Vapors: The Essential G. Wayne Miller Fiction Vol. 2

by G. Wayne Miller

  “That you were as crazy as him.”

  The following Monday, after Matt had gone to work, Kate called the Bay Police.

  “Frank Nickerson?” the sergeant echoed. “Sure, I know him. More years than I’d like to remember, the old coot. He’s a character, all right, but so’s most of the old-timers in this town.”

  “I heard he was arrested one time,” Kate lied. “Has a record.”

  “Arrested? Are we talking the same Frank Nickerson? What would anyone want to arrest him for, except maybe for overcharging on his premiums? Who is this, anyway?”

  Kate hung up, more disturbed than when she’d dialed.

  Jenny’s first bogeyman nightmare shattered her sleep 15 minutes after midnight on Sept. 4.

  Matt, who liked to joke that he was the lightest sleeper in the continental U.S.A., was in her room immediately. Jenny was beyond basic tears - she was sobbing, so hysterically that for a few scary minutes Kate and Matt were sure she was having a seizure. Together, Mommy and Daddy hugged her.

  Eventually, Jenny was calm enough to form complete words. “It was there . . . outside the w-w-window,” she stammered.

  “What, honey?” her mother said.

  “The b-b-bogeyman.”

  “It was only a bad dream, sweetheart,” her father said.

  “But it wasn’t] It wasn’t a dream] It was like . . . like a werewolf, w-with teeth and fur.”

  “Shhhh,” Kate urged. “Your daddy’s right, honey. Sometimes dreams seem very real. You think you’re awake when you’re really not.”

  “But I was awake. I was.”

  “There’s no such thing as the bogeymen,” Matt said, curbing the impulse to be angry. This was the age, Jenny’s pediatrician had cautioned, when a child’s imagination expands at breakneck speed. The age when all sorts of new possibilities open up to the 4-year-old mind - including a number of fears the 4-year-old herself in another year or two will scoff at. Be patient, the doctor had advised, cool, lest a lifelong phobia be created.

  “But I saw it. It came out of the dark and when I started crying, it went back. I saw it, Mommy. I saw it, Daddy.”

  “Even if there were such things as bogeymen and werewolves,” Matt explained, “they couldn’t get up here. Everybody knows bogeymen and werewolves can’t climb the side of a house. Right, Mommy?”

  “That’s right, honey,” Kate said unconvincingly.

  Jenny ignored her parents’ logic. “Can I sleep in your bed, Mommy? Daddy?” she begged. “Please?”

  “Sure, pumpkin,” Kate said. In 10 minutes, Matt and Jenny were asleep.

  It was more than two hours before Kate was.

  A few days later, as he mowed the lawn, Matt spotted a set of paw prints in the soft soil beneath Jenny’s bedroom window. A dog hadn’t left them, any idiot could see that. They were too big - about the size of an adult hand.

  He knew immediately.

  Bear. Growing up in Maine, we’d see the tracks - every fall, when food got scarce in the woods.

  And that’s all Kate and Jenny need. Especially with me working late nights the way I’ve been, them alone, their female imaginations free to go berserk.

  Matt got a rake and carefully erased the prints.

  And made a mental note to clean and oil his rifle.

  On three successive nights, Jenny’s nightmare recurred.

  On each of those nights, Kate was on the verge of panic.

  And on each of the following mornings, she was on the phone to their pediatrician. His familiar dissertation on the nature of a child’s imagination was not reassuring.

  It could not erase old Mr. Nickerson’s comments, still echoing in her mind... Last sightings were, oh, a century ago . . . mostly by kids . . . though why that should be is something I don’t pretend to understand. Gramps said he took on the form of a shaggy, clawed thing, closer to a bear than anything else.

  And it could not explain what Kate had seen on the side of the house: scratch marks.

  Or what she’d found on the ground: flecks of dark, bristly fur. Definitely not the cat’s fur.

  Or the fact that Jenny gave the same account, the same description, every single time, as if she were observing . . .

  . . . not dreaming.

  “I’m worried,” Kate finally admitted.

  “About what?” Matt said.

  “Jenny’s nightmares.”

