Ghoulish

by Kat Bellamy

  “You don’t know that,” said Jason. “You were alone when the police found you, but you were obviously cared for. The report stated they didn’t think you’d been neglected.”

  Colt’s eyes narrowed. Normally he didn’t mind Jason’s misguided attempts to be helpful, but he was already in a mood, and it was getting unexplainably worse. “You dug up that old police report?”

  Jason’s gaze turned down to the napkin he’d already half-shredded. “It’s just, I have access to the cold cases now because of my internship, and I thought maybe I could find something. Something they missed.”

  Colt set his jaw and let his breath out slow through his mouth. It was the one useful thing he’d taken away from his time in therapy. “I thought I asked you to drop it last time.”

  “You did, but --”

  “There’s no but. This isn’t a debate for you to argue and poke holes in,” Colt interrupted. He cleared his throat when his words came out far harsher than he’d meant them to, but his voice still sounded like gravel. “We go through this every year. I don’t care who my birth parents are or what their excuse was for ditching me, and getting more details from a police report doesn’t change that.”

  “But what if they did have a reason? A reason for leaving you even though they wanted you?” Jason pressed. “What if they didn’t want to lose you? What if they’re still out there somewhere, and they’ve always wondered? I know you wonder about them, too, even if you don’t want to admit it. Some kids are left because their parents—their birthparents—thought it was best for them, not because they weren’t wanted.”

  “I told you. I don’t care,” he said through gritted teeth. “I was left in the fucking woods, Jason.”

  “You do care.” Usually, this was the point where Jason backed off, but Colt could tell from the look in his eyes that wasn’t going to happen. The fire in them was at once infuriating and arousing. “Every year, you get like this. If you didn’t care, it wouldn’t have such an effect on you.”

  “Get like what?”

  “Angry. Sullen. Withdrawn,” Jason said it like he was listing the symptoms in some diagnostic manual. That was what pissed Colt off the most. The fact that Jason saw him as something to be analyzed and fixed. Optimized. “I know you’re afraid of what the answers might be if you start asking questions, but not knowing is hurting you so much more.”

  “Enough,” Colt growled. Without meaning to, he’d slammed his fist on the table and Jason jumped. The couple at the next table cast them a curious glance and Colt turned toward the window, willing his anger away. He wasn’t usually this touchy. Maybe Jason was onto something about his birthday funk after all. “I’m sorry,” he said in a more measured tone. “I just hate when you do this.”

  “Do what? Bring up your parents? I’m sorry—”

  “Not just that. When you treat me like one of your mock cases,” Colt muttered. He’d spent hours listening to Jason rehearse his arguments for his classes, and while he’d always loved watching the change that came over the usually easygoing man when he was in piranha mode, he didn’t like being the object of it. “You want everyone to have a clean-cut motive. Every action, every move someone makes has to have a motivation you can explain, but sometimes you want to see it so badly that you invent shit that just isn’t there. Not when it comes to me.”

  Jason frowned. “I’m just trying to help, Colt.” His tone softened and his eyes took on that sad-puppy-dog quality that made Colt want to do whatever was necessary to make him happy again. “You haven’t been yourself lately.”

  Colt sighed, reaching across the table to take Jason’s hand. “I’m sorry. Like I said, it’s been a long day. We’re behind schedule at the site, this other company keeps hounding me about taking a job, and the lumber I ordered last week still hasn’t come in.” He paused when he realized Jason’s eyes were glazing over the same way Colt’s always did when the other man started speaking legalese. “Long story short, it’s been a week from hell.”

  “What other company?” Jason asked suddenly.

  “Bracher Construction,” Colt said, taking a sip of his beer.

  “Oh, I’ve heard of them,” said Jason. “They did the building my dad moved his practice to last year.”

  “Yeah, they’re everywhere.”

  “What do they want with you?”

  “Just a job offer,” Colt mumbled. Now he almost wished they were still talking about his biological parents. At least that didn’t make him anxious.

  “A job?” Jason’s eyes lit up. “They’re scouting you? For what?”

