Dear Undead Journal,
I'm a bit of a Halloween junkie, and I write something about the holiday every year, either as fanfic or an original story. This is an idea I came up with last October. The synopsis was on my stolen laptop, but it stuck with me anyway. I don't really know how to introduce it except to say, "there's gay sex and ghosts, enjoy!"
Title: To Come True a Thing Must Come Second
Fandom: Halloween (the holiday, not the movie)
Rating: R
Notes: It's a tradition for me to write a Halloween story every year, and this year I thought I'd throw in some gay love story angst for the potential enjoyment of my lovely friends list.
Summary: Brandon is a nerdy high schooler who wanted to be a paranormal research scientist until he was teased enough to give up his belief in ghosts altogether. His old obsession is reborn when a classmate consults him as an "expert" on a haunting in his house.
Brandon is walking from fourth period to lunch when Grant Wheeler steps in front of him to tell him that he's started hallucinating bats.
"Well," Grant says. "Just one bat. In the corner of the ceiling by the art room."
"Like, a Hunter S. Thompson-type bat?" Brandon asks. Grant falls in step beside him, but grabs his arm to guide him away from the lunch room when he starts to turn in that direction.
"No, friendlier than that. It was big, though."
Brandon walks with Grant to the end of the hall. He's looking at Brandon like he should know what to say about this. Brandon still can't believe Grant Wheeler is speaking to him. He's not such a big deal, but he smokes cigarettes and plays basketball, or baseball, or one of those goddamn things.
"Uh," Brandon says. "Did you feel threatened?"
"No, not really." Grant opens the door to the senior courtyard and holds it like Brandon should follow him out.
Brandon follows. He doesn't have enough friends to turn away Grant Wheeler, even if he is only speaking to Brandon because he thinks he's some kind of authority on ghosts. There was a time when Brandon announced to his Life Studies class that he wanted to study paranormal science at college. That made its way around to the entire student body by the following morning, and he still gets called Ghost Boy, though he's since seen the error of his ways and doesn't even believe in ghosts anymore. He hasn't told Grant yet. Grant thinks his house is haunted. Brandon fully plans on telling him to seek psychological help as soon as this ghost consultation gets annoying, but that hasn't happened yet. Grant is kind of funny. If the whole thing ends up being a joke at Brandon's expense he'll lose all faith in humanity.
Grant pulls out his cigarettes as soon as they've turned the corner toward the soccer field, the windows of the cafeteria no longer visible. He sits down on the pavement and looks up at Brandon, one eye shut against the glare of the sun. It's a cool October day, bright and stinking of half-dead leaves.
"I mean, it was just part of the molding up there on the ceiling," Grant says. "It was this little section of it, but I thought it was a bat -- you think the ghost is fucking with my head?"
"I think it'd be more direct." Brandon takes a Snickers bar from his book bag and eats half of it while Grant smokes. He offers Grant a bite, but he just looks at it like he doesn't know what to do with it. Grant is tall and pretty sturdy for a sixteen-year-old, which Brandon doesn't understand, because he never seems to eat.
"I've been doing research," Grant says. "I think we should go to the cemetery after school."
"Okay." Brandon was going to study for a chemistry exam, but fuck it. He's forgotten how much fun it is to chase after the rumor of ghosts. When he was fourteen, he had a group of friends who would get together on weekends and do seances and graveyard runs, but most of them didn't take it as seriously as Brandon, and he would always get frustrated when they laughed and ruined the mood. Grant seems serious. He always has a gravely excited expression on his face when he talks about the ghost.
"Aren't you going to eat lunch?" Brandon asks. Grant puts his cigarette out against the pavement.
"I eat my lunch in History," he says. "I can't wait until fucking 1:30 to eat, you know what I mean?"
"Yeah. Fourth shift lunch is cruel."
"No kidding." Grant looks up at the sky, where wispy clouds sit motionless against the deep blue. "So, the cemetery?"
"I already said yes."
"Oh, yeah." Grant grins, and Brandon studies him, tries to figure out what the hell is really going on here. "Cool."
*
After seventh period, Brandon stuffs his books into his bag and walks out to the parking lot to meet Grant. His car is easy enough to find, a bright yellow 1973 Mustang with a black stripe along the hood. It's the best car in the lot, despite the fact that Grant lives in the only shitty neighborhood in Thousand Trees. His father works days at the Bank of America on Davidson and nights at Sam's Club, stocking shelves. He's been saving the car since his own teenager-hood, and he gave it to Grant the day he got his license. Brandon's heard the whole story. Grant is obsessed with the car, won't even smoke in it.
Grant is sitting in the driver's seat, and Brandon thinks he's asleep until he gets close enough to see that he's smiling. His eyes are hooded, and the sun is beating bright across the windshield.
"How long have you been waiting?" Brandon asks as he climbs into the passenger seat.
"I skipped seventh."
"Sorry." Brandon would have skipped, too.
"It's okay. You ready?"
They drive down to Lake Park Cemetery, the most significant one in town. Grant has a talk station on the radio, but the volume is turned so low that Brandon can't make out any words. He doesn't mind, tilts his head back on the seat and lets his eyes slide nearly shut. Grant has all the windows down, making conversation impossible, and it's nice.
"I've been reading," Grant says when they arrive. He seems to know where he's going, so Brandon follows him through the graveyard's soggy grass, crows harping up in the trees. "About all the murders in Thousand Trees. Two of them happened in Hickory Pines."
Hickory Pines is Grant's neighborhood. Brandon lives one over, in Chestnut Grove. It used to be the most reputable neighborhood in town, until pockets of McMansions started going up in every available cranny.
"But none of them happened specifically in your house?" Brandon asks.
"They might have. The addresses weren't mentioned, you know what I mean?"
"Yeah. Cool."
Grant wants his house to be haunted; Brandon has determined that much. He remembers longing for this sort of thing to happen to him, but that was mostly because he was a bored kid who wanted the world to present him with some macabre mystery to solve. Grant has a life. At least, Brandon has always assumed that he does. Whenever they're together, Grant's cell phone stays quiet, and people pass him by in the school hallways without a second look.
"So there was one suicide," Grant says dismissively, as if this is too common to account for his ghost. "And then there was that lawyer who came home to find his wife and son murdered by a dude he'd prosecuted."
"That happened in your neighborhood?"
"Yep," Grant says proudly. "Pretty sure it wasn't in my house, but it could have been."
"Did you ask your parents if the realtor told them a murder happened in your house? They have to disclose that you know, when they sell it."
"That's a good idea," Grant says. He's staring at something in the distance, and Brandon turns. It's the big angel statue in the middle of the cemetery, perched over the grave of a man who died in 1920, when Thousand Trees was just somebody's farmland.
"That angel's eyes follow you if you move around her," Brandon says. "Have you ever tried it? It's creepy."
Grant doesn't say anything. He chews his lip like he's deep in thought.
"I found out the name of that lawyer guy," he says. "It was Richard Pratt. I figure if we find a couple of Pratts and one of them is a lady who died in middle-age and the other is a guy who died when he was fifteen, that's them."
"But then what do we do?"
"I dunno." Grant looks at Brandon like this is where he comes in. Brandon sighs.
"I guess it couldn't hurt to make contact with something -- physical." Brandon is pulling this out of his ass, but he doesn't want Grant to lose faith in him. "Then if we have a seance, they've got a point of reference, you know? In case they haven't already -- locked onto you."
"Yeah." Grant grins like that was what he was waiting to hear. "Exactly."
Brandon's face is red from the exertion of spouting such bullshit. He follows Grant through the graveyard, searching for Pratts. It's getting colder as the sun sinks lower, and Brandon wishes he hadn't spitefully told his mother he didn't need a sweater when she reminded him to take one to school. Grant is wearing only a t-shirt, the back of it tucked into the waistband of his boxers. Brandon would say something but he doesn't want to admit he's looked, though it's hard not to notice with Grant walking in front of him.
"Well, this sucks," Grant says when they've searched for an hour and come up with nothing. "But it's almost dark. You want to come over and I can show you what I'm talking about, the way the door opens itself?"
"Sure." Brandon hasn't been to Grant's house yet. His mother will be worried, but he's not about to interrupt this to check in. Grant pats his shoulder like he's being a good sport, and they walk back toward the car.
"You ever actually seen a ghost?" Grant asks.
"No."
"I think I have."
"Oh yeah?" Brandon hasn't heard this part yet.
"Yeah, I'm not sure, though. This ghost in my house, it just looks blacker than the darkness, you know what I mean? Like, solid black, not just dark but black."
They get to his house around six o'clock. It's a two-story contemporary thing, faded bluish paint and a weird octagonal window over the driveway. Grant parks on the street and unlocks the front door with a key from under the mat, which makes sense. He seems like the kind of guy who doesn't like to keep anything unnecessary in his pockets, just his car key on a short chain that looks like it was once a girl's bracelet, and his cigarettes, an ever-present rectangular shape over his right ass cheek. Not that Brandon has looked.
The house is bright and bustling, which Brandon didn't expect. Grant's younger sister is sitting Indian-style on the floor, watching cartoons. She gazes at them with disinterest and turns back to her show. Grant makes a fart noise and taps her with his shoe as they walk past. She scowls at him and calls him an asshole. She's maybe ten.
"Is that you?" his mother asks when Grant and Brandon walk into the kitchen. It's steamy and smells like onions cooking in butter. Grant kisses his mother's cheek. She's tiny and pretty but looks very tired.
"This is my friend," Grant says when his mother sees Brandon lingering awkwardly.
"Hey." Grant's mother grins a little tightly. "Is he here for dinner?" she asks Grant.
"I dunno." Grant is in the pantry, already has a mouth full of fruit roll up. He peels one for Brandon and hands it to him. "You staying?"
"I guess. If that's okay."
Grant's mother waves her hand, and Brandon isn't sure how to interpret that. Grant shrugs and leads him out of the kitchen. They go to Grant's room, where he claims he's heard the ghost crawling across his floor at night. Brandon got goosebumps the first time he told him about it. But he doesn't believe in this stuff anymore.
"Okay, watch," Grant says. He shuts the bedroom door and goes to sit on his bed, a twin with ransacked sheets. Brandon stands in the middle of the room until Grant pats the mattress. They sit together and stare at the door, listening to the muffled sound of the television and plates clattering together out in the kitchen.
"Maybe if we turn off the lights," Grant says. He jumps up and snaps the switch down before Brandon can offer input, like your mother's gonna think we're up to something if we sit in here together with the lights out and the door shut. He swallows hard when Grant bounces onto the bed beside him, waits for his eyes to adjust.
