The Year the Fog Would Not Lift: Autumn 1938, Port Chatham

In September 1938, fishermen in Port Chatham woke to a wall of fog so thick it pressed against the windows like damp cotton, and by winter, nothing beyond six feet could be seen at midday. The wharf bell, usually heard from miles out, fell silent as if the fog swallowed the sound itself. Children went missing on the way to school, their lunch pails later found sunk in mud, handles snapped, with no footprints leading away. By February, dogs howled and refused to cross the village square after nightfall, staring into the white curtain where shapes shifted and then vanished. Mail stopped arriving after the courier’s sled was found circling the same patch of woods in loops, its tracks never crossing the treeline. All year, the fog never thinned, as if it had settled to claim more than just the sunlight. The day it finally lifted, every house on Bay Row was empty-doors ajar, soup cooling in bowls, no sign of where the families inside had gone.