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Series Catalogue

Just after the stroke of midnight, my whole world changed.

I sat there, drunk and cold in the dark of early morning, but the hour was far from quiet. There was blood on the floor, on the window. The neighbors were still sobbing, probably holding each other close, praying for it to be over. And I was alone, looking out at the streets of town where destruction stretches as far as the eye can see.

Before it all went wrong, it started with a sound. A drone. A bellow that shook the whole earth.

A siren.

“A fog warning is being issued for the village of Pinehaven.”

The crackle of the radio pulled me out of a deep, cold sleep. I rolled suddenly and fell off the couch, the back of my head hitting the floor with a loud thud. The siren was blaring over the entirety of our quiet mountain village like a single scream in the dead of night; I had never heard it from this side of the forest before. The tone of Daniel’s voice, however, was more alarming. He was shaken to the core. He had done this before, many many times in fact…Why was his voice trembling now?

“Please stay indoors until instructed to do otherwise. Close and lock all windows. D-Do not go outside. Do … Do not...^(do not)…”

He went quiet. Still trapped in a twisted blanket, I squinted at the radio as white noise started to break through. With a tired, ornery grunt, I grabbed it, smacking it with the palm of my hand. I gave it a shake, tried adjusting the station, even turned it on and off again. All I heard was white noise in every direction, as if 104.6 F.M. didn’t exist anymore.

You’d think that years into this sort of thing, I would be used to kind of horseshit. The jitters would go away. But, thinking about Danny spending the night in the tower by himself reminded me too much of my own first days. I knew he didn’t like to be alone.

The radio was placed back down, and almost as if on cue, a light from outside my window went dark. I squinted at the frosted glass. It was the streetlamp beneath my floor. It flickered a few times, then went out completely, and was soon followed by the lamp beside it. As I pushed the blankets off of my legs and my skin was touched by the chill in an unheated room, that small view of the quiet downtown street became clear. I rushed to the window, bare feet shocked by the cold floor. Down every street that I could see, lights were going out one by one on the roadside, in peoples’ windows… in the sky.

It looked like the stars were going out, one by one.

I felt a tightness growing in my chest as I watched the night sky grow black. A heavy cloud was passing over. It was a cloud that reached the ground: a heavy, swirling fog that went on for miles and miles up the mountain.

It reached us. Somewhere in a matter of minutes, it had passed the forest boundary and it had reached us. Ever since I came back to Pinehaven and began my shitty little 'hero’s journey', I had never, ever seen it from this view - the powerless view of the observer, locked behind closed doors with no choice but to wait out the nightmare as the siren blared over us all.

The people in the village must have been terrified, just as they always were. But I knew something that most of them didn’t - if the fog reached the town, it only meant one thing. The radio signal had stopped. 104.6 F.M. had lost its operator.

We weren’t safe anymore.

​

I swore loudly, stubbing my toe on one of the boxes strewn around the kitchenette, knocking them over with an avalanche of noise. I felt drunk in the dark as I searched blindly for my phone, patting every surface until finally it was found between the couch cushions. My eye burned as soon as the lit screen flooded my face, but I squinted through the discomfort as my thumbs got to typing - luckily, my list of contacts was small. Daniel was easy to find.

The line rang once, then twice. I sat down on the living room floor next to the couch, legs curled up to tuck my cold feet underneath me. There was a third ring, a fourth, and silence.

“Dan, you walnut, pick up your fucking phone.” I couldn’t even enjoy the simple pleasure of insulting my best friend when my heart was beating a mile per minute. He didn’t pick up. As Daniel’s voicemail greeted me once again, I canceled the call and prepared to try it once more, not satisfied until something came through on the other line. Please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead.

He didn’t pick up. Again.

I heard car alarms, police sirens. The town was starting to go mad as the fog drifted over the business district, leaving some unseen path of destruction in its wake on the other side of town. There was only one thing left to do: get in my truck and drive.

