The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (29 page)

The new Parsons home was on K Street. It had a “lawn” of white and golden stones, the common local substitute for grass that would not grow in the sand, and was bordered by large hydrangea bushes, thick with balls of pale blue and purplish petals. Downstairs there was a large screened porch that seemed to attract breezes, an enormous living room, and a large kitchen and bathroom at the back. Upstairs there was another bathroom and four bedrooms. There was a master bedroom, a guest room (they called it that although it had been used for that purpose only once, for a month, when Uncle Jack, Big Bill’s brother, split up with his wife), and two rooms for the boys. Frank was fourteen when they moved in and Junior was twelve.

When the boys examined the house and the rooms, it was immediately obvious that one of the rooms designated for them was better than the other. It was larger, it had three windows instead of two, and it had a view of the beach at the end of the street. Junior said casually that he preferred that room. He didn’t say it aggressively or challengingly, just with his usual easy assurance that his wish would be granted. And so it was. Frank did not object. He was used to giving in, he was happy with his own room, and the issue didn’t really matter to him. Perhaps by way of compensation—Big Bill had merely laid a hand on Frank’s shoulder one day and said he was glad he hadn’t made “a thing” about the rooms—a handsome new wardrobe was bought for Frank’s room and the old monstrosity that had been hauled all the way from Englewood was wrestled up the stairs and placed in Junior’s room.

Big Bill was a construction supervisor and doing better and better all the time. He remodeled the kitchen and, when the porch was discovered to be sagging, he tore it down and built a new one that was larger and breezier. Once they had placed six rocking chairs and a couple of small tables on it, Frank’s parents began to think about renting out rooms themselves, like their neighbors, when the boys were grown and gone off to college. It would be an easy job, Big Bill said, to wall off part of the huge living room to make a bedroom at the back for themselves. They could live downstairs and rent out the four bedrooms upstairs. Frank’s mother, who enjoyed cooking and feeding people, said they could offer a full breakfast to their guests and make it a classy bed-and-breakfast, something that was unheard of in Seashore Heights or Seashore Park, and, with minimal cost, charge an even higher price for the rooms. They were excited at the idea of converting the house into a bed-and-breakfast. But of course that would have to wait until the boys got older.

But only one of the boys would grow older and go away to college.

The family had been in the house for two years and Junior was fourteen when he died. Ever since then, Frank did everything possible to avoid anything that would remind him of it, but he would never forget that day.

Frank was sixteen that summer and had his first job. Two of their neighbors on K Street were teachers at Toms River High School. In the summer, they had adjoining stands on the boardwalk in Seashore Heights where players placed money on numbers on a board and the operator spun a big wheel. If your number came up on the wheel, you won. It was a time-honored entertainment at Seashore Heights. At the back of each stand, right behind the operator, were shelves with a huge display of the prizes available. That year the hot items were digital cameras and iPods, but you could also win MP3 players and pendrives and, if you saved up enough winning coupons, maybe even a laptop. Other stands offered as prizes more traditional items: blankets and sets of towels, silverware, electrical appliances, candy, and huge stuffed animals in gaudy colors. The two stands, though they were side by side, were actually jointly owned and operated by the teachers, and customers whose luck failed them at one wheel would often just move next door and try again at the next one. Frank swept the boardwalk in front of the stands, emptied the garbage cans, went on food and drink runs, organized the stock of merchandise, fetched prizes down from the top shelves, and replaced items that were “won out.” He worked six days a week and he was enjoying the summer. He was off on Mondays, the slow day on the boardwalk.

On Mondays, he went to the beach, usually with Junior. Mostly they played catch and swam, riding the waves. Sometimes Frank brought a book. He liked to read biographies of baseball players and he had recently discovered the books of Roger Angell. Those were good times. Frank and Junior could spend the day at the beach and it only took five minutes to walk home for lunch or to use the bathroom. They were both well tanned, although Junior, who had more beach time that summer, was darker.

There was nothing unusual about the day it happened, nothing remarkable at all. Big Bill had taken two weeks off from work to have a little summer vacation himself and to do some work around the house. That morning their parents had gone to the Ocean County Mall to buy something their mother had seen was on sale in the Sunday paper. They would be back by one o’clock and the boys could come home for lunch at one-thirty. At one-thirty the boys walked home for lunch, ate, and returned to the beach. Big Bill said he would meet them on the beach in half an hour or so.

