Fear Itself

by Jonathan Nasaw

  Attagirl, can’t be fearless until you’ve been afraid. Now turn away from the object, nice and slow, don’t hyperventilate; now you can open your eyes…now you can take a step…now you can take another….

  And the danger was behind her, both physically and temporally. Nor did she abandon her errand, instead detouring another three blocks out of her way, only to return home empty-handed—no letters in her box, from Pender or anybody else—to an empty driveway and empty house: no Wayne, either.

  By six o’clock, Dorie was concerned; by eight, she was worried; by ten she had already left three messages on Wayne’s machine and another two on his mother’s.

  A few minutes after eleven the phone rang; Dorie snatched the receiver off the cradle, barked “Where the hell are you?” and was told, in no uncertain terms, to watch her language. Vera Summers, who double-shifted as a private nurse, was Dorie’s age, a praise-shoutin’, hymn-singin’, tee-totalin’, no-cussin’ Baptist, and not to be trifled with. Dorie apologized. “Sorry, Vera, I thought it was Wayne.”

  “Apologize to Jesus, not me. But listen, sugar, I ain’t seen Wayne since church yesterday morning. Didn’t come home last night, didn’t call, nothing. You do see him first, you warn him he better duck next time he see his mama. He show up there, you have him call me. Meantime I’m ’onna see if I can get hold of my brother Al, on the police, grease some wheels.”

  “Okay, stay in touch.”

  “I will. I wouldn’t worry too much, though—it wouldn’t be the first time that boy stayed out all night, tomcattin’ around.”

  But Dorie did worry, because she knew something Vera did not know. God damn it, she thought, picking up the phone again—how many more of us have to die before somebody listens?

  “Hello?” The man on the other end of the line sounded peeved.

  “Hi, it’s Dorie. Did I wake you?”

  The voice softened. “Oh, hi. No, no problem—I’m a night owl. What’s up?”

  “Remember Wayne Summers?”

  “Refresh me.”

  “He was the only black guy at the convention.”

  “Right, right, the ornithophobe. What about him?”

  “He’s missing,” said Dorie. “He was supposed to be coming down today, but he never showed up.”

  “Maybe it slipped his mind. From what I recall of the boy, he did strike me as being just a tad flaky.”

  “No, I talked to his mother. She doesn’t know where he is either—she said he didn’t come home last night.”

  “Has she filed a missing persons?”

  “Not yet—but her brother, Wayne’s uncle, he’s a cop, he’s gonna look into it.”

  Attenuated silence, then the snick of a lighter and a hissing inhalation (the unmistakable sound of somebody toking up), followed by a spluttering cough (the unmistakable sound of somebody blowing a toke).

  “You okay?” Dorie asked.

  “Yes, yes,” he snapped. “Just calming my nerves.” It didn’t sound to Dorie as if he’d had much success. “Listen, Dorito, I’m sorry to hear about Wayne—I’m sure he’ll turn up—but I have to ask: why on earth are you calling me?”

  Up until now—up until Wayne—Dorie had restrained herself from taking her suspicions to any of her new friends from the PWSPD convention. The phobic community was the last place you wanted to start a panic. And her theory—that somebody was going around the country murdering phobics and trying to make it look like suicide—did sound a little paranoid, if not downright fantastic, not just to the authorities she’d contacted, but to her own ears as well. The letter she’d sent Pender was an umpteenth draft, and the only way she’d managed to get that one off was to seal the envelope and drop it into the corner mailbox without reading it first.

  But what had seemed like caution this morning felt more like denial this evening. Dorie took a here-goes-nothing breath and let ’er rip. She told him about the deaths of Carl, Mara, and Kim, about her correspondence with the Las Vegas, Fresno, and Chicago police, about the letter to Pender—she laid it all out, and when she had finished, the silence on the other end of the line was so complete she thought at first the connection had been broken.

  “Hello? Hello, are you still there?”

  “Yes, yes—just trying to find my Valium.”

  “Hey, take it easy on the meds,” Dorie cautioned him. “I can’t afford to lose any more friends.”

