The Splendor of Fear

by Ambrose Ibsen

“No...” I motioned at our immediate surroundings, unable to articulate what I meant.

  “The campsite?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jared took a deep breath. “I don't think so, no.” He paused to glance around the site, studied the treeline that surrounded the clearing. “I've been standing here the whole time, grilling,” he added. “If there had been someone here other than the two of us, I think I would have seen them.”

  I couldn't help rolling my eyes at him. “Oh, yeah, no way they could have escaped your watchful eye while you're squatting there, eating off the ground!”

  He returned to the grill with a furrowed brow and batted a few links around the grate. “Oh, come on. There's nothing wrong with eating off the ground. Haven't you heard of the five-second rule? I don't want to be wasting food out here—”

  “When I was in the tent, I saw someone—someone's shadow. They were standing next to it,” I interrupted. “I saw them.”

  Sighing, Jared took another hurried look around the campsite and then threw his shoulders. “Well, what do you want me to do about it? There's no one here except the two of us, OK? You must have been mistaken.” Clearing his throat, he shouted into the wilderness. “Hey, if you're lurking out there waiting for a hotdog, then go ahead and keep walking! We aren't sharing, so git! Penny here eats like a horse—there won't be enough to go around!”

  “Fuck off,” I mumbled, walking another circuit around the tent. “I swear I saw something!”

  “You probably did,” he offered, taking a bite from one of the freshly grilled hotdogs and burning his tongue in the process. “We're surrounded by trees and whatnot. Maybe you're tired. It was a long trip out here, after all.”

  “Maybe,” I conceded when I'd worn a narrow path around our campsite and discovered no sign of any strangers.

  Jared brought out a bag of hotdog buns and a six-pack of Labatt's from the cooler. “Have something to eat. The rain is going to quit any second now. When we're all fueled up we'll have some fun!” He tossed me a can of beer and dropped the hotdogs—somewhat charred—onto a paper plate.

  I eyed the beer suspiciously before cracking it open and taking a sip. “Are we even allowed to have alcohol here?”

  Jared pressed a greasy finger to his lips and smiled mischievously. “As long as you don't go ratting me out, I think we can do just about anything we want in these woods.”

  “Yeah, well, save me a few more of those, then,” I said, motioning to the beers. “I'm going to need them to deal with your ass these next two days.”

  We sat down at the table and ate our hotdogs. It'd been hours since our pitstop for lunch, and to my surprise I'd built up quite an appetite since. We managed to eat every last scrap of food between the two of us, and except for the persistent flies that circled our table, I found I enjoyed myself. When it comes to meals, I've never been much for picnics, but as we sat there munching, Jared regaling me with stories of previous camping trips, I began to see what he liked about this “outdoors” business.

  There was just one problem I had with the whole thing, aside from the flies.

  While we ate, I found myself repeatedly glancing over my shoulder and monitoring the woods. Each time I did it, I expected to find someone standing there, peeking at me from around a tree or waiting by the tent.

  The forest was immense and dark. On the one hand, all the trees made me feel isolated and secure, but on the other I couldn't help singling out all of the excellent hiding spaces where something might be lurking just out of view. I told myself I'd get used to it in time—that by the end of the trip, I'd feel at home in the great outdoors, and Jared assured me as well.

  At first, anyway, I really believed it.

  Six

  “Go on, take it.”

  I refused.

  Jared dangled the worm between two fingers. It wriggled lazily, as if it had just come out of a deep sleep. “Just grab it!”

  “I'd rather not.”

  “We're burning daylight, babe!” He pointed upward with his slime-slick fingers. “Got an hour before sunset, tops.”

  Exasperated, I held out my palm and allowed him to drop the nightcrawler into my hand. It met my skin with an awkward plop, and its body—somewhat rough and low on mucous—began immediately to expand. I shuddered a little at the feel of it, but what bothered me most was what Jared wanted me to do to the thing.

  “OK, now bait the hook.” After our meal, he'd packed up one of the fishing rods and marched me down to the edge of the creek for an impromptu fishing lesson. When he'd finished teaching me how to use the rod and reel however, we'd reached an impasse. “It's not that gross, honest.”

