Are You Ready to Board?

It was an hour before Edgar’s alarm was set to go off when a series of rapid thumps on the roof jolted him awake.

He shot up from the small, hard bed, eyes shooting around the old trailer home as the bombardment continued, like the contents of a butcher’s shop had been dropped on this lakeside retreat. By the time he had thrown off the dusty covers and gotten his feet on the cold floor the barrage had stopped, leaving him in total silence save for his own breath.

Then came another sound. It cut through the stillness, reminding him of the noise hot air balloons make when the fire is used to send them higher. It was there for a moment, then gone.

He gave himself a few seconds to calm down before finding his clothes from yesterday and hauling them on, plus a muddy pair of boots at the door. He strung his hunting knife by the sheath through his belt as well, just in case.

The dim light from outside barely lit up the windows past the worn curtains, but it was enough for him to tell that fog straddled the entire landscape just past the trailer home. He grabbed the battery-powered lantern he had brought with him, even if it wouldn’t help much. Still, holding it, as well as having his knife nearby, made his hands shake a little less.

He opened the front door, stepping out onto the ramshackle, half-rotted front porch of the lake house. It was a steep, one-minute walk away down a gravel path to the small lake, formed from a dammed valley and stocked with fish to try and bring in some development to this portion of Missouri, but all it had managed was a trailer park a distance away around the lake and a few old places like the one he and his extended family shared. He had been looking forward to unplugging for a few days of alone time, but apparently the weather had other plans.

He groaned, his anxiety fading as he rubbed his temples. Stupid Missouri weather. Whatever had happened, the lake house had better not have been damaged. His carpentry skills were about on par with the funds he had to get someone out here to fix this crumbling place.

But it was as soon as his first step off the covered front porch that he found the issue at hand was something else entirely. Plopped right on the front step was a large, gelatinous… thing. Some sort of gray, squishy orb, almost like a deflated oblong balloon. He grabbed a walking stick from the porch and poked the blob, moving it off the step with a meaty thud. He stepped off, spotting more of the things even as the fog closed in around him.

He walked around the perimeter of the house, checking and seeing no damage, just more of those blobs littering the landscape and rolling off the roof. Each one barely the length of his hand, yet they were everywhere. What on earth could these things be? He poked another, shoving the stick further in, yet the increased pressure didn’t break or rip the blob; it gave inward.

He sighed. He had his cell phone, but there was no signal on this side of the lake and he couldn’t take his car around with how thick this soup was. He had a long walk ahead of him.

He moved toward the road, the lake house and treeline disappearing into the fog. No noise cut through the air save for his own footsteps. What had happened to the animals? Even with him present the forest wildlife would make their presence known. Birds chirping, squirrels scurrying across the trees, deer shuffling through the undergrowth. Instead, there was nothing but silence.

He found his reason why when he started down the gravel road that circled the lake. Right in the center of the road, just past the lake house’s mailbox, was a deer lying on the gravel like it had been hit by a car. It lay still but he could see its eyes were open, lids pulled back as if encountering him was a nightmare beyond the doe’s capacity to imagine. It twitched and convulsed and as he got closer, he saw that one of those blobs lay on its back, clinging to it like a tumor. He circled around and poked at the blob, but it kept its grip on the deer.

The tremble made its way back into his hands and he found himself wishing he had a gun as well as his knife. His family had been coming out to this lake for decades and this had never happened before. Hell, this fog had never happened; the fog had always been something in the hills south of them, rolling slopes of forests that even hunters didn’t bother with as they never seemed to have any good luck. Things must have changed with all that new construction being done in the nearby town; hadn’t they altered a river or something for one of their projects?

Either way he had to keep going. The silence clung to him as much as the fog did, and for a moment he felt like he was caught in the clutches of some gigantic amoeba, a living being made of water that sought to pull him in further until it dissolved him down to the bone. His grip tightened on both the lantern and the walking stick as he lifted his feet, each newly-encountered blob like a gray, translucent land mine. He smacked them off to the side when he could, clearing a path.

