The fog slipped through the night, hunched-shouldered, hiding from the sun. It stretched out every morning and evening, through towns, along roads, always searching. People would assume that this fog would not have a name, but this one did, although unpronounceable to a human. Its name was a sound that was a little like the vibrations of the tail of a rattle snake or Jack Frost’s bony fingers playing icicles like a harp.
The fog was hunting. Nights fell, mornings rose. Hunting, always hunting.
Over time the fog’s finger tips had brushed against many, hoping for the right one. She had to be perfect.
Every week, Caroline came with her mother. Down the long winding street, past the old church and into the graveyard. Caroline would wait by the
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“Caroline,” the fog whispered that night, when the lights were out, the house as quiet as a tomb.
“Who said that?” Caroline asked, sitting upright in her bed.
Before she could stop, her feet pressed on the cold floor. The fog opened his arms wide and welcomed her. She followed him up the street, past the harbour and down the long winding road to the graveyard. It had been raining so her bare feet sloshed in the mud past the fresh flowers her mother had only laid that afternoon. He led her gently, to the shared gravestone of father and daughter, John and Alice Evans.
The fog’s fingers reached from gravestone to gravestone, gently touching dates long past, long forgotten. It started to rain. Caroline watched in a trance like state the tiny raindrops bouncing from the gravestone and to the ground. As she watched she noticed a tiny glint of gold. She knelt down and between her fingers she grasped from the mud a necklace, fine and old.
Her cold, wet fingers fumbled with the chain as she gently placed it around her neck. It felt familiar, like coming home. As she turned to leave the tiny heart necklace upon her chest began to beat. Beating a tiny crying chorus like a nest of heartbroken