ALTERNATE ENDINGS

By

Jeremy Gordon March


[NOTE: This is fan fiction. It is protected by the First Amendment and 
the Fair Use Doctrine. This story has not been written or posted for 
profit. It has not been reviewed or approved by anyone connected with the 
film “The Mist” or the novella of the same name.]



“Must we dream our dreams, and have them too?”

	-Marilyn May Lombardi, “Questions of Travel”



I.

Sometime before dawn, Mattie Lee Denton sat up in her small bed, crying 
for her husband Kyle.



Kyle, a tall, trim young man lying next to her, had been sleeping soundly 
but he got up in an instant. “I’m right here, honey,” he said softly.



Mattie was inches away from him and her eyes were open, but she didn’t 
hear or see him. “I miss you so much, baby.” Kyle could see teardrops 
coursing down her face in the moonlight. He put his hands on her 
shoulders somewhat uncertainly – he had always been gentle with her in 
their nine years of marriage – and shook her lightly. She didn’t wake up. 
“I’m so lonely,” she whispered. She said something else but it was cut 
off by a flood of tears.



“Mattie Lee-?” Kyle brushed a lock of his long, dark-blonde hair out of 
his eyes (although he was only twenty-seven, a year older than Mattie, 
his hair had recently begun to recede, and he’d been growing it longer 
and had added a goatee in a vain effort to stay young) and shook her 
again. He could feel his wife’s heart – the doctors all said it was a 
weak heart – begin to beat faster.



“The…things are here. The monsters,” Mattie said, still crying, her voice 
rising now. She was staring blankly ahead, toward the dresser with the 
pictures of their children. “They’re coming for Wanda and Victor. I can’t 
save them. I don’t know how. Please come back to us, baby. I’m sorry.



“I’m sorry I killed you,” she finished. Her pleading gave way to sobs.



Kyle reached past her, over to the night table, and switched on the lamp. 
She didn’t react. “Mattie. Mattie Lee. Wake up!” He rocked her again, 
hating himself for shouting at her, for not being able to spare her from 
the terrible dreams. Her detailed and vivid imagination had brought 
happiness to so many people when she wrote her wonderful stories and 
books. “The new Harper Lee,” that was what some of the papers called her. 
But what good was that imagination if it tortured Mattie herself night 
after night?



As he begged her again and again to wake up, Kyle heard the bedroom 
doorknob turn. “Mama?” Framed in the doorway was their beautiful daughter 
Wanda Lee, eight years old, a little on the chubby side but with her 
mother’s bright green eyes and delicate long nose, and the platinum 
blonde hair her daddy had had when he fell in love with Mattie Lee. 
Behind her was Victor Lee, their second child, a redhead like his mama, 
five years old, blinking sleep from his eyes. “Don’t cry, mommy,” he was 
saying, “please don’t cry.”



Recognition dawned in Mattie’s eyes. She looked at Kyle, then past him at 
her babies standing just outside the door. The spell was broken. “I-I’m 
sorry,” she shrugged, shaking her head. “I dreamt – it was just so real…” 
Mattie began to cry again. Kyle put his strong arms around her back and 
held her, gestured for the children to come to the side of the bed.



“This is home,” he assured her, gently rocking her back and forth. “We’re 
all here. Just like you left us last night.” He tried to laugh, didn’t 
quite make it. Nothing that hurt Mattie Lee could be funny.



“It was just a nightmare, mama,” Wanda put her tiny hand in Mattie’s. Her 
mother squeezed her fingers. Wanda, like Mattie before her, was a gifted 
child, maybe even a prodigy. She couldn’t write like her mother – Kyle 
figured no one could write that well – but her piano recitals could make 
anyone cry. Mattie and Wanda were perhaps the brightest and most talented 
people in the small blue-collar town of Rubidoux, Missouri. Mattie’s 
older sister Tamara would have been one of the town’s shining stars as 
well, had she not abandoned her home at the age of eighteen to become an 
actress in faraway Los Angeles. (Tamara either did not see, or refused to 
acknowledge, the irony of her career; she left Rubidoux far behind, only 
returning once every few years and sending letters and E-mails extolling 
her new life in what she called “the industry” in L.A., but she was 
invariably cast as a small-town Southern girl.)



“I know,” Mattie nodded. She was still snuffling and tears still rolled 
down her face, but she calmed down a bit. “It was just so real-“



She was interrupted by a sharp rapping at their front door. “Mattie Lee?” 
It was another woman’s voice, loud, nasal, and with a strong Southern 
accent. “Open up. Open this door!”