  It was evening, Sept. 14, and their daughter had been asleep an hour. They were downstairs, watching TV.

  “What about them?”

  “I don’t think they’re nightmares, Matt. I think she’s really been seeing something.”

  “And what do you think she’s been seeing?” His voice had a sarcastic edge to it. “The bogeyman?”

  “It’s not funny, Matt. I found something that looks like fur this morning on the ground beneath her window.”

  Oh, Jesus, Matt thought. Here we go.

  “Probably a dog’s,” he said.

  “Would a dog scratch the side of the house 10 feet up? There’s something else, too, Matt. I ran into a lady the other day at Bay Market. Ethel Kiernan, her name was. Lives up Elm a few houses. Know what she said?”

  “No.”

  “She said the mail is slow around here and Frank Nickerson’s devil policies are overpriced. That’s all: ‘His devil policies are overpriced.’ She could have been talking about the price of hamburger, for God’s sake, she was so matter-of-fact.”

  Matt laughed, but it was a weaker laugh than he’d intended. “So Bay has two loons on the loose. Big deal. Providence is full of them.”

  “She didn’t sound crazy, Matt. She talked about it like the devil is a fact of life around here.”

  “Well, I don’t know about you, Kate,” Matt said, “but I don’t believe in devils. I believe in good and evil, heaven and hell, yes - but I don’t believe in horned creatures from hell. That’s Bible imagery, symbolism. Didn’t they teach you that in parochial school?”

  “Yes, they did,” Kate said, “and I don’t believe in devils, either. At least, I never have. But what if - “

  “What are you driving at? That we ought to play along with Nickerson? I told you, he’s nothing but a harmless coot who’s operating on half a tank. Gets his jollies trying to spook people.”

  Kate was becoming angry. Here she was concerned for Jenny’s safety, and what was Matt doing? Pulling one of his holier-than-thou routines.

  “What if you’re wrong?” she snarled. “What if for the very first time in your life you’re wrong?”

  “I’m not.”

  “How can you be so sure?” she thundered.

  “Because I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s been going on here,” Matt said indignantly, “and if you’ll get off your high horse, I’d be pleased to tell you.” Actually, he was not going to be pleased, but he could see now there was no way around it.

  “Go ahead,” she said reluctantly.

  “The first thing is I don’t think it’s all been nightmares with Jenny.” Kate swallowed the impulse to say the three most provocative words in the English language: Told you so.

  “You think she’s seen something,” she stated flatly.

  “Yes. An animal. Probably a dog,” he lied. “A large dog.”

  “A dog?” Kate said.

  Matt held his breath. “Or maybe a bear,” he said carefully.

  “Jesus!”

  “I doubt it’s a bear, but they have been seen from time to time in Bay. The good news is if it really is a bear, it’s a black bear, not a grizzly or something. Black bears’re more afraid of people than people are of them.”

  Kate turned it over in her mind for a moment. “Only one thing doesn’t make sense,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Where Jenny’s been seeing this . . . whatever: on the second floor, Matt.”

  “I’ve thought about that, too,” Matt said triumphantly. “I think this dog, or bear, has been scratching around outside - making enough noise
to wake Jenny. Half asleep, she goes to the window and looks outside. Which is where she sees it - on the ground. She only thinks it’s at her window sill.”

  Kate hadn’t been prepared to accept an explanation, but this - this, she had to admit, made good sense.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We keep the windows and doors locked, and I keep the rifle handy, that’s what we do,” Matt said. “I’ll bet you a million bucks we’ll never have to use it.”

  Jenny had only one more nightmare, on Sept. 19.

  Then there was nothing - no disturbance, no scratch marks, no fresh paw prints. Rather quickly, and with an unspoken but heavy sense of relief, the earlier incidents began to slip from the family’s consciousness. Summer faded to fall, and Matt kept the leaves off his lawn, and Kate got the dining room wallpapered, and Jenny learned to ride a bicycle with training wheels, and life was sweet that autumn for the Kirbys of Bay, R.I.

  Until Oct. 31, a Saturday.

  Halloween.

  At 3:35 p.m. that day, Frank Nickerson returned to the Kirbys’.

