The man’s arm squeezed down hard against Oliver, propelling him backward, arms pinwheeling to break his fall, useless. The hard, oil-stained floor rose up to slam against the back of his head, jarring, causing tiny flecks of silver light to dance before his eyes. His teeth dug into his own tongue. He hadn’t realized it until a moment later, when his mouth filled with the coppery warmth of his blood and pain rose up, beastly and undeniable.
The man turned to Ryan, unzipping the mask. His voice emerged, a croak. “Beat it, man! I’m not gonna hurt him. Not unless you stick around.”
And then Ryan lunged.
That was all it took. That one movement of violence and aggression merged with their attacker’s fear and resulted in disaster.
Why hadn’t Oliver done more? Why did something so pivotal have to take only a few seconds? Why hadn’t there been time to think?
The switchblade did not glint in the darkness, gave no warning of its malicious intent. Their attacker plunged it into Ryan’s throat with sureness and rage, stopping the world for just an instant.
And then he was gone…running, running, switchblade still in hand. Later, they would discover the brown stains that trailed behind him, blood dripping from the knife.
And Oliver was alone with Ryan, who said nothing more, who only gasped a time or two and then was dead.
Oliver was surrounded by people: people in high-rises, people in cars rushing by, people coming in and out of bars and discount stores less than a block away on Granville. People everywhere…and not one of them heard him screaming.
Chapter 2
Oliver’s loneliness was like a shadow that never stopped trailing him. Four months had passed. Snow had melted, giving way to gray skies and thunderstorms, which suited Oliver fine. But now spring was at the door, impatient, already making its colorful entrance.
Outside Oliver’s second-story window stood a redbud tree, its impressionist buds of lavender mocking him. The forsythia bush did the same; Oliver couldn’t bear the vibrant yellow when he made a rare emergence from his front door.
So Oliver tried to stay inside. It wasn’t that hard to do. He had no appetite. When he absolutely had to eat, he could usually find crackers in the pantry or a can of soup. He had long ago disconnected the phone. Even the mail no longer got to him…when he remembered to remove it from his mailbox, he simply added it to the white snowdrift of paper inside the front door. He hadn’t logged on to his e-mail in months.
When he looked in the mirror, a sallow man gazed back with listless eyes. After Ryan had died, he had stood in front of the mirror and cut his wavy, whiskey-colored hair close to his scalp, finishing it up with a buzz from their Wahl clippers, nicking his head several times in the process. After all, who was there to look good for now? What did he care?
The rent hadn’t been paid. The calls from his boss and coworkers at the educational publishing house where he had once worked as an editor, had ceased. Soon, Oliver thought, he would find himself evicted. Perhaps he would go and live in the subway, become a crazy who begged for spare change and urinated in corners.
Most days, Oliver did nothing more than sit on the couch in the living room, watching the quality of light as it changed from morning brightness to the lengthening shadows of dusk.
He wondered why he didn’t just kill himself and get it over with. Something held him back…perhaps a sense of unfinished business.
There had to be something more.
This afternoon, the air and light from outside had been even more irritating than usual. In the past, on a day such as this, he and Ryan would have mounted their mountain bikes and headed to the lakefront trails that wound all the way south of downtown. He would ride behind Ryan, “drafting,” caught up in the force of his powerful pedaling, watching his blond curls blow back in the wind, feeling the cool of the air suspended over the blue-green water, and anticipating a time when they would stop, set their bikes on the grass, and lie, side by side, watching other bikers, runners, and bladers speed by.
Today’s sunshine and warmth were cruel. Didn’t they understand how he felt? Couldn’t the children outside—the boys playing Frisbee, the girls with their jump ropes—realize how grating their loud voices were?
The buzzer sounding in the little apartment caused him to cry out. It had been so long since it had made any noise that, for a moment, Oliver wasn’t sure what the noise was, or from where it had come. It sounded again, a sharp metallic bark.
He would not answer it. He didn’t care who it was.
And then he tensed at the sound of the glass-fronted door downstairs slamming.
Oliver stiffened at the first tentative knock.
