by Joe Hart
“Why did Fellow ask you not to call the things in the mist demons?” I asked. Kotis stiffened, his back straightening as he looked off into the darkness. I waited, thinking I’d offended him somehow, and was about to apologize when he spoke.
“He believes there’s only one demon.” He paused. “The one that took your family.”
“Like, he thinks it’s actually from Hell?”
“Yes and no. It’s kind of a ... religion, I guess you’d call it. You see, it’s just like Ellius probably told you—there’s good in every place, just like there’s a bit of evil everywhere. You think that beautiful place he spoke of that’s all good and light, that vents into the Earth opposite us, doesn’t have its share of evil? You can bet it does.”
“Just like you three are the spots of good here,” I said.
Kotis chuckled. “You talk like you know us.”
“Just what I’ve seen so far, you three seem better than a lot of people I know back home.”
“Can you say you’re completely good?” he asked, his dark eyes shifting toward me.
“Well, no, I have my flaws, just like anyone.”
He nodded. “Me too. I ain’t perfect, neither is Ellius or ... well, Fellow just might be, but you get the idea. There’s some of us here who try to live peacefully in the midst of all the evil. We’re few and far between, but we’re still here. Now the one that took your family, that’s a different story. The ones like us fear and loathe it, but you could guess there’s a right many others that worship it like a god.”
“And Fellow just doesn’t want things that aren’t as malevolent lumped in with something he thinks—”
“Is pure evil,” Kotis finished. “He hates the evil one with as much malice as his little body can produce, and right now he doesn’t look it, but he’s scared down to his soul of this journey we’re on. But he’s going anyway because he believes it’s the right thing to do.”
“And what do you think?” I asked.
“I think I try to do what I believe is right, as much of the time as I can.”
I closed my eyes and soaked in the information Kotis had provided, as fear came over me. It was a creeping sensation of distant doom, of a failing yet to come. How would I fight something that was pure evil? How could I win against something that was as old as the Earth? My family’s faces swam through my mind, each smiling or framed in a memory of everyday life, which was now precious. Jane doing dishes, her hair falling over her forehead; Jack bounding across the living room to jump into my lap; Sara gently combing the hair of her doll, no doubt imagining the wonderful mother she would grow up to be.
I opened my eyes to the fire, which burned low. I made a silent promise: I would save them, or I would die trying.
Kotis slapped my back with a meaty hand and sent the air in my chest flying from my mouth. “Better get some shut eye, mate. Dawn’ll come early, no doubt.” He pointed at the sun that never dropped below the horizon and laughed before standing and moving away from the light.
I sat for a while longer, listening to the breeze in the forest before throwing another chunk of wood on the fire. I lay down and drew the coat of a soldier long departed close around me, and when I closed my eyes to sleep, I pretended that the air speaking in the branches nearby was the familiar wind of home.
A gentle hand shook me awake, and I opened my eyes to see Fellow stooped over me. “It’s time to get up, Michael.”
I nodded and stretched, feeling the soreness of muscles overworked by adrenaline the day before. I sat up and accepted a cold piece of feltson meat from Ellius and chewed on it, letting the salty striations dissolve on my tongue.
“You could probably sell this in my home state,” I said between bites. “Tell people it’s venison, they wouldn’t know the difference.”
“If a person ate it in your world, they would die almost immediately,” Ellius said, looking over his shoulder.
I paused, another bite almost to my lips. “But I can eat it,” I said.
“Yes, here it is fine. On Earth it becomes poisonous, like most other things brought from here,” Ellius said. A strange look danced across his features, and he turned away. I wanted to ask him more, but he moved away toward the belt of trees that lined the middle of the field.
As Kotis passed by me, he jabbed a light elbow to my ribs. “It’ll just give ya rotten gas here.” His laughter rang out against the trees, startling a few birds from the lower branches.
