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THE MOONLIGHT IS DIM and in the darkness of P.J.’s backyard he can just barely make out the ridge of the lake. There is a light hum of crickets and a scattering of toads and frogs that croak in the mud. Behind him, his house is dark and his father asleep. P.J. stands there with his hands in his pockets and he looks at where the grass meets the water.
When he was younger, this is where he had seen the Bog Man before he turned back and ran for his life. This is where he was revealed to be childish and to be afraid of his own imagination.
He squatted down low and smelled the water. He felt his feet sink in the mud. Across the lake he could see other houses still lit up. Over to the west he could hear music playing. A family was drinking and talking.
He thought of all the times he was afraid and what fear meant and how important it was in the development of a person. The Bog Man and the nightmares he’s always had – even before he met Rory. They all sat like black and white prophecies spooling through a projector. He didn’t remember the incident in the shed but it had already made its mark, like a notch in wood. Each one, in its own way, foretold the next. If he was scared now, he would be scared later. If he never got over these fears, then they would eat at him like rats in the night. His skin felt dry and his hair felt thin. He hadn’t thought about his mother in a long time but then he did as he looked over the surface of the lake and the reflection of the moon and its streak of white bone over the water.
She could be dead, he thought. He had never thought about it in such terms but he always felt that anxiety in his soul and in his chest. She could be dead now and nobody would know. When would they find out, he wondered. And to think about all the pain and love and grief their mother caused them and her father, to think that she could be out in the world right now dead and irrelevant and not punished for what she’s put them through.
He lowered himself and sat on his butt and the heels of his feet rested in the wet grass and just beyond him he watched a turtle move out and away like a dark boat. Dennis could die out there on the beach and leave P.J. and his father alone. Then when P.J. dies, his father would have nobody. That was a certainty to him. He knew, somewhere inside, that his father would outlive the both of them. Sometimes P.J. had nightmares about it. Being shaken awake by his brother after screaming from images of car wrecks and home invasions. Seeing his brother stand above him in his bedroom after having just witnessed him being mauled by a bear or dragged into a wood chipper. Visions of violence and gore and hell have always sat on his eyes like the cloud of glaucoma. Why then, he wondered, did this man on the beach scare him so much. He didn’t know the answer and soon the water of the lake felt too cold and aggressive. He pulled his feet in. He felt a brush of air on the back of his neck and turned over his shoulder and saw nobody. Then he turned back to the lake and still saw nobody.
The next morning P.J. drove his father’s car back to Marisol Island. Whereas the drive back was an abrupt one for Dennis, for P.J. the road seemed to drag on forever. There was a stretch of bridge over choppy blue water that beset him with anxiety. He pulled over on the side of the bridge, in the emergency lane, and turned off the engine and hyperventilated in the confines of the car. He felt constricted, sweaty, there was pressure on his chest. With the windows closed and the radio off he sat there in the car with the beginnings of panic tears at the base of his eyes. Cars roared by the window and he felt raw and vulnerable. To his right was the water. It was hard blue and frothy and rushed around left and right, the waves running from each other only to slowly crash and die later. It watched him from below and it waited, impossibly deep and endlessly dark. A couple miles out a boat bobbed up and down and the man in the skiff stood up and put his hands on his hips and looked into the water. P.J., desperate to focus on something other than the sea and the road, squinted his eyes and watched the figure on the skiff. The lone fisherman stood there idle and swaying with the heave of the wooden boat. He was wearing a white cap and sunglasses. He was shirtless and pink. P.J. wished for him to return to shore. He repeated it to himself over and over, hushed, for if he spoke too loudly the gulf would hear it even over the yell of the traffic.
“Get off the water,” he said to himself. “Get off the water.”
But the man far out there on that skiff slung his rod back and then cast it forward a long line from a professional wrist. And P.J. followed the bob with his eyes and soon he saw the dark triangle breach the surface of the water and race towards the boat. P.J. sat upright and tensed up. He scrambled into the passenger seat and pressed up against the glass, watching the great fish in the water. The fisherman had no knowledge of the approaching fin but it moved fast like the wind, and then with a leap from the water it curved and dipped back down diving under. It was a porpoise and the fisherman, startled at first, clapped for the mammal. P.J. melted with relief and laid his head on the dash. He breathed slowly and watched the cars rush by from left to right and disappear past his frame.
When P.J. arrived at his apartment he walked past the spot where Max’s car was parked, now empty after being towed. He ascended the stairs and he opened the door with the key card his father used. He placed his dad’s car keys on the kitchen counter and he too felt a nefarious pall string itself in and around the very woodwork of the apartment. It was all quiet. The place was empty.
P.J. walked over to the balcony and pulled the heavy curtains close, dropping the room into a weak artificial lamplight. He passed by the coffee table and made no remark of the tape recorder on it. There were some boxes he hadn’t gathered when he first left, things he was going to leave for Dennis. Toiletries, books, a set of tools they used for the boat. He gathered each one up and moved it to the kitchen area, in front of the door, and even still he knew he was lying to himself. He finished packing the ones that were empty. Knick knacks here. Spare items there. He put a majority of the bric-a-brac into a garbage bag and made his way to the chute in the hall outside. It was a small room with a metal cabinet and a gaping hole. He jammed the trash down and eased the cabinet closed. He stood there for a moment. He sat down and rested against the chute. Despite the reek of the small room the aura was drastically safer. Like walking from rain into cover. Or when you shut off a light in the basement and scurry upstairs fast to the lighted area. All around him was dark. Everywhere on that island was the dank cellar from which nightmares are born. Every movement he made was to find the last dimly lit bulb, slowing dying, the throbbing light giving its final exhale before the clap of blackness.
