The building was a steal, which Mark always said was just another term for "a problem you haven't found yet."
He and Riella bought it sight unseen, fueled by a 3 AM wine-fueled "let's quit L.A." pact and a grainy virtual tour. It was one of the older, salt-scoured buildings on the Embarcadero, wedged between a T-shirt shop selling tie-dyed skulls and a restaurant that perpetually smelled of stale fryer oil. The ground floor was a gutted commercial space, the ghost of a long-dead taffy shop, but the upstairs apartment was the prize.
It was, as Riella called it, "all bones and view." The main room was dominated by a single, massive picture window that overlooked the harbor. It framed Morro Rock like a living painting.
"Look at that, Mark," Riella breathed on their first day. They stood in the empty, dust-moted room, their voices echoing. "We'll put the couch right here. We can drink coffee and watch the otters."
"We'll need to reseal this window first," Mark said, running his hand along the frame. "The caulking is shot. I can feel the draft from here."
"It's 'patina,' babe," she smiled, kissing him. "It's perfect."
For the first two weeks, it was. They hauled drywall, spackled, and painted. They learned the rhythms of the bay: the morning chaos of the fishing boats, the lazy afternoon swell, and the evening chorus of the sea lions. They learned the sound of the foghorn: the two-tone groan that was the town's heartbeat.
It was a sound of safety. A warning to others. Keep back. Rocks here.
Then, the fog came for them.
It wasn't the usual high, wispy marine layer. This fog arrived on a Tuesday night, silent and heavy. It didn't just roll in; it settled. It was a living, breathing entity that devoured the Rock in one grey gulp, smothered the three smokestacks, and then crept across the water to press itself against their new life.
Riella was the first to notice the silence.
"Mark?" she called from the main room. "Do you hear that?"
"Hear what? I don't hear anything." He was in the kitchen, trying to fix a leaking tap.
"Exactly. The sea lions. They're quiet."
He came out, wiping his hands on a rag. He listened. The usual chaotic, barking-mad symphony from the floating dock was gone. The world was utterly still, muffled by the grey wool outside. The only sound was the foghorn, and it suddenly sounded desperate.
"Weird," Mark said. "Maybe they all went for a swim."
Riella stood at the picture window, her arms wrapped around herself. The fog was so thick it was opaque, a solid wall of nothing. It was like staring at a powered-off television screen.
"God, it's cold," she whispered, rubbing her arms. "Your caulking gun didn't work. That draft is still here."
Mark walked over and put his hand near the glass. "That's... not a draft, Ri. That's just the glass. It's freezing. Single pane, probably original."
"No," she said, her voice small. "It feels like... it feels like it's coming from the glass."
She reached out and pressed her palm flat against the center of the pane. She snatched it back with a sharp hiss.
Mark touched it. He, too, flinched. The glass was unnaturally, painfully cold. "Jesus. Okay, new window is officially priority number one."
He pulled her away from the window, and they went to bed. Riella dreamt of the silence, and Mark dreamt of fractures in glass.
The next night, the fog returned, just as thick. They were eating takeout on the couch they had finally wrestled up the stairs.
"Okay," Riella said, putting her container down. "I'm not crazy. Look."
Mark looked at the window. "What am I looking at? It's just... fog."
"No. In the window. Look at my reflection."
He looked. He saw their living room reflected dimly in the dark glass: the couch, the lamp, his own face, and Riella's.
"Keep looking," she whispered.
He stared. His reflection was normal. Riella's was normal. And then, standing just behind her reflection, was a face.
It was a girl. Young, maybe nineteen or twenty. She wasn't looking in. She was looking out, past them, at the fog-shrouded bay. Her hair was different, shorter, in a 1960s-style flip. Her clothes were a high-collared coat. Her face was pale, and her eyes were wide, fixed on something in the mist. Her mouth was a perfect, silent "O" of terror
"Mark?" Riellaâs voice was shaking. "Do you see her?"
"What the hell is that?" he whispered. He stood up.
The instant he moved, the face vanished. Not faded. It was just gone.
He scrambled to the window, his heart hammering. He stared into the glass, seeing only his own wide-eyed reflection and the pressing grey fog behind it.
"It was a... a smudge," he said, his voice unconvincing.
"That was not a smudge, Mark! That was a person."
He went outside, down the rickety stairs to the street. He looked up at their window from the empty, misty boardwalk. Nothing. Just a dark square of glass. He came back up, his face pale.
