The Fog

by Dennis Etchison

  “See if that file cabinet will move. If it will, shove it against the door. I’ll block the windows.”

  “I know,” said Andy. “We need a hammer and nails and—”

  “Keep back, son. Stay with Reverend Malone. Will you do that for me? He needs you.”

  The pastor was in a corner talking to himself. Andy took the candle out of his wavering hands and found a niche for it in the wall where the mortar had crumbled. He watched wax drip drip down the wall, hardening before it could get very far. The flame stabilized and began to blacken the granite. The wick was bent at a bad angle but it was too late to do anything about that. An overflow of wax trickled down the side and plopped onto the floor. Something squeaked in the shadows and ran over Andy’s shoes.

  An animal with burning fur hopped to the center of the room.

  Kathy nearly fainted. It was only a rat. It crouched on the floor, twitching its snout in every direction like a compass. Then it circled and snapped, the way dogs do when they are trying to catch their own tails. Its yellow eyes blistered in agony as it gnawed at its back, trying to put out the burning in its skin.

  “Do something!”

  Nick brought his shoe down hard and put it out of its misery. He kicked it away and reached for some cuts of plywood stacked against the wall.

  “Get this tip into the other window, if you can,” he said to Elizabeth. “It might work. Break the wood down if you have to. Use anything. I’ll see if there are tools.”

  She left the file cabinet where it was.

  The windows in the storage room were ordinary glass, frosted over with decades of grime. They brightened like movie screens as the fog came around to the rear of the church. As Elizabeth hefted a span of plywood into the casement, a dark contour moved across the pane.

  “They’re here,” she said, flattening against the wall.

  Reverend Malone stood and swayed, muttering.

  Nick hoisted a board and slammed it into the first casement. It would not fit. He held one side under his shoe and bent it back until it broke and wedged the piece into place.

  “Cover the other one. Now!”

  There was a thump. Andy looked. The crossbar fell to the floor as the door shagged back over the stones.

  Reverend Malone was gone.

  Andy ran to the door, but Nick pushed him aside.

  A patch of subterranean light shone at the end of the passageway. Malone was there in the glow of the windows beyond. Nick caught up with him and shunted him back into the passage.

  Kathy took his wrist and led him back. “Here! Reverend! You can’t do any good out there.”

  “Nick, hurry!” said Elizabeth. “They’ve found us. I see four or five in back!”

  “The book,” said Nick from the corridor. “We may need it. Where is that damned journal?”

  “Forget it! What good is it now? We already know—”

  “It’s all we’ve got. It’s got to be here. If anything happens, shut the door and lock it and keep it locked.”

  He disappeared from view as he retrieved another candle. Then he was silhouetted against the first pulsating window of the rectory as he searched the floor. Andy sneaked into the hall to watch. He heard the broken bits of the wine bottle popping under Nick’s heels.

  Something thudded against the storage room window, loosening the plywood.

  “Nick, hurry up!”

  “Got it!” He waved the book.

  The pounding at the window. Sandy and Elizabeth piled boxes, anything they could find against it.

  Nick started back. Before he could get to the hall, a pair of arms thrust through the stained glass, breaking it with a wet bursting sound, and grabbed him from behind.

  Andy felt his heart beating. It was the worst fear he had ever known. Like when he was being rescued out of his bedroom window. It was worse than anything.

  Don’t die, Nick! he thought. I won’t let you! Get away from him! He’s my friend!

  He ran down the hall in time to see the candle go flying and Nick’s feet leave the floor, kicking madly. The arms, black and stringy and running slime, had him around the head and were lifting him backward through the window.

  “Andy! Stay back!”

  The girl’s voice, Elizabeth’s. She didn’t understand. Andy tried not to look up as he grabbed hold of Nick’s waist, then his belt, with both hands and monkeyed his feet up the wall. Nick was being lifted through the air. Andy held on and kicked with both feet. A fragment of colored glass struck his head. He felt Nick slide back a few inches. He dropped down and held an ankle. Nick got one hand up and inserted it under the black arm, loosed it enough to turn his body, and kicked the wall himself. He wrenched free with a sucking sound, and fell to the ground with Andy.

