We rocked together, refusing to part. Each of his soft moans, I swallowed. The arcadian gentility of our love broke. Everywhere he touched seemed to burn. Heat spread through me. All I needed - the smoothness of his skin when I pushed up his shirt, shoving the fabric to gather in his armpits - exposing the lithe slimness of his stomach and chest. The delicate trail of hair which disappeared beneath the waist of his pants. Chasing his breath with my fingers. Buttons flying. Hands on my shoulders. Nails dug into my skin.
"James," he whispered, gasping for breath between my kisses.
"I got them for you," I confessed. "To free you from limbo. Get you out of Crables - bring you home with me."
"Limbo?"
Nuzzling into his neck - down from his jaw to his shoulder when he shifted away from my desperate mouth, I groaned. "They’re tearing down the manor in the spring. If we miss this year, there won’t be another."
All heat left me though my body protested the sudden shift in mood. Pressed so tightly to him, how could I not be torn between want and terror? This could be the last time I touched him - kissed him - how could I not be horrified yet desperate to touch him all the more?
"What are you talking about?" Gray asked, taking my face in his hands. His eyes scanned me, and when he frowned, I wondered what he saw. "Rory told you - he told you that you needed these tattoos to save me?"
When I nodded, a soft choked sound slipped from between his lips. I couldn’t bear the pity brewing in his eyes. "I’d do whatever it takes to save you."
"Oh, James…"
His lips brushed against my cheek as he pulled me down, holding me close as if to rock a fretful child. I allowed the touch for a moment, but the longer the silence remained between us, the more awake I grew, feeling a tug in my gut to fall asleep in his arms and wake back up in my bed. This could be the last time I ever saw him. He needed to know I had tried. That I would try until the life left my body.
When I shifted back, he let me go. "Gray - you died - do you remember?" Shaking his head, he squirmed, moving up the bed and away from me. "In the widow’s watch...they tried to kill you. Lit the room on fire, but the Governess saved you. She pulled you into some kind of limbo. Every year, you relive it, but with these -" I showed off the tattoos across my body then my bare arm. "Once I get the other arm done tomorrow, I can pull you through. Bring you back to life...with me."
"James -you have to hear yourself. You sound…" he closed his eyes, shaking his head.
"You know this place isn’t right. Time skips and jumps. The ghosts! You have to remember the ghosts," I cried.
All the while, he shook his head and whispered, "No."
"Gray isn’t even your real name!"
His eyes - wide and bloodshot - focused on me once more. "No. Stop it, James. This isn’t funny."
"I’m not trying to be funny. I need you to know! If I fail...I need you to know that -"
Covering my mouth with his hands, Gray swallowed. His pale throat almost glistened in the room’s dim light. "James, I know Rory is persuasive, but he’s an addict. No - no don’t argue, James. He’s a bad influence. He lied to you. I’m fine. I don’t need to be saved. I wanted to come here. I asked to be admitted to Crables. My father wanted to pretend nothing was wrong, but I wanted to get better - and I am getting better," he insisted. Calm and sure, he spoke, "You’ve helped me so much, and I don’t care what Rory told you - but you didn’t need to do this."
"What year is it?" I demanded, tearing his hands from my lips.
"What does that matter?"
Holding onto his delicate wrists, I tried to summon some sort of courage. Only desperation showed up. "The Curse of the Great Bambino broke - you think that might be important."
"And it will be when it happens," he retorted.
Pressing a kiss to his palm, I tried once more. "You used to call me a boarder -"
"Denial. I’m still recovering."
"It’s -" but his fingers pressed to my lips once more.
Softly, he shushed me. "You were doing so well lately."
This was impossible. I hadn’t been doing well. If the whole mess of my Harvard life - of the future for him and the present for me - if that existed only as a mad hallucination, I had been spending far longer there than in Crables. Tattooing as a patient also wouldn’t have been possible. He couldn’t see that. Like he said - this was all denial. Denial he had died. Denial - but he had to fight - had to be just as ready for the shock of another time when I pulled him out.
