In the early morning hours a freezing fog rolled in off the still Atlantic in a solid bank that stretched from New Brunswick south to Myrtle Beach. On the ocean, mariners crossed themselves, rigged sea anchors and hung every lantern they could get their icy hands on. They would later claim in waterfront bars from New York to the Carolinas that men drowned on the decks of their ships, so they did, when the foul mist condensed in their throats. It made landfall in Boston like a river roiling in silent slow motion around the red brick buildings. Along the streets of Beacon Hill it hung on the chilled air, glistening on iron rails and scroll work, softening the orange light of oil lamps and muting the jingling clopping of horse-drawn carriages on gleaming cobbles.

It was about 1:45 a.m. when John Garrick pulled his Hansom up in front of a Hancock Street brownstone and sat waiting as a young man climbed out of the cab and stood by the door, still arguing with the young woman huddled inside the icy box.

From his perch behind the cab, Garrick could gather only that the argument concerned a marriage that the woman, at least, was determined should not take place.

As the discussion grew more heated, Garrick was able to make out a phrase or even a complete sentence.

"Listen, Elizabeth, you say it hasn't anything to do with my station, with my living here. But you haven't given me any other reason. You have to give a reason. It's only fair, darling. It's only fair."

The man glanced up again at Garrick, the cab's brass oil lamp casting his young face in warm yellow. His lips tightened and he turned back to the woman.

A few seconds later he heard her clearly saying "It just isn't something I want to discuss, Milton. We'll have to wait and that's that."

Carefully averting his weathered face, Garrick went back to considering whether he should sneak out the next night to the barge for Davis versus O'Hara. It was an idle consideration, because Garrick was destined to be unavoidably detained — spending several anxious days with flint-faced detectives of the Boston police, praying he would escape the hangman's noose.

Garrick was chilled clear through by the time the conversation broke off. The young man handed him the fare, telling him to take the woman to an Arlington St. address in fashionable Back Bay. Garrick shook his head sadly. The young lady came from a Back Bay family and her suitor lived on the hill, amongst brothels and seedy taverns. It was no wonder marriage would be out of the question.

Garrick touched the horse's flank with his buggy whip and the animal moved off down Hancock towards Mt. Vernon, steel shoes clopping hollowly on the bricks, the cab rocking gently with its fog-softened clattering roll. There was the cold wash of even heavier mist against his face and, as Garrick turned the corner onto Mt. Vernon, he saw the woman's hand, encased in a long white glove, waving from the cab window.

The hand seemed skeletal in the swirling fog and Garrick, setting the wheel brake, surreptitiously crossed himself. He swung down, noticing mist glittering like spider's diamonds on his horse's coat.

He took a deep breath as his boots touched slick stones and nearly choked. He had never known the fog to be so heavy. Garrick was an uneducated man and didn't know words like 'cloying', but that was the feeling he got from the rich, greasy mist. He crossed himself again.

Someone just walked on your grave, John Garrick.

He drew his threadbare coat even more tightly around him and stamped his feet for warmth. As he reached the cab door he noticed the woman, who was exceptionally beautiful with her thick ringlets of black hair, lavender eyes and delicate, elfin features, looked pale and sick.

"You alright, Miz?" he asked.

In the dim yellow light from the cab's oil lamps, the woman's expression was one of helpless confusion. She drew a deep, shuddering breath.

"I want you to drop me at the park, driver. At Charles and Boylston. I'll walk from there."

"I can't do that, Miz," Garrick mumbled. "Miz, the man that was with you, he told me to take you right home, paid for it too, so I gotta do that."

With a sudden and surprising force the woman snapped "I told you where I'll get off, driver, and that is where I will get off. You have no right to question me!"

Garrick. mouth hanging open in consternation. stepped back. Dear God, a word in the wrong place from this society snip and 'twas the little Garricks would be going hungry, indeed. As he fumbled for a reply, the young woman's expression softened.

"You poor old man," she sighed. "I'm sorry. It's alright. Everything is alright. I just don't want my family to hear the carriage pull up. That’s all. It's not anything more serious than that. And you mustn't worry — I shall be quite safe."

As a somewhat shaken John Garrick got his horse moving, Elizabeth Winslow, absently nibbling at her glove, huddled in the corner of the cab. Like Garrick, she had never seen fog so thick and clammy and she bit until pain brought tears. Only a few more blocks to go. She drew herself up on the hard, horsehair-padded bench and struggled for composure.

Just as she was winning the battle, the sounds of her cab were joined by the sounds of another. Suddenly sick with nerves, she saw the other cab's black horse, huge and surreal, looming out of the fog towards her. And as the other Hansom, brass glowing in lantern light and sparkling with water beads, passed in the opposite direction, she shoved her gloved hand hard back against her mouth. Her jaw closed with such ferocity that even in her fear, she could feel teeth deep in her own flesh.

Dear God, the eyes! Oh my Lord! The eyes!

For the briefest of moments, she was certain, she had seen two eyes looking at her from the other cab's door window, eyes that glowed coal red in the blackness, pulsing with evil and malice. The eyes were those of her awful dreams about that creature, the same as the tortured dreams of Henrietta related in anguished letters from France.

