by Bryn Roar
“Sorry, Daddy. Is there anything I can do?”
“Nah, that’s all right, Rusty. I’m only teasing you. You ain’t a boy for very much longer. Enjoy it while you can. I hear Frank done hired you to be a projection man.”
“Projectionist, Dad. And yes sir…thanks to you.”
Ham nodded and smiled. “You gotta go where your heart leads you, son.”
Rusty followed his dad over to their backyard, where the two of them took a seat on top of their Talkin’ Table. As they referred to Jessie’s old picnic table. Betty Anne had left a bucket of ice on top of the weathered planks, chilling two bottles of Miller High Life.
Ham looked behind him, to make sure his wife wasn’t watching from the kitchen window, and handed over one of the beers to his son.
Rusty clinked bottles with his dad. “I’m glad we’re alone, Pop. I’ve been meaning to tell you something.”
Ham took a long swallow and ran the ice-cold bottle over his perspiring face. “Yeah? Well, I’ve been meaning to talk to you too, son. Mind if I blather first?”
“Not at all,” Rusty said. He took a long pull himself; hating the taste, but liking the feeling it gave him. His dad had only recently begun to let him have the occasional beer, and it was still a big deal for Rusty.
“You being careful, boy?”
“Sir?”
Ham killed the rest of his beer and upended it in the ice bucket. “I don’t rightly know how to go at this, Rusty. This island. Moon. You know what she meant to your granddaddy Jessie, what she means to me. I adore this lizard lovin’ rock. It’s home. But…”
Rusty gave the rest of his beer to his dad and watched him drink it down. The last time he’d seen his father so worked up was when he gave him The Talk.
“What’re you trying to say, Dad?”
“This island. She’s not always what she seems. When I was ten years old, your granddaddy told me what I’m about to tell you. That this place has direct ties to Heaven and Hell.” Ham could tell by the way his son’s eyes widened that he’d struck a cord. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
Rusty pushed his glasses up on his nose. “I’m beginning to think I do. Bud…he has these dreams…visions, which seem to have a supernatural force behind them.”
“And you believe that?”
“I didn’t at first. Bud’s been through so much. It’s natural for him to—”
“To have a screw loose?”
Rusty shrugged.
“Only now you don’t think so.”
Rusty hesitated for a second, and then he firmly shook his head. “No. I don’t think so.”
Ham took a deep breath and looked out at the ocean, searching for his muse. His silver pendant dangled off his bull neck, the bright rays making it dazzle like a miniature star. A gray/black fin broke through the dappled waves and Ham smiled ear to ear. “The good Lord should’ve given dominion over the earth to those smilin’ critters. If He had, this world would sure be a better place. Couldn’t do any worse than our sorry behinds.” Rusty had heard this theory before, and he waited for his father to get back on track. “Son, stay close to your friends in the days ahead. There’s something going on here I can’t put my finger on. It…it just don’t feel right.”
Rusty considered telling Ham everything he knew about the rabies scare. The Center. Dr. Bidwell. The whole sorry shebang. Instead, he kept his mouth shut. Things seemed to be getting back to normal, and the last thing he wanted was to stir up that hornet’s nest again. Better to let sleeping wasps lie. Later, he would come to regret that decision. Maybe things would have turned out different had he warned his dad. But the moment passed, and Ham moved on.
“When I was a boy I saw something that to this day I don’t rightly understand. I was sitting on the docks with my daddy, sharing a beer with him—like you and I doing right now—when I saw a rat tightroping down a mooring line from The Moon Maiden. Trying to come ashore, you know? Like rats been doin’ since man first took to the sea.”
Rusty could only nod. He understood that he was learning something of real importance here, and he didn’t want to break his father’s train of thought.
“Well, that rat got about halfway down the rope, when suddenly he stopped. As if it had run into an invisible wall…or seen something so terrible, something a rat could only see...that it changed its mind about disembarking. Mr. Rat, he did an about-face and shot up that line so fast, you’d ‘a thought a cat was after him! I looked up into your grandfather’s face, and he was studying me intently. Jessie said, ‘What you think about that, boy?’ I told him I didn’t know what to make of it. I said it was strange, but that there had to be a simple explanation. He then went on to tell me that he’d seen the same thing happen so many times before, and only on our docks, that it couldn’t be no “simple” to it. ‘Rats,’ he told me, ‘just don’t like Moon.’ And by God, he was right! From then on, I saw rats coming down the mooring lines of other boats, only to turn their scaly tails around at the last second. Son, in all my years here, I ain’t never seen a single rat on this island! A mouse neither, for that matter. Squirrels are the only rodents I know of on Moon. Maybe that’s because they’re only distant kin to the rat. Shiiitt, I don’t know.”
Rusty’s eyes filled up his glasses. That reminds me of my pet hamster, Goober. Remember him, Daddy?”