"Your real name is Theodore Thompson. You were a renowned medium - people came from all around the world to have you connect them with their dead loved ones. Your father died in 1948 - six years after you supposedly burned in the -"
"Shut up!" he screamed, pulling his wrists from my hold. His hands covered his ears as he cried. How cruel. Even as horrified as I made him - I still wanted to kiss him. To silence his terror with my mouth like some beast. He deserved more from me. "My father’s alive. It’s not - it’s only 1942. I’m alive. Oh god, not again."
"Again…"
All of my confidence vanished with that one word. He seemed smaller. More delicate for the horror on his face. I wanted to scoop him into my arms. Wrap him up and promise to make all his fears go away, but I had scared him. I couldn’t lie to him. Couldn’t pretend I was being less than truthful - and maybe he should have been scared.
The door flew open. Ose stood with a white coat on his shoulders. "Nurse - escort Mr. Thompson back to his room."
An invisible force entered the room. One-two. One-two. The clicking of heels as Gray listed to the side, half-carried and half-dragged toward the door.
"Calm down, James," Dr. Ose urged, grabbing my upper arm and stepping between Gray and me. "Nurse Florence is only taking Theodore back to his room to calm down. You want him to feel safe, don’t you?"
"Stop lying!" I raged, struggling, but my muscles protested. Hunger burned in my veins. Knuckles against wood. My dorm room door swung open - hadn’t I locked it? Voices like I was under water. Someone - who was that? Fingers against my pulse - that wasn’t Gray. That wasn’t Ose.
The dead doctor held me. "Just focus on breathing, James. You’ll get through this. We’ve done this before. Deep breaths - can you do that for me?"
Rolled onto a stretcher - screaming, crying - I had to wake up. Something went wrong. Caught between two worlds. Useless in both. They were taking Gray away from me. They were taking me away - I couldn’t. I had to -
"Stop!" I demanded, an echo of Gray’s earlier pleas. "I’m fine. Leave me -"
An ambulance. Sirens. Oh god - oh god - this had to be a nightmare. They couldn’t keep me. Wouldn’t I? Why did they come? What if they made me eat? I had to wake up. Had to stop before they put in an IV or feeding tube - would they know I hadn’t eaten? They couldn’t - couldn’t they? Just an IV - but would that count?
"No," I groaned as the last vestiges of energy abandoned me.
Dr. Ose smiled - his eyes - pools of oil - swirled as he leaned over me, chasing me as I fell awake - caught between the two. "Shush now, James. It’s almost over. Just breath. In. Out."
Chapter Thirty
Waking up screaming, I scared the EMT beside me and myself. He pressed a hand to my chest, calming himself down as he checked my vitals over as if I were some kind of junky awaking from a bad trip.
"No IV!" I demanded.
"Do - " he tried to talk, but I wasn’t about to let him roll right over me.
"My name is James Madison - freshman Harvard psych. I stayed here for the break because I hate my family, but I got a little too excited with all the free time, so I crashed hard. I’m not on drugs," I informed him, struggling to sit up, but they had me strapped down. "I might’ve had some alcohol at a party, but I’m fine. I don’t know who called you, but - "
"Some nice tattoos you’ve got, James."
All the blood drained from my face, and a burgeoning sickness brewed in my stomach. Zeke wouldn’t have called, and the onl
y one that knew besides him was Tom. Tom couldn’t have done this to me. "Shit, did Zeke call? I have an appointment today! Did I sleep through it? He’s such a worrier."
Shaking his head, the EMT shrugged. "We got a call from your roommate. Said you were having some dark thoughts…"
No way. Tom wouldn’t have done this to me. If I missed a few of his calls or sent them to the reject abyss, it shouldn’t have made him call 9-1-1 on me. I didn’t have to answer to him. All my talk about him being a great roommate - completely proven wrong. He had wrecked me. I couldn’t eat, but I couldn’t say that until asked, or they might think I had an eating disorder. Was there a holiday which I could use? Ramadan? Shit, I didn’t know enough about that to work. Did Jehovah’s Witnesses also refuse anything intravenous? Or was that just blood? Come on, James - think!
