Little Hidden Darknesses

I never hated the sound of a dial tone as much as I did right then. Brrbrr. Brrbrr. Oh, just fucking pick up already. With my phone to my ear and my duffle bag bouncing off my back, Alejandro and I sprinted across town to Evermist High, to the overgrown lacrosse field that flanked the forest.

We ploughed into the grass, guided by the moon toward the barricade of shadows ahead of us. The ever-so-lightly swaying trees, and tufts of fog that lapped at the sky from afar.

“Come on, come on,” I murmured under my breath. Brrbrr. Brrbrr. I couldn’t take it anymore.

And then the dial tone ceased, replaced by a man’s groggy voice, “For goodness sake, Jeremiah, I thought I told you to stop calling here after nine. What the hell do you want?”

“H – Hello,” I replied, stopping in my tracks and reeling the phone closer against my cheek.

“You’re not Jeremiah,” the man confirmed as if it wasn’t obvious by my not-so-manly voice.

“N – No, I’m not.” Alejandro watched me as I spoke, shaking his hands and pacing about the clearing while murmuring to himself. “And I’m – uh – sorry to bother you after hours like this, but please, please tell me this is Don’s Ferries? From around the Plymouth area?”

“Yes, this is Don’s Ferries.” The man phrased his answer more like a question rather than a statement.

“Great! I mean, we need a ferry from Evermist Island to the mainland. Please, it’s urgent.”

Don hesitated on the other end. Then, he groaned, “A ferry you say? At this late hour? Listen missy –”

I forestalled him, “Please, it really is an emergency. I know it’s late ... I know you’re closed by now ...”

No reply.

“Don – Don are you still there?” I shared a nervous glance with Alejandro, who every now and then got onto his toes to check the surrounding area. Not that he could see much, I reckoned. But anything would do. Any sound, any smell. Anything that so much as moved.

Don exhaled on the other end, then took a sip of something. I heard his glass hit a wooden surface, and a gassy belch slip from his lips. I could almost smell it through my phone, the beer on his breath. “Well, alright. If it’s an emergency. But it’ll cost you extra, you understand?”

“Yes, yes.” A smile of relief warped across my face. “Thank you, Don. And please, hurry.”

With that, Don hung up. I stood a moment with the phone still to my ear, my eyes burning with tears. Not the sad kind, but the kind that came with hope, with gratitude and disbelief.

Was this real?

Yes. We were actually breaking free from this prison of an island. And not just that, but the very man who had rescued my mum was now going to rescue me. Us. With any luck – which I greatly lacked these days – he’d recognise me, be the first to recall my mum.

“He’s coming,” I said, even though Alejandro already knew that. “We’re getting out of here.”

A pause in which I let it all sink in. Then, I said, “We’ve got to get to the dock right away. Come on!”

I reached for Alejandro’s hand and our fingers interlaced, but my hand was sweaty and no farther than a few steps across the clearing did we break apart. I heard him fall back, start to slow down, but didn’t stop to look back. I dashed into the trees, the stagnant fog that seemed to come alive the moment I touched it. I felt my blood rushing to my head, my eyes, and my veins starting to throb. The golden glow lit our path, all the way to the other side, the shore.

The tide was high tonight, the waves hurling themselves against the rocky shoreline. Roll, crash, repeat.

My face became clammy from the salty air, and my breaths hollow from too much oxygen. “Alejandro,” I said with my eyes to the star-filled sky, “we’ve made it. We’re finally –”

But as I reached behind me, my fingers merely swept through the air. No one was there. I spun, facing nothing but forest. A dark, twisted entanglement of trees and shrubs and fog. Silence roamed from within, the type that made me sink right into my boots. What the heck?

With his name burning on my lips, I dropped my duffle bag and raced back into the overgrowth. I saw his shadow beyond the trees, a boy looming at the edge of his greatest fear. He glanced up when he heard me return, his lips already forming some form of excuse.

“Eira, I –” But he swallowed his words once he saw me – the real me – as I emerged into the moonlight.

Eyes like an animal’s.

Veins like a monster’s.

