The Fear Hunter

by Elise Sax

  As soon as he entered, he stopped and did a rock ‘n’ roll pose. A couple of middle-aged women in the shop screamed, and a few older men stood and cheered him. “Eddie Acid!” a woman screamed, and a man fanned her with his hand.

  “It’s me! Eddie Acid!” the rocker announced. He bowed to the diners in the shop and walked directly toward me. “You must be Prudence’s replacement. She probably talked to you about me. Eddie Acid.”

  I had never heard of him before, but Auntie Prudence didn’t talk much about her work. When she was home, she talked about home things.

  I nodded. “Of course she did,” I lied. “You’re Eddie Acid.”

  He pointed at me, as if his finger was a gun. “The first punk rocker. The greatest punk rocker. The number one citizen of Sea Breeze.”

  “Eddie Acid!” a woman screamed and lunged for him, but her husband dragged her away and out the door.

  Eddie posed again and showed me one of his posters. “Do I have your permission to put one of these in the window?”

  “Sure,” I said. There were already a handful of posters on the windows, so I didn’t think another one would hurt. “What’s the Punk Rock Knitting Championship?” I asked, reading the poster.

  “Glad you asked, sweetheart.” Eddie cleared his throat and faced the diners in the shop, like he was running for Congress. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m happy to announce that Sea Breeze will be hosting the first annual Punk Rock Knitting Championship next week. It’s like a dance-a-thon but with knitting. So, get to practicing. There will be a sign-up table at the lifeguard tower. I’m putting up the prize money. Two thousand dollars!”

  There was a general murmur of excitement and awe. Eddie walked around the shop, answering questions about the knitting championship.

  “Oh, I love to knit,” Mouse told me. “I’m going to win that two thousand dollars and buy an electric bicycle. It’ll change my life. Are you going to enter the competition?”

  “I don’t know how to knit,” I told her. I also didn’t know how to ride a bicycle, and I didn’t know what I would spend two thousand dollars on. I had everything I wanted, and if we ever needed something, it sort of showed up, like the time the oven broke and a new one appeared in its place the next day.

  “We have such a thoughtful house,” Auntie Prudence said that day, looking at the new oven in our kitchen. “It always knows just what we need. And look, the oven has six burners. What luxury!”

  Mouse and I closed the shop at four o’clock in the afternoon. “Are you sure you don’t want me to clean up?” Mouse asked me as I shut the door behind us.

  “No, it’ll get done,” I said.

  “That’s what Prudence always said, and she was right. Every morning, the shop was spic-and-span. You guys must have a great cleanup crew.”

  “The best. I never have to tell them what to do,” I said. The cleanup crew wasn’t exactly what Mouse thought it was, but if I told her the truth, she would probably get me locked up.

  We left the shop, and I locked the door with the skeleton key. Mouse went to the right, and I went to the left down Sea Breeze Avenue. As I got closer to home, I felt a familiar feeling of relief, and when I turned onto our long dirt road up to the house, I took a deep, healing breath. Working in the soup shop wasn’t bad, but I still felt out of place, like I was invading Prudence’s space. And I so missed my lighthouse. Although today had more than its share of excitement. Between Remington, the glowing man, Area 38, Felicia and her fights, and Rocky’s accident, I had forgotten about my dread for a good part of the day.

  Finally walking up the steps to the front porch of our house, the door opened before I had a chance to touch the doorknob.

  “Get in, quick,” Auntie Ida said, pulling me inside by the hand.

  “What’s wrong? Did something happen to the house?”

  Auntie Ida’s face had drained of color, and her eyes were wild. Her hair had escaped her bandana and was flying every which way, and her overalls were undone, revealing her checked shirt.

  “Not the house. The wind. The wind’s changed. Big time changed. Not changed like I said it was changed. But really changed. And you know what that means,” Auntie Ida said.

  I had no idea what that meant. “What does that mean?” I breathed, afraid of the answer.

  At that moment, the doorbell rang. Auntie Ida and I jumped a foot in the air and clutched onto each other for support.

  “Don’t answer it,” Auntie Ida ordered. I could feel her tremble against me.