  “It's cruel,” was my reply. “I'm just supposed to skewer this poor thing?”

  “Several times,” he clarified. “Gotta make sure he stays put on the hook, after all.”

  I stared down at the writhing creature on my palm and then handed it back to him. “I'll bait the hook next time, for sure,” I said.

  With a sigh, he took the worm between his fingers and began loading it onto the hook. He was done within seconds and he held the finished product before my eyes with a dramatic flourish befitting a stage magician. “Voila!”

  The worm twitched in its death throes, and the sight of it made me queasy. “Awesome. Now what?”

  “Watch closely,” he said, standing up and moving a few feet away from me. “This is how you make a proper cast.” Rearing back, he flicked his wrist and set the baited line speeding into the clear water of the creek, where it sank with a little splash. Reeling in just a bit, he stared at the end of the rod. “Now, we wait.”

  I wasn't sure what I'd expected when I'd heard the word “creek”. Swan Creek wasn't exactly a raging river, but it wasn't a dinky stream, either. In some spots it was narrow enough that you might leap from one bank to the other with a running jump, while other sections further on—which Jared was keen to explore in the morning—appeared much wider. Depending on the topography, the creek's depth varied quite a lot, too. If I'd jumped into the water at our current fishing spot, I probably would have ended up waist-deep. The reading I'd done earlier had alluded to deeper sections, though—especially the closer one got to the Kentucky River, which the creek fed.

  Standing on the edge of the bank, I stared down at the clear water, watching as it rippled gently by. The pale sky—dim and only growing dimmer—left the water a hazy bluish grey. A cool, rain-scented breeze kicked off a fluttering in the trees, and a handful of golden leaves fluttered down from up above, coming to rest on the water. Arms crossed, I took a deep breath of the cool air and turned to Jared. “It's really pretty out here, even with the rain,” I conceded.

  Jared had the fishing rod in one hand, but his eyes were elsewhere. He seemed to be staring across the creek, into the woods, and when I'd spoken up, he'd startled, almost as if I'd interrupted him. He'd had his free hand raised, as if in a wave, and an uncertain smile on his face. “W-What's that, babe?”

  I stepped towards him, trying to align my gaze with his. There were a number of large stones sticking out of the bank opposite, and beyond them what looked like miles of untamed growth. “I was just saying how pretty it is out here,” I repeated. “Who are you waving at?”

  Again, he startled. His broad shoulders tensed at the question, then suddenly relaxed, and I noticed his facial expression had done the same—a momentary wince. “Uh...” Holding the rod limply, he wiped at his brow and, staring on, gave a slow shake of the head. “There was someone over there.” He had to clear his throat to get the words out, and even then they came out a bit muddled.

  “Someone was standing over there?” I asked, reexamining the opposite bank with renewed interest. “Who was it? One of the rangers? Or... someone from another campsite?”

  Jared's brow was furrowed, his face a little red. “Erm... I dunno.” He laughed sheepishly. “It was a woman, I think. She was standing there, just waving at me.”

  “A woman?” I asked.

  He
nodded.

  I narrowed my gaze and took a good, hard look at the woods, but couldn't make out anything like a woman standing amidst the trees. “Are you drunk?” I asked. “I don't see anyone. Where was she?”

  He blinked a few times then looked down into the water with a shrug. “I—I dunno,” he said, laughing nervously. “Maybe I'm losing it. She was there just a second ago.” He pointed across the creek, singling out a particularly large stone peeking out of the bank. “She was standing right about there—near that big rock. Waving.”

  I had another look, then slapped him in the arm. “Are you serious, or are you just messing with me?”

  He shied away, reeling in the line a few clicks. “I'm not lying, Penny. I... well, I thought I saw someone.” He sighed. “Forget it.”

  “What did she look like?” I asked.

  His brow grew wrinkled again and he made a noise like he was trying really hard to summon up the details, but after several moments he opted instead to reel in the line and rear back for another cast. “I didn't get a good look, I guess,” he said under his breath. “Sorry. Can we drop it?”

