CHAPTER 5

EVERYONE’S AFRAID OF SOMETHING:
Ablutophobia is the fear of washing or bathing.

John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City was in for quite a surprise the night the Mastersons arrived from London. Weary travelers wheeling suitcases, holding children’s hands, and generally trying to make it through the maze of gates stopped in their tracks. They paused mid-sentence, mid-gait, mid-look, mid-breath to stare at Madeleine Masterson, her parents, and a plume of repellent.

Quite literally, a cloud of bug repellent lingered over Madeleine’s veil-covered head, causing strangers to cough vociferously. Madeleine plowed through the highly congested terminal without batting an eyelash. Madeleine had long ago made peace with the price of spider protection.

The Masterson clan rushed through the terminal to catch their flight to Pittsfield, or as Farmingtonians called it, “the Pitts.” While the Mastersons expected the plane to be little, they certainly never thought it would be that little. The plane was approximately the size and color of a New York City cab, only much more run-down. If the Mastersons hadn’t been told otherwise, they would have thought the plane was en route to a demolition yard. Its wings were lopsided, leaning strongly to the left, and the windows were secured with silver duct tape.

Mr. Masterson felt a definite somersault in his stomach while looking over the plane. He wondered how any reasonable person could NOT be afraid of the aircraft, yet Madeleine wasn’t. She wouldn’t have minded if the plane had been called Certain Death. For Madeleine, the comprehensive fumigation of the plane’s interior was far more important to worry about than a little thing like safety — although, it should be noted that Mrs. Masterson only allowed Madeleine access to non-flammable repellent.

The entire Masterson clan remained silent throughout the fifty-seven-minute flight. Madeleine was much too frantic worrying that School of Fear would confiscate her repellents and netted veil to be bothered with idle chitchat. The veil and repellents had been with her so long they had become extensions of her own limbs. In fact, Madeleine would sooner consider a life without arms than one without bug repellent, although she would have to come up with a clever contraption to spray the repellent without arms.

Madeleine considered the many gruesome things she would endure for her repellent and veil, completely ignoring the plane’s wild altitude fluctuations. Mr. and Mrs. Masterson’s stomachs climbed into their throats, but Madeleine barely noticed. She was absorbed in a bargaining of sorts: Was the veil worth a toe? Five toes? A foot? A hand? A fingernail? A finger?

The plane continued to weather heavy turbulence until finally landing — although it felt more like crashing — in the Pitts. Mr. Masterson wobbled with queasiness as he deplaned directly onto the bumpy Tarmac.

“Maddie, are you sure you’re not afraid of flying? I’m not terribly fond of it myself, especially after that ride. I am more than happy to travel by car, bus, train, or boat. It seems a great deal easier than attempting to exterminate the planet of bugs and spiders. Do you think you might be up for switching fears?” Mr. Masterson asked as his face started to regain color.

“Mummy, please tell Father to stop talking,” Madeleine said in a small but authoritative voice.

“Arthur, please. No one is in the mood for your sense of humor. Or rather lack thereof.”

As part of the Mastersons’ standard travel practice, the family checked into a pre-exterminated bed-and-breakfast, which was in this case the Pretty Pitts Inn. The Mastersons had long since implemented a fumigation mandate for all travel accommodations. It required a great deal of preparation and considerable expense, but it was necessary for Madeleine to maintain any semblance of sanity.

In the pale green bathroom at the Pretty Pitts Inn, Madeleine brushed her teeth vigorously while scanning the walls for spiderwebs. On the other side of the wall, the still nauseated Mastersons inspected the sheets and pillowcase before assembling the mesh canopy. Madeleine entered the room in her pink dressing gown with a built-in veil, pumped off a few sprays of repellent, climbed into bed, and silently prayed for a bug and spider-free night.