But many others he dared not touch. The deer had just been the first; more animals littered the road, unfortunate critters hit in this early morning by an unwanted surprise from the sky. Turkeys, a fox, squirrels everywhere, more deer, even the coyote he had been hearing all last night, all of them maimed and laid flat by these things.

He continued his route around the lake, part of him wondering just how many had made their way down to the water, floating across it in clumps. The smell of ozone clung to everything. He wrapped a strip of cloth around his face to try and help him breathe and by then it was just a few minutes before he saw another house. An A-frame cabin, a blue tarp just visible flapping on the roof and an assortment of broken-down cars littering the front yard. The blobs covered everything, seeming a bit more inflated than the ones he had encountered earlier. They were almost taking on a football shape, a tapered point on one end and the other side flat, and the sharp ozone scent seemed to be emanating from them.

Unlike earlier, not a single animal lay in the forest or grass around him.

He made his way up to the front door and knocked. “Hey!” he called out, almost shocked by how loud his voice was in the dead air. “Name’s Edgar. I’m staying at the house down the road. You got a phone?” Didn’t this guy live here full-time? He had to have a landline or something, maybe even a walkie-talkie that could reach the trailer park. “We really gotta make some calls.”

He reached for the door and found it unlocked, squeaking open. The wooden walls of the cabin were adorned with various taxidermy animals and an array of antlers on plaques, plus pinned-up pictures of the resident holding up various fish caught in the lake. The floor was bare wood, the entire place feeling like it was still being worked on despite standing there for years. He moved through the hall, scoping out each Spartan room and finding no one. “Hello?” he called out again. “Really sorry for barging in like this. Anyone home?”

Nothing.

He made his way to the other side of the A-frame. He took the stairs before him, emerging into an open attic space that served as a bedroom. Across from him he could see the blue tarp, forced inward by the rain of the gray blobs that had come down on it. It hung like a curtain across from him, fog spilling inside from the hole in the ceiling that had gone too long without being repaired.

To the side near him was an open gun cabinet, and just inside he could see a hunting rifle. He didn’t know the make or model, but it was there. A box of cartridges sat on a shelf by it in the case.

He moved in, grabbing the rifle and slinging its sash over his shoulder. No one was here, and if he managed to get through this in one piece, he’d return it with a few dollars to cover any ammo he used. His body relaxed some as he felt the stock in his hands.

The tarp rattled.

Edgar spun around, tensing back up when he saw the shape of a person forming in the tarp. “Hey!” he called out. “So sorry about this, I’ll give it back.” He moved the rifle away from him pointing the muzzle down at the floor. “Just… You really need to know what’s going on out there.”

No response. The figure shuffled, jerking around like a marionette. It stumbled around the tarp with all the grace of a local redneck after happy hour at his favorite bar. It lurched free of the tarp, and soon Edgar could see the man, dressed in torn jeans with a soiled white tank top. Each muscle in him looked tensed, taught like wires supporting a bridge. His eyes and mouth pulled back from his face in a frozen look of surprise. And adorning him like a colossal leech was one of those gray blobs, latched around the side of his neck.

Long, gray tentacles spread away from the football-shaped sack, wrapping down the man’s torso to his feet, across his arms to his hands and up his face, as if the thing was using the tendrils to make him look at something he wanted to shy away from.

“What the actual–” Edgar lost the words, trembling hands grabbing the box of cartridges before shoving them in a pocket and trying to open the chamber of the bolt-action rifle. “Please stay back! You just stay right there; I’ll be right back with your gun and an ambulance.”

The man regarded him, or perhaps it was more accurate to say the blob regarded him. It made him lurch forward, and as it got closer Edgar could see it had swollen up more, with little fins starting to form on its side.

“The Mist Queen is boarding this area,” said the man, a tentacle wrapped tight around his throat. The voice was dead, empty, spoken without any rhythm or meter. “Are you ready to board?”

“Mist Queen? Board? What?” Edgar wracked his mind at what he was hearing.

“Are you ready to board?” the man asked again. He looked at him. “You aren’t ready. This man wasn’t, either. This will be quick.”

The man’s hand shot down, grabbing one of the loose blobs and palming it like a baseball. As he held it the tentacles shot out of its flat bottom like a spike trap, hanging in the air for a second before going limp. “You will be ready for boarding.”

