It was near the end of October when the fog began to roll in from the fields. It came thick and low, the kind that swallowed fences and trees and made the world feel small.
Our house sat alone at the edge of town, with the wheat fields stretching out behind it like an old quilt. My father said the fog was normal this time of year. “Just the land breathing,” he’d say. But that didn’t explain the shapes I started seeing in it.
The first time, I was walking home from school. The sun was low, the air sharp. The fog was just starting to creep in from the fields. That’s when I noticed something standing near the scarecrow.
It wasn’t moving, but it wasn’t the scarecrow either. It was taller. The shoulders too wide. The arms hung too low.
When I blinked, it was gone.
That night, I told my father what I’d seen. He said it was probably a man cutting across the land to reach the road, and that I shouldn’t worry. But when I went to bed, I couldn’t stop thinking about it—the way it stood there, still as stone, watching.
The next morning, the fog was thicker than before. I could barely see the fence. The scarecrow’s post was just a shadow in the white.
When I walked out there later, there were footprints. Long, deep ones, pressed into the mud. They started at the field’s edge and went straight toward the house.
Then they stopped.
Right beneath my window.
That night, I left the curtains closed. I tried to sleep, but sometime past midnight, I woke to a sound—slow, dragging, like something brushing against the siding of the house. I sat up, heart pounding, listening.
Then came a firm tap on the window. Just once.
I didn’t look. I couldn’t.
In the morning, I saw what it left behind. A handprint, long and pale, pressed into the glass. The fingers were too thin… too long Like branches soaked in fog.
Father said it must have been a trick of moisture, maybe a bird’s wing. He told me to stop worrying, but that night I heard him bolt the doors and pull the curtains tight.
The next evening, the fog came thicker than ever. It crept under the doors and through the cracks in the window frames. The dog wouldn’t stop growling. Then, just as the clock struck midnight, the sound came again—soft and steady.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I whispered for my father, but he didn’t answer. His bed was empty when I looked.
The tapping grew louder.
I crept to the window, just enough to lift one corner of the curtain.
The fog pressed against the glass like a living thing. And there, through the pale mist, I saw it. A tall shape with its face turned up toward me. No eyes. No mouth. Just a smooth, white blur where a face should be. Its hand rested flat on the windowpane.
And then—slowly—it leaned forward, pressing its head against the glass, as if it were trying to listen.
This morning, the fog hasn’t lifted. It hangs heavy around the house. Father still hasn’t come back.
But just now, I heard the front door open.
And someone—something—is breathing, slow and deep, at the bottom of the stairs.
The CJBuzz 