Little Hidden Darknesses

Even with the sun yet to set, the town lay swathed in fog. A blanket so dense, my every sense of direction abandoned me. I could still find my way to the motel, of course, however I’d risk running into the Vinsants that way. Especially since I no longer sensed them.

They had left the fog, concealed themselves from me. Perhaps on purpose, perhaps without a care.

Whatever the reason, I had a good couple minutes to reach the motel, to hide myself. To convince them I really did leave the island, and that they had succeeded in their plan.

“Damn it,” I blurted out as I walked into a table in the centre of the square. With everyone having carried out and put up their own decorations, traversing the foggy street proved even more difficult. Especially if I wanted to take Alejandro’s special path – the one that led right through the graveyard. A relatively safe route, unless Lilith decided to pay her husband a visit again. I swallowed, surprised at the burn in my stomach.

The mere mention of her husband, of how he was possibly murdered by my mum, disgusted me. But I couldn’t focus on that now. Not while I still had no idea what was going on.

I manoeuvred in between the tables toward my only beacon in a void of grey: the crimson-glowing sign of Ariel’s Café. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise the blinds weren’t drawn until I caught sight of them, the townsfolk, all staring at me with horror through the windows.

A glowing girl, a spirit from a passed loved one. Shit. This wasn’t helping my case at all.

My elbow snapped up to conceal my face. Whether or not anyone recognised me, there was no way of telling. I nonetheless turned and set off down the pavement to the canopy of trees. Up ahead, the statue watched me run, the man and woman’s faces lit by a hundred fairy lights.

Even now, after having seen it multiple times, I still thought it resembled Genevieve too much.

By the foot of the statue, the stage looked just about finished, complete with a large, mahogany podium and an arrangement of flowers in the shape of a cross. It was all going down tomorrow night, the All Saint’s Day Festival – if the fog had cleared by then, of course.

I raced down the lane, darted past the laundromat and skidded around the corner into the alley.

My breath stung in my throat, but I kept on running. I ran, trudging through the potholes, until I reached the cemetery, upon which my lungs felt as though they might just explode.

And to think, I used to be so fit at school. Could’ve gotten a track scholarship had I not dropped out.

I basked in the quiet, listening to my breath, my feet across the soil as I tiptoed in between the graves to the motel across the street. The trees rustled overhead, sprinkling me with leaves. A lump of soil sank away under me, and a chill crept up my spine.

There was just something about crossing a cemetery – blind, nonetheless – that scared me. Made the hair at the back of my neck stand upright, and caused my muscles to tense. Except whatever I experienced in the cemetery was no match for when I felt them: Branka and Aillard. Somewhere in town – near the square – they had made contact with the fog.

Which meant they felt me too.

I cursed under my breath and upped my hood, almost as if that would hide my presence from them. My feet sped up, my duffle bag cradled in my arms, and I sprinted across the farthest side of the parking lot, and around the back of the motel, to the closest room.

Room nr. 9.

When I tried it, the door was unlocked.

I opened it on a screen and slid inside, however my bag got stuck and I dropped it on the porch. Damn it.

I held my breath as I opened the door as fast as I could, crouched down and hauled my bag across the threshold. All in a single movement. A single, less-than-graceful jerk. But grace didn’t matter right now. The less fog that got inside, the better – and safer – for me.

The door clicked shut and I fell against it with my back. I took a deep, relieved breath, only to expel it in the form of a scream. There, across the room from me, stood a person.

Alejandro.

“What the heck?” I snarled, my right hand cradling my heart and my left wiping my forehead.

Alejandro approached me, his own eyes wide. “Eira!” he exclaimed, then raised me to my feet, took me into his arms and squeezed me half to death. I felt his heartbeat in my own chest, a symphony of drums. “Thank goodness you’re okay. I thought you were in jail!”

“Uh,” I murmured, fighting against his grip, “I was ... kind of ... almost. It’s a long story.”

When I didn’t hug him back, his muscles tensed and he let go of me, his cheeks enflamed. He stepped back with his hand in his hair and his left foot drilling into the floorboards.

“Sorry about that,” he apologised.

I shrugged it off and glanced about the dimly lit room. “What – uh – are you doing in here?”

“Well, after you got arrested, I thought I’d investigate.” Alejandro gestured all around him, everything exactly as we had left it. My mum’s note to Fernando lay flattened on the dressing table, the paper glowing orange by the lamplight. Her bag’s contents – the books, blazer and clothes – were still strewn across the bed, except one of the books were open.

“Okay,” I said as I approached the bed and picked up the book, “what exactly did you find?” My eyes flicked across the page, a collection of notes on final year chemistry.

