Whispering Smoke, Spirits in the Clouds

CW: gun violence, kidnapping, references to suicide

Whispering Smoke, Spirits in the Clouds

(c) 2026

Rm Harrington

Laura knew a closed door meant Eric wanted privacy.

His mind often braided into the difficulties of his work. But this felt different. He had been working alone for days. Skipping shared meals. Avoiding their morning walk. Offering no conversation beyond the occasional rushed mutters through the knotty oak door.

She drew a full breath, released it, then knocked twice. “Honey?”

No response. Timed clicks sounded from a mini grandfather clock on the shelf to her right. She waited.

As a child psychologist, Eric specialized in troubled children, those whose behavior seemed to lack any rational explanation. Tormented, he sometimes mentioned. Sad to deal with.

A metaphor, Laura had once supposed. Now the words felt ominous, even familiar. She turned the knob, nudged the door inward, then stepped inside.

The odors came first. Beer. Stale tobacco. Sweat. And something sour beneath it all.

She remained still, waiting until her eyes adjusted to the dimness. The study reflected the look of Eric's bachelor years: functional, comfortable, and hopelessly disorganized.

He sat slumped in the high-backed office chair at the window, his forehead resting on the desktop, brown hair uncombed. He wore his standard gray boxers and a white T-shirt. Stained socks stretched tight up his legs.

Laura smiled. On the wall above the fireplace, photographs displayed Eric with his parents. Honeymoon shots of him and her, sometimes as one, sometimes separate. The shots also included friends. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Beaches. Christmases.

A life together. At least, that’s what the captured memories suggested.

Her gaze switched toward the adjoining bathroom. An open laundry basket sagged under the overload. Another chuckle. She peeked toward the mirror above the washbasin, then did a double-take. Had her shadow just flickered? Nonsense.

At fifty going on thirty, she stood shorter than average and a tad too round, but in great health. Then she touched her hair. It seemed wrong, as though age had arrived overnight, bringing more instability.

Attracted by a shift near Eric’s desk, she switched focus. On a pull-out shelf, a half-eaten peanut-butter sandwich lay on top of a stack of patient files. An empty carton of Sky-Crown beer cans sat on the floor. From an overflowing ashtray, a trace of lingering smoke drifted up, then faded. A chrome-plated revolver jutted barrel-out over the edge.

Laura stopped breathing, wet her lips. “Eric?” She rushed across the room; pressed both hands to his shoulders, and shook him into awareness.

“What is this?” Her gaze lingered on the weapon. “Where did it come from?”

His head lifted, gray eyes bloodshot and unfocused. For a moment, his pupils wandered, then settled on Laura.

She glanced down at the stacks of medical reports and IQ tests, all most likely linked to one or more of his patients. What had he discovered in this mess?

Moving in quick jerks, he snatched the revolver, stood, and turned. The pistol’s barrel pointed at Laura’s chest.

“Step back!” Eric’s bloodshot eyes went wide, blazing gray stones in a pool of red clay. “Sit on that chair, or I will shoot you.”

“What?” Laura faltered rearward, hands reaching out palms up, her lower jaw hanging open. No other words passed the sudden dry thickness of her tongue. 

“I said, sit.” Eric’s right arm trembled, the revolver’s nozzle a black hole dancing in quick jerks. With his free hand, he dragged the office chair forward, gave it a spin, and let it stop in front of his wife.

Walking backward toward the door may have been a more prudent action, but Laura stepped forward and eased into the chair. Perhaps he was working on a new social experiment? Maybe testing how people respond to unexpected and overwhelming stress? No matter how foolishly dangerous this encounter seemed, the lingering alternative remained forever worse. 

“What is wrong, Eric?” Her voice sounded calm, too calm.

He stared at her, then picked up a file. Henry Jacobs was nine years old and motivated by what?

Laura felt a mounting cold pressure beneath her ribs. Eric never discussed case issues.

He waved the pistol. “Henry was a normal child. No warning signs. No previous violence. Then one morning he attacked his parents with a kitchen knife.”

Laura remained silent.

“Somehow, his father got him out of the bedroom and locked the door. When the police arrived, they found Henry unconscious.” Eric opened the file, mumbling as he read his own notes. “Young Jacobs can’t explain what happened. He gazes at nothing and speaks of strange things, calling them spirits in the clouds.”

