The Fog (10 page)

The cloud fluffed around him, soft as the angel hair his mother put on the Christmas tree every year. He could not feel it under him, but he believed in it, and so it supported his weight easily, buoying him far from shore until he could no longer see the fox fires of the coastline or any other familiar landmarks. A high wind blew him into the jetstream. He flew over green islands and whales who were standing on their tails and spouting alongside coral reefs, just as in the pictures he had seen . . .

He heard the calling again.

It was a husky voice, booming at him from the other side of the Channel Islands. He leaned over the edge and saw a brown man blowing on a conch shell. The sound of the shell was like the sound of the voice, or maybe it was the voice. He couldn’t tell. He leaned farther, trying to identify it.

The cloud shifted under him.

He looked around, surprised, and saw it pulsating magically. Like smoke from a burning house, he thought. The cloud became a swirl of flashes, then began to vibrate. It cracked and rumbled, a sound he could feel but not hear. Then the sky was streaked with lightning as a long finger torched the sea.

Too late, he recognized the calling. It was shriller, higher-pitched than he had thought at first. It was actually the fire alarm bell from school, and it was warning him to get out before it was too late, because the sky was burning.

He leaned farther, too far this time, and plummeted out of the firecloud.

He splashed down near a herd of leaping dolphins. He flailed his arms and tried to grab one of their dorsal fins for a free ride, but could not. He sank deep, deeper into the inky waters, and finally touched bottom somewhere out in the middle of the ocean.

He saw a blurry picture through the silt he had stirred up: oily riggings and splintered masts and an overturned treasure chest spilling its dark jewels at his sinking feet. Excitedly he reached down and scooped his pockets full until there were no more to be found.

Luckily he had remembered to bring along his swim fins, which was good thinking. He put his arms down straight at his sides and paddled upward with a butterfly kick.

But now he was too heavy to move. Panicked, he fumbled to unload the treasure.

A giant manta ray glided batlike over his head. Its heavy wings beat a current, raising bones and tatters, which he now saw were the remains of the great pirate Davy Jones himself. An electric eel was slithering alive inside the empty skull, lighting the eyesockets with a blinding fluorescence. A host of plankton jetted by, tinging the water around Andy with a glow like Greek fire. The dead pirate advanced on him in worm-eaten seven league boots. A bejeweled captain’s hat glittered atop his white skull.

You must give it back,
said Davy Jones,
all of it. Now.

I can’t!
stammered Andy.
I don’t have it, honest! It turned into a piece of wood and then
—

You have taken what is mine, boy. I have waited one hundred years. Your time is up.

The walking skeleton was almost upon him, when suddenly it was obscured by a burst of bubbles in front of Andy’s face. Andy covered his mouth desperately, struggling to hold his air. Then a sound returned to him, a keening more piercing than ever, and finally he realized what it was. It was the sound of his own muffled screaming. He . . .

“Andy,” called a woman’s voice, too insistent to ignore this time. “Andy, the telephone! My hands are full . . .”

Andy rolled over in a cold sweat, fell off the pillows and out of bed.

“I—I got it, Mrs. Kobritz. Just a minute.”

He stumbled out of his bedroom, his dream fading rapidly.

He closed his hands over the telephone in the living room, cutting off its banshee wail.

“Hello? Mother?”

“Andy. How did you know?”

“I always know when it’s you, Mom. Hey, what time is it?”

“Andy, I have a very important question to ask you, and this time I’m not joking. This is very, very serious. Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Andy. Exactly where did you get that piece of driftwood you brought me this morning?”

“Aw, I told you. It was on the beach. Mom, when you were little did you ever have a dream about—”

“Where?”

“By the rocks. You know the ones. Mom—”

“What was it doing there?”

“I already told you, Mom.”

“I know you already told me. Tell me again.”

He sighed. “Well, first it was a gold coin and then it turned into the wood. Did you take it to work? I can’t find it. I think it disappeared.”

“Andy, listen to me. I can’t explain now, but listen very closely. I want you to stay away from the rocks. Don’t pick up anything else on the beach. No more! Do you understand?”

“It didn’t belong to anybody.”

“I know it didn’t. That’s not the point.” Her voice eased down an octave. “I’m not angry with you, Andy. It’s going to be all right. But you must not pick up anything else, not unless you come and get me first. Okay?”

“Okay. But why?”

“I’ll explain later. Is Mrs. Kobritz there yet?”

“Yeah. Mom, what time is it?”

“Almost six. I’ve got to start the broadcast now.”

“Oh good. I’ll—”

“Promise me you won’t leave the house.”

“Aw, Mom.”

“Not tonight, Andy. Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Andy?”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

“Me too, Mom. ’Bye.”

Andy held the phone for an extra moment, puzzling over the sound of her voice. Sort of like she was about to cry. Not exactly; that wasn’t it, not quite. More like she was afraid. Could that be? It was impossible. She had never sounded that way before.

He heard Mrs. Kobritz rattling the refrigerator shelves, putting the groceries away.

He let go of the telephone and skidded across the rug to the stereo. As he passed the kitchen door, he saw Mrs. Kobritz stooping over the open freezer.

He pressed the power button. The speakers thumped as the automatic timing took over, and then the sound of his mother’s voice filled the room. It was deep and throaty again, not like it had been on the phone. For a moment, for the first time since he had been a little boy, he wondered if it was really just a recording on the other end.

“Ahoy, maties! This is your nightlight, Stevie Wayne herself, and that means KAB, Antonio Bay, California, is on the air . . . !”

He went to the window to watch for the revolving beacon from the Point. The curtains were still drawn. No, they weren’t. There was white outside, like curtains, covering the sky.

