Spirit

by John Inman

  Sam let his voice trail away for a second to calm himself down. He took a sip of beer, then set the bottle down and laid his hand to his own breast, as if hoping to slow his thudding heart. There was a shimmer of tears in his eyes that hadn’t been there a moment before.

  Once again, I felt myself longing to reach out and pull Sam into an embrace, to lay my hand to the back of his head and press his face to the crook of my neck and tell him to let it go. Cry, if that’s what he needed. Scream and rant, if he needed that more. But I sat frozen in my chair, unable to do any of those things because I simply didn’t know him well enough. I watched him fight the battle alone, the battle of hiding his emotions, the battle of trying to stay calm in the face of a mystery he couldn’t understand. And maybe never would.

  Maybe. Never. Would.

  I tried to ease the pain burning there in front of me in Sam’s eyes by ratcheting down the sadness a notch. It was getting us nowhere. And the misery of it seemed to be tearing at Sam so deeply I could hardly stand to watch him go through it.

  I let my face twist into a lazy smile, remembering Paul. “I once had a bit of a crush on your brother. I did my damnedest to keep it secret. If Sally had known, she would never have let me hear the end of it. I think maybe Paul would have understood it better than Sally would. He had a kindness in him that was a little bit astonishing, a little bit… otherworldly. And he was a very handsome guy. Almost as handsome as you are.”

  Sam scowled a bit at that. “Oh, please.”

  I grinned at his embarrassment. “I don’t care if you believe it or not. It’s true. Your parents made a couple of beautiful babies, and those beautiful babies turned into beautiful men. And your parents must have known a few tricks of child rearing that my parents didn’t catch wind of. My sister and I were at each other’s throats from the moment of conception. Even now it’s kind of a love-hate thing going on between us. But you and Paul seemed to have honestly loved each other deeply. He spoke well of you. And he spoke well of you often. Now that I think of it, I never remember Paul speaking badly of anyone.”

  At that, Sam’s face finally brightened. He was remembering back now too. I could almost see the memories flashing behind his eyes, all in a row, like one of those old-time newsreels they used to play before the movie started. Way back in another century. In another time.

  I smiled to see the angst in Sam’s eyes dissipate. When our eyes connected now, he twisted his mouth into a smile that matched my own.

  I finished my thought, finished what I had wanted to say. “Paul knew I was gay, of course. But it never bothered him. In fact, he never mentioned it. I always loved him for that. He treated me the same as he treated everyone. Did he know you were gay, Sam? Did the two of you ever sit down and talk about it?”

  Sam nodded. He brushed the hair away from his eyes and laughed. “I told him shortly before his wedding. Do you know what he said?”

  I grinned. A smiling Sam was a beautiful thing to behold. “What?”

  “He told me he knew it before I did. He told me he knew it when I was no more than ten years old.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  Sam laced his fingers together and cupped the back of his head, watching me. He tilted his chair onto its back legs like my mother always told me not to do. “Yes, Jason. I believed him. I always believed Paul. He was my big brother. My hero. I never heard him speak an untrue word. I can’t say that about anyone else I’ve ever met. Can you?”

  I shook my head. “Not even close.”

  He dropped the chair onto all four legs and rested his elbows on the table. He stuck his chin in his hands, watching me. There was a tease in the turn of his mouth. A happy light in his eyes. I liked seeing it there. It was very sexy.

  “Did you tell Paul you had a crush on him?” he asked. “Did Paul know it?”

  It was my turn to laugh and blush. “God, no. I would have died if he’d known. And I never would have told him. I would have been afraid to jeopardize what we had.”

  “And what was that?” he asked. “What did you and Paul have?”

  I considered the question for all of three seconds. “Friendship. We had friendship. I would have done anything for Paul, and I’m pretty sure he would have done anything for me. Right up until the moment—”

  “The moment he left,” Sam said quietly.

  “Yes. The moment he left.”

  “And now you hate him.”

