The Silk Diamond

III B: The Forest Beneath The Fog

It was at that moment Ibrahim's phone rang, the call made less sense than usual and Kirian sounded like he had been drinking again, or maybe it was just the manic anxiety he had to be feeling with his newly public company vulnerable to public opinion. He'd probably been religiously searching the internet and updating himself on how his IPO was being received by his public. His public being lazy tech bros with too much time on their hands.

"Guys, we have a problem."

"What kind of problem", Simon asked.

"I'll explain when you get here...I just need back up."

A voice sounded in the background.

Ibrahim read the text that flashed across the screen of his phone as he navigated his way back to the old manor in his red Honda civic.

"The kind of problem we're gonna need a priest for."

Ibrahim's brow furrowed. What the hell did that mean.

When he arrived, he parked at the end of the long drive and texted Syman and Kirian.

"Kir, where are you?"

There was no reply.

Syman arrived a few minutes later in his silver Prius. He walked to Ibrahim who was leaning against his car smoking a cigarette and looking up at the cloudy sky.

"Looks like rain", Syman said lightly.

Ibrahim made a noncommittal noise and stomped out the embers underneath his blue nikes.

The brothers looked at each other and then to the the grounds surrounding them. Through the thick fog that lingered around the manor, the brothers peered out to see the strange visage of something more pressing than Kirian's apparent crisis.

There was something just at the edge of the property undulating in something that could only be described as black smokey figures just across the wide expanse where the property met the woods behind and around it. The two shared another glance and cautiously approached, curiously. It took around ten minutes to get through the fog and to the edge of the trees.

Syman took the lead once they reached the trees and stopped short. Chanting, there was some sort of rhythmical echoing chanting in some language that Syman had never heard before. It sounded slippery somehow, like when he tried to listen to the indistinct words they slid between his fingers like mist. He looked back at his elder brother and held a finger to his lips and crouched drawing ever nearer.

They hiked through the underbrush over roots and fallen branches, ever careful following the sounds which seemed to become more rhythmic, but somehow softer until they came to a clearing. It was empty. They walked to the middle and searched around them. There was nothing. And then it started to rain.

"Shit", Ibrahim swore.

They both looked up at the darkening clouds. While they looked up, a clap of thunder rolled. They both jumped, and then shared a laugh. There was nothing to be on edge about. They must have been seeing things, some kind of psychosomatic hallucination, Ibrahim suggested. Neither of them wanted to address the fact that hallucinations that two people who were otherwise sober were impossible.

Then everything changed in an instant. Where there had been emptiness and trees was now overlaid with something neither could account for.

All around the brothers in a circle, shadowy figures moved like ghosts across the frosted ground. Their footfalls quiet like the snow that was now falling all around them. The floor of the forest was painted white, blank and cold in the breath of a moment. The two brothers turned around slowly as the visage of the figures seemed to close in on thems. The footsteps of each figure like a stark declaration on the icy landscape around them.