  “What's the matter?” I asked. I was more unnerved by the way he was acting than I was by the idea of some woman walking around near the creek—though I should note this latter notion was more than a little strange to me. The park was huge, and it stood to reason that we weren't the only people in it. And yet, there'd been no other cars in the parking lot, and the ranger on the phone had made it sound like this area was set to be a complete ghost town for the next few days.

  Ghost town. Something about that term stood out in my mind, and before I knew it the back of my neck was tingling against another gust of the cool autumn wind. There's a ghost town somewhere out here, I recalled. Newsom's Landing. I glanced around while Jared busied himself with yet another cast, wondering where the old ruins might be located. The more I thought about the abandoned town however, the more I was reminded of its most infamous personality. Ellie Pomeroy.

  It was my turn to loose a nervous snicker. I sidled up to Jared and socked him in the arm while he watched his line in the water. “You saw a woman, huh? You're such a dick, you know that? I'll bet it was Ellie Pomeroy—that's what you're going for, yeah?” I laughed again—a haughty laugh that bounced eerily off the water, and which died off slowly in the open space that surrounded us. “Nice try.”

  Jared smiled tightly, but it was clear something was bothering him. He shook his head and reeled in a final time. Tugging the worm off the hook—still thrashing, mind you—he tossed it into the water and nodded back in the direction of camp. “Guess the fish aren't biting tonight, huh? We'll come back in the morning and do some proper fishing then. Sound good? I'm pretty bushed. Let's head back to camp and relax. Sun will be setting pretty soon.”

  “Uh, sure...” I fell into step behind him, but we hadn't gone more than a couple of paces before I had to tug on his sleeve. “Jared, where are you going?” I asked.

  He stood bolt upright and whirled around to face me. “W-What?”

  He'd started in the wrong direction. The campsite was off to our right. Jared had, seemingly without thinking, started deeper into the woods instead. “Camp is this way, remember?” I singled out the sparse footpath we'd taken to get to the creek in the first place.

  Like a lightbulb had come on behind his eyes, he flashed a big grin and nodded. “Oh, yeah, I guess you're right.” He rubbed at the back of his head with evident embarrassment. “Got a little turned around for a second there.” Almost immediately, he barreled to the right, marching in silence all the way to the camp. Even as we returned to the picnic table, the tent, the struggling fire, he remained somewhat stoic. He tucked the fishing rod beneath the table and immediately set about feeding the fire.

  It wasn't like him to act this way, and I knew there must have been something bubbling underneath the surface that had him feeling mixed up. Maybe—I hoped—it had to do with a theoretical proposal. Such a thing was likely to make him nervous, right?

  Another possibility occurred to me, though—one that I tried hard to force from my thoughts.

  What if he really did see someone by the creek?

  Seven

  I ignored it as long as I could, but nature wasn't merely calling—it was pounding on my bladder like a debt collector.

  Jared and I had gone to bed a few hours previously, and where he'd managed to drift off almost immediately, I'd only tossed and turned in my sleeping bag. I couldn't see how anyone could possibly relax enough to sleep in such a thing, but judging by his steady breathing this was my boyfriend's natural habitat.

  There was very little moonlight—just enough to set the top of the tent glowing and make me feel like I was lying in a plastic bag. Without fail, in those rare moments where sleep would draw tantalizingly close, unfamiliar noises would break the silence and refresh my wakefulness. The birds sounded different at night, somehow unkind. Leaves crinkled in the trees with every nudge of the wind, and sometimes, prompting a special kind of paranoia in my city-loving soul, I'd hear something akin to the snapping of twigs underfoot.

  And now, this.

  I hated the tent, but I didn't want to leave it. Can't you just hold out till morning, damn you? I shifted in my sleeping bag, sensing the pressure building in my abdomen with a wince. My bladder had become a shaken can of soda. One wrong move, and...

  “Ugh.” I wormed my way out of the sleeping bag and shook Jared awake. “I've gotta pee.”

