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Be Not Afraid

by Michael Thomas Ford

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“Take out all the yellow ones,” Mamaw says. “Put these in.”

She takes a box of Christmas bulbs out of the plastic grocery sack from the Dollar General and sets it on the kitchen table beside the tangled strings of lights I’m trying my best to work apart. They’re lined with green, blue, red, and yellow bulbs.

“What color do you want me to replace them with?” I ask her.

“Don’t matter,” she says, and takes a draw on the cigarette in her mouth. She blows the smoke out, and it settles over the table like smog. I wish she would quit, but she won’t, even though her cough has been getting worse and worse. She won’t go to the doctor anymore, either, because as she says, “He don’t know nothin’ I don’t already know.”

What she means is that she’s probably going to die before too long. Maybe not next month or even next year, but more likely than not she won’t be around to see me graduate from high school in two years. But that’s not something we talk about. Just like we don’t talk about what will happen to me and Pike if she does. With our parents gone, she’s the only relative we have. Since Pike is eighteen and technically an adult, I guess he’ll be in charge of taking care of things then.

Except that Pike is the one who needs taking care of, and I’ve been looking out for myself since I was twelve. As much as I love Mamaw—and I love her more than just about anything—she’s not exactly a caretaker, either. Most of the time, I feel like the only adult in the house, and I’m not even old enough to drive.

“Shouldn’t we be replacing the red ones?” I say. “I thought his eyes were red.”

Mamaw shakes her head, taps her ash into the empty Ale-8-One can beside her. “That statue they got over in Point Pleasant makes everyone think that,” she says. “Those Blenko glass eyes and all. But they’re yellow.” She pauses, takes another puff of her cigarette. “At least, they were when I seen him. I s’pose he might look different to different people.”

Him. What she means is Mothman. But we don’t say his name around here. Mamaw thinks it’s bad luck. One time, maybe a year after our parents died, I did say it, and she slapped my face so hard I couldn’t breathe for half a minute. I just stood there looking at her face all twisted up in anger and fear. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t call him. Not ever.”

Mamaw and Mothman have a history. She was five years old in 1967, the year the Silver Bridge linking Point Pleasant, West Virginia, with Gallipolis, Ohio [NOTE: Against all reason, this town name is pronounced gal-uh-police. NOT liss.], collapsed, a little more than a week before Christmas. Forty-six people died in the tragedy, including Mamaw’s cousin Elmer, who was driving a beer delivery truck across the bridge when it went down and dumped everyone on it into the Ohio River.

For a year before the bridge accident, people reported seeing a big, winged creature with glowing eyes in the area. Somewhere along the way they started calling it Mothman. Then they decided that Mothman must have been showing up to warn everybody about the bridge. I don’t know why, exactly, but the idea stuck, and ever since then Mothman coming around has been linked to bad things happening. Especially for Mamaw, who is kind of obsessed with him, first because of what happened to Elmer and then because she says she saw him not long before my parents died. She didn’t bring that up until after their funeral, though, so I’m not sure what to think about it.

I don’t have any particular feelings about Mothman one way or another. He’s a big deal around here and brings a lot of tourists to Point Pleasant, where they’ve got a museum and the statue Mamaw mentioned. He’s our monster the way Scotland has its Nessie and New Jersey has its Devil, and since we don’t have a whole lot to call our own here, I guess that’s a good thing. But sometimes I think people use him as something to blame their bad luck on when blaming the real problems is too hard.

Anyway, the Christmas-lights thing is new and has come about because this is the first year we’ve done anything for the holidays since my parents died. Christmas was always my mama’s thing, and with her gone, Mamaw couldn’t bring herself to do it. The boxes of ornaments have been in the attic. But a few days ago she asked me and Pike to get them down, and now the artificial tree is up in the living room, waiting to be decorated.

I pull a yellow bulb out and drop it into the plastic margarine container on the table. I stick a blue light in where that one was. I’m taking out another yellow one when the door bangs open and Pike walks in.

“There you are,” he says. “What the fuck are you doing?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer before saying, “Come on. We’re going for a ride.”

My stomach knots up. What Pike means is that he picked up another delivery from Wart and now he needs to make a run, to take the drugs to his buyers. And he needs me to hold them because I’m only fifteen and if we get stopped by the cops and they search us, I’m supposed to say they’re mine. That way, Pike won’t get arrested.

It’s a stupid game, and we’re lucky that we’ve never been stopped. Eventually, though, our luck is going to run out. It always does. And while I won’t go to jail, I could end up in a mess of trouble. But Pike doesn’t think about that. He never thinks more than one step ahead. Daddy always said that was why he was a lousy deer hunter and never got any. “Those deer are three steps ahead,” he always said. “That makes them two steps smarter than you, Pike.”

I know arguing with Pike is useless, so I get up and take my coat from the hook beside the door. “I’ll help you when I get back,” I tell Mamaw. She nods and continues replacing the lights.

“Is this that stupid Mothman bullshit again?” Pike asks as we walk to his truck.

“Yeah,” I say as I open the door of the beat-up Ford and climb into the passenger seat.

Pike gets in, fishes in the pocket of his oil-stained Carhartt jacket, and hands me a plastic baggie filled with half a dozen smaller bags of small, white crystals. Meth. Wart’s specialty. I tuck it into my pocket and put my seat belt on.

