All Too Familiar
by Shy Watson
It was the era of the mothman sightings, and Helma wanted a guardian to stand by and assuage her fears. The government had no problem giving free food to all the men and women who couldn’t stand holding a job, but when it came to a real, imminent threat, one of nobody’s choosing, Helma was left to fend for herself. She had paid her taxes, hadn’t she? Where was the National Guard when she needed them? Where were convoys to protect her streets? Oh, how she longed for spotlights to scan the mountains like a stage. Helma’s favorite televangelist, Peter Knight, shouted through her television set, “Repent! Repent!” The mothmen, he warned, were demons, sent to serve their master, Lyndon B. Johnson.
Helma slept with every lamp and the television on. Gold-framed photographs of her three grandsons reflected the buzzing fluorescent tubes in the hall. Betty Boop magnets secured newspaper clippings of Joseph McCarthy’s face to the fridge. Helma was grateful for that patriot Lee Harvey Whatever, but Johnson was barely an improvement. Forget the war on poverty. How about a war on tramps? She despised the Communists who threatened to ruin her way of life. Her husband Elmer had been a strong man, a decent man, a man who had worked his way up to become Natrium’s plant manager down in Proctor and constructed them a nice Sears home up in Wheeling, the Norwich model. His life insurance wasn’t half bad either.
Helma thought it a cruel joke that Elmer died of prostate cancer in the same year the Gleason grading system was devised. He had not been one to trust doctors and had repudiated all of Helma’s concerns. “Taking a leak gets harder with age,” he had said. It wasn’t until he saw blood in the bowl that he finally allowed Helma to accompany him to the hospital. He scored an eight on the Gleason. The prognosis wasn’t good. Within three weeks, the cells had spread to Elmer’s lymph nodes. Within two months, he was dead.
The house displayed not a single picture of Helma’s daughter. She couldn’t believe Barbara had married a Democrat who took her last name and moved with him up to Cleveland, leaving Helma to spill oatmeal on the dover-gray broadloom and rot in her recliner all alone. Even Helma’s cat, Feathers, which she had gotten for Barbara, hated her. Feathers had adored Elmer, wouldn’t leave his lap. But ever since Elmer had died the year before, all she did was claw at the couch and piss on the bath mat. Barbara’s dorm in Morgantown hadn’t allowed pets, and then the man she married claimed to be allergic. That sissy. Helma wasn’t born yesterday. No one was allergic to cats.
Rumor had it the mothmen fluttered from roof to roof and terrorized the streets with their glowing red eyes only at night. The sole daytime sighting was reported by an unreliable adolescent. At first, the mothmen had only been in Point Pleasant, but they had slowly infiltrated the surrounding areas. The lights, Helma reasoned, were worth the electric bill. And Raymond would be worth the eighteen dollars per night.
Helma came upon Raymond in the classifieds two days after the first sighting in Proctor. The listing advertised a bodyguard, but Helma prided herself on spotting diamonds in the rough. His experience included one year as a bus driver, three years as a security guard at Food Machinery Corporation in South Charleston, and one year infantry in Vietnam. Surely, he was qualified for the task.
“One time a drunk smashed my bus’s windshield with a walking cane,” he told Helma during the telephone interview. “Didn’t live to tell the tale. I could wipe out any ol’ mothman. Easy.”
Though he had been unavailable for the first two nights after the interview due to a preplanned turkey hunting trip, Helma was confident he would be an ideal overnight watchman. The boy must have been no older than twenty-five.
The night Raymond was due, Helma spent all day getting ready. She hadn’t seen anyone but her girlfriends at bingo for over a week. Even those excursions had diminished, as she wouldn’t dare drive home after dusk. Barbara regularly condescended to Helma about how she shouldn’t be driving anyway, day or night, wouldn’t even let her boys ride in the back of Helma’s GTO. “Christ, Mom,” Barbara would say. “Relax on the brakes, you’re giving me whiplash!”
Helma was astonished by how Barbara had reacted to her plan to hire Raymond. She had quoted some quack professor who claimed the mothmen were mere sandhill cranes, stopping by West Virginia on their migration down south. Helma had not raised her daughter to be so ignorant. It was clearly the fault of her spineless husband. Helma had lived in West Virginia all her life and had never seen a single damn crane, let alone one that resembled a demon. Besides, Ethel-from-bingo’s grandson had seen a mothman down in New Martinsville two nights before the Proctor report. He was a policeman, and Helma knew a policeman wouldn’t lie.
