Lost in the Fog

By Terry Kerr

Llanstaff, North Wales, 1984 - a place that feels like home to Andy Walsh - perhaps that's a little odd, as he's certain he's never been to Wales before in his life, but never mind. Llanstaff is a calm (if slightly unreal) place. He starts a new job, meets the love of his life, feels perfectly at home.

Until the fog. until the killings, until the monsters ...

Andy Walsh realises he has a destiny; the final battle between Chaos and Calm is approaching, and he might be the one to save us all. If he's prepared to kill.

A TERRIFYING paranormal thriller, Lost in the Fog, is a story of destiny, identity, myth and love. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terry Kerr
• Release date: May 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9798215944929

Terry Kerr

Terry Kerr was born in Liverpool, England, in 1965. He fell in love with the horror genre as a child and has never grown out of it. In addition to writing, he also works as an actor, which means he spends a lot of time waiting for the phone to ring.

Book preview

For Abi, who made me write it.

The following is a work of fiction, no resemblance to any person alive or dead, or to any actual events, is intended or should be inferred. Though real locations are used, I have taken many geographical liberties, and the town of Llanstaff exists entirely in the author’s imagination.

This work is copyright. It shall not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any way without the written permission of the author.

Once again, my great and eternal thanks to Samantha Roberts, for her incredible work on this book. 

Chapter One

Death is not an ending .

There are many things I’ve said in class over the years, but the one I’ve said most often, even more than a sentence must have both a noun and a verb, is this; when it comes to storytelling, tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em, tell ‘em it, then tell ‘em what you’ve told ‘em.  That would be followed with, Of course, never tell ‘em that’s what you’re doing. A good trick has to be invisible Occasionally I’d add a wink.

So here I am, in my final years as a teacher, both following and breaking the great rule of storytelling. I’ve told you – if there is a you – what I’m going to tell you, and I’ve admitted the trick I’m using.

Sue me, as we used to say when I was a teenager.

But back to the point, death is not an ending. This is a fact. It’s a fact like my enlarged prostate, the lack of hair on my head, the stick I use to walk, the 1984 miners’ strike and a ship called the Titanic which never sailed twice. We go on. I’ve seen the place we go on to. Or, no, I’ve seen one of the places we may go on to. Death is Crewe station with lots of platforms heading off to various destinations. I know we go on, but to exactly where I’m unsure. Nor do I know if we all go together. Some may get off at different stops; others may stay on till the end of the line. Some places are lovely, they make Acapulco look like Bognor, some places aren’t; they make Bognor look like Acapulco. I don’t know if we decide our destinations ourselves or if we’re handed tickets at the barrier. But I know we go on. 

This gives me some comfort in the night, especially without Leanne. I know she’s still there, still existing, somewhere. I don’t know if we’ll meet up again, but I know she’s still around. Yes, I long to see her again – it’s been much too long, much too long since I held her, spoke to her, kissed her – but if I don’t, if I get off at a different station, then at least I’ll know that she’s still somewhere.

I’ve made my peace with that. I think that’s the essence of love, when you boil it down. It doesn’t matter if you never see your lover again, as long as you know they’re somewhere, that they’re okay. Yeah, in an ideal world – in an ideal afterlife – I’d want to be with her forever, her and Sausage too, but this is a far from ideal world.

That’s something else I know. If you’ve lived long enough – if you’re over five years old, say – I suspect you know that too.

Death is not the end. We go on. There are planes of being out there, states of existence. And in some of them there are monsters.

That’s the other thing I know. I’ve met them.   I’ve been one.

Chapter Two

Iwas born in March 1958. I don’t know when you’re reading this, but I’m writing it in April 2017. You do the maths; I hate thinking about how old I am. One of my colleagues said that Age is just a number as she gave me a card last month, but she’s twenty-four. At twenty-four and with two good legs you can afford to say shit like that. 

