Chapter 7

AFTER

2005

Jenarius was searching the living room for his daughter, his daughters’ spirit, anything that involved Phoebe- really. He tossed pillows and looked behind couches, this time with an energy saving lamp on, but he had found nothing.

He called out to Leane, who had gone silent before Phoebe had arrived, and sighed in relief when she answered.

Leane mumbled a noncommittal ‘yes’ and turned back around to face the closet.

What did he want? Why was he being so strange?

She was drunk, she was sure of it, but she had managed to pack her clothes and her baby’s clothes into an overnight bag. She didn’t take everything, that would have been stupid. No, she had only packed the necessities. Some gym clothing, toiletries, everything for baby Christopher. She ran a hand over her hair and picked up her bag. She had forgotten to zip it up and most of its contents on the top fell to the ground.

That’s when she noticed the mist.

“What the fuck?” she asked, startled.

It was everywhere.

It was all over the ugly brown wallpaper of their room, all over the bed and windows, she had no idea where it was coming from. She turned on her heels, a full circumference was made on the carpet of their bedroom, but she couldn’t tell. She hoped she was just that drunk. It had been a long time.

Leane saw that the mist had risen alarmingly close to her child. She was about to take a step forward when the grey mist began to turn black.

She shrieked.

“What the fuck?” she yelled louder.

Her body didn’t move as she watched in paralyzed terror as a swirl of black mist lifted from the ground and formed into what she hoped wasn’t the person she was seeing.

Sunken eyes stared back at her. Pale white pupils filled the hole of the black sockets. The smell of water, moss and something lethal grew stronger as the mist moved around her. She couldn’t have recognized her on any other day, not her bloodied and muddy uniform and not even her dead face, but it was the red of her hair that confirmed everything that Jen had been going on about.

Phoebe wasn’t dead.

Phoebe was, in fact, very much alive.

“Phoebe?” Leane said, awkwardly.

She wanted to speak, wanted to ask questions and maybe laugh at the sight before her eyes but she didn’t know exactly what she was looking at.

Leane took a step forward but then stopped as a presence behind her back shocked her into freezing.

Was that a man?

She could barely make him out, but yes- that was a man. He was leaning casually in the corner of the room but he wasn’t really there. He was a mixture of a black suit and the black mist, he seemed to float in the air on the opposite side of him that was perched on his legs. He had a gentlemanly look to him, dressed in a three-piece suit with his black hair smoothed back. His eyes were an alarming black color.

Leane screamed this time. A scream that clawed at her own ear drums. She didn’t know why she had done it but she didn’t need an explanation.

She had no idea what was going on.

Jenarius grabbed a knife from the kitchen and then turned and sprinted towards his bedroom.

He had heard the shrieking, the swearing and now the scream and at first, he had assumed Leane was being dramatic- because Leane was always fucking dramatic- but the last scream had been one of torment and not one of her usual theatrical ones.

He couldn’t ignore it anymore.

He felt a wave of panic flood over his fear of whatever he would find. He madly rushed into the room, shocked at the sight of this Phoebe. He saw her under the light, now, and it scared the shit out of him.

He gasped in shock as he looked her over.

Phoebe tried to face him and her face pulled into a tight smile.

“Hey, Jen,” her voice was deeper but it continued to echo.

Beside him, Leane screamed again.

“Darling,” an unknown voice spoke.

Jenarius glanced around the room and then noticed the man in the corner.

He wanted to rush forward at slash at him with his knife but he stopped short when he took a good look at the…creature?

He was man and fog but that the same time. He was darkness and body, too. A ghost within a man. It was hard to explain. But Jenarius finally understood what he was, he understood everything.

That man was The Mist.

“Don’t fucking call her that!” Jen snapped.

He was ignored.

“Phoebe, are you hungry,” The Mist asked patiently, as if he cared.

Phoebe turned around and smiled up at The Mist.

“Yes daddy.”

Jenarius almost puked.

Daddy?

“Go on,” what was happening, “eat, Phoebe, eat anything you like.”

She turned her head towards the baby, her eyes hungry, and Jenarius and Leane’s breaths both hitched in terrorized understanding.

Jenarius lunged for his child, the one who wasn’t being controlled by whatever the fuck that man was, as Leane shoved herself onto Phoebe.

Jenarius didn’t have time to see if she was alright, he was running towards the front entrance. He moved from the hallway as quickly as his legs could carry him but everything seemed to be slowing down, as though he was in front of a screen- running on a treadmill- and the distance had been reduced.

He was passing through the sitting room, the front door in sight, but the black mist had moved and gathered around his feet.

Jenarius felt something grip his legs and he only had time to place Christopher on the couch before he had been pulled back.

He landed on his face, nose connecting with the ground, and he kicked back into nothing. He was fighting with a fucking mist, yet it wasn’t really a fight. Jenarius’ eyes were stuck on his baby, his baby and not Leane’s. He couldn’t hear her distant screams because she could not make a sound anymore. None of them could.

The baby wasn’t crying. Jenarius could only grunt. The shuffling of bodies in the bedroom were the only indication that Leane was still alive.

He knew he had begun to cry, as the mist roughly dragged him to the center of the room, he felt the tears wet his face as he watched his baby- utterly terrified.

