by West, Sam
THE GREEN FOG
AN EXTREME HORROR NOVELLA
BY SAM WEST
The Green Fog: An Extreme Horror Novella
By Sam West
Copyright Sam West 2016
Cover Image: [email protected]
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book may not be reproduced or used in any way without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in book reviews. The characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
CHAPTER ONE
“I’m pregnant,” Sarah announced.
Inside, Amber winced. Poor Marjorie.
“That’s fantastic, sweetie, congratulations,” Amber said with a smile, genuinely pleased for her friend despite feeling bad for Marjorie. “So that’s why you’re not drinking. How far gone are you? You’re not showing.”
“Almost three months.”
Amber squinted in the early evening, summer sunshine, glancing over the handcrafted, driftwood table at Marjorie. She was staring out to sea, her striking blue eyes hidden by the big sunglasses, every exquisite line of her tanned face expressionless. Only the slightest tremor of her fingers as she brought the wine-glass to her lips betrayed her hurt to Amber.
“Congratulations,” Marjorie said, with one of her customary, icy smiles. “Someone should see if the boys need a hand.”
“Why? You’ll only get in the way,” Sara said.
Again, Amber winced inside. Sara didn’t mean to sound rude, it was just the way she came across. She was one of those brisk and chirpy types with a loud voice and a braying laugh.
Marjorie scraped back her chair over the newly-laid decking. “Excuse me.”
Amber shot Sara a look. Leave her. Sara just looked puzzled, but to Amber’s relief she didn’t say anything more until Marjorie was a safe distance away on the other side of the expansive lawn.
“What’s crawled up her backside? Apart from the pole that’s always there. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, she’s just so cold. I’m pregnant, for God’s sake.”
Amber sighed, thoughtfully watching her friend over with the men at the other end of the garden.
She’s so beautiful, came the automatic thought. There was no jealousy or desire in it, it was just what she always thought whenever she watched her.
Alfie, Colin and Jeff were busy knocking back the beers and flipping the homemade fishcakes made with fresh mackerel that her husband Alfie had scrounged off the fishermen down on the quay earlier that day. Marjorie looked so out of place standing there, with her waif-like figure in the little black dress and her dyed black hair pulled off her face in an elaborate up-do. She was always so pristine, so perfect, and for the most part she came across as a stuck-up bitch. Sometimes Amber felt like the only person who could see through her cool façade to the warm and kind woman beyond. To the sad woman.
Should I tell Sara that Marjorie has been doing the IVF thing for two years and just last week at the grand old age of thirty-nine and a half she went into an early menopause? Yep, Mother Nature sure could be one cruel bitch…
No, she couldn’t break her friend’s confidence.
“She has her reasons, Sara. She’s really not that bad, once you get to know her.”
“If you say so. And what reasons would they be, then?”
Amber sighed and took a big mouthful of red wine. She stared wistfully over at her glamorous friend, cupping her hand over her eyes to shield them from the glare of the sun. The sound of laughter drifted her way, mingling with the cawing of the seagulls as the four of them shared a joke that she couldn’t hear. Her husband, Alfie, draped an arm over her shoulders, and Amber felt a sudden pang of…
Of What? Jealousy? Don’t be ridiculous, you’re not the jealous type, remember?
“Just reasons, you know, personal stuff,” she said, dragging her gaze away from her husband
(flirting?)
with her friend.
Then she realised what she had just said and mentally kicked herself.
How juvenile am I? I’ve got a secret and I’m not going to tell you? I can’t believe I just said that…
“No, I don’t know her reasons as it happens, seeing as you won’t tell me,” Sara said.
Great. Now Sara’s got the hump.
A momentary wave of irritation stirred within her – Sara and Marjorie would get on great if they would just open up with each other. She didn’t really understand why they rubbed each other up the wrong way because deep down, they weren’t that different. All they wanted was a man that loved them, and children.
Isn’t that what every woman wants? I’m so lucky to have my husband and daughter.
Yeah, even if he is flirting with my friend.
He’s not flirting.
Amber trusted her husband one hundred percent, she had no idea why she was feeling like this. Her period was due, maybe it was that.
“That’s really great news about you being pregnant. Jeff must be thrilled,” she said, mainly in an attempt to take Sara’s mind off her admittance that she was keeping something from her.
Not only that, she didn’t appreciate the dark turn her thoughts were inexplicably taking.
It really wasn’t like her at all.
Amazingly, her transparent tactic worked a treat. Sara’s face lit up again, thinking about the impending baby. If there was one thing about Sara, she never held a grudge for long.
“He is. We both are. Oh, it’s so exciting, I can’t wait, even though I’m going to be ancient by the time he’s the same age as your Jessie.”
“You’re not old, you’re only thirty-five. Try being thirty-eight. Now that’s old,” she said, but her heart wasn’t in the conversation.
“You have a point,” Sara said.
But Amber barely heard her. Instinctively, at the mention of her ten-year-old daughter’s name, her gaze flickered upwards towards her bedroom window.
I hope she’s okay.
