Things We Fear

by Glenn Rolfe

  The image crawled over his numb skin like a million baby spiders. He knew she hadn’t meant it the way he interpreted it, but the thought of the pig-nosed man following him—waiting for him, waiting to pull him under and finish the job—breathed a real-life fear into his phantasmic memory.

  She lifted his chin and gazed into his eyes. Their lips met for the first time. For a moment, the creature from his dreams was gone. He kissed her deeply. Duke’s clapping brought them up for air.

  “That’s how we say a-lo-ha!”

  Aaron and Emily both laughed. The patrons surrounding them broke out into a round of applause.

  Mortified, Aaron raised his drink. “Aloha!”

  “Aloha!” the crowd repeated.

  “Well, that’s a first,” Emily said. Her cheeks were a deep red. “I hope this isn’t a schtick you use on all the girls.”

  “I wish I were that capable.”

  “Can I get you guys another?” Duke said. His eyes twinkled above his broad smile.

  “Sure, Duke. That would be lovely,” Emily said.

  Matt sat in the back, closest to the pier’s walkway, nursing a beer. He had spotted them at the fry stand and followed them into the shitty Hawaiian joint. The place, and all the Frenchies cluttering every inch of the beach, reminded him why he hated OOB. Fucking tourists. He’d witnessed the whole gross lovey-dovey display. He also watched Aaron go from tan to pale to red. The pale face intrigued him most. He’d caught a bit about the guy being afraid to go in the water. The douche bag made it too easy.

  Matt placed his tip on the cherrywood tabletop, left Sully’s and ventured through the crowd toward the end of the pier. Despite the pussy’s fear, he’d be willing to bet Aaron would bring Emily down here to gaze out at the ocean, and when he did, Matt would be waiting.

  He pushed his way through the thickening crowd and reached the pier’s end. A lot of fucking out-of-towners. A lot of witnesses. He’d need a good distraction to give Em’s fuck buddy the ride of his life. Off to his right, in front of a shack packed full of cheap jewelry, pocketknives and other assorted odd items, an ugly freckle-faced kid stood alone, stuffing his face with fries. Perfect. Matt pulled out his wallet and checked his cash.

  * * * * *

  This all seemed too impossible to be true. Aaron was pretty damn amazing. Good looks, genuine, yet not flawless enough to make her self-conscious. His bizarre confession of the pig-nosed figure in the river…well, she was sure the vision had more to do with the bump he’d taken on the head in his rope-swinging accident than it actually did with some underwater creature. Still, whatever the case, the image haunted him to this day. She’d watched the blood drain from his face as he described the thing.

  Aaron’s choice of summer home was interesting, to say the least. The paradoxical situation was like a case study begging her to take it on. And here they were, arm in arm, following the ’80s couple in concert T-shirts, down the length of the pier. The couple’s matching long, dirty blond locks hung down to where they each had a hand on the other’s back pocket, caressing each other in a familiar way.

  In that instant, Emily understood what attracted Aaron to this place. The people. From the loving Mrs. Hersom, to the youths they’d watched testing each other on the beach, to Duke, to the couple trapped in a time warp but in love for the rest of the world to see. There was a real magical feeling present everywhere you looked. Emily gazed up at Aaron’s eyes. He was watching the couple too. His soft brown hair was dancing with the warm breeze blowing in from the ocean. She leaned her head on his shoulder. His free hand slipped across his body and caressed her hand by his shoulder. It was the sort of gesture inspired by true romance. Don’t swoon, don’t swoon, she begged her heart, but felt her resolve give in to love’s gravity.

  They stopped at the end of the pier, squeezing into the crowded spot a couple feet over from the ’80s couple. They kissed again. Longer, deeper. Their fingers intertwined, and despite the near shoulder-to-shoulder gathering of people at this gorgeous spot, the crowd faded away.

  “Excuse me. Miss? Excuse me.”

  Emily turned at the tugging on the bottom of her T-shirt. There stood a red-haired boy missing two of his top teeth, nose and cheeks spattered with freckles, and with a goofy look in his blue-green eyes.

  “Hi, sweetie,” she said. Still holding Aaron’s hand, she bent down to the boy’s eye level.

