In the Fog

by Andrew J Brandt

  Both Brandon and Jem nodded in agreement.

  “Two, both television and radio signals are out.”

  “Internet too,” Brandon said. “We have no internet either.”

  “Right. Television, radio and internet, all out of commission. So, communications through airwaves are cut out. And three,” Mr. Jones said, “any woman we call, we are greeted with only voicemail.”

  “Except my mother in San Antonio,” Jem said.

  “Young man,” Mr. Jones said to Brandon, “do you know anyone else we can try to call outside of Decker?”

  “I can try my brother in Round Rock,” he said. However, when Brandon dialed his brother’s number, he was met with the same message Jem heard when he tried to call his mother. “No connection. Could not go through.”

  “Let me try to call Hector,” Brandon said.

  “Who’s Hector?” Jem asked.

  “He’s my technician. I talked to him just before Mr. Jones walked in, he said he was on his way.”

  “So, you were able to make a call to a local number, and it went through? And you talked to him?” Jem asked.

  “Yeah,” Brandon said, the phone to his ear.

  Jem and Mr. Jones looked at each other, the concern and confusion in their eyes mirrored one another.

  “Hey, Hector!” Brandon said. He pointed to the phone, his face bright with excitement, like he’d just found the answer to a long-standing question. “He answered!” Turning his attention to the phone, he said, “Hey, I’ve got two guys in the shop talking about something really weird going on.”

  Both Jem and Mr. Jones waited for the conversation to end, watching the young man’s face cycle through expressions of confusion and terror as he talked with his coworker. “Oh, shit. Are you serious?” Brandon said. “Alright. Well, get back home then. I’m probably going to shut the shop down and see if they’ll let me get home,” he said as he ended the call.

  “What was that about?” Jem asked.

  “Hector said the police have Main Street cordoned off, not allowing anyone through, telling people to get back home,” Brandon said. “I think we should get out of here.”

  Jem and Mr. Jones agreed, and they noticed the sirens outside now as several first responders drove past the shopping center, the alternating sounds of both police and ambulances filling the air. The three men hurried to the front of the shop and spilled out the front door, watching the police cruisers and ambulances drive by.

  One of the police cruisers pulled into the parking lot of the shopping center, the tires screeching as the officer brought the car in front of the TechMedix office. The young Hispanic officer got out of his car, and standing in the door asked the three men at the front of the office, “You men work here?”

  “I do,” Brandon said.

  “This one next door is my wife’s office,” Mr. Jones said.

  “Is she here now?” the officer asked.

  “No,” Mr. Jones said curtly. “Which is why I’m here.”

  “So there are no women inside?” the officer asked.

  “No, officer,” Jem said. “We haven’t seen our wives at all. Came up here hoping we’d find them. They had a scheduled meeting.”

  “Alright. We want everyone off the streets. Chief McMillan has ordered everyone in town to City Hall at noon for an emergency meeting,” the officer said.

  Steve Jones stepped toward the car with his hands in front of him, showing he was no threat. The officer looked on edge, and the last thing any of the men wanted to do was set him off.

  “Let me ask you something, son,” Mr. Jones said. “Does this have to do with the women?”

  The officer nodded. “Yes sir. They’re all gone. Now, I’ve got to get to the station. You men need to be at city hall at noon. You’ll hear the announcements from the officers on patrol.”

  The officer got back in his car and drove off, leaving Jem, Steve and Brandon dumbstruck in front of the TechMedix office.

  “Did you hear what he said?” Brandon said.

  But of course they did. They’re all gone.

  CHAPTER 7

  GRANT | 9:54AM

  GRANT DROVE HOME in silence, though the little boy in the back seat of the Lexus sang and talked to himself. Playing with his toys, he’d seemingly completely forgotten about Aunt Catherine. Grant watched him through the rearview mirror, trying to remain calm.

  He couldn’t get the image out of his mind. His sister-in-law lying there on her bed, her skin completely white and drained of color, except for her face, purple from bruising. The deep red bruise around her neck where her assailant had strangled her.