  He jerked mid-snore and turned towards me groggily. “Uh-huh.”

  “The bathrooms are down the footpath, right? Away from the creek?”

  “Uh-huh,” he replied, likely not aware of what he was saying.

  I jostled him again, slipping on my boots. “Come with me, will you?”

  Before he could form a proper response, his head lolled back and he loosed a loud snore.

  “Wake up, you lazy ass,” I said, tugging on the edge of his sleeping bag. “Come with me!”

  “W-what?” he muttered.

  I crouched, edging towards the tent entrance. Pulling the cover away, I looked through the little mesh window in it and tried to take stock of the campsite. “I won't take too long. Just come with me. I don't want to get lost.”

  His deep breathing told me he hadn't heard a word; he was already back to sleep.

  Jared and I had taken a brief tour of the facilities not long after we'd gotten our camp set up, and while I knew them to be somewhat close by, I didn't entirely trust myself to get there in the dead of night. “Jared...” I whined. Finally, when he didn't awaken, I unzipped the tent and crawled out. I couldn't wait any longer. “What good are you, anyway?”

  I met the cold head-on, and it left me shuddering from the moment I first stepped out. The tent hadn't exactly been cozy, but with the entrance zipped and a sleeping bag around me I'd been able to ignore the autumn chill up to that point. Sniffing at the cold air and blinking till my eyes could make some use of the sparse moonlight, I glanced around the circular clearing and tried locating the footpath that would lead me to the bathrooms.

  It wasn't cold enough for frost, but the ocean of damp grass before me seemed stiff and icicle-like as I paced around the tent. The fire had given up the ghost, which left only a watery and ineffectual moonlight to see by. There were no artificial lights in sight. Jared had claimed that the trails were fitted with them to help campers find their way to the bathroom on occasions just like this one, but as I scanned the trees I found the space between them home only to darkness.

  I paused, considering a quick squat in the woods and a hasty return to the tent, but pride got the better of me. I was no savage, and a cold, dirty toilet was better than peeing in the bush, I figured. After some wandering—and cursing—I actually managed to find the footpath and I started down it.

  Arms crossed tightly to keep the cold from sinking its claws into my core, I walked down the path at as quick a clip as I could manage. My feet were tired and clumsy, though, weig
hed down by hiking boots I hadn't yet broken in, which made my advance down the tree-lined path unsteady. Now and then I'd veer too far to one side, into the tall grass, and I'd panic till I managed to relocate the dirt walkway in the low light. Keeping to the footpath was the only security I had. Its borders felt safe; so long as I kept to it, maybe nothing from the surrounding wilderness could get at me. Stay on the path. That's all that matters. Stay on the path and the things in the woods will leave you alone. I supposed that this was a more grown-up version of, Keep your arms and legs tucked under the covers; that way the monster under the bed won't be able to get you!

  It seemed unlikely to me that any living thing could find comfort in this chill, damp landscape, but as I walked the dim trail my thoughts were fixed on anything but living subjects, and much against my will I began to entertain the possibility that other things—malefic things, maybe—kept hours and settings such as these. In particular, the myth-haunted name of Ellie Pomeroy, the notorious witch of Newsom's Landing, burst from the depths of my mind as I wandered, littering my shadowed periphery with vague shapes I took for leaning specters or beckoning crones.

  Stay on the path and look straight ahead. There's nothing out there but a bunch of lumber, I told myself, though the reassurances did little to prop up my courage. I cursed Jared for not accompanying me, but did it under my breath, lest I gain the notice of something lurking nearby. Moments later, out of nervous reflex, I panned to the left, then the right, scanning the bleak forest and finding nothing. See? Just trees.

  But I knew that wasn't entirely true. Come to think of it, there were many things buried in this sea of trees. People had lived out here, once—quite a lot of them—and if you ventured far enough, there was still evidence of them. Thoughts of crumbling buildings transitioned naturally to imaginings of the people who'd once filled them.

  People like Ellie Pomeroy.

  I shuddered so violently that my knees knocked together and I nearly tripped.