He was pushed upwards by a great force and he coughed out a sob but was then silenced. The tears ran out from his eyes like a waterfall. The mist wrapped his own arms around his body and Jenarius foolishly gripped himself, helpless and out of control.

Jenarius sucked in a deep breath, the only sounds he could make, and a pressure forced him to stay stock still- in that position on the ground.

The mist around him spread and it began to swirl; he knew what that meant now.

The Mist, half man and fog, sprung up, appeared from the smoky black wisps of the mist. The smile on his face was wicked, a hint of confidence and amusement lurking behind the surface of his dark stare. Jenarius didn’t understand why he cared to shield it.

Jenarius fought, fought as hard as he could, over the force that was keeping him quiet, over whatever magic was in the air. He fought- not to scream- but to make his first promise to the creature that had ruined his life.

“I am-,” it came out a harsh, ragged whisper, through a locked jaw, but he continued to fight, “going to…kill…you.”

The Mist nodded, as though he sympathized with Jenarius. The impassive way he moved across the carpet, towards Christopher, told him otherwise.

This thing couldn’t care less.

“Darling,” The Mist called.

As quickly as he had uttered the single word, the calling, that dumb name that made Jenarius’ blood boil- a swirl of mist was carrying a silenced Leane towards them. It moved from the hallway and into the living room and then settled her onto the ground beside the couch where their baby lay silently. Jenarius tried to move but it was of no use. He was weighed down, paralyzed, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Phoebe then appeared from the swirl, just like her new daddy had, and she stood beside him like an obedient little pet.

The Mist raised his hand and held onto her precious little neck.

Jenarius fought against the force and tried to speak but he only ended up biting himself. His tongue began to bleed and the metallic taste startled him.

“Who’s first, Darling?” The Mist said.

Phoebe didn’t waste time. Her hungry eyes moved towards baby Christopher. She lunged at him, all body and no mist, and Jenarius watched in horror as his first born sank her chipped, claws over the face of his baby.

He tried to scream but nothing came out. He groaned as a pain erupted in his chest, filling his body to the brim. It wasn’t physical, he hadn’t been harmed, but it was mental pain and that was worse. He could barely breathe as he watched Phoebe, his precious Phoebe, sink her claws into the chest of his child.

Blood slowly oozed out of the tear of his baby clothes, of his flesh, and with one hand, she carried him to the carpet. She lay the baby right in the center space between a sobbing Leane and his terrified self.

Phoebe leaned down and sank her teeth into the flesh of Christopher and Jenarius wretched. Nothing came out of his mouth but gasps of air as it was released and strings of saliva that wet his body for as long as his mouth was open.

He couldn’t bare it. Nobody would ever be able to.

He tried to shut his eyes but almost wretched again when he realized that the force was stopping him from doing that, too.

He knew then that this was the game, the trick.

He was going to have to watch the show.

Phoebe- that thing could not be his child- chewed hungrily at the tiny organs of his baby. Christopher was lifeless, not twitching, no longer dying. He was just dead.

Phoebe looked up and their eyes caught, just as she was ripping at the baby flesh of Christopher’s neck, and Jenarius pleaded with his eyes.

Stop this. Please, stop this. If you’re in there, if you can hear me, then stop this.

“No,” her voice echoed and then she smiled. She pulled at the bloodied meat, licked her fingers clean and then sank her teeth into the baby’s corpse- once again.

He could only watch.

Watch and cry.

He glanced at Leane, she who had been his recent problem, and nothing kind was passed between them. She had always looked at him like that, like he had been the ruin of her life, but this was different.

She had so much hatred in her eyes. Deep and ferocious, fiery and real.

He had done this, her eyes said, he had killed her baby.

And she knew it was true.

If he had been there for Phoebe that day, if he had just been there, everything would be different now.

Everything.

“Enough,” The Mist said.

Phoebe stood to her full height but continued to lick her fingers clean. One by one. She started from her index to her little pinky finger- those lovely hands Jenarius had used to love- until she had one left. Strings of ligaments hung from her hands and she sucked them into her mouth like the way one would have mannerlessly eaten spaghetti.

“Full?” The Mist asked, bored.

Phoebe nodded politely, Jenarius had taught her that.

“Yes, daddy.”

Jenarius watched Leane begin to sob, he watched Phoebe away left to right- like she had just won best dressed at a party- and he slowly began to hate himself. He ached. Once for the girl he had loved and lost and once for the boy he had disregarded and now had lost. His heart felt broken and it contracted painfully in his chest, the heavy heartbeat now a slow thrum- as though it could not bear the pressure- and he couldn’t stop the tears from falling, he couldn’t stop crying.

“Next one,” The Mist said.

Just as Jenarius had thought the worst was over, that the worst had subsided, his heart beat sky rocketed in his chest as he anticipated the worst.

Was Phoebe about to eat him?

The Mist snapped his fingers and caught the attention of everybody in the room. Leane paused her ragged breathing, Jenarius tried to do the same, and then they watched as the The Mist pointed downwards.

He was pointing at Leane.

“No,” Jenarius begged, breathlessly, “Phoebe, plea-,”

The force silenced him again and he gasped as the sound was knocked out of his mouth.

He gaped, only gaped, as his eyes were forced to move to watch his daughter lean down, right over his second wife.

Phoebe glanced back, white eyes watching him closely; he was drowning in the pain and his own tears.

She smiled, leaned down, and began to feast on Leane Richard Hughes.