The Fog-Bound Turn

The cottage sat at the edge of a dead-end lane in the Welsh Marches, a place of rolling hills and ancient hedgerows that swallowed the moonlight. It was New Year’s Eve, and the four of us—my friend Dafydd, his girlfriend Cerys, and my own partner, Elin—had rented the place to escape the city. The rain had been relentless all day, turning the lane into a ribbon of mud, and by ten o’clock we were drunk on cheap whiskey and homemade cider, with a haze of smoke clinging to the ceiling. I had made the mistake of taking a handful of pills from my pocket, thinking they were paracetamol, but they turned out to be codeine left over from a dental surgery. The combination of booze, weed, and opiates wrapped my mind in a thick, syrupy fog, and I found myself nodding off by the fire.

I fought it, forcing myself upright and stumbling to the kitchen for another beer. The clock read half past eleven, and the others were laughing at some joke I couldn’t follow. I decided to get some air, stepping out onto the stone porch. The night was a black void, the lane illuminated only by a single flickering lantern on a post across the field. The fog had rolled in, thick and wet, muffling all sound except the distant gurgle of a stream. I felt a sudden, childish thrill—I would run ahead, hide in the bushes, and jump out to scare the others when they walked past. I told them I needed to pee and set off down the lane, the cold air stinging my face.

The lane curved after fifty yards, and the cottage’s light faded behind me. I jogged, the ground squelching under my boots, and found a dense thicket of gorse and fern near a broken gate. I crouched down, heart pounding, waiting for the sound of footsteps. Minutes passed—or maybe seconds, I couldn’t tell—and the fog grew thicker, swirling as if alive. Then I heard something: a rhythmic, dragging sound, like a heavy sack being pulled over gravel. It was coming from ahead, not behind, and it was accompanied by a low, guttural hum.

My drunk courage evaporated. I froze, peering through the gaps in the foliage. A shape emerged from the fog—not human, but something approximating one. It was tall, with limbs too long and jointed wrong, and its head hung at an unnatural angle, as if the neck were broken. It dragged a dark mass behind it, leaving a trough in the mud. As it passed my hiding spot, it stopped, tilting its head as if listening. I held my breath, my heart hammering against my ribs. Then it turned its face toward the bush, and in the dim lantern light, I saw no eyes—only smooth, pale skin where eyes should have been, but a mouth stretched wide and filled with thin, needle-like teeth.

It spoke, the voice not coming from the mouth but from the air around it, like radio static: ‘You shouldn’t have come to the turning.’ I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the pain, but nothing happened. When I opened them, the thing was gone. The fog had thinned, and I could see the cottage light ahead. I scrambled to my feet and ran, not looking back, bursting through the door to find Dafydd, Cerys, and Elin staring at me with white faces.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Cerys snapped. ‘We’ve been calling for you for ten minutes.’ They were huddled by the fire, and I noticed Elin was trembling.

‘What happened?’ I asked, my voice shaking.

Dafydd took a long swig of whiskey. ‘We followed you, you idiot. When you didn’t come back, we went to look. We saw you walking down the lane, but you weren’t… you weren’t moving like yourself. Your arms were too long, and you were dragging your feet. And when we called your name, you turned around, and your face was all wrong—like it was melting.’ He paused, and Cerys finished, ‘We ran back here and bolted the door. You showed up two minutes later.’

I looked down at my hands. They were normal. But then I noticed the mud on my boots—it was red, like rusted iron, and it didn’t match the brown soil of the lane. Elin pointed a shaking finger at the window. ‘That thing,’ she whispered. ‘It’s out there, waiting.’

We looked out. The fog had cleared, and the moon cast a pale light on the lane. But there, standing at the edge of the garden, was the shape again. It was looking at the cottage, and as we watched, it raised one long arm and pointed at the front door. Then it opened its mouth, and even through the glass, we heard the static voice: ‘You brought it back with you.’

I felt a cold pressure in my chest, and when I glanced at my reflection in the dark window, my face seemed to ripple, as if something was trying to push through. The others stared at me, their eyes wide with horror, and I knew then that whatever had been out there wasn’t following me—it had come inside. The last thing I remember is the lantern flickering, and Dafydd’s scream as my shadow stretched across the wall, taking on a shape that was not my own.

We never made it to midnight. The cottage is still there, abandoned now, and locals say on New Year’s Eve, you can see four figures walking the lane, one of them dragging behind the others, its head tilted at an angle, whispering to the fog.