The fog swirled around the trees like a snake constricting its prey. It contracted further until trees along the graveled path became haunting specters screaming to be noticed. It was quiet. The kind of quiet where every creature prays not to be caught in the blast of an impending explosion. A pond lay off the side of the path with a thick film of mud coating the top. Dead twigs with skeletons of leaves extended out of the water with phantom arms pleading to be removed before the water took away all that was left of their lives, but it was far too late for them. A bright moon shone overhead indicating the coming of twilight as the fog fingered its way around the edges of the disc, hoping to grope at the ethereal life the moon contained.
Bathed in soft moonlight, a woman in her mid-forties appeared on the pebbled pathway, a tourist to this eerie English fog. She hurried past the pond and the twigs whose watery arms pleaded to her. Just beyond the pond, a light shone through the fog, not soft like the moon, but with the harshness of a doctor’s light beaming on a recently conscious patient. The source of the light was a bright porch-lamp connected to an otherwise perfect English cottage. The tourist rushed along the path, removing herself from the soft stage light of the moon to the medical lamp of the cabin. With trembling hands she knocked on the door. She had been running from the fog for hours, away from the English medical center where she had been admitted to. The fog whispered to her that she was lost, that she was going to die if she stayed out much longer. A deadness answered her knock, not even an echo on the inside of the cottage. Fearing she was still alone in this foreign night, the tourist turned to leave and continue on her frantic search for human life and an escape from the grips of the swirling fog. A creak in the door indicated to her that she was not alone after all. Turning slowly back toward the door, the tourist spoke in the hurried American voice only New Yorkers are familiar with, “Excuse me, I don’t mean to bother you. I’m terribly lost.”
The second figure, the owner of the cottage, was a small woman no older than ninety, but no younger than eighty. She wore large glasses magnifying her beady black eyes, and a woolen shawl draped over her fragile form. “You poor dear, you must be scared half to death. A fog like this one comes only once every three or four years. Come in, why don’t you? I’ll make you a nice pot of tea and help you find your way again,” she said in a voice that reminded the tourist of the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz.
Being from New York and naturally suspicious (suspicion only heightened by the coiling of the fog around her ankles) the tourist shook her head, “I don’t know if I have time for some tea. Please if you could just direct me toward the nearest town, I would be very grateful. I’m trying to find a way to get back into the city.”
The old woman clicked her tongue, “You Americans are always in such a hurry. I’m betting you’re coming from the facility up the room, they probably wouldn’t like you running around this Witch’s Fog alone, now would they?”
A shiver not related to the cold ran down the tourist’s spine, “Witch’s Fog? Why is it called that?”
Laughing throatily, the old woman explained, “Because this is when the witches come out to prey on innocent victims. Come in, come in already.”
Uncertain, but with the cold billowing around her torso, the tourist entered the cottage whose warmth rushed through her core easing some of her doubts about this old woman who lived on the edge of a skeletal pond in the midst an English Witch’s Fog. The warmth from a roaring fire held her close as though she and it were old friends who had just been reacquainted after years apart. She accepted the old woman’s offering to sit nearer to the fire in a cozy rocking chair draped with crocheted blankets. All around the cottage were various tea cozies and china sets, along with yarn, needles, and a quilted mattress over a small bed. The tourist settled in, trying to calm her pounding heart, erasing the images in her head of doctors reaching into her brain with scalpels and sharp needles. No pictures met the tourist’s eyes except an old photograph of a handsome young man in a military uniform.
“I see you’ve noticed my Nicky. Nicholas Roger William Hamstead was his full name, but he’ll always be my Nicky.” The old woman handed the tourist a steaming cup of tea.
“Was he your son?” The tourist asked curious, but skeptical.
The old woman laughed her throaty laugh once more, “No my dear, he was my husband. That picture was taken two days after we married, and a month before he died. It was love at first sight. I was a nurse during the war and he was a soldier. He came in with PTSD, and my kindness cured him.”
The tourist gulped, a vision again passed through her head of hospitals and her heart beat quickened, “I’m so sorry. Was he killed in battle?”
