Fog

Years later, when Jeff thought back to the summer of 1958, the first thing he would remember was the fog. 

Every morning and every night, great white sheets of it rolled in from the ocean, smothering the town in a misty blanket so thick a person standing five feet in front of you would all but disappear. The fog always seemed to be saying something, as if by flowing over the rooftops, towers, and church steeples it was speaking some alien language that no human would ever understand. Jeff included.

Some twelve miles off the coast of Rhode Island, Block Island was like a North American Shangri-La, a place where news of the outside world came slowly, and then mostly during the summer, when tourists more than tripled the island’s tiny population. It was a place untouched by time, where fishermen laid out their kills on the shore in the evening, and ancient automobiles drove down wide streets without being stared at. It was a place of empty, crumbling buildings, stretched against the backdrop of the endless Atlantic, buildings that told of some former glory that was as mysterious and elusive as the sea itself.

           The fog had been particularly thick on the night a small group of preteen boys climbed out their bedroom windows and met in the empty street, wheeling their bikes alongside them. Their thin flashlights, mounted on their handlebars, did little to clear the fog. “I’m not sure about this,” Ben said cautiously as he met up with the others, eyeing his house next door. Or where his house would have been had he been able to see it. “If my dad finds out—”

           “Your dad won’t hear a thing,” Randy said. Randy’s claim-to-fame had always been being able to run fast enough to catch one of the island’s many seagulls in his bare hands. “We’ll go in, we’ll have a look around, and we’ll head right out. Come on, this might be our only chance. What if there really is something valuable in there?”

           They all wanted to go, of course, even Ben, so before long they were on their bikes and pedaling down the bumpy road, the murky town riding slowly past them on either side. Jeff knew Randy was right – they’d been on plenty of similar expeditions before, and they had yet to get caught – but he also knew if his sister Joy happened to notice he was gone… A few years ago, Jeff had burned Joy’s favorite doll at the stake in his front yard, next to a pile of trash, and ever since then she’d gone out of her way to rat him out for every slip-up. When his parents asked him why he’d done it, all Jeff had been able to say was “Well, she’s my sister.”

           Block Island was a small place, so the four boys didn’t have to pedal far before they saw it rising out of the mist before them. The Old Spring House, it was called, a luxury resort at the edge of town that had once held the island’s biggest casino, back when it was built in the 1930s. Now it was empty, a four-story edifice of broken stairways, cobwebs, crumbling corridors, and darkness. At the top of the building, just visible through the icy fog, there was a glass dome like a jewel in the air, reflecting the light of the moon into the empty space below. That was their destination.

           The boys hopped off their bikes and leaned them against the stone wall surrounding the estate, grabbing their flashlights from the handlebars. As the beams bounced around, they lit up a menagerie of signs reading “NO TRESPASSING” and “PRIVATE PROPERTY: KEEP OUT,” signs which reminded Jeff that what he and his friends were doing was certainly illegal and possibly dangerous. He swallowed. 

Clambering over the wall was easy, and then it was a matter of wading through a thick field of grass that had grown so high it tickled the undersides of their chins. The building’s grand outside staircase, a great set of steps pockmarked with holes and rotting wood, was just ahead now, visible in the dim beams of their flashlights, and as they pushed towards it, Jeff cast a quick glance behind them. There was nothing to see. The rest of the island might as well not have existed in that moment, just the four of them and their lights and the empty structure they were about to enter.

           Their footsteps echoed as they stepped into the foyer, a sure sign of the immensity of the space, but other than a few moon shadows cast by the glass dome far overhead, the entire room was shrouded in darkness. Their thin beams of light suddenly felt even thinner.

           “Well, there isn’t much to see here, is there?” Ben whispered.

           “Not here, maybe,” Steve, Jeff’s younger brother, whispered back, “but I bet we’ll find something in the dome.” The others nodded in agreement even though they couldn’t see each other. That had been their plan all along, after all. There was something captivating about that dome, in a way only a preteen boy might understand, a special magic that had seemed to call to them since they’d first laid eyes upon it. Anything at all could be up there: a chest full of gold, a withered skeleton, an ancient tome, a magic wand, a secret lab full of beakers and vials. They were here tonight because they knew they wouldn’t be able to rest until they found out what was in that dome, and now that they were here, there was no turning back.

Proceeding carefully, shining their lights mostly on the floor so they could see where to step, the group moved across the dusty hall towards where they could just make out another grand set of steps ahead. There should have been furniture in this room, Jeff thought, desks or armchairs, perhaps pool tables, but there was nothing besides the wooden floorboards that sometimes squeaked beneath their feet. Reaching the staircase, they found it was much larger than they’d guessed, a grand set of terraces that gripped the foyer on three sides like a vice, leading straight up, four stories, to where they knew they would find the dome. Cautiously, fearful of any sign that a step might not hold their weight, the boys took hold of the wooden handrail on one side of the staircase and began walking up. None of them dared speak. It felt as though speaking might break the illusion.

           Most towns in those days had at least one old building that was cloaked in superstition, the kind of building that would always be boarded up, forgotten about for decades, and, eventually, haunted. But even in a town like Block Island, where it seemed like there was one such building on every block, the Old Spring House was actively shunned. Jeff wasn’t sure who owned it – though it seemed unlikely it could be anyone but a miserly old man with a cane and a shotgun – but he’d never seen anyone go within fifty feet of the place, and if you asked one of the neighbors why that was they’d brush the matter off and find an excuse to end the conversation quickly.

Jeff was sure that just meant there was something special inside, something none of the adults wanted them to see.

None of them really expected to find it, of course, but as they walked up that staircase in the dark, breathing softly so as not to disturb the dust, common sense and reason didn’t seem to matter anymore, the same way they don’t matter in dreams.

Which was why when they heard the noise, a quick shuffling or shaking down in the foyer, they all froze.

Not even Randy dared comment, and their hearts were caught in their throats for a full minute as they stood there clutching the handrail. There was no more noise, though. Had they imagined it? Jeff told himself it had just been a loose shingle falling to the ground, or a bit of rubble.  They waited another minute, shined their lights in each other’s faces to see each other nod, then went on, slower than before.

           The glass dome, when they finally reached it, was terribly disappointing. The empty hemisphere afforded a glimpse of the misty night they had already known was there, and the moon above. Strewn with rubble, like the rest of the building, coated with dust, the inside of the dome was absolutely devoid of anything that would have been of interest to them. By that point, however, they were all ready to leave, and as soon as they realized their purpose had been fulfilled, they began retracing their steps, only a little disappointed, down the grand staircase.

           “Kind of stupid, really,” Ben said as they neared the bottom. “Coming here and all. Turns out there was nothing to get excited about.”

           Jeff almost told him to stay quiet, but instead he laughed, nervously. “Yeah,” he agreed. “What a waste of time.” The others laughed, too, but the chuckles were subdued, and their eyes roamed.

That was when they heard it again. A scuffing, louder this time, down in the foyer that was just a few steps below them. This time there was no ignoring it, too, because the noise continued, a hefty something moving around and making the floorboards squeak in protest. The boys stood still and waited, until finally there was a low grunt, the thing settled, and all was quiet again.

Well, there was nothing for it. That foyer was their only way out of the building, and they certainly weren’t going to sit around and wait for morning to come. They took a moment to ready themselves, each of them knowing what they had to do, and on the silent count of three they sprang forward, leaped down the last remaining stairs and bolted blindly towards the exit.

The low grunt came again, and then they heard a shrill shriek to their left and the sound of something stumbling in their direction. The boys were no longer quiet; panicked, they yelled and stumbled over each other, flashlights dancing randomly across the walls, and whatever was pursuing them got closer, feet pounding on the wooden floorboards. With a final surge, Randy was the first to tumble out of the entryway, followed shortly by the others, and no sooner had they emerged than they were pounding down the outside steps wildly, knocking each other aside and tripping over their own feet.

           When they reached the grass the footsteps behind them stopped, and after another panicked moment the boys turned around just as another loud shriek pierced the night. Standing on the top of the steps was the biggest donkey they had ever seen. Its lips were bared and it was baying at them, loudly, as if saying “Get off my lawn, you cretins!” Hooves clacking against the top steps, the donkey turned around and vanished into the darkness of the foyer, and in the dim moonlight they could just see it settling down to go back to sleep, resting its head grumpily on its front legs.

           Jeff almost collapsed on the ground in relief, and the four of them paused for a moment there in the field to catch their breaths and gain control of their throbbing hearts. Then they noticed the headlights.

           Coming down the enshrouded street were two brilliant white dots, mounted on the front of a familiar squat black automobile. None of them needed Ben to tell them who it was, who the only person that drove that vehicle had to be: the Chief of Police, Ben’s dad.

Ben’s eyes grew wide, and instinctively they all ducked into the tall grass, heads peeking over the top to look. The headlights were bright, so they had to squint. “They must have seen our bikes,” Randy said, and Jeff nodded, realizing only now what a dumb move that had been to leave them there in the open. Momentarily, he wondered if any of them had bothered thinking any of this through at all, and he came to the conclusion that they hadn’t.

           “We’re so dead, we’re so dead,” Ben moaned, but Randy clapped a hand over his mouth.

“We can make it,” he said. “Our bikes are probably still there. Let’s just wait and sees if he drives past us.”

           They waited, and when that pair of headlights vanished into the fog they leapt up and scrambled through the grass, coughing and sputtering as it slapped at their faces, and when they reached the wall they practically bounded over it. Their bikes were indeed still where they had left them, and, muscles shaking feverishly, they all clambered aboard and pedaled furiously into the night, turning away from the Old Spring House and towards where their homes lay at the center of the island.

           It was only a minute before another headlight pierced through the fog on the street ahead, and with a muttered exclamation they leapt off their bikes and crouched behind a crumbling stone wall just before the car drove past them. A different car this time. Sharing a worried glance with Steve, Jeff realized with dismay there was more than one person looking for them, and for a moment he considered giving up and turning himself in right then and there. Ben’s dad was reasonable; perhaps he would understand that they hadn’t been after any serious trouble. But as soon as the car drove out of sight, the other boys were on their bikes again, pedaling as fast as their wearied legs could muster, and Jeff had no choice but to follow.

           For thirty minutes they raced through those foggy streets, ducking away whenever a headlight came into view, taking detours and roundabouts and getting lost and finding themselves again. They aimed in the vague direction of their homes, but they were obstructed at every turn by a cold yellow headlight emerging from a wall of fog, and were forced to abandon that path many times.

They did finally make it, in the end. As they whispered goodbyes to each other and climbed through the windows of their respective houses, feigning sleep as soon as they hit their beds, their heads were swollen with excitement and limp with relief. They were safe. There had been nothing to worry about after all.

Jeff saw the headlights passing by every once and a while outside his window, and for an hour or two he was convinced one of his parents – or worse, his sister – would at any moment come barging in and demand to know where he’d been, but it never happened. It was as if the entire affair had never happened.

           The next morning, as Jeff’s mother led him and Steve through the editorials of the New York Times, making them look up any words they didn’t know, nobody mentioned the incident. Fog still shrouded the streets outside, heavy, thick fog that would hide a person standing five feet away, and looking out the window that morning, Jeff realized for the first time that he was glad the fog had been there. He looked at Steve, and they both smiled.

           As disappointing as that old casino had been, decades later it was still Jeff’s dream to return there, to walk once more through the fog-enshrouded streets of that city lost in time. A place where he could relive for a short while the life he’d lived as a boy: no TV, no internet, no telemarketers. Just fog, fog made from the same water vapor that was in the air fifty, a hundred, a thousand years ago, stretching out over the backdrop of the endless Atlantic, unchangeable.