The Gypsy Moths, page 8
Chapter Eight
~1977~
NOTHING MOVED. EVERYTHING was oddly still, suspiciously quiet. Night was a couple hours off, but on its way. The sun was lower in the sky now, nearly touching the horizon, though the heat remained oppressive as ever. In that strange and uncertain moment, I feared it might suffocate and strangle us all.
Alex stood up, breaking the spell. “Sometimes deer stand up on their hind legs,” he said, retrieving his knapsack from the ground. “You know, like when they can’t reach something? They put their front legs up against trees and sort of stand up. That kind of shit happens. It’s not a big deal.”
“I don’t know, man.” Shawn drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “This was different.”
“You guys, there aren’t any other animals around here with racks,” Alex insisted. “It had to be a deer. You probably didn’t get a good look at it and freaked out because you figured it was walking on two legs is all.”
“I didn’t freak out, asshole,” Shawn growled.
“I’m just saying—”
“I don’t know what the hell it was, all right? There was nothing there and then there was, and whatever it was, it didn’t look…I don’t know…right.”
I knew Shawn was holding something back, and while I didn’t know why just yet, I could tell Max was too. “It wasn’t any goddamn deer,” I said.
“How the fuck would you know?” Shawn turned away and hocked a huge loogie into the street. “You didn’t even see it.”
“Frankie Boy,” Alex said, “it couldn’t be anything else, it had to be a deer. Why are you so sure it wasn’t?”
“Because he thinks it’s the same thing his father saw.”
The words hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest. I looked over at Max, who was still sitting on the swing and staring down into the dirt at his feet. I watched him a moment, wanting to be certain I’d heard him correctly. “How do you know about that?” I asked.
“Go home and ask your father,” he said softly.
“I’m asking you, Max.”
His eyes lifted, found me. “Samoset’s a small town. People talk.”
“Oh yeah, do they? And what do they say, Max?” Embarrassment and confusion rose in me, roiling into a boil of frustration and rage. “What do they say about my father?”
Max slipped out of the swing and stood there like he didn’t know what to do next. “That one night when he was at work, on a break out in the parking lot, he saw something in the woods. It scared him so bad he had a breakdown and they had to call an ambulance and take him to the ER. No one else saw it, but a lot of people he worked with were there when he lost it. Some of those people go to the same church my parents do. I heard my mother talking to my father about it one night.”
Alex knit his brow, staring at me with such shock and concern I knew this was as much of a surprise to him as it was to me. As for Shawn, I couldn’t be so sure. All I knew was that my father’s gibberish and insistence that something was watching and waiting and stalking us suddenly made sense, and that was terrifying, maybe even more terrifying than him losing his mind.
Still trembling with fear and anger, I turned back to Shawn. “Did you know anything about this?”
“My old man heard something about it. He asked me if your dad was all right and if you were going to be okay. I told him I didn’t know if you even knew anything. I mean, I knew you knew he lost his job, but I didn’t know if you knew why. So I didn’t say anything.”
“I can’t believe in all this time neither one of you fucking told me.”
“I figured if you wanted to talk to me about it you would,” Shawn said.
“We didn’t know what you did or didn’t know,” Max told me, “and we didn’t want to make things worse. All we knew—all we know—is that your father was having problems because of what he said he saw.”
I ran a hand through my hair. It came back damp and sticky with sweat and a few grains of sand from the beach. “And now Shawn saw this thing too.”
“I didn’t fucking say that!” Shawn snapped. “Whatever it was, I told you I didn’t get a good look. But I…I don’t think it was a deer, okay?”
“You guys aren’t getting it,” Alex said again. “It couldn’t be anything else.”
“You think a deer would’ve scared my dad that bad? You think his whole life would go to shit over a fucking deer?”
Alex slung his knapsack over his shoulder and moved back a bit. “I don’t know what your father saw, Frankie Boy. I’m just saying if what Shawn saw had a rack, then it couldn’t be anything but a deer.”
“Yeah, I know what you’re saying, Alex. You know how I know? Because you keep saying the same fucking thing over and over again like we’re morons.”
Alex blanched. “I didn’t—I don’t mean it like that, I—why you mad at me?”
“Everyone calm down,” Max said through a sigh. “Alex is right. It must’ve been a deer. What else could it be?”
“The same thing my dad saw, obviously.”
“And what was that?”
“I don’t know. But it scared him enough to ruin his life, and back there in the woods, I’ve never seen Shawn so scared.”
“I wasn’t scared,” Shawn said. “I was…”
I waited for him to finish even though I knew he never would.
“Fuck it,” he said instead. “I’ll catch you guys later. I’m going home.”
“Are you all right?” Max asked.
“Yeah, don’t worry about it. I just want to go home.”
This time when he tried to leave no one stopped him. We all stood there and watched until he reached the end of the street and disappeared around the corner with a quick wave.
“Think I’ll head home too,” Max finally said.
On his way by, he dropped a hand on my shoulder. Then he was gone, and it was just Alex and me on that old playground.
“You better get going too,” I told him.