At 7:30 AM the following morning, the fatigued Masterson family boarded a bus for Farmington. The silver-sided bus was completely empty except for a handsome young boy named Garrison Feldman. At thirteen, he was big for his age, making him an ace in all things athletic, from soccer to baseball to football. He was somewhat of a local celebrity at his Miami middle school, and not just for his exploits on the field. His blond hair, tanned complexion, and blue eyes inspired more than a few girls to drop sappy love notes in his locker. The combination of his athletic prowess and extreme good looks made Garrison the most popular boy at Palmetto Middle School.

However, in between successes on the field and blushing girls in the hall, Garrison had developed quite the reputation for moodiness, often snapping at classmates for inconsequential things. One day following an impressive soccer match, two of Garrison’s classmates, Phil and Rick, approached with boogie boards hanging from their backs.

“Dude, you were awesome out there,” Rick exploded with excitement usually reserved for NFL players. “You led us to victory again!”

Garrison offered a knowing nod; he was praised regularly for his leadership on the field.

“We brought our boogie boards; let’s sneak down to the beach and hit the waves,” Phil suggested.

“Nah, I’m not into it,” Garrison responded coldly.

“Come on,” Rick chimed in, desperate to pique Garrison’s interest. “You never come.”

“Yeah, the waves are really breaking today,” Phil said with pleasure. “There’s a warning up and everything.”

A small but powerful ocean breeze blew across Garrison’s face, weakening his knees as he stared into the boys’ eyes. Small spots of light flitted across his vision as he struggled to remain standing.

“I heard the waves are nearly twenty feet high,” Rick added.

Garrison’s eyes fluttered into a cross-eyed expression as he fought to stand upright.

“Man, what’s wrong with your face?” Rick asked with concern.

“Oh that? That was my impersonation of your mom,” Garrison shot back defensively.

“That’s harsh, man,” Rick said seriously.

Garrison marched off the field, turning behind the gardener’s shed, where he collapsed in a heap of sweat and guilt. As he sat on the grass with clammy hands, he prayed that Phil and Rick couldn’t see him. He needed a second to compose himself, to banish all thoughts of the beach and its giant waves. Outside of his parents, no one knew that Garrison was petrified of water. Not drinking water or showering water, but any large body of water such as a lake, pool, or ocean. Embarrassingly, Garrison even broke out in a cold sweat watching reruns of Baywatch.

The fear of water, hydrophobia, didn’t fit with Garrison’s tough image, and he knew it. All the players he had defeated in baseball, basketball, and soccer would taunt him mercilessly if they found out. He was certain his game would suffer greatly from the release of this information.

Garrison knew that time was running out; he needed to address his hydrophobia or risk discovery. So at four-thirty in the morning, he had crept from his room to the den, where his dad kept their only computer, a bulky old desktop. Much to his parents’ chagrin, Garrison had forced his family to move to this beaten-down house due to its distance from the shore. Dressed in old sweats, Garrison searched the Internet for an efficient solution. His fingertips grazed the keys lightly to avoid waking his gruff parents.

Garrison’s stomach gurgled stridently as he imagined confronting his fear and gaining his father’s approval. Whichever program he chose, it needed to work. If it didn’t, his father would use the failure as fodder for more put-downs. Garrison prodded through Web sites, struggling with conflicting emotions. The phobic part of him yearned to avoid water, yet his rational mind wanted nothing more than to tackle it and move on. After all, a boy in Miami could avoid the beach for only so long before people got suspicious.

Nearing dawn, Garrison’s eyelids drooped heavily as he vigorously attempted to resist sleep. Frustrated and exhausted, he scanned a blog entitled “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf or Anything Else?” He inspected three testimonials before stopping on one written by an eleven-year-old boy who overcame his sun phobia during a summer at School of Fear. So thorough was this boy’s treatment that he was now a junior lifeguard at the beach.

Garrison’s fatigue instantly disappeared as he searched the testimonial for a contact number. But in a flash, it was gone. The message literally evaporated before his drowsy eyes. For a second he wondered if he had dreamed the whole thing. Did he make up the boy who lived at night due to his sun aversion? Garrison rubbed his eyes and once again looked at the screen. A stern statement from the law offices of Munchauser and Son appeared, claiming the previous testimonial was a work of fiction.

