Nothing to Be Afraid of

P.T. Florence

Catrina had to stand on her tiptoes to peek through the diamond-shaped window in the front door. The fire across the street was surprisingly small. Almost welcoming. Like the little fires her father made to keep warm when he worked outside. But by the time she put her shoes on and selected her one item, the flames were licking tentatively at the awning above the gas pumps, like a butterfly’s proboscis testing a flower.

"There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a precaution." Her mother stood clutching the family photo album like a shield. Catrina’s brother joined them at the now-open door carrying a stack of records.

"That's cheating," Catrina scolded him. 

Her first instinct had been to grab Rarebit, but she would look childish carrying a stuffed animal, so she had brought The Secret Garden instead. It wasn’t necessarily special, other than being the first book she purchased with her own money at the book fair. It certainly wasn’t irreplaceable, the way Rarebit was. But it would give her something to do while they waited.

She and Charlie stood, mesmerized, bathed in a disorienting wash of colors—the red lights from the fire trucks strobing through the orange of the blaze.

Their father emerged from the dark interior of the house, stoically carrying nothing but the car keys. As they walked to the car, Catrina focused on her brother’s back, a tall, white beacon leading her through the weirdly bright night. 

They sat in the backseat, waiting while their father talked with a policeman. To keep her eyes from the flames she stared at the topmost album cover in Charlie’s lap: KISS balancing precariously atop a precipice, their painted faces like tiny moons hovering above the sea of lava. One of the neighbor’s kids, Jeff, shoved his way into the back with them. The two boys began talking, quietly, their heads bent so close they could almost be kissing. 

Catrina was an island now.

࿓

A disembodied flashlight helped her father navigate the car out of the drive and through the maze of emergency vehicles arriving and maneuvering for position. They emerged from the hellish landscape of moaning sirens and warring colors into a quiet that was somehow too loud and a darkness that was hollow, like when the candle in a jack-o'-lantern has burned out.

Catrina did not know where they were going until they pulled into the church parking lot. People were already gathered in clumps around the two security lights, like moths in their colorful pajamas and hastily assembled, mismatched outfits. She expected the evacuees to be quiet and grim, but their voices vibrated in a continuous hum, an occasional outbreak of laughter pulsing out in incongruous mockery of the broiling horizon. 

Charlie and Jeff broke away from them, drifting casually to the oversized concrete table already colonized by a group of teenage boys, some leaning against it and some sitting atop it, swinging their legs with that restless energy that boys always seemed to have. Catrina followed her parents to a spot on the outskirts of one of the pools of tawny light. Her parents, who knew everyone, greeted and began talking with some people she vaguely recognized. While she knew their kids from school, they were all one or two grades ahead, so they ignored her.

The familiar perfume of mimosas mingling with the green tang of trampled grass reminded her of having cookies and Kool-Aid at the concrete table during Vacation Bible School. She still had the necklace made from cut-up magazines they crafted last summer. But as more and more people arrived and crowded onto the narrow margin of weeds separating the parking lot from the graveyard, these smells were subsumed beneath those of the bodies beginning to enclose her like a damp, musky cocoon.

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A tall silhouette materialized from the darkness. Some kind of strangely shaped hat pulled down low obscured the face.

“Got a light?” The voice was flat. Emotionless. 

Her parents shook their heads.

The figure moved past them, trailing an odor of stale cigarette smoke and something chemical—motor oil or some other fluid she couldn’t quite place but was sure she had smelled before. Lurking somewhere beneath, something sweet-sour. 

“Got a light?”

As the man next to Catrina began digging in his pants pocket, the figure lifted a cigarette to its mouth in anticipation. She waited, too. 

The figure leaned toward the flickering lighter but the brim of the hat kept the face shadowed. Only the hand cupping the flame was visible. She could see the dark tributaries of veins beneath the flesh. It made her think of the dead baby bird she had once found, featherless and translucently pink.

The figure nodded its thanks to the man and turned away, standing directly behind a cluster of people talking in a loud, animated way. One of the women held a baby who squirmed and whimpered, but, engrossed in the conversation, the woman ignored it. 

The tip of the cigarette flared like a lightning bug in the dim half-light, but when the figure took it from their mouth, they did not exhale the smoke. Instead, they appeared to take an even deeper breath. Like trying to inhale as much of the air around them as possible. 

The figure remained standing, not breathing out. Unconsciously, Catrina, too, was holding her breath. She tried to hold it until the figure exhaled, but she was forced to let it out.

“Mom?”

Her mother half-crouched so that she was closer to eye level with her. 

“Who was that person? The one who just asked for a light?”

“I don’t know, hon.” Her mother shook her head and stood back up.

During the past few years, more and more of their neighbors had moved out, strangers moving in to take their place, renting trailers or setting up campers in the woods. Her parents no longer knew everyone. Unfamiliar faces populated the classrooms at school, appearing and disappearing like ghosts traveling a newly opened expressway.

