Sunday: 06/09/2030: I finished feeding our livestock and eating my lunch, grilled cheese, when a sudden downpour rolled in at 2pm. It went from the sun shining to gray clouds making it look surreal as the wind came in from the west. “That wasn’t part of the forecast for today, was it, Dad?” “No, not at all. In fact, it was supposed to be sunny for the next four days.” “Told you those ten-day forecasts can’t be trusted, son.” “Something’s going on. Probably to do with this black mist that showed up three days ago.” “I’ll be shocked if it wasn’t.” I get a text message from Kyle just as Mom gets a text from Binky, both saying something along the lines of
A sudden lightning flash startles me as I am sitting in the living room in the seat next to the west-facing window, followed by the obligatory peal of thunder that visibly shakes the glass.
Kyle and I have been friends going back to kindergarten and have various common interests such as the outdoors, science fiction, scary stories, and the like. We’ve never developed any feelings for each other, though. I mean, it’s not like boys and girls can’t just be friends. I’ve been waiting to watch the new show for the past several weeks and all I know is, if the power goes out, I am going to freak. “Dad?” “Yes, baby?” “Have you ever encountered the black mist before last Thursday?” “Hmm. I don’t think I have ever been up against anything like that.” “That’s because the only decent opponent you’ve ever had was Mrs. Dyson’s hot water heater.” A great shout of “Ohhhhhhhhhhh!” erupts from TJ, Grandma, Grandpa, and I, leaving Dad speechless. “Looks like FireFly just got frostbitten!” “Dang!” “Still got that savage, Sal.” “What’s that song by that Stallion, honey?” “Ok, we get it, I’m a savage with the jokes.” It isn’t uncommon for us to make zings at each other, in good fun, of course. Over the course of the next several hours, I then help Mom and Dad audit the farm for the past year in terms of the success of last fall’s harvest. Overall, we exceeded expectations regarding crop yield, for which the Food Lion across the street and all who buy their groceries there (pretty much everyone in the Western half of Hanover County) are grateful. All in all, we made at least $100K from last year’s harvest, most of which has been donated to charities, set aside for TJ’s and I’s college tuition, and used to maintain the farm and equipment. Our day-to-day living expenses are paid for by money earned from Mom and Dad’s HVAC business, BlazingCool. A loud pang of thunder rattles the house, and the rain comes down harder than before, sending the foxes for a loop. “It’s ok, babies. It’s just some rain.” All the cats are chasing each other around chittering and going ‘mrrp’ and ‘mlem’ before giving each other a bath, with Spock licking Xena’s belly, causing her to blep. “Aww. Y’all are so cute and funny.” At 6, we start fixing rice pilaf for dinner and sit down at 7 to watch the pilot episode of Midnight Oil, which blows us away with its allusion to an Eldritch monstrosity of cosmic origins and its supposed involvement in the disappearances of teenagers in a rural Midwestern town.
Monday, 06/10/2030: The rain is still coming down outside, though there’s no thunder and lightning, but it is very windy, so we take all the farm equipment into the storage shed, secure the animals in the barn, and set up emergency supplies in the basement. “How many batteries do we have, Lindsay?” “36 AAAs, 30 AAs, 18 Cs, 12 Ds, and 12 9Vs. If you’re wondering, the first aid kit is fully stocked. I checked.” “Thank you, Lindsay.” The emergency supplies are set up in the storage room and we filled the bathtubs with water in the event of a power outage. “I just remembered that we need to close up the flue.” “Go and do that before it gets forgotten and the fireplace is wet.” I crawl into the fireplace where I close the flue. Grandpa goes out on his Monday beat. “See you later, Grandpa!” “Love you, too.” I finish up with the fireplace covered in ash and soot, so I shower and change my clothes and go back down to the basement where TJ has the NES set up and we spend the rest of the day playing Super Princess Peach and Super Mario Galaxy. “Hey. It’s time for dinner, you two!” We pause the game and run upstairs for dinner and see Dad dishing up homemade ramen with leftover chicken and steamed broccoli. Grandma turns on TCM and the film Mothra comes on as part of its monster mash special and we spend the evening witnessing the giant moth goddess fighting for her fairies. The movie finishes and we go to bed, the rain and wind still coming down. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a flood advisory by morning.” “Me, neither TJ.” Having gone to bed, I think back on last year’s VA Beach trip and how we could only spend a few hours at the beach out of 2-3 days in the city because of the weather. As such, the trip was saved from total ruin by the good food at the local restaurants, especially the crab cakes. Meanwhile, a rusty old pickup with no head or taillights on, drives surreptitiously down Old Ridge Rd, the reason for its furtiveness yet unclear. Its midnight ride is disrupted by the appearance of the black mist, which startles the driver and sends the mist into the trees. The truck continues its course, whatever it is, and the mist goes into an abandoned, derelict house and hides there.
