Fear Itself

The Chair

The two boys dropped down in the hard seats. The air inside the small room was thick and clogged their windpipes, filling their lungs like liquid tar. Their eyes pulled to the front of the room. A large pane of glass looked into an even smaller, cubicle room beyond. A central object in that little room demanded their attention – and got it. A single thought came to both boys at the same time; I don't want to be here. But they had to be. Not just for Dustin, but for themselves as well.

Still, sitting there shoulder to shoulder with his friend, Lonny Payne was sure if he suggested they back out...Johnny wouldn't argue. Lonny held his peace, suggested nothing. But by the ashy pallor of Johnny Hanson's face, and the nervous working of his throat warning he wasn't feeling well – not feeling well at all – Lonny wondered if maybe he should make the suggestion. Still, he said nothing.

The storm outside pummeled the high brick walls of the massive structure and Lonny thought – I'll huff, and I'll puff – of the three little pigs tormented by the big bad wolf. Their story, though, had started out with four little pigs. But by the time the big bad wolf had gotten through with them...there were only three. Dustin had been the fourth, the one eaten. Except the wolf hadn't eaten him so much as skinned him alive.

Lonny clenched his fists in his lap and squeezed his eyes shut, sucking in a deep breath. He didn't want to think about Dustin right now. Or Willie, who had been too afraid to face the monster of their childhood, even under these circumstances. Lonny just wanted this to be over.

The night swelled with fury and Lonny wondered what would happen if the electricity went out. Would all this be postponed? Did they have backup generators for such emergencies? He couldn't do this again. He could never come here a second time. This was it.

“I feel sick.” Johnny groaned. His voice was thick, as if he might vomit at any moment.

Nerves. Lonny felt them too. “Just hang on, man.” He told his friend, leaning Johnny's way. “It'll be over soon.”

Johnny's arms wrapped around his upset gut and held tight. To look at him, one would surmise he could wrap those long arms around his lanky frame twice over. “Willie should be here too.”

“I know, man.” Lonny whispered. “But...”

“He was too scared?” Johnny finished.

Lonny released a low sigh and leaned forward. “Yeah.” He couldn't take his eyes off the object behind the large pane of glass. He had the creepy feeling it was alive, playing dead, waiting quietly for its next victim.

“You know.” Johnny started again, his young voice shaking. “Willie...he was so fucking scared of the Tommyknocker man.”

“We all were.” The Tommyknocker Man. Lonny couldn't remember just when they started calling him that. Whether the title had materialized from the killer's own name – Thomas Narker – or from some dark regions of a Stephen King novel, Lonny didn't remember. But somehow it fit.

Johnny shook his head. His long arms tightened around his lanky teenage body. “Willie came up to me a couple days after Narker was taken away.” He sniffed and cleared his throat anxiously. “He said...he said Narker wasn't a man. He said he looked in his eyes and he saw the monster.”

Lonny said nothing. He stared at the dirty floor, at a hard dark clump stuck to the floor that might once have been bubble gum. He nudged it with the toe of his Nike. How could someone sit in this room and chew gum? He wondered for no apparent reason.

“Willie said he was evil.” Johnny shifted in his seat. “Not human.”

Lonny shook his head and straightened in his chair. “He seemed that way to all of us. But he's just a man, Johnny.”

“Willie didn't think so.” Johnny rasped. His face was white as a sheet, his eyes drawn. He looked terminally ill, like he had cancer or something. Maybe in a sense he did. Maybe Lonny did too. And Willie. A cancer called fear. Fear in its darkest, deadliest form.

Nothing to fear but fear itself.

Yeah, well, Lonny had heard that one before. How many times do parents tell their children there's nothing to be afraid of? It's just your imagination? But Lonny had found out different. They all had. Dustin most of all. Nothing to fear but fear itself? Bull-fucking-shit!

“That night in the basement of the butcher shop.” Johnny whispered. “That's when he saw the thing behind Narker's face.”

“He was traumatized for fuck's sake!” Lonny hissed loudly, then clamped his mouth shut when the other occupants in the room turned to stare at them. He wish Johnny would just shut the fuck up. This kind of talk was giving him the fucking creeps. Tom Narker was an evil man. A sick, twisted motherfucker. But he was still just a man.

Still, something had convinced Willie otherwise. And that's why Willie wasn't there with them. He didn't believe the Tommyknocker Man could be killed.

Lonny Payne didn't want to know the facts. The real facts that Willie knew. He didn't want to know what Willie had seen. And he would never ask.