by John Inman
“Probably a squirrel,” Derek answered, and the moment he spoke, the chittering stopped.
When Derek tensed beside him, Jamie jumped. “What?”
“Look there,” Derek said, maddeningly calm. He pointed to a window on the far side of the old garage. The window was half-covered with the remnants of a torn shower curtain, brittle and faded with age. Beyond the curtain, Jamie saw the trees in the distance, and closer in, an old steel barrel, blackened and eaten away with rust at the top.
“They burned their trash!” Derek said. “Let’s check it out.”
Not quite absorbing the gist of what Derek was getting at, Jamie relinquished his lead yet again, giving Derek the helm. Derek claimed it by tugging at his hand and pulling him back out onto the muddy yard through the filthy storm door.
Taking broad strides on his long legs, Derek led him around the corner of the dilapidated garage. There, between the garage and the edge of the forest perhaps fifty yards away, was a burned circle of ground with the rusty, charcoal-encrusted metal drum standing upright in the middle of it. The ground was littered with partially scorched pieces of junk and wood. Tatters of half-burned paper, drenched from the previous storms, lay sodden on the ground. The stench of melted plastic and watery ashes lay heavy on the air. Jamie scrunched up his nose at the reek.
“Isn’t burning your trash illegal?” he asked.
Derek snorted back a laugh. “Anywhere else, maybe. Out here in the boondocks, it’s probably standard practice. And they were old. Let’s cut them a little slack, shall we?”
“You mean the old couple in the basement?” Jamie asked.
“Yes,” Derek said, his eyes growing pensive, as if the thought of them lying down there among the cobwebs and the coal dust still saddened him. “The old couple in the basement.”
He stepped forward, and Jamie stayed close to his side. As one, they peeked over the rim of the barrel and peered inside.
Jamie barked out a laugh.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” he cried, slapping Derek on the back hard enough to rattle his teeth. “Are you the bomb, or what?”
OLIVER BANYON, Tommy Stevens, and Cleeta-Gayle Jones all looked up when they strode into the dining room. Before they could speak, Derek walked up and dropped three cell phones on the dining room table. The cell phones were melted into twisted clumps of metal and plastic. Smeared with mud and ash, they lay like dead things on the pristine tablecloth. Banyon leaned in close. With a shaky hand, he tapped one particular blob of plastic with the tip of his butter knife. “I think that one’s mine,” he said, his eyes round and sad.
“And the other two are ours,” Derek said. “Jamie’s and mine.”
Banyon found his way to his feet then, his napkin forgotten, still tucked in the vee of his shirt front. “What does this mean?” he asked.
“It means we’re in deep doo-doo, but then we knew that already,” Jamie answered. “And while we’re on the subject,” he added, “here’s another piece of the puzzle.” He tossed a charred piece of wood onto the table next to the ruined phones. The wood was perhaps eight inches long, and the part that was not burned to a crisp was ornately carved.
“What’s that?” Tommy asked, checking out the charred wood.
“It’s part of a picture frame,” Derek said, watching Tommy closely. Watching them all closely, in fact. Well aware that one of the three at the table must have had something to do with this. “It’s probably part of one of the picture frames that were taken from the walls to be destroyed. The flames didn’t quite do their job on this one. If you want to go out back and sift through the ashes, you might find a few more fragments, but I doubt if they’ll tell us anything more than what we’ve got already.”
“Did you find any pieces of the pictures themselves?” Tommy asked, his young face bright with hope. “Anything that could lead us to the killer?”
Derek shook his head, still staring down at the charred clues. “No.”
Lifting his eyes, he scanned the faces in front of him. Cleeta-Gayle, as always, looked terrified. Tommy seemed curious. Banyon appeared angry. Jamie alone seemed sad. When Derek’s gaze touched him, he turned his forest-green eyes right back at him. They were so beautiful and so hurt, Derek’s breath almost caught in his throat.
