First Thrills

Brent looked away. “It’s all right, Mr. Shelby. I realize that my own behavior must appear far less than hospitable. Forgive me.”

I wanted to slap his face. My father, however, had my elbow. He apologized for me, and we were quickly out of the house.

“He’s doing something to Johnny-it’s Brent. Father! Maybe he’s trying to kill him. Brent would probably like to inherit the property. You must stop him!”

My father looked at me. He was grave, but didn’t share my fear or my passion. “Child, war is hard on the women who wait. It is devastating to the men who fight, who stare at their fellow human beings, sometimes look them in their eyes, and shoot them or stab them through with their knives or bayonets. Let it be; we will see. Brent knows that Johnny must answer to me. Give it the day.”

I had no intention of giving it a day. I rode out to Johnny’s beautiful Fairhaven, and I came around the back. I left Mathilda, my horse, behind the stables, grazing on long grasses, and I slipped through the kitchen door. I knew my way around the house, and I looked out for both Brambles and Mable as I climbed the stairs.

What I found horrified me.

Johnny’s room had been boarded; there were nails imbedded in the wooden planks that now walled him in. I walked to the door and called his name.

He did not answer. I tried and tried, and then hurried down the hall to Janey Sue’s room. Her door was not barricaded, but she wasn’t there.

I slipped from the house, furious now. Brent was locking his cousin away! What had he done with Janey Sue?

I rode hard, straight back to my home, determined that my father was going to do something, and do that something now. But he wasn’t there, and as I stood in the parlor of our home on Main Street, not far from the docks, I heard the shouting.

The sound was distant, but so loud it carried on the breeze. I left the house and ran down Main Street until I reached the long boardwalk that stretched out so that the larger ships could avail themselves of the deep harbor, and there, found the reason for the horror. People had backed away, but they were in a circle around something on the dock.

I pushed through the crowd.

And I saw what they saw.

Bodies. White, swollen, and bloated, and torn to shreds. They had been gnawed upon.

Eaten.

“Sharks,” someone cried. “The water is infested!”

“This was not a shark attack,” one of the older fishermen said. He shook his grizzled head, rubbing his chin. “This is not a shark attack. I’ve seen what the big fellows can do to a man left in the water. The bodies are… not missing any limbs. They’ve been chewed by something. But not a shark.”

As I stood there, Brent arrived at the docks. He pushed his way through the crowd until he could stare at the bodies. He became the color of burnt ash, and he turned around without a word, and strode back to his carriage.

I ran after him. I caught him at the end of the dock, grabbed his shoulder, and forced him to face me. He stared at me for a minute as if he didn’t even see me. I slapped him across the face, I was so scared and furious. “What is going on, Brent, damn you, what is going on? I went to the house. I saw what you did to Johnny, and I will not stand for it, do you hear me?”

He did then. The slap had angered him, but it had brought him back to the reality of the moment-and me, forcing the issue, in his face.

“Go away, Jules,” he said duly. “Go away, and lock yourself in your house. Better yet, take your father and go far, far away.”

“You have lost your mind, Brent. What are you going on about? What is happening?”

He hesitated, but then indicated the tavern on Main Street. He set an arm around my shoulder and led me toward it, and around to the benches that sat outdoors to where, in better times, many a fisherman and farmer had gathered together to drink beer and eat their noon meals.

Now, the area was empty, and he made me sit down.

Across from me, he closed his eyes for a moment as if gathering both his strength and his sense of sanity, then, he looked at me. “There’s something really wrong with Johnny.”

“What?” I demanded. “I know he has been at war. I know he might have been injured, I know that many men bear mental wounds, that they’ve seen things, but…”

“You saw the men on the dock,” he said. It wasn’t a question. It was a fact. “I’ve seen just a similar thing- before.”

“Go on,” I said, frowning, and truly puzzled. Maybe Brent had returned more damaged than any of us had imagined.

He let out a breath and looked at the moss dripping from one of the old oaks that bordered the small outdoor dining area. He didn’t want to look at me.

“It was at Cold Harbor,” he said.

I shook my head, still trying desperately to understand what he was talking about. I placed my hands on his. “Brent, Cold Harbor was a victory for Lee. I know that dead men are still dead men, and I know that more than two thousand of your own troops died as well, but-”

He looked at me, dead on. “Men die. It’s how they die that’s terrifying. We were near Bethesda Church, camped out there. Yes, it was a Rebel victory. But on the night of the tenth, there was a break, and two companies of Feds made it through the lines. We might have been slaughtered in our sleep, but Johnny was on guard duty.”

“So he saved your lives!” I told him.

Brent said, “We woke up and found them. At least fifty of them. Torn to pieces. Like the men on the dock. It wasn’t as if they had been killed; it was as if they had been eaten. I don’t know what happened; I never will. They were bloated from the sea, but they were… gnawed. Chewed. Eaten.”

I ripped my hands away from his and stood up. “Brent! You’re trying to say that Johnny did it, that Johnny… ate the men on the schooner? You must be insane! I’m telling my father what you said, I’m… Brent! You’re horrible, don’t you see that? How dare you imply that Johnny could… and where is Janey Sue? She wasn’t at the house.”

He looked up at me, startled. “What?”

“Janey Sue isn’t at the house,” I told him.

Ignoring me, he jumped to his feet, and he was gone down the street. I saw him reach his horse, and in his wake, the road became dust.

I left him to find my father. At the docks, I was horrified to find that he’d left a message for me. He was gone. He had climbed aboard a boat with the bodies to take them back to the mainland.

I was frustrated beyond belief, but it was almost dark. I went back to my house, seething, trying to determine what I could do before he returned.

Finally, I determined that I would wait until the morning. In the daylight, I was going to find one of my father’s friends to accompany me out to Fairhaven, and I would demand that Brent produce Johnny and Janey Sue.

I locked my doors carefully, and I went upstairs to sleep. I tossed about, but finally dozed, and I believed it was Brent’s horrible story that made me dream. And in that dream, Johnny was outside. He was high in the branches of the massive oak beyond my window, begging that I let him in. I opened the window, deliriously happy to know that he was all right, and that he needed me.

But something was wrong with him.

His eyes. The color, the pale blue color, a dead color…

He was cold, although it was June, and he seemed strong, though he shouldn’t have been so strong. He held me, he cradled me, and then he pulled away from me. Suddenly, he seemed tortured, and he pushed me away. “No, God no,” he shouted. “Oh, God, no, oh, God, no!”

Then, he was gone. He leaped through the window, and he was gone.

I had been dreaming, of course. He had never been there. I opened my eyes and roused, and discovered that my window was open.

Through the open window, I heard the screams.