The Fog

by Dennis Etchison

  The radio clicked off. That’s decent of him, he thought. At least he respects my quarters.

  “I’m all through, Reverend.”

  He was aware of the boy standing there, shifting his weight awkwardly. He turned slowly and gave the boy a sleepy smile, rotating the stem of the crystal wine glass in his fingers. Should I offer him a drink? A little wine for thy stomach and thy infirmities. But Bennett had no infirmities, not yet. No, that would be too much.

  “That’s fine, Bennett.” His tongue was thick and wouldn’t work right. He wiped the wine from the corners of his mouth and discovered that his lips were numb. “I won’t be needing you till four tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bennett put his transistor on the table and took his jacket from the hanger in the corner. Reverend Malone noted the angular energy of his shoulders. Surely he must have a girl of his own, he thought. Why, then, does he need that Wayne woman? Some sort of security blanket, perhaps. It’s dark out, he thought. No one else out there will identify themselves.

  “I was wondering, Reverend.”

  Come on, boy, out with it. You’re not afraid of me, are you? Are you? Why?

  “Reverend, um, I was wondering if I could get paid.”

  “I’m afraid it will have to be tomorrow.”

  “It’s been two weeks, and I sort of had plans for the—”

  “Tomorrow, Bennett.”

  Don’t sound so cold, he told himself. You were his age once, though in those days you certainly didn’t have time of your own for anything but studies.

  “Bennett?”

  “Yes?”

  “You—you’d better be getting on home before your parents start to worry.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He watched the boy go to the door, his face grim with disappointment. I wonder what he calls me behind my back?

  “Oh, and Bennett?”

  The boy half turned.

  “You may as well make it six tomorrow, instead of four. The whole town will be over in the square celebrating at least until then.”

  The boy let himself out.

  Reverend Malone shook his head in the dim lamplight. Everything tomorrow, he thought, and reached for the glass.

  He noticed that Bennett had forgotten his portable. It rested there on the desk, silent at last, the green reflection of the bottles slanted across the dials like moonlight through stained glass. He pushed himself from his chair and started out of the office.

  The door at the end of the hall clacked shut behind Bennett. Too late. Ah, well.

  Tomorrow.

  He returned to his desk, his own shuffling footsteps resounding in the walls and ceiling beams. He cocked his head. It was the wine, that was all. It distorted the senses. Too much wine.

  He fingered the radio. Idly he toyed with the ON knob and the volume. The rhythmic strains of a distant music began to fill the narrow room. It was a swing number from the forties. He closed his eyes and tried to remember that which had been kept from him as a child. It was called “Stompin’ at the Savoy.” The years became transparent as for a few seconds he recalled the opening bars as they had sounded on Father’s radio, the upright Philco that had been allowed in the house supposedly only to hear President Roosevelt’s fireside chats and the war news. There were other good songs then, too. Like “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company C,” “Sunrise Serenade,” and his personal favorite, “Where or When.” To think that he had carried the melodies around with him for years, for decades, only to have them released to his conscious memory now, at last no longer to be denied. He increased the volume.

  He wrinkled his brow. The music was not right somehow. There was something else, an underlay of rustling noises. It was like whispering. He turned the radio off and looked over his shoulder.

  “Bennett?”

  The music had disappeared, but not the whispering, which grew louder. It was everywhere—in the wardrobe, in the flooring, behind the wood panels and within the beams. It was—

  He started toward the hall.

  No one there.

  He touched the doorknob, then jerked his hand away. It was rattling.

  Bennett. It had to be. The boy had come back. He was—

  He felt the floor begin to move under him. He reached out for the door jamb, his head reeling. There was a shifting and a lurching and a separating in the bricks of the walls, a great settling and crumbling and rearranging, as if a force within the mortar was pressing to be let out. He put a trembling hand to his forehead and lunged back to the desk.

