Page 27 of Ever After

I’m moving before I’ve even thought about it, sliding into my boxers and striding to the window. I peer out and choke back a shocked gasp. The mist has fallen back and there are men gathered in the garden. They look up at me and one of them jeers and laughs. They’re masked and dressed in the same clothes as the wreckers in my dream—dark breeches tucked into high boots, and waistcoats and coats.

A tall, dark-haired man steps forward and gestures at me. He smiles up at me, his teeth glinting, the gaps between them dark. He’s so thin he looks like a skeleton. “Come and join us,” he calls, his Cornish accent thick. “We see you, Blue Billings. We knows you.”

I step back instinctively and then gasp as water abruptly flows over the windowsill. It surges over and is suddenly pouring into the room and dropping onto the carpet. I can’t see where it’s coming from, and I grab my jumper from the back of the chair, pressing it onto the windowsill and trying to soak up the water. It stops as quickly as it started.

I put out my finger and touch it before tentatively tasting it with the tip of my tongue. I immediately grimace. Salt. It’s seawater.

There’s a sudden smart rapping on the bedroom door. I rush over and fling it open, hoping to stop whatever’s happening. But the only thing on the other side of the door is the mist. It’s inside the house now, covering the floorboards, those eerie tendrils creeping over the walls as if testing their strength. I swallow hard, my throat ticking in my ears.

The banging starts again, and I have a horrid thought. Did we lock the front door last night? I thought we did, but now I can’t be sure. We were kissing when we came in, full of beer and love, and I can’t remember if that fucking door is locked.

“Blue Billings!” comes the call from the garden.

I sway against the doorframe, my fingers curling against the mist-damp wood. What do they want?

The banging comes again and I groan. I have to check the front door. Next time I go to sleep in this house I’m going to be blackout drunk. That way I can’t be relied on to make all the hard decisions.

I hesitate as I glance at Levi. Should I wake him up? A voice sounds in my head, deep, posh, and almost mocking. “Ah, I would leave him be, Blue Billings.”

My gaze bounces wildly from the bed to the window to the landing. There’s nobody. Just the mist.

The voice continues, “He’s safe there, but I can’t vouch for his continued safety if you awaken him.”

I obey my instincts, what my heart instructs me to do. I leave Levi safely sleeping, but after stepping onto the landing, I close the door tightly against the fog.

The mist abruptly hits my face, thick and briny enough to make me gag. Something skitters across my feet as I step forward—it’s sharp and has pincers, and I’m doing all I can to ignore it. I take another step, and a pained, ragged sound oozes from the shimmering fog.

I keep walking, bracing for the step down to the stairs from the landing. My head begins to spin from my shallow breaths, and my bare toes curl against slimy floorboards. I don’t want to move, don’t want to see what’s beyond the thick, grey soup.

But Levi’s in bed behind me. If something’s coming, I’ll face it and protect my husband.

I force myself to take another step. The mist cringes away from me, and growing bolder, I move faster until I’m pounding down the stairs with the mist reforming behind me.

The kitchen smells overwhelmingly of pipe smoke, but I ignore it, racing to the front door and slamming against it. My fingers slip on the handle, finally gripping it, but the catch is on, the door closed tightly. I veer away, my gaze landing on the console table, the worktop, wherever we might’ve left the key.

My breath freezes in my throat. The fog is outside the cottage again, and now it’s pressed against the window by the front door—the same glass where I saw the face last night. And the glass is moving, warping inwards as though the fog is testing its strength.

I’ve been through so much shit, seen so many fucked-up things. But this is something different.

That fog—it carries an air of menace that’s thick and awful, and it’s everywhere, inside and out, and so cloying I can’t catch my breath. And my fear itself is terrifying. I feel like I could die from this fright.

I cry out, “What do you want!” and a sudden brine-scented wind whips against my face. It smashes against the doorframe, making the old wood creak, and I watch, stunned, as the misty moisture hovering on the wood freezes, abruptly turning to frost. Icicles form on the overhead beam.

“This can’t be happening,” I say out loud. Maybe if I say it enough times, one day it will be true. But right now, my ragged breaths are freezing white on the air and a renewed knocking at the door makes me brace a shaking shoulder against it.

“The door is locked,” I say out loud. “You can’t come in.”

There’s a squeaking noise on the window. Words appear on the frosty glass. Open the door.

My hand moves before I can stop it, stretching toward the door handle. Something has control of my hand, dangling it like a puppet. Ice-cold fingers curl around my skin, and I need to break free.

Small noises erupt from the back of my throat as I dig in my heels, but nothing stops the forward momentum, and I can almost feel the glass. It’ll be cold. As cold as the grave.

Then a calm, deep voice speaks from behind me. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

The fingers let go of me so abruptly that I lose my balance and crumple to the floor. I immediately scramble up, putting my back to the wall and turning to face the source of that voice.

The fire is lit and a man is sitting in the rocking chair, rocking lazily back and forth. He’s cast in shadow, but he suddenly sits forward and the firelight washes over his face.