  “Foreman,” he admitted grudgingly.

  “What? Colt! That’s amazing,” Jason said, leaning in excitedly. It was never good when his eyes had that much light in them. Jason may have fancied himself the rebel son of the Jones family because he’d chosen to pursue a slightly less lucrative field of study than his father, but they clearly shared an obsession with motivational speakers and upward mobility.

  Jason paused suddenly, studying Colt’s face when his date didn’t mirror his own enthusiasm. “You are going to take it, right?”

  “I told Bracher I’d think about it, but…” Colt shrugged, suddenly disinterested in the rest of his meal. He’d already finished his steak, but the food quality in the place was slipping.

  “What’s there to think about? It’s a promotion. A huge one.”

  “It’d be a promotion if it came from my current employer. This would be jumping ship, and I have a good crew that counts on me.”

  Jason sighed and gave him a half-pitying, half-adoring smile. “Colt, I know how loyal you are to Chuck, but there’s no room for advancement as long as you stay under him. Besides, I’m sure he’d understand and be happy for you. He didn’t get his job by staying where he was.”

  “Actually, he did. He’s been with the company for twenty-one years,” said Colt.

  “So that’s the plan? You’re just going to stick around and wait until Chuck retires?”

  Colt shrugged. “It’s a good job. Chuck’s probably gonna retire soon, anyway.”

  Jason pursed his lips and Colt knew he wanted to say more, but he stabbed his salad with his fork and stuffed his mouth instead.

  “What?” Colt asked against his better judgment. “I know you’ve got something to say, so just say it.”

  “I just don’t understand.”

  “What’s there to understand?”

  “Why you’d throw an opportunity away, for one thing.” As soon as the words were out of Jason’s mouth, the look on his face made it clear he regretted them. “You practically run that site and you have ever since you took the job. You’re too good and too talented to get stuck in the same dead end job for the next twenty years, Colt.”

  “I’m confused,” Colt said. “Are we still talking about the promotion, or are we talking about the fact that I dropped out of school to go into construction in the first place?”

  “Both, since you brought it up,” Jason said, folding his arms. “At least I understood why you dropped out of RIC. College wasn’t your thing. You wanted to be your own man, work with your hands, chart your own course in life without buckling down every day to go to some nine to five. That I could understand, but this? This is everything you want.”

  “It’s not what I want, it’s what you want,” Colt growled. Again, the response that came out of his mouth didn’t seem to match the one he’d gone over in his head. Getting hounded by Jason was nothing new, and he’d never reacted like this.

  “Okay, you got me,” said Jason, obviously oblivious to Colt’s escalating anger. “I don’t want to see my best friend throw his time and talent away on a dead-end job where he’s never going to be appreciated, so sue me.” Sometimes Jason seemed so different from his family that Colt was convinced he was the one who’d been adopted, and others, he seemed to be possessed by the spirit of his Italian mother.

  “This isn’t the kind of conversation ‘best friends’ have, Jason,” Colt shot back. “If
we were just ‘best friends,’ we’d be at the bar throwing back beers and talking smack, not sitting at a table for two discussing our life paths.”

  “Is this about how I’m not ready to get serious with you?”

  “It’s been five years, Jason. I’m sick of being your on-again, off-again closet buddy while you and your lesbian beard put on a hetero puppet show to keep your parents happy,” he muttered. “Excuse me if I’m starting to think ‘ready’ isn’t something you’re ever gonna be.”

  “That’s not true! I’m almost done with my degree, and then--”

  “And then what? Law school,” Colt answered for him. “Nothing’s gonna change. As long as the Joneses are writing the tuition checks, they pull the strings and you’ll keep dancing.”

  The hurt in Jason’s eyes made Colt regret his words, but he couldn’t bring himself to take them back like he usually would have. “You really want to go there?”

  “Why not? It’s obviously related, and you’ve been going plenty of places tonight.”

  “How?” Jason demanded. Colt could tell he was losing his cool, but only because of the vein sticking out on his forehead. He never betrayed any other sign of emotion unless he wanted to.