“Safety first,” Pike teases as he starts the truck and starts down the driveway. His own seat belt hangs unused beside him.

I don’t say anything. I’ve stopped begging Pike to worry about himself. But it bothers me that he does things like this. Our parents died in a wreck, and it’s like he’s daring the universe to take him, too. I don’t get it.

“We’re making two stops,” Pike says as we head down the road. “You stay in the truck. It’ll be quick.”

I nod. I know the drill. Pike does all the actual work. I’m just the fall guy if he needs one. Just along for the ride.

I hate that we have to do this. But we do. We have the same bills to pay that everyone does, and most months there’s barely enough to cover them. Usually Mamaw waits until they threaten to turn off the water or electric before she pays those, and the assistance we get for food doesn’t go as far as it needs to. We also have some bills other people don’t, like one of the medicines Mamaw needs that her insurance won’t cover. She tried going without it, but she got sicker and sicker. Finally, Pike went to Wart and asked him for a loan to pay for it. Wart gave it to him on the condition that Pike come to work for him. Pike’s been doing that ever since. I wish he would get a real job, but real jobs are hard to come by around here. And jobs that pay as well as what Pike makes from doing this are almost nonexistent. Pike told Mamaw that he talked to the insurance company and got them to pay for her medicine. I think she probably knows this isn’t true, but she doesn’t ask, just like she never asks where Pike and I are going on our rides. We used to come back with at least a pop or a bag of chips, to make it look like we made a junk-food run, but we don’t even do that anymore.

We come to Hapsburg and drive through town, passing stores and houses decorated for Christmas. A plastic Santa waves from a porch. In some of the windows I can see Christmas trees, the lights twinkling. I wonder how many of them have no yellow bulbs. Probably, I think, just ours. Then we turn onto a side street.

“Where are we going?” I ask Pike. But I’m afraid I already know the answer.

Pike doesn’t answer me, confirming what I fear. He drives until he stops in front of a house I know very well. The porch is hung with colored lights—including yellow—and in the yard an inflatable Grinch stands almost to the roof, grinning at us.

Pike holds out his hand, and I give him the bag from my pocket. He takes a couple of baggies out and hands me back the rest. Then he gets out and walks up the steps. He knocks on the door, and a dog barks. Trixie. She’s a German shepherd mix. If she knew I was here, she’d go nuts, wanting me to scratch her behind the ears the way she likes.

The door opens, and Mrs. Clarke appears. She darts her eyes toward the truck, and I wave. She doesn’t wave back, just hands Pike some folded-up bills, and he drops the baggies into her hand in return. Then she’s gone, and Pike is walking back to the truck.

I wait until we’re back on the main street, heading for our next stop, before I ask, “Did she say if she’s heard anything from Burlie?”

Pike shakes his head. “Nothing. I mean she didn’t say. So I guess not.”

Burlie is Mrs. Clarke’s boy. My best friend. A lot more than my best friend, although that part is a little confusing. Confusing enough that Burlie ran off a couple of months ago after he got into a fight with his parents about it.

I don’t say anything else as Pike drives to the next house and makes the second deal. Twenty minutes later, we’re home again, and I go into the house to find Mamaw asleep in the recliner in front of the TV. There’s a burning cigarette in her hand, the inch-long ash dangling like a broken finger. I take it and drop it into the Ale-8-One can on the coffee table. I take the crocheted afghan from the back of the couch and lay it over Mamaw, then go to my room.

On my bedside table is the copy of John Crowley’s novel Little, Big that Burlie left on my bed the night he went away. It’s his own copy, battered and taped together, because it’s his favorite book and he’s read it I don’t know how many times. The pages are smudged with orange Cheetos dust from Burlie’s fingers, the cover torn, the spine crooked from being held open. It’s the most important thing Burlie owns, and he left it as a promise that someday he would come back for it. And for me.

I pick the book up and open it. Tucked inside the pages is the note he left with it, the one where he tells me he loves me and wants to be with me but needs to go away for a little while. I take it out now and read it again, although I don’t need to. I know every word of it by heart.

Now I use the note for a bookmark. Even though Little, Big is Burlie’s favorite book, I’ve never read it. Instead, I asked him to tell it to me in his own words. He tried, but he didn’t get very far before he left. So now I’m reading it for myself. It’s a difficult book for me to get through, since reading isn’t the easiest thing for me to begin with, and reading a book like this one takes extra concentration because the sentences are tricky. You think they mean one thing, but by the end you think maybe they mean another. Sometimes I have to read one sentence four or five times until I get it. Even then, I’m not always sure. But I still love the story, which is about a family that has made deals with the fairies that turn their lives upside down and sideways. And I love the way it makes me feel, and sometimes that’s even more important than knowing exactly what’s going on.

That’s how it was with Burlie and me. I didn’t always understand what was going on with us. I didn’t always have the words to describe it. But I knew how it made me feel. The first time he kissed me, when he was sleeping over and we were sharing the bed, I finally had a word for it. But it was the feeling that was the most important thing. When he kissed me, I knew it was what I’d been waiting my whole life for. And even though I worried what people might think, I honestly didn’t care. I really didn’t.

But Burlie’s parents cared. They said they didn’t want a kid who was “like that” and that he had to stop if he wanted to keep living there. Like who you are is something you can just change like a shirt.