The man threw the blob at Edgar, who just managed to duck to the side as it flailed past him. Its tentacles went every way, thrashing about in a desperate attempt to grab him, all while the stench of ozone grew. The blob hit the wall with a thud, but instead of falling it floated down, tentacles drooping to the floor.

Edgar darted down the stairs as fast as he could, and soon he could hear the puppet of a man charging after him. He hit the ground floor and made for the outside as the man threw himself down the stairs, the controlling parasite not heeding the damage it was doing to its host. As jerking as its motions were, it moved so quickly.

Edgar slung the rifle again, freeing his hand to properly grab his walking stick. He dropped the lantern and readied his weapon as the man shot upright as if lifted by strings. The man charged at him, the blob from before now held in his hand.

Edgar lanced ahead, getting the man in the chest with enough force to knock him down with a loud crack, but Edgar fell back as well from the momentum. He caught himself, eyeing the man ahead. His chest had caved in, but still the man launched himself back onto his feet, the parasite focused on its goal even as the man surely had to be mortally wounded.

“You will be ready to board the Mist Queen,” said the man in that same cold, empty voice, as if uttered by a robot.

“Hell with this,” said Edgar, dropping the stick and readying the hunting rifle. He managed to force a cartridge into the chamber and locked it tight, raising the barrel at his opponent. He did everything he could to keep his hands from shaking the barrel, trying to replicate the breathing exercises his uncle had taught him when showing him how to use a gun. The man shot forward and Edgar fired. Rather than hit him straight on, his shaking had sent the bullet into the pulsating sack on his neck.

The sack exploded in a fiery ball, setting part of the A-frame alight and sending the man’s head flying as his decapitated body fell to the floor, the tentacles covering him falling off. Edgar’s ears rang as he stumbled back, doing everything he could to calm down and get out of the burning house, having just enough thought to grab the lantern as he did.

Somehow him killing a man wasn’t even close to his main thought as he stumbled back out into the fog, stopping at a rusted truck to catch himself. What on earth had he just seen? This couldn’t be real. Was that some sort of alien? Had an alien ship come to this lake and dropped some sort of bio-weapon on them so it could abduct them all with ease?

He could see more of the blobs around him, scattered like party balloons but inflating more and more. They lay about doing nothing, but if he had touched one of them… he shuddered. He tied the lantern to his belt, thankful he had thought to grab that. The walking stick was gone, left in the house the fire continued to consume; he wasn’t about to reclaim it, and the rifle took priority. He would need it; he heard more shuffling off in the woods, and now he knew why he had not seen animals around here. The aliens must have gone to his house last, traveling around the lake dropping their puppeteer parasites.

The Mist Queen. The name stuck in his mind. He recalled a story his uncle had told him about a zeppelin, a majestic sight that had once flown across the Midwest. One of its crew had gone mad while the Mist Queen had been cruising over these hills, causing it to crash into one of the lakes further south, and since then the ghost of this zeppelin haunted the forest, carried by the fog as it could no longer float on the air past it.

Were these parasites the twisted form of its crew, seeking more passengers to carry to the afterlife?

More shuffling, and just off in the fog he could see forms moving in the undergrowth that encroached on the gravel road. He saw a buck, tentacles twisting their way up its antlers. He loaded another cartridge, trying to spot where the parasite was on the animal. Ozone plagued the air.

He kept moving as he heard the deer lurch forward, falling over its own limbs with even less grace than the man had been piloted. He picked up his pace, doing all he could to avoid the parasites that had yet to catch a host. Another animal stumbled out of the woods but he kept going. He did a double-take when he saw a squirrel floating through the air, carried by a much larger swollen parasite like a balloon. This one’s side fins had fully formed, complete with two on the pointed back. A cavity lay between them, and a circular bulge had manifested on the front of the thing’s face. Edgar would swear the parasite was pointing that bulge at him.