I was raised in Dovecot, South Liverpool by my parents, Harry and Freda, both no longer on the Earth, both somewhere else now. They were good people. Five years after I was born, my brother Ed came along. We got on as well as two brothers ever really get on; he’s a good lad and I love him, but sometimes we just irritate the hell out of each other. But if he needs me, I’m there. And vice versa. 

Dovecot was once prosperous, but by the mid-Fifties it had lost its way a little. Big deal, the whole city had. My dad worked as an electrician, my mother as a part-time bookkeeper. We did okay.

At some stage I decided I loved English more than anything else at school. I loved words, how they could lock and create images. I found Dickens and Wyndham and T.H. White and Steinbeck and Shakespeare, and at a slightly later stage I found myself looking at my second year English teacher, Miss Thompson, as she expounded clauses and gerunds and alliteration and I thought, I’d like to stand where she does.

I both did and I didn’t. I became an English teacher – modesty forbids me from telling you what kind of degree I got (no it doesn’t, it was a First!) – but I never stood where she did. In 1978 I picked up a student teacher post in a town called Seeton, a no-mark little blip of posh houses full of posh kids on the North-West coast. 

It was in Seeton I met my first wife, Emily. She was – and I daresay still is – half a foot smaller than me, blonde, green eyed, and perky. Also drop dead gorgeous. She was a friend of a friend, and soon she was my friend, and soon my lover, and by 1981 – my student teacher gig now full time - my wife.

Soon after that, she was my mistake. No, let’s get this straight. We were each other’s mistake. We really tried to be in love, honest to God we did, but the truth is this; if you have to try, you’re not in love.

We persevered though. We bought a house in a relatively affluent area called Crosby, a half hour drive from the school, and we furnished it, and we went on holidays, and we talked and read and made love, but...

I’ve looked back on our time together often, especially since the events of 1984, and I now think this; we were not meant to be together. It wouldn’t have mattered how well or otherwise we got on, it was not meant. Fate, or God, or the many gods, had pointed at me and said, Nope. Not her, and not here. Y’got other stuff to do, Andy. In another place. Wouldn’t have mattered who I’d hooked up with, and how much I’d cared, that was not where I was meant to be, and not who I was meant to be with. There are two things you can’t fight; City Hall (or so our American cousins would have us believe) and Fate.

So we slid apart, Emily and me. And in the January of 1984, she asked me for a divorce. With no argument, I agreed. I moved out, rented a flat ten minutes away, we put the house on the market, and I...

That’s when I started to feel it. Or, at least I think that’s when I started to feel it. Of all the liars, Bev Lincoln told me later that year, the smoothest and most persuasive is memory. That could well be so (I’d like to think it wasn’t, but I probably know better), but I’m convinced that as January became February, and I shivered in my under-heated bedsit and taught in my overheated classroom, that it was time to go, to move...to change.

Change! Hah!

It nagged at me, this sensation; a restlessness the like of which I had never felt before. There was a sense that things were growing heavy, that the roof was lowering and the sky was darker, that this wasn’t my place anymore, and maybe it never had been.

I saw the application for the post in St Cadoc’s secondary school, Llanstaff, North Wales towards the end of February. It was in The Guardian, the Sits Vac column of which I’d begun scrutinising religiously. I’d scanned dozens of others, passed them over, but that one ...that one leapt out at me, fully formed in glorious 3-D and Technicolor. I grabbed a pen and wrote off for an application form, and when that arrived I sent it off, and when I was called for an interview I went.

I applied for no other jobs, just that one. That was the one that stopped me itching. It called and I answered. I had no choice. 

Chapter Three

Idrove into North Wales for my interview on Monday, March 5th 1984; Seeton Comprehensive had been good about giving me the day off. Spring – and a long, brutal summer – was coming, the sun was strong, and as I passed the sign with the red dragon on it which said YOU ARE NOW ENTERING WALES, I felt it for the first time, that lodestone call; come home you, come home .