"There's no one out there. It was a reflection. A weird reflection, from the shop across the street, on the fog, back to our window." His explanation was a tangled mess of frantic physics.
"It wasn't a reflection," Riella said, tears welling. "She was in the glass."
They didn't sleep in the main room that night.
They tried to normalize it. They spent the next day at the hardware store, Mark buying every kind of sealant and weather-stripping imaginable. Riella bought a dozen plants to "bring life into the room." But that night, as the sun went down and the first tendrils of mist crept back into the bay, the cold returned to the glass.
They sat on the couch, forcing themselves to watch a movie on their laptop, pointedly ignoring the giant, cold rectangle to their left.
"I'm going to get some water," Riella said, pausing the movie.
As she stood, her movement caught her eye. She looked at the window.
Mark didn't move. "Don't look, Ri. Just come sit down."
"No. Mark. She's... different."
He looked. The girl was there. The same pale face, the same coat. But her expression wasn't terror. It was... longing. An empty, hollow, bottomless ache.
Behind her, pressed against the glass, were other faces. Dim, translucent, and overlapping, like a dozen photographs badly exposed on the same negative. Men, women, children, all with the same hollow, hungry stare.
But the girl was the clearest. She was the "anchor."
"They're watching us," Mark said, his voice a dry rasp.
"No," Riella whispered, taking a step closer. "They're not. They're watching the fog. They're... waiting."
The girl's face seemed to focus. She lifted a hand, a translucent, misty shape, and pressed her palm against the glass from the inside.
On their side of the pane, in that exact spot, a perfect handprint of ice bloomed on the glass.
Riella screamed and scrambled back. The faces vanished. The frost handprint remained for a few seconds, then faded, melting into nothing.
"We have to leave," Riella was sobbing. "Mark, we have to leave now."
"We can't," he said, his voice rigid with a fear he was trying to fight. "This is everything, Riella. All our money. It's... it's an old building. It's just... echoes."
The next day, Mark went to the T-shirt shop next door. The man behind the counter was old, with skin like cured leather and eyes that had seen too many fog-bound mornings. Mark, feeling like a fool, bought a sweatshirt and then, as casually as he could, asked about the building.
"The old PISCO building?" the man said in a gravelly rumble. He stopped folding shirts. "You're the ones who bought it? The kids from L.A.?"
"Yeah. We're fixing up the apartment upstairs."
The man looked him over, a long, assessing stare. "You seen her yet?"
Mark's blood went cold. "Seen who?"
"The Girl. Lucy." He nodded at their building. "She's anchored there. To that window. Most folks who rent that place don't last a month."
"Who was she?" Mark asked.
The man sighed, turning to look out his own window at the bay. "It was... hell, must be 1968. '69. Long time ago. Lucy was a local girl. Worked the taffy counter downstairs. Fell in love with a young fisherman. He had a boat called the Wanderer. Kid was reckless, went out when the forecast was bad. Said he could 'smell' his way home."
"Then a fog rolled in. Not a fog like you're used to. This was... different. Smelled like a dead battery. The kind of fog that eats sound. The sea lions went silent, just like they do.
Mark felt a prickle of dread on his neck.
"Lucy, she waited. He was due back. She stood at that window. The big one upstairs. She stood there all night. And all the next day. And all the next night. Just staring into the white. Her friends brought her coffee, but she wouldn't move. Just stared. Waiting to see the mast of the Wanderer slide out of the mist."
"What happened to the boat?" Mark asked.
"What do you think?" the man said. "The fog took it. Coast Guard found a piece of the bow near the sandspit. Never found the kid. But the fog... it wasn't done."
"On the third morning, her boss came in. The apartment door was locked from the inside. He knocked and knocked. Finally called the sheriff. They broke the door down."
The old man turned back to Mark, his eyes flat. "The apartment was empty. Not a sign of her. Just the coffee cup on the floor by the window. She was gone. The fog... it wants what it's owed. It took the fisherman. And it came back for the one who was watching. It claimed her. Anchored her right to the glass she was looking through. She's an echo, son. A lure. Part of its collection."
Mark walked back to the apartment in a daze. The sun was shining. The bay was a brilliant, postcard blue. It seemed impossible.
He told Riella. Her reaction wasn't fear. It was a strange, cold sadness. She was quiet for the rest of the day
That night, the fog returned.
It was the worst one yet. It was a suffocating, churning, grey-black mass. It didn't just press on the window; it pounded. They could feel the glass vibrating, bowing slightly inward with the pressure of the mist. The foghorn was a distant, strangled groan.
