A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares

by Krystal Sutherland

  And then he turned around.

  And, for the second time that day, she recognized him.

  There, glowing in the warm light of the bonfire, was Jonah Smallwood. Even from here she could tell that the bruise that had been swelling across his cheek that afternoon was gone, that the split at his eyebrow had healed, which meant that he was either a) a Highlander, or b) a pretty decent makeup artist, both of which seemed equally implausible.

  Esther wasn’t usually prone to violent outbursts, but for a half second she considered busting her wine bottle against a wall and getting stabby with Jonah’s lower intestines. Then she remembered that blood was number forty on her semi-definitive list, so she gagged a little bit and then decided to punch him instead. She abandoned the bottle, slipped down the stairs, passed through the chain link fence, and strode toward the fire, her rage temporarily dislodging the anxiety anchor from her chest and giving her extraordinary courage.

  Jonah didn’t immediately recognize her because she was dressed as Wednesday Addams, which was the desired effect of the costumes. Confusion. Disorientation. Camouflage from predators.

  When she was about three feet away from him, it clicked. Jonah put her face together with the memory “girl I robbed at the bus stop and left for dead” and said, “Oh shit!” He stumbled off the anvil and dropped one of his drinks and made to bolt, but it was too late. Esther was already there. She grabbed him by the shirtfront and swung. She’d never punched anyone before, not really, not with the intention of genuinely hurting them. Her blow landed two inches to the north of her intended target (left eye) and kind of glanced gently off the left side of his forehead before sailing like a soft breeze over the top of his hair.

  “You hit me,” Jonah said, like he was wholly bewildered by this fact, “in the hairline.”

  “You stole my money! And my Roll-Up!”

  “It was delicious.” He enunciated every syllable in a way that made Esther’s eye twitch like a cartoon villain’s.

  And that’s when the sirens came.

  “Oh shit! Run!” Even though she’d just punched him very poorly in the left side of his head, Jonah dropped his remaining drink and grabbed her hand and pulled her after him toward the back of the warehouse. Esther’s first thought was for Eugene, who couldn’t run, who couldn’t leave the light of the bonfire, but the cops were already on them, shouting, the beams of their flashlights darting all around. There was the sound of barking police dogs and the delighted squeals of teenagers who knew the nickel refinery like their own homes, knew the secrets of the place, the hidden crevasses and the labyrinthine catwalks and the holes rusted in boilers, just large enough for someone to crawl through and hide. They knew that they were fast enough to get away and so they howled and laughed and then went silent as the refinery swallowed them whole, one by one. And then there was Esther and Jonah, breathing heavily but quietly, knowing that even though they were running, they’d been seen and that escape was questionable.

  Her second thought was that she shouldn’t be running at all. She should stop and turn and wait for the cops and identify Jonah Smallwood as the petty criminal who’d swindled her out of fifty-five dollars and a much anticipated Fruit Roll-Up hours before. But she didn’t. She ran and she ran and she ran and Jonah never let her go. Then they were outside at the edge of a copse of trees, wading—and then tumbling—through the undergrowth. She landed on top of him, her right knee between his thighs, her chest against his chest, her hand still in his hand.

  A flashlight beam swept over her head. A dog snarled. Jonah pulled her down by the crucifix (an important feature of any Wednesday Addams costume), so close that her nose was pressed against the skin of his neck and she had no choice but to breathe in the scent of him again and again. Not his shampoo or laundry powder or cologne (or—let’s be honest here, he was a teenage boy after all—his cheap Axe Body Spray), but him, that smell you smell when you walk into someone’s bedroom or get into their car and it doesn’t smell bad or good—it’s just them. The essence of them. Normally you needed to know a person for years before you knew the way they really smelled. Needed to parse away the perfume and the sweat and the shampoo and the detergent. But there he was, laid bare before her.

