“Brr! It looks kind of spooky out there,” Honey commented, as she guided her car along a deserted country road. “It’s the kind of night where you’d believe any kind of story someone told you – you know, about ghosts and witches and things that go bump in the night.”

“In that case,” Trixie, beside her, began.

“No! Don’t try to tell me any of them,” Honey interrupted.

Diana, in the back seat, agreed. “Definitely not. We’d probably scare ourselves half to death and Honey might lose control if something sudden happens – like, if a dog ran out in front of us – and we’d end up in a ditch.”

Trixie let out an entirely artificial sigh. “You two are no fun.”

They were on their way home from a college friend’s twenty-first birthday party, held in her home town. When they had left the party, the night had been chilly but clear, illuminated by a full moon. In the half-hour or so since then, swirls of mist had begun to form.

“Ugh, I think it’s getting worse.” Honey slowed as the road dipped down into a hollow and the mist thickened. “I can hardly even see the road any more.”

It thinned for a minute or two, and then all of a sudden the word mist no longer seemed appropriate. What they had entered could only be called a fog. They slowed to a crawl.

“I think I’d better turn around,” Honey decided. “Can anyone see anywhere to do that?”

“Here, maybe?” Trixie pointed to a wide, flat area beside the road. “If we watch carefully for lights?”

“I guess it will have to do.” Honey made the manoeuvre, knuckles turning white as she gripped the wheel. “I just hope we can find our way out of this again and we don’t meet anyone else.”

She followed the road for several minutes, but the edge of the fog never emerged.

“We must have gone back further than we came before we got into this,” she commented, at length. “And I think it’s getting even worse.”

“Now what do we do?” asked Di. “Honey, you can’t drive in this! It’s like there’s no road at all.”

“Well, I can’t exactly stop,” she answered. “What if someone comes up behind us? They’ll crash into us. We need to find somewhere to pull over, I guess, but I don’t exactly know where we are…”

“Is that a driveway?” Trixie asked, pointing to her side of the road. “Pull in there!”

Honey did as suggested, soon coming to an ornate set of wrought iron gates in a tall, brick wall topped with matching wrought iron spikes.

“It looks kind of fancy,” Trixie commented. “I bet it’s a big house.”

“I can’t see any lights anywhere.” Honey switched off the headlights for a moment. “In fact, I don’t see anything at all.”

“Considering we can see exactly three feet, I don’t think that’s surprising,” Diana replied, a note of tension in her voice. “What are we going to do? We can’t stay here all night.”

A vehicle passed right behind them at reckless speed, only barely missing the rear end of their car. Another came only moments later.

“How can they even–” Trixie began, then broke off at the sound of an almighty crash. “Quick! We’d better go and see what’s happened.”

She threw open the door and began running along the side of the road, stumbling every now and then over unseen obstacles. But she could not find the crash scene.

“Trixie? Where are you?” she heard Honey call, after a few minutes’ searching.

“Over here!”

“Did you find it?”

“No!”

She began walking back the way she had come, meeting Honey and Diana after only a few paces.

“Maybe they just bumped into something and kept driving,” Di suggested. “There’s a tree back there that’s got a big scrape on it.”

“I guess they must have,” Trixie answered. “Unless they crashed right off the road and we just can’t see them.”

“Well, let’s go back to the car.” Honey made a helpless gesture. “We can’t find anyone to help and it’s cold out here, not to mention kind of damp and definitely spooky.”

They retraced their steps to the place where they had left the car, but even before they got there, Trixie knew that something was wrong.

“This was the place, wasn’t it?” she asked. “Unless there’s two sets of these gates?”

“Where is the car?”

Trixie placed both hands over her face. “I’m so sorry! This is all my fault!”

“Let’s not panic just yet.” Despite her words, Honey’s voice held a detectable hint of panic. “Maybe there are two sets of gates and we’re parked at the other one. We’ll just keep walking a little further and check.”

But in another few minutes it became clear that this was not the case. They returned to the gates and examined the scene as best they could.

