The Agreement

"I don't believe," Roland said aloud to the empty room.  "Not any more."

The study was dark, the computer long since turned off for the night and the only light came from the crack beneath the door.  Roland sat at the desk listening to the ticking of the wall clock, waiting.  A cold bead of sweat ran down between his shoulder blades and he shivered, then shook his head slowly.  This was ridiculous, he told himself.  He hadn't had the nightmares in years and wouldn't have thought of them at all today if he hadn't come across the note in his mother's attic as he was emptying it out.  It was discoloured, chewed upon by rats or whatever other denizens lurked behind the paneling in the old house, but it still carried the message in untidy childish scrawl: Give me more time.  Even the black crayon had begun to fade.

He had it now, and carefully pulled it from his wallet to smooth it out on the desk with his long fingers.  The paper was so worn it almost felt like cloth, and it was coming apart at the creases.  He wasn't sure where his mother would have found this, or why she had even kept it, but it had been heavy on his mind all day.  Thirty had seemed so old to his six year old self, almost unimaginable.  Now he could hardly remember six.  But he remembered this, and so he waited.

It came quietly, a grotesque slither and crawling.  It sounded of rats, of centipedes, of branches at the window and the howling wind.  It smelled of rot, of mold, of sweat and urine soaked bedsheets.  It was cold as it sidled up to him, keeping Roland's body and chair between it and the light as it hovered beside the desk.  

We have come, came the cold rasping.

"I'm too old for this, you know," Roland said as a sardonic smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.  "My therapist says you were a manifestation of a traumatic childhood, an archetypal representation of fear.  There's no such thing as the Boogeyman."

We had an agreement.  We have come.

"For what, my pound of flesh?  I was a scared little boy.  What does a grown man have to offer you?  I'm too old for this!" he repeated emphatically.

We are Fear given form.  You cannot outgrow Us.  We have come for you.

The smell was almost overpowering, the stench of urine.  It took Roland back, back to the time his mother had finally had enough of changing his sheets every day, of the time he spent a week in a bed stinking of piss because he woke up frightened every night.  He had learned how to change his own sheets after that, had learned how the coin operated machines at the corner laundromat worked.  He would shove the sheets in his backpack when he left in the morning, shove them in a washer on his way to school and stay to dry them on his way home.  The old woman who owned the laundromat had felt sorry for him, every day washing a set of sheets and a pair of pajamas.  She had understood, even if his mother hadn't, and had given him the small boxes of soap powder to use and had made sure his sheets never went missing.  If his mother knew, she hadn't cared that the money he should have used to buy comic books and baseball cards was spent to buy her some peace of mind.  She never asked him why his backpack always smelled of piss.

She did not understand, it wheezed.  She could not.

"Three kids, and no husband on her income?  There wasn't enough valium in the world to treat that," Roland shrugged.  She had tried, and when she wasn't taking the pills she was drinking.  Roland had made his peace with it a long time ago, and had started to forgive her while he cleaned out the old town house after the funeral.  His brothers hadn't come.

Roland had spent the last three years caring for his mother while her health failed her after a life time of addiction.  His older brothers had left home at eighteen and had never looked back; one, Roland was fairly certain, now lived in Atlanta.  The other he had no idea; there was a card every Christmas, but never a return address.  They, who had seemed so well adapted after their father had left and their mother chose to self medicate, had run at the first opportunity and had preferred to keep their distance.  Roland had stayed because he had hoped, one day, to rebuild his relationship with her.  She was his mother, for Christ's sake!  Wasn't there supposed to be some kind of affection there?

He had needed it as a child.  He was so much smaller than his brothers, so fearful.  He had not coped well with their father's sudden departure from the house – he still wasn't sure why he had left.  Either his mother's addiction drove him out, or there was some truth to his mother's stories of the whore.  It hadn't mattered, in the end.  Roland had never seen his father again, and his mother resented his sensitivity.  He hadn't wanted to be the one to look after her, but there was no one else.  It needed to be done, and so he had done it.

"So what now?" he asked as the silence stretched.  "I'm a grown man – I'm not exactly afraid of the dark any more, of Dennis McInnis or Shelly Lang..."

We took them, as We promised.  We had an agreement.