A wave of anxiety caught her off-guard. It was just that one heard so many real-life horror stories about children going missing from their own bedrooms as parents boozed the night away in nearby proximity…
Stop it. She’s fine. Our house doesn’t even have a backdoor and any intruder would have to walk right past us to get inside.
As laid-back and as easy-going as Amber was, sometimes she suffered from bouts of anxiety. She had landed on her feet, and she knew it. Her husband was gorgeous and he owned a thriving business in the form of a chain of surf-shops. Her daughter was perfect. Her house was perfect. Her job as an artist was a dream come true.
Sometimes, like now, when she sat in her vast garden of a warm summer’s evening and gazed out at that view of the Atlantic Ocean, she felt as if she were in the wrong life. The home she shared with Alfie and Jessie was the very last house on a dead-end stretch of gravel-road that was situated in an elevated position behind the cliff-path that wound all the way to the neighbouring town of Zennor.
The four-bedroomed house faced out to sea and had a vast front-garden which more than made up for the lack of back-garden. It was the length and width of half a football pitch and at the end of it was a panoramic view of Porthmeor Beach. The next door neighbours were a good fifty metres away.
Yep, I live in my own private paradise. Whatever did I do to get so lucky?
“You’ve gone quiet. What are you thinking?” Sara asked, her expression unreadable behind her sunglasses.
Amber immediately felt guilty for going off into her own little dream world and she focussed properly on Sara. “Nothing, really. Just about my charmed life.”
“You know your problem? You lack confidence. Why are you so insecure about your existence? You and Alfie have earned everything that you have.”<
br />
“I get paid to paint pictures. I make money from my hobby, sometimes I can barely live with the guilt.”
She was only half-joking. Sara’s right. I am insecure.
“You are such a stereotype, Amber Wilson. Stop being such an overly-sensitive artist. You’re successful and rich, so what, get over it. I don’t do fuck all, and believe me, I live with it just fine. Thanks to your hubby, my Jeff can now keep me in the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed.”
Amber snorted laughter. Sara’s down-to-earth, speak-as-she-found attitude always made her feel better. In her moments of paranoia, she was a breath of fresh air.
“That’s because you’re just a gold-digger.”
“I love my husband, the fact he is now loaded is an added bonus.”
She was right. Financially, he was doing fine. Better than fine. Marjorie’s husband, Colin, was Alfie’s business partner but Jeff still had his fingers in their very lucrative pie, owning a small percentage of shares in the business. He was the charismatic front man; he acted as area manager and always stepped in as the temporary shop manager when a new outlet was launched and new staff had to be trained.
Amber gazed thoughtfully over at their husbands who were laughing with Marjorie. Marjorie’s husband Colin looked so out of place standing there with the other two men. To everyone that knew them, Alfie and Jeff were affectionately known as ‘Bill and Ted’. Mainly because they were both keen surfers and Alfie was tall and dark, Jeff short and blonde. They carried on together like a couple of school-boys, constantly bantering and laughing at each other.
Visually, Colin was the polar opposite of the pair of them. Where Alfie and Jeff epitomised the ‘surfer dude’ look, with the almost-too-long hair, year-round suntans and a penchant for baggy board shorts and flip-flops, Colin was, in contrast, decidedly ‘buttoned up’. He favoured chords and shirts teamed with loafers. He wore his hair short, had glasses, and his complexion was whiter than an anaemic goth’s.
He looked every inch the accountant. Which in a way, Amber supposed, he was. He was the brains behind the outfit, a shrewd businessman that was about as into surfing as he was into high-fashion. He had seen an opening, and he had gone for it. As a result, the pair of them now owned eighteen surf-shops across Cornwall, and counting.
“I think maybe Marjorie hates me because our husbands are so close. She feels like Jeff has taken Colin’s place.”
Yeah. There’s more than a grain of truth in that. “Our guys are just so laid-back, that’s all. And Colin is so…”
“Uptight?”
Both women laughed, even though Amber derived no pleasure in ever slagging someone off.
“I was going to say serious. I have to be honest, I never knew why you and Jeff didn’t have kids earlier,” Amber said, changing the subject, uncomfortable with bad-mouthing the guy that had helped make her husband a millionaire.
Sara shrugged. “It’s just the right time now, financially, and everything.”
Amber smiled at her friend, taking in her glowing, plump face with the strawberry blonde, wavy hair cascading every which way over her freckly shoulders.
“I really am pleased for you.”
“Thanks. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Any plans for another?”
Amber smiled wistfully. “We’re happy as we are. Besides, I’m probably too old now, anyway.”
She neglected to mention that she was off the pill for the first time in years, and wasn’t adverse to the idea of falling pregnant. It wasn’t something that she and Alfie were actively courting, but if it happened, then she would embrace the opportunity wholeheartedly. Jessie was getting so big, it would be nice to have a baby around the house again…
“You are not too old,” Sara said. “What about Marjorie? Is she upset because I’m pregnant? Surely not? I always thought she was too busy with her teaching career to worry about kids.”
Amber squirmed in her seat – Sara was too near the truth for comfort. The simple fact was, Marjorie had left it too late to start a family. To her relief, she was saved from answering when her husband Alfie approached the table. Amber’s heart skipped a beat, just like it always did whenever she laid eyes on him.