  “Whaaa…”

  She heard Aaron’s voice call out in surprise before his hand ripped free from hers.

  Her stomach dropped like an elevator with its cables cut. Aaron pinwheeled over the pier’s railing.

  “Oh my God,” the ’80s woman called out.

  Emily jumped up and watched, helpless, as Aaron spun toward his greatest fear. His body met the pulsating Atlantic with a smack. He disappeared into the sea.

  “Somebody help! Please, somebody help him!” Emily pleaded with the surrounding crowd that seemed to close in around her, swarming her as they tried to see what just happened.

  Matt managed to shove the lightweight hard enough to send him over the rail. Just as easily as he’d been able to move through the crowd to bump Aaron, he’d also managed to slither away nearly unnoticed and blend in with the crowd. He knew the people walking up must have seen him, at least a couple of them, but with all of the commotion, everyone’s attention was on the wimp falling into the water. Paying the freckle-faced kid to distract Emily had been an act of pure genius. Well worth the five bucks.

  Matt stopped by the trash can at the end of the pier, stripped off his white dress shirt and stuffed it into the trash receptacle. He strode over to the tiny sports shop, grabbed a navy-blue Patriots T-shirt and a white Patriots hat, and threw a hundred-dollar bill at the tired-looking man, with the spectacles and long mustache, at the cluttered counter. Then, he hurried back outside. He threw on the shirt and hat and skipped out to the beach to catch the outcome of his little stunt.

  * * * * *

  The world spun. Just like that day at the Ropes. Aaron was swallowed by the dread of what was coming before he hit the ice-cold water. He was gulped by the mother sea almost instantly. The sunlight above, with all of its warmth, was snuffed out. The waters swarmed him, enfolded him and tugged him farther and farther down. How far out was he? Would anyone try to help him?

  His face exploded. Pain burst to life in his right eyebrow as his head bounced off something hard. His mouth opened. He took in a lungful of salty water. His limbs flailed within the depths, his arms and legs in slow motion. Where was the surface? Where was the sun? He couldn’t even tell which way was up and which was down.

  I’m going to die.

  The swaying sea placed its hands on his chest and back and attempted to crush him. He closed his eyes, prepared for the end.

  Something wrapped around his legs.

  He was suddenly back in the Kennebec River. He knew what had him. He couldn’t open his eyes. He felt it on his thigh. Pig Nose had come to finish him off.

  His thoughts slid down the drain and delivered him to blackness. The water world that held him disappeared.

  Chapter Eleven

  The rescue boat managed to pull Aaron up. He’d drifted out fifty feet from the end of the pier. Emily watched, horrified, as the rescuers hauled his body from the water and hurried to the shore. The ambulance had him loaded and was gone before she could fight her way past the clusters of onlookers. The beach life’s charming spell had been shattered.

  Emily ran back to Aaron’s in tears. An elderly couple who couldn’t be anybody but Aaron’s beloved Hersoms met her at the door. The old woman, Mary, held a casserole in her hands.

  “What is it, dear?” Mary asked. She handed the glass container to her husband and wrapped her arm around Emily’s shaky shoulders.

  “Aaron…Aaron…” she muttered through the sobs.

  “Emily, is it?”

>   Emily nodded.

  “Aaron mentioned he was seeing you today. I’m Mary and this here’s Gil. Now, what has happened to our Aaron?”

  Emily brought her gaze up to Mary’s. Emily’s lips trembled. “He fell off the pier.”

  “My God,” Gil said.

  “The ambulance took him…took him…”

  “Gil, go get the car.”

  Emily broke down all over again.

  * * * * *

  Gil pulled up to the curb in a tan Oldsmobile. He got out and wrapped his arm around Emily’s other shoulder and helped Mary guide her to the vehicle.

  In the traffic, it took them nearly forty minutes to get into Portland, another ten to find a place to park.

  Gil and Mary Hersom walked Emily Young into the lobby of the Maine Medical Center.

  “Y-yes, Aaron Jackson’s room, please?”

  The older woman behind the reception glass, maybe mid-to-late fifties, the name tag over her left breast reading Brenda, typed the name into her computer. “When was he brought in?”