  The doorbell rang again, and it was followed by pounding on the door. “We have to open it,” I said. “What if the shop burned down?”

  “What was that?” Auntie Ida said, pointing at my face.

  I touched my face. “What?”

  “That. You want the shop to burn down.”

  “No, I don’t,” I lied.

  She pointed at me, again. “There. You did it again. You want the shop to burn down. Listen, the shop is your thing now. Prudence said so.”

  “When did she say that?”

  The doorbell rang again. I ignored Auntie Ida and opened it, just to change the topic of conversation.

  Outside, a woman was standing on the front porch, and she looked royally pissed off at having been kept waiting. I knew her face well. I had grown up with her face.

  But I thought her face was dead.

  “Prudence?” I asked her.

  Chapter 3

  “Man produces evil as a bee produces honey.”

  –William Golding

  “Auntie Prudence?” I repeated, dumbstruck. It was all I could do not to pass out. It was all I could do to keep breathing. My beloved Auntie Prudence was standing in front of me, even though she had died two weeks and one day ago under mysterious circumstances. I had seen her body after she died. Auntie Ida and I had buried her in the backyard in a coffin that Auntie Ida made for her out of driftwood and hand-fashioned copper nails. We had mourned her loss. We had packed away her clothes. I had taken over her shop.

  But here she was, standing on the front porch. Breathing. She didn’t look like a ghost. She looked real and alive. Her skin was lightly tanned. Her cheeks were pink. I stuck my index finger out and poked her middle. Yep, she felt like herself. Trim but slightly soft from a life of fresh-baked bread and Auntie Ida’s homemade midnight treats.

  But after a couple seconds of staring at her, I realized that Auntie Prudence didn’t exactly look like herself. She was slightly different, like one of those puzzles in a kid’s magazine that asks to notice the differences in a picture.

  Her hair was tied up high on her head when she normally wore it tied low. And her clothes looked like they came out of Katharine Hepburn’s wardrobe, not Auntie Prudence’s closet.

  And there was something else. Something about her demeanor. Where Auntie Prudence was sweet and patient, this woman gave off a distinct ballbreaker stink. Then, it dawned on me. I knew who she was, and she wasn’t Auntie Prudence.

  I squinted at her and took a closer look. “Auntie Tilly?” I breathed.

  “Of course it’s your Auntie Tilly,” she spat, pushing me aside so she could enter the house. “Who the hell do you think I am? Ida, make me some of your terrible pancakes. I’ve come all the way from New Mexico, and my dogs are barking.”

  Auntie Ida and I trotted behind her, as she marched into the kitchen. Auntie Tilly and Auntie Prudence were twins, but I hadn’t seen Auntie Tilly in years. Lots of years. Lots and lots and lots of years. She had gone wandering and didn’t bother coming back.

  But now she was back.

  “You walked all the way here?” Auntie Ida asked, breathless, as she gathered the ingredients to make Auntie Tilly pancakes.

  “No, that’s just an expression. I took Southwest Airlines, but nobody bothered to pick me up at the airport, so I had to take a taxi here and lug my bags up the road myself because the cabbie got goosebumps when he got near,” Auntie Tilly explained.

  Auntie Ida and I nodded. The house w
as different things to different people. It had a few tricks to ward off unwanted visitors. For example, the five stairs up the porch could turn into a hundred for someone who was really unwanted.

  “That reminds me. Bring in my luggage, Agatha,” Auntie Tilly ordered.

  “Wait a second. What’re you doing here?” I asked.

  “The wind,” Auntie Ida answered for her.

  “Yep. Big change of wind. Big,” Auntie Tilly said. “I’m here for a while. I’m going to take care of the lighthouse.”

  “What?” I said. “No! Now that you’re here, you can take over the shop, and I can go back to my lighthouse.”

  Auntie Tilly and Auntie Ida shook their heads in unison as if they were being pulled by the same string. “The shop’s yours now. Prudence said so,” Auntie Ida said.

