Chapter 8

PRESENT

2020

She missed the old days, bloody hell, the good old days, when the sight of a setting sun would make her smile, when she didn’t have to drink to keep herself awake long enough not to dream about the past, when she had a family and a soul.

When she had a purpose.

She recalled, just for a second, the beauty of her twin brothers’ brown eyes. It was hard to allow herself to think about him, to think about anything from the past, but she always did it to remind herself why she was working so hard to fight the force that had taken her brother.

To fight The Mist.

What kind of a stupid name was that anyway?

As stupid as the name was, though, it still evoked fear and distress into her heart whenever she thought of it. That thing- that demon- had ruined her.

She took a swig at her vodka bottle as the Mustang GT, one that belonged to a dead man in California, roared to a halt. She switched off the engine and got out of the car. Her door banged shut, alarming the dull faced American citizens around her. A few white people eyed her, probably wondering what a Mexican was doing on their lands, but she rolled her eyes. She was Canadian, proudly Canadian, but had grown up in America. She wished, till that day, that she hadn’t.

The motel she had parked outside of had once been white. It was a large, square, three story building with circular black doors and square windows. It looked like a horror house from where she was standing. The large blinking ‘MOTEL’ sign was the only confirmation she had that she might have been in the right place.

Might.

She had been searching for the last known victim of The Mist for years now.

The minute she had turned 18, she had run away from her Forster home.

That was three years ago.

Some days, the guilt would gnaw at her. She had been given a second chance, a fighting chance- unlike her brother, Julian- but she couldn’t live knowing what she knew. She couldn’t live with the images that haunted her night and day.

She adjusted her brown leather jacket, one left by her biological father- somebody who was dead- and the silver buckles of her boots rattled with every heavy step she took towards what she hoped was the reception.

The door was red and it swung back and forth as customers walked in and out. She caught the door just as she it was closing and something caught at the corner of her eye.

A man. A boy.

The man had beautiful, tree green eyes, and was about 40 years old. He was tall, dressed in black from head to toe. His brown hair was long, it ran to the tips of his shoulders, and it was tucked behind his ears. He was bouncing the kid on his hip yet managed to carry three bags of food at the same time. The kid looked to be 5 years old. She took a step back and watched them rush up a flight of stairs, up to the third floor.

She turned on her heels and rushed after them.

She didn’t need to see any identification to know. That was the man she had been looking for.

That was Jenarius Hughes.

PRESENT

2020

“Daddy,” that was Harvey.

Harvey Jenarius Hughes.

Not Phoebe. Not Christopher. Just Harvey.

But he loved him more than both children combined.

Harvey was five but Jenarius always insisted on feeding the boy. It wasn’t about control more than it was about savoring every second he had with him. He had learned that his love for people, or lack of love, would always lead to heartbreak no matter what.

He was cursed, that was more accurate.

“Yeah.”

They were eating takeout. Chinese. It was Harvey’s favorite other than pizza. He liked things that were different, people that were different, he was nothing like his father.

Different to Jen was either demonic or untrustworthy.

Everything except Chinese.

“Can we go to the circus tomorrow?” Harvey said, his green eyes hopeful.

Jenarius stared at the boy’s face.

He looked exactly like his late mother. A sexy and feisty Katherine Willards who had died saving him. Saving them both.

Just another life on his conscious.

He wiped the oil that had started to collect on the corner of Harvey’s mouth with a pink napkin.

“I don’t know if it’s safe.”

It was his most honest reply.

Jenarius truly didn’t know these days. It was almost the time of the year that he dreaded the most. A day and time he could not forget.

October 12th was 9 days away.

Two weeks that now felt like two hours.

He had to keep moving, far away from Phoebe’s grave, far away from Massachusetts.

Harvey opened his mouth to speak but the words never came out. Somebody had knocked on the door.

At first, Jenarius thought to open the door and shoot whoever was outside. His hand had flown to his closest gun, the familiar shot gun from his first wife, and he gripped it as he rose to his full height.

Harvey already knew the drill.

The boy had risen before his father and he was running towards a bed. Jenarius watched him clamber underneath it with a hand gun in his palm.

Jenarius knew that what he was running from, what he had been running from for five years now, would never knock on a door but he wasn’t taking any chances.

“Who’s there!” Jenarius snapped.

“A friend,” a young woman called.

Jenarius made sure everything was in order, made sure Harvey was safe and sound under the bed, before he clicked open the door and placed the barrel of his shotgun under the chin of the stranger.

“Hands up, friend,” Jenarius spat, sarcastically.

Angel Valerio raised her hands up but she didn’t appear too afraid even when the man pushed the barrel of his gun deeper into the flesh of her neck.

Jenarius watched the woman, young and beautiful, tilt her head back.

Her black hair was short, only hanging just beneath her ear lobes- something the women who cut his late wives hair called a ’bob’. The stranger had lovely golden-brown eyes and long lashes that fanned the bottom of her light brown cheeks. She was a Latin American, or Mexican, he couldn’t tell. Her accent had sounded American, much like every other female in the country, so he assumed it was the former and not the latter.

She was wearing a leather jacket, and underneath it, he could just make out a black buttoned shirt. She had on faded black jeans and buckled knee length boots that he knew- just from one glance- were a size 42. She was shorter than him, maybe 5’6, and he liked that his height gave him the upper hand because something was telling him- definitely her dull expression- that the gun wasn’t scaring her.

“What do you want?”

Her eyes darted around the room.

“Where’s your son?”

At the question, his finger flew to the trigger. He almost pulled- almost- but wasn’t mentally prepared for the blood spatter. It had only been a year since he was in the presence of violence. He had just started to sleep again. The distraction gave her an advantage.

The woman grabbed at the gun and pushed it to the side. He pulled the trigger and watched as her head was almost blown off. She punched him in the chest and he coughed out a whoosh of air. He clutched his stomach and lunged for her, dropping his gun in the process. He ignored the pain in his stomach- he had felt worse- and he wrapped both of his large, white hands around her tiny throat.

She choked out four words that had his blood running cold.

“He killed my brother.”

He didn’t let her go, even though his heart began to thump mercilessly in his chest.

“Who?”

She grabbed onto his hands and started to scratch at his palms. They were tiny stings compared to the pain he had felt i his lifetime. He continued to squeeze, forcing her to answer even though he was cutting her oxygen supply.

Her eyes began to close shut as she gasped like a fish out of water.

She was fading, fading quickly, but he didn’t care.

He needed an answer and he needed it now.

Her tiny, pink mouth opened and she let out the words he had been dreading.

“The Mist.”

Jenarius froze and let her go.