Phobias

by Ryan Horvath

  “It’s right here,” Walt said moving out of his mom’s grip. Doing so made him feel cold, as if her arm represented the warmth of her womb. He waved a hand for Terry to come over to where the dart still rested.

  Terry stepped over and stood on one side of Walt while his mom came to the other.

  “You… You didn’t touch it, did you, baby?” Mrs. Bailer, or Lisa to her friends, asked her son. She looked down at the tiny object and sneered at it in disgust.

  “Of course mot, Mom,” Walt replied. “I know better than that.”

  “What makes you think this has anything to do with Calvin’s disappearance?” Terry said and knelt down for a closer look at the dart. He never saw anything like it before and he’d seen a lot. The ampule portion of the dart was about three quarters of an inch long and minute in diameter. It was rounded on one end and had a well-honed metal sharp on the other.

  “Well… Isn’t that blood on the tip?” Walt said.

  “Maybe,” Terry returned. “But we won’t know for sure until we get it back to the lab.” He did know for sure though. He’d seen enough bodily fluid spilled over the course of his career to agree this small amount was indeed blood. But that didn’t mean it was Calvin Vale’s blood. He pulled a pair of tweezers and a small baggie marked EVIDENCE from the pocket of his jacket. He used the tweezers and gently picked up the dart. He dropped it into the baggie and sealed it. He held it closer to his eyes. He could see no fingerprints on the casing that held a tiny volume of an odd-looking green liquid. He turned his head to look at Walt. “So tell me about this ‘messing with’ you were talking about. Why would someone be messing with your best friend?”

  Walt pulled his lower lip back with his top teeth and looked to the side. He was reluctant to tell anyone about Calvin’s personal dilemmas. But if it helped find his friend, he really didn’t have a lot of choice. Walt repeated about the tarred windows and about how he and Calvin found Cal’s dream drugs spelled differently on the bottle’s label. When he was finished, he said, “Calvin thought it was because of his phobias.”

  Terry stood up fast and stared at Walt. His mind began to race and he moved his eyes over to his unmarked detective’s squad car and the man who sat inside. Phobias wasn’t a word Terry heard often, but today, he’d heard it a lot and here Walt Bailer was saying it again. Earlier today, he and Chad talked a lot about phobias. Chad told Terry about Marcia’s phobias as well as his own. And the assistant medical examiner mentioned hers when they were at the morgue. “What… phobias?” Terry said sternly. His mind continued to work and he suddenly became sure, without the aid of a lab, that the blood on the dart tip was definitely Calvin Vale’s.

  “I don’t remember what they were called,” Walt said. “I mean. There’s a special name for each phobia and I don’t remember the special names. But Cal had a trio of pretty nasty fears that started right after his dad died. He’s afraid of the dark. He can’t stand to be alone. And… this is what the dream drugs are for… He’s terrified of his own dreams.”

  “You never told me about that,” Lisa said to her son.

  “Cal tried to keep it pretty private. Aside from his mom, and a couple of us on the team, I guess only his shrink knew about it,” Walt returned.

  “And that’s why he thought it was someone messing with him?” Terry suggested. “Because one of the guys on the team knows.”

  “But it couldn’t have been any of them,” Walt said shaking his head. “Those three only know about Cal’s fear of the dark. And they’d never do anything like tarring his windows. I mean, Cal and I have known those guys for years. Plus they’re all too busy with their girlfriends.”

  Terry was thinking about the phobias. He pointed to his car and said, “You know that man? Either of you?”

  Walt and Lisa looked toward the car. In the last vestiges of light, they could just make out the man. He stared back at them curiously. But neither son nor mother recognized him. They both looked at Terry and shook their heads.

  “Who is he?” Lisa asked.

  “Someone you two might have just cleared from a list of suspects.” Chad had been with Terry all day. And he was almost certain, with the mention of Calvin’s phobias, that there was some connection between Chad’s dead wife and Calvin’s disappearance. If there was a connection, Chad most likely didn’t kill his wife since he was accounted for when Calvin disappeared. “Do you happen to remember the name of Calvin’s medication?” Terry asked Walt.

