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But as the congregation swelled, the vicar’s sermons had become darker in tone. She hadn’t attended herself, but her parents had, before they ...

She shut the thought out. Put it in a box. Locked it. Sealed it. Then threw it into an unused corner of her mind where she could forget about it.

The village grapevine whispered that the vicar was drinking too excess, which was why his sermons had become dark and strange, but Mandy wasn’t so sure that was the reason. Although she never entered the church, she had, out of curiosity, once stood in the graveyard, underneath the stained glass window and listened as he preached from Revelation. He also liked to preach from the Old Testament, about the tree of knowledge and how thou
shalt
not eat from it. Although she was sure some of the things he preached about were not even in the bible: people who live in glass houses will invariably get cut; if you choose to sit on the fence, shit happens (she wasn’t
actually
sure he did say shit, but it sounded like he said shit); damnation sits on the shoulder of greed; Humpty
Dumpty
was pushed (people had actually laughed at that one); bad things happen.

She knew that one was true, though.

Although she hadn’t thought it at the time, she had later come to realise there was a sort of code among the sermons, a message, a warning ... and when she felt the change, she knew the warning had come too late.

It had started with her memory. First she forgot where she put things. Then she forgot what the things were that she couldn’t find. Then it was names. People she had known all nineteen years of her life became strangers. Then came the absence of time when she couldn’t recall where she had been or what she had done. Then there was her cat, Candle Wax. She had called him that because as a kitten he’d always been dripping on the carpet. But he was gone now.

She still saw him sometimes, padding across the carpet and purring as he rubbed against her leg, his tail erect and pointing up at her like an accusation. Other times she never saw him for days or weeks at a time, or if she did, she couldn’t remember. Was he really dead? And if he was, had she killed him?

The reason she wasn’t so sure whether he was dead or not, was because sometimes she saw her parents too, in the lane, in a field, in a room, and yet they
were
dead, weren’t they? Hadn’t she watched them die? Hadn’t she been the cause of their death?

No, that was wrong. She hadn’t been the cause, not directly anyway.

It was about a month after the fog descended, perhaps longer, perhaps shorter; it was before the change; the time was irrelevant ...

It was raining heavily. Mandy watched the water running down the lane, an impromptu river through
Paradise
. Her mother was in the kitchen, baking bread with the army rations that had been delivered to the village shop. Money no longer changed hands for food supplies – the government subsidised them, calling it emergency aid. Mandy thought aid only went to third world countries and areas damaged by natural disaster: earthquake, flood and the like. She never thought of
Paradise
as being a charity case, dependant on handouts.

Her father, unable to get to work in the city forty miles away was going stir-crazy. He sat around the house, trying to find something to do with his time. He tried gardening, but everything he touched wilted and died, so he abandoned that idea (much to his wife’s relief) and took to walking around the village. He was an intelligent man who worked in finance, and even though in the circumstances, he would have been able to work from home, all communication had ceased. First the phone lines went dead, and then there was never a signal available for the mobile phone. He had tried getting answers out of Nigel Moon, but he was as evasive and taciturn as an eel.

And then there was the fog.

Omnipresent.

Cloying.

Insidious.

It blanketed the area around the village like a shield, a nebulous barrier. At first people had tried to get through, but the fog had proved too thick; its stranglehold too absolute. Those who did try found they were disallowed from further attempts by security guards posted in the fog – apparently for the villagers’ safety. Escape was futile. Mandy’s dad said how it reminded him of the old television series, The Prisoner with Patrick
McGoohan
.

On that rainy day, he came home from one of his walks, drenched to the skin but wearing a determined expression. His usual affable demeanour was gone and he ran a hand through his dark hair, flicking water from his fingers.

“Karen, Mandy, get your things,” he said, dripping water over the carpet.

“What’s the matter, dear?” Karen asked. “Look at the state of you. You’ll catch your death. And look at the carpet.” She ran a hand across her forehead, leaving a slight dusting of flour on her face. Her hair was going grey, but she disguised it beneath auburn dye.

“Look, forget the bloody carpet,” he said, walking into the kitchen and grabbing his wife by the arm. “We’re going.”

“Going where?”

“Anywhere away from here, that’s bloody where.” He hesitated. “We’ll find a hotel until this fog has gone.”
 

“Richard, what’s got into you?”

“I’m fed up with being fucked around, now come on, we’re getting out of the village. Mandy, get whatever you can carry and get in the car.”

Mandy frowned. “But we were told we couldn’t leave.” It wasn’t like her father to lose his temper or swear.

“Fuck what they said.”

“
Richard
, do you have to use that language.” Karen frowned.

“Sorry, but get a bloody move on. Come on, shake yourselves.”