"No dark thoughts here. I’m fine - great even. Have an appointment for the future - today, I guess, but tattoo appointment works as prior planning, and I’m going to this vigil with classmates," I lied, grasping the bits I could to try to find a way to escape this mess. They couldn’t keep me under surveillance. Basics - prove I had future plans, no signs of depression but not too much overenthusiasm. Answer the questions. Keep it concise. I could do this. "I’ve pulled a couple too many all-nighters on a couple online games."
"Oh, what game?"
Crap - what was the online game Maddix talked about? "Halo."
"Halo, huh? I thought they shut down the online release…" the EMT studied me, waiting for my reaction on being called out.
"Fan-mod."
Nodding, he leaned forward. "I know Zeke. He’s a nice dude. He won’t give you trouble about rescheduling your appointment if you end up missing it."
"I have to be there. He was coming in just for me. It would be a dick move to miss it," I told him.
I just needed to stay calm. The more I panicked, the harder it would be to get out of this. And if the room stopped spinning, that would have been nice too. I could handle it. Sure, Gray didn’t believe me, and he might go catatonic when he realized he wasn’t dead, but I would have brought him back, so that was fine. I could handle this. They couldn’t keep me here.
It didn’t help my case that I blacked out again, waking up in a room that sure as heck wasn’t an Emergency Room. No curtains. Who did they think I was? I couldn’t afford a private room. Unless my scholarship included some pretty amazing healthcare. Did it?
The door opened, and an older man in a white coat and glasses walked in. He had that little string which went around his neck in case his glasses fell off his nose, they would just hang about his chest. He glanced up at me over his lenses.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Madison. I’m Dr. Ben Kedves. Do you know where you are?"
Inhaling, I glanced up at the bags hanging and the line connecting them into my arm. Maybe an I.V. wouldn’t count. I wasn’t about to panic in front of a psychiatrist. I could still get out of this. Just needed to stay calm. Talk clearly.
"Last guy I talked to was an E.M.T., so I’m guessing Boston General."
The man nodded. "Your friend, Tom, was very worried about you."
Did they always give up the ghost? It felt off. Weren’t we supposed to keep some confidence? Or maybe I hadn’t gotten to the lesson yet where humanization through familiar name-dropping happened.
With a sigh, I shrugged. "Tom’s kind of a worrier. Normally, I’d appreciate it a bit more, but if it’s afternoon, odds are he made me miss a tattoo appointment that was being done as a favor."
"Yes, they mentioned you were concerned the artist - a man named Zeke? - would be upset," the doctor informed me, slowly drawing closer to the bed as if feeling out how close he could get without startling me.
"His kid just started college, and he was willing to help me get my tats done before the New Year. Zeke understood how important this was to me. See - I come from a small town, and there are parts of me that I couldn’t really address while I was there, so coming here allowed me a safe environment to become the person I wanted to be." There. That had to be close enough to the truth to work. He had to understand. I didn’t have to say it yet, right? I could. I could do it. If pushed, I could come out to this guy. He was a psychiatrist. Probably saw weirder coming out stories, right? If I looked like a guy getting a handle on his sexuality rather than someone killing themselves for discovering it...shit, such a thin wire. I could do this. I had to do this. "Tom has - he’s not exactly someone I can confide in, so this wasn’t something I wanted to discuss with him until I was ready."
More nodding. "Sure. It can be tough to talk about things to our closest friends before we’re ready." He gestured to the chair beside my bed. "Do you mind if I sit down?"
"Whatever will get me out of here fastest. Even if I can’t get the tattoo finished today, I’d like to at least apologize for wasting Zeke’s time," I replied.
He hummed but sat down. "It’s your first semester at college. That’s a big change for a lot of people."
"Took some getting used to - same with Boston. Had a bit of trouble sleeping earlier in the semester," better to admit it now than to deal with Tom having said something and me looking like I was keeping information from him, "I got myself in order for the end of the semester. A’s across the board." Somehow. Knowing that would probably piss Chad off. Maybe I should go to the vigil to tell him.