Already made up, Helma opened her Lady Vanity case and plugged it in. While the rollers heated, she surveyed her dress collection and felt, as she always did, the transient pride that came with fitting into the same clothes she’d had since the ‘30s, forever a size 2. But today, she longed to appear modern, electing instead for a pair of periwinkle capris and a scalloped white top. She hung her bathrobe, embroidered Sunshine, on its hook, the last anniversary gift Elmer had given her. As she bent over to buckle the patent leather flats, she smelled the baked, chemical air of the rollers.
Raymond’s knock was loud. He was an hour early, which Helma considered a good sign because it meant he was punctual. When she opened the door, she was startled by his height, which must have been a couple inches shorter than her own. He also looked a bit older than twenty-five, but Helma reasoned that the war had weathered him; the violence he’d seen had left trenches above his brows.
“Raymond Bellhive at your service, ma’am.”
His handshake was as hard as his knock, and Helma glimpsed the tail of a shark tattoo peeking out from under his sleeve.
“Well, come on in,” Helma said. “Make yourself at home.” She handed Raymond a spare set of keys. “I would have had tea ready, but you’re an hour early. Usually my hair isn’t such a mess. Here, sit. I’ll put some water on the stove.”
Raymond limped into the den and sat on the couch.
“No disrespect, ma’am, but I wasn’t early. Uniform Time Act. I can change your clocks. Been since Sunday.”
“That clown Johnson.”
“Amen to that!”
Raymond resembled a toy soldier as he sunk into the floral tufted cushions. Helma recalled that Vietnam had quicksand. Or was it Africa? Feathers jumped onto Raymond’s lap and made biscuits along his chest before Helma turned away. The moment had somehow seemed private, had made her feel like a pervert, and she couldn’t bear to intrude. She filled the kettle and put it on the burner, then marched to the bathroom and ripped the roller cord from the wall. Raymond Bellhive was not handsome. He wasn’t worth getting ready for, anyway.
Helma was uncertain if she was qualified to bless water, so she rang Pastor Jim.
“I don’t know, Helma,” he said, “Call the Catholics.”
The phone book rested on top of the fridge under a thin layer of dust. Helma wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and flipped the yellowed pages until she found Blessed Trinity. It was a Tuesday but worth a try. The phone rang and rang and rang. Helma scoffed. As if she needed more proof that the Catholics were behind the times. Not even an answering machine.
The TV blared from the living room, so Helma plugged her ears and closed her eyes as she struggled to recall what was required. Natural source, salt, prayer. Their property was blessed with well water, which seemed as natural as anything else. Helma turned the faucet so hard water splashed out of the saucer and onto her shirt. It looked like lopsided lactation. But she had no one to impress. She reduced the stream to droplets and sprinkled in some Morton salt. Helma thought the salt girl was adorable, with her big umbrella and small yellow shoes. She decided she would buy similar shoes, perhaps before inviting her plumber over to fix the overzealous sink. Thomas was so square-jawed and rugged he managed to render the vocation glamorous.
Whhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Helma jumped when the kettle whistled, overturning the saucer.
“Goddamnit,” she said. “Lord forgive me.”
She poured the steaming water over two chamomile tea bags and returned to her consecration. She filled the saucer once more, sprinkled in the salt, hovered her palm over its surface, and bowed her head in prayer.
“Blessed are you, Lord, all-powerful God, Christ who art in Heaven. I ask humbly for your service, may you assist me. To protect against the mothmen who art demons. Dear Lord, please repel these interlopers and offer an orb of protection around my home, myself, Feathers, and Raymond. In the name of Jesus I pray. Ah-men.”
Helma placed her pinky into the salt water and stirred.
“Want honey?” she yelled. She waited a moment but received no response.
Helma crept into the den to find Raymond’s pygmy legs twitching on the coffee table as he watched television. Feathers nestled under his armpit. His shirt was coated in fur.
“Mr. Bellhive, would you like honey?”
“Oh no, ma’am. Call me Raymond.”
The channel was set to a Twilight Zone rerun, which Helma found rather inappropriate during this trying time. She went back to the kitchen and grabbed a tea tray. When she returned, Feathers had mounted Raymond’s chest again. She audibly purred.
“Why don’t we watch something a little less sinister,” Helma said. “It’s almost sunset.”
