Ray Bradbury - The Fog Horn

Ray Bradbury

1951-1953

1951

Out there in the cold water, far from land, we waited every night for the coming of the fog, and it came, and we oiled the brass machinery and lit the fog light up in the stone tower. Feeling like two birds in the gray sky, McDunn and I sent the light touching out, red, then white, then red again, to eye the lonely ships. And if they did not see our light, then there was always our Voice, the great deep cry of our Fog Horn shuddering through the rags of mist to startle the gulls away like decks of scattered cards and make the waves turn high and foam.

Its a lonely life, but youre used to it now, arent you? asked McDunn.

Yes, I said. Youre a good talker, thank the Lord.

Well, its your turn on land tomorrow, he said, smiling, to dance the ladies and drink gin.

What do you think, McDunn, when I leave you out here alone?

On the mysteries of the sea. McDunn lit his pipe. It was a quarter past seven of a cold November evening, the heat on, the light switching its tail in two hundred directions, the Fog Horn bumbling in the high throat of the tower. There wasnt a town for a hundred miles down the coast, just a road which came lonely through dead country to the sea, with few cars on it, a stretch of two miles of cold water out to our rock, and rare few ships.

The mysteries of the sea said McDunn thoughtfully. You know, the oceans the biggest damned snowflake ever? It rolls and swells a thousand shapes and colours, no two alike. Strange. One night, years ago, I was here alone, when all of the fish of the sea surfaced out there. Something made them swim in and lie in the bay, sort of trembling and staring up at the tower light going red, white, red, white across them so I could see their funny eyes. I fumed cold. They were like a big peacocks tail, moving out there until midnight. Then, without so much as a sound, they slipped away, the million of them was gone. I kind of think maybe, in some sort of way, they came all those miles to worship. Strange. But think how the tower must look to them, standing seventy feet above the water, the God-light flashing out from it, and the tower declaring itself with a monster voice. They never came back, those fish, but dont you think for a while they thought they were in the Presence?

I shivered. I looked out at the long gray lawn of the sea stretching away into nothing and nowhere.

Oh, the seas full. McDunn puffed his pipe nervously, blinking. He had been nervous all day and hadnt said why. For all our engines and so-called submarines, itll be ten thousand centuries before we set foot on the real bottom of the sunken lands, in the fairy kingdoms there, and know real terror. Think of it, its still the year 300,000 Before Christ down under there. While weve paraded around with trumpets, lopping off each others countries and heads, they have been living beneath the sea twelve miles deep and cold in a time as old as the beard of a comet.

Yes, its an old world.

Come on. I got something special I been saving up to tell you.

We ascended the eighty steps, talking and taking our time. At the top, McDunn switched off the room lights so thered be no reflection in the plate glass. The great eye of the light was humming, turning easily in its oiled socket. The Fog Horn was blowing steadily, once every fifteen seconds.

Sounds like an animal, dont it? McDunn nodded to himself. A big lonely animal crying in the night. Sitting here on the edge of ten billion years calling out to the Deeps, Im here, Im here, Im here. And the Deeps do answer, yes, they do. You been here now for three months, Johnny, so I better prepare you. About this time of year, he said, studying the murk and fog, something comes to visit the lighthouse.

The swarms of fish like you said?

No, this is something else. Ive put off telling you because you might think Im daft. But tonights the latest I can put it off, for if my calendars marked right from last year, tonights the night it comes. I wont go into detail, youll have to see it yourself. Just sit down there. If you want, tomorrow you can pack your duffel and take the motorboat in to land and get your car parked there at the dinghy pier on the cape and drive on back to some little inland town and keep your lights burning nights, I wont question or blame you. Its happened three years now, and this is the only time anyones been here with me to verify it. You wait and watch.

Half an hour passed with only a few whispers between us. When we grew tired waiting, McDunn began describing some of his ideas to me. He had some theories about the Fog Horn itself.

One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound of the ocean on a cold sunless shore and said, We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; Ill make one. Ill make a voice like all of time and all of the fog that ever was; Ill make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. Ill make a sound thats so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns. Ill make me a sound and an apparatus and theyll call it a Fog Horn and whoever bears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life.

The Fog Horn blew.

I made up that story, said McDunn quietly, to try to explain why this thing keeps coming back to the lighthouse every year. The Fog Horn calls it, I think, and it comes.

But - I said.

Sssst! said McDunn. There! He nodded out to the Deeps.

Something was swimming toward the lighthouse tower.

It was a cold night, as I have said; the high tower was cold, the light coming and going, and the Fog Horn calling and calling through the raveling mist. You couldnt see far and you couldnt see plain, but there was the deep sea moving on its way about the night earth, flat and quiet, the colour of gray mud, and here were the two of us alone in the high tower, and there, far out at first, was a ripple, followed by a wave, a rising, a bubble, a bit of froth. And then, from the surface of the cold sea came a head, a large head, dark-coloured, with immense eyes, and then a neck. And then - not a body - but more neck and more! The head rose a full forty feet above the water on a slender and beautiful dark neck. Only then did the body, like a little island of black coral and shells and crayfish, drip up from the subterranean. There was a flicker of tail. In all, from head to tip of tail, I estimated the monster at ninety or a hundred feet.

I dont know what I said. I said something.

Steady, boy, steady, whispered McDunn.

Its impossible! I said.

No, Johnny, were impossible. Its like it always was ten million years ago. It hasnt changed. Its us and the land thatve changed, become impossible. Us!

It swam slowly and with a great dark majesty out in the icy waters, far away. The fog came and went about it, momentarily erasing its shape. One of the monster eyes caught and held and flashed back our immense light, red, white, red, white, like a disk held high and sending a message in primeval code. It was as silent as the fog through which it swam.

Its a dinosaur of some sort! I crouched down, holding to the stair rail.

Yes, one of the tribe.

But they died out!

No, only hid away in the Deeps. Deep, deep down in the deepest Deeps. Isnt that a word now, Johnny, a real word, it says so much: the Deeps. Theres all the coldness and darkness and deepness in a word like that.

Whatll we do?

Do? We got our job, we cant leave. Besides, were safer here than in any boat trying to get to land. That things as big as a destroyer and almost as swift.