Speaker 1: Hullo. I'm 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 marsh out of my name.
Before I finished standing, fear ran through my limbs so
clearly I could feel my fingers good numb. As I
stepped toward the glass. I threw the curtain aside and
saw a pale, flat and face pressed to the pane,
wet breath fogging the edgewhere cheek met cealant. I did
not wait to think. I opened the window finger with
and Mara grabbed my sleeve. My fear was not thought.
It was a pressure behind my roops that made my
hand shake while I fumbled the old latch. That fear
pushed me to acting to talk fast. Morrow stayed back,
I said, Dante open. Mara pushed the curtain harder and peered,
nails white at the knuckles. She what is that? And
her voice went tight. Marr dantes. I started again, and
then the face drew a slow, wet circle against the
glass and leaned harder. I could name where I lived
in the next breath. I lay on the second floor
of a narrow brick building on Harbor Lane. I keep
Tee in a chipped kettle on the stove. I sleep
in the side with the window, and afraid gray hoodie
that smells like salt. Does fox matter? Because I had
to move without thinking about them, so I could close
the window before whatever was outside could press itself farther
in more 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 felt a dam cooix hail against my wrist. Were
the gap let air in the skin on my forearm prickled.
I watched the face through the condensation. It was long
and wart, pale, not detailed, but there were dark white
hollows where eyes might sit. It matched a drawing we
later found on the stawell board, but we didn't know
that yet. I dialed the town despatch with one hand
and held the window with the other. The despatcher listened
and then answered in a voice that treated us like
two people plain a joke. It's fog, My am, stay inside,
and don Tee may contact. I said my address twice
in The despatcher repeated the word fog like a final
word that would end the call. Mar a hiss. 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 entered the coal with an unresolved click. The fear
chained shaped to something, prickled close and sharpened suspicion. I
paced while the fog move against the street like something
it lie, but solid enough to press faces to glass.
The suspicion made me open the door to the halt
to check the stairwar 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, he after to see. He shrugged and then
pass complaints by tone kids, droll, weird stuff. People scared 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
reached short to night as calm didn't tea land. While
he spoke, I noticed fresh smudge marks in the stable
glass below the handrail. I said, mister Hallow, looked down there,
Those prints are wet. He glanced and frowned, but kept
talking about previous tenants. Those princes stopped me from accepting
his dismissal. Back in my flat mirror had found a
folded flier under the door mat. She unfolded it with
shaky fingers. Look she said. The flyers showed a face
in a photograph labeled with the name and a date,
mon Solaer. The paper was damp at the corners. I
recognized the handwriting on the bulletin board notice from building management,
a lost purse and flyer we had passed every week.
I felt the suspicion hardened into a sense of patteren
flier and the child's drawing on the stairs will both
match the shape of faces pressed to windows. We argued
about what to do. Maurra'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 two at a time, with the battered
carracase slung over his shoulder. I hadn't expected Elly so early.
He fed the latch with his shoulder and said, you texted.
I came anyway. I said his name, and he dropped
the case in the table. Ellie smells of oil and colder.
He lifts his chin when he thinks. I thought you
were joking, He said, I thought he'd overreacted. Marris napped,
we were right. Look. She pushed the flyer towards him,
alas Maners shifted from skeptical to business like. Inside a
few breaths. He set up the cheap camera on a tripod,
aim at the window, and foretted 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 jittered slightly when
he adjusted the focus. The jump in his motion showed
for 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 the window faster if I had to. The
fog came in the cup before dawn. The silhouettes collected
at the curb and leaned against lamp posts. Their faces
were impressions pressed to glass. They did not move like people.
They modulated pressure waiting. Ali whispered. They re at the
far corner leaning. I see them, Marra, 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 checklist film document do not
touch The camera flickered each time a face came closer
the screen. Shirt blocks of static, and then a wat
How low were condensation condensed into a mouse shaped oval.
Elie tapped the recorder and cursed under his breath, he
it kills the signal keep the glass closed. I moved
to the window and pressed my palms flat against the cell.