We followed the tree line all morning. The ridge that it rode upon maintained a steady incline that wasn’t noticeable but for the ache that began to bloom in my calves just before we stopped for lunch. The clouds looked higher and the sky seemed brighter. Maybe I was imagining things, or maybe I was actually getting used to how time passed here. As we set out again, our footsteps the only sounds save for the rustling of some small, unseen animals in the underbrush, I looked at Kotis, Ellius, and Fellow in turn.
“None of you have weapons,” I said.
Ellius glanced back at me before replying. “No, typically there’s no need for them. Especially since we live mostly on the other side of the fog. It’s a place of relative peace, except for the occasional traveler from this area.”
“I don’t ever carry a weapon,” Kotis said, stroking Scrim’s feathers. “Got all I need right here, don’t I, piss beak?” Scrim squawked and nipped at Kotis’s ear, eliciting a chuckle from the giant.
“You don’t need any weapons, you’re as big as an ox,” I said.
Kotis eyed me before turning his gaze forward again. “How big’s an ox?”
I grinned. “They’re big.” Kotis nodded, a pleased expression on his slab-like features.
Ahead the ground rose abruptly before falling away into a panoramic view. The trees became more sporadic as we neared the drop, and when we crested the rise, I stopped, my legs locked tight by the sight below.
The ground ended in a sharp cliff of tan rock. A valley stretched out a thousand feet below us, and the sheer size of it addled my mind. To the right I saw a forest of dead trees on the valley floor, which must have covered hundreds of thousands of acres, their spiny branches like a nest of sea urchins. A dark river flowed from the center of the forest and wound its way through the valley, sometimes disappearing for what must have been miles, only to reappear again and then fade out of sight. To the left was a field of stone, with towering buttes and boulders that were almost level with our height. Much of the valley lay in shadow created by the low sun at our backs.
“My God,” I said.
“Yes, it’s a sight,” Ellius murmured at my side.
I tore my gaze away from the immense basin to look at him. “You’ve been here before?” I asked.
He nodded imperceptibly. “Once, a long time ago.”
Fellow approached the edge of the cliff and looked down, then turned back to us. “There’s a trail, looks safe enough.”
“Well, lead on, you viny bastard,” Kotis grumbled, nearing the edge.
The path was narrow and pocked with holes that opened unto gaping depths I tried not to look into. Every hundred yards it switchbacked, leading in the opposite direction. The air cooled as we dropped out of the sun’s light, and I fastened the topmost button of my coat and rubbed my hands together to dispel the chill. Several times we stopped to climb over various rock piles and parts of the wall that had collapsed, and, once, we were forced to sit down as the rock beneath out feet rumbled with a ferocity I was sure would throw us off the face of the gorge. After several minutes, it quieted and we resumed our descent.
When at last the path switched one last time and we could see where it merged with the valley floor, I breathed a sigh of relief. My legs ached from climbing, and my eyes were sore from the stinging wind that constantly pelted the side of the valley. We stepped onto a rough landscape of parched rock and cracked soil. The ground looked like it had never seen a drop of rain. For all I knew, maybe it hadn’t. The thought of a storm made my insides cringe.
; “Does it storm here?” I asked.
“Storm?” Ellius repeated.
“Yeah, does it rain and thunder, lightning, that sort of thing?”
“Well, yes, we do get a storm from time to time. Nothing much, a little moisture and noise, but that’s all.” Ellius regarded me for a second, his eyes questioning, but then Fellow spoke and we all turned our attention to him.
“Stop,” he hissed, tilting his head to one side.
We halted. The shadows on the valley floor seemed to move on their own accord, and I waited for something to spring at us, claws and teeth open and waiting. A noise caught my attention as I surveyed our surroundings to see what had Fellow spooked. It was a high whining that came from our left. The rocky wall extended in a hip that branched several hundred yards out, obscuring our view of the sound’s origin. It rose in pitch and then dropped, and I felt my heart beat faster. Something in the noise was familiar, and I strained my ears to discern it.
