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.