Chapter 3 The Mystified Fog

Living in a small village was prestigious for having a cup of coffee on the porch and watching the sunset.

Sonya inhaled and she was about to take some sips of her coffee when her ears captured a woman’s voice, but it was not either hers or Auntie Caroline.

“Sonya…your journey will begin…” that voice whispered so gently in Sonya’s ears.

‘Whose voice is that?’ Sonya put her coffee cup on a table that was in front of her and Auntie Caroline.

“Auntie, did you hear that?” she asked Auntie Caroline who was sitting next to her on an old wooden chair, but Auntie Caroline didn’t hear what Sonya said to her as she was too absorbed in reading something from the magazine in her hands.

Sonya took a deep breath as she knew that Auntie Caroline missed her question, otherwise, she didn’t want to ask twice about that.

Auntie Caroline finished reading a magazine that she brought at that time Sonya took her coffee cup again from the table and sipped some.

“It’s getting colder for my old bones, Sonya!” Auntie Caroline rose from her seat and walked into the front door. “Will you serve dinner?” She turned her head to Sonya before entering the house. Her wrinkled hands with some vein lines were folded in front and held tightly to the side of the sweater that she was wearing.

Sonya nodded. “No problem! Let me look for some menu!”

Auntie Caroline smiled and tapped her shoulder. “Enjoy your evening coffee time, dear!”

Sonya held and kissed Auntie Caroline’s hand before that old woman drew it and left her alone on the porch. She inhaled deeply and looked at the horizon above was becoming more reddish and orange.

“What a wonderful sunset, Lassie!” She talked to the German shepherd dog who was sitting on the long sofa next to her.

‘I never enjoyed an evening so relaxed as this evening!’ She smiled as she put her coffee cup on the table and looked through some menus for dinner on the pages of the magazine. She was busy flipping over pages when she heard someone talking.

‘Hey, coward! Why are you staring at me?’ a throaty voice of a man stopped Sonya’s eyes from the magazine in her hands. She turned her head and looked around and there was nobody in the front yard or near her.

‘Hey, stupid cat, why now you are staring at her?’ again that voice appeared.

Sonya closed the magazine and the voice sounded so nearby. She saw Lassie was staring at something. She followed Lassie’s eye that directed at something behind the plant pot outside the terrace. Then, her ears captured a meowing sound from there.

She turned her head at Lassie. “Did you speak?” She wrinkled her forehead.

Lassie woofed softly to her as his eyes looked into her.

Sonya sighed. “Glad you’re barking!” She continued to read the magazine again.

She rose from her seat and asked Lassie to come with her into the house as the dark approached.

Behind the front gate, she could see that the street was getting quiet and dark, there was no street light along the street side since it was only a street of a village that bridged the area with the nearest market. Alongside the street, there were some maples and two old oak trees.

Her family house was built in a spacious family land and resided quite remotely from the nearest neighborhood. It took a fifteen-minute walk to get there.

‘Granny used to make maple syrup from those trees and served it with some pancakes for breakfast, some grated cheese on the top!’ She remembered that and started to become a little bit nostalgic as her eyes caught the swaying dances of some maple trees’ leaves.

Sonya found Auntie Caroline fell asleep in front of the television that she should have been watching as Sonya entered the house with Lassie. She locked the front door quietly to avoid the key’s clicking sound startling Auntie Caroline. After putting the magazine on the magazine shelf, Sonya entered the kitchen.

‘Hey, Sonya, Sonya. Look at those hams. It looks so delicious!’ Again, that sound appeared at the time Sonya opened the fridge door to prepare some stuff for dinner.

‘The voice seemed so near, as it came from my left side!’ Sonya closed the fridge and wiped her nose as her heart started pounding. ‘Whose voice is that?’ She turned her head to her left side. Nobody was there except Lassie who was sitting on the floor with his begging eyes kept looking at her. Lassie woofed again as Sonya looked at him. He put out his tongue with his half mouth opened as he craved for something.

Sonya stared at that dog for some seconds. She was so freaking confused.

‘Did the voice belong to that dog?’ She inhaled.

She opened the fridge and took two slices of hams from its plastic bag. She put those hams on the floor slowly while her eyes still stared at the dog.

Lassie turned his head to the right side as he seemed to ask why Sonya looked suspicious of him. Later, he ate those hams after woofing at her.

Sonya sighed and put one of her hands on her waist.

‘Am I freaking?’ She rubbed her forehead and backed to slice some vegetables, onions, and chicken breast meat that had already been cooked to make fried noodles.