At last he could see the rows of mobile homes up ahead, encased in a shabby wooden privacy fence. The Oak Village Trailer Park. He saw more small animals floating upward, disappearing into the fog and paying him no mind. Squirrels, rabbits, birds. Even a fox and bobcat, their own parasites inflating more to support their climb up the thick air. A deer stumbled out of the woods, its parasite the size of a beach ball and still swelling. The deer looked to be shriveling up, desiccating.

No time. He charged up the road, finally spotting the office for the trailer park. He barged his way inside and slammed the door shut behind him.

He pushed himself against it, panting as he slid down to the floor. No lights were on inside the office. As empty and dead as the rest of the world he now lived in.

Who knew how far this fog went, created by the Mist Queen so it could take on passengers. Carried this far north by the changes to the landscape affecting where its vapors could travel. He checked the chamber of his rifle again. He had a handful of cartridges left, his lantern and his hunting knife for whatever good that would serve him. Maybe it would leave after taking enough of the wildlife and whatever poor souls that had touched one of its crew.

Or perhaps they would all be readied to board.

“Hey,” said a voice, followed by the cocking of a gun. Edgar looked up to see a middle-aged, frumpy bald man pointing a pistol at him before lowering it. “You ain’t one of those freaks. Sorry ‘bout that.”

“It’s okay,” said Edgar. “Been a long morning.” He pulled himself up. “Edgar.”

“Warren,” said the man. “Where on earth you come from, boy?”

“Down the road,” said Edgar. “Got any idea what’s going on?”

“No more than you do, I’d wager,” he said. He moved over to the front desk and grabbed a water bottle, which he tossed to Edgar. “Those damn blob things plastered my entire park before the sun was up. Tried to clear them off before the dimwits renting my lots started messing with them when I realized something was off. I’m sure you’ve seen what these things do.”

Edgar nodded. “So, you’ve been hiding in here,” he said. “When’s help coming?”

Warren shook his head. “Don’t know what these things are, but they’re damn smart. One of them controlling this father and his kids dug up the line those internet people had just installed. Cell phones ain’t working, either. Whatever’s doing this has us cut off.”

“The Mist Queen.”

“I heard one of them saying that before she threw one of those blobs at another woman here.” Warren shuddered. “I don’t know where they are right now. Last I saw they were trying to break into a house two lots over. Two idiots I’ve been trying to evict for a while because they keep shooting off these massive fireworks after midnight.”

“That might be just what we need,” said Edgar. “I shot one of those parasites and it exploded.”

Warren raised a hand to his chin, contemplating this. “Better we hide. Who knows where they are.”

A window shattered somewhere in the back of the office. They both raised their guns, Edgar flicking off the safety as he took in the form shuffling out of a back room. A man, his body shriveling even as the parasite on his side swelled, contorting and breaking his spine to accommodate itself. “The Mist Queen is boarding this area,” he croaked out, the dead voice hoarse. “Are you ready to be boarded?” In his hands he held two more of the parasites, tentacles ready.

“Why’d it have to be you, Gary?” growled Warren. “Damn Mist Queen’s taking over my favorite tenants!” He shot Gary’s parasite without hesitation, the gray blob erupting into fire and blasting its victim to bits. “Guess we’re trying for that house, kid!”

They burst out of the burning office, Edgar’s ears still ringing. What on earth was in those things that made them explode? It had to be tied to the ozone he smelled, why the victims were shriveling up as the parasites grew bigger. The fog closed in on them but even through it they could see people stumbling their way. Their parasites had grown almost as large as their bodies, inflating so much their victims seemed to almost float across the ground, each gentle step carrying them with ease.

Edgar gulped and fired, taking out another and earning another blazing explosion that obliterated the poor host. Still the parasites sent their debilitated puppets forward, more of their ilk in hand, swollen football-shaped orbs taking control from all manner of places. They favored the head and shoulders but he saw them clinging everywhere they could; one floated along while dragging its puppet by the foot. Many threw parasites at them but they managed to dodge, Warren doing so by a hair.

The flames made the others shy away, and soon a path was cleared for them to charge down the park’s road toward the lot Warren had pointed out. Another mobile home, nearly indistinguishable from the rest, the door broken in and the previous tenants out on the front lawn, floating upward and making their way into the fog. Others still remained, blocking their way. Edgar and Warren held back from destroying these ones; if they did, they risked catching the home afire and lighting all the fireworks.

