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The whispers reached into her dreams that night.
Shelby sat up with a gasp, blinking against the thin strip of filtered moonlight peering into her room. Shadows loomed. She stared at them.
They stared back.
Every creak of her bed and groan of her house in the whispering breeze sent a jolt down her spine as she locked eyes with one shadow. White eyes glared back at her with a sinister grin.
It hissed.
Laughed.
Shelby…
The iron frame of her lantern rattled from her shaking hands, only the familiar press of the rough grained wood of her wand calming her enough to cast a simple fire spell. The shadows melted away at the flood of light with a screech, skittering back into hiding on thousands of invisible legs..
The shadow watching her was nothing but a shelf lined with candles and a few books.
The shadows had gone, but the whispers remained, carried by the wispy tendrils of fog spilling through her open window.
Now that was unusual. The fog had never come through her window.
Shelby…
Shelby sighed, blatantly ignoring the whispers saying her name. “No shadow creatures here,” she told herself. “Just a trick of the light. You can’t scare me!”
Yet the Evermoore seemed determined to prove her wrong tonight.
A scream joined in the chorus of whispers. They reached a crescendo as the shriek faded away, sliding over her ears and skin like a stream of water until the roaring of her own heart in her ears drowned them out. Shelby bit her lip, drawing in a shaky breath through clenched teeth. She slid out of bed, never letting the flickering lantern or her wand leave her grasp as she pulled her hat over her head.
If her sensors were being activated, then something was out there and she had to investigate.
Shelby stepped outside, the warm, fruit scented candle wax of her home remaining trapped inside as the door creaked shut behind her, filling the air with the familiar scents of the swamp instead. Damp and musty, wood and wet squelching mud with an underlying note of decay.
She stopped in place, holding her breath as the fog tenderly curled around her ankles in a gentle caress. Cool, and soft, yet left a dry burning tingle over her exposed skin. Especially where the sculk had already taken root in her skin. Whispers bled together with rustling leaves, casting shifting shadows that shimmered and wavered in the hazy moonlight turned translucent by the dome of fog. Towering mangroves creaked and groaned in the howling gusts of wind that nearly stole her hat, bending over the clearing like the looming Headmaster of the Witches Academy, ready to expel her and steal away her magic.
This was wrong. The fog never came this close to her house. The amethyst lake had always kept it at bay.
And the frogs were never silent.
Shelby…
“Who’s there!” Shelby yelled, raising the rattling lantern against the encroaching fog. It was just a tree. The Headmaster wasn’t here. And he certainly wasn't the size of a mangrove tree.
Just a tree. Just roots and branches that looked alarmingly like claws stretching down to grab her and drag her into the afterlife.
With a shaky inhale, Shelby pushed through the fog, holding her wand at the ready as she approached the first of her sensors. Her heart nearly stopped at a dart of movement through the dense fog bank. There, and gone again within the blink of an eye. It thinned out as it neared the amethyst lake as it always did, but here, away from its magic, it was impenetrable. A wall of thick, ghostly white, reaching out in sinister tendrils towards her before swirling back over into itself again.
Coalescing.
Shelby…
Gathering.
Shelby…
Mesmerizing.
Shelby…
Shelby couldn’t stop staring at it in its careful, cycling dance, only snapping out of her stupor when it reached for the lantern in her hand. “Oh no you don’t,” she reprimanded, jerking the fragile flame inside the glass away from anything wanting to snuff it out.
The whispers slithered back over her with hissing laughter.
Come join us…
“No. Nope. No way. Absolutely not. I don’t listen to you and I am going back to bed!”
The whispers gathered at her proclamation. They screeched and screamed, burning hatred tightening around her throat and robbing her lungs of air. Shelby clawed at her throat. And the fog knew. It numbed her fingers until the lantern slipped free and was swallowed by the mud.
The flame choked and died.
The whispers laughed, slithering away. She gasped for air, groping through the mud in the filtered moonlight for anything metal, to no avail. The Evermoore had claimed the lantern for itself.
