Cold Dead Past

by John Curtis

  It was not an easy walk to make. Every snap and pop as he crossed the ice was magnified ten-fold in his mind. His heart raced when, with one step, there was the sound of a pistol report that bounced off the banks to either side and a jagged seam appeared in the ice at his feet. He was on a part of the pond where he knew the water was over his head. If he went in now, Frank might just get what he was after by default.

  Jay's next step took him to the edge of the crack. He could feel cold water well up over his feet just as he leapt to the other side. He slammed the point of the spear into the ice to steady himself. The ice was definitely thinner here, springy under each step he took. When he looked back the way he had just come, he could see the full moon reflected in inky wavelets as a pool formed.

  He became so intent on watching his feet that he almost ran into one of the flags, now ragged and torn with age. The red appeared a dark grey. The pole was canted at an angle, but it was reassuring to him that someone still cared enough to trudge out in the middle of the winter and mark the circle. But, then, he reached out his hand to touch the nylon fabric and his fingers passed through it as if it were smoke.

  "Frank," he thought out loud.

  As if cued, the scenery in front of him shimmered and went out of focus. Then a trompe l'oeil curtain parted in the center of the circle of ghostly flags, revealing Frank with his feet on the ground and Meg at his side.

  "Right here, buddy," Frank announced with a wave and flourish of his hand.

  "Meg! Are you alright?"

  "She can’t hear you. She’s kinda otherwise engaged right now." He tapped the top of Meg’s head lightly with his knuckles, eliciting only a dumb stare from her. "She’s doing just fine and she’ll stay that way as long as you agree to discuss a little unfinished business with me."

  Frank laughed and it drove through the pack of snow, down to the bare ground, so that it echoed across the barren landscape as no other sound could. It rattled the tree-skeletons all the way to the hills on the other side of the valley. Jay could hear the cawing of the crows as they were shaken in their roosts and the hoosh of the snow as it was shed by the bare branches.

  He realized that the only way he could deal Meg out of the equation was to give Frank what he wanted.

  "All right," he said. "You win. Now let her go." It was a childish ploy, but wasn't that essentially what he was dealing with? An adolescent?

  "Oh, no," replied Frank. "You got me in a circle and now it’s your turn. I can play games, too." He motioned at the ring of flags. "This place is mine and I want you to step through before I’ll even think of letting her go."

  Jay hesitated for a moment.

  "What’s the matter, buddy? It’s not like you’re gonna get electrocuted or something."

  Jay slid the tip of one shoe across the line marked by the flags, just to test the surface to make sure it was real and not a trick. Frank hadn’t lied. Jay stepped through the line of flags.

  "All right. Now let her go!"

  Frank brought his hand across Meg’s face. She blinked and as soon as she realized what was going on, she began squirming in his tight grasp.

  "I said let her go!"

  Frank held her in front of him by her arms. Then looked Jay up and down, as if sizing him up for a schoolyard fight.

  "Come on," Jay thought to himself.

  Frank, evidently satisfied by what he saw, shoved her toward Jay. He caught her as she slipped and stumbled across the ice into his arms.

  "Are you okay?"

  "Yes, but you can’t stay here," she replied.

  When he looked down into her eyes, he could see that he had made the right decision to return to Haddonfield.

  "I have to," he said, as he turned back to Frank. "I've got to have a heart to heart with my best friend. Isn’t that right, Frank?"

  "I think that nowadays, they would say we have a lot of issues to discuss," said Frank. "You give me what I want. You know what could happen to her if you don't."

  Jay held Meg, looking deeply into her eyes. "It’s the best thing. Now go back to the house. The long way, not the way I came. Gary’s there and needs to be looked after. I want you to remember that I love you, that nothing’s ever going to change that."

  A single tear ran down her cheek. He wiped it away with his thumb. "Now go on."

  She gave him a tight embrace before he pulled her around behind him and gave her a little push off with his hand. Jay never looked back as she walked away. He gritted his teeth and took up the spear in both hands.

  "Now let’s get on with it. This isn’t about revenge."

  "If I had wanted revenge, I would have just taken out that fatass, Tommy, and been on my way. It was all his fault, anyway, you know. His, theirs. But I'm not about that tonight. It’s about friends, man. Everybody needs friends."