  “I’m more worried about you. If your suspicions are accurate—and I’m not at all sure they are, despite my now shattered nerves and pounding heart—you’re in more danger than I am, a woman alone and all that.”

  “I think we’re all at risk here,” replied Dorie. “In fact, I’m thinking about posting this on the chat room.”

  “No!” The response was unhesitating. “There are a lot of unstable personalities who visit that chat room. Something like this might drive some of them over the edge. Panic attacks, agoraphobia, maybe even suicide.”

  “Then what—”

  “First of all, calm down. I’m not without resources myself. I’ll make a few calls, contact a few people. I’ll let you know what I find out, you let me know what you find out. And in the meantime, let’s keep this between us—we don’t want to throw the whole community into a panic.”

  “You think so?” said Dorie doubtfully.

  “I know so. Look, I have to go now—sounds like Missy just woke up.”

  “Say hi to her for me—and for God’s sake, be careful.”

  “You too. Good night, Dorito.”

  “Good night, Simon.”

  7

  Monday had been a lonely day for Missy. Simon had given Tasha, her attendant, the week off, then spent all morning in the locked basement. And after lunch, instead of taking her to the park as he’d promised, he’d installed her in her bedroom with her favorite Audrey Hepburn videos (Charade, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Wait Until Dark), a snack tray, and strict instructions not to leave the room unless she had to use the toilet.

  Then he was kind of distant all through dinner and hardly paid any attention to her. It was a good dinner, though: hamburgs, Tater Tots, applesauce, and Little Debbie snack cakes for dessert—she gobbled down three before he even noticed, and he didn’t make her eat any green veggies. Plus Simon cooked it for her himself, which made it extra good.

  After dinner Simon sent Missy back upstairs, then went down into the basement, and didn’t come back up until halfway through The Original Ten O’Clock News. Missy never missed The Original Ten O’Clock News—she had a major crush on Dennis Richmond, the handsome black anchorman. Once Simon took her to the telethon and she met him in person and gave him a dollar for those poor children in their wheelchairs.

  But even after Simon came up from the basement, he didn’t pay any attention to Missy—just went into his room and closed the door. Missy kept expecting him to come kiss her good night, but he didn’t. She fell asleep with the light and the TV on but woke up in the dark with the TV off—she’d been awakened by the ringing of the telephone. From across the hall she heard Simon talking. She got out of bed and knocked on the door of the master suite. No answer—she opened it anyway, crossed the bedroom, and stuck her head into Simon’s little office. He was at the computer.

  “Who called?” A stranger would have heard Hoo-haw, but as always, Simon had no trouble understanding Missy.

  “Dorie. She said to say hi to you.”

  Missy decided to tease him a little. “Talking to your girlfriend. Simon’s got a girlfriend.”

  “Missy, I’m in no mood for your nonsense. Now, go back to bed before I get serious.”

  Uh-oh. When Simon said “serious,” he meant “mad.” When Simon was mad, sometimes he did things he was sorry for later. But the sorry didn’t help much if you were the one he did the things to. “I love you?” she whispered cautiously.

  “I love you, too,” said Simon, turning his back to the door. It wasn’t as though he’d had that great a day, either. That’s what comes from trying to do to
o much too fast, he told himself. The total darkness, then that stunt with the liver—greedy, Simon, greedy. And now, what with Dorie Bell stirring things up, it would have to end sooner than he had planned. For Wayne and Dorie both.

  Still, spilt milk and all that. And perhaps when Wayne knew the end was coming…

  Simon could feel his pulse quickening at the thought. Yes, that’s it, he told himself, that’s what we’re in this for. Then he realized Missy was still standing forlornly in the doorway. He spun his chair around again. “Hey, sis, what do you say, how ’bout pancakes for breakfast?”

  “Peachy keen,” replied Missy, picturing the Mrs. Butterworth’s bottle, which always made her giggle. “I love pancakes.”

  “I know you do. Now, go to bed—I have to go back down to the basement.”

