Mosquito Man

by Jeremy Bates

  “Yes!”

  “Then I suppose so.”

  Footsteps darted across the ceiling, then down the stairs. Ellie skidded to a stop before Bobby. “You saw a deer?” she asked excitedly. “Like Bambi?”

  “We didn’t actually see anything,” Rex said, pushing past the afghan. “We heard one.”

  Tabitha frowned as she remembered the sound outside the outhouse. Was that what she’d heard too? A deer? The same one? But wouldn’t it have made more noise than the snapping of a single stick?

  “It was real noisy!” Bobby said, as if in answer to her thoughts. “It was like…” By the expression on his face, he didn’t seem to know how to replicate the sound, and instead he ran in circles around the room, mimicking the sound of a motor by blowing air through his pressed lips.

  “So—the deer was the surprise?” Tabitha asked, confused. How did you organize to hear a deer in the wild?

  “No, there was a car—” Bobby said before realizing to whom he was speaking.

  “A car?” Ellie said.

  Tabitha looked questioningly at Rex. He nodded. “It’s been there for close to a hundred years. You guys can see it tomorrow. But right now let’s get cooking. It’s stopped raining, and I’m starving.”

  Rex carried the wieners and buns outside, Tabitha the onions and tomatoes and condiments. They set everything on the ground next to a ring of weathered stones that would serve as the fire pit. Rex collected the stringy shavings from the bark of a nearby cedar, which he rubbed quickly between his hands to create a small fluff ball. He used this as tinder, as well as the papery bark from a birch, to encourage a few nascent flames into existence, over which he added scavenged twigs and sticks for kindle, as well as larger deadwood. Ten minutes later they were sitting around a decent-sized fire, roasting wieners impaled on sticks.

  “Smell that air, guys,” Rex said. “How fresh is that?”

  Ellie sniffed exaggeratedly. “Smells like the beginning of the world,” she said straight-faced.

  Rex and Tabitha laughed.

  “What?” Ellie asked.

  “You’re beyond your years sometimes, sweetheart,” Tabitha said.

  “Can I have some Coke?” Bobby asked.

  “I left the bottle in the car, bud,” Rex told him. “It was too heavy to carry with all the other groceries. I’ll go back and get it tomorrow.”

  “Can we roast weenies tomorrow night too?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “What’s for lunch tomorrow?” Ellie asked.

  “Tuna fish sandwiches,” Tabitha said.

  “Do we have pickles too?”

  “No pickles.”

  “I think your wiener’s done, Bobby,” Rex said. “Better pull it out or it’s going to fall off.”

  Tabitha snickered at the double entendre. Bobby carefully removed his stick from the flames, but before he could get the wiener to his paper plate it slipped loose and fell to the ground.

  “Oh no!” Bobby said, a look of devastation on his face.

  “It’s okay,” Rex said quickly. “Have this one.” He lowered his wiener over Bobby’s plate. “Just pluck it off with your fingers. But be careful. It will be hot.”

  “Ow!” he said.

  “I told you it will be hot.”

  “Yuck!” Ellie blurted, making a face.

  “What’s wrong?” Tabitha asked.

  “I don’t like that mustard!” She pointed to the bottle of Dijon mustard on the ground next to the regular mustard.

  “That’s adult mustard, honey. It’s a bit stronger, that’s all.”

  “I-I-I hate it,” she sputtered, her cheeks coloring, her jaw setting, her eyes glowering—all the telltale signs of one of her temper tantrums. “And now. My life. Is ruined.”

  To avert a total meltdown, Tabitha said, “Guess what we have for dessert, guys?”

  Silence.

  Bobby was clearly curious but wouldn’t speak to her.

  Ellie seemed torn between curiosity and defiance, but finally put her concern over her ruined life temporarily on hold and asked, “What, Mommy?”

  “S’mores! They’re a kind of marshmallow sandwich.”

  “There’s no such thing!”

  “There sure is, sweetie. I had them all the time when I was your age.”

  “When were you my age?”

  “A long time ago.”

  “When you were just like me but smaller than now?”

  “That’s right. Anyway, make a new wiener with the normal mustard, and I’ll go fetch the ingredients we need.”

  While the kids finished up their dinner, Tabitha went inside and collected the graham crackers and marshmallows. Returning outside, she recalled she had banned Ellie from having dessert, but she decided to turn a blind eye to the punishment. This night was special for everybody.

