Speaker 1: Hullo. I welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here,
Let's get into it. Something hit the living room window
with a wet, hard thump, and Mara shouted my name.
Before I finished standing, fear run through my limbs so clearly.
I could feel my fingers going on as I stepped
toward the glass. I threw the curtain aside and saw
a pale, flattened face pressed to the pane, wet breath
fogging the edgewere cheek met Celant. I did not wait
to think. I opened the window finger with Amarra grabbed
my sleeve. My fear was not a thought. It was
a pressure behind my lips that made my hands shake
while I fumbled the old latch. That fear pushed me
to act and to talk fast. Mars stayed back, I said,
Dantes opened. Maura pushed the curtain harder and peered, nails
white at the knuckles. She what is that? And her
voice went tight. Mara Dantes, I started again, and then
the face drew slow, wet circle against the glass and
leaned harder. I could name where I lived in the
next breath. I live on the second floor of a
narrow brick building. On harbor Lane. I keep tea in
the chip kettle on the stove. I sleep in the
side with the window and a fray gray hoodie that
smells like salt. Those facts mattered because I had to
move without thinking about them, so I could close the
window before whatever was outside could press itself farther in.
Mora cursed and pulled her hand back. She we need
to call some one. I sighed and grabbed my phone
while keeping the window a jar. With my thumb. I
fell to damp cole ex hail against my wrists with
a gap let air, and the skin on my forearm prickled.
I watched a face through the condensation. It was long
and wood pale, not detailed, but there were dark, wet
hollows wore eyes mates. It a match the drawing we
later found on the stable board, but we didn't know
that yet. I dialed the town dispatch with one hand
and held a window with the other. The despatcher listened
and then answered, in a voice that treated us like
two people playing a joke. It's fog, maam, stay inside,
and don tea made conduct. I said my address twice
in The despatcher repeated the word fog like a final
word that would end a call. Mara hissed, they think
it's just weather, and I pushed her through my teeth.
My suspicion turned to anger. For a breath, I told
the despatch of the face was pressed to my glass,
and the voice said again, stay inside, we'll log it.
We ended to call with the numbersolve click. The fear
of Chaine shaped to something prickle close and sharpened suspicion.
I paced well. Fog move against the street like something alie,
but solid enough to press faces to glass. The suspicion
made me open the door to the halt to jet
the stairwell windows. I left Mara inside with the kettle humming.
I saw mister Harlowe by the lobby light when I
stepped out. He held a cheap flashlight and a cigarette
and he said, ye again, people complain every fog night.
He turned the flashlight away like it showed nothing. I said,
there was a face on my window, mister Harlowe, you
have to see. He shrugged and name pass complaints by tone.
Kid's draw weird stuff. People scare themselves. I felt anger rise,
along with the suspicion that the landlord was minimizing to
avoid work. I asked, did anyone call the station. He
tapped his chin and said they re short to night.
His calm didn't tea land. While he spoke. I noticed
fresh mudch marks on the stairwell glass below the handrail.
I said, mister Hallowe, looked down there. Those prints are wet.
He glanced and frowned, but kept talking about previous tenants.
Those Prince stopped me from accepting his dismissal. Back in
my flat, Morrow had found a folded flier under the
door mat. She unfolded it with shaky fingers. Look she said.
The fly showed a face in a photograph label with
a name and a date months earlier. The paper was
damp at the corners. I recognized the handwriting on the
bullet and board notice from building management, a lost person
flier we had passed every week. I felt the suspicion
harden into a sense of patten. The flier and the
child's drawing on the stair will both match the shape
of faces pressed to windows. We argued about what to do.
Mar's voice kept catch and call some one, Call some
one now, I said, we already did. The station didn't
take us seriously. Ellie arrived then, climbing the stairs to
you at a time, with the batted camocasse slung over
his shoulder. I hadn't expected Ellie sorely. He fed the
latch with his shoulder and said, he texted, I came anyway.
I said his name, and he dropped the case in
the table. Ellice's of oil and cold air. He lifts
his chin when he thinks I thought you were joking.
He said, I thought you too, overreacted. Marrows snapped, we
were right. Look. She pushed the flyer toward him. Elis
manners shifted from skeptical to business like inside a few breaths.
He set up the cheap camera on a tripod, aim
at the window, and furted a cable to my old
radio to power the recorder. He in a flat voice,
if this is something weird, I want footage. If it's
a prank, we catch them. Ellie's hand jitters slightly when
he adjusted the focus. The jump in his motion showed
far under his face control. I found that I was counting.
I counted to stay steady. The counting became a small ritual,
one two, three, I told myself the count would help
me close to window faster if I had to. The
fog came in thicker before dawn. The silhouettes collected at
the cub and leaned against lamp bursts. Their faces were
impressions pressed to glass. They did not move like people.
They marginated pressure, waiting. Ellie whispered, they re at the
far corner, Albini, I see them, Mar, We should lock
the door, I said, Now we should document it. The
group argued for a minute. Ellie wanted evidence, Mara wanted
to hide. I stood between the impulses and felt the
suspicion return. As a practical checkist film document did not touch.