The condensation cooled my skin. I could hear a distant
low hump through the fog, like a single string pluck
fairy low. It made my teeth ache. We debated their
next move in short sentences, shut it morrr fillmore, Eli,
call some one again. I say. The argument became one
of small quick lines. The tension rose Mara, if it
wants us, we dun't tee let it near the open
Ellie answered, if it hides from the camera, we need
to lower it out to prove it. I said, Ali,
we will not lure it closer mirror. We should tape
the window to Ellie, tap one to stop it. I say,
we need proof without bating. In those exchanges, their priorities
were visible. Mour name safety, Elly named evidence. I named containment.
At three in the morning, the fog pressed directly at
our window in a wall. A single long face led
along the glass and stopped where the latch lived. I
felt the window frame vibrate under the pressure. Ellie muttered,
the camera registers the Humer's interference. Mar a step backward
and hit the table leg. She that's close. Her breath
came fast. I've felt resolve hardened in my jaw. I
loosened one hand from the latch and reached for the
camera to check its connection. My hand burushed the edge
of the window in a faint w s may marked
my palm The smear was cold and smelled of algi
in metal. I wiped it on my sleeve and held
my hand up. The smear asked shape echoed the flattened face.
Elly looked at my palm and his face changed sharp
enough for MITSI he don't he open it. I'll let
gold the latch. My fingers shook in the fear compressed
into a different feeling, a tight, angry insistence not to
be a passive observer. Ellie moved faster than either of
us had expected. He lunged for the tripodoagius the angle.
In the motion, his knee clept the sill, and the
window cracked the fraction of an inch I had kept
the gap opened and a long. When impression slipped through
the seam, it pressed against Elly's wrists with the softness
at mimic's skin. The contact made a thin, wet sound,
like lips meeting oily glass. Illy shouted and grabbed the camera.
He tried to pull it back, but something on the
other side flexed and pushed deeper. Morris screamed, close it,
close it now. I slammed my shoulder into the frame
and felt the woopscape under my palm. The entity mimicked
our movements. Why I tried to pull the window up.
The pressure and the sill countered me. It matched the
angle Alley used and shoved against the frame, with the
timing that nearly unlatched. Heff fingers. Ellie cursed and shoved
his shoulder, and the camera colatter. The silhouette's pressure moved
in rhythm with us. It was not random. It cop
its more gestures. The mimicry made me aware of how
the fog had been watching houses all night, finding seems.
I forced the frame closed with both hands and heard
a wet slip and sparkles. Something slid off the siltan
into the fog with a soft sucking sound. We stood panting.
The room smelled of cold, salt and metal. The camera's
memory card was corrupted in places where faces had leaned closest.
Eli swore and threw the recorder onto the couch. He
played at back. The playback had a low, droning hum,
laid under static. At points, the hum had an ear
whispered that sounded like a word against the microphone. Mara
put her hands over her mouth. What did it say?
She asked. Ellie fed the recorder into the stereo and
sowed the playback. There was no clear word. There was
only pressure and the impression of a voice under the static.
Dawn shifted the light, and the 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 stairwll to check the bulletin board. My mouth tasted
of metal, and fear had folded into a ringing weariness.
At the board, I founded damp child like drawing of
tall faces pressed to glass, pined under clear tape. The
drawing had the date scolded in a shaky hand, and
a name with a phone number. I turned and called
Morrow's name. The stairwell smelled of wet paint and algae.
The bottom of the stairwell had smears leading away like
drag damn cloth. I called and imment morror, 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, wet footprints leading down toward the pier.
They were narrow and long gated, 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 posts. The
Prince led to the corner, where the street narrowed and
pulled toward the harbor. I heard a low hum that
match the playback. I called Mara's name again, and the
sound returned to a thin repeat, as if the fog
absorbed and turned voices. I felt the hazel all my
arm stand up, and I wrapped my scaff tighter. The
Prince ended at a pile of wet rags and a
childish shoe half buried in the puddle. The shoe es
tongue had a name written inside. I read the skull
and found a match to the Purson flyer. I spun
and saw Ellie at the stairhead, leaning like he could
not breathe. Here ran to the corner. There was someone
standing there. Then they were in tea. He looked at
the shoe with something like guilt. I said, where's morrr?
Ellie as reply was klipped, had done 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. Ali wanted the camera.
I wanted to follow the wet prince. The exchange was quick, Elie,
we followed the prince. No, we call more people. We
already called. They want 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 can fool you.
