Trembling With Fear 6-2-24

The Boy on the Pier, by Callum Young

My sister hated the pier at nighttime. As we walked along the shore, with our jackets closed against the winter’s cold, she glanced at it with increasing nervousness. She was grumbling about something, huffing on a joint, and the gentle red glow from its tip lit her frown in the darkness. She had always been the bravest of us both, jumping off cliffs at the cove around the headland; trespassing across barbed wire in the woods behind our house. Her fear tonight was conspicuous – more so because I felt nothing but contentment as our feet dug trenches through the sand. 

Words like ‘haunted’, and ‘demon’ danced on the wind as we walked. I had never heard my sister talk of such things. This was paranoia, surely. A heady mix of THC and filtered moonlight as we stumbled along the beach. She had never believed in ghosts. Even when we were children, huddling around campfires and telling stories with our torches beneath our chin. Even when the wind howled and the stairs creaked, and I shook with terror beneath the blankets. Even when the horrors were tangible: a raised fist, a cruel word, a bottle smashed on the countertop. She’d never been scared. 

But she was now. 

I kept walking. I hadn’t noticed her draw back, sit on the sea wall, and finish her zoot in peace. I was drawn forwards. I felt determined, like I had a point to prove. 

The pier was dilapidated. There was no use for such a thing in this tiny town, and it had never made the money which it promised. Within a year, it was abandoned and the sea had set to work. Now, it was little more than a row of wooden poles piercing the water, seaweed tangling anxiously around the rusted metal which had once held the structure together. Further from the shore, some boards remained straddling the ocean. They were visibly rotten, sagging under the weight of the moon’s glare. Atop them, a skeleton of wooden planks stood stark against the horizon, where they once supported a canvas shelter for holiday-makers who had never arrived. 

I looked closer. There was someone on the pier. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, sure that darkness was playing tricks with my vision. But no. I was certain. A silhouette stood against the night’s blackness, illuminated by moonbeams like a spotlight from above. As I stared, the image resolved itself. It was a boy, perhaps twelve years old. A blue coat flapped in the breeze around him. Across most of his body, though, it appeared to hug his form as if it was wet and plastered to his skin. His hood was up, but I could tell from the angle of his head that he returned my gaze.

I hurried back to my sister to tell her what I’d seen. She told me to shut up, that she was cold and wanted to leave. I insisted, but she had already turned to walk the way we’d come. I looked back at the pier. From this vantage, I could no longer see him. The pier loomed like a beached behemoth, and it sheltered him from intruders like me. Nonetheless, as I turned to hurry after my sister, I felt his eyes on the back of my head. 

###

A psychiatrist’s office. The doctor talked about pills and therapy and I listened to him through a haze of antidepressants. He asked me questions, and I answered, all the while watching the boy through the window. He was on the lawn. His blue coat was still wet, stuck to his skeletal frame as if painted on his skin. The sun shone down on him, glaringly bright, and grass glittered with morning dew around his bare feet. They were translucent against the vivacity of the spring-time garden. 

He was watching me too. I couldn’t see his eyes, shadowed as they were beneath his plastic hood, but his head was tilted toward our first-floor window, and he stood motionless as I talked about my childhood. With his back to the window, the psychiatrist didn’t notice my absent gaze; it wasn’t so unusual in his line of work. And so we talked more, his words brushing harmlessly off my distant attention. 

The session ended. I approached the receptionist and booked my next appointment. She looked at me with sleepy concern – the sort reserved for a sad man amongst a sea of sad men. She cared, of course, but not enough to wake her from her morning lull. Politely, she bid me farewell as I signed the slip of paper on her counter, and turned away. Down a flight of stairs, I pushed through the front door into the chilled embrace of outdoors. 

I looked around. The garden shone back in its brilliance, offering its gaudy hello as I strode toward the car park a few streets away. Glancing toward the lawn, I looked for the boy. All I saw were two lonely footprints in the grass. 

###

Life continued as normal after that. I went to work, riding the bus under the morning moon. I met my friends in stuffy pubs; walked the shore with my sister and her drugs. I watched movies on my own. I read books and scrolled through Instagram. Yes, life was normal. Normal, except that he was there. Always there, on the periphery of the scene, watching intently. He was never close enough to notice, if you didn’t know to look. But he pulled my eyes to him. He was magnetic to me. 

On the bus: He sits at the back when I settle into my seat toward the front. I glance over my shoulder. His coat is soaked and droplets of water pool in the folds of his clothing. Beside him, an elderly woman reads a paperback, oblivious to her sodden companion. She catches my eye and frowns. She gets off at the next stop, glancing my way until she alights the vehicle.

In the pub: He sits by the door. His face is almost glowing in the faded light. It is as if his skin reflects the moonlight flowing through the windows. His hair hangs in a damp fringe across his forehead, plastered to his face in unruly strands. His lips are thin and pale, making it impossible to trace the curve of his mouth as he points his gaze in our direction. There is no drink on his table. I am facing him, my back to the bar. I raise a pint in recognition. He does not respond.

In my room: He sits at my desk, as I lie on my bed. Water pools on the hardwood floors; the room is rich with damp fug. I lounge with a book held open above me. I am lost in the plot, following the words with rapt attention. Only when I lower it, checking my phone or sipping a drink, do I notice him at all. He faces me with the same intensity as always. His skin sags around his hollow cheeks; his hands are calloused as they rest by his side. I raise the book again, returning to the world I had been lost in. 

###

One day, my sister talked of our brother. I had been too young to remember, she said. Too young and too innocent. Things at home were worse then, she told me. I wouldn’t remember. Perhaps, I couldn’t remember. The mind had a way of keeping things secret, of keeping us safe from the dangers of our past. But she remembered. And so did he. 

She talked of him. How he had been strong for us. How he had taken the beatings to keep us safe. How he had held us at night, promising we would be safe whilst he was with us. 

She talked of how he left us. How he fled the fists and the kicks and the broken glass. How, one day, he didn’t come to our bedroom, but instead disappeared into the night. How she had looked for him, only to find him on the shore with his feet in the sea and his pale skin glittering under the winter moonlight. She told me how she tried to take him home, how he must have been freezing, how she feared he’d get sick. 

She told me how he said no. How he told us both to follow him.

I asked her how he died. She told me that he drowned. That he jumped off the pier in the dead of night, under the moon’s watch, and was never seen again. I shook my head, but didn’t correct her. He stood by her side, watching me closely as I listened to her words.

I swear I saw him smile.