Pike and Mamaw don’t care. Pike said it’s nobody’s business, and that if anyone ever gives me shit about it to tell him and he’ll take care of it. Mamaw said there’s been queers (that’s her word, not mine) in the family for seven generations back, including her uncle Henny, who lived with his man, Cork, for forty-seven years on a farm where they raised goats and seven children they adopted for various reasons and put through college using money they made selling all that goat milk and cheese.

I don’t know if Burlie’s family blames me for things or not. Before driving over there with Pike I hadn’t seen any of them since Burlie left. Burlie thinks they might not even know it was me he was in love with, since the way they found out about him was that his mother went into his room looking for money he might have saved from mowing lawns and shoveling driveways and instead found a couple of books that made her suspicious. When she asked him about them, he told her the truth, because one thing Burlie is incapable of doing is lying. Even when it might save him a whole lot of trouble.

I open Little, Big and pick up where I left off. I don’t let myself read more than three pages a day, because I told myself that by the time I reach the end of it, Burlie will have come back. You’d think that would make me read it faster, so that he’d be home sooner, but the truth is that I’m not sure it’ll work. I don’t know why I think that, but I do. And I’m afraid that if I finish the story before he returns, that will somehow make him never return.

He’s been gone since before Halloween. It’s December now. Burlie has been gone forty-one days, and I’m on page 109 of Little, Big. It’s 538 pages, which means I have 429 to go. If I stick to my three-page-a-day limit, I’ll finish sometime in April, May if I read fewer pages a day. I could go even longer if I read only a page a day, or skip days and stretch into summer, but that feels like cheating. One of the things I’ve learned from reading Little, Big is that magic has rules, and this feels like a kind of magic.

Besides, if Burlie isn’t back by springtime, let alone summer, he’s not coming back.

I wish I knew where he was. He said he’d call or email or something when he could. He hasn’t, though, and that has to mean something, right? I don’t want to think about what it means, though, because him not being in touch can’t be good.

I shut the book and lie on the bed with it resting on my chest. I close my eyes and picture Burlie’s face. I have pictures of him on my phone, but I like to try to remember on my own. Most of the time, it’s easy. Sometimes, though, I can’t remember exactly what color his eyes are, or the shape of his mouth. Then I panic that I’m forgetting him, and I look at a photo to remind myself.

Tonight I remember. I see his eyes perfectly. They’re a gold-brown color. His hair is brown, too, kind of long and tucked behind his ears. He’s smiling—he’s almost always smiling, at least when we’re together—and the nails on one hand are painted black. They’re also chipped, because that’s the hand he picks with when he plays guitar.

I fall asleep thinking about him, and this turns into a dream where I’m walking through the woods behind our house. I know where I’m going—to the abandoned house that sits in the middle of the trees. Somebody lived there once, of course, but not for a very long time. The paint has long since faded away, and the boards are a silvery gray. Most of the windows were shattered years ago, and there’s no furniture. Sometimes Burlie and I would spend the night in there, our sleeping bags spread out on the wood floor in the living room, the space lit up with battery-powered lanterns. When the weather turned colder, we had fires in the fireplace, which still has a working chimney.

I daydreamed a lot about fixing that house up, making it our own. It’s too far gone to do that, but it was a nice fantasy. I pictured us painting the walls, getting the water running again, filling the rooms with furniture. I imagined us cooking together in the kitchen and heading upstairs to bed. I thought about listening to the rain on the roof while we snuggled under blankets and made plans for later.

In my dream I walk through the woods. There’s no path, no road, but I know exactly how to go. Only now, something is wrong. The trees don’t look right. And when I peer through the fog I’m walking in, I see the outline of the house for only a moment before something swallows it up. Then it reappears off to my left, farther away than it should be, and when I change direction to get to it, I stumble over unfamiliar ground.

“Willet!” I hear Burlie call my name. “I’m over here! Come find me!”

“I’m coming!” I cry out, my voice tight. I’m straining to see the house, to find my way to it, to Burlie, but the fog is too thick. It swirls around me, cold and damp. I shiver. This isn’t right.

“Willet!” Burlie calls again. He sounds frightened.

“Coming!” I try to answer, but I choke on the fog as it fills my throat.

“Willet!” Burlie’s voice is shrill with fear now. He says my name again, but it turns into a scream, which grows thinner and fainter, as if Burlie is being lifted into the air. I hear the sound of wings flapping, and the fog around me stirs.

Then there’s nothing but silence.

I wake up in darkness. For a moment I think I see lights in the corner of my room, pale yellow dots like the headlights of an oncoming car. Then they blink out, and there’s nothing but darkness and moonlight. I don’t know who turned the lights in my room out. Maybe I did? I don’t remember doing it.

Then I recall the dream. Burlie. Burlie calling out to me. Burlie being carried off by . . . something. But what? And where did it take him?

I know it’s crazy, but I’m suddenly filled with the need to go look for him in the abandoned house. Our house. Maybe, I think, he’s been there all along, hiding from everyone while he decides what to do. Maybe he’s been waiting there for me to find him. And I haven’t been out there once since he left.

I get up and pull on some clothes and boots, then head to the kitchen. Mamaw is still asleep in her recliner, snoring. The TV is on—a Hallmark Christmas movie with the sound off—and a blond woman is looking in a mirror and holding up two scarves as if trying to decide which one to wear.

