Rising Fears

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Jason had a moment to remember Jonesy's words when the hunter had shown up at the general store to buy shot: "I figured I'd get out of town. Go up to the mountains where the only thing I have to worry about is a rogue dear impaling me or something."

  The hunter looked at Jason for a long moment, then his eyes rolled back and he died, pinned to the wall by a dead buck's antlers.

  Jason grabbed Lenore and Albert and dragged them out of the house, back into the mist that was still frightening but not nearly so terrifying as the prospect of being shut up inside the house with mist, phantoms, and the frightful trophy that now adorned Albert's wall.

  As before, all was pale darkness and disorientation in the fog. Glimpses of phantoms all around, seemingly ever more numerous, made everything seem crowded, strange, and dangerous. He tried to ignore them; tried even harder when he thought he saw a petite shape in the mist, holding hands with an even smaller form.

  Aaron. Elizabeth.

  He thrust the thoughts from his mind. It wasn't them. It couldn't be. They were dead and gone and would not come back. They were in oblivion, and he knew he would never see them again; anything he did see was just a trick of this horrible fog.

  Behind him, Lenore screamed.

  "What?"

  "I thought I saw him," she whispered.

  "The man with the knife?" asked Jason. She nodded. Jason pulled them on faster, moving quickly away from the area.

  Then Lenore stopped, shivered. "What?" asked Albert.

  "This is where Sarah West..." her voice petered off, and Jason realized that Albert had no way of knowing what had happened to his classmate.

  But apparently Albert didn't need to be told. "She's dead, too," he guessed.

  Jason said nothing, just pulling the group onward. Soon they were back at the Sheriff's station, which was still lit from within and without.

  Hatty's body was gone.

  "They're all disappearing," said Lenore. "Like Roanoke. Like the Harappans."

  "Then why not us, too?" demanded Jason. "Why not us?" He knocked over a table, so frustrated that he simply had to vent somehow. He pushed Hatty's computer off her desk, the electronics sparking as it crashed to the ground.

  Lenore moved instantly away, and he sensed her fear had suddenly focused on him. "Stop it," she whispered.

  He was disconcerted that he had frightened her, and even more upset to realize how much he didn't want that. But before he had a chance to apologize, she began screaming, "Stop it, stop it, stop it!"

  He stopped moving, embarrassed and alarmed at the rabidity of her outburst. "Sorry," he said lamely. "I just...I don't know what to do."

  "Don't throw things," she said. "Don't...don't be like that."

  "Sorry," he soothed, trying desperately to exude calm, hoping that she could forget and forgive his outburst. "No more throwing things. We'll just stick together and figure out what's going on. Right, Albert?" There was no answer, so he looked around. "Albert?"

  Albert was gone.

  Lenore instantly assumed a defensive look, not so much for herself as for the missing boy, and Jason again marveled at how she could be so concerned about other people in a time like this.

  She'd be a great mother, he thought. He suppressed the urge to take her hand, instead settling for following her as she rushed out of the Sheriff's station.

  "Albert," she hollered, "where are you?"

  "Albert!" Jason added.

  Both of them jumped as they heard a voice nearby.

  "Right here," said Albert.

  Jason felt the relief as a tangible force that flushed through him like cool water. Albert had not disappeared like the rest of the town; had not died horribly and impossibly like Ox or Sarah West. No, the boy was standing next door to the Sheriff's station, looking up.

  Jason followed the boy's gaze upward. The clocktower. It was, he realized, the first non-digital clock he had seen since he had first seen the microwave clock in the Rand home. Like the digital clocks, the analog hands of this clock were a blur, but unlike the high-tech clocks, he could still make out the hands, barely. They were moving, but so fast he couldn't focus on them properly. Minutes swept by in seconds, hours in minutes.

  "Now what?" Jason said, more to himself than anything.

  Surprisingly, in this night of questions, he got an answer. "I know what's happening," said Albert.

  Jason and Lenore both looked at him. The boy almost shrank under their gaze, clearly unaccustomed to being listened to. "Well?" prompted Lenore.

  "It's fear," said Albert.

  "That's what the crayon notes said," replied Jason, "but that doesn't help us much."

  "Yeah, the notes were right," said Albert with a bit more confidence. "It's fear."

  "What do you mean?" asked Lenore.

  "This all started with Sean, right?" asked Albert.

  Jason nodded. "I think so," he said.

  Albert turned to Lenore. "Is it true what they were saying about him in school?"

  Before Lenore could answer, Jason said, "What were they saying in school?"

  "That he was afraid of the monster in the basement, and that's where he died," answered Lenore. To Albert she said, "Yes, from what I understand he did die in his basement."

  Albert nodded sagely. "The monster got him," he said simply.

  "What do you mean by that?" asked Lenore, beating Jason to the same question.

  "That the thing that frightened Sean the most...it came true."

  "This is insane," said Jason.

  "Is it?" Albert turned to Lenore. "How did Sarah die?"

  "You don't want to hear-" began Lenore.

  "She drowned, didn't she?" asked Albert.

  "How did you know that?" demanded Jason.

  "Because she was afraid of water," said Albert, warming to his subject. "So somehow she drowned in the middle of town."