  Walt tried to remember but then realized he didn’t need to. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and typed the first few letters he recalled Calvin speaking to him when he looked the medication up just a few hours ago. The history on the phone quickly displayed the search he did previously. He handed his phone to the detective.

  Terry sounded out the name of the medication while he clicked on one of the links. After a few seconds of reading, he looked at Walt and Lisa and said, “This is an anti-psychotic.”

  Walt shrugged. “Cal always said his dreams were terrible,” he offered. “But he wasn’t a psycho.”

  “Happen to know the name of the doctor who prescribed him this?” Terry continued.

  Walt shook his head. “Cal never told me.” He thought for a beat and then snapped his fingers. “We could go look at the bottle! He left the pills by his bed before we came over here to paint.”

  “What is Calvin’s exact address?” Terry asked.

  “It’s over on Dupont,” Walt said. “But can’t I just take you over there? His mom’s kind of a… well… it’d just be easier to get in the house if she sees a familiar face. I can just tell her Cal’s sleeping over; he’s in the shower cuz he got paint all over himself, and asked me to run over and get his pills.”

  Terry looked at Lisa and raised an eyebrow.

  Lisa picked up the implication. “No, I didn’t raise my son to be a liar. But I raised him to be smart. Calvin’s mom hasn’t done well since her husband died…,” she started.

  “Neither of them has,” Walt chimed in.

  “And she drinks. If you go over there and tell her her son is missing before you know for sure there’s something up, then you’ll have a bigger problem on your hands,” Lisa continued. “But what about your dinner?” she said to Walt in a motherly way.

  “I’m kinda too stressed out to eat right now, Mom,” Walt said. “I want to make sure Cal’s okay. Can you just wrap some up for me and I’ll eat later?”

  “Hold on a sec,” Terry said. “I can’t just take a minor into my car with me. There’s protocol… paperwork…”

  “You know, detective?” Lisa said. “It was really tough for me. When Walt was supposed to start kindergarten. I didn’t want him to go right away so I kept him back. Not a full year, and Walt worked to make up that time, but he’s still one of the oldest seniors in his class. And he’s been eighteen for about five days now. If he wants to help, he’s adult enough to make that decision.”

  Walt looked hopefully at Terry.

  Terry thought about it. Having Walt with him was no worse than having Chad. “Alright, Walt. Let’s go.”

  ~*~0~0~*~

  In the car, Terry introduced Walt and Chad.

  “Chad lost his wife early this morning in an… incident,” Terry explained.

  Walt could see the fatigue and sadness in Chad’s eyes. But he also recognized something he’d seen on Calvin’s mom’s face before; usually right when she got home if she didn’t hit the bars after work. Chad was in dire need of a drink.

  “And Walt here,” Terry said, talking to Chad, “lost his best friend an hour ago. He just… disappeared.”

  “So what’s that got to do with my wife?” Chad said sourly.

  “Walt’s friend, Calvin, like your wife, like you, has some pretty unusual phobias,” Terry said. “Somehow, I’m thinking there’s a connection. You ever heard of anyone using fear as a weapon?” He looked from Chad to Walt.

  “An instrument of control maybe…,” Walt offered.

  T
erry nodded. “I have a hunch that someone is taking it to a new level.” He started the car, reversed into a neighboring driveway, and pulled them into the alley and then the street.

  ~*~0~0~*~

  Minutes later, they were back at the Vale residence.

  “Man it looks dark. I wonder why Mrs. Vale isn’t home yet,” Walt pondered aloud.

  Terry pulled them to the curb and Walt bounded out of the car. He raced up the sidewalk and rapped on the front door. He listened intently and heard nothing. Walt turned back to the detective’s car and saw Terry and Chad had gotten out and were standing on the street in front of the car. Walt knew where there was a key hidden and pulled it out from under a nearby owl statue. He let himself in the dark quiet house. For the briefest second, before he switched on the lights, Walt felt true empathy for his best friend. When the lights were on, he headed back to Calvin’s bedroom while calling out for Mrs. Vale. It only took a few seconds to establish she wasn’t there.