  I put my hands on my hips. “When? When did she say so? This doesn’t make sense. Tomorrow I have to make chili. Do you know how much pressure that is? Truckers come in from all over for Auntie Prudence’s chili. Auntie Tilly could make that without a moment’s thought.”

  “That’s true. I make a mean chili,” Auntie Tilly said. “But Prudence was crystal clear about this. The shop is yours. It’s your destiny. Your destiny starts with the wind change. You can’t get clearer than that.”

  I stomped my foot on the tile floor. “It’s not clear at all,” I exclaimed. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why is cooking soup my destiny?”

  “Do you want syrup with your pancakes, or do you want some of my gooseberry jam?” Auntie Ida asked Auntie Tilly, changing the subject. “I just put some up last week. It’s so good, you’ll want to slap someone.”

  “I always want to slap someone. But give me some of that jam, anyway,” Auntie Tilly said.

  “I would have picked you up from the airport, if you had bothered to inform us that you were arriving,” Auntie Ida told Auntie Tilly.

  Auntie Tilly shook her head, vehemently. “No way. You can’t drive, and any other means of transportation would have garnered too much unwanted attention.”

  “I’ve been meaning to get that Uber thing,” Auntie Ida said, stirring the pancake batter.

  “You need a phone for that,” Auntie Tilly said.

  “Oh, I definitely don’t want a phone,” Auntie Ida said.

  “What’s happening here?” I demanded. “Is the conversation about me over? What about my destiny? What about my lighthouse?”

  There was a creaking sound from the other side of the house, as if someone was walking on the old floorboards. Immediately, we shut up and listened, craning our heads to see if there was something to be seen. But the sound wasn’t followed by another one, and there was nothing to see except for our old, beloved home.

  “What’s going on? Awfully quiet around here,” Auntie Tilly said, looking straight at me.

  “It’s been quiet for nearly a year,” Auntie Ida answered for me, as she flipped a pancake on the stove.

  “Why? What happened?” Auntie Tilly asked, looking at me, again.

  “I’m being saved from heartache,” I said and fought back tears that were stinging my eyes. I didn’t want to go into detail. The details were way too painful.

  “I should have come home earlier,” Auntie Tilly said. “Obviously, everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket. It’s not right. It shouldn’t be this quiet. My niece shouldn’t be lonely. But I was needed in Goodnight. They couldn’t have gotten along without me, you know.”

  We ate pancakes with gooseberry jam for dinner and caught up with Auntie Tilly. I brought in her luggage and set her up in her old room. I checked on the lighthouse to make sure everything was being taken care of in my absence. Then, I went to bed early.

  I took a shower, brushed my teeth, and dressed in my nightgown. I turned the lights off in my room and laid down in my bed, pulling the covers up under my chin. What a day. The wind had changed, all right. The soup shop had turned into a circus’s center ring. It might have been the focus of a government conspiracy. I still didn’t know what Area 38 was, and what it had to do with a glowing man.

  And then there was Auntie Tilly. The wind must have really changed if she had come back to stay.

  I turned over in bed and fluffed my pillow to try and get comfortable. I wanted to talk about all this with someone. I used to have someone to talk to about my days and about my feelings. But that someone had disappeared, went away supposedly to save me from heartbreak.

  But his disappearance had left me heartbroken.

  “Where are you?” I said out loud, but there wasn’t an answer.

  “Chili was not invented in Chile, Irving,” Doris told her husband, as I handed them their second bowl of chili. It had turned out good today. Not as good as Auntie Prudence’s, but good enough to make diners ask for seconds. It was eleven o’clock, and the shop was packed with the lunch crowd.

  “Of course, it was. Chili. Chile. They’re the same word. Why do you think that is, genius?” Irving said with his mouth full of chili.

  “It’s not the same word. They’re spelled differently,” Doris said. “Chili’s from Texas. Everyone knows that.”

  “Chile is not in Texas, Doris. It’s a completely different country,” Irving insisted.

  Doris pointed at him with her fork. “I wonder if this fork could go right through your face.”

