House Haunted

by Al Sarrantonio

  Ricky began to cry. He wouldn't open his eyes.

  Gary breathed deeply, trying to keep down his impatience. He pulled at the kid's pant leg. Ricky pulled his leg up tight, rolling into a more compact form.

  Gary put his foot up on the step and reached into the van, yanking the kid up off the bench seat.

  “Get the fuck out,” he said.

  “God no, God no,” Ricky moaned, sobbing freely.

  Gary tightened his fist and punched at Ricky ribs. He landed two solid blows. Ricky's answer was to pull himself up even tighter.

  “Fuck!” Gary shouted. His breath turned ragged and hard. He stalked to the back of the van, yanked open the door. He put his hand into the back well, searching until his fingers closed around the cold shaft of the tire jack's crowbar. He hefted it out and took three hard steps back to the side of the van.

  “Get out!” He pumped the tire iron over his head and reached in, pulling with all his strength. He jerked Ricky up onto the seat, then out of the van.

  Ricky fell to the road and lay moaning.

  “You little fucker,” Gary spat, raising the tire iron in one hand and then transferring it to two.

  “Gary.”

  It was Bridget. He wheeled around, facing empty night. “Leave him there,” her voice said, somewhere close-by. “Go home.”

  “I'm fucking invincible!” Gary shouted.

  “Yes, but you have to leave him alone.”

  “I don't have to do anything! You hear me? I DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING!”

  He shouted, raising the tire iron high and bringing it down with all his strength on the kid's head.

  But Ricky wasn't there. The jack hit driveway. Gary grunted with the dull shock.

  “Where the fuck—?”

  “He's safe,” she said. “I told you I need him.”

  “You fucking bitch—” Gary began. His words were cut in midsentence. The tire iron was pulled from his hands. It struck him on the left side under his arm. He heard ribs crack. He dropped to his knees.

  His vision cleared as the iron bar hit him again. A hot pain tore through his right forearm. Almost immediately, his shoulder went bright with pain and then numbness.

  “Je-sus,” he grunted, collapsing.

  The tire iron hit him on his right ankle and again on his shoulder.

  “Do you want more?” Bridget laughed.

  “I'll . . . kill . . . you . . .”

  The iron struck his left knee. A blossom of white pain opened in his leg.

  “Listen carefully, Gary. Leave now. If you come back, I'll kill you.” The iron bar struck across his back.

  “I'm . . . invin . . . cible,” Gary gasped.

  She laughed. “You never were.”

  “I'm invin . . .” he insisted, but the fall of the tire iron on his right elbow ended his protestations.

  “Last chance, Gary.”

  Groaning, he pushed himself to his knees. Holding the side of the van, he pulled himself to his feet. He stood gasping, then leaned his way around the van to the driver's side and crawled in. When he sat up straight over the wheel, his eyes went blind with pain. He sat breathing heavily over the wheel until he could see again.

  “Good-bye, Gary,” he heard her laugh, close-by his ear. He twisted the ignition key. The engine roared out of sleep.

  He slammed the shift into reverse, backing down into the driveway.

  Clouds were moving in, and in the peek-a-boo moonlight, he saw Ricky. He was lying where Gary had left him, the tire iron next to him on the tarmac.

  Gary gunned the van back down the long drive to the street, barely missing a sturdy oak butting on the side of the drive.

  Half doubled over, blinking sweat and grogginess from his eyes, he roared off toward the Taconic Parkway.

  As it began to drizzle an hour later on the Major Deegan Expressway, he put the accelerator pedal to the floor and drove into the side of an overpass.

  He awoke sometime later, alive. There was a fireman in a black slicker and hat standing over him. A cold rain was falling; red and white flashing lights reflected off the fire-man's wet uniform.

  “Buddy,” the fireman said to him, “can you move?” Slowly, Gary stood, only the retreating aches of the tire-iron beating making him wince.

  In the cold rain, the fireman helped him up.

  “You sure you're okay?”

  “I'm fine,” Gary said.

  “Damnedest thing I ever saw,” the fireman said. “You have any idea how far you were thrown?”

