Document notes:

This account arrived in my PO Box as a diary. Purple cover with glitter, spiral bound, ruled on both sides of each page. It seems like it must have lain face-down in water for some time as a majority of the pages leading up to the relevant passages are almost completely illegible—of those that survived, I’d say they contained “normal” day-to-day diary entries. “here’s what I had for lunch, the cow kicked over the milk pail again, school sucked but the boy I liked looked at me.” Some song lyrics and doodles.

I haven’t the time or the heart to read out the non-relevant passages. It’s just some young persons' diary, maybe thirteen to fifteen years old, likely a girl, living on a farm with her small family. The account follows.

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"November 2, 1993

Day 1

We heard the sirens today right after breakfast. I never heard Dad swear so loud but Mom was too busy wiping the oatmeal off Baby Jay’s face and hauling him outta his highchair to tisk-tisk him.

Everything we needed was already down in the old cold cellar. I had helped Mom make beef tallow emergency candles and Dad to clear spaces down there for us to live and sleep. Dad cooked up some flour and soot paint to cover the two little windows we had down there before piling field stones against them. He filled any chinks in the doorframe with painty rags and nailed spare lumber over the gaps. Mom brought down all the spare bedding we had to make us some beds—it would be rough without mattresses, she said, but I think we have enough old duvets to make it pretty cozy. I carefully stacked our canned food, store bought and homemade, on one side of the cellar while Dad dug us a toilet in a little back room. He dug it after covering the window in there with paint and rocks so he had to dig by the light of one of Moms tallow candles, making the whole cellar smell beefy. 

The cellar actually looked pretty nice after we had finished with it. We had time to make it more homey and to fill any gaps in the weeks before the fog wall would hit so we hung a nice tablecloth on one side and made a dinner table with an old door from the lumber pile. I got some stuffed animals down from my closet upstairs and lined our sleeping spot with them too. Baby Jay got a wash basin as a bed and I painted flowers on the sides with the rest of Dad’s black paint. They didn’t look very good but Mom says it’s the thought that counts.

So the hurricane siren went off and Dad swore and Mom got Baby Jay up out of his highchair to get him downstairs. I asked Mom if I could get my diary, had to ask her twice actually with how fussy Baby Jay had gotten-- anyway, she said yeah but "hurry up, for god’s sake." Dad had snapped on the radio and tuned it to 95.5 fm to see what was going on. I paused a little when he did, but Mom shooed me up the stairs to grab you, diary, before I could hear more than a few excited-sounding words.

I checked my window after grabbing you and I could see the fog wall from where I was on the second floor. It didn’t really look special, except that it stretched from one side of the horizon to the other in one grey smudgy line, like looking at a far-off rainstorm. I saw Dad from the window too, he was jogging to the barn to fill the animals' troughs with as much food as water as we had and to turn on their nightlight—he spent a lot of time last week cleaning some old car batteries and hooking them up to a lightbulb so the animals wouldn’t go crazy in the dark. I’m really glad he did. Twelve days in darkness sounds like a nightmare. I gave the fog wall one long last look. It was such a nothing. Before all the stores closed, I heard some customers and salesfolks talking big about how it was some big overblown hoax and that they’d stay upside when or IF it came. Looking at the wall I shivered a bit. I hope those people changed their minds. Heck I heard that you could survive the wall just by hanging your thickest blankets against the windows and hiding in a closet. No light allowed. I really hope that’s true. I really hope they changed their minds.

We got downstairs quick. Once Dad locked the door we all sat quiet for a little while, listening to the radio. Big Steve was going through all the preparations we should have done in the last week and we all listened anxiously, but we had prepared exactly as he and the government had said and maybe a little more. Baby Jay had fallen asleep in my lap but after maybe half an hour he woke up and got scared of the dark. Mom started singing and bouncing him on her knee while me and Dad started looking through boardgames to play. We pointed one of the two wind-up emergency flashlights against a jar of water to make a better boardgaming light and played a few games of scrabble.