  The desk inched away from him.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  Something roared and cracked around him. The wine glass fell from the desk and smashed on the floor. He stepped into the red stain and felt glass crunching under his feet.

  He covered his ears and cried out.

  A stone dislodged from the wall and crashed onto the desktop, jarring the radio to life. Loud music blared, louder than he could bear.

  Suddenly the roaring ceased and there was only the music. He fumbled for the radio but couldn’t find it.

  Around him, incredibly, the old walls had parted from the floor to ceiling, the cracks like lightning bolt tracings in the granite.

  He touched one, to be sure it was real.

  There. In the new hollow that now gaped behind the missing stone. It seemed to be beckoning to him.

  Dazed, he reached into the dark opening.

  And touched something soft. His fingers closed around it.

  “It’s all of twelve minutes after midnight,” crooned Stevie Wayne, “and this is still your lady of the night, right where you want me . . .”

  “. . . Close by your ever-lovin’ side.”

  In a bleached white tower perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking Antonio Bay, a thick lens swung around on its oiled track, sweeping the waves again with four hundred thousand foot-candles of light from its faithful acetylene-cluster burners. At the same time, in a glass-fronted cubicle atop the tower, a dark woman in her late twenties picked up another record by the edges, flopped it onto a spinning turntable and cued the tone arm over track three, side one. She adjusted the microphone, finished her yawn and flipped the cough switch back to LIVE.

  “I’m high up here in the KAB lighthouse on Spivey Point tonight, as usual, and in case you’ve forgotten, it’s April the twenty-first. A happy one hundredth birthday to all you good people . . .”

  She rubbed her eyes under the warm light of the low-hanging lamps and studied the clipboard in front of her, then touched the microphone gently on the neck and spoke again.

  “There’s a celebration planned for tonight, and if you’re so excited about it you can’t sleep, why don’t we stay up together? I’ll figure some way to keep you occupied . . .”

  She thumbed a button on the console and as the record started she slumped back in her chair, still looking at the microphone as if it were a person, though she now had a distinctly bored expression on her face.

  “Who will cut the barber’s hair?” she said flatly to herself.

  In one smooth, economical motion she lit a cigarette, scanned the dials in front of her, picked up a pencil, and made a notation in her logbook.

  The phone rang. Without looking up she reached behind her, the cigarette dangling from her lips.

  “Hello, world, KAB.”

  “Hello yourself, sweetheart,” said the voice on the other end.

  “Oh hi, Dan. What’ve you got for me? Never mind. Don’t answer that.”

  “I’m calling to see if you’re as lonely as you sound, babe. What else? If you are, I’m sure there’s something I can do about it. If you’ll let me.”

  “Never lonely, Dan. I thought you got off at seven.”

  “I changed shifts so I can make it to the big party tonight. Will you be there?”

  “I’m a working girl,” she said, checking the turntable. “Remember?” She balanced the phone and reached for another album.

 
“You have to take time off sooner or later.”

  “Do I? Till I can con someone else into giving up city living for Antonio Bay, I’m it. And ‘it’ means night and day, big boy.”

  “Too much work makes—”

  “It’s a hard life, Dan. A cold, cruel world all around. At least you don’t own your own weather station.” The needle was getting close to the end of the track. “And if you don’t tell me why you called in about fifteen seconds, I’m going to have to hang up on you.”

  “You want something to talk about?”

  “Anything. You think this is easy? You do, don’t you? You have five seconds to prove yourself.”

  “Well, I got a position on a little trawler about twenty-five miles out. Called the Sea Grass, it says here. And I got something on my scope that looks like a fogbank, moving in their direction.”

  “Thanks,” she said, making a note. “That’s worth about ten seconds.”

  “Oh, I’m worth longer than that.”

  “I’m on the air now. ’Bye.”

  She hung up, lifted the tonearm and hit the switch.