  She was just approaching the fire again when Ellie cried out, “Ewww!” She pointed at Bobby. “He’s letting it bite him!”

  “What’s going on, bud?” Rex asked him.

  “I’m letting the mosquita have dinner too.” He held forth his right hand proudly to reveal a mosquito, plump with his blood, stuck to his wrist.

  “Flick it off, Bobby,” Rex said.

  “Do I have to?” he said.

  “You heard me.”

  “But I want to keep it as a pet.”

  “You can’t keep a mosquito as a pet.”

  “Ellie got the chipmunk!”

  “Not for keeps.”

  “I can put it in my Tic Tac container.”

  “How are you going to feed it? They only eat blood.”

  “I can give it mine.”

  “You’re not a human blood bank, bud. Now flick it away.”

  Reluctantly, Bobby nudged the insect with his finger. It didn’t move.

  “It’s too fat to fly!” Ellie crowed.

  “Just give it a good flick,” Rex said.

  Bobby tried again. This time, however, he accidentally squished the bug flat, staring in surprise at the smear of blood it left behind on his skin.

  “Gross!” Ellie said.

  “And the moral of this story,” Tabitha said, “is to not be greedy.”

  “Or risk getting struck down by a…” Rex trailed off.

  Tabitha looked where he was looking and saw a light bobbing amongst the trees.

  “Who could that be?” she said, frowning.

  “Probably the neighbors,” Rex said. “Must have heard us and are coming by to say hi.”

  “But the road… Do people still come out here?” She remembered the pickup truck. “That couple who passed us…?”

  “Maybe,” Rex said.

  It would be an innocuous encounter, surely—this wasn’t the city; people in the country were friendly—but Tabitha nevertheless felt a shiver of unease. “Kids,” she said, “I think it’s time to call it a night.”

  “But we haven’t even had the S’mores!” Ellie said.

  “We’ll save them for tomorrow night.”

  “But you promised!”

  “What did I promise? You can have the S’mores tomorrow, or none at all.”

  “Oh, crud!” she said, kicking at dirt. “Tomorrow’s forever away.”

  “The faster you go to sleep,” Rex said, “the faster it will come.”

  “Is that true?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  Ellie relented. “I guess I’ll go to sleep really fast.”

  “That’s a very good decision, sweetie,” Tabitha said. “Now say goodnight to T-Rex.”

  “See you later, alligator,” she said.

  “In a while, crocodile,” he replied, reciting their old joke.

  “C’mon, guys, let’s go brush our teeth.” Tabitha looked at Rex. “I’ll be back out shortly.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be here.”

  ***

  Rex fussed with the fire, stoking the ashes with a stick to reinvigorate the winnowing flames, all the while keeping an eye on the foreig
n flashlight beam, which continued to move in his direction. He wasn’t concerned by the neighbor’s unexpected arrival. Inconvenienced was more like it. He wanted to spend the evening with Tabitha, not strangers.

  When he could make out the silhouettes of two people, he rose from his crouch and faced them. It was indeed the couple from the pickup truck. The blonde woman wore a blueberry quilted jacket over a black turtleneck, tight jeans, and white high tops. The man had exchanged the Stetson for an oilskin mesh-back trucker cap. Despite the fact it couldn’t have been any warmer than forty degrees out, he wore neither jacket nor sweater, only a black Metallica tee-shirt that revealed beefy biceps. A black belt that featured a flashy silver buckle held up stonewashed jeans. He gripped the flashlight in one hand, a tallboy can of Molson Canadian beer in the other. He had been limping, and now he stood with his weight favoring his left leg.

  “Hi,” Rex said, extending his hand. “I’m Rex.”

  “Hi!” the woman said, shaking. “Daisy.” Her skin was icy cold.

  The man made no effort to set aside either flashlight or beer can to shake. “Tony Lyons,” he said simply, almost a grunt. His eyes were bright blue and serious.

  “Saw you guys on our way in,” Rex said. “Didn’t know the road was going to be so bad. Forced us to leave the car behind and walk.”

  “It’s been like that for years now,” Daisy said. “Nobody comes out here nowadays.”

  “They don’t like the view?” he said lightly.

  She chucked. Tony’s face remained impassive.

  “Are you next door?” Rex asked. “The place with the big deck…?”

