Uno and Fog: Something Wicked This Way Comes

“Do you know any banishing spells in R’lyehian?”  I asked The Fog.

“It is not R’lyehian.”  The Fog apparently still doesn’t think I’m funny.

“How do you know?”

“Because I speak R’lyehian.” 

I realized that he wasn’t the straight man, I was.

At least I hoped I was the straight man.  Maybe he did know how to speak a fake language invented by bored horror writers.  He claimed to know many things that seemed like a waste of time, like the difference between over three hundred perfumes and aftershaves, the scents of the flowers commonly carried at florists, the difference between various cigarettes and cigars.

The Fog’s voice pitched low into my earpiece.  “I’m going to try and knock down the barrier,  I want you to back up quickly and then go forward as soon as I make my move and grab David.”

“O.k.”

“Don’t go headfirst, it might not work and you could slam into it,”  he paused, “I don’t know how long it will stay down.”  A slightly longer pause, “assuming it does.”

“Great.”

James’s voice was heading to a crescendo, I backed away quickly.

The Fog tossed three smoke grenades in quick succession, I saw them strike the barrier and start to slide downward before exploding with a quick succession of foomp, foomp, foomp.  

There was something in the smoke, iron or a derivative suspended in something.  I ran into the smoke and toward James’ voice.  Despite the attack, he kept up his chnatI felt something sliding over my body, like gossamer and I let out a breath I had been holding when I didn’t slam into a barrier.

The smoke was no barrier to me sense the nervous system of both David and James.  I considered for one fleeting moment of striking James, but I feared his abilities and leving David to his mercies.

I scooped David up and ran away with him.  I saw the fog running at James.  I set David down and sprinted back, ready to slam into the killer.

I heard him laugh ruefully, “So be it, a sacrifice of someone important must be made.”  I saw him lower the blade to his throat and jerk it across his own neck in a swift motion.

Blood fountained out of him spraying into the lake.  In the sudden stillness I could hear it hit the water just moments before his body splashed into the lake.

The wind picked up carrying the smoke away, yet the lake was eerily still with the ripple at the center slowly radiating outward and then starting again.  I could swear the epicenter of the ripple was moving toward us.

The Fog joined me at the edge of the lake, where James’ body floated, half on the land and half in the water.  His blood was spreading outward.

“Do you think…?”

He shook his head, ”

we aren’t that lucky.”

I sighed, “you ever think about lying at times like these?”  The smoke was clearing away.

“No.”  I noticed that the blood water seemed to be gathering at a point, as if the water was thickening as it was being gathered up into a pile in front of us.

“How about running?”

The Fog had throwing knives in his hands, ready to be thrown at water ever arrived.  He glanced at me.  “No.”

I sighed again, “It was a thought.”

The blood starts to leave the water, dripping upward and feathering outward.  The Fog tenses.  It starts forming into an oblique shape, a slice of pure darkness forms within the blood.  My try to look into the darkness but I keep averting my eyes from it.

I feel a pressure build and then something hits us, some weird pulse radiating outward.  Something slithers at the edge of my perceptions

The rift is widening and reaching farther up towards the autumn stars.

I find I can barely move, I try to get closer to the hole in the world but can’t. The Fog is right beside me, a grimace on his face that almost looks like a rictus grin as he struggles to get closer as well.

We can feel an intense, strange pressure against us, as if we are in a high wind tearing against us, but it is absolutely still. His trench coat is pushed out behind him as he moves incrementally closer toward the gate between this world and the other. I see him glancing at me from the corner of his eye, hoping that maybe I can do something, but I can’t.  My abilities are useless.

We’re suddenly pulled forward, as if something was taking a deep breath, or gathering strength. Everything seems to actually stretch toward the gape in the world. The lights of the city that surrounds the park distort slightly, getting redder. I swear the stars above us, on this cloudless night, twist. I hear muffled car alarms in the distance, even the sounds of the city sound deeper, lower.

Just as suddenly we are propelled backward. I stumble, The Fog is quicker at catching his balance. In that moment, the rift closes. Just as suddenly as it had appeared its gone.

The early evening sounds return, the water of the lake ripples with the breeze.

Where before there was a hole, there is standing before us a woman, barely five feet tall, wearing a denim shirt, jeans and sensible flats that looked a little scuffed.

Her shoulder length hair is straight, dirty blond and her skin looks windburned. She looks at us with watery blue eyes that have a hint of crows feet around the edges. A nose more button than pert crinkles slight as her thin lips tighten and she furrows her brows on a forehead that is maybe a little to big.

“Where is he?” She demands.

SHE had arrived.