“Oliver? Honey, are you in there?”
Oliver held his breath. His mother hadn’t been over in at least two weeks. The last time she had insisted on cleaning the place and cooking her son a meal. Oliver didn’t think he could bear his mother’s pained expression as she surveyed the mess of the apartment and the lack of interest her son had in life. He couldn’t stand his mother’s wounded brown eyes, as she went through the apartment, picking up clothes, throwing away junk mail, sorting through the bills, and wiping down sinks and countertops.
The knock came again, louder, a hollow echo. “Oliver, please open up. It’s Mom. Please…I’m worried about you.”
Oliver had just begun to breathe normally again when he heard the jingle of keys. Oh no…
The air rushed out of the room as his mother fitted the key in the lock.
He panicked…a wild animal caught in a trap.
Just as the tumblers clicked, Oliver rushed into the bedroom and scurried under the bed. Safety in the darkness, with Ryan’s Nikes and the dust balls.
Perhaps he would stay under the bed awhile. It was nice there.
Footsteps clicked on hardwood. Sensible, low-heeled pumps. Oliver imagined her: salt-and-pepper hair pulled up, dark skirt, and a light cardigan with pearl buttons.
“Oliver?” The word came out shaky, and Oliver bit his lip.
“Please don’t cry, Mother,” he whispered. “If you cry, I will be forced to slide out from under here, and I like it here. I like it.”
After a while, the door closed, tumblers sounded once more.
Oliver slid out. Day’s brightness watered down at last to a dull orange glow. He sneezed and sat on the bed, looking down at his sweat pants covered with dust balls. He slid them off and lay back.
Ryan’s baseball cap sat on his pillow. Oliver lifted it, fingering the wales in the corduroy, biting his lower lip. He had gone back the next day, numb, a zombie, to the parking garage where Ryan had been taken from him. Oliver didn’t understand why he would want to return. Perhaps to reassure himself that everything had really happened. Perhaps seeing the bright-yellow police-line tape and the chalk outline of his husband’s body would make it real.
Or maybe it was just to find the hat he now caressed. It had blown into a corner, or had been propelled there from the scuffle.
However it had gotten there, Oliver was grateful it had been he who had found it. Grateful it had not been put in some sterile Ziploc bag by a police evidence technician.
Oliver imagined he could still smell Ryan’s hair in the brim of the cap. He held it close, remembering the faint strawberry scent of Ryan’s shampoo.
And then Ryan was there, in his arms once more. And Oliver was kissing him, and he was gazing down. Their eyes locked for an instant before his face found Ryan’s neck and he felt the cool damp of Ryan’s tears.
Oliver clutched Ryan’s back, holding on so tightly he was afraid he might hurt him, but also afraid if he let go he would lose him once more, that he would vanish, like smoke.
Then, as quickly as he had come, Ryan was gone, leaving Oliver holding a dusty navy blue corduroy cap and wondering if anything was real.
Inside the cap lay a single strand of blond hair. Oliver plucked it out, certain it had never been there before.
Chapter 3
The next night Oliv
er lay sleepless. His eyes had long ago grown accustomed to the darkness and the objects in the room; the furniture and discarded clothing had taken on the shapes of gray hulks, almost alive in the shadows.
Sleep eluded him. He dreaded its coming, even though his eyes cried out for it, even though his muscles ached.
What if Ryan came back as he slept? What assurance would he have Ryan might slip into his dreams? Besides, even if he had such an assurance, Oliver wanted more than this ethereal connection.
In spite of his resolve, he found himself drifting. The confines of their bedroom would dissolve, and Oliver would suddenly be searching for footing on slippery outcroppings of granite and limestone, where one misstep would send him plummeting into an abyss so deep and black, the darkness rose up, palpable as stone. One wrong step was all it took for Oliver’ s muscles to retract, hurling him back into wakefulness.
It was during one of these fugues that something else brought him back.
“Oliver.”
A whispered voice.
“Oliver.”
Again, the voice…whispery, dry, and empty as a husk, the end of his name a growl.
Oliver got up on his elbows, searching the silver-gray darkness.
