At the turnoff to Maple Street, Alice threw up a militant “STOP”
gesture with her hand. She took stock of the hardscaped entrance…a
pair of low-to-the-ground curved stone walls and plantings of
well-trimmed hedges, squat and boxy and clearly groomed on a regular
basis.  Some 50 yards beyond, however, the road turned left and
vanished beneath a canopy of trees arching from both sides of the
road.  There, the darkness thickened and waited.  Whatever
houses had found a way to fend off the darkness, whether by lantern or
candlelight, would not be visible from the road, no stars or moon would
light their way.  The beams of their flashlights seemed nothing
more than feeble jabs against the pitch blackness that had nearly taken
on substance and form.

“Helena?” Alice said in a voice that was close to cracking.  “Are you sure this is the best way?”

Helena ticked her head to the side.  “I don’t know that it’s the
best,” she said in her impeccable accent, “but it’s the quickest.”

Alice sighed in resignation, and motioned the group forward, inching
slowly past the hedgerows and into the nearly impenetrable darkness
beneath the trees.  A warm wind began to sigh from behind, and a
clutch of fallen leaves rasped dryly across the road.  As the wind
picked up, whistling through the maples, Alice imagined furtive
creatures shaking their leathery wings, ready to launch themselves at
any moment.  

Then a pale mist began to rise out of the drainage swales, oozing
across the grass and onto the gravel berms like some malevolent living
thing.  This was the point where in every horror movie she’d ever
seen, the spooky music would kick in, as if to say “don’t go there”
while the victims-to-be walked blithely to their deaths.

She shuddered and Dana wrapped one arm around her.  “Are you all right?”

“Hmmm?”  Alice muttered, caught up in the prospect of impending
doom for all of them.  “Yeah,” she finally grinned gamely and
edged onto the roadway, preferring death by SUV than by whatever might
be lurking in the brush and fog, just biding its time. She swept her
flashlight right to left and back again, trying to anticipate the next
turn in the road.  “How much farther?” she called over her
shoulder, past Marina and Jenny who was clinging to her lover’s arm.

“Fifteen minutes by car,” Helena joked weakly, more focused on keeping
a respectable distance between herself and Tina when all she truly
wanted was to pull her into the safety of her arms and reassure her
that all would be well.  But her confidence had faded as the trees
loomed closer to the road, and the fog seemed to be tracking them every
step of the way.