The Fog — a short story for English reading and speaking

Read the story carefully. As you read, notice how the writer uses smells, sounds, and silence to build suspense.

The smell came first.
It wasn’t the clean bite of sea spray that Tom usually breathed deep into his lungs on his evening walks.
This was thicker. Sour.
It coated his tongue like milk gone off, clinging to the back of his throat. Beneath it was the faint sweetness of flesh rotting, as if something had died far out at sea and been carried ashore in the tide.
He was halfway along the cliffs when the fog began its crawl towards him.
It came from the horizon as a grey wall, rolling across the water with unnatural speed.
One moment the sea lay open and restless; the next, it was gone, smothered under a moving mass that seemed almost solid.
The wind died in an instant. The gulls’ cries stopped. Even the constant heartbeat of the waves fell silent.
Jasper stiffened beside him, ears pricked. Then he barked—a single, sharp sound—and bolted forward, chasing a gull that flapped low and vanished into the fog.
“Jasper, wait!” Tom called. His voice was deadened, as if he’d spoken into a thick blanket.
No echo. No answer.
The damp reached him first—a film of moisture settling on his hair, his eyelashes, the inside of his collar. The fog wrapped close, and with it came a subtle sound.
Not the wind. Not the sea.
Something softer, lower—like breathing.
A dog’s bark floated back to him. Distant. Flattened by the mist.
Tom took the path down the cliff. Fence posts loomed out of the fog only to slip back into it again, their slick wood leaving damp on his sleeve when he brushed past.
Every step seemed to take him deeper into stillness, into air that pressed close on all sides.
The bark came again—but this time it was joined by another sound: a dragging scrape, wet and slow, like rope sliding across waterlogged planks.
The fog shifted, thinning for a heartbeat. The beach below glistened black in the dim light, and the scent of rot was stronger here—thick enough to make Tom swallow hard.
He stepped off the last rock and sank at once. The sand was wet and clinging, gripping at his boots. It released reluctantly each time he pulled his foot free, sucking and smacking as if trying to keep him there. To keep him submerged.
Shapes lay scattered along the tideline. At first, he thought it was driftwood. But as he drew closer, they sharpened into something much stranger.
A fishing net, frayed and tangled, clung to the ribs of a half-buried boat. Inside it was a skull, bleached smooth and clean, but far too big for a seagull or any other creature of the shore—its eye sockets round, human-sized.
A little further on, a boot jutted from the sand, barnacles crusting the rim. The leather was split, and inside, something pale and shrivelled protruded—skin pulled tight over bone.
The fog shifted again.
Something moved just beyond his sightline—shadows gliding parallel to him, too big for seals, too quiet for people.
When he stopped, they stopped.
When he took a step, they slid forward again, keeping pace in the murk.
From somewhere ahead came Jasper’s bark, high and panicked.
Tom pushed forward, the sand clutching his legs higher with every step. Then the shadows parted, and it came into view.
Tall. Thin. Macabre.
Its limbs bent where they shouldn’t, joints jutting like snapped branches under skin stretched pale and tight.
From its frame hung torn sheets of seaweed, dripping steadily, swaying as if stirred by an unseen current.
Where its face should have been was a gaping hole, jagged with broken shell, brimming with black water that poured in slow streams into the sand below.
In its claws—long, spindly things hooked like fishing gaffs—it held Jasper. The dog’s legs kicked weakly, paws scrabbling against the wet ground.
Tom shouted, lunging forward—only to sink deeper to his knees in the clinging sand. It was colder now, and when he looked down he thought, just for a moment, that each grain of sand was shifting around his legs as if alive.
The creature looming before him froze.
The dripping slowed. It turned its faceless head towards him.
Tom felt its attention like deep water pressing against his chest. Behind him, the shadows in the fog stilled, as though they too were watching.
He pulled, twisted, clawed at the sand. The grit tore the skin from his palms. He couldn’t breathe properly—the air was thick, carrying a low murmur now.
Whispers. Indistinct, curling around his ears, just at the edge of comprehension.
The creature stepped backwards, into the shallows. Water lapped against its bent legs. Jasper’s eyes locked on Tom’s—wild, pleading, desperate.
Tom roared and wrenched himself forward. For an instant, he felt the grip of the sand loosen. But the moment he lunged again, it pulled him back harder, swallowing him almost to his thighs.
The whispers grew clearer, though he couldn’t understand the words.
They were cold words. Ancient words from another time, another civilisation. They slid under his skin.
The water rose around the creature. One last, muffled bark—and then both it and Jasper slipped into the fog, swallowed whole.
The sand released him without warning. He fell forward onto his hands, gasping, and scrambled to the water’s edge. Nothing but the hiss of the tide.
No bark. No movement.
When the fog thinned, the beach was bare. The skull, the boot, the boat—they were all gone.
So was Jasper.
Tom climbed the cliff path without feeling his own legs. At home, he locked the door and pressed his back to it in the dark. His pulse slowed, but his chest was hollow, and the air in the room still smelled faintly of salt and rot.
He never spoke of that night—not to his parents, not to anyone. But the shame stayed with him.
Because he could have fought harder. Could have gone under with Jasper, if nothing else.
But he hadn’t. He’d let the fog take him.
And when the mist returned, curling against the windows, he would sometimes hear it—the dragging scrape, the whispers in that cold, foreign tongue—and beneath it, faint and desperate, a single solitary bark.