  “Less than an hour ago. He fell from the pier at the beach.”

  After another minute of Brenda searching her computer, she raised her gaze. “We had a man brought in from Old Orchard Beach—”

  “That’s him.”

  “Are you family?”

  Mary, bless her heart, stepped forward. “I’m his grandmother, dear, Mary Hersom. Emily here’s his gal. She’s with us.”

  Brenda picked up a phone and turned her back to them. She spoke in quiet tones. Emily couldn’t concentrate enough to make out what the woman was saying. After a moment, Brenda said to them, “If you folks will have a seat over in that room across the hall, a nurse will be down to get you as soon as the doctor is done running his tests.”

  “Is he going to be okay?” Emily said.

  * * * * *

  Floating in a sea of blackness, slipping farther away, Aaron wanted to let himself be taken. The dream, the memory, the thing in the water, it was all too much. Behind his closed eyelids, he spun, like a pinwheel, end over end toward the dancing tide, the cry of seagulls, the jubilant calls from children chasing the waves as they crashed upon the shore, the oh-my-Gods from the people gathered on the pier above, Emily...

  …his head smacked the water and the frigid (even in June) waters of the Atlantic stole the breath from his lungs. His body tensed. He felt the power of the ocean pull him under and try to take him away. He was a plastic baggy filled with the salty sea, bent to the will of the blue world.

  And then it gripped him. Impossible. Yet he knew it was real. He’d always known. Dr. Lewis just didn’t want to believe in monsters. And now, the creature’s patience had been rewarded. Aaron refused to open his eyes. The face of the creature was burned into his eyelids. He’d seen it replayed in hundreds of suffocating dreams. The tentacle slid up his calf to his thigh. The slimy appendage latched on and extended the constricted leg muscle. This broke Aaron free of his mental whirlpool of defeat. He opened his eyes and searched for the light of the brilliant sun above. He looked just in time to see the pig nose and onyx pebble eyes before his forehead crashed into one of the pier’s unforgiving support beams. He saw the world illuminated in a flash of white light. Then it was red, and then, it all disappeared.

  * * * * *

  Emily picked at her purple fingernails. Mary placed a soft, wrinkled hand over hers. Emily turned toward her with lips that quivered, and gave a weak smile.

  “Mrs.…Hersom?” A short male doctor, with white hair pulled back into a ponytail and spectacles teetering beneath bushy white eyebrows, wore green scrubs under a white coat, and stood before them.

  Emily jumped up. “Is he all right?”

  “Sorry, doctor,” Mary said, rising next to Emily. Gil followed. “She’s my grandson’s gal. Is Aaron okay?”

  Emily noted the way the man with beady eyes and tight lips dropped his gaze to the floor before answering. Her stomach prepared to drop.

  “He was successfully resuscitated by the paramedics, though we can’t be sure of the extent of the damage, if there is any. He also suffered a fracture to the front of his skull.”

  Emily couldn’t hold back any longer. “But, is he going to be okay?”

  “Right now, he’s stable, but unconscious. We won’t know the full extent of the damage until he wakes up.”

  Emily’s hand went to her mouth. The tears began to fall like stars from a sky that’s lost its light.

  “Can we see him?” Mary said.

  * * * * *

  Both of Aaron’s eyes were black. His head was bandaged like Emily remembered the G.I.s from the war movies her father used to love to watch on Sundays. She laid her head on his chest. His breaths were slow but steady. Alive. He’s still here.

  She felt a hand rub her back and cast a glance to the side. Gil, for all his silence, spoke with his actions instead.

  Mary stroked Aaron’s arm on the opposite side of the hospital bed. The steady beep of the heart monitor blipped like sonar. He was here.

  After an hour, holding his hand and praying to God that he would open his eyes, Emily’s eyelids drooped. She opened them, sat up straight and took a quick breath. Mary was next to her.

  “Do you live in town?”

  “No…I…I have a hotel room.”

  “Maybe you should go get yourself some food and rest.”

  “I…I couldn’t eat.”