I get my coat and open the door as quietly as I can, slipping outside. It’s snowing lightly and the moon is only a thin slice in the sky, so it’s not easy to see. But I know where I’m going, and I have a small flashlight that I keep in my inside jacket pocket just for this reason. I take it out and turn it on, the narrow beam barely cutting through the snowy dark.

The woods start not far behind the house. I disappear into them, following the route I’ve walked with Burlie so many times. My boots crunch softly on the old snow while the falling flakes swirl around me as they drift down through the leafless trees. I know walking in the woods alone at night isn’t the smartest thing to do. There are coyotes—I hear them yipping off in the distance—and worse. But I need to know if my dream meant anything.

It takes about fifteen minutes to reach the house. I see its shadow in the trees as I get closer, like it’s waiting for me. When I get to the sagging porch, I see the front door is open. Maybe the wind blew it open, but I don’t think so. Somebody has been here. My heart leaps.

I rush inside.

“Burlie?” I call out.

There’s no answer.

I shine the flashlight around the living room, as if maybe I just can’t see him. But the room is empty. I call Burlie’s name one more time, just in case, but I know he’s not here. It was only a stupid dream. Still, it makes me sad, and I realize how badly I wanted him to be here. I feel like if I stay in the house another second, I’ll start crying and won’t be able to stop.

Then I see that the room isn’t completely empty. There’s something on the floor in front of the fireplace. I walk over and crouch down. It’s a Walkman, a portable cassette tape player. They haven’t made them in years, but they were really popular once, and this one belonged to Burlie’s grandfather. Burlie thinks it’s cool, and he likes making tapes of his favorite music and listening to them on something old-school. He says it’s more real than digital.

I set the flashlight on the floor, pick the player up, and pop it open. There’s a cassette inside. The label says XMAS MUSIC FOR WILLET on it in Burlie’s sloppy printing. Looking at it, I feel my heart flutter. Burlie is here. Or was. But when? How long has the Walkman been sitting here? And why? If he meant to give me the tape, why didn’t he?

I close the player, slip the attached headphones into my ears, and hit Play. A low, bubbling synthesized bass line begins to play. Then a man’s voice sings. “The angel Gabriel from heaven came, his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame.”

There’s a noise behind me, the creak of a foot on the stairs. I whirl around, kicking the flashlight and sending it spinning across the floor. “Burlie?”

Standing at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor is a shadow, darker even than the darkness of the room. It’s too big to be Burlie. Too big to be any person. As the song continues to play in my ears, the shadow grows, wings extending out on either side. Then two pale yellow eyes flare, as if someone has lit kerosene lamps.

I stand there, frozen, waiting for something to happen. I don’t know what. Anything, really. But the thing doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, doesn’t speak. It’s just there. I don’t do anything, either. And I’m not sure if it’s because I can’t or because I don’t want to. I feel like I should be afraid. I am afraid. At the same time, I don’t think this thing (I can’t bring myself to use the name I know I should) wants to hurt me.

What it does want, I don’t know.

I force my pinkie finger to bend, to prove to myself that I can move if I want to. I curl my fingers into fists, then relax them. I do the same with my toes, curling them inside my shoes. Still, I don’t run. I stand, looking into the yellow eyes. Waiting.

Hours seem to pass with neither of us moving. Then the wings beat, once, and I feel cold air surround me. The yellow eyes blink out, and the thing is gone. Now there’s just the darkness of the winter night.

I let out a long sigh, surprised to discover that I’ve been holding my breath. I look for the flashlight, pick it up, and shine it at the stairs. Nothing. I’m alone in the house. Then I realize that the song is still playing in my ears. It’s been only a minute or two. I hit Stop, and the singing ends. Now all I hear is the low whistling of the wind in the chimney.

The fear I couldn’t let myself feel while it was happening surges in. I need to get out of the house. I run through the door and toward home. I don’t know exactly what I saw in the house, but I can’t help thinking about the yellow Christmas lights Mamaw wanted out of the strings. I can’t help thinking about her story, of all the stories I’ve heard. And if it was Mothman who just appeared to me, what does it mean? He always arrives as a warning. Combined with Burlie running away and now finding the cassette tape he made for me, I fear these things are all related.

When I get home, Mamaw is still asleep, and the blond woman is now ice-skating with a man who looks like he’d rather be doing something else. I go back to my room. Lying on the bed, I rewind the tape and start the first song again. This time, I listen to the lyrics. I take out my phone and start Googling. The song is called “Gabriel’s Message.” The version on my tape is sung by Sting, who I know was in a popular ’80s group called the Police, but the song itself is an old one, like hundreds of years old. It’s about the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary to tell her that she would be the mother of Jesus.

In other words, a kind of warning.

The song ends, and another one comes on, this time Fiona Apple singing “Frosty the Snowman.” I know this one because Burlie played it a lot. He loves Christmas, and especially Christmas music and those old stop-motion specials about Frosty, Rudolph, and the Miser Brothers. He’s played me a lot of Christmas songs. But I don’t remember him ever playing “Gabriel’s Message.” So why is it the first one on the tape?

A warning.

An angel.

Mothman.

When I think about it, maybe Mothman is a kind of angel. There’s the whole wings thing, obviously. And he supposedly appears to people to tell them something. Tidings, like in the carols. Comfort and joy and all of that. Only his messages aren’t comforting.