  The cell phone was in his hand, the numbers 911 dialed, but Grant didn’t connect the call. Something internal, deep down, kept him from calling. He didn’t want to acknowledge it, but it was guilt. Shame. Fear.

  He rewound the night in his mind, as much as he could remember of it. Catherine, with Malibu on her breath, had saddled next to him at the table near the back of the room. She had lit up when she saw him. They’d talked, laughed, drank. The endless rounds of beer and booze. Then the song came on and she begged him to dance. Her arms wrapped around him, her hair all in his face, his member growing in his pants.

  But then...he’d left. Right? He’d gone back to Craig’s when the bar closed. The pool table in Craig’s den, the men laughing. Catherine wasn’t there though. They’d closed down the bar, and then...

  Grant cursed under his breath. He’d give anything now to remember. Still in his hand, he looked at the screen for a moment, the numbers 911 illuminated on the screen. Instead, he shut the screen off and looked back up at the road. He slammed on the breaks, his tires making an awful screeching sound on the asphalt. A car was idling at the intersection and he nearly rear-ended it, his car coming to a stop mere inches from the other car’s rear fender.

  “Daddy!” the boy cried out from the backseat. Grant looked back to see his son’s car seat lopsided from the quick stop, the little boy hanging in his seat, the harness straps keeping him from spilling onto the floorboards.

  Grant got out of the driver’s seat and opened the back door to fix his son’s car seat. “Sorry, buddy,” he said. “Daddy wasn’t paying attention.”

  Looking back at the car in the intersection that he’d nearly hit, he called out, “Sorry about that.” The other driver, however, didn’t acknowledge him or get out of their car, the charcoal-colored Ford Taurus idling and humming at the stop sign.

  Grant approached the Ford slowly, walking to the driver’s door. When he looked in, he saw the car was empty, except for the clothes. Just as his wife’s nightgown and panties had been in their bed between the sheets, an entire outfit was in the driver’s seat of the Ford.

  Grant tried the door handle, and it opened for him. The radio was on, with only loud static pouring from the sound system. In the driver’s seat, he felt around the clothes, the white blouse and bra in the seat, a pair of skinny dark denim jeans and ankle boots in the floorboard. Among the clothing, he found a diamond ring and several gold studs that he thought were earrings. A purse sat in the passenger seat and a Samsung phone nested in a holster hanging from the air vents.

  Grant backed away from the car slowly and looked around the neighborhood. Just like his wife, the woman that once occupied this vehicle had apparently disintegrated, leaving her belongings and personal items behind. It made no sense whatsoever, his brain unable to compute while he was still trying to keep a hangover at bay and a full-on panic attack from taking over after what he’d seen at Catherine’s house.

  Whatever was going on, he knew he needed to get Benjamin back home and out of the streets. From there he could calculate his next move. He shut the door to the Ford and went back to his car, dropping into the seat and saying to his son, “We need to get home.”

  Grant reversed the car from behind the Ford in the intersection and maneuvered around it, looking into the vacant car once more as he passed it. Whatever was going on, between the disappeared women
and his sister-in-law, he was scared out of his mind, but wasn’t about to let that fear take over, not while he had Benjamin with him.

  He needed to get home, and he needed some pain meds. Or hell, even a Xanax. He could figure out what to do or who to call once he calmed down a little, and he knew he had a bottle of ibuprofen on the kitchen counter. He’d take them out to the front porch and, with a giant glass of water, he’d down them, the whole damn bottle probably, and then he’d formulate a plan. The panic wouldn’t take over, not today.

  He pulled into the driveway in front of the house, next to Christine’s Traverse, and turned the ignition off. Unbuckling his son from the car seat, he went to the front door and as he unlocked the deadbolt, his next-door neighbor jogged over.

