They say the fog hides secrets. The thicker the fog, the deeper the secrets buried underneath. And in St. Leo, the fog was always thickest after 7PM.

Here's the thing about small towns in misty hills: they collect mysteries like old houses collect dust. St. Leo wasn't even a footnote on most maps, just a scatter of buildings clinging to the slopes of Nsukka's forgotten corners. Its claim to fame was having no claim to fame at all—unless you counted the forests that seemed to breathe in the twilight, or the roads that twisted like serpents around hills that had witnessed centuries of untold stories.

The bus lurched around another hairpin turn, and the boy pressed his forehead against the cool glass, watching droplets of condensation race down the window like tears. His reflection stared back at him: eighteen years old, carrying nothing but a backpack and the weight of his mother's final words. "That town is evil," she had whispered, back when he was five and she was still strong enough to run. Back before cancer had hollowed her out like the harmattan leaves that now skittered across the road ahead.

The irony wasn't lost on him – how they had fled this place thirteen years ago, only for life to drive him right back into its misty embrace. Lagos had been their sanctuary, their escape, but even there, survival had been a daily struggle. His mother had worked double shifts at the hospital, her nurse's uniform becoming more threadbare with each passing year, but they had been free. Free from whatever darkness had sent them running in the first place.

Now, with each mile the bus climbed, the fog grew thicker, as if St. Leo itself was reaching out with ghostly fingers to reclaim its lost child. Somewhere in that soup of gray and white lived his aunt and uncle – Naomi and Eli, names that had only ever been whispers in his mother's rare moments of nostalgia. They were his last hope, the only family he had left in a world that suddenly felt too big and too empty.

The bus's headlights cut through the gathering dusk, and a sign emerged from the mist: "Welcome to St. Leo." Below it, someone had scratched four words that made his stomach turn: "Run while you can."

The bus wheezed to a stop at what passed for the town park, though it was little more than a patch of grass consumed by shadows. As the last passengers shuffled off, their footsteps fading into the mist like dying echoes, he remained seated, watching this ghost town through foggy windows. Lagos, with its endless pulse of life and light, felt like a fever dream now. Here, at barely half-past seven, streets lay abandoned and shops stood dark, their windows like blind eyes staring into nothing.

His phone glowed weakly in the growing darkness – 3%.

"Shit," he muttered, fingers fumbling to dial Eli's number before the battery died completely. The voicemail's mechanical chirp seemed to mock him. He tried again, each unanswered ring making the darkness press closer.

"Arinze!"

The name cut through the silence like a blade, making him spin around. Through the disappearing mist, a figure emerged – tall and lean, wearing a brown checkered shirt that hung loose on a frame that spoke of years of hard labor. Eli. His uncle was nothing like the smiling man in his mother's old photographs. Time had carved deep valleys into his unshaven face, and his hands, when they reached out, were a map of veins and old scars. He stood every bit as tall as Arinze's six feet, but there was something wound tight in his posture, like a spring ready to uncoil.

"Look at you," Eli said, his voice rough as bark. "Last time I saw you, you barely reached my knee. Now you're..." He gestured vaguely, as if words failed him. "You look like your mother."

The silence that followed felt heavy with unspoken things.

"The phone," Arinze began, holding up the now—dead device. "I tried to call—"

"Phones don't work too well up here," Eli cut in, reaching for Arinze's bag. His forearms, exposed by rolled-up sleeves, were ropey with muscle. "Reception comes and goes with the fog. You'll learn." He paused, studying Arinze's face in the dim light. "How was she? At the end?"

There was something in his uncle's eyes then—a flicker of something that might have been guilt, or fear, or both.

"She was..." Arinze started, but found he couldn't finish. The words stuck in his throat like fish bones.

"Yeah," Eli nodded, understanding what wasn't said. "Come on. Your aunt is waiting. She's made dinner."

Eli led him to a rusted Hilux truck lurking in the corner of the park like an old watchdog. The fog had condensed into droplets on its dull silver paint, making it weep in the streetlight. Arinze tugged at the passenger door, but it remained stubbornly shut.

"It's customized," Eli said, reaching across to pop it open from inside. The metal groaned like it was giving up secrets.

"Mad oh," Nze muttered, climbing in.

The interior smelled of old leather and cigarettes. Eli hunched under the steering wheel, fiddling with a nest of exposed wires. The engine coughed once, twice, then roared to life with a series of flatulent explosions from the exhaust.

They wound their way up the hill, headlights cutting yellow wounds through the mist. The silence between them grew until Eli finally tried to bridge it.

"School was good in Lagos?"

"Yeah."

"You finished?"

"May."

"Got plans?"

"No."

Another stretch of silence, broken only by the engine's asthmatic wheeze. They passed a group of locals—teenagers and twenty—somethings clustered at the roadside like crows. Their heads turned in unison to follow the truck, eyes reflecting the headlights like animals caught in the dark. Nze stared back, struck by something odd in their synchronized movement.

"Don't," Eli said sharply, knuckles whitening on the steering wheel. "Don't stare at the locals. Not here."

"Why?"

But Eli just pressed his lips together, the muscles in his jaw working like he was chewing on words he couldn't spit out.

"Because it's rude to stare, genius."

The truck climbed higher, and the group disappeared into the fog behind them, though Nze could still feel their eyes burning into the back of his neck.

The Hilux's headlights swept across a collection of houses that loomed through the mist like ships anchored in a ghostly harbor. Each building seemed to tell its own story of faded glory – some duplexes, others bungalows, all of them wearing decades of history like moss on their walls.

They pulled up in front of a duplex that Nze recognized from his mother's photographs, though the reality felt somehow more substantial and more ethereal at the same time. His great-grandfather's house. Four generations of his family had lived here, each adding their own layer of memories to its bones. Each renovation like a fresh coat of paint over old scars.

The front door opened, spilling warm light onto the misty path, and out bustled Aunt Naomi or Sister Naomi as everyone in town called her. Her blue habit seemed to gather shadows around its edges, but her face was all light and warmth. She was small and round, like a bluebird that had eaten too well, her smile creating a constellation of wrinkles around her eyes.

"My sweet little Arinze!" she exclaimed, arms already opening. "Though not so little anymore – tall as an iroko tree!"

"Good evening, Aunty," he managed before being enveloped in a hug that smelled of vanilla and candle wax.

"Come in, come in! You must be hungry. I've made ofe nsala – your mother always said it was your favorite." She linked her arm through his, practically pulling him toward the door. "You remember anything about this house? You used to toddle around that garden, chasing butterflies. And look at you now! You have her eyes, you know. The same way of looking at things like you're trying to see right through them."

Nze let her chatter wash over him as they entered the house, noting how the warmth of her welcome seemed to push back the evening chill. Behind them, Eli paused at the threshold, his watchful eyes scanning the darkness beyond the light's reach. His jaw worked silently, teeth grinding against unseen tensions. For a moment, he looked less like a man entering his home and more like a guard taking up his post.

Something moved in the mist behind him – or perhaps it was just the fog itself, twisting into shapes that almost made sense. Eli's shoulders tightened, and he stepped inside quickly, shutting the door with a firmness that suggested it was keeping out more than just the cold.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚

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