I don’t know what to think. Now that I’m in my own house, in my own room, what happened in the abandoned house feels like it might never have really happened. Maybe I made the whole thing up. Maybe the yellow eyes were the flashlight reflecting off bits of glass. Only I’m pretty sure there was no glass where the thing was standing. And the flashlight was on the floor, facing the other direction. Which means either it was all in my head or it was real.

I lie there, thinking about all of this and listening to the tape Burlie made for me, until dawn arrives and weak sunlight trickles into my room. It’s still snowing, and the sky is gray. The whole world feels cold, and I can’t get warm. It’s like the wind the creature in the house swept at me with its wings has wrapped around me and won’t let go.

I get up, pull a hoodie over my head, and go to the kitchen. Mamaw is standing at the stove, cooking bacon. “Made coffee,” she says. “Want some eggs?”

“Sure,” I say. “Thanks.” She rarely makes breakfast, and usually it’s just a bowl of Froot Loops or Cap’n Crunch for herself. This is a surprise.

I pour some coffee into a mug and sit down. As I wait for breakfast to be ready, I consider telling Mamaw what happened in the abandoned house. But now that it’s daylight, it all seems kind of silly. So when she sets a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs in front of me, I eat it without saying anything.

“Where’s Pike?” I ask Mamaw. “He never sleeps through the smell of bacon cooking.”

“Don’t know,” Mamaw says. “Not in his bedroom. Truck’s gone. Guess he went out.”

I grunt. Pike being up this early is almost unheard of. That means he probably got a call from Wart or one of his clients and went out to make a sale. At least he didn’t wake me up to go with him. I’m grateful for that.

Mamaw is standing in front of the open refrigerator. “Outta pop,” she says. “And only got two cigarettes left.”

Now I know why she’s made me breakfast. She wants me to go to the store for her. With Pike gone, that means I’ll have to walk. It’s more than a mile each way. But it’s Sunday morning and I don’t have anything else to do, so after I finish eating, I set the plate in the sink and say, “Think I’ll go to the Piggly Wiggly,” as if this isn’t exactly what she wants me to do.

The walk is actually nice. Because of all the snow, there aren’t a lot of cars out, and I have the road to myself. I have Burlie’s Walkman in my coat pocket and the headphones in, listening to the Christmas songs he picked out for me. The mystery of how the player ended up in the house is still there, but I ignore it for the moment and try to just enjoy the music. But every time a song mentions angels—and there are a lot of angels in Christmas songs—I think about what I saw and what it might mean.

A song comes on by a group called Over the Rhine. They’re from Ohio, like me and Burlie, and he really likes them. Every year they do a series of Christmas concerts, and one of the things Burlie wanted to do was go see them together. He was saving up money for tickets.

The song on the tape is called “Snow Angel,” and even though it’s a Christmas song, it’s sad. It’s all about someone whose lover goes off to war and doesn’t come back, and how the one left behind is comforted by knowing that one day they’ll die, too, and the two of them will be reunited and be happy again. Not exactly cheery. But the singer’s voice is beautiful, and Burlie loved playing the record the song is from. He said sometimes sad is better than happy because sad reminds us that happy doesn’t last forever, and that we need to enjoy it while we can.

Another warning.

When I get to the Piggly Wiggly I keep the tape playing while I go inside. I pick up a six-pack of Ale-8-One, then head to the checkout for Mamaw’s cigarettes. I’m not old enough to buy them, but nobody ever cards around here. I set the pop on the conveyor belt and say, “Pack of Newports.”

“Willet,” a voice says, and I look up and see Gina—Burlie’s sister—behind the register. I forgot she works Sundays. We stand there, looking at each other, neither one of us asking the question I know we’re both thinking.

“Heard anything?” Gina says finally.

I shake my head. “You?”

“Nothing,” Gina says as she sets the cigarettes down in front of me.

I hand Gina a twenty, and she makes change. Then we stand there, staring at each other again. Gina’s eyes are the same color as Burlie’s, and they’re filled with sadness and questions. I can’t help her with, either.

“Let me know if you do, okay?” she says.

I nod. “You too.”

I put the cigarettes into my coat pocket, pick up the six-pack, and leave. I think maybe I should have told Gina about finding the cassette player. Then again, it would probably only make her worry more.

When I get home, Mamaw is sitting at the kitchen table. As soon as I shut the door, she says, “Cops called.”

I stop, the pop still in my hand. “Did they find Burlie?” I don’t know why the cops would call us about him, but he’s on my mind and it’s the first thing I think of.

“No,” Mamaw says. “About Pike. They arrested him.”

I don’t have to ask her what for. And if she was surprised to learn the reason, she’s not showing it. I set the pop down, take the cigarettes out of my coat, and hand them to Mamaw. She fumbles with the wrapper, her hands shaking, but gets it off and takes a cigarette out. As soon as she lights it and takes a drag, she seems to settle down a little.

“What now?” I ask her.

“I don’t know,” Mamaw answers. “Don’t have the money for bail.”

We actually do. Or at least I know where we can get it. Wart. But that will put us more in debt to him than we already are. “I saw him last night,” I say.

Mamaw looks at me. “Saw who? Pike?”

“No,” I say. I hesitate a moment before adding, “Him. Mothman.”

Mamaw looks hard at me. “You sure?”