I said, there's a shoe, there is a smear. He
shrugged and reached into his jacket. He I have a flashlight,
I'll help look. His voice had a different now, he
was less ready to minimize and more 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 the light
toward the pier. At a dock, I found more water,
smeared Prince heading under the boards. The fog thin enough
that I saw a shadows slide under the gap. Billy
braced himself against the railing and sat in quick control
lines dawnty go under, we wait for the station. The
words were in order and aply. I answered with a
short sentence, we go now. Mara's name 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 aalgaie and wrought 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 wept on my sleeve. I felt the air vibrate,
the hum swelled, then the fog moved with intent. Elie
growled my arm. He if we split up, we can
find more clo More's absence hung between us like a question.
I said, 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 out well on
the pilings. Every few steps another was smear showed where
something had pressed a face to wood. The fog hummed
below the threshold of hearing. Then Eli found the camera
cord still in his pocket, but corrupted. He thumb through
the housing and found frames where the silouets leaned so
close to class 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. He in a low voice.
This was someone here earlier. At the discovery made the
fog feel deliberate. We reached a ladder that slotted 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 a line of small, neat handwriting
on the edge. I read the letters aloud. They matched
the name on the flier. After that things flipped. The
fog drew close like a column, and then drew in
a deliberate measure way. I heard a scrape at the
dock above us, and then a soft, wet slide along
the edge. I said, up, Elly, no, wait, I move first.
At the top of the ladder, a figure blocked the stair.
It was neither fully fog nor fully human. It leaned
its flattened face against a railing and looked in through
the hairline cracks of the bots. The featureless impression rested
and pressed, and when it moved it made a sucking,
wet sound. Ellie flinched and hit the deck with his
palm NESSA Hello, had his flashlight steady and shown it down.
The beam carved a white circle into the fog, ensured
this smudge prince clearly. The thing did not retreat. It
simply shifted and folded, like material being rearranged. The mini
cliffinger hit. Then something at the railing slid alowng 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 lounged 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. Ellis Shaw echoed under
the pier. I ripped my hands free and hold him up.
We fell on the planks and the well tilted into
shouting Mora was not there. Ellie coughed and spat water
and said, in a rapid cadence, 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
dun't 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. Hallo used the flashlight to sweep
the harbor and found a wet smere leading back toward
the stairwell. The smear glowed in a beam like a
fresh bruise onward. I realized our small victory in forcing
the window shut. It cost us Morrow's presence. We flagged
the despatcher again, and this time they sent one car.
After a full minute, the officer on sight shoning a
searchlight that cut the falk into a hard line. He
name in a voice tuned for procedure. I told him
Mora's name in my dress. The officer wrote it down
slowly and asked about the drawing. He stared at the
pink child's picture and then looked up. He did not
have the insulation of dismissal in his face. He we
will checked the missing person's file. The sentence felt like
thin armor, but it was something. At dawn, the town
began a low mechanical search. Patrol cars moved slowly down
Harbour Lane 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 bad TV shot. Ellie moved in quick lunges
and jerky breaths between the patrols. He kept saying short
things into his phone about corrupted footage and static um.
Hallow kept 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 a last sweep of my apartment and found
the camera's battery compartment shoved under the couch, inside a
scrap of fabric that matched the child she was stuck
in the hinge appeals are Free, and tucked it in
my pocket. My hands were steady enough to tie ant.
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 where the hum resolved into a half
phrase that sounded like a name. We could not be sure.
The small twist came when mister Hallow pointed at the
stairwall and said, there is a smear on the third step.
We went down together on the stairwall. The wet smere
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 trees on muskin.
The smear ended at the stair tread, and a single
wet finger prin faded toward the hall. I bent to
fall over it, and then heard a sound behind me,
like paper being folded in a mail box. I stirred
and found an envelope taped to the under side of
the stair rail. The envelope had no stamp and only
my name written in a neat small hand. I opened
it with one finger and slid out a single folded photograph.
The photograph showed a window with condensation and a pail
flattened face pressed at the inside of the glass. Someone
had drawn a small circle around the corner of the pane,
where a hairline gap showed 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 alias I s followed. I folded the photograph and
slipped it into my pocket, closed my fist around the
fabric's crap, and stepped out into the fog, following the
stairwellsmere downward. Mars shoved the door open and dragged me
on to the porch, shouting that the fog had people
at the windows. Fear tightened my hands round the rail.
