Fog reached in from the west in ragged phalanxes. The radio unit in Virgil’s car crackled and hissed. Occasional voices garbled beneath the static, unintelligible, purposeless. The local meteorological phenomenon subdued all manner of technology, both modern and antique. It misted its way onto the peninsula once or twice a year, swaddled a vast swath of land, and drifted away again after a couple of days.

The first time Booker had experienced the Oceanrest Fog, he’d nearly lost his mind. It had happened between cases, some random week when Booker had had two days off, and the clouds had caught him alone. All the clocks in his condo had started malfunctioning. The streaming services on his television had all stuttered and buffered and disconnected. His phone hadn’t worked and neither had his radio unit. He’d panicked. When he’d finally gone up to a neighbor’s door and knocked on it, the incredulous reception he’d received set the record unforgettably straight in his mind. This shit was, apparently, ‘normal’ here.

Luckily, nobody on the force had found out about his freak-out.

“You sure about this?” Virgil asked.

“You’re gonna have to lie to him,” Castellanos said from the back seat. Virgil didn’t seem to hear her and, in fact, Booker hadn’t noticed her, either, until she spoke. He glanced at her shadow-laden silhouette in the rearview mirror.

“Yeah,” Booker lied. “I’m sure.”

They drove along a broad, four-lane thoroughfare following the peninsula’s western coast, speeding despite the inclement haze. Despite the distracting radio crackle and the dark, cloud-choked sky. Despite the missing person sitting in the backseat, sometimes there and sometimes gone.

“Walk me through it, again, will ya?” Virgil asked. His visage wrinkled, near-sighted squint and half-confused scowl carving his face into canyons.

“Don’t,” Castellanos advised.

Virgil didn’t hear her. Even staring at the rearview, Booker didn’t think she existed except when she spoke. At least not all the time.

It made him queasy.

He shook his head and took a deep breath. “In the old case files. Nick was one of the only repeat suspects. Now his nephew’s out there killing people by coincidence? Nah. There’s something going on…” he trailed off.

A yellow eye blinked at them through the mists. Virgil sped beneath it and through; it watched them, still, from behind.

“We need more than that,” Virgil said.

“Don’t,” Castellanos repeated. “You know it’s full of holes. How well do you even remember the last few days?”

Booker didn’t peer back at the rearview. He kept his gaze forward. Headlights spotlit fog-drifts; faint moisture speckled the windshield. “You’re driving for a reason, remember?” he asked. “I can’t exactly operate a motor vehicle right now.”

“Huh?”

Booker noised something between a chuckle and a groan. “My head’s a little…off. I remember all the broad strokes, everything I told you at the condo, but the details…” this time the chuckle came more earnestly. “The details are foggy.”

Virgil chuckled, too. “A’yeah. Suppose they would be.”

“They would.”

Sound flooded Virgil’s radio unit. The static reached such a rush of pitch and volume it sounded like a wail. 

“Jesus!” Virgil shouted, taking his eyes off the road, reaching for the power button.

Did some darker thing whisper beneath all that shout? Did a cold, bleak god mutter subliminal backmask at some inscrutable frequency? 

(remember me?)

(because I remember you)

The radio unit went quiet. Virgil withdrew his hand from the power switch and adjusted the steering wheel.

Uncle Nick had lived in Denton in an era when people had considered Denton ‘rural’ instead of ‘suburban.’ Before all the white collars had moved in and put up all their white fences. Back in the early sixties, the property had backed up to the woods. Of course, Denton sported nearly double the population it had in the sixties, even after the peninsula-wide exodus of the eighties and nineties, so now the property backed up to another street that backed up to another street and so on and so on unto the new treeline three-quarters of a mile to the northwest.

The fog let up as they approached the house. The clock stopped spinning digital LEDs and settled on a still-incorrect time.

They parked on the side of the road in front of Uncle Nick’s. Older than anything else on the block, it also stood taller. It had only two stories, but the high ceilings of both and the vaulted roof gave it a few extra feet on its neighbors. Hints of an art deco history, renovated into obscurity by the local HOA, gave the place an antique aura. It looked modern but also didn’t. Staring out at it, Booker wondered if it was this dichotomy that gave it its haunted air. 

“We can’t go in without a reason,” Virgil said. And, as if it needed clarification, “A good one.”

“He’s not renting the place out,” Booker insisted.

“He is on paper.”

“Come on. One mailbox, no unit numbers…” Booker stared. He couldn’t stop staring. “No lights on inside.”

“A’yeah, I see that.”

“He’s not renting it out.”

“But on paper—”

“Who cares, on paper?”

“On paper, he rents it out. We pretend to believe that because if we don’t and we break in there and we’re wrong, any evidence we find becomes inadmissible and we’ll have a lawsuit on our hands from the tenant.”

“I’m telling you—”

“And I believe you,” Virgil interrupted. “Really. But the paperwork matters more.”

“He could be in there.”

Virgil pursed his lips. “We could walk the perimeter, check the windows. Just in case.”

They left the car. As they approached the house, flashlights in hand, a sudden breeze blew in from the southwest, strong enough to brace them. It passed in a second, a momentary gale.

Booker couldn’t help but look over his shoulder.

A momentary gale? Or a sign, an omen?