Shelby hauled herself back to her feet. Wet, sticky mud clung to her fingertips and filled her nose with the rich scent of damp wood and soaked dirt. It squished around her boots.
Pulling.
Tugging.
Trying to drag her down as she desperately turned in place.
Shelby…
She could’ve sworn she hadn’t gone this far from home. Yet her home was nowhere in sight. Swallowed by fog. Instead, looming mangroves formed a tight circle around her, stretching sparse leafed branches down to tear at her. Thousands of eyes peered down at her through gaps in the dense canopy cast by the full moon haloed by fog like the ethereal eye of a watching angel.
The whispers faded. Silence. But the fog remained.
Pressing.
Beckoning.
Demanding.
Silence pervaded. Only the whispers, the wind, and the fog had emerged this night. Unbroken. Not a croak from a frog. Not even a groan from a zombie or the rattle of a skeleton broke the silence. No spiders scuttled up the smooth bark of the mangroves, tangling their many legs in the hanging leaves to build their webs. Not even a slime, despite the full moon.
Shelby…
The whispers returned. Silence shattered.
Broken.
Fragmented.
Whispers crowded around her, indistinct words blurring together into a jumbled, incomprehensible mess of voices. They swirled around her. Crawled over her boots and wove between her mud-coated fingers. Shelby breathed.
The fog would not claim her too.
“ Shelby… ”
She froze at one voice sliding out from the rest.
“Sausage?” She whispered. Flickers of movement hung at the edge of her vision. Always out of sight. Whatever it was could always see her, but it wouldn’t allow her to see it.
Footsteps. Heavy. Squelching through mud.
Closer.
Closer.
Shelby’s throat tightened. She held her breath.
The footsteps came closer. Whatever it was, she wasn’t inclined to find out.
She took off running in the direction she thought was home, weaving through the labyrinthine tunnel of tangled mangrove roots. Anywhere was better than staying with the creature in the fog. Home would be ideal. She’d even take the Forgotten Cove at this point. Or Sanctuary. Sausage would be in Sanctuary. He wasn’t here in the fog despite what the whispers said.
So shivering from the frigid chill of the swirling fog and the sensation of thousands of eyes roaming over her, Shelby ran.
Shelby…
“I don’t listen to you!” She screamed back, gasping for air. The fog raced after her. It didn’t need to breathe. Wasn’t even winded.
Shelby screamed when the mud vanished beneath her feet. Icy, stagnant water splashed and soaked through her clothes up to her shoulders, melting away the crust of mud clinging to her fingers and replacing it with a slimy layer of mossy algae. She had fallen into a pond. Green mingled with white. The fog slid along the water’s surface.
Reaching.
Inviting.
Gathering around the ghostly figure on the shore.
Shelby scrambled out of the pond, pointing her wand at it. It looked human. Or at least human-shaped. She kept the pond between herself and it, drawing in ragged breaths and shuddering from the cold biting into her skin as it drew closer.
Closer.
Closer.
Shelby breathed a sigh of relief and bit her tongue when she nearly loosed the spell on her lips as the figure materialized into Pixlriffs, his ghostly form shimmering in the fog-coated moonlight. “Oh my god. Don’t scare me like that! I thought you were some kind of fog creature!”
Pix didn’t respond. Shelby had thought he was adjusting well after being turned into a ghost at the tea party, but maybe he wasn’t.
“Pix?” She prompted, slightly raising the tip of her wand at him again. He stepped forward, silent, onto the surface of the water like it was a solid sheet of rock. One hand slowly moved out to the side, letting the fog swirl around his fingers, weaving between them and over his gloves. It gathered in the palm of his hand, matching his translucency until he became a part of the fog himself.
Dark, empty eyes stared at her until a wide grin spread over his face. The fog in his hand darkened. Ghostly white into shimmering blue, until sculk crept up over his gloves and his sleeves. His eyes took on the eerie blue glow of a soul lantern, two sinister bright points in the moonlit haze, and he never stopped smiling as the fog bank behind him rose up like a wave.
