The Fringe Dwellers

by Patrick K. Ball

  He opened a couple of promising-looking sites, but was disappointed. At this point though, Ed was almost too tired to read. He was now lying on his side, head resting on the pillows, with the computer on the bed next to him. The next site he opened appeared to be what he was looking for. It was a newspaper article entitled, “Grisly Find Shocks Police.” Ed fell asleep reading that article.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Show me the way to go home. I’m tired and I wanna go to bed. ‘Cause I had a little drink about an hour ago and it’s gone right to my heeee-eeead!” Christian sang at the top of his lungs while he staggered down the sidewalk. “Where-ev-er I may roam. By land or sea or foam. You will always a-hear me a-singin’ this song, show me the way to go hooo-ome!” It was the only verse of the song he knew and he’d been singing it over . . . and over . . . and over . . . for the last half-hour. Fortunately, it was around three o’clock in the morning, so the streets were empty and he wasn’t bothering anyone.

  “One more verse, same as the first. Show me the way to go home-”

  “And just where would that be?” a voice from behind the shadows mercifully interrupted Christian’s street performance.

  “Who’s there?!” Christian spun around in a circle, nervously searching for the source of the voice.

  “No need to be frightened,” the voice answered and then a man stepped out of the shadows of the alley that had been obscuring him from Christian’s view. “No one should ever be afraid of anything.”

  Once Christian got an alcohol-blurred view of the man who was the source of the voice, he was instantly relieved. He warn’t no cop, which is what Christian had been afraid of at first. Actually, Christian felt pretty relaxed now that he could see the man. Even a little sleepy.

  “I ain’t scared of nuthin’,” Christian replied.

  “Is that so?” said the shadow-man. “That hasn’t been my experience at all. I’ve found that everyone’s got some fear they live with. Whether it’s a big or small fear is the question.”

  “Well, now thatcha mention it. There is one thing I’ve got a big, huge fear of.”

  “And what would that be.”

  “I’ve always had this fear that some time . . . some day . . . I won’t be able to git me no BOOZE!! Haw-haw-haw.” Christian doubled over slapping his side while laughing at his joke.

  The shadow-man didn’t even crack a smile. He waited, calmly, until Christian regained his composure.

  When Christian finally stopped laughing and the shadow-man had his attention again, he asked, “I’m sure you weren’t wandering around the streets this late at night singing because you were scared that you couldn’t find any alcohol. Now, why would you be doing that?”

  “Shit, buddy, you gotta drink on ya and I’ll tell ya my whole life story.”

  The shadow-man reached into his overcoat pocket and pulled out a flask-shaped bottle. “Ask, and you shall receive. All you have to do is believe. You only need a little faith.”

  Christian couldn’t read the label through his alcohol-induced haze, but he certainly knew a bottle of MD 20/20 when he saw it. “Well, I’ll be dipped in shit. Ya see that, Rosey,” Christian said as he looked up to the sky, “you were right all along. All I needed was a little faith. Ask and I shall receive.”

  “Why don’t you come over here into the alley where we won’t attract any unwanted attention and you can drink a toast to Rosey while you tell me the story of your life.”

  “The alley?” Christian said hesitantly.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “It’s just that . . . my Rosey, she never liked no alleys.”

  “Is that so?” the shadow-man said, and smiled. “Since Rosey’s not here, there shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

  “B-but my Rosey, she’s everywhere now. She’s been watchin’ over me since the cancer took her away. It wouldn’t be right for me to make her go no place she hated so much. There’s a big, old park right down the street. It’s got wide open spaces and lots of lights and stuff. It’s really nice. We could go there. That’d be much better than some dark, stinky alley.”

  “This alley isn’t stinky at all. And I’m sure Rosey wouldn’t mind the alley. There’s nothing that can scare her anymore, now that she’s no longer among us. Or are we even talking about Rosey? Could there be someone else around here that doesn’t like alleys? Something about an alley that holds a deep-seated fear, maybe?”