The old woman stared inquisitively at her, “In battle? Of course not my child. I killed him. Drowned him in the pond just there.”
Fear poisoning her veins, the tourist stopped sipping her tea mid-gulp. Icicles ran through her and she found she could no longer move her body. Fear had paralyzed her completely. The tourist was unsure of whether or not the old woman was joking. Her heart quickened until it thundered in her ears like bombs exploding.
“What? What do you mean?” She whispered through paralyzed lips. Images of witches, death, and murderous old ladies in cottages during a dense fog joined those from the medical center.
The old woman grinned showing pointed yellow teeth, “Oh I’m simply teasing my dear. You facility patients are too easy to scare. Weren’t you listening out there? This is a Witch’s Fog, which happens every three or four years when a witch needs a new victim. I haven’t had company in such a long time, and I never get to talk to people such as yourself.”
So you tell me that you murdered your own husband? The tourist thought to herself, still too paranoid to move. Should she run? Flee back into that night of shadows and howls? To the doctors experimenting on her her brain? The prospect of going back into the fog drained the remaining blood from her face. She looked around the cottage again for that comfort she felt when she first walked in. She saw a pentacle hanging over the window, red and black candles on the kitchen counter with their wax dripping down into blood-like pools. A large rack of knives hung up over the stove all sharp looking, and one was missing! The prospect of staying with this old woman, who might be a witch, made her choke on a blood-curdling scream.
“I do not think anyone is going to miss you will they, Teresa Smith of Soho? A lousy secretary fired after at most a year of every job you have ever worked at. You have never married, your only family is a sister who never calls, and all that awaits you at home is a dead goldfish. I think your misery will feed me for quite a long time. Not to mention the reason you came here in the first place. Why exactly would you be in a mental institution? I wonder.”
With wide unblinking eyes, Teresa Smith, a tourist from Soho, New York stood stunned at the old woman’s words, uncomprehending at her knowledge. She shook her head slightly, trying to clear it. She was unsure of whether or not the woman had actually said that, or if she imagined it all. “What did you just say?”
The old woman cocked her head, her eyes concerned, “I said that I never get much company around here and its nice to have a house guest from America to tell me about the world. Would you like some treacle tart?”
Teresa wondered if she was going mad. Closing her eyes and breathing deeply, she attempted to collect herself. However, when she opened them she saw the old woman driving her
small leathery hand into a knitting satchel to extract a long athame, the knife missing from the rack. Her black eyes had turned yellow and long like a snake’s, and her grey hair curled around her face just like the fog had curled around Teresa’s ankles. Teresa gasped and blinked hard. The image returned to normal. Knitting needles and yarn were all the old woman held.
She leaned forward, putting one hand on Teresa’s arm, “Are you well, my child? You seem perturbed.”
Teresa’s breathing had become inconsistent, and she found it difficult to consume the air inside the warm cottage. The fog had completely blanketed the windows. Teresa attempted to move, to perhaps run back into that fog. She did not know which was worse, the doctors experimenting on her troubled mind, or this woman who might be a witch. She tried to put her tea down, to stand up, but her limbs were frozen.
She turned her wide eyes to the old woman who smirked. “I’ve poisoned you, my dear child. You are paralyzed.”
Teresa closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. Was this real? Was this another hallucination? Opening her eyes Teresa watched unmoving as the old woman ripped her stomach open the witch’s athame, her own blood pouring over the black handle. Unable to scream, Teresa choked, staring into the old woman’s caring eyes as she held her knitting.
Two miles away, the alarm sounded at South Hampton’s Home for the Mentally Insane. An escaped patient suffering from delusions, schizophrenia, and multiple personality disorder. She is a danger to herself and others, and must be found at all costs. The orderlies ran past the pond of dead twigs, under the full moon, through the rapidly dissipating fog. They ran along the path until they found her. Teresa Smith sat on a tree stump, her hand gripped on a black knife she had plunged into her own stomach, her eyes wide and forever terrified. The last tendril of fog caressed her frozen cheek as it rolled away.
The End
Note: An athame is a ceremonial dagger with a double-edged blade and a black handle used for magical ceremonies.
