In the darkness we lie, and if  you wish to see us, you must die, but calling in the fog, you will come to us...

Soon...

The cool night air washed over me, bringing with it a thick, sleepy fog, but I could still see the moon, hanging full and cold up above. A time for the creatures of other worlds to cross over, and feast on the unwary and weak, my mum had always said. But she was dead, and with her her warnings had been forgotten, long ago.

It was probably stupid of me, but I walked down the creaky old steps of my porch, through the backyard, past the swing set my dad made years ago, past my silent old dog, and down to the lake. And there I sat, listening to the lull of the waves. I started to drift off, and in my dreams I was sitting in a rotting old boat, next to a ferryman hooded in wisps and black.

The ferryman rowed slowly down a river lit with murk and bioluminescence, occasionally under a dripping cave roof, and sometimes under a ceiling of stars. Far in the distance, a mist was encroaching, and the wails of voices unlike any of this earth could be heard. Faintly, at first, but louder and louder, yet the mist never seemed to get any closer. Strangely, I wanted to get closer, though in my bones I felt an ancient sense of foreboding, begging me to turn back.

The voices sang to me, of a lonely, quiet night, as the stars called down to me, and promised that I would have my lost childhood again. As the ferryman rowed down the river, we reached a wide lake surrounded by weeping willows and tiny tassels of love-lies-bleeding. Here we stopped, and the ferryman turned to me, his face nothing more than a grinning skull.

"My job isss done... From here you musssst move forwardsss alone... Bessst of luck..." he hissed out, and suddenly I was left standing in the lake as he rowed back where we had come.

Slowly but surely, step by step, I walked closer and closer to the mysterious mist from which the unearthly voices emanated. It lay low and heavy over the lake, and concealed all that might await. And suddenly the song they sang changed, to one which I recognized as one my mother had sang to me, once upon a time.  

When I had walked for seemingly an eternity, I began to walk into the mist. Although I sensed that I might never return, I was no longer afraid. The voices were with me, mysterious yet comforting, singing that same haunting melody. The mist began to swirl around me, enfolding me in its cold clutches, and I could feel myself becoming less and less substantial, until I vanished...

The next morning, she is reported to have vanished. Her neighbors did not notice a disturbance, and a police search reveals no sign of a struggle. No one knows what happened that foggy night, under the light of a full moon...