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The wall hit just before dinner. We’re pretty much gonna have to eat cold canned stuff because Mom says the smoke from a gas grill or even more than one candle at a time will get dangerous really quick. I was finishing opening a can of creamed corn  when Big Steve on the radio started sounding excited. Dad had told me the radio station was about parallel to us so when they went into the wall we’d be in really soon after.

We had gone out a few weeks ago to paper the whole station up--Big Steve had hosted a Big Hot Dog Grill to get the town out to help him make it all sight safe. Dad helped sledge down a man-sized hole in one wall so Big Steve could get to the emergency generator shed without having to go outside.

Anyway, Big Steve said the security camera on the east side just passed into the wall. He said it got really staticky and that we might get some interruptions while the rest of the tower went in. It did get staticky for a few minutes, then it went straight into white noise for a few more—but that’s when we heard the fog wall rolling at and over us. Me and Baby Jay sat on the bedding while Mom and Dad waited tensely with our stash of cardboard and tape. We turned out all the lights and I assumed they were looking around everywhere while the wall rolled over us to see if any last-minute light was coming in. Soon we heard this low sucking sound from upside, getting closer and closer  until it was right over us. It was pretty scary at first, almost like a few years ago when we had a tornado nearly pass over us and we had to spend the night down here. It got really quiet after that.

Then the DJ came back on the radio, a little more staticky but not too bad. He was broadcasting to the whole town he said, the town in the fog vortex, and we were all a big family now and here’s a tune to keep us cheerful while we braved this funny little weather phenomenon. He sounded really happy. He sounded like how you do just before you go on stage? Nervous, but you don’t want people to know you're kinda freaking out. Mom and Dad eventually turned the lights back on when they were sure no light from outside was coming in and we ate dinner to Big Steve playing music on the radio. He ate dinner live on air too. He said he'd keep broadcasting as long as he could through the 12 days we’d be in the wall. After we all took turns winding the radio and our flashlights. Now Mom and Dad are sitting and holding hands and listening to the radio while I write in you. Gonna go to bed soon but I think I’ll be awake for a long time listening to the fog.

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Day 2

Mom  brought an alarm clock down so we wouldn’t lose track of time. She set it to ring at 8am every day and we’re keeping count by making lines on a support beam with a piece of chalk. Me and her thought it was a little funny when we set it up, like we were all doing time in jail. 

The toilet smells like how I bet a jail toilet smells. It’s already making it pretty gross down here but Dad made some extra ventilation ahead of time so he says it shouldn't get too bad, or at least it wont get dangerous. Did you know a smelly toilet could kill you? Like how too many candles or a gas leak can kill you I guess. I kept my head leaning towards one of the ventilation tubes while I used the can and I think I got a breath of air from above but I’m not sure, I didn’t want to breathe too deeply. The government said the air wasn’t what was so dangerous about the fog wall. It was just normal air.

Other than that today was pretty boring. We sat around the light and read or play boardgames. We nap when we feel like it and listen to the radio. The music is nice. Big Steve is as cheerful as ever. Baby Jay isn’t allowed on the dirt floor but we let him play around on the bed. I’m glad he likes all my stuffed animals. Mom and Dad opened a bottle of wine and let me have a little. I think it made my head feel  light but I don’t like the taste—too bitter! They cheered up a little though so the evening was more fun and they actually got to laughing while we played Trivial Pursuit. I thought about the cows and chickens in the barn. I hoped their light was still on. 

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Day 2 ½

I’m creeped out. It’s night I guess, at least it’s a few hours after we all decided to go to bed but I’m the only one awake. I had to get up to use the toilet. It’s cold tonight though and my stomach was hurting a bit so I took the radio into the bathroom and turned it on really low while I sat on the toilet—it's just a bucket with the bottom cut out and some planks across it, set across the hole Dad dug. We have another bucket of spare dirt beside us to scoop into the toilet when we’re done to keep the smell down. 

I had the radio on super low and pressed to one ear while I sat. Some music was on for a while but soon Big Steve comes back on air but he’s sounding a little different. Quieter, not like I have the volume down quieter but like he’s almost whispering into the microphone quieter.