Inside P.J. bubbled a concern for his brother. He admitted it to himself. That’s why he was there. It was one last effort to bring him home. It wasn’t about the boxes, that was random garbage. It was about trying to save Dennis. But his own fear was still too much. He wondered where Dennis was. He stood up from his ugly safe haven and approached his room again. He knows that if his brother is dead, then a different curse will be upon him. He will be the heathen of the land, naked and shameful. But even still he would accept it over the alternative. The millions of dagger teeth. The cutter fins and heavy tails. The needle water and all that brine.
When he placed his hand on the doorknob he heard a faint rustle come up the steps. Then a head emerged from the stairwell, followed by the body, and it was Dennis. The two brothers made eye contact. P.J. opened the door.
“What are you doing back?” Dennis asked.
“I came here to find you.”
Dennis came over and the two brothers entered the apartment. He sat down and watched P.J. mill around, between the small boxes on the floor. He looked at the tape recorder still in its place where he had left it. He couldn’t determine whether it had been played or not.
P.J. closed his eyes and thought for a moment.
“I have to tell you something,” Dennis said. P.J. opened his eyes. “I’m going to kill that guy.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m going to take Kyle’s boat out. He has a shotgun in the cabin. We used to shoot it at the water.”
“You don’t have to do this,” P.J. said.
Dennis pressed play on the recorder and set it on the coffee table. The room filled with the voice of Max. Dennis looked ashen. P.J. looked at the ground.
“Enough, that’s enough,” P.J. said.
“It’s not over.”
“I don’t want to hear anymore. That’s enough, Dennis, stop.”
“No, I want you to hear it. You keep running from this. You need to hear this.”
“I said it’s enough,” P.J. asserted. He darted from his place at the doorway and grabbed the recorder and hurled it against the wall. It shattered to pieces.
“That was evidence!” Dennis hollered, and he bolted up and shoved his brother back.
“Evidence of what? He sounds like a lunatic!”
“We left him and now he’s dead!” Dennis shoved him again. P.J. stumbled and returned with another shove and quickly the two brothers were fighting and rolling on the ground. The hits they landed were not familiar to when they fought as kids. As kids, siblings fight well aware of their relationship, and they don’t really seek violence on each other. But these brothers fought like strangers, notably Dennis, whose frustration with P.J. had reached its boiling point and had now turned over into violence.
Dennis mounted his brother and punched him hard over and over again and P.J. covered his face and yelled for him to stop but Dennis would not. The blood of his brother spattered his fist and arced onto the carpet. Then all at once he stopped and stood up.
“How could you let me go by myself? How?” Dennis said seething. His fists were still clenched hard. His breathing was heavy. He felt light and airy from the adrenaline. His heart ran. “I could be fucking dead right now and you don’t even fucking care.”
P.J. replied with a groan. He turned to his side and spat out blood. “I came to stop you.”
Dennis didn’t reply.
“I don’t wanna get killed over something we don’t understand. I kept saying it was a bad idea. I kept saying it,” he spat out some more blood. He could feel the inside of his lip where it cut against his teeth. It stung like hell. Then he sat up. “Open your eyes. This isn’t a story where we come out on top.”
“But we’re brothers. We’re supposed to have each other’s back.”
“Then why do you want to get us killed?”
Dennis looked into his brother’s eyes. P.J. kept going.
“You can walk away from this. We can leave and this doesn’t have to be our problem.”
“But everything you’ve seen is true,” Dennis implored. “Everything you’re afraid of is real and it’s true. If it’s happened to Max, then it’s happened to everyone. I believe you now. Don’t you get it? I believe you.”
“Then why aren’t you running away with me? Why are you still here?” P.J.’s mouth was still bleeding. He wiped it away.
Dennis thought for a second.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know... I don’t know, I don’t know.” He started to pace around the apartment. His breathing picked up. “I- I need to see this. I cannot turn a blind eye like you have. I cannot have nightmares about this. I can’t go home and forget about this. It will kill me. It will eat me from the inside. I have to be here.”
Dennis spoke again.
“I love you so much and I can’t let you get hurt. Let me take care of this. Let me do this. I need to do this.”
A pause.
“Get out,” Dennis said. “Grab your shit and go. Don’t come back until I say so.”
P.J. slowly climbed to his feet and wiped the blood from his mouth and nose.
“I’ve been taking care of you my whole life,” Dennis said. “Waking you up from nightmares and saving you from imaginary monsters. But this one is real. This one matters the most. This one has gotten into my head too.”
P.J. looked at him. He stammered. Then he spoke.
“Please. I’m begging you. Don’t do this.”
“Just go. I’ll call you when it’s done.”
Then P.J. left and the door shut behind him, and the two brothers never saw each other again.