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under the covers, he ran his hand across his stomach. Thick, yes, but hardly
flabby. Neighbors joked about how you could set your watch by Stephen's daily
exercise. Come Arctic blasts of snow or monsoon rainstorms, he was up every
morning at five, taking a brisk walk around the fifteen acres surrounding his
house.
Yes, he was in pretty good shape, Stephen thought, but was it good enough? If
what he thought was approaching, could he handle it? Handle it again? He could
admit it to himself. He was scared.
For almost an hour, sleep danced around him, teasing and taunting but never
coming close enough to grab. When he finally nodded off, he was no less
nervous, no less worried.
He awoke suddenly several hours later, his eyes snapping open and his mind in a
state of crystalline clarity. There had been no noises; none were needed. He
knew what was happening.
He sat upright in bed, the covers falling away from his neck. He jumped as they
crumpled to a pile at his waist.
My Lord, the room is frigid, he thought. His rapid breaths formed Siberian
clouds in front of his face.
He looked quickly to the windows, closed to keep the air conditioning inside.
The panes were covered in thick ice on the inside. Even the wood between the
panes was sheathed and glistening, a diamond-clear covering that, except for the
fuzzy, muted light from outside, shut out the world.
And I'm shut in, Stephen thought.
As he stared at the windows, he saw the curtains gently lift and sway, as if a
slight breeze made the fabric dance. What emerged was no breeze.
An opaque band of mist oozed from behind the drapes and slithered slowly along
the wall, brushing past the paintings, over the chest of drawers and across the
dresser, where it left a line of ice on the mirror. As it moved, it swirled in a
corkscrew spiral and Stephen could see faces, twisted in pain, appear in the fog,
then quickly dissipate. Vague moanings rose from the heart of the mist.
It snaked past the open bathroom door without entering and continued to the
corner of the room, where it veered away from the wall and aimed itself at the
bed, a sinuous cobra approaching its prey.
Stephen sat stone still as wintry tentacles crawled over the edge of the bed, along
the comforter and up his right hip. Climbing over his thigh, the fog coiled around
him, starting at his waist and moving up. The cold was so intense it burned. His
skin turned to goose bumps and his balls drew into his body, tightening to almost
painful knots of muscle and fiber.
Winding upward, the stream encircled his head. For a moment, the band simply
spun itself about his head, creating a chilling band around his skull. Then it
clamped down.
Nausea swept through Stephen's body. Malignant visions assaulted his mind.
Bodies writhed as their faces were ripped off in baconlike strips. Faces contorted
as their limbs were twisted until they broke, then broke again. Screams echoed as
abdomens were slit open and the entrails pulled out and laid on the chest like a
newborn baby on its mother's belly.
Just as Stephen thought he would vomit, the fog leisurely unwrapped itself from
his head, leaving him shivering with cold and revulsion. Flowing off the end of
the bed, the mist moved toward the door, spreading out as it flowed, expanding
into a rolling cloud extending from floor to ceiling. A shape began to rise within
but the fog hid its contents with eddies and backwaters of vapor. Stephen
watched and waited.
"Hello, Stephen," the guttural hiss said from the cloud. "How nice to see you
again after all these years."
Stephen jumped, then mentally cursed himself for showing such a strong
reaction.
"Oh, did I scare you?" the voice said with hateful sarcasm. "I'm so sorry."
"I was wondering when you'd show up," Stephen said, searching the fog for a
solid shape. "You're too much a creature of habit to change your ways now.
You're predictable."
"Am I?" the voice said silkily. "Am I really?"
From out of the fog extended a hand as wide as the blade of a shovel. The color
of dark bronze, each of its long fingers was tipped with twin nails, bloodthirsty
scalpels jutting out two inches. The index finger pointed at Stephen, light
sparkling off the razor edges of its nails.
"Too predictable? I could say the same for you, Stephen," the voice scraped.
"However, you have changed in one way. You've gotten old."
Stephen looked at the powerful hand, remembering how a blow from it had sent
him flying twenty feet and shattered three of his ribs. He ran the fingers of his
hand down the foot-long scar along his right thigh, another by-product from a
swipe of that claw.
High in the fog, only a few inches under the nine-foot ceiling, two points of
flaming silver ignited. Stephen felt evil hatred grip him like a vise. It was a
living thing, capable of squeezing the life out of him.
Raising his arms in a cross, Stephen passed them in front of his chest, crossing
his heart with the palms inward. The air crackled and spit as a thin, almost
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