The dwindling twilight sparked a fiery glow within the shrouded mist as it slithered across the high mountain pass like a living tapestry woven seamlessly of fog, vapor, smoke and the collective gathering of low-lying storm clouds. From the bottom of the road below, naked eyes supported by steel nerves could look up in brief intervals through the breaks to the clearing beyond and perhaps see the old woman in the rocking chair on that outcrop known as The Devil’s Courtyard; a sheer 6000 foot high ledge rising treacherously above the valley floor and roaring river far below.
The mist moved steadily and with serpent stealthiness it slid across the surrounding peaks and up out of the valleys while the dying sun cast foreboding shadows on the most ancient of the world’s mountain ranges. It moved and grew in breadth, concealing and then briefly revealing a time and place, not so long ago where those few posessing “the sight” could still see beyond the veil to what was yet to come, and perhaps tame the wild terror that lies dormant within the fathomless depths of us all. The depths few trevass far down below the mountains and deep in the hidden ravines and caverns of man’s dark geographies.
The mist moved and grew, as it circled and sourced from a familiar sight chilling the blood of any who dared gaze up towards it. For high atop the prominent ledge of that rocky outcrop bearing the evil moniker and among all that lay silent and static below, in eerie synchronicity, the cloud tapestry slithered and grew in rhythm to a very old woman in a wooden rocking chair. Her feet dangled carelessly over the cliff as she rocked with the cadence of a great weaver at the loom, who’s creation was the serpent-like textile of this giant cloak of iridescent clouds rolling down the mountains and ravines in all directions, appearing to materialize from this singular place as she exhaled, then billowing out below her hands and beyond her feet, into the void.
From up close, one could see the old woman rocking and smoking an old cob pipe, swaying back and forth at the fragile ledge separating life and certain death far below. In the crook of her arm she held a small child loosely across the chest and puffed on her pipe with one hand, exhaling grayish-white puffs weaving their way into the surrounding mist and giving it breath and life and animus. The toddler rocked gently in unison with the old woman and occasionally grasped at the smokey clouds with his tiny hands. They both looked outward and down into the dark depths and then the child turned and fixed a lingered gaze up at her gaunt face, weathered and cracked as if it were made of the same bare rock where they swayed precariously together. The child stared intently behind the wisps of white and grey strands of hair hanging down the old womans brow and beyond into a pair of pale and lifeless eyes of only milky sclera as blank as an untouched canvas and as formless and edgeless as the surrounding cloud and smoke tapestries. Shadows and clouds grew therein like a formidable storm front about to break and became mirrored within the shrouded depths below, now immersed in hues of dark blue, grey and black and within those eyes, as so below… the dark mist moved and grew.
A bold of lightning flashed from behind the old womans eyes alone and the milky white sclera became engulfed with the infernal hues of red and oranges flames. She reached down to the ground and replaced the pipe in her hand with a hatchet, lifting the blade high above her and the child. As she drew the blade down with one fell swing, the storm clouds, and mist and smoke suddenly cleaved in half and parted in opposite directions like a giant curtain at the prominence of the blade and then rolled down the mountain sides and into the valleys, slithering low in the shadows and creeping silently through the towns and villages and surroundinghomesteads where the mist moved…and grew and began to feed. The old woman grasped the child by the waist and planted both her feet on the ledge where she stood. The chair continued to rock without slowing as she walked to the other side of it, then she briefly paused while the child reached out a tiny hand to stop the chair’s motion.
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