 He says “welcome back, ladies and gents, welcome back to the town in the fog wall. We got a new one here for you tonight. I got up to take a trip down to the little boys room—thank god for septic tanks, can I get an amen—and I took a peek at our security cameras while I did, as I’m want to do. Now there isn’t much to look at out there in the fog wall most of the time, y’all aint missing much—its fog!-- but I'll be damned if I didn’t catch a little bit of movement out there in the west parking lot. We got a little LED light hooked up out there, not much of a power draw and it’s good to have a light on in the night in case any raccoons feel like ransacking the place. But tonight I did not see a raccoon. I saw...”

Big Steve trailed off there for a sec.

“... well, family, I don’t quite know what I saw. It was big, but not like an elephant big. Like it wasn’t solid or thick. It looked kinda like a hairball blew across the camera lens truth be told, and that might have very well been what it was, all fuzzy 'n outta focus and lookin to be carried on a breeze from out yonder.”

 He paused again.

“Wish Sunday Sue decided to stay up here so I could get a second opinion, but she drove out on Monday to keep an eye on her family. Sunday Sue, if you're out there I hope you’re doing fine and well. I’m good up here. But an old man does miss his cohost.”

He chuckled.

“Okay folks, sorry to creep you in the middle of the night. As penitence I’ll drag out some Carpenters to keep us in the long hours and I’ll get back to some good old-fashioned shut eye.”

 Guitar music started playing. I stayed on the toilet until my butt hurt but it seemed like Big Steve really did go to bed. So I went back to bed, too—but I kept the radio on close to my ear as I lay here. I tried to listen above me for sounds in the fog and I wrote in this diary.

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Day 4

I was still feeling a little sick yesterday so I mostly stayed on the bed and read some books. Mom and Dad thought the wine might have upset my stomach. I think the toilet smell is getting to me. It smells so gross that I try to eat and drink less so I don’t have to use it. Dad had hung air fresheners after digging the toilet hole but they don’t do much unless you hold them against your nose. I’m breathing through my mouth mostly now and luckily I have a ventilation pipe near my side of the bed. I think I can smell fresh air through it, cool and a little damp.

I felt better today so Mom sat me down with my math textbook and we worked on some problems. She’s really good at trig but I can’t stand it. I can get it when it’s being explained to me—everything she says makes sense when she goes through all the steps—but once she hands me a new equation and asks me to solve it all flies away. She wants me to go to University but I don’t even know what I want to study. I like English, but she says that if I want to get an English major I might as well get into trades and be a plumber or something instead.

If I was a plumber maybe I could figure out a better toilet.

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Day 4 ½

Can’t sleep. Sounds above us. We started hearing it as we were getting ready for bed. Mom and me were shaking out the bed linens when Dad shushed us. He was standing near the door with his head cocked upwards. He looked whiter than the sheets. We stopped and listened too.

First there was nothing. Every once in a while for the past four days we’d hear the familiar sound of cows lowing from the barn. They’d gone quiet too, like they were listening with us. Then I heard it. A sound like someone sweeping the floor with a straw broom, coming out of the fog very slowly towards our hiding place. The radio was already on quiet but Mom dropped her corner of the blanket we were holding and snapped the radio off. We let absolute silence fill the pantry as whatever it was passed over us.

When it groaned I almost screamed out loud. I actually clapped both hands over my mouth. Mom and Dad didn’t so much as look at me. Baby Jay kept sleeping, thank god. The groan warbled on above us, louder and louder, but still not much above a whisper, following the side of the house. Eventually it peaked right above us. Mom threw a hand out to me and I gripped it silently. I can’t remember the last time I held her hand. Baby Jay, though, shifted in his washbasin bed and started fussing. Mom let me go immediately to pick him up and started rocking him gently, sparing a few terrified glances up as she did. I think I heard the barest pause in the strange sweeping footsteps above us but the groan remained unbroken. It was finally moving away. Baby Jay had fallen back asleep. We all stood like that for minutes after, all staring at the ceiling. After we were certain it was gone we shared a silent group hug. Then we all went to bed and all lay in the quiet with the radio turned off.