My mum had scribbled hearts here and there, complete with doodles of what her signature might’ve looked like had she gone on to marry Fernando. PP. Mrs. Perez. Piper Perez.

I couldn’t look at it and shut the book.

Alejandro gently took it from me. “Not much. I wanted to leave, but then the fog came and trapped me in here.” He flipped through the book himself, then dropped it on the bed.

“What Freya did wasn’t normal, Eira,” he said and looked up. “They weren’t just there to scare us.”

“I know,” I replied. My knees gave in and I sank down on the bed. The mattress sank under my weight, the old, stiff springs screeching. “But nothing about that family is normal.”

In an attempt to keep myself from blurting everything out, I undid and took off my boots one by one before tossing them in the corner by the door. Both my socks shortly followed.

“What – uh – happened after you got arrested?” Alejandro asked. He moved my mum’s stuff and sat down next to me. As the mattress caved in, so too did the distance in between us. My breath snagged when the outer side of his arm pressed against mine, and when our thighs touched. I thought he might pull away, apologise again, but he didn’t.

Neither did I, for some reason.

I kept my eyes in front of me as I spoke. “After I got to the station, Lilith and Aillard showed up. They bailed me out, can you believe it? And then they took me to their house ...”

“Their house? Why?”

“At first I thought they might want to threaten me, kill me or lock me up” – this made Alejandro smirk – “but then ... they accused my mum of murder. Lilith’s husband, supposedly.”

A silence passed between us. A moment so tense I couldn’t help but turn my head and look at his face. I had to see his reaction. Had to see the horror fill his eyes as he realised what I had said.

But the horror never came. Instead, he contorted his face in a mix of anger and annoyance.

“What is it?” I asked.

Alejandro scratched behind his ear. “It’s just ... well, Lilith’s husband wasn’t murdered.”

I bounded upright and stepped in front him, towering out above him. “What?” I blurted out.

“Yea,” said Alejandro. “I guess he had a terminal illness or something. Stayed indoors for weeks before one day they held a funeral. No one ever said anything about a murder.”

“Are you sure?”

He shrugged. “There certainly weren’t any investigations.”

I raked my hands through my hair and cradled the back of my head. It felt light and heavy at the same time, my eyes already burning with fresh tears. I never thought such simple words could fill me with such relief. My mum wasn’t a murderer. They had lied – once again – and tried to get inside my head. To prevent me from finding out their secret.

“Alejandro,” I said with such determination, he also got up. “The Vinsants aren’t what they seem.”

“Uh, I think that’s fairly obvious at this point.”

“No – I mean, yes – but no, that’s not what I meant.” I made my hands into fists and paced to the window. I glanced at my reflection, at Alejandro’s reflection in my wake. Bit by bit, my courage started to fade. “They control the fog. I don’t know how, but they can.”

“Control the fog? What do you mean?”

Alright, Eira, here we go. Don’t you dare mess this up. I dodged Alejandro’s eyes in the window, just to make things easier – if that was even possible. I was yet to tell him about his dad, after all. “They’re the ones who made it come out this early. They told it to follow me, to engulf everything.”

Alejandro came to stand next to me. We both glanced outside, despite not seeing anything except grey. “Why would they want to make the fog follow you? You’re not affected by it.”

“True. But also not.”

“What?”

“Whenever I touch it” – I pressed my finger against the window – “they know exactly where I am.”

“Oh, okay,” Alejandro replied with hesitance.

“It sounds crazy, I know. But it’s true. And it’s exactly why I have to stay indoors until it fades.”

I expelled a breath, watching as it fogged up the glass. Fog overlapping fog. A double blanket of dark, of haziness. Like buried secrets. Buried people. So many buried people.

“Alejandro,” I said and gulped.

“Yea?”

“I think they kidnap people.”

Alejandro glanced sideways at me, his eyes skimming my face. A tinge of insecurity crawled up my spine. Could he see my blemishes? What about the weird hump in the bridge of my nose?

But he merely asked, “The Vinsants?”

“Who else?” I kind of snapped. Damn insecurities. “But yes. I think that’s where everyone goes when they enter the fog. They fog itself doesn’t kill them, but the people inside do.”

“Wow,” he replied, and I briefly considered stopping there, saving him from what was yet to come.

“I also think –” I couldn’t do it. My lips wouldn’t move, wouldn’t shape to words in my throat.

“Think what, Eira?” Alejandro’s voice rang with impatience. “You know you can tell me anything.”

I did. And that was what made this even harder. “I think” – I swallowed – “they murdered you dad.”