"Mark," Riella whispered. She was standing in the middle of the room, staring at the window.
The girl was there. Lucy. Her face was clear, clearer than ever. The other faces swirled behind her like smoke.
"Don't look at her, Ri. Let's go to the bedroom."
"She's not looking at the fog anymore," Riella said, her voice mesmerized.
The face in the glass... was looking in.
It was staring directly at Riella. And it was smiling. A slow, stretching, terrible smile.
The mist inside the apartment, which had seeped under the door and through the window seals, began to rise from the floor. It wasn't mist anymore. It was tendrils. Grey, grasping, vaporous hands.
"Riella, run!" Mark yelled, grabbing her arm.
But Riella didn't move. She was transfixed. She walked toward the window, as if in a dream.
"She's so... lonely," Riella whispered.
"She's not real! It's a trap!" Mark tried to pull her back, but she was impossibly strong.
The handprint of frost appeared on the glass. Lucy's hand, beckoning.
Riella lifted her own hand, her movements slow and graceful.
"Ri, no! Don't touch it!"
She pressed her palm flat against the glass, perfectly matching the icy print on the other side.
The moment her skin made contact, the world went silent. The foghorn died. The vibration stopped.
"Mark..." Riella whispered. Her voice was thin. "I can't... I can't move my hand. It's stuck."
Mark lunged, grabbing her around the waist. He pulled, but her hand was fused to the glass. "It's so cold..." she cried, her body starting to tremble violently.
He looked at her hand. It wasn't just on the glass. It was in it.
The glass was no longer solid. It was rippling like water, like a heat haze. Her fingers were sinking into the pane, turning the same translucent, misty grey as the face on the other side.
"Mark!" she screamed, her voice suddenly terrified. "It's pulling me!"
He watched in horror as the fog tendrils in the room shot forward, wrapping around her arm, her waist, her legs, and pulling. They weren't pulling her away from the window. They were pulling her into it.
"I won't let you go!" he roared, wrapping his arms around her, his feet skidding on the wooden floor.
The face in the window, Lucy's face, began to blur. The features softened, the 1960s haircut melting away. The face reformed, and Mark let out a strangled sob.
He was staring at Riella's face. Hollow-eyed, pale, and trapped inside the glass, looking back at her own struggling body.
The face in the window smiled.
And outside, from the deep, dead-silent fog, a sound emerged. Not the foghorn. A sound like a thousand whispers, a thousand voices, all sighing in welcome.
Markâs grip held, but Riella didn't. Her body seemed to lose its substance, turning cold and fluid in his arms. With a final, violent jerk, she was pulled, not through the glass, but into it. Mark fell backward, clutching only a handful of empty fabric.
He scrambled up, slamming his hands against the pane. It was solid again. Cold, hard, single-pane glass.
"Riella!" he screamed, pounding until his fists bled.
But the room was empty. And outside, in the swirling grey, the reflection of his own terrified face was the only thing looking back.
The "For Sale" sign was back in the window. The real estate listing called it a "diamond in the rough" with "motivated sellers." The price had dropped again. A young couple from San Francisco stood on the boardwalk, looking up. "It's perfect," the woman said, squeezing her husband's hand. "Look at that view."
"It looks a little dark," he said. "Even with the sun out."
"It's just the glass," she laughed. "It's old. It has character." She pointed up at the main window. "See? Even the reflection looks cool. It looks like there's someone standing there, waving at us."
The husband squinted. He saw it, too. A faint, pale shape in the glass. A woman, maybe thirty, with long dark hair and a sad, hollow smile. "Yeah," he said, feeling a sudden, inexplicable chill. "It looks like she's waiting for someone."
"Maybe she's waiting for us," the woman said. And then she turned to the door and knocked.
The fog holds more secrets...
"The Girl in the Window" is just one piece of the legend. Discover the other terrifying tales of the Watchers, the Takers, and the mist that consumes, in the full Morro Bay Fog-Mythos Collection.
The best way to know when the next story emerges from the mist is to subscribe to my newsletter!
As a thank-you for joining, youâll get a free download of my exclusive subscriber-only short story, âWhere the Fog Settles First,ââa spooky tale you canât read anywhere else.
Pamela Beach is a multi-genre author, poet, and lyricist who writes from her home on Californiaâs foggy Central Coast. She is the creator of the âMorro Bay fog-mythosâ and author of The Unstoppable You. You can read more of her work and explore her complete âfog-mythosâ collection at her blog, Beyond the Blog with Pamela Beach
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Source: The Girl in the Window
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