  “Come in, come in,” Kate said when he knocked. “We were just putting the finishing touches on Jenny’s costume.”

  “I’m going to be a ghost!” Jenny giggled from inside her sheet.

  “And a scary one, too,” Nickerson said.

  “Wanna hear me be scary?”

  “Sure.”

  “Rahhhhhh!”

  “OK, honey,” Kate said. “Mr. Nickerson wants to talk with me.”

  Kate took Jenny’s costume off and gave her a kiss. “You go play upstairs now,” she said.

  “OK,” Jenny said cheerfully.

  Kate wasn’t sure how she felt at seeing Nickerson - relieved that he had kept his promise to return, or afraid of the scene she knew would unfold with Matt. Because though she hadn’t been dwelling on it, and though the seeming urgency of the situation had waned with time, she had decided that they should buy a policy.

  Must buy.

  And not because I believe in devils, but because . . . because there are some things in this world we just don’t understand, that’s all.

  Things all the scientists can’t explain, regardless of how much research they conduct. Like how salmon can travel 10,000 miles and return to the place of their birth to spawn. How a single cell can multiply into cancer. How the human mind, which produces Renoir paintings and Mahler symphonies, can trick a David Berkowitz into believing a neighbor’s dog is ordering him to stalk and murder a dozen innocent people in complete and utter cold blood.

  Matt denies the existence of the devil, and probably he’s right. Probably it was a dog, or just maybe it was a bear. But what if . . . just what if it weren’t?

  “Can only stay a minute,” Nickerson said. In his hand was a manila envelope.

  “Hello, Mr. Nickerson,” Matt said, coming into the room.

  “Hello, Mr. Kirby. I drew up your policy. I’d like you to look it over, make sure everything’s in order. Then you can sign my copy, which I will keep on record.”

  Matt opened the envelope, withdrew a single-page document, scrutinized it a moment, and then threw it onto the kitchen counter.

  Enough of this, he thought. Enough is enough.

  “I’m afraid I’m not interested, Mr. Nickerson,” he said sternly. Kate opened her mouth to speak, but Matt cut her off. “That goes for my wife, too.”

  “And why’s that, Mr. Kirby?” the old man asked politely.

  “Because we don’t need your policy, Mr. Nickerson,” he declared.

  Nickerson looked at Matt - an emotionless look that revealed nothing of what was going on inside his head. He scratched his chin, covered with a four-day stubble.

  “Don’t need it? Why, you already did need it, my friend, and thank the good Lord you had it. Thank the good Lord Frank Nickerson’s the kind of neighbor he is, and has seen fit to give those newcomers who are . . .How shall we put it? . . . unbelievin’ a trial period.

  “Otherwise - well, otherwise we might not be having this conversation, Mr. Kirby. Otherwise old Jack Smith down at the mortuary might’ve had some new business this summer. And it might’ve been worse. It can get much worse, you know - much worse than an undertaker. Oh, yes. Something about eternity and souls.”

  Matt was steaming again. What was it about this old duff, anyway? Was it his persistence that bothered Matt most? Or the sheer lunacy of his babbling?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Matt said.

  “I think you do, Mr. Kirby. I think if I were to say that nothing’s happened to you the past two months, everything and everybody’s been hunky-dory, and the credit for that happy fact rightly belongs to me and my generosity - why, if I were to say that, I’d bet your wife here would agree.”

  Kate thought of the nightmares, how . . . whatever it was looked through the window, but never came in.

  For all the fright, for all the crying and sobbing, it’s never come in.

  Never actually harmed any of us.

  Kate began, “That’s - “

  “Nonsense,” Matt said.

  “Is it, Mr. Kirby? Is paw prints under your little girl’s window nonsense? Paw prints you and I both know ain’t been left by no dog or bear? Is claw marks up the side of a wall - a wall you know no animal big enough to leave those same prints could ever climb - nonsense? Is it? He’s been around. Oh, yes. I know he’s been around. Sniffing. Checking things out. Scouting new territory, if you will.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “Please be quiet, Mr. Kirby, if just for a moment. I know what I’m sayin’, ‘cause he’s been by my place this summer, too.

