Roy Tang

“I don’t understand,” Liz said, scratching her head.

“What’s not to understand?” The old man looked at her with a look that was somewhere between condescension and amusement. “There’s simply nothing there.”

“You mean like, no one lives there right? Behind your house? Or is it just a steep cliff that I’d fall off if I tried to walk into whatever that mist is?”

The old man shook his head, “No, no. No cliff. A cliff is something after all. There’s nothing there.”

“I don’t understand,” Liz repeated, looking even more confused.

“Tell you what, why don’t you go out back, pick up a stick, and poke it through the “mist”, see what happens,” the old man turned his back to her and started fussing around with the oven again, “After all, this pie will be a few more minutes.”

Liz didn’t really have anything to do but wait, so she decided to satisfy her curiosity. She still wasn’t sure if she could fully trust the old man (although he didn’t look he was in any condition to assault anyone), so she picked up her backpack before heading out the door at the back of the kitchen.

She stepped out into a small, grassy back yard (not very well-maintained) surrounded by a number of trees of varying age. Beyond the yard and beyond the trees, a swirling black and grey and white shrouded her view, and she could not see anything more than a few dozen meters from the house. The black and grey and white extended in both directions, as far as her eyes could see, interspersing with the trees that dotted the landscape.

Slowly, Liz walked towards the mysterious black and grey and white. She glanced back at the house as she did so, the aging red-bricked walls no different from the facade she had sighted from the distance. The house looked a lot smaller up close, even though it was two stories. It must have been some trick of perspective that made it look like a mansion when she first spotted it not thirty minutes ago. Or perhaps a trick of her mind, deliriously happy to see smoke coming from the chimney indicating someone was home who could help her find her way back to town.

The house didn’t have a fence or a gate, so she had just walked up to the wide oaken doors and knocked as hard as she could. The old man who opened the door had been happy to see her and had been a gracious host. She had explained her predicament and the old man was more than willing to help her get back to town, but he was in the middle of something in the kitchen. Liz, famished from her long trek, had followed the old man and the sweet aroma of apple pie into the kitchen, where she had finally asked him about that strange black and grey and white behind his house. It was neither fog or mist, she had been told. Simply nothing.

She had assumed the old man was just pranking her, and that it would clear up a bit as she stepped closer, that she would see the faint outline of trees beyond the black and grey and white. But here she was now, not three paces from the edge of the mist, and still she could see nothing beyond the swirling grayscale colors.

Liz knelt down and found a short twig, about the length of her arm, fallen from one of the nearby trees. She stood up and took a step closer to the edge. She looked at the twig in her hand, shrugged and thrust it forward. Into the black and grey and white.

Nothing happened. As far as she could tell. A full foot and a half of the twig was beyond the edge now. Not that she could see it in the swirling grayscale. She pulled the twig back and was shocked.

The twig, once almost three feet long, was now shorter by a foot and a half. She had no idea what had happened to it. She had felt no force that could have snapped the twig in half. She examined the end of the twig, and it seemed like a perfectly natural endpoint for the twig. As if it had never had that extra foot and a half of length.

Liz stared across the edge for perhaps an eternity, her curiosity completely piqued. She raised her hand and waved it vertically in front of the black and grey and white, less than an inch from the edge. For some reason she was expecting a cold sensation emanating from the “mist”, but there was nothing. Nothing to indicate there was anything beyond.

She looked at the mist, then she looked at her hand, then back at the mist. Should she?

“Not a good idea lass!” She heard the old man’s voice from the house and she half-turned. The old man had stepped just out the kitchen door and had cupped his hands to project his voice. “Better get back here, pie’s ready!”

Liz took another look at her hand, a mere sliver away from the edge, and reluctantly pulled it away. She shouted back to the old man as she got closer. “Is it really just nothing?”

“Yep,” the old man nodded. “People never believe it either. Always have to make them go out and do the stick thing.”

“Has it always been there?”

The old man shrugged. “It was there before I bought this house eight years ago at least. Previous owner didn’t tell me nothin’ about it either. It didn’t bother me much at first since it used to be a lot farther out.”

“It moves?” Liz said incredulously.

“A few meters every year, near as I can tell. Maybe more. Seems to be getting faster too. I’ll probably need to think about moving out in a couple of years, if I live that long,” he chuckled. The old man waved Liz towards the kitchen door as she approached. The smell of apple pie was much stronger now, and she could see beyond the open door that the old man had set down a couple of plates.

“I–” Liz wasn’t sure what to say as she stepped up to the door. She held it open for a moment. “I don’t understand how there could be nothing there. Hasn’t someone come up here to study it or something?”

“Yeah, couple years back some government folks set up a research facility a few miles yonder,” the old man said, nodding mountain range in the distance. “You’ll meet ‘em soon, we’re going to pass by their checkpoint on the way back to town, and they’ll probably ask you not to tell anybody about it.”

“Am I in some sort of trouble?” Liz wondered what madness she had stumbled upon.

“Nah, they’re friendly folk, they might want to ask you a few questions though. So we should have some pie before we go.”

Liz stopped for a moment then nodded. “I guess I could use some apple pie.”