Chapter 17
The Jock
Levi woke up to the sound of something tapping the window in a room that felt colder than when he had fallen asleep.
The fog was still there, outside the window, with condensation running down the outside of the pane in thin tracks, the larger drops hitting the sill as they fell.
The light coming through had no direction to it, no sun behind it, just flat.
Shit.
Levi jumped as there was a knock on the door.
“Levi?” Zoe’s voice called, muffled through the wood. “Nobody got a wake-up call. Is Asher in there? I knocked on his door and there was no answer.”
Asher’s arm tightened across his waist.
“Give us a minute,” Levi called.
He slid out from under Asher’s arm and went to the window, leaning his face close to the glass without touching it.
The fog was brighter than last night but not clearer — the brightness made it worse, actually, because he could see further into it and it didn’t quite make sense.
The shapes were there, moving at their wrong speed, but there were more of them now.
Three, four, five — drifting past each other at different distances, different sizes, all moving in directions that didn’t correspond to wind.
Closer to the ground, there were smaller shapes, vaguely shaped like people, drifting as though they couldn’t hold their forms. They jittered in and out of sight.
There are more. Okay. As long as they stay out there, we have time. There have to be clues about what we need to do next.
He turned from the window and looked around the room as Asher sat up, yawning and stretching.
The closet was still open — he’d grabbed a t-shirt for Asher from it last night, and the carry-on bag was still on the floor where he’d left it.
If this was supposed to be his room, there was probably some sort of inventory in there the game was giving him.
He crouched down and opened it. It was mostly empty — just a toiletry bag, a pair of reading glasses in a case, a cardigan folded at the bottom.
Tucked in the front pocket was a folded piece of paper, soft at the creases from being handled.
He unfolded it and saw an itinerary in faded ink, printed on thin travel-agent paper.
Margaret Husk - Green Oasis Development.
Restorations Mountain Lodge. Check-in: September 14, 2008. Check-out: September 17, 2008.
Sixteen years ago. This bag had been in this closet for sixteen years.
She never checked out.
Underneath the itinerary, at the bottom of the front pocket, his fingers found a metal key — not a key card, a regular key, old, the kind with teeth and a bow, the metal cold and heavy in his palm. No tag. No room number.
He pocketed it.
Asher was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him. “What’s that?”
“Someone else’s luggage. From 2008.” Levi stood up. “She never checked out.”
Asher’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes moved to the window. The fog against the glass. The shapes.
“Get dressed,” Levi said. “We need to get downstairs.”
The hallway was cold enough that his breath was visible. The overhead lights were on but dim, buzzing, working harder than they should have been. Zoe was by the window near their room, her arms crossed, looking at the glass.
“The front desk was supposed to call at 9:30,” she said. “Every room has a phone. None of them rang. Levi, this is weird, right?”
“It’s…different,” he said with a shrug he hoped was casual. Generally, telling the NPCs they were going to die didn’t help. “Let’s go meetup with everyone and figure out what happened.”
The lounge was thankfully warm, the fireplace having been turned all the way up.
Jasper and Owen were already sitting closest to the fire, and Levi was pretty sure he watched Jasper exhale vapor.
He took a step closer. Could the fog have gotten inside their lungs?
What happened to them if it did? He watched Jasper’s cupped hand come up to his mouth, a faint blue glow coming from the bottom of it, and then Jasper started coughing as he pulled his hand away, more puffs of vapor popping out of his mouth as he did.
Oh.
He’s just vaping, probably something with THC, while there is depression fog and shadow monsters outside. Great.
Owen was in an armchair with a different book in his lap, but his posture was wrong — shoulders drawn in, eyes moving across the page too fast. He looked up when Levi came in.
“The fog events in this region average three to four days,” he said, repeating the same fact from last night, but his usual enthusiasm for spouting random facts was gone. “Three to four days.”
“The bus was supposed to come at ten,” Zoe said, ignoring Owen. “It’s almost 10:30.”
“Can we even see the parking lot from here?” Levi asked.
“No, but the bus might be sitting in the lot right now and the driver is waiting. Or it might not have come at all due to a lack of visibility,” she said, her mouth forming a line. “Something feels off.”
“Has anyone seen the staff this morning?” Tyler asked as he walked in, a duffle bag slung over his shoulder, with Elliot following behind him. “I haven’t seen anyone since the dinner last night.”
“At a place like this, the staff usually has quarters on-site,” Elliot said. “They could just be in the back. But someone should be at the front desk by now.”
“I knocked on the office door on my way down,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “No answer.”
No staff. No phone signal. No bus. No wake-up call.
Maddie appeared a few moments later, her makeup done and a tightness around her eyes. “The banquet hall was empty. They didn’t even have the coffee station set up like yesterday.”