Tuesday, 06/11/2030: It is still raining heavily, and I am woken up by the EAS on my iPhone displaying a Flood Advisory for Hanover County effective until noon tomorrow. I text Kyle.
I get up and get dressed and when I finish, I look out the window and the rain is forming puddles in our yard. I hear TJ showering in our bathroom, so I go downstairs. “Morning.” “Morning, Dad.” “Flood Advisory?” “Till noon tomorrow.” “Jeez. Just when I thought we would be dining on hot dogs and Dippin’ Dots at the Diamond tomorrow.” “Don’t jinx it, Dad.” “Everything will be alright. What could happen?” Dad goes out on his weekly beat. Today goes by fairly quietly, if one can call wind howling and thunder rumbling quiet by any stretch of the imagination. Apart from feeding our animals and securing the barn, TJ and I spend the whole day playing on our gaming system. Games like Gollum’s Quest and various NES titles fill our free time and we truly bonded with each other through video games. At 4, Kyle texts me back.
TJ comes back from the bathroom, and we resume our game. At 6, we are called to dinner. “Boboli Pizza?!” “Sweet!” We sit down and watch the next episode of Midnight Oil, Kyle and I texting each other throughout and us jumping in our recliners as the monster in the show makes a truly frightening sound, which isn’t helped when the lights flicker at the exact moment that the monster makes its sound.
I nearly dropped my phone. “Lindsay, are you ok?” “The Crawfords are in trouble!” I race over to Kyle’s house and rush inside to find the whole family swinging in and out of consciousness, with Ida holding up her book in front of her, having already thrown a few sigils around going by the glowing scorch marks in the living room walls. “Kyle! Silo! Billy! Is everyone all right?!” Kyle comes to as do the rest of them over the following moments. “What happened?!” “That thing’s arm was reaching out of the TV screen!” “Like that girl from The Ring!” “The TV blew out, and I can’t remember anything in between that and us waking up with you here.” I look at their now-destroyed entertainment system: TV screen shattered beyond all comprehension and speakers and cable box melted beyond repair. Buck looks at the wreck. “No!” “Looks like our interloper just sank us $1,500 in electronics.”
Then, I hear a scream from Binky, pointing at the window behind me. The black mist was completely blocking out what was left of the light. I rushed outside to confront her and have quite a fight, but when I stepped outside, it wasn’t where it was in front of that window. I couldn’t sense it anymore, so I walked back home, but not before I promised the Crawfords a boon on their property. I arrive back home, go to my rose bush, and go downstairs to our sacred room and I begin boiling water with my rose petals. By 8, the spell was ready and so I drank it, wishing for the Crawfords and their home to be protected. I then go to bed, fully expecting another fight with the enemy. However, nothing untoward happened at all.