  "And Ox was afraid of heights," said Lenore, looking at Jason with haunted eyes. "And remember how his store looked; how Ox looked?"

  Jason tried to find a flaw in what they were saying, but couldn't...other than the fact that it was utterly insane. But then, everything that had happened tonight was insane. He looked at the floodlights all around the Sheriff's station and murmured something under his breath.

  "What?" asked Lenore.

  "Scared of the dark," repeated Jason, remembering his secretary. "It's what Hatty said she was afraid of."

  "And I'm betting that's how she died," said Albert. "I don't know how dark could kill you, but I bet it did."

  Jason shuddered, remembering Hatty's blind, white eyes, and the way she had clawed at herself so hard she had a heart attack and died in her own personal darkness. He nodded. Then shook his head. "No, I don't believe this."

  "It's the only thing that makes sense," insisted Albert.

  "Sense?" said Jason incredulously. "Your definition must be a tad different from mine."

  "I believe him," whispered Lenore.

  "You can't be serious."

  "I am." She looked at the youth beside her. "Because my fear is here, too."

  "What do you mean?" asked Jason, though he had a strong suspicion what she was going to say. He was surprised, however, because Lenore said nothing. She just looked at the clocktower and then walked into the Sheriff's station.

  Albert took a moment to put his camcorder down on a nearby wall, aiming it into the mist, then he followed the teacher inside.

  Jason sighed and followed suit.

  Lenore was inside, sitting at Hatty's old desk, holding herself.

  "The man," she said without preamble. "The one you shot. The one we keep seeing. I know him."

  "How?" asked Jason.

  "Before I moved here," she began, "I-" Her voice cut off. Her mouth moved, but no sound was forthcoming.

  "What happened?" asked Jason. He reached out and touched her hand softly. It was hard for him, to reach out and try to connect with someone this way after so many years, but he simply couldn't let her feel alone. He w
anted to protect her, to stay with her and make sure she got through this thing alive.

  "It was in a parking lot," she said. "I remember his smell. Wine, some kind of cheap booze. And beneath it, something worse, evil. Rotten." She clutched herself even harder. "That smell stayed on me for months. I still smell it sometimes. Even now."

  "What happened to him?" asked Albert.

  "His name was Ben Cowles. I know because they found him: the cops did. And Cowles didn't go peacefully. There was a shootout a few hours later. Cowles was shot in the chest and neck. He survived, but was paralyzed from the neck down. He's been in a special prison since then. Until tonight." She shivered. "But he's here now, and he's not crippled, he's strong and nasty as I remember him. And he's back, because Cowles - a whole, healthy Cowles - is my worst fear.

  "What about the computer words?" demanded Jason. "What about the crayon notes? Where do those fit in?"

  "Don't you see?" asked Albert. "I bet that Sean was just the crack in the dam. The first."

  "We all live with so much fear," said Lenore quietly.

  Jason jerked as if shot. "That's what Hatty said. That everyone in this town lives in constant fear."

  "She's right," said Albert decisively. "The entire world has gone insane. Wars, disease, terrorism, just getting from your house to your car in some cities is a life-threatening proposition. Fear isn't just a reality anymore, it's a basic requirement of our existence. The whole world cringes in terror at night, afraid that the monsters might come to get them."

  "And here it's more than that," added Lenore, nodding.

  Albert smiled shyly at her. "Sean was the first, making the monster in the basement real with the intensity of his fear. He was the crack in the dam, and now fear has reached some kind of critical mass. And it's coming for all of us."

  "But what about the bodies?" said Lenore. "Why did they all disappear?"

  "They didn't," said Albert, with the air of someone about to deliver a coup de grace. "We disappeared. This whole town."

  Jason didn't get it, and could see that Lenore was lost as well. Albert sighed. "Wait here," he said, and went outside before Jason could tell him not to. He was back in just a moment, however, holding his camcorder, leaving the door open behind him, the mist easily visible from where they stood.

  Albert went to a small television on Hatty's desk, but instead of hooking the camcorder up to the device as Jason had expected he would, Albert turned on the TV. Snow was all the television showed. Albert aimed his camcorder at it and recorded the fuzzy image. Then he looked at Jason. "Is there a clock around?"

  Jason pointed at a clock in the corner. Like all the others, it was blurred; unreadable. Albert taped it.

  At that second, one of the shadowy wraiths appeared in the mist outside the open door, its horned head floating in the mist and reminding Jason of the deer he had killed. At the same instant as the phantom appeared, his walkie-talkie did its screaming trick. Albert turned around, whip-fast, and recorded the phantom.

  The ghostly apparition faded back into the mist, but Albert looked supremely satisfied with himself. "Got it," he said.

  He held up the camcorder to Jason and Lenore. "Now we have to go back to my house."

  ***

  TWENTY THREE

  ***

  Albert stood in front of his house and wondered if he would ever have a home again. A house was just brick and steel and wood. A home was a place you were safe.

  By that definition, he suspected he would be homeless for a very long time.