Was it Ryan?
Nails dug into the sheets, clawing. What if it was him? Oliver needed to show his love and desire, not terror.
“Oliver.” The whisper segued into a dry, throaty chuckle.
Oliver flattened himself against the headboard, one quivering hand reaching out to switch on the lamp on the nightstand.
Light broke into the room, shattering the darkness.
Empty.
Perhaps under the bed? Nightmare images assaulted him. The closet door stood open a few inches, enough to give the banished darkness a shelter, enough to cause Oliver to wonder what lurked within.
Ryan’s hat rested on the pillow, and Oliver snatched it up.
He put his feet to the floor, expecting taloned hands, red and sore, to fly out from underneath the bed. The hands would grab his ankles tightly enough to force the blood out, with bright rings of white appearing above monstrous fingers.
And Oliver would be pulled under the bed and farther down, deeper until he could no longer breathe.
Until he vanished.
Oliver squatted. Under the bed, he found nothing more horrifying than clumps of gray dust and pairs of shoes, both his and Ryan’s, continuing to mingle.
He crept to the closet and swung open the door. The darkness disappeared, and he faced rows of hangers holding suit coats, pants, shirts.
Yet what lurked in the back, where the light did not penetrate?
Wasn’t that the shape of something? The shape of something crouched, yet human?
Oliver’s heart stopped; his mouth went dry. With the last of his resolve, he pushed aside the hanging clothes and let in the light.
Ryan hid like a child…stooped, arms gripping himself in an attempt to make himself smaller. He stared at the floor, but when he looked up at Oliver, his eyes had an odd clarity, a paleness that almost made them translucent.
He chuckled. And then, mocking his whisper of earlier, he whispered, “Oliver.”
The room, for an instant, lost substance, whirling. Oliver felt drunk…dizzy and nauseous. He sat down and placed his head in his hands.
When he looked up, Ryan was squatting beside him, naked. Oliver was shocked to see Ryan was aroused.
“Ryan?” He touched his face. It felt oddly cool, and a light stubble covered his chin. Oliver ran his fingertips over it, marveling in its reality.
“You’re really here, aren’t you?”
Ryan’s response was to lift Oliver from the floor and carry him to the bed. He lowered Oliver to the sheets, which were cold and gritty.
Oliver lay back, staring into the eyes, trying to forget that these eyes were paler than Ryan’s. But they were close enough.
Oliver bit the inside of his cheek as Ryan spread himself out on top of him, a blanket of silken cool, conjuring up images of blue-green water. He gripped Ryan’s back as Ryan entered him, unable to stop the sharp cry of pain at the ice of his penis as it rammed into him, insistent in a way Ryan would never have been.
Oliver tried to accustom himself to the pain and the chill, biting his lip and grasping Ryan so tightly his nails dug into his back, drawing blood.
Chapter 4
Morning found Oliver nauseated. The medicine cabinet mirror threw back a wild-eyed ashen wraith.
Oliver gripped the sink, cool porcelain scant comfort to his racing heart and the blood pounding in his ears. Close to the spigot, he splashed cold water on his face, over and over until it ran in rivers down his body, puddling on the floor.
Then he collapsed in the cold water and wept. Bitter salt tears reddened his eyes, made him gasp. He trembled, clutching himself.
Between his thighs and lower he discovered reddened, chapped skin that looked frozen and charred.
Later, in the late afternoon sun, dying rays of wan light cast slants of gray on the hardwood. Outside a purple sky filtered down to pink tinged with gold on the horizon. Budding trees blackened in silhouette.
Oliver pictured Ryan emerging out of the darkness, as if formed from it…strong muscles, broad shoulders, wavy blond hair, and stubbly face. Imagined disappointment reflected in ice blue eyes as his gaze penetrated the darkness, seeking out Oliver.
But it wasn’t Ryan! Ryan was dead.
A rustling in the bedroom, fabric hitting the floor, interrupted.
Oliver stiffened, mouth suddenly dry. Sweat trickled down his sides.
Standing on legs that felt like water, Oliver was unsure which door to head toward.
