Excerpt: The Fog of Dockside City, Volumes 1, 2 and 3

Excerpt from The Fog of Dockside City, Volume One, "The Obliteration Machine."

“Sheldon!” she screamed.

Mad Matty Brown trembled behind her until his body just couldn’t bear the shock anymore. “I’m outta here!” He thrust Miss Kaine toward the spent machine, and she fell against it, hands against the broken controls.

“Sheldon!”

Outside, gunfire prattled on, this time joined by the booming voice of an office over the megaphone. The voice paused while somebody shot in his direction, but it started afresh and returned fire.

“Sheldon…?”

Miss Kaine lifted her hands from the machine and crept forward, toward the barrel end of the device. Sparks and a puff of smoke shot from exposed wires.

“Sheldon, where are you…”

Smoke filled that whole end of the laboratory, brightening and fading whenever a search light passed across the broken windows, or whenever a jolt of electricity charged the cloud.

There was nothing left of him.

Miss Kaine pressed her hand to her mouth, and tears fell against the backs of her fingers. “Oh Sheldon, what happened to you…”

There wasn’t even a pile of ash.

She heard voices outside. The three-part battle was nearly over. Only hold-outs shot random bullets, in contempt and in panic.

But one voice sounded nearer than the rest.

“Dr. Bairns – ” She slipped back behind the machine to see if any life remained in the man’s body. His chin rested against his slumped chest, and his eyes were closed. She touched him on the neck, but she couldn’t find a pulse.

“Kay…”

She gasped and sat up.

“Mih…”

She grasped the front of her blouse as if to protect her throat. “Hello?”

“Mih…Kay…”

“Who’s there?”

“Miss…Kaine…”

“Who’s there?” she demanded. She was too afraid to stand. She ducked when sparks showered down. The machine was catching fire, and the stink of ammonia, ozone and sulphur was too much to bear. She slipped back between the wall and the edge of the panel, pressing her back against the open laboratory door. “Who’s there? Answer me!”

But there wasn’t anyone there.

The window was open, and yet the thick smoke lingered.

Electricity rippled through the cloud. In the afterimage, she saw a shadow of a man. She could just discern the slope of his shoulders and the brim of his hat.

“Miss Kaine…?”

“Sh…”

A search light from across the street passed across the windows, and in the lingering mist, there was the blurry shadow of the man in the chauffeur’s cap.

“Sheldon?” she whispered.

The figure in the mist turned toward her, but stayed where he was. He lifted a hand and looked at it – rather, through it – turning it palm in, palm out – and then he touched his face.

The search light faded, blood thudded in her ears, and then everything went black.

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Excerpt from the Fog of Dockside City, Volume Two: "Cold Spell"

“Too fast!”

He became Fog again, slowing his descent, but already the robber was half a block away. Fortunately, he was going with the wind. Sheldon reached out for the wall and stuck to it like mist, and when the gust picked up again, Sheldon imagined himself running on all fours, pulling and pushing himself along the wall until it ended. He was still two storeys high, but when he pushed off the end of the one wall, the wind scooped him up and pushed him a third storey up again. Sheldon whirled and spun, trying to regain some sense of one direction or another – which is particularly difficult when you have no form – technically, you’re facing all directions at once – and below him, the man he was chasing left a long loud trail of heavy breathing and heavy, running footsteps.

The robber skidded to the right. Sheldon blew past the alleyway, fighting against the wind, fighting the vortex in the middle of the two buildings. He stretched out his arm as far as he could reach without losing cohesion altogether, catching a window sill, and with a force of will, he compacted himself together again, reeling himself in. The robber looked up and back again.

“No – stay away!”

Sheldon pushed off from the wall, arms extended, legs apart, solidifying to give himself that much extra weight, and he plummeted to the alley pavement below.

The robber screamed and ran that much faster, right into a dead end.

Sheldon puffed into Fog right before he slammed into the ground.

The robber turned, purse raised, both hands up. “You want it?” He threw the purse into the centre of the cloud of fog. “There. It’s yours! Now leave me alone!”

A figure of a man emerged in the centre of the swirling cloud of Fog, rising up as if right out of the pavement itself. The robber pressed further and further back against the wooden fence as if he could climb up it, backwards and out of the way. “This is my town,” Sheldon said.

“Yeah,” the robber said. “Yeah, sure! You just tell Mr. Keys that! Tell Mr. Meriweather!”

Sheldon approached, visible as no more than an ill-defined shadow in the fog.

“No don’t – don’t suffocate me – no – ”

“Why don’t you send them a message yourself,” Sheldon whispered.

“I-I don’t know where to find them!”

Sheldon unspooled more of himself into Fog, surrounding the robber on three sides. “I think you’re lying…”

The robber shook his head and said, “I was just lookin’ for a quick buck!” And with two swipes of his arm, he had ripped through the most solid part and run right through him, splashing and tearing off his cap.

The purse lay idly in a puddle. Sheldon resolidified completely, pulling up his scarf to protect his identity, and picked it up.