Alejandro took several steps back, nearly tripping over his feet. “Eira, you’re ... look at you ...”

“Alejandro,” I tried to explain, “please, just let me explain.”

“You’re one of them ...”

“No, I’m not.” I approached him with outstretched arms. Already the glow began to fade, to vanish under my skin. This seemed to ease him a little, and he let me take his wrists, wearily. “It happens when I touch the fog. I don’t know what it means, but I’m still me.”

“It’s – It’s gone?” Alejandro scanned my skin, my arms and neck and face. He paused on my eyes, on the bits of gold that still sparked within them. Proof of who I really was.

I nodded. “That happens.” A nervous chuckle before I turned serious. “Please, don’t be afraid of me.”

“Afraid? If anything, I’m confused. First I find out I’m an old man, and now that you’re –” He squeezed his eyes in frustration. “I don’t care what you are, Eira. I know you’re not like them.”

Music to my ears. But we had no time for music right now.

“What about you, eh?” I snapped. “Why didn’t you come after me? You know we don’t have a lot of time.”

Alejandro slipped from my grip. He rubbed his forehead with his hands, his eyes unable to meet the edge of the forest. Each time they did, the corners of his mouth curved down and a frown split between his brows. He paced to the grass and back, breathing heavily.

“Alejandro?”

“I’m scared, okay?”

Silence.

“It’s what I’ve been taught my entire life. The one thing I grew up to fear. It doesn’t feel right.”

I reversed toward the treeline, just far enough so I didn’t touch the fog. “It’s all fine, see? You’ve got nothing to fear. And once you’ve gone through, you never have to touch it again.”

A pause.

“Never have to be trapped here again.”

Whether it was my words that persuaded him, or his desire for freedom, I had no idea. It worked, though, and Alejandro approached. Slowly, hesitantly, but with a new type of determination across his face. He wanted this, wanted to break free from this life of fear.

“That’s right,” I said once he reached me, and our hands met. I took both of his into mine, holding them at ninety degrees while I gave another step back, right into the densest fog.

Except, instead of filling me with the usual thrill – life and energy and power – I felt my entire stomach caving in on itself. They were here. Around me. Directly behind me.

“Alejandro, get back!” I shouted, then pushed him away from me. I leapt after him, at once facing the forest and the creatures that wandered it, stalking us. “They’ve found us.”

“Just in time too,” said Branka, the first to emerge. Her eyes burned into us, golden as the sun itself. And they didn’t fade right away. Not like mine, anyway. “You almost killed him, Eira.”

I hissed when she cocked her head at me. Just because they had found us, it didn’t mean we were giving up, yielding. “Lies! You’re all lying. I know what you are, what you do.”

“Oh?” came Freya’s voice. Her body shortly followed, along with Aillard, Lilith and Genevieve. They surrounded us, closed us in. Trapped us. “Go on, then. What exactly are we?”

I couldn’t answer that. “I – I don’t know. But I know you control the fog. I know you lied to everyone in order to trap them here for centuries. The fog isn’t poisonous, is it?”

The Vinsants all looked to Lilith, who elegantly crossed her hands in front of her and approached. Out of all of them, only she and Genevieve still glowed. While not as bright, it didn’t seem to fade as quickly. Like they’ve been exposed to the power the longest of all.

“What we do, dearest Eira, is for the sake of our survival.”

A scoff gurgled up my throat. “This is not surviving. Whatever you are, you’re monsters.” I clenched my fists, feeling my blood start to boil and my eyes start to tingle. “Now, step aside.”

“No.” Lilith reaffirmed her stand.

And this only angered me more.

“I won’t let you trap these people another second.” As the words left my mouth, the fog in between the trees started to move. To swirl and twist and coil. It also started to rise, higher than I had ever seen it go. Up, up, up and in between the treetops, clearing the forest.

“Eira,” said Lilith with a new nervousness to her voice. She beckoned Genevieve away from the now naked forest. “Stop it. You don’t know what you’re doing. You’ll kill us all.”

But that didn’t sound too bad, actually. I narrowed my eyes and applied all my focus on my anger. On the spark inside of me that kept the fog aloft, elevating it almost into the sky.