On TV, a group of leather-clad hunks were really aliens in disguise. Raymond turned it off.
“You got blackout curtains?” he asked.
“God no, they hate the daylight. I’ve been sleeping with every light on.”
“Ma’am, no disrespect, but these things are phototactic! That’s why they been soarin’ toward headlights and bangin’ against windows!”
Helma hadn’t heard of the windows. Had they already visited her home?
“I’ve got blankets in one of the guest rooms,” she said. “In the trunk.”
Helma pointed Raymond in the right direction, then got back to her holy water. She fetched the hummingbird feeder from the front porch. The sun sank below the horizon, but the sky remained pink. She’d have to be quick.
Under the sink, Helma kept Tupperware full of rotting grapes and cabbage. Moths had always taken a liking to Elmer’s flannels, so she cut a collar off an old green number and plunged it into the rancid pulp. She dumped the mixture into the feeder’s tank and filled the base with holy water like a moat. If a demon wanted to hover near Helma’s home, it wouldn’t go down easy. God’s power was great, Lyndon B. Johnson be damned.
“Ms. Cotting.” Raymond stood in the kitchen doorway carrying quilts. “Are these what you meant?”
“It’s Mrs., and they will have to do.”
Raymond pointed to the bird feeder and scrunched his brows.
“It’s a trap,” Helma said. “Subtle enough not to attract from a distance, but if one ventures onto the property, it will be instantly lured.”
Raymond opened the fridge, grabbed a Coca-Cola, and doused the contents of the feeder. “Moths love this stuff. And they hate smokes. Speaking of which, do you mind? I’ll bring
the trap.”
Helma wondered if Raymond knew the difference between fruit flies and moths, but she knew better than to insult a man. She showed Raymond to the front porch though it was dusk.
“Are you sure you want to go out there?”
“I’ve seen the worst of it, believe you me.”
Raymond held onto the doorway as he ventured outside, and Helma swore one of his legs was shorter than the other. She thought to check the classifieds again in the morning, then set to pinning quilts on the curtain rods. Barbara’s husband had miraculously managed to install a chain lock on the door after Elmer died, but for the last couple weeks, Helma had been lodging a crutch under the knob in case it hadn’t been adequately secured. She yawned. When Raymond came back, he brought smoke with him, which Helma hadn’t smelled since she last sat at the American Legion, winning nothing at bingo for the fourth month in a row. Elmer had smoked, but only cigars, which smelled much sweeter than whatever Raymond dragged in. He crumpled the empty pack in his fist, then threw it into Helma’s garbage can.
“Well, what’s it like out there?” she asked.
“Warm. April showers bring May flowers.”
“You see anything?”
“Not yet. Do you have a gun?” Raymond’s lids twitched. His deep-set eyes reminded Helma of Ovaltine.
“Excuse me?”
“Just in case.”
Elmer had a gun safe in his study, but Helma hadn’t entered in months.
“I think so,” she said. “Upstairs.”
Raymond paused on the swell step and acknowledged Elmer’s framed portrait.
“Is this Mr. Cotting?”
“It was.”
Raymond’s footsteps plodded uneven and heavy behind Helma. His heft seemed incompatible with his stature. Maybe he was all muscle underneath, solid as stone. He climbed the stairs uncomfortably close to Helma, filling her with heat. The doorknob was cold in her palm. The air in Elmer’s study stood still. She had left it exactly as it was. Checks signed a year ago sat on the desk beside a single cigar. The oakmoss notes from Elmer’s aftershave exuded from the walls. The study was so evidently his that Helma nearly sensed his presence; his spirit felt closer than it had since his death.
“Here’s the case,” she said. “I think the code is our daughter’s birthday, 10-4-43.”
Raymond knelt down and twisted the lock.
“Nope.”
Helma struggled to think of what else it could have been, but nothing came. Raymond stared up at her expectantly.
“I don’t know what else it could be,” she said.
“Well, when’s your birthday?”
Raymond tried 5-13-19, but that was wrong, too.
“What about your anniversary?”
And with 6-18-42, the case swung open, revealing a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol. Helma felt remarkably smitten by her deceased husband’s gesture. The man had only said “I love you” about a dozen times.
“Okay, well, now you know where to find them,” Helma said. She bent to shut the gun case, but Raymond wedged his hand to block the door.
“We’re gonna need one of these downstairs.”
