THE MOON KEEPS CALLING MY NAME

The fog came in around midnight, the way it always did like the sea was exhaling and forgot to stop. I watched it swallow the harbor through the station window, one streetlight at a time, and pressed the button that opened the line. "Good morning, Minakami. It's twelve-oh-one, which means it's technically tomorrow, which means you should be asleep." I leaned into the mic. "You're listening to Midnight Harbor on FM 77.7. I'm Ren Kisaragi, and since you're awake anyway — what's keeping you up?" This was my kingdom: four hours a night, five nights a week, in a radio station the size of a convenience store, broadcasting to a town that pretended not to listen and then quoted my show back to me at the fish market. The first call was Mrs. Etou, who was eighty-six and called every single night. "Ren-chan. There's a dog in my garden again." "Mrs. Etou, that's Mr. Etou's dog." "He doesn't look at me like a dog," she said, and hung up. I made a note on the call sheet: dog (haunted?). Daichi, my producer and only coworker insane enough to keep these hours, slid me a convenience-store coffee through the booth window and mouthed, you're encouraging her. I was absolutely encouraging her. The second call was a fisherman who wanted to know if the moon affected the fish. I told him the moon affected everything and he seemed satisfied. The third was a teenager who whispered, "Do you believe in monsters?" and then panicked and hung up when I said yes. Standard Tuesday. Then, at 2:17 a.m., the board lit up with a call from a blocked number, and the night stopped being standard. "You're on Midnight Harbor. What's keeping you up?" Silence first. Then breathing.... careful breathing. Like someone listening to two things at once, and I was the less important one. Then a girl's voice. Young. Tired in a way that had nothing to do with the late hour. "Do you take the coast road home, Ren Kisaragi?" I glanced at Daichi through the glass. He'd already sat up straighter. We got odd calls — odd was the business model — but nobody ever used my full name on air. I never gave it. The show was just Ren. "Most nights," I said. "It's the only road that doesn't flood. Who's asking?" "Don't take it tonight." The fog pressed against the window like it wanted to burst in. "Okay," I said, in my best radio-soothing voice. "I'll bite. Why not?" "Because the fog isn't empty tonight." A pause. I could hear wind on her end — real wind, high and cold, the kind you only got up on the mountain road. "And because it's listening to your show right now." Daichi made a strangled noise and started scribbling on the call sheet. I caught the words KEEP HER TALKING. "That's a little dramatic for FM 77.7," I said. "We mostly do fishing reports and Mrs. Etou's haunted dog. What's it?" "You joke when you're scared. That's a good instinct. Keep it." Something shifted on the line — fabric, a footstep, the creak of a gate. "Take the mountain road home. The long way. Promise me, and I mean actually promise me, not radio-promise me." "And if I don't?" The wind rose. Under it, very faintly, I heard something else. A sound I knew from exactly one nature documentary and a hundred bad dreams. A howl. Close to her. Close enough that she should have been screaming. She wasn't. "Then tomorrow night," the girl said softly, "your listeners get a new host." The line went dead. "Tell me you got the number," I said. "Blocked." Daichi was already replaying the recording, headphones clamped over his ears. "Ren. The howl. Tell me you heard the howl." "I heard the howl." "That's a wolf." He looked up, and his face did something I'd never seen it do in four years of friendship — it went genuinely, completely serious. "There are no wolves in Minakami. There haven't been wolves here in a hundred years. My grandmother has a saying about it." "So it's a big dog. Mrs. Etou's been warning us for weeks." "Mrs. Etou thinks her husband's corgi is a yokai." "He does have suspicious eyebrows." Daichi didn't laugh, which was how I knew the night had officially gotten away from us. He pulled the show's log up on the second monitor. "Blocked numbers, threats, howling. We report this, right? That's what normal people do. We call the police, we—" "And tell them what? A girl told me to take the long way home?" I leaned back in my chair. The fog had reached the station lot now. My car was a rumor somewhere inside it. "It's a prank. Some kid up on the mountain with a speaker and too much free time. It's basically fan mail." "You don't believe that." No. I didn't. Because here was the thing I hadn't told Daichi, the thing I was still turning over like a stone in my pocket: She hadn't said don't take the coast road like a warning. She'd said it like an apology, like she was sorry for what is about to happen . We signed off at four. I sat in the parking lot for a long time, engine running, heater fighting the damp, headlights carving two pale tunnels into the fog. Left was the coast road. Ten minutes, sea on one side, cliffs on the other, home by 4:20. Right was the mountain road. Forty minutes of switchbacks through cedar forest, past the old shrine nobody visited, home by 5:00 if the fog let me. Promise me, and I mean actually promise me. I'm not a superstitious guy. I host a show where insomniacs confess their fears to a stranger, and the first rule of Midnight Harbor is that fear is just a story you tell in the dark. Fog is weather. Howls are dogs. Blocked calls are bored kids. I turned left. I told myself it was because I was tired, and the coast road was fast, and I don't take orders from mysterious radio girls. But if I'm honest — and this show has made me bad at lying to myself — it was because some stupid, curious part of me wanted to know what was in the fog. I found out at kilometer marker seven. Like a dream — suddenly something was just there, standing in the middle of the road, lit up silver-white in my headlights. A wolf. No. Not a wolf. Wolves are animals, and this was an idea — too big, too still, its fur catching light that wasn't there, its eyes the color of a full moon on water. It looked at me the way Mrs. Etou's dog never had. It looked at me like it knew my name, like it knew me. I don't remember braking. I remember the world turning sideways, the sea filling the windshield, the sound of my own radio voice still echoing in my skull — what's keeping you up? — and then the moon leaned down out of the sky, and everything went silver, and everything went dark.