Good Ol' Henry

©2003 Brian J. Slattery
All rights reserved.

Joe Mannings sat in a hard-backed chair, which was uncomfortable but better for his injured back than a cushioned one, and took stock of his surroundings. They weren't where he had planned to be at this early stage in life. He was only fifty-one and in good shape. He'd figured he'd end up at a volunteer squad in some nice shore town one day, but not this soon. Even after the 11th, as he and his band of brothers referred to it, Joe had planned to hold on for at least five more years. Especially after the 11th, he'd planned to stay on, even though he was eligible for retirement with full benefits. But then a stupid accident had put an end to that plan.

It happened on the job, and he had been well-compensated for it, yet that didn't matter. Joe was a New York City fireman. He needed the job. A nice nest egg to put away for retirement was great, but not being able to do the job he'd been born to do was a crushing blow to his sense of personal identity. His grandfather, father, and uncles were all New York City firemen. He and his two brothers continued that tradition. One of them had continued it until his death on the 11th. One still continued it, while Joe sat in what passed for Ocean Glen's dispatch center, thinking about the day he'd fallen down the stairs at the fire house.

He and a couple of the younger guys had been carrying supplies down to the basement when he'd slipped. The next thing he'd known, he was in traction at St. Vincent's Medical Center.

Now, a year and a half and a shit-load of pain killers later, here he sat, dispatching for the night shift in a sleepy New Jersey shore town. This hadn't been his plan, but sometimes plans get fucked and dropped by the wayside.

Eighteen months after his fall, Joe Mannings sat in Ocean Glen's fire house, a building that used to be a mechanic's shop with an apartment upstairs, ready to get a good night of reading in, with minimal interruptions. He figured on a few E.M.S. calls, but that was it. Ocean Glen wasn't a big city. There were no high rises, unless you counted the steeples of the three churches in 'the Glen,' or the lighthouse out on Widow's Point.

Joe planned to read a little, maybe listen to some music, and possibly even lay down for an hour or two. This type of relaxed working environment wouldn't wash in New York City, but small towns moved at their own pace, with their own rules to guide them through and protect them from the world that existed outside. Joe mused on this subject as he tried to get as comfortable as possible in the wooden chair. It creaked as he shifted his weight, breaking a silence Joe hadn't been aware of until that moment.

At least it was more comfortable than the wooden board he slept on at home. That was no day at the beach, but was better for his back than the mattress in his bedroom. Besides, it wasn't fair to Elaine to try to sleep in the master bed, with all his tossing and turning, so Joe had set up his board in the guest bedroom originally set aside for when their children visited. They hadn't been down to stay too much, so it didn't really matter.

Yeah, Joe, and why don't they visit? And how many nights did you spend on the couch before the accident? Come on now, be honest. You never performed too well in the bedroom anyway. Well, at least not in your bedroom. And while we're on that topic, tell me, what did that creaking noise just now remind you of, Joey? If you want, I can give you a hint? Joe shook his head to get the familiar and unwelcome voice out of his head.

Now aware of the surrounding silence, Joe shifted again in his chair, this time uncomfortably and uneasily. For the first time that night, and probably the first time since he started hanging around the station, Joe thought about the stories he'd heard about the fire house. They weren't exactly stories, more like bits and pieces of one larger story, a story which, until that very minute, as he shifted uneasily in his chair, Joe had paid no mind. But now he began to wonder. Were all the things he heard just part of a much larger tall tale? Or was there some truth to the things that the different members of the station, mostly the old-timers, would talk about during a poker game or while sitting outside on a warm spring night?

Joe didn't believe in the supernatural. In the light of day, he scoffed at such foolishness. In the light of day he saw it for what it surely must be: the type of local legend that at the same time is particular to and universal in any small town. Each town has its haunted house or graveyard or stretch of road. Each town has its share of sightings and weird happenings. The details differ, but the story is the same. Something bad happened and now, if you listen over the sound of wind and rain on a dark night, you hear the cries of the dead, or see glowing shapes.

The old-timers swore by the story. Most members of the volunteer fire department knew the story, but it was the old-timers who believed it. Sitting at the house as midnight swiftly approached, Joe entertained the stories more than he ever would have in the daylight.

And he laughed out loud. Why should some stories told by a few old guys who only came around to the squad so they'd remember they were alive even be worth a second's worth of worrying? There are much more frightening things that go bump in the night, right Joey? You should know all about that. Again, the voice. Again, Joe shook his head and warded it off.

They were just stories. Why, then, did Joe feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up when he thought about them? And why did Joe nearly jump out of his seat when he heard a noise from upstairs?

Because that's where it happened! his unconscious mind shouted.

"Nonsense," he muttered beneath his breath as he got up to investigate.

He walked across the room to the doorway. He went through it and made a right toward the flight of stairs that led upstairs.

That's where they lived! That's where it happened!

As Joe crossed the short distance from the entryway to the stairs, that thought flashed through his mind. As the door closed behind him, and he ascended the first step, the old wooden boards creaking under his weight, the story of the fire house came back to him, and he paused there on the stairs.

What now served as the fire and E.M.S. station for Ocean Glen used to be a mechanic's garage. Said mechanic, Henry Thornvold, one-time star of the football team only fifteen short years before his demise, lived above with his wife and three children. After the 'accident,' the already large garage had been expanded and the building had been made into the fire station.

As Joe continued up the stairs, he remembered that usually at some point in the storytelling, someone would say something to the effect of 'poor woman' or 'how did she survive?' Apparently quite well, by most accounts. After the accident, Mrs. Thornvold and her three young children remained in Ocean Glen, where she still resided, now married to the former mayor. The children had since grown and moved away in the hope that bad memories couldn't travel beyond the town lines. The youngest, the boy, had lived at home during college, but when he'd graduated he'd moved to Philadelphia. He'd found out early on that bad memories know no boundaries.

Joe was more than halfway up the stairs, not giving a second thought to the fact that where he was now standing was where, according to legend, they'd found Henry Thornvold. As Joe reached the top of the stairs, he flipped the light switch and continued his recollection of the legend of the firehouse.

Fact and fiction melded when it came to the events of that fateful evening. Everyone who'd ever told Joe the tale insisted that the police and fire inspector's conclusions were only partially right. Henry had been drunk, and he had been sitting in his recliner when the fire started. He had stumbled out into the hall, his torso, arms, and genitals ablaze. He had made it to the hallway, and he'd finally succumbed there to the flames as he tried to make his way out of the inferno. The part of the story they didn't have correct, Joe had been told, regarded Henry's head injury and the cause of the fire. Those two little details centered on Helen Thornvold's part in her husband's death, the old-timers said.

Joe continued down the hall with the story in the back of his mind. He checked the first door on the right, which was an office, and which was securely locked.

As he investigated the first open door he came across, he lost himself again in the old-timers' stories.

Joe snapped out of his musings when he heard something from behind the next door. As he flung the door open, Joe looked in on a surprised and slightly inebriated Buster Leighton, who was trying in vain to pull his pants up and get off the bed.

"Sorry, Buster," Joe said. "I heard a noise and didn't know who was up here."

"It's just me, Joe. No ghosts tonight."

That must have been a joke, but Buster didn't laugh.

"No problem. I'll be downstairs. Sleep tight."

"Nah, I'm gonna get out of here. Don't like staying past midnight," he said, slurring slightly.

Joe closed the door and went back downstairs, chiding himself as he made his way back to the dispatcher's desk, and shaking his head at Buster's odd statements.

Yeah, that was really scary. Buster sleeping off a drunk. Very other-worldly indeed, genius.

He took his place at the desk, hunkered down for a slow night, and opened the latest novel he had picked up. This one was about some other-worldly happenings at a southern New Jersey college. The main character, a girl named Susie, Suze to her friends, was plagued by an unwelcome and unwelcoming force when she went off to college. Joe got into it without a problem, quickly intrigued by the story. However, as he sat at the dispatcher's desk, the legend of good ol' Henry Thornvold danced just beyond his consciousness. He had trouble staying focused on what he was reading after that.

Unable to concentrate, Joe finally gave up the ghost, as the old saying goes. Instead, he hung his headphones around his neck, so he'd hear the phone, although that wasn't totally necessary since it also lit up when it rang, and put on a new CD by one of his favorite singer/songwriters, Warren Zevon. The fire station stood in silence while he listened to the CD. The phone, which was called the tie-line, since it was tied into the police dispatch center where all emergency calls, whether police, fire, or E.M.S. initially were received, remained silent for the duration of the 70+ minute CD. Such was life in a small town.

A few minutes after the CD ended, Joe took a call for a baby running a high fever. He was able to listen to half of another CD before he felt the pressing need to use the facilities.

Each room had a phone connected to the tie-line, so Joe left his station and headed upstairs to the larger bathroom on the second floor. Once in the bathroom, he waited for Mother Nature to pay a visit. Apparently Buster had changed his mind and stayed, because he heard a noise in the next room, and then he heard footsteps cross the bedroom. He didn't hear the door open, but he definitely heard Buster in the hall, where it sounded like he slammed into the wall. Then, just as Mother Nature made her presence known, Buster slammed into the bathroom door, causing the few hangers on it to come crashing down. Joe ducked and avoided one projectile hanger, but wasn't so lucky to block the one that hit his leg.

No longer needing to visit with Mother Nature, Joe jumped up, raised his pants, and went to the door. He swung it open, expecting to see Buster unconscious on the floor. Instead, he caught a glimpse of him going down the stairs and a whiff of what smelled like a mixture of a distillery and burnt meat. Surely that second smell was imagined ... but it sure seemed real. So did the chill that ran through Joe's body.

Come on, Joey, that smell is familiar. What was your drink of choice, the Glenlivet? I don't have to ask what your pastime of choice was when you indulged. You know very well what that was; and you know what I think, Joey? So does Elaine.

He shrugged the voice off, but this time with much more difficulty, and waited to hear if Buster fell. When he heard nothing, not even the door opening, he gave up interest and decided to lounge for a while. He made his way to the bedroom Buster hadn't been using. Even though Buster was gone, Joe was confident that he'd left behind some of his odor, and Joe could do without that.

Yeah, you remember that smell well, don't you? And Elaine does too, although she never admitted that she smelled it on the sheets. But she knew.

He tried to silence the inner voice while he opened the door to the other men's sleeping quarters and flipped the light switch. This is where she did it!

His unconscious mind spoke up with those six simple words, and Joe froze where he stood. He pushed down his unease and entered the room, turned on the T.V. and sat down on the bed. He didn't plan to sleep, just lounge, but he must have dozed off at some point, because he thought he heard people shouting, and someone saying "we found a body over here!"

Then, in the dream, the television went off of its own accord. Only, when the television was silenced and Joe shook off what he thought had been a dream, he was wide awake. Maybe he'd hit the remote. Maybe there had been a power surge, although the clock on the nightstand didn't show it. Or ... maybe....

Ridiculous! There is no ghost!

Joe didn't feel comforted. Rather, he became more troubled. The mere fact that he was thinking about all those foolish legends disturbed him. There had to be a rational explanation. There had to be.

Joe turned the T.V. on again, certain that the outage wouldn't repeat itself; and if it did, that he'd find a faulty wire or a problem with the remote control. Sometimes, at home, when the batteries in the remote were dying, the wrong signal would be sent to the cable box, and a channel would change or be muted accidentally. That's what happened here. He was certain.

Almost.

He surfed through the channels. Channel 8 usually had good late night movies; this, Joe had learned from the many pain-filled, sleepless nights since his accident. Tonight he hoped not to be disappointed, and when the commercial ended, he wasn't. He was, however, unnerved. While Jack Nicholson was one of his favorite actors, and Stephen King one of his favorite authors, for some reason, Joe didn't want to watch "The Shining."

He went back downstairs to the dispatcher's desk and popped in another CD. Before the first song ended, the phone rang. Joe picked it up.

"Ocean Glen Fire Department and E.M.S., what is the nature of your call?"

He waited for a response, but the line seemed dead. He repeated himself. No response. He looked down at the phone and saw all four lines, plus the fax line, lit green, which meant that it was also an active line. As he pondered this, the phone cradled on his right shoulder, the earpiece held in place against his right ear, someone finally answered.

"There's a fire. I can't get out. Neither will you."

Joe was frightened, but he wasn't sure if it was because of what the voice had said or because he'd heard it in his left ear, not his right. He also felt hot breath on his ear. It tickled him, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. There was also a commingled odor that he couldn't quite put his finger on, but that he had smelled before. One of the distinct and unpleasant odors was stale beer mixed with whiskey. The other, much more pungent odor, was the stench of burnt flesh.

Loud noises came from upstairs.

He dropped the phone and nearly fell to his knees. He put his hands on the desk, trying to steady himself, and shook his head to clear his mind. He had to be mistaken. He'd heard the call in his right ear, where the phone was, and he didn't really smell anything. It was just his imagination. It had happened before. You can't easily forget the smell of burnt flesh.

What about the alcohol? You surely remember what that smells like on your breath, and Mark and John know what it smells like in their ears. You think when they close their eyes they can still smell it and feel that breath in their ears?

"Shut up," Joe said aloud.

Sure, he'd had run-ins with alcohol that had been less than pleasant, but those days were behind him. He was sure of it. He'd been able to grab the bottle before it completely grabbed him.

Get a damn grip, you silly bastard. Nothing strange was going on. It was just his imagination. That was all. Someone was making a lot of noise upstairs, and Joe would find out why, irrational fears be damned. He'd survived the worst disaster in American history. He wasn't going to be scared by some old-timers' stories and a few strange noises.

Joe made his way up the stairs. Halfway up, he thought he smelled smoke, but he shook it off and continued. At the top of the stairs he involuntarily coughed and could no longer deny the smell of smoke.

He'd faced that smell more times than he could remember, and never with a moment's hesitation. He was a fireman. That was his job. Now, standing on the stairs in Ocean Glen's volunteer fire department, a building that wasn't even on fire, Joe felt real fear. It only fluttered for a minute, but it was there nonetheless.

Forbidding himself to be crippled by irrational fear—he who had scoffed at rational fears, such as of running into a burning building and risking his life for complete strangers—Joe pushed open the door and entered the long hallway. He flipped the light switch and illuminated the empty hall ... the hall, which, in the second he turned on the light, seemed to shimmer and change before Joe's eyes.

Man, you need to relax!

He didn't succeed in following his own advice. The momentary fear he'd felt on the stairs was gone, but he didn't feel relaxed. He planned to hold down the queasy, uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach and check each room. He knew he'd find a rational explanation for the noises he had heard, and that his unease was unfounded. His rational brain knew this as a certainty. The more primal part of his brain, however, screamed warnings that went unheeded.

As he searched for the key labeled "OF. 1," Joe thought he heard the noise from behind the door to the captain's office. He finally found the appropriate key, put it in the lock, turned the knob, swung the door open, and closed his eyes.

He didn't feel any hands around his neck, or the rancid breath of the undead in his face, so he opened his eyes and peered into the dark room. Before he went in, he reached for the light switch. Again, he didn't feel a cold, lifeless hand touch his, nor did any claws rip at his skin. The only thing he felt was the light switch, which he quickly flipped.

There were no gruesome specters in the room, just a functional desk, an old couch, (probably for mid-morning, early afternoon, mid-afternoon, and late-afternoon naps) a little refrigerator, and an air conditioner that was making too much noise for a unit that boasted 'Quiet Kool.'

Joe laughed out loud as he crossed the room. The mysterious noises he'd heard from downstairs were just an air conditioner on the fritz. Nothing more. Nothing less. Just a simple matter of a faulty wire. That explained the T.V. shutting off earlier, too.

When he got to the air conditioner, he saw part of the problem immediately. Someone had left it on and it had frozen over, something that Joe had dealt with numerous times when his children were young and they'd go out and leave every major appliance on in their absence. Yeah, Joe, that happened a lot, but it sure helped you, didn't it? Covered up the noises nicely, right, Joey?

"Shut the fuck up," he said to himself, dismissing that voice from his own mind. "I'm better; that was the alcohol."

If you say so, Joe.

"I say so. Now shut up," Joe said to the empty room.

The air conditioner had made the noise. With 20/20 hindsight, Joe realized it wasn't very loud at all. He'd been sitting right under the office, and it had probably rattled the walls, but it was his overactive imagination that had given the noise such an ominous quality. He unplugged it and sighed, mad at himself for letting his imagination get the better of him.

Okay, smart guy, what about the phone call?

Joe hated it when his mind wouldn't allow him to quickly and quietly resolve a situation. There were countless times when his mind neatly socked away the most disturbing of things, but other times it wouldn't let him rest.

What about the phone lines lighting up?

"A minor malfunction. Could be water dripping from the air conditioner or something related to that."

Joe walked back across the room, confident that all was right with the world until he heard a sound from the hall that he couldn't mistake. He didn't smell smoke this time, but he did hear the sound of a fire raging out of control.

He reached the office door, his heart racing, his mind going in five different directions at once, and heard the sound of a wooden beam crash to the floor.

He looked into the hall, and all was normal, but the sounds continued. Then he saw the hall shimmer again, and in that shimmer, everything was engulfed in fire. Flames licked down from the wall directly across from him. A broken beam, fully ablaze, fell to the floor five or six feet down the hall, toward the sleeping quarters, just past the kitchen. Then everything shimmered again, much as though, Joe mused, he were viewing the scene through smoke, and the hall was as it had been since they'd remodeled it after the fire.

A loud scream emanated from down the hall: "You bitch! You'll pay for this!"

Then the shimmering happened again, and Joe found himself in the middle of an inferno. The path behind him was blocked by a wall of flame, yet he feared that voice more than the flames that were sure to engulf him.

If they were really there—but they're not!

Joe's rational brain made a last-ditch effort to rescue him from what was a most irrational situation. He felt no heat, but he saw flames engulfing everything around him. His rational brain screamed for him to take a good look around, but the screams went unheeded. The only voice he heard was the terrible, slurred voice that came from up ahead. Powerless against the force that had reached out and touched him, Joe made his way down the hall to the source of that voice.

He looked in on a scene not unfamiliar to him, yet more unsettling than any real fire he had ever fought. The room was ablaze, curtains burned, the T.V. exploded, the plastic table in the corner melted. A La-Z-Boy recliner was knocked on its side, and flames shot up from the cushion. An antique curio cabinet, which in most homes would house the fine china, but in the Thornvold residence only held some cheap glasses and plates, caught on fire.

Then, as if this bizarre vision of the past weren't disturbing enough, Joe felt a hand on his shoulder.

He spun around and came face-to-face with good ol' Henry Thornvold. Joe had never laid eyes on him, but that's who it had to be. It was good ol' Henry, who, according to the old-timers' stories, would pay visits to his young son's room in the middle of the night to violate and humiliate the boy in the most unspeakable ways. It was good ol' Henry, whose wife had finally found out what he was doing and put an end to it and to him with swift and blinding violence and justice. There he was ... in the flesh, so to speak.

Too bad Elaine never had the courage, isn't it, Joey? You wouldn't be here, but Mark wouldn't be addicted to prescription medications, and John would be able to function with a woman in a normal way. No, poor John can only get it up when he uses his fists, he can only....

This time, it wasn't Joe's command that stopped the voice, but the living corpse before him. The skin was burnt and waxy to the touch ... a touch Joe loathed as the hand continued to grasp his shoulder, but a touch he was powerless to stop as the hand tightened its hold on him. He grabbed the arm that held him, and as he tried to get a firm grip, the skin under his hand cracked and fell off, exposing blackened bone.

Waves of horror, revulsion, and disbelief crashed over him, as he stood face-to-burnt-and-decimated-face with Henry Thornvold. Part of Henry's skull was bare, exposing teeth in a contorted, fire-blackened rictus.

Joe felt his bladder let go, and warm urine coursed down his leg, staining his new Dockers.