The beach in Seashore Park, as usual on a weekday, especially a Monday, was sparsely populated. A few young mothers played with small children at the water’s edge, lifting them up to jump the waves. The children were laughing. Two pairs of interesting-looking girls were sunbathing.

There was a tall, white wooden lifeguard stand nearby and the two guys there were chatting and looking bored. There were no more than fifteen or twenty swimmers in the water. An elderly couple, white-haired and with sagging bodies, strolled along the water’s edge, holding hands. A little girl was knocked over by a wave and let out a howl before her mother could grab her. All these things, of which Frank was barely conscious at the time, lived vividly in his memory afterward.

He and Junior went into the water, jumping the swells and then riding the waves or the breakers rolling in toward the beach. Junior missed a swell and stayed behind in the water while Frank rode the wave in. When he felt the bottom under his feet he stood up and walked out of the water and up the slight slope of the beach. The two pairs of girls were still sunbathing. One of the girls smiled and waved to him. Frank raised his hand and gave her a half-wave, not sure in the glaring sunlight if he recognized her or not. He looked around for the blanket, spotted it, and saw his Roger Angell book and his and Junior’s sunglasses and their suntan lotion on it. When he looked back toward the ocean and Junior, Junior wasn’t there.

Frank put his hands on his hips and surveyed the water, checking out each of the dark heads he saw at the water’s surface. Junior wasn’t there. It was very strange. Where was Junior? Frank looked up toward the lifeguards. They were still chatting. One of them was rubbing the back of his neck with a white towel. Frank looked at the water again. There was no sign of Junior. He scanned the beach to his right and left, beyond the lifeguard stand. Of course Junior was not on the beach. Junior was in the water. But where? Frank surveyed the surface of the water again. He opened his mouth to shout. But to shout what? To whom? He walked down to the edge of the water, his eyes still surveying the surface. A glaring light came off the shifting surface and the rolling swells. There was no sign of Junior. I should do something, Frank thought. But what was there to do? He glanced sideways again at the lifeguards. They were talking and untroubled. He looked steadily out at the water. Junior had to be right out there. At any second, Junior’s head would pop out of the water and he would wave an arm. Frank half-raised his right arm to wave back. But there was nobody to wave to. Junior did not appear. Frank couldn’t understand what was going on. He scanned the water again, left and right.

Suddenly he was aware of rapid motion and activity around him. The two lifeguards streaked past him and dove into the incoming waves. People on the beach were running down to stand at the edge of the water. Frank stepped down to the water with them, stood in it, felt a dying wave swirl around his legs, then stepped back and stood with the other people higher up the beach. They were all pointing to the lifeguards. Frank saw the elderly woman there with her hand raised to her mouth. The young woman with the little girl carried her away quickly up the beach in the direction of the boardwalk.

Then everything happened very quickly. The two lifeguards reached still water and bobbed for a moment on the swells. One of them dove and came up with a body. The other quickly took hold of it and started toward the shore. The first lifeguard stayed nearby until they reached the point where the swells were rising into waves, then dove into a wave himself and rode it almost onto the sand. He ran at once to the lifeguard stand and grabbed the emergency phone and talked into it, then ran back to help his partner as he emerged from the water with the person he had rescued. It was Junior.

Together they carried Junior out of the water and laid him on his back on the sand. The anxious crowds of onlookers gathered around and one of the lifeguards told them to move back. Frank moved back with them. Speculations were whispered. He must have had a cramp. He had a fainting spell. The hot sun made him faint. Frank said nothing.

Then Junior coughed, gagged, spat out water, and sat up. He was breathing hard but he said, even short of breath, “I’m okay, I’m okay.” The lifeguards sat back on their heels. One of them asked Junior some questions. Frank could not hear the questions but he heard Junior say again, “I’m okay, I’m okay.” Then he heard the wailing siren of Seashore’s ambulance drawing near.

