Fog Heart by Thomas Tessier Page B

to make sure the nozzle pointed in the right direction. Now, if she could only remember, were you supposed to shake it? Were you supposed to fire it when your assailant was six feet away or ten?
    He just stood there, apparently staring at her for what felt like a very long time. Carrie didn’t bother attempting to speak to him. Her free hand started for the lock.
    He came running. One instant he was still, the next he was flying at her silently. She remembered that. There should have been a lot of noise from the bare floorboards, even if he’d been wearing sneakers. But there was no sound at all. She let go of her bags, stiffened her stance, snatched her free hand away from the door and used it to brace the arm with the pepper spray. The man swept down the corridor towards her. She fired once. It had no effect on him.
    He emerged in the brighter light of the entry foyer, and she could see him clearly for the first time. She fired, and clamped her finger to the button now for continuous spray. It seemed to pass right through him. He was greyish-brown from head to foot, a sepia figure with remotely humanoid features that seemed to be twisted and smeared into themselves so that his face was hardly recognizable as human. A grotesque echo of a man. He was going to crash into her, Carrie realized dimly. There was nothing she could do about it, she was frozen to the spot.
    His body flew into hers, his face into hers, a glimpse of an unbearably elongated eye rushing directly into hers. It felt as if she had been hit by a wave of frigid moisture, so shocking to her system that it nearly knocked her out, and at the same moment she could hear him shriek in agony – from within her body, the awful noise filling her, seeming to swell her brain and resound in the chambers of her heart, devastating her with shared pain.
    She tottered, then something smashed her knee and the back of her hand banged against the floor. Carrie slid down onto her side. She was stunned but still conscious. She saw the floor and the walls. She felt incredibly weak, her arms and legs as useless as string. She wondered if she were dying, and already half-way out of her body. There was a lingering clamour in her ears – but no, not just her ears. It was fading away on the inside of her flesh and bones. Beneath her clothes she felt damp and chilled. Her knuckles were scraped, a headache began to drum at the temples, and she saw the canister of pepper spray on the floor several feet away. Carrie turned to look around. No one. Nothing. She was alone, the apartment still locked.
    I’m not going crazy, she told herself, because it doesn’t happen like this. Does it? Carrie struggled to her feet. She reeled precariously, as a sudden wave of nausea and dizziness hit her, and groped for the wall to steady herself. It took a few moments for her vision to clear and her breathing to settle down somewhat. Her heart was still pounding fearfully.
    Okay, she thought, okay.
    You have my attention.
    *   *   *
    Oliver listened patiently to her story. He had no idea what was going on any more. Carrie still seemed to be herself, steady and sensible, but what she was saying was the stuff of fantasy or mental illness. He had written off the first two incidents as transient aberrations. Now this. It wasn’t her father this time. It was something else, an escalation.
    The supernatural cut no ice with Oliver. Other people could believe in it, of course, and he would never consider that reason enough to doubt their sanity. Unless it went too far, and became irrational, obsessive.
    â€˜What do you think it was?’ he asked her.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ she replied, matter-of-factly. ‘I honestly have no idea at all.’
    He couldn’t get over how composed and self-possessed Carrie was as she spoke. She appeared to have digested the experience and come to certain conclusions about what she intended to do in response to it. The