  Nick was breathing so heavily through the slime on his face that he could not speak. He picked Andy up under one arm as the black hands beat the air, dripping their slime down the wall to where the red wine stain glistened like blood. Then Andy was being carried down the hall at a run and the door was slammed and bolted and he was sprawled on the floor near where the dead rat had been. He smelled it and started to get sick to his stomach.

  “You okay, son?”

  Nick was crouching over him, and Elizabeth over them both. Kathy was in some kind of shock and Sandy had backed to the uncovered window. There were no shapes behind her yet, not even eddies of fog against the frosted glass.

  “Okay,” Andy said.

  There was a moment of silence with only the ratchety breathing of them all there in the room. The slamming of the door had blown out the candles and only a sliver of light entered around the plywood window buttress. Nick’s body started working again and he embraced the file cabinet, seesawing it across the room to the door.

  “See if you can get the candles going.”

  Andy wondered to whom he was talking. The girl Sandy stayed where she was. The blackout behind her head opened a little, igniting a cold halo through her curly hair. Andy realized that the fog must have reached this window, too, but something very large was blocking its glow.

  “Look!” said Andy.

  Kathy Williams lowered herself next to him and stroked his head. Her nose was running and she was crying without making any noise. She pressed his forehead to her neck and did not see the hinged window chattering inward, slowly opening.

  Sandy nibbed her arms and pulled her sleeves down. Then she noticed the cape of fog that was flowing in over her shoulders.

  “What . . . ?”

  She made a strangled yelp and reached for her hair.

  “See? It’s got her!” said Andy. “Somebody help!”

  Kathy let go of him and sprang toward Sandy. She put her hands on Sandy’s and yanked back and forth.

  “Nick!”

  Andy heard some of Sandy’s hair rip out of her scalp as she fought forward. Then the thing that had her lashed her head backward like a whip and smashed her head into the glass.

  Kathy was hysterical, panting and making animal sounds in her throat. She picked up an S-curved blade of glass and stabbed it again and again at the ropy black arms but they did not let go. The razor-sharp point struck like a knife in gelatin but the black hands held on.

  Nick took the glass from Kathy and slashed downward, severing the hair. With his other hand he pushed Sandy away. She fell forward on her hands. He hurled the glass blade into the thing’s chest, but it kept trying to climb through the window. It would not quit. Nick snatched an end of plywood and jammed it straight out and down, ripping at the hands and dangling wrists.

  “Get the table!”

  Somebody slid a heavy claw-foot table to the window and Nick upended it, cutting off the rest of the light. Something wet struck it from the other side, crunching glass. Then it stopped.

  “Light,” he choked.

  Kathy lit a match but couldn’t hold it. Andy got the candle from the wall and Nick took it, bracing his back against the table.

  “The book,” he said, “give me the book.�
��

  “It can do us no good now,” said Malone.

  “It’s all we’ve got. The driftwood. Stevie Wayne said there were words. What did it say, what?”

  “What are you talking about?” said Elizabeth, holding the journal.

  “I don’t know yet. Find the passage about the conspirators. March or April. Quickly!”

  “ ‘. . . Met tonight. From midnight until one . . .’ ”

  “Farther on.”

  “I tell you, Blake and his men have come for us.” Reverend Malone was saying. “The day of judgment is upon us.”

  “I can’t find it.”

  “Let me see,” said Nick, handing her the candle. “Here. ‘Were it possible to call back the deeds of Baxter, Wallace, Williams, O’Bannon . . .’ ”

  “The three men on the Sea Grass,” said Elizabeth, “and the weatherman?”

  “ ‘. . . Kobritz and myself, I would gladly lay down my life to do so . . .’ ”

  Mrs. Kobritz, thought Andy. They wanted Mrs. Kobritz.