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They came back, though. Or more moved through. Mom and Dad and Baby Jay are asleep again and I’m up listening to what sounds like a whole herd of brooms walking along above us, every once in a while letting out one of those terrible drawn-out moans. It’s so quiet but it’s there. I tried to hold it but eventually I had to get up and pee. I took the radio and turned it on so quiet that for a few moments I thought it was still muted. I sat on the can and listened. Then Big Steve came on, whispering, and I realized he must have been listening too.

“There goes another one,” he breathed just above the faint static. “Folks, I think we’re in a herd of these things. Now hold on one second.”

There was the sound of a chair shifting. Then Big Steve's voice came from further away, in a stage-whisper.

“God, if that isn’t the spookiest thing I’ve ever seen.” A very long pause, the sound of him sitting down again. “Sorry folks, the cameras are on the outside of my booth and I gotta really stretch my mic cord to be able to see ‘em, and that’s still from ten feet away. Kinda wish I hadn’t gotten up to take a closer look because they are capital C creepy.” Sound of him sipping water, clearing his throat. Another pause and he comes back even quieter.

 “They just drift, really. Their... their feet? Barely touch the ground. They must be so light. National tv says they do something to the security tapes and sure enough after seeing that first one the other night I checked the tape and it was all messed up, static, blue screen, flickers, the whole shebang. Like I had run it through the wash with my biggest electromagnets. But the live feed still comes in pretty good. For now at least.”

I think I sat on the toilet for another half an hour, barely noticing the stink and just listening to Big Steve describe the things moving around above us. They shifted and groaned as he thought out loud about where the fog wall came from and what the strange creatures moving within it were. I had seen plenty of TV show hosts and experts talk about this. Some people said aliens. More said they were people who got changed when they looked into the fog. The programs usually had a drawing from a survivor who had seen one through a security camera like Big Steve. It always looked like a tangled mat of yarn, usually with a big question mark pasted over it by the tv station. They said the things didn’t ever try to break in or anything but I knew Dad had brought down his shotgun and kept it tucked under the pile of quilts we used as a mattress on his side.

When I finally got up and finished my business my legs were all pins and needles. I tried to shake feeling back into them while taking a few deep breaths of the fresh air streaming in from the ventilation pipe beside the can. The way the cellar worked had the pipe coming out at about head-level for me so I could just stand and let the air wash over me. Cool and damp. The pins and needles faded and I closed my eyes for a second, thinking about being back up there in broad daylight and crisp, near frigid November air.

I stopped breathing when a brushing footstep and a groan echoed from what sounded like within the pipe.

The sound came in so clearly it was like I was standing outside with them. I felt my hands grip the radio tightly. The groan got louder. It got louder and closer, like whatever was making it was pushing its head down the pipe. I finally managed to move a few steps back but I was staring at the end of pipe and couldn’t look away. Deep in it’s mouth I thought I saw the faintest pulse of light. It seemed to beat steadily for a few moments before fading to nothing along with the groan. A pause, then the sound of sweeping footsteps moving away. I stood with my back against the rough stone wall that separated the toilet from the main room. I stared into the now pitch-black pipe and started to shiver all over. I went back to bed and lay with my flashlight and radio on and wrote in my diary. The light is just about out now. I don’t want to make noise by winding it. The radio is already dead. I’ll try to sleep.

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Day 5

Mom and Dad heard Big Steve talking about the things in the fog today. He repeated his story about them sweeping in during the night again and again and they seemed to get more and more upset every time he did. Big Steve, though, he sounded more and more... I dunno, comfortable—every time he told the story. 

I’ve decided not to tell Mom and Dad about what I thought I saw last night. I think I was just really creeped out by the sounds and the radio. There’s no light inside the pipe today, I checked, and we haven’t heard anything move above since last night. The cows are even back to mooing every so often. I hope they’re still doing well. They sound pretty fine to me. 

More boardgames, more napping, more studying. We’re doing biology today and learning about photosynthesis. I thought I had a pretty good idea of how it worked but it turns out there’s a whole dark reaction part of it that even Mom has to take time to read to herself to understand. She was a geologist before having me and marrying Dad though so at least she can understand a lot of the chemistry stuff. It’s weird, I didn’t know much about what Mom was doing before she had me. She never really talked about it before but during a homework break she told me a few stories about her field work in the Yukon before she married Dad. It’s kinda nice. Maybe after all this we’ll be a little closer.