Oh yes, Roland thought, there had been an agreement.  Roland had seen no other way to escape Dennis, who had made it his personal mission to torment "sissy pissy pants"; he had been bigger than Roland, and had taken great pleasure in the odor that clung to the cowering Roland.  There were years of beatings, of swirlies and being shut up inside lockers.  Roland was fairly certain he hadn't eaten lunch at school until the tenth grade.  Shelly had just been miserable and took it out on whoever happened to be handy and wouldn't fight back.  Roland had no friends to stand up for him, or none who were suited to the task, and so Shelly sought him out.  In a moment of desperation, Roland bartered their lives for his own at the age of six.

"You took them!" Roland laugh.  "Shelly's father took her, his drinking was the end of her.  And Dennis kissed his pistol good night instead of his wife when his business went belly up during the Recession.  The pair of them still beat the crap out of me until high school!  Where was the agreement then?"

The world was no worse off without them, Roland felt vindicated in believing.  Shelly was still the same white trash she had been as a child, still living in the same run down trailer court with small time drug dealers and chronic alcoholics.  And Dennis?  The government had announced the day after he splattered his brains across the bedroom wall an economic plan that would have saved his business from going under.  That it was too late was almost poetic justice, karma in action!  Roland would never have wished such fates on his childhood antagonizers as an adult, but his inner child couldn't help but take some vicious glee in the turn of events.

There was no stipulation on when or how, only that We would take them.  Shelly's father saw her kissing Jennifer Hoskins goodnight and was afraid of what his daughter had become.  The beer made it easier for him to surrender control to Us, and We took her.  Dennis was afraid to tell his wife that he had lost everything, afraid that she would see nothing in him once their lifestyle was gone and We took him as well.  

Do not fool yourself into thinking that age brings with it an immunity to Us.  No, it brings you new fears and leaves you vulnerable to Us in ways you never were before.  You cannot hide beneath the covers or simply turn on the light to make the new monsters go away.  These monsters live in every person you encounter every day, and there is no way of knowing which of them hold which monster, and they are all a part of Us.  Your wife doesn't love you, she stays because she feels entitled to some benefit after carrying you for so long.  Your agent thinks you're a hack, but you pay well and so once in a while he passes along the refuse you give him to the lowest bidder.  Your friends don't call because they're embarrassed to be seen with you.  The Shrink knew you were a lost cause.  You belong to Us.

"Ouch.  You're right to the point, aren't you?  Yeah, I'm worthless.  You're not the first to tell me that and you won't be the last.  I've accepted it, so try again.  Spiders scare me, so do terrorists and those fugly little dogs my mother-in-law keeps.  So what?  What do you get out of the deal?"

Sustenance!  There is no sweeter nectar than the fear of a child.  It tastes of pure ambrosia!  They all fear, some more than others, and We are there to feed on all of it.  When the fear is strong enough, then We will claim as Our own.    

"Listen, I don't lay awake at night worrying about any of those things.  They're not true.  I've had bad days and I've thought every single one of them, but they're not true.  You can't make them true.  I don't care about any agreements," Roland said, taking the note up in his hand and tearing it along the central crease.  "It's wax on paper, not blood.  No signature.  The word of a sacred little boy isn't binding!"

You cannot refuse Us.  You belong to Us!

"Fuck you!" Roland snapped as the door opened and the lights flicked on.

"Rollie?  You talking to someone?" his wife asked hesitantly from the door way.

Roland blinked his eyes, rubbed at them with his fists against the sudden brightness in the room.  Jamie was already in her nightdress, her pregnant belly ballooning before her.  He forced a smile.  "Nah, just working through a monologue, baby.  I had everything shut down when an idea hit and I wanted to see where it went."

"Oh," she said softly, her head on one side and her soft brown hair falling into her eyes.  "Sorry, babe, I shouldn't have interrupted.  Want me to shut the light back out for you?  I was just checking on you before I went to bed."

"Nah, I'll get it.  You and the baby head off and I'll be in in a few minutes.  Love you, Jame."

Jamie smiled and rubbed her stomach.  "Love you too, Roland.  See you in a few."

When he was alone again, Roland proceeded to rip up the rest of the note and tossed the pieces into the paper shredder's basket.  He pushed his chair back into the desk, shut out the light and paused in the doorway.  "I don't belong to you," he said softly.  "I don't belong to any one thing, and I certainly won't surrender myself over to fear.  I'm sorry, you can't have me."

We had an agreement, and it will stand.  You will join Us, because We will teach you what it is to fear.  The child will fear, like all children do, and you will fear for the child as a parent.  We will have you, one way or another.