The fog came in off the water on a Thursday and it didn't leave.
Not unusual for the coast. We get fog in March that sits for days — thick, cold, deadening. The lighthouse goes all night and the foghorns answer each other across the harbor and you learn to navigate by sound.
This fog was different in quality before it was different in effect. Thicker than usual, yes, but more than that — it had a presence to it, a weight, that normal coastal fog doesn't have. Standing in it felt like being inside something rather than surrounded by something.
The first person who went into it on Thursday evening and came back different was my neighbor Carl. He'd gone to check on his boat. He came back forty minutes later and sat in his kitchen for two hours without speaking. His wife called me. He was fine physically. He said the fog was strange and he didn't want to go back out.
By Friday we had six people who'd gone into the fog and come back changed in some way. Changed is the right word — not traumatized, not hurt, but different in some specific feature of themselves that their families noticed immediately and couldn't name precisely. Carl was quieter. Ellen from the marina was less interested in things she'd always been interested in. The hardware store owner smiled less. Small changes. But consistent, and associated with time spent in the fog.
People stopped going out in it. We waited.
The fog lifted on Monday morning.
Everyone who'd been in it had reverted mostly to normal by Tuesday. Mostly. Carl was still a little quieter. Ellen still seemed slightly dimmer about the things she'd loved.
We didn't talk about it much. The fog lifted and we moved on, because that's what you do on the coast.
But sometimes, when a thick fog comes in and sits, I watch people who go into it. I watch when they come back. I look for the small difference — the particular thing that's slightly less present, slightly more absent.
I've never found an explanation for what the fog took. I've never found evidence that it put anything back.