  A table of truckers paid, and I cleared off their table. The door opened, and the workout couple came in. I had seen the woman earlier in the day, doing her jumping jacks outside across the street, but her husband hadn’t been with her. Now, he was wearing a suit that was a little too big for him, and she was still in her workout clothes. I sat them at the truckers’ old table.

  “Today’s soups are beef and barley, vegetable, chili, and loaded potato. Mouse made cornbread that’s going fast, if you’re interested,” I told them.

  “We don’t eat bread,” the woman informed me.

  “I could go for some cornbread,” the man countered. “Do you have that good butter from Switzerland that Prudence always went on about?”

  “Yes. Of course,” I said. The woman shot him a death stare, a stare that only a woman who worked out every day of her life could.

  “We’ll both take the vegetable soup,” she said, and he nodded.

  Phew. People were so weird about food. This one wouldn’t eat gluten. That one didn’t eat dairy. The other one was on a low carb diet. Another one was vegan. It made me crazy. I should have changed the menu to one soup per day and made them all love it or leave it.

  I went back to the kitchen and cut the man a large slab of cornbread and spooned a big dollop of butter on top. The front door opened, and even before I looked up, I knew that Remington was back.

  I could feel his presence. My arms sprouted goosebumps, and I felt younger. Schoolgirl younger. I was surprised to realize that I was fighting off a case of the giggles. Oh, geez. Why was I getting this reaction to a man?

  I lifted my head and saw him. He was just as sexy as he was yesterday, but he was wearing a fitted suit now. He nodded at me and walked my way with a definite purpose. My body clenched in some weird turned-on exercise, and I got giddy with the possible reasons for his visit.

  Are you going to ask me out? Are you going to ask me to marry you? I should have worn earrings. I look good in earrings.

  Once again, the sight of Remington provoked a whole litany of crazy thoughts in my head. I willed myself not to giggle or throw myself on top of him or flip my hair back, like I was Farrah Fawcett. Just act normal. Act like you don’t care. Act like he’s not sexy at all.

  “We’re full up, but if you want to wait a few minutes, a table should clear,” I told him when he reached me. My voice came out like I had a frog in my throat. I tried to clear it, but I sounded like I was choking.

  “Are you all right?” he asked me.

  I grabbed a glass of water and gulped half of it down. “Yes. Sorry about that.”

  “I’m not here to eat. I’m here on professional business.”
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  The noise in the shop died down, and more than one head turned in our direction. “Is this about the glowing man?” I whispered to him.

  “No. He got away and hasn’t been seen since. This is more serious than that.”

  “Area 38?” I whispered, leaning toward him.

  “No. I’ve come to ask you a few questions about a disappearance,” he said seriously. He never lost eye contact with me. I felt naked under his gaze. I was sure that my pupils were dilated and my face was bright red, but I was too embarrassed to break eye contact and look away.

  “Look, it’s the detective,” Mouse squeaked loudly. She was walking out of the stacks with an armful of dirty plates, and when she saw Remington, her hands flew to her face, like she was starring in Home Alone. The plates went flying.

  “Incoming!” Remington shouted, and half of the diners covered their heads in an act of self-preservation. The dishes rained down and crashed on the floor, narrowly missing Irving’s head.

  “Sorry!” I announced. “Just a slight mishap!”

  “It’s him! It’s him!” Mouse continued, walking in Remington’s direction, like she was a zombie with a big craving for Remington brains.

  “Why don’t you look like that in a suit?” Doris asked Irving.

  “Nobody looks like that in a suit, Doris,” he replied. “Not even the cop. It’s an optical illusion. Probably done with mirrors.”

  The shop cleared out of a few diners, who weren’t thrilled that dishes were raining down on their lunches, and I helped Mouse clean up her mess. When we were done, she went to the kitchen to drink ice water.

  “May we talk privately?” Remington asked me.

  I pointed at myself. “Me?”

  “And me,” he said.

  “Uh,” I managed and pointed at the stacks. He followed me behind the books, and we sat at a stacks table. We were all alone behind the bookshelves. Just him and me. Me and him. His muscles and my virginity. He smiled at me, and I realized that my mouth was open. “Uh,” I said, again.