She had prepared the dinner and took off the apron that she wore. She folded the apron and hung it on the handle of the oven. As she walked in front of Lassie who was sitting on the floor and his eyes kept staring at the dining table, her ears captured that voice again saying this, ‘It smells so nice, Sonya. May I….?’

Sonya stopped her steps and looked at that dog who also stared at her with his widened eyes.

“Are you talking to me, Lassie?” She asked in a low pitch and the dog answered her question with his barking sound.

She sighed and walked to approach her Auntie.

“Auntie, let’s have dinner!” She whispered in Auntie Caroline’s ear and woke the old woman up gently.

“I must’ve fallen asleep!” Auntie Caroline chuckled and rose from her lazy seat.

They were having dinner and spending time talking about many things.

“I think the late Uncle Elbert loved you!” Sonya ate some bite slices of watermelon that she bought from the nearest market that morning. For desserts, Auntie Caroline chose some peeled-off small cutting pieces of a banana.

Auntie Caroline sighed. “The last story that he wrote was about us. The way we met! How rough life had been to us in our early years of marriage!” The eyes of Auntie Caroline looked more sparkling when her lips gushed the story about her last everlasting love, Mr. Hengelbert.

Sonya swallowed her water as deep down inside her heart, she desired to find out the kind of love that the late Uncle Elbert brought to her Auntie.

“But he never finished that story!” Auntie Caroline gripped the napkin tightly as she remained the last story of Uncle Elbert.

Sonya let Auntie Caroline leave the dining room while she was alone and taking a seat. She did some contemplations as her mouth was munching some crisps from the jar. When she glanced at Lassie who still sat on the chair next to her and stared at her eating. Sonya gave her plate with the remaining noodles from her and Auntie Caroline’s dinner meals for Lassie to finish up. Lassie seemed to not mind helping her clean all the stuff on the plate before she washed the culinary tools used for dinner that night.

She glanced at the dog who was eating next to her and rubbing her forehead. “Tell me, did you speak to me?”

She stared at the dog and was still questioning where the voice came from while her mouth was busy munching.

Lassie stopped eating the noodles, looking at her and woofing at her.

Sonya’s eyes were wandering through the window of the kitchen to the family land. ‘It looked so dark there!’ She sighed. All she could see was the shadows of trees and some swaying leaves that were blown by the wind.

In a few moments, she saw the walking fog approaching to overwhelmingly cover the family land and the house where she was sitting. It seemed that the fog had built a wall guarding off the family land and the house from any sights coming through the mansion.

Sonya inhaled deeply. ‘I couldn’t see the shadow of the mansion! The thick fog made it invisible and separated off. Like we are on different islands.’

Sonya drew the curtain to veil the window as she finished washing the dishes. Lassie was sitting in front of the television. Sonya thought Auntie Caroline had to go to bed. She turned off the television.

She was going to sleep in a room on the attic floor. Her footsteps sounded thudding lightly at the time she stepped on the wooden stairs.

Sonya remembered that she used to be afraid when she was a little girl to sleep in that room alone. She used to imagine that the sound of the wind coming through the ventilation glass which opened slightly and was covered by the mosquito trapping filaments, in the middle of the night, could transform like the humming sound of someone pronouncing a kind of mantra.

“Good night, Lassie!” She pulled the blanket and saw Lassie reclining near her feet.

Lassie moved his eyes to her as she turned her back and started to close her eyes.

‘I have never seen the fog so thick as I saw right now!’ She wrapped her body with a blanket.

‘It should be chilling but it feels warm here in this room!’ She pulled down the blanket. She leaned her head side with one of her arms. She saw the walking fog didn’t come through the opened ventilation glass. ‘They just passed through!’ Sonya whispered in silence.

In a short moment, her eyes felt so heavy that Sonya could not help to close her both eyelids and fall asleep.

The time was passing slowly and inaudibly, unwavering moment as the sounds of nocturnal animals were dreadfully voiceless and the animals seemed to hide inside their nests.

In the middle of the night, the walking fog stopped to wander and faintly came through the opened window. Within the fog, there was also a bright light that was hiding.

The fog faintly covered the room and it slowly moved to spin into a spiral movement, approaching Sonya who was reclining on her bed. It sounded like a mantra whisper as it tried to cover Sonya’s front body as she was sleeping.

Sonya and Lassie were sleeping profoundly as they were wandering into a dream land and neither one of them realized that the fog had passed and nudged into the nostril as Sonya inhaled in her sleep. Only took a few seconds before the fog completely disappeared and smoothly streamed into Sonya’s nose as she was breathing in.

The fog seemed to move and talk like an entity and now, it had profoundly enshrined its ethereal substance into Sonya.