  The bay window that he had sat in for so many hours, reading comics or looking at his newest gadget in the bright sunlight it afforded was still gone, smashed to pieces by a crazy deer that had killed Mr. Jones. But the deer and Mr. Jones were both gone now.

  He was not surprised; this is what had happened so many times over the millennia. The world was a big place, he knew; big enough that you could never find out about everything, including the huge disappearances that he theorized had been going on since the dawn of time. Only a few were known, but he suspected that many more had happened.

  Fear was, after all, a contagious disease.

  He looked at Miss Harris. She was a total rock-solid babe, he had realized earlier, and tried to steal a glance or two whenever she wasn’t looking. Who would have known that the third grade teacher had such a great bod? Why did she wear all that stupid gray? He supposed it was because of her experience with that man, Cowles, whoever he was, but still…even if something bad happened to you, that was no reason to not be good looking. Albert knew that he would gladly have suffered a thousand near-death experiences to look just half as good as Miss Harris did.

  But that was just a pipe dream. He was who he was: Albert, super-nerd and uber-geek. He’d never be popular, never even really accepted. Miss Harris and Sheriff Meeks were treating him okay, but he knew that was mostly because he had something they wanted: information. Without knowing what he did, he doubted they would have saddled themselves with a fat tub of lard like him.

  He knew that they didn’t like him; knew they couldn’t like him. But he still reveled in the fact that, finally, someone was listening to him.

  He pointed at the destroyed window. "What I thought," he said.

  "But why?" asked Lenore. "I still don’t understand why they disappeared."

  "That’s not the right question," said Albert.

  "What is?"

  Albert smiled at her. Rock-solid babe. "The right question is why did we see Mr. Jones die? Why him specifically, and Ox, and Miss Hatty, and Sarah? Why did we see what happened to them, but not see what happened to everyone else?"

  He waited for a moment. Surprisingly, it was Sheriff Meeks – whom Albert had always thought to be a bit slow in the head, people who talked as little as the sheriff did were generally either slow or shy – who came up with the answer.

  "It’s because we knew," said Sheriff Meeks.

  Albert nodded. "We knew what they feared," he said. "So we saw how they died. Because whatever is doing this…"

  "…wants us to know what’s coming," said Miss Harris.

  Albert nodded, then felt himself grow a bit downcast. "But why it wants us to know…that I haven’t figured out yet."

  Again, Sheriff Meeks surprised him. "Time slows down," said the sheriff.

  "What?" said Albert.

  "I remember –" began the sheriff, then stopped himself from saying something. A second later, he said, "The worst part of fear is knowing what’s going to happen, and not being able to stop it."

  "And being alone while it happens," added Lenore.

  Albert nodded. "Like we are," he said. He again felt the crushing loneliness that had always followed him, the despair of knowing that no one would or could ever really love him. He nodded curtly, suddenly anxious to again prove his worth to the sheriff and Miss Harris so they wouldn’t ditch him out here.

  He went inside his house.

  ***

  Jason felt himself grow cold as he realized what fear did. He remembered The Dream, and the reality behind it; remembered how in every instance time slowed so that he couldn’t stop the shots, couldn’t stop the sick bastard from gunning down Elizabeth and Aaron.

  If he’d only gotten there in time, they wouldn’t be gone right now.

  It was his fault. They were gone and it was his fault.

  He pushed that thought away as they entered the basement. Albert – he was a good kid, one that deserved better than he’d been given in life – hooked up his camcorder to some of the editing equipment he had in the basement and hit several buttons.

  A large computer screen lit up. Haunting images flashed: the clocktower hands, blurred too fast. The flash of the ghost that had wandered past the Sheriff’s station in the mist, strange points on its head. The shriek of Jason’s own walkie-talkie.

  Albert hit another button, and this time the scene appeared in slow motion. The clock reappeared, still moving fast, but this time clear enough to see that it was
moving forward. The shape of the wraith in the mist, moving slower and appearing more solid, but still unrecognizable. The feedback of the walkie-talkie, lower pitched but still sounding like a fork scraping across plates.

  Albert typed a bit, and this time the screen showed the clock in super slow motion. It appeared to be moving normally.

  "So that’s why all the clocks seemed blurred?" Jason said.

  The kid nodded. "The digital clocks were all moving too fast to see. Or better said, we were moving too slow to see them continue to move normally."

  "What about the ghosts?" asked Lenore, and Jason nodded. What were they?

  Albert clicked a mouse and the scene jumped ahead, to the spot where the ghost walked by. Only in slow motion it wasn’t a ghost.

  Jason gaped.

  It was a cop. The "horns" were now visible as the points on the officer’s hat. A gas mask was slung around his neck, and the goggles reminded Jason of the large eyes of the phantoms that he had glimpsed from time to time.

  Albert stopped the playback with the officer frozen on the screen. "What do you want to bet that on the last day of the Harappan civilization everyone was scared shitless? War, famine, destruction, all the things we are afraid of today. It got to be too much, and their fears came alive to them. To us."

  Albert clicked the mouse again and the playback continued. The cop raised his walkie-talkie and Jason suddenly realized why his own device had screeched so often when the "ghosts" had passed nearby: he was picking up on the transmissions of the cops’ walkie-talkies.