I could still feel the wet slap against the living
room glass from earlier, and Mara's voice cutting through it.
Feo pushed me forward before thought. The porch light pulled
on the floor in a small disc, and the fog
closed around the building like a slow, wet hand. I've
been awake when something hit the living room window. I
had stood with the curve n in my fist and
seen a pail flat and face pressed to the pane,
breath fogg in the 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 smere Mara's name in the hallway. Those detail shaped
everything I did that night. They made me get dressed,
then made me follow Mora out of the apartment. Tom
Mara call, bounding down the corridor with her keys in
her fist. Her voice carried a raw edge I hadn't
heard before. I follow with my hood. He pulled up
and the radio bag slung over my shoulder. I kept
glancing at the living room window through the open door.
The condensation along the edge still held the shape of
a face. My breath came out in short tuffs. We
hit Tom's door first. I knocked hard. Mara's palm left
a print in the wood. Tom wake up, She said,
Her voice was tight. The haway smelled of damp stairs
and some one 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 flat with sleep. He rubbed at his eyes
and 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
fog Morrow, they read your window. Tom's face changed when
we stepped close enough to his kitchen window to see
the condensation. He reached for the latch and froze. A
flattened white shape hovered on the outside pane, just above
waist tight It held there without moving like a pressed hand.
Tom swallowed Jesus. He stepped forward, appeared. The smear resolved
into the impression of an elongated face. Nothing that could
be cold 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 pahne.
The screen lit up, then pixelated into a grutostatic and
black phones die. I said, my voice was small. I
heard the tightness in it. Mara's joel worked. She grabbed
Tom's wrist. Don't he call anyone on it? She said,
we need to wake the building. We moved doward to door,
rapping and shaking. Neighbors awake. The building responded in fragments,
footsteps padding down, a grumble from behind a door, a
woman crying out, someone swearing. Each time a face appeared
at a window. It looked pressed and wet, a translucent
impression that blurred as soon as you named it. People
open doors and pajamas were wrapped in towels. They leaned
out 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 fire window, several longated silhouettes leaning close
to the glass. They did not walk, They pressed their presence,
made a paint near the frame, dark with wet and
neighbor misses cold. Wolf screened and then clamped her hands
over her mouth. Her voice broke into quick, incoherent 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 screen went black, he cursed
and slammed his palm against the stair rail. That anger
was sudden and raw. They 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 in old algae. Porch lights threw
thin cones. Every cone was ringed with damp figures leaned
toward each lit doorway. They did not move toward as
a new gate or with a step. They leaned. When
someone shone a flashlight, they seemed to withdraw a haze
bread and then press harder against the glass. I fumbled
from my phone and raised it to record des so wets.
The scream bloomed and then dissolved into interference, gray baws,
and a warped image where the light bent around something
not there. When Mara tried her phone, it went dead
with a 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 subtle at first, It vibrated through the soles
of my shoes and into my teeth. The sound came
from nowhere and from everywhere. It matched an ache behind
my eyes. I tightened my jaw and felt a pressure
rise behind the skull, like the first hug of a migraine. Listen, Morra.
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 possessed the coppy
Tom's stands. It was not a mirror. It matched the
small angle of his elbow in the set of his shoulders.
Then the hum layered a voice over itself, a wet
echoed version of Tom's thought from years ago. It called
his name in the high intimate turne he used to
make when he was trying to coax a cap from
under the porch. Tom straightened. That's me, he said. His
feet slid toward the cot without command. That's my laugh. Ma.
I grubbed his sleeve. My fingers left wet prints on
his jacket. The pressure at the top of my head increased.
I could hear blood in my ears. The figure the
cup leaned closer, and the air round it showed my cheek.
Tom kept moving forward his joel watch, but his eyes
were blank, like a man reading from a script. That
scrip was his own voice bent into a lower More's
hands were cold on his shoulders. She pulled and hissed, Tom,
get back Falm three, t morror, 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
wetcoth rubbing my forearm. I pulled Mara grabbed Tom's other arm.