It would look kinda stupid for him to walk out of the alley with a purse under his arm…He could leave it some place where no one else would find it – the roof came to mind…but he couldn’t get to it without climbing the fire escape…

So Sheldon took off his cap, unwound his scarf, mussed up his hair and draped his coat over the arm that carried the purse.

And emerging from the alley, he couldn’t help but smile.

Some lunch break.

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Excerpt from the Fog of Dockside City, Volume Three: "Flight of the Wendigo"

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Miss Kaine bolted up right, hands and feet free of their fetters, and on the fly, she flung herself at the rifle and ran with it, over the pile of bones, out the mouth of the cave and under the reaching claws of the wendigo outside. Finally, the sun was rising! There was hope yet! She kept on running along a narrow slope between the steep face of the hill on her left and a sheer drop on her right. Dawn was breaking! She could see her enemy for who he really was – she could see where she was going, and she could see well enough to shoot, if she could just chamber a round without having to stop!

A hand grabbed her by the back of the collar and jerked her to a stop before she could load the first cartridge.

“Thought you could outrun me?” he laughed. “There’s only one way you could be faster than a wendigo!” He spun her around and knocked the rifle from her hands. He raised his axe and grinned, baring those hideous gnashing teeth of his, and he said, “You can learn how to fly!” And he pushed her toward the edge of the path. The open air yawned before her, and she pinwheeled her arms to keep her balance.

“Get down!” Sheldon shouted.

Miss Kaine let her knees go soft, and she sunk in the old man’s single-handed grasp. It left the man wide open to Sheldon’s shot. The rifle cracked, and she screamed, jamming her hands over her ears.

When the echo subsided, the old man laughed uproariously. “You can’t kill me!” He stomped forward, throwing down his axe. “I’m immortal!”

Sheldon worked the lever and chambered another round. “You stay away from her!”

“You can’t kill me, boy!” He picked up the rifle he’d knocked from Miss Kaine’s hand.

“Sheldon, get down!” Miss Kaine screamed. She shot to her feet and leaped at the man’s back, beating him with her bare and frozen fists. He flung out his arm, sending her reeling backwards to her bottom.

The old man kicked up the rifle from the snow and caught it out of the air.

Sheldon pulled the trigger again, and once again, he missed. He chambered another round and pulled the trigger a third time.

Nothing happened.

The old man chuckled. “You’re jammed, boy…” While Sheldon struggled to clear the jam, the old man leveled his own stolen rifle, shouldered it, pointed it and said, “I’ll bet you taste like chicken.”

“Sheldon!” Miss Kaine screamed.

Sheldon and the old man both aimed and pulled their triggers, but only one gun went off., belching a blast of brilliance and smoke.

“No!” Miss Kaine screamed.

But the old man slowly lowered his rifle, astounded by the effect the rifle had had on his target.

Sheldon was gone.

Like the tap of a ball peen hammer on candy glass, Sheldon had shattered into a billion minute fragments and a haze of steam.

Miss Kaine’s heart pounded in her chest. Sheldon was gone. Tiny, innumerable flakes of ice fell where Sheldon had been standing.

“What the hell…?”

“Oh no…” Miss Kaine whispered. “No, Sheldon…”

“What the hell happened to him?” the old man shouted at her. He rushed over and reached down, single-handed to pull her up to her feet and force her meet his crazy eyes. “Where the hell did he go?”

“I don’t know!” Miss Kaine answered.

“What the hell is he?”

Over the old man’s shoulder, Miss Kaine saw the flakes rising up again. A thousand little crystals of ice spun in the air, drawing up more and more of their fellows – a formless column at first, then legs and arms – and as all the chunks of ice reassembled, a man began to appear in the storm. All around him, the snow billowed, but in the middle of it, he took shape.

The old man saw the horror in Miss Kaine’s eyes, and he turned to witness it for himself.

It was Sheldon, but he hadn’t become Fog. He was a man made up entirely of ice crystals. He raised his clawed hand, staring at it through see-through eyes. She could see the blush of a pink dawn through him, magnified and refracted through every glassy fleck. His jaw, his nose, his brow, all there, but broader, stylized, like a work of modern art, and yet he could move. And when he did, turning slowly at the neck, then at the shoulders and lowering his hand, he creaked like footsteps in snow, or crackled like thin ice breaking.

“What the hell are you?” the old man asked.

Sheldon took a step forward, crushing the snow under him. He was solid – he was ice, but he was solid! He took another step forward, crushing his hands into brittle, shining fists. The old man shoved Miss Kaine to the side and backed up, but not fast enough. Sheldon ran forward and punched the old man in the mouth.

Both Sheldon and the old man were stunned. Sheldon’s prickly skin had left a thousand tiny little cuts where he’d punched the old man – and the old man held his open hand below his mouth to catch the broken false teeth that fell out.

Realizing now that he was in grave trouble, the old man turned and ran back toward the cave, toward the safety of the larger wendigo posted outside.

Sheldon’s icy form disintegrated, and his billions of hail-like cells shot across the ledge, cutting off the old man’s path, and once there, at the mouth of the cave, he reassembled himself into his man-like shape.

Only this time, he’d fashioned two ice picks out of his fists, and he held them at his sides like daggers.