“We should eat,” Derek softly said, and Jamie nodded. With the thought of food, some of Jamie’s inner turmoil seemed to slip away. Jamie lifted his eyes and stared in turn at every face around the table. His usually lush lips were now a thin slit carved across his face. Suddenly his angst appeared to be doing battle with pure anger.
“Which one of you is doing this?” he asked, his voice taut, his hands clenched at his side.
All eyes glared back at him as if offended by the question. All eyes but Derek’s. He couldn’t bear to see such anger suddenly spilling from the man he loved. Rather than witness it, he stared down at his own hands, only realizing at that moment how dirty and smudged with soot they were from digging through the burned trash.
Without looking up into Jamie’s face, he eased his hand along the table and gently grasped Jamie’s hand. Only then did he raise his eyes, and as he watched, the anger and distrust on Jamie’s face appeared to melt away, replaced by a feeble smile as Jamie squeezed his fingers.
Silently, Jamie mouthed the words “Thank you.” And at that precise moment, the peace and the calm of the morning exploded.
An almost physical chill spilled through the air. An ugly darkness claimed the sky. The house dimmed. With the roar of an avalanche, a great wash of rain peppered the grounds outside and slapped the roof above their heads. A whipcrack of lightning sizzled through the house, followed by an immediate crash of thunder that jarred the knickknacks on the mantle. One statue fell and crashed onto the brick apron below. Shards of porcelain sprinkled the fire. In the wake of the thunder came a sudden pall of unearthly silence that only comes with the loss of electricity.
All heads turned to the window looking out onto the yard in front. A spray of sparks showered down through the rain, and a moment later a horrendous explosion jarred the house, sending more trinkets crashing onto the floor. The floor shifted beneath Derek’s feet, and in the same second of time, Jamie swept to his side and clutched at his arm, holding on for dear life.
An awful creaking sound set Derek’s teeth on edge. And just as he was about to ask what on earth that sound could be, the storm answered his question for him.
The house heaved sideways as the light pole outside split like kindling and the entire length of it crashed down onto the porch roof, sending timber and shingles scattering across the yard. The window they were staring through exploded inward. Wind and rain and razor-sharp wedges of glass swept into the room. Burning embers blew up from the grate, scattering flecks of fire across the floor. Everyone wheeled away, running toward the back of the room to escape the encroaching storm.
They came to rest along the back wall—Jamie in Derek’s arms. Tommy in Banyon’s. The only one alone, Cleeta-Gayle clung to the doorframe leading out to the old servants’ quarters. The wind swept through the house with such wanton strength that she had to clutch her skirt to keep herself covered. From her lips emitted a continuous wail of heart-wrenching terror. Her eyes were the eyes of a creature. Hunted. Facing death. Helpless to flee but afraid to stand its ground.
Still clutching Jamie to his side, Derek rushed toward her, and the two of them, Jamie and Derek both, wrapped her safely in their arms.
As one, they stared through the gaping maw of the shattered window, while outside, the storm continued to batter the house.
Derek alone lifted his eyes to the powerless light fixtures overhead. Darkness would be here soon, he knew. Without electricity, what the hell would happen when the sun went down?
Chapter Eleven
“I’VE FOUND more candles,” Jamie declared, dumping them on the dining room table. “At least we won’t be totally in the dark when night comes.”
He stood perfectly still, head coc
ked to the side, listening as if reaffirming the fact that the power was still out. It was, of course. With the light pole splintered across the front porch and all the damage the storm had wreaked on the house, there was no way it could not be.
“Don’t panic,” Derek said. “We’ll have the fireplaces too. They will afford some light if we keep the fires burning.” He turned to the broken window where Tommy and Banyon were nailing planks across the opening to keep out the elements. They were both soaked by the rain still pelting in, driven by that ceaseless wind that was a major component of this latest storm, which had descended on them with a vengeance.
Outside, the storm still howled like a wounded, furious beast. There seemed to be no end to it. The trees beyond the perimeter of the yard were being thrashed to within an inch of their lives. Branches stripped away and hurled through the air landed now and then against the side of the house with a horrendous crash. Only minutes before, somewhere over their heads, in the attic perhaps, they had heard another window shatter, but none of them had the heart to check it out. Their hands were already full resecuring the windows on the ground floor.