  “No, no,” Daisy said. “Do you know the Williams’ cottage? It’s about two klicks down the road.”

  “Fair walk to get here,” he remarked.

  “We wanted to meet the one and only Rex Chapman,” Tony said, smirking.

  Rex hadn’t told the man his last name, but he figured anyone who grew up in Lillooet would have heard about Rex—or more specifically, what happened to his family. Small towns talk, and remember. “Are you from around here?” he asked, guessing the man to be roughly his own age.

  “Around,” Tony said, draining his beer. He crushed the can in his fist and tossed it onto the fire, which irked Rex, as he would be the one picking the can out of the ashes tomorrow. “Spent a lot of time with the oil and gas companies up north. Tough as fuck work. People get injured. Some die. You living in Vancouver now, I bet?”

  Rex studied Tony. The man’s barb had been perfectly clear. He may as well have said, “You’re a fruitcake office-worker, I bet?”

  “No, not Vancouver,” he said.

  “City boy?”

  “You don’t like cities?”

  “Don’t care much for the people from ’em. Pussies, most of ’em.”

  So the gloves were off, Rex thought. The question was why. What was this guy’s problem?

  He looked at Daisy. Her smile had faltered. He decided to remain pleasant for her sake. “And you? Are you from around here too?”

  She nodded. “Lived all my life here.”

  “So you’re friends of the Williams?”

  “No, I never met them actually.”

  Rex frowned. “But you’re staying at their place?”

  “They’re dead,” she said with a shrug. “Been dead for a long time now. Their place just sits there empty, so sometimes we come down here for a bit of a vacation, I guess you would call it.”

  “You’re squatting?”

  “Oh, we don’t stay long or nothing,” she insisted. “We just come down for the night usually. We leave in the morning. We stayed at the Starr’s place once. They’re not dead. They just don’t come out here no more. But we like the Williams’ place the best. It has a fireplace and is practically right on top of the water. Don’t worry though. We’ve never stayed here in yours!”

  Rex was baffled. “Given the condition of the road,” he said, “I figured people didn’t come out here much anymore. But never?”

  “Never ever,” Daisy said. “Except us, course. You’re the first person we’ve seen since we began coming…” She looked at Tony. “How long now, babe? Four or five years?”

  “What do you do?” Tony asked him.

  “I’m a pilot,” Rex said, caught off guard by the abrupt change of conversation.

  “You fly one of those commercial things?”

  “An Airbus 380.”

  “I got me a single-engine Cessna. Use it to get to the oil and gas fields. You have to actually fly a Cessna. No autopilot bullshit.”

  Rex had had enough of the jerk’s condescending attitude. “What is it?” he asked. “A 172?”

  Tony nodded. “172RG Cutlass. Four-seat, single-engine.”

  “One-fifty, one-sixty horsepower?”

  “One eighty,” Tony said proudly. “Got the more powerful O-360 in her.”

  “Nice,” Rex said appreciatively. “But not quite the same as having four eighteen-hundred-horsepower Rolls-Royce engines under you, is it? That’s what? Eight thousand horsepower all told?”

  Tony’s eyes darkened.

  “So—anyway!” Daisy said, intervening. “We just wanted to say hi. Meet the famous Rex Chapman! We knew right away it was you.” She pointed to her head.

  It took Rex a moment to realize what she meant. His white hair.

  “Famous?” he said, unimpressed by the crass choice of an adjective. Did losing your family in a boating accident grant you celebrity status?

  “Well, you know, because of everything that’s happened,” Daisy said. “You were the start of it.”

  Rex was dumbfounded. “What are you talking about?”

  She seemed equally stunned that he was in the dark. “You mean…you don’t know?”

  “Don’t know what?”

  “Hey, Rexy,” Tony said. “You gonna offer your guest a beer?”

  “I don’t have any,” he said.

  “Don’t got no beer?”

  “I don’t drink beer.”

  “Ah, right. You a wine man?” That smirk.

  “As a matter of fact, I don’t drink at all.”

  “That so?”

  “That’s so.”

  “What you hiding?”

  Rex blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “All the teetotalers I know, they don’t drink ’cause they got issues. They drink, and it all comes gushing out. All the tears and shit and everything. They just come fucking apart.”

