TWENTY TWO
***
Fog flowed into the room like a living pool of whitewater as soon as the door flew off its hinges. Jason managed not to scream, but he heard Lenore and Albert yelling beside him. With the fog came the phantoms, and at the same moment his walkie-talkie went crazy, issuing high-pitched squeals that grated worse than nails on a chalkboard.
Notwithstanding the fact that the phantoms had yet to touch them or harm them, being so close to the things was not in Jason's itinerary. "Come on," he hollered, and grabbed Lenore's hand. She in turn grasped Albert's hand, and he led them in a small train up the stairs. The shadows poured past them into the basement below and lights flashed strobiscopically in the mist, disconcerting and frightening.
They ran as one into the foyer of Albert's house, toward the front door. Jason glanced to the side as they did, and saw a huge shape barreling at them through the mist. And this was no phantom, he could tell: it had a weight, a substantial reality that the wraiths did not have.
"Down!" shouted Jason, driving Lenore and Albert down below him as he hit the deck. They fell in a heap as the bay window shattered inward.
Jason gasped.
It was the deer. The deer that he had shot on his hunt, the same one that had disappeared. Its face and neck had been torn by his shot, blood and foam matted its fur around its mouth. It was bloody, broken, but still moving somehow.
And most horrific of all: at the front of the deer, impaled on its antlers, so beautiful and deadly at the same time, was Jonesy. The veteran hunter shouted quietly as the deer rammed into the wall, driving its antlers right through the hunter.
Jason had a moment to remember Jonesy's words when the hunter had shown up at the general store to buy shot: "I figured I'd get out of town. Go up to the mountains where the only thing I have to worry about is a rogue dear impaling me or something."
The hunter looked at Jason for a long moment, then his eyes rolled back and he died, pinned to the wall by a dead buck's antlers.
Jason grabbed Lenore and Albert and dragged them out of the house, back into the mist that was still frightening but not nearly so terrifying as the prospect of being shut up inside the house with mist, phantoms, and the frightful trophy that now adorned Albert's wall.
As before, all was pale darkness and disorientation in the fog. Glimpses of phantoms all around, seemingly ever more numerous, made everything seem crowded, strange, and dangerous. He tried to ignore them; tried even harder when he thought he saw a petite shape in the mist, holding hands with an even smaller form.
Aaron. Elizabeth.
He thrust the thoughts from his mind. It wasn't them. It couldn't be. They were dead and gone and would not come back. They were in oblivion, and he knew he would never see them again; anything he did see was just a trick of this horrible fog.
Behind him, Lenore screamed.
"What?"
"I thought I saw him," she whispered.
"The man with the knife?" asked Jason. She nodded. Jason pulled them on faster, moving quickly away from the area.
Then Lenore stopped, shivered. "What?" asked Albert.
"This is where Sarah West..." her voice petered off, and Jason realized that Albert had no way of knowing what had happened to his classmate.
But apparently Albert didn't need to be told. "She's dead, too," he guessed.
Jason said nothing, just pulling the group onward. Soon they were back at the Sheriff's station, which was still lit from within and without.
Hatty's body was gone.
"They're all disappearing," said Lenore. "Like Roanoke. Like the Harappans."
"Then why not us, too?" demanded Jason. "Why not us?" He knocked over a table, so frustrated that he simply had to vent somehow. He pushed Hatty's computer off her desk, the electronics sparking as it crashed to the ground.
Lenore moved instantly away, and he sensed her fear had suddenly focused on him. "Stop it," she whispered.
He was disconcerted that he had frightened her, and even more upset to realize how much he didn't want that. But before he had a chance to apologize, she began screaming, "Stop it, stop it, stop it!"
He stopped moving, embarrassed and alarmed at the rabidity of her outburst. "Sorry," he said lamely. "I just...I don't know what to do."
"Don't throw things," she said. "Don't...don't be like that."
"Sorry," he soothed, trying desperately to exude calm, hoping that she could forget and forgive his outburst. "No more throwing things. We'll just stick together and figure out what's going on. Right, Albert?" There was no answer, so he looked around. "Albert?"
Albert was gone.
Lenore instantly assumed a defensive look, not so much for herself as for the missing boy, and Jason again marveled at how she could be so concerned about other people in a time like this.
She'd be a great mother, he thought. He suppressed the urge to take her hand, instead settling for following her as she rushed out of the Sheriff's station.
"Albert," she hollered, "where are you?"
"Albert!" Jason added.
Both of them jumped as they heard a voice nearby.
"Right here," said Albert.
Jason felt the relief as a tangible force that flushed through him like cool water. Albert had not disappeared like the rest of the town; had not died horribly and impossibly like Ox or Sarah West. No, the boy was standing next door to the Sheriff's station, looking up.
Jason followed the boy's gaze upward. The clocktower. It was, he realized, the first non-digital clock he had seen since he had first seen the microwave clock in the Rand home. Like the digital clocks, the analog hands of this clock were a blur, but unlike the high-tech clocks, he could still make out the hands, barely. They were moving, but so fast he couldn't focus on them properly. Minutes swept by in seconds, hours in minutes.
"Now what?" Jason said, more to himself than anything.
Surprisingly, in this night of questions, he got an answer. "I know what's happening," said Albert.
Jason and Lenore both looked at him. The boy almost shrank under their gaze, clearly unaccustomed to being listened to. "Well?" prompted Lenore.
"It's fear," said Albert.
"That's what the crayon notes said," replied Jason, "but that doesn't help us much."
"Yeah, the notes were right," said Albert with a bit more confidence. "It's fear."