  The cops were getting closer. Jonah pressed his finger to her lips, pulled her closer to him, tried to make their two bodies smaller than they were, which was difficult, because he was tall and she was wide and her blood was pulsing so brightly and loudly through her veins that it should have been like a beacon in the dark. As she breathed him in, a curious thing began to happen—the grapnel anchor lodged in her back loosened slightly, letting her lungs expand to their fullest. When you have anxiety, you don’t really get to have deep breaths. Your ribs are too small to let your shriveled lungs expand beyond half their size.

  Yet for a few calm seconds in the dark, Esther wasn’t worried about velociraptors or cougars or an unprovoked alien invasion, which were her usual go-to concerns when falling asleep at night. She wasn’t even particularly worried about getting arrested, because Jonah didn’t seem to be all that alarmed.

  Then a flashlight beam landed full on their faces, her nose still in Jonah’s neck, his finger still at her mouth.

  Jonah’s lips parted into a magnificent smile. “Evening officer,” he said pleasantly, like this was the least compromising position law enforcement had ever busted him in. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “You’re trespassing on private property,” said the cop, who was still nothing but a deep voice and a bright hovering light in the dark.

  “Oh dear. We were just out for a spot of nighttime bird watching. The rare Common Barn Owl was said to have been seen around—hey, ow, hey, okay man, okay, Jesus,” Jonah said as the cop wrenched him out from under her by his collar. More police appeared, and Esther, too, was hauled to her feet by a burly female (possible ex–MMA cage fighter) and steered back toward the flashing lights at the front of the warehouse.

  Eugene, as it turns out, hadn’t tried to run from the police, so no one had paid any attention to him. He was standing next to one of the cop cars, reveling in the red and blue lights, his hands in his pockets like he was waiting to meet someone at Starbucks and not waiting to be arrested.

  Hide, Esther mouthed to him. Eugene looked around and shrugged and then walked back to the fire, where he’d remain until dawn, unable to leave its circle of light until the sun rose. The police didn’t notice him. It worried her when others couldn’t see him. Sometimes, when the light was right, when he turned his body at the right angle, she could swear Eugene was transparent. You know those weird memories you have from childhood, the ones you can’t explain, those half-remembered dreamscapes of impossible things? A book flying off a shelf by itself; a breath taken underwater; a black lump of shadow at the end of the hall with teeth and claws and acid white eyes. Esther’s were all of Eugene. When they were younger, when he was very sad or very scared, he would flicker. Like he was being projected into reality but wasn’t really part of it, like he could turn himself off at will.

  A boy made of lightning bugs.

  As a poor man’s Ronda Rousey pushed her head into the cop car, Esther saw her brother vanish, just for a moment, into thin air. Then Jonah was shoved into the back seat on the other side of her. And that was how, the same night he robbed her, Jonah Smallwood accompanied Esther Solar during her first arrest.

  As it turns out, they weren’t really under arrest, which they should’ve guessed from the lack of handcuffs and Miranda rights. The cops drove them back into town and took them to the station and walked them into separate holding cells, which they referred to as “custody suites.” Jonah’s cell was empty, while Esther’s held a very thin woman in a red wig who was picking at scabs on her arm. She introduced herself as Mary, mother of God.

  Esther tried to explain to Ronda that a great injustice had been done to her, and that Jonah should be charged with thef
t and she should be set free, but Ronda ignored her and said, “One phone call.”

  Esther didn’t have her phone (obviously) and couldn’t remember any of her relatives’ numbers, except for her grandfather’s, which wasn’t very helpful. So she called Hephzibah’s cell.

  Esther: “Hephzibah, I’ve been apprehended by law enforcement. I need you to tell my mom to bail me out.”

  Hephzibah: [SILENCE]

  Esther: “I assume the fact you just answered your phone means you got away when the cops raided the place.”

  Hephzibah: [SILENCE]

  Esther: “I know Mom will be at the casino until, like, sunrise, but you need to tell her where I am, okay?”