“Aunt Rose,” Wanda said.



“Let her in,” Mattie said. 



Wanda left the bedroom. A few moments later, Mattie and Kyle heard their 
front door crash open. A shadow moved briefly through the hallway, and 
then Rose strode into the bedroom with Wanda Lee in tow. Rose Sullivan 
was their next-door neighbor in the Rubidoux Trailer Park, and Mattie’s 
lifelong best friend. They had grown up together - Kyle had not joined 
them until they were sixteen – and Rose understood Mattie better than 
anyone else. The night he met Mattie and Rose – a meeting that resulted 
from Kyle’s stepfather ramming the family SUV into Rose’s car – Kyle had 
assumed they were twin sisters. They looked alike – they had the same 
bony build (though Rose, a tomboy who had fought in Afghanistan and Iraq 
and was now a Sheriff’s Deputy, was taller, with broader shoulders, and 
more muscular); the same pale Irish skin dotted here and there with red 
freckles; the same green eyes; and both had red hair (although Mattie’s 
was a dark reddish-brown while Rose’s was bright orange). They both had 
the same Celtic knotwork tattoos across their biceps, and both wore their 
hair in the same unusual style: Shaved to the scalp on the lower sides 
and back, and fading up to about a half-inch on top. They had almost a 
whole lifetime of common memories and experiences and agreed on nearly 
everything. (Their one big difference was that Rose liked girls and 
Mattie liked boys. Rose had initially been a little hurt when Mattie fell 
in love with Kyle; and a year later Rose had cried – possibly for the 
first time in her life – at Mattie and Kyle’s wedding. But Rose had 
finally accepted things for what they were, and all three of them were 
now inseparable.)



“I could hear you cryin’ again, honey,” Rose said gently. Like Mattie, 
she was barefoot, clad in a tank top and boxer shorts. 



“I’m sorry.” Mattie Lee remembered a night six months or so ago when 
she’d awakened from one of her dreams shrieking again and again. Kyle had 
tried to wake her up; she’d accidentally knocked him aside, bloodying his 
nose, and gone on screaming until she had roused a dozen families. One 
neighbor, a retired old busybody named Ralph Allen Chesney, thinking that 
Mattie was being murdered, had even called the police. Over the next two 
days Mattie, red-faced with embarrassment, had delivered boxes of her 
home-baked corn bread to everyone she’d inconvenienced, including the two 
officers from the local Sheriff’s station.



“Now, don’t you worry about that. Rose is here.” Kyle moved aside and let 
Rose take Mattie in her arms. Mattie began to cry again, more softly this 
time. Kyle could hear Rose singing to her, an old Irish folk song, as she 
rocked her best friend back and forth.



“I’ll get your medicine, mama,” Wanda turned and began walking out of the 
room.



“Wait…I don’t want your mama to take too much of that,” Kyle cautioned 
her. Mattie, as he and Rose and nearly everyone else in town knew, was 
addicted to Vicodin. She’d been prescribed some for a minor knee injury 
when she was sixteen. Since then, she’d taken more and more, claiming it 
helped not only with the physical pain but also helped her to calm down 
and to concentrate. A year after they were married, Kyle had been shocked 
to discover she was taking twenty or more pills a day, ten times her 
prescribed dose, ordering the extras online or getting them from 
emergency rooms and hiding the evidence. That had led to their first, and 
almost their only, real argument in all their time together. She always 
agreed with him that what she was doing was wrong; and that someday she 
would need to quit, even get help from one of those rehab places if 
necessary. But they both suspected it was too late. She’d tried to quit 
twice, once after their big argument and the second time about a year 
later. Each time, Kyle had seen his wife go through two weeks of hell, 
both physical and mental anguish, as the stuff withdrew from her system. 
Both times she had been unable to go to work or play with her family 
because of an unending sense of dread. And both times she’d gotten off 
the stuff, she had fallen into deep depression for a month afterwards. 
Kyle and the kids couldn’t stand to see their wife and mother suffer and 
they had tried another approach, reducing her dosage until she was down 
to six a day.



Mattie smiled up at him briefly. “You’re right, guys. But this isn’t the 
right time. Not now.”



Rose sighed. “Oh, honey…”



“Okay, Mattie Lee,” Kyle shook his head, disappointed, “but you only get 
one. And I’m gonna make sure you only take five for the rest of the day.” 
Wanda disappeared and returned a few moments later with a little yellow 
pill - Kyle insisted she keep the jar in the medicine cabinet, where he 
could see and count them, and not in her handbag or nightstand drawer – 
and a can of Red Bull (Mattie found that the effects of the Vicodin 
somehow came on sooner, and stronger, if she washed them down with coffee 
or certain energy drinks).



