Occasional Demons

by Rick Hautala

  “All it’s ever smelled like to me is dead, rotting fish!“

  His mother seemed to consider this for a moment. Then she nodded and stared at him silently. Mark sniffed the air, flaring his nostrils as though testing the wind.

  “Can’t you smell it right now?“ He snorted loudly, the faint stench—or the memory of it—clinging to the insides of his nose and throat. “God, ever since I can remember, that’s all this house, this town, this whole goddamned island has ever smelled like—a barrel of dead, rotting, putrid fish.“ His voice trailed away as he shook his head slowly and finished, “Just like pop’s bait barrel.“

  He took another swallow of beer, draining the bottle, then carefully placed it on the table in front of him.

  “That always was pop’s own special smell, wasn’t it?“ He chuckled softly. “It was like his personal cologne or something—a mixture of—what? Dead fish, diesel fumes, cigar smoke—“ He swallowed again, noisily, and added, “—and cheap whiskey.“

  “Your father was a lobsterman.“ His mom let out a lilting laugh of her own. “It went with the job.“

  “Yeah, but do you realize how embarrassing it was? Jesus, all through high school, I never wanted to invite any of my friends into the house. I didn’t dare to because of the smell. Especially my friends from the mainland. I was so embarrassed by the way the stink of him seemed to permeate everything. Everything! Remember how I used to shower once, sometimes two or three times a day? I did it just so that god-awful smell wouldn’t cling to me the way it did to him.“

  Ellen tilted her head slightly to one side and shrugged.

  “Well, your father wasn’t the only man on GlooscapIsland who smelled like that, I can assure you.“

  “Yeah, but...“ Mark took a deep breath before continuing. “There’s something I never told you.“

  He couldn’t meet his mother’s gaze, so he focused on his clasped hands in his lap.

  “You know how for the last couple of years I’ve been doing therapy. Well, I finally remembered something that happened back when I was nine years old that was significant. Remember the summer dad broke his foot and I went out with him to haul his pots?“

  Ellen nodded. “How could I forget? That’s when his drinking started getting worse because he was so depressed about being laid up. It really set him back, you know?“

  “Yeah, but I never told you what he did to me one day when we were out, did I?“

  His mother frowned. Sadness shaded her eyes as she shook her head, silently encouraging him to continue. Mark leaned back in his chair and heaved a heavy sigh. The fishy smell clung to him, making his stomach churn.

  “I always figured, when I grew up, I’d be a lobster man like pop, you know? Wasn’t really any other choice, it seemed. He was a lobsterman just like grandpa was, and I was a lobsterman’s son. I never doubted that eventually I’d take over his job, setting my traps in the same places he set his.“

  Mark picked up the empty beer bottle and began rolling it back and forth between his hands. He winced as the memory of that day grew sharper in his mind.

  “One of the first days we were out together, it was right after a storm, I remember, because the sea was running high. Well, one of his lines had gotten fouled up with someone else’s. Ole’ Man Johnson’s, as I recall. There was a real danger that the rope would get tangled up in our propeller. While I was hauling in the line, because the rough sea was tossing the boat around, I had to lean over the side of the boat. I was trying my best to unfoul the ropes while pop held the boat steady into the swells, but I was scared that with each rising wave, I would pitch head-over-heels over the side of the boat and into the water.“

  “Lobstering’s a dangerous job sometimes, no doubt about that,“ Ellen said mildly. “Fact is, I had more ’n a few arguments with your father about how I thought you might be a little too young to be out there with him, working as hard as that.“

  “Umm—yeah. I can bet he said something about ’making a boy a man.’ But you see, by mistake I cut pop’s pot line, and we lost his trap. The other guy’s buoy stayed afloat. Pop went nuts. He loses traps all the time. Everyone does. But he was so mad about losing that particular trap because it was my fault that he started shouting and cussing me out, calling me all kinds of things I’d never even heard before. He slapped me around a few times, and then he took me by the scruff of the neck and shoved my head into the bait barrel. Held me there a good, long time, too. So long I thought I was going to die.“

  Mark ran his hand over his throat to relieve that steady pressure that was still strangling him.