  “We both know this--whatever the hell you want to call it, ‘cause it sure as hell ain’t a relationship--has had an expiration date on it from the minute we decided to be anything more than friends,” Colt said, tossing his napkin on the table. “Even if you only want to be more than that half the time.”

  “Colt...”

  “Please don’t say it’s not true. The one thing we’ve always had going for us is that we don’t keep secrets and we never lie to each other, so please don’t start now,” he said, clearing his throat. “I get it. It’s more than just the gay thing. Your parents, your dad especially, always hated that we were even friends. Coming out as gay’s only half the problem. The other half is just… me.”

  Jason looked like he wanted to argue, but to his credit, he didn’t. Raymond Jones had never made any secret of his distaste for his neighbors or their adopted progeny. Sometimes Colt was sure the doctor would have looked down on him less if he had remained a street rat.

  “The truth is,” Colt continued, “I could turn my whole life upside down, take the promotion, go back to school, put on a million-dollar suit, and your dad would still see me the same way. It never bothered me, because until now, I let myself believe you didn’t see me that way. I guess I wanted to believe that things really would be different when you graduated. That it would finally be ‘our time.’ Lame, I know.”

  “It will be,” Jason said earnestly. “Once I’m done with school, things will be different.”

  “Yeah? You’re willing to set a date?” Colt challenged. “As soon as you graduate, you’ll ‘break up’ with Mia, tell your parents we’re together so they can stop bankrolling your education, and then you can spend the rest of your life slumming it with a guy who couldn’t handle college?”

  Jason pursed his lips. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but it’ll be easier.”

  “Will it? Because as far as I can tell, there’s always gonna be someone you’ll have to impress. If it’s not your parents looking down on me, it’ll be your boss, your coworkers, your country club,” he listed. Somewhere in the back of his head, a voice was railing at Colt to stop before he said something he couldn’t take back. This was the conversation he’d been wanting to have for the better part of a year, but it was coming out all wrong and he was powerless to stop it.

  “So what are you saying?” Jason asked, his voice wavering.

  “That you’re too good for me. Sooner or later, you’re gonna run out of people to project it onto and realize that you’re not afraid of what your parents think. You’re just afraid to admit that you think the very same thing.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Isn’t it?” Colt snapped. “If it’s not true, then call them.” He fished his phone out of his pocket and laid it out on the table. “Call them right now and tell them their kid’s gonna throw his whole life away to be with some blue collar schmuck. Go ahead.”

  Jason’s eyes watered and he wouldn’t even look down at the phone. “Something’s wrong, Colt. This isn’t you.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Colt said, taking back his phone. He pulled out his wallet and dropped enough cash to cover the bill along with his car keys. “Take the truck back to the dorm, I’ll walk home.”

  “Colt!” Jason cried, standing from the table. “Wait!”

  Colt ignored him, stalking out the side door. He didn’t wait to see if Jason was following him. The anger that had been building all night was finally boiling over and he knew if he didn’t get out of that restaurant, he was going to say something he would regret even more than the foolish words that had already come out of his mouth.

  Chapter 2

  Once Colt was out of sight of the restaurant, the closest tree became the object of his misdirected wrath. Normally, punching greenery would have made him feel like enough of a douchebag to shame him into complacency, but that night, it only served to amp him up. He walked a few blocks without trying and found himself on the edge of the downtown district. He tucked his hands in the pockets of his jacket and kept up a steady pace, doing his best to avoid making eye contact with anyone. He didn’t trust himself around people.

  It was a strange but familiar impulse. It was also one Colt hadn’t had in years, not since his anger management classes as a teenager. He’d been so certain he had laid that part of him to rest, but all of a sudden, he felt like a hormonal teenager out of control of his emotions and barely in control of his physical body.

  Jason was right. Something was wrong with him. Colt had told himself it was just a lack of sleep, the stress of his job, and the altogether shittiness of his least favorite time of year, but this was something else entirely.