“Thank you, little one.” Mattie took the pill and chugged half the can of 
Red Bull. “Now, you take your brother back to your room. Get back to 
sleep. Today’s a school day and I don’t want you falling asleep.” She 
gave Wanda and Victor a kiss each. “And Wanda? Close the door when you 
go.”



“Do you want to talk about it?” Kyle asked once the three adults were 
alone.



Mattie was torn. She didn’t want to relive the images and feelings from 
the dream. They were so vivid; almost like actual memories experiences. 
But if she didn’t talk about it, she would have a sense of being left to 
face the fear and guilt and sadness alone. So she told them.



“It was the same thing again, the same dream,” she began as she stumbled 
out of bed and into the rocking chair. Rose remained standing, as she 
almost always did; she was inherently restless. Kyle moved to the other 
side of the bed so he could hold his wife’s hand.



“Did you dream of that…mist again?” Rose asked.



“I think you did,” Kyle prodded her. “You said something about monsters.”



“It was the mist again, yeah,” Mattie shuddered briefly as she 
remembered. “And those…things inside. The flying things. The spiders. The 
fish. But that wasn’t the worst.”



“Then what was?” Rose had found a pack of cigarettes on the top of the 
dresser, took one out and lit it, lit another for Mattie.



“I dreamt…” Mattie paused to take a drag on her cigarette. “At least in 
my dream I could ‘remember’…that Kyle was dead. I couldn’t live without 
him. But I couldn’t die. Could bring myself to-“



“Hush, Mattie Lee,” Rose said very quietly.



“I’m sorry.” And Mattie, crying and trembling at first but later calming 
down as the drug took effect, told Rose and Kyle, as she had told them 
before, of the vivid “memories” she’d head in her dream. Memories of 
driving Rose’s car drunk just before their senior year in high school, 
driving the car into a ditch and killing Kyle. Memories of a year and a 
half spent in a girls’ prison and then of a seven-year exile from her 
home town. In the dream, she’d had Wanda Lee by a man who had never even 
told her his real name and had abandoned her days after learning she was 
pregnant. Then she’d gone to New England to care for her dying Aunt Judy. 
(That part of the dream had some basis in reality. Judy Frost was her 
late father’s hateful, social-climbing sister who had married a wealthy 
man and left town, but not before telling Mattie’s dad and mom how glad 
she was not to have to live among poor white trash like them anymore. 
Mattie’s mom swore that Judy was actually a witch. Mattie had gone to 
visit her once, for two weeks, during a research trip for one of her 
books. She’d gotten up around midnight to get a glass of water, and had 
overheard Judy laughingly telling her husband Arnie that she was amazed 
her niece knew what soap and toilet paper were for.) But in her dream, 
she’d looked after Judy for nearly a year. Judy had treated her like a 
slave, constantly ridiculing and screaming at Mattie and Wanda Lee, 
locking Mattie out of the house, even threatening to have her arrested 
for elder abuse. And in the dream she’d been stranded in New England 
after Judy died, living in Judy’s house but with no money to buy Wanda 
proper food or medicine. She’d worked as a waitress, and when that hadn’t 
earned her enough, she’d prostituted herself one night and ended up 
pregnant with Victor Lee.



“Honey,” Kyle began, caressing her hand in both of his, “none of that 
ever happened. “I was there in the car that night when you had that 
accident, remember?”



“So was I,” Rose concurred.



“Maybe you’d had a little too much to drink that night – we were all 
pretty sloshed – but you just banged the car up a little. We hit that 
ditch at – what, five miles an hour? You were the only one hurt – you 
broke your knee.”



“I know that now,” Mattie explained. “But I also knew I could have killed 
you. I could have killed us all.”



“Stop blaming yourself for something that didn’t happen,” he pushed on. 
“You were sixteen. You’ve never done anything like that since. And we got 
married a year and a half later.



“And I’m Wanda’s father. Victor’s too. Don’t tell me you don’t remember 
that.” He got up, letting go of Mattie’s hand, rummaged around in the 
dresser and came up with an old photo album. “See this?” He flipped 
through the pages until he found one with two very similar pictures, 
pictures that had been taken three years apart. The first was of Mattie 
in a hospital bed, proudly holding Wanda Lee, flanked by Kyle on the 
right and Rose on the left. The second showed Mattie, again in bed, 
looking a little weak and pale but beaming nonetheless as she held up 
little Victor. Rose and Kyle were smiling as they leaned towards the 
camera on opposite sides of Mattie.