Wednesday: 06/12/2030: Wednesday, June 12, 2030. I wake up and look out the window to see strange clouds, like those one might see just before a tornado descends. I look at the weather app on my phone. High of 87ᵒ F, winds heading east at 5 mph, 75% humidity, etc., but no tornado warning, not even so much as an advisory or alert. Just more wind and rain. I go downstairs and outside to feed the animals. Fengmao, I can tell, is somewhat nervous about the weather and the black mist, which I cannot blame her for. The chickens are also on edge as I collect fresh eggs for breakfast as are the cows as I milk them. “It’s all right. We placed a boon on this property, so she can’t come here.” After grooming Fengmao, I bring the eggs and milk into the kitchen where I boil the milk on the stove and hard boil all the eggs for our breakfast. Grandma comes into the kitchen where I’m hard-boiling eggs and boiling milk. “Morning, Grandma.” “Morning, sweetie. Homemade hard-boiled eggs and milk?” “Yep. The weather is making the animals pretty antsy this morning.” “Even with the boon on our land?” “Yeah. The clouds look like the green-black clouds you see before a tornado comes down.” “There’s no tornado warning, is there?” “Nothing, just more wind and rain for the greater Richmond area.” “Strange.” “You’re telling me. I put a boon on the Crawfords and their land last night, so it shouldn’t happen again.” “Good.” I finish hard-boiling the eggs and plate them up. “How many did the hens give you?” “About one dozen.” “Not unusual for the hens.” “Fengmao and the cows were nervous as well.” The milk reaches the proper temperature, so I take it off the heat and let it sit. TJ comes in and takes a hard-boiled egg and eats it. “Those are some wicked-looking clouds out there.” “Don’t I know it. Hard boiled eggs. My, my. The hens are real lifesavers.” “They’re actually quite nervous this morning about the weather.” “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if they canceled the game today.” “I think the real question is, will we get our money back?” “Yeah. We paid for the tickets in advance.” “I think we’ll get our money back. They’d have to refund us.” I go into the den and turn on the TV to the weather channel. The anchors are talking about the strange weather and how it’s highly incongruous with the previously sunny 10-day forecast. Not only that, but they are also remarking how the Doppler Radar is showing no immediate signs of supercells, the precursors of tornadoes. I heard it in their voices that they really had no idea what was happening or what to make of it. Mom comes downstairs and finds me watching the weather channel and adds, “FaceBook is going crazy with the weird clouds.” Mom shows me a picture of the weird clouds with the caption “I’ll get you, my pretty!” “Heh. If they’d met Her Royal Wickedness in person, they’d be changing their tone faster than they can click the like button. Is that Aunt Connie’s post?” “Yep. How’s she doing?” “She and the girls are doing good.” “Good. It must be hard without Uncle Refine there, even after so many years.” “Indeed. It is unfair that many we love may die or must die while we can only live on into whatever veiled future awaits us. Anyway, I best be out on my beat.” “See you later, Mom.” “See you later, sweetie. Kano, Amina! Come!” Mom takes on her true form and goes off with her foxes to do her Wednesday rounds.
Xena jumps up on my lap and she is followed by the other felines in the house. “Good morning, cats.” “Good morning, Lindsay.” Then, Dad comes downstairs, displeased. TJ takes notice. “I didn’t do it!” “Not you! Bad news: The game has been canceled because of the weather.” “Aww.” “Will we get our money back?” “I’m sure we’ll be refunded pretty soon.” “What are we going to do now?!” “We could watch a movie.” “I second.” I put our Lord of the Rings 3-in-1 DVD into the entertainment system, and we sat with the cats, and we then spent the next several hours watching the most precious trilogy of all time. TJ does his best Trahald/Sméagol/Gollum impressions during Andy Serkis’ bits on screen. Meanwhile, during Mom’s beat, she is called to a situation of ice forming in the trees near the Ashland, only it’s not her causing it. Even weirder, the ice doesn’t look natural, with it being summer and all, but more than that, the ice looked almost completely black. Approaching the trees from the air and hovering just in front of them, Mom touches the substance and feels an unholy chill run through her body. She then notices a dark shape moving out of the corner of her eye and hiding in the mess of shadowy ice. When Mom tries to follow it, she can’t see it anymore, but she then feels a sudden and inexplicable sense of dread. Looking behind her, she finds nothing but the people who called her out to it. Then, a pale hand reaches out from the shadowy mass of ice and wraps itself around her arm, causing her great pain and leaving a cold, oily mark where it touched her. The lower portion of her brain kicks in and she lets off a blast of cold air that knocks all the unnatural ice out of the trees to the ground where it sublimates in the hot and humid June air. The ice goddess lands on the ground, looking at her arm, hoping whatever it was never comes back, wondering if the black mist has struck again. “What was that?” Arctic Fox looks at them and says, bewildered “I have no idea.” “What should we do?” “If this black ice shows up again, just call me out and whatever you do, don’t touch it,” she replies, showing them the cold mark on her arm, which frightens them. “I’ll be alright.” “If a mortal touches it, could it kill them?” “Hopefully if nobody touches it, we won’t have to find out.” “Is it related to the weird clouds of late?” “I’m not sure.” Mom leaves them and goes for a quick lunch where she overhears a group of people talking about the strange happenings over the past week.