  Frank walked across the circle to where Jay stood and placed his hand on Jay’s shoulder. When Jay looked into his eyes now, he saw him as he had been all those years ago, before he had gone into the water. Before Jay's life had become a complicated mess of signings and editorial meetings. Was it some kind of illusion to catch him off-guard or was this really some part of the Frank he remembered forcing its way to the top?

  "You’re my bud, man," Frank said. "We ought to be together. Friends to the end."

  Jay wasn’t sure what it was, but just as he said those words, there was a tingling where Frank touched him on the shoulder. He thought that he could see a sort of shimmer and shift in Frank’s eyes. It made his skin crawl."

  "The operative words are ‘to the end’. Frank's time ended here, in this place, that day."

  He felt the hand on his shoulder flex and squeeze. The eyes winked for a moment between Frank's deep blue and this thing before him's native dead black.

  "I don’t know what you are, but you can never be my friend," he continued. "I don't even think that you know the meaning of that word! All you know is how to make others feel pain and suffering!"

  It had finally come to him, what he was facing. It was those hidden emotions, all those glances and looks that had never been shared, fighting their way to the surface. They wanted their place in the spotlight, powered by the anger of a twelve-year-old mind that saw what had happened on the ice so many years ago as betrayal of unrequited attentions. It was what Jay saw in the bloody retribution and shark's eyes of the creature before him. The only hope he had of beating this thing was if he could pull out some ounce of the boy he had once known, just long enough for him to penetrate the guard that had been thrown up.

  The spear suddenly felt warm in his hand. Something told him that the time was now. He threw his arm up in a sweeping motion. Frank grabbed the shaft just behind the razor sharp tip and batted it out of the way just before it could strike him in the chest.

  A look of hurt and confusion came across Frank's face. Whatever fantasies Frank had entertained didn’t include the object of his affection trying to kill him. "I don’t want to hurt you," Frank said. "Never...never that. Why did you do that?"

  "But you are and you will. Once you understand that I can never be what you want. You want too much. More than I could ever have given you when you were alive and nothing I would be willing to give you now when you're ... this."

  Frank frowned and his eyes cast down. He released his hold on the spear just for a moment, but it was enough time for Jay to lunge at him again.

  Frank side-stepped and Jay went sprawling on the ice. As he crawled to his knees, he could feel the ice roll under him.

  Frank offered Jay his hand. "Just come with me now. It could be really beautiful." His eyes softened and appeared to be a cloudy blue as the light of the moon hit just the slightest hints of tears. "Please... Jay."

  Jay was leaning back, looking up at Frank like a mantis waiting to spring, when it finally occurred to him what he had to do.

  "I can’t," he said. "I’m with Meg now and nothing is going to change that. You were my best friend, but I'm not going to give up what I have now for somethi
ng that disappeared fifteen years ago."

  Frank shook his head and stomped his foot. "No!"

  The ice cracked. Jay eyed the spear, just out of reach, as he ranted on.

  "But I did all this for you!"

  Frank looked down at his feet, dejected, then turned away.

  "This isn't for nothing," he continued. "You don't mean what you said. I did things. It isn't supposed to be this way."

  He stamped his foot again, like a petulant child. Jay could feel the water surging up from the opening beneath him as it widened. He scrabbled at the ice with his finger tips as he pulled himself onto the side closest to Frank, inching closer to the spear.

  In that moment, Frank’s smile changed to a look of rage and his eyes became cold, dead marbles.

  "It’s that bitch," he yelled. "I knew it! I should have just killed her when I had the chance. Then you would have been mine. All for me."

  Jay sprang toward the spear. The ice gave way under him just as he closed his fingers around it and he found himself immersed in the frigid water. Frank's anger changed to surprise as he lost his balance and slid into the black water right behind him.

  Once Jay had gotten over the initial shock of the cold, he could feel his muscles begin to cramp. It would only be a short time before his hands and legs turned blue, numb, and worthless. He tried kicking to the surface and was suddenly jerked back. He could feel Frank's hand around his ankle, tight as a vise.