  The fireman pointed at the still burning, smoking, black, ruined mass of metal that had been the van, twenty-five feet away.

  The fireman patted him on the back. “You should be real dead, my friend. Whoever you pray to, I think you owe him thanks.”

  The fireman walked back to his truck, shaking his head. Gary stood in the rain, watching the van burn blacker, and suddenly he laughed.

  “I AM INVINCIBLE,” he shouted up at the rain. And I'm going to kill her.

  15. BRENNAN

  He was at the circus with his father. They were sitting in wonderful seats, in the front row, and Ted had a huge box of popcorn in one hand and a magnificent pink wad of cotton candy on a stick in his other hand. It was his birthday, and he was nine years old.

  He had looked forward to this day for two months. His father had promised him the circus, promised him he would free his schedule of surgery and spend the entire afternoon with him. They had gotten there early and watched the clowns practice their routines. One of the clowns had come over and stood before Ted and performed for him alone, juggling and lighting matches that disappeared into his mouth and then reappeared lit again and, finally, doing a trick with his hat that made it shoot of his orange wig with a popping explosion. It had been a wonderful afternoon, with three rings performing simultaneously, with trapeze artists and a lion tamer and a man who rode a motorcycle around the inside of a wire cage while torch flames licked at the tires.

  And then, about halfway through the show, as Ted put the popcorn down between his knees to concentrate on the cotton candy, some of whose pink spider web strands were already stuck to his cheeks, he heard the one sound he had thought he would not hear today, the soft insistent sound of his father's beeper.

  “Damn,” his father said, taking his cigarette from his mouth and grinding it out with his shoe, reaching to push the button on the pager.

  “You promised you wouldn't bring it!” Ted protested.

  His father's face bore a mixture of remorse and worry. “I'm sorry, Ted, it's Mrs. Morris, who I told you about. I thought for sure that Dr. Parks would be able to handle it—”

  “You promised! You promised!” Ted had risen from his seat, knocking the huge tub of popcorn over. His face was flushed red, his eyes filling with hot tears.

  His father put his hand on Ted's shoulder. “I'm truly sorry, son. I'll call Mrs. Jacobsen, and she'll come stay with you the rest of the day.”

  “I don't want my nanny!”

  His father squeezed Ted's shoulder, bending low, trying to quiet the boy. “Ted, please, I have to go.”

  “No!” Ted thrust the pink cloud of cotton candy up at his father, who warded of the blow with his hands, immersing them in the sticky mass.

  Ted stood trembling, tears tracking his cheeks as his father quietly extricated himself from the cotton candy.

  An usher appeared, and when Ted's father explained the situation, the usher offered to stay until Ted's nanny arrived.

  His father began to move toward the aisle; as he reached it, he paused and glanced back at Ted, a pleading for understanding in his eyes.

  “I want my mother!” Ted screamed. His father hurried up the aisle. “All of my friends have mothers. I want my mother. . .”

  In the dream, the circus darkened, and now Ted was in a night place. He was very young. He heard a mixture of voices, away from where he was. He was on his back, and where he was was quiet and dark.

  A crack of light appeared in the
room, and he strained to see. When his eyes were open, he saw blurs; in the day, different colors, fuzzy blue and yellows. But the blurs were getting sharper. Today, for the first time, he had seen the edge of something hanging above him: a yellow thing smiling, with wings.

  The crack of light widened; more light entered the room. He heard voices, louder.

  Someone crying.

  He knew the crying voice; he became very excited when it came near. The other voices stayed back. He began to kick his legs, move his hands expectantly.

  She was crying. She leaned down over him. She rose like the moon above him, her face, and she murmured something to him, a crying sweet thing, and then she came close and kissed him, a warm tear on his cheek, a blur, but as she pulled away the blur began to sharpen

  And then another voice came into the room, and came close, and put a blanket on him, and his mother's crying went away, and he became afraid, and for a moment as he was lifted, the blanket covered his just-focusing eyes, and he was blinded, and he panicked and began to scream—

  Brennan awoke.

  “God.”

  “You needn't call me that, sugar,” a yawning voice said.