“How could I forget? Even if you did only have it for a day or two. We got that little thing for you down at the Wal-Mart in Beaufort. You was about ten, right?”
“Yes, sir. The man in the pet department let me pick the one I wanted. Told me to choose one that wasn’t scared to be picked up. Said it was less likely to bite that way.”
“That’s right. You carried that furball all the way home…until it bit you.”
“He curled right up in my pocket and fell asleep on the ride over on the ferry. Then, when we were offloading, he started acting crazy. I tried picking him up and putting him back in the cage, and that’s when he bit me! You had to stop the truck and catch it for me.”
Ham chuckled. “Little rascal bit me too.”
“Never could pick Goober up again. Not without gloves. He was wild after—”
“After we landed on the island.”
“Yes, sir. He commenced to running around in circles in his cage, and two days later, he was dead; his teeth gnawed down to bloody nubs, from trying to chew his way through those bars. I always assumed I just picked the wrong hamster, that he was sick or somethin’. You’ve known all this time, though, haven’t you?”
“I didn’t want to scare you, son. But rodents aren’t the only creatures that don’t cotton to this island. Old lady Purcell? For years she tried keeping a cat, but they react even more violently to this place than rats do. They will not abide it, no sir. Dogs for some reason don’t seem to have a problem here. Nor do all the wild critters in the Pines. ”
“Why haven’t you ever said anything about all this before now?”
“To be honest, Rust, til recently, I didn’t know if I really believed it. Even if it was true, I certainly didn’t think it mattered all that much. So what if rats and cats don’t care for this island! Shoot, far as I’m concerned, that’s a good thing!”
“I can tell it bothers you now, though. What changed your mind?”
“What your granddaddy Jessie said all them years ago finally sunk in. I’m not a superstitious man by nature. Not like Jessie was. He and Momma Reva came from a Haitian culture that not only believed in Christian voodoo, they held it dear to their hearts. To them, the Supernatural played an essential part in our day-to-day lives. Co-existing with the mundane as well as the profane. Like I said before, Jessie told me that Moon has ties between Heaven and Hell. Good and evil abide here, son. Only he told me it warn’t nothin’ to be scared about; that there was a balance that kept the island safe…
“Most of the time.”
“Most of the time?” Rusty gulped.
“Good and evil, you see, are at const
ant odds with one another. My momma once told me that there are a select few places on earth where these wars take place. Battlegrounds, if you will, where angels are allowed to tread. Where the dead coexist with the living. Where a neverending conflict endures over our very heads. The very sight of which would drive a mortal man insane; but that God, in His wisdom, made us blind to. Moon Island, according to Jessie and Reva, is one of those places.”
Rusty stared up into the sky, imagining the unimaginable. “Did they ever tell you who was winning?”
“In the end, Good will prevail. That’s in the Bible, Rusty, and while I don’t know if I believe in all that battleground stuff your grandparents went on about, I do believe that Good will always triumph over Evil in the end. Like all wars, though, there’s give and take. Like the tides, an ebb and flow. Ground won and ground lost. So let’s say, for arguments sake, that daddy was right. Then during Jessie’s time here, and most of my life as well, Moon has been a place of peace and prosperity. Therefore, Good must’ve been kicking Evil’s red behind during that period.”
Rusty looked up at the sky again. “But the tide is turning, isn’t it?”
Ham put his arm around his son’s shoulders. “As my old grandmammy used to put it, ‘mayhap so, son. Mayhap so.’ If the tide has turned, then it started back in ’96, when Evil paid your good friend Bud a visit.”
“Do you really think so, Dad?”
Ham took a deep breath. “I feel it, son. Feel it in my tired bones. Moon ain’t the same no more. Been living here my entire life and I’ve never felt like this before. Not this bad, nohow. Like something wrong is waiting around every corner. Which is why I asked if you were being careful.” Ham saw the frightened look on his son’s face, and he tried to dismiss everything he’d just said. “Don’t mind me, Rusty. This hurricane has got me jittery, that’s all. Seeing shadows where there ain’t none. Just put my mind at ease, and stick close to your friends in the days to come, you hear me? Don’t go off into them woods by yourself.”
“I won’t, Daddy.”
“Good. Then let’s not speak of this foolishness again. Now, what was it you had on your mind?”
“I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry for disappointing you. About becoming a shrimper, I mean.” Ham tried to interject, but Rusty pushed on, knowing the timing would never be this right again. “But I promise you, Daddy, that someday I will make you proud. And when the day comes, when I go off to college and beyond, no matter where I am or where I go, Moon Island will always be my home. And I’ll always make time to come home. You have my word on that.”
Ham looked down at his son, his bottom lip quivering, his big brown eyes filling up with tears.
The last time Rusty had seen his father cry was at Mr. O’Hara’s funeral. “Daddy?”
“Shush, boy,” Ham said, hugging Rusty to him. “Just you shush and let this here grown man cry.”
