The Darkest Evening of the Year

whispering his name in a friendly way. The muttering multitudes were angry, hostile, and eager.
    He didn’t know what they were eager for, and he refused to think further about it, because they weren’t people, damn it, just waves.
    What he needed to do was come up with a simile that would push his stuck mind on to a more pleasant image.
    Muffled by fog, the breaking surf sounded like…
    Muffled by fog, the breaking surf sounded like…
    A condensation of fog soaked his thin hair and beaded on his face. Just fog, not a cold sweat.
    Muffled by fog, the breaking surf sounded like ten thousand of Billy’s friends whispering about what a great guy he was.
    Pathetic. He might be having a midlife crisis, but he was still the old Billy, a tough guy, a funny guy, a guy who embraced the truth of truths, that nothing matters, nothing except how to get what you want.
    He had read all the great deathworks, he had read Finnegans Wake three times, three times, he had decanted all those brilliant beautiful scalding ideas into his head, thousands of volumes of deathworks, and because you are the ideas you pour into yourself, he had in a sense been killed by what he read, was already dead to any truth except the truth that no truths exist. Having died in this way, he had no fear of death, no fear of anything, and he certainly did not fear breaking surf that sounded like ten thousand people whispering in the distance!
    With one hand he wiped at his wet face.
    How could a drawing of a dog give a guy a midlife crisis?
    He cocked his head and listened for the sound of an engine.
    He thought that he heard the Expedition approaching. Then the fog stole that sound, though it kept paying out the susurrations of the sea.
     

     
    Nickie growled, Amy said “Stop,” and Brian braked on the rising road.
    Denser than any waves before it, a tide of fog poured down from a crest unseen, as formless as dreams, as weightless as air yet as solid as alabaster, pressing the vehicle as if to encapsulate and fossilize it.
    Here in a snowless whiteout, where nothing beyond the Expedition could be seen, where nothing layered upon nothing, Amy Redwing was perhaps at an ultimate place, deep in the immortal primordial, where faith mattered so much that she dared rely on nothing else.
    Nickie let out a faint sigh, and Amy felt the equivalent of a sigh in the centrum of her soul, an expelled breath of resignation to the power of fate.
    “How far yet?” she asked.
    “Just over half a mile.”
    “She’s lying. We’re close.”
    “Why would she lie about that?”
    “I don’t know. But I know.”
     

     
    Billy again heard the engine of the Expedition, and this time it did not fade, as before, but grew louder by the moment, until he could no longer hear the surf crawling on the shore.
    Although no headlights brightened the fog at the crest, the SUV appeared, ten feet away, like the specter of a vehicle, ghost ship on wheels.
    Puzzled by the lampless arrival, but happy to be back in action, Billy rushed from the shelter of the trees.
    Because the sea held the fog close to itself before flinging it at the land, the high catwalk and lantern room of the lighthouse were visible above the slowly churning curdled mass that hid the rest of it, though at the brink of twilight, the halogen beam did not yet stab out from those summit windows.
    As expected, at the sight of the lighthouse, the Expedition braked to a stop, and at the same moment, Billy arrived beside it, squeezing a short burst from the Glock 18, blowing out the front portside tire.
    He would have stooped and fired under the vehicle, popping other tires, before pointing the gun at the driver’s door and shouting Put the window down, but after he blew one tire, nothing went as planned.
     

     
    Brian drove slowly up the hill, and Amy walked behind the SUV, concealed by it, left hand on the vehicle to steady herself on the slick pavement, the SIG P245 in her right hand.
    From the cargo space, solemn Nickie peered out at her through the tailgate window.
    For some reason, for luck, for a blessing, Amy raised her hand from the tailgate handle, to which she had been holding, and put it on the glass, in front of Nickie’s face.
    Twice Amy glanced around the side of the Expedition, but she could see nothing more than streaming fog.
    With the headlights off, the taillights were off as well, and therefore did not prematurely reveal her.
    She could not clearly express to Brian the purpose of this tactic,