"Listen," Grant says. Brandon can't hear anything but his heart beating like a piece of enormous machinery that is close to overheating. But then. A click. Something about it makes his blood go cold.
The door groans as it slides open just a crack, light spilling inside. Grant laughs deep in his throat and grabs Brandon's hand to make sure he's seeing this. Brandon turns to him, stunned. A line of light from the hallway is sliced across across Grant's left eye like they're in a comic book panel.
"See?" Grant whispers, as if there is someone else in the room who might hear.
"Fuck," Brandon exhales in astonishment. Grant puts his arm around Brandon's shoulders and shakes him, laughing, like they're on the same team and they just scored a goal.
*
Two days later, they skip third period and go to Taco Bell for lunch. Grant eats five soft tacos and drinks a combination of Mountain Dew, orange Fanta and pink lemonade from the fountain. He makes Brandon try it, and it's surprisingly not disgusting.
"We should go into the woods behind that one house on Howell Mill with the pond out front," Grant says. "I've heard a witch lives back there."
Brandon just rolls his eyes. Grant throws a straw wrapper at him.
"I need a cleansing ritual," Grant says. "I don't want to try to talk to this fucker without some kind of protective charms, you know? The thing scared the shit out of me last night."
Grant has big bags under his eyes. Brandon wasn't going to ask. He sits forward, hunches his shoulders.
"What happened?"
Grant rubs a hand over his face and sighs. Brandon has never before seen him express any reluctance to talk about the ghost.
"It sat on me," he says. Brandon chokes up a laugh before he can stop himself. Grant kicks him under the table.
"It wouldn't let me wake up, or move. It was weird. I felt like I couldn't breathe."
"Shit." Brandon doesn't know what else to say. He could make up a cleansing ritual, but what if something really is happening in Grant's house? Ghosts aren't real, but there does seem to be something evil in the place. Just yesterday they were playing Nintendo when tinkly, ice-cream truck type music could be heard faintly from somewhere near the front door. Grant's sister jumped up to catch the truck, but when she opened the door the music stopped, and there was nothing there. Something about the strained innocence of the music was particularly sinister, and for the first time Grant looked sort of freaked out, though he tried to hide it.
They drive out to Howell Mill and Grant parks his car in the little lot by the pond. The shack that sells Icees and counterfeit fishing permits is dark and dusty, a big CLOSED sign hanging crooked in its window. They venture past it to the path that leads up to the hiking trail, the sound of woodpeckers knocking on dead trees echoing through the quiet. The leaves on the ground are satisfyingly crunchy. It hasn't rained since they started to fall.
"We're not seriously looking for a witch's house, are we?" Brandon asks, afraid that Grant has crossed from fun crazy over to dangerous crazy.
"No," Grant says. "I just need to think. My mind's all fuzzy."
"You're just tired." Brandon wants to slap himself. He sounds like his mother.
"You don't think a ghost can make you go insane, do you?" Grant asks. He stops and looks back at Brandon for the answer.
"Only if you let it," Brandon says. Grant smiles, scoffs.
"I don't think it's the ghost of one of the Pratts," he says. "I think it's something else. Remember that girl our age who got arrested when one of the kids she babysat for disappeared?"
"Yeah -- kind of. They let her go, right?"
Grant nods. "Not enough evidence to convict. She went nuts anyway. Her story was that the kids were asleep, and she walked into the kitchen and found the back door open, and water all over the floor. The one kid was missing, so she took the other one out into the woods with her to search. They didn't find him, didn't find anything."
"Someone must have snatched him."
"But then she started seeing him everywhere!" Grant's eyes are getting wide with excitement. "And the other kid did, too. And people kept finding all these weird footprints around the creek back behind the kid's house, big boot prints and little kid feet, bare."
"What does this have to do with your ghost?"
"We heard that weird music." Grant shakes his head. "I don't know, man. I need to think. I feel like I'm on the verge of figuring it out, you know?"
"Yeah." Brandon doesn't feel that way at all. He follows Grant up the trail, and then off of it, into a small meadow full of rocks and tall grass. Grant sits down in the grass with a groan, and stretches onto his back. He covers his eyes, then peeks out through his fingers at Brandon.
"Can we just sit here for a minute?" he says. Brandon is already kneeling down beside him. He lies back and folds his hands on his stomach. It's a cool day, but it feels good in the sun, just warm enough.
"I want to try and contact the ghost," Grant says. "But we have to figure out who it is first. If it's some kind of serial killer ghost, I don't know what I'll do."
"So they never found that kid?" Brandon asks. "Not his bones or anything?"
"Not even a piece of his hair," Grant says. "He was gone, man."
"Shit," Brandon says. He shuts his eyes against the sun. "Are you starting to get worried?"
"Yeah. A little."
Grant's voice is close, and when Brandon opens his eyes, he's leaning over him. He looks sleepy and harmless, his bangs hanging across his forehead, blocking the sun from Brandon's eyes.
"Are you worried?" Grant asks.
"No," Brandon says, though suddenly he is. He's holding his breath even before Grant puts a hand on his chest. There's a protest lodged in his throat when Grant's hand begins to drag down over his stomach and toward his lap, but he can't force it out. Grant is holding his gaze so steadily that Brandon is afraid they'll both die if he blinks.
Grant doesn't say anything, just breathes hot and slow. Brandon's chest is doing some weird ratcheting thing and the sun is suddenly so bright. He opens his legs up involuntarily when Grant's squeezes his dick through his jeans, and Grant takes it like a cue to reach down and cup his balls. Brandon makes a croaking noise and shuts his eyes. He doesn't know what's happening. He's dreaming, must have fallen asleep. Grant's fingers are clumsy but firm, rubbing Brandon until his cock is so hard and full he barely recognizes it. He's never done this with someone else. Never even considered doing it with a guy. Maybe this is something normal guys do, like smoking, like sports.
"Wait," Brandon squawks, and then he comes in his pants, letting out his breath like he's been holding it for hours. He lets his mouth hang open and watches the sky, waits for things to begin making sense again. Grant is staring at him, but Brandon is afraid to meet his eyes. He feels like he just woke up in someone else's life.
"You don't have to do me," Grant says. It's a pretty obvious request to return the favor, but Brandon only lies still, thinking about his ruined boxers and the walk back to the car. He looks down and watches Grant open his own jeans and work a hand into his briefs, studies the shape of his cock inside the cotton. His face is hot; he feels like he's spying. Grant is stroking himself fast like he wants to get this over with, his breath landing in short puffs on Brandon's temple. Brandon dares a glance at Grant's face, and he seems so naked and lonely, jerking himself off while Brandon lies there like he's been drained of blood. He looks like he wants to be kissed. It's so absurd that it fits, and Brandon sits up quick on his elbows, smashes his lips against Grant's with his eyes shut tight. Grant licks him soft like an apology, and it feels even better than his hand did.
Their heads knock together when Grant comes. Brandon kisses the side of his nose and lies back on the ground in defeat. He feels weightless and humiliated, waits for the punch line. Grant sighs tremendously and falls onto his side like he's going to sleep for days. He's crumpled and hazy, his shirt hitched up to reveal the smooth skin on his stomach. Brandon tries to come up with an appropriate response to this situation, knows he never will.
"Sorry," Grant mumbles. "I don't know why I did that."
"Maybe it was the witch."
And that must be the appropriate response, because Grant grins and shuts one eye against the sun, and the cold mess in Brandon's boxers seems suddenly less apocalyptic. He never realized before that part of the reason he likes Grant is his face. He's got a really good face.
*
They go to the haunted movie theater that Friday to get a sense of perspective. They've been kind of inseparable since the day in the meadow, skipping a lot of school. Brandon doesn't know about Grant, because they don't talk about it, but he feels like they'll wake up from whatever is happening if they spend too much time apart. He doesn't want to wake up. He kisses Grant in bathroom stalls between classes, pressed between the painted cinderblock and the warm weight of him. Grant with his Old Navy sweaters and turkey sandwich breath. Brandon comes when Grant kisses him. That's all it takes, and he's not dumb enough to believe that stuff like this lasts very long.
"We just want tickets for whatever you've got playing in theater seven," Grant says when they're leaning on the box office ledge. The cashier, a girl with hair that's been bleached to death and separated by plastic barrettes, gives them a long-suffering look. It's not an uncommon request.
"That would be Blood Sport IV," she says. Grant looks at Brandon, beams.
"Perfect," he says to the girl. He pays for Brandon's ticket. Brandon doesn't care what people think. He's been living like he knows when the world is going to end: soon.
"So, the double murders," Grant says as they wait in line for refreshments. Brandon has heard the story ten million times before, like everyone who lives in Thousand Tress, but he shoves his hands in his back pockets and listens intently. Like everyone in Thousand Trees, he loves this story.
"There's this married woman and she falls in love with -- what was he?"
"A mechanic." Brandon has also heard a version where she fell in love with a janitor, but he refuses to believe that.
"Right. And her husband, he owns the only laundromat in town. Cause this was awhile back."
"You know what's there now?" Brandon asks.
"A pet store," Grant says. They order their popcorn and two monstrous Coke Icees that go for five bucks each, but they're not quite reckless enough to share a drink in public, and Brandon is grateful that Grant understands this. He seems to get everything Brandon needs without asking, and to know what Brandon wants before he does. He invents what Brandon wants, seems like.
"So she's in love with this mechanic," Grant says as they head toward theater seven, in the back on the right, the scene of the crime. "And while her husband is slaving away over laundromat shit, she meets the mechanic in this theater. It's a regular thing, because they always run the worst movies here at the back, and the theater's usually empty -- or it was, before this -- so they've got privacy to fuck around in there. But the husband is not as dumb as she thinks, and he figures it out, follows her. The next time she does it he's got a gun. Two shots, one in the back of each head. No silencer! They didn't see it coming, and no one thought anything of hearing gun shots, cause it's a movie theater. The husband walks out the exit doors at the side --" Grant pauses to nod at them. "And that's it. Gets away. Never seen again."
"Everyone always assumes the husband did it," Brandon says. "Maybe it was random."
"Yeah, right!" Grant opens the door with his hip, hands full of junk food. "It was him. He disappeared the day it happened. Brandon! It was him."
Brandon is glad the lights have already gone down. He's smiling hard as they find their way to their seats. Grant has never said his name before. He didn't even realize this until he finally heard it.
"They should make a movie about the murders," Brandon whispers when they're seated in the middle of the fourth row. "And show it in this theater."