For a second, all three of us hugged, 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 wrapped round 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 silwet at the curb opened like a hand and
then closed. Tom was pulled forward in a slipping sound.
He landed against the curb, and then he was gone
into the fog, swallowed without a RiPP or splash. His
phone fell and shattered in the assholet with a final
white flare. Oh Mari yell. She dropped hernees and reached
into the fog with both hands. Her fingers found nothing
but cold, damn barry 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 cod 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
temples worsened. In the hum layered a new sound, a
childlike whisper repeating Marrow's name. The radio bag at my
hip thump, as if something heavy had landed on it.
We dragged ourselves back to the porch and shut the
door inside. The old analog radio on my windows or
sat with its dial half way between stations. I had
taken it from a thrift shop weeks earlier. Because the
dials with the satisfying clack. Mara stagger to the soull
and frozen fog traced 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 mofed at first Morrow in a
high nasal tona I had heard when we were kids
fighting over cards at the yard sale. The voice repeated
a private thing Mara had said only once on a
night in college, a confession about skipping a final exam
to walk the peer. The sound in the radio was
laid like a tape played on three players at 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 mimiced, I said,
I switched the radio's band and found the knob stuck.
When I tapped the face, the sound shifted to the
low droning hum and thender a faint scrape, like finger
nails on a wooden table. We argued about running to
the lighthouse. Tom mess 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 public plays and maybe, like we keep them
off the rocks. I sat, running would scatter us, and
that scattered groups were easier to pick off. The argument
spun into a sharp exchange lighttoso barricade. Mara 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 pressed against the walls like weight.
Mara paced to the window and pressed her forehead to
the glass. I could see the vane 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. You record,
she said, You put it all on tape. If anything
happens to us, people will know what the radio played,
what it sounded like. Take the analoge recorder and speak
into it. I clicked on the recorder and its red
light blink. My fingers tremble as spoke the first line.
Because she told meat, and because fear tightened my throat
into a roupe of words. I cataloged at the events,
the knock at the window, the flattened face in the
living room, Tom at the cub, the hum, I said,
the names allow Saint Tom's name was a brivile thing.
As I spoke, the radio shifted again. The voice on
it started to imitate me. It took my last phrase
and rewind it into a thinner, younger curtains. It repeated
my admission, how I'd seen the face first and not
pulled the curta and folly. That small confession landed between
us like a stone, you knew Morr. Her eyes never
left the window. I saw it, I corrected. I thought
my sentence snapped off as a pressure lanced behind my eyes.
I clutched the recorder and heard my own breath grow ragged.
The humming phased into a version of my own voice,
counting softly. It copied the rhythm of my breathing. My
resolve shifted. Then fear let go of me for a second,
and something cold and moved in responsibility. We move at three,
m I said. My voice had a narrow edge. We
go down the alley by the bakery. We stay together.
We had for the light out, Sawny. If we can
keep line of sight, Mara nodded, without looking at me.
She fall held it a scarf into her jacket pocket,
found the old key on her cord and put it
into her palm like a talisman. Her hand stopped shaking.
Her decision pushed me into action. My resolver placed my
first wave of panic. We prepared in fifteen minutes that
felt longer. I packed a recorder of flat light, two
spare batteries, and a small pocket knife. Mara found a
heavy blanket and a length of duct tape. We tied
jackets around our waists and fixed the scarf around Mar's throat.
She hissed when it touched her wet skin. My heart
thudded a deliberate count in my chest. One, two, one too.
At two thirty, the hum deepened and the fog pressed
at a window. Like hands. We waited. The radiator clanged
in the next room. Mar sat on the couch and
counted backwards in short bursts under her breath. I washed
her joel work. She kept her voice low and steady.
The counting was a ritual to hold panic at bay.
At three aim, we opened the door. The stair was
smelled of damp paint and the salt air that seeped
through the cracks the banister was slick. We moved on
in single file, the blanket wrapped over our should My
flasklight caught an arrow come through the haze. At the landing.
Something moved above us. The stairwell shuddered, and a thick
wet pressure pushed between the rails. The silhouette climbed the
stairs like a hand draggoncloth along the banister. It made
a wet scrape, and that crawled up through the soles
of my feet. Mara cursed and stepped back. I grabbed
the rail and felt drop. It struck my wrist. The
pressure in my head spiked into a white flare. My
fingers went numb. Goll Mara. We tried the door and
it stuck on swollen wood. The fog pressed against the
glass in the staie window and made the paane bead.
