The March 2015 Featured Writer is Dominick Nole

Please feel free to email Dominick at neversleeps26@yahoo.com

INTEREST DUE
by Dominick Nole

The late August sun burned across the dried up bedrock that plagued the shores of the receded Susquehanna River. It was 1948, and I was planted atop an overturned bucket. My fishing pole was in my hands, beer was resting in a cooler of ice, and I was enjoying the serenity of a late afternoon breeze, not-quite-empty wilderness, and a gurgling river.

My mind has grown old with my body, and there are things in my life which I cannot recall. Time has a way of melting the glue of one’s memory, leaving only stagnant puddles that are murky and deep. Sometimes, if you dig long enough, you find a clam with a pearl resting inside, and you tell everyone about this little tidbit of news over and over, even though you know they have heard it before. You fear that if you throw that clam back it might sink to the bottom, never to be found again. So you put that clam in your pocket along with any others and hold on tight, and you keep digging for more with your other hand.

The days and evenings I spent along the banks of that river in Pennsylvania stand out in my mind with haunting clarity. I can remember the rich, brown smell of the mud at the bottom of the river, the sun casting its diamonds among the rippling waters. How the trees would sigh with each faint puff of wind. The way it looked before houses and cottages popped up along the upper banks of the river like chicken pox, bringing along their occupants and the pollution that surrounded them like a cancer. 

But I’m preaching. Or bitching, as the nurses like to tell me every day—but not without a smile.

I was along those banks of the river that run throughout several towns scattered about northeastern Pennsylvania. My son, Rory, had liked to prance and cavort about them, looking for snakes and crawfish and other things that hold a boy's attention until he reaches a certain age, and his mind turns to the mysteries of sex and the wonders of alcohol (which often went hand in hand).

I would often fish alone, only bringing my son when I wasn’t expecting the fish to be biting, and I rarely went with a friend as I had few. I had become something of a recluse since my wife had died two years before, blasted out of her shoes by a drunk driver. God, I miss her so much.

Rory would usually stay at home and wander about the woods behind our house, playing Cowboys and Indians with the Danvers boy who lived a mile down the road, leaving me to pursue the only pastime I thoroughly enjoyed. It wasn’t so much the fishing; it was the pleasurable loneliness that gives a man time to enjoy what he is and think about what he wants to become.

I sat along the stretch of shoreline that ran next to Camel’s Ledge, a high cliff that broods over the main road. One could make the tiresome climb through the woods and sit with their legs dangling over the cliff, pulling in the breathtaking view with their eyes. You could see for miles, the river bleeding its way through the valley. It was always best right before sunset during the tail-end of summer, when the sky was still a dark blue at one end that faded into a bewitching peach color at the other. If you felt like trekking back through the woods in the dark, that is. Not many did. It was old Susquehannock Indian country, and some believed the souls of the dead held communion on that cliff top during the black of night.

I never heard or saw any ghosts myself, but I did see something come out of the river one night that made me abandon my love of fishing for the rest of my life.

I had arrived at my favorite spot late afternoon, and by six thirty I had pulled in several smallmouth bass. I had kept two of the bass to take home and cook for supper, but I let the others go, hoping they would grow larger over the years as I came back to go to war with my fishing pole.

The water remained crotch-deep on a six foot man from bank to bank at that time of year, except for a spot almost in the middle. This spot was called Hell’s Coin Slot by some, Satan’s Piggy Bank by others. No one knew for sure how deep it was out there. If you asked, the reply was always deep, and said with raised eyebrows. 

What people did know was that it had claimed the lives of many swimmers over the years, and a sad amount of them were children. The water ran deep and fast there, and if you got pulled down and tried to fight it—like a panicked kid would—it was over. The best course when swept away by a river current is to just let it take you where it will until it peters out. Now that I think about it, the best course is to just stay out of the goddamn river in the first place.

People began saying that part of the river was cursed. No bodies ever turned up. Of course the wild has its scavengers, but there should at least have been bones. The only thing that was ever found was young Melissa Burns’s dark brown bathing suit, wrapped around a log half a mile downriver from where she was swimming. She was seven.