“No,” I admit. “But yes.”

She nods. “Came to warn us about Pike.”

I don’t agree or disagree with her. But it does make sense.

“Guess I should have said something,” I say.

“Wouldn’t matter,” she says. “He doesn’t show up to give you a chance to change things. Only to let you know something bad is coming.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” I tell her.

“Life ain’t fair,” she says.

She’s right about that. But we’ve had more than our share of not fair, and I’m not sure what the point of warning us that more might be coming is when there’s not much we can do about it. We were already barely getting by. Now, with Pike in jail, things are worse. There’s no money for a lawyer. If Pike doesn’t come home, it’s just me and Mamaw. And if something happens to Mamaw, it’s just me. Especially now that Burlie is gone. I’d have nobody.

I can’t even let myself think about that, about what would happen to me then. And there’s nothing I can do about any of it right now, so instead of hanging around the house being angry or upset, I decide I need to walk out to the abandoned house and see it in the daylight. I tell Mamaw to call me if she hears anything, then go back to the woods.

When I get to the house, the front door is shut. I pause before going in. I don’t know why, since I can’t imagine finding anything in there that would be more frightening than what I saw last night. Still, my heart is beating as I turn the knob and go inside.

The living room is empty. I examine the walls around the stairs, but there’s nothing there that might have reflected light. I knew there wouldn’t be, but I had to make sure. I’m looking up the stairs and thinking about checking out the second floor when I hear something behind me and turn around.

My heart is already pounding. But it’s not Mothman. It’s just a man. Wart. He must have come to the house, seen me going into the woods, and followed me.

Wart is skinny, with a scraggly reddish beard that hangs halfway down his chest. He’s got a green knit cap pulled down almost to his small, yellowy eyes, and he’s standing with his hands in the pockets of dirty jeans. He looks at me, then spits on the floor.

“You’re Pike’s brother,” he says. It’s not a question.

I nod.

“Heard about him getting caught.” He doesn’t wait for me to respond before continuing. “Sounds like he got stupid. That could be trouble for me.”

“Maybe you should sell your own drugs, then,” I say before I can stop myself.

Wart looks like he wants to punch me in the face. Instead he says, “He still owes me five grand. That means you owe me five grand.”

“Five grand?” I say. I had no idea Pike had borrowed so much. “Where am I supposed to get five grand?”

“You on the nice list?” Wart says, showing a mouth of broken teeth. “Maybe Santa will bring it to you. If not, you come work for me, least until your bill is paid off.”

“We’re gonna get Pike out,” I tell him.

Wart laughs. “Sure,” he says, as if I’ve said I’m going to fly to the moon. “Even if you do, he’s done working for me. I don’t work with guys who get caught. Besides, the cops’ll be watching him. Hope you’re smarter than he is.”

He turns and leaves. I don’t bother going to watch, as I just want him away from me.

I need to get home, so after waiting a few minutes I go to the door and look outside. Wart is gone. He could still be lurking around somewhere in the woods, but he’s already made his point—if I don’t pay off my family’s debt, things will get a lot worse—so it doesn’t really matter. I hightail it back to the house, where Mamaw is pacing in the kitchen, a Newport burning in one hand and the phone in the other. She hangs up a moment after I come in.

“That’s the last bail place,” she says. “Can’t afford none of them.”

I want to go hug her. Actually, I want her to hug me. I want someone to tell me everything will be okay, that Pike won’t be in jail forever and Burlie will come back. I want to be comforted. But Mamaw only leans against the sink and keeps smoking. I can tell she’s worn out. She doesn’t have anything left to give anyone else.

I go to my room and try to distract myself by reading Little, Big. But nothing can keep me from thinking about what’s going on. Five grand. Where am I going to get that kind of money? Even if Pike gets out, how is he supposed to get that kind of money if he can’t work for Wart anymore?

I have to think of something else.

Then I remember something I read when I first looked for information about Mothman, about how sometimes people leave offerings to the Mothman statue in Point Pleasant. They put out plates of sausage rolls and cans of Mountain Dew. Both things are super popular in this part of the world, and I guess people assume since Mothman is from here, he likes them, too.

I don’t have either thing in the house, but I know where I can get them. I head out to the kitchen, put on my jacket. “I’ll be back,” I tell Mamaw. She doesn’t ask where I’m going.

This time, the trip to the Piggly Wiggly seems to take longer, because I’m in a hurry and want to get there and back. It’s dark by the time I get home, and I head right into the woods. When I come to the abandoned house, I take the can of Mountain Dew and the package of sausage rolls out and set them on the porch. I stand there staring at them, feeling ridiculous. But I’ve started this thing, and I need to see it through. Besides, I don’t have any other ideas.

“Hey,” I say, feeling dumber by the second. “I don’t know if you’re real. I think you are. Even if you are, I don’t know if you give a shit about me and my family. Maybe Mamaw’s right and all you do is show up to let us know things are about to suck even worse than they usually do. I don’t know what the point of that is, unless you’re also telling us we get a chance to change what happens, even if Mamaw doesn’t believe that. That’s what I’m trying to do. Change what’s happening. I don’t know if you can help us or not, but you’re the best chance I’ve got.”

I don’t know what else to say. I’ve never made an offering to anyone before. I don’t know how it’s supposed to work. I mean, I know how prayers are supposed to work, but I’ve never really believed anyone listens to those. If they did, there’d be a lot more people getting what they want.