“You mad at me, Frankie Boy?”
He looked so helpless standing there, like a much younger kid left on his own to negotiate wholly foreign territory. “Nah, it’s cool. Sorry I got pissed.”
“No problem.” He cocked his head, indicating the knapsack on his shoulder. “Want me to hang onto the swag for now?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll grab the Conan off you tomorrow, cool?”
“Cool.”
I gave him a playful punch in the shoulder. “Later, man.”
Alex started toward the street then stopped and looked back at me. “You really think there’s something out there, some kind of monster or something?”
I remembered the message from the Ouija board.
I AM WATCHING
I looked around at the trees and the grass and the dirt. I had no doubt the gypsy moth invasion Mr. O’Hara warned me about was real, but the creatures he’d described were nowhere in sight. Maybe they were hiding, waiting for the right time to strike. Maybe they were slowly devouring our town along with everything and everyone in it right under our noses, only we couldn’t see them. Or maybe you could only see them if they let you.
It doesn’t want you to see it, not yet…
Regardless, the answer to Alex’s question was yes. I did think there was a monster out there. And if there really was, then maybe my father wasn’t losing his mind after all.
He’d been right all along.
* * * *
The walk home was more harrowing than I’d hoped. Like I’d been fitted with blinders, I looked straight ahead and tried not to let anything distract me. But my fear only intensified, turning the town and streets I knew so well into unfamiliar and dangerous terrain. Despite my best efforts to prevent it, my mind continued to conjure visions of whatever was in the woods watching me from the shadows. I could feel its eyes on me. Inside me, like it knew things about me, my secrets and most private thoughts. When my house was finally in sight, and I saw both cars in the driveway, I broke into a full run until I reached the front door.
Once inside I closed the door behind me and listened to the silence of the house a moment, my chest heaving. I had no idea what I expected to see, but I peeked out the front window. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and there was no one there, nothing watching.
As my fear settled and began to recede, I moved through the living room and into the kitchen. No one was around, so I checked the rest of the house but didn’t find anyone until I followed the hallway to the den. There was no sign of my mother, but my father was slumped in a recliner in the corner. The Ouija board was still sitting on the coffee table, and the couch across from it was littered with crumpled pieces of paper, two empty Coke cans, and a plate with the remains of a ham sandwich and potato chip crumbs on it.
Still dressed in his robe, my father was awake but looked like he’d been sleeping. “You all right?” he asked groggily. “You just get home?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Jesus, Dad, have you been in here all day?”
He stared at me like I’d presented him with a question so profoundly complex he couldn’t even begin to comprehend it, much less provide an answer. “I think I fell asleep, but it’s hard to say for sure.”
“That’s good. You need to sleep. Where’s Mom at?”
“She went out.”
“Her car’s still here,” I told him.
“She must be back then.”
“I checked the whole house. She’s not here.”
“Huh,” he said, perplexed.
“Where’d she go?”
“She didn’t say.” He absently scratched at his armpit. A wave of pungent body odor drifted free of him. “She just said she’d be back in a while.”
It was very unusual for my mother to leave the house on weekends unless it was to run errands or to do the grocery shopping, and she always did those things in the morning. Even if for some reason she’d decided to do them later than usual, she certainly wouldn’t do it on foot.
“When did she leave?” I asked.
He stared at his wrist but he wasn’t wearing a watch. “Earlier, I guess. Time’s a funny thing, son. I can’t seem to keep track of it worth a damn lately.”
“Did she get a ride?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure she’s fine. She’ll be home soon.” My father struggled up out of his slumped posture but remained seated. “Been trying all day to get that board to tell me more about—”
“Dad,” I interrupted, raising my voice in the hopes that it might help hold his attention. “I have to ask you something. It’s important, so you got to listen, okay?
“Sure, Frankie Boy, okay.” He clenched shut his bloodshot eyes, holding them closed for a moment before opening them and squinting at me like he was trying his best to focus. “What is it?”
I took a moment to try and put together a question that made sense, but none of this made anything even close to sense. With my frustration rising, I blurted, “The thing out there that’s watching you keep telling me about, does it have antlers like a deer?”
He thought it over a while before answering. “It depends.”
“Depends? On what?”
“Who it’s showing itself to.”
My fear returned, if it had ever really left, pulsed along the back of my neck like an exhale of grave-cold breath then curled up at the base of my spine. Before I could ask my father anything else, I heard a car door slam. He heard it too, though he pretended he hadn’t. He just sat there looking into his lap like something there had drawn his attention.
I hurried back through the house to the living room.
At the window I saw my mother approaching the house as a big Lincoln Continental, shiny and new, slowly backed out of the driveway. Behind the wheel of the gold car was an older heavyset man I didn’t recognize. Sporting only a thin horseshoe of gray hair, he was otherwise bald and wore aviator sunglasses, his shirt open at the collar.
As I moved from the window, the front door swung open and my mother stepped inside. Startled, she jumped then closed the door and flashed me a disapproving sideways glance. “What are you doing lurching out at me like something from a funhouse?” she said. Her speech was slurred and she smelled like cigarettes and liquor. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“I didn’t lurch out, Mom,” I said flatly. “I’m just standing here.”