  “Gimme your wallet.”

  Colt froze. The unmistakable click of a gun being cocked registered at the same time as he felt the barrel press into his back through his jacket. He was at the lip of an alleyway and he could see the man standing behind him in the reflective glass window of the abandoned shop he’d stopped in front of. The man shoved him with a gun and he stumbled further into the alleyway. “You want me to fuckin’ spell it out for you, shithead?”

  It wasn’t the first time Colt had been mugged. The first time, he’d been twelve. Gerald and Renee had taken him out to celebrate the finalization of his adoption, and they’d been stopped by a skinny kid who barely looked old enough to drive. Renee had gasped and clung to Colt’s arm--he’d been taller than her even then--and Gerald had put himself between them without hesitation. It was the first time anyone, especially an adult, had risked anything of value for Colt, and that moment had stayed with him ever since.

  Colt knew what he should have done. He should have done exactly what Gerald did, which was to slowly reach into his pocket and disarm the situation, if not the mugger himself, by remaining calm and compliant. As usual, the gap between what Colt should have done and what he actually did was wide.

  He turned suddenly and pinned the mugger against the wet brick. The snarl that erupted from Colt’s throat was more of a shock than the sound of the gun firing into the air. The bullet ricocheted off the gutter overhead and Colt slammed the other man’s hand into the wall. The force made the mugger drop the gun and Colt registered the terror in his eyes, as if he was looking into the face of a monster rather than the man he’d been prepared to kill for forty bucks and change moments earlier.

  What happened next seemed to Colt to be happening to someone else entirely. He saw his left hand wrap around the man’s throat, but he couldn’t feel the pressure, not even when he watched his nails dig into the mugger’s flesh, calling streams of blood to the surface. He’d always been strong. Six years spent in construction had ensured that, but it didn’t seem possible that he’d applied that much pressure. Even less believable was the animalistic snarl t
hat seemed to be emanating from his own throat.

  All of a sudden, Colt could feel again. The mugger’s pulse fluttered entreatingly in his grasp. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Every beat wove into a seductive rhythm and soon, the sound of it was enough to drown out the growling and the man’s screams. It had to be his own pulse. Colt had never been able to hear another person’s, but that sound became all he could hear.

  He’d eaten his fill at the restaurant, but hunger as fierce and twisting as a knife in his gut threatened to make Colt double over. He hadn’t felt this kind of hunger in years--decades. Not since his brief placement in a foster home where the mother’s idea of punishment was sending him to school without being fed the night before and without lunch money. Strange thoughts entered a child’s mind when he was convinced he was starving. He’d entertained a few morbid revenge fantasies then, fueled by cartoonesque hallucinations of people turned into walking rotisserie chickens, but this was something different. It was something more sinister than anything a macabre child with an overactive imagination could concoct. In an instant, that dank alleyway, filled with trash and clogged gutters, was perfumed with the most enticing scent Colt had ever smelled. And it was coming from the wriggling man in his grasp.

  Colt realized only when he felt the blood streaming down his wrist that the mugger was clawing his flesh in a desperate attempt to escape. Colt applied a bit more pressure to the man’s neck, intending only to make him stop long enough that Colt could think, but instead, he just...stopped. The snap of his neck seemed to echo, audible only because his pulse had ceased entirely. That once-deafening sound left a hole in its absence—in Colt, in the alley, in time itself.

  For a few seconds, all Colt could do was stare at the lifeless man he had pinned against a wall. He finally came back to himself enough to release the mugger and yelled in horror when he looked down at his hands. His fingertips were covered in blood, as if they’d been embedded to the first knuckle in the other man’s flesh. His nails were sharpened to clawlike points even though he always kept them short. Panicked, Colt wiped his hands off on his jeans and felt the claws digging into his own skin. When he looked down, most of the blood was gone, but his fingers were stained black in a gradient that faded the closer it got to his hand. Even though his flesh turned back to its usual light tan hue, his veins were dark, spreading out underneath the surface like a splintered web in cracked glass.