When I was at work telling people over lunchtime about the fish I always caught (exaggerating as only a fisherman can) and they asked “Where were ya fishin?” I always replied, “Down at the Piggy Bank.” I would get the usual stares, the ones that said are you nuts? But the way I looked at it I was safe as long as I was fishing, not swimming.

Thrilled at my luck thus far, I was digging into my beer much quicker than I should have been. By the time I polished off the last one I was in a happy funk, laughing every time I felt my pole twitch and I failed to set the hook.

I dozed off (passed out would be the more correct term) and by the time I woke up a full, cheese-colored moon was illuminating some unknown horror perched fifteen feet ahead of me.

Maybe it was the booze, or shock, but my mind didn’t even register the thing at first. I gazed around. My fishing pole lay mostly on the ground and partly on my lap. “Shit, must’ve fallen asleep, the boy’s probably worried si—”

 And then I saw it.

It was enormous. Not in a mountainous sense, but it was long. Its segmented, oily, elongated body stretched for at least a hundred feet and then disappeared into the awful blackness that was Satan’s Piggy Bank.

Appendages hung from both sides of the body. Some looked a little like giant flippers, others like the legs and feet of a salamander. Underneath the head were arms that looked too much like human arms for comfort, and a pair of hands capped them off. And about a foot below them was a giant claw with nastily serrated grips. I imagined those claws taking my head off—schwip—and gallons of blood geysering out of the stump of my neck like Old Faithful.

My entire body began shaking, knocking the rest of my pole onto the rocks below my boots, making a little clattering sound.

The head was ugly and alien. It also looked slightly like a salamander, but no salamander that has ever crawled on the face of this earth. There were two eyes on top of its head that were a light, cloudy grey, and two more right above the lip of its mouth that were pure black with two reddish-orange reptilian slits. 

I had no idea what it planned on doing, and a weak, childish moan escaped my mouth. I began to rise from my bucket and the thing charged forward and opened its mouth at me with a roar. Years later, at the Philadelphia Zoo with my grandchildren, I heard a gator make a similar noise and I screamed. Everyone laughed at me and my grandchildren tugged at my shirt. “Pappy, you’re embarrassing us!” But a gator could only vaguely mimic the sound of this creature, and it was so close to me I thought the volume would make my ear drums collapse.

I wish it had never opened its horrible mouth. The inside looked like moldy pink carpeting with large shards of glass sticking out of it. There was no tongue, only teeth on top and bottom with no apparent order to them. Some were almost as long as my arm, others as small as my fingers, and they all had that jagged look of broken glass.

A reek came from its mouth, a potpourri of the damned: rotten river mud mixed with open bowels and old seaweed, and dead fish that had lain in the sun for a week. It was redolent with the stench of mucousy, half-digested meat and congealed bones.

Before I vomited and pissed myself at the same time, I could hear voices coming from the pale red witch-light at the base of its throat. “Help us, we’re drowning, it has me, we’re in Hell, where are we, Jesus, God, Mommy, Daddy, save me, save us!” all at the same time, a chorus of the forgotten, the lost, the eternally frightened. And in between retching and gagging, I thought, It has no tail, nope. It goes down Satan’s Piggy Bank for miles and shits them out into the bowels of Hell itself.

And I still think that’s what it was: the Devil’s own Jack in the Box on a mission to snatch fresh souls from the surface, those pale eyes on top of its head always scanning the surface for any thrashing person that happened to float its way.

I plopped back down onto the bucket, my dungarees squelching with piss. The creature's mouth remained open long enough for me to see its teeth sink into their gums like the retracting blade of a box cutter. Then it retreated and stared at me with those evil reptilian eyes, marking me.

Maybe fifteen minutes passed, maybe an hour. I became increasingly uncomfortable with the staring contest, so I started talking to it.

“What do you want with me, huh? Are you hungry? I have some worms, you know. They’re fresh. You could have them, go ahead.”

It continued to stare.

“How ‘bout some fish? They stink a little from sitting in the sun, but here, have one!” I reached to my side where the two bass were, never taking my eyes away from the beast. I wrapped my hand around one, hearing a squish as I gripped it tight. The fish had a slimy, tacky feel to it and it was cold, so cold. Rigor had locked it into a slight U-shape. A spine on the dorsal fin punctured the palm of my hand.