  Jay kicked hard, trying to break loose, but when he did it was as if he were tangled in a steel coil that knotted itself tighter with each attempt. He could feel his lungs, about to burst, filled with pain. He knew that if he were going to get out of this live, he had to keep his wits about him and not panic. The first thing that came to his mind as his feet touched the soft bottom of the pond was that he still had the spear in his hand. He jabbed blindly with it, scraping his ankle before hitting home. Frank's grip loosened just long enough for Jay to pull himself free.

  He broke the surface, steam rising off his body from the exertion in the cold night, and took a great gulp of air. Jay scraped his fingertips raw trying to get a grip on the slick surface of the ice. Frank grabbed hold of him once again and dragged him down.

  There was no way he could use the spear as a club. The only way to get into position to use it in the prescribed manner was to just give up and allow Frank to have his way, taking him to the bottom. He wasn’t sure if he could do it. His lungs ached as the two of them slipped deeper.

  When they touched bottom once again, he could feel Frank’s hands coming to rest on his shoulders. If there were ever a time to do what had to be done, it was then. Jay gripped the shaft of the spear tightly, near the center, feeling the balance of it for an instant. As Frank pulled him closer, he raised it to his chest. As their lips touched, Jay thrust the spear forward.

  Jay was a lucky man. His blind attempt struck true, just at the base of the sternum and angling up into Frank's chest. Time stopped as a green glow suffused the water.

  Thick, black bile poured from Frank's wound. Then Jay looked into his eyes. They were the deep blue he remembered. The anger and hatred had drained from his face to be replaced by a smile.

  Frank nodded his head and lifted his hands from Jay’s shoulders, releasing him. He kicked away and just before he reached the surface, he looked back. He could see Frank there, the glow encasing his body and growing brighter.

  He broke out of the water once again, gulping in breaths and feeling a burning in his lungs as the freezing air rushed into them. Once he was able to get his bearings, he paddled over to the edge of the ice and heaved himself up onto it. He laid there for a moment, breathing hard, the hair on his head beginning to freeze, looking around to get his bearings.

  He began crawling away from the edge and back toward the house. He had been lucky in the direction he had chosen when he had reached the surface. If he had swum in the other direction, he would have faced a long trip around the pond in the freezing gloom. The line of flags had disappeared, so he had to use dead reckoning to figure out just when he had made it back onto ice thick enough to support him on foot.

  Jay had risen to his knees when there was a sudden blinding flash in the direction from which he had come, followed by a loud crash. He was thrown down, smacking his face hard against the ice. When he sat up and looked to see what had happened, he saw Frank, on his back on the ice, bathed in that glow, the spear still lodged in his chest.

  Jay heard a plaintive call.

  "Please."

  Meg had seen the light from her vantage point on the shore and ran up to his side. She knelt down beside Jay and wrapped him up in her coat. As she held him close, he basked in her warmth and the love it represented.

  Frank rose to his feet and approached them, his arms stretched out to his sides. As he got closer, it became clear that he was no longer the bloodthirsty creature that they had come to know and fear. The vileness, corruption, the accumulated years of jealousy and anger seemed to melt away. What they saw, finally, just a few feet away, was a boy, dressed for play in his stocking cap and corduroy coat.

  Frank’s arms dropped to his side.

  "Thanks, buddy," he said. "I don’t have much time, but now you know. I didn’t want to leave that way. Leave without knowing."

  Frank smiled once again. Jay nodded and returned it with a smile of his own. Then Frank grasped the spear in his hands. As he did, a bolt like lightning shot out from it’s tip into the sky. A beam of light emanated from the wound, growing larger with each second. Soon there was no more Frank, just a pillar of light that was so bright that Meg and Jay had to shield their eyes. It flowed toward them until it was a great ball, just inches from Jay’s face.

  There was no heat. It was a cool light. But Jay could feel the hairs on the back of his neck tingle. When he hesitantly reached out with the palm of his hand, there was an arc of little blue sparks.

  "I release you," Jay said.

  The sparks shot up into the sky, a buzzing swarm of fireflies. The two of them watched the spectacle until it disappeared, swallowed up by the night. When it was over, Meg turned to Jay.

  "What was it all about, Jay? In the end, what did he want so much?"

  Jay thought for a moment before he answered. He pulled Meg close. He held her tight, so tight she thought she would break, and then he kissed her.

  "What you’ve given to me. A second chance."

  THE END