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Erosion
I can’t remember when I first realized something strange was happening. I think the fog came first. It was, for a long while, only a vague yellow tint in the air over the longest of distances. It was there, but only imperceptibly so. Yes, it was soon after that… that I could first remember seeing them.
They left a person with an impression, at most, if they were sensed at all… fleeting sensations of being watched, of a person in a regular dark hoodie, cowl always up, but never up enough to hide the face. Something was wrong with the face. It might have been that their black eyes were far too large, or they were wearing a mask of some sort. I could remember details, but never a whole… details, of a curving, lurid, smiling face that wasn’t smiling. It somehow managed to be both mocking and ironic and completely expressionless at the same. Maybe that’s why I felt like it was a mask…
There were less of them, I think, at first. Daily life continued without much discussion of the yellow haze that, day by day, grew thicker. It was strange how little it was acknowledged, and only ever in a roundabout manner, such as how one couldn’t see distant buildings as easily as the day before. Nobody asked, nobody tested, nobody investigated, yet we were all aware of it, and commonplace discussions took on an air of nervousness and foreboding as people tried to share their unfocused fears in the most subconscious and subtle ways.
Over time, the strange watchers grew more numerous, though I was never vaguely aware of more than one at once in any given scene… except when there was two, no longer watching, but instead dragging something away in an unknown direction. Their expressionless faces and grasping arms leered over the impression of a large black bag containing something kicking and struggling, and perhaps, screaming, though no noise registered in my awareness. These experiences started in the dark and at night and in lonely places, but, soon, I was feeling the accompanying increased anxiety of these events while buying coffee, or at work, or waiting at the bus stop.
As the watchers grew more prevalent, and the sticky yellow fog grew thicker, things started to seem… emptier. It was as if people were missing, people that couldn’t be remembered, missed, or asked about. At work, we were tasked with jobs that required many more people than we had, but we obliviously worked on them anyway.
On the bus, the few other passengers who still shared my daily commute and I would murmur nervously and quietly to each other, our fear now stronger than ever, yet our concerns still vague and unable to be voiced. Even then, we all knew there was another on the bus, one who watched and leered without expression and did not join in our hushed whisperings, one who sat as we did in one of the seats and swayed as we did with the turns of the bus, but who could not be located, looked at, or acknowledged.
It was in one of these whisper-filled commutes that the normal course of life finally broke down. I was whispering to a homeless man who often rode, for he and I had befriended one another as a matter of necessity, being the only passengers these days. We had reached such rapport of subconscious body language that we were nearly on the same page with our fears, though the reasons we feared were still unclear.
Even so, it still took a long unknown while for us to realize that the bus had stopped… not at an intersection or a light, but merely stopped completely. There was nobody operating it, and we sat in the middle of a busy road that itself sat in yellow-shrouded silence. The husks of empty cars could be seen in the road, a mockery of the traffic that once flowed there. We were forced to leave the bus, our egress followed by the twin impressions of large black eyes and a seated, hooded watcher.
Unable to see more than ten feet in the dense and twisting yellow, he and I picked our way forward, initially heading towards my workplace, as I was still blithely intent on finishing my commute. As we moved, the sensations of being watched grew nearly unbearable, as the small radius of sight meant we felt as if the watcher was mere feet away. As we left one vague sense of unease behind, another would be standing ahead, waiting, and turning its mocking and unmoving eyes on us as we crept between the cars in apprehensive silence. If not for my friend’s reassuring presence, I would have curled up in a ball and gone catatonic without even knowing why.
It was then that a single bright spark flared in my thoughts, as I thought of the work day ahead. I knew I worked at a corporation, in an office building, yet… I was the only employee I was aware of. The very concept of a corporation, of a large group of individuals, and the fact that I wasn’t the head of the company… didn’t… seem… to…
I froze, my hands holding my face in sudden terror. For the first time, I was able to conceptualize that something horrible was happening. I turned to my friend, insisting that we had to go to my home instead, to make sure… to check on… somebody… I felt like I was about to break down for worry about someone, but I knew not who. He saw my near-hysterics, and, though he didn’t know the reason, trusted me enough to start heading the other way with me, those eyes on us the entire time. As we turned, his aged face grew concerned, as if he had finally realized something strange or fearful.
I started describing the path ahead, and, mid-sentence, there was suddenly the fleeting impression of pulling arms and two mocking faces and a struggling black bag being dragged away on the pavement. I screamed, and tried to race after it, stumbling between skeletal cars, but I couldn’t tell which direction it had gone... if, indeed, it had gone in any direction at all. I found myself looking around in confusion, unable to see more than three or four feet now, my fists clenched, and my heart burning with anger and confusion and alarm. One thought remained, churning fire through my veins: home!
For a brief moment, I found all sensations of being watched had gone. I decided to risk injury, and began running crouched, following the river of dead cars in the direction I knew held my home. My visibility was so impaired that I almost ran into jutting metal a dozen times, each time barely avoiding a collision that would give away my position in the sea of fog. I felt emotionless eyes and hooded faces turning this way and that in the roiling gold, looking for me, and I shook with fear even as I scrambled along, now cutting my hands and bruising my knees on the pavement, stumbling along at a dangerous pace.
Somehow, I made it home, hitting the front door of my house with a soft thud that shot another surge of fear-fueled adrenaline through me. I quietly fumbled with the keys, went inside, locked the door, and pulled all the curtains. Even then, I still could not form a definite concept of what I feared… I barricaded everything I could, and then relaxed, overwhelmed with fatigue.
