Free The Fog by Dennis Etchison

walls, but it would not hold. And now the evil returns. It is written. Can you understand this much? We are all damned.”
    Stevie drove via the coastal route, the top down, grateful for the chance to soak up the last of the day’s warming rays.
    She saw that the tan hills had come alive again with a riot of wildflowers and viridescent grasses that stretched to the edges of the sea cliffs, waving in the breeze like the fields of a brilliant undersea harvest. The breeze strafed the languid surface of the ocean, plating it with a billion sparkling coins.
    It was her favorite time of year, the season when seeds scattered on the winds, breathing life once more into the rainswept northern California coast. She had another hour left till broadcast time, and it was well worth it to her to take the long way around to Spivey Point. The air made her feel alert in a way no dirty Chicago winds had ever done. Which was one of the main reasons, she realized again, that she had chosen to stay here, for better or worse. Never to go back, she thought. Let the dead bury the dead and remain there with them in that dying, polluted necropolis.
    She poked in the glove compartment for her sunglasses. Her fingers clattered the ad cassettes she had hidden there. She found the glasses, put them on, lit a cigarette with the dashboard lighter, and gave in. Face it, she told herself; money is money. Gee, that’s profound. How come I never thought of it that way before?
    She chucked the first reel into the tape recorder on the seat next to her and depressed the PLAY button. It’s depressing me, she thought, waiting for the leader to run out. But so what? That’s the price you’ll have to pay, Stevie, for a whole new life in the far, far West. Play or pay.
    A chorus of small-mouthed blonds sang into the wind:
It’s one hun-dred years a-go to-day,
    So please now don’t you go a-way
    Un-til you take the time to say,
    “Hap-py Birth-day,
    An-to-ni-o Bay!”
    HAPPY BIRTHDAY FROM
    THRIFTIWAY CLEANERS!
    “Oh, brother,” she said. With friends like that . . . Small mouths, bad taste. I Have No Voice and I Must Sing. Wasn’t that the name of a book Andy had been reading? It should be, she thought, it should be.
    She considered playing the tape that had arrived in the mail today from Chicago, just to take the bad taste out of her ears, so to speak, but decided there would be plenty of time for legal talk once she got to the station.
    The rest of the way was free and clear with no off-road vehicles in sight. In her rearview mirror she saw a silver Cadillac whiz by in the opposite direction on the main highway above. As she approached the Point, she passed a burned-out campfire site but no people, thank God, only the usual remains of pop-tops, empty cigarette packs, and crumbled potato chip bags mixed in with the ashes. A small animal, a badger or a weasel, dashed across the access road and froze at the sight of her orange VW bearing down, so that she had to take her foot off the accelerator and downshift after the curve. It came to life at the last second and dashed for safety in the shadows of the chick-weed, its eyes glazed saucers in the flat light. She arrived at the lighthouse with time to spare, started to roll up her window and secure the top, in case that unscheduled fog bank decided to pay a visit to the mainland, but decided to leave the car as it was. Unlikely, to say the least. And vandals? Who ever came this far out onto the Point? Besides, canvas and vinyl wouldn’t keep out anyone who was determined, especially if they had so much as a penknife with them.
    She gathered up the tapes, stuffed them with the recorder into her tote bag, grabbed the keys and some extra cigarettes, and headed for work. She unlatched the gate and started downhill.
    The lighthouse thrust into the sky before her, a whitewashed mushroom anchored on the rocks at the end of a long, graded walkway built over the boulders. A hundred-and-thirty-nine steps down, she knew;