I live in a remote town in the American northwest, in a forest, in the mountains. It was created in the mid 1900s as a mining town, 3 miles up into the mountains there is a coal mine. The coal mine ran out in the late 1990s and the town has only been depopulating since. The population is only around 250 people. It’s getting more and more abandoned and in turn more and more eerie. For context, the town really is remote. There is only 1 road that leads into the town. We didn’t have wi-fi until 2019 when the first Starlink satellite started servicing our area. There is only 1 store from which we buy everything.
Our town is in a small creek valley so naturally, it’s perpetually covered in fog. I remember going hunting with my father in the thick fog, trying to shoot down a deer, surrounded by nature. I remember going to the one diner we had for my birthday - instead of a cake we were always served a large steak, so that’s the birthday food I always had. I have 3 brothers, all significantly older than me, so they left the town into the wide world many years ago. Only I remained.
There were a few other kids in the town, kids I regarded as my siblings, but even then my parents were my whole world. Everything I know, my parents taught me, writing, reading, math. So my whole world came crashing down when they died. First was my father. He came down sick and died within a week. And after that it was my mother. I buried them, we had a small funeral in the local chapel. Needless to say I had nothing keeping me in that town. I was only 16 but I knew how to drive. My idea was to take the pickup truck, load it with a few of my belongings and drive off never to come back. But I was scared to do that.
I decided to remain in the house another week to think it over. Before the week was over, to leave the town was impossible. It was impossible to even leave the house.
It was a cold and typically foggy Monday afternoon. I decided to go out for a walk. When I went out the air strangled me, I couldn’t breathe right. I couldn’t even see right. The fog was impossibly thick. I could not see my feet if I looked down. Walking was hard due to the resistance from the air. The fog filled me with a sense of dread. I had never experienced something like this. I immediately turned back to the entrance door. I went back inside, trying to shake the feeling stuck in my head. I was too scared to even look out the windows, not that I’d see anything. That night I could not sleep. On the next day, in the morning, I tried to go out again. I stepped out, not having left the doorstep I could feel the fog strangling me. My eyes teared up and I immediately stepped back inside and closed the front door. This had never happened before, it’s unexplainable. I decided to see if internet is available in order to text my friends. There was indeed internet and I sent a message in the chatroom we had set up. Then I remembered an old FM radio we had that sometimes announced extreme weather events through the government broadcast signal. I decided to look through the attic and I found it. Plugged it in, not really hoping for much but there it was, I heard the static coming through. I tuned it to the signal of the government broadcast and as I expected, there was nothing. My friends had not contacted me either, there was no response. Later in the day all internet cut off.
The next day the fog was still there, potent as ever. I began to panic a little. Went through all the food in the house. We ate mostly canned goods, except for when me and my father caught some animal while hunting, but other than that the town store only had canned goods stocked to it. I had enough for maybe a month if I was careful. The water came from the local creek, so we always drank tap water, meaning water wasn’t something to worry about. That night I could not sleep. I could feel the fog’s pressure on the house. Even though I covered the windows I still felt like someone was looking at me.
2 nights later I head sounds of a helicopter. I had never heard a helicopter in real life, only through videos on the internet. It was so much louder than I’d imagined it. I heard the helicopter land, and then I heard gunshots. Hundreds of gunshots, so fast, all within a couple minutes. Those couple minutes felt like an eternity. When I heard knocking on my door a few minutes later I was hesitant to open it. A human voice calling back calmed me enough to step to the door and look through the peephole. I saw a person, covered in a large yellow suit with only a darkened glass visor for his eyes. I opened the door - wisps of the fog entered like smoke and lingered in the air. The fog smelled potently of mold. The person in the yellow suit handed me a mask, a gas mask I believe. He instructed me sternly never to open the door, to cover and lock my windows and to never let too much fog into the house. I tried to ask him about the other people in the town but he quickly slammed the door and left. This had been a confusing encounter. I decided to switch the FM radio back on and surprisingly I head a broadcast. It was a weather warning broadcast instructing me the same things the man in the yellow suit had done earlier.
What was in that fog? Why had it come? I asked myself these questions constantly over the next week. I felt myself losing grip over time and reality. The FM radio blabbered the same things once every hour. I kept it on so I could hear human speech and keep track of time. The fog had grown so thick no sun could pass through so it was constantly dark inside the house. Either that or the newspapers I’d layered over the windows suddenly stopped letting light through. The clock eventually ran out of battery and I could no longer keep track over time. This radio was my last tether to reality, as I began hallucinating. I began seeing my parents, talking to them.
Eventually the electricity stopped. I lit candle after candle. Even the candles ran out. I lived in almost pitch darkness for a few days. Or weeks, or months, or it may have only been an hour. Time felt frozen. I wasn’t eating, I did not feel hungry. I no longer had thoughts in my head. I no longer thought about the fog. Why it was here, how it was here, what caused it. Who created it.
2 hours ago the electricity came back on and so did the radio. The broadcast said the fog had gone back to normal, that it was safe outside. This sudden change brought me back to reality. It woke up my brain enough to write this message. Whether it is safe outside or not I do not know, but I do know that this message will have documented the past events in case of any further problems. I plan on going out to see what’s left of the town.