In the Fog

by Andrew J Brandt

  He stripped out of his Nike sweat pants, throwing them into the hamper and pulled on the khakis and polo shirt. From the closet, Jem went to the bathroom, looked at his hair in the mirror. It didn’t look too bad, so he opted to just brush his teeth for now. After a minute of brushing, he spit the toothpaste and saliva into the drain, flushing it with water from the sink.

  His wallet and phone were on his nightstand, and he shoved the items in his pockets, walking out of the bedroom only to realize that he’d forgotten shoes in his hurry. Back in the closet, he pulled on a pair of brown leather loafers, grabbed his keys and went to the garage.

  He slapped the button hanging beside the exit that opened the overhead door, the motor cranking to life, clanging and clinking the chain as it pulled open the garage door behind his Grand Cherokee.

  Hopping into the seat, Jem pushed the button that started the ignition and reversed out of the garage. The XM station he regularly listened to was on, but the only sound coming from the speakers was static. As he pulled into the alley and toward the street, he cycled through a couple of other stations, getting the same thing. Even flipping from satellite to terrestrial radio, he got the same noise. It dawned on him that it was the same high-pitched static Jay had on his battery-powered unit just thirty minutes prior.

  Looking both ways, making sure he wasn’t turning into oncoming traffic, Jem pulled out into the street and accelerated toward downtown, which was not much more than a ten minute drive on a good day. As he drove, he fiddled with the stereo some more before finally turning it off completely in frustration.

  Passing the houses in their neighborhood, he couldn’t help but notice the peculiarity of the multitude of men in their front yards, all talking to each other feverishly, like some giant social event was going on.

  It never occurred to him that they were facing the same dilemma he was. And he never realized that there wasn’t a single woman among them.

  CHAPTER 5

  GRANT | 9:10AM

  THE LITTLE BOY in the backseat talked to himself and played with two action figures in his hands as Grant drove across town to his sister-in-law’s house on Lynn Drive. The home, a little white cottage in the older part of town, was Catherine’s inheritance when her mother—Christine’s stepmother—passed away after a lengthy bout with lung cancer. And even if Catherine had spruced the place up, repainting the interior and laying new floors, every time he stepped in that house, Grant swore he could still smell the ghost of Virginia Slims past.

  “Daddy,” the little boy said, and Grant looked at him through the rearview mirror, “I wanna listen to music.”

  “The radio’s not working, buddy,” Grant said. He turned the dial, both FM and AM, only to find static on the bands, which he honestly glad for. He didn’t know how much noise he could stand with the hangover thumping in his temples. “There must be something wrong with the tower downtown,” he said.

  “What’s a tower?” the little boy asked.

  “It’s what sends the tv and radio signals, buddy,” he said.

  While driving with one hand, Grant reached for his cellphone and dialed his wife’s phone number, only getting her voicemail. When he tried Catherine’s number, he got the same. A few rings, and then Catherine’s vibrant, energetic voice, “Hey it’s Catherine, you know what to do.” Beep.

  His wife and her sister were polar opposites. Where Christine was ever the housewife and homemaker, Catherine was a wild child, a bohemian woman who regularly wore flowing skirts and talked about chakras and zen. She had once backpacked all across western Europe—Christine couldn’t be bothered to take a weekend camping trip. Even at their wedding, Catherine insisted on wearing a crown of flowers in her hair, the purple and yellow tulips matching the color scheme of the rest of the wedding party. Christine was the woman you married; Catherine was the woman you played with.

  Grant dialed his wife again, and again, the call just going to voicemail each time. He hoped the women were ignoring him on purpose, teaching him a lesson. As he drove, he thought about all the words he wanted to say; he’d stop going out so often with the guys, he’d dial it back, it was a mistake. I’m sorry.

  His head still pounded from the lack of sleep and the hangover. How long had he been on Craig’s couch? He couldn’t even tell you what time he’d gone to sleep. He remembered the bar, then going back to Craig’s place. He remembered a few games of pool. Had he told them he was going home? Wait, didn’t he say he was going home after the bar? So why did he end up at Craig’s? He blinked a couple of times as he tried to put the pieces of the evening together in his head. He found it hard to concentrate due to the dull ache in his temples, radiating to his forehead and behind his eye sockets.