Now everything happened even more quickly. The ambulance drove onto the boardwalk and two attendants came running down the beach, one of them carrying a light stretcher. Junior struggled to his feet, tottered for a moment, and one of the lifeguards helped him to sit down again. The ambulance attendants, both of them volunteers wearing shorts and T-shirts, talked quickly with the lifeguards. Junior continued protesting that he was okay. They had to insist but they got him to lie down on the stretcher, then carried him quickly up the beach to the boardwalk, laid him on the collapsible gurney that stood waiting, and slid it briskly into the ambulance. In a moment the vehicle was driving away and the siren was starting up again.

And then Frank saw his father running down the beach toward where he still stood.

The little crowd had dispersed now, most of the people returning to their blankets, only a few going into the water. Frank stood alone in the glare of the sun.

He saw his father scanning the beach and the water as he hurried across the width of the sand. In a moment, breathing hard, he was in front of Frank, gripping both his arms at the elbows. His eyes looked straight into Frank’s and pleaded for mercy.

“It was Junior,” Frank told him.

Big Bill seemed to crumple inward. Then he turned and plodded heavily back up the beach, moving as quickly as he could across the sand. Frank saw him cross the boardwalk and then disappear in the direction of K Street. He remained standing where he was. A couple of minutes later, he heard the distant sound of tires screeching in the street.

The volunteer ambulance attendants, both well-meaning but inexperienced, reported later that Junior was a little shaken and out of breath, which seemed normal enough, but he seemed otherwise fine. He was talking and, like the lifeguards, they took him at his word that he was okay. And, like the lifeguards, they neglected to pump his chest. Junior, his lungs filled with water, drowned in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Frank and Big Bill never spoke about that day or about Junior again.

Three weeks later, Junior came back to haunt Frank. Or so Frank thought.

Frank had not been talking much with his parents about anything. They were easy to avoid. Big Bill was lost in a deep silence. Frank’s mother kept herself busier than ever with cooking and laundry and taking care of the house, but Frank could sometimes hear her crying in their bedroom and his father’s low voice talking to her. Dinner time, with only three of them at the table, was a terrible strain. Frank invented excuses to avoid it.

Even his father’s nickname bothered him. It had come into use only after Junior was born and now, with no “little” Bill on the scene, it made no sense, but it stuck. Every time Frank heard somebody refer to his father as Big Bill, he had to hide a shiver.

Eventually, after some interminable weeks, Labor Day came and the terrible summer was over. Frank went back to school. Everybody at school knew what had happened and some of his friends and a number of his teachers tried to talk with him about Junior. Frank couldn’t stand it. He nodded and mumbled something and then they left him alone. But he knew he was going to have to find a way to deal with Junior.

On the Thursday night of that first week of school, his parents went out to the supermarket and Frank was alone in the house. Get it over with, he told himself. He went up the stairs and stood for a long time in front of the closed door of Junior’s room. He didn’t think anybody had been in there since his mother had gone in to get clothes to dress Junior for burial. Frank took a deep breath and pulled the door open.

He didn’t really know if he had been expecting something weird to happen but nothing did, weird or otherwise. It was just Junior’s room and it looked pretty much the way it had always looked. His mother must have straightened up Junior’s desk, which was usually covered with sports and music magazines. Now it was clear and clean and almost empty, but that was the only real difference in the room. Apart from the tidiness, everything was normal. The bed was neatly made. Junior’s books stood neatly on their shelves. His plastic Mickey Mouse, a souvenir from Disney World, stood on top of the low bookcase. A blue windbreaker, a red flannel shirt, and a yellow slicker hung from the clothes tree in the corner. Frank looked at them for a long minute. Apparently his mother had not been able to make herself remove them or put them away.

Then he shook his shoulders, walked across the room, and sat down at the desk. Okay, he admitted to himself, it was kind of creepy being in here, with the way everything seemed so normal but so strangely still, as if Junior’s things themselves knew he was gone forever. He opened the top drawer of the desk. An open package of looseleaf refill, a wooden ruler, three blue Bic pens and one red, a dozen large paperclips, a key ring without keys, an empty Pez dispenser with the head of Spider-Man, a crisp ten-dollar bill that looked like it just came from the bank, a plastic Skippy peanut butter jar with the label still on it, half-filled with quarters.