The camera flickered each time a face came closer. The
screen showed blocks of static, and then a warped hollow
where condensation condensed into a mouth shaped oval. Ellie tapped
the recorder and cursed under his breath, he it kills
the signal. Peet the glass closed. I moved to the
window and pressed my pums flat against the sill. The
condensation called my skin. I could hear a distant, low
hum through the fog, like a single string plot very low.
It made my teeth thick. We debated their next move
and short sentences. Shut it Morrow, fill moore, ily call
some one again, I said. The argument became one of
small quick lines. The tension rose Morrow. If it wants us,
we don't he let it nearly open? Ellie answered, if
it hide from the camera, we need to lure it.
How to prove it, I said, Ellie, we will not
LORI close to Marr. We should tape the window. To Ellie,
tape one stop it, I said, we need proof without baiting.
In those exchanges, their priorities were visible. Mara named safety,
Ellie named evidence. I named containment. At three in the morning,
the fog pressed directly at our window in a wall.
A single long face lit along the glass and stopped
where the latch lived. I felt the window frame vibrate
under the pressure. Ellie moutted the camera register as the
hummer's interference. Mar stepped backward and hit the table leg.
She that's close. Her breath came fast. I felt resolve
harden in my jaw. I loosened one hand from the
latch and reached for the camera to check its connection.
My hand brushed the edge of the window in a
faint where smear mark my palm. The smear was coold
and smelled of algae in metal. I wiped it on
my sleeve and held my hand up. The smearske shape
echered the flattened face. Ellie looked at my palm and
his face changed, sharp enough for me to see he
don't he open it. I let go of the latch.
My fingers shook in the fear compressed into a different feeling,
a tight, angry insistence not to be a passive observer.
Alli moved faster than either of us had expected. He
lunched for the tripe or two, just the angle in
the motion as neclipped the cell and the window cracked
the fraction of an inch I had kept the gap
opened in a lawn. What impressions slept through the seam.
It pressed against Illy's wrist with the softness at mimic's skin.
The contact made a thin, wet sound, like flips meeting
early glass. Illy shouted and grabbed the camera. He tried
to pull it back, but something on the other side
flexed and pushed deeper. Marus screamed, closet, close it now.
I slammed my shoulder into the frame and felt the
wood scrape under my palm. The entity mimicked our movements.
When I tried to pull the window up, the pressure
on the sill countered me. It matched the angle Ali
used and shove against the frame of the timing that
nearly unlatched her fingers. Elly cursed and shoved his shoulder,
and the camera cladded the Silhwetdy's pressure moved in rhythm
with us. It was not random, It copied more gestures.
The mimicry made me aware of how the fog had
been watching houses all night, finding seams. I forced the
frame closed with both and heard a wet slip and
spark as something slid off the sill and into the fog.
With the soft sucking sound, we stood panting. The room
smelled of cold, salt and metal. The camera's memory cart
was corrupted in places where faces had leaned closest. Ellie
swore and threw the recorder onto the couch. He played
that back. The playback had a low, drowning hum, laid
under static. At points, the hum had a near whisper
that sounded like a word against the microphone. More put
her hands over her mouth. What did it say? She asked.
Ellie fed the recorder into the stereo and slowed the playback.
There was no clear word. There was only pressure on
the impression of a voice under the static. Dawn shifted
the light, and a fog thinned like a hand drawing back.
The street outside was quieter than it should have been.
I unlatched the door and went down the sail to
check the bulletin board. My mauthed hasted of metal and
fear had folded into a ringing weariness. At the board
I found a damp, child like drawing of tall faces
pristo glass, pinned under clear tape. The drawing had the
dates gold in a shaky hand, and a name with
a phone number. I turned and called Mora's name. The
stairwell smelled of wet paint and algae at the bottom
of the stairwell had to me as leading away like
dragged damp cloth. I called and memem Morrower and heard
no answer. The door to the outside yard was cracked.
I pulled it and it resisted, as if something had
leaned against it from the other side. I shoved it
open and saw fresh weare footprints leading down toward the pier.
There were narrow and elongated, not like normal shoes. My
chest tightened and a new shift arrived, anger into grim determination.
I pushed past the lintel and followed the Prince outside
the fog clustered around the lamp post. The Prince led
to the coroner, where the street narrowed and pulled toward
the harbor. I heard a low hum that matched the playback.
I called Mara's name again, and the sound returned in
a thin repeat, as if the fog absorbed and turned voices.
I felt the hazel on my arms stand up in
a rapmiskarv tider. The Prince ended a pile of wet
rags and a childish shoe half buried in the puddle.
The shoe asked tongue had a name written inside. I
read the scroll and found a match to the missing
person Flier. I spawn and saw Ellie at the stair head,
leaning like he could not breathe. He I ran to
the corner. There was some one standing there. Then they
were in tea. He looked at the shoe with something
like gilt. I said, where's morr. Ellie's reply was clipped.
I dun't to know. I left her in the doorway.
She she would check the lobby. I pictured the small
fights we had in the share tasks that now meant
little in the face of her absence. We argued about
where to search next. Ellie wanted the camera. I wanted
to follow the wet prince. The exchange was quick Ellie,
we followed the prince. No, we call more people. We
already called they. Won't he come. We stood in the
fog and moved in opposite directions. A neighbor came out,
then mister hallowe as if to check the commotion. He
shouldn't he be out here? That fog could fool you.