  Hephzibah: [SILENCE]

  Esther: “Also, I left Eugene alone at the refinery. Can you please go rescue him?”

  Hephzibah: [SILENCE]

  Esther: “I’m gonna go back to being a hardened criminal now.”

  Hephzibah: [SILENCE]

  Esther: “Okay, good talk.”

  The cop led her back to her cell, at which point she proceeded to lie facedown on the ground so she didn’t have to talk to Jonah, who was sitting cross-legged on the far side of his cage, watching her.

  “I wouldn’t lie there if I were you,” Jonah said.

  To which she replied: “Can I live?”

  To which he replied: “Think about all the piss and vomit and blood that’s been on that floor. You know they don’t pay these cops enough to clean it.”

  “He’s right, you know,” croaked Jesus’s mom. “I peed in here just last week.”

  “It does smell a lot like urine.” Esther sat up and mirrored Jonah’s stance, her back pressed against the bars. Jonah was led out for his phone call, which—judging by the amount of yelling and swearing he did—went much less smoothly than hers.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking about you ever since I robbed you this afternoon,” he said when he sat down again. The cop at the desk closest to the cells peered up over his glasses and raised his eyebrows. “It’s a metaphor for, uh, sex stuff,” Jonah explained quickly. The cop narrowed his eyes but looked back down at his phone.

  “About how you want forgiveness for your heinous crime?” Esther said.

  “Nah, about your weird family, the ones you did a presentation on back in elementary school.”

  “Oh.” Esther had specifically enrolled at East River High School because no one from her third grade class (bar Hephzibah) was going there, and thus no one would remember her third grade report about the Solar family curse.

  “Yeah, how are they weird again? They’re all lactose intolerant or something?”

  “It’s definitely that. They cannot handle milk.”

  “Nah, that isn’t it. Phobias, right? They all have a great fear. Scared of spiders and heights and all that. Cursed by Death himself. And whatever you’re afraid of, that’s what kills you one day.”

  “How do you even remember that?”

  “I paid a lot of attention to you when I was eight. Like, a lot.”

  Esther blushed, and then filled Jonah in on the two rules of the curse, which were these:

  - The curse could befall a Solar at any stage of their life at any time without warning, like a dormant disease in the blood, waiting to strike. Reginald, her grandfather, had not become terrified of water until he was in his thirties, when Death told him that he would one day drown. Eugene’s fear of the dark, on the other hand, had developed when he was a child.

  - Whatever you feared would consume your life until it eventually killed you.

  “So what about you?” Jonah asked. “What are you scared of?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You can’t be the special snowflake, letting the rest of the cursed family down. You wanna bring shame to your bloodline?”

  “It’s not funny.”

  “Yeah, I remember your report. Your cousin’s scared of bees. Your uncle’s scared of germs. Your granddad’s scared of water. Your dad was a veterinarian, and he didn’t know his great fear yet.”

  “Dad knows his fear now. He has agoraphobia. He hasn’t left the basement in six years.”

  “Well, there you go. You must be afraid of something.”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Sure you are. You just gotta figure out what.”

  “That’s really inspirational.”

  “Thank you.”

  They didn’t speak again until Jonah’s dad, Holland, arrived to bail him out (well, to pick him up, technically, because he wasn’t under arrest). Holland kind of looked like Jonah if everything about Jonah was bigger and puffier. Bigger, puffier shoulders, bigger, puffier belly, bigger, puffier hair.

  “Hey Dad. Can we give Esther a ride home?” asked Jonah as budget Ronda Rousey freed him from his cage. Holland looked Esther up and down with mean eyes and then turned to leave, which apparently meant “Yes,” because Jonah said, “C’mon.”