Grant looks at him like he's a genius.
The movie sucks, predictably, but at moments it's unintentionally hilarious. There are only three other people in the theater: a chunky man and woman in the back, and a kid in the front row who looks nervous, either because he snuck into the movie or because of the theater's history. Brandon and Grant finish the entire bag of popcorn and play jerk-off chicken until the flies of their jeans are buttery and salted. They laugh and curse each other in whispers, and the theater, as usual, isn't scary at all.
They practically jog to the car, and Grant drives way too fast, parks crazily in the under-construction McMansion-hood of the week. This is a good one, the houses still wooden skeletons surrounded by red dirt. Grant yanks Brandon into the backseat, and they grind their laps together, because it still feels so frighteningly good and makes them come so fast and hard that they can't even imagine doing anything else. Grant fishes his little battery-powered radio out of the glove compartment, and they stretch out on the seat to listen to Coast to Coast AM, fooling around during commercial breaks and when it starts to get too cold. It's three in the morning by the time they leave the construction site, and Brandon falls asleep in the passenger seat.
He's pretty sure Grant made the whole ghost thing up just to seduce him, and he's in something like love with him for it. What a story for the grandkids.
Grant pets him awake when they get to his house. Brandon sits up with a moan, filled with the weird dread he experiences whenever they separate.
"Tomorrow we'll read up on those other unsolved child abductions," Grant says. "I just bet the guy who's responsible for them lived in my house. I just have a feeling."
"Don't say that," Brandon mutters, still half-asleep. He thinks about telling Grant that he can drop the whole act, but discussion of what's going on could easily break the spell.
"Listen, I hope I'm wrong," Grant says. He sounds truly afraid, and Brandon leans over to give him a comically wet kiss on the cheek.
"You're wrong," he says.
In the morning he'll recognize this as the jinx. He learned during his stint as a paranormal junkie that there's nothing a pissed off spirit likes better than calling a cocky fucker's bluff.
*
The next day feels off from the beginning. Something about the sunlight is wrong, sharp and bitter. Brandon takes a shower to try and get rid of the feeling, and drives his mom's car over to Grant's house with his hair still wet.
Grant is sitting on the front steps, which are wooden and cracked all over, a collection of loosely associated splinters. He's smoking, the pack and lighter beside him on the top step. Brandon walks up with his hands in his pockets, a defensive sort of move. Grant looks terrible.
"You okay?" Brandon asks. Grant shakes his head. Brandon scoots the lighter and cigarettes over and takes their place beside him.
"Something bad happened." Grant's voice is almost unrecognizable, not timid but checked.
"Isn't your mom going to get pissed if she sees you smoking?" Brandon isn't ready to hear about anything bad. He's been waiting for the catch; everything's been so good. It's not fair that he knew it was coming. It's not right that it finally has.
"She took Alicia to a soccer game," Grant says. "Dad's at work."
"Let's go inside." Brandon wants to put an arm around him. He's shaking.
"I'm not going back in there." Grant meets his eyes at last, and for a minute Brandon is afraid of him.
"What the hell happened?"
"I'll tell you." Grant stands up, flexes his hand until Brandon puts the cigarettes and lighter into it. "I'll tell you when we're in the car."
Grant smokes two cigarettes while Brandon drives. Brandon's mom is going to kill him when she smells it, but he doesn't have the heart to ask him to stop. He's wrecked, someone wrecked him. Brandon swallows the first bubble of a sob when he thinks of it this way. He doesn't even know where he's going. Someplace they can be alone, which is nowhere during the day, especially on a sunny Saturday with the parks full of ultimate frisbee leagues. He finally settles on the senior community center behind the public library. It's deserted as usual. He parks in the back and looks at Grant, who hasn't said a word since they left his house.
"Hey," Brandon says, desperate. He reaches over to touch the back of Grant's neck, and he's relieved to find that his skin is warm, despite the fact that he looks half-dead.
"Brandon." Grant won't look at him. When he swallows, Brandon can feel it under his hand. "Something's wrong with me."
"No, Grant -- what are you talking about?"
"Last night. I scared everybody. My parents, my sister. I thought I saw something and it was going to kill me."
"What did you see?"
Grant pinches his eyes shut and shakes his head, like he doesn't want to remember. Brandon's heart is pounding. He wants to tell him to stop this right now, to laugh it off and find it fascinating and talk again about buying charms from witches as if it's all a big joke. He rubs Grant's neck with his thumb and forefinger. His muscles are tight and trembling.
"I even turned the light on," he says. "I turned the light on and it was still there. It was this black stuff, like cobwebs, and it spread out from the corners -- oh shit, Brandon, I'm crazy, I'm fucking crazy, aren't I?"
Brandon gets out of the car. He's shaking now, too. Maybe Grant is just joking. Maybe he'll burst into laughter any minute now, tell Brandon he really had him going, but he's cowering in the passenger seat like he still thinks he's in danger. Brandon opens the passenger side door and pulls him out by the hand, wraps him into his arms. He doesn't even look around the lot to make sure no one will see, doesn't much care at the moment. Grant ducks his head down to Brandon's shoulder and sniffles against it.
"It's okay," Brandon says. He rubs his back, kisses the wet corner of his eye. He can fix this, whatever the fuck it is. No problem.
"They came in and they couldn't see it," Grant says, crying in muffled jags against Brandon's neck. "My parents, and my sister. It was there, and they couldn't see it."
"Maybe you just need your eyes checked."
"But I felt it, too. It wanted to kill me."
"Okay, okay." Brandon rocks him in his arms. He reeks of cigarettes and feels thinner than he did last night.
"I don't know what to do," Grant says, like he's looking for suggestions. "I don't want to get committed. I don't want to get doped up. You should have seen the way my mom looked at me this morning. Even my sister--" He breaks off there, cries hard. Brandon holds him like he can squeeze this out of him if he just gets close enough.
"You're not crazy," Brandon says, though he's isn't sure. "I saw the door open, and heard that music. There's something there. Maybe it can hide itself from your family. Maybe it is trying to drive you insane."
"Oh, fuck, do you really believe that?" Grant pulls back to look at him, and Brandon is afraid that he'll recognize his doubt. He makes his face as cool and certain as he can.
"Yes," he says. "You're fine. We'll fix it. You're fine."
They drive to the Quick Stop so Grant can buy more cigarettes, the sunlight sharpening around them. Grant doesn't need a fake ID because his friend works the counter. The guy is stringy and tattooed and Brandon hates him immediately. He buys a slushie and a bag of Ruffles, fills the tank. He usually lets it run down to empty before he'll spend money putting gas in his mom's car, but he needs something to do with his hands, busy work.
"Eat these," he says when he's driving. He throws the Ruffles into Grant's lap. Grant is smoking again, and he takes a last drag before flinging the cigarette out the window and opening the chips with feeble determination.
"I haven't been sleeping," he says, gazing down into the bag as if it's an intimidating abyss.
"You can come stay at my house," Brandon says.
"Really?"
"Yep." Brandon lives in the basement and has his own door that leads out to the backyard. His Dungeons and Dragons group has commented that it's a great setup for sneaking in girls. He never knew until recently why the concept made him so glum. Girls are like sports, another thing he wishes everyone would get off his back about.
They spend the rest of the day the library, where the sunlight is dusty and kind through the high windows. Brandon pages through familiar spirit guides and ghost hunting manuals, the books he would renew and renew during his obsession with paranormal science. They feel like old friends between his fingers, calming him down and assuring him that all of this is possible, documented and rational in its way. Grant leans beside him and reads over his shoulder while he makes notes. Brandon kisses him when no one is looking, quick and sweet just to make sure he's still okay. He seems to be recovering, slowly, pointing at examples of spirit photography with wonder rather than fear. Brandon can hear his stomach growling. When the library closes down at seven he takes him to Ruby Tuesday's and pays for his cherry Coke and bacon cheeseburger. Grant grins at him across the table.
"Maybe it was just a nightmare," he says.
In the midst of the warm restaurant noise, Brandon is inflated with a sense of accomplishment. Grant's eyes have gone mischievous again, less gray and more blue. Case closed.
He drives home and tells Grant how to get into the basement, then makes a quick appearance upstairs with his mother, who is watching old horror movies on AMC. Halloween is just a week away, and they're showing Bride of Frankenstein and Revenge of the Creature, all the old classics. Brandon would watch with her if he didn't have Grant to look after. He wishes he could just tell her about Grant, and maybe he could, maybe they could all watch scary movies together and she would trust him to take Grant downstairs for a sleepover afterward. It's not like one of them might get pregnant.
"You're certainly out and about a lot lately," his mother says while Brandon leans on the arm of the couch. "What's up?"
"Nothing's up. I'm just hanging out with my friend. Friends."
His mother grins as if she knows everything, and Brandon goes for the basement door, tells her he's going to watch Evil Dead downstairs.
Grant has put all the lights in the basement on, and he's sitting at the end of Brandon's bed, which is just two fat mattresses stacked onto the floor. He's hugging his arms to his chest. His eyes look gray again, but maybe it's just the shadows.
"I think it comes when I'm alone," he says.
"Is it here now?"
"No."
Brandon is afraid he's lying. He looks around his room but sees nothing out of the ordinary, just the Lord of the Rings poster he should have thought to take down.
"We'll watch a movie," he says, trying not to give this development too much thought. It's late. Grant is tried, that's all. When Brandon goes to his DVD collection he skims over Evil Dead in favor of The Big Lebowski. Grant lies sideways on the bed and Brandon curls around him, absorbs his laughter happily. They fall asleep without even reaching for each other's laps. It's not that kind of night.
In the morning, they spend a long time waking up, yawning bad breath into each other's faces and drifting back to sleep. Brandon knows that if he sleeps too late his mother will come down looking for his laundry, so he finally rouses Grant a little after eleven o'clock. He sits up and rubs his face, lets Grant yank him back down.
"Did you sleep alright?" Brandon asks. His eyes fall shut again once his head is on the pillow, and he cups the back of Grant's head, smooths his hair into place.
"Uh-huh." Grant scoots close, bites the tip of his nose. "You're -- I -- " He can't articulate it, and Brandon is mostly relieved, lets him push his boxers down and feel what he's like without two layers of clothes between them. He's still got his morning wood, hot and sensitive against Grant's palm. He tries not to make any embarrassing noises, and pushes them into Grant's mouth when he can't stuff them down. Grant reaches around to touch his bare ass, feather-light like he doesn't want to wake it, and it only takes two passes of his hand along the crack to finish Brandon off. He pumps what feels like a week's worth of come onto the sheets, and Grant watches him, his mouth wet and open.