I said, there's a shoe, there's a smear. He shrugged
and reached into his jacket. He I have a flash light,
I'll help look. His voice had a different tone. Now
he was less ready to minimize and were ready to fix.
I felt a small twist of relief, and then suspicion returned.
His change of tone could be for any reason. He
wiped his hands on his trousers and pointed a light
toward the pier. At the dock, I found more water
spar prints heading under the boards. The fog thin enough
that I saw a shadows slide under the gap. Illy
braced himself against the railing and sat in quick, controlled lines.
Dawn tea, go under, We wait for the station. The
words were an order and a blee. I answered with
a short sentence, We go now. Mara's nane felt like
a stone in my mouth. The decision to move under
the pier felt like an oath. We climbed down into
the rotten planks, and the smell of algie and rot
was stronger, salty and metallic and sharp. Under the dock,
the damp press was thicker. I saw a place where
condensation had pulled against a wooden post and a flattened
impression had been left, like a wet palm. The impression
matched the shape I'd wiped on my sleeve. I felt
the air vibrate, the hum swelt, and the fod moved
with intent. Ellie grabbed my arm. He if we split up,
we can find more clues. Morris absence hung between us
like a question. I say it. We stay together, he complained,
in a quick line. You always say that, I answered
with my name, in a firm, short sentence. We stayed together, Ellie.
He looked at me and then nodded. We worked our
way along the pilance. Every few steps another whats may
show where something had pressed a face to wood. The
fog commed below the threshold of hearing. Then Ellie found
the gamma cord still in his pocket, but corrupted. He
thumb through the housing and found frames where the silhouettes
leaned so close the glass saturated with condensation. One frame
clearer than the rest showed a handprint on the outside
of a window, with a child's wrist inside a jacket.
The image did not match anything we knew in a
low voice, this was someone here earlier. The discovery made
the fog feel deliberate. We reached a ladder that slaughtered
into the harbor water and found the wet cloth tied
to the rum. The cloth had been stamped with an
imprint like a palm, and the line of small, neat
handwriting on the edge. I read the letters aloud. They
mashed the name on the flier. After that thing slipped,
the fog drew close like a column, and then drew
in a deliberate, measured way. I heard a scrape at
the dock above us, and then a soft, wet slide
along the edge. I said, up, Elie, no wait. I
moved first at the top of the ladder, a figure
blocked the stair. It was neither fully fought nor fully human.
It leaned its flattened face against the railing and looked
in through the hell line cracks of the boards, featureless impression.
Rested and pressed, and when it moved it made a sucking,
wet sound. Ellye flinched and hit the deck with his palm.
Nissa Hallow had his flashlight steady and shown it down.
The beam carved a white circle into the fog and
showed the smudge prince clearly. The thing did not retreat.
It simply shifted and folded, like material being rearranged. The
minni cliffinger hit. Then something at the railing slid alarm
smeared down the wood and then reached into the ladder
gap with a wet filament that looked like a hand.
It moved slow. I shouldered backward. Elly lunged and grabbed
for the filament, and the thing reciprocated with a pressure
that fit his grip exactly. There was a short chaotic pull,
and then a wet sucking sound. Ellie's shout echoed under
the pier. I ripped my hands free and hold him up.
We fell on the planks and the wall tilted into shouting.
Marrow was not there. Ellie coughed and spat water and said,
in a rapid hittence, I felt like it was trying
to pull me down. I said, where's Mara. He hit
the deck with both hands and said, I done to
know she was at the door. I looked back to
check the camera and she wasn't there. She wasn't at
the rail. Missa Hawoe used the flashlight to sweep the
harbor and found a wet smere leading back toward the stairwell.
The smear glowed in the beam like a fresh bruise onwood.
I realized our small victory in forcing the window shut
had cost us Morra's presence. We flipped the despatcher again,
and this time they sent one car. After a full minute,
the officer on such showing a searchlight to cut the
fog into a hard line. He name in a voice
tuned for procedure. I told him Mora's name and my address.
The officer wrote it down slowly and asked about the drawing.
He stared at the pin child's picture and then looked up.
He did not have the insulation of dismissal in his face.
He we will check the missing person's file. The sentence
felt like thin on, but it was something at don.
The town began a low mechanical search. A troll cars
moved slowly dunharbour, lame with lights that did not use sirens.
People leaned from windows and frowned. The landlord miffed. Hallow
stood with his cigarette stop gun cold and watched, as
if watching a by a TV show. Ellie moved in
quick lunges and jerky breasts between the patrols. He kept
saying short things into his phone about corrupted footage and static.
M Hallow quat, circling back to minimize, and then stepping
forward to point at the damp smudges. The mix of
denial and help made it hard to tell who to trust.
I did the last sweep of my apartment and found
the cama's battery compartment shoved under the couch, inside a
scrap of fabric that match the charwel shee was stuck
in the hinge. I peeled it free, intact it in
my pocket. My hands were steady enough to tie not
The knot felt like a choice. I would document, I
would follow, I would warn the fear receded into a
tight line of resolve. Ellie bent over the recorder and
played a section with the hum resolved into a half
phrase that sounded like a name. We could not be sure.