Laura looked toward the window. Churning clouds thickened with colors. She grimaced.

“There’s more.” Eric picked up a second file. A trace of spittle had gathered around the right corner of his lips.

Laura closed her eyes and blinked. “Stop, Eric. Can’t you just let it be?”

“Ron Ambrose. Eleven. Rage episodes from the time he turned seven. He attacked his younger brother with an ice pick, then sucked blood out of his neck.” Eric’s voice dropped. “He said that people weren’t real.”

Laura struggled for words that might ease the tension. Perspiration had gathered above her upper lip, and the sting of fresh bile tugged at the back of her throat. Something dark nudged at her mind.   

“For three years, I treated him. Nothing changed.”

“You did everything you could, Eric.”

He stared for a moment, then grunted. “We communicated via vid-com, Laura. Do you understand how strange that is? I never saw him in person. Not any of them.”

“Why are you bringing this up?” The room felt colder, even distant.

Eric dropped the files. “Ron’s family stopped asking questions. Stopped answering mine. The medical system showed no transfer. No relocation. No death record.”

He leaned toward her. “They vanished, all of them.”

Laura waited. Fragments of old memories stirred through her thoughts.

“Why?” Eric glared toward the window. “Why does no one go outside? Including us?”

“You’re exhausted, Eric. Let’s rest.”

“People don’t just disappear. Do they?” He pointed to the window. “Why are those blasted clouds seeping so near?”

A faint scratching moved across the glass. Laura groaned.

Eric wiped sweat from his forehead, then lowered the revolver, almost putting it down before shoving the barrel into the waistband of his boxers.

“Don’t get up.” He paced around the room. “The pattern never changes. It begins with small things and ends with imaginary friends and talking to people who aren’t present. In the end, the patient’s behavior turns dangerous.”

Lightning flashed from beyond the window, from deep within the clouds.

“Stop it, Eric. You need rest.” Could he not sense the accumulating threat?

“Communications collapse. They ramble about spirits in the sky. After that, the anger turns into violence.”

Laura’s fingers tightened around the arms of the chair. “There’s no point in this, Eric. You tried to save them; did your best.”

“No! I needed answers.” He looked into her eyes. “And I found them. They’re in the whispers.”

“What do you think you’ve learned, Eric? And how did you learn it?”

He pointed at the photographs. “Memories.”

She stared at him. “What?”

His voice cracked. “In times past, some people believed pictures captured the soul. What if that’s only the beginning?”

Laura stared as mist crept under the study door. She closed her eyes, then looked away.

“I’ve studied the photos. Occasionally, they flicker to a moment beyond now, revealing unfamiliar people.” He swallowed hard.

“Stop it,” Laura whimpered. “There’s no point talking about this. The kids and their families. All of it. Let it go. We’re still here, still talking.”

“What happens when it goes beyond not knowing who we are…” Eric’s gaze met Laura’s eyes. “…It ends in nothingness?”

Laura’s hands started rubbing against the arms of the chair. She shivered. Not from the chill in the air. Not even because of the increasing thickness of gases that had somehow entered Eric’s studio. She had a soul-chilling certainty of a coming loss.

“I’m close to grasping all of it, Laura. Do you want to know how I figured it out?”

She glanced downward; aware this day had long passed. “Eric. Please stop.”

“You knew.”

“No.” A murky river raged through her mind, a bridge, a memory from nothingness.

“Yes. You knew these things and kept them private.”

“Eric, listen to me. Give me time to find the words.” No hope. No chance to adjust.

“I’ve been helping you, Eric.” She shook her head. “This is our home.”

“Why don’t I remember your parents?”

Laura stayed silent, thinking, remembering something about occupying the story inside her mind.

He pressed closer, face to face, his hot breath still smelling of alcohol. “Answer me!” He slapped at the air, struggling to disperse the accumulating mist. “Why have I never met your mom and dad?”

Laura stared at the floor. “Eric…”

“Wrong answer, Laura. I’m thinking they’re in the clouds. Beings that slip up-close and into our memories. Then, we all remain locked away in our own little cloud-house.”