  “God! That stench of raw, rotting fish. I was convinced I was going to die. That he was going to kill me.“

  Mark paused a moment and looked at his mother, trying to read her reaction, but her face seemed devoid of expression. She didn’t seem the least bit surprised by this revelation, as if her thirty-plus years of living with Ernie Stover had made her immune to any surprises about his violence and abuse.

  “So, then.“ Mark cleared his throat. “You can see why that smell still bothers me? How after all these years, I still can’t get it out of my memory? It’s like it’s still clinging to the back of my throat, and no matter what I do, I’ll never be able to get rid of it. Never. I was so scared. I was absolutely convinced pop was going to kill me and then just toss me over the side of the boat. All for losing one lousy lobster trap! I mean, how many did he lose every year due to storms or whatever? It was crazy for him to react like that! And that’s why, after all these years, I can truly say that I think I feared … no, I hated pop more than anyone else in the world.“

  He’s finally said it out loud, and he sat back to take a deep, shuddering breath.

  “And I hate him for dying before I could tell him how much I hated him.“

  Mark looked at his mother, shocked and a little embarrassed to see the single tear that was running down from the corner of her left eye, shimmering like glycerin on the puffy, deeply-pored skin of her face. His stomach twisted up, and his eyes started stinging as though he were about to start crying, too; but after so many years of bottling up the rage and hurt inside himself, it seemed almost too easy to say these things out loud...at least to his mother. If only his father were still alive so he could tell him.

  “And you know what?“ he said after taking a moment to compose himself, “I don’t think it could possibly have been a conscious decision at that age, but from then on, I knew that I could never become a lobsterman, that I would do absolutely anything and everything within my power to get away from this island just to get away from him! That’s why I studied as hard as I did in school. I was sure that a college education was my ticket off Glooscap and away from a life that smelled like … dead fish in a bait barrel.“

  “You think I didn’t know that?“ his mother said softly.

  She stopped twisting her fingers together, and then slid both of her hands across the table toward him. He was surprised by how small and delicate her hands felt as she twined her fingers around his and squeezed. She had always seemed so big, so strong to him, but now it was a shock to realize how tiny and fragile she really was.

  A sudden, blinding surge of anger filled him. He thought how easy it would be to squeeze his mother’s hands together and grind her knuckles to powder. But after years of therapy, he knew his anger wasn’t directed at her. Although she had never spoken to him about it, he knew that she had suffered horribly at the hands of her husband, as much if not more than he had. Shortly after his father died, his mother had been hospitalized—for nervous exhaustion, the doctor had told Mark at the time, but he had recognized the truth. She’d had a nervous breakdown.

  “You wanna know something?“ Mark asked, struggling to keep control of his emotions. “There’s really only one thing I really wish for. I wish pop was still alive so I could tell him—just once how much he hurt me, and how, over the years, I’ve worked so hard to forgive him but can’t.“

  “I know that,“ his mot
her whispered, giving his hands a tighter squeeze. Her touch seemed unnaturally dry and rough.

  “I try to do it, too, in my heart,“ Mark continued. “I try like hell. Just last night, I was awake in bed for a long time just staring up at the ceiling and listening to the tick-tock of my old alarm clock. I tried so hard to imagine that he was there in the room with me so I could talk to him...so I could tell him that. But every time I tried to visualize him, I couldn’t get a clear mental image of what he looked like. Instead, all I could see was this...this—“

  The strong, cold clutching sensation gripping his throat spread a tingling panic through his body. Sweat broke out over his forehead, and deep inside his chest, a scream was threatening to burst loose at any second.