The small twist came when mister Haller pointed at the
stairwell and said there was a smear on the third step.
We went down together on the stair well. The wet
smell led to the door of Unit three and stopped
at the threshold. No footprints left beyond it. The building
smelled like wet wool and coffee. I touched the smear
with my finger tip and it left a damp trace
on my skin. This may ended at the stair tread,
and a single wet fingerprint faded toward the hall. I
bent to follow it, and then heard a sound behind me,
like paper being folded in the mail box. I stood
and found an envelope taped to the end of side
of the stair rail. The envelope had no stemp and
only my name written in a neat small hand. I
opened it with one finger and said out a single
folded photograph. The photograph showed a window with condensation and
a pail flattened face pressed to the inside of the glass.
Some one had drawn a small circle round the corner
of the pane, where a hairline gattoed on the back.
Written in the same neat hand was a line. We
watched the windows first. The hand rating was not mine.
It was not ily. As I swollowed. I folded the
photograph and slip upped it into my pocket, closed my
fist around the fabric's scrap, and stepped out into the fog,
following the stale smear downward. Mara shoved the door open
and dragged me on to the porch, shouting at the
fog had people at the windows. Fear tightened my hands
around the rail. I could still feel the wet slap
against the living room glass from earlier, and Mara's voice
cutting through it. Fear pushed me forward before thought. The
porch light pulled on the floor in a small disk,
and the fog closed around the building like a slow,
wet hand. I'd been awake when something hit the living
room window. I had stood with the coat and in
my fist and seen a pail flattened, face pressed to
the pane, breath fogging a corner. Mara had screened my
name before I finished moving. That was the physical fact.
I kept returning to the sound of impact on glass,
the wet smear, Mara's name in the hallway. Those details
shaped everything I did at night. They made me get dressed,
They made me follow Mara out of the apartment. Tom
Morra called, pounding down the corridor with her keys in
her fist. Her voice carried a wrought edge I hadn't
heard before. I followed with my hood. He pulled up
and the radio bag slung over my shoulder. I kept
glancing at the living room window for the open door.
The condensation along the edge still held the shape of face.
My breath came out in short tufts. We hit Tom's
door first. I noted hard Mara's palm left a print
in the wood. Tom wake up, She said, her voice
was tight. The hallway smelled of damp stairs and someone
frying onions earlier in the evening. Tom opened the door
crack and blinked at us, like he had been asleep
in a chair. What's going on? Tom's voice was flatless sleep.
He rubbed at his eyes, then pushed his hair back.
I watched his hand callous, knuckle, grease under the nail.
The small details that told me he had been asleep
on his feet, not in bed. Falk Mora, they rear
at your window. Tom's fish changed when we stepped close
enough to his caitch and window to see the condensation.
He reached for the latch and froze. I flattened, which
shape hovered on the outside pane, just above waist height.
It held there without moving, like a pressed hand. Tom
swallowed Jesus. He stepped forward and peered. The smear resolved
into the impression of an elongated face, nothing that could
be called eyes, only darker wet patches and the suggestion
of a nose. Flattened to the glass, Tom pulled back
with a small, involuntary step. He reached for his phone.
The screen lit up, then pixelated into her gritostatic and
black phones died. I said, my voice were small. I
heard the tightness in it. Maur's joel worked. She grubbed
Tom's wrist. Dante call anyone on it. She said, we
need to wake the building. We moved door to door,
rapping and shaking neighbors awake. The building responded in fragments, footstits,
padding down, a grumble from behind a door, a woman
crying out someone swearing each time. A face appeared at
a window that looked pressed and wet, a translucent impression
that blowed as soon as you named it. People opened
doors and pajamas were wrapped in towels. They leaned up
and pointed eyes wide with them to wake everyone, to
make noise, to keep doors closed. I said those words
because fear told me to say them. At the second
stair landing, I glanced back the hallway light caught something
at the far end window, several long bated silhouettes leaning
close to the the glass. They did not walk, They preased.
The presence made the paint near the frame dock with wet.
A neighbor, Misses called while screamed, and then clamped her
hands over her mouth. Her voice broke into quick, in
coherent sobs. Call nine hundred eleven Tom. He sounded like
he was giving himself permission to do it. His hand
hovered above his phone. I watched him make the choice
and then change his mind. When the scream went black,
he cursed and slammed his palm against the stair rail.
That anger was sudden and raw. It cut through the
building along with the fog. We went outside the street
was a narrow ribbon of yellow light, with fog pressing
at both edges. It smelled like seat and old algae.
Porch lights drew thin cones. Every cone was ringed with
damp figures leaned toward each lit doorway. They did not
move toward us in a gate or with a step.
They leaned. When someone shone a flashlight, they seemed to
withdraw a hay's breadth and then press harder against the glass.
I fumbled from my phone and raised it to record
the silhouettes. The scream bloomed and then saw into interference,
gray bars and a warped image where the light bent
around something not there. When Mara tried her phone, it
went dead. With the soft pop. Tom slammed his fist
into the hood of his jacket and then grabbed my elbow.