I lobbed the fish at the thing’s head, expecting it to snap it out of the air like a fly. The bass bounced off its lower lip, uneaten, and plopped into the water.

“What in God’s name do you want from me?”

I don’t know if it was the mentioning of God or not, but I think it was. It opened its mouth a tiny crack and started laughing at me. I wanted to run mad and claw at my face, gibbering at the sound of that laugh, so much like a wicked jester.

The mouth closed and it was back to staring.

I began to loathe its regard. It made forests of goosebumps spring up on my flesh, my balls draw up towards my gut. I have never felt so analyzed, so penetrated, so filed by a simple gaze.

The moon was beginning to wane and lose its luster. I prayed the coming of day would chase this abomination away.

“You got a name? Are you a demon or something? I bet you are. I bet you’re the goddamn thing responsible for all the ‘drownings’ that happen here.”

It laughed.

“Yeah, laugh about it. Those were good people. Children.”

The staring continued.

“Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy na—”

And the creature laughed again, so loud, so mocking. Either God had no place there or I had no faith. I pray to this day it was the former.

I saw a little silver twinkle out in the water that wasn’t moonlight: a fishing hook caught on top of the thing's mottled grey body. My fishing hook. It must have stuck there as the demon swam its way up from hellish depths.

I reached down and patted the ground with my hands, looking for my fishing pole. Finding it, I assumed my usual relaxed sitting position on my bucket, my fishing squat. 

A gleam finally came over those slitted, staring eyes. Interest. Curiosity.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” I said, reeling up the slack of my line, “I just figured we seem to be at some sort of stalemate here, so I might as well do some fishing. You don’t mind that, do you? I heard there’s some awful big fish in these waters. But the problem with them big ones is setting the hook. The older and bigger a fish gets, the harder the roof of its mouth is. Like cement. Damn near impossible to set a hook there. No, you wanna try getting that hook wear it’s softer, like the side of its mouth or its lower lip. Soft…kinda the way your skin looks.”

And it cocked its head at me, cocked its head sideways like a damn dog.

The slack was almost tight enough for me to set the hook.

“Of course, you’re already landed." Almost there. "I just want to see what kind of fight you’ll put up,” I growled as I jerked my fishing pole up and back with everything I had. The hook snared into the flesh, and I saw black ichor dribble out in the fading moonlight. I had set that hook with my soul.

The monster gave a little mewl, more of surprise than of pain, I think. As it turned around to locate the source of the interruption I exploded from my bucket, turning around in mid-air and running faster than I could ever imagine. The only reason I think I didn’t die of a heart attack was pure will.

As I reached the edge of the woods I heard a cry of rage that shook the ground beneath my feet. It must surely be coming after me, I thought, but I sure as shit wasn’t stopping to turn around and look. If I had ran any faster that night, I think I could have turned the earth on its axis.

I couldn’t hear any sounds of pursuit, no scrabbling amphibian legs and dangling flippers being dragged over dry river stones. Branches slapped at my face. I ran into some flying creature or other, and grabbed an unknown furry lump that clung to my shirt and tossed it into the darkness.

Upon exiting the trappings of the woods and reaching the road I heard another roar. Before it ended in a throaty gurgle I heard my name. The creature said my name. And underneath that I heard more of those screaming, pleading voices.

Then there was a scraping noise (skin against rock) and a gigantic splash. I dove into my pickup and had driven two miles before I realized my headlights were not on, the whole time going at least sixty miles an hour on a winding dirt road.

I came bursting through the kitchen door of my home at four in the morning and saw my son sitting at the kitchen table, sleeping, snores escaping from his mouth and a little bit of spittle dribbling from the corner.

I was about to start laughing as I strode forward to pick him up and carry him to his room, until I saw that he had my bolt-action .22 cradled in his lap. I took the gun and placed it on the table, then picked him up. His arms wrapped around my neck even though he was still out like a light. 

“Please don’t eat my daddy,” he groaned in his sleep.

My entire body went numb and I almost dropped him on the floor. I carried him to his bedroom, giving him a kiss on the forehead as I tucked the sheets up to his chin. He rolled over on his side, and his body clamped up into a fetal position as he cried, “Daddy, no! Don’t look in its eyes!” Then he relaxed and sobbed for a few minutes, still sleeping. I waited until he quieted before going to my own bedroom, though sleep never came to me that night.

