The Fog, Cold, Frightening, Evil Fog.

 

My grandmother, or Nanny, as we called her, was the best story teller I ever knew. She had so many stories, and most were very scary, well, at least they were, when you were like 6 or 7 years old. There was one, that really scared me, I think it still does….

I would often ask her to tell it to me, when it was just me and her, and she would be, tucking me in bed. I don’t know what I was thinking, looking back, but I soo wanted her to tell me.

Ohh, my, are you sure you want to hear that one, little man? I liked that she called me, little man. I think it made me feel, more grown up :). It’s not made up, it’s true you know? She would say. 

Yes Nanny, I’m sure, I would say, not at all sure, I did, but for whatever reason, I did.

She would spread her hands, and smack her lips, and look off into, someplace, and just pause, for a long period of time, and then, start. 

It was a very dark, and evil night, spooky, and foggy, fog so thick you couldn’t see two feet, outside of the house. No one went outside, it was a very evil night, or so the older people said.

You could feel a cold wind, even though there could be no wind, if there was fog, because it would blow the fog away, but there was a wind.

Back then we felt the wind, through the cracks in the walls, of our house, because it was an old house. I was a very little girl, and had been sent to bed much earlier.

As I always was, because the night, is no place for children, they would say.

We had no electricity, back in those days, and my mother told my father, she was going to bed. He was in his big chair, reading, and she said to him, as she always said “remember to turn the lamp off before you come up.”

We had kerosene lamps, back then, and sometimes he would forget, and waste kerosene. You didn’t want to waste anything back then, because we didn’t have the big stores we have today. 

My mother woke up in the middle of the night, and my father wasn’t in the bed.

She looked out the window, beside the bed, and couldn’t see anything, the fog was too thick.

But she felt that cold wind, and then she heard the chains dragging, and she became very frightened, because chains dragging meant, someone was going to die. 

The old people said, if you hear chains dragging, it was the devil, coming for you. And he always came on a very foggy night, like that night.

My mother was too frightened to go downstairs, to see if my father had fallen asleep again in his chair, smoking his pipe.

So she pulled up her blankets, as far as she could, and prayed, that the devil wasn’t coming for her, that night.

She awoke in the morning, and looked out the window, the fog was all gone. But my father, still wasn’t in the bed, beside her.

She crept down the stairs, it was cold, so very, very cold, and she could see my father, in his chair, his pipe had fallen out, and was laying on the floor.

She went to him, and touched him, he was very cold, so very cold. She shook him, but he didn’t wake up, he was dead, the devil had come for him, in the fog, in the night.