They can tee be recorded, Tom, They kill electronics. A
low hum started subtler. First, it vibrated through the soles
of my shoes and into my teeth. The sound came
from nowhere and from everywhere. It matched a nick behind
my eyes. I tidened my jaw and felt a pressure
rise behind the skull, like the first hug of a Migraine.
Listen mirror. She had gone pale and was whispering, though
there was no one to keep the noise down from.
Do you hear it? It's copying us. We watched one
figure at the cup tilt its head and then precisely
copied Tom's dance. It was not a mirror. It matched
the small angle of his elbow and the set of
his shoulders. Then the humley had a voice over itself,
a wet, echoed version of Tom's slough from years ago.
He called his name in the high intimate tone he
used to make when he was trying to cook a
cap from under the porch. Tom straightened that to me,
he said. His feet slid toward the curb without command.
That's my laugh, Mah, I go out his sleeve. My
fingers left wet prints on his jacket. The pressure at
the top of my head and greased. I could hear
blood in my ears. The figure the cop leaned closer,
and the air around it chilled my cheek. Tom kept
moving forward. His jewel worked, but his eyes were blank,
like a man reading from a script. The script was
his own voice, bent into a lure. Mara's hands were
cold on his shoulders. She pulled and hissed, Tom, get back, Tom, three,
t Morrow, it's me Tom. Tom listened to me, I said.
Tom turned his head slowly, and then his foot slipped
off the curb. The figure pushed through the fog with
a pressure that felt like wet cloth rubbing my forearm.
I pulled Mara grabbed Tom's other arm. For a second,
all three of us tout, each leading the motion in
a different direction. The pressure intensified into a scraping along
my skin. My nails dug into Tom's coat. Something cold
wrap around Tom's ankle. He went still for a half breath,
and then a sound left him that was not his voice.
It was a thin, metallic scream. The silhouette of the
curb opened like a hand, and then clothes Tomas pulled
forward in a slipping sound. He landed against the cub,
and then he was gone into the fog, swallowed without
a red horse splash. His phone fell and shattered in
the asshalt with a final white flare. Now Maury yelled.
She dropped her knees and reached into the fog with
both hands. Her fingers found nothing but cold, dam bare
that smelled of rotten salt. She tried to scream his name,
and the sound came out small and broken. Her finger
nails clicked on the pavement like someone tapping a coat.
I called forward on my hands and knees into the
edge of the fog, until my hoodie soaked with the wet.
The pressure at my temple's warsened, and the hum layered
and new sand. A childlike whisper repeating Mara's name. The
radio bag at my hit thumped, as if something heavy
had landed on it. We dragged ourselves back to the
porch and shut the door. Inside the old down log
radio all my window sill sat with its dial half
way between stations. I had taken it from a thrift
shop weeks earlier. Because the dial spun with a satisfying clack,
Maris dagger to the selp the frozen fog trace her
breath in the glass. The radio rose like a small
animal to a note. Static filled the room. Then a
child's voice came through, overlapping with the hum. It Martha first, Marra,
in a high nasal tone I had heard when we
were kids fighting over cards the yard sale. The voss
repeated private thing Mara had said only once on a
night in college, a confession about skipping a final exam
to work to pear. The sound in the radio was
laid like tip played on three plays. Once Mara's face
went white and she swore under her breath, how does
it know that? She asked. Her voice trembled and then
steaded into something hard. It mimics, I said, I switched
the radio's ban and found the knob stuck. When I
tapped the face, the sound shifted to the lord drowning
hummon into a faint scrape, like finger nails on a
wooden table. We argued about running to the lighthouse. Toms
crashed into the fog had changed the temperature in the room.
Everything felt closer and smaller. Mara wanted to go out
and search. She said the lighthouse was a public blaze
and maybe light would keith them off the right. I say,
running would scatter us, and that scattered groups were easier
to pick off. The arguments run into a sharp exchange,
lighthouse or barricade. Mars snapped, we document and move as one,
I replied, document, document, what Tom is gone? She said,
Tom's choice? Doesn't he help us? I said, if we
run without a plan, he'll be the first to be
mimicked again. Mara's reply was quick and clipped. So we
sit here and wait while they learn our names. The
argument was three rapid exchanges and then silence. The silence
press against the walls like weight. Mara paced to the
window and pressed her forehead to the glass. I could
see the vein in her temple beat like a small drum.
She inhaled and then forced herself to calm. That act
of forcing stead at her voice, it made a decision
for both of us, he recalled. She said, deep at
it all on tape. If anything happens to us, people
will know what the radio played, what it sounded like.
Take the analog recorder and speak into it. I clicked
in the recorder and its red light blinked. My fingers trembled.
I spoke the first line because she told me to him,
because fear tightened my throat into a rope of words.
I cattalot at the events, the knock at the window,
the flatten face in the living room, Tom at the curb,
the hum. I said the names aloud. Saying Tom's name
was a brutal thing. As I spoke, the radio shifted again,
the voice on it started to imitate me. It took
my last phrase and rewunded into a thinner, younger kedance.
It repeated my admission, how I had seen the face
first and not pulled the curtain fully. That small confession
landed between us like a stone, you knew, Marra. Her
eyes never left the window. I saw it, I corrected.