I called off of work the next day, told them Rory had caught a little summer cold. It was a lie, but he was too pale for my liking. 

I asked him why he had gotten my gun out the previous night as we both sat there eating breakfast.

“Well, I was playing out in the woods with Charlie, and when you didn’t get back home by eight I made myself a sandwich and fell asleep. And I had two nightmares, daddy. 

“You were sitting next to the river and a demon was standing over you. He was so tall he blocked out the moon, and the eyes were all red and scary. And he was muttering to himself, ‘How to get this one, how to get that one, bring them all down, without a sound’ and he kept repeating it while he scratched at his chin. I was kind of floating around, watching this, and he… he saw me, daddy. And he pointed at me, and he had claws, and he said, ‘When I get your dad, don’t you be sad, ‘cus when I am through, I’ll come home for you!’ and his eyes were like fire and he screamed the last word, and it was like he was blowing me away in the wind, and I did blow away, real fast-like, and I woke up.”

Now he was sobbing, his chest hitching, letting it all out. “And I woke up, and I ran around the house, and I couldn’t find a cross or a Bible because you threw them all out when Momma died and all I had was this stupid g-g-gun!”

I hugged him close to my chest, shushing him, telling him I was all right, I was here, nothing had happened to me. Eventually he calmed down and began picking at his food again.

I waited several minutes, fiercely debating inside my own head, and then asked, “What about the other dream?”

I didn’t think he was going to answer, just continue to sit there and scrape his eggs around his plate like rally racers. “I don’t remember much of that one, but it was worse. Something about a snake or something, and water. Daddy, what happened to you last night?”

I smiled and ruffled his hair. “Nothing, squirt. I just drank too much and passed out.”

“But you’ve got cuts all over you.”

“Yeah, it’s hard navigating through those woods in the dark, bud.” A lie wrapped up prettily in the truth.

“Oh.”

We continued eating. He spoke up again. “What about my nightmares? They were so real.”

I grinned and said, “Probably too many of those damn horror comics you and Charlie like to read.” I leaned forward, arms crooked and fingers wriggling. “I’m gonna get you,” I moaned in a deep voice, then grabbed my son and started tickling him, and his fears were swallowed up by his laughter. We didn’t bring up that night again for a long time, though sometimes I heard him cry out in his sleep, “He’s waiting, coming up the hole, gonna get you, Daddy!” And I would lay awake all night, shivering.

I never told anyone what happened and I made my son promise not to as well. I didn’t need people laughing at me behind my back, or thinking it was something a grief-stricken husband imagined in the wake of his wife’s death. No one would have believed me anyway... except maybe Charlie Danver's father, Stu, who told me one drunken night about the ape-man he saw along the banks of Hollisterville Creek while he was hunting for Fall turkey.

As much as I wanted to keep my mouth shut, there was another part of me that wanted to warn people, tell them to stay away from Satan’s Piggy Bank. Most people did, anyway, but they were locals. There were always out-of-towners looking for a place to swim or teenagers looking for a place to drink and screw. And whenever I heard about some unfortunate who had drowned there I felt a pang of guilt, thinking I could have, should have done something.

I never did return to that God-forsaken shoreline, but I began making trips to the peak of Camel’s Ledge to stare out over those demonic waters. I felt like a watchmen in a lighthouse... though a useless one, since I never did a damn thing to warn anyone.

Three times I saw people disappear into the not-empty waters, my binoculars giving me an enhanced view of the evil deeds. And all three times, those people just vanished from the surface. No thrashing, no screaming; just there and gone as if they were erased from existence.

The last time was the worst because it was a child, a young boy. I could see his father fishing far down to the right of the Piggy Bank in knee deep water, the mother sitting on a towel on the shoreline bouncing a fat, laughing baby on her knee. The boy was out too far, almost chest deep in the swirling waters of the Susquehanna.

Through my binoculars I saw him take a step forward and slip, falling into a hole. The current stole him away to the deep waters known to some as Hell’s Coin Slot, to others as Satan’s Piggy Bank.