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Day 6

Halfway done!! It’s been so boring. No light from the pipe today, didn’t hear anything last night. Still smells here. Dad joked that once we’re out of here we’re gonna burn all the clothes and linens out back because the smell has gotten into them so much. We’re getting really restless so we played charades all afternoon to try to tire us out and Mom “made” a special dessert for after dinner. It was just cherry pie filling with crushed graham crackers on top but it was really good anyway. I like how you get a burst of juice when you bite into a cherry. We’ve been eating straight out of cans, passing it around with a spoon and taking bites because we can’t really clean our dishes. We keep the old cans and jars in a garbage bag in the bathroom so at least the smell is kept all in one spot. We tried lighting a candle near the main rooms ventilation pipe to force a draft but I don’t think it made a difference. Tomorrow we’ll be over the hump and there’ll only be five days left.

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Day 6 ½

Still no light from the pipe, no sounds above us. Big Steve is back on though. He’s been counting how many move past his east-facing camera. So far he’s at 51 tonight.

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Day 7

Another boring day. I know we’re on the downslope but it sucks so bad down here. I don’t know what I’ll do first when I get back upside—probably check on the animals with Dad. We’ll open the doors and let them get any last little bit of grass from the fields. I’m gonna kiss each cow on the nose and hug each chicken. None of the cows need milking thank goodness, though there’ll probably be some eggs that are on their way to becoming baby chicks! They have to stay in their eggs for longer than us, poor little guys. I hope Dad lets us keep them.

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Day 7 ½

They’re moving above us again. It’s very late. I don’t know how Mom and Dad can stay asleep through the moans and footsteps. Stupid that I have to keep getting up to pee. I’m trying to stay under the covers for as long as I can but I gotta go. Be back. Taking the radio.

There’s light inside the pipe again. I was doing my usual thing and went to get my breath of fresh air when I saw it. I covered it up with my sweater straight away. Big Steve was on the radio. I listened while I watched the pipe.

“To those just tuning in, I made, uh, some minor miscalculations with the gas when we were settin’ up the place. I’m keepin’ everything but the radio equipment off. I’ve redone the arithmetic and we should have enough to get us through to the last day if I take nights off, but for this evening I’m feelin’ mighty lonely so we’ll stay on. Can’t see anything outside of course with the security cameras off but I think I’ve heard some of them pass when I was down takin a leak. Er, using the facilities. Nothing comes through the soundproofing up here in the booth of course.”

He stopped to clear his throat. The sound of shuffling papers, and then gruffly, “how bout some music.” 

He put on one of my favorites, Stargazing by Pondworks. It’s a low and slow one. There’s some violin. It always makes me kinda sad. Afterwards it wound down into silence and only after a while did Big Steve come back on, speaking quietly.

“Sometimes they’ll touch each other. Just barely. Brushin’ fingertips, like. And when they do their movement will kinda sync up and they’ll sway together. It’s hypnotizing, like watching wind pass over a sea of wheat.”

Another long pause. Another song played. I watched the pipe. Another song. Then Steve came back on again.

“Alright, folks, I think that’ll wrap it up for tonight. I’ll power down for a few hours and see you bright and early tomorrow morning for some more music. Big Steve, signing off.”

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Day 8

Big Steve barely came on the radio to speak today. It was mostly music. I don’t think Mom and Dad noticed. They didn’t notice when I started taking longer and longer bathroom breaks either. More biology lessons. Haven’t heard the cows low in a while.

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Day 9

Big Steve wasn’t on the radio today. No music, just static. Mom and Dad seemed worried. Very quiet in the shelter. Kept checking pipe.

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Day 9 ½

He’s doing nights! We kept the radio on low all evening and after dinner he finally comes on, cheerful as can be. 

“GOOOOD MORNING,” he boomed. His intro sound effects played: a horse whinny, a revving motor and honking horn, “Welcome back to 95.5 the BEAR FM, I’m your host Big Steve and I am broadcasting to all my good friends and family here in the valley. We have a hell of a mixtape for you today if you’d pardon my french, so let’s get this rock rollin’!”