"What do you mean?" asked Lenore.
"This all started with Sean, right?" asked Albert.
Jason nodded. "I think so," he said.
Albert turned to Lenore. "Is it true what they were saying about him in school?"
Before Lenore could answer, Jason said, "What were they saying in school?"
"That he was afraid of the monster in the basement, and that's where he died," answered Lenore. To Albert she said, "Yes, from what I understand he did die in his basement."
Albert nodded sagely. "The monster got him," he said simply.
"What do you mean by that?" asked Lenore, beating Jason to the same question.
"That the thing that frightened Sean the most...it came true."
"This is insane," said Jason.
"Is it?" Albert turned to Lenore. "How did Sarah die?"
"You don't want to hear-" began Lenore.
"She drowned, didn't she?" asked Albert.
"How did you know that?" demanded Jason.
"Because she was afraid of water," said Albert, warming to his subject. "So somehow she drowned in the middle of town."
"And Ox was afraid of heights," said Lenore, looking at Jason with haunted eyes. "And remember how his store looked; how Ox looked?"
Jason tried to find a flaw in what they were saying, but couldn't...other than the fact that it was utterly insane. But then, everything that had happened tonight was insane. He looked at the floodlights all around the Sheriff's station and murmured something under his breath.
"What?" asked Lenore.
"Scared of the dark," repeated Jason, remembering his secretary. "It's what Hatty said she was afraid of."
"And I'm betting that's how she died," said Albert. "I don't know how dark could kill you, but I bet it did."
Jason shuddered, remembering Hatty's blind, white eyes, and the way she had clawed at herself so hard she had a heart attack and died in her own personal darkness. He nodded. Then shook his head. "No, I don't believe this."
"It's the only thing that makes sense," insisted Albert.
"Sense?" said Jason incredulously. "Your definition must be a tad different from mine."
"I believe him," whispered Lenore.
"You can't be serious."
"I am." She looked at the youth beside her. "Because my fear is here, too."
"What do you mean?" asked Jason, though he had a strong suspicion what she was going to say. He was surprised, however, because Lenore said nothing. She just looked at the clocktower and then walked into the Sheriff's station.
Albert took a moment to put his camcorder down on a nearby wall, aiming it into the mist, then he followed the teacher inside.
Jason sighed and followed suit.
Lenore was inside, sitting at Hatty's old desk, holding herself.
"The man," she said without preamble. "The one you shot. The one we keep seeing. I know him."
"How?" asked Jason.
"Before I moved here," she began, "I-" Her voice cut off. Her mouth moved, but no sound was forthcoming.
"What happened?" asked Jason. He reached out and touched her hand softly. It was hard for him, to reach out and try to connect with someone this way after so many years, but he simply couldn't let her feel alone. He wanted to protect her, to stay with her and make sure she got through this thing alive.
"It was in a parking lot," she said. "I remember his smell. Wine, some kind of cheap booze. And beneath it, something worse, evil. Rotten." She clutched herself even harder. "That smell stayed on me for months. I still smell it sometimes. Even now."
"What happened to him?" asked Albert.
"His name was Ben Cowles. I know because they found him: the cops did. And Cowles didn't go peacefully. There was a shootout a few hours later. Cowles was shot in the chest and neck. He survived, but was paralyzed from the neck down. He's been in a special prison since then. Until tonight." She shivered. "But he's here now, and he's not crippled, he's strong and nasty as I remember him. And he's back, because Cowles - a whole, healthy Cowles - is my worst fear.
"What about the computer words?" demanded Jason. "What about the crayon notes? Where do those fit in?"
"Don't you see?" asked Albert. "I bet that Sean was just the crack in the dam. The first."
"We all live with so much fear," said Lenore quietly.
Jason jerked as if shot. "That's what Hatty said. That everyone in this town lives in constant fear."
"She's right," said Albert decisively. "The entire world has gone insane. Wars, disease, terrorism, just getting from your house to your car in some cities is a life-threatening proposition. Fear isn't just a reality anymore, it's a basic requirement of our existence. The whole world cringes in terror at night, afraid that the monsters might come to get them."
"And here it's more than that," added Lenore, nodding.
Albert smiled shyly at her. "Sean was the first, making the monster in the basement real with the intensity of his fear. He was the crack in the dam, and now fear has reached some kind of critical mass. And it's coming for all of us."
"But what about the bodies?" said Lenore. "Why did they all disappear?"
"They didn't," said Albert, with the air of someone about to deliver a coup de grace. "We disappeared. This whole town."
Jason didn't get it, and could see that Lenore was lost as well. Albert sighed. "Wait here," he said, and went outside before Jason could tell him not to. He was back in just a moment, however, holding his camcorder, leaving the door open behind him, the mist easily visible from where they stood.
Albert went to a small television on Hatty's desk, but instead of hooking the camcorder up to the device as Jason had expected he would, Albert turned on the TV. Snow was all the television showed. Albert aimed his camcorder at it and recorded the fuzzy image. Then he looked at Jason. "Is there a clock around?"
Jason pointed at a clock in the corner. Like all the others, it was blurred; unreadable. Albert taped it.
At that second, one of the shadowy wraiths appeared in the mist outside the open door, its horned head floating in the mist and reminding Jason of the deer he had killed. At the same instant as the phantom appeared, his walkie-talkie did its screaming trick. Albert turned around, whip-fast, and recorded the phantom.
The ghostly apparition faded back into the mist, but Albert looked supremely satisfied with himself. "Got it," he said.
He held up the camcorder to Jason and Lenore. "Now we have to go back to my house."
***