The Fogged-Up Town

My mother told me stories of the little town where the fog was thick. Where shadow people traded at the market. Where days could last for months. The village was sat on a rock way out to sea. Those who were meant to end up there always did. Eventually.

Often, those who went there never returned. There were few who believed it was for some non-menacing reason that no one returned, and I was one of those few. The shadow people were usually what turned people off to the small sea-locked town. Others couldn't stand the thought of constant, thick fog. I wasn't scared. Not of anything the village had to offer, nor the island, nor the obscured surroundings.

It was my dream to go there. I charted maps constantly, trying my hardest to figure out where it could be, as my mother refused to tell the location. Clearly, she had been there and escaped lucky to have her life.

I'm in my twenties now, and the location of the small pile of rocks has finally landed itself on my doorstep.

Once I saw the spot, it was obvious. A small, constant vortex had made its way onto each map I could find. It was just a whirlpool of nothing. I had looked everywhere, but once I did some digging into this specific spot, it was clearer than the day that I had found it.

It was like I had found Atlantis (which I think I may have in my extensive research). Less than thirty minutes after pinpointing the location, I had charted a boat and was on my way to the docks. The salty sea greeted me kindly, a beautiful trip with perfect weather the whole way. Except for the last stretch, that is.

We knew when we were there since the boat began to spiral into a merciless vortex. I had thought the vortex on maps was a cover-up, but it seemed there was an actual vortex where the island was presumed to be. The boat fell into the center, dumping anyone and anything on the top deck into a void of dark, cold water.

I was the only survivor. I woke on a rock, chilling waves splashing against my face like a wake-up call. I looked around to see shards of metal being tossed and smashed against a rocky cliff that loomed above me. There were some small, faint streaks of blood in the moody water.

I grabbed hold of a large sheet of metal that seemed well enough for a raft and slowly swam, with help from the metal, around the island. Hours went by before I finally reached an amiable shore. I lay on the rocky beach for who knows how long, occasionally coughing out water, even less frequently coughing small spatters of blood.

It was probably hours before I finally mustered the strength to stand and find the town I had dreamed of my entire life. It didn't take long since the village made up much of the workable surface of the island.

The first house I met was quaint and squat, a dim light emanating from a single window. I stood on the veranda and knocked firmly on the door, but not too forcefully.

The man who opened up was in his thirties, a little bit of gray hair flecking the sides of his head. He seemed shocked at my appearance, and I realized I must've looked like hell itself had just spat me out. He urgently ushered me inside, sitting me beside the light source, a dim fireplace, as he put more wood on the pile.

He asked my name, where I was from, how I got here, why I came, your typical 'I'm-trying-to-get-to-know-this-random-stranger-who-showed-up-mysteriously-on-my-doorstep-in-the-middle-of-the-night' conversation. He invited me in and to stay for the night. I politely accepted his offer.

In turn, I asked about the town. When the last time there wasn't fog (never) and if he'd ever seen shadow people in the market. He said once he'd seen a person in the fog, or he thought he did, and when he went to speak with them, they were gone.

I took notes on his experiences on a borrowed piece of paper. Once he was done I folded the paper and stuck it in my pocket. I left that night while he slept, taking care not to wake him.

I found my way to the market at long last. I wandered the empty stall for a while before I saw them. The tall, blurry figures roaming the streets like anyone would do on a normal day, except it was the middle of the night.

They traded and purchased, anything from apples to guitars, as if it were a normal day. And I suppose it was for them. The shadow people live in the night, in the places of obscured sight, where almost no one stumbles upon their presence on accident.

The next morning, I found myself waking from a deep slumber on a pile of hay in an alleyway. I didn't remember laying down, but I wasn't by any means surprised to find myself displaced. That night, I woke yet again to spy on the otherworldly beings going about their business.

In my midnight wanderings, I happened upon a calendar. To my surprise, I found that I had been on that island watching the shadow people for an entire month. It didn't add up. I had arrived, spent two nights there, but somehow I was a month in the future? It simply wasn't possible.

I brushed the incident off and kept up with my nightly routine of watching the strange forms, going about every-night life. Until, on the 'fifth' night, precisely when I noticed my watch. It was early morning, and the digital watch face told me it was 6:66 a.m.

This, of course, isn't possible. It shouldn't be possible, and it couldn't be possible. But, then again, I was on an island where shadow people and frequent time skips were the norm. Nonetheless, it freaked me out, especially when I heard the screech.

It burst through the quiet of the night, piercing through the noise-revokingly thick fog like a bomb dropping on quiet farmland. I jumped at least three inches off the ground and froze. A faint thumping could be felt more than heard echoing through the town, sending small ripples through puddles that haven't been dry since the Ice Age.

A dim street light flickered near imperceptibly some ten feet from my position. The thumping became louder, the light flickered more visibly, and the ripples in the puddles more obvious. Something was coming toward me. Something fast. Something big.

It was almost upon me before I saw the massive shadow in the fog before me. I stopped breathing for a few seconds before bursting into a sudden sprint in the opposite direction. I had thought up until now that shadow people both couldn't see humans and weren't malevolent. I was wrong about both speculations.

I gripped my rucksack tighter as I picked up speed on the moist, empty street, rounding corners and swerving into alleyways in an attempt to lose the creature. I wasn't entirely sure what it wanted with me, but I didn't think it was anything pleasant.

I was thinking back to stories I had heard from locals in the day time about other residents going missing in the middle of the night and never being seen again. Now, I think I know who, or what, took them.

I could feel it on my tail, just closing the distance. I was about to lunge into a pile of garbage bags, but his long, near intangible fingers wrapped around my waist and caught me midair. He carried my wriggling form down all the streets he had given chase on with perfect memory. I suppose they would know the streets as well as we would.

Eventually, I found myself virtually floating atop a large flat rock that sat overlooking the village. I could see more shadows surrounding me and my captor in the fog, illuminated by the conveniently full moon overhead.

The whispers started then, slowly picking up in volume until I had to attempt to cover my ears. The noise wasn't deafening by any means, it was whispering. However, the multitude of the voices joined in an overwhelming experience.

The whispers stopped suddenly as if an intruder had been spotted and they were hiding. The whispering then started again, gradually climbing back to its overwhelming mass, before stopping just as suddenly as the first time.

Then, I felt the grip around my waist remove itself, followed by light but forceful grips on each of my limbs ensue, pulling each in separate directions. I was almost to the point of howling in pain when it stopped as abruptly as the whispers. The grip around my waist was viable yet again and I was upright.

The next thing I knew, I was lying in the dirt in the morning light. The sun burned my skin with the odd sensation that I was slowly fading away. I looked down at my hand and discovered that it wasn't merely a feeling. I was fading away.

I slipped into the cover of a nearby tree, my mind racing. I stayed in the shade under the same tree until nightfall, when I finally chanced a step out from under the protective foliage. I felt normal. Confident that I had been imagining it all, I made my way back to town to resume my routine.

It was then that I saw another, someone else spying on the shadow people. He looked directly at me with a gaping mouth. I realized he was wearing my clothes. The clothing I was currently wearing. It wasn't possib...

To my left was a window, a storefront. It was quite reflective in the dim light. I stared at my surroundings through the mirrored image, but what I found in the center where I should've been was more disturbing than seeing someone else.

There was no one there.