Earlier, as a group, they had surveyed the damage done to the front porch. The light pole that fell had a large metal transformer attached to the top of it, which landed on the house like the head of a club. It had not only taken out the electricity, it had taken out the front porch as well. Little remained of it now but kindling and shingles, with that awful great light pole speared through the middle of it. Even the porch floorboards had been crushed. They could still leave through the front door if they wished, but they would have to be careful doing so. The floor was littered with sharp spears of wood and vicious long nails, ancient and rusty, that tore up into the light as if gleefully waiting for someone to come along and step on them, driving them deep into tender flesh.
Jamie and the others had quickly ducked back inside to escape the storm’s wrath.
Cleeta-Gayle stood in front of the fireplace now, staring down into the flames. The scattered embers had been extinguished earlier and a safer fire relit on the grate. She was hugging it for the warmth it offered, for with the latest storm had come a vicious cold that still whipped through the broken window.
“Can’t you hurry?” she called out to Banyon and Tommy. Patiently, Banyon told her they were working as fast as they could, while Tommy muttered something a little less charitable.
Banyon nailed the last plank across the shattered window and stepped back, drenched in rainwater, wiping it from his eyes. It puddled at his feet. Tommy stepped back too, shaking himself off like a wet dog. Derek noticed he had rather an amused expression on his face, but his eyes were cold. And they were aimed directly at the only woman in the room.
“Thanks for all your assistance,” he said, running his filthy hands through his wet hair to get it out of his eyes. “I can’t tell you how much your constant nagging and bitching helped.”
Banyon laid a calming hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “Don’t be mean,” he said quietly, turning his back to the group and facing Tommy alone. “We’re all nervous and frightened. Don’t make it worse than it is.”
Tommy glared down at the hammer in his hand, then with a sigh and a god-awful clatter, he tossed it in the corner. “Sorry,” he mumbled to no one in particular.
Banyon smiled and reached out to brush a dribble of water from Tommy’s cheek. In that moment, Jamie thought he saw what it was that attracted Banyon to the boy. Aside from the fact that he was gorgeous. In that snippet of time, there was almost a fatherly light in Banyon’s benign expression as he gazed on the boy. Jamie wondered how quickly that fatherly gaze could turn into something else when they were alone and naked in their four-poster bed upstairs.
Jamie turned away to give them some privacy. Cleeta-Gayle, too, turned back to the flames at her feet. Derek sat at the dining room table, his feet propped up on a second chair. He had removed his wet shoes and socks, and his bare feet were pointed toward the fire. His eyes, however, were on the pile of charred cell phones on the table in front of him.
Jamie moved up behind him. Massaging his shoulders, he looked down as Derek tilted his head back and gazed up into his eyes.
“Listen to that,” Derek said on a tremulous breath.
In unison, the two turned toward the boarded-up window, where outside the storm was pounding the house like a wild animal trying to get in.
“It can’t last forever,” Jamie said.
“Let’s hope not. I don’t know how much longer the house can stand up against it.”
They fell silent as Oliver Banyon and Tommy Stevens slipped past, shoulder to shoulder, whispering and nodding embarrassed excuses to the others in the room. Jamie heard a conspiratorial laugh as they climbed the staircase out in the hall, obviously headed back to their room.
“I think I know what they’re gonna do,” Jamie smirked. But Derek wasn’t listening. He was studying the charred and mangled cell phones again.
“Whoever is doing this,” Derek said, his voice low, as if sharing his thoughts with Jamie alone, “they had it all planned out. Whatever they have against us, it must be important enough to make the killer seriously crazy.” Derek twisted his head around to stare up at Jamie again. “What the hell did we do to warrant such hatred? Who did we hurt? Who did we make mad? Who do we both know who is insane enough to be behind all this?”