“And I know you had a bad experience in New England, honey. But you had 
to go there. You were working on – which one was it?” 



Mattie tried to look annoyed with her husband, ended up laughing at him 
instead. “Kyle Denton, even you should know that. I was doin’ research 
for ‘The Gallant Seventh.’ My second book. Also my worst, probably thanks 
to Aunt Judy.” Mattie Lee’s first two books had been historical novels 
focusing on the Civil War. The first, which she still regarded as her 
best, had focused on her own ancestors and their exploits in the First 
Missouri Confederate Brigade at the Battle of Champion Hill in 
Mississippi. It had sold well – most of the money went into a trust for 
her children’s’ education – and made her a household name among Civil War 
reenactors and aficionados. Some critics north of the Mason-Dixon line, 
however, had suggested that Mattie had painted an overly idealistic view 
of the Old South. She’d thus resolved to write her next book entirely 
from the Union standpoint. She had focused on the lives of three brothers 
in the Seventh Maine Volunteer Regiment and their fate at the Battle of 
Chancellorsville. At the time, staying with Aunt Judy in Castle Rock 
seemed like a reasonable thing to do. Instead, it had ruined her trip and 
her mood. She found she just wasn’t motivated enough to do proper 
research for her story about “the Maine Boys,” as she called them. The 
book had been a near-disaster. And her literary career was almost cut 
short when the book was panned by the New York Times Review of Books, 
which accused the young Southern author of trading in negative 
stereotypes of Northerners. (Her third outing, a best-selling collection 
of short stories titled “The Tomboys of Rubidoux,” had resurrected her 
career and earned her a loyal nationwide audience; it had been based on 
her happy teenage years with Rose, Kyle, and their other friends. Two of 
the stories had even been adapted into an independent film, with Mattie’s 
sister Tamara playing the minor role of a biker chick.)



Rose shrugged. “So you made a mistake. Next time, stay in a motel, 
y’hear? Get some of them Maine lobsters.”



“But…it wasn’t just Aunt Judy. They hated me, hated my kids.”



Kyle was behind her, massaging her shoulders. “But who’s ‘they?’ No one 
hates you or Wanda or Victor. Why would they?”



Mattie began to cry again as she remembered her dream. “Everybody hated 
us. The neighbors, the people I worked for. The police. Other women 
wouldn’t talk to me. They wouldn’t let their kids play with Wanda and 
Victor, except to tease them.”



“Why?”



“I was…different. They were rich, I’m poor-“



“We’re not poor anymore, honey,” Kyle assured her. “Thanks to you. Wanda 
and Victor can go anyplace they want for school. And like I told you, we 
can move out of the park if you want, get us a real house-“



“No, no, no,” Mattie waved her hand. “This is where I belong. It’s where 
I grew up. I wouldn’t be happy anyplace else. But they didn’t understand 
that. They called me poor white trash. They didn’t like Southerners. I 
wasn’t liberal enough – my best friend was a soldier - and I talked 
funny.” 



“You mean: They talk funny,” corrected Rose.



“And they didn’t even like my hair.” Mattie ran a hand over her nearly-
shaved head. “They thought I was a skinhead. They thought I was gay.”



“Honey, listen to me.” Kyle knelt down in front of her. “None of those 
things ever happened. You never lived in Maine except for those two weeks 
with Aunt Judy. This is your home, and people like you here. You’re so 
good to them.” Mattie supposed that was true. Despite Mattie’s success, 
the Dentons lived modestly, as if they lived only on his machinist’s 
salary; still hung out with the people they’d known in high school; and 
Mattie spent two evenings a week teaching children to read.



Rose stubbed her cigarette out, lit another. “You said something about a 
‘mist.’ You told me about that before. What is that?”



“It was horrible,” Mattie began as gestured to Rose for another cigarette 
and lit up. “I was in New England again, in Aunt Judy’s town. We’d had a 
storm; and this cloud of mist rolled in. And none of us could see it but 
there were…things – spiders, bees, beetles – in the mist.” 



“You always had a thing about bugs.” For as long as Rose had known her, 
Mattie Lee had had a very deep-rooted fear of insects. They both knew 
why. When Mattie was four years old, her mother Sue had found her sitting 
blissfully under a leafy tree in the park’s small common area – directly 
beneath a huge beehive. Mattie had only a vague idea of what bees were – 
she’d seen a few of them in cartoons or in her children’s books. She had 
no idea, though, that they could be dangerous. Up until that point, the 
bees in the hive had ignored Mattie because she had ignored them, 
focusing instead on the Dr. Seuss book she’d been reading. She found the 
buzzing sound somehow soothing, and the few bees that occasionally flew 
down to observe her looked to her like fuzzy flying jewels.