She pressed to her feet, pushing him backward. “That’s ridiculous, Eric.”

“Same pattern,” he said. “The odd behavior cranks over and then expands. Something in the mind deteriorates. Memories fade. Would you go without a fight?”

“You don’t understand, Eric.” She heard individual sounds now. Fragments of voices. Half-formed words. The remnants of conversations coming from nowhere.

“Then explain it, Laura.”

“We bought this house together, toured the grounds, and picked the furniture.” Her voice sounded far away, a whisper in the ever-changing mist. She smelled it, a musty scent, wet and cold, but most of all, ancient.

“Not so.”

“You work here, Eric.”

“I did?”

“Don’t say did, Eric.”

“You knew all along.”

“Only what matters.” She grimaced.

“What does that mean?” Eric jerked the pistol free of his boxers.

“It means you aren’t ready.”

“Ready for what? You’re the one who moved here.” A great trembling lingered in his body. The revolver faded in and out of his fist.

“You won’t stop.” Laura gazed toward the now unseen floor, her arms rippling in the mist as her thoughts slowly separated from all she had ever known. Chance. Chance. Chance. Perhaps we'll meet again. 

“I didn’t make this up.”

It’s real now. her legs dissolved into the mist. “Please, let me stay, Eric.” A whispered response from within the fog. Need somebody to love...

“You were on a bridge, ready to jump when I found you.” For a moment, he looked puzzled. “It was early morning.”

“Honey, we talked about this. Remember our hiking trip when we both fell in the river?”

“Never happened.”

“Does it matter? We came together, each of us with our own special needs.”

#

Eric reared back, cackling and snorting.

“Live here. Live now.” Laura spoke from afar.

“There is no past.” Eric began weeping. I’ve been here all these years, while you came and went, sometimes leaving me locked in this office for weeks. Look in the mirror, Laura. There’s not much left.”

As though now under Eric’s control, the clouds parted. Laura’s reflection had a shadowy tint. The wallpaper and the file cabinets on the wall to her rear peeked in and through her body. A different woman stared from within the wedding photo.

Eric paused, visualized the bridge. He remembered seeing her jump.

He looked down. Brown liver spots and wrinkles laced the back of his hands. “You’re not here, and I’m old and worn.” He turned the pistol sideways and flat before his eyes. Death lay hidden within. But was it literal?

From the shape in the mists, Laura said, “It’s not what you think, Eric. Put the gun down. We can make it work.”

“You are not here.” He pointed and pulled the trigger. The pistol snapped upward. Fire sliced into the mist. A rumble of thunder masked the explosive power.

#

Surprised that he had actually shot her, Laura struggled to keep hold.

“Stay back.” Eric retreated with nowhere to go. He fired again, and then again.

She kept holding on, striving to keep breath in this life as it had been.

“You died,” he said. “You drowned beneath fifty feet of black river run.”

“Not me, Eric. You.” She pressed nearer, but had no power to grasp, smile, or even express physical love. Whispering voices called: Snap. Crackle. Pop. Gonna make us hop. Spirits in the sky.

#

Eric looked through the window. His house floated amid the clouds in the sky like many others in the distance. On the wall and above the mantle, he saw pictures of himself, his wife Tina, a cute redhead fifty going on thirty. And others. His parents. Friends. And more. A happy family.

A brief shadow caught his eye. Whispered words followed.

It ain’t me, babe, it ain’t me you’re thinking of.

He blinked his mind clear.

Case folders cluttered his desk. He returned them to the cabinet drawer. Time enough for work tomorrow. He stood, crossed to the washroom, and checked himself in the mirror. For a thirty-year-old, not bad, even if he would gray earlier than most men.

Before leaving the study, he slipped on jeans with a western-style dress shirt, and added a pair of soft leather house-slippers. Tina would be waiting to serve dinner. As he rounded the corner leaving his room, he glimpsed movement—was it a woman? She differed from Tina, kind of ordinary and a bit too curvy, yet strangely sexy. Then she was gone, vanished like mist into a soft white cloud.

“Hi, Honey.”

For a moment, Tina’s voice sounded distant and faint, like whispering smoke from long ago. And then, “Want some hot tea?”

#

End