This wasn’t Pix.
“Stop it!” Shelby yelled. The tip of her wand shook and wavered from where she kept it pointed at this horror of the fog wearing Pix’s face. “It’s me you want! Let him go!”
“ Join us, Shelby, ” he rasped, his voice echoing over itself and sounding completely unlike him.
Sculk crawled over the surface of the pond, consuming moss and algae and leaving the sinister substance from the darkest depths of the world crawling up the mangroves. Shelby choked on the musty stench of the sculk chasing away the normal dampness of the Evermoore, forcing dry moldy air reeking of decay into its path as it forged ahead on its conquest across the pond. Veins stretched down like stalactites from the claw-like branches looming overhead, reaching down until the sculk already clinging to her skin started to burn.
Darkness intermingled with ethereal fog.
It skittered.
And bit with invisible fangs, sinking into her skin but never drawing blood.
“Let him go!” Shelby yelled. She didn’t suppress the spell sliding off her tongue this time and a wave of fire drove the sculky fog back. Not-Pix gave a rasping, hissing laugh, tilting his head back and forth as glowing eyes bored into her soul.
Searching.
Probing.
Shelby cast another wave of fire. The tendrils recoiled from her, and Not-Pix changed. Translucent blue clothing morphed into a sculk-coated white lab coat, but the glowing eyes and creepy smile remained, now on the face of Cubfan.
“Cub was cured ages ago,” Shelby raised her head, staring the creature in the eye. “He’s safe on Hermitcraft and you can’t hurt him anymore.”
“ You lost us our greatest asset,” the whispers hissed. “ For that you must pay!”
“Cub was never yours to take!”
The fog monster sneered before morphing again. White turned to black robes draped over the aged skeletal body of the headmaster of the Witches Academy. He regarded her with those same sculk coated glowing eyes.
Judging.
Deciding.
He had already decided her fate. The acrid smoke of the burned expulsion letter lingered in her mind, combusted paper joining the sulphurous array of stenches native to the Nether.
The monster took another step forward. And another. Gliding smoothly over the water like it was solid ice.
“ You’ll never be a great Witch,” it hissed. “ They’ll find you. They’ll always find you. You’ll never be able to hide!”
“Shut up!” Shelby snapped. “You’re not real!”
“ You’ll never amount to anything other than an expelled failure.” Another step forward. “ Join us instead. Listen. Help us. We just want to help you.”
“Go away!” Her scream tore her throat raw, a deep set burn that ached as much as her expulsion from the Academy. Fire roared from her wand, engulfing the mimicking fog monster and the treetop-high wave of fog lingering over the forest. Trees crackled and groaned, drowned out by the distressed shriek of the fog. It whirled.
Burning.
Screaming.
It tore into her ears and drove knives through her skin until they pierced her nerves. Shivers ran over her as the tendrils reached for her through the flames, only to disperse into mist from the heat.
“ We just want to protect you!”
“Join us!”
“Shelby!”
The whispers were now screams. And they screamed and screeched and screamed again. Agony and anger at her refusals.
“I am a Great Witch!” Shelby yelled, renewing the wave of fire until it surrounded her entirely. Flames danced over the surface of the pond in mesmerizing reflections as fog and looming shadows recoiled from the light. “I don’t need you! I don’t listen to you!”
The fire reached a crescendo. Shelby squeezed her eyes shut, only cracking them open when the soft croaking of frogs replaced the raging inferno.
She was in front of her house, kneeling in the mud like she had never left. Familiar potions bubbled in the giant cauldron with a reassuring sweet aroma mixing with the normal damp wood and wet mud of the mangrove swamp. And the fog lingered at the edge, swirling ominously as it hid from the rising sun filtering through the dense mangrove canopy.
All that was out of place was an intact lantern resting toppled at her feet, carefully cradling a dying soul flame inside the silvery casing.