  I started. “No! I—I was just sorry he did what he did. I was sorry he didn’t come to me first. Whatever his problem was, maybe we could have worked something out. Maybe I could have helped him. But I never hated him. I don’t hate him now. I’m just… disappointed. And confused. I expected more of him. I guess I expected him to be stronger than what he turned out to be. Running away like he did was a cowardly thing to do. Abandoning his wife and child was beyond cowardly. It was mean.” I leaned forward, piercing Sam’s eyes with my own. I had just talked myself into an understanding of sorts. I thought I knew now why Paul’s leaving bothered me so much. “It was out of character for him to do what he did. The Paul I knew would never have done it.”

  Sam’s fist hit the table with a bang, making me jump. “Bingo!” he cried. “That’s exactly right! He wouldn’t have done it. Not my brother. Not Paul.”

  Now it was Sam’s turn to lean in closer, to stare into my eyes. He gripped the beer bottle so tightly his knuckles were white. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the bottle explode in his grip.

  “Jason, Paul wouldn’t have done what everyone thinks he did. He was too good a person. And more than everything else people think he did, I know for a fact he would never have abandoned that boy in there. He loved his son with all his heart. He told me so a million times. In letters, on the phone. Timmy was like a heartbeat to Paul. It kept him alive. I don’t know how he felt about your sister, because frankly, I never asked. I assumed he loved her. He married her, so why wouldn’t he? But the boy was Paul’s reason for everything. He would have died before he did anything to hurt Timmy. In fact—”

  He pushed his fingers through his hair, scraping it all back out of the way, tipping his chair back, staring at the ceiling again.

  “What?” I asked. “In fact, what?”

  Sam pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, like a weary man does. Like a weary man does who can hardly stay awake another minute. When he lowered his hands again, his eyes were red.

  When he spoke, his voice was solemn. Pained. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

  “What doesn’t matter? What are you trying to say, Sam? Or more to the point, what are you trying not to say?”

  But he never had time to answer.

  From somewhere in the shadows of night around us, the house slowly filled with a roar of sound. It was almost as if a jet were screaming just overhead, it’s great engines thrumming through the walls, shivering the windowpanes, rattling the dishes in the cupboards.

  I could feel the kitchen table trembling beneath my arms. A glass on the countertop tipped over and smashed, causing us both to jump.

  Sam and I stared at each other, our faces agape with shock, not knowing what was happening, not understanding where the sound was coming from. It was so loud now, it filled our heads like sand, leaving room for nothing else. No coherent thought could survive in that awful avalanche of noise. That roar. That endless screaming roar.

  I slapped my hands over my ears, and Sam did the same. And the moment we did, the sound immediately ceased. Just like that. One second the world was screaming in pain, and the next it was stone-cold silent.

  But for the pattering and the clicking.

  We looked to the kitchen door leading in from the living room. The pattering noise came from Timmy’s footsteps as his bare feet slapped quietly across the tile floor.

  The clicking noise came from Thumper—her tiny toenails tippy-tapping against the floor as she followed Timmy through the kitchen.

  Neither child nor dog appeared to realize we wer
e there. They walked right past us. Unhurried. Almost casually. Timmy’s face was blank, his eyes gazing straight ahead. His god-awful haircut stuck up all over the place where he had been sleeping on it. Thumper’s only show of emotion was in her tail. It hung straight down behind her. A wary tail. A sad tail.

  They crossed the entire kitchen, one behind the other. I reached out my hand to touch Timmy as he passed, but Sam reached over and pulled my hand back.

  “Let them go,” he whispered.

  So I did.

  Leaving the kitchen, one still following the footsteps of the other, they stepped through the door to the service porch, Timmy’s face still blank, Thumper’s tail still down. Timmy looked as if he was sleepwalking, and for all I knew, maybe he was.

  But that sound! What had caused that screaming rush of sound?

  Sam and I pushed ourselves up from the table and quietly left the kitchen, following along behind the boy and dog. We stood in the service porch doorway, our shoulder’s brushing, our breathing hushed. We watched as Timmy and Thumper came to a stop in front of the basement door.

  Timmy reached out for the door handle, then seemed to think better of it. He dropped his hand to his side. Thumper caught up to Timmy and sat her ass down on the floor right next to Timmy’s foot. Motionless, they watched the basement door as if expecting it to open.

