RETURN TO CAPE FEAR

Sam Bowman's alpha male rite of passage came late into his middle age and so, after everything that went down at Cape Fear that psychotic, blood-soaked summer protecting his wife and teenage daughter, he took a boating trip alone every year since to return to the scene where Max Cady was finally vanquished from their lives deep beneath the surface of the blackwater river in his eternal watery grave.

As much as Sam tried to no longer keep any secrets from, Leigh his wife, after all the affairs and other deceptions throughout their decades of marriage, he kept this yearly pilgrimage as one. He wasn't sure she would understand what could be easily misconstrued as an unhealthy obsession, a meditation on the near supernatual evil that almost destroyed their lives all those many years ago.

Rather than sell the houseboat where their final confrontation with Cady took place, Sam decided to lease it throughout the year via 'Lazy Jack's', a local boat rental service, with the exception of those few days every late July where he would use it himself.  

"You headed back up Cape Fear Mr Bowman?" Casey, one of the maintenance guys at 'Lazy Jack's' asked him upon arrival.

"You know me, Casey. I'm a creature of habit."

"That's okay Mr Bowman. Just so long as they're not bad habits."

Sam detected just enough whiff of an implication in what Casey was saying to make no further attempt at conversing with him. He already felt guilty enough about returning like this every year without telling Leigh and Danielle; he certainly didn't need some backwater slob to prick his conscience.

"Prick!' he muttered under his breath as he could feel Casey's eyes boring through his back like two laser beams.

After confirming with the office that he was taking his boat up the river, Sam left for the port and stepped aboard 'Moana', reacquainting himself with the vessel like an old faithful friend.

For Sam there was nothing quite like the tranquility before setting off on a voyage, that moment of stillness where you'd check over the boat and just enjoy being off land for the first time in awhile, bobbing ever so gently on the water's surface whilst being moored.

Shafts of sunlight streamed down the companionway hatch into the cabin below; there was a particular smell that Sam loved of oiled wood and musty paperbacks being warmed by the sun. He would sell it as a cologne if he could. What would it be called, he wondered to himself?

Boat De Cologne, Nostrilomo.

He laughed at his own joke, a sure fire sign he was getting old now.

Cape Fear?

Suddenly just saying those two words in his mind made him go cold all throughout his body. Maybe that's why he felt on edge when Casey mentioned it back at the boat yard.

Distracting himself from dark thoughts, Sam leafed through the pulpy novels that he'd left out for those renting the boat, a combination of old airport novels and classic old adventure stories, some of which he'd taken from his Aunt Maggie's old holiday cottage in Tybee Island when he used to stay there in the summer. Some of the happiest days of his teenage years were returning from a day at the beach and settling down on the couch after showering all the sand from his body and reading an immersive story before finally falling into a blissful sleep while he could hear the adults chattering away outside in the garden over their al fresco dinner.

He remembered loving those old classic DeMaurier books, especially 'Jamiaca Inn' and 'Rebecca' as well as those more trashy nautical spy novels such as 'Sea No Evil', 'Deep Dive Surveillance', and "The Spy Beneath The Waves'. Best of all though, were the more lurid and erotic murder mysteries that kept him up all night processing all the ramifictions of the fictional crimes carried out in them: 'Drowned In Blood', 'The House At Black Lake' and 'The River Of Secrets'.

With some time and distance between him and the events of that awful summer, he now thought his experience at Cape Fear could just as easily been the plot of one of these trashy books where he was the hero of the story.

Perhaps there was some part of him that liked the danger of that crimson summer as if it recalled a desire from when he was young to live in his own pulp novel or story.

His therapist would know but after they started fucking that last time in her office, he knew he couldn't go back to her in a professional capacity anymore. That was always the way with Sam - screwing someone who could genuinely help him and then burning that bridge so he sabotaged any real chance at repairing life-long wounds deep within his own psyche.

One observation that Dr Allen had provocatively pointed out in one of their last sessions together was that Max Cady represented Sam's own unrepressed male fantasy of activating his primal instincts without any concern for others. It was his own initial irritation at the point Dr Allen made that unleashed a brutally honest exchange between them which ultimately led to them having sex, much to both their instant regret - hers professionally, his personally.

Still, he couldn't forget the bitch had suggested that Cady was some part of who he was deep down as if he might have even invented him out of his own subconscious, a leviathan lurking at the bottom of his imagination. No. He wasn't the villain here. Yes, he done stupid, immoral things at times but never criminal.

The sun had retreated behind some clouds now and Sam was starting to feel restless again. As he looked across the port, it disturbed him how quickly the weather had now changed. Looking toward the horizon he could see a cluster of menacing looking clouds emerging out of the blue sky like sudden giant oil spills.

It was time for him to embark on his mini-voyage once again.

Back to Cape Fear.