Finn called me on my cell phone and I picked up immediately.

“The fog’s outside my house.” He said, gruff and angry but I could still hear panic in his voice. “Where the fuck is Daniel?”

“I. Don’t. Know.” I trembled as I tried to find my boots in the dark. The lights weren’t working. “H-he’s not picking up. The radio’s out. I think he’s–”

“Don’t. Think.” Finn was stern with me. “Just go. Someone has to activate The Bell and I’m–” On the other end of the phone, I heard the shatter of glass and a loud rumble, as if Finn’s house were falling apart. He dropped his voice down to a whisper, breathing heavily as doors slammed and feet stomped. He was on the move. “It’s too late for me to go. They’re here already. They’re–” I heard a heavy thump. “Fuck, they’re in the house. I’ll…I’ll try the cellar, it’s the only place I have left. Goodbye for now, Evelyn. Good luck. I-I hope we meet again soon, but if not, it …it was an honor. And I’m…I’m so sorry.”

He hung up on me. In the end, his voice quivered as if on the verge of tears and it was the first time I had ever heard him sound defeated. Scared. All I could think was that those words were the last I would ever hear from Finn. God, all these years and I didn’t even know his first name.

Stumbling in the dark, I put my boots on but didn’t even bother to lace them up. I left my coat behind, fully prepared to step out the front door in a pair of boxer shorts and a sleeveless shirt as I raced out of the room and started to make my way down the stairs. There were already people in the hallway, trying to get down for a closer look.

I was one of them. I pushed my way through the crowd and down to the front exit of the building, where the square glass windows showed a world of pure gray. It was too late. The fog had reached the building and we were surrounded, an icy cold draft seeping underneath the door and dark figures shifting within the mist.

Everything was deathly silent for a moment. And then, bang*!* Something heavy knocked against the door, making the metal hinges whine. It happened again, and everyone in the crowd jumped as the glass began to crack. One person screamed, another was running back up the stairs.

All at once, the glass shattered and the fog started to seep into the apartment building, filling the hall and rolling towards us at an alarming pace.

“Everyone, go, go, go!” I yelled, pushing anyone near me towards the stairwell. “Back upstairs! Go inside, lock your doors! J-Just go!”

A man looked me in the face. He must have seen the terror I wore, or else he recognized my voice from the radio, because as soon as our eyes met, he started to help push back the crowds, trusting that I knew what I was doing. People were fleeing back to their apartments as the doors continued to shake, something strong attempting to fight its way in. The crowd was congested, some people too afraid to move and others stumbling over one another.

We weren’t quick enough. Long, gray, spider-like limbs reached in through the broken window, followed by another and another from a beast with many arms, some human and some animal. It grabbed the nearest person, a young man, and pulled him toward the door until his back cracked against the dented metal. Fuck, the way it broke him to pieces with its hands…I don’t even want to describe it. All I need you to know is that it dragged part of his body out through the window and the rest dropped to the floor, spraying the crowd with blood. I wasn’t spared from the mess.

The crowd finally began to move faster, frantic and screaming. One of those long, crooked limbs reached through the window and grabbed me by the leg, claws digging into my flesh and tearing it open. I was holding onto the stairwell for dear life, almost sure I would be torn apart as well. The creature only dropped me when a brave neighbor stomped a heavy boot down on the limb, cracking the brittle bones.

I raced up to the fifth floor, dragging the injured leg behind me. And as I slammed the door to my apartment, the last thing I saw was a view of the stairwell and something large and fleshy crawling up the stairs on dozens of mutated, mismatched limbs.

Oh, god. I didn’t know what to do. I was trapped here, no way to get to the broadcast room, and Daniel was just gone. Finn was gone. I pulled out my phone again and I called, and called, and called, but nothing happened. No one would answer me. I…I was the only one left.

I tried texting Daniel:

“Where are you?” “Are you ok?” “ANSWER ME.” “PLEASE.”

Nothing.