A rock formed in Garrison’s stomach, a hardened mound of shriveled-up hope. The rock grew larger by the second, pushing his internal organs against his skin. He looked at his stomach, half-expecting to see an outline of his spleen. Garrison paused and took a deep breath, allowing for a trickle of common sense to enter his head. Why would a law office bother to post a letter about a boy’s overactive imagination?

Sensing there was more to the story, Garrison scoured the Web for any other mention of School of Fear, but found nothing. The lack of information only bolstered Garrison’s belief that he had stumbled onto something. In his gut, he knew he had to find School of Fear, by any means necessary. By now, the sun had risen and Garrison could hear the buzzing of his parents’ alarm clock. His father lumbered into the kitchen for coffee, immediately spotting a sleep-deprived Garrison at the computer in the adjoining den.

“You better not be buying junk on eBay,” Mike Feldman warned as he poured instant coffee crystals into a mug.

In a moment of truly poor judgment, Garrison had swiped his dad’s credit card to pay for a replica Joe DiMaggio baseball card. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the money; he simply couldn’t use cash on the Internet. Not wanting to steal, he dropped a twenty in his dad’s wallet and called it even. Not surprisingly, his father had an entirely different perspective on the transaction.

Garrison shifted on the plaid chair as he wondered how much he was willing to bet School of Fear could help him. Was his belief in School of Fear worth what he was about to put himself through? Before he could decide, he spit out the words that cemented his decision. “I need your help.”

Having brought both of his parents into the fold about School of Fear, Garrison knew there was no turning back. His father had no respect for quitters, whether it was in sports, scrabble, or finding the elusive School of Fear. Together the three of them canvassed over half the child therapists listed in Miami’s phonebook, questioning each and every one of them about School of Fear.

Some hung up without saying a word, while others flatly denied having heard of such a thing. The manner in which some blustered and stammered led the Feldmans to believe that Garrison’s instincts were right. It was Garrison who happened to call Dr. Ernestina Franklin on that fateful Wednesday morning. After asking about School of Fear, Garrison waited to hear either a dial tone or the usual denial, but instead he heard something entirely different.

“Yes.”

“You’ve heard of School of Fear?” he repeated in a state of shock.

Within twenty minutes, the Feldman family was pulling up to Dr. Franklin’s quaint yellow home. Upon seeing the frail old woman at the door, they knew she was nearing both senility and death. Dr. Franklin greeted Garrison warmly with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. The old woman’s overly welcoming manner was explained seconds later when she asked “Freddy” why he hadn’t visited his grandma sooner.

Garrison, desperate for help, smiled and hugged his newfound grandma. He then covertly directed the conversation to the infamous School of Fear. Dr. Franklin’s demeanor altered as she vaguely explained the mysterious institution. Garrison absorbed the information and attempted to ask questions, but Dr. Franklin refused to answer any of them. She did, however, agree to write “Freddy” — who Mrs. Feldman explained preferred to go by his middle name, Garrison — a letter of recommendation.

Letter in hand, the family was walking toward the front door when Dr. Franklin stopped them.

“Wait!” the old woman shouted as she opened the end table’s drawer.

She held up a small and withered photograph. The Feldmans approached slowly, unsure what to expect. First Mr. Feldman, then Mrs. Feldman, and finally Garrison gasped at the sight of a man’s distorted face. Knobs of scaly flesh covered his cruel face. Almost worse than his skin were his eyes; they weren’t the typical bloodcurdling black, but a much more disconcerting banana yellow.

“Once you send that letter, he’ll be watching you … every-where you go, everything you buy, anyone you call, he’ll know; he knows everything,” Dr. Franklin said ominously.

“Who?” Garrison asked quietly.

“Munchauser.”