  In the bedroom, Walt turned on the light and looked on the night stand where he was absolutely certain he saw Calvin set his bottle of dream drugs.

  But there was no little orange prescription bottle there.

  “What the fuck?” Walt said to the empty room. He crossed over to the night stand and began looking on the floor around it but spotted no bottle of pills. He opened the small drawer in the stand and also found no medication.

  “But I saw him set it right here.” He tapped the wood loudly. “I’m sure of it!”

  Walt suddenly realized that, if Calvin had been taking the dream drugs for a few years now, there was bound to be an empty bottle around. He set to searching; mostly under the furniture and a few articles of clothing and papers. He hunted for five minutes and came up empty-handed. He checked the small bathroom that was across the hall from Calvin’s bedroom but scored nothing. Feeling defeated and confused, he stepped back outside and joined Terry and Chad.

  “Your hands are empty,” Terry said with disappointment.

  “I know that,” Walt said hotly and furrowed his brow. “The dream drugs are gone.”

  ~~8~~

  Holly yawned and stretched her arms high over her head when the microwave in the employee lounge beeped indicating her late-night breakfast was finished cooking.

  It was just after 8:00 PM and right about the same time Walt, Chad, and Terry were pulling up to the curb in front of the Vale residence, though Holly had no way of knowing that. She was unrested. Exhausted. Whipped, actually. After the end of her night shift, Holly would usually go to the gym for a couple hours, then, as the sun started to come up, she’d take care of errands. Sleep for her usually started around 11:00 am or noon. But this afternoon she hadn’t slept well at all. She’d been plagued by a dream that she couldn’t seem to get away from no matter how many times she shook herself awake.

  ~*~0~0~*~

  Holly’s parents always knew about their daughter’s irrational phobia of all things with eight or more legs. Her mother sympathized but her father ridiculed her for it, so much so that Holly soon began to hate her father when he would mock her reaction to a passing daddy-long-leg or hopping jumping spider.

  In her ongoing dream last night, her parents, surely at the suggestion of her father, had lured and trapped Holly into a most unusual compound. Once inside its high fences, razor wire stretched along the top of the fence line and heavy doors slammed shut and locked around the entrance she passed through. Not long after, thick fog began to slowly creep across the ground and towards her. And in the fog, though she couldn’t directly see them, several things moved toward her. She raced to the structure that resembled an unkempt Victorian house and scaled the stairs to the covered front porch. Out of the fog, she started to relax and took hold of one of the support columns while she watched whatever was in the fog continue to search. In seconds, she realized the column she was embracing was covered with short coarse hairs. With dread, she slowly looked up the length of the column until she saw a frightening thing. She was clutching the end of a very large spider’s appendage and, as she stared up in horror at its eight glassy eyes, she shrieked and felt a measure of her sanity slip away from her. She released the thing as an impossibly large spotted black tongue came out of the creature’s mouth and moved her way. Squealing, Holly ran for the front door of the house. Just as she was about the cross the threshold, she heard her father’s laughter ring out loudly and he called her names like pussy, bat shit crazy cat, and dipshit chicken-shit. Tears slipped out of her eyes and when she ran into the dark house, she abruptly found herself nude. The space was chilly and she tried to cover the rarely exposed areas of skin with her hands, but they did little to warm her. Next, in the distance, she heard feet; not just one or two but the scuttling sound of thousands. Trepidation began to shake her and from the hallway she saw a dozen or more oversized house centipedes approaching. Their feathery legs undulated oddly as they closed in. Holly was sure she could hear the hideous impact of each footfall as the arthropods approached. Holly looked desperately around for where to go next. To her left was a cobweb shrouded archway with an unknown ebon room behind it. To her right was an unoccupied living room with a window.