“I think this is my footprint,” Trixie decided, as Honey’s phone light glanced across it. “I remember hitting a muddy patch off the side of the driveway before I got to the hard shoulder of the road.”

“That would mean this is definitely where I left the car and it’s definitely not still here.” Honey stopped and took a couple of breaths. “So, what do we do now?”

“I don’t have phone signal,” Diana almost wailed.

Honey checked her phone. “Neither do I.”

“I think I left mine in the car.” Trixie patted her pockets in vain, as she turned to the gates. “Maybe we should try this house. Maybe there’s someone there who can help us.”

“If the gates are unlocked.” Diana shivered. “But even then, if it looks like it’s from a horror movie, I’m coming straight back here.”

Trixie went up to them and undid the latch. “There’s not even a lock. Come on.”

The gate swung open with a creak and the three stepped through. After hesitating a moment, Honey closed it behind them. Trees overhung the drive on both sides and between the darkness and the fog, they could see nothing. The moon hid behind a cloud and gave no help.

“Oh, this is even creepier than the road,” Honey commented, in a whisper. “Walk faster; I want to get this over with as quickly as we can.”

Huddling together, they followed the drive for several minutes, but a house never came into sight. The drive just seemed to keep going and going and going, without ever reaching a destination.

“Maybe that’s it up there,” Trixie suggested, pointing to an area up ahead without so many trees. “I think I can see something that looks a bit like a roof.”

As they walked uphill, the fog suddenly thinned. The three stopped short.

“Okay. So, it’s not a house,” Trixie admitted, in a rather strangled voice. “I think I’m done with making suggestions today. My ideas just don’t seem to be working right.”

“Not a house,” Di repeated, faintly. “That’s kind of an understatement.”

“While I can see that none of this is your fault, Trixie, and that your suggestions don’t usually turn out quite as badly as they seem to be doing today,” Honey told her, with a rising note of hysteria in her voice, “I’d really have to agree that that’s the best idea right now, because that’s not just not a house, which is a category of things that has lots of things I don’t mind in it – such as barns and picnic shelters and offices and all kinds of things like that – it’s actually, in fact, a mausoleum, which means that we’re in a cemetery, on a cold, dark, foggy night, with no car and no way of getting away and very little idea of where we actually are.”

“And I still have no phone signal,” Di added.

“We’re in kind of a valley, I think,” Trixie commented, peering around. “I guess it’s kind of a black spot. Maybe it just wasn’t worth fixing, seeing as no one lives here.”

“As if we needed to be reminded of that!” Honey took a calming breath. “Okay. So, what are we going to do now?”

Trixie shook her head. “Don’t look at me. I’m not making any more suggestions, remember?”

“I’m not making the decisions!” Di added. “But I guess the options are either we go back the way we came, or stay here, and I know which one I prefer.”

Honey nodded. “Okay, then, we’ll go back. But we need to start thinking of a plan for what we do after that, because it’s not going to be all that long until we get there.”

“Isn’t it?”

“What do you mean, Trixie?” Di demanded. “Of course, it’s not going to take very long. It only took us a couple of minutes to walk here.”

“Yes,” Trixie replied, slowly. “But which path did we come here on?”

Behind them, the thing they had thought was a driveway split into two near-identical paths, each angled in a different direction.

“That one?” Di suggested, pointing to the one on the right, while Honey pointed to that on the left. “Or, was it the other one?”

Honey shivered. “Maybe if we walk a short way down one of them and turn around, we’ll be able to see if the roof looks the same.”

After a moment of confusion, they chose the one on the right and carried out the plan. But the fog seemed to have moved again, swallowing up the mausoleum.

“This is no good!” Honey wailed. “What are we going to do now?”

“Maybe it just means that this is the wrong path.” Di took a tentative step back the other way. “If we try the other one, maybe we’ll be able to see it.”

“Okay.” Honey grasped hold of each of her friends’ arms. “Let’s try that.”

A minute later, Trixie commented, “I can see it again.”

“Is this right?” Honey wondered, peering at it. “I think it looks the same, but I’m not certain.”

“I think so,” Di answered, and turned to Trixie.