Man, Elaine's going to kill me for ruining these pants!

Ruined pants? If she were going to kill you, it would be for much more than that. And you know she knows, and she's thought about how much better it would be if you were dead.

"No. Stop. I'm better now! And this is not real..." He closed his eyes.

How could this be happening? Why me? It's not real! Not real! NOT REAL!

As though in answer to his question, Henry spoke one word.

"Remember."

And Joe did. He remembered all those drunken nights, coming home at 3 a.m. stinking of whiskey and beer and the smell of smoke. He remembered creeping to his sons' rooms and drunkenly groping at their pajama bottoms. He remembered that sometimes they would cry and ask him to stop, and sometimes they would just turn away from him and not say a word. And he remembered that he never did stop.

But that was the alcohol. I'm better now.

Was he, though? Even if he was, did that matter?

As these thoughts raced through his mind, Joe continued his mantra: "You're not real. You're not real. Go away. Go away," as if those words would ward off the boogeyman and make all things right again.

When he opened his eyes again, he found that it had worked. He saw the same hallway that had been there since the place had been turned into a fire station.

The walls weren't engulfed in flame. No corpse with a skeletal rictus stood there. Everything was normal.

He made his way toward the stairs in an attempt to escape this bizarre waking nightmare. Before he opened the door that led to the stairs, he gave one last look down the hallway. Again, he saw the shimmer. At first nothing was there, just an empty hall. Then the entire top floor was engulfed in flame. Then it shimmered again, and Joe saw both images overlap each other. At the same time, the hallway was unchanged and undamaged, and completely engulfed in flame. And there, in both images, stood good ol' Henry Thornvold, walking toward him.

Joe fumbled for the door. At first he couldn't open it, but then, on the second try, he succeeded. He nearly jumped through, slamming it behind him. Then he leaned against it, out of breath, shocked and frightened. He started down the stairs but stopped when he heard a slurred voice from behind him.

"I didn't get out, and neither will you."

Joe didn't waste time to face the owner of that slurred and dead voice. He started to sprint down the stairs, only to be grabbed around the neck by burnt hands. He felt himself dragged back up toward whatever unspeakable horrors waited for him on the second floor.

Joe used all his strength to ram both elbows back and up. If he could only get one good hit in, he might be able to break free. His elbows connected with something very real and substantive. The force of his blows was enough to momentarily free him from the death grip, and he took the opportunity to flee for his life. Just as he was almost completely out of harm's way, one of the corpse-like hands grabbed him again, throwing him off balance.

He fell down the stairs, crashed into the banister twice, and felt his back break for the second time. As he lay there, unable to move, blackness closed in, and Joe realized that old-timers' stories had been real.

He knew his life was over. With immediate medical attention, someone with his injuries might have a slim chance of survival. But he was the only person in the fire house, and even that slim chance slipped away.

Unable to breathe due to the damage to his spinal cord, he watched good ol' Henry Thornvold come toward him with his blackened skeleton rictus, and he knew that anything would be better than what was ahead. He tried to scream, but there wasn't enough breath left in his lungs. He only managed to utter a strained croaking sound that could have been "Why?"

As he began to suffocate, a disembodied voice answered.

"I wanted company. After all, you and I are so much alike."

"No," he groaned as he closed his eyes on the horror that slowly approached him.

When he opened them for the last time, he was alone again. There was no charred, living corpse, no fire-engulfed walls. He was alone, the man who had bravely fought fires and then gone home and pressed his naked body against his own children in the dark of drunken nights, the man who'd pinned down his own flesh and blood until he'd heaved and shuddered and finished his frenzied thrusts. As he closed his eyes for the last time, Joe Mannings saw what waited beyond this life, and he tried to scream, but had no breath left. What awaited him on the other side of death was far worse than any specter, real or conjured up by a guilt-ridden mind overtaken by insanity, and he mentally screamed as it drew closer, waiting to devour him.

As it embraced him, he continued to scream on the inside. He would soon find out that he couldn't stop screaming for a long, long time ... what seemed like an eternity.

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