On my right, the Irish Sea churned and bubbled as I passed through Rhyl and Colwyn Bay, and in my head that phrase bobbed and popped. Come home you, come home.

I remember blinking, my shoulders stiffening. What did that mean, I wondered. Should I turn back? This wasn’t home; my home was sixty or so miles back. Liverpool was my home; that odd city that called itself a town, the one with the adenoids and the glottal stops, the one that had rioted a few years back and would soon have a Garden Festival, courtesy of Thatcher’s Government. I was a Scouser, born and bred, to be viewed with suspicion by the rest of the country. A chancer, a thief – a little bit cheeky, a little bit funny – but a thief nonetheless. We called people la and we told them to Go ‘ead. We drank too much, we loved our football, we had those Cathedrals, we were our own little tribe.

I was not Welsh.

So why was I thinking come home you, come home? Not go home, but come home. Why? And why did I feel as if there was something pulling me, a magnet, pulling – not pushing – me forwards? Why? I frowned, tried to work it out, couldn’t, then concentrated on the signposts. Maybe I was just nervous about the interview – if I was offered the job and I accepted it then the changes would be enormous. On top of that, could I afford to move? I was still contributing to our mortgage, I’d signed a six month lease on the flat, there was no way I was going to commute to Wales every day ...but could I afford to find somewhere to live near St Cadoc’s? And if I could, what kind of hovel would it be on my budget?

All of this tumbled through my mind – batting against that backbeat of come home you, come home – as I realised I was about to pass Llandudno, that I was to take the next left into Llanstaff. I focused as best I could on easing into the correct lane, and then, rounding a corner, I saw, for the first time in my life, the Great Orme.

It jutted from the sea and attempted to scratch the sky; nearly seven hundred feet at its highest point; three miles in diameter, a limestone peninsular of almost barbarian arrogance. You think that makes no sense? Barbarian arrogance? It’s just rock, Andy. I’ve seen it. A big slab of rock, sure, but just rock. Rock isn’t anything, rock is just rock, it hasn’t any attitude, never mind arrogance, never mind barbarian arrogance.

And you’re right. It is just rock. But you’re wrong. It’s a long way from being just rock. That thing was here a long time before you were. A long time. It’ll be there a long time after you’ve gone on. That thing, that slab, that jutting finger is arrogant, and it is barbarian. It’s older than you, it’ll exist on this Earth longer than you. It’s seen more than you ever will. It’ll know more than you ever will. And unless it decides otherwise, it’ll never tell you its secret.

They call it the Great Orme, but its real name is Time.

I stared at it. I could see cable cars ascending to its summit from the south, cars driving along the mountain road to the west. They scurried like insects across the corpse of a giant. That great slab loomed over the coast, and over my consciousness. It was awesome. I use that word with precision, not the sloppy way it’s often used nowadays. Awesome.

Then I turned left into Llanstaff itself, and the Orme was gone from view...but I knew it was there. Peeking at me.

I barely gave Llanstaff village a second glance as I drove through it – all of that would come later – as I was fixated on finding the school. I took a couple of wrong turns, but eventually I pulled up in the car park, stepped out and made my way to Reception. As I did, I felt the looming presence of the Orme behind me and that call in my head again, the one that said, come home you, come home. 

I wondered what it all meant. I remember that clearly. I looked at the school – clean, large, imposing, a mass of brick and concrete and glass, it gave the impression of something new built to look like something old – and wondered why I was feeling like this, why I was jittery like the heroine of a Victorian novel. Then I checked my Sekonda, saw it was ten minutes to interview time, and made my way inside.

Vapours or not, I wanted that job. I just didn’t know why.

Chapter Four

T hank you very much , Mr Walsh said the Headmaster, Mr Jenkins, forty-five minutes later. He was flanked by the Bursar, Mr Kane, and the Head of English, Mr Burton. (Everyone calls me Richard, he’d said as we’d shaken hands, but it’s actually Ian.) Jenkins was a short, balding man with glasses. There was something very old-fashioned and English about him, even though his accent was as Welsh as Max Boyce. You remember the actor Richard Wattis? That’s how he seemed, a Welsh Richard Wattis. If you don’t, Google him.

