Fear Itself

by Jeff Gelb

  “I gave him a chance. For his great-aunt’s sake. But everyone’s heard about you, Mr. Harper.”

  “What do you mean?” Harper demanded. “What have you heard, and who said—”

  Mrs. Porter closed the inner door.

  Harper lay in the darkness, staring at the shadowy form of the ceiling fan. Even with the wooden blades swishing around and the AC rumbling, the bedroom seemed hot and close. Mary lay beside him, a couple feet away. He sensed that she wasn’t asleep, either.

  “God, I hate his place,” she said at last. “The humidity. The toilets overflowing—”

  “Come on, that only happened one time. Since the guy pumped out the septic tank, they’re fine.”

  “Back in civilization, we didn’t have to worry about things like that. We had sewers. As opposed to hillbilly neighbors out of Deliverance.”

  “There were fundamentalists who thought all fantasy was evil in Cincinnati, too. Remember when they picketed Hal-ley’s Comics?”

  “Yes. But they didn’t live near us, and they didn’t dump on our kid.”

  Outside the window, Carthoris yowled, probably chasing off another cat. Harper rolled onto his side and put his hand on Mary’s shoulder. “Look, I’m upset too, but let’s not blow this out of proportion. So a couple of idiots have weird ideas about us. Kevin’ll meet other kids.”

  She squirmed away from his touch. “I just wish we could move back where our friends are.”

  “Well, we can’t,” Harper snapped. “Not right now. We can’t afford rent. You know that as well as I do.”

  “We could if you hadn’t spent a year and a half writing that World War I thing. Your breakout book,” she sneered.

  Harper’s muscles tightened, shooting a twinge through his lower back. He tried to rein in his temper. “Not every project sells. That’s the nature of the business. All a writer can do—”

  “Your agent warned you nobody would buy it.”

  “You know, if I haven’t told you lately how much I appreciate your support, there’s a reason.” He flung off the sheet, sat up, and fumbled for the clothes he’d tossed on the chair. “I need some air.”

  By the time he reached the living room, his anger had cooled to a weary frustration. Mary was right, he’d screwed up, but was she going to hold it against him forever? Couldn’t she see that no matter how little money they had or where they were forced to live, life would be more pleasant if they were kind to each other?

  He sighed. Maybe she’d wake up in a better mood. Maybe they could make peace then.

  He opened the door just in time to see the black bulk of a pickup truck rolling by. Metal clanged, then clattered, something rolling in the street. The vehicle roared away.

  Curious, he trotted down the rutted strip of ground that served as his driveway. Carthoris, ghostly in the moonlight, bounded along beside him. Harper figured that a piece of the truck, a hubcap or muffler perhaps, had fallen off. But when he reached the street, he saw his own dented mailbox lying on the pavement. Someone in the back of the pickup had clubbed it off its wooden post.

  Mary rose from the dining room table and started prowling around, her coffee mug shivering in her hand. “We can’t live like this,” she said.

  Harper pushed his raisin bran away untasted. The discussion had spoiled what little appetite he’d sat down with. “How do you know it had anything to do with what Mrs. Porter said? Maybe it was just teenagers playing a prank.”

  “Were any of the other mailboxes on the street knocked down?”

  He sighed. “Not that I noticed.”

  Her lip curled. “Well, then.”

  “Okay, maybe it was somebody who thinks we’re Satan-ists. It’s still no big deal. It took me about a minute to nail the damn thing back on its pole.”

  “It’s harassment,” Mary hissed. “I don’t know how you think we’re going to manage in a place where everyone’s against us.”

  Harper closed his eyes. He hoped that if he couldn’t see her, he wouldn’t feel quite as angry. “ ‘Everyone’ is not against us.”

  “Oh, yeah? How do you know?”

  “Because it’s 1993, and we’re in America, fifteen miles from a major city. The vast majority of our neighbors happen to be rational, educated people. You just want to assume otherwise to convince yourself this is a hellhole and there’s no choice but to leave.”