  “That’s it,” said Nick. “That’s what they want. They’ve come back for the original conspirators, or at least their descendants, don’t you see?” He read on. “ ‘. . . And were it possible in God’s grace to raise the dead I would return Blake’s fortune to him, intact save for the money spent on these stone walls that hide it. My fellow conspirators believe that the confiscated fortune has been stolen from them when in fact I am the thief and God’s temple is the tomb of gold!’ ”

  “Reverend Malone!” said Elizabeth, looking up.

  Nick dropped the book and charged through the open door.

  The hall was empty.

  Elizabeth was right there. “Where did he go?”

  “Leave it,” said Kathy calmly. “It can’t matter now. Al is dead. Let them take back whatever it is they want from this wretched town and leave us to mourn. What more can they do?”

  “What’s that?” said Andy.

  It was an opening in the stones, a narrow passageway behind the rectory.

  Nick entered it, waving Andy and Elizabeth back. They followed anyway, leaving Kathy weeping and cradling Sandy in her arms.

  They came out behind the altar.

  Now the church was swimming with fog, a bog of mist curdling in the aisles, adding its supernatural light to the few remaining candles. And in those aisles, standing tall between the century-old pews, were terrible, black shapes that resembled men. Only their livid eyes shone clearly, burning with a hellfire from within.

  Reverend Malone ignored them. He was toiling under the golden cross that had hung in the apse all these years, as untarnished as the day it had been forged. Malone found the release on its mounting and took its weight onto his shoulders. His knees buckled but he held it high.

  “Blake,” he said, “I call you in!”

  “Stop him,” whispered Elizabeth.

  “Wait,” said Nick uncertainly. “This must be what they want, what they’ve come back for. It’s all that’s left.”

  “This is your gold, Blake!” said the pastor. “It was my grandfather who stole it from you. Blake, I beseech you! Set this town free, in the name of God!”

  The tallest figure floated forward over the fog, not touching the floor.

  An oil-slicked hand retracted to its side, grasping a scabbard lashed there by algae. His black fingers closed around the handle of the sword, crawling with sea snails.

  “Blake,” said Malone, shifting the cross. “Take back your gold. Now!”

  The ghostly figure resheathed its sword. Then it reached out and grappled the top of the crucifix with both tattered hands. At the contact, its eyes burned bright crimson.

  The cross began to glow.

  The pastor’s features contorted in pain as a surge of energy oscillated from the molten metal. He shook. He fell back but could not undo his hold on it. His hands were welded to the cross as it shimmered and pulsated between the two men with a light that was brighter than the sun, washing out even Blake’s flaming eyes. A force field scorched the air around them as the mist became blue-white, blazing about the cross. The church itself seemed to crack open as a peal of thunder shook the hillside and the foundations of the town.

  Nick tackled Reverend Malone from the side. With a scream the pastor was torn free, leaving the cross in Blake’s vaporizing fingers. The cross flared white-hot. There was another great crash of thunder as both Blake and the gold burst into a white phosphorus flame.

  The thunder died away.

  Then the church was suddenly and shockingly silent and dark once more as the ghostly crew drifted back and became transparent, withdrawing with the fog.

  On the altar of the empty sanctuary, Nick helped Reverend Malone to his feet.

  Somewhere a human voice was crying, keening like a wind off the sea through the rooms of the rugged old building.

  It was Sunday morning, April the twenty-second, in Antonio Bay.

  EPILOGUE

  “. . . And I can see cars moving on our streets again. Looks like the juice is on from Main Street to the Scottsville Road . . .”

  Stevie sat before the steady green and red lights of her control board, marveling at how quickly the feeling of life had been restored to the studio by so simple an occurrence as the return of electrical power. The heater whirred near her toes, and the phones were ringing off the hook. She relaxed and massaged her temples as her blood warmed and coursed through her extremities again. She breathed deeply and regularly as she observed the vista of Antonio Bay, once so tranquil and inviting, through the vanishing frost on the windows. Circulation resumed in her feet and fingers with a flush of pins-and-needles. Feels like I’m born all over, she thought. It feels so good. It feels better than anything.