*******
The first thing Josie noticed when she came home was the boarded up windows; the next was the absence of her mother and brother inside the house. Her eyes narrowed as she wandered through the empty rooms. Her mother’s door was locked, though that in itself wasn’t unusual. Shayna frequently locked her room whenever she left the house. Nothing was really amiss, unless you considered the intense darkness and the muffled echoes of her footsteps.
The boarded up windows explained all that, though. Didn’t they? Nevertheless, something was off. Josie just couldn’t put her finger on it. As soon as she’d entered her home, she’d felt it. It was ominous, oppressive, and…wrong. Yes, that was the word. Wrong.
It was a sixth sense kind of dread. A ghostly whisper in your ear, imploring you to: Take heed! Take heed! Here, there be monsters! She dismissed it as superstitious drivel, flipping on the lights as she moved throughout the rooms. As Rusty would say: Fuck a damn duck! This empty house feels more like a mausoleum than my home. No wonder I’m freaking out…
Yet even with all the lights on, it made little difference to the consuming darkness. It seemed to suffocate any penetrating light, leaving all but the lamps and overhead fixtures barely aglow. Joel’s annoying absence wasn’t helping her nerves much, either. Josie had intended on speaking with her brother as soon as she got home. Even though she’d discounted his feelings as nonsense, his fear had been a palpable thing, which had stayed with her throughout the day. Eventually infecting her, drawing out of her subconscious some long dormant trepidation that the modern world had till then kept sedated and slumbering. A trepidation that Bud Brown dealt with on a daily basis. In this dark vacuum, the ancient fear came on particularly strong. Urging her to flee into the night.
Get out, Josie! Get out, while you still can…
“Get a grip, Tits,” Josie said out loud. The act was akin to whistling past a graveyard. Just to prove she wasn’t afraid. “Joel’s safe and sound. And so are you, girlie.”
After changing into the sports bra, Josie dumped the shopping bags on her mattress and pulled her gym bag out from underneath the bed. The first thing she placed in the carryall was the finished pages of her novel. The rest of the shopping bag’s contents went in next, followed by a few other necessities from her dresser and bathroom.
As an afterthought, she added a few select sections from the Sunday funny pages. She kept a small stack of them inside her closet. Best gift-wrap in the world, the funny pages. And you couldn’t beat the price! She’d left Tubby’s coat with Bud, and would wrap it later.
Despite what she’d said to Ralph, just thirty minutes ago, she had no intentions of coming back for anymore of her things. It was the same with Bud and Rusty. They had all been through this drill so many times before that they no longer took it serious. Despite the uproar that always accompanied these storms, she had no doubts her stuff would still be here when she came home in a day or two. It was how most teenagers processed reality; bad things, like hurricanes blowing away your home, only happened to other folks on CNN or Fox News. Of all people, Josie O’Hara should have known better. Her whole childhood had been one long, continuous hurricane.
She stopped in the kitchen, noticing for the first time a note on the refrigerator. A wax museum magnet held it in place. Dracula, baring his bloody fangs.
Josie, I don’t think I’ll go with you on Ham’s
boat tomorrow. I’m taking Joel with me to the
Mainland until the storm passes.
See you real Soon, baby…
Shayna
The note unsettled Josie on more than one level. First off, it didn’t say whether they’d left for Beaufort already or not. Secondly, Beaufort wasn’t going to be much safer than Moon, if the hurricane came this way as predicted. Thirdly, and most importantly, Joel wouldn’t have wanted to go with their mother! Like the house, there was something off about the note.
That last line:See you, real Soon, baby…
Something about that dot dot dot, made her skin crawl. Her mom’s handwriting was different, too. The script spidery, uneven. As if another person had written it. Then again, maybe that’s what her mother’s handwriting looked like when she was clean and sober. Shayna was probably suffering from withdrawal. Sure, that’s it! The poor thing! I should be there for her!
Josie had her hand over the kitchen phone to call her Aunt Sissy, when suddenly it rang. “AAAHHH!!!” she screamed. Embarrassed, she lifted the receiver off the hook.
“Hello?” she said, taking a calming breath. Her heart felt like it was going to rip right through her chest.
“Josie,” Bud said on the other end. “I’m glad I caught you!”
“What is it?” she said, impatiently. She glanced up at the black cat clock on the wall. Its ebony tail and its slitted eyes flicking from side to side. It was louder than usual tonight. She was used to the laughing eyes, following her wherever she went, but tonight they seemed to be more intent, alive with mischief. She wondered what had possessed her to buy the ugly damn thing. Kitschy or not, she loathed it. She sniffed. There was a hint of bleach in th
e air. As if someone had recently mopped the kitchen floor—and underneath that, an odor she couldn’t identify except on a primal level. For some reason she flashed on the gray bitch in the Pines. Right after Bud had opened her belly up with the shotgun. All that blood and guts…