  Brennan sat up in bed. Beauvaque rose from a chair in the corner of the room. He wore a long red robe. He stretched his arms up, then rubbed his back. “Lord, these chairs weren't meant to be slept in.” His hooded eyes regarded Brennan. “You can see this morning, sugar?”

  Full realization that he had regained his sight gripped Brennan. “Yes!”

  “Ah.”

  Beauvaque brushed something from the chair he had been in. It was one of the cats, a black shorthair with one white ear. It jumped onto the bed, purring, and began to knead at Brennan's foot under the covers.

  “I do believe he likes you,” Beauvaque said, sitting on the end of the bed. He petted the cat. “I should tell you,” he continued, fixing Brennan with a fiercely even look, “that he hardly likes anybody.”

  Brennan wondered briefly if Beauvaque was actually jealous of the cat's affection for him. He pulled his foot away beneath the covers, but the cat merely followed, pushing at it with his front paws, purring.

  “My, my,” Beauvaque said, pulling his hand away from the cat.

  “Perhaps I should leave,” Brennan said.

  Beauvaque looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. “Oh, no, don't you worry about leaving just yet, sugar. I wouldn't hear of it. Not before you tell me just what happened to you yesterday. And I must insist on making you the finest breakfast you've ever had.”

  Brennan sensed that he, at least, was not the source of Beauvaque's anger, which suddenly flared again as Beauvaque rose from the bed and slammed his fist into his palm.

  “Is something wrong?” Brennan asked.

  Beauvaque turned away from him, bringing his knuckles up to his mouth. Brennan heard a muffled sob.

  “Are you all right?” 'Brennan said.

  Beauvaque waved a hand behind his back at him; his body heaved in short sobbing gasps.

  “Don't . . . worry about . . . me, sugar.”

  Brennan felt trapped. Even the black cat seemed to have him, pouncing on his foot each time he slid it away, holding and biting at it beneath the sheets.

  Beauvaque turned around. As abruptly as his outburst began it was gone. He wiped at his eyes with one hand, holding his robe tightly closed with the other. “Don't mind me.”

  “Are you sure—”

  “I was just being foolish. And old.” He smiled, unconvincingly. “That's what I am, you know.”

  Brennan said nothing.

  “Tell me,” Beauvaque said, sitting back on the bed. His dried eyes were focused on Brennan with full attention. “What happened in that apartment yesterday?”

  “I went blind,” Brennan said.

  Beauvaque motioned impatiently. “I know that already. Tell me what happened.”

  Brennan considered, saw no harm in being honest (thumbnail of Beauvaque: old queen capable of spite and kindness but not dishonesty; likes gossip but doesn't like getting involved. Safe—thank God).

  “I think,” Brennan said, “I was attacked.”

  “Ah,” Beauvaque said. He added, unblinking, “By who?”

  Brennan sat up, putting his back against the backboard. The cat followed his movements, jumping twice at folds in the blanket before finding Brennan's foot. “I don't know.”

  “You think something didn't want you snooping in there, sugar?”

  Brennan's mind, recalling the mixture of hope and fear he had felt the previous day, missed the urgency in Beauvaque's voice.

  “Something . . . bad?” Beauvaque said, in a tone so sharp that Brennan's attention refocused on him.

  ''Yes.”

  “Ah.”

  Beauvaque rose, clutching his robe closed as he paced the room. He stopped before the blinds, toyed with the rod to open them, kept them closed. “Dr. Brennan,” Beauvaque said, slowly, turning to face him. The look was the angriest he had seen yet from the landlord. “I. . .”

  His face collapsed into anguish, and once again he bit his knuckles, so hard that Brennan was alarmed to see a thin trickle of blood run down the back of Beauvaque's hand.

  “God. . . you just don't know how much it hurts, Dr. Brennan. No one knows. . .”

  “Maybe if you told—”

  “I'M TRYING TO TELL YOU!” Beauvaque shouted. His face, flushed red, was twisted in anguish. He thrust his bloody knuckles back into his mouth and then covered his face with his hands. A sobbing groan escaped him. “Oh, God . . .”

  Brennan's fingers had strayed to rub the belly of the black cat, which had rolled onto its side in the hollow of the thigh, accepting his gift with typical feline nonchalance.