  Timmy closed his eyes and hunkered in upon himself, like a man suddenly beaten down by fear. His breath gave a hitch. He brought his hands up to his ears and covered them tight, just as Sam and I had done a minute before when that horrible roaring filled the house. Was Timmy hearing it now? Is that why he covered his ears? Thumper showed no sign of hearing anything. She simply sat there by Timmy’s foot as if waiting for Timmy to make the next move.

  And then Timmy did.

  He lowered his hands from his ears and turned to Sam and me watching from the doorway. His little face was sad. A tear had sprung from his eye and slid down his cheek. As I watched, his tongue came out and licked the tear away from the corner of his mouth. Then he spoke.

  “He’s mad at the dark,” Timmy said. “He doesn’t like it.”

  Sam rushed across the floor and knelt in front of the boy, gripping his tiny shoulders.

  “Who, Timmy? Who’s mad at the dark?”

  But Timmy wouldn’t say. He wrapped his arms around Sam’s neck and closed his eyes. Pushing his face into Sam’s shirtfront, he shut out the room around him. Sam scooped him off the floor, wrapping him protectively in his arms. Giving Timmy a safe harbor. A place where he wouldn’t be afraid.

  “Let’s put him to bed,” I said quietly.

  A moment later, Timmy was asleep in Sam’s arms, and Sam carried him toward the stairs.

  Before I followed along behind to dig out Timmy’s pajamas and show Sam how to get him to brush his teeth and do everything he needed to do before going to sleep for the night, I opened the basement door and peered inside.

  The dark was impenetrable. The silence profound.

  I groped around the doorframe to switch on the light and felt a chill creep up my back. I imagined a creature’s clawed hand closing over my own, grabbing me from the darkness. I imagined the creature pulling me down into that well of shadows and there, with tooth and claw and a scream of triumph, ripping me to shreds. I closed my eyes against the terror that suddenly gripped me, and using every ounce of willpower I possessed, I continued to fumble around in the dark, getting more panicky by the second, until my fingers brushed the light switch.

  Thank God! Frantically, I flicked it on and yanked my arm back.

  I gasped with relief as light filled the basement, exposing every corner, every cranny. The long flight of stairs. The old furnace off in the corner. The night-blackened windows high along the walls. Stacks of boxes and tools and furniture, freshly organized after the work I had done that morning.

  Aside from the crap piled up everywhere, neatly arranged and stacked out of the way, there was nothing there. No creature. No ghost. No slavering serial killer. Not a zombie in sight. And thank Christ for small favors.

  I flicked off the light and quickly slammed the basement door. Reaching up, I latched the simple hook and eye I had installed at eye level, well above a four-year-old’s reach, to keep Timmy from tumbling down the stairs when I wasn’t watching.

  Only then did I realize my hands were shaking like crazy.

  What the hell had just happened?

  Chapter 5

  SAM CAME to my room that night. He came with a soft rapping at my door not long after we had all gone to bed.

  The rapping scared the crap out of me.

  I lay naked on the bed, chest and legs poking out from beneath a crumpled mass of sheet that hid only my crotch area. My bedroom windows were flung wide to let the night breeze cool my skin and hopefully ease my fevered thoughts. I was still mightily rattled by what had transpired down in the kitchen less than an hour before.

  For the first time in I don’t know how long, I was in bed alone without Thumper at my side. The mutt had insisted on sleeping with Timmy tonight—would not leave the boy’s side in fact, even while Timmy brushed his teeth and struggled into his pajamas all by himself. Thumper had nestled up to Timmy’s leg, staying close, giving Timmy an occasional lick on the ankle, which never failed to make the boy laugh and reach down to twiddle Thumper’s ear, or pat her snout.

  Timmy seemed to be feeling even more independent than usual this evening. And since he had to grow up sometime, plus the fact he had handled what happened in the kitchen earlier with more guts and aplomb and forbearance than either Sam or I had, we decided maybe he was a bit more grown up than we were anyway, so we let him run with it.

  Independence? Sure, kid. Help yourself. Take all you want.

