Waking Nightmares by Christopher Golden Read Free Book Online Page B

cabin of his father’s thirty-two-foot Boston Whaler, nudging the throttle now and again to make sure she didn’t drift too much. Days like today, when he knew a lot of his friends from high school were sitting in a college classroom somewhere, he relished being out there on the water, the sky so blue and the salt breeze off the Atlantic still warm. But now that the nights had begun to cool down and he knew fall was not far off, he had started thinking about what it would be like to be out here night and day as fall turned to early winter, and he’d begun to have second thoughts about his decision to skip college.
    All through high school, Tommy had spent summers working with his father, Norm Dunne. By night, they prowled the waters off Salem, Beverly, and Hawthorne, cast-netting for squid, and by day they netted as many bunkers—what they called menhaden, an otherwise useless bait fish—as possible. Norm Dunne sold most of the squid to local restaurants, and the rest of it went with the bunkers to Tommy’s uncle Paul’s bait shop. Tommy’s mother had died in a car accident when he was nine years old. His father had been out with a few women in the years since, but never dated anyone seriously, which maybe explained why Norm and Paul still referred to each other as brothers-in-law, though the woman who had been the link between them had been dead going on ten years.
    Uncle Paul had encouraged Tommy to go to college. His dad had taken a more neutral stance. If Tommy wanted to go, that was fine by him, but if his son preferred to become a fisherman like his father, Norm made no effort to hide how pleased and proud that would make him. Uncle Paul didn’t want this life for Tommy—a life of hard work for little reward, when some years slim margins could turn into big losses. My sister wouldn’t have wanted her boy to ever go hungry, Tommy had once heard Uncle Paul say, in a conversation he was sure he hadn’t been meant to hear. Tommy’s dad had been furious. Have I ever let my son go hungry? he had shouted.
    There’d been beer involved. There always was.
    Tommy had loved the summers he had spent working the nets with his father. Days and nights on the water. Money in his pocket on his days off. And there had been no shortage of girls. Being a fisherman during those summers earned him a great tan, lean muscles, and an aura of maturity that other guys in his high school just couldn’t pull off.
    But now that he looked ahead to a lifetime of this work, not just beautiful summers but cold, dismal falls and winters, it gave him pause. His father was forty-three and still in decent shape, but he’d started to have problems with his back and his right shoulder, and Tommy had a hard time picturing himself doing this work without his dad. Would he really want to be out here on his own?
    Fuck, no.
    So he had pretty much decided this would be it. One year off from school. Next fall, he would go to college. Now he just had to figure out how he was going to tell his father.
    Tommy heard a splash and then his dad called his name. He jumped up and ran to the port side, where he’d tied off the net. Norm Dunne bobbed in the water, his unruly thatch of salt-and-pepper hair plastered to his skull. Despite his age, his work had kept him in damn good shape. If not for the scar on the left side of his face, he’d have been a pretty good-looking guy.
    “Did you get it unsnagged?” Tommy asked.
    His dad grinned. “Not exactly.”
    “Then what are you smiling about?”
    “You’ll see,” Norm replied.
    Tommy stepped back while his father grabbed hold of the rail and hoisted himself up and over, spilling into the boat. He scrambled to his feet and reached for the net.
    “Gimme a hand, punk,” he said.
    Norm had a dozen affectionate nicknames for his son. Punk was only one of them. Some people thought Norm was trying to echo Clint Eastwood, and that was fine with Tommy. He would never admit to anyone that it came from his toddler