  Holland’s car was a squash-colored ’80s station wagon with caramel leather seats that were so badly cracked they left scratches on Esther’s legs. She did not mention this as she gave directions to her house. When they slowed in front of the old Victorian, Jonah said, “Jesus Horatio Christ!” Her home, as always, was seeping light, casting the long shadows of oak trees across the street. The nazars were whispering in the breeze, singing softly, ominously, of the terrible fate that would befall anyone who wished the Solars harm and dared to stray too close. Esther scrambled out before the car had stopped. This was why she never invited friends from school over.

  “Esther, wait!” called Jonah. She didn’t wait, but he was faster than she was, so he caught her among the trees. “Hey, I have something for you. I sold the bracelet already and the money’s gone, but you can have this back.” He dug in his pocket and handed Esther her cell phone.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Sorry for picking your pocket.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “See you round, Esther.”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Jonah blew her a kiss and then darted back to the road as his dad’s car began to crawl away down the street.

  Esther unlocked her phone. Everything was gone. All her photos, her contacts, her apps. It had been scrubbed clean, factory reset, and readied for sale on the black market. Only a single contact had been saved. Jonah Smallwood, it read, with a red heart emoji next to his name and his phone number below. Her finger hovered over the “Delete” button. You shouldn’t keep the phone numbers of rapscallions who robbed you and left you for dead at bus stops, or stood you up on Valentine’s Day at the age of eight, even if they looked like Finn from Star Wars and dressed like the Fantastic Mr. Fox and smelled like heady cologne.

  Esther wasn’t entirely sure why she kept his number, but it probably had something to do with the fact that she imagined she would never see Jonah Smallwood again.

  It would only be sixteen hours and seven minutes before that assumption proved entirely incorrect.

  4

  STRING LIGHTS AND SERIAL KILLERS

  HOME WAS, as she knew it would be, bright but abandoned. Esther went to the kitchen and searched the drawers for the book where Rosemary scribbled down all their phone numbers in case of an emergency. Rabbits, small and gray and twitchy, hopped at her feet, hoping to be fed. Like most everything Rosemary brought into the house—the chamomile tea she washed her hands in before she went to play the slots, the sage leaves she carried in her wallet, the coins she sewed into her clothing, the horseshoe, that goddamn evil goblin rooster—the rabbits were for good luck. Most people just carried around a single rabbit’s foot, but why buy a single foot, her mother reasoned, when you could buy a whole rabbit and get four times the amount of luck without spilling any blood?

  Esther called Rosemary on the landline, but she didn’t answer, so she checked all t
he downstairs rooms, but her mother wasn’t in any of them. Rosemary thought the house was haunted, but really, the only ghosts inside these walls were her parents. (That still didn’t mean Esther was going to go snooping around upstairs—that’s how horror movies started.) She tried Eugene and Heph on their cells, but they both went straight to voicemail.

  What she did next was a testament to how much she loved her stupid brother: She located her long-abandoned bike in the garage, pumped up the tires, pimped the thing out with half a dozen bike headlights scavenged from Eugene’s bedroom, and then wrapped a string of lights around her chest and torso, just for good measure. Have you ever seen a horror movie where someone gets murdered with a string of madly flashing lights wrapped around them? Of course not. No one wants to murder ridiculous people. It gets the cops asking too many questions. Plus, no one was going to forget if they saw Wednesday Addams wrapped in string lights. Murderers want, like, drifters and prostitutes. Fade-into-the-background type people that no one will remember seeing and no one will miss.

  Nobody would forget seeing her.

  Outside, the early morning was dark and quiet. Esther slowly peddled past the 7-Eleven, because it was about the only thing still open and therefore the only place that her “last known sighting” would occur if someone did decide to murder her. She thought about this too much. Like, what if Jonah Smallwood was the last person to see her alive (apart from her killer, obviously). What would the cops make of the grainy 7-Eleven CCTV footage that showed her riding past with a loop of string lights around her chest? Would they simply conclude she’d gone bat-shit crazy and cycled off a cliff somewhere? Probably. Her mutilated corpse wouldn’t be discovered for months. Years maybe.