  Grant turned onto Lynn Drive and pulled up in front of Catherine’s house. Her car, a little blue Honda Accord with a “Coexist” bumper sticker on the back windshield, occupied the single car width driveway. For a moment, he felt relieved, but then remembered that his wife’s car was also still at home, and she was nowhere to be found.

  He turned off the ignition and pulled his son out of his car seat and they walked up to the front door. Standing on the front porch, he rang the doorbell. After a few seconds of no answer, he rang it again and knocked on the door, only to be greeted with the same silence.

  He leaned over the shrubs that grew beneath the window beside the front porch and peered inside, seeing nothing but darkness, the house looking vacant and empty.

  “Is mommy here?” the boy asked, standing at his feet.

  “I don’t know, buddy. I don’t see anyone inside,” Grant said.

  Not knowing what else to do, Grant put his hand on the doorknob and gave it a turn. Surprisingly, it opened up for him and he pushed it to look inside the living room. “Catherine?” he called out. “Christine? Y’all here?”

  He stepped inside, his son with him. “Go sit on the couch, Ben,” he told the boy, which he did, taking a seat on the old floral print couch, his feet dangling just over the edge of the cushion.

  Grant walked into the kitchen which adjoined the living room, flipping on the light switch. Everything was in place, but no sign of the women. Did Catherine not come home after last night either? Even if she and his wife had been here this morning, they didn’t leave much evidence. “Catherine?” he called out again, a little louder this time. “Are you here?”

  The hallway that led off the living room to the two bedrooms and the lone bathroom was dark and he flipped on the light switch. He crept slowly toward Catherine’s room, the door slightly ajar. He opened it and saw her lying on the bed. Catherine’s body, completely naked, draped across the mattress, her head contorted to a weird and unnatural angle, facing him.

  He gasped in horror. The woman was blue, her eyes bulging from the sockets. Her hair, matted in sweat and vomit, surrounded her face which was frozen in a horrific dead stare. A deep red bruise ran the circumference of her neck. Her panties were around her ankles, a red-streaked yellow stain of urine and blood leaked out between her legs.

  Grant immediately felt the bile gurgle up his esophagus and he vomited on the floor, the yellow liquid smelling of acid and beer.

  Instantly sobered, images from the previous night came flooding back in his brain. Images from the bar. Of Catherine. Of her slender figure in a pair of tight jeans rubbing against his body while some hip hop thump played on the jukebox. A smoky haze of alcohol and cigarettes and lust all flooded back at once and he doubled over again, yellow vomit splashing on his shoes.

  “Daddy?” the boy’s voice called out, bringing Grant back from nearly passing out. Grant turned around and saw the little boy walking toward him in the hallway.

  “Get back!” he yelled at the boy. Grant looked once again at his sister-in-law, her lifeless body on the bed, just to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. Wiping his mouth clean with his forearm, he picked his son up and, holding the boy into his chest, ran the length of the hallway and toward the front door.

  “Where’s Aunt
Catherine?” little Benjamin asked as they ran out the door. Grant pulled it shut harder than he wanted, the thing slamming behind him, echoing in the quiet morning.

  “Aunt Catherine is sick,” he said.

  Once at the car, Grant opened the rear door and put his son in the car seat. He fumbled with the seatbelt clasp, his hands trembling. Finally, he got the mechanism to clasp and he shut the door. The little boy, not understanding what was happening, said, “Daddy? Is Aunt Catherine going to be okay?”

  “I hope so buddy, but we need to go find mommy,” he said as he fell into the driver’s seat, his breath fast and chest heaving.

  He knew he needed to calm himself down for the boy’s sake. “Everything’s okay, Ben,” Grant said, more to himself than to his son. He looked at the boy through the reflection in the rear-view mirror then mashed the button to start the ignition, the lights and gauges in the Lexus coming to life. Grant pulled the shifter and tore out of Lynn Drive, his back tires squealing on the pavement.

