Chapter 2: The Fog Eats Sound
The fog in Arkham didn't feel like any fog Harrison had ever known.
It pressed in—not cold, not damp, just heavy, like a wool blanket wrapped around his head. The air tasted metallic, each breath leaving a faint tingle on his tongue.
The night bus groaned behind him as it lumbered away into the mist, its tail-lights swallowed whole by the dark.
Now he was alone.
Harrison adjusted the brim of his fedora and tightened his grip on the scuffed leather suitcase. The soles of his dress shoes clicked faintly against cobblestone, but even that sound felt muted, strangled before it could echo.
Arkham smelled wrong.
Salt.
Like the docks in summer. But beneath that was something else, fainter but insistent: copper.
Blood.
He kept walking.
Streetlamps glowed dimly, their light smothered just inches from the glass. Shadows stretched at impossible angles. Houses loomed on either side of the narrow street, their roofs sagging under the weight of decades. Windows peered down at him like lidless eyes.
The fog swirled, curling into shapes that almost looked like hands.
You shouldn't have come back here.
The voice wasn't his own, but it spoke from inside his skull.
Harrison rubbed his temples. His Sixth Sense had been flickering ever since the bus crossed into town, like a bad bulb struggling to stay lit.
"Sixth sense or starvation," he muttered under his breath. "Hell of a choice."
The sound of his own voice felt too loud in the fog, like shouting in a cathedral.
A soft thump echoed to his left.
Harrison froze.
Between two crooked buildings stood a man—or something shaped like a man. His suit was black, perfectly pressed, and his smile stretched too wide across his face. Too many teeth. No eyes.
Harrison blinked.
Gone.
Not this time, he thought, forcing his legs to move. He didn't have time for phantoms. Grace Whitmore's daughter wasn't going to find herself.
But his Sixth Sense thrummed harder, vibrating deep in his bones.
The Arkham Boarding House squatted like a toad on the edge of a cul-de-sac, its peeling paint the color of rotted ivory. A warped sign above the door read: "Rooms to Let—Nightly or Weekly".
Harrison hesitated on the threshold.
The house seemed to breathe.
The door creaked open before he could knock.
A gaunt woman with hair like steel wool peered out. Her gray eyes were too wide, too pale.
"You got the look of a man who knows he shouldn't be here," she rasped.
"Do I?"
"You do. What brings you to Arkham, Mr…?"
"Love. Harrison Love."
"Appropriate name for a man with eyes like that."
"Room for the night?" he asked flatly.
"Plenty of rooms," she said. "Folks tend to leave."
"Why's that?"
"They hear the whispers."
She handed him a tarnished brass key. Room 3.
Later, Harrison lay on a lumpy mattress staring at the cracked ceiling. Rain drummed against the window.
He hadn't even started searching, but already the town was getting under his skin.
You're not ready, said a voice—not spoken, not heard, but felt.
The bulb overhead flickered.
Something moved at the foot of the bed.
Harrison sat up, hand on his revolver.
Clara Whitmore stood there—barefoot, wearing a white nightgown, her hair damp as if she'd just climbed from a river. Her eyes were wrong.
Pitch black.
"Mr. Love," she said in a voice that wasn't a child's. "You've come to take me home."
Harrison's Sixth Sense flared so violently it felt like needles in his skull.
Clara's mouth widened into a grin that split her face ear to ear.
And then—
Gone.
Harrison woke with a start, drenched in sweat.
Was it a dream?
Or a warning?
The clock read 3:03 AM.
Below his window, in the foggy street, stood the black-suited man from earlier.
This time, he waved.
And whispered words Harrison shouldn't have been able to hear:
"The girl is his… unless you find her first."
Harrison drew the curtains shut and reached for his cigarette case with shaking hands.
Tomorrow, he'd start asking questions.
If Arkham let him live that long.
The next morning brought no sun. Only gray.
The streets seemed to shift subtly every time Harrison looked away. He swore the bakery on Main Street had been on the right yesterday, but today it sat on the left.
"Don't trust your eyes here," croaked an old man on a bench as Harrison passed.
Harrison stopped.
"Excuse me?"
The man grinned, showing gums where teeth should've been. "Your eyes'll lie. Listen instead."
"Listen to what?"
"To him."
Harrison's stomach knotted. "Him who?"
The man leaned forward, breath sour.
"The Black Pharaoh. He's already whispering to you, isn't he?"
Harrison's Sixth Sense thrummed like a war drum.
"I think you've got me confused for someone else."
The man cackled. "No confusion, Mr. Love. You're marked."
Before Harrison could respond, the man was gone.
Just… gone.
By noon, Harrison had gathered little more than rumors.
"Children vanish all the time here," said the butcher, wiping his hands on a bloody apron. "Some say they wander into the woods. Some say the woods wander into them."
"Don't go to the Whitmore house," hissed the librarian, a pale woman with ink-stained fingers. "Not unless you want to see what's left of her parents."
Great. Just great.
Harrison's head throbbed. His sixth sense hadn't quieted since he arrived.
Every shadow seemed too deep. Every whisper seemed aimed at him.
And the fog… the fog never lifted.
That night, Harrison returned to his room at the boarding house, utterly drained.
But sleep wouldn't come.
The sound of scratching drifted from the walls.
And then: laughter.
Soft. Childlike.
Harrison sat up, revolver in hand.
"Who's there?"
No answer.
Then—
A voice, right beside his ear:
"Welcome home… prophet."
Harrison spun, but the room was empty.
His reflection in the cracked mirror stared back—but its eyes were gold.
Not blue.
Gold.
And its mouth moved though his did not.
"You'll bring her to me."
Harrison stumbled back, heart hammering.
He grabbed his suitcase, tossed his revolver and flask inside, and slammed the door behind him.
Arkham had always been bad.
But this time, it felt alive.
And it wants me back.
End of Chapter 2