At 3:00, the power cuts out, knocking out the Wi-Fi and thus, the Internet. Since the game was canceled, TJ and I go up to the second floor and enter the broom closet, but not because we had something to clean up, but because there is a small space that looks like a broom closet, and to unauthorized/hostile persons/entities, it is nothing other than a simple broom closet. Like a blend of the TARDIS and the Room of Requirement, it can create virtual space inside as needed by us. Going inside, (assuming authorization) one would see a long ornate corridor lit by torches and covered in silver and gold and lush green plants, lined by unique doors behind which are virtual spaces depicting pristine and uninhabited versions of Earth’s different biomes. Behind the wooden door is a vast temperate forest. Behind the ice door is a frozen tundra, etc. We use these spaces to train and practice using our abilities without disturbing the outside world as well as to store weapons or other precious things. There are roughly one dozen doors leading to such biomes. There are additional doors that open to completely empty void-like spaces unless the nature of the room is dictated, usually a bedroom. At the very end of the corridor, a door made of ice and crystal leads to Lyral’s room, which looks like a frozen fantasy world. Each one of us has a special biome-room: I prefer to use the one representing the temperate deciduous/coniferous forest, TJ likes the rainforest, Mom likes the frozen tundra, Dad likes the volcanic lava field, Grandma likes the grassy prairie, and Grandpa likes the mountains. TJ enters the rainforest room while I enter the temperate forest room, the second door on the right, and start practicing my routine. I start weightlifting with large rocks and boulders weighing hundreds of pounds for one hour, which I end off with caber-tossing a fallen log over the tallest tree in the area. Feeling pumped up, I move on to the hand-to-hand combat portion of the exercise. For this, the room conjured up an illusion of my family members. First, I fight a phantom of my brother, who could be just as annoying as the real thing at times with his stealth and speed, especially. In spite of its sneakiness, I still won the mock fight. Then, I battle phantoms of all my family, which I still win, even though I nearly lost to Grandma’s famous dive attack. This is to test our skills in symmetrical as well as asymmetrical battle scenarios. Feeling satisfied, I move on to my flying/conjuring exercises, lifting myself up into the air above the trees and soaring over the forest. Slender purple sparks sprout from my fingers and spread across the sky, creating a massive electrical storm. Amidst this glorious display of power, I noticed a black smudge off in the distance, which before I can process what it is, abruptly rushes towards me, knocking me out of the air. I wake up on the forest floor, spitting dirt out of my mouth, and I look around in a tizzy, trying to find whatever attacked me. The room knows that I was finished with the combat portion of the exercise, and it has never attacked me unprovoked or unprepared before. It just doesn’t make sense. I run back to the doorway past the crystal grotto, into the secret hallway, shut the forest door, and rush out of the second-floor broom closet where I bump right into Lyral. “Lindsay! Is everything all right?!” “Yeah, I think.” “What’s the matter?!” “Lyral, do you know if any of the rooms would attack us without warning, even as an exercise?” “No. Why?” “Because a phantom of the black mist just came at me out of nowhere during my conjuring exercise. Knocked me out of the sky.” “That’s weird. If you banished the black mist from the house, it shouldn’t show up in the biomes. I’ll check out the temperate forest tonight. This is the first I’ve heard of a glitch in any of the biomes if that’s indeed what it is. Thanks for telling me.” TJ comes out of his practice room and sees my heightened stress level. “What’s up?” “Let me put it this way: Have you seen anything unusual in your biome lately?” “Why?” “It may be that my biome experienced a temporary glitch, maybe my fear manifested in the form of the black mist.” TJ’s eyes grow wide. “Now, Lyral is looking into it, so we’re safe, seeing as the boon prevents her from entering the property.” “It just scares