“Eira –”

I interjected, “You won’t get away with this. I won’t allow it!”

“Neither will I,” muttered Branka, then she kicked off the ground and launched at me, bulldozing me.

I fell on my back, and with me, the fog also fell from the sky. It tumbled across the forest, spilling right towards us, over us. Branka and I rolled around on the ground, each overpowering the other in turns. But as soon as she lit up, it was as if Branka doubled in strength.

Her golden eyes drilled into mine as she pinned me down. I studied her face, alive with veins. For a monster, she had a splendour about her. A splendour that at once vanished when she growled at me. “Feeling strong now, eh? Like you can save the world from us?”

A surge of energy slowly built inside of me – not as strong as Branka’s, of course – but enough to match her strength. “Actually, I do.” And with this, I turned the tables on her. She kicked me in the shin, but I pressed her down into the ground, my hand covering her face.

And that was when she bit me.

“Ouch!” I yanked away, only to be walloped in the stomach. First her one leg, then the other. I fell back, out of breath, bile gurgling up my throat, only to have her grab my arm and toss me out of the fog and into the clearing. I skidded across the ground, chomping on dirt.

On humiliation.

“You forget,” said Branka as she emerged after me. “I’ve got centuries worth of experience.”

I wiped across my face and spat on the ground. My bitten hand had bloody teeth marks across it, although it was already healing, the pain vanishing. I relished every ounce of it, punishing myself for losing. For not being able to avenge my mum. The townsfolk.

Alejandro.

“Eira ...” came his unsettled voice.

My head snapped up, my eyes welling with terror. Aillard had Alejandro on the ground, his hands behind his back and his face inches away from the fog. He looked afraid. Terrified.

The sight of him broke me.

“Alejandro!” I shouted, clutching my bruised upper arm. “Let him go! What are you doing to him?”

Lilith hardly blinked. “We gave you a choice to join us, opened up our family to provide you a home. You think we’re lying about the fog? Well, see for yourself what it does.”

“Eira –” Alejandro began, but Aillard wrestled him down again, then pushed half his face into the fog.

A scream erupted from his throat, dull and hollow but filled with enough agony to prompt one from me as well. I darted forward, but Branka stepped in and grabbed me from behind.

“Let me go! Stop it, you’re hurting him!”

Lilith clicked her fingers again and Aillard withdrew Alejandro, who sank down to his knees. I looked at him through a thick film of tears, my confusion starting to build, to amass.

Unlike the Vinsants and I, Alejandro didn’t glow. There, in front of me, sat no longer a boy, but a man. An old man of nearly sixty years of age. Almost seventy. Now eighty.

I forced myself to swallowed a flush of bile. “What – What did you do to him?” I asked.

“We didn’t do anything. The fog did.” Lilith walked over and yanked Alejandro’s face up by his hair. His once hazel locks, now grey. Like ash. “It’s what it does to people like him. It reaps him of his lifeforce, and the longer he stays in there, the worse it gets.”

“He’ll deteriorate,” Branka clarified with too much pleasure.

“Poof,” added Aillard as a sound effect.

My face contorted in disgust. “I said, let go of me!”

Then, I wrenched free from Branka and crawled to Alejandro’s side. He hardly had the strength to look at me, so I brought his face – wrinkly and blotchy – into my hands, letting him lean against me. He still smelled the same, felt the same. Alas, he wasn’t the same.

“This it what happens when mortals touch the fog. It’s what happened to those two boys.”

Benjy and Bobby.

Shit.

I really did kill them. I had pulled them into the fog and then ... the thought sickened me to such an extent, I thought I might hurl all over Alejandro. Eira, keep it in. Keep it in.

“But,” I said, barely able to speak, “I don’t understand. Where do all of you fit into this? My mum?”

Lilith came to stand before me, the tips of her shoes right by my knees. I couldn’t bear to look up at her. Not yet, anyway. “We are called the Alltaf. We manipulate the fog, settle it over the town at night, just diluted enough to keep everyone alive, but to still feed on their lifeforce.”