Mandy went upstairs and threw a few belongings in a holdall. When she came back downstairs, her dad was impatiently goading her mother into action.

“I don’t see what the rush is.” Karen looked at Mandy as if for support.

“No, I’m with dad.” Mandy grabbed her dad’s hand and squeezed.

“Coming or staying,” Richard said.

“Well, you’re not leaving me here on my own. Just let me get my make-up.”

“Forget the make-up, let’s just go.”

Karen sighed in acquiescence.

Richard led them to the car. It hadn’t been driven for over a month, but it started first time. “German engineering,” Richard said, gunning the accelerator and speeding precariously out of the drive, almost running Ms Woods, the shopkeeper over.

Looking through the rear window, Mandy was sure she saw old Ms Woods stick two fingers up at them, but as they sped around the corner, Mandy didn’t think anymore of it, putting it down to her imagination.

Beyond the church, the fog lay before them, a sea of mist undulating like a phantom jellyfish. Licking his lips, Richard slowed the car down and edged into the fog.

Mandy watched it envelop them like a shroud. Richard put the headlights on, but the light glared off the fog, cutting visibility even more, so he turned them back off. The car crawled along at a snails pace and Richard craned his head like a tortoise to navigate, turning the windscreen wipers on to clear the condensation. With visibility down to a few feet, the car momentarily left the road, juddering over ruts on the grass verge. Richard quickly turned the wheel, trying to bring the car back onto the tarmac. The wheels slipped, trying to get a purchase in the mud.

“Shit,” Richard muttered.

Mandy thought she saw movement in the fog, a ghostly apparition that hovered beside the window, peering in with bug-like eyes.

And then it was gone.

Cupping her hands against the window, she tried to penetrate the mist, but it was no good, she couldn’t see anything bar her own reflection.

“Damn, it’s thick,” Richard muttered.

“Perhaps we should turn round,” Karen said.

“
No
,” Mandy hissed. Her dad smiled at her in the rear-view mirror.

“That’s the spirit.” He nodded his head, lips pursed.

Karen shook her head. “But it’s too ... we can’t see where we’re going.”

“We’ll be all right. Trust me.”

“
Candle Wax
,” Mandy screeched. “We’ve left Candle Wax behind.”

“He’ll be all right,” Richard said.

“No, you’ve got to go back. I can’t leave him.”

“She’s right Richard. We’ve got to go back.”

“No, we’re going on.”

“Dad,
please
, we’ve got to go back.”

She saw her dad looking at her in the mirror. This time he wasn’t smiling.

Mandy heard a shout and peering through the mist, she saw they were approaching a roadblock. The barrier was down, and there were men stood in front of it, but instead of slowing down, her father put his foot on the accelerator. Karen screamed as the men dived out of the way. The car careered through the barrier; wood splintered like bone.

And then the shot rang out, puncturing the air.

Richard jerked the wheel in surprise. Hazy figures drifted through the mist, circling.

“
Dad, they’ve got guns
,” Mandy squealed.

Richard floored the accelerator. The wheels spun, sending the car zigzagging across the road like a pinball.

Mandy and her mother screamed.

The tyres found a purchase and the car shot forward, sending them blindly into the fog. A shot rang out and Mandy felt glass slice her cheek as the side window exploded.

“
Dad!
”

“
Fuckin
’ hell,” Richard said.

“
Richard!
”

Mandy never knew whether her mother’s last word was an admonishment or a cry for help because the next bullet shattered her mother’s window, entered her head and exited through the windscreen in a shower of blood, bone and grey matter.

“
Fuck
,” Richard wailed, slamming the brakes on.

“
Don’t stop
,” Mandy screamed, causing her dad to put his foot back on the accelerator.

The car shot forward, a shot rang out, the rear tyre exploded and the car left the road, slamming into a tree. The impact launched Mandy out of her seat, her head smashing into the headrest and delivering her into the blackness of oblivion ...

When she came round, Mandy was at home, in bed. Candle Wax was curled at her feet. The cat stretched, yawned and padded toward her. She stroked him, her head still fuzzy. The remnants of a bad dream still gripped her and she ran a hand down her face, feeling bandages instead of skin.

She screamed.

The nightmare had been real.

Bad things happen.

The memory was now vague. She had tried to recall the events of that day, but as more time passed, the harder it got. After the accident (which is what
they
called it,
they
being Nigel Moon and his stooges) the doctor, Adam White ministered to her, bringing her food, and she recovered within a couple of days. Although she was sure the force of the collision must have cracked her skull, she didn’t need any drugs. She was surprised there wasn’t even a scar on her face, although the one in her mind remained, albeit faded.

Walking up the drive to her house, she tried to recall what she had just been thinking about, but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember.