Trembling With Fear 11/29/20

The Providers by Stephen Bustanoby

“Son! Get back from there!” shouted Morris Turnbaum, through a thick cloud of white condensation that shrouded his head. Morris was walking his dog, Buster, a ten year old boxer-pitbull mix, by a frozen lake on their ritual morning jaunt. 

A half-hour into their turn around the lake, he spotted a boy out on the ice, staring into a hole. Morris’s seventy-eight-year old eyes were still sharp enough to see the immediate danger to the boy; breaking through the cracked ice around his feet. The kid looked about ten years old, and he was not dressed for the twenty degree weather. “Hey, you there on the ice!” Morris called again. There was no reaction from the kid dressed in a blue t-shirt, jeans and sneakers. Morris wondered what the hell was going on. The boy just kept staring into that black hole in the white ice; which looked very much like the eye socket in a skull. Morris put his hands on his hips, the loop of Buster’s leash around one wrist. He’d got to do something. That kid would sure enough break through the thin ice around that hole. “Young man! Slowly back away from that hole!” Still no reaction. “I suggest you get on your belly and slide yourself away!”

#

The young man at the hole, Jesse Moore, heard the old man shouting to him. He’d even peeked at the man from the corners of his eyes while facing the brownish, green water in front of him. He was supposed to pretend he didn’t see or hear the old man. 

This was nine-year-old Jesse’s first time. His brother Samuel was before him. Samuel now looked more like a man, at sixteen years old, than a child. When Jesse got too old, his sister Sarah would take her turn. Just as the Moore family had done for generations untold. 

Last night when Jesse’s father assigned him to be the Provider, the boy recited the Family Devotion. “We shall always be the Provider so it does not come to pass that we become the Taken. The sins of our fathers have condemned us to carry the burden of this eternal family penance.” 

#

Morris was a veteran of frozen lakes and the dangers thereof. He had fallen through the ice on a pond when he was fifteen years old while adventurously inspecting a hole. For what seemed to him, an eternity, he was held under water by the ice. A man who had been skating nearby pulled him out of the water. Since that near-death experience, he had not ventured out on any frozen body of water. Not even after his father lectured him on how to stay safe if it were to happen again. Morris knew the terror the boy must be feeling, because he felt it too.

Morris looked around his surroundings to see if the kid had parents or older siblings in the area. Nothing. Nobody. He cupped his mouth, “Son, just do not move!”

The kid didn’t look panicked or concerned as cracks were forming under his sneakers. “Hey kid! Get down on your belly and spread your arms and legs. I’m coming for ya!”  He shouted. Morris unhooked Buster’s leash. He might need it as a lifeline to the kid. “Now Buster, you stay.” 

Morris analyzed the situation as he gazed out at the boy. The kid hadn’t moved a muscle. Weird how he kept staring into the hole. “Okay old-timer, you’re the only one here. It’s got to be you,” Morris whispered a pep talk out loud. “You’re going to be alright, just remember what Pop said about safety on ice.”

As Morris carefully skated his snow boots out onto the ice, he heard the cracking first as the kid went through the ice into the water, the hole engulfing him. Morris picked up the pace, shouting, “I’m coming! Hang on!” He looked like a toy, mechanical robot as he scooted his feet across the ice, swaying back and forth, arms pumping.

Morris sprawled on his belly, legs spread, reaching out to the boy. “Kid! I’m going to toss this leash to ya, turn around!” The boy didn’t move. He thought he’d at least thrash some. But no. Morris slid closer to the hole. He could now peer down into the murky, deathly cold water.

Bubbles began rising from the depths, expelling a rotten, infected, and septic smell. 

Jesse tensed. 

With a splash of freezing water to the face, an arm stabbed up through the hole toward Morris. Sickly, festering white flesh hung from the arm; at the end of that arm there was an oversized hand with four, long sinewy fingers. Each finger tipped with a talon that reflected the somber sunlight in twinkly starbursts. The hand swallowed Morris’s head, the talons securing themselves around his neck.

Then Morris was gone.

#                                      

“Hey, kid! Get away from that hole!”  Will Muncy stood on the bank of a frozen lake, waving his arms to get the kids attention. It was fifteen degrees and the boy was dressed in a blue t-shirt, jeans and sneakers. 

Back on the shore, Will called out, “Hold on kid, I’m coming for ya.”