"Yeah," he says softly, as if Brandon needs encouragement.
Brandon climbs over the swamp he's left on his sheets, his arms and legs wobbly and barely functional. He slides Grant's boxers off and stares at his cock, thick and flushed red, and for the first time he thinks he understands blow jobs. He wants to lick Grant until he's shivering with pleasure, toes curled up, wants him in his mouth and hard against the back of his throat, but he barely knows how to use his hand when he's trying his tricks on someone else, so he doesn't dare. He figures they have time for that, for everything. Pulling him off is miraculous enough. With his hand tight around Grant's naked cock, he can feel him throb when he comes, and it's enough to get him half-hard again. Grant's ribs surface along his chest when he arches up off the mattress, his eyes fluttering somewhere between open and closed, his dick still pulsing in Brandon's loosening grip.
They slump onto each other, boxers still pulled down because it feels good to be pressed against so much skin, even the sticky parts. Brandon sleeps thinly, listening to his mother walk around upstairs, turn the water on in the kitchen, open and shut the front door. He lifts his head and looks at Grant. He likes that they can stare at each other without speaking and it doesn't feel weird.
"Did you like me before the ghost?" Brandon asks. He feels bad about bringing it up, but he's been wondering.
"A little," Grant says. "You were in my Econ class last year, remember? You had to do a presentation and you like, forgot one of the pages of notes you'd written."
"Oh, God." Brandon winces at the memory.
"Your face got all red and your voice started shaking, and I --" Grant kisses him. "Yeah."
They take turns in the shower, and Brandon gets a weird thrill out of loaning Grant clean socks, boxers, and a faded Dream Theater t-shirt that once belonged to his father. Brandon's mother has gone somewhere with the car, so they walk over to Grant's house, eating cold Pop Tarts on the way. It's another bright day, the colors slanted to pastels the way they always seem to be on Sundays, pumpkins on the porch of almost every house they pass. Grant's footsteps are slow, but Brandon insists.
"You're going to have to sleep there tonight," he says. "We have to speak to the spirit, or whatever, get him to go away."
"You think it's a him?"
"Well -- yeah, I guess I do."
Grant stops walking and presses his lips together.
"I don't want to do this," he says. Brandon hooks a finger through the belt loop of his jeans. They're standing in the woods between Chestnut Grove and Hickory Pines, and they can just see the roof of Grant's house, leaf-covered and innocuous.
"I know," Brandon says. "But you have to. It's your house. I wish you could live in my room, but you can't."
"Why not?" Grant asks, and he sounds so pathetic that Brandon almost gives in. He puts his hand on Grant's back and gently moves him forward until he's walking toward his house at a steady clip. He needs closure. It was just a nightmare, but it must have been a bad one.
Nobody is home. Grant moves through the living room cautiously, calling for his mother even after it's obvious that she's gone, her car missing from the driveway. They walk back to Grant's room, which is as dim and quiet as the rest of the house. The place has an evacuated feeling, like it's been abandoned in a hurry and no one will be back. Brandon stays close to Grant, who is looking up at the corners of his bedroom ceiling, hugging his elbows.
"It's not gonna come when you're here," he says.
"Why not?" Brandon asks. "It opened the door when I was here. It played that music."
"Maybe that was something else," Grant says. "Some not-evil spirit. This thing waits until I'm by myself."
Brandon puts his hands on Grant's hips, lips against the back of his ear. He wants to tell him he loves him, to give that to him like a charm he can keep with him when he's alone, but he doesn't want the presence in this house -- whatever it is, even if it's just something he's imagined -- to use it against them.
"Okay," Brandon says. "I'll go into the living room. You shut the door. If anything happens, just shout, and I'll come running."
"It won't work," Grant says. "I'll know you're out there."
"Just try it." Brandon will not let him go crazy. He just won't allow it. He wants Grant to be his boyfriend and take him to prom and marry him in Massachusetts and do all the stupid fruity things that used to terrify him so much that he couldn't even think about the fact that he beats off to thoughts about other guys beating off, like they're cheering each other on. He's starting to feel like himself, and it's easier than he ever imagined, and he won't let some black cobwebs take it away.
Grant agrees to the experiment, and Brandon waves to him somberly before shutting him inside his room. He lingers out in the hallway for half a minute, listening, but he only hears Grant sit on his bed, two quick squeaks of the mattress springs. He lets out his breath and walks into the living room, steps up onto the fireplace to look at the family pictures lined up on the mantle. There's one of Grant when he was a kid, gap-toothed and grinning with a t-ball bat slung over his shoulder. Brandon looks at it until his eyes sting, and he hurries back down the hall, throws open the door of Grant's bedroom. He's just sitting there on the bed, and he tries to smile when Brandon walks inside.
"See?" Brandon sits behind him, pulls him close and wraps his legs around him.
"Yeah." Grant puts his hands over Brandon's. He doesn't really sound convinced.
*
Monday morning is cloudy and cold, the sky paved gray and the kitchen windows frosted with a few delicate ice crystals. Brandon makes hot chocolate while his mother stands at the sink, her coffee cup hugged to her chest.
"Mrs. Johnson called me," she says. Brandon puts a mug full of milk into the microwave.
"Who?"
"That lady who lives in Dorset Falls, you know, in the house behind ours? Stephanie's mom."
"Oh, right." Stephanie was the bane of Brandon's childhood, a jock who always organized the other neighborhood kids into games that involved constant running. Brandon eventually gave up their company for video games.
"She said you had someone over the other night. A boy."
Brandon keeps his eyes on the mug, which is turning in the microwave. He hasn't had a lot of time to envision his mother's reaction to Grant. It's been just the two of them since his dad died when he was thirteen, and he's never really had a reason not to tell her everything.
"I smelled smoke in my car," she says. "Is he a smoker?"
The microwave beeps, and Brandon jumps. He doesn't know how to answer that question. Yeah, Grant smokes, but is he a smoker?
"I'll make him quit," Brandon says. His face is burning, and suddenly the hot chocolate seems unnecessary. He dumps the Swiss Miss powder into the steaming milk anyway, stirs it up vigorously. His mother touches the back of his neck, rubs her hand across his shoulders.
"I asked Mrs. Johnson if he was cute," she says. "She looked at me like I was nuts. She's a nosy bitch, but I knew that already."
"Yeah." Brandon grins down at his hot chocolate, blows on it.
"So is he?"
"Jesus, Mom. I don't know. Yes."
She drives him to school. He usually walks, but it's cold, and in the moment he loves his mother and their non-haunted house so much that he doesn't mind the extra time with her. They listen to the horrible Top 40 radio show on the city's "number one" station. They're doing a feature on ghosts for Halloween, playing alleged EVP recordings from listeners' homes.
"You used to be so into that stuff," his mother says.
"I still kinda like it," Brandon admits.
At school, he sits through first and second period anxiously, his right leg jiggling under his desk. He waits at Grant's locker after second, when he usually changes books, but doesn't see him. Third period seems to last an eternity, and he goes to the typically deserted bathroom by the orchestra room, where they usually meet before fourth. He's not in their stall, not anywhere. Brandon waits as long as he can, and he's late to class. He wishes for the first time in his life that he had a cell phone.
When Grant is not in their usual lunch spot out by the soccer field, he walks to the parking lot, his heart pounding. A cursory examination from the top of the front stairs tells him Grant is not here, or at least his car isn't. The sight of the lot, filled with taupe SUVs and silver Corollas, is entirely too depressing without Grant's bright yellow Mustang dressing it up a bit. As the bell for fifth period rings, Brandon walks away from the school, toward the woods.
The small pine forest between the school and Hickory Pines is quieter than usual, no pot smokers standing in giggling circles or shouts from the Phys Ed classes that practice on the soccer field. The sun is still hidden behind a flat wall of clouds, and the day is abnormally cold for October. Brandon walks quickly through the woods, troubled by the feeling that he's being watched. He thinks of the kid who got kidnapped right under his babysitter's nose, and the sitter running through the woods with the other kid's hand tight in hers, screaming his name. A squirrel shimmies frantically up a tree behind him, and he breaks into a jog, startled by the sound even after he turns back to see the animal staring at him in equal terror.
Grant's car is parked out in front of the house. Brandon pounds on the front door, but no one answers. Afraid that he's in there, trapped by a ghost or maybe even hurt, he takes the key from under the front mat and unlocks the door.
"Hello?" he calls. "Grant? Anybody here?"
He races down the hallway toward Grant's bedroom when he gets no answer. The door is hanging open and the room is empty. Brandon walks inside, his breath coming fast and loud, the key for the front door squeezed so hard into his hand that it cuts his palm.
"Grant?" he says weakly, though he knows now that he's not here. He stands in the middle of the room and tries to quiet his breath. The silence hums around him like florescent lights, though the whole house is dark. He knows he should leave, but he wants to prove either that there is nothing here or that there definitely is something. He can't decide. If there is nothing, that might mean Grant really is crazy, and he'd accept any reality before that one. He turns around with the terrible feeling that he'll see someone standing in the hall and staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes, and gasps even when he finds the doorway empty.
Suddenly, a door slams. Not the one in front of him, or across the hall, but it came from somewhere in the house, and the sharpness of the noise was unmistakable. Whoever or whatever slammed that door was angry.
Brandon tears out of the house, a frightened whine building in the back of his throat. He doesn't look at anything, and is afraid that when he tries to pull the front door open, whatever is in here won't let him leave. When the door opens without resistance he flings himself outside, trips down the front stairs. He's flooded with the feeling that if he had stayed in that house for five seconds longer, he'd be dead. He runs from the house with the key still clutched in his hand, his heart pinballing like it's going for the high score.
He runs all the way to his house as if he's being chased. For all he knows, he is. The satisfaction he expected to feel upon learning that Grant is not just seeing things is overshadowed by a mealy, rotten new awareness: there are evil things in the world, and they mean to do harm. Being alone in that house left him with no doubt.
He rounds the side of his house, headed for the backyard and the door to the basement, and he screams when he sees someone sitting on the concrete platform by the air conditioning unit. It's Grant, jacket-less and white-faced, staring at him with the wide eyes he was afraid he would see inside his house.
"Grant!" he says in a huff, bent over, his exhaustion catching up with his adrenaline. "What are you -- I was looking for you --"
"It was there, at school." Grant's voice is a tiny, stepped-on thing, his eyes unfocused. "I saw it in second period, spreading across the whole ceiling. I don't know. I ran."