“Well stop just standing here.” She removed her sunglasses and hooked them on the front of her top, which was very tight and low-cut. It was obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra, and her denim shorts looked new and were much shorter than any I’d seen her in before. She held a pair of sandals in one hand, dangling them from her fingers by the straps. Except for occasionally in the backyard or at the beach, I’d never known her to go barefoot. “It’s unsettling to walk into the house and find someone right in my face like that.”
“Who was that guy?” I asked, cocking my head toward the window.
“Someone to do with my job,” she said, and headed for the kitchen.
I followed close behind her. “It’s Saturday.”
“All day, in fact, what’s your point?”
“You don’t work on Saturdays.”
In the doorway to the kitchen my mother stopped and turned back, facing me. “I didn’t say I was working,” she said with forced pleasantness, and though she smiled I could tell she was upset with me. “You asked who that was and I told you. If you’d like further clarification for some reason, his name is Mr. Harry Ralston, and he’s the regional vice president of our company. He’s visiting from Connecticut—Hartford, actually—and only in town for a few days for some very important meetings with our office. He asked if I’d like to get some lunch with him so we could discuss things pertaining to my job and future at the company.”
Her outfit, coupled with the venom in her eyes, left me unsure of where to look. It was as if someone had kidnapped my mother and replaced her with the woman standing before me. “You’re not even wearing shoes,” I said, heart racing. “Why are you dressed like that?”
She let out something between a sigh and a quiet laugh. “Like what?”
Head bowed, I shrugged. I didn’t know what else to do.
“If you think I’m going to allow myself to be subjected to an interrogation from my teenage son,” she said evenly, “I’m afraid you’re sorely mistaken.”
I was still looking at the carpet when she walked away. As it blurred through the tears filling my eyes, part of me wanted to go right out the door and as far away from all this as possible. But after everything that had happened today, I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to run headlong into the coming darkness. Still, could I be certain anymore if in here was any less horrifying than out there?
There wasn’t anywhere safe anymore. Not for me. Not for any of us.
Chapter Nine
SAMOSET DIDN’T HAVE much in the way of gathering spots for young people, unless it was one of the sports fields or something promoted by the churches in town. There was a Boys and Girls Club, but none of my friends ever went there. It was mostly used to host a local elementary-school-age basketball league and served as a kind of after school daycare for kids a lot younger than me. As a result, teenagers tended to congregate at various spots outdoors. The boulder over by the rectory, the beach, on the lawn of a bandstand where music ensembles sometimes performed in the warmer months, or downtown in front of the general store.
A few weeks ago, Shawn and I had been hanging out on the bandstand lawn, just sitting around and debating which recent album was better, Rock and Roll Over by KISS or Jailbreak from Thin Lizzy. I liked both but was more in the Thin Lizzy camp, while Shawn favored the KISS release. We’d been there maybe half an hour, just killing time and trying to figure out what else we could get into, when Ronica and four of her friends showed up and joined us on the lawn. One of her friends, a pretty redhead whose name I couldn’t remember, brought a blanket, so we all sat on that. Nothing much transpired for a good long while, and though Shawn had the ability to seamlessly interject himself into their conversation now and then, I felt less confident in attempting that, so I mostly stayed quiet, pretending to listen to whatever these older girls were talking about while all I was really doing was taking in Ronica and trying to keep my lust for her under control. I remember she wore jeans and knee-high suede boots, along with a peasant blouse and a pair of dangle earrings in the shape of peace signs. With her long hair pulled back into a ponytail and a flower tucked above her right ear, she was more beautiful than ever. She’d taken up position right next to me from the start, and smelled so good it made me dizzy. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. In those strange moments, with one of my best friends right there and both of us surrounded by these cool older girls, oddly, I’d never felt more alone in my life. Shawn was able to feel part of it all—or was at least good enough to fake it effectively—but I lacked those skills. I was just sort of there, and certain I could get up and walk away without anyone even noticing. So when the conversation died down and Ronica focused on me, I was both surprised and flattered. She’d just lit a cigarette and was taking deep drags before throwing her head back and exhaling streams of smoke up at the sky like some sort of movie queen.
“There’s a dance this Friday night at the VFW,” she said, looking right at me. “Are you going?”
I’d been to some dances at school but that was it. The ones held at the VFW were generally for older kids. “Not sure,” I said, trying my best to come off nonchalant as possible. “Depends if I got anything else going on, I guess.”
“I don’t know if I’m going either,” she said. “I mean, I keep waiting to see if someone worth going with asks me, you know?”
I of course had no idea what that was like at all, but I nodded knowingly anyway. Suddenly cognizant and more than a little nervous that everyone else had gone quiet and was now zeroed in on our conversation, I tried desperately to think of some other topic.
“It’s like, I’m sure some guys will ask me or whatever,” Ronica said, “but I’m holding out for someone that’s actually nice and just wants to have fun and maybe actually dance.”