  Rex had quit drinking after a night out in university. He’d drunk so much spiced rum at a frat party he woke in the bushes behind the house with no memory of the preceding few hours. He’d been covered in vomit and knew if he’d passed out on his back and not on his front he likely would have choked to death. During the three-day hangover that followed this epiphany, he’d decided alcohol wasn’t for him—and he’d simply never imbibed any more since.

  Rex wasn’t going to tell Tony this, of course, and so he returned his attention to Daisy. “What don’t I know?” he asked.

  “Everything that’s happened since you left! The guy who…who got your family…he got—”

  “The guy who got my family?” he said, incensed. Deciding he was the butt of a bad joke, he added: “I don’t know what the hell you two are getting at, or what rumors have been spun about my family over the years up here in Hicksville, Nobody Cares, but nobody ‘got’ my family, and I think it’s in extremely bad taste to come onto my property spreading such nonsense. They drowned in a boating accident. Now I think we’re done here. You should both leave.”

  “Oh Rexy,” Tony said, shaking his head. “How naïve do you think we are? Drowned?” He barked a laugh. “Where did the bodies go if they drowned? Pavilion Lake ain’t the Pacific Ocean. They would’ve washed up eventually.”

  Rex frowned. The bodies were never found? He hadn’t been aware of this. He’d only known what his Uncle Henry had told him when he came to Lillooet to take Rex back to Vancouver all those years ago. They drowned, Rex.
I’m sorry to have to tell you that, and I don’t want you thinking too much about it. There’s no point thinking about what you can’t change. You got a new life now to focus on.

  “If my family didn’t drown,” Rex said tightly, fighting the thick air of unreality washing over him, “do you want to tell me what happened to them? Who’s this guy you mentioned?”

  “We don’t know exactly,” Daisy said. “What I meant was, whoever got your family must have been a guy, a man. That’s all I meant. No woman could, you know, make so many families just disappear.”

  Rex almost fell over. “Other people have gone missing too?”

  She nodded. “That’s what I was trying to tell ya. A whole lot of other people. I was only two years old when you left, so I don’t recall anything that happened with your family and everything. I mean, I don’t have my memories of that. Just what people told me when I got older. Like your hair and stuff. But I was eight when the Petersons disappeared. And I remember that.”

  “The Petersons?” Rex said, his heart pounding. They had been friends of his parents and had stopped by occasionally for cocktails. He seemed to recall Mrs. Peterson always having a cigarette in her hand.

  “They were from Vancouver,” Daisy said. “They only came up here in the summers. Always hosted a game of bridge on Friday nights. But one Friday they just weren’t home. Car was there and everything, but they just wouldn’t answer the door. Friends got concerned and called Paulsy who had a look around—”

  “Paulsy?” Rex said.

  “The police chief. He was still just a kid then. Didn’t find any clues or nothing of what happened to the Petersons, and that got everybody talking. You know, because of how your family just disappeared six years earlier. Even the TV was talking about it. I remember everybody on my street going to one of the neighbors’ to watch a story about it on the six o’clock news.”

  “There were no suspects?” Rex said. “No theories?”

  “Suspects, no. Theories? Yeah, everybody had their own theory.”

  “You got a theory, Rex?” Tony asked him.

  “Me? My uncle told me my family died in a boating accident. I was seven. I believed him. And to tell you the truth, I’m still not sure everything I’m hearing right now isn’t a big load of bullshit.”

  “We’re not messing with ya,” Daisy said. “It wasn’t just the Petersons in ’87 either. The Ryersons went missing in 1998. Rick, Sue, and their two teenage daughters. That time it was different. People actually heard them screaming. Paulsy found the front door wide open. Kitchen window was open too. Nobody knew if this was due to someone trying to get in, or the family trying to get out. Blood everywhere. In any event, all four of them were never seen again. And that was the tipper, I guess. When everyone decided to get the hell out of Dodge. One family disappearing, okay. Two families, well that’s just weird, but it can happen, maybe. But three? Three families in what? Less than twenty years? On a lake that only a handful of people live on? That you can’t ignore. That’s getting into Jason Voorhees territory. The next summer every cabin out here went up for sale, but there were no takers. Not with what happened, and the rumors. A crazy mountain man. Ghosts. Bigfoot. Pavilion Lake got a reputation. A bad reputation. And, well, that hasn’t changed. People just don’t come here no more.”