I thought my sentence snapped off as a pressure lance
behind my eyes. I clutched the recorder and heard my
own bath grow ragged. The humming phased into a version
of my own voice, counting softly, It copied the rhythm
of my breeding. My resolves shifted. Then TiO let go
of me for a second, and something cold and moved
in responsibility. We move at three end, I said. My
voice had a narrow edge. We go down the alley
by the bakery, we say together, we head for the lighthouse,
only if we can keep lying of sight. Mara nodded,
was out looking at me. She folded her scuff into
her jacket pocket, found the old key on her cord
and put it into a palm like a talisman. Her
hands stopped shaking. Her decision pushed me into action. My
resolver plays my first wave of panic. We prepared in
fifteen minutes that felt longer. I packed the recorder, a flasklight,
two spare batteries, and a small pocket knife. Mara found
a heavy blanket and a length of duct tape. We
tied jacket of round our waists and fixed the scoff
around Mara's throat. She hissed when it touched her wet skin.
My heart thudded a deliberate count in my chest. One too,
one too. At two thirty, it hum deepened, and the
fog pressed at the window like hands. We waited. The
radiator clinbed in the next room. Mars sat on the
couch and counted backwards and short bursts under her breath.
I watched her joal work. She kept her voice low
and steady. The counting was a ritual to hold panic
at bay. At ree aim, we opened the door. The
stairs smelled of damp paint and the salve. The air
that seeped through the cracks the banister was slick. We
moved down in single file, the blanket wrapped over our shoulders.
My floss light cut a narrow cone through the haze.
At the landing, something moved above us, The stairrow shuddered,
and a thick, wet pressure pushed between the rails. The
silwet climbed the stairs like a hand dragon cloth along
a banister. It made a wet scraping that cold up
through the soles of my feet. Marra cursed and stepped back.
I grabbed the rail and felt drop to strike my wrist.
The pressure and I head spiked into a white flare.
My fingers went numb. Bah Maw. We tried the door
and it stuck on swollen wood. The vog pressed against
the glass in the stairwell window and made the pane bead.
I shoved with my shoulder and the lock snapped. We
spilled out into the corridor, and then the figures landed
against the banister with a sound like wet plied hitting beam.
It forced us apart. The scrip ran up my spine
and my hands slipped on my flashlight. Mara reached for me,
and I reached for Tom. The syrol became a field
of pulling pressure. Something wrapped around Tom's ankle and pulled.
I screamed his name, and the sound echoed as if
the stairwell was a throat. He went limp and then
snapped forward his you caught the air, and then he
was gone over the railing into a shape of steam
and falk. Marus screamed and then sounded like she had
been struck. She pitched forward against the banister and hit
her mouth. Blood came, her fingers dug into the wood.
She solved my name in short purse, and there was
a new hardness in her voice, now angered, that had
no softest left. I lunged and got two fingers on
his coat. This slid through as ifua fabric. I felt
the cold tug at my finger tips, and then nothing.
The recorder flew pocket and clipped the stair of rail
before skittering on to the landing. I growled it back
with shaking hands. The warmth of Tom's hand was gone
from the jacket sterwell held only damp in the hum.
It carried a thin replay of Tom's saying and a
child's sing song in nick nam my dein never had
used in years. And then as suctioning sigh, like some
one inhaling through a wet cloth. Marus screamed and then
screamed again, in a different register and an edge of
blame that snapped like a wire. You waited, she said
to me, he saw it, and you waited. Her words
were sharp and immediate. Guilt folded over me and then
dissolved into a white hotspock of panic. My fingers tightened,
and the recorder so hard the case creaked. I tried
to say something, and my mouth would not form words
that could carry back what had happened. Her accusation hit
the place where I paused when I first saw the
face and chose not to ring every neighbor that night.
It made the all a choice, tactile and shameful. I
called you, I said, I you hesitated. She said. Her
voice was precise. You can die whether it was worth
risking us? That isn't he fair? I began. We traded
three clip blind, and then Marrow's silence took the shape
of a new resolution. She wrapped the blanket tight around
her shoulders and forced herself upright. She spat a small sound,
and then the air in strole shifted. The hum tuned
itself into the sound of our own breathing. We dragged
ourselves back up. The apartment door closed behind us like
a final clake. Dawn paled the sky with a thin wash,
and the fog thin to a low bank along the harbor.
Mars sat on the floor and pressed an old keep
between her teeth like a talisman. Blood dried at the
corner of her mouth. She stared at the recorder in
my hand. I want you to say everything, she said.
Say what you say, all what you heard, what you felt.
Say Tom's name and the way he laughed, and the
way he walked. Leave the recorder running. I did. I
narrated the stairwell, the scraping, the feeling of my fingers
threw cold fog, Tom's shoes getting off the curb. I
said how the radio imitated memory, and how the silhouhettest
press faces. I described the smell of algie and rotten metal,
and the way the hum vibrated the teeth in my jaw.
My voice cracked, and I kept talking, saying it made
the events real and fixed. The recorders read like kept blinking.
