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Voices From The Fog

Everyone was silent after hearing the transmission. Marawa was staring down at her feet, Hicks was still staring at the screen of the radio and both Chef and Milman had stopped rowing, both men staring aimlessly at the fog. Bree was taking regular sips from the tankard of water while occasionally checking her cellphone. I was now sitting upright after having a snack of dry meat and oatmeal biscuits. I still had a blanket draped over me and was just observing what was around, my eyes trying to pierce the thick sheets of swirling fog. I noticed, the more I gazed out at it, a kind of faint, yellowish glow. It made all kinds of weird and unusual shapes, snaking it's way around us, up our nostrils, inside our mouths whenever we spoke. I thought it might have been my tired, overactive imagination but there really was something unusual about the fog. The sea itself was still strangely calm and flat. There was no ripples on the the surface, not even a small wave which made me wonder if there was any underwater current. Now and again, small clumps of weed would pass by the boat as if guided by some unseen force. The air itself was moist and damp and I could feel it on my face as if light, really fine rain had been falling. The silence that pervaded around us was unsettling. Even more so was the paranoid feeling that something out there in the fog was watching us. To describe the feeling, it was like a predator hiding, circling us, waiting for the right moment to strike. I was wondering if this was what everyone else was feeling.
"I just don't get it," Hicks said, his voice breaking the silence. "How could we have got a transmission from a captain and ship that has been missing for almost a hundred years?"
"That couldn't have been a hoax," said Milman. "If there was a ship lost here out in the fog, why would someone pretend to be George Worely of the USS Cyclops?"
"Maybe it was a transmission that had been made on the date the ship went missing," theorised Bree.
"How could we have picked up a transmission that old?" said Hicks, the theory sounding ludicrous to him. "You try and explain the science and psychics behind that?"
Bree sighed and put her phone away. "You ever heard of residual hauntings? It's not the haunting of an actual spirit but the imprint on a place of an emotionally charged event. We all leave our energy signatures in whatever places we inhabit through life and sometimes they are recorded. Residual hauntings play like a film. What you, Um, see are, um, a past event replaying itself."
"So you saying that what we heard was a ghostly transmission from long ago?" said Milman, shaking his head in disbelief.
"The residual energy behind that transmission might have been carried in the fog," said Bree. "And the radio picked up on that."
Hicks shook his head and chuckled slightly to this. "No offence but that's the biggest load of crap I've heard in my whole life. I can understand a house being haunted but this is the Atlantic Ocean here! We are a slap bang in open sea!"
"And seas can be haunted," came back Bree. "I'm surprised you would so easily dismiss this as nonsense after everything that has happened."
"Okay, granted, there are things that can't be so easily explained," said Hicks. "But sea monsters, ghosts...Oh cmon! That's ridiculous!"
"There is something about this place that is not right!" said Chef, cutting in. "Have you not already noticed how the fog is? How it blankets everything? The absence of life in the ocean? No wind, not even a breeze? No birds, no sky? Just this lingering fog."
Hicks threw his hands in the air as if in submission. "Okay, yes, but fog is fog right? I've seen fogs. It's thick, it covers everything. There's nothing supernatural about the fog!"
I did not know whether Hicks was in denial, but even he must have felt that sense of dread, of not being safe.
"Didn't you already hear what the last position of the Wessex was before it got lost in the fog?" said Bree. "It was slap bang in the Bermuda Triangle, that region of sea where boats and planes have gone missing! Now we are missing!"
"I think we should all just get our heads straight," suggested Milman. "We've all been through a lot and just need to think this through."
Hicks cast a look in Milman direction. "What's there to think through?" he asked Milman. "Look around you! We're lost in fog with no idea what direction we are going in and what's going to happen when the food and water runs out? What are we going to eat then? What we going to drink? Seawater? And no offence, but I ain't been the bathroom in ages and I could really do with a shave!"
"We are all in pretty hung out shape," Chef said cutting in. "You should rest Hicks. I think you all should."
"And just who would row and keep watch?" said Hicks.
"I'll stay up with Chef and row," I said, putting my hand up.
"You sure you are up to it?" Bree asked me.
I nodded my head slowly. "I've had enough rest. Besides, I feel I need to be doing something to help get us out of this."
Hicks nodded approvingly. "Well thanks whatever your name is," he said to me. "Maybe I should call you Harry or something."
"Call me what you want," I said to Hicks moving over to take the oars from Milman. "But I'm all for getting us out of this mess."
Hicks grinned at this. "Well if I take a nap I'll expect when I wake up blue skies and sunshine."
I stood up and slowly made my way to Hicks rocking the boat slightly as I did. I nearly stumbled but managed to steady myself. I took the oars off Hicks and Hicks made his way to my side of the boat, slumping down at the same spot, wrapping his own coat round him as he did. It did not take long for him to drift off to sleep. Soon Marawa, Milman and Bree had followed leaving only myself and Chef to row the boat. Chef really was not talkative as everyone slept. Maybe he was a little suspicious of me, or perhaps he was a bit on edge. In this place, wherever it was, it was enough to get anyone uneasy. I hated fog at the best of times, but this particular fog was somewhat odd, almost as if it had been put here to conceal something. Whatever that something was I could not explain. But there was that uneasy feeling, the kind that made you feel like you were being watched. Gazing ahead at the thick sheets of roiling fog I could swear at times that I could make out vague shapes moving about. It only occurred on occasions when the fog seemed to lift briefly. They would be 20 or so feet in front of us, several feet behind either side. To describe them, they looked like odd shapes, like figures walking on water, perhaps the odd serpent shaped head or tentacle, even faint yellow eyes glaring at us from across the fog shrouded waters. Whatever I thought I was seeing I tried to dismiss it as a figment of my overactive imagination. This fog was somehow making me see things. I was not sure whether Chef was seeing what I was seeing. It was hard to read his face. It seemed hard and firm like a proper native American warrior but his eyes told a different story. He was frightened like the rest of us.
After about ten minutes of light rowing, something out in the fog broke the silence. It seemed faint at first. So faint that my ears barley made out what it was. Then slowly, gradually it built up in its intensity. It was like a braying sound, like that of a howler monkey. It was hard to distinguish where it was coming from, whether it was in front of us, behind us or either side. But, whatever the hell it was, it appeared to be getting close. The braying sound got louder and I turned to look at Chef, who returned my stare with a confused and bewildered look. Then, we heard it, a god-awful shriek that echoed through the fog across the cleat, calm waters. It went straight through me like a pair of icy fingers and my blood went cold. It was not long before everyone was awake, startled by what they just heard. The braying sound continued and now everyone was looking across the waters, trying to see through the fog at what was causing that sound.
"What in hell was that?!" said Hicks, standing bolt upright in the boat.
"I don't know," said Bree, her eyes wide on shock. "But whatever it is, wherever it is, it's heading straight for us..."