  Christian tried to hold off the memory, but it came rushing through anyway. He couldn’t stop it.

  * * *

  Christian couldn’t remember how old he was the day it happened, but he couldn’t have been more than ten years old. It was dark outside—pitch-black. That didn’t bother little Christian. The night didn’t scare him back then. He was walking home from a friend’s house, as he’d done a thousand times before. Only difference was that tonight it was later than usual. It was almost nine o’clock—his curfew time. If he didn’t make it home by then, he’d get a whooping. That is, assuming his mom wasn’t passed out drunk. Just the same, he knew he had to high-tail it home. That’s what made him take the short-cut that night—through the alley.

  “Now, what’s a young fellow like you doing out so late,” the man in the alley said to young Christian.

  Christian couldn’t see his face. The man was sitting inside a recessed entrance-way leading into one of the warehouses on either side of the alley; his features were hidden by the shadows. The man’s words sounded friendly, but there was something about his tone that made Christian nervous.

  “I-I’m just on my way home, sir. My mom’s waiting for me and I can’t be late, so I gotta go,” Christian said as he quickly turned away from the man to make a fast exit.

  Before he got more than a few steps, the man grabbed him. “Didn’t your mom teach you any manners, son. It’s not polite to run away from an adult when he’s talking to you.”

  “I-I’m s-sorry, mister, b-but I gotta get home. P-please-”

  “Guess I’ll just have to teach you some manners myself,” the man interrupted as he picked up Christian and carried him back into the entrance-way. As soon as he got into the shadows next to the doors, the man pulled Christian’s shorts down and bent him in half over his knees.

  Christian had been spanked—and abused—on a regular basis all his life by his mom, her various boyfriends, relatives, everyone it seemed. So this was nothing new. He also knew that it was better not to struggle or the beating would be that much worse. He cringed in anticipation of the hand slapping his bare back-side. Then, he did feel the man’s hand on his butt—it wasn’t a slap though. The man was squeezing the boy’s cheeks.

  “Oh yeah, you’re a very bad boy. I can feel it. Such a naughty boy.”

  Then, the pain came . . . but it wasn’t from a spanking. Something was being stuck into Christian’s rear end. Now he did struggle.

  “So, you want to wiggle around, huh? Well, you will get your punishment . . . and it won’t be my finger this time,” the man said as he flipped Christian onto his stomach, pinning him to the ground.

  When it was over, the man just walked away without saying anything. Christian was left lying on the ground with his shorts still pulled down around his ankles. He continued crying for awhile before he finally moved. When he was finally able to, he stood up, pulled his pants up, brushed himself off and wiped the tears from his eyes. Then, he walked the rest of the way home.

  Fortunately, Christian’s mom was passed out drunk when he got home; she never knew he was late. Christian never told his mom what happened that night—never told anybody. He also never went down that alley—or any other alley—ever again. He couldn’t stand to be in a dark place after that night either. He feared the dark.

  * * *

  “I’m not going into that alley. You can keep your hooch. I don’t care,” Christian said to the shadow-man.

  “Calm down. There’s no reason to get angry. Just relax. Stay calm. I didn’t know that Rosey was so afraid of the a
lley. We don’t have to go there. Why don’t you show me where this park of yours is. That would be okay, wouldn’t it,” the shadow-man said in a soothing voice.

  Christian was relaxed again. “Yes, that would be okay.”

  “We can talk when we get there. For now, just relax. Think of a happy place, okay?”

  “Happy place, yeah,” Christian said, robot-like, and began to walk with the shadow-man towards the park.

  Ten minutes later—about three fifteen in the morning—they were sitting on a park bench under a bright light. Christian was enjoying his Mad-Dog 20/20 wine.

  “You know, there’s really no reason for anyone to be afraid of an alley, even Rosey,” the shadow-man said.