Sue, a highly-strung woman, had shouted – no, screamed - at Mattie to run 
to her right this instant and that she was in terrible danger from the 
“killer bees,” who were bad and wanted to hurt her. Mattie, afraid as 
always of her mother’s temper but also vaguely remembering something 
she’d heard about bees being able to “sting” people, had panicked. She’d 
dropped the book and run toward her mama – and in so doing, finally 
attracted the attention of the bees, who gave chase. Now she understood 
she was in danger. A sprinkler had been going nearby, but she didn’t know 
that bees were afraid of water. The cloud of angry bees had chased her 
around her mama’s trailer twice before she tripped over her own feet. By 
the time Sue got her inside, she’d been stung seventeen times. The stings 
themselves hadn’t hurt much – at least not at first - but she’d been 
terrified at the way these pretty little living jewels had turned on her. 
How could she know that other cute things – the grass, ladybugs, kittens, 
whatever – wouldn’t attack her as well? To this day, she overreacted to 
any small crawling or flying thing. If she saw a bee, wasp, or hornet, 
her first instinct was to run. As a teenager, she’d been a graceful, 
naturally skilled swimmer, but she’d almost drowned after brushing up 
against a dead potato bug in the pool at McKinley High, opening her mouth 
to scream, and inhaling several ounces of water. 



“Maybe that’s where they came from. But these weren’t just regular bugs. 
They were big. The size of dogs. Some the size of horses. No one could 
see them because of the mist. No one knew they were in danger. And then 
the mist closed over the whole town, and-“ Mattie helplessly held out the 
palms of her hands.



“I was at the market when it happened. I remember I’d left little Wanda 
and Victor at home alone.” She sniffled. “Oh, why did I do that?”



“But you didn’t do it, honey,” Kyle smiled. “I’ve never seen you leave 
our babies alone.”



“But in the dream…I had. I kept imagining them opening a window in the 
house and those things coming in; or going outside to play in the mist or 
to look for their mama…and never coming home again.



“I wanted to go back home to them but I was afraid. I asked people in the 
store – the people who hated me, remember? – to walk me home but no one 
would.” Mattie’s hands clenched into fists as her face flooded red. “They 
hated me – and they would’ve hated you, Kyle, and you, Rosie – and they 
didn’t give a damn about my babies.



“They were probably too scared to go outside.”



“No! That wasn’t it. I was different from them. They thought I was poor 
and stupid and takin’ up their space. They wanted me and my babies to 
die. They loved it.”



“Honey, calm down.” Kyle’s heart sank as he heard the ugly new note in 
his wife’s voice. Mattie was no bigot, but she felt very uncomfortable 
with certain types of people: Anyone rich (the Dentons were certainly on 
their way but Mattie would live no place but the trailer park, wear no 
watch fancier than a plastic digital model from the local Wal-Mart; and 
drive nothing fancier than her ancient Chevy). Anyone from a big city 
(Kyle himself was from Jefferson City; he and Mattie had almost instantly 
fallen in love with one another but Mattie kept telling him how different 
he was from other city folk). 



And Mattie was also uncomfortable with most people from the North. Mattie 
was very proud of her Southern heritage. Kyle knew how much she loved the 
beautiful Southern landscape and its cooking and folklore. But he 
suspected that some of her patriotism was a bit defensive. 



For one thing, Mattie Lee liked to think of herself, her family, and her 
neighbors as hardworking, brave, and unaffected, many of whom spent two 
or three years between high school and college defending the country. She 
was genuinely hurt to learn that some people in the North tended to think 
of rural Southerners as backward, bigoted, superstitious and lazy. 
Although Mattie had a number of Northern friends (her literary agent, 
Teddy Gold, was from New York), when she was in a bad mood she was 
convinced that all Northerners thought this way. She loved her sister 
Tamara, but was angry with her for abandoning the South to try to be part 
of that wealthy liberal crowd in Los Angeles. She was sure that a 
Presidential candidate’s comment about poor people clinging to their 
faith and their guns was directed entirely against Southerners. 