“Anyway,” I say. “I brought you this stuff.”

I wait a minute or two. I don’t know what for. An answer? It’s not like Mothman is going to appear and eat the sausage rolls and drink the pop. When I was a kid I used to leave milk and cookies out for Santa on Christmas Eve, then wait for him to show. I always fell asleep before he did, but in the morning there’d be half a glass of milk and the cookies would be gone. That was enough for me to believe he was real for a long time.

I turn and walk back to the house. Inside, Mamaw is back in her recliner. I ask if there’s any update on Pike, and she shakes her head. I go to my room, lie down, try to calm my racing thoughts. I slip the headphones on and listen to the tape Burlie made me. Songs about angels fill my head, and eventually I fall into a restless sleep.

I wake up when someone shakes me. I open my eyes and see the glowing end of Mamaw’s cigarette hovering above me like a star.

“Come see this,” she says. “Hurry up.”

She turns and leaves. I have no idea what’s happening, but I get up and follow her. In the living room she’s standing in front of the TV. The news is on, and there’s a reporter standing near what looks like a car crash. A truck is on its back on the side of the road, the front end smashed into a telephone pole that tilts wildly. Glass is all over the place. The reporter is talking to a man.

“Ain’t that Dewey Miller?” Mamaw says.

“Yeah,” I say. “What’s he doing on the TV?”

Mamaw doesn’t say anything, but she turns the volume up.

“So you say something hit your truck and rolled it?” the reporter says to Dewey.

Dewey nods. “Weirdest thing I ever seen. Weren’t no deer or nothing like that. It was more like a big bat or something. It had wings. And red eyes.”

“Yellow,” Mamaw mutters under her breath.

The reporter nods but looks skeptical. “A bat large enough to turn over a pickup truck,” she says.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Dewey tells her. “But I swear that’s what it was.”

The reporter turns to the camera. “Police tell us they suspect black ice and driving over the speed limit for the conditions are a more likely cause of this accident that has sent one man, Warther Reeves, to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. In any event, until they can get this cleaned up, Trenton Hollow Road is closed, so take an alternate route.”

As the camera pans to the wreckage of the truck, Dewey shouts, “I’m telling y’all, it weren’t no goddamn black ice!”

Mamaw looks at me. “He’s right about that,” she says, and walks into the kitchen.

I know what she’s thinking because I’m thinking the same thing. It doesn’t seem possible, but now I want to know if the sausage rolls and pop are gone. “Be back in a bit,” I tell Mamaw as I get my jacket and one more time head out to the abandoned house in the woods. I stop at the edge of the porch, shining the flashlight on where my offerings were. The cardboard tray the sausage rolls were on is empty. The can of Mountain Dew is on its side, a little puddle of pop next to it.

Raccoons, I think. Maybe a possum.

Except that I know I didn’t open the can.

Then I notice something else on the porch. At first I think it’s an animal lying there. But it doesn’t move. I go over to it and shine the flashlight on it. It’s a knit hat. Green. There are rips in it, and darker areas that look wet. The last time I saw that hat, it was on Wart’s head. I touch the darker spot, and my finger comes away red.

I’m staring at my finger when there’s a rustling sound. When I turn, I see yellow eyes watching me from between the trees. My heart starts to beat harder. I resist the urge to run into the house, shut the door. This time, I want to see whom those yellow eyes belong to. I want answers.

Then the two eyes blink, and when they open again there’s just a single eye, and it’s moving toward me. I wait to feel the rush of beating wings.

“Willet!” a voice calls out.

“Burlie?” I answer, confused.

The eye moves more quickly in my direction, and I realize that it’s not an eye at all. It’s a flashlight. A flashlight that Burlie is carrying.

“Willet!” he calls again.

Then he’s in front of me, and we’re looking at each other. I can’t believe this is happening, that he might actually be real. But then his arms go around me, and he’s kissing me, and it’s all so real that I can hardly breathe. When we finally let go of each other, I say, “I found the tape.”

“The what?” Burlie says.

“The tape you left me,” I tell him. “With the Christmas songs. The Walkman was in the house.”

“I didn’t leave it there,” he says. “I had it with me. At least I thought I did. In my backpack. I promised myself I’d bring it back to you in time for Christmas. Then, a few days ago, I looked for the Walkman and it was gone. I wondered where it went. I thought someone stole it or I lost it. You found it here?”

I nod. “I thought you left it for me. To let me know you were coming back.”

Burlie laughs. “Weird,” he says. Then he laughs again. “Maybe the fae took it and brought it here.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him, because it doesn’t. “Where were you? Why didn’t you call or email or anything?”

“It’s a long story,” he says. “I sold my phone when I needed money. But I’m back now.” He reaches out, takes my hands in his. “It’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. I talked to Gina. She’s moving out. We’re going to get a place. Things are going to change, Willet.”

He hugs me again. Over his shoulder, I see movement in the trees behind him. The darkness ripples. Two yellow moons appear. This time, I’m not afraid. The darkness expands like wings unfolding. Then the moons rise up through the trees and into the night.

I don’t know exactly how everything has happened. But I’ve got some ideas. I think about the green hat and what that might mean. We’ve still got the rest of the Pike problem to sort out, but now I have a feeling we’ll manage it somehow.

