Table of Contents

  Praise for the writing of Will Ludwigsen

  A Scout is Brave - Will Ludwigsen

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  Author's Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  A SCOUT IS BRAVE

  “You don’t have to have been a boy scout to love A Scout Is Brave as much as I did. It’s a story about an odd friendship between two young boys that is at once funny, scary, innocent, and, above all, sweet in all the ways that make us smile. They share a splendid adventure in a haunted town that forces them to confront a secret Lovecraftian evil. Will Ludwigsen finds beauty and humor in the commonplace and courageously reaffirms the values our cynical age desperately needs."

  —James Patrick Kelly, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards

  “This short novel manages to pack into its 150 pages Bradburyesque whimsy and imagination, the melancholia of memoir, the spirit of weird pulp adventure, and the bite of contemporary angst and satire. Will Ludwigsen is a treasure and his A Scout is Brave is f*cking brilliant."

  —Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World and Horror Movie

  “An adventurous little Lovecraftian mythos story, designed to be read quickly but possessing plenty of heart, with demonstrated subtexts that include friendship, hope, the various ideals of the Boy Scout handbook, and the value of hearing from a trusted adult after you have done something nominally bad, like punching a bully or defying an eldritch villain, 'You done good.'"

  —Adam-Troy Castro, author of the Gustav Gloom series and Z is for Zombie

  ACRES OF PERHAPS

  “Evocative tales of alternate realities steeped in the ethos of Shirley Jackson and Ray Bradbury.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Imagine The Twilight Zone with a beating heart, Hitchcock crackling with strangeness around his edges. This is masterful storytelling for fans of literary and genre fiction alike.”

  —Michael Wehunt, author of Greener Pastures

  “Ludwigsen has a talent for constructing atmosphere without overwhelming the reader with concrete descriptions, and he is a deft observer of what shadows move the human heart.”

  —Jack M. Haringa

  IN SEARCH OF AND OTHERS

  “Each story’s concepts remain fully accessible while still challenging the reader, and exquisite craftsmanship makes this a timeless classic for those seeking asylum from formulaic prose.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  A Scout is Brave

  Copyright © 2024 Will Ludwigsen

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in 2024 by Lethe Press

  www.lethepressbooks.com • lethepress@aol.com

  Cover design and layout by JeremyJohnParker.com

  ISBN: 978-1-59021-660-6

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For William Simmons, who was never to my knowledge a Boy Scout but who has exemplified every one of their stated ideals throughout our nearly forty-year friendship…though not perhaps in the ways they’d expect. I appreciate our late-night urban hikes and the honest perspectives you’ve always provided to me. I hereby award you the Iconoclastic Integrity merit badge.

  1

  When 1963 started, it was still possible to be an idiot about the world if you were thirteen and didn’t know much about it. The missiles in Cuba were gone, 122 Americans would be killed that year in Vietnam, and when you clenched your eyes tightly enough, you could pretend black people were getting bludgeoned only in Alabama.

  My Scout handbook had a Norman Rockwell cover with a cheerful waving boy on the front, and he was holding another handbook with another cheerful waving boy on the front, and so on into infinity, which was just how much I believed every word in it: forever and ever, amen.

  By the time we moved from Queens to Innsmouth that summer, though, I was beginning to think my father might be right and only suckers like me believed in being trustworthy and loyal and all the rest. Mom had lost a baby in March and Dad had lost his job in April, and there’s not much more you need to know about how crummy our lives had gotten than it was an improvement to move to a crumbled pile of rocks on the bleak Massachusetts shore.

  Well, almost nothing more to know.

  It was in Innsmouth where I met the greatest Scout I’ve ever known, a boy named Aubrey Marsh, and he’s the reason I’m still here and the reason I still believe it’s worth being human, even though he’s not quite either of those things anymore.

  2

  If you’ve never heard of Innsmouth, that’s okay; it’s a sure sign you’re living an enviable life of happy ignorance. We wouldn’t have heard of it either if Mr. Farkas from the Innsmouth Oil Speculating Consortium hadn’t called my dad one morning in mid-June with a job offer we were desperate enough to take.

  My father was a construction and demolition diver, a Sea Bee during the war, and he worked a lot of jobs building or clearing bridges and piers all over the New York and New Jersey coasts. He’d suit up in a heavy canvas outfit with a brass helmet to either weld steel or blow it loose with Primacord, which sounds like a cool job until you realize it meant spending hours a day in the East and Hudson Rivers breathing oil-rancid air down a hose.

  My dad hadn’t been working since April. On his last job, he was forced to take on a supervisor’s son as an “apprentice” so he could be plausibly added to the payroll. One day the guy wandered off during my father’s dive and the compressor stalled. When that happens, the rancid air stops and all you have is what’s left in your helmet to get to the surface.

  When Dad finally made it back up, he flung his helmet across the deck like a bowling ball and told the boss to fire his kid. Instead, it was my father he sent packing, which is how Dad was home reading Atlas Shrugged on the couch in his undershirt at nine in the morning to receive the call from Raymond Farkas, Esquire.