"Fuck," Brandon exhales. He pulls Grant up and hugs him hard. He's stiff and cold, unresponsive, like he doesn't know where he is.
"I went to your house, looking for you," Brandon says. "I was in your room and I -- I don't know how, but I know it was there. And it wanted to hurt me, oh, fuck, Grant, but you're not crazy, don't worry, it's there."
"I know," Grant says. His face is vacant, almost unfamiliar. "I'm not worried about that anymore. I know it's real and it's going to kill me, Brandon. It's coming."
The panicked way he says so makes Brandon look over his shoulder, but he only sees the trees and bushes in the backyard, swaying against a breeze that is so delicate it seems menacing. He fumbles at the back door, trying to get it open, and curses himself when he realizes he's using the key to Grant's house. He finds the right one in his pocket and hurries Grant inside.
His mother will be at work until five, and he can't decide if he's glad or sorry about this. He takes Grant up to the kitchen and cuts him a slice of leftover lasagna. Grant sits in silence while it bubbles in the microwave, and Brandon paces, pulls his hands through his hair.
"Okay," he says. "Okay." He doesn't know how to continue.
"I think I have to burn the house down," Grant says. "I had a dream that I did."
Brandon waits for any indication that he's kidding, not really expecting one. The microwave goes off they both curse in surprise.
"No," Brandon says. He sets the lasagna in front of Grant and hands him a fork. "You're not burning your house down. Eat something, you look sick."
Grant holds the fork like he doesn't know what it is. Brandon peers out the kitchen windows, waiting for some approaching invisible force to show itself.
"I think we need to find that witch," he says. Grant looks at him like this is crazier than the idea of burning the house to the ground.
"What's she going to do about it?"
"I don't know, but I'm afraid -- I'm afraid. We could go back over to the house, just me and you, and try to tell the ghost to get lost, but I don't think it would work. I think it would go really badly, in fact."
Grant nods in agreement. He eats the entire plate of lasagna and then some Halloween candy from the bag Brandon's mother bought for trick-or-treaters. They move to the living room and Brandon puts the TV on; they both need a break from discussing the situation. They stare at Cheaters and Judge Mathis without really watching, Grant leaning limply against Brandon's chest. He checks the corners of the room periodically, bringing his eyes up slowly and shuddering even when he sees nothing there.
"Tell me if you see anything," Brandon whispers, like they're already hiding from it.
"It won't come when I'm with you." Grant sounds so certain. He presses his face against Brandon's neck, and Brandon can feel his eyelashes swipe down over his skin as he shuts his eyes.
"Get some rest," Brandon says. Grant sighs as if this is a preposterous suggestion and then promptly falls asleep, melting down to Brandon's lap and snoring in little outbursts every ten minutes or so. Brandon holds him like they're in a tragic oil painting, one hand in the indention before his hip and the other cupped over his head. He keeps his eyes on the windows, watching the blue-tinted landscape and the changes in the wind.
He carefully disentangles himself from Grant when he hears his mother's car pulling into the garage, and leaves Grant asleep on the sofa. He's had a few hours to think about how to present this situation to his mother, but hasn't really come up with anything. He stands near the basement door and listens to her footsteps, slow and heavy like it's been a long day. She opens the door and gasps when she sees him standing there, puts a hand over her heart.
"Brandon, you --" She frowns when he holds a finger to his lips. He points toward the couch and she chuffs in surprise when she sees Grant curled up under the red throw that she huddles under when she's watching movies late at night.
"Okay," she whispers. "What the hell?"
"C'mere." Brandon leads her down the hallway to his bedroom. He's got no idea how he'll explain what's going on, but he's glad to have an ally. Grant is involved in this to a terrifying degree, and he's not thinking straight. Brandon cares about him too much to be objective. Still, he knows his mother doesn't believe in ghosts, and there's always the threat of her getting the police or child services or some other judgmental bastard involved.
"Who is that boy?" she asks when Brandon's bedroom door is shut. "Is that the boy?"
"Yeah. Mom. He's in trouble. But don't freak out."
"What kind of -- oh, God, you were such an easy teenager for so long. I knew this kind of shit was gonna catch up with me and then some."
"It's fine!" Brandon says, though it isn't. "It's not a big thing. There's just some stuff going on at his house. His parents, uh. Found out he's, you know, and kicked him out."
"Poor thing." His mother frowns as if she knows he's lying, but Brandon has this delicate new understanding between them on his side, and she's willing to play along, maybe. "Do you want me to talk to his mother?"
"No, God no. She's actually not that bad. It'll probably be okay, they just need some time. You know? To think about it? Uh, or. Anyway, he's here. So that's why."
His mother takes a deep breath and stares at him, holding it, then lets it out. Brandon gives her a pleading look. They've had many conversations without speaking since his father died; there are some things that would only be cheapened if they were said out loud. Brandon has always felt lucky to have one of the few mothers in the world who seems to understand this.
"Do his parents know where he is?" she asks.
"No."
"Well, make sure they know he's safe. He can sleep on the couch, but I'm watching Dancing with the Stars in there at eight, so he'd better be otherwise occupied for an hour. And for God's sake, Brandon, tell me you're using condoms."
"Mom!"
"Excuse me? Don't give me that look, I'm completely serious. I'll go back out into that nasty weather right now and buy you some if you --"
"It's not, like, an issue!" Brandon holds his hands up and shuts his eyes, winces. "And anyway don't worry about it. I'm not stupid."
She gives him another long look of consideration, then makes an exasperated face in the direction of the ceiling. It's her way of consulting his father when Brandon drives her insane. He's always been jealous of her ability to do this, as if he actually answers.
"I'm taking a bath," she says. "Get dinner started for me and wake your little friend up. I'd like to meet him."
"Mom, God. Don't call him my little friend."
He goes back out the living room and sits beside Grant on the couch. He hears the squeak of the bathtub faucet in his mother's room, and then the water whining through the cold pipes. The wind has picked up outside. Brandon scratches Grant's back until he rolls over and blinks up at him. He's droopy-eyed, his hair sticking up crazily, and the color has finally returned to his cheeks.
"I will never let anything hurt you," Brandon says, so low and quiet that he thinks Grant might not have heard. He sits up with a groan and puts his face against Brandon's. His cheeks are hot and soft; he smells like sleep.
"I'd be dead already if you weren't around," Grant says.
"Don't talk about being dead."
"Okay. Sorry."
They eat dinner with Brandon's mother at the kitchen table. Dinner is usually served on the couch in front of the TV, so it feels like a special occasion; his mother even lights a few dusty candles. They eat stir fry with rice, and Grant at least pretends to like the tofu. He's surprisingly charming with Brandon's mother, all smiles, and only jumps once, when a branch hits the back porch.
"It's getting dangerous out there," Brandon's mother says. "Grant, do your parents know where you are?"
"Yes," he says, a lie. "Thanks for letting me stay."
"It's no problem. I'm glad to help."
Grant beams at her like she knows the whole story, like she's the witch who will save him.
"Where's your dad?" Grant asks later, when he and Brandon are down in the basement, Brandon's mother upstairs watching her show. They're curled under three layers of blankets, pressed nose to nose, the TV playing post-season baseball on mute. It gets freezing in the basement during winter, and this is the first time Brandon has had someone to pull under the blankets with him.
"He died three years ago," Brandon says. He's gotten good at saying it with a poker face.
"Oh." Grant's hand tightens on his side, underneath the blankets, underneath his shirt. "Shit."
"Yeah. An accident at work. I don't -- it was bad."
He lets Grant pull him in close like he's suddenly an invalid. This kind of sympathetic petting once made him want to break things, but he doesn't mind it so much now. Grant breathes into his hair, warm and Halloween-candy scented, and for a second Brandon thinks they can beat whatever is after them just like this, ducked under blankets, out of the wind.
"Do you believe in God?" Grant asks. He sounds like he's afraid someone will overhear. Brandon kisses the skin just under his chin, where he's softest and warmest and smells so good.
"I don't know," he says. "Sometimes."
*
Continued
Title: To Come True a Thing Must Come Second
Fandom: Halloween (the holiday, not the movie)
Rating: R
Notes: It's a tradition for me to write a Halloween story every year, and this year I thought I'd throw in some gay love story angst for the potential enjoyment of my lovely friends list.
Summary: Brandon is a nerdy high schooler who wanted to be a paranormal research scientist until he was teased enough to give up his belief in ghosts altogether. His old obsession is reborn when a classmate consults him as an "expert" on a haunting in his house.
Brandon is walking from fourth period to lunch when Grant Wheeler steps in front of him to tell him that he's started hallucinating bats.
"Well," Grant says. "Just one bat. In the corner of the ceiling by the art room."
"Like, a Hunter S. Thompson-type bat?" Brandon asks. Grant falls in step beside him, but grabs his arm to guide him away from the lunch room when he starts to turn in that direction.
"No, friendlier than that. It was big, though."
Brandon walks with Grant to the end of the hall. He's looking at Brandon like he should know what to say about this. Brandon still can't believe Grant Wheeler is speaking to him. He's not such a big deal, but he smokes cigarettes and plays basketball, or baseball, or one of those goddamn things.
"Uh," Brandon says. "Did you feel threatened?"
"No, not really." Grant opens the door to the senior courtyard and holds it like Brandon should follow him out.
Brandon follows. He doesn't have enough friends to turn away Grant Wheeler, even if he is only speaking to Brandon because he thinks he's some kind of authority on ghosts. There was a time when Brandon announced to his Life Studies class that he wanted to study paranormal science at college. That made its way around to the entire student body by the following morning, and he still gets called Ghost Boy, though he's since seen the error of his ways and doesn't even believe in ghosts anymore. He hasn't told Grant yet. Grant thinks his house is haunted. Brandon fully plans on telling him to seek psychological help as soon as this ghost consultation gets annoying, but that hasn't happened yet. Grant is kind of funny. If the whole thing ends up being a joke at Brandon's expense he'll lose all faith in humanity.
Grant pulls out his cigarettes as soon as they've turned the corner toward the soccer field, the windows of the cafeteria no longer visible. He sits down on the pavement and looks up at Brandon, one eye shut against the glare of the sun. It's a cool October day, bright and stinking of half-dead leaves.
"I mean, it was just part of the molding up there on the ceiling," Grant says. "It was this little section of it, but I thought it was a bat -- you think the ghost is fucking with my head?"