  CHAPTER 6

  JEM | 10:12AM

  JEM PULLED HIS Grand Cherokee into the shopping center’s nearly-empty parking lot and parked in a space in front of Georgia Jones’s insurance office. He could see from the car, however, that the office was dark inside, vacant like the parking spots in front of the building. To be sure, he got out of the vehicle and went to the front door of the business, pulling on the metal handle. The locked door met his pull with a resistance that said sorry, no service today. He cupped his hands on each side of his face and pressed his nose to the plate glass windows. He saw the front receptionist’s desk, where Georgia’s personal assistant and secretary Cindy normally sat, greeting customers with her bright blue eyes, infectious smile and southern drawl. Though today, the desk and chair were just as empty as the rest of the place. Jem took a few steps back and looked up and down the sidewalk that lined the businesses in the shopping center, each space dark.

  In the suite next to Georgia’s insurance office, however, a neon open sign illuminated the window, breaking the monotony of dark spaces and locked doors. Jem pulled on the door, which, to his surprise and relief, swung open, a chime dinging above his head to signify his entrance. It was a cell phone shop of some kind, the lobby’s walls lined with pegboards full of phone accessories and cases. There was a glass display case that housed used phones inside and a cash register on top.

  “Hello?” he called out. “Is there anyone in here?”

  A young black man appeared from a room behind the lobby and stood behind a display case full of cellular phones and laptops. He was sharply-dressed in black trousers and red polo shirt. Jem thought he looked like a young Tiger Woods.

  “How can I help you?” the young man asked.

  “Hi,” Jem said. “My name is Jem Taylor, I was hoping to find my wife nearby. She wasn’t at home this morning, and she had a scheduled meeting with Georgia next door. I went over there, but they seem to be closed this morning. Along with everyone but you, apparently. Have you seen a woman, about my height, with long brown hair? Or anyone from next door this morning?”

  “Hold up, back up,” the young man said. “You’re Jem Taylor? The guy that wrote The Summertime Murder Squad?”

  “You must watch the Netflix show,” Jem said with a sigh.

  “Yeah, man of course. I love that show. Went back and read the book too. Gotta say, the show’s ending is much better. I watched all eight episodes in one day. But, wait,” Brandon said, knowing he was getting ahead of himself. “You said you woke up this morning and your wife was gone too?”

  The question threw Jem off for a moment. “What do you mean, too?”

  “I mean, you woke up, and your wife was gone. Have you tried to call her?”

  “No, because her phone was still on the nightstand. She didn’t take it with her,” Jem said.

  “Come back here with me,” the young man said. As he led Jem to the back of the office suite, he held out his hand. “I’m Brandon Owens. This is my shop.”

  “Nice to meet you, Brandon,” Jem said, shaking the kid’s hand. Jem was surprised at how young he looked, but also not that surprised. The generation before him, the ones that witnessed 9/11 from the comfort of their classrooms instead of offices, the ones that grew up with everything at their fingertips within a thought’s notice, seemingly were born with technology in their hands right out of the womb. Repairing a computer himself? Jem couldn’t fathom it. His one marketable skill was still a holdover of the old world, one that, he was afraid, was dying. Without the help of adaptations that glued people to screens, Jem often wondered, sometimes at night, unable to sleep, head swimming from bourbon and eyes aching from staring at a blank Microsoft Word file, how long he’d actually be able to be a writer.

  They walked into a second room which was full of phone and computer parts strewn over several workbenches that lined the walls. Another man, older than Jem, occupied one of the chairs, and the entire room smelled of coffee.

  Jem immediately recognized the other man. “Steve!” he said, holding his hand out. Steve Jones, Georgia’s husband was a frequent golfing buddy, and even more frequent bourbon partner. The two men had become close friends when their wives began working together, and Georgia had insured several of Susan’s projects over the years. An older man, a decade older than his wife, and pushing nearly fifteen years older than Jem and Susan, Steve would tell you, over bourbon and cigars, that he was semi-retired, though he spent most of his time now in commodities trading. When Jem had asked him to explain how it worked, the man simply said, “If the price of corn goes up when I think it will, I make money.”