  As Dad told it later, Mr. Farkas asked to speak to “the best underwater demolitions man on the eastern seaboard,” which was a smooth way to start. I remember my father waving at Mom and me to be quiet even though we were both reading in silence on the couch. We looked up and listened to Dad’s side of the conversation, which was mostly him saying, “Yes,” and “That’s what I do,” and “When can I start helping you?”

  The seaside town of Innsmouth had fallen on hard times, Mr. Farkas told my father. Once a center for shipbuilding and fishing dating back to the 1700s, the town suffered several catastrophes soon after the turn of the century that closed its fish packing plants and scattered its last few residents for good. But nothing dead stays dead forever, Farkas said, and hope was sprouting once again in Innsmouth. Or more accurately it was bubbling, as in the persistent seepage of crude oil detected offshore by a geology firm.

  When my father got to this part of the story after the call, Mom was surprised. “Have you ever heard of oil in Massachusetts?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “But then, the name of the company includes the word ‘speculating,’ right? What’s wrong with helping them speculate?”

  What Innsmouth wanted from my father was to move our family to their town and help install the second-hand oil drilling rig they’d towed from the coast of Venezuela to about a mile offshore. For his crucial contribution of six months’ construction and demolition work, the investors were willing to pay all our moving expenses (both ways, if we didn’t choose to stay after the project was done), a house rent-free, and a salary of $30,000.

  “That can’t be right,” Mom said.

  “Look, it’s probably to make jobs for the locals,” Dad said. “If a bunch of fat cats want to throw their dough around to save the town, what’s wrong with letting them save us, too?”

  In our little Flushing apartment, we were broke and sweltering and losing our minds, which must be why my mother let her keener practical faculties give way. Thinking back on it now, though, she was the one who’d been the most restless of the three of us, going in and out of what would have been the nursery, sitting out on the fire escape with an ashtray full of butts, and winding down slowly like a clock. I didn’t guess it then, but she needed a change more than any of us.

  As for me, I had nothing keeping me in New York, either. Sure, I’d lived there all my life, but it wasn’t like anybody wanted me to stick around anymore.

  “What about Bud? He has school here and friends,” Mom said.

  Before I could tell her it was fine, Dad said, “You mean those comemierdas he had to tune up on?”

  I’d seen Jaime and Frank a few times in Kissena Park after my disastrous last Scout meeting, but they’d walked away as though I should be embarrassed to show myself. I was, but they never gave me the opportunity t o un-embarrass myself with an apology. So when school started again I’d have to find new friends, which I figured would be just as easy in Innsmouth as New York. Easier, maybe, with no past for the new kids to know about.

  “You know, I think a change would be good for all of us,” I said.

  “See?” Dad said. “Chance of a lifetime. It’s like the stars have aligned.”

  We moved two weeks later at the end of June, and though we didn’t peel out from the curb in Dad’s Volkswagen bus, we didn’t take a nostalgic turn around the park or stop for an egg cream, either. While the movers went on ahead with their truck full of our things, Dad squeezed Mom’s hand before pulling it uncomfortably over the shift lever, and they both smiled through the windshield as we pulled away.

  Only I looked back, which is how I saw Jaime (arm still in a sling) and Frank (left eye still blackened) watching us leave from the sidewalk, satisfying themselves I was gone for good. They didn’t wave, and neither did I.

  3

  You can drive from New York City to Innsmouth in one long day if you don’t stop much to eat or pee, but that’s just distance. In terms of time, the decades fall away as soon as the buildings of New York are behind you, first to the smaller cities and towns of Connecticut and then to the villages and lonely farms of rural Massachusetts. Some of the places we passed could have come from the Scout handbook with their bandstands and general stores, but what we noticed most was the quiet. It was a little like driving into a dream, and we didn’t talk much on the way.

  We reached the shore and headed north just as the afternoon was darkening toward evening, and after an hour of roughening road, we came to the top of a hill. Dad stopped the VW, and through the windshield we could see Innsmouth sprawled before us, larger than we’d expected but emptier, too. The outward edges of town seemed ragged and crumbling, full of old gray houses on old gray streets shaded by old gray trees.

  “The whole town is a fixer upper,” Mom said.

  “It’s a hellhole, is what it is,” my father said.

  We descended the hill into town along Federal Street past rows of houses sagging from the weight of dampness, their wooden porches dark and rotting, their bricks covered with moss. You don’t think of New England as a swampy place, but Innsmouth sits low along the shore in a marsh and the moisture seems to wallow there.

  We soon came to a town square with a freshly-scoured First National grocery store and a fire station, and the people running their afternoon errands stopped to wave at us. They all seemed older than my parents, most with gray hair, and they wore the clothing you’d expect from a small town: the firemen played checkers in their red suspenders, the manager of the market stacked cans in an apron. A woman in sagging stockings trundled along the sidewalk with a bag of groceries, but there wasn’t time to jump out and help her.

  We crossed a walled-in river (the Manuxet, we’d later learn) on a crumbling bridge and passed through another square, and here Mom had to check our directions again to direct us to turn first at Church Street and then onto Adams. That’s where our house was waiting for us, along with a dozen townspeople beneath a hand-painted banner reading “WELCOME CASTILLOS.”

  Dad had barely pulled the parking brake before people started opening the doors of the Volkswagen bus. Two older ladies in blue dresses helped my mother from the passenger seat, and a heavyset man in a sweaty white dress shirt and suspenders hurried to my father’s side. The guy looked like he was just betting on the ponies at Aqueduct, complete with a little brimmed hat.

  “Raymond Farkas,” he said, holding out his hand. With each word, his tie twitched against his bulging neck. “I guess you’d call us the Welcome Wagon.”

  Dad shook his hand. “Ted Castillo,” he said, distracted by the people crowding around to put much strength into it.

  “We know,” said Farkas.

  Dad nodded up toward the house standing two stories above us with a long porch curled around the front and side. “It’s a beautiful place,” he said, meaning only the house, which had been restored at a higher priority than the rest of town.

  “The Reverend insisted we find you a special one,” Farkas said. “A lot of them around here are, after a little elbow grease.”

  If my father was curious about who Farkas meant by ‘the Reverend,’ it wasn’t for long: a tall man in a salmon-colored suit, the brightest thing in Innsmouth, emerged onto the front porch and raised his arms like he was about to part the Red Sea.

  “Folks!” the man shouted, motioning the crowd to quiet down. “Today we welcome a new family to ours!”

  The people whooped and shouted in a muted New England sort of way. Like the ones in town, they wore older clothes, dark and formal, yellowed at the sleeves and rumpled. Many women had lacy necklines, and many men had drooping fedoras.

  “I’m Reverend Pritchett,” he said, “and as you can tell by my accent, I ain’t from ‘round here.”

  That got a laugh from the crowd. He sounded Southern to me, though his voice had a flat quality I couldn’t place.

  “Like you, though, I was lucky enough to find my way to Innsmouth.” Some people started to cheer again, but Pritchett raised his hands. “And though we weren’t born here, I figure you’ll learn like I have that home ain’t where you’re from but who you’re with.”

  The crowd shouted their agreement.

  My parents kept smiling, but I could see Dad rattle the watch on his wrist, his usual sign that he was ready to move on to something more constructive. Nobody caught it but me, though, so he settled on his heels.

  “Back home New Orleans way, my mama liked to put together them jigsaw puzzles, you know the ones, spreading ‘em out on our old kitchen table and snappin’ pieces in one by one, like the Spivey sisters do in that beautiful parlor of theirs.”

  Two older women in front, the ones who’d helped my mother, beamed in their recognition.

  “Now Mama did this real special thing for me every time. She’d always save the last piece for me. Took a lot for her give away her satisfaction that way, but I loved the little shiver I’d feel when a piece fit in on all four sides. I’m feeling a little shiver today. Aren’t y’all?”

  A few people in the crowd shouted, “Amen!”

  “Today, with the arrival of the Castillos, we’re completing Innsmouth’s bold new picture!”

  Everyone applauded, even my parents.

  When the noise faded, Pritchett motioned to his left. “Now, y’all got nothin’ to worry about. Dinner has been taken care of by the Ladies Auxiliary.”

  Three old oak-skinned ladies stood holding covered plates with stoic pride, or maybe total indifference. It was hard to tell.

  “As for your heavy lifting,” Pritchett continued, “the rest of us will handle that.”

  The people cheered again and then turned toward the moving truck. It had arrived before we did, God knew how long, and the movers sat waiting in the cab with their cigarette smoke rolling out the windows. Now, their mouths fell open as the horde lurched towards them.

  One of the Innsmouth men fumbled at the rear door latch, and a few more shoved the door open with a clang. Then, like ants swarming the corpse of our former life, the people of Innsmouth marched in and out of our house, carrying our dressers and tables and chairs. They knocked a few into the walls, of course, and they broke a mirror after a spectacular drop from the top landing on the stairs. They got Dad’s chair lodged in the doorway for half an hour while three men with sweaty foreheads argued over how to get it out. Still, we were politely grateful for their “help.”

  The professional movers tried to steer clear of the swarm. They lifted our larger items out of their reach and scurried in and out of the back door. “Gangway!” they cried, holding our couch overhead like pygmies portaging a canoe. People scattered whenever they approached.

  The truck emptied far faster than it had filled, and Mom was harried by their speed. She worked as a traffic cop, directing people all over the house on where and how to set things down. I don’t know which phrase she said more often: “Over there, please,” “Look out,” or “That’s okay, it wasn’t valuable.” She was relieved, though, when the last of our boxes entered the house and all of the townspeople exited.

 

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