  “Hey, Mr. Oliver?” It was Tommy Lester, who was fifteen—maybe sixteen at his point?—with a face full of pimples and freckles under a head of striking orange hair. The kid mowed their lawn for twenty bucks every other week, though Grant didn’t really talk to him much. He knew the kid and his two redheaded brothers had lived with their mother, a single woman with hair the same striking orange color, next door since he and Christine had moved in while she was pregnant with Benjamin. When their son was born, Ms. Lester had given them several hand-me-down clothes from her youngest son who was two when Benjamin came into the world. If there was a Mr. Lester, Grant had never seen him. As far as he knew, the three boys were the product of immaculate conception as they were all spitting images of their mother.

  “Hey Tommy, give me a second,” Grant said as he opened the door and let Benjamin in. The little boy walked in the front door and went back to his bedroom, his toys still in his hands. “Alright, what’s up?” Grant asked. Looking at Tommy, he could see the kid had a concerned look about him.

  “My mom’s not home, and we tried to call her but it just goes to voicemail,” he said. “I was just wondering if you’d seen her leave this morning. My brothers are pretty scared because,” Tommy paused for a second, like what he was saying was crazy, or embarrassed to say it out loud, “we found her clothes in the bed.”

  Grant stared at the redheaded teenager, the words taking a moment to fully make sense in his brain. Everything that was happening was too much for him to process. “You saying she’s nowhere?”

  “Right,” Tommy said. “I was just hoping maybe you’d seen her out here before you left or something.”

  “Do you mind if I come over and see what you’re talking about?” Grant said. “The clothes, I mean?”

  Tommy thought for a second. “Um, yeah, sure,” he said.

  Grant followed his neighbor across the yard. He considered grabbing Ben, but decided that the boy would be okay for two minutes playing by himself. He was never one to get into things or draw on the walls with a marker. In fact, right now, he felt rather grateful for having an easy kid. He’d read horror stories about kids rubbing peanut butter all over their entire bodies or chopping their hair off after finding a pair of scissors in a kitchen drawer when their parents turned their backs for seemingly seconds, but that wasn’t Benjamin. As long as the boy had his toys and a sippy cup full of chocolate milk, he could be left for an hour and be just fine. Grant had no intentions of leaving him that long right now, however. No, he’d go see what the neighbor kid was talking about, because Grant didn’t want to believe it. Finding his wife’s gown in the sheets and then the vacant idling vehicle were too much of a coincidence. Another woman vanished as well? Surely not.

  Besides, and it ate at the back of his brain, Catherine hadn’t vanished. No, she was dead, lying face down on her bed and covered in blood and piss, but the body was still there. He’d seen it.

  He followed Tommy in the front door of the Lester household. Inside it smelled like boys and Scentsy, feet and sweat mixed with berries and lavender. This poor woman tried with all her might to mask the odor of living with three boys, and it wasn’t quite working. The other two Lester boys, twelve-year-old Michael and six year-old Luke, were sitting on the couch in the living room in front of a black-screen television. They said nothing as Tommy led Grant back to their mother’s bedroom.

  The room was small, a queen-sized mattress on metal rails and no headboard was tucked against the far wall, and a wooden dresser that had seemingly seen better days, its handles mismatched and wood chipped, occupied an otherwise bare bedroom. The walls were painted white, but the color was flat and stale. Door jambs had the residue of sticky fingers, leaving behind brown stains on the white surfaces. Tommy stood in the doorway and Grant walked over to the empty bed. A floral print comforter and white sheets were on the unmade bed. Carefully pulling back the bedding, Grant saw the woman’s clothes in between the sheets, just as he’d found Christine’s.

  “This is not good,” Grant said, putting the sheets back in place.

  “What do you mean?” Tommy said. “It’s like she just disappeared. Her car is still here, her purse is hanging on the door. But she’s not here.”

  “I know,” Grant said. “I,” he started to say that he got home this morning, but stopped himself. Instead, he finished the sentence with, “woke up this morning and my wife was missing too. Same thing. Gown in the sheets like she just,” he paused, not knowing how to describe it. “Just vanished. And not just her. Down the road, there was a car idling in the middle of the intersection. Clothes in the driver’s seat. Purse in the floorboard. No woman.”

  “You mean —” Tommy started but trailed off.