We all stayed up late listening to the music. Mom said he must have slept in or felt under the weather during the day. I think so too. I’m really glad he’s back. I didn’t want to guard the pipe without my DJ. 

The light in the pipe is still so weak I have to keep it uncovered so I can make sure it doesn’t get brighter. Lots of rustling and groaning outside, Mom and Dad and Baby Jay don’t wake up though. Big Steve comes on to talk about them up above.

“Remember when the fog first rolled outta the Atlantic? Scary. Scary, scary, scary. All those people living on the coast didn’t know how to hide from the light. Can’t remember the number of disappearances. Musta been millions—whatever the population of newfoundland was. Everybody thought they were vaporized or somesuch at first, like the fog was an acid. And you know, maybe something about that’s true—but I think we nailed it second try when we started thinking that those things walking around out there were all those missing people.”

Pause. I leaned in closer to the light. I breathed in the air from above.

“I’m glad they’re out there together. Disappearing all alone is one thing. Disappearing while holding the hand of your wife or kid is another. We should all be so lucky.”

No more radio for that night. No music either. The light pulsed in the pipe. After a long time standing and staring at it I noticed that the concrete the tube was set in looked like it was flaking off in places. I poked at it and a large piece fell away, showing the hasty gravel and rock wall Dad had balanced the pipe in before slapping it with a concrete slurry. I remembered it had rained the day he had installed the ventilation. I started picking at it, throwing the spare pieces in the toilet as I went. I had dug a fair bit into the wall when I heard one of my parents shift around in bed in the other room. I stood still and waited for it to come again. It did so I decided to get out of there. The hole I’d made was on the far side of the pipe and more or less invisible to anyone coming in and using the toilet. I threw the last piece into the toilet and tossed in some of the dirt from the bucket after it. I went to bed. 

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Day 10 ½ 

Mom and Dad stayed up late again to listen to the radio. Big Steve hadn’t come on. The music snapped on some time after dinner, already in the middle of a song. Mom and Dad exchanged a look but they kept listening for hours. Had to wait a long time to go guard the tube. This time I took a table knife. We weren’t using them at all to eat out of our cans so I knew it wouldn’t be missed.

I started back to work on the hole in the wall. Before long one last piece of concrete on the other side of the head-height hole fell away and a shaft of orange light flowed into the bathroom. I dropped the knife to the ground and pressed my face against the hole. I let the fresh air wash over me. Outside was totally silent, draped in a fog that obscured the sight of the fence around our property only a few dozen meters away. I sat there and bathed in the night air and glow from the fog. After a while the music that was playing quietly over the radio switched off and I could hear the sound of Big Steve breathing on the other end. It was like we both sat there in silence, looking out into the night, waiting. We didn’t have to wait for too long.

A faint brushing sound soon rose out of the fog. I held my breath and pressed my other eye to the hole to try to see around the corner of the house. Big Steve also seemed to hold his breath. After an indeterminable moment one of the walkers in the fog drifted around the corner and I saw it in full view.

“Just beautiful,” Big Steve breathed. I sighed in agreement.

It was taller than a man but walked almost like one. It had two legs and two arms, anyway, frayed things that drifted up and away from what I supposed were shoulders—equally loose tangles of what Steve had described as yarn—and two legs that barely brushed along the ground to move it along. It had a head, again looking like a loose handful of hair pulled off a brush, and a chest that all of that attached to.

It looked like something familiar but I couldn’t quite place it. Its core glowed with the same orange light of the fog, only a little brighter. It seemed to swim along the side of our house with one... one hand?.. ...whispering across the siding.

When it came close, I realized what it looked like—I had been paging through my biology textbook a few days ago and ended up on a two-page spread showing the human cardiovascular system. Fluffly clouds of veins and thicker highways of major arteries jammed into a humanoid silhouette. That’s what these things looked like, only if they had spread out a lot to drift more freely in the fog. It was beautiful.

I felt pressure rise in my chest as it drew closer along the house. It dropped out of sight momentarily as it approached the 90-degree angle where the house met the cellar door, its low wall, and my little hole. It re-appeared only a foot away from my face, floating serenely on the tips of its feet.