me, because if you’re afraid, then I should be, for you are more powerful.” “It’s not about whether you’re feeling fear, TJ. It’s about how you choose to deal with fear. Come on. Let’s eat dinner.” TJ and I go downstairs to eat dinner. Mom returns home not long afterwards. “Hey, Mom. How was your beat today?” “Good. However, something weird happened at that wall of trees just west of the train station.” “What happened?” “Well, some of the residents spotted a thick mat of ice that looked completely black, like it was frozen oil slick. When I was inspecting it, something reached out and grabbed my arm.” Mom shows us her arm, still cold and oily from where the creature grabbed her. “Y’all ready for some dinner?” “I am, Dad.” “I sure am,” Mom says, returning to her mundane form. “I destroyed the ice formation after it grabbed me, and I told the people who called it in not to touch the substance if it appeared again. If it caused me great pain, then it could be deadly to mortals.” Dad opens the oven to reveal two Publix chicken pot pies. “Yes!” TJ goes right up to the oven, licking his lips. “Hold on, sonny.” Dad takes the food out of the oven and starts plating it up. We eat while watching SNL recordings, LOLing and Mega-LOLing with all the gags. After dinner, Lyral takes Mom downstairs to the temple to see if she can do something about the mark left on Mom’s arm.
At 8:00, we start getting ready for bed, brushing our teeth and me trying to get a handle on my acne. I climb into bed with the paperback of Fellowship of the Ring, getting lost in Middle-Earth. Meanwhile, Lyral goes into the broom closet to follow up on what I told her earlier today. She enters the temperate forest room, which shows nothing out of place. “Room, replay the last five minutes of today’s conjuring exercise.” At her command, the room, through holograms, recreates the events of the last five minutes of my conjuring exercise. Up until the middle of that, there was nothing out of the ordinary, but roughly three minutes into that last five minutes, I abruptly faint and fall out of the air, waking up two minutes later, and then looking around frantically and finally running out of the room. “Room, explain anomaly.” “Possible anxiety attack.” “Scan for unauthorized entities.” After a moment’s pause, the room declares “None.” I reach the part where Bilbo puts on the Ring and Gandalf lets off his fireworks when Lyral comes in. “What’s up?” “I checked out the room, replayed the last five minutes of your exercise, and it showed you fainting and dropping like a fly and then running out of the room. When I scanned for anything that didn’t belong, the scan came up empty. The room thinks you probably had an anxiety attack.” “Maybe. It was probably a hallucination since the black mist couldn’t come into the room if it can’t even approach the house.” “Probably.” “Goodnight, Lyral.” “Goodnight, Lindsay. I love you.” Lyral leaves and goes to bed in her room while I go back to my book. After finishing the Shadow of the Past chapter, I turn off the light and go to sleep in short order. My cats are still up, and they go outside with some of the other animals to watch over the fields. My consciousness wanders off to the wall of trees near the train station where Mom encountered the strange dark ice. She said she dispelled it and told the people who reported it not to touch it if they find any more of it. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, I return home and am about to return to my sleeping body when I notice a dark shape on the edge of our woods. “Let us in!” I stand firm. “No.” She gives a piercing cry like the winter wind at its worst and is unable to breach the property line as put forth by the boon I placed upon the house. She darts off into the night, frustrated. I then receive a vision of what looks like an exoplanet with its sunlit side covered in deserts and its dark side covered in ice. In between is a strip of twilight forests stretching around it from pole to pole. I don’t know what to make of this vision other than that there are potentially habitable exoplanets that exist. I return to my sleeping body, for even when I leave my body during sleep, my consciousness must still rest, even if it takes longer to tire.
Previous Episode: All That Goes Bump in the Night.
Next Episode: The Nightmare.