Jenkins looked to his colleagues; they nodded, smiled at him, smiled at me, then shuffled the wholly unnecessary papers in front of them. All of that, Jenkins went on, seemed perfectly satisfactory. Is there anything you’d like to ask us?

I’d done the interview thing before – though not for a while – and I knew you were always supposed to come up with one question, and how much will you pay me was not recommended. Instead I said, Would it be possible to tour the site? While classes are in progress? I’d like to get a feel of the place, if I may.

It was as if I’d said Would you like me to give you a million pounds? Each? The beaming grins that erupted on their faces made me think I’ve got this. I’m in.

Splendid idea, said Jenkins. He checked his watch. I’ll take you myself, I’ve a little time. Would you care to follow me? I nodded at the other two, stood up, and trailed in his wake. We made our way out of his office – which was down the corridor from Reception – and stood before the main doors. This is a newish building, he said. Opened in sixty-one, but there’s been a St Cadoc’s school on this site since 1859. Then he pointed to the main doors. Main entrance, he said, and the car park. Of course you know that, being parked out there. I smiled. He turned his back to the doors and pointed right. At the bottom of that corridor is the staff room. Tea and coffee and kettles and pigeon holes – everything you’re used to at your current school, I’m sure. He pointed in front of him, to the Reception desk and the handsome middle-aged lady sitting behind it. Reception, and Mrs Moore. We nodded at each other. We keep a visible Reception presence here, Mr Walsh – we like to be transparent to our students. Mrs Moore is our first line of contact with the public and the students. Also she’s our admin guru. Anything you need, check with Mrs Moore first.

Then Jenkins set off to the left; for a short man with little legs he could stride, and I had to scurry to keep up with him. Ground floor is mainly our science and technical subjects...woodwork, metalwork and so on. We paused at a corridor T-junction. He pointed to his right. Down there we have the Arts and Crafts Department. Painting, pottery and so forth. He strode forward again and I tagged along. We reached a staircase and he lunged up it. English is mainly located on the first floor, he went on. We strode past a red painted door. Drama studio. That comes under the English Department’s remit, of course, though we like to bed our new teachers in before we get them to direct an end of year show. Also, that’s where we hold the Assemblies. One for each year every day of the week." We strode to another classroom, and mercifully here we paused. We glanced through the window to see a woman in her forties, slightly plump but with generous eyes, reading aloud from a book. The students – they were students here, not pupils as they’d been in Seeton Comprehensive – were looking at her. They all had books on their desks, but they were looking at her. I could hear the cadences in her voice, even if I couldn’t quite make out the words. She was driving that story; she was riding it, making it dance. No wonder the students weren’t reading along.  They were engaged. Some were laughing a little, some were frowning in concentration, but they were engaged. They were connected. I caught a look at the book as the woman dipped her hand a little, making a gesture of exasperation. It was A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines. I smiled a little myself. No wonder the kids were into it. It was not only a great story, it was full of swearing. What fifteen-year-old wanted less?

Jenkins fell silent, and I watched the woman interact with her students, and I felt it again. Come home you, come home.

Yes. Come home. Come home to a place like this, where the kids got the stories. Come home to a place that wasn’t home, come home to a new start, a fresh start, come home to a blank slate.

She’s good, I said, actually to myself, but Jenkins heard.

That’s Mrs Lincoln. And yes, she is. He touched my arm and started guiding me towards the stairs. We employ only the best here, Mr Walsh. In days gone by, St Cadoc’s was once Wales’ premier public school. The Comprehensive system, of course, is looked upon as a second rate cousin. I’m determined to prove that wrong. We made our way down to Reception. "I believe in this school, Mr Walsh. I believe in tradition, in good teaching, intelligent teaching to produce intelligent adults. This is a fine town, a good country. We’ve had it tough in this recession, like your own hometown, but I refuse to believe there’s no hope. I think that, out of the past, can come the future. And the future is in this building, wouldn’t you agree?"