  “I know you think I’m a selfish bitch, but this isn’t about me. I can stick it out here if that’s what it takes to make you happy. I mean, God forbid that you should have to get a job or anything. But can you imagine what it’ll be like for Kevin, going to a school where all the other kids treat him like a freak?”

  “That won’t happen,” Harper said. As a timid, bookish child, he’d been bullied himself, and the suggestion that he was setting his son up for the same treatment infuriated him. “Look, I admit, we’re having a problem. But it’s a stupid problem, easy to solve. We just have to let people get to know us. As soon as they see we don’t have cloven hooves, the rumor will collapse under the weight of its own absurdity.”

  Mary grimaced. Her shoulders slumped, as if she was suddenly as sick of the quarrel as he was. “Fine. You fix it, then.”

  The nearest bar was a small, concrete-block box about a mile from Harper’s house. Pit bulls prowled the yard of the trailer next door, and a Baptist church stood directly across the street.

  Harper thought that in the darkness, the tavern looked forbidding, like a pillbox on a battlefield, or a blockhouse in a prison complex. Trying to rein in his imagination, he opened the door.

  The interior of the building was nearly as drab as the facade. The floor was the cement foundation slab. The mismatched tables, chairs, and barstools looked as if they’d been purchased at some of the subdivision’s ubiquitous yard sales. Even though it was Friday night, there were only a few customers. Perhaps most of the area residents preferred to drink farther afield, in more congenial surroundings.

  Harper headed for two guys, one tall and barrel-chested, the other short and wiry, sitting shrouded in cigarette smoke at the bar. The smaller man glanced over his shoulder, twitched, and elbowed his companion in the ribs. The big man looked around too.

  Trying not to choke on the acrid blue haze, Harper said, “Hi. Hot out there. Too hot not to stop for a beer.” He looked at the bartender, a gawky, pimply kid who looked too young for the job. “I’ll have a draft. And give these gentlemen a refill.”

  The wiry man raised his hand, revealing a faded eagle tattoo. “No. We’re fine. I take it you’re walking?”

  “Yeah,” Harper said. “I do it a lot. At night, when it’s cooler. For the exercise.”

  The tattooed man grimaced. “Most people around here get all the exercise they need on the job. Must be nice to get paid for sitting on your ass making up stuff.”

  Harper said, “I guess I don’t need to introduce myself.”

  The big guy shook his head. The glow of the fluorescent lights rippled across his close-cropped, graying hair. “No,” he said. “People have heard about you.”

  Harper looked him in the eye. “What have they heard?”

  The big man shifted uncomfortably on his stool. His friend answered for him. “That you’re in some kind of cult. That a bunch of the other weirdos came to your place and you all danced naked around a bonfire.”

  “Well, it’s all true,” Harper said. “I worship Lucifer. I guess it had to come out sooner or later. Even if nobody had spotted the coven celebrating the Black Mass, eventually somebody would have noticed my wife flying around on her broom, or me setting the remains of our human sacrifices out on trash day.” He realized the other men weren’t grinning, just staring at him stonily. “Jesus, I’m kidding! You guys don’t believe in that kind of creature-feature mumbo jumbo, do you?”

  The big man shrugged his massive, rounded shoulders.

  “Well, you shouldn’t,” Harper said, “I’ve researched the occult, for my writing. Take it from me, demons, curses, and
the rest of the powers of darkness are fun ideas to play around with in fiction, but they also violate the laws of science. They can’t exist in the real world. So even if you did have a neighbor who worshipped Satan, you wouldn’t have to be afraid of him. He’d just be a harmless crank.”

  The tattooed man scowled. “Are you saying Manson was harmless? Or those devil lovers who rape little children?”

  “I don’t think Manson claimed to be a Satanist. And there aren’t really hordes of depraved cultists running around America molesting kids. That’s just an urban legend.” The two friends exchanged sceptical glances. Harper could tell he was losing them. “Well, all right, there might be a few sick people trying to practice black magic and actually doing some damage. But I’m not one of them! I’m normal. I have a family and work and bills and stupid, ordinary problems just like everybody else. I wish I knew who was telling people otherwise.”