Helma hated guns, had since she was a child when her father shot her rabid dog. “The shotgun would work,” she said. That was what her father had used, and it had only taken one shell.
“I’ll handle the guns, if you don’t mind,” Raymond said, with what Helma took to be an ex-soldier’s authority. He caressed the engraving on the shotgun’s receiver, bird dogs pointing at pheasants. “I love Remingtons, but this tube mag only takes two shells. Got the gas system built into the front. We’re usin’ the M14 tonight. Twenty rounds. Like riding a bike.”
Helma shrugged. Raymond may as well have been speaking Mandarin, but she figured a gun would do better than his dilapidated body alone. He turned on the safety, checked the chamber, then loaded it. He pointed the barrel toward the carpet and Helma followed him down. Feathers meowed at the foot of the stairs and rubbed her head against the barrel of the gun.
“She likes you,” Helma said.
“She’s hungry.”
Helma was horrified to realize she hadn’t fed Feathers in what must have been two or three days. “Dear God,” she said. “You’re right.” Feathers nipped at her heels as she headed toward the pantry and knelt to open the bag of Friskies. Feathers hovered her head over the bowl so anxiously Helma had to fight her off to pour it in. A shadow fell over the pantry and Helma whipped around to see Raymond blocking the doorway with the gun in his hand.
“Should I stay on the couch tonight?” he asked.
“Where else would you stay?”
Raymond shifted on his bowlegs. “You tell me.”
Helma had intended to dig through the attic for a cot. She knew there had to be one somewhere, but all of Barbara’s toddler toys along with every holiday decoration ever purchased crowded the space, rendering excavation insuperable.
“The couch has a nice hide-a-bed,” Helma explained. “Just grab a blanket from the trunk.” Raymond disappeared into the guest room and returned with Elmer’s quilt, which his mother had made him. Helma hadn’t seen it since she packed it away on the morning of the funeral. She felt uneasy with the notion of Raymond cozied beneath it. “Is that the only blanket?”
“Last one. The rest are on the windows.”
It had been over a year, Helma reasoned, so she resolved not to be maladaptive. “Fine,” she said, relenting. Raymond helped her pull the handle that transformed the sofa into a bed. “What’s your wife think of you staying in another woman’s house?”
Raymond chortled. “I’ve got no wife to think of anything.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“Oh, it’s fine. It’s not for lack of want. I spent my good years in the service and haven’t found me anybody yet. I’m ready and able.”
“Did you have a lady before you enlisted?” It was rare for Helma to meet an unmarried man of Raymond’s age.
“Yeah, but she wasn’t very patient. Came back to learn she’d been running around on me.”
“That’s just awful. Young people these days have no sense of commitment. You’re better off. You’ll find a woman who’s worthy when God wills it.”
Raymond shrugged.
“Well,” Helma continued, “this chamomile is getting to me. I ought to retire.”
“Suit yourself, Mrs. Cotting. You think they’ll show Elvis’s wedding on the TV?”
“I hope not. That boy’s an abomination.”
“The man’s a legend,” Raymond said. “Besides, it’ll be good for staying up.”
Helma held the handrail as she ascended to her room. It disgusted her that a wedding could be televised. There was no more sanctity. She’d never forget when Elvis gyrated his hips all over The Milton Berle Show. Fitting that he was singing about a dog. Helma hated dogs. They possessed no discernment whatsoever.
The batteries in the General Electric toothbrush were losing power, and, unfortunately, they were irreplaceable. The device rumbled with a couple pauses but still did the trick. Helma had often fantasized about pressing it against her cooch, but she wouldn’t dare for fear that Elmer’s spirit would look down from heaven. But this time the desire was too heavy. She resolved to turn off the light. It took less than one minute.
The twin-sized bed was already made. Barbara insisted Helma downsize after the funeral, as she didn’t want her mother to suffer Elmer’s absence. If only it had been that simple. Helma had been inconsolable for months, incapable of consuming anything but instant mashed potatoes and Tang. She had prayed that God take her too, so at least she could be with Elmer in the afterlife. But God wouldn’t grant it. She supposed her purpose had not yet been met.