Tyler sighed and moved to the north windows, his arms crossed over his chest, shifting forward, his body leaning toward the glass and pulling back.
“Maybe the staff had a party and are all hungover somewhere? Honestly, it doesn’t matter.
I’m ready to go home, and the bus could be sitting right out there,” he said.
“We can’t see anything past the porch,” Zoe said.
“Right. So someone should go check.” Tyler was already rolling his shoulders. “I’ll walk to the lot and check.”
“Tyler, don’t go out there,” Levi warned.
“It’s a parking lot, man. It’s like, what, a hundred yards? I ran that in college holding a football, dude.”
Levi shook his head, trying to think of a way to keep Tyler inside without saying more. “No…I don’t think we should go out there—”
“There’s something in the fog,” Owen said softly, his eyes fixed on the windows. His glasses had slipped down his nose and he made no effort to push them back up.
Tyler rolled his eyes. “It’s probably just a deer,” he said, moving out into the hall. “I’ll stay on the path. You’ll be able to see me from the door.”
This stupid jock archetype…Levi followed him, not quite sure what he was going to do, but he had to try. “Tyler —”
“Two minutes, time me.” Tyler grinned as he placed his hand on the front door’s handle and pulled.
The cold came through the gap before the door was half open and then the fog pushed into the lodge with a weight behind it, arriving as pressure against Levi’s chest, his face, the inside of his lungs on the first inhale.
The entryway went grey in seconds, the floor and the walls disappearing into the fog that poured through the opening.
“Tyler —”
“I can see the path. It’s right here. Two minutes.” He stepped through. One step. The porch boards creaked under his shoes. Two steps. His outline was still visible. Three steps. The outline thinning.
In four steps he was gone.
Levi stood in the doorway. The fog pressed against his face, cold and wet, and he could feel it starting like a heaviness behind his ribs, settling in, whispering to him: You’re alone.
His legs ached. They wanted to move, to stumble forward after Tyler into the nothingness outside the door.
He shook his head, slamming a hand against the doorframe to grip it as he took in another breath, goosebumps prickling on his skin as the fog wrapped around him.
The bottoms of his jeans felt strange, like small hands were tugging on them, urging him to step over the threshold.
You’ve always been alone. There’s no one coming. There’s no point to any of this.
His chest went heavy and his grip on the doorframe loosened.
You’ll always be alone. Ethan knew. Ethan found the answer—
Asher’s hand closed on his shoulder and pulled him back from the door. The thought broke. The heaviness cracked and the air in the entryway hit his lungs and his chest was his again, and Asher was between him and the fog, his body a wall as it wisped around him instead.
“Don’t,” Asher said, low, his hand still on Levi’s shoulder. “Don’t stand in it.”
The fog kept pressing through the open door, the cold spreading into the lounge.
“We have to close it,” Asher said.
“He’s still out there —” Levi protested.
“We close it or the fog fills the building.”
He pushed Asher’s hand off his shoulder. “We’re not locking him out.”
“Levi —”
“We are not locking him out,” Levi snapped.
Then Tyler screamed. The sound came from nowhere and everywhere, directionless, the fog stripping the distance from it. It started as Tyler and ended as something else, his voice cracking in the middle and the thing underneath it not human.
God dammit, no. We need everyone. We can’t lose people this fast into the game.
“TYLER!” Levi jolted forward, but Asher’s arm went around his waist, pulling him back from the door. Asher kicked the door shut as he yanked Levi further from the fog.
The door almost closed, then bounced back inward. Tyler stood there, the tip of his shoe just over the threshold of the door, and he walked back in slowly, shutting the door gently behind him and locking it. Levi let out a sigh of relief.
Tyler just stood there, his arms at his sides, hanging like sleeves on a coatrack. He faced forward, but his eyes were wrong: open, pointed at nothing, and utterly blank.
The person who went outside is not the person who came back.
“Tyler, what happened?” Levi stepped in front of him. “Tyler, can you hear me?”
Nothing.
Maddie rushed out into the hall. “Tyler — Tyler, look at me.” She grabbed his face, turning his head toward hers. His head went where she put it and stayed there. “He’s freezing.”
“Sit him down,” Levi said. “Get him back in the lounge by the fire.”
Maddie led him. Tyler went where she took him, sat where she sat him; he didn’t acknowledge it when she placed a blanket over his shoulders. His hands settled on his knees and stayed there.
What the fuck is out there?
Levi looked at Asher, unsure of what to say or do. They needed more information.
Then Tyler spoke, his voice flat and empty:
“It wasn’t a deer.”
Nobody moved. Tyler’s hands stayed on his knees, his eyes on the fire or on nothing, and he didn’t say anything else.