And Mattie had conceived a special hostility for a Los Angeles Times book 
critic named Amanda Dumfries who she was convinced hated everything and 
everyone in the South. Amanda – a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, perfectly 
tanned, surgically enhanced young woman who looked like a supermodel – 
had written basically positive, if somewhat patronizing, reviews of 
Mattie’s three collections of short stories. The reviews alone probably 
sold another fifty thousand copies of each of the three books. When the 
books went into their second printing, her publisher had wanted to print 
excerpts from the reviews on the back covers. Mattie flat-out refused. 
She focused on a few unfortunate comments in the reviews – especially one 
in which Amanda, after describing the hardscrabble lives of Mattie’s 
characters (all of whom were based on Mattie and her friends), said that 
she had managed to “create something beautiful out of something ugly.” 
Mattie had ranted for days on end about how a “spoiled child” like Amanda 
Dumfries had nothing but contempt for the people who grew her food, made 
her clothes, and “pulled her fat out of the fryer” by dying in 
Afghanistan and Iraq. 



Mattie had actually consulted a lawyer after Amanda Dumfries implied that 
Mattie might possibly be a lesbian. In the middle of a very favorable 
review of one of Mattie’s stories, Dumfries wrote that the lead character 
was trying to “discover her sexual identity.” Amanda had then said that 
this character seemed to be based on Mattie herself. Mattie, she 
observed, wore her hair very short, had an “boyish” build, and was best 
friends with a woman who was openly gay. Two years later, when Amanda was 
diagnosed with cancer and lost all of her own hair and twenty pounds to 
chemotherapy, Mattie had to be restrained by her friends from sending 
Amanda an E-mail asking her if she’d just discovered her own sexual 
identity. “Right now,” Rose had told her, “I don’t even know who you are, 
Mattie Lee. That woman is sick. Dying, maybe. What the hell’s the matter 
with you?” When she’d turned to Kyle for support, he said he should 
certainly send the E-mail if she wanted all of her readers to think she 
was crazy and never go near her books or stories again. (In all fairness 
to Mattie, she had dropped the idea and eventually written Amanda a far 
nicer E-mail wishing her a full recovery.)



Also, Kyle knew that Mattie felt compelled to continuously prove her 
loyalty to other Southerners. Her Irish Catholic forebears, even after 
fighting and in some cases dying for the Confederacy, had been rejected 
as “Papists” by some of their Protestant fellows. Mattie, he sometimes 
thought, was out to prove, if only to herself, that she was as Southern 
as anyone else. This compulsion was usually strongest after Mattie had 
heard some Evangelical preacher on the radio or the TV. For a whole 
month, she’d wasted countless hours sending E-mail after E-mail to 
“Mother” Rebecca Carmody, a televangelist broadcasting from nearby Salem, 
after she heard that the woman had made some comment about the “great 
Protestant traditions” of the South and had urged Missouri’s Catholics, 
Jews and non-believers to get properly “saved.”



“I know I take this too far sometimes,” Mattie conceded. “But this time I 
could see it in their eyes: Here’s this unwed mother from the Ozarks, 
probably on welfare, who can’t even take care of her own kids-”



“Honey,” Rose broke in, “you know I don’t like folks like that either, 
but this was just a dream-“



“You’re not listening!” Mattie realized she was shouting and she briefly 
clapped her hands over her mouth. “The worst thing I can think of, the 
worst thing I can imagine, is something bad happening to my babies. I had 
to get home to them, to tell them what was out there and keep them 
inside. Or at least so that we could…” she took a deep breath that turned 
into a sob. “…we could die…together-“



Kyle gently pulled Mattie to her feet, wrapped his arms around her. “Let 
it out, Mattie, let it all out.” He could feel her little heart pounding, 
could feel her trembling, and he knew her blood sugar was low. He moved 
her over to the bed, sat her down, and asked Rose to please get something 
sweet from the kitchen.



Rose came back a minute later with a glass of orange juice. Mattie drank 
it greedily, remembered a little guiltily that she’d skipped dinner last 
night.



“You don’t have to talk anymore,” Kyle said after she’d cooled off a bit.



“No I-I want to. I have to.” And Mattie told them the rest of the dream, 
about shooting her way through the parking lot until she stole a car (a 
skill she and Rose had picked up when they were fifteen and that Mattie 
had taught to her readers through a story about a pair of young car 
thieves. About hiding with Wanda and Victor in Aunt Judy’s house for two 
days, leaving just as the house began to collapse. About driving through 
the mist, past scenes of death and desolation and encountering a huge 
monster (Rose smiled at her description of the thing as a “six-legged 
dinosaur”). And finally, about the dream of rescue by the military, her 
reunion with Rose, and the return to their home town.



When she was finished, Kyle gave her a kiss. “You protected our kids, 
even in your dreams.”