  “Ahoy, maties. This is radio KAB, beaming a signal across the sea to all you swabbies and seabees. To the big, brave men of the Sea Grass, twenty-five miles out tonight, a warm hello and you all be sure to keep a watch out for that fogbank coming in from the east, hear? And in the meantime . . .”

  “. . . Why don’t you just sit back and get comfy with me while I play this little number by the Coupe de Villes? It’s dedicated especially to you . . .”

  “You got it.”

  The man in the truck slid his hands to the bottom of the wheel and stretched his back. This section of Highway 1 was straight and clean for several miles, so there was no reason to dog it. He had been straight-arming the wheel for the past five miles and had not even noticed.

  A white shape came into view. He wiped at the window, then kicked on his brights. It was only a sign. WELCOME TO ANTONIO BAY.

  He wouldn’t have given it another look, except that as he sped past his lights caught something that didn’t belong there. Reflexively he eased his right foot and glanced in the rearview mirror.

  He slammed on his brakes and came to a stop on the shoulder. He turned and looked over the seat, then dropped into reverse, bounced up onto the asphalt, and backed even with the sign, idling in neutral as a girl ran up and grabbed the door handle. Reflecting the taillights, her face was bright red.

  “Hi! I’m Elizabeth.” She said it as if it ought to mean something to him.

  She was nineteen going on thirty, wearing faded blue jeans, an expensive leather jacket, fashionably mistreated. One of those just-passing-throughs who always seemed to hit the coast with their backpacks and stashbags around this time of year. Easter vacation; it went with the season.

  “Hi, yourself. I’m Nick.”

  “How far can you go?” she asked innocently.

  She was pretty in a way, but not really very different from so many others. “Other side of town.”

  “Okay,” she said, and climbed in.

  She stuffed her pack behind the seat, but kept a large, flat book safe, on her lap. “Can I ask you something?” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve never hitchhiked before, and I want to be careful. Are you at all, well, weird?”

  He considered. In the mothlight from the front window, his face took on a wry, amused grin. “Yeah,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I am. I’m pretty weird.”

  “Good.” She settled into the seat and looked ahead, relieved. “My last ride was normal. He picked me up in Santa Barbara, and by the time we got to Carmel he’d asked me to marry him.”

  He passed her a can of Bud. “I thought you said you’d never thumbed before.”

  “Mm. Not before last week. You’re my—” She looked at the headliner and counted to herself. “—Thirteenth ride.”

  “That’s supposed to be an unlucky number.”

  “Is it?” she said, smiling. “We’ll see, won’t we? What’s that?”

  “What’s what?”

  He peered ahead. From the side of the road, below the throw of the headlights, a lone finger of mist uncoiled across the highway, only to be cut into swirls as the truck nosed through it.

  “I thought you guys don’t get any fog around here till later in the year.”

  “We don’t. That was some kind of dust devil, probably. Or a nice chunk of L.A. smog some tourist brought along.”

  The song was ending as he turned the radio back up.

  “It’s twenty-three-and-a-half minutes after midnight, and we . . .”

  Suddenly, the outside mirror buckled and cracked, as if someone had thrown a rock at it. He started to laugh, to say something about gravel spitting up under the tires, but then the driver’s window imploded, spraying glass over the dashboard, his arms, his shirt.

  “Look out!” he yelled.

  He shot an arm out to hold her back as he hit the brakes hard, and then the entire front window shattered, spider-webbing and finally cascading over them like a shower of sharp diamonds.

  He sat there in the stalled truck, pointlessly covering his head, but nothing else broke. His hand was warm and moist but he felt no pain. He looked around him dumbly, incredulous at the empty window frames, and saw that the passenger window had been demolished, too. He still didn’t know what had happened.

  “Are you all right?” he said, his voice hollow with disbelief.

  “I think so.” She raised her head slowly from her lap.

  He reached over and picked chunks of safety glass out of her hair. In the dashboard light, they glittered eerily like jewels.

  “I know this is a stupid question,” she said, “but what did we hit?”