“So, essentially, they’re all your cows? Always ready for the milking?”

“We keep them young. No one ever dies here.”

“Except when they do. And then what, huh? You make everyone forget they ever existed?”

“It’s what we have to do to survive, Eira. If we don’t feed for long periods of time, our age catches up to us. Like it did with your mother.” Of course, her Werner syndrome – or lack thereof. No wonder I didn’t inherit it. “We do this, because it’s who we are. Who you are.”

“I’m nothing like you,” I sneered.

“You killed Bobby and Benjy,” Freya noted.

Her words hit me harder than I expected. To hear someone else say it out loud, to confirm it ...

“Eira,” Alejandro struggled to say, “you’re not a murderer.” Once again, it was as if he read my mind. Only this time, I feared it might be the last. Even though he no longer touched the fog, his hair continued to grey and his skin continued to droop around his face.

I brought him closer to me, sobbing into his neck. “No, no, Alejandro. You can’t die now. Not when I’ve only just gotten to know you.” I glanced up. “What can I do to save him?”

No answer.

“There has to be a way!”

Genevieve and Lilith shared another of their many cagy glances, then Genevieve walked toward me. I felt the urge to scoot back across the sand, but she didn’t come as close as Lilith. “It’s called the Tengsl. A bond between a human and Alltaf. A bond of true love.”

“Mother –” Lilith began, but Genevieve cut her off.

“Let me finish,” she said with her hand still raised. “Lilith made such a bond between your mother and her father when she was born. The love between a father and his infant daughter. It kept him young. Kept him safe from the fog, and from ever dying.”

“But Leonardo,” I started to say, afraid of whether or not Lilith might kill me for mentioning him.

“Leonardo died because your mother left here,” Genevieve went on. She towered out above me now, right by my feet next to Lilith. Her blue eyes glowed even without having touched the fog. “That’s the thing about the Tengsl. Once created, Eira, you can never leave.”

A moment in which she swallowed.

“Or else the young boy will die.”

I choked, Alejandro suddenly feeling like a sack of coal in my arms. He groaned every now and then, every time another of his bones began to crumble. He was dying, actually dying.

And the only way to save him ...

“I – I’ll do it,” I said before properly thinking it through. Saving him meant staying here, with these monsters, for the rest of eternity. But it also meant I got to be with Alejandro. The two of us. Like none of this had ever happened. “Will he – remember anything about this?”

I jerked when Genevieve placed a hand on my shoulder. Her touch was light, almost non-existent, but with a sense of unrest. “Not if you don’t want him to. You can make him forget.”

A moment passed in which I merely looked at Alejandro, at the patches around his mouth and forehead. As he died, they almost seemed to fade. At least he’d die without them, like he always wanted to. Splash. A tear landed on his cheek. It slid into his neck, his clothes.

“W – What do I do?” I asked.

“Breathe into his mouth.”

“Mother,” Lilith persisted, “the Tengsl is a big deal. One not to be taken lightly, you know this.”

Genevieve pursed her lips. “Yes, but you wanted Eira to stay, didn’t you? Well, now she has to.”

I paused, for a moment reconsidering it. By doing this, I was giving them exactly what they wanted. But sometimes people had to make sacrifices. Like my mum had made a sacrifice for me. If she had never left here, never broken her family’s trust, I wouldn’t be alive.

With several doubts still at the back of my mind, I lowered Alejandro onto his old, crackling back.

It was almost funny, thinking about the absolute absurdity of this situation. Me, in love with an old man. Would my mum be proud to see me now? Would she want me to save Alejandro?

“Piper Vinsant really, really loved you,” I whispered. “But you know what, I love you even more.” Love? Ridiculous. I wiped a slather of tears from my eyes and forced myself to breathe.

Come on, Eira.

Do it for Alejandro. For once in your life, do something bigger than yourself. Be more than an outsider.

“Eira,” Lilith said just before I lowered to breathe into Alejandro’s mouth, “how much will he remember?”

“Enough to make him happy.” Then, our lips met and I blew from my lips, filling his chest with air.