“Well, I guess…” Mattie held out her hands again. “And then I scared the 
hell out of ‘em this morning by having that nightmare.” She forced a 
laugh. “Not a very good trade for them, is it?”



She looked down at her hands again. They were small and graceful and – 
except for a few calluses on her fingertips brought on by years of typing 
– nearly perfect. “There was…one more thing.”



“What?”



“It…I dreamed something – felt something – that tells me I’m a bad 
person.”



“But you’re not a bad person.” Kyle sat beside her on the bed, had his 
arms around her shoulders.



“Sometimes I am. You remember Amanda Dumfries, right?”



Kyle smiled and shook his head. “How could we not? But I thought you and 
she were friends now.”



“Kind of. Y’all stopped me from killing her, anyway. Well, she was in the 
dream.”



“Uh-oh,” Rose lowered her head. 



“That’s right. And it’s my bad. And you know who else was in there? David 
Drayton.”



“Wait…” Kyle snapped his fingers. “That’s…”



“From Heavy Metal,” Rose beat him to the punch. As kids, she and Mattie 
had spent almost all their money on comic books and graphic novels. They 
knew the names of every major artist and every minor character, and could 
tell you the plot lines of almost any comic book serial you cared to 
name. Kyle had loved the books as well – his own daughter Wanda was named 
after Wanda Maximoff, a character from the “X-Men” series, but he was 
less of a fanatic than his wife or Rose. David Drayton was perhaps 
Mattie’s favorite illustrator in those days. Drayton was a talented 
artist who had started with science-fiction pieces in an illustrated 
fantasy magazine called Heavy Metal. He had gone on to draw graphic novel 
adaptations of several books by Stephen King. Finally, he’d launched a 
graphic novel of his own (called “A Sound of Thunder” and based on a 
classic Ray Bradbury story about the unintended consequences of time 
travel).



“Haven’t you forgotten that yet?” Rose sounded a bit reproachful.



“I know I should, but I guess I haven’t.” About a year ago, Mattie, who 
loved science fiction almost as much as she loved Southern history, had 
written a novel of “alternative” history called “If At First You Don’t 
Succeed…” In the book, a Fascist government comes to power in Washington 
in the wake of the Great Depression. The Southern states refuse to accept 
the atheist, socialist regime and secede to protect the traditions of 
personal liberty, free enterprise, religious tolerance and minority 
rights. In the final chapter, Southern soldiers and sailors seize control 
of the U.S. military, overthrow the dictatorial regime in Washington, and 
restore democracy and union. Her publisher had asked her if she had any 
ideas for a cover illustration; and she had immediately thought of David 
Drayton. Along with the publisher’s formal request to Drayton’s agent, 
Mattie had included a handwritten note in which she told Drayton how much 
she admired his work; reminded him of the time they met – briefly – at a 
comic book convention in Dallas; and told him how honored she would be if 
he would illustrate her book. Drayton had politely turned her down, 
saying that he had other commitments. Mattie – who admired him and loved 
his work too much to be angry at him – had simply broken down and cried.



“What happened to them?” Rose asked warily. “Did they eaten by giant 
spiders? Forced to read your books, maybe?”



“Worse. They were in the store when I was…pleading for help for Wanda and 
Victor Lee. They wouldn’t help me. David picked up his little boy – I 
think I read somewhere once that he has a little boy. He said he had his 
own kid to worry about. He held him out in front of me, like a prize he 
had and I didn’t. Right before I left, I told them I hoped they’d rot in 
Hell.



“You were angry, that’s all.” Kyle kept his arm around her. “Who wouldn’t 
be?”



“Well, that’s not the worst of it. At the end of the dream, I saw them 
again. While I was on the truck with Wanda and Victor. Amanda was dead. 
She looked horrible. Her eyes were open and her mouth was open. And 
David’s…” she paused and collected herself. “David’s son was sitting in 
her lap. Her arms were around him but loose, like she’d been holding him 
when she died. He was dead too. David was still alive. He’d killed them. 
Killed them minutes before we would’ve picked them all up.



“And in my dream, I was happy about it.” She began to cry again and Rose 
joined her and her husband on the side of the bed. “Can you believe that? 
Here’s a little boy – a beautiful boy about Victor Lee’s age – and I’m 
happy that he’s dead. And a young woman too. And the man who lost them 
and who’s gonna be dead himself pretty soon. I was happy because they 
were richer than me, and smarter than me, and had an easier time than me, 
and looked down on me, and wouldn’t help me.”



“It’s okay, Mattie Lee,” Kyle ran his hands through what there was of her 
hair. “None of those things happened. You were very nice to David and 
Amanda in real life. When Amanda was sick, you told her you wanted her to 
get well; and you told David how much you loved his work.”