  The rearview mirror was demolished so he leaned outside, elbowing glass out of his way, but there were no marks on either the outside mirror or the hood, as clearly as he could see.

  “The question is,” he said, “what in the holy hell hit us?”

  “. . . It’s a quiet fifty-nine degrees tonight,” a sleepy voice was saying. “The weatherman tells me we may be in for a little rain tonight, so button up your overcoats . . .”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “. . . And get to bed by three, hear? That one was for you, Sea Grass. Have a safe trip home. It’s twelve forty-three and I have four in a row for you right here on the mighty thirteen-forty . . .”

  She cued up another record and stood, reaching over her head and stretching down to touch her toes.

  “Another four in a row,” she muttered to herself. “And then, you know, it’s time for me to go!” She was feeling silly. She always felt silly close to the end. Nothing that shows, she thought. I hope.

  She wandered to the window and scanned the jet-black ocean. It was especially serene tonight, interrupted only by the breakers around the Point. Not a cloud in sight.

  A lot of water she thought, lots and lots of it, and not much good for anything but looking. Too cold to swim in this time of year. But don’t kid yourself. It sure beats being in Chicago.

  The phone rang. She sighed wearily.

  “KAB.”

  “I liked what you said, but for your information you lied.”

  “Dan, we can’t keep meeting like this.”

  “That fog bank has moved due west, probably missed the boat entirely by now.”

  She leaned over the panel. “Well, my gauges must be wrong here, because I’ve got a wind blowing due east. What kind of fog moves against the wind?”

  “You got me.”

  “I’m not sure I want you. You’re just a voice on the telephone.”

  “And you’re just a voice on the radio. We’d make a perfect couple.”

  He went on like that, but she wasn’t listening. She left the panel and strained her eyes at the horizon. There was something. The Sea Grass? It was impossible at this range. And yet—

  She could have sworn that there was a light.

  But it was so far .
. . no, not far, just sort of diffused. Was that the word? Like a cloud of some sort. It seemed to be expanding and then—contracting? Could that be? Not really. An inversion layer sometimes caused that kind of displacement from this angle, but . . . she could swear that it was a cloud, like a spreading ball of smoke. Or fog. It must be the fogbank Dan had told her about.

  Except that it was brighter at the center, burning from within, as if the sea were smoldering. It seemed to be pulsating, she thought, actually growing brighter as she watched. She must be getting tired. She rubbed her eyes.

  “If you’ll let me take you to dinner tonight,” Dan was droning, “I’ll prove it to you.”

  “Why ruin it? My idea of perfection is a voice on the phone. Pure, unadulterated sound.”

  “Okay, mystery lady. I guess you win for now. Only—”

  “ ’Night.”

  For a long moment she stood there, staring out into the darkness, hoping to get a clearer look. She scanned the horizon from north to south, but it was like the first feeble star of evening: if you tried to look straight at it, it disappeared. And then you could never find it again.

  The record had run out. She forced herself away from the window.

  “Damn it,” she said. God knows how long it’s been like that. She shot a glance at the wall clock. I promised them four in a row, and four it is. While she was slapping the next platter into place, she keyed herself back on the air.

  “Take care out there, Sea Grass,” she said, forgetting her old voice for a beat. “Antonio Bay will be looking for you, safe and sane, at the big celebration tomorrow night . . .”

  “. . . And if for some reason you can’t make it . . . if you’ve got to recharge your batteries, and you know what I mean . . . then be sure to join me, ’cause I’ll be here, as always . . .”

  “Man,” said Williams, captain of the Sea Grass, killing his Bud and lining it up alongside the other empties. “I sure would like to jump her battery.”

  “I saw her once at the 7-11 store,” said Baxter.

  “And?”

  He patted the bunk. “I wouldn’t kick her out of bed.”

  Wallace got up and gravitated, bleary-eyed, to the port window. “She’s crazy,” he said matter-of-factly. “There’s no frigging fog bank out there.”