  Mary placed a hand on her shoulder. “You need to. Even something small. Come on, let me and Gil take you to get a bite. We’re used to eating our suppers early.”

  Emily had no idea what time it was. It no longer seemed important.

  “I guess…but what if he wakes up. Someone should be here.”

  “I gave Dr. Eule the number for my TracFone. He’s promised to call if anything changes.”

  Emily wondered when Mary could have done this. The old woman answered as if she’d read her thoughts.

  “You dozed off more than once in that chair. You never let go of his hand—” she nodded toward Aaron, “—but you did fade here and there. Let’s go get us something for our bellies, and then we’ll drive you back to your hotel.”

  Emily went to protest, but Mary raised her hand.

  “Visiting hours end soon anyway, and you need your rest too. We’ll come back over with you first thing in the morning.”

  Emily didn’t like the idea of abandoning Aaron here. Leaving him to a building full of strangers and the steady song of the monitor, but she was drained. How such a gorgeous and perfect day could be slammed and derailed so fast, so cruelly…

  She rubbed Aaron’s hand, then let Mary and Gil lead her out of the room.

  Chapter Twelve

  Matt Holmes crossed the marble floor of the lobby and approached the heavenly curved girl with the pretty eyes behind the front desk. A man with hard eyes, rigid posture and an obvious stick up his posh ass had checked him in earlier. Matt made the guy, whose name tag read Bill, out to be the manager. Matt passed on trying to procure the information he needed from him, choosing to wait and see what the later shifts offered in way of a welcome committee. It was a risk. Emily could beat him back to the hotel, if she came back at all. Luck was on his side yet again as his patience brought a bounty of access.

  “Hello,” the girl said. Her tone was friendly, yet he sensed a slight nervousness in it. She brushed the curly, dark lock of hair, which dangled down by her chin, to behind her ear. “Can I help you?”

  “I certainly hope so…Heather?”

  “Me too.”

  Matt took a step back and placed a hand to his chest. “I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you have the most gorgeous eyes.”

  Heather cocked her head, her gaze dropped to her hands folded at the base of the keyboard in front of her. The smile spread awkwardly across her f
ace.

  “Um, thanks.”

  “I’m sorry. I hope that didn’t come off as weird.”

  “No, you’re fine.”

  “Great. Well, Heather, I checked in earlier today and I just realized my stepsister is staying at the hotel as well. I was hoping you could let me know what room she’s in. I want to surprise her. We haven’t seen each other in almost two years since our, well, my dad passed away.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “It was hard, still is some days, but he lived a good life. Would you be able to help me out?”

  “I’m…” her pretty eyes swept the lobby behind him, “…I’m not supposed to give out room numbers…” She held a finger up and scurried over to the open door behind the desk area.

  Matt used the moment to check his watch. Nearly seven.

  Heather came back. “What’s your sister’s name?”

  “Em, er, Emily Young.” He smiled.

  Heather’s pretty eyes shone in the computer light as her black nails clicked away on the keyboard.

  She pulled a notepad from a stack of them emblazoned with the hotel’s logo. She scribbled on the paper, folded it and slid it across the counter to Matt.

  A couple dressed for some sort of gala stepped up beside him. Matt mouthed Heather a thank-you. He took the folded note, being sure to let his fingers linger atop hers for a moment, and then stepped around the couple and headed toward the elevators.

  He stepped inside the elevator, unfolded the piece of paper and pressed the number five. Had he been able to catch Heather all alone, he was certain he could have coaxed her into making him a copy of his stepsister’s room key. She’d been nervous giving him the room number, but not nervous enough.

  After getting the dolled-up couple a wine cork, Heather decided to check out the guy she’d given Emily Young’s room number. She went to pull up his folio and realized she hadn’t even asked his name or room number.

  Shit.

  Bill would kill her if he found out, not that he would find out. The guy’s story had been too cute and sad to resist, what with his stepsister and his dad. Damn it, what if he made that shit up? She’d turned down these sorts of requests and stories from guests a hundred times. Yeah, the guy was pretty good-looking, totally not her type as he was no Jesse, but had she really let his smile sway her so easily? She just felt stupid. Well, there was jack she could do about it now.