  “Yeah, it’s silly,” he paused to take a swig. “Grown man and all. I mean, Rosey . . . she’s the one-”

  “Yessss, relaxxx. Just let it flow. There’s no reason to be afraid. Let it all flow out. Just tell me one thing. What scares you? WHAT SCARES YOU?!”

  Christian dropped the bottle. The shadow-man had disappeared. The park had disappeared. He was in the alley of his childhood. And it was dark. Pitch-black. He heard the man’s voice from the shadows of the entrance-way—the man from his childhood. That’s when Christian’s whole world went dark.

  The other shadow-man sitting on the park bench looked at his watch—three sixteen—and smiled.

  CHAPTER 7

  Ed sat up straight in bed, shocked awake by the nightmare. The room wasn’t right though.

  “The hotel. Edge Key,” Ed said out loud as he looked around.

  Something else wasn’t right. Ed continued looking around. The clock said three sixteen. That was usual. Then it hit him. The nightmare had been different. Ed hadn’t dreamt about his seven year old self in the alley. It had been some other kid in a different alley. No, it wasn’t a kid in an alley, but some derelict in an alley. No, that wasn’t right either, it was a derelict in a park. The nightmare was fading as Ed continued to wake up. All he could remember about the dream was that it wasn’t his normal nightmare.

  Ed’s computer was still sitting next to him on the bed. It was still turned on and a bunch of flying toasters were traveling from one side of the screen to the other in a random pattern—his screen saver. Ed touched the mouse-pad and the flying toasters disappeared, replaced by the article he’d been reading before he fell asleep.

  Ed started reading the article from the beginning. It was a two year old article from some little community newspaper in Poway, California that had been picked up by one of the San Diego papers. It was entitled, “Grisly Find Shocks Police.” According to the article, a morning jogger came across a body in one of the local parks lying on a park bench. The decedent had been a homeless, alcoholic male known to have frequented that area of town. Foul play had been ruled out so far. A detective speculated that the cause of death was alcohol related due to a broken bottle of cheap wine found next to the body.

  “He probably was in the middle of some type of alcohol-induced hallucination, which would explain why he’d tried to claw out his own eyes as well as the look of a frozen scream on his face and his shock-induced white hair,” the detective was quoted as saying.

  “Well, there’s the source of my nightmare,” Ed said to himself. “Serves me right for reading such gory stuff right before I go to sleep.”

  However, the similarities between this discovery and The Crash Test Maven were not lost on Ed, despite the fact that they occurred on opposite coasts. He decided to save the article. He also saved a few other unread, but promising looking sites from his earlier research including one article from a small newspaper in Oklahoma called, The Perry Daily Journal:

  BODY FOUND IN TOWN SQUARE

  A mysterious death has shocked this small community and brought a type of excitement into this quiet town unknown since the Oklahoma City Bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was briefly held in the Perry jail. Less than one hundred yards away from the window of McVeigh’s former cell, a body was discovered under one of the large trees in the town square yesterday morning. This was no ordinary discovery though. Details are sketchy, but according to one source, the deceased appeared to have died while trying to claw out his own eyes. His face was frozen in an eternal scream and his hair had turned solid white.

  Police are still investigating this gruesome find and the name of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of the next of kin. Foul play has not been ruled out, although it seems highly unlikely due to the apparent self-inflicted nature of the wounds. The official cause of death will not be released until after an autopsy is completed. If this were determined to be a murder, it would only be the second murder of this year.

  After Ed saved his research, he closed his computer and rolled over in the hope that he could get back to sleep. He wasn’t sure what time it’d been when he finally passed out, but he couldn’t have been asleep for too long when he was awakened by the nightmare. Since this wasn’t his normal nightmare, he thought he might actually have a chance of getting back to sleep. He wasn’t disappointed. Ed fell back asleep within a few minutes.