Jamie stepped around and knelt by the side of the chair. He rested his chin on Derek’s knee. Absentmindedly stroking Derek’s bare toes, he stared at the phones on the table. Outside, the storm had lessened a bit, but Jamie didn’t get his hopes up about that. It was only a momentary lull. The storm had quieted now and then before, but it always cranked up its fury again when they least expected it.
He was beginning to think the storm would be with them forever. All the way to the end of whatever fate they were being led toward.
“It wasn’t part of the plan,” Jamie said, as if realizing the truth for the first time. “The storm. It couldn’t have been part of the plan. Neither could the collapse of the bridge. I suppose that might have been planned, although for the life of me I’m not sure how. No.” Jamie burrowed his chin into Derek’s leg, excited now by his own ponderings. “Disabling the cars would have been enough to keep us here. The bridge, the storm, stabbing the front porch with the light pole, that’s all gravy for the killer. He’s probably loving every minute of the fucking drama.”
“But who is it?” Derek whispered, his voice so low now that even Jamie could barely hear it.
They both turned simultaneously to study Cleeta-Gayle in front of the fire. Her hair was a mess, as usual. Her clothes were rumpled and damp. She wore no stockings under her dress, and her legs looked veined and anemic, as if they never saw the sun.
“It can’t be her,” Derek said, again his voice as soft as a breath of air. “She hasn’t got the strength to do all this. And look at her. She’s terrified.”
Jamie slipped his fingers under the cuff of Derek’s slacks to caress the brush of hair above his bare ankle. Even such an innocent touch caused his cock to stir. “It’s either Banyon or Tommy,” he said, his chin digging into Derek’s knee again. “One of them has to be the killer.”
“How do you suggest we prove that?” Derek asked, smiling now at Jamie staring up at him. He was clearly enjoying Jamie’s fingers on his leg, and Jamie smiled back to let him know he knew.
Despite the battering of the storm, Jamie felt a weary peace settle down between them. He glanced at his wristwatch. A lot of the day had slipped past already. The storm, repairing the window, examining the shattered front porch, exploring the grounds—it had all taken time. Before long, night would fall.
And since they no longer had electricity, it would be the first night they would all share the house in darkness.
As before, Derek proved their thoughts were often mutual. “We’ll have to lock ourselves in our rooms tonight,” Derek said. “All of us. We can’t be roaming around in the dark.
It’s too dangerous.”
“I’ll be safe as long as I’m with you,” Jamie said. “I always feel safe when I’m with you. Even before we got trapped here with a crazyass murderer, I knew I was always safe as long as you were around.”
Derek slid a fingertip across Jamie’s mouth as if drawn to the texture of his lips. The light in his eyes was as soft as cotton. “You’re right. You will be safe. I won’t let anything happen to you. We need to hunker down, survive the storm, avoid the madman trying to kill us, and either find a way to contact the police or simply sit back and wait for them to contact us. Someone is bound to start worrying about the old couple who lived here. It’s just a matter of time. My only job in the meantime is to keep you safe.”
Jamie kissed the fingertip at his mouth while continuing to run his own fingers through the hair on Derek’s shin.
“You really love me,” he said softly.
At that, Derek finally smiled. “Yes, dipshit. I really love you.”
They were both surprised when Cleeta-Gayle came up quietly behind them. She cleared her throat awkwardly, as if apologizing for interrupting.
Stubbornly, Jamie refused to remove his hand from beneath the cuff of Derek’s trousers. He merely continued to kneel there, waiting for her to speak.
Derek had tilted his head back to look at her. His face was kind. “Yes?” he asked.
She laid a hand to Derek’s shoulder, then just as quickly removed it, as if thinking she might have gone too far. “I’m going to go into the kitchen and try to prepare us all something to eat. You must be hungry. I know I am. When I get the food together, we can call the others.” She cast an embarrassed glance toward the ceiling, as if knowing full well what Banyon and Tommy were doing upstairs. “And then we can all have dinner together. We should probably stay in the same room as much as we can from here on out, at least during the day,” she finished quickly, taking a step back, giving them their space.