Crossing one leg over the other, Dr. Kedves furrowed his brow. "James, when was the last time you ate anything?"
"Breakfast yesterday?" I lied, dropping my head in feigned guilt. "I got really into this game online…"
"Yes, Pete - one of the gentlemen who brought you in - mentioned it. Halo? My nephews are into it. I wasn’t aware there was an online version available…"
Crap. Either I folded and opened myself up to the possibility of another failed lie, or I hedged my bets and presented as the sheltered midwestern Christian freshman who just discovered porn and refused to own up to it. Gray was kinda like porn. I mean, he got me hot and bothered, and I wanted to push him down and - there we go.
Blushing - thank you, Gray, I shifted. "Yeah - some fans made it."
Another over the glasses look - pensive. Good, look at me. See a horny college student newly awakening to his sexuality - let me go. I could handle this. Zeke understood. We’d reschedule, I’d be there still twenty-four hours ahead of the window when Gray might relive his burning. Sure, the tattoos on my left arm would be pretty fresh, but I could do this. We could get through this, and then Gray would be here, and I could talk about things, because I’d have to because Gray would be here, and maybe Gray would have 1940s biases. Maybe he wouldn’t want anyone to know, and I’d be an absolute mess because I’d question whether he really wanted to be with me or had some sort of savior complex -
No. Those thoughts were making my vitals wonky. Think horny thoughts. Kissing Gray before things went south. The way he felt in my arms. Pressing against him and feeling the hard line of his interest, rocking against my own erection. I just wanted to feel his legs wrapped around my waist - pump into that round ass of his. For a guy that delicate, he filled my hands just right, and his lips made me drunk. That was the furthest we had gone, and it had been amazing. We would be amazing together.
"I know you’ve got a lot going on, but with everyone gone for the holidays, this might be the best time. No disruptions to your academic schedule." No - no - no. "It’s only a seventy-two hour hold, so we’ll have you for a bit of a long weekend. Get some good food in you. I know what they say about hospital food, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised - "
"I’m really fine." My heart spiked, and there was nothing I could do to stop the way it raced or how his eyes shifted to the monitor. I had to find a way to get out of this. Had to get the runes completed - get to Gray -
"Tell him to get my brother," Rory whispered, hovering at my side. "He’s got hospital privileges, doesn’t he? Tell them he knows you, and he’ll see that you’re fine."
I wanted to ask h
ow he got back, but talking to myself wouldn’t exactly give me the best chance of getting out. "Please, call in Professor Haggard. He’s one of my professors. He knows me."
Dr. Kedves frowned, but then - by some miracle, he nodded. "I can see if Dr. Haggard is free to come in early. He’s in tomorrow evening, so you might have to wait until then. Can you do that?"
Morning. I could do morning. Get cleared in the morning - tattoo in the afternoon - straight to Crables. "I prefer sleeping in my own bed, but if tomorrow’s the best I can do…"
A small smile rose to his calm features. "I’ll reach out and see what I can do. Why don’t you get some sleep?"
And with that, he left me alone with only a ghost as company. Shifting to sit in the newly vacated seat, Rory chewed at the skin about his thumb nail, twitching his feet as he crossed first one leg over the other and back and forth, switching which leg balanced on the other. His whole itchy demeanor screamed withdrawal, but I couldn’t ask him about that. Not know. I had to concentrate. Keep my focus - keep Rory here and Carreau out. This was a love story, wasn’t it? They always had a race to the end. I just had to stay focused.
"Fucking go to sleep, kid," Rory commanded. "I’ll wake you when something important happens."
And the dark abyss of dreamlessness stole me away.
Chapter Thirty-One
Polished, gleaming dark woods spread through Crables Manor. High ceilings and a roaring fireplace greeted me, but the flames shifted, more like shadows, consuming the light around them, black holes with tongues.
Heels clicked. No longer in their slow drumming pattern. They rushed around above me. Feet thundered. Bodies rolled; blood spilt. Rory's screams echoed in the unfurnished hallows of Crables Manor as I stood at its threshold - for the first time in my months neither inside the beast nor awake.
All That We Say or Seem Page 16