  The wiry man said, “It would be real dumb to try and get revenge.”

  Startled, Harper blinked. “I don’t want revenge. I just want to talk to him and convince him he’s wrong.”

  “I don’t know who started the stories,” the big man said. “They’re just going around. But I’ll give you some advice: You won’t do yourself any good by sneaking around in the dark, or speaking out in defense of devil worship, either.”

  “I wasn’t,” Harper said. “I was just—”

  “We have to go,” said the tattooed man, tossing a taped and faded five-dollar bill on the bar. He and his friend strode for the door, leaving their half-finished beers behind.

  When Harper got home, he found Kevin and Mary huddled together watching a Hammer horror movie. The chanting of the busty, black-robed witch on the TV screen made his head throb, and his wife’s greeting jangled his nerves still further. “Well? Does everybody love us now?” Kevin seemed to cringe at the edge in her voice.

  In reality, Harper hadn’t been able to tell if he’d done any good. None of the people he’d accosted in the bar and on the street had refused to speak with him, but many had seemed uncomfortable, guarded, or cold. But he was damned if he’d admit it when Mary was out to break his balls, and Kevin needed reassurance. “I met some people. I think it did some good.”

  “How much?” Mary asked. “At best, you talked to a tiny fraction of the people in the area. Even if you charmed every one of them—”

  “I didn’t say the problem was solved,” Harper said. “But I made a start. I’ll keep introducing myself, the neighbors I meet will talk to others, and gradually word will get around that we’re okay.”

  Mary grimaced. “Assuming that even happens, how long will it take? And what’s going to happen in the meantime?”

  “Nothing,” Harper said, “except maybe I’ll have to put the mailbox back up again. You’re panicking over a trivial annoyance. “ He put his hand on Kevin’s shoulder and smiled down into the boy’s anxious blue eyes. “I promise, everything’s going to be fine.”

  The following night, Harper awoke to screaming, or at least he thought he had. But by the time he bolted upright, the night was still, though it still seemed to vibrate with the echo of a cry.

  He was pretty sure he’d been having a nightmare. Had someone been shrieking in that? Befuddled, he ran his fingers through his sweaty hair.

  “What is it?” Mary mumbled.

  Harper didn’t particularly want to answer. If he kept quiet, she might go back to sleep, and these days, he liked her better that way. But his heart was still pounding, his skin, crawling; it might help to be told that the scream had only sounded in his dreams. “I thought I heard something. Did you?”

  “Maybe,” she said, the grogginess draining out of her voice. “Carthoris screeching. Another cat fight. Except maybe he sounded different.”

  Out in the front yard, Kevin wailed, the sound of his voice unmistakable. Harper and Mary leaped up and scrambled for the front of the house, jamming together in the bedroom doorway. For an instant, he wanted to knock her aside.

  They found their son sobbing on his knees. Carthoris, burned almost beyond recognition, squirmed feebly on the grass before him. Evidently someone had poured gasoline on the cat, then set him on fire. A sickening stench of charred meat hung in the air.

  Mary knelt and put her arms around Kevin. The boy twisted and buried his face in her nightgown. Harper noticed that his fingers were blistered, no doubt from touching the cat’s still-smoldering flesh.

  Mary sneered up at her husband. “Another ‘trivial annoyance,’“ she said.

  Harper’s fists clenched. “I’ll call the vet.”

  The coppery stubble on the deputy’s deeply cleft chin glinted in the sunlight streaming through the window. Harper, pacing restlessly, surmised that the green-uniformed officer was finishing up the graveyard shift. “How’s the cat now?” he asked.

  Mary said, “They had to put him to sleep.” In her lap, Kevin sniffled.

  “And nobody saw or heard anything,” the deputy said.

  “No,” Harper said wearily. He wondered how many times the cop was going to take them over the same ground. “Just Carthoris crying.”

  The deputy clicked the nib back into his ball-point and closed his black fake-leather notebook. “Then I hope you realize, we may not be able to do much.”