I shoved with my shoulder and the lock snapped. We
spilled out into the corridor, and then the figure slammed
against the banister with a sound like wet plyorate hitting beam.
It forced us apart. The scrape ran up my spine
and my hands slipped on my flaskway. Mara reached for me,
and now reached for Tom. The stairwell 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 for his shoe caught the air, and then he
was gone over the railing into a shape of steam
and fog. Marus screamed and then sounded like she had
been struck. She pitched forward against the banister and hit
her mouth. Luck came, her fingers dug into the wood.
She saw my name in short breaths, and there was
a new hardness in her voice, now angered that had
no softness left. I lunged and got two fingers on
his coat. This slid through, as if through wet fabric.
I felt the cold tug at my finger tips, and
then nothing the record of free pocket and clipped the
stair rail before skittering on to the landing. I grabbed
it back with shaking hands. The warmth of Tom's hand
was gone from the jacket. The stair well held only
damp in the hum. It carried a thin replay of
Tom saying and a child's sings on a nickname a
dem never heard used in years, and then a suctioning sigh,
like some one inhaling through wet cloth. Mars screamed and
then screamed again, in a different register and 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 hu spike 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.
A mid earl, a choice, tactile and shameful. I called you,
I said, ay, You hesitated as she said. Her voice
was precise. You counted whether it was worth risking us.
That isn't he fairer? I began. We traded through clip blind,
and then Mara'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 the stair was 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 click. Dawn paled sky with a thin wash, and
the fog thin to a low bank along the harbor.
Marra sat on the floor and pressed an old key
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 saw, 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
through cold fog, tom shoes getting off the cab. I
said how the radio imitated memory, and how the soul
whitest press faces. I described the smell of algaie in
wrotten metal, and the way the hum vibrary to the
teeth in my jaw. My voice cracked, and I kept talking,
saying it made events real and fixed. The recorder's red
light kept blinking adorn. The fog drew back in thin,
nervous tendrils. The silhoueest slid away to the edges of
town and pulled there in low shapes. Mara lay back
on the couch and closed her eyes. Her hands were
clenched into small fists. She had an injured look, not
just from the hip dormouth, but from the tuck 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 and died near it. We gave concrete facts, a
missing man, damp marks on every window, of the smell.
The officer's voice was flat and procedural. He someone would
checked patrols along the coast. When the patrol car came
at idle at the end of our block, and two
officers walked up with jacket 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 down to Tom's name. One officer, young,
with a spare cigarette behind his ear, rolled his eyes
when I tried to describe the hum You are right,
he asked me. He used my name after I had
told it. His tone was the kind that assumed we
were shaken. But okay, I'm fine. I said, I wasn't
at the recorder, ticked to my jacket pocket, and the
radio is still hummed faintly on the window sill. The
officer nodded and then left with the form to file.
After they left, the apartment was quiet but not safe.
Marius leapt 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
harm the radio, repeating the same private phrases. Each playback
made the impression of the event more concrete. Each playback
also made it clear that something had learned. The sounds
that mattered. 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 sad
plainly we pressed to learn. The voice was thin and
wet and layered with static. Listening did not make me safer,
it made the fact of what had happened more direct.
MA awoke before dawn and found Tom's jacket folded over
a chair where it been idle. She pressed her hand
to the fabric, like a parent filling a child's temperature.
He never left this town, she said, Her voice was
war thin. He'd walked to the docks in winter and
bring back boxes of junk. She stores about how Tom
would widdle 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, how he kept keyring
with single brass tag. The small stores made Tom reel
again in a way that the fog had raced. 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 that forced us to reassess earlier 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, it playing white noise
all afternoon. We set a note on the door that
read no entry and tipped it with duct tape that
had Tom's phone under the flap as a weight. The
note was a small, defiant thing. It was a decision
that grounded the next dires. I knew. The fog had
retreated to the waterfront, and the silhuts 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 found idle at the corner,
and a reporter spoke into a camera about a local phenomenon.