  “Hey there, Jemmy,” the man said, setting a styrofoam cup down and meeting Jem’s handshake.

  “You two know each other?” Brandon asked.

  “We do, indeed,” Mr. Jones said. “How’s Susan?” he said, turning back to Jem.

  “I don’t know,” Jem said. “In fact, I came here hoping to find her. She wasn’t in bed this morning. It’s like she—”

  Mr. Jones cut him off, “Disappeared in the middle of the night? Vanished into thin air?”

  “Yes, exactly,” Jem said, furrowing his brows and meeting the man’s stare with an inquisitive gaze. “Wait, how do you know that?”

  “Because it’s the same with Georgia,” Mr. Jones said.

  “You’re telling me that Georgia’s missing as well?” Jem asked incredulously. How could that be? How did not just one, but two women, simply disappear without a trace?

  Mr. Jones leaned in a bit, closing the distance between them like he had some confidential information to share. “Were her clothes still there?” he asked.

  “What?” Jem asked, not that he didn’t understand the question, but perplexed that Steve could even know that.

  “In the bed. Was her nightgown still between the sheets?” Steve said, matter-of-factly.

  “Well, she wears shorts and a t-shirt to bed, but yes,” Jem said.

  “Hang on,” Brandon interrupted. “Both of your wives are gone, and their clothes were still in the bed?”

  Jem nodded. “Yeah, that’s what happened. I even found her wedding band.” Jem reached into the deep drill pocket of his khakis and pulled his wife’s ring from its depth. He held it out to show the men. “It was beneath her pillow. When she sleeps, she’ll tuck her arm underneath. Her ring was there.”

  To both Jem’s dismay and horror, Mr. Jones reached into the pocket of his jeans and produced a gold band with an incredibly vibrant and substantial diamond cradled on top. “Same thing, son,” Mr. Jones said.

  “I’ll be damned,” Jem said.

  “Okay, okay, this is really weird,” Brandon said. “What if they were snatched up by, like, aliens or something?”

  Jem shook his head, “There’s no such thing as aliens.” Of course, the idea had flashed through his own brain, if even momentarily. Despite his career writing fiction, he knew that the world was grounded in reality. “There’s a logical explanation for what’s going on her
e, not science fiction. We’re all still here, so I don’t think there’s an invasion of body snatchers.”

  “But we aren’t women,” Mr. Jones interjected.

  “He’s right,” Brandon said. “We’re all dudes.”

  “So, what, you think it’s just the women? Some supernatural force has decided to hand-select our wives and make them disappear? Doesn’t make sense to me.” Jem asked.

  “Two isn’t a large enough sample size,” Mr. Jones said. “We need to see if anyone else in town has experienced the same anomaly.”

  “It’s not just two, though,” Brandon said. “This shopping center is full of women. Your wife’s office, the nail salon, it’s all busy. We’re the only ones here today. None of them came to work. He picked up his cellphone, went to his contacts and selected “Mom” in the list of names. Holding the device to his ear, the two other men watched him. “I’m calling my mom,” Brandon said. The call went to voicemail without answer, however. “No answer.”

  Jem pulled his own phone from his pocket and dialed the number for his mother. Instead of ringing, he got a robotic voice telling him that the call “could not go through. Please check the number and dial again.”

  “Weird,” Jem said. “Tried my mother but the call could not go through.”

  “Try again,” Brandon said, and Jem obliged, though the outcome remained unchanged.

  “Does your mom live in Decker?” Brandon asked.

  “No, San Antonio,” Jem replied.

  “Try someone local,” Brandon said.

  As Jem scrolled through his phone, Brandon called Michelle again. After a few rings, he was greeted with her voicemail message. “The girl that works for me,” Brandon said, hanging up the call, “her phone goes to voicemail. She’s not answering either.”

  “Okay, gentlemen,” Mr. Jones said. “Let’s take all the data we have into account. One, we have, for certain, two women who have seemingly disappeared in the middle of the night, leaving behind the belongings they wore to bed.”