  “I'm sorry,” Beauvaque said. He lowered his bloody hand, dabbing at it with a handkerchief produced from the pocket of his robe. With relative success, he composed himself. He walked to the end of the bed, began to lower himself to sit on it, changed his mind. He stood straight; still uncomfortable, he walked stiffly back to the window. Once again, he fingered the rod that opened and closed the blinds, opening them a crack this time and staring out.

  “I have a very strange story to tell you.” He looked quickly at Brennan, catching his impassive look. “Will you listen?”

  “Yes.”

  Beauvaque went to the club chair in the comer and sat down. His face fell in half-shadow. When he spoke again, his voice had assumed the dreamy cadence of painful recollection. He looked toward the window that held out the day, staring at it in a kind of trance.

  “He was a beautiful boy.” He cast a sharp look at Brennan. “Of course, that's how you would expect me to start something like this.”

  Brennan said nothing.

  “But he was beautiful,” Beauvaque continued, dreamily. “I don't think many people—even gay people—understand that a person can be truly loved for his beauty alone, without all the sexual business entering into it. Believe me, Dr. Brennan, it can happen.”

  Again Beauvaque looked to Brennan for reaction. Brennan said, “I understand.”

  “This was almost four years ago. He lived in that apartment you were in. The one that girl was in. He was eleven then, he would not have been fifteen, yet.”

  Beauvaque paused. “You must remember how hard this is for me.”

  “Yes.”

  Beauvaque stared at the window. “He was so beautiful. When I first saw him, his mother was holding his hand. They were moving into a new apartment, and she kept him close to her.

  “God, how I wanted to be that woman. I wanted to hold him the way she was holding him. He was the kind of boy who was lost. He needed to be protected. You could see that on his face, Dr. Brennan. Even his mother knew that.”

  Beauvaque took a deep, shuddering breath. “So they moved in. And I acted like a fool. The mother didn't see through me—at least not at the beginning. She was a fluttery type, so caught up in her own little problems that the rest of the world barely existed for
her. But Jeffrey knew from the start. He knew why I was always making excuses to see the two of them, to check up on the apartment, make sure the heating was working, the plumbing was all right, to share a particularly nice flower I had found while walking. Oh, yes, I'm sure he knew about me. It was terrible of me, Dr. Brennan, but I just couldn't keep my eyes off him. I began to dream about him at night, about enfolding him in my arms like a baby. In my dreams I sang to him. Oh, God. . .”

  He took another halting breath and, after a brief pause, continued. “Perhaps if I describe him to you. He was frail, but not short. Almost as tall as his mother. I never saw him play ball. I never saw his mother let him play with another child. For that reason alone I pitied him, because I would have let him play, would have encouraged him to make friends.

  “It was his face that captivated me, Mr. Brennan. It had the beauty that only some Mediterranean faces can have. His skin was dark, his hair the deepest and straightest black I've ever seen. He was always pushing it up and to the side because it would hang down over his right eye. And his eyes. They were set deep in his face. They were the most liquid brown I have ever seen. They say it isn't the eyeball itself that makes the eye, that it's the expression of the facial skin around eyes that make them expressive, but in this case I would have to disagree. I would know those brown eyes, that color of brown, anywhere. I'm sure no one else on earth had those eyes.

  “He liked to draw. I was able to study his hands. They were long-fingered. He bit his nails. I would have persuaded him to stop that terrible habit. . .”

  He stopped; and Brennan took the opportunity to shift his back, which had begun to hurt. He moved his leg away from the lounging cat, which rolled farther onto its back than it wanted to. It gave Brennan a reproachful look before settling into a new position.

  “Dr. Brennan, I must admit I had fantasies of stealing that boy.” Beauvaque's voice was a near-whisper. “I went so far as to make a plan. I was going to take him to Vancouver with me, to a place where I had been once, a resort town that would be safe for us. I was going to raise him myself.”

  A smile touched and then abandoned Beauvaque's lips. “I never got so close as to actually try it, though. The planning was a way of relieving my agony. Then a real agony came, Dr. Brennan, which began as the sweetest time in my life.”