Screaming.
The deep guttural sounds of people dying echoed to us from around the corner. The high shriek of a woman and the baritone yells of men intermingled in a cacophony of suffering that made the skin on the back of my neck bristle. It sounded as though they were being eaten alive.
Fellow spun, his orange eyes wild. “Hide!” he yelled, pointing to a break in the valley wall behind us. I turned and ran as the volume of the screams became louder, until the whole basin rang with them. There were a few garbled words amongst the cries, emphatic pleas for relief that surpassed the eardrum and knifed directly through the heart. Part of me wanted to turn back, to run to the aid of people obviously in desperate need of help, but something else pushed me on. Fear throbbed through my veins, a steady pulse that told me to run and hide.
The crevasse in the wall was wide enough to house all of us, but it was not much over five feet high, and Kotis nearly had to crawl on hands and knees to fit. We scrambled into the darkness, our breathing rebounding off the walls, each of us trying to control it. Fellow crouched at the mouth of the cave, with Ellius at his side. I shuffled forward, flanking both of them. We watched for movement as the screams became louder and more hysterical.
A mass of swirling air filled with dust and debris emerged around the rocky hip to our left. It looked like a whirling tornado, but smaller and more concentrated. Strands of twirling air stretched out and touched the ground, making the dust storm resemble a shifting spider. Screaming emanated from it, and as it drew nearer I squinted, seeing forms within its clouded exterior.
Faces leered at us through the haze.
Elongated and amorphous, they were like blotches of oil on water. I could see men’s, women’s, and even a few children’s features pressing against the skin of the funnel, as if they were trying to escape. As soon as one face came into focus it would release a scream of torment. I assumed the same thing was happening on the storm’s opposite side, since I could still hear many other voices. Then the face would recede, letting another take its place.
The cloud tipped and spun closer to where we hid, and I had a vision of it beelining toward us, smothering our hiding spot with its spitting dirt and choking wind. The screaming rose to a climax in a symphony of pain and despair. I clapped my hands to my ears to block it out, but merely muffled the sounds of agony. The stirring storm swung away from our hiding spot and continued toward the distant edge of forest that was barely visible, the arms that extended from it seeming to pull it along.
I slumped to the cave wall and felt my stomach slosh sickeningly. I’d heard of alarm systems for homes emitting a high-frequency sound that, if listened to for any longer than a few seconds, would make a person nauseated. After hearing the screams for less than a minute, I could relate. The unbearable urge to have a drink hit me again, and my throat constricted. For a sip of wine or whiskey I would’ve traded the same amount in blood.
I pushed myself off the wall and put a hand on Ellius’s shoulder. “What in the hell was that?”
“A soul storm,” he said. “There are several of them here in this valley. They’re a product of the one who took your family.” Ellius’s face sobered to the point I thought it might crack. “The people who accidentally come here never leave. They eventually die one way or another, killed by something native or by their own hand when they can’t find a way back. But the worst is, their souls cannot escape. They are bound to this world in death. When the one that took your family finds them, alive or dead, it weaves them into a storm of anguish like the one you just saw. It feeds on their suffering and they are bound to it, to forever wander this place in unbearable pain.”
My hand fell to my side. I glanced at Fellow and Kotis. Both of them looked like I felt inside, sick and unsteady. The ground shifted beneath my feet. “Do any of you have anything to drink?” I asked.
Fellow pulled a small water skin from his belt and offered it to me.
“Something stronger?” I asked. He tilted his head and looked to Ellius.
“He means alcohol,” Ellius said, waving Fellow’s water skin away. “We have nothing like it here, Michael, I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am,” I said with a quaver in my voice. “What happens if you touch one of the storms?”
“You join their ranks of torment,” Ellius said.
“Right, so don’t touch the bleedin’ things,” Kotis said gruffly.
“Exactly. Avoid them at all costs. You cannot fight them. If you see one, just run,” Ellius admonished.
