Echoes in the Fog

The town of Drellings Hollow had one rule: never go out when the fog rolls in.

It was the kind of fog that crept in like a secret. Thick, pale, and unnaturally quiet. It swallowed sound, blurred sight, and chilled the spine. The townspeople would bolt their doors, pull their children close, and light a single candle in every window—as tradition dictated. No one remembered why. Only that they must.

Thirteen-year-old Milo didn’t believe in ghost stories. He believed in facts, maps, logic. He had read every book in the school library, even the ones with cracked spines and missing pages. So when the fog rolled in on the night of the Fall Festival, and he saw something move in it—something tall, twitching, almost human—he didn’t run.

He followed.

His parents had been arguing again. Milo slipped away from the bonfire unnoticed, just a boy with too much curiosity and not enough fear.

He didn’t mean to stray far. But the fog played tricks. One moment, he was near the town square. The next, he was deep in the woods, where the trees didn’t whisper—they watched.

A branch cracked. Something skittered.

Milo stopped, heart pounding. The fog parted briefly, just enough to reveal… a door.

Not a house. Just a door. Standing upright in the middle of a clearing. No frame. No walls. Just ancient, weathered wood and a brass doorknob, shining like a full moon.

He should’ve turned back.

Instead, he opened it.

There was no resistance. No sound. Just a soft hum—like a memory trying to speak. The moment he stepped through, the air turned warm. The fog vanished.

And Drellings Hollow… was gone.

Instead, he stood in a place where time breathed. The sky above was violet. Stars blinked like eyes. A train with no tracks passed silently in the distance, its windows showing scenes of his life—his first birthday, the time he broke his arm, the moment he stepped through the door.

“What is this?” he whispered.

“You’re between echoes,” said a voice.

He spun around. A girl stood there, about his age, wearing a coat made of moving feathers. Her eyes were silver and sad.

“You stepped through. You always do. You’re the only one who ever does.”

“Where am I?” Milo asked.

She tilted her head. “Where time remembers.”

The girl explained that Drellings Hollow was caught in a loop, a town preserved by fear, kept safe by forgetting. Every time someone vanished in the fog, time rewound a little. The town never moved forward. It just played the same safe song. Over and over.

“You were supposed to forget, too,” she said. “But you didn’t. That makes you… different.”

Milo looked at his hands. “Can I go back?”

“You could,” she said. “But you can also break it.”

“Break what?”

She pointed up. In the sky above, a giant clock ticked backward. Each second was an echo. Each tick was a scream swallowed by silence.

“You can stop it. Or let it keep ticking. But either way, once you know, you can’t unknow.”

He felt it then. The weight of knowledge. The fog wasn’t just weather. It was memory protection. The candles weren’t for light—they were to blind the truth.

He took a step back toward the door.

The girl smiled sadly. “If you go back, the town might hate you. But it might also wake up.”

Milo reached for the doorknob.

He turned it.

---

The next morning, the town woke to no fog.

The people whispered. Birds sang songs they hadn’t heard in years. The bakery opened two hours later than usual. The school bell rang out of rhythm.

Milo stood at the edge of the woods. Behind him, the door was gone.

But in its place, a small stone marker read:

> “To the one who stepped through: Thank you for remembering.”