Prologue
The road stretched endlessly in both directions, a thin, cracked ribbon of asphalt cutting through the trees. Maggie sat in the driver’s seat of her aging sedan, one hand draped over the wheel, the other gripping the edge of the seat as though she needed to keep herself tethered to the present.
The kids were quiet in the back seat, too quiet. Katie clutched her battered stuffed bunny so tight Maggie worried its seams would give. Luke stared out the window, his expression unreadable, his reflection pale and warped in the glass.
Maggie didn’t know when the fog had rolled in. She’d noticed it first about ten minutes back, swirling at the edges of the road, low and wispy, like steam rising off a pot of boiling water. Now, it was thick, dense, clinging to the car and swallowing the trees whole.
She flicked her eyes to the rearview mirror and then back to the road, her pulse racing. “How much farther?” she asked, though she wasn’t sure who she was asking. Maybe herself. Maybe the universe.
Luke didn’t look away from the window. “It doesn’t matter,” he said softly.
Maggie’s stomach twisted, a slow, deep pull. “What do you mean it doesn’t matter?”
Luke finally turned his head, his face calm in that way only a child’s could be—calm and utterly terrifying. His blue eyes locked on hers through the mirror. “Because it’s already here.”
A chill crept up Maggie’s spine, and her grip on the seat tightened. “What’s already here?”
Katie whimpered, the sound small and sharp, like a bird with a broken wing. “Mama,” she whispered, clutching the bunny tighter, her knuckles white.
Maggie turned her head, her heart lurching, but Katie wasn’t looking at her. She was looking out the window on the other side of the car. Her tiny hand rose slowly, trembling, and pointed into the fog.
Maggie’s gaze followed her daughter’s finger, her breath stopping in her throat. At first, she saw nothing but the swirling mist, thick and impenetrable. But then something shifted, a shape emerging where there shouldn’t have been one.
It was tall—impossibly tall—and thin, its limbs stretched out like black wires, its head tilted slightly as if curious. It didn’t move. It didn’t need to. Its presence was enough, pressing down on the car like a suffocating weight.
Katie whimpered again, and Maggie’s voice broke before she even spoke. “Don’t look at it,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Don’t look.”
“Mama,” Katie whispered again, but there was no question in her voice this time.
The thing in the fog tilted its head farther, until it felt like the car itself might break under the strain of its attention. Maggie’s chest heaved, but she forced her shaking hand to the gear shift.
She didn’t know what it was. She didn’t care. All she knew was that it was watching.
And she had to get her kids away from it.
