Never Ending Abyss

Sploosh. Sploosh. The black, murky water lapped at the rocky entrance to the bay where Katrianna stood motionless. The never ending fog cast up from the water, and swirled with each breath she took. Swirling in, swirling out, in steady time.

Regardless of the lack of visibility, she stared blindly toward the ocean. She could hear the crashing of waves on rock further out, smell and taste the salt, and feel the spray, as heavy mist would infiltrate the fog from time to time. If I only was able to infiltrate the fog in the same way, she thought. Scatter a ghostly presence that could find a way through. Floating, floating, until I found an opening.

“Kat!” A friendly voice shattered her reverie. How Johnny always knew how to find her, she’d never know. He scrambled up the rocks to her side, taking care not to trip in the darkness, footholds illuminated only by starlight. “I knew you’d be here. You have an uncanny fascination, staring into the never ending abyss.”

“Ha. Ha.” Her tone was sarcastic. “I just don’t believe what we’ve been told.”

“What? That we’re living on the only land mass and the ocean spreads out from the island until it hits the edges of the world?” Johnny looked genuinely confused that she was speculating. “It’s pretty obvious, I would say. No one who’s ever left and lived to return has seen beyond the fog. Those who haven’t returned—well, you already know about Tuck’s fate. Fragments from his boat were found when the tide came in.”

It’s true no one had left, made it out of the fog, and returned to tell of other sights. However, Kat wouldn’t stop believing there was a world out there with others like them, other people who lived, not just existed in a perpetual dream world as she felt she did.

“Well, look at old Hank,” she countered. “He arrived here from another land. He’s told many a story about it. At least he did until his memory started to fade.”

Johnny laughed. “Hank, the old coot? He’s as crazy as they come. He can’t remember what he’s talking about half the time.”

“Then tell me this.” Kat stood defiantly, hands on her hips. “Where did he come from?”

“You have a point,” Johnny conceded. “But I believe what Mrs. Carroll always explained, that he left years before and was adrift on his ship for ages, until his boat washed ashore in the bay.”

“Where was the rest of the crew then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they took another of the boats and didn’t make it?”

“What I’m saying, is that we shouldn’t always take things at face value.” Kat shivered, as tendrils of fog seemed to attack her in the eerie night.

“Fog sure acts strangely around you, Kat.” Johnny smirked. “Maybe it doesn’t like what you have to say.”

Kat rolled her eyes. “Stop trying to creep me out.” Her arms drew more tightly around herself, protecting her from the chill.

“C’mon. Let’s go. You shouldn’t be out here in the cold by yourself. Especially, when I know you’ve been having morbid thoughts.”

Kat looked at Johnny. Somehow he always knew. She resigned herself and sighed.

“Fine. Let’s go somewhere warm then.”

“Great! Let’s head over to Toppy’s.”

The two of them made their way down from the rocky ridge, and set on the cobblestone road that led to Toppy’s. There was not much traffic tonight, just the odd horse and wagon. Everyone was either at home or at Toppy’s for the evening.

A gust of cold wind blew the wooden sign and it creaked as it swung on its rusty chains, from the equally rusted bar Toppy had rigged above the doorway. They heard lively voices and hearty laughter coming from the common room before they entered.

“Johnny! Kat!” The two of them were clapped on the back as they entered the large room, lit by a cheery fire in the old stone fireplace.

“Good to see you!” A man waved his mug of ale at them from his seat at the bar.

Johnny returned the greetings enthusiastically. However, Kat couldn’t help feeling things were “off”. Like they’d been repeating the same night over and over. She tried to remember what she had done the previous evening, but everything was hazy. No one else looked bothered or brooding—she seemed to be the only one who felt it.

Thankfully, Johnny carried the conversation while she snuck over to the fireplace for some warmth. She rubbed her hands together as she stood by the fire, and hoped no one would notice her there. However, her wish was soon dashed as Edgar walked over to her.

“So, what has you in a mood tonight?” His voice was hard to read, but she could tell he’d been drinking.

She wished she could ignore him, pretend she hadn’t heard him. He definitely wasn’t her favorite person to talk to.

“Just warming up by the fire.”

“You haven’t been doubting again have you?” His eyes glittered.

“Please, just leave me alone. I’m not in the mood to talk to you.”

“See, I knew you were in a mood. You remind me of Old Lady Vance just before she went missing.”