  The first thing she had done was to call home, of course. She was almost reassured to hear the phone burring and burring in the empty house. That meant Mrs. Kobritz had gotten Andy out. They had heard her in time, undoubtedly on Andy’s portable. Even if no one else heard, my message got through to the single most important radio in Antonio Bay or the world, the true source of all my broadcasts, and the one it’s all really for. I know that now.

  “How do you like that, folks?” she said into the mike. “Our own real live melodrama right where we live. It’s been a long night, hasn’t it? I don’t know about you out there, but I’m about ready to brush my teeth. Bless you all for hanging in with me. I’ll be paying you back in real short order . . .”

  She blinked at the last trace of fog as it receded back across the Pacific, leaving the skyline as crisp and serene as it had been on her first day here. As if you could see all the way to China, she had thought then, if you were high enough. And I feel high enough now. Feel like I’m fixin’ to fly!

  A wave exploded a white fantail over the rocks of Spivey Point, attaching a fringe of cut-glass droplets to the rail outside. They sparkled winking eyes at her in the moonlight.

  There must be a full moon, she thought, directly overhead so I can’t see it. I never would have guessed.

  Or is it the first light of dawn from behind the hills?

  By God, I believe it is. A good omen. It’s going to be a wonderful day for lolling on the beach, getting to know Andy better. He won’t be here that much longer; a few more years, that’s all; how quickly it passes. I wonder if he’ll choose to stay on? Will I, after all? Yes, I think I’d like that. There are real people out there, a whole lot of them, voices in the night whose hands I’d like to shake and whose lives I’d like to be a part of, if they’ll let me in. And Andy? Wherever he goes and whatever he does, that will be my center, knowing that he’s alive and healthy. That will be more than enough to keep me going.

  She thumbed a toggle switch and spoke out again through the wires and into the streets and homes and cars of her many unseen neighbors.

  Where to begin? We’ve come full circle; it doesn’t matter.

  “You know what?” she said. “I don’t think any of us understands what happened to our town to
night. We may never know. But you know something else? In a very real sense it doesn’t matter. No, it really doesn’t. All we need to remember is that something that didn’t belong here, that never belonged in a place like this, came out of the fog and tried to destroy us where we live. The important thing and the only thing we need to carry with us from the experience is that it failed. In one moment, in less than the time it takes me to hunt down one of your requests and put it on the air, it was gone like a cheap wine dream . . .”

  She revolved in her chair, flexing her leg muscles.

  There on the floor was the studio door where it had fallen seconds before it—whatever it was—turned tail and left. Whatever it thought it wanted, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t even here in Antonio Bay, after all. And even if it was, it was something we’ll be none the poorer without.

  She saw a twisted skein of seaweed lopped over the top step. The puddle around it was evaporating away into nothingness, as if it had never been there. Now it was only a dead and discarded piece of kelp waiting to be mopped down the stairs and out the door to feed the sands and the turning of the earth. The memory of it would pass out of her as naturally as a breath is taken and released. Soon it would be gone completely, gone away never to come back, lost on the wind between the stars.

  “But you know,” she said, listening to what it was she was going to say, “if this has been anything but a nightmare—if all of us don’t wake up to find ourselves safely tucked into our beds, then . . .”

  She forced herself to go on. She didn’t like this part, didn’t want to hear it herself, but it needed to be said. Otherwise the lives that had been lost had been for nothing.

  “. . . Then, you know, it’s possible it could happen again. That’s a bummer, I know, but it could. And so, to all you good buddies and ships at sea, to every one of you good people within the sound of my voice, this is Stevie Wayne, the voice of KAB, with one more public service announcement for the night. Watch the waters. If what’s happened tonight means anything to you and your loved ones, look into the darkness across the water. Look right at it and see it for what it is, so that it will never creep up on you again.