I kiss Burlie again. “Yeah,” I say. “I think they are.”

---

Host Commentary

PseudoPod Episode 954

December 20th 2024

Be Not Afraid by Michael Thomas Ford 

Narrated by Dave Liloia

Hosted by Alasdair Stuart with audio by Chelsea Davis

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Hello everyone, and welcome to PseudoPod the weekly horror podcast. I’m Alasdair your host and this week’s story comes to us from Michael Thomas Ford. This story originally appeared in the 2024 anthology We Mostly Come Out at Night edited by Rob Costello 

 

Michael Thomas Ford is the author of numerous books for both young readers and adults. His novels for teenagers include EVERY STAR THAT FALLS, LOVE & OTHER CURSES, and SUICIDE NOTES. His books for middle-grade readers include THE LONELY GHOST and THE HEADLESS DOLL. A five-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ books, he has also been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Ignyte Award, and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award. He lives in rural Ohio with his husband and dogs, where he gardens, collects flannel shirts, and waits impatiently for Mothman to pay him a visit. Find out more at www.michaelthomasford.com

 

Your narrator this week is Dave Liloia. Dave Liloia is a nerd who builds Gundam models, 3D printing as many dragons as his partner will allow, getting tattoos, and playing Dungeons and Dragons. He is a huge fan of spoken word science fiction and fantasy. He has narrated several pieces of fiction including Some Demon (Audible), Oh Give Me a Home (Glittership), and managed the audio engineering of the Pseudopod story Granite Requires.  He resides in Southern California with his family and two cats who should be paying rent.

 

So happy holidays and…check your lights, yeah? 

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I stand there, frozen, waiting for something to happen. I don’t know what. Anything, really. But the thing doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, doesn’t speak. It’s just there. I don’t do anything, either. And I’m not sure if it’s because I can’t or because I don’t want to. I feel like I should be afraid. I am afraid. At the same time, I don’t think this thing (I can’t bring myself to use the name I know I should) wants to hurt me.

 

This is such a perfect description of interacting with the unknown. It’s something that I’ve seen referred to as ‘The Oz Factor’, the sense of unreality but strange reassurance you feel in the presence of the unknown, especially when the unknown witnesses you.

That acknowledgement is, so often, a negative one. But sometimes it can be awesome, in the original sense of the word. Which is:

 

causing feelings of great admiration, respect, or fear:

 

Something impossible and alien and terrifying and BEAUTIFUL. Admiration, then respect, then fear. You want to know the difference between horror and science fiction, it’s the order of those words. Admiration first? Science Fiction. Star Trek. Fear first? Horror. Dead Space.

 

I love that here all three words happen at once. I love even more that this is the Mothman as the sort of reassuringly upsetting figure that you get out in the woods. I grew up somewhere where you said hello to the fairies every time you crossed a particular bridge. A friend lived for a logn time in the UFO capital of the UK in Yorkshire. There’s always something else on the other side of the street, on the outskirts of the fire. It’s always there, and it’s always watching and when we’re very brave, we watch back. When we’re extraordinarily brave? We talk to it. And listen to what it has to say.

But there are still teeth. There are always teeth. If we’re incredibly lucky, then we get to decide where those teeth fall or, at least where they don’t. 

An offering not a Faustian bargain. A chance but not a solution. Sometimes that’s enough to make you change the colour o your Christmas lights.

 

Speaking of which, a fantastic festive season to you all from all of us! Thanks for listening and supporting us. 2025 is just around the corner and with it Escape Artists’ 20th anniversary. To prepare for 20 more years, we are running an end-of-year donation drive and several of our most generous supporters have committed to matching every gift 1:1 between now and January 1st. That means if you donate $5 it will become a $10 donation. $25 becomes $50. And $42 becomes twice the meaning of life, the universe, and everything to us. 

If you make a one-time gift, it will go twice as far today, but if you subscribe, you will have twice the impact for the rest of the year. Monthly donations ensure we can plan ahead with a reliable income, which means we can publish more original stories, devote more time to editorial excellence, and plan for the future. And, because Escape Artists is a US 501(c)3 nonprofit, your donation may be tax deductible, depending on your own tax circumstances. EA can also accept gifts from donor advised funds, family foundations, employer matching gift programs, and lots more. Whether you have been a member of Escape Artists’ community since 2005 or just started following, now is the perfect time to start supporting us because your gift will have twice the impact.

Visit Escape Artists dot net forward slash Support for all our support options – from Patreon and PayPal to Kofi and more. Or if you have a question, contact donations at escape artists dot net. 

Thank you for supporting our mission to bring free and accessible speculative audio fiction to a global audience. We couldn’t do it without you!

 

PseudoPod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International license. Download and listen to the episode on any device you like, but don’t change it or sell it. Theme music is by permission of Anders Manga.

 

Have a fantastic holiday, folks. You deserve it. We’ll see you next week with Flash on the Borderlands  LXXII (72): 2024 Anthologies and Collections Showcase featuring stories by Robbie Banfitch, TJ Price, Christi Nogle and Rob Costello with narration by Robbie Banfitch, Brent Lambert, Dani Daly and Justin Riestra. I’ll be hosting, Chelsea will be producing and you’ll be listening. We’ll see you then but before we do PseudoPod wants to ask And was drop-kicking him into the manger really the best way to handle this?