I started to hyperventilate, tears running down my face as I realized that this could be the end…The end of it all*.* I grabbed the radio in both hands, gripping it tightly as I sat on the floor and rocked back and forth. Something was lumbering outside my door, banging on the walls as it went up and down the hallway looking for a way in. I focused on the radio - on the smell of smoke and gasoline: the last memory I had of my father.

And the photo on the fridge: the last memory of my best friend.

But something broke through the white noise. I heard Dan’s voice. It was soft, shivering, disjointed through the sound.

“No…you’re not real. You’re not real.” He whispered.

He was alive. The crackle of the radio interrupted his quiet murmurs and turned to white noise again, but he was alive. With a turn of the dial, the garbled sounds and ear-piercing screeches became louder until a few taps against the plastic began to clear the airwaves.

“That’s not true...Th-that’s not true! I would never–” Daniel sounded far away, his voice carrying a frail tremble. Between the white noise and the moments of static, I heard the squeak of a rolling chair and the scuff of an arm against the table. He was leaving his seat.

I kept calling. He ignored me every time. And no matter how many times I tried to shout his name, he would never hear me.

Don’t go out there, I found myself thinking. Whatever you do, just don’t you dare go out there, you dumb son of a bitch.

In an instant, all the noise stopped. The radio gave one final shriek of static before it fell to silence, and the connection I had was gone. All signals were lost - I couldn’t call, I couldn’t text. Daniel and I were suddenly worlds apart.

That mile between us may as well have been an ocean.

​

But, a flickering light through the window struck me as something new. In those distracted moments, I hadn’t seen the layer of fog that was now completely covering every inch of our sleepy mountain town and beyond. The streets below disappeared, fading into an obscure lump of blurry color and shape. Some of those shapes were moving. All the while, not too far away, the solitary glow of a single street lamp began to pulse and flicker until it burst in a quick, startling shower of electricity. I could hear the crack of wood and the groan of taut wire as the vague outline of a telephone pole began to fall and crash into the pavement. It was followed by several more; the town was falling apart.

Car alarms were blaring. The ground was shaking. Fire hydrants burst open. Down the street, gunshots rang out and screams followed. Doors slammed, windows shattered, and somewhere downstairs, the fellow apartment building tenants ran up and down the halls. I wasn’t the only one huddled against the window, watching to see what was out there.

It took large footsteps. It snapped wires, sending sparks flying. In those tiny glimmers of electric light, I could see the faint, sharp silhouette of long, gnarled horns. My skin began to crawl as I realized just how tall it stood - tall enough to push the telephone poles down with ease. It lumbered slowly, voicing the low roars of a massive and ancient beast. No. Not him. Not him.

Beneath me, I heard a scream before I saw anything. A young girl in the apartment below shrieked, but her voice was soon muffled and replaced by the comforting shush of a parent. Moments later, I saw it for myself. A family of vines began to crawl their way up from the corner of the window, growing and spreading over the glass as they made their way up the building at least five stories high. What first appeared as slithering plantlife soon became something different. Its blossoms opened, and within, I could see the wiggling of blood-soaked fingers that crawled out from between its petals, connected to the vine where their wrists would be. They were molded and gray, like the skin of something long drowned. These tiny, vaguely human hands began to paw and scrape and scratch at the window glass. They had no eyes to see me, but they clawed at the glass with a sharp, ear-splitting sound - they knew someone was on the inside.

I still can’t put my finger on why it felt worse to see the fog from here than it did to see it from inside the forest itself. Perhaps, I just felt..helpless. Out here, there was nothing I could do. Out here, all I could do was watch as the world ended.

A set of giant footsteps grew closer, and the used cups on my kitchen counter began to shiver and shake precariously close to the edge. Before I could react, one of them slid off, shattering on the floor.

The sound of breaking glass was nowhere near as unpleasant as the sharp scrape of antlers against the side of the building. The behemoth thing was close enough to dip its head, as if peering into the windows of my downstairs neighbors. Its horns scratched on the brick.