Catrina wished, now, that she had brought Rarebit instead of a book. There was not enough light to read by and something about the strange person made her long for the comfort that the stuffed bunny brought, no matter how childish it might be.

When she looked back toward the group of people, the stranger was gone.

࿓

Catrina scanned the crowd, twisting her body this way and that, searching for the stranger without leaving the safety of her parents’ presence. Her stomach twisted with the knowledge that the stranger was there somewhere, invisible to her. 

They could be anywhere. 

Even right behind her.

She turned around quickly, but saw only Mr. and Mrs. Wiggins, who always gave out suckers with quarters taped to them at Halloween. Mrs. Wiggins cooed and tutted at the wiener dog in her arms. It continued to bare its teeth and emit a continuous, guttural growl at no one in particular. Catrina, normally distrustful of the dog, who liked to run up and snap at her ankles whenever she rode her bike by its house, now felt a kinship with it. 

Why were people so unconcerned about what the stranger was doing? Why was no one else paying attention to them?

The rank mixture of smells drifted to her and she began walking toward the source. She wove in and out and around people, as they jabbed her with their elbows or swatted her with their hands. She had to move slowly, cautiously, because that's how the stranger was moving.

She saw them. They stood in that same pose, as close as possible to a couple, the glowing tip of the cigarette dangling at their side, as though forgotten, their body taut. 

The stranger moved to the next group. This time, there was no pretense at taking a pull from the cigarette. They drew themselves up so exaggeratedly that Catrina imagined she could hear a deep intake of breath, like the kind people took before diving into water.

The stranger was getting nearer to the security light and the crowd grew denser. The hems of Catrina's pajama pants were wet with dew, making it feel as though something tangled and pulled at her legs, each step a test of her will. But she kept moving. If she could just see the stranger's face she would know whether she was right to be afraid or not.

But before stepping into the space where the light bled from a gauzy illumination into a penetrating brightness, the stranger turned around.

They now stood, facing her. 

She lost her breath.

In that moment, the world zeroed down to the two of them. Too far away from the light, Catrina could still not make out the features beneath the brim of the hat. 

Slowly, deliberately, the stranger lifted the cigarette, taking a long, deep drag that reduced it to a column of ash that fell, scattering onto the grass. Without exhaling, they flicked the butt away with a practiced gesture.

“Got a smoke?”

The teeth were black and glinting. The smile a contortion of muscles, distended and inert. Catrina fled.

But the crowd had shifted. She turned and turned, frantically searching for a path back to her parents through the swirl of dark forms. She stumbled blindly along, her heart racing, wanting to cry but sure that tears were exactly what the stranger wanted.

“Hey, Squirt.”

She ran to Charlie, choking on a half-escaped sob when she reached his arms. Some of the other boys made a mocking awww sound.

“What’s wrong?”

“A strange . . .” A strange what? Man? Woman? Thing? “A strange person.”

“Where?”

She pointed toward the people milling around on the edge of the parking lot, but from this vantage point, everyone except those directly beneath the security lights was a stranger.

“You didn’t take any candy from them, did you?” one of Charlie’s friends called out and everyone, including Charlie, laughed.

Charlie needed to understand. He needed to know what she saw. But her thoughts were all muddled. What had she seen? What had her imagination supplied? The darkness and the crowd created gaps.

“Silly willy, there’s nothing to be afraid of.” Charlie pinched her nose. “Look, the fire is almost out.”

He pointed and she looked to see that the glow on the horizon had diminished. Now, it might have been a nightlight left on to keep God from stubbing his toe on the mountaintops. 

They would go back home soon. And the stranger would go back to wherever they came from.

She stayed by Charlie’s side. The boys carried on talking about music and cars and girls, their voices like distant rumbles of thunder, a danger rendered harmless by the comfort of Charlie's presence and the impending return home.

࿓

Back in the car, Charlie and Jeff teased her about “stranger danger.”

“What’s going on back there?” their mother demanded.

“Catrina thought someone was trying to kidnap her,” Charlie said.

“No, Mom. There was a scary person. They were acting weird. That person who asked you for a light for their cigarette.”

“No one asked me for a light,” her mother said.

Her mother’s words were like a slap, stunning Catrina into muteness. When she finally found her voice, it came out in a high-pitched wail: “Yes, they did. They asked you and Dad for a light.”

“Do you remember that, John?”

Her father, silhouetted against the lights from the dash, shook his head.

“No one asked us for a light, hon.” 

“See.” Charlie poked her in the side. 

Hot tears dammed up in her eyes, blurring the lights from the remaining fire trucks into a prism. She hugged The Secret Garden to her chest, but the smell of the paper, redolent of normalcy and comfort, was a betrayal, siding with everyone else. She shoved the book down into the gap in the seat between her and Charlie. 

The street was subdued now, just a few firemen spraying a smoking hulk of mangled metal with a single hose. Some people had returned before the official all-clear and stood watching, commentating. The way they would if a car had broken down or a tree had fallen. One of them turned toward the car slowly. Against the black blank of the face, a tiny pinprick of orange light flared.

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