"I think it'd be more direct." Brandon takes a Snickers bar from his book bag and eats half of it while Grant smokes. He offers Grant a bite, but he just looks at it like he doesn't know what to do with it. Grant is tall and pretty sturdy for a sixteen-year-old, which Brandon doesn't understand, because he never seems to eat.
"I've been doing research," Grant says. "I think we should go to the cemetery after school."
"Okay." Brandon was going to study for a chemistry exam, but fuck it. He's forgotten how much fun it is to chase after the rumor of ghosts. When he was fourteen, he had a group of friends who would get together on weekends and do seances and graveyard runs, but most of them didn't take it as seriously as Brandon, and he would always get frustrated when they laughed and ruined the mood. Grant seems serious. He always has a gravely excited expression on his face when he talks about the ghost.
"Aren't you going to eat lunch?" Brandon asks. Grant puts his cigarette out against the pavement.
"I eat my lunch in History," he says. "I can't wait until fucking 1:30 to eat, you know what I mean?"
"Yeah. Fourth shift lunch is cruel."
"No kidding." Grant looks up at the sky, where wispy clouds sit motionless against the deep blue. "So, the cemetery?"
"I already said yes."
"Oh, yeah." Grant grins, and Brandon studies him, tries to figure out what the hell is really going on here. "Cool."
*
After seventh period, Brandon stuffs his books into his bag and walks out to the parking lot to meet Grant. His car is easy enough to find, a bright yellow 1973 Mustang with a black stripe along the hood. It's the best car in the lot, despite the fact that Grant lives in the only shitty neighborhood in Thousand Trees. His father works days at the Bank of America on Davidson and nights at Sam's Club, stocking shelves. He's been saving the car since his own teenager-hood, and he gave it to Grant the day he got his license. Brandon's heard the whole story. Grant is obsessed with the car, won't even smoke in it.
Grant is sitting in the driver's seat, and Brandon thinks he's asleep until he gets close enough to see that he's smiling. His eyes are hooded, and the sun is beating bright across the windshield.
"How long have you been waiting?" Brandon asks as he climbs into the passenger seat.
"I skipped seventh."
"Sorry." Brandon would have skipped, too.
"It's okay. You ready?"
They drive down to Lake Park Cemetery, the most significant one in town. Grant has a talk station on the radio, but the volume is turned so low that Brandon can't make out any words. He doesn't mind, tilts his head back on the seat and lets his eyes slide nearly shut. Grant has all the windows down, making conversation impossible, and it's nice.
"I've been reading," Grant says when they arrive. He seems to know where he's going, so Brandon follows him through the graveyard's soggy grass, crows harping up in the trees. "About all the murders in Thousand Trees. Two of them happened in Hickory Pines."
Hickory Pines is Grant's neighborhood. Brandon lives one over, in Chestnut Grove. It used to be the most reputable neighborhood in town, until pockets of McMansions started going up in every available cranny.
"But none of them happened specifically in your house?" Brandon asks.
"They might have. The addresses weren't mentioned, you know what I mean?"
"Yeah. Cool."
Grant wants his house to be haunted; Brandon has determined that much. He remembers longing for this sort of thing to happen to him, but that was mostly because he was a bored kid who wanted the world to present him with some macabre mystery to solve. Grant has a life. At least, Brandon has always assumed that he does. Whenever they're together, Grant's cell phone stays quiet, and people pass him by in the school hallways without a second look.
"So there was one suicide," Grant says dismissively, as if this is too common to account for his ghost. "And then there was that lawyer who came home to find his wife and son murdered by a dude he'd prosecuted."
"That happened in your neighborhood?"
"Yep," Grant says proudly. "Pretty sure it wasn't in my house, but it could have been."
"Did you ask your parents if the realtor told them a murder happened in your house? They have to disclose that you know, when they sell it."
"That's a good idea," Grant says. He's staring at something in the distance, and Brandon turns. It's the big angel statue in the middle of the cemetery, perched over the grave of a man who died in 1920, when Thousand Trees was just somebody's farmland.
"That angel's eyes follow you if you move around her," Brandon says. "Have you ever tried it? It's creepy."
Grant doesn't say anything. He chews his lip like he's deep in thought.
"I found out the name of that lawyer guy," he says. "It was Richard Pratt. I figure if we find a couple of Pratts and one of them is a lady who died in middle-age and the other is a guy who died when he was fifteen, that's them."
"But then what do we do?"
"I dunno." Grant looks at Brandon like this is where he comes in. Brandon sighs.
"I guess it couldn't hurt to make contact with something -- physical." Brandon is pulling this out of his ass, but he doesn't want Grant to lose faith in him. "Then if we have a seance, they've got a point of reference, you know? In case they haven't already -- locked onto you."
"Yeah." Grant grins like that was what he was waiting to hear. "Exactly."
Brandon's face is red from the exertion of spouting such bullshit. He follows Grant through the graveyard, searching for Pratts. It's getting colder as the sun sinks lower, and Brandon wishes he hadn't spitefully told his mother he didn't need a sweater when she reminded him to take one to school. Grant is wearing only a t-shirt, the back of it tucked into the waistband of his boxers. Brandon would say something but he doesn't want to admit he's looked, though it's hard not to notice with Grant walking in front of him.
"Well, this sucks," Grant says when they've searched for an hour and come up with nothing. "But it's almost dark. You want to come over and I can show you what I'm talking about, the way the door opens itself?"
"Sure." Brandon hasn't been to Grant's house yet. His mother will be worried, but he's not about to interrupt this to check in. Grant pats his shoulder like he's being a good sport, and they walk back toward the car.
"You ever actually seen a ghost?" Grant asks.
"No."
"I think I have."
"Oh yeah?" Brandon hasn't heard this part yet.
"Yeah, I'm not sure, though. This ghost in my house, it just looks blacker than the darkness, you know what I mean? Like, solid black, not just dark but black."
They get to his house around six o'clock. It's a two-story contemporary thing, faded bluish paint and a weird octagonal window over the driveway. Grant parks on the street and unlocks the front door with a key from under the mat, which makes sense. He seems like the kind of guy who doesn't like to keep anything unnecessary in his pockets, just his car key on a short chain that looks like it was once a girl's bracelet, and his cigarettes, an ever-present rectangular shape over his right ass cheek. Not that Brandon has looked.
The house is bright and bustling, which Brandon didn't expect. Grant's younger sister is sitting Indian-style on the floor, watching cartoons. She gazes at them with disinterest and turns back to her show. Grant makes a fart noise and taps her with his shoe as they walk past. She scowls at him and calls him an asshole. She's maybe ten.
"Is that you?" his mother asks when Grant and Brandon walk into the kitchen. It's steamy and smells like onions cooking in butter. Grant kisses his mother's cheek. She's tiny and pretty but looks very tired.
"This is my friend," Grant says when his mother sees Brandon lingering awkwardly.
"Hey." Grant's mother grins a little tightly. "Is he here for dinner?" she asks Grant.
"I dunno." Grant is in the pantry, already has a mouth full of fruit roll up. He peels one for Brandon and hands it to him. "You staying?"
"I guess. If that's okay."
Grant's mother waves her hand, and Brandon isn't sure how to interpret that. Grant shrugs and leads him out of the kitchen. They go to Grant's room, where he claims he's heard the ghost crawling across his floor at night. Brandon got goosebumps the first time he told him about it. But he doesn't believe in this stuff anymore.
"Okay, watch," Grant says. He shuts the bedroom door and goes to sit on his bed, a twin with ransacked sheets. Brandon stands in the middle of the room until Grant pats the mattress. They sit together and stare at the door, listening to the muffled sound of the television and plates clattering together out in the kitchen.
"Maybe if we turn off the lights," Grant says. He jumps up and snaps the switch down before Brandon can offer input, like your mother's gonna think we're up to something if we sit in here together with the lights out and the door shut. He swallows hard when Grant bounces onto the bed beside him, waits for his eyes to adjust.
"Listen," Grant says. Brandon can't hear anything but his heart beating like a piece of enormous machinery that is close to overheating. But then. A click. Something about it makes his blood go cold.
The door groans as it slides open just a crack, light spilling inside. Grant laughs deep in his throat and grabs Brandon's hand to make sure he's seeing this. Brandon turns to him, stunned. A line of light from the hallway is sliced across across Grant's left eye like they're in a comic book panel.
"See?" Grant whispers, as if there is someone else in the room who might hear.
"Fuck," Brandon exhales in astonishment. Grant puts his arm around Brandon's shoulders and shakes him, laughing, like they're on the same team and they just scored a goal.
*
Two days later, they skip third period and go to Taco Bell for lunch. Grant eats five soft tacos and drinks a combination of Mountain Dew, orange Fanta and pink lemonade from the fountain. He makes Brandon try it, and it's surprisingly not disgusting.
"We should go into the woods behind that one house on Howell Mill with the pond out front," Grant says. "I've heard a witch lives back there."
Brandon just rolls his eyes. Grant throws a straw wrapper at him.
"I need a cleansing ritual," Grant says. "I don't want to try to talk to this fucker without some kind of protective charms, you know? The thing scared the shit out of me last night."
Grant has big bags under his eyes. Brandon wasn't going to ask. He sits forward, hunches his shoulders.
"What happened?"
Grant rubs a hand over his face and sighs. Brandon has never before seen him express any reluctance to talk about the ghost.
"It sat on me," he says. Brandon chokes up a laugh before he can stop himself. Grant kicks him under the table.
"It wouldn't let me wake up, or move. It was weird. I felt like I couldn't breathe."
"Shit." Brandon doesn't know what else to say. He could make up a cleansing ritual, but what if something really is happening in Grant's house? Ghosts aren't real, but there does seem to be something evil in the place. Just yesterday they were playing Nintendo when tinkly, ice-cream truck type music could be heard faintly from somewhere near the front door. Grant's sister jumped up to catch the truck, but when she opened the door the music stopped, and there was nothing there. Something about the strained innocence of the music was particularly sinister, and for the first time Grant looked sort of freaked out, though he tried to hide it.
They drive out to Howell Mill and Grant parks his car in the little lot by the pond. The shack that sells Icees and counterfeit fishing permits is dark and dusty, a big CLOSED sign hanging crooked in its window. They venture past it to the path that leads up to the hiking trail, the sound of woodpeckers knocking on dead trees echoing through the quiet. The leaves on the ground are satisfyingly crunchy. It hasn't rained since they started to fall.
"We're not seriously looking for a witch's house, are we?" Brandon asks, afraid that Grant has crossed from fun crazy over to dangerous crazy.
"No," Grant says. "I just need to think. My mind's all fuzzy."