At dawn, the fog drew back, and thin nervous tendrils
the silhouette slid away to the edges of tan and
pulled there in low shapes. Morrell lay back on the
couch and closed her eyes. My hands were clenched into
small fists, she had an injured look, not just from
the hip to her mouth, but from the tug of
something taken. We dialed emergency services with a neighbor's phone
that actually worked. The operator said we would be put
on a wait list and someone would call. We did
not tell the officer everything. We left out that the
fog spoke in voices we knew. We left out that
phone's I near it. We gave concrete facts, a missing man,
damp marks on every window, with the smell. The officer's
voice was flat and procedural. He someone would check patrols
along the coast. When the patrol car came idle at
the end of a block and two officers walked up
with jacket's button tight, They looked at the windows and
at the scratch marks on the stair rail. They called
it vandalism and organized some paperwork. They took our statements
and wrote Dan Tom's name. One officer, young, with a
spar cigarette behind his ear, rolled his eyes. When I
tried to describe the hum you're right, he asked me.
He used my name, Mafra. I had told it. His
tone was the kind that assumed we were shaken, But Ouquet,
I'm fine, I said, I wasn't at the recorder tacked
in my jacket pocket, and the radio is still hummed
faintly on the window sill. The officer nodded and then
left with a form to file. After they left, the
apartment was quiet but not safe. Marus slept in short bursts.
I watched her mouth move sometimes and heard her whisper
Tom's name in a soft loop. I checked the window
where the face had been and found dry condensation lines.
The recorder was full of the night's audio. My voice
marrow as Tom's last half screamed the harm the radio
repeating the same private phrases. Each playback made the impression
of the event more concrete. Each playpack also made it
clearer that something had learned the sounds that matted. I
listened to the tape again and again. The recording contained
a change I had not noticed live, a small, near
silent voice under the hum that said, plainly, we pressed
to learn. The voice was thin and wet and layer
with static. Listening did not make me safer, it made
the fact of what had happened more direct. Mara worked
before dawn and found Tom's jacket folded over a chair
where it had been idle. She pressed her hand to
the fabrica, like apparent feeling a child's temperature. He never
left this town, she said, Her voice was water thin.
He'd walk to the docks in winter and bring back
boxes of junk. She stores about how Tom would whittle
wooden birds on slow nights and leave them on people's porches.
She spoke of details I hadn't known, how he said
sorry too soon, and how he kept a key ring
with a single brass tag. The small stores made tell
reel again in a way that the fog had erased.
They also changed how we understood the night. The fog
didn't tea only take. It imitated what it had been given.
It replayed private things to make a path. That realization
was a twist up forced us to reassess other choices.
If it learned from memory and from voice, then leaving
recorded traces was as dangerous as it was useful. We
agreed to keep the recorder on and locked inside a
cabinet with the radio on top of plain white noise
all afternoon. We set a note on the door that
read no entry and taped it with duct tape that
had Tom's phone under the flappers. A weight. The note
was a small, defined thing. It was a decision that
grounded the next hours. While Neon, the fog had retreated
to the waterfront, and the silhouettes gathered there like a
slow congregation. They stood in a low line, occasionally leaning
their faces out and pressing the glass of store fronts.
People gathered at windows to look, some filmed from behind
the safety of plate glass. The officers were back in
pairs and kept distance. A news van idled at the corner,
and a reporter spoke into a camera about a local phenomenon.
I watched a life feed on my small battery TV
and saw the the silhou which were produced in a
grainy box. The twist came in the feed. A woman
in the street called out the name, and the nearest
silouet twisted and leaned toward the glass. The woman walked
forward and then turned and left, as if she had
remembered something she had been called away from. Later, a
cyclist who had gone missing for five years reported long
AGO's runaway was found in a side alley, shaking and incoherent.
He spoke of lights and voices, telling him the harbor
had been calling his name. The news cut between the
shots and our building in a way that put a
new rid. John would have been private. Fog could reach
into memory and in a minute private cues, and it
had used that ability to push Tom. Dusk came with
the brutal clarity that made shadows fall long, and then
we had to decide whether to stay or to try
again for the lighthouse before the next night. The choice
pulled between us. Mara wanted to leave town and find
shelter inland. I wanted to gather with evidence we could
and alert other towns. The decision then was not only
about escaping. It was about whether we would take the
risk of keeping the record and telling others. Marris stood
and folded the blanket into the shape of a roll.
She just the key into my palm and said, in
a voice I recognized as steady, take the recorder and
the radio, leave the tits in the cabinet, and burn
anything that mentions names. Burn what I asked Tom's notes?
She said, his list of whom he trusted and who
he said to call, anything that would tell them where
to look. We did not argue. We burned a list
in the sink. I watched a paper coal black and
fat with ash. The smoke smelled like burned blue. The
recorder's red light sat on the sill, and one final
whisper echoed through the apartment, a soft free play of
Tom's laugh, and then a silence that rolled through the walls.
At twilight, as a fog thinned to a bank beyond
the pier, I set the recorder face upon the window
sill and left it running. Morra sat a second radio
on a low white noise band and slid it sword
hum under the other sound. She sat down and pressed
her palms together. Her fingers were still marked with Tom's
finger prints from where she had held him. She rubbed
the collises with her thumb. I spoke into the recorder
one last time, with a voice steady enough to be understood.