More came in behind them, but these ones did not try to attack or throw their parasites like the others. They stared at the two of them, a line of desiccated men, women and children at the complete mercy of their puppeteers, eyes almost begging them for help even as the tentacles pulled the lids back and worked their mouths and throats.

“The Mist Queen is boarding this area,” they called out in unison. “Are you ready to board?”

“The actual crap is the Mist Queen?” barked Warren, raising his gun. “I don’t believe in ghosts, so you’d better have something good!”

The hosts stopped, jerking their heads to look at each other. “We are the Mist Queen,” one said.

“What?” Warren scratched his head.

“The Mist Queen is no ghost,” another said. “Each of us is the Mist Queen.”

“All of us together, working as one.”

“United to serve the whole.”

“Each designed to a unique purpose.”

“We are to ready you to board.”

“Others will board you.”

“More will take care of you.”

“And the rest shall carry the Mist Queen to the next place.”

They all stopped and jerked their heads upward. “The rest of us is here.”

Edgar felt his skin grow cold as he looked at the fog, still as obscuring and opaque as before. Then he saw something move. Giant cords, tapering down from the sky, dozens of them. No, not cords; tentacles. Tentacles just like those on the parasites, elegant yet covered in rows upon rows of barbs. Had he not been trying so hard to find them they might have almost blended into the fog. The tentacles twisted upward, and the further he craned his neck the more he could make out an obscured, dark figure floating down. He heard the hot air balloon sound from before and the shape moved ahead, the fog parting to reveal what now draped its tendrils across the trailer park.

Its body matched that of its parasites but yet was so much more. The finned, inflated form was lined and supported by a frame of something white like bone, containing its swollen body like a cage. Rows upon rows of pods lined the protruding bottom side. Above them he could see the inner workings of the horror through the translucent hide, pulsating organs working to power the monstrosity. Bodies of the taken floated upward toward the pods, tentacles reaching and grabbing them before the pods opened sideways for their catch to be placed inside. The parasites relinquished their host and grabbed onto the outside of the pods, fusing with the flesh and wriggling their way back into the main body, returning to the center where rows of them hung like profane fruit. The pods closed once full, their prey now fully boarded and ready to be taken care of.

And at the front of the Mist Queen, the circular bulge opened. A single rose-colored eye gazed down, a long light band running across it while three slit-like pupils focused in on the two of them.

“You will board the Mist Queen,” said one of the hosts. She as well as the others the Mist Queen had taken started to float upward. “Even if you’re not ready, you will board.”

The Mist Queen moved itself over and tentacles dropped down around them, a trap of barbed tendrils barring their way even as they took the other people the parasites had claimed. A series of tentacles fell down toward them, shooting out of the Mist Queen’s main body.

“Get in the house!” yelled Warren, pushing Edgar ahead and out of the reach of the tentacles. “Find something and–”

Warren’s words devolved into shrieks of agony as several tentacles wrapped around him, digging their barbs into his arms, legs, torso. Soon they were dragging him up into the air to board alongside all the other people that had called this park home.

Edgar managed to tear himself away from the sight and got back onto his feet, dashing past the hosts that now floated up to rejoin the rest of their kind. Edgar could almost feel that inhuman, banded eye glaring at him, somehow seeing him in so many ways he couldn’t comprehend. He got to the door of the mobile home, loaded a shot and fired it up at the Mist Queen, but if it did anything he could see no evidence of it. The Mist Queen must have been far beyond the parts of itself thrown on the ground to catch prey, reinforced against such paltry weapons.

But if the house had something with more punch…

Edgar threw himself into the home, loading another cartridge into the rifle even as his eyes shot around, looking for anything that could save him. He heard the firing sound again and it finally clicked that this was the Mist Queen using whatever it had in its form to propel itself through the air. The windows grew darker as the horror stopped itself just over him and he could hear wood cracking and tearing as its tentacles shot down and bombarded the roof. More tendrils blocked off the windows and open doorway, leaving him trapped and soon to be as exposed as a rabbit whose home had been dug out by a starving wolf.