He didn’t thrash or flounder and he didn’t even cry out. He just floated on his back and let the current take him, like his father must have taught him. It was a cloudless day, and the water was unnaturally clear. As his body drifted over the Piggy Bank I saw a dark, black form surging towards the surface. Then what looked like an arm (one I still see in my worst nightmares) came out of the water, grabbed the boys head, and dunked him under—just like that.

I dropped the binoculars and started sobbing into my arm. After several minutes of self-loathing, I snatched them up again and scanned the shoreline. The father was still fishing. The baby, maybe sensing something was wrong, was crying in the mother’s lap. I tilted the binoculars in the direction where I had last seen the boy and my heart stopped.

There was a shape sticking out of the water, a face I tried countless times to drown in booze and pills. It was looking at me. Steam rose from its slimy head. Maybe it was interested in another staring contest with the one who got away.

Its heckling laughterdrifted to me on the wind, echoing off the rocky surface of Camel’s Ledge, and then it dipped below the surface, not making so much as a ripple. The parents must have heard it, too, because they both looked out into the river and finally noticed their son was no longer there. I could see them screaming and calling for their son, the worry on their faces. I threw the binoculars off of the cliff and have never gone back.

The day after that incident I received a call from my son, who was then living in Wilkes-Barre with a wife and three children.

“Dad, you okay?” He sounded worried.

“Sure, squirt. Why, what’s wrong?”

“You weren’t at the river yesterday, were you?” he asked.

“Naw, I had Stu Danvers over and we got shitfaced over a couple hands of pinochle.What’s wrong?” I asked again.

“I had a nightmare last night that sort of reminded me of That Night. You know what one.”

I thought he might be crying. “Go on.”

“It was almost the same. You were sitting on your bucket, but instead of a fishing pole, you had binoculars in your lap, and that demon was standing over you. And he was staring into your eyes like he had you hypnotized, and he kept saying, ‘Two, four, six, eight, your payments coming very late; red, yellow, green, blue, you have lots of interest due; you can never hide from Him, so dive right in and take a swim.’ He saw me again, but he just flapped his hand at me and I woke up. Cindy was sitting next to me in bed when I woke with a scream, sweating. She told me I woke her up because I kept pushing down on her head like I was trying to dunk her under water, and she said I was talking in my sleep. She said I kept saying, ‘Gonna getcha, gonna bring ya down, gonna getcha, you’ll be coming back around.’ Dad, I’m scared.”

Hell, I was scared, too. “Don’t worry, son. Just residue of a bad dream when you were a kid.”

I could hear the liquidy noise his gulp made over the phone. “It doesn’t feel that way, Dad.”

“I’ll be fine, squirt, I’ll be fine.”

That was twenty years ago. Rory is dead now. He died in a hospital with cancer riddling his bones. I was getting a coffee when he went. The doctor told me his last words were, “Don’t let it eat my daddy.”

I’m over a hundred now, living in a nursing home in Pittston, and whether that’s lucky or not depends on where you’re standing. My mind is mostly intact, and I can get around decently enough with a walker. But my bones hurt and I’m tired, and the nursing home food tastes like shit. I have no family left, no friends. I’ve outlived them all, even my grandchildren.

I used to wish I would just die already, but in the last year I’ve started wanting to live again. I believe the only reason the demon did not take me that night was simple luck. I think the creature had its limits and could not go any further ashore than it already had, and I was just out of reach. But it had frightened me just enough to make me believe it was toying with me, like a cat will toy with a mouse before it opens its guts with the swipe of a paw. I think it wanted me to stay there, and it wanted me to stare at it. The eyes are the window to the soul, they say. That is why I got the feeling of being filed away, for that is exactly what that creature was doing: saving me for a later date.

Now I spend my days in terror, willing myself to stay alive; but my body is old and wants to retire. And it will, eventually.

On hot summer days when I have my window open, the wind will often carry to me the terrible sounds and smells of the Susquehannah River. And sometimes, underneath the drone of the river, I hear the laughter of a demon who has laid claim to my soul. I fear those waters which once brought me so much joy.

Dominick Nole has loved all things horror since he was born in 1984, and his stories have appeared in anthologies from SNM Magazine, The Horror Zine, and Hellfire Crossroads. He continues to write from his home in northeastern Pennsylvania.