“It just felt so real,” Mattie insisted. “Not like a dream at all. And 
even if it was a dream, now I know it’s in me to think and feel those 
terrible things.” And with that she fell silent for a time. Rose and Kyle 
sat on either side of her, consoling her.



Eventually Rose stood up. “I should get back. I have work tomorrow.”



“We should all get back to sleep,” agreed Kyle. He turned to face his 
wife. “Mattie Lee, I’ll be right there beside you, holding your hand. If 
you start to dream again, or you start to get scared or sad, just go like 
this. He squeezed her hand.”



“I’m sorry,” Mattie said again. “I woke you both up. I told you about all 
these ugly things-“



“Honey, shush,” Rose put her finger over Mattie’s lips. “You’re the best 
friend I have. If you want to call me, you want me to come back, I’ll be 
right next door.” And with that, she gave Mattie a final kiss on top of 
the head. Mattie and Kyle saw her out, entered Wanda and Victor’s room to 
tell them that their mama was all right, and went back to bed. 



“Kyle,” Mattie said as she closed her eyes, “just promise you won’t 
leave. Ever.”



“I won’t honey.” And with that he kissed her good night, switched off the 
light, and laced his right hand in her left. Mattie was soon asleep but 
she still felt the gentle pressure of his hand.





II.

“Mattie Lee?” Somewhere above her, Mattie could hear Rose’s voice.



“What?” She smiled contentedly. This time there had been no bad dreams – 
no dreams at all, in fact – and Kyle’s hand felt good in hers. She hoped 
that Rose would let her lay there a while longer with her husband.



“Wake up.” Mattie opened her eyes, confused. It was just after dawn, and 
she could not see much in front of her. She could see Rose leaning over 
her bed, leaning close to her. She hoped Rose wasn’t crowding Kyle.



“What is it?” 



“You were having a bad dream.”



“Not just now. I had one earlier, remember? You and Kyle talked me down.“



“Kyle’s gone, honey,” Rose said gently, sadly. “You remember that, don’t 
you?” 



It was then that Mattie realized she was in a single bed and that Rose, 
not Kyle, was holding her left hand. 



“No, that was the bad dream. He was here. We’ve been married nine years.” 
But Mattie was no longer sure any of that was true.



“No, honey. You love Kyle and you always will. You were calling his name, 
but he couldn’t come. He can’t come.” And the room brightened just a 
little, enough for Mattie Lee to see the outlines of the stitches and 
scars and burn marks on her left hand and wrist. What she’d hoped would 
bring her back to Kyle, in the only way they could be together again.



And then Mattie began to cry again. “Wanda…and Victor?” She asked 
fearfully.



“They’re here. In their room. They heard you and they woke me up. And I’m 
here for you. Always.”



“My…writing? My books?”



“You’ve started on that. You’re off to a real good start.” 



“And the part about the mist? David…and Amanda?”



“All that was real too. But none of it-“ Rose squeezed her hand “-was 
your fault.”



“I-I wanted them to die. I was angry. Jealous. I was happy when they 
died.”



“They were your neighbors. They never treated you good. Amanda was a 
nobody, a dumb Yankee schoolteacher who treated you like a child. And she 
never forgave Wanda Lee for knowing more about – what was it, Greek 
myths? - than she did. We loved David’s art when we were kids. But that 
don’t make it OK for him to call the police whenever you played your 
music too loud. I’d be angry with them, too. And remember, you were half 
out of your mind with fear – like everybody else who was trapped up 
there. And you couldn’t have saved them.”



“Hold me, Rosie.” She did.



“I was so happy,” Mattie reflected, “to hear it was all a dream – what 
happened to Kyle, to me, to David and Amanda, to all those folks.”



“I wish that’s what happened too. But at least you lived. You and Wanda 
and Victor Lee. At least we got you back home. And some day, we’ll find 
you a man-“



“Please don’t say that. I just want Kyle.” Mattie paused. “I can’t let 
go, Rosie. I promise I’ll be here for you and Wanda and Victor but I 
can’t let him go.”



Rose had no answer for that. She put Mattie back down on the bed, covered 
her with the blanket, and sang softly to her until she stopped crying.



“You got work today, honey,” she reminded Mattie gently. “I’ll come back 
for you in an hour, okay?”



“Good night, Rosie,” Mattie nodded. And then she closed her eyes, 
squeezing out the last tears, and settled back against the pillow,
waiting to go back to sleep or to wake up.