He took a few steps toward the bedroom and pushed the door, causing it to slide open a little…enough to see Ryan standing there. Half-light revealed his baseball cap, crooked grin below it.
“Oliver?” His voice was querulous, uncertain.
Oliver moved toward him. As he did, the phone rang. Oliver ignored it even as the voice of his mother came through. “Oliver? It’s Mom. Pick up.”
As his mother spoke, Oliver surrendered to Ryan. Ryan’s arms enfolded him—swan wings, protective.
As Oliver closed his eyes, breathing in wood smoke and flame, yet feeling an icy chill from Ryan’s body, he thought, It doesn’t matter.
But it did matter. And as another morning slipped into the apartment, creeping under Oliver’s eyelids with thin, watery light, he knew that today, he must find a way to climb out of this madness, this insanity…this wasn’t Ryan. It couldn’t be. Out there, somewhere, Oliver’s real life was waiting.
His stomach roiled with nausea and hopelessness. Where to turn? A spiritualist? Satanist?
An image rose up, and Oliver recalled something about the night of Ryan’s murder he hadn’t thought of since that time. He remembered a young man, wearing a black leather biker jacket, jeans with ripped out knees, his dingy reddish-brown hair topped with a stocking cap, a scruffy goatee, and a chipped tooth. His own recall amazed Oliver. And even sharper in his memory was the sound of the young man’s voice, deeper, older than his appearance, shouting, “Get close to Lucifer! Lucifer! Lucifer!” His arms were upraised…in what? A gesture of supplication?
He’d been important, hadn’t he? A precursor of things to come. It had been no accident they’d seen him that night. No accident Ryan had been the one who had passed closer to him. Ryan, he now remembered, had met the man’s eyes.
And what eyes! Pale, paler than human. Eyes of a saint, a monster, a devil, an animal.
Eyes just like the Ryan who had come to him in the night.
“Am I going completely insane?” Oliver wondered aloud, then laughed. Gazing about the room, he tried to discern if he was seeing things in a different way.
But the room looked the same: Navaho print rug, with tones of forest green and rust, still partially covered the hardwood, an oak carved mirror still stood on the mantel, reflecting his grinning face.
&n
bsp; Insanity would be such an easy defense.
If only it were true.
Oliver hurried into the bedroom to dress.
Chapter 5
Doors closed and the train rumbled away from Fullerton station. Oliver sat in the front seat of the first car. This way, he could watch as the train descended from the el into the subway tunnel. As the train lumbered forward, the light began to dim above as the el tracks of the Ravenswood line became their rooftop, as they headed underground. Lights lined the subway tunnel, the dark round hole into which he was hurtling.
Over and over, forehead pressed against cold glass, he told herself this was crazy. What assurance did he have that he would even be there?
And if he was, what help could he offer? Would the man be able to tell him just how to “get close to Lucifer”? Is that really what he wanted to know?
“Do you know if this train stops at Grand Avenue?”
Oliver almost cried out as the female voice, tinged with a Southern accent, came from behind. He had never heard anyone sit down.
Oliver turned to see a young woman on the seat behind him. She gave him a tentative smile. Oliver wondered how he must appear to the woman, knowing only too well how his cheeks had sunken, how his eyes had become listless, his hair drab and colorless.
In contrast, the woman was everything Oliver had once been…slightly plump, reddish cheeks, black hair that tumbled in curls out of a yellow knitted cap, deep blue eyes.
“What?”
“Grand and…what is it…” The woman consulted a Post-it note. “State. Does this train stop there?”
“Yes, I think it does.”
“Thank you.”
Oliver wanted to look away but couldn’t. The woman held an infant, a tiny, blue-wrapped bundle. Squirming. Whimpering.
“Would you mind if I nursed him a little?”
Oliver shook his head.
The woman smiled. “Some people, you know, are funny about that.” She unbuttoned her blouse and undid a strap on the left cup of her bra. A flash of white skin, brownish-pink nipple and then the blue bundle covered everything. The woman gazed down at the baby, gently touching its forehead. She smiled.
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