How could she be wide awake and still see this horrid image from her tormented nights?

Corset stays digging into her ribs, Elizabeth looked through the oval rear window and saw nothing. Not even the huge black Hansom being swallowed by swirling mist. As though it had never existed.

But it had been there.

Elizabeth suddenly wished that she had confided more of her own dreams in her letters to Henrietta. She wished even more fervently that her friend were still in Boston. And that Lizzie had not gotten into that terrible trouble in Fall River. She sat very still, trying hard not to cry. Soon she’d be in bed in the warmth of her own home.

That brought no consolation, for the terrible dreams would surely come again and bring her, screaming in horror, into wakefulness. But nobody would come running to see what was the matter. Her family had gotten used to her feral screams and there was nothing anyone could do. She rubbed her face and there was no elasticity to the skin that seemed to her to be hanging on her cheekbones. In the dim yellow glow of passing street lamps her hands trembled incessantly.

Dear lord, how could she marry anybody in a state like this?

The cab stopped at the Charles and Boylston entrance to the Public Garden, squeaking on its leaf springs as Garrick left his perch. His boots clumped on wet cobbles and, a moment later, her door opened.

Taking a deep breath, Elizabeth cast off the throw rugs and left the dark mustiness, stepping tremblingly into cold, wet air, immediately assaulted by the smell of the nearby Charles River mixed with the odor of tar and fishnets that eddied through swirling fog. It was as though she and fat John Garrick were alone in the world, enveloped in the clammy mist of the Gotterdammerung.

Garrick touched his cap.

"I'll be leavin' you here, Miz," he said deferentially. "Like you asked. 'Less you changed your mind."

"No, driver, I haven't," Elizabeth said.

"Alright, Miz, I'll be leavin', then..."

On sudden impulse, Elizabeth laid a restraining hand on his arm.

"Yes, Miz? Changed your mind, have you?"

"Driver, the cab that passed us going the other way. Do you know the other driver?"

"Cab, Miz?"

"The black carriage, driver," Elizabeth said. "The black carriage that passed us by the other way."

"Miz, there weren't no cab goin' t'other way. No cab a'tall."

Elizabeth shuddered as an icy tendril of something ran up her back.

"Miz, mebbe I better..."

"No, it's alright. It's alright. Driver, are you sure? Sure there was no cab?"

"There were no cab, Miz."

"Alright. Thank you."

Garrick, hesitant to leave his fare alone in the mist, walked slowly to the back of his Hansom. With a fluid motion out of place for a man of his bulk, he sprang to the seat. Elizabeth, a pale, white shadow with a black cape beaded by moisture and a heavy bonnet obscuring her face, crossed the street to the gates of the Public Garden. In the guttering yellow light of a nearby street lamp she glanced back at Garrick, who shuddered. The light made her pale face look like a skull with deep black eye sockets in which was only an eldritch glitter. Then, as Elizabeth's slight figure vanished in the swirling fog, Garrick headed back towards Beacon Hill.

As he set his Hansom in motion, another cab rolled past. The driver recognized Garrick and waved as he passed. The fact that his friend saw Garrick let his fare off and drive away without her was later to save Garrick from the gallows, but if he'd known his peril he wouldn't have cared. He felt only an unaccountable need to get away from the young woman with the skull-face and eyes so black they glittered like mirrors.

As Garrick's Hansom swung onto Beacon Street, Elizabeth was deep in the garden, heading for the safety of her Arlington Street home. As her shoes clicked softly on the cobbles, fog thickened about her in a cloying, choking lake that made her shiver despite the warmth of her winter coat. Widely scattered oil lamps along the path provided the occasional pool of milky, surreal light. As she reached the halfway point in her trek there was only one lamp before her, marking the Arlington Street entrance. The only sounds were her own footsteps and ragged breathing as she fought to control mounting panic.

It was nothing in particular that stopped her.

A sound, a breath of air, or perhaps a faint smell of decay that seemed to be drifting from the docks, swirling sluggishly in the fog as though a huge, rotten fish were being washed on waves of mist.

As she stood rooted in place, her heart slamming in her chest so hard it was painful, the smell took on a clinging, unbelievably rich fetor, and it truly was the smell of her tormented dreams. Suddenly the milky and watery night seemed alive with surreal evil. Her skin drawn tight on her face with terror, she looked back in the eldritch fog.

And there were two red and glowing eyes glaring at her from far back on the path!

The horrid orbs swayed from side to side in a sickening, reptilian motion, then they suddenly disappeared. Whimpering like a child, Elizabeth began to run towards the welcoming light of Arlington Street. She'd taken only a couple of steps before she stopped dead, staring in horror and disbelief. In front of the Arlington Street lamp, something was forming in the mist. As it coalesced under her incredulous gaze it became the thing that haunted her terrible dreams! The stench was now a physical force, invading sinuses, throat, lungs and stomach. Her knees came unhinged and she dropped to filthy park cobbles, retching helplessly, hot tears of terror nearly blinding her.

And out of the top of her eyes she saw the writhing column suddenly move towards her, impossibly fast and with deadly intent...