The fog came early that evening. Earlier than usual. By dusk, it had blanketed the hills and swallowed the village whole. The trees on the edge of Briarwall's wooded perimeter blurred into shape-shifting silhouettes. Chimneys vanished. So did the sea.
Dr. Elise Marlowe stood by her small upstairs window, watching as the mist licked up the walls of the Holding House like curious fingers. The fog had returned with a hunger. And for the first time, she sensed it wasn't simply weather.
It was memory.
Or worse—something sentient.
Behind her, Elena sat still on the bed, her arms tucked around her knees. She had not spoken since that morning. Not another word. Not even a blink to confirm her name again. But she had not denied it either.
"Elena," Elise said softly, "Do you know what they are?"
The girl's gaze flicked to the window.
"They come when it rises," she'd whispered before. That much was clear.
But who were they?
Elise picked up her leather notebook and scribbled the question:
Who are THEY? Delusion, or collective memory? Mythological figures embedded in local consciousness?
Correlation: fog → word → collapse. Fear response? Possession? Psychogenic trauma?
Salt: adverse reaction. Symbolism: purification, banishment—used in folklore to ward off spirits. Connects to religious and occult traditions.
She shut the notebook abruptly.
This was no ordinary case.
She needed answers.
That evening, after ensuring Elena had eaten a few spoonfuls of plain porridge, Elise left her in the care of Margery and ventured down the main hallway in search of Greaves. She found him in the study—an old converted drawing room filled with cracked leather furniture and shelves lined with crumbling tomes. The fireplace was lit, but it did nothing to warm the space.
Greaves was standing beside a tall cabinet, locking a drawer as she entered.
He turned slowly. "You shouldn't wander at night."
"I need to speak with you about the girl."
"Elena?"
Elise paused. "Yes."
"You gave her a name. That's… dangerous here."
"Why?"
He didn't answer directly. He walked to the hearth and poured himself a measure of whisky from a crystal decanter. "Names carry weight. Especially in Briarwall. They wake things. Remind them they haven't been forgotten."
Elise crossed her arms. "Stop speaking in riddles. I want facts."
Greaves sipped his drink slowly, then gave a short laugh. "You're still a doctor in the city, aren't you? You want case files. Statistics. You want clarity in chaos."
"I want the truth."
"Then you came to the wrong place."
He gestured toward a tattered chair. Elise sat slowly.
Greaves drained his glass. "There's a reason this building wasn't demolished after the fire. A reason it was quietly repurposed instead of closed. Officially, this isn't an asylum anymore. It's a holding house. That's not just semantics. We don't cure anyone here. We contain them."
Elise's brows lowered. "Contain?"
Greaves nodded. "Most of our patients aren't from Briarwall. They're brought here. By the government. By wealthy families. By men who need certain problems to disappear."
"That girl doesn't belong here."
"She does now."
Elise leaned forward. "She mentioned the fog. She trembled at the word. You're going to tell me that's coincidence?"
Greaves hesitated. His knuckles whitened around the empty glass.
"I've seen things in the fog," he said finally. "Most of us here have. Sounds. Shapes. Sometimes people we used to know. And always… watchers."
"Watchers?"
Greaves nodded slowly. "Figures that don't move like they should. That don't cast shadows. That don't belong to the landscape. They only come when the fog is thickest. And if you stare too long… you start to see them in places where the fog hasn't reached."
"You're describing hallucinations."
"I'm describing survival."
Elise studied him. The rational part of her wanted to dismiss him. But something in his eyes—something old and raw—told her he wasn't lying.
"What happened to the previous staff?" she asked.
Greaves didn't answer. He walked to the far shelf and pulled down a dusty leather volume. He handed it to her.
Dr. Solomon Arkwright – Daily Logs – 1903–1905
"This is the original warden's log," Greaves said. "Before the fire. Before they changed what this place was meant to be. He wrote about the girl, too."
Elise's eyes narrowed. "You said she was new."
Greaves's voice dropped to a whisper.
"She's always new. But always the same."
Elise didn't sleep that night either.
She sat by the oil lamp in her room, reading page after brittle page of Dr. Arkwright's log, the script looping in elegant but increasingly erratic lines.
"Patient #23 has arrived again. Female. Estimated age between 12 and 15. Mute upon intake. Pale, waterlogged appearance. Eyes wide. No identification. No claimants."
"This is the third appearance in six years. Identical in every detail. Impossible. No explanation."
"Attempts to communicate have failed. At dusk, she stood at the window and whispered something I could not hear. The fog arrived thirty minutes later."
"She collapsed again after speaking the word. The same as always. Fog. Fog. Fog."
"Salt burned her skin."
"She does not age."
The entries grew darker. The handwriting deteriorated. He began referring to the girl as "The Marker." In one entry, he claimed she was not human.
In the final entry before the fire, Arkwright wrote:
"She is the first. The key. She returns each time we forget. Each time we bury the truth. And they always follow."
The page ended in a scorch mark.
At dawn, Elise dressed quickly, pocketed the logbook, and slipped outside.
She needed to walk.
She needed air.
The fog had lifted somewhat, revealing the jagged landscape beyond the cliffs. The sharp edge of the moors. And to the east—what remained of Briarwall Cemetery. A forgotten slope of land half-swallowed by soil and weeds.
She climbed the narrow path and entered through a rusted iron gate.
The gravestones were old and illegible in many places. But some names she could just barely read.
Dymphna Greaves – 1881–1904
Father Jude Arkwright – 1905
L. T. Marlowe – 1910
She stopped. Her breath caught.
Marlowe.
Her own surname.
She crouched and rubbed away the moss.
Lysander Thorne Marlowe
"Returned once. Never left again."
The phrase chilled her more than the wind.
She stood slowly.
Behind her, the ground shifted.
She spun around.
No one.
But the fog was returning.
And this time, it crawled from beneath the soil.