Finally, he caught sight of a colossal tube of the sort a young him had only imagined having the money to purchase. He moved over to it, scrambling around and eventually finding a lighter. He grabbed both and moved to the center of the home, looking around for some sort of wick he could use to light it from a distance before–

The roof caved in and he could barely put up his hands in time to protect his head as the wood and debris rained on him. Then down came a tentacle and his waist erupted into seething pain as the Mist Queen grasped him in its clutches. It felt like a burning ring of fire had closed tight around his midsection, his skin erupting into welts as the barbs dug in, his legs numbing within seconds. The Mist Queen started to retract him out of the mobile home and it wouldn’t be long before it brought him up to one of those pods to board him.

The gun was gone, fallen off his shoulders from his rough climb into the air. The fireworks lay below him. Even as Edgar shrieked in pain his hand moved on its own, scrambling for the sheath at his side and popping it open. He kept his hand clear of the tentacle around his waist, just managing to pull the knife free without touching the barbs and bringing it up.

He sawed at the tentacle, cutting it off and sending him back to the ground. He hit the debris-covered floor of the home, a whole new host of pain joining the tentacle that had loosened itself from his waist. He cried out again, his knife lost to the side. The Mist Queen still lay overhead, only a matter of time before it sent down another tentacle to board him.

There it was, just within reach. The tube of fireworks, spared from destruction by the falling debris. He still had the lighter. He could see the wick sticking out as if beckoning to him.

“You will still board,” called out a parasite’s host as it floated by. Even as Edgar fought for his life, all parts of the Mist Queen still acted like he was just a small part of a normal day.

He cried out in excruciation as he flicked the lighter on and set the wick ablaze. He pushed himself and rolled away, his body finally giving out from the countless wounds covering him, leaving him on his back.

The fireworks went off a distance away, countless shots flying up into the sky and blanketing the Mist Queen in their multi-colored glory. Blast after blast hit its underside, searing tentacles, blasting pods and charring the hanging parasites. He could almost see the banded eye widening as the firing sound emitted again, trying to carry the floating horror away from the constant bombardment.

The firing sound was soon accompanied by an eruption that dwarfed all those emitted from the hosts, and Edgar just managed to see a fiery blaze erupt on one side of the Mist Queen, sending it off-tilt and moving toward the ground as he descended into unconsciousness.

Edgar awoke to find himself in a bed, most of his body wrapped up and every part of him hurting like he had just been put through a trash compactor. He must be at the clinic in the town near the trailer park. A nurse entered the room and turned to him when he awoke.

“Good to see you’re awake,” said the nurse. “You have a lot of questions right now, don’t you? Just know you’re safe for now, though I have someone who wants to talk to you.”

“Okay,” said Edgar. He couldn’t do anything else; he was trapped, but at least he still lived.

The nurse nodded and left, soon replaced by a man in a suit. Edgar had only ever seen men like him in movies. “Hello, young man,” he said. “You’re quite lucky to be alive. After all, it’s not every day a gas main explodes and takes out an entire trailer park, plus some of the surrounding area.”

“That’s not–” Edgar stopped. It clicked. “I suppose I am.” As if anyone would believe the truth, but surely the man across from him had to make sure Edgar didn’t even try. “Well… At least it won’t happen again. It’s all over with, isn’t it?”

“We’re cleaning up all the other… remnants in the area,” said the man. “We’ve picked up the mobile home park, the lake and the burned house nearby. That one yours?”

“No, the one past it,” said Edgar. “At least they’re all gone, right?”

“There were none dropped at the house past the burned one,” said the man. He started, his calm expression giving way for just a second, then reached up to his ear. “I’ll take my leave for now. Get the nurse to call someone to get you. You won’t be going back to your house for a while.” Before Edgar could say anything else, he darted out the door.

Edgar lay in bed, skin growing clammy even as his exhaustion caught up with him again. He faded back into sleep but not before he glanced out the window and, in the early misty morning, almost thought he could see a small, floating, translucent shape moving through the vapor.

Credit: Justin Arthur

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