I said the facts, names, times, what we had seen
and done. I said the things we had learned about
mimicry and the danger of audible memory. I told it
not to be sensational. I told it to be practical.
I listed street names in the time the hum began.
Each sentence was short, Each sentence was a claim against
whatever had happened. When I finished, I reached for the
radio and turned the dial until there was nothing but
static in a thin pitch. The room filled with the
blanket sound. The hum beyond the windows receded to a
distant thread. Mara closed her eyes. She counted, this time
a lot in slow spaced numbers, and accounting anchored her
like a rope. We agreed on one last rule before
I left to walk the block with the recorder. No
one answered a voice that sounded like a person we knew.
No one looked closely at a face that matched the memories.
We would not let the fog use our past to
claim us. I locked the door and put the key
on the window. Still under the radio, I took one
last look at the spot where the living room winders
still showed a faint ring of try condensation. The face
marked a narrow streak running down from where we had
touched a pane. It looked like a finger print gone wrong.
I kept my hand in the knob and felt the
colm outside. The streets meled like salt and old rope,
and the fab lay at the harbor like a pale wall.
I walked slowly, the recorder heavy in my palm. I
kept telling myself the next steps document worn avoid direct
contact with recorded voices. My fear had shivered twice that night,
first into paralysis, then into her heart focused resolved that
drove me to act. I felt both panic and a
strange numbness in my hands. The recorder clicked as I walked.
A girl cried above, and its sound was real and
sepparate from the layered mimics. At the corner, a woman
held her child close. The child's face was turned to
the harbor, and the silhouette theared his palm flat to
the glass of a store front. The child waved, and
for a second the silhwet mimicked the small motion. The
child looked up, surprised. The mother pulled the child in
and whispered something I couldn't hear. She had a child's name,
and then pushed her away. I kept walking. I went
to Tom's last nun spot and found one of his
wooden birds lying in the gutter, soaked but intact. I
picked it up and felt the grain of a wood
bide into my palm. The bird's beak had been chewed
slightly at the tip. I put it in my pocket.
It was a small, stubborn piece of the life Tom
had before the fog pressed him when I returned. Mara
had the recorder's case open and the radio faced end.
She met me in the doorway and did not speak
for a long moment. A mouse set in a line.
Then she said, we bury what matters, and we tell
the rest to strangers. I nodded. We recorded an our
cavel copy and then a safety copy, and then slapped
duct tape over the cabinet with the word do not
open written in pencil. We left instruction sealed in an
envelope for anyone who might find the tapes and know
what to do. Dawn came, and the fog stayed back
at the harbor, humming like an ocean machine. It had
taken Tom and a few others, but it had also
taught us the cost of being remembered. The lesson sat
heavy in my stomach. I set the recorder on the
cell with the radio humming under it, and pressed stop.
The recorder's rad light went out. I labeled the cassette
with a ballpoint pen tape two do not share names.
Mara pinned it to the inside of the cabinet and
then slaughtered the key behind it. She opened her mouth
to say something, and then closed it instead. She folded
her hands and excited. The exhale was a practical sound.
She walked to the window and pressed her forehead to
the glass, not in revery, but in measurement, feeling the
coal pane, feeling the place where Tom's weight had shifted
the night he was taken. The window held the faint
smear of his outlines. Still. When the patrol returned later
that day with canvas and official forms, we handed them
a tight statement in the names of streets. We did
not hand them the tape. Weed m the truth as
far as we could, without telling them how to call
some one by their old laugh. The officer who took
the statement was a different man from the first. He
looked at the smear on the pane and made a
note he was send some one to check the pier
at first light. Night came again, and the fog grows
slow from the water. It hummed like a machine some
one had left running. Mars slept with her coat on
and the blanket wrapped around her knees. I left the
recorder on the window sill, with a small pillow under
the tape, so that if the radio vibrated it would
not fall. I slipped the wooden bird onto the recorder
like a talisman, and left the room slight low. I
am writing this now, with the recorder open and the
radio low. The hum has a shape. I can point
to a name. The fog still waits at the edges.
I cannot promise it will stop. I can only tell
the facts I have. The face is pressed to glass.
The way the sound imitates what it learns. The danger
of answering a voice he recognize. We burned Tom's list.
We kept a safe to copy of the tape and
hid it. We taped a note on the cabinet with instructions.
We agreed not to leave the building again to night.
When dawn touched the water, I watched the silhouette slide
away to the harbor and fold like pages. Marris sat
on the couch and wrenched the key from her pocket
and thunder until the metal was warm. She we keep
this quiet, We keep the tape safe. We call the
patrol if anything else movesing close. I nodded. My fear
has shifted into watch from this and a tired resolve.
I will keep this recording, and I will keep the
radio one white noise. I will not let the fog
use names to call. I will not let it learn
the way we say each other's names and the sound
of our small private faults. I will press this recorder
face down on the sill and let the hump pass.
By Morrow reached up, locked the dead bolt, and set
the recorder face down on the sill, while the fog
thin toward the harbor. And then she whispered tom name
wants into the empty room. And that is the end.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
the next one.