Now he turned to Eric, his intense eyes fixed on him.  “Why is that?”

Sensing that his time for remaining quiet was over, Eric replied, “I wouldn’t know.”

The no-longer-foggy man stared at him with those piercing blue eyes, studying him, considering.

Eric stared back.  He wasn’t sure what this mysterious person wanted him to say, but he had no intention of playing along.  This was, after all, the man who left three monsters to kill him and then clubbed him over the head and threw him out a loading dock door.  He would have liked to walk over there and knock the stupid kid on his pompous ass…but of course that brought him back to those three monsters.  Punching anyone who could do such a thing simply seemed like a very dumb idea.

Finally, the young stranger turned and looked down into the darkness below them again, as if deciding that Eric really didn’t have an answer for him.  “I’ve never come across anything like this place before.  It’s wrong.  It scares me.”

“It’s a scary place,” Eric reasoned.

“I know about scary places.  I’ve been to a lot of them.  Just a few months ago I was in Mexico.  There are these caves there…”  He trailed off and stared down into that darkness for a moment, his eyes distant, distracted, haunted.  Then he blinked it away and smiled at him.  “Four men went insane and ate their own hands.”

Eric couldn’t make himself hide his revulsion.  He didn’t know what was worse, the idea of men devouring their own hands or the fact that this psychopath could relate such a thing with a smile on his face.

But perhaps the smile was nothing more than a mask.  Perhaps that haunted look that had passed over his eyes a moment before had revealed some shred of his humanity.

He hoped so, at least.

“But this…”  The man gazed down into the darkness again.  “This feels so wrong…  No matter where I am, the wrongness of this place doesn’t go away.”

Eric had no idea what this meant, but he didn’t bother saying so.

“My tricks don’t work here.  Why?”

Eric actually glanced around, expecting to find someone else here with them.  But they were alone.  The question was obviously for him.  “What?”

There was no smile this time when the stranger turned his eyes on him.  He glared.  “I can’t shift here.  Why can’t I shift here?”

“Why would I know that?”

“Don’t play games with me.”

“I’m not playing games,” Eric replied calmly.  “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.  I don’t even know what you mean by ‘shift.’”

For a moment, the young man continued to glare at him silently.  He seemed to be trying to decide if he was being lied to, but Eric had no idea why this person would think he had any answers for him.

“Who do you work for?”

Eric stared back at him.  “What?”

“Answer me.”

“Creek Bend High School.”

This seemed to catch him off guard.  “What?”

“I’m an English teacher.”

“I told you not to play games with me.”

“And I told you I’m not playing games.  Just who do you think I am?”

“I don’t know.  FBI maybe.”

“FBI…?  Really?”

“Maybe.”

Eric chuckled.  “Right.  I’d make a great FBI agent, wouldn’t I?  Stumbling around here like an idiot, nearly getting myself killed.  Repeatedly.  Cursing at that ape-thing that was throwing rocks at me back at the lake.  That was very professional.  Even better, I should join the CIA.  Become a secret agent.”

The foggy man, still missing his fogginess, considered him for another moment.

Eric considered him back.  Did this guy actually think he was some kind of government agent?  It seemed ridiculous that anyone could mistake someone like him for something so grand.

“You weren’t carrying a gun at the factory,” the stranger recalled.  “Or a badge.”

“I don’t sound like a very responsible federal agent.  And while we’re on the subject, let’s talk about you hitting me over the head back there, why don’t we?”

“I want to know who you are.”

Apparently, Foggy didn’t care to discuss that matter at the moment.

“I’d rather talk about who you are.”

“Answer me.”

“I don’t have any answers,” growled Eric, beginning to lose his patience.

The young man stared at him, apparently still trying to decide if he was playing dumb or legitimately stupid.

“How do you do it, anyway?  How do you make the golems?”

Again, the stranger lowered his face and stared down into the darkness.  Eric didn’t think he would answer, but like so many other times today, he was wrong.  “I don’t know, honestly.  I just can.  I find a container.  A box, a closet, the trunk of a car, anything.  And then I…  I just…funnel some part of myself into it.”

“A part of yourself?”

“It’s difficult to explain.  It’s like a kind of energy deep inside me.”  He glanced up from the empty abyss beneath them and met Eric’s eyes as he said, “I’m not sure…but I think it might be my soul.”

“Your soul…?”

“I’m not sure,” he said again, as if afraid that the man he’d three times tried to kill might think he was bugshit crazy for saying such a thing.

Now it was Eric’s turn to gaze down into the darkness and ponder.  His soul?  Really?  He could hardly deny the possibility that a man could utilize his own soul to make monsters, certainly not when he’d already been attacked by three such beasts in only a few short hours.  But there was something profoundly unsettling about using one’s own soul to create such foul abominations.

The man went on:  “I funnel that energy out and into something…incredible.  And I make it live.  That’s a grossly simplified description, but it’s as good as I can explain it.  They don’t make words for what I do.  Not in any language.”

Eric had no doubt.  “And the fog?”

“Fog?”

“That half-disappearing thing…  Where you look like you’re standing in an invisible fog.”

“Huh.  Never heard it described like that before.”

“So how do you do it?”

“I shift back and forth through physical space.”

“How does that work, exactly?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“You have to grasp the concept that there are things beyond our world.”

“I really don’t think that’s going to be a problem for me today.”

The foggy man shrugged and said, “Reality is layered.  It’s a spectrum.  The world exists across most of this spectrum, but most life on earth only exists within a small portion of it.  Humans, in particular, only exist within a narrow band of it.  I can slide along that spectrum, out of that narrow band, effectively disappearing from this world altogether.  Or I can shift to the very edge of that band and only partially fade away, if I choose.  You wouldn’t think only partially leaving this plane of existence would be useful, but it turns out it scares the shit out of people.”

“It is exceptionally frightening to see.”

The man grinned.  He seemed quite proud of himself.

“So then, can you move between these two worlds without using the fissure?”

“No.  The two worlds here are completely separate.  All the worlds in all the fissures are.  They each have their own spectrums.  I can shift along the spectrum in any world, but I can’t just jump between worlds.  That’s pure science fiction.”

“Right.  What was I thinking?”

Again, he gazed down into the abyss.  “But it doesn’t matter in this place.  Nothing works here.  And I don’t know why.”

“Neither do I.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you want.  I don’t know why you can’t work your voodoo here.  I could guess it’s because the singularity screws everything up.”

The foggy man stood at the railing, contemplating this in silence.

Eric stared at him.  “Have you tried going down there yet?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m afraid.”