  When the rapping at my door came a second time, I decided it wasn’t a murderous apparition come to rip my head off and fling it through the open window to go bouncing across the lawn, but quite possibly my houseguest, come to discuss the evening’s events. And who could blame him for wanting to do that?

  Since I could hear Timmy (and Thumper) snoring through the baby monitor at my side, I called out softly, “Come in, Sam. The door’s unlocked.”

  I spread out the clump of sheet covering my crotch so it covered a wee bit more of me but still left my legs and chest exposed. It was too damn hot not to.

  I switched on the light on my nightstand as Sam stepped through the door. He was wearing boxer shorts and had a towel wrapped around his neck. His hair was damp. He had just showered.

  This was the first glimpse I’d had of Sam’s legs and chest, and I have to say, they were quite lovely. His legs were coated with the same brushing of fine dark hair that covered his arms. His chest was smooth but for a small patch of chest hair smack between his luscious brown nipples. He had a teeny-tiny belly button surrounded by another smattering of dark hair that trailed down to disappear beneath the boxers. The boxers were a merry yellow and had pictures of little roosters all over them. I had seen those boxers in a catalog once. Had almost ordered them in fact, but then I decided even I would be embarrassed to actually wear them.

  Apparently, Sam had no such compunction.

  As soon as I stopped ogling that beautiful belly button and ceased to wonder how it would taste if I stuck my tongue in it, I dragged my eyes back to Sam’s face like a proper host.

  He took me in from head to toe, smiled, and asked, “You okay? Blood pressure gone down?”

  I laughed, but it wasn’t exactly boisterous. In fact, it was feeble, lame, and a little forced. Truth to tell, I wasn’t feeling all that amused.

  “What the hell happened down there, Sam? Any ideas? And I love your shorts.”

  “Thanks. I had to empty the other ones.”

  This time my laugh was a little more unrestrained. “I know what you mean.” I really did too.

  Sam crossed the room and perched his ass on the foot of my bed. I wasn’t sure if I felt encroached upon or the luckiest dude in the world. When h
e leaned back on one arm, trapping my legs between his hand and his hip, I decided to go with lucky.

  When he ran a cool hand over the hair on my shin and said, “Fuzzy legs,” I figured even lucky didn’t quite cover it.

  I waited for my toes to stop curling. “You keep doing that and you’ll be in big, big trouble, mister.”

  So Sam stopped. That’ll teach me to open my big mouth.

  He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, letting the breeze from the window cool his face. I wondered what he came to say, although I had a pretty good idea. I wasn’t wrong either.

  “How long have you known your house is haunted?”

  I stole one of Timmy’s guffaws. It didn’t sound much better coming from me than it had coming from him. “Oh, please, Sam. It was a jet. A low-flying jet. A really low-flying jet.”

  Sam’s eyes went to half-mast as he studied my face. He wasn’t buying it. “And it was flying through your basement?”

  “Well—”

  “So you don’t believe in ghosts. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I don’t believe in ghosts.” Yesterday it would have been the truth. Today I was lying through my teeth.

  Sam gave me a cockeyed grimace. Skeptical. A little amazed. He knew I was lying as well as I did. “Neither did I an hour ago,” he said. “Didn’t believe in ’em at all.”

  “And now?” I asked.

  It was Sam’s turn to shrug and say, “Well….”

  Then the two of us couldn’t help it. We both spit up a chuckle. A look of wonder came over Sam’s face that I suspected could be found on my face as well. We both seemed to be asking ourselves “What really did happen down there?”

  As if tired of the subject already, Sam gazed around the room, taking things in. The posters on the wall from a couple of my video games that had sold reasonably well. The two dormer windows looking out over the neighborhood, showing the streetlights and an occasional porch light shimmering in the distance. He eyed the construction of the room with a vague smile on his face, seeming to like the way the top half of the bedroom walls slanted in, making the room look like a garret, which in truth I guess it was. Sam’s room, located closer to the center of the house, had no such distinction. The sloping walls had been one of the reasons I chose this room to be my own. I loved the old-world feel of it. The quaint warmth of the slanting oak walls and hardwood floor. The tiny fireplace off to the side I never used.