  “You know you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,“ his mother said mildly. “I know there’s been a lot of pain in your life, and I feel absolutely miserable that I wasn’t able to help you. If there’s anything you can’t forgive me for it’s that I wasn’t able to protect you.“

  “Mom,“ Mark said in a shattered voice. “You did the best you could at the time. I realize that. It’s just that last night—“

  Again, Mark shivered as the memory of his nightmare rose up. Leaning forward with his elbows in his knees, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut as the mental image came more clearly into focus. He knew he had to face this so he could put it all behind him, but shivers wracked his body as he remembered lying in his darkened bedroom last night trying to conjure up the image of his dead father’s face.

  “Do you—?“ he said, but tears welled up in his eyes, and his voice cut off abruptly. Gripped with a swell of emotion, he grabbed his mother’s hands again and gripped them tightly, as if desperate to find in her clasp even a small measure of the strength and reassurance he needed right now.

  “Whenever I try to remember what he looked like,“ Mark said in a high, halting voice. “I know it’s crazy, but all I ever get is this image of a big iron frog.“

  He sighed heavily, keeping his eyes closed as he shook his head and wished that the image burned into his brain would dissolve, but he knew that it never would.

  “I know how weird this must sound,“ he said, finally opening his eyes and looking at her through his tears. “But that’s all I ever see.“

  Ever since he had first mentioned this image to his therapist, more than two years ago, he had hoped that just saying this to his mother give him some measure of relief, but now that the words were out, all they did was make the mental image of the frog resolve all the more clearly in his mind, and with it came a bolt of blinding, white terror.

  Last night!

  He wasn’t even sure if he had been asleep or awake. There was no way of knowing if the image was inside his mind or really there in the room with him, hovering in a blue, ghostly glow in the darkness beside his bed. But he had seen the wide, grinning face of a huge frog. Its round, bulging eyes were slitted with golden, cat-like pupils that stared at him, unblinking, from out of the darkness. The wide face was split by the thick, dark line of a grin, but there was no life, no animation in the features. The frog’s face was absolutely immobile, as though it had been cast in metal that was marked with black and rust-red splotches of corrosion. Once or twice, the frog’s mouth seemed almost to twitch as though the creature were trying to make a sound or was about to speak.

  “An iron frog,“ Mark said, his voice as flat as a distant echo. “I think it’s, like, an image I made up for pop, you know? Maybe I always thought, even while I was growing up so scared of him because he hurt me so many times, that underneath it all, he still loved me somehow. He was probably quite vulnerable too, you know? Like he was this soft squishy thing—a frog—inside a hard, protective shell that he had to put on to protect himself.“

  “Could be,“ his mother said, nodding, “but I remember that we used to have an iron frog.“

  “We what?“

  Mark shoved himself back from the table so violently his chair almost tipped him over backwards. His foot kicked against one of the table legs, knocking his empty beer bottle onto the floor where it broke.

  “Sure,“ his mother said in a light, detached sounding voice as if she hadn’t even noticed his reaction. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember it? You gave it to me as a gift, many years ago, for Mother’s Day. Come on, you must remember it. It was the cutest little thing. Actually, it was quite large. A big, cast iron bullfrog about—so big.“ She held her hands about two feet apart. “You said you got it for me to put in my flower garden.“

  “Oh, my God!“ Mark said, reeling backwards, his hands clawing through his hair. “Oh, Jesus, no!“

  Whimpering softly, he began to pace back and forth across the kitchen floor, all the while slapping his fist into the flat of his hand, making wet, smacking sounds. His breath came in burning gulps. Even before his mother had finished speaking, something he hadn’t remembered in years had come rushing back to him all at once, so fast it crashed on top of him with the irresistible surge of a tidal wave.

  “Yes,“ he whispered in a raw, gasping voice. “Yes, I do remember it!“

  His mother looked at him and laughed lightly.

  “That was so like you, to pick out nice things for me. You were always such a kind boy. You were only—what, maybe ten or eleven years old when you bought it for me? I couldn’t imagine how you could have afforded something like that.“

  “I couldn’t,“ Mark said flatly, shaking his head and licking his lips. “I didn’t buy it...I stole it.“

  The memory swept over him, swirling inside his brain like a whirlpool of oily, black water. His face and hands had gone ice cold. With every step as he paced back and forth, he felt as though his legs were going to fold up under him.