And when it turned its head closer, I saw it. Many pairs of eyes were glowing through the thick, swirling fog as a warm mist formed on the window from its breath. It made a sound like a low, droning death rattle. The cry of an elk followed, but it was low and alien. In my memory, I could smell it still: the amalgamation of soil, mold, and old rotten flesh.

One of those eyes used to be mine, but now it was dead and blind. I wondered if the beast remembered.

My foot caught a slice of broken glass when I turned, and I hissed out in pain before rushing to the bathroom. I slammed the door behind me. The power was out and I was plunged into total darkness, listening to the sound of whispers coming from the sink. The pitch black room was far more comfortable, however, than the peering eyes of the beast.

The sink began to gurgle, a black fluid bubbling up from within the pipes. It dripped down the porcelain and onto the floor by my feet where it hissed and bubbled like boiling water. I crawled away from it, backed up into a corner like a tiny ball. The floor shook as tremors passed through the building and I could hear the screams of neighbors between the walls…neighbors who had been too curious or had left their doors unlocked.

I couldn’t say how long it lasted - perhaps it was a minute or an hour. It felt agonizing, like time had decided to stand still. But, the end of it all didn’t come in the form of screams and panic. It came in a siren too high for any to hear, and one that I only recognized from the howls of all the town’s dogs wailing from within the walls of their homes.

“The Bell.” I whispered, my voice a quiet puff of breath. I leaned against the wall limply, hands over my racing heart. “You finally did it, Danny Boy.”

I had no curiosity to watch the fog dissipate, or to watch the departing silhouettes of whatever beasts had emerged. I waited, my back to the door, until I felt ready to come out of the bathroom. When I did, they were gone. The streets were left in disrepair, with snapped power lines across roads, scattered shingles torn from rooftops, and huge marks in the snow where gargantuan hooves had stepped. There were cracks in the drywall, dust falling from the ceiling. The quakes that tore through the apartment building left my items scattered across the floor. Even on my window, I saw the stains of old, murky-colored blood from the hands that scratched too hard on the glass in an attempt to get in.

There was a crack in the corner. They almost succeeded.

I got a text message. It was from Finn. It simply said: “I think they’re gone now.”

With a relieved sigh, I stuffed my phone back in my pocket, deciding to leave the quiet darkness of my apartment to follow a new procession of footsteps that rushed up and down the hallways. I wasn’t the only one eager and anxious to see it all for myself.

…There was blood in the hallway. Trails of blood. Some of my new neighbors didn’t make it out alive.

Down the stairs and at the end of the hall, a small crowd had already formed with their hands and faces pressed against the glass and peering through the busted door. As my neighbors began to hesitantly creep outside, I pushed my way through until my bare and bloodied feet hit the cold cement.

The streets of Pinehaven were dark, lit only by wandering flashlights and the occasional spark from a broken street lamp. I could hear the mixture of hushed whispers and distressed shouts. Somewhere down the sidewalk, a man was running from gate to gate, asking hurriedly if anyone had seen his wife out for her evening walk. People were crying. Police sirens were already blaring, lights appearing down the road as they parked around the hazards to keep people from getting too close. But everything was a hazard, really.

I reached into my memory then, thinking of the sirens I used to hear as a child and the way my mother would close the curtains whenever the fog rolled in. Sometimes we’d sit in the basement. Back then, I didn’t know. Back then, it was never this bad.

But then again, I drank those memories away.

​

My back pocket began to buzz, and I grabbed for it with cold, unsteady hands and nearly dropped it on the pavement in the process. It was Daniel’s number. Pushing and shoving my way back inside the apartment, I put it up to my ear and winced with each step that I took on my injured leg.

“Daniel?” I answered, hearing a crackle on the other end. The signal was poor, but began to clear the closer I got to the stairs.