  “Been away for a few years, but this summer he’s been back. Oh, I ain’t seen him, but I’ve heard him. Rattlin’ my windows at night. Howlin’. Prints, too. Has my wife scared half to death, and who’s to blame her? Ain’t only kids who are scared of the devil.

  “These are old tricks, Mr. Kirby. Very old. Go back to Gramps’s time, and earlier. He always does this when there’s a newcomer in the neighborhood. Thinks he can scare me out of selling ‘em a policy is what it is. But I been around too long to let him scare me. Got my own policy, somethin’ he knows full well. He can make noise fit to raise the dead, but he knows he can’t do me no harm.”

  “What you’ve heard has been a dog,” Matt said. “Or a bear.”

  “Trust me, Mr. Kirby. That wasn’t no animal. Oh, there’s bears in the woods here, all right - every now and then some hiker catches a glimpse of one - but you won’t find ‘em comin’ out this far.”

  Kate spoke up: “Matt - “

  “You keep out of this, Kate,” he snapped. He turned back to their visitor, who had kept his post by the kitchen door. “I think it’s time for you to leave now, Mr. Nickerson.”

  “Suit yourself.” Nickerson reached for the knob. “Ain’t my little girl.”

  “Mr. Nickerson.” Kate’s voice was firm. If the wool was going to fly, then so be it.

  “Yes, Mrs. Kirby?”

  “How much is the premium?”

  Matt exploded. His stomach had been churning, and now he exploded. “We’re not paying, and that’s it!” he shouted.

  “Thirty dollars a year, Mrs. Kirby,” Nickerson said, his voice all ice.

  Kate turned toward her husband. She was furious - no, she was past furious. She wanted to curse him, slap him until the mantle of self-righteousness he’d wrapped himself in slipped away.

  “For 30 lousy bucks,” she screamed, “you’d sell your family? I can’t believe it]”

  “You’re as crazy as he is.”

  “You’re the one who’s crazy. And pig-headed, and stupid. . . .”

  In the middle of their argument, Frank Nickerson quietly let himself out.

  Trick-or-treating took less than half an hour - there were so few houses on the Kirbys’ road. Matt made sure they didn’t stop at Nickerson’s.

  That night, after threats and counterthreats of divorce, after 2 1/
2 hours of stone silence in front of the TV, after the whole family had turned in, the nightmare - nightmare? - resumed.

  This time, it wasn’t only Jenny.

  It was Kate, too.

  “There was something there,” she insisted, after she had screamed and then run madly to turn on every light on the second floor.

  “What?” Matt said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Matt hadn’t seen anything, hadn’t heard anything. He’d slept lightly , as lightly as ever, undisturbed. That fact in itself was all the proof he needed.

  “You know what!” Kate hollered. “You know and you’re too stubborn to admit it. You’ve taken a stand, and anytime you take a - “

  Jenny cut her off.

  Wide-eyed, crying Jenny, standing at the entrance to their bedroom, her Cabbage Patch doll in her trembling hand.

  “Mommy, Daddy, I saw -

  “I know, honey,” Kate said, smothering her in her arms.

  “It w-w-w-was - “

  “Shhhh. It’s all right, now. Everything’s OK.”

  Matt threw the covers off and stood up. Kate was one thing, a more-or-less self-sufficient thing, but his daughter . . . his daughter was something else entirely. He reached for her.

  Kate pushed him away - violently, as if he were a stranger who had materialized in their room.

  “Get out of here,” Kate said. Now the tears were closer than ever, but she would not give in, no, she wouldn’t. “Just leave us alone.”

  “Kate - “

  “Leave us alone!”

  Kate inched toward the night table. She reached for the bedside phone.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Frank Nickerson.”

  “No, you’re not,” Matt snarled.

  “Oh, yes, I am. Our trial policy runs out tonight, and I’m calling him!”

  “Oh, no, you’re not!”

  Matt walked calmly to their closet, took his recently oiled AR-15 rifle down from its rack, loaded a live clip into it, placed the gun on his chest of drawers, pulled on jeans and a shirt, laced up his boots, tucked his three-battery heavy-duty flashlight into his pocket, and then picked up the loaded weapon.