I watched a live feed on my small battery TV
and saw the soul which were pret used in a
grainy box. The twist came in the feed. A woman
on the street called out a name, and the nearest
silhouette 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 as 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 cup
between the shots and now building in a way that
put a new edge on what had been private. The
fog could reach into memory and in a minute private cues,
and it had used that ability to push Tom. Thus
came with the brittle clergy that made shadows fall long
and thin. We had to decide whether to stay or
to try again for the lighthouse. Before the next night.
The tros pooled between us. Mara wanted to leave town
and find shelter inland. I wanted to gather what evidence
we could and alert other terms. The decision then was
not only about escaping. It was about whether we would
take the risk of keeping the record and telling others.
Maura stood and folded the blanket into the shape of
a rural She thrust the key into my palmon said
in a voice I recognized as steady. Take the recorder
and the radio, leave the tapes in the cabinet, and
burn anything that mentions names. Burn what. I asked Tom's notes?
She said, his list of who he trusted and who
he said to call, anything that would tell them where
to look. We did not argue. We burned the list
in the sink and watched the paper curled black and
fat with ash. The smoke smiled like burnt blue. The
recorder's red light sat in the sill, and one final
whisper echoed through the apartment, a soft replay of Tom's laugh,
and then a silence that rolled through the walls. At twilight,
as the fog thint a bank beyond the pier. I
set the recorder face upon the window sill and left
it running. Maris said a second radio on a low
white noise band, and slid it soht hound 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 elicited
street names in the time the hum began. Each sentence
were 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 blankets armed. The
hum beyond the windows receded to a distant thread. Morrow
close her eyes. She counted this turn aloud in slow
space numbers, and the counting anchored her like a rope.
We agreed on one last roll 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 their memories. We
would not let the fog use up 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 windows still showed a
faint ring of dry condensation. The face marked a narrow
streak running down from where we had touched the pane.
It looked like a finger print gone wrong. I kept
my hand in the knob and felt the cool metal outside.
The street smelled like salt and old rope in the
fog 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 shifted twice that night,
first into paralysis, then into a hard, focused resolve 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
separate from the layer at Mimicks. At the corner, a
woman held her child close. Chiles's face was turned to
the harbor, and the silhuette there had its palm flat
to the glass of a storefront. The child waved, and
for a second the silhouette make the small motion. The
child looked up, surprised. The mother pulled the child in them,
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 snown spot and found one of his
wooden boats lying in the gutter, soaked buttt act. I
picked it up and felt the grin of the wood
bite into my palm. The bird's beak had been showed
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 face dimmed.
She met me in the doorway and did not speak
for a long moment. Her mouth set in a line.
Then she said, we bury what matters, and we tell
the rest to strangers. I nodded. We recorded an arc
of a 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 instructions sealed in
an envelope for any one who might find the tats
and know what to do. Don 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
lessons sat heavy in my stomach. I set the recorder
on the sill, with the radio humming under it, and
pressed stop. The recorder's red light went out. I labeled
the cassette with a ballpoint pen tip, too did not
share names. Mara painned 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 exhaled. The sail was a
practical sound. She walked to the window and pressed her
forehead to the glass, not in revery, but a measurement,
feeling the cool pane, feeling the place where Tom's waited
shifted the night he was taken. The window held the
faint smerr of his outline 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, with them 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 would 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.
Someone near left running. Mars lept with her curt on
and the blank give wrapped around her knees. I left
the recorder and 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 opened in
the radiola. The hum has a shape. I can point
to a name. The fog still waits at the edges
and 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 you recognize. We burned Tom's less.
We kept a safety 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 sil wits slide
away to the harbor and fold like pages. Mars sat
on the couch and wrenched the key from her pocket
and thumbed it until the metal was warm. Shee we
keep this quiet, We keep the tape safe. We called
the patrol. If anything else moose and close. I nodded.
My fear has shifted into watchfulness and a tired resolve.
I will keep this recording, and I will keep the
radio on white noise. I will not let the fog
use names to call. I will not let it learn
the way we see 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.
Mara reached up, locked the dead bolt, and set the
recorder face down on the sill while the fog thinned
toward the harbor. And then she whisper for Tom's name
once into the empty room. And that is the end.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
the next one.