Prologue
July 23, 1892
Dear Shadrack,
The foul weather in the Territories has continued. The heavy clouds, motionless and low, seem now to be a permanent fixture. I cannot remember when we last saw the sun. But now things have taken a turn for the worse. Something has happened this day that I have never seen before and that cannot be explained. I scarcely trust myself to describe it. Let me tell you how it happened.
I awoke in the middle of the night to a commotion at my door. A woman I know from the nearby town of Pear Tree stood there. Esther had a look about her that I have seen only once before, on the face of a man who fled and outran a forest fire: grief, disbelief, and confusion swirled in her eyes. She seemed unsure of whether she was among the living or the dead. “Casper?” she whispered. “Is it you?”
I told her it was. I did not understand the tale she related to me, and it had to be repeated many times. Even when I finally understood her words, I still could not make sense of them.
She said it had started in the evening, a while still before sunset, for there was yet light enough to see. She had been taking the children’s clothing down from the drying line when she saw a red vapor spilling over the stone wall of her garden. Wondering what it was, she watched the strange substance approach until it rose and swelled, immersing her and the clothesline, obscuring even her house from view. For a time she stood, waiting anxiously. She realized the vapor smelled sweet, like a flower. Then the smell changed. It grew foul—like rotting meat.
She heard a distant scream, and the sound filled her with panic. Fighting through the fog, she burst into the house. She found the crimson vapor clogging every room and passageway, and the panic rose to terror. Calling for her children, she made her way through the house half-blind. Then she saw the intruders: three giant rats as large as full-grown men, their black eyes cruel, their yellowed teeth sharp. Seizing a knife from the kitchen, she chased them through the house, fearing what they would do or had done to her children. The rats closeted themselves in the pantry and hissed at her through the door.
She could not find her children anywhere.
She called for them with growing desperation, finally stumbling outside. Then she realized that her own cries were being echoed by others everywhere, in every house of Pear Tree. The entire town blazed with panic. Something tugged at her mind, some uncertainty, but she could not place it. She knew only that something was not right.
It is the fog, she finally realized. I am confused, and it began with the fog.
She found her way along the road, though the sounds on either side were terrifying. When she finally made her way out of Pear Tree, darkness had fallen. She could tell that she had left the fog behind, because her mind began to clear. Looking back upon the town, she could see nothing in the settled darkness, but she heard ceaseless screams and shouts. The impulse to turn back and seek her children warred with the impulse to seek help elsewhere. Uncertainly, still confused by what she had seen, she came here and woke me in the dead of night.
I assembled all the council and within the hour we were on the road to Pear Tree. We arrived just as the gray day was dawning, putrid and damp as every day has been all this month. The crimson fog had passed, but it had left its mark in more ways than one. A thin sediment of the purest red coated every surface: the stone wall surrounding Pear Tree, the leaves of every tree, the roof of every house, the surface of every path and road. As we made our way slowly into the silent town, we saw what else the fog had left behind: the human wreckage.
The first thing we saw was a man sitting on his front step, holding a woman’s laced boot. When we spoke to him, he ignored us entirely. I approached and asked if he was hurt. Finally he turned his eyes to me and held up the boot, saying, “Wolves don’t wear shoes.” He seemed stunned by his own statement. We could gain nothing more from him.
Some of the houses and barns had been burned with their occupants. The smell was unbearable. Many houses that stood intact had doors ominously ajar, and I caught glimpses of broken furniture, torn curtains, shattered windows.
I will not describe it further, Shadrack, for it is too horrible, but I believe in those few hours half the lives of Pear Tree were lost.
We returned to Esther’s home. She was shocked, of course—shocked into silence and shaking beside me as we walked. “There is something,” she said, her voice breaking, as we neared her house. “There is something I do not understand.”
“There is much that I do not understand,” I said.
“How,” she went on, as if I had not spoken, “how were the rats able to barricade the door to the pantry?”
I confess that I did not take her meaning. It seemed a pointless question in the midst of such a catastrophe. No doubt the truth had begun to dawn on her before I saw even the faintest glimmer of it. But when we reached her house I understood. Hurrying, anxious with her sudden doubt, she rushed in and made her way to the pantry door. She knocked upon it urgently. “Open the door,” she sobbed. “Open the door, I beg you.”
There was a scuffle, and we heard heavy things shifted aside one by one. The door opened a crack and Esther’s three children peered out at us, their eyes wide with fear.
It is a distortion, Shadrack, a skewed perception that changes the reality before you into something dreadful. The survivors who could assemble their thoughts described to us different visions—all terrifying. There were no intruders, no monsters. The fog caused the people of Pear Tree to turn upon themselves.
If this is done by human hand, it is the cruelest act I have yet to see. If it is done by nature, it is no less frightening. I ask you: What is this? Is it part and parcel of the weather that plagues us, or is it something unrelated? Has it happened only in Pear Tree, or elsewhere, too? Please—tell me what you know.
(This will be given to Entwhistle, as you asked. Instruct me if I should do otherwise in future.)
Yours,
Casper Bearing