"You're just tired." Brandon wants to slap himself. He sounds like his mother.
"You don't think a ghost can make you go insane, do you?" Grant asks. He stops and looks back at Brandon for the answer.
"Only if you let it," Brandon says. Grant smiles, scoffs.
"I don't think it's the ghost of one of the Pratts," he says. "I think it's something else. Remember that girl our age who got arrested when one of the kids she babysat for disappeared?"
"Yeah -- kind of. They let her go, right?"
Grant nods. "Not enough evidence to convict. She went nuts anyway. Her story was that the kids were asleep, and she walked into the kitchen and found the back door open, and water all over the floor. The one kid was missing, so she took the other one out into the woods with her to search. They didn't find him, didn't find anything."
"Someone must have snatched him."
"But then she started seeing him everywhere!" Grant's eyes are getting wide with excitement. "And the other kid did, too. And people kept finding all these weird footprints around the creek back behind the kid's house, big boot prints and little kid feet, bare."
"What does this have to do with your ghost?"
"We heard that weird music." Grant shakes his head. "I don't know, man. I need to think. I feel like I'm on the verge of figuring it out, you know?"
"Yeah." Brandon doesn't feel that way at all. He follows Grant up the trail, and then off of it, into a small meadow full of rocks and tall grass. Grant sits down in the grass with a groan, and stretches onto his back. He covers his eyes, then peeks out through his fingers at Brandon.
"Can we just sit here for a minute?" he says. Brandon is already kneeling down beside him. He lies back and folds his hands on his stomach. It's a cool day, but it feels good in the sun, just warm enough.
"I want to try and contact the ghost," Grant says. "But we have to figure out who it is first. If it's some kind of serial killer ghost, I don't know what I'll do."
"So they never found that kid?" Brandon asks. "Not his bones or anything?"
"Not even a piece of his hair," Grant says. "He was gone, man."
"Shit," Brandon says. He shuts his eyes against the sun. "Are you starting to get worried?"
"Yeah. A little."
Grant's voice is close, and when Brandon opens his eyes, he's leaning over him. He looks sleepy and harmless, his bangs hanging across his forehead, blocking the sun from Brandon's eyes.
"Are you worried?" Grant asks.
"No," Brandon says, though suddenly he is. He's holding his breath even before Grant puts a hand on his chest. There's a protest lodged in his throat when Grant's hand begins to drag down over his stomach and toward his lap, but he can't force it out. Grant is holding his gaze so steadily that Brandon is afraid they'll both die if he blinks.
Grant doesn't say anything, just breathes hot and slow. Brandon's chest is doing some weird ratcheting thing and the sun is suddenly so bright. He opens his legs up involuntarily when Grant's squeezes his dick through his jeans, and Grant takes it like a cue to reach down and cup his balls. Brandon makes a croaking noise and shuts his eyes. He doesn't know what's happening. He's dreaming, must have fallen asleep. Grant's fingers are clumsy but firm, rubbing Brandon until his cock is so hard and full he barely recognizes it. He's never done this with someone else. Never even considered doing it with a guy. Maybe this is something normal guys do, like smoking, like sports.
"Wait," Brandon squawks, and then he comes in his pants, letting out his breath like he's been holding it for hours. He lets his mouth hang open and watches the sky, waits for things to begin making sense again. Grant is staring at him, but Brandon is afraid to meet his eyes. He feels like he just woke up in someone else's life.
"You don't have to do me," Grant says. It's a pretty obvious request to return the favor, but Brandon only lies still, thinking about his ruined boxers and the walk back to the car. He looks down and watches Grant open his own jeans and work a hand into his briefs, studies the shape of his cock inside the cotton. His face is hot; he feels like he's spying. Grant is stroking himself fast like he wants to get this over with, his breath landing in short puffs on Brandon's temple. Brandon dares a glance at Grant's face, and he seems so naked and lonely, jerking himself off while Brandon lies there like he's been drained of blood. He looks like he wants to be kissed. It's so absurd that it fits, and Brandon sits up quick on his elbows, smashes his lips against Grant's with his eyes shut tight. Grant licks him soft like an apology, and it feels even better than his hand did.
Their heads knock together when Grant comes. Brandon kisses the side of his nose and lies back on the ground in defeat. He feels weightless and humiliated, waits for the punch line. Grant sighs tremendously and falls onto his side like he's going to sleep for days. He's crumpled and hazy, his shirt hitched up to reveal the smooth skin on his stomach. Brandon tries to come up with an appropriate response to this situation, knows he never will.
"Sorry," Grant mumbles. "I don't know why I did that."
"Maybe it was the witch."
And that must be the appropriate response, because Grant grins and shuts one eye against the sun, and the cold mess in Brandon's boxers seems suddenly less apocalyptic. He never realized before that part of the reason he likes Grant is his face. He's got a really good face.
*
They go to the haunted movie theater that Friday to get a sense of perspective. They've been kind of inseparable since the day in the meadow, skipping a lot of school. Brandon doesn't know about Grant, because they don't talk about it, but he feels like they'll wake up from whatever is happening if they spend too much time apart. He doesn't want to wake up. He kisses Grant in bathroom stalls between classes, pressed between the painted cinderblock and the warm weight of him. Grant with his Old Navy sweaters and turkey sandwich breath. Brandon comes when Grant kisses him. That's all it takes, and he's not dumb enough to believe that stuff like this lasts very long.
"We just want tickets for whatever you've got playing in theater seven," Grant says when they're leaning on the box office ledge. The cashier, a girl with hair that's been bleached to death and separated by plastic barrettes, gives them a long-suffering look. It's not an uncommon request.
"That would be Blood Sport IV," she says. Grant looks at Brandon, beams.
"Perfect," he says to the girl. He pays for Brandon's ticket. Brandon doesn't care what people think. He's been living like he knows when the world is going to end: soon.
"So, the double murders," Grant says as they wait in line for refreshments. Brandon has heard the story ten million times before, like everyone who lives in Thousand Tress, but he shoves his hands in his back pockets and listens intently. Like everyone in Thousand Trees, he loves this story.
"There's this married woman and she falls in love with -- what was he?"
"A mechanic." Brandon has also heard a version where she fell in love with a janitor, but he refuses to believe that.
"Right. And her husband, he owns the only laundromat in town. Cause this was awhile back."
"You know what's there now?" Brandon asks.
"A pet store," Grant says. They order their popcorn and two monstrous Coke Icees that go for five bucks each, but they're not quite reckless enough to share a drink in public, and Brandon is grateful that Grant understands this. He seems to get everything Brandon needs without asking, and to know what Brandon wants before he does. He invents what Brandon wants, seems like.
"So she's in love with this mechanic," Grant says as they head toward theater seven, in the back on the right, the scene of the crime. "And while her husband is slaving away over laundromat shit, she meets the mechanic in this theater. It's a regular thing, because they always run the worst movies here at the back, and the theater's usually empty -- or it was, before this -- so they've got privacy to fuck around in there. But the husband is not as dumb as she thinks, and he figures it out, follows her. The next time she does it he's got a gun. Two shots, one in the back of each head. No silencer! They didn't see it coming, and no one thought anything of hearing gun shots, cause it's a movie theater. The husband walks out the exit doors at the side --" Grant pauses to nod at them. "And that's it. Gets away. Never seen again."
"Everyone always assumes the husband did it," Brandon says. "Maybe it was random."
"Yeah, right!" Grant opens the door with his hip, hands full of junk food. "It was him. He disappeared the day it happened. Brandon! It was him."
Brandon is glad the lights have already gone down. He's smiling hard as they find their way to their seats. Grant has never said his name before. He didn't even realize this until he finally heard it.
"They should make a movie about the murders," Brandon whispers when they're seated in the middle of the fourth row. "And show it in this theater."
Grant looks at him like he's a genius.
The movie sucks, predictably, but at moments it's unintentionally hilarious. There are only three other people in the theater: a chunky man and woman in the back, and a kid in the front row who looks nervous, either because he snuck into the movie or because of the theater's history. Brandon and Grant finish the entire bag of popcorn and play jerk-off chicken until the flies of their jeans are buttery and salted. They laugh and curse each other in whispers, and the theater, as usual, isn't scary at all.
They practically jog to the car, and Grant drives way too fast, parks crazily in the under-construction McMansion-hood of the week. This is a good one, the houses still wooden skeletons surrounded by red dirt. Grant yanks Brandon into the backseat, and they grind their laps together, because it still feels so frighteningly good and makes them come so fast and hard that they can't even imagine doing anything else. Grant fishes his little battery-powered radio out of the glove compartment, and they stretch out on the seat to listen to Coast to Coast AM, fooling around during commercial breaks and when it starts to get too cold. It's three in the morning by the time they leave the construction site, and Brandon falls asleep in the passenger seat.
He's pretty sure Grant made the whole ghost thing up just to seduce him, and he's in something like love with him for it. What a story for the grandkids.
Grant pets him awake when they get to his house. Brandon sits up with a moan, filled with the weird dread he experiences whenever they separate.
"Tomorrow we'll read up on those other unsolved child abductions," Grant says. "I just bet the guy who's responsible for them lived in my house. I just have a feeling."
"Don't say that," Brandon mutters, still half-asleep. He thinks about telling Grant that he can drop the whole act, but discussion of what's going on could easily break the spell.
"Listen, I hope I'm wrong," Grant says. He sounds truly afraid, and Brandon leans over to give him a comically wet kiss on the cheek.
"You're wrong," he says.
In the morning he'll recognize this as the jinx. He learned during his stint as a paranormal junkie that there's nothing a pissed off spirit likes better than calling a cocky fucker's bluff.
*
The next day feels off from the beginning. Something about the sunlight is wrong, sharp and bitter. Brandon takes a shower to try and get rid of the feeling, and drives his mom's car over to Grant's house with his hair still wet.
Grant is sitting on the front steps, which are wooden and cracked all over, a collection of loosely associated splinters. He's smoking, the pack and lighter beside him on the top step. Brandon walks up with his hands in his pockets, a defensive sort of move. Grant looks terrible.
"You okay?" Brandon asks. Grant shakes his head. Brandon scoots the lighter and cigarettes over and takes their place beside him.
"Something bad happened." Grant's voice is almost unrecognizable, not timid but checked.
"Isn't your mom going to get pissed if she sees you smoking?" Brandon isn't ready to hear about anything bad. He's been waiting for the catch; everything's been so good. It's not fair that he knew it was coming. It's not right that it finally has.
"She took Alicia to a soccer game," Grant says. "Dad's at work."