  “I don’t like the basement. It’s scary.”

  “I know,” he said. “That’s why you mustn’t go down there, not ever.”

  “You do,” she said intelligibly. She could manage her oo sounds pretty well. And as Simon knew, her speech difficulties stemmed from the way the congenital Down’s flattening of the palate forced Missy’s tongue to protrude, and were not indicative of her level of comprehension.

  “I have to,” he said.

  “Ha hunh,” she replied, waving a chubby hand.

  Have fun. Simon found himself wondering, as he slipped on his new D-303, single-tube, dual-eye, night-vision goggles with built-in two-stage infrared illuminator, whether somehow Missy didn’t understand a lot more than even he gave her credit for.

  8

  Something was wrong.

  Since regaining consciousness, pain, thirst, and hunger permitting, Wayne had spent the last few hours working his way through the Bach suites numerically, and doing rather well, too, until he got stuck on number five, the one Casals called the tempestuous suite. The problem wasn’t that he didn’t have the music with him—he knew the score by heart. But he just couldn’t seem to get number five going.

  Then, in his mind’s ear, he heard old Brotsky: the tuning, Mr. Summers, the tuning. He’d forgotten to drop the A string down to G—a little trick Bach had employed to enhance the cello’s sonority. After that, the piece went relatively smoothly, although it was interesting to note that even on an imaginary instrument he still sometimes stumbled over the same difficult intervals that had always given him trouble.

  He played with his remaining eye firmly closed. Funny how total darkness made you want to shut your eyes, he thought. Otherwise it was too vast, like the blackness of space—you felt as though if you let go, you’d tumble through it forever.

  But even with his eye closed, he was so sensitive to light that he knew when the door at the top of the stairs had been opened, however brief and faint the glow. He did his best to ignore it, concentrating all the harder on the Bach.

  As for the birds, a curious thing had happened. It might have been the result of such an extreme application of Dr. Taylor’s desensitization therapy. Flooding, the technical term for overwhelming a phobic with the object of his fear, was considered by some psychiatrists to be the most effective form of phobia therapy, but few patients or psychiatrists had the stomach for it, and the malpractice carriers weren’t crazy about it either—when it failed, it failed big time. Or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he and the birds were all fellow captives, but whatever the reason, Wayne’s ornithophobia had vanished: he found that birds no longer frightened him. Except for the owl, but as that was no longer an unreasonable fear, it no longer qualified as a phobia.

  Somebody probably should have locked me in a room with a bunch of birds years ago, thought Wayne during one of his more lucid moments. He even started to chuckle.

  Think of the money I’d have saved on therapy.

  Laughing out loud, now. LOL, as they said in the PWSPD chat room.

  Miracle cure for ornithophobia. Not cheap, though—cost you an eye and an ear.

  LOL a little too hard.

  Also guaranteed to improve your cello playing. Play even the most difficult pieces with your hands tied behind your back.

  Shrieking with laughter. Lucid no longer. Couldn’t stop if his life depended on it. Birds skittering around in their cages.

  My new friends.

  Shrieking and sobbing.

  My fine new feathered friends.

  Just sobbing, until he’d sobbed himself out. Then it was back to Bach. Number six—the bucolic.

  And this time, Mr. Summers, remember to retune your instrument before you begin.

  Much better, thought Simon, when Wayne began to lose his composure. Fear comes in flavors, but the purer it was, the better—nothing chased away the blind rat, or made Simon feel more alive than the terror of a severe phobic. And these new Generation 2 technology goggles were really something—$1,899 over the Internet, but worth every penny. The detail was astounding, especially when you switched on the optional infrared spot/flood lens intended for use in total darkness. You could see every twitch, every quiver, every tear and every drop of fear sweat, and even the darkest blood. All in shades of green, of course, but you got used to that quickly enough, and the padded headgear distributed the one-and-a-half pound weight of the goggles evenly, and thus made it easy to bear—Simon thought of himself as having a long, aristocratic neck and a delicate build.