Wearily, I walked around my house. The fog was much lighter inside, where it merely gave everything a disturbing yellow tone. My rampant paranoia noted the sepia cast, even if I could not, and it urged me to hurry. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for until I found it.
A picture.
It was a photo of me, and a woman, and a child. We stood on a beach somewhere, laughing and holding each other. It was only then, at that moment, that I finally let myself feel despair. I didn’t know them… but I felt the void in me where a family should be. Warm tears flowed down my cheeks. I… had no more ideas… no more plans. That subconscious scheming and planning part of my mind that had brought me this far knew I was probably the last person left, though I still couldn’t understand why.
I lifted my head at the slow realization that I was not alone. I could sense, behind me, a hooded face watching me from the back corner of the room. In my haste to pick up the picture, I had forgotten stealth, and I had been found. An image of a stranger, a man, old and disheveled, flashed into my mind – two ideas in turn, of a look of realization on his face, and then a strange sort of disappearance. The two images felt immediate and recent, as if they had just happened to someone I had known…
Animal instinct surged through me, and I understood vaguely that conscious acknowledgement of the threat meant death. My only choice was to flee, without thinking about why. I leapt into motion, and ran at the curtained bay window,
smashing through it desperately. I felt stinging in my arm from sharp glass, but took off running in panic after I hit the ground. I could feel my mind attempting to think, attempting to interpret what was really happening, and I knew instinctively that I would be doomed if it was successful.
I ran down a hill in the almost complete yellow fog, blindly slamming my feet against the dirt. The watching, leering face constantly flashed by only an inch from my face, to my left, to my right, in front of me as I ran, trying to force me to acknowledge it. I fell brutally against rocks, and began crawling and stumbling on bruised arms and legs, eyes now closed, for the mocking and emotionless face was now right up against my skin as I fled through the void.
I could sense those huge black eyes pressed against my eyelids and I could feel the smooth curves of the emotionless watcher’s masklike face grinning against my chin, its mocking expression daring me to open my eyes for even a moment. Through it all, I ran at full speed through the empty world, without sight or senses… but I knew it couldn’t last.
The moment finally came, when the ground betrayed me, and I felt myself falling into space. I screamed then, a noiseless scream that filled my mind and soul. In that instant, I knew absolute despair. It shot through me like a torrent, rupturing my resolve, and my instinctual response to falling happened: I opened my eyes.
Arms grabbed me roughly. I heard a dozen shouts that felt like explosions after the silence I’d endured for so long. I struggled, fighting the arms and grasping hands, but more came. I heard machines somewhere nearby, rolling and turning and rumbling. I screamed again, but this time I heard myself.
“Sir!” came a voice, shocking me with its impact, with its reality. “Sir, calm down!”
Gradually, awareness came to me, and I stopped struggling. The yellow fog was gone, and I found myself in a bright and clear space, grass beneath me. Men in military uniforms grasped me, relaxing as I did. All around us, jeeps, tanks, and artillery stood poised.
“What…” I said reflexively, and the sound of my own voice surprised me. “Where am I?”
“Sir!” one of the soldiers shouted, trying to get my dazed attention. “How did you escape?”
I shook my head in confusion, lacking understanding. I followed the gaze of the soldiers…
Behind me, mere feet away, the world ended. A shimmering mass of strange motion and unreality extended like a wall in a vast sphere that stretched to both horizons. I could see the buildings of my city deep inside, and… strange, living matter, pulsing in vast cords and arrays. It was all one thing, one entity, vast and inexplicable, unlike anything alive, purely unphysical and seemingly extra-dimensional. I shook in sick relief and sheer terror as I realized that the little black specks floating within it were… people. I stared into the other world from which I had barely stumbled at the last seconds of my life, and… I felt it. It was aware of me, of my escape, but it felt no anger… only a sort of mocking irony – that damned leering! – as if it laughed about something only it knew.
And then, it left, the horizon-wide disturbance seeming to shrink on itself in moments, and I was left with the impression of its motion down a vast and infinite tunnel. I felt subconsciously that I had been right in thinking I was the last survivor. The entity’s inscrutable purpose done, it had moved on… elsewhere.
The soldiers shouted and milled about, running to establish new orders. One stayed with me, the one that had spoken. He grabbed me again.
“How did you survive? How did you escape?” he shouted over the din.
“The fog…” I mumbled absently, going into shock. “The yellow fog…”
“What fog?” he asked loudly. I could only smile weakly, and eventually he gave up and placed me in a jeep. My head lolled back and forth lightly with the bumps in the road as they drove me. I was weak, and covered in cuts and bruises, but it was alright… I’d survived.
I knew then that the fog had been my own mind, my brain, trying to protect me as best it could from events it could not understand or interpret. My human capacity for self-delusion had saved me from that extra-dimensional predator. I felt… proud. I’d beaten it… I’d survived. I looked down at the crumpled picture still somehow in my hand, looking at the unknown woman and child with me in the image. I still couldn’t remember them. My pride took on a shadow of hollow, vague sorrow.
I’d survived… but at what cost?
As the jeep bounced and sped along, the soldier next to me squinted at something in the distance. He blinked, checked his vision, and found he still couldn’t see it clearly, but he didn’t seem to know why. In that moment, I understood the entity’s mirth, at the puny little animal’s relief and pride in thinking that it had escaped, that it could escape at all. I clenched the picture of my forgotten family tighter in my hand. Soon, I might see them again. Would I remember them then? I closed my eyes in resignation, listening to the sounds of the road and wind while they lasted.
Psychosis: Tales of Horror Page 13