Even with Helma’s head pressed to the pillow, she could hear the faint chatter from the TV downstairs. It was distracting. She imagined Raymond watching Elvis and resolved conclusively that Raymond was a dunce. She lay still, working up the courage to confront him about the volume, but her body was so relaxed she felt submerged in Skin So Soft. She wished she hadn’t waited so long with that toothbrush. Tomorrow she should draw a bath. Maybe try again if the batteries held out. If not, she could send Raymond out for new ones. That was nice to imagine. Helma unwittingly drifted off to sleep.
The rifle’s blast startled Helma awake. She felt paralyzed and told herself repeatedly that it had only been a dream. Straining for sound, she realized the television was no longer on. The house was silent. Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears. She felt more awake than she had in decades. And then the silence transformed into a bloodcurdling cry. The mothmen were here.
Helma hurried out of bed, covered her body with her embroidered bathrobe, and scampered down the stairs. On the swell step, Helma’s foot rang out in pain. She squatted and grazed a cluster of shards with her fingertips.
“Raymond?” she called out.
She stepped as wide as she could to avoid further injury and trembled toward the living room, where she found Raymond rolled tight in Elmer’s quilt and the gun on the ground.
“Raymond,” she said, but he didn’t reply. She reached out to discover his face was drenched in sweat. His teeth chattered. Unintelligible sounds fell from his mouth, reminding Helma of a whimpering dog. Raymond’s legs kicked as if he were running, and Helma imagined him blood-soaked in camouflage, fleeing to a trench, the percussion of land mines pulsing through his legs. Helma stroked his hair behind his ear and cooed, “Shhhh, now. Shhhh.”
Raymond’s lids fluttered as he grabbed Helma’s forearm. His strength was undeniable as he pulled her on top of him and squeezed her desperately. She was unsure whether the wetness on her shoulders came from tears or sweat. With her face against his ear, she continued to coo, and Raymond’s fingers stroked the length of her arm. At once, his tremor ceased, and his breathing became uniform and deep. To Helma’s despair, Raymond’s wrist fell limp.
Helma lay still for fear of waking him. She waited until Raymond’s next exhale, and then she began to breathe in sync. Their chests rose and fell together. It was intoxicating. In the dark, Helma’s thoughts turned toward Elmer. The man, like a saint, had never snored. She had often traced the contours of his face once the sun shone in with the morning. His stillness never ceased to make Helma marvel. It was as if he dreamt only of wool.
Helma repositioned her cheek against the crook of Raymond’s neck. She experimented again with her breathing, this time inhaling the air that exited his nose. There was something sweet in it, like fresh-baked bread. She pined for Elmer as she hadn’t since his death. She bartered again with God. Lord, I will give you anything, she thought. Take my diamonds, my dresses, the white oak at the end of the drive.
Tears burned under Helma’s lids as she reached under the comforter and pulled the fragment of glass from her foot. A rush of fatigue apprehended her, and, intertwined with Raymond, she was overcome with sleep.
It was still dark when Helma sprung to consciousness, startled to find herself cocooned within Elmer’s quilt against her watchman. Worried Raymond would catch her snuggling him, she shimmied slowly from his grip and crawled off the pull-out mattress. She fumbled invisibly in the den, sidestepped the glass, and returned to her own room, where she reluctantly tucked herself back under the twin-sized sheets.
Helma awoke at 7:00 a.m. sans alarm as she did every day. The scent of coffee floated up the stairs. She selected her favorite silk nightdress, slid into her slippers, and sprayed a spritz of her most expensive perfume. The glass was gone from the bottom of the stairs. Elmer’s portrait hung nearly frameless with a dime-sized hole above the left brow.
She forced the front door open to find the birdfeeder all but empty and cracked on the concrete beside Barbara’s embossed childhood footprint. The only remaining pulp was caked to the plastic, and the holy water left no trace. Feeling triumphant, she decided to call her daughter right away to boast about having been right.
As Helma strode into the doorway of the kitchen, she was surprised to see Raymond’s legs on the table, a newspaper opened across his lap. The blankets had been removed from the windows. In the sunlight, Raymond’s hair looked gray. Smoke swirled from the tip of a cigar. When he turned to look at Helma, he appeared twenty years older and striking. His smile revealed a dazzling set of teeth.
“Good morning, Sunshine,” he said in a voice all too familiar. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
Helma felt as if she would faint, but still, she managed to nod her head.
Shy Watson is a writer and poet who grew up in Missouri. Her fiction appears in Fence, Southwest Review, Joyland, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from the University of Montana in 2023 and has since received support from Monson Arts and The Lighthouse Works.