“I did it.” His voice came through at long last. I felt a weight lift off of my shoulders. Even if he sounded shaken, it was still undoubtedly and positively him. “It was...I...can’t explain it. I don’t know what I saw.”

“It’s fine, it’s okay.” I assured, a bit breathless when I reached the top of the stairs. “Just breathe…You got it under control, that’s all that matters. Fuck, I’m so glad to hear your voice. You have no idea. I was beginning to think that…”

On the other end of the phone, I could hear the unsteady breaths of someone still struggling to pull themselves together. He was crying, I could tell. I tried my best to assure him and keep him at ease, all the while pinching my phone between my cheek and shoulder as I struggled to un-stick the old apartment door. It swung open, and once again, I was in the dark with the scent of mildew and quiet, static-riddled music coming from the radio by the couch.

“Are you gonna be okay?” I asked, plopping myself down on the sofa and idly picking at the bottom of my foot in search of tiny pieces of glass. “You don’t sound great, bud.”

“I’ll be fine,” he told me, his nose stuffed. “It was just...worse than I remember. The fog came in quick and I just...I just don’t think I was ready for it this time. My ears still hurt like hell, though.” I remembered the first time he had activated The Bell. Poor sucker had to rip out his hearing aid because the frequency was so harsh. Daniel gave a small sniffle, and in the background I could hear the landline ringing constantly. “M-maybe it’s just me, but I feel like it’s a lot smarter than it used to be. Those things are getting pretty good at using stairs. I felt...I felt like they came straight for me, like they had a plan to try to lure me out. Or maybe I’m just losing all my remaining marbles.”

“Took you long enough.” I said with a half-spirited smirk, and Daniel snorted in response. Here we were yet again, trying to laugh when nothing was funny. It was a lot harder to do this time.

“But what about you?” Dan asked. “You were out there, in the middle of it. Right? Is everything in town okay?”

As I felt the tackiness of blood on my fingertips, I abandoned my injured foot and looked up to the window, still seeing the distant glow of the police lights flashing on every street corner. I dreaded seeing what it looked like in the daylight.

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” I told him. “It wasn’t so bad.”

There was a long lapse of silence on the other end of the phone. We were both keeping plenty to ourselves, it seemed, too afraid to let the worst be known. Finally, Daniel let out a light huff of breath.

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “I can see the flashing lights from here. Cops are out on the roads.”

“It’s just a few downed power lines.” The lie of the century right there. “Don’t worry. Our apartment building is still here. It was…it was like a storm. That’s all. Besides…cops are always out on the roads, they don’t have anything else to do.”

I didn’t want him to know yet…He was having a bad enough time as it was, he didn’t need to sit all night with the knowledge that the fog had destroyed part of the town. People had died. I didn’t blame him, but I knew he’d blame himself. He’s always been too good for this place.

“You know, I could drive out there if you wanted me to.” I told him. “I’d be up there in just a few minutes. Then you wouldn’t have to be alone. I-I could bring Finn too and we’ll sit it out together, the three of us.”

Daniel paused for a moment, as if thinking it over. “No, it’s okay.” He finally said. “But maybe, you can just…sit with me on the phone for a few more minutes. You know, until you want to go back to sleep.”

He knew better. We didn’t sleep, not when the fog was still in the mountains. On nights like these, when it loomed over the town and watched us from afar, there was never a possibility of rest. He was right about one thing - it was getting smarter. As I looked out at the destruction, mountains looming in the background, I knew that the forest was already trying to find its way back to us.

“Sure, Danny Boy...” I went to the kitchen, already getting a pot of coffee ready to start my day at 2 A.M. I eyed the bottle of tequila on the counter for a moment before breaking off the seal and taking a sip straight from the bottle. It hit my throat with a pleasant heat that I once promised I’d never feel again. “I’ll be here as long as you need me.”

This is Evelyn McKinnon from 104.6 F.M. And I don’t think Pinehaven is ever going to be the same after tonight. Neither will we.

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