Chapter 2

BEFORE

2003

Betsy! Mother fucking cunt Betsy! Why did she always have to chew gum so loudly and why did she have to breathe so loudly? Chicken was good, always good, but that wasn’t an excuse to eat like an extra from a zombie movie. Lord, if the apocalypse came right now, if the ground got up and opened up, he would throw her inside.

Fucking Bets-

Wait a second. What’s that?

It’s a little girl. A girl and she’s crying.

Why the hell is she crying?

I don’t know. Fuck you for asking me. We’re on the same level of knowledge, alrighty.

But where do you think she’s headed?

Look, would ya. Just look.

Carl Langdorf strained his 80-year-old eyes and it hurt more than it should have. He was walking down the Wood Hill path, if only to see the bouncing breasts of the girls who’d run the trail after work, but had stumbled upon a little girl.

A lost girl.

She was tiny, maybe four or five, and she could barely walk straight as she shifted around trees and over tiny shrubs. She was dirty as fuck, whoever had to wash those clothes was going to have a great fucking exercise.

Carl told himself to focus as his large stomach bounced, just like his favorite breasts on that blond larger woman he always saw on Mondays, as he jogged down the trail towards whatever direction the girl was going.

He liked women. Okay, he loved women. But he wasn’t a pedophile, in fact, he didn’t understand the concept at all.

He had two daughters, one from the most beautiful woman he had ever met and another from fucking Betsy, but he had been a good father and he still was. When he saw kids, kids like this little lost crying child, he would think back to the time when his two girls were small and weak and innocent.

The beauty of a child was never lost by him and he would never allow himself, as much as he liked women, to take that innocence away.

All he wanted to do, in that moment, heaving heavily as he rushed after the crying red head, was hold her hand and make sure she got home safe and also congratulate whoever had to wash her uniform.

He could see her now, just a few feet away, standing under the canopy of dead leafed trees. The fall had come a while ago and the colors never seized to amaze him. He watched her turn left, through a new trail that he was aware led to nothing good. He sucked in breaths faster than he let them out but his body began to tire.

Carl stopped when his vision began to blur and he bent over and held his knees as he tried, willed, his lungs to take in more oxygen.

He was fit just too old.

He squeezed his eyes shut and hoped to god she hadn’t gotten away. He spent a minute trying to regain himself, and when he was done, he opened his eyes and stood straight.

What the fuck?

A boy, not much older than the girl he had just been chasing down, stood before him in the dumbest boy scout uniform he had ever seen.

It was brown and stained in areas that shouldn’t have been. His neckline had turned a dark, almost blackish, color of faded maroon and Carl hoped to god that it was ketchup. The boy was pale, eerily pale, like those dumb fucks from Germany who would sometimes pop up in the city with those accents, and his feet were bare yet barely had any dirt on them. The kid’s blond hair blew in the direction of the harsh wind and Carl wondered how he was still alive, barefoot in torn clothes in October, when he could barely stop shivering in his black jersey- as fast as he had assumed he had been running.

Carl looked into the deep blue of the kid’s eyes and saw nothing but emptiness inside. The kid’s eyes were dull, almost dead, and a strong feeling of danger settled in Carl’s thudding heart.

What’s with you? He spoke to his own voice inside his head, the way he always did. Scared of a little kid? Wanna piss your fucking pants now? Grow up, Carl! Grow up.

Sighing, he closed the space between him and the boy and leaned down. He felt much better when he realized that he was taller than him and larger than him.

Yeah, Carl, you aren’t in any fucking danger.

“Hey, boy, you, person,” Carl ran a hand over his sweaty face. “Did you see the little crying girl that was running around?”

The boy only nodded.

Carl raised his blond bushy brows and waited for the boy to elaborate. When he didn’t, Carl nodded his head and sighed again.

“Know where she went?”

The boy pointed to his left, eyes blank.

“Don’t go after her.”

The confusing words sent chills down Carl’s spine. He turned around and frowned down at the boy.

“Um…why not?”

The boy tilted his head to the side and blinked once.

“She’s on a mission.”

Carl couldn’t help but recall a horror movie he had once watched where the exact same thing had happened.

“What mission?” his voice shook.

He was overwhelmed with the urge to scream, like one of those final girls in the films, but he had to hear the kids next words.

“She’s going to find him. She’s going to free him.”

Carl frowned deeper and narrowed his eyes at the boy.

“Who?”

“The Mist.”

And then he smiled.

And God fucking shit, Carl almost pissed his khaki shorts.

He stumbled back in shock as the boy’s mouth widened into a grin and his full blue eyes turned black, like black ink seeping into wet paint, and the boy took a menacing step forward. Carl opened his mouth to scream, like a final girl, but his voice had left him. His eyes widened as he tried to speak but no sound came out. When he looked back at the boy's face, his smile hadn’t vanished.

Carl turned around to run as fast as his jelly doughnut filled legs would take him, but he felt a harsh pressure cling onto his legs. He dropped down onto the ground, onto his face, and tried to scramble upwards even as his body began to ache and burn from the pain. He didn’t know whether to insult God or to pray to him.

Carl scratched his non-existent nails at the ground and the Autumn leaves, he scratched at the sand and the dirt beneath his chubby hands, but as soon as he began he was being dragged backgrounds. He whimpered, the only sound he could make, and his eyes widened as his body was pulled back by a force he could not see. His body whipped past the trees and past the leaves, and then past the boy.

He watched as the smiling kid began to laugh wickedly, his hands clapping frantically, like one of those freaks at the circus. Carl opened his mouth to scream, one last time, but before he could release it, he was swallowed by the mist.