“Still not making suggestions,” she muttered, “but I kind of think the other path was the right one – only, don’t take my word for it!”

The three shared an uneasy look, then continued down their chosen path.

“I think the fog’s thinning again,” Trixie noted, a short time later as they passed by a looming angel statue. “If we’d seen this on the way in, we’d have know where we were a lot earlier. Oops! I spoke too soon.”

Without warning, they could see almost nothing at all. Trixie looked back over her shoulder, but the angel had disappeared.

“We have to stop.” Honey’s grip tightened on both of their arms. “We’ll trip and fall into an open grave, or something, if we wander around in the fog like this.”

“But it’s chilly,” Di objected. “I feel like it’s trying to get inside me. Can’t we just kind of walk really slowly?”

Honey gulped audibly. “I guess so. But it has to be very, very slowly, because I can’t think of anything worse than falling into a grave, right now, and considering the luck we’ve had over the last hour, it’s exactly what’s going to happen if we try to go fast.”

They edged along for some time, trying to feel their way without touching anything other than the ground. Once or twice, they strayed off the path and had to find it again. After ten agonising minutes, their path rose enough that they could see a little more once more.

“Okay. I think we can walk again,” Honey decided, but only a few paces later she came to a complete stop. “Only, I’m sure this isn’t the right path.”

They had arrived at a T-intersection. All three looked back the way they had come, every detail obliterated by the fog.

“Well, I’m not going back through there!” Diana shook her head to reinforce her point.

Honey shivered at the thought. “No. Definitely not. But which way do we go now? Because I’m not staying right here, either.”

“Any thoughts, Trixie? Because my ideas aren’t working either. Or, do we just have to do whatever Di says? Because she must have been right about the right path last time, because mine was definitely wrong.”

Trixie shook her head. “Unless we left the path and got on a different one while we were wandering around in there. But I think it’s definitely Di’s turn to decide. Go on, Di. You can’t do any worse than I already did.”

“Are you sure about that?” Di didn’t let anyone answer, but pointed to the right. “Let’s try that way. Because if the right path was the one on the right and we went left last time, surely the right way this time must be to the right.”

“Right,” Trixie agreed, as they turned that way. “Maybe the gates are just up ahead. I think I can see the wall.”

“The last time you thought you saw something, it turned out to not be the thing you thought it was going to be, but something much worse,” Honey pointed out rather gloomily. “Only I can’t think of anything worse than a wall that this could be, except maybe just not being a wall, when we’ve got our hopes up.”

“Well, I don’t have my hopes up,” Di answered. “I’m firmly convinced that we’re going to be in here forever and that we’re probably already dead and we just haven’t accepted it yet. That’s why we can’t find the way out, because we’re actually trapped here.”

“Ooh! Do you think that could happen?” Trixie asked. “Maybe that big bang was actually us having a crash and those other cars we saw were the ones who caused it.”

“I don’t feel dead,” Honey objected.

Trixie laughed. “But you haven’t ever been dead before. You don’t know what it feels like.”

“Well, I hope it doesn’t feel like this!”

“Shh! Did you hear that?” Trixie peered around, trying to find the source of the noise. “There it is again!”

“It’s people,” Di whispered back. “But where are they?”

Honey took a small step forward. “Maybe it really is the wall and they’re on the other side of it and maybe there’s a house close by where maybe we can get some help.”

Trixie set off in that direction. “Let’s go and see.”

“I thought you weren’t making any more suggestions,” Di teased, as she and Honey followed along.

“I forgot about that,” Trixie admitted. “But we were going to do this anyway, no matter whether I suggested it or not.”

Honey sighed. “Probably. But that doesn’t exactly make me feel any better about it.”

As they reached the thing Trixie had seen, which indeed did appear to be the cemetery wall, Trixie made a gesture calling for quiet. Male voices talked and laughed, the words only sometimes intelligible. Sometimes, other sounds intruded. A faint light brought the cast iron spikes into relief against the white of the fog.

“What are they doing?” Honey wondered, in a breathy whisper.