  “Yeah,” Grant said. He and Tommy walked out of the room.

  “I tried to call 911, but it was busy. And I called our grandma, but her phone just rings and rings. I was going to ride my bike over there when you pulled up,” he said.

  “I’m going back to my house to watch Benjamin and see if I can get ahold of anyone else,” Grant said. “Go to your grandma’s, and let me know what you see over there.”

  “Do you think everything is going to be okay?” Tommy said. “My brothers are really scared.”

  Grant leaned in. What could he say? That everything was just peachy? That all these women were playing some elaborate prank on the town and they’d all show up and have a laugh with a camera crew in tow? No. Whatever was happening, whatever caused these women to vanish in the middle of the night, was no joke. “I don’t know, kid. Something really strange is going on here though.”

  Grant walked out the front door and heard the sirens approach their street. His heart stopped. His first thought was Catherine. Had they found her body? Had he been seen leaving her house? He felt so stupid. Why didn’t he call the police when he’d had the chance? He’d had the phone in his hand, the numbers punched in. What stopped him? His palms immediately broke out in sweat. If they took him in for questioning, what would happen to little Ben? He stood on the concrete front step of the Lester home, Tommy standing next to him on the unlevel surface as the police cruiser turned the corner and drove down Eastern Avenue.

  “What’s going on, Mr. Oliver?”

  “I don’t know, kid,” he lied. They were coming for him.

  The bullhorn on top of the car sounded through the sirens and the officer inside the car announced, “ATTENTION DECKER RESIDENTS. EMERGENCY MEETING AT CITY HALL AT NOON. ATTENDANCE IS MANDATORY.” The officer repeated the message as he drove past the homes on the block. Looking across the street, Grant saw several people on their front porches, watching and listening.

  Grant, his heart rate falling when he realized he wasn’t being pursued by the police, noticed that not a single woman was amongst them.

  CHAPTER 8

  JEM | 11:57AM

  JEM AND STEVE Jones stood in the parking lot of city hall as more and more men walked up. The high sun beat down on the men standing on the asphalt black top, and the heat was sweltering. Sweat was already forming in Jem’s armpits and the back of his neck as he felt the warm sun bearing down on him. He knew that he’d have a nice sunburn by the time he got back home and he wished he’d grabbed a ballcap, but in his hurry he hadn’t
thought about it until just now.

  “Look at this,” Steve Jones said, surveying the gathering crowd. They were all men, both young and old. There were men with their sons and babies in strollers. Judging from the color schemes of the carriers and strollers, Jem could immediately assume that there wasn’t a single female in the lot.

  The Decker City Hall occupied the center of downtown and was surrounded by a parking lot and park that usually housed outdoor farmers’ markets and community events. The two-screen movie theater just south of the imposing granite city hall building hosted outdoor movie events on the lawn in the summer. Today, however, the mood was solemn and worried. Jem could feel it in the hot humid mid-June air, this palpable paranoia that permeated the ever-shallowing space between the men as they arrived for the emergency meeting.

  “Not a single woman,” Jem said. “How is this possible?”

  “I don’t know,” Steve said. “I don’t understand it. It doesn’t make sense to me. Every woman in town just disappeared? In the middle of the night?”

  “It’s not just the women, though,” Jem said. “Look at the kids. The babies. They’re all boys. There are no females at all.” No little girls, no teenage ones either. All the females in Decker. Gone.

  Jem’s writer brain was absorbing all this information as he scanned the crowd. He recognized a group of boys, all teenagers, as they approached him. “Hey, Mr. T,” one of the boys said. It was John David Franks, in a Decker High athletics shirt. The kid was tall and lanky, one of the basketball players at Decker High School and one of the few athletes in school who gave a damn about literature. While reading Romeo and Juliet in freshman literature class last spring, it was John David that pounded his hands on his desk and exclaimed, “This is a gang war, Mr. T!” Jem remembered cracking up and couldn’t believe he’d never made the analogy himself. With John David were two of his friends and fellow basketball players. Jem knew them as well. They didn’t give a damn about literature.