A Remembrance in Shadows and Smoke
...if we don't wake up to find ourselves safe in our beds, it could come again. To the ships at sea who can hear my voice, look across the water, into the darkness. Look for the fog. - Adrienne Barbeau as Stevie Wayne
Near the end of 1980,
Bubby and I walked uphill
past houses already dark,
the streetlights thin and unreliable,
toward the old theater on Elmira Heights.
It had been there longer than either of us,
a stone-front building with a tired marquee,
letters half-lit,
announcing The Fog
for a late show.
Inside, the red curtains sagged.
The seats smelled of dust and butter.
Popcorn rose in the air
like something meant to distract us
from whatever the building remembered.
We sat halfway back,
laughed louder than we meant to,
kept our hands folded
so no one would notice them shake.
Onscreen, a town vanished
behind white moving air.
A bell rang.
A voice came from nowhere.
When the movie ended,
we stepped outside still joking,
that practiced kind of joking
meant to keep fear at arm’s length.
The fog was waiting.
Not dramatic.
Not fast.
Just there -
already in the street,
already around the lamps,
already thinning the distance
between things that should have stayed apart.
“Cool night,” Bubby said,
too loudly.
“Yeah,” I answered,
too quickly.
We walked faster.
Not running.
Just not walking normally.
Every porch looked occupied.
Every tree leaned closer than before.
The sidewalk cracked under our feet
with a sound too much like bone.
We whistled -
not a tune,
just noise -
as if sound itself could keep us visible.
At Bubby’s house
he dropped his keys once,
then laughed,
then tried again.
I didn’t look back
until I was sure the door was open.
Years later, we say the movie was fine.
We say it wasn’t that scary.
We laugh in well-lit rooms.
But sometimes,
when fog rolls in where it shouldn’t,
I still walk a little faster.
And I know -
without ever saying it -
that something followed us home that night,
or tried to,
or at least learned our names.
GBS jr
1996
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