He pressed his fingertips to the window. He stood steaming the glass with his breath. There was the beach outside the house, his skim-board and bucket and orange life raft. But a little ways out from shore, nothing. It really was thick, like clouds. It had to be clouds. Nothing else could be so white, for sure not fog like they had last winter. But he had never seen clouds so low. He waited, hoping against hope for the lighthouse beam to swing around, but it never did, or if it did, he could not see it. His mother might not have turned it on yet. The glass was cold as ice. He snatched his hands away, leaving five tiny round circles on the brittle pane.

“What did your mother want, Andy?” asked Mrs. Kobritz from the kitchen.

“Nothing.”

“It must have been something, child.”

“Nothing. Hey, Mrs. Kobritz? Can you come here a minute?”

He heard her setting down the frying pan and then the heavy footfalls of her old-fashioned shoes. He smelled the Avon perfume on her flowered dress and wrinkled his nose.

“What is it now? Your dinner will be ready in no time.”

“Mrs. Kobritz? Are those clouds out there on the water? See ’em? Did you ever see clouds like that before, so low, right on top of the water?”

“Oh, Andrew,” said Mrs. Kobritz, making a clucking sound in her throat. “You know better than that. Those aren’t clouds. Heavens, no.

“That’s nothing in this world to worry about,” she said. “It’s only the fog rolling in.”

THE NIGHT
OF
THE FOG

CHAPTER SIX

Nick was in a foul mood.

“Hey, Ni-i-ick,” she said next to him, her voice full of dread, “what
is
that?”

He hoped she had seen something that would justify the hair-raising tone, the delicate, insidious edge that scraped his nerves in exactly the wrong way, like an emery board covered with iron filings.

Grow up, he thought wearily. There are a hell of a lot more strange things out there in this world than you know, things you haven’t seen or dreamed of yet, some of them so terrifying, if you let them get to you that way, you’d never make it even partway through the fire on your own. You’d have to be strapped to somebody’s big, strong back like a papoose the whole time in order to get anywhere at all that’s worth getting to—like home through the Gulf Stream in hurricane season, or the rest of the way into your thirties, say. Well, I’m not Daddy. I know that. I sure as hell didn’t feel like Daddy when I saw you waiting back at the house an hour ago, and you must have known it. You certainly knew it last night. You weren’t exactly passed out. So do us both a big favor. Don’t go laying that kind of hysterical, helpless trip on me now, because I can hear it coming and I don’t think I could take it.

“That,” said Nick, gesturing toward the activity on the street, “is supposed to be what this whole business has been building up to. Antonio Bay’s candlelight procession.” He glanced over at her sitting there so primly in the passenger seat. She still had her sketchbook with her, but it was unopened, and her eyes were fixed straight ahead, unblinking. Take it easy on her, Nick, he told himself. She may turn out to be tougher than you give her credit for. And she sure didn’t do anything to deserve any of this. You didn’t ask her to stay. If you had, she probably wouldn’t have. They never do when things get choppy. “What did you think it was?”

“I don’t know. Reminds me of something. Sort of religious-like, I guess. Do they always do this?”

“Only every hundred years.”

“They never had anything like this back in Pasadena.”

“Yeah,” said Nick, pulling over to the curb at the end of Main Street, “I believe you. That’s the part I could do without myself, the phony religious angle. What the hell do they think they’re honoring? Each other?”

“They do that sort of thing at rock concerts sometimes,” she said. “Lighting matches in the dark and holding them up, you know? I guess it has to do with brotherhood or something.”

Nick yanked the tire iron from under the seat and knocked the rest of the broken windshield out of the molding. A few stubby fragments remained on the hood, catching and reflecting the candlelight off their tough, prism-like edges. He cut the engine just as a pompous, self-congratulatory speaker’s voice blew their way on the PA system.

“Who’s that?”

“The mayor,” he said. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t vote for him.”

“. . . And some have said,” the Mayor was proclaiming, “ ‘You can’t survive in Antonio Bay without big business.’ And we have said to them, ‘We survive in Antonio Bay because of the heart and soul of our people!’ ”

Sure, he thought, run that stale mackerel up the flagpole one more time. Don’t kid yourselves. The Gospel of the Greenback, that’s what it’s really about.

The crowd applauded in spite of the dripping candles in their hands. Do they know something I don’t? he wondered.

“It sure is getting cold,” said Elizabeth.

“We’re going inside.”

“She’s probably not here now,” said Elizabeth. “She looked like she just stopped in to get a drink. She looked like she needed one.”

“She’ll be here,” he said, “or somewhere close by. Believe it. This whole shindig is her baby. She’s been driving everyone crazy for months.”

He steered her through the crowd and into the Elizabeth Dane Inn.

The tables were empty, but a few unrepentant types were belly-up to the bar at the back, waiting it out. A grizzled old man, a salesman, a hooker from Canal Street. The sight of them there with their backs to the town square warmed the cockles of his heart.

“You seen Mrs. Williams?” Nick asked the bartender.

“Nicky!”

It hit him hard now how much he didn’t want to have to face her. But it had to be done.

She came at him with a double gimlet in one hand and a clipboard in the other, her hairdo breaking loose and her face beginning to shine under the subterranean lighting. There were crinkles sewn around her lips from holding so much in. He remembered those lips, and damned himself for it.

“Nicky, thank God. Those incompetents at the Coast Guard switchboard won’t tell me a thing. But you were there. I want you to tell me. The life raft, first. Was it there?”

“It was.”

“Then—”

“Then nothing. We don’t know more than that, Kath. Don’t work yourself up. We’ll just have to wait this one out.”

“Is there a search party?”

“A helicopter, yes. And two cutters, criss-crossing for miles in every direction. Kathy. Listen to me.” Close up, her eyes were switching back and forth between his, which made him more nervous. He saw the twitch, the wrinkling of her eyelids.