  “You didn’t? Why, Mark! I’m surprised that you would ever steal anything!“

  “Oh yes, I did. I stole it off Old Lady Warren’s lawn, but you want to know what? The funny thing is, I never really planned to give it to you.“

  Squinting as she looked up at him, his mother shook her head as though absolutely confused.

  “What do you mean?“

  “I mean I was going to use it to...to kill him!“ Mark suddenly shouted as the long buried emotions exploded out of him. “I wanted to kill that miserable son of a bitch!“

  He took a deep breath in an effort to calm himself, but it did no good; he was swept away by a maelstrom of emotion.

  “I was on my way home from school when I stole that iron frog. It was a Friday afternoon, I remember. Sometime in May. I knew—as usual—pop would be on the couch in the living room, either watching TV or passed out. I was planning to sneak up on him while he was asleep on the couch and … and— I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I was going to smash his head in for all the things he’d done to me!“

  Hot, burning panic raged inside Mark. He had no idea what his mother’s reaction was. She sat leaning forward, her elbows on the edge of the table, her wrinkled hands covering her face. Her shoulders were shaking, but he couldn’t tell if she was crying or if it was just the tremors of age.

  Oh, God! He thought. I should have kept my mouth shut. She’s losing it. She can’t believe I would even think or say something like that!

  But when his mother looked up at him, he saw a sparkling glint of genuine amusement in her eyes. Only then did Mark realize she was laughing. Low, sniffing chuckles gradually built up into a gale of rippling laughter as she leaned back in her chair. Mark stopped his pacing and stared at her, dumbfounded.

  “What the—? What’s so damned funny?“

  “What’s so damned funny?“ his mother echoed, almost choking from laughing so hard. Pressing both of her hands to her temples and cupping her face, she shook her head from side to side. Her body rocked back and forth with uncontained merriment.

  “What’s so damned funny?“ she said again. “Why—why because that’s exactly what I did!“

  “What?“

  “Your iron frog... That�
�s what I used to kill your father.“

  She was shaking with uncontrollable laughter, and Mark was genuinely concerned for her mental and physical health. He watched as tears streamed down her cheeks. She sniffed and wiped them away with the flats of her hands, but more came along with rising peals of insane-sounding laughter.

  “Mom... Please,“ Mark said, moving toward her but not quite daring to get too near.

  “I’d finally had enough of his abuse, too, you know,“ she said between vain attempts to catch her breath. “And after all those years—I finally couldn’t take it any more—so one day I smacked him a good one on the side of the head with that iron frog. Killed him on the spot. Once he was dead, I dragged his body over to the stairway, and then I called the ambulance.“

  She looked up at him, and making eye contact seemed to calm her down, at least a little. Taking a deep, sputtering breath, she managed to gain a measure of control.

  “The cops came. And an ambulance. I told them that I’d been out shopping, and he must’ve been drunk as usual and fallen down the stairs and banged his damned fool head on the steps or something. No one ever questioned me about it. Late that night, way past midnight, after I’d been to the funeral home and all to make arrangements, I went outside and dropped your iron frog down into the old well. The mouth was all stained with blood, like it had this big, bloody grin, and there was some skin and hair still stuck to it that I couldn’t get off. I didn’t even try to clean it off ’cause I didn’t want it to maybe catch in the sink or something if the cops did decide to investigate.“

  “This can’t be... I don’t believe this,“ Mark whispered, finding it almost impossible to process what his mother had told him.

  “My guess is, it’s still down there at the bottom of the well,“ his mother said, shrugging her shoulders as though easily dismissing the thought. “Your iron frog.“

  Mark righted his chair and sat back down at the table, supporting his head in his hands. His whole body was drained of strength. Closing his eyes, he pressed the palms of his hands hard against his eyes until bright spirals of lights exploded across his vision. From somewhere far away, he heard a high, sniffing sound.