Alone Read Free Page B

increased. Something was wrong in here. He didn’t know what it was. He couldn’t name it or define it or explain the cause. He just felt it on some instinctive level.  
    The gloom deepened as he went further, obscuring his vision. Hesitating, Dan reached out and tried to touch the gray haze, but his hand simply passed through it as if it weren’t there. He thought back to an experience he’d had when he and Jerry first started dating. They’d gone mountain climbing together for a weekend, and at the top of a peak, he’d touched the low-hanging mist. At the time, Jerry had made a joke of it, saying that his love for Dan made him feel like he was walking amidst the clouds. Dan remembered the sensation as he’d waved his hand through the fog in the Kresby’s home. This wasn’t the same as on the mountain. There was no sense of dampness or cold. Indeed, the grayness felt like nothing at all. It had no temperature or texture or smell. He stepped into it, and that sense of foreboding increased.  
    “Phil?” he called again, but now his voice had grown timid. “Susan? Please answer me. Please...?”
    His feet faltered in time with his voice. The unreasonable fear deepened, threatening to overwhelm him. The deeper he went into the fog, the worse the feeling became. Dan still had no idea just what he was afraid of. He only knew that he had to get out of the house. Turning, he fled across the room, heedless of the broken glass, and hurried back out the window. His unease subsided as he left the gray haze behind, and his worries for Jerry and Danielle returned to the forefront again.
    Seized with panic for his family, Dan charged across his neighbor’s yard, dodged around a tree, and ran out into the street. He shouted as loudly as he could, but his cries sounded hollow and meek. He half wondered if the strange atmosphere was having some kind of dampening effect on sound. He plunged through more of the gloom as he ran across the street. The pavement beneath his feet vanished. He glanced around, looking for the houses and trees that he knew were there, but saw only a wall of gray. Even the curb was gone.  
    Plow through, he thought. It’s just fog. A weird fucking fog, but fog all the same. You can do this. You need to find out what’s happened.  
    Trying hard to ignore his fears, he forced himself to continue ahead. As he did, the nameless dread returned again, growing stronger with each subsequent step. He kept going, realizing that he was well past where the curb should have been. Despite this, there was no grass beneath his feet. No yard. No houses or trees or trash cans or mailboxes. It was as if everything on the block, other than his home and the Lopez and Kresby homes had vanished. He turned to look behind him and saw his own house. It seemed to be shimmering. The image made Dan think of the way heat waves were sometimes visible rising off a hot road surface. He took a deep breath, trying to clear his head and make sense of things, and that was when he felt it.
    Someone—or some thing —was here with him, inside the fog. He couldn’t see them or hear them, but he definitely felt a presence.  
    “H-hello?”
    He saw no movement, but he sensed it all the same. Something was coming toward him, pushing its way through the haze. His dread increased. The disembodied presence drew closer. He still couldn’t see it, but the grayness seemed to press around him.  
    “Who’s there?”
    For a second, the gloom parted, and Dan caught a glimpse of a looming, shadowy figure. It wasn’t human. That much he was sure of. He saw no distinguishing features or traits. No face or clothing. The entity seemed to be nothing more than a black, man-shaped hole, but much larger than a human. It towered over him, dwarfing him with its presence. The grayness seemed to congeal in the figure’s wake. Dan felt the creatures eyes upon him, even though he couldn’t see any. Then, the shadow reached for him.
    Screaming, Dan fled back