Samantha Baumann knew something was different about tonight. As the mists rolled in across the moor, settling in for the frosty and lonely night atop the downs, Sam felt as though she was being watched. Her wide, penetrating blue eyes swept the room suspiciously from where she sat on her window seat. She met nothing unfamiliar as she looked around the room she knew only too well. She turned her cold, unforgiving gaze back to the outside world and she watched the eerie fog settle in like a blanket trapping her in a world of misery, an ominous shadow that would never stop protruding and closing in around her. Sam quickly shook her head to rid herself of the trapped, claustrophobic feeling that the mist always brought. But she still could not shake the feeling; something was different about tonight.
Unable to rid her mind of the foreboding feeling of something sinister, Samantha shuddered and closed her shutters, leaping swiftly from the windowsill. She pulled the sleeves of her winter sweater over her hands, her fingers numb and white from the bitter cold. No insulating. No heating. Tonight was sure to be long and cold.
Sam climbed under her thin, unprotecting sheets and lay silently, used to listening nightly to the howling wind attacking the windows and the battle of the lashing rain. But tonight, all was still. No wind. No movement. No sound. Sam imagined that she could hear the creeping fog, haunting and hostile and is neared the window, teasing and taunting her with it's ability to hide and conceal even the darkest and deepest of secrets.
No wind.
Eerie silence.
Sam pulled the covers around her as a shiver shot down her spine. There was something different about tonight.
The day brought no respite from the inauspicious, enigmatic mist. Sam was woken by the sound of a hammering on her door and the long list of insults yelled from beyond her bedroom. She rolled out of bed and pulled on some oversized, untidy clothes and ran her fingers through her rats' nest of long, mousy hair. She could not remember the last time her hair had seen a brush.
She stumbled out into the living space before another train of insults could be directed at her, and picked up a metal bucket from the door by the kitchen. Without another word, she blundered through the back door and traipsed down towards the field containing the water well. The mist hung heavily on the atmosphere and Sam felt a physical burden upon her shoulders. The lingering feeling of being watched followed her down to the field, and she couldn't stop looking over her shoulder.
As she began to pump the well, she caught sight of a shadowing emerging from the fog not a metre away. Her heart played a drumbeat through her chest as she turned to face the intruder, her stomach plummeting until she realised that it was only her sheep herding collie.
"Hello, Gus," she croaked, her voice dry from underuse. Gus trotted behind her, weaving in concentric circles around her overly thin legs, his breath freezing on the icy air. Gus seemed uneasy. That was never a good sign.
"It's just the mist," Sam muttered to herself as she heaved the now full bucket of water over the stone wall and back along the path. The water was icy and almost frozen.
After lugging the pail back to the lonely stone farmhouse, she began to start on the daily chores. Cleaning the inside of the house. Making any repairs to the outside. Feeding the goats. Feeding the dogs. Harvesting the very last of the crops. Milking the goats. Working the butter churner. All the while, her father stayed locked in the study. Well, it was called the study. In reality, it was her father's dishonest workshop.
When it seemed she could put it off no longer, Sam set off to bring the sheep in from the far pasture. The mist swallowed her as she set off across the fields, making sure that Gus stuck close to her side, Rogue and Ginger circling not too far away. Her lanky, skinny and awkward figure lacked any classical grace as she walked, for her bones stuck out far too visually on skeletal body. Lack of nutrition had affected Sam over the years; her face was hollow and her skin was sallow, her eyes tired and the skin around them bruised from lack of sleep. Here on the lonely moor, in the lonely old farmhouse of Tanglewood Brooke, was were Sam lived her lonely existence. Sam hated her living arrangements. She hated the moor. There were too many secrets entwined in the bracken on these hillsides, secrets melted into the stone walls, buried deep beneath the ground, too far to resurface once more. Secrets safe from prying eyes. Or so Sam had believed. Or led herself to believe.
Once again, Sam felt eyes on her and a foreboding and sinister tingle spread through her body. The mist had seemed to thicken around Sam, closing in and trapping her in a feeling of looming danger more urgent than before.
Sam could see nothing but the mist. In all directions, the fog spread ominously, devouring everything in its path. She suddenly felt very exposed.
"Gus," she called quietly but firmly, glancing around. The old sheepdog was not beside her.
"Gus?" Sam called more urgently. She felt her heart begin to race, her breath beginning to get shallow and fast.
"Gus!" she called, forcing her faltering voice to yell above the deafening silence that came with the veil of fog. "Gus!"
But the dog had vanished. Sam stopped walking. Her ears strained as she tried to listen out for the soft padding of paws, the heavy breath of the old sheep herder. But the cloud of mist swirled around her head and stole away her senses. She could not hear a sound. She could not see more than a few inches in front of her face. That creeping feeling of being watched grew to an unbearable intensity. Sam felt something in the fog. Something was there, not more than two metres away. A hot sweat broke out across Sam's pale skin. Her fists clenched. Her heart pounded. Her blood coursed through her veins. And then she saw it. Not a foot away. And her heart stopped.