“Please, just stop,” Kat whispered. She suddenly realized the room had gone quiet, and that all eyes were turned in her direction. They were all-knowing, those eyes, omniscient, as though each person had been borne of a higher power. She wished those eyes away, but they all lingered on her, searching her out, like the fog. The fog had seemed to ‘know’, too.

Suddenly, the door banged open, and Kat jumped. A strange wind rushed through the room, blowing out the candles, and dissipating the fire into nothingness. The common room grew cold, and Kat could hear chanting in the room.

“C’mon, guys, leave her alone.” The voice was Johnny’s. Whatever was occurring, he knew more about it than she did.

Kat started to panic. “Johnny, what’s going on?”

Johnny kept up his insistent speech with force now, as if it could provide a wall to protect her.

A voice belonging to Jimmy Kaine spoke out. “It’s been long enough, and she hasn’t been properly assimilated yet.”

Johnny was now standing in front of her, keeping the others back. How did he even find me in the dark? Johnny’s voice changed to pleading. However, his pleas were being ignored, and Kat could sense terror growing.

“Please, not Kat. I promise, I’ll take her home and she’ll have no memory of tonight. Just don’t do that.

“She’s had enough chances. There’s new blood arriving tonight. Leave her be with us and we’ll deal with her.”

“You know I can’t do that.” Johnny swiftly spun Kat around to the door, yelling, “Run!”

Kat did just that. Behind her she could hear flesh pounding into flesh, as Johnny’s agonized voice was swallowed by the crowd. Although she ran as quickly as she could, she still sensed she was being pursued. She noticed thick fog coming out of the buildings toward her.

The fog in front of her started to materialize into the most hideous creature, a warped mass of deformed and torn flesh. She could tell it was once human. Bony fingers grasped at her as she ran, trying to avoid the creatures of the fog, and howls and eerie sounds reverberated through the night.

The landscape changed in front of her eyes, rotting, thick liquid bursting out of vegetation. The stench itself nauseated her. She felt slithering over her feet, glanced down and nearly screamed at the insects slithering over her feet and into her shoes. She heard shrieking in the night.

She ran to her regular viewing spot, scrambled up the rocks to the ridge, but didn’t know where to go. She was cornered. Deformed, crazed creatures, lusting for blood materialized in front of her. Her only choice was to jump.

She felt a heaviness, but it wasn’t just the thickness of the air, that now felt like gelatin, that was pressing on her. She glanced down and saw the brass chains and locks that had now been revealed around her body. She wondered why she hadn’t seen them before. She had felt trapped on the island. Well, now she could see the manisfestation of that bondage.

She stumbled backwards, and glancing behind her, watched as a stone fell into the the depths below. She weighed her chances. The tide was going out, which was both good and bad. Good since she wouldn’t be crushed by the rocks on the cliffs that lay outward from the bay, bad because she would easily be lost at sea.

The creatures in front of her elongated their teeth, not just their canines, into sharp pointed dagger-like weapons that would easily rip into her flesh and tear her apart. She spun around, and jumped toward a less terrifying demise. Weighed down with locks and chains, her chances of survival were nil, lest there be a miracle. But no miracle would arise from the depths to save her soul.

As she sunk into the deep, there was an eerie glow. As her feet touched down on the floor of the ocean, through the glow she saw a never ending pit of locks and chains…and bones. Hers would soon be added to the pit of anonymity, losing her identity forever. Her lungs were on fire, then her eyes started to dim, as cold overtook her.

She awoke what seemed a second later, floating, her molecules dispersed into a misty form. I must be a spirit! she thought. However, as she looked down at the land mass of the island, her molecules were being assimilated by the fog. Just when I thought I’d regained my identity…

The fog drifted in the darkness, and her wish to infiltrate it, to escape from the island had come to pass. The cost of moving from a mindless, repetitive, meaningless identity was to lose that identity. The fog despaired.

Yet, through that despair there was a warmth. It was as if Johnny had taken her hand. The fog swirled as it found comfort in itself. As a collective, the souls that melded together in the fog, good souls who would not give in to the island’s will, had found their freedom. However, it was together with the rotting souls that took freedom away.

She knew that Johnny’s soul would cling to hers as long as possible, until they were completely assimilated. Her final wish was that the goodness in the two of them could influence the collective, and turn the tide and fate of other souls to come. She felt his comfort and warmth until her consciousness faded away, and her ghostly presence was scattered to the wind.