"Let's go inside." Brandon wants to put an arm around him. He's shaking.
"I'm not going back in there." Grant meets his eyes at last, and for a minute Brandon is afraid of him.
"What the hell happened?"
"I'll tell you." Grant stands up, flexes his hand until Brandon puts the cigarettes and lighter into it. "I'll tell you when we're in the car."
Grant smokes two cigarettes while Brandon drives. Brandon's mom is going to kill him when she smells it, but he doesn't have the heart to ask him to stop. He's wrecked, someone wrecked him. Brandon swallows the first bubble of a sob when he thinks of it this way. He doesn't even know where he's going. Someplace they can be alone, which is nowhere during the day, especially on a sunny Saturday with the parks full of ultimate frisbee leagues. He finally settles on the senior community center behind the public library. It's deserted as usual. He parks in the back and looks at Grant, who hasn't said a word since they left his house.
"Hey," Brandon says, desperate. He reaches over to touch the back of Grant's neck, and he's relieved to find that his skin is warm, despite the fact that he looks half-dead.
"Brandon." Grant won't look at him. When he swallows, Brandon can feel it under his hand. "Something's wrong with me."
"No, Grant -- what are you talking about?"
"Last night. I scared everybody. My parents, my sister. I thought I saw something and it was going to kill me."
"What did you see?"
Grant pinches his eyes shut and shakes his head, like he doesn't want to remember. Brandon's heart is pounding. He wants to tell him to stop this right now, to laugh it off and find it fascinating and talk again about buying charms from witches as if it's all a big joke. He rubs Grant's neck with his thumb and forefinger. His muscles are tight and trembling.
"I even turned the light on," he says. "I turned the light on and it was still there. It was this black stuff, like cobwebs, and it spread out from the corners -- oh shit, Brandon, I'm crazy, I'm fucking crazy, aren't I?"
Brandon gets out of the car. He's shaking now, too. Maybe Grant is just joking. Maybe he'll burst into laughter any minute now, tell Brandon he really had him going, but he's cowering in the passenger seat like he still thinks he's in danger. Brandon opens the passenger side door and pulls him out by the hand, wraps him into his arms. He doesn't even look around the lot to make sure no one will see, doesn't much care at the moment. Grant ducks his head down to Brandon's shoulder and sniffles against it.
"It's okay," Brandon says. He rubs his back, kisses the wet corner of his eye. He can fix this, whatever the fuck it is. No problem.
"They came in and they couldn't see it," Grant says, crying in muffled jags against Brandon's neck. "My parents, and my sister. It was there, and they couldn't see it."
"Maybe you just need your eyes checked."
"But I felt it, too. It wanted to kill me."
"Okay, okay." Brandon rocks him in his arms. He reeks of cigarettes and feels thinner than he did last night.
"I don't know what to do," Grant says, like he's looking for suggestions. "I don't want to get committed. I don't want to get doped up. You should have seen the way my mom looked at me this morning. Even my sister--" He breaks off there, cries hard. Brandon holds him like he can squeeze this out of him if he just gets close enough.
"You're not crazy," Brandon says, though he's isn't sure. "I saw the door open, and heard that music. There's something there. Maybe it can hide itself from your family. Maybe it is trying to drive you insane."
"Oh, fuck, do you really believe that?" Grant pulls back to look at him, and Brandon is afraid that he'll recognize his doubt. He makes his face as cool and certain as he can.
"Yes," he says. "You're fine. We'll fix it. You're fine."
They drive to the Quick Stop so Grant can buy more cigarettes, the sunlight sharpening around them. Grant doesn't need a fake ID because his friend works the counter. The guy is stringy and tattooed and Brandon hates him immediately. He buys a slushie and a bag of Ruffles, fills the tank. He usually lets it run down to empty before he'll spend money putting gas in his mom's car, but he needs something to do with his hands, busy work.
"Eat these," he says when he's driving. He throws the Ruffles into Grant's lap. Grant is smoking again, and he takes a last drag before flinging the cigarette out the window and opening the chips with feeble determination.
"I haven't been sleeping," he says, gazing down into the bag as if it's an intimidating abyss.
"You can come stay at my house," Brandon says.
"Really?"
"Yep." Brandon lives in the basement and has his own door that leads out to the backyard. His Dungeons and Dragons group has commented that it's a great setup for sneaking in girls. He never knew until recently why the concept made him so glum. Girls are like sports, another thing he wishes everyone would get off his back about.
They spend the rest of the day the library, where the sunlight is dusty and kind through the high windows. Brandon pages through familiar spirit guides and ghost hunting manuals, the books he would renew and renew during his obsession with paranormal science. They feel like old friends between his fingers, calming him down and assuring him that all of this is possible, documented and rational in its way. Grant leans beside him and reads over his shoulder while he makes notes. Brandon kisses him when no one is looking, quick and sweet just to make sure he's still okay. He seems to be recovering, slowly, pointing at examples of spirit photography with wonder rather than fear. Brandon can hear his stomach growling. When the library closes down at seven he takes him to Ruby Tuesday's and pays for his cherry Coke and bacon cheeseburger. Grant grins at him across the table.
"Maybe it was just a nightmare," he says.
In the midst of the warm restaurant noise, Brandon is inflated with a sense of accomplishment. Grant's eyes have gone mischievous again, less gray and more blue. Case closed.
He drives home and tells Grant how to get into the basement, then makes a quick appearance upstairs with his mother, who is watching old horror movies on AMC. Halloween is just a week away, and they're showing Bride of Frankenstein and Revenge of the Creature, all the old classics. Brandon would watch with her if he didn't have Grant to look after. He wishes he could just tell her about Grant, and maybe he could, maybe they could all watch scary movies together and she would trust him to take Grant downstairs for a sleepover afterward. It's not like one of them might get pregnant.
"You're certainly out and about a lot lately," his mother says while Brandon leans on the arm of the couch. "What's up?"
"Nothing's up. I'm just hanging out with my friend. Friends."
His mother grins as if she knows everything, and Brandon goes for the basement door, tells her he's going to watch Evil Dead downstairs.
Grant has put all the lights in the basement on, and he's sitting at the end of Brandon's bed, which is just two fat mattresses stacked onto the floor. He's hugging his arms to his chest. His eyes look gray again, but maybe it's just the shadows.
"I think it comes when I'm alone," he says.
"Is it here now?"
"No."
Brandon is afraid he's lying. He looks around his room but sees nothing out of the ordinary, just the Lord of the Rings poster he should have thought to take down.
"We'll watch a movie," he says, trying not to give this development too much thought. It's late. Grant is tried, that's all. When Brandon goes to his DVD collection he skims over Evil Dead in favor of The Big Lebowski. Grant lies sideways on the bed and Brandon curls around him, absorbs his laughter happily. They fall asleep without even reaching for each other's laps. It's not that kind of night.
In the morning, they spend a long time waking up, yawning bad breath into each other's faces and drifting back to sleep. Brandon knows that if he sleeps too late his mother will come down looking for his laundry, so he finally rouses Grant a little after eleven o'clock. He sits up and rubs his face, lets Grant yank him back down.
"Did you sleep alright?" Brandon asks. His eyes fall shut again once his head is on the pillow, and he cups the back of Grant's head, smooths his hair into place.
"Uh-huh." Grant scoots close, bites the tip of his nose. "You're -- I -- " He can't articulate it, and Brandon is mostly relieved, lets him push his boxers down and feel what he's like without two layers of clothes between them. He's still got his morning wood, hot and sensitive against Grant's palm. He tries not to make any embarrassing noises, and pushes them into Grant's mouth when he can't stuff them down. Grant reaches around to touch his bare ass, feather-light like he doesn't want to wake it, and it only takes two passes of his hand along the crack to finish Brandon off. He pumps what feels like a week's worth of come onto the sheets, and Grant watches him, his mouth wet and open.
"Yeah," he says softly, as if Brandon needs encouragement.
Brandon climbs over the swamp he's left on his sheets, his arms and legs wobbly and barely functional. He slides Grant's boxers off and stares at his cock, thick and flushed red, and for the first time he thinks he understands blow jobs. He wants to lick Grant until he's shivering with pleasure, toes curled up, wants him in his mouth and hard against the back of his throat, but he barely knows how to use his hand when he's trying his tricks on someone else, so he doesn't dare. He figures they have time for that, for everything. Pulling him off is miraculous enough. With his hand tight around Grant's naked cock, he can feel him throb when he comes, and it's enough to get him half-hard again. Grant's ribs surface along his chest when he arches up off the mattress, his eyes fluttering somewhere between open and closed, his dick still pulsing in Brandon's loosening grip.
They slump onto each other, boxers still pulled down because it feels good to be pressed against so much skin, even the sticky parts. Brandon sleeps thinly, listening to his mother walk around upstairs, turn the water on in the kitchen, open and shut the front door. He lifts his head and looks at Grant. He likes that they can stare at each other without speaking and it doesn't feel weird.
"Did you like me before the ghost?" Brandon asks. He feels bad about bringing it up, but he's been wondering.
"A little," Grant says. "You were in my Econ class last year, remember? You had to do a presentation and you like, forgot one of the pages of notes you'd written."
"Oh, God." Brandon winces at the memory.
"Your face got all red and your voice started shaking, and I --" Grant kisses him. "Yeah."
They take turns in the shower, and Brandon gets a weird thrill out of loaning Grant clean socks, boxers, and a faded Dream Theater t-shirt that once belonged to his father. Brandon's mother has gone somewhere with the car, so they walk over to Grant's house, eating cold Pop Tarts on the way. It's another bright day, the colors slanted to pastels the way they always seem to be on Sundays, pumpkins on the porch of almost every house they pass. Grant's footsteps are slow, but Brandon insists.
"You're going to have to sleep there tonight," he says. "We have to speak to the spirit, or whatever, get him to go away."
"You think it's a him?"
"Well -- yeah, I guess I do."
Grant stops walking and presses his lips together.
"I don't want to do this," he says. Brandon hooks a finger through the belt loop of his jeans. They're standing in the woods between Chestnut Grove and Hickory Pines, and they can just see the roof of Grant's house, leaf-covered and innocuous.
"I know," Brandon says. "But you have to. It's your house. I wish you could live in my room, but you can't."
"Why not?" Grant asks, and he sounds so pathetic that Brandon almost gives in. He puts his hand on Grant's back and gently moves him forward until he's walking toward his house at a steady clip. He needs closure. It was just a nightmare, but it must have been a bad one.
Nobody is home. Grant moves through the living room cautiously, calling for