“I’m going to take a look.” Trixie peered around, searching for a way up. “Over there!”

She made her way to a gnarled, old tree that overhung the wall and soon scaled it. One of its massive branches lay almost horizontal. Once Trixie had positioned herself on it, she got a good view of what lay beyond. Her mouth dropped open in astonishment.

“What is it?” Di demanded, once her friend had scrambled back to the ground.

Trixie waited until they’d put a short distance between themselves and the wall. “There’s no house, just grass and trees and things. And they’re not going to help us.”

“How can you tell?”

She turned to Honey. “Because they’ve got your car. And the other ones we saw – the ones we thought had crashed. And a couple of others, too.”

“My car? How many of them are there? Do you think we can go over there and get it?”

Trixie shook her head. “There’s four boys, that I can see. I don’t think any of them is older than about fifteen, but they’re all bigger than us. And the one that’s closest is huge and stupid-looking and he was smashing things with a lump of wood for the fun of it – that’s the noise we heard earlier, I think.”

“We need to go for the police.” Di looked from one of her friends to the other. “Just as soon as we find our way out of this stupid cemetery, we can start walking back along the road and sooner or later we’ll have to either get somewhere, or get a phone signal.

“How are we ever going to describe where this is?” Trixie objected. “We need to trick them into letting us have the car back.”

“How do you think we could do that?” Di demanded.

“We’ll think of something,” Trixie answered. “If the three of us work together… Hold on. Where’s Honey?”

They each turned in a full circle, but neither could see her anywhere.

“What do we do now?” Di asked, gripping Trixie’s arm so hard that it hurt. “We can’t look for her because we might get lost, but we can’t not look for her. And we can’t call out, because they might hear us.”

“I don’t know!” Trixie answered. “I don’t even understand how she could leave without us noticing.”

“Anything could be happening in this fog and we wouldn’t know about it! There could be hordes of people, all sneaking around, but they know their way around, so they don’t keep getting lost like we do.”

Trixie froze. “You don’t think someone took her? Snuck up while we were talking and just snatched her?”

Di’s gaze turned in the direction of the wall. “Maybe it was them.”

“We need to get back to the tree,” Trixie answered. “I just hope we can find it again. The way things are around here, I wouldn’t be surprised if we couldn’t.”

But the tree still stood in the same location and they found it without difficulty. As soon as Trixie put her hand on the trunk, she suppressed a groan.

“She’s here,” she told Di, in a whisper.

Honey gestured for silence. The two below waited impatiently as she listened intently to something that they could only hear snatches of. At length, she slid down to the ground and pulled them a little away.

“They’re going to do it again,” she told them. “They’ve got some kind of thing which stops the phone reception and they were thinking of turning it off and going away, only they’ve got a friend who sends them some kind of signal when a car is coming, and he’s sent it just now. There’s some other person out there that they’re going to try to trick into leaving their car so they can steal it.”

“We’ve got to stop them!” Trixie stamped in frustration. “But how? How do we even get out of here? We can’t even climb over the wall, because of the spikes.”

On the other side of the wall, two engines started. Trixie cast an agonised look at the wall.

“Maybe we could follow it back to the gates?” Di suggested. “We couldn’t possibly get lost if we just keep a hand on the wall the whole time.”

“But what if we find something in the way?” asked Honey. “And mightn’t we fall in a hole or something?”

“And do we have that much time?” Trixie shook her head. “Maybe there’s a way over the wall if we go back up the tree. Honey, you go first and I’ll follow and I’ll kind of lower you down on the other side.”

“Can’t we do it the other way around?” Honey wondered.

“It’s your car,” Trixie replied, giving her a little push. “Quickly! They’re getting away.”

“Right now, I’d be happy if we could get away,” Honey answered, while scrambling back up the tree. “Okay. I’m up. Are you coming?”

She needn’t have asked, as Trixie followed right behind her. They shifted back and forth, trying different positions, but none of them allowed Honey to drop down on the other side.

“Move up a bit higher,” Trixie suggested. “If I can just get a bit closer…”

Continue to part two.

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