I looked at him, that little man with the big vision, and I saw what I thought was passion for his students in his eyes, and I said, I do, Mr Jenkins. As a matter of fact, I do.

His smile widened, showing some very small teeth. Between you and me, Mr Walsh, should your references check out – and I’m sure they will – I think we’ll be seeing a lot of each other in future. He held out his hand. I shook it.

I’d like that, I said. 

Chapter Five

A re you sure you know what you’re doing, son? my mother asked over Sunday lunch a fortnight later. In that time I’d been contacted by the North Wales Education Board and asked if I’d like to take up the post of English teacher at St Cadoc’s Secondary School from the Autumn Term’s start, September 10th 1984. I’d replied by return of post that I would, thank you very much, and handed my resignation in at Seeton Comp. It was good for my ego to see how much dismay that caused. But still ...

Yes, I could see why my mother looked so apprehensive as she dished out the baked potatoes. There were just the three of us – Ed was running around somewhere, God alone knew where – and that meant they could give me their full attention. And they knew, as did I, that I had never been an impulsive man. Ed had got the impulsive gene in our family; he ran from place to place and burned with a new obsession every week. At the moment he was working as a plumber for a contractor somewhere in the city centre. A year before he’d been a bricklayer. The year before that, he’d been unemployed – him and three million others.

But me? Hell, I chewed my food twenty times before I swallowed. I cogitated, pondered and considered. Crossing the street I’d look left, right, left again, and then do it all over, just to be sure. I started packing a week before every holiday. I didn’t make lists – I knew what I wanted and needed in my head – but I never went short either. I was a mental tick-box kind of man. It had driven Emily up the wall.

So yes, I understood why she was asking that. What I couldn’t understand were my own actions, or that bizarre sense of magnetism. That come home you, come home pull.

It’ll be good, I said, smiling at them both. I’d love to say that they exchanged a quick, worried glance as I spoke, but I really don’t think they did. Maybe by then they’d forgotten why they should have been uneasy. If I see them again, afterwards, maybe I’ll ask them.

Yeah, but...Wales, said Dad, cutting his chicken into slices. He gave a huge shudder. Andy, you know what they’re like. All that sheep sha...

Keep it clean, you, my mum said and swatted him on the arm. He laughed. She laughed back.

I promise you I’ll leave the sheep alone, I said, pouring gravy.  Even the pretty ones. Anyway, I went on, over my mother’s scowl and my father’s laugh, I’m only an hour and a half down the road. It’s easier to get to Llanstaff from here than it is to Crosby. And the air’s better. And...

And a change is as good as a rest, Dad said, nodding. And there’s not much to keep you here, I know. He put down his fork and laid a hand over one of my mother’s. "We know."

It’ll be a stretch though, won’t it? Financially. I mean, until the house... That’s mums for you the world over, isn’t it?

Yes, it would. Not to mention the flat – that bastard of a landlord was keeping me to the letter of the lease, which meant stumping up rent even though I wasn’t living there - and even though Emily had said she was perfectly prepared to pay the mortgage on her own, I knew it’d be impossible on her wages. And just because we couldn’t make the marriage work, she was still a nice person ...so a stretch it would be, but ...

I just feel this is the right thing to do, I said. It all feels like the right move to me. The school’s got a good reputation, high performance and all that – and these things will really count when Thatcher brings those league tables in. But mostly ...I want to move. I want to get out, spread out a bit. Maybe learn a bit of Welsh. Maybe watch the rugby ...no, that’ll never happen. Dad laughed at that. He may have lived in Dovecot but his home was Anfield, seat 89, Row D, Centenary Stand. There was Liverpool FC, there was football (in that order) and there may, at a push, be snooker, but there were no other sports mentioned. Yeah, it’ll be tight for a while, but what do I need? A bed, a change of clothes, and something to eat. And if I ever get really hungry I’ll call for a food parcel.