I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath until I let it out in one gust. I saw it move the dark orange capillaries of its nearest leg and the creature stopped slowly and turned to face the gap. I instinctively drew back a little. Something I could call a hand meandered down from somewhere above unseen, tiny thread-like tips questing along the sides of the hole. I watched it. I felt like I was floating.

I heard Big Steve murmur “they’re us. Just more connected to the world. Maybe they’re connected to another one too. Another world in the fog.”

A thread of orange capillary brushed one of my cheeks like a spiderweb. A comforting warmth grew from that spot and radiated out into by body. It felt like being seen. Being understood. I heard Big Steves voice now not from the radio but from what seemed to be just over my shoulder.

“Yesterday I took the sledgehammer from downstairs and opened up the side of the studio wall with it. They’re all lined up in the parking lot and swaying like seaweed in the tide.”

I’m not sure how long I stood there in the light. By the time I came back the creature was gone and I felt very, very tired. I went back to bed. Wrote everything down. Tired.

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Day 11

Mom and Dad and Baby Jay found the hole while I was sleeping. I got up and they were all packed into the bathroom and staring out at a sea of the creatures. It looked like they had even widened it a bit so we had a space around the size of a teacup saucer to bathe in. The fresh air and the view was so nice but Mom and Dad got so close to the hole I could only see it a little. Still so tired. Brought the radio and my diary into the bathroom to listen and watch and write. It doesn’t even smell bad in here anymore and Baby Jay’s thoughts are so relaxing, all wrapped up in his blankie and held Mom’s arms like he is. I’m starting to remember what that felt like when I was a baby.

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November 14, 1993

Day 12

It’s hard to hold the pencil. Mom and Dad have gone transparent so now the light can come in and wash over me. Baby Jay had a lot less body to be filled with the light so he’s already stretched out completely in Mom’s arms, draping over them and near the floor and so, so content.

My hands don’t feel too weak to hold a pencil, just... not built for it anymore. My veins and nerves are visible through the skin which seems to have gone from solid flesh to almost matching the consistency of the fog in only a day. They’re all still outside, swaying, waiting.

The fog is supposed to clear today. We weren’t to come out until the siren blew again. Maybe the fog will stay. Maybe it will go. I think we’re supposed to go with it, but I don’t think I have the hands to open the hole up wider or even unlock the door to join them. Maybe we’ll be allowed to stay and fill the whole cellar with light and fog even after the main body moves on.

Saw Big Steve join the sea outside. He’s almost fully changed now, but he still has the same plaid overshirt I saw him wearing way back when we helped get his station prepped. 

Seems forever ago.

Now he looks like his shirt has frayed at the sleeves, neck, and waist. It kind of looks like his shirt is walking along on its own. Maybe I can see a hint of his skull still. I wonder where all that goes. Is it being dissolved by the light and fog? My own writing hand is little more than bone wrapped in red and grey thread.

I think I’ll stop writing very soon. I can hear Mom and Dad now too, and everybody else outside. It’s so peaceful to be a part of the fog with them. I thought it might be a little like how it was after Baby Jay was born. All the attention on him. But it’s not like that at all. There’s so much love in all of us.

Goodbye, diary. They’re starting to move on."

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Parting notes:

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I don’t know about you all but I certainly don’t remember a fog bank rolling out of the ocean and disappearing people across North America in 1993. I, along with the internet, have also never heard of a band called “Pondworks” and a song of theirs called “Stargazing.” I would have written this entire diary off as a piece of fiction if it weren’t for an unusual phenomenon I witnessed when first unboxing it: the entire diary glows, faintly, with orange light. I have since locked it away separately from my other accounts, in a safe with two-inch-thick iron walls and in a closet behind my winter coats. I have not noticed any adverse effects since being exposed to the diary but it will wait in that safe until I can locate a specialist to analyze it further.

As for how it got here, well-- a particular passage from the diary sticks out. Something said by that incorrigible radio DJ, “Big Steve:”

“They’re us. Just more connected to the world. Maybe they’re connected to another one too. Another world in the fog.”