And I was correct to want to save him, as the moment my allegation processed in his mind, he swallowed and looked away. His bottom lip trembled. “Eira, please. My father –”

“Walked into the fog and was never seen or heard of again. That’s exactly what happened to Benjy and Bobby. I found their clothes on the other side of the fog, on the beach. They made it out, Alejandro, which means someone must’ve gotten to them afterwards.”

Alejandro’s jaw visibly tensed. I tried to meet his eyes in the window, but he kept glancing past me, anywhere except at me. The whites of his eyes turned pink, welling with tears.

“I know it’s just a theory, but it explains so much. Why my mum ran away, for starters. She couldn’t watch them do it anymore, couldn’t live with the guilt of their actions. And ... if she might’ve been a part of it ... if she had helped them ... she couldn’t handle it anymore.”

“Can you prove it?” Alejandro wanted to know.

I tossed back my head in frustration. “N – No,” I said, “not yet. But if we can sneak into their mansion, find concrete proof, maybe bodies. We can prove to everyone what they really are.”

“We?”

“Yea, the both of us.” I stepped away from the window and paced down the length of the bed. “I think tomorrow night might be the most optimal time. You know, with the fog not coming out. And they’d all be at the festival, of course. They won’t suspect a thing.”

Alejandro chest rose and declined. Then, he spun around to face me. “Fine,” he agreed, much to my delight. “But only because it might finally shed light on my father’s death.”

“Great,” I thanked him. “I promise, Alejandro, I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. We’ll find proof.” I smacked my fists together, then put my hands on my hips and glanced around as I inhaled. “So, I guess we’re both stuck in here for the night?”

“I guess so.” Alejandro padded toward me.

“What will we do for all this time?” I chirped. “Oh, maybe we can search my mum’s stuff again.”

“Already did that, remember,” he said as he brushed past me and crossed to the far end of the room, the wardrobes that lined the wall. He opened them one by one, each time only to shut them again with a sigh. When he finished, he paused in the corner with his back to me.

“Eira,” he finally said.

I looked up from where I was loading my mum’s stuff into her backpack, and dropped it. Her books sprawled across the bed again, her name flashing before my eyes. Alejandro’s voice had a dismalness to it. A depressed drawl. “Y – Yes?” I asked with hesitation.

“I’m sorry I left you back there.”

“What?” The word shot from my mouth as a bullet from a gun. I never expected him to apologise.

“At the school today. I shouldn’t have run away like that.”

With my hands set against my sides, I fled across the room toward him. Anger bubbled up inside of me, threatening to flow over. How dare he be sorry for obeying me. “I told you to run away,” I insisted. “I could handle it. I wanted to know you were far away and safe.”

“I know,” he said and scratched the side of his arm. “But I just feel like a loser, a coward.” A pause. “I feel like what everyone’s been calling me all along. Fucking dalmatian boy.”

I bit my tongue.

He went on, “There you were, living proof that the fog doesn’t affect people at all, and I just couldn’t bring myself to touch it. I was stuck in the way I was brought up, what I’ve been taught.” I watched him rub across his face. “How I thought my dad might’ve died.”

“Alejandro,” I began, but didn’t finish. While I still had no idea what to say – how to prove to him how little of a coward he actually was – I approached him in the corner of the room. Our eyes met the entire time, our foreheads sporting the same line between our brows.

When I reached him, the words came, “I understand.”

“You do?”

I shook my head, now standing mere inches away from him. From his chest and face and nose.

From his mouth.

His lips.

“You don’t have to explain anything,” I insisted in barely a whisper. “If I had just stayed away from the fog when you first told me to, none of this would’ve ever happened.”

“You don’t know that,” he replied. Then his eyes flicked down to my own lips, only briefly.

It proved enough, however, to knock some sense into me. I cleared my throat and ran my hands down my sides, my shoulders drawn up into my neck – a very, very, long shrug.

“Well,” I said as casually as I could while reversing away from him, “I built up quite a sweat today. I better hop in the shower before I start to reek. The taps work, don’t they?”

Alejandro seemed surprised, however nonetheless nodded. “Y – Yea,” he stammered. “The hot faucet sticks a little, but other than that you’re set to go. There’s no soap, though.”

“It’s fine,” I said as I scooped my duffle bag off the floor by the door and shuffled to the bathroom without looking his way. If I did, he might’ve noticed the red that had tinted my cheeks.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

We weren’t twelve anymore. What was wrong with me?

I deliberated the answer, even after I had shut the bathroom door and collapsed against it.

Once again, I was out of breath. And this time I didn’t even run, didn’t even jump or suffer a scare. All I did was almost kiss a boy. Not just any boy, but a boy whose dad had dated my mum before she left him, and who was likely murdered in cold blood by her family.

By my family.

My blood proved responsible for his lifetime of pain, and what sort of relationship ought to sprout from that?