  Ed slept until about nine o’clock in the morning and he woke up feeling relatively refreshed. Of course, he also had a vague recollection of another dream—a pleasant dream—involving Torrie, which probably accounted for his current mood. As Ed showered and got dressed, he was actually whistling a tune that seemed stuck in his mind for some unknown reason. It took him awhile to place the tune, but then it finally came to him. It was an obscure little ditty from the movie, Jaws. In the movie, the characters played by Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider were sitting around on the boat chartered to kill the great white shark, and they were all singing this song, “Show Me the Way to Go Home.”

  Ed couldn’t figure out why that particular tune was stuck in his head, but it didn’t concern him either. He had other things on his mind, like his Uncle Kane. Hopefully, there was nothing seriously wrong with Kane and he could get back to his story in Gibsonton. By ten o’clock, Ed was on his way to Ivory Rock Clinic.

  CHAPTER 8

  “I’m not eatin’ a god-damn thing until you tell me what I’m doin’ here!” Kane yelled at the nurse’s assistant who was trying to convince him to eat something. Breakfast had been served two hours ago, but Kane hadn’t touched anything on his plate.

  “Look, I had nothing to do with your admittance into the hospital,” said the nurse’s assistant. “There’s no reason for you to be angry with me. I’m just saying that if you don’t eat something, then the doctor’s gonna be less likely to release you. Just eat a little bit, will ya? I’m just trying to do my job, mister. At eight bucks an hour, I don’t need this kind of aggravation. If you don’t eat, they’ll blame it on me and I’ll get in trouble. So, why don’t you just do me a favor and eat a little something. If you do, I’ll try to find a doctor for you. Deal? The doctor can answer all your questions and I can finish my rounds.”

  “I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass, little miss, but I hate hospitals,” Kane said. He seemed to have calmed down somewhat. He knew his predicament wasn’t this twenty year old girl’s fault, and he hadn’t meant to take his frustrations out on her. “I just wanna know why I’m here.”

  “Is there a problem here?” said an older looking nurse who’d stopped in the doorway to Kane’s hospital room.

  “Hello, Nurse Trish,” Kane said to her. Kane knew her from his previous visits to the clinic. She’d been working here for as long as he could remember, probably since the dawn of time. He’d never really liked her. She was a mean-spirited person who didn’t seem suited for the health-care profession. “Just tryin’ to figure out how I got here, that’s all.”

  “Hmmft. If you can’t even remember why you’re here, then I think it would behoove you to stop causing Terri any problems and do what she says without any further trouble,” Nurse Trish said. “If you can’t behave yourself civilly, then we have a nice quiet room that you can spend a few hours in. Maybe that’ll change your
attitude.”

  Nurse Trish was referring to a specific room in the psych-ward where the staff would confine difficult patients until they calmed down. It was the padded room. Those who didn’t calm down on their own were given a tranquilizer shot and kept in solitary confinement until they did calm down.

  “That won’t be necessary, Nurse Trish,” Terri said. “We just made ourselves a little deal and mister, uh-”

  “Kane,” he filled in for her.

  “Mr. Kane agreed to eat his breakfast and I agreed to find a doctor who could answer some questions for him. Right, Mr. Kane?”

  “That’s exactly right, little missy,” Kane said while glaring at Nurse Trish. “She’s a good egg, Nurse Trish. You should get yourself more employees like her, people who are actually concerned about the well-being of the patients.”

  “Hmmft,” Nurse Trish mumbled and walked away from the insult.

  “Thanks for the help,” Kane said to Terri once Nurse Trish was out of earshot.

  “That’s okay, but remember, we have a deal. You’re gonna eat your breakfast while I go find a doctor for you.”

  “Yes, mam,” Kane said while saluting and smiling.

  As Kane began eating his breakfast, Ed was walking through the automatic doors of the clinic.

  “Hello,” Ed said to the receptionist who was talking to an attractive female staff member who was also behind the counter.

  “Can I help you?” the receptionist responded. It wasn’t Dawn and she definitely wasn’t as chatty . . . or as pleasant.

  “I’m here to see my uncle, Kane Nanreit. My name is Ed-”