And don’t think I won’t send one, Mum said. Her eyes were shiny. Dad’s weren’t – he only cried when Man United or Everton won the League – but he swallowed hard. I looked at them, and I loved them, and after a while we ate and talked of other things.

I want to move ...to get out, spread out a bit. That’s what I wanted, and I did all of those things. I got what I wished for. I don’t suppose I have to remind you of that phrase about being careful of that, do I? 

Chapter Six

Idrove into Wales on July 30th 1984. That summer was incredibly hot – you can look it up, if you’ve nothing better to do – and both of the Civic’s windows were down, the wind from the sea blowing my hair everywhere (I had hair back then, lots of it in a 1980’s bouffant I’m not as ashamed of as I should be) and anyone who cared to listen could hear The Thompson Twins blasting from my cassette deck, but still that heat was remorseless, baking.

I didn’t care though.  I was ...well ...

On an adventure. That’s what I felt as I tootled along at sixty along that coast road, all my worldly goods in the boot. That’s what I felt as I thought of saying goodbye to my family, my soon to be ex-wife, my hometown ...I am on an adventure.

As well as being cautious, I have a gift for understatement. I think the two go together

I got to 117 Mere Street, Llanstaff, Mrs Thomas’s Boarding House, at about one in the afternoon. The house looked Georgian. Two stories tall, detached, whitewashed stone with a black wooden front door and a wide, gravel packed drive. It screamed careful and pick up after yourself. It screamed genteel.

It did not, however, scream of blood and deceit and death, so I pulled my cases from the boot and rang the bell.

Mrs Thomas answered. I’d spoken to her on the phone when I’d found the place in the pages of the Tourist Information Office and ...well, you know how you just know the way a DJ looks by listening to his show? And you’re always disappointed? During the conversation with Mrs T where she’d taken me through what I could expect for my twenty pounds a week (Shared kitchen and dining room/TV area, top floor shower room and toilet shared between you and one other, use of the washing machine, change of linen and towels once a week, rooms cleaned once a week, bills included, no food, drink or guests of either sex in your room) I’d conjured up an image of a sturdy, ruddy-faced, rather sour woman of late middle age. Knotted headscarf. Pinafore. Two plastic rollers. So I prepared myself to meet a twenty-five year old Christie Brinkley lookalike as I heard the lock being turned ...

And found myself facing my exact mental image of her – bar the knotted headscarf and pinafore. The plastic rollers were proudly displayed to the world. She smelt faintly of Pledge. Mr Walsh? I said I was. She gave a lip-twitch that could have been a smile. I’ll show you to your room.

It was on the second floor; a bedsit no bigger than the one I was still paying for in Crosby, but it was cleaner and the bedclothes were fresh. It wasn’t the Ritz, but (a) I couldn’t afford the Ritz and (b) even if I could the commute was too far.

I thanked her, unpacked, then wandered into Llanstaff itself to stock up on groceries. It was maybe a five minute walk. A five minute walk on a hot summer’s day, a light breeze rippling at my T-shirt and jeans. Just a five minute walk, nothing exceptional, until I entered the village itself.

How was it? Well ...when I was a kid, the standard TV fare was a whole factory full of filmed TV dramas from the old ITC studios; harmless if slightly insubstantial stuff such as The Saint, Department S and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). Though these shows would be set in exotic locations like Monte Carlo or Rome, they were actually shot on the backlot of some London studio; actors like Roger Moore or Peter Wyngarde walked down streets that had an oddly artificial air – well, perhaps not oddly, as they were artificial. The pavements were too narrow, the roads too empty, the shop fronts ill-defined ...

That was Llanstaff. A place that looked as real as a TV show