The New Neighbor

back, the shrill, tangy voice of the fat woman in the Muumuu sounded again and they spun around to see her jogging down her front walk toward her husband.

Alana patted her cameraman's arm and said, 'Get this, get this.'

'But there's nothing happening,' he said.

Alana and Steve went around the pickup and back up on the sidewalk where Malcolm and Will taped the fat woman as she pushed her husband aside and said, 'Well? Are you gonna stop this nonsense, or not?'

Her husband put a hand on her shoulder and quietly spoke to her, but she pushed him away angrily, put her fists to her enormous hips and leaned into the window, pushing her face close to Pastor Quillerman's. 'People are gonna start calling the police, you know! People don't like to hear this kinda crap spouted at their front door!'

Her husband stepped forward again, took her arm and said, 'Listen to me, Betty, he's -'

'Get away from me and let me speak!'

In a voice that contradicted his meek appearance, he shouted, 'Dammit, Betty, you know he's right.'

She stared at him in shock, her jaw slack, arms limp at her sides. Finally: 'What did you say?'

'He's right. We both know he's right.'

Neither of them moved for a long moment. The vapors of their breaths mingled in a small cloud before their faces.

'Why don't the two of you go inside and talk about this,' Pastor Quillerman said softly? When they turned to him, he smiled and nodded encouragingly. 'Please, go inside. We'll get together later.'

'Thank you,' the man said, then took his wife's hand. They turned and did as the pastor had said, ignoring Alana and Steve and the cameras as they passed. The man looked almost sick with sadness, while the woman seemed barely able to hold in her anger.

The reporters dove toward the pickup and Quiller man's open window, but he was already rolling it up. He put the pickup into gear and drove away slowly, his voice sounding over the loudspeaker once again.

'Dammit,' Steve muttered, looking at his watch. 'We're gonna have to go. We've got a deadline.'

'You're leaving?' Alana asked, surprised.

'I think the only story here has already been reported,' he said, nodding toward the Garry house.

'Weren't you listening? Those people actually believed him. They think their neighbor is a demon.'

Steve grinned. 'Gullible people aren’t exactly news. This town’s got more churches than gas stations.” He turned to Malcolm and said, 'We've a gotta get going.' Then to Alana: 'Nice meeting you.' They went to their van.

“Let's stick around a while, Will,' Alana said. 'I’ve got a feeling this is gonna get weird.”

She was right.

Chapter 22

The Mist

George and Robby Pritchard stood at their living room window watching Pastor Quiller man's pickup drive back and forth. Jen was seated in her dad's recliner behind them. She'd served them some stew earlier and the bowls were still on the coffee table. None of them had spoken for a while.

They'd watched Mr. and Mrs. LaBianco and then Sheri MacNeil approach the pickup, and they'd watched the reporters standing by, waiting patiently for a few crumbs. Occasionally they heard the voices of people shouting at Pastor Quillerman from their porches. They called him foul names and told him to keep his opinions and his religion to himself. But Quillerman ignored them and continued to warning of the danger they were in, appealing to the goodness in them, the goodness not yet stolen away by their new neighbor.

Across the street and one house to the north, Mr. and Mrs. Weyland came out to the sidewalk, both wearing bathrobes. Mrs. Weyland had carried a stained brown paper bag and her husband a plastic green garbage bag. When Pastor Quillerman drove by, they reached into their bags and began to throw garbage at him – cans, cartons, boxes and old slimy fruits and vegetables that made a thick wet mess on the pickup's hood and windshield. As they threw garbage, they shouted at him to go away before they shot out his tires and removed him bodily from the neighborhood themselves. Pastor Quillerman spoke to them calmly through the loudspeaker, imploring them to take a look at themselves, to think about what they were doing and why, and to think about what kind of people they'd been just a few days ago, before they'd met their new neighbor.

And through it all, the odd mist had remained.

Once things had calmed down a little and the only action outside was Pastor Quillerman's slow and monotonous trips up and down the street, Robby paid close attention to the mist. It moved slowly, sometimes changing direction abruptly, and occasionally a smoky tendril or two of the mist would rise fluidly above the restless surface, reminding Robby of Lorelle standing naked outside the glass door while the mist crawled up her body. He closed his eyes a moment and gave his head a couple of hard shakes. He didn't want to think of her.

The afternoon darkened with the approach of evening. The streetlights on Deerfield came on as the clouds went from murky gray to a mottled charcoal. Quillerman turned on the pickup's headlights and their beams gave an even eerier quality to the mist. Robby watched as it moved with what almost appeared to be a life of its own… a purpose. His eyes scanned the mist from left to right until he spotted something strange at the base of a power pole on the opposite side of the street between the LaBianco house and the Parkers’. Robby squinted and leaned forward a bit, not quite sure of what he was seeing. A tentacle of mist seemed to be winding its way slowly up the pole.

Robby reached over, tapped his George’s arm and said, 'Dad? You ever seen mist do anything like this before?'

George looked out the window with heavy, preoccupied eyes. 'Not around here,' he drawled flatly.

'Isn't it kinda weird?'

'I don't know,' he shrugged. 'Not really.'

'I mean that.' Robby pointed at the power pole.

The mist, winding steadily up the pole like a snake, had nearly reached the top. Once it did, it moved quickly and engulfed the gray-metal transformer in a small cloud.

George said, 'What in the hell is -'

Before he finished his sentence, there was an explosion of sparks that rained down on the ground and -

– the streetlights went dark at the same moment that -

– the light behind every window on Deerfield went out and -

– the Pritchard house became dark and the refrigerator’s hum fell silent and -

– the mist that had climbed up the power pole dissolved quickly as the sparks that fell down around it hit the ground and bounced and rolled like glowing marbles.

'What the hell was that?' Jen asked, her voice weak and panicky.

'I-I'm not sure,' George said, putting a hand on her shoulder, 'but why don't you go get the flashlights out of the tool drawer in the kitchen.'

She nodded and left the room. George moved to a phone, put the receiver to his ear a moment, then replaced it, saying, 'Dead.'

Robby watched the reporter outside. She'd been sitting on the hood of her car with the cameraman standing beside her when the transformer exploded. She had fallen from the car and landed in a protective crouch while the man had spun around, leaned through the car's open window and grabbed his camera. But Robby knew they hadn't seen the mist climbing that power pole as he had.

'Mr. Prosky told me she could move around as a mist,' Robby said quietly.

'You mean Lorelle?'

Robby nodded. 'He said he'd seen her do it.'

George took a moment to digest that bit of information, then pressed both hands over his face and rubbed