  “What does that mean?” Harper demanded. “I told you what this is all about. If you find the people who think we’re Satanists—”

  “I thought Mrs. Harper said the whole neighborhood thinks so.”

  “Of course they don’t.” Harper shot Mary a venomous glance. “I’m sure it’s only a couple idiots, five or six at the absolute outside. Start with Mrs. Porter across the street.”

  The deputy frowned. “Are you accusing her?”

  “No. But I imagine she can point you at the people who did do it.”

  “Well, of course, we’ll check around,” the deputy said vaguely. “I didn’t mean to suggest any different. But you know, however it works out, in the long run it might pay you to be a little less”—he hesitated—”provocative.” He waved his hands at the pictures of dragons, wizards, and barbarian warriors on the opposite wall. “I mean, look at this place.”

  Harper stared at him incredulously. “Are you saying that what happened is our own fault?”

  The deputy shrugged. “I grew up around here, Mr. Harper. And I can tell you, it’s a conservative, family-values kind of community. If you want to live a wild life, I guess that’s your privilege, but maybe you’d be better off doing it in California or someplace like that. But of course, that’s for you to decide. I am sorry about your pet.” He got up, put on his cowboy hat, and went out the door.

  “So much for that,” Mary said. “He’s on their side. Which means people are free to do anything they want to us. Now can we leave?”

  “No,” Harper said. “What happened to Carthoris is horrible, but basically, nothing’s changed. We still need to ride this out.”

  “I knew I couldn’t persuade you,” Mary said. “You’d oppose anything I suggested, just for spite. But maybe you’ll listen to your son.” She squeezed Kevin’s forearm. “Go on, sweetheart, tell Daddy what you told me.”

  Kevin slowly raised his head. His eyes were red, his face, blotched and puffy. He smelled of tears and mucus. “I hate it here,” he said haltingly. “I’m scared.”

  Though Harper knew he was being unfair, he couldn’t help resenting the boy for siding with his mother. Struggling to keep his anger out of his voice, he said, “Kev, please, listen. We have a right to be who we want and live where we want. If we let ourselves be driven out of our home, we’ll always be scared, because we’ll know that bad people can intimidate us whenever it suits them. Do you understand?”

  Kevin shook his head. “No.” He started crying again, and Mary wrapped her arms around him.

  “Nice parenting,” she said. “That really comforted him. But you forgot to make another promise to solve the problem.”

  Harper’s forearm twitche
d. He might actually have slapped her if an idea hadn’t burst into his head. “As a matter of fact, I’m going to solve it right now. If only to get you off my back.” He took his keys out of his pocket.

  “Wait!” Mary said. He turned, surprised by a softer note in her voice. She shifted Kevin onto the sofa cushion, rose, and hurried to him. “What are you going to do?”

  “What do you care?” Harper said. “It’s not like you think I can do anything right.”

  She put her hand on his chest. “Please. You’re upset. You should calm down before you go anywhere.”

  For the first time in a long while, she actually sounded like she cared about him. But it was too little too late. She’d dumped on him one too many times, and now he had to show her. “Don’t tell me what to do.” He pivoted, shaking off her hand.

  Two minutes later, Harper pulled into the parking lot of the Baptist church, among the fifty or so vehicles that had arrived before him. The building’s spire gleamed like freshly fallen snow. Organ music and slightly off-key singing moaned from inside.

  Harper had rushed here because he’d realized Mary had been right about one thing: It would take too long to win the neighbors over one and two at a time. He needed to talk to them en masse. He climbed out of the car and strode to the church’s entrance.

  The interior of the building looked as cheery and modem as the Cincinnati church where he’d gotten married. Potted palms flanked the altar. The walls and carpet were bright, pastel colors. The stained-glass windows beneath the vaulted ceiling shone. But evidently the air conditioning was broken, because the hall was hot and stuffy. Many of the people in the gleaming oak pews sat fanning themselves with the congregation newsletter.

  As Harper marched down the aisle, they turned and stared. Murmurs arose, growing louder and louder, until the minister, a bald, middle-aged man in glasses, stopped the sermon in mid-sentence. “Can I help you?” he asked hesitantly.