“Is it gone now?” I asked.
Fellow stepped out of the cave and swiveled his head back and forth. He waited nearly a minute before turning back to us. “I can’t see or hear it anymore,” he said.
“Good,” Kotis said, crawling forward. “This abode leaves a lot to be desired. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
We exited the cave one by one, and stood abreast of each other. Without another word, we moved forward into the valley. After only a few steps, I heard the clack of rocks falling behind us and turned.
A figure stood framed in the sunlight at the edge of the canyon.
“Guys!” I yelled, and stared at the outline above us. It wavered and then folded, just as before, into half, and then again.
Kotis stopped at my side, staring up to where I looked. “What is it, mate?”
I scanned the rim, searching for anything that would betray the figure’s location. Nothing moved; it was gone.
“The shadow I saw before, it was right there above us, watching us,” I said, pointing to the spot where it had been. I could feel Fellow and Ellius behind me looking for the outline I’d seen.
“You sure it was there?” Kotis finally asked.
“I’m not seeing things,” I said, looking at his wide face. “It was there, I heard a rock fall behind us, that’s why I turned. There’s someone following us.”
“We believe you, Michael,” Fellow said. “Let’s all keep a lookout from now on, we don’t know if it might be an agent of the one we seek.”
“Come on, mate, let’s move,” Kotis said, placing a giant hand on my shoulder.
Psalm 23 came to me as we turned and made our way across the burned ground, around slanted piles of rock. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me. The words were shallow and didn’t hold the power I hoped they would. No matter, I sent up my own prayer: Be with my family instead of me if you have to choose, amen.
We walked for several hours through a winding maze of rock outcrops, which opened into a wide field of the familiar cut straw. The forest we’d seen earlier ran close to the field, and after another mile we stepped into the weak rays of the sun, leaving the shadow of the gorge behind. The sun crept clockwise to a seven o’clock position, and I mused on the idea that it actually was seven in the evening. The idea seemed right somehow, and I was going to voice my opinion about the time when we crested a small hill that dropped away into a gorge with a flat bottom.
An enormous ship lay in
the center of the depression.
I stopped, my breath catching in my throat as I took in the ship’s shape. It lay sideways to us, its broad hull partially buried in the dirt. Its bow tilted down, as did its stern, giving it the look of a dying beached whale. Its upper decks heaved toward the sky, and a massive crack ran down the side of the hull. The ship was a dull brown where it met the ground, faded to a poisonous green at its top. I could see the leprous etchings that aquatic sea life leaves on a ship that has been underwater for some time. A bit of seaweed hung from the foremost railing and waved in the slight breeze. I looked for the four steam stacks, but realized they would have toppled off as the ship sank. Even without them I recognized the ocean liner in an instant.
It was the RMS Titanic.
“Oh my God,” I managed, staring at the impossible sight. “What the fuck is that doing here?” I felt my mind tremble with the ramifications of what lay before me. This was a ship that had sunk in the Atlantic Ocean a century ago. I’d seen the movie, I’d watched the documentaries. It was at the bottom of the ocean. How could it be there, lodged in the ground just the way it was in all the photos of where it came to rest on the ocean’s floor?
I fell onto my ass. I’d always thought someone’s legs giving out was melodramatic and didn’t actually happen, but I couldn’t help it. I’d tipped over from drinking too much, but never when I was stone sober. I didn’t even feel the sting in my tailbone as I touched down, only noticed the change in the view of the ship. Fellow knelt at my side, and then Ellius was there too.
“How?” I asked finally, tearing my gaze away from the ship.
“It appeared here some time ago, Michael,” Ellius said. “Sometimes when something terrible or evil happens on Earth it materializes here, like an afterimage from looking at a bright light. I assume you recognize it?”
I nodded, feeling like I’d consumed a bottle of cheap vodka much too fast. My head swam and my hands shook. After all I’d seen and experienced, the vision of the Titanic sitting in the depression was the most shocking.