He was just so easy-going and smiley, and, more importantly, genuinely had no idea how good-looking he was. He strode over, grinning broadly, his dark hair flopping in his blue eyes.
“What’s up, lovely lady,” he said, briefly bending down to plant a smacker on her lips. “Do you girls wanna come and get your meat?”
He waggled his eyebrows lewdly at her and she playfully punched him in the shoulder.
“Hey, what was that for?” he asked in mock, wide-eyed innocence.
“You know perfectly well what that was for.” She leaned in closer to Sara and whispered in her ear: “Can I tell him?”
Sara grinned and nodded, her cheeks flushed.
“Sara’s pregnant,” Amber blurted out.
“What? That’s fantastic, congratulations.”
Sara squealed when he bodily scooped her up and spun her round once in a circle. She looked like a plump ragdoll in his arms; he was well over six foot and she was barely five foot two. Her pink sundress fanned out around her making her look even more like a doll.
Amber frowned as her husband set down a flustered Sara on her feet. It wasn’t really Alfie’s style to do something like that. Sure, he was a friendly guy, but generally speaking, he wasn’t especially tactile, even after a beer or two. She shrugged aside the strange feeling and just decided that he was happy for her and Jeff.
“Grab your plates, ladies, get yourself some meat.”
He waggled his eyebrows again, but this time Amber wasn’t even halfway close to cracking a smile. “That joke’s getting a little old, honey.”
But he didn’t appear to have heard her and was already striding back over to the end of the garden, his flip-flops smacking against the soles of his feet.
“Shall we?” Sara asked, straightening her dress and grabbing a plate off of the stack next to the array of salads and potato dishes laid out on the table.
“You go, I left my sunglasses inside and I want to check on Jessie. I’ll be right back.”
Just to the left of the front-door were the wide French-doors that led into the expansive kitchen. They were open and she strode into her home.
CHAPTER TWO
It was cooler in the kitchen and she shivered in her denim cut-offs and tight, white t-shirt, her arms breaking out in a rash of goose-bumps.
Even after living in the house for three full years, the beauty of it still took her breath away; she had to pinch herself on a regular basis. The sink was right next to the French-doors, and she stopped for a glass of water. As she knocked back the water, she gazed out through the window above the draining-board, across the garden and to the sparkling sea beyond.
Such a beautiful evening, she thought wistfully.
Sunset was around two hours away, and an evening filled with friends and laughter stretched out before her. In that moment, life seemed perfect.
Too perfect. Something bad is going to happen.
She shook her head, almost smiling at her ridiculous flights of fancy.
Turning her back to the window, she flip-flopped across the Italian-tiled floor of the kitchen and out into the hallway, pausing to retrieve her sunglasses off the sideboard. As she did so, she caught her reflection in the hallway mirror.
Not bad for thirty-eight.
Amber was not a vain woman, and was referring to her body rather than her face.
Having a husband as gorgeous, super-fit and as successful as Alfie was a strong incentive for her to take care of her appearance. She spent hours a week in the gym they had installed in the basement, wore her light-brown hair in a long, deceptively tousled style that in reality took far too many hours a week to achieve, and sported the perfect tan.
Like with everything else in her life, she was also mistrustful of her be
autiful face. She was aware of how fleeting good-looks were, how they could fade overnight, especially with a sun-worshiper like her. She peered more closely at her face in the mirror. No wrinkles yet.
“Mum? Is that you?”
The sound of her daughter calling out to her snapped her gaze guiltily away from the mirror.
You’re so shallow…
She took the steps of the lavish, spiral stone staircase two at a time and bounded into Jessie’s bedroom.
“Hey, sweetie, how’s it going?”
Jessie was sitting cross-legged on her pink ‘princess’ bed, writing in her pink diary. She slammed it shut as soon as Amber entered the room.
“Mum! You have to knock before entering. I am writing down my most private things.”
A brief pang of sadness twisted in her heart; there was a time when Jessie shared every last little thought that went through her little brain… They really did just grow up so fast.
“Your private things, huh?” she said, sitting down on the bed and ruffling her daughter’s hair which was as dark as Alfie’s. “Too private even for your old mum?”
Jessie rolled her eyes – the same shade of dark-blue as her own. ‘Ocean eyes’, as Alfie sometimes called them. “Yes, Mother, especially for you. Are you and Dad getting drunk in the garden?”
“No, we’re just talking to our friends.”
“You mean a party, and you’re getting drunk.”
Amber tried not to go on the defensive; rule number one of child rearing, never show weakness. She decided to get Jessie off of the subject of her and Alfie’s inevitable hangovers tomorrow.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come downstairs and have something to eat with us?”
“Well, I was going to eat a burger and stream that film in the living-room like you said I could, but I can’t get internet.”
Amber frowned. “Well, did you try switching it off then turning it on again?”
“Yes.”
“You should have told us there’s no connection, sweetie.”
Jessie shrugged. Her diary was one of those kids’ toys that came with a lock and a key, and she put on a theatrical show of locking it up before placing her key carefully inside the top drawer of her bedside table. “I’ll know if the key moves, Mother, so please don’t even try and read my diary.”