  She hastily moved to the living room as the sound of centipede legs neared. Once inside, from the bottom of the room’s only window, hundreds of half-dollar-sized spiders began to ascend, covering the glass. Holly trembled and saw the centipedes coming into the room, but a quick scan of the space told her she had nowhere else to go. Soon the vile, oversized creatures would be on top of her and, if her mind didn’t fracture at their first touch, it certainly would after only just a few.

  Here, baby girl a voice said from nowhere. It was her mother’s but it sounded surreptitious. Grab onto this.

  A trapeze appeared above Holly. Without thinking twice, she jumped as high as she could and seized the grab bar. When she had it, she looked down to see a centipede stop where she’d just been standing and raise its vile head to look at her. Its mandibles clicked in frustration as its kin joined it and stared up at Holly. While Holly hung there it didn’t take long for the revolting creatures to begin to pile on top of one another building their own version of a centipede pyramid much like the human variety Holly had once been part of when she was a high school cheerleader. Soon they’d be high enough to start gnawing on the bottoms of her feet.

  Stupid, Holly-scared-by-golly her father’s voice taunted. Don’t just sit there. The spiders are coming in through the window now.

  Holly dared a glance at the window. Sure enough, the army of frighteningly large arachnids was coming across the ceiling straight to where she was hanging. Sweat poured off of her and landed on the centipedes below, which only seemed to double their efforts to get to her.

  Why are you doing this, Daddy? Holly whimpered.

  Gotta face yer fear, Kiddo her father’s voice rang out confidently. Only way to get rid of it is to face it.

  But I can’t! They’ll kill me! Holly insisted.

  No they won’t, you big ninny! her father countered. They’re just a buncha’ little bugs.

  The centipedes, now inches below her, didn’t look little. Neither did the increasing hoard of black spiders marching across the ceiling.

  I…I…I… can’t… move… Holly said weakly. Her arms were starting to burn but she had nowhere to move to.

  I’ll help you her mother said again. A series of trapezes spread across the ceiling. Holly heard her father growl in frustration, but she wasn’t going to wait for the heinous creatures to get any closer to her. She built momentum and began to swing from trapeze to trapeze until she was out of the living room.

  Shoulda just dropped right down on those centipedes, you chicken shit her father chastised. We coulda been done with this right then and there. But now? Now this has gotta go on all night!

  And it did. No matter how many times she woke during the night, when she fell back to sleep, she fell back into the compound and the house and the sick game her father was playing. So
metimes she had to contend with millipedes and scorpions; in other instances, it was monstrous ticks and solifugae. But mostly, it was fucking spiders.

  When her alarm finally woke her in the early parts of dusk, she and her sheets were soaked in perspiration.

  ~*~0~0~*~

  Once awake, she felt like she could slip at any moment back into sleep and that unthinkable compound full of arachnids. She felt so woozy upon standing from her bed that, when she moved her hands in front of her face, colorful tracers were left behind, as if she was coming off an LSD trip.

  Holly didn’t know that she’d indeed been drugged. Not with LSD but a more potent hallucinogenic that she, even with her medical training, had never heard of.

  Miedo had let himself into her condo and slipped it into her water while she was taking a shower before retiring to bed. It was a creation of his own and he couldn’t have been happier with its results as he watched her fear-idled sleep through the cameras hidden in her bedroom prior to collecting the young football player.

  Also, before he collected the football player, he stopped by Holly’s office at the Anoka County Medical Examiner and left her a very special surprise. If Holly found it on her own, she’d likely panic and it would kill her. But if she didn’t come across it by her lonesome, Miedo would activate his little creation and set it to strike her when the time was right.

  ~*~0~0~*~

  With her late-night breakfast on a plate in her hand, Holly sat down at her desk and lazily began looking through e-mails while she thought about Marcia Dean’s demise. High and deep in the upper recesses of the kneehole of her desk, a creature waited. Suspended in a freshly constructed web was a black widow spider. But it was unlike any other black widow on the planet. Miedo had made some interesting modifications to its genetic structure and it was far more aggressive than its reclusive kin with a venom that was also unlike that of typical widow spiders.

  The spider shuddered in its web as Holly’s hand neared it when she reached down to scratch her knee, but it did not attack her.