  But when Wayne left off sobbing and went back to that intolerable, infernal finger twitching, Simon intervened for the first time since the owl attack.

  “I think I’m going to let the smaller birds have you now,” he said quietly.

  “Fuck you, Simon,” replied Wayne. He still didn’t remember much after the recital Sunday evening, but the voice of the man who had called himself fear itself, particularly when he said the word buddy, had triggered one of those wispy, smoke-ring memories: standing out on Van Ness with his cello case, eyes averted from the sight of the Civic Center pigeons while he waited for a cab. Shiny silver Mercedes convertible pulls up to the curb, Simon Childs behind the wheel.

  Hey, buddy, I thought that was you, what a coincidence, can I give you a lift someplace?

  Wayne had always been a sucker for silver-haired white guys, not to mention silver convertibles; he’d almost made a move on Simon at the PWSPD convention last spring, but hadn’t been able to decipher the decidedly mixed signals the older man was putting out.

  The sexual signals weren’t the only contradictions Wayne had noticed. Simon Childs was third-generation wealthy, obviously upper-crust, but though he was well-spoken, his speech was sprinkled with just enough street snarl to suggest that he’d spent some time mucking around down at the bottom of the pie as well. And yet he never swore—Wayne had never heard so much as a hell or damn escape from those elegant lips.

  Wayne had never seen Simon in a tie, either, even at the PWSPD closing banquet in Vegas—his dress was always casual and comfortable, but expensive, and the drape of those casual, comfortable clothes could only have been achieved by a tailor. Part dandy, part roughneck, intelligent and well-read, but with little formal education, Simon Childs was also the most poised phobic Wayne had ever seen. Not a stiff white man’s poise, either, but a loose, slouchy, long-limbed, easy kind of poise, so perfect it had to be studied.

  But Simon’s signals must have been clear enough last night, thought Wayne: he had a vague recollection of a wild ride in the convertible, top down, of wild laughter and champagne on a balcony, of undressing in a bedroom. But everything after that was a blank. Obviously Childs had slipped a roofie—a Rohypnol capsule—into the champagne.

  Fuck you, Simon? Disappointed as Simon was to have been recognized so early in the game, he refused to stoop to Wayne’s level. Simon took pride in not swearing, regardless of the provocation; it was his own private mental discipline, enforced at an early age by a few good beatings from Grandfather Childs, who didn’t swear either, and reinforced when Missy began parroting his occasional epithet.

  But Simon did feel rather foolish when he realized
that Wayne had called his bluff. As part of his preparation for this latest round of the fear game (the preparation was as important, and nearly as engrossing, as the game itself), Simon had read a book on the making of Hitchcock’s The Birds and learned that it was nearly impossible to get the smaller species, even the more aggressive ones, to attack on command. In the film it was all done with trick shots and chroma-key. And Simon would be the one who’d have to clean up the crap and get them back in their cages afterward.

  “Wayne, listen to me—this is important.”

  “Fuck you,” repeated Wayne, closing his eye and returning to the Bach. In many ways the sixth suite was the least satisfying to play, perhaps because it had originally been written for some unknown five-stringed instru—

  Whap! A hard blow to the temple. Wayne toppled sideways onto the mattress, but made no effort to get up again. Fuck it, he thought as he tuned the imaginary top string back up to A. When you’re practicing an imaginary cello with your hands cuffed behind you, it doesn’t make all that much difference whether you’re sitting up or lying down.

  At-teck the gigue, Mr. Summers, don’t snyeak up on it. If Wayne concentrated hard enough, he could almost hear old Brotsky’s Russian-Jewish accent. It’s a dence, Mr. Summers, make it dence!

  And so Wayne attacked it, and he made it dance—in his mind his bowing action had never been freer, or more joyous, or, paradoxically enough, more under control. But there was a limit to his ability to maintain his concentration: he lost his place when Simon started kicking him.

  “Wayne! Listen up, Wayne—you have to do something for me.”

  That got his attention. The chutzpah, as Brotsky would have said. The sheer chutzpah.“What?”

  “I need you to write something.”