Foggy Revelations

My story.

It all started early one foggy morning. My grandmother used to call it a ‘ropin’ fog’ because it was so thick you needed a rope to find our red barn out back. Colors disappeared into it, swallowed by the fog monster as my brother used to say. It sucked the color out of living things, shrouding the world in grey and black. You could feel it against your skin like tendrils of some shivery creature wrapping you in tight. Steam rose off the surface like writhing, sinuous snakes. I was ten and a half almost eleven, but it didn’t matter. I did not like the fog. It scared me. I was always afraid of getting lost and never finding my way home or getting lost and ending up in some other world that waited on the far side of the fogbank.

My collie had dug his way out of his kennel and hadn't come back. My dad told me to go look for him. Go look for him? Out in that fog? Alone? But…but…

But when my dad said, ‘Go. Do.’ I went. And I did.

The lake we lived on was up a two and a half mile long dirt road. Our house was one of only two houses on the lake. I’d grown up here and knew my way around it as well as I knew my way around our house. But the fog played tricks on you. It made the familiar disappear into the strange. Nothing looked quite the same. So in short order, not only was our dog missing, but I was lost. I kept hollering my dog’s name. By now I’d lost the house, lost the lake and couldn’t find the dog.

If only he’d come running up to me and stick his cold nose into my hand. Then I wouldn’t be alone. I began to cry, but still kept calling out for my dog to come back.

~~~~~

Gary’s Story

What We Did This Weekend.

Me ‘n Billy spent the night on the ‘Little Island’ in our lake at our new camp. There was only one other house on the lake but we hadn’t met the people who lived there yet. Bet was, they wouldn’t have any kids, because we hadn’t seen any toys outside or bikes or anything. It was looking like another lonely summer with just my twin brother for company. We got along great, but sometimes, it was fun to have another kid around to kind of mix things up.

Anyway, we at least could finally sleep out! We’d had a ball the night before lying in our sleeping bags and reading comic books by flashlight. We’d eaten all the candy we’d brought with us and didn’t get to sleep until really late. I woke up fast.
I nudged Billy. Then I punched him. ‘ Hey! Wake up, Twinner. Listen! What’s that?’

Billy woke up and looked at me all bleary eyed. ‘Listen to what?’

He and I stuck our heads out of the tent. The world was white. We couldn’t see where the ground ended and the lake began. ‘I don’t hear nothin’.’

‘Shhhh. Listen.’

From across the lake we heard something. It sounded like someone crying and calling out some weird name. It didn’t sound like any name I’d ever heard before. It was something old fashioned, like from a movie my folks would watch.

People always said me ‘n Billy were like looking in a mirror. He looked all bug-eyed and scared. I was too. That voice, It sent shivers down my spine. It sounded lost and sad and like, maybe a ghost or something.

‘Think it can get across the water?’ Billy sounded like he was gonna start crying.

‘Nah. But don’t you go crying on me. Mum will never let us camp out again!’

‘Ain’t we gonna tell her?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not leaving this tent yet tho.’

So we both pulled our sleeping bags over our heads and hoped we wouldn’t hear that voice again. We fell asleep and when we woke up the sun was shining and we messed around the island for most of the day. That’s what we did this weekend. The end.


~~~~~
Harvey’s Story

Harvey was not having a good day. He was really beginning to regret coming in for a haircut, and he knew he should have known that Ole Jonas couldn’t keep his yap shut about that morning.

‘Heard you heard a ghost over the weekend, Harv. Have too much, um, coffee on your way fishing? To keep the early morning chill off and all?’

Joe Kemple flashed a knowing look around the barbershop and several of the other guys snickered. ‘That's what you get, I guess, from going up and fishing that lake. You know it’s all private up there. So what really happened?’

Harvey shook his head and figured that since Jonas had already spilled most of the beans, he might as well spill the rest. ‘Well, guys, it was like this. Jonas and I had gone up to the lake to do some bass fishing. You know how foggy it was Saturday morning. We crawled up that road to the lake. Good fishing this morning tho! Almost caught me a big ol bass! Had to be this big.’ Harvey held his hands about a foot and a half apart.

Joe kept cutting the hair of the man in the chair, fashioning the crew cut so that the top was perfectly flat. The man in the chair looked in the mirror and caught Harvey’s eye. ‘Never mind the fish story. Tell us what happened.’

‘Well. Like I said. We were fishing. The lake was real still. The fog was as thick as Joe here’s coffee. Then we hear it. A voice, all plaintive like. Desperate sounding. Right out of that move, what’s it called? Um, Wuthering Heights or some such. You know that one, Joe. The one Ruthie likes so much.
Anyway…this voice is calling out, ‘Heathcliff….Heeeathcliff. Come back to me, Heathcliff. Come back.’

‘Bout then, me and Jonas decided to row back to the dock and head home. We’d had enough fishing. We never did see no people up there. Damn bar wasn’t open yet, of course, when we got back to town. But let me tell you, if it had been, me and Jonas would have had ourselves a good stiff one. Never heard the like!’

‘Good fish story, Harv. I’d never had believed it if one of the kids in Ruthie’s class hadn’t written about the same thing.

Joe finished the man in the chair, whisking off the stray hairs from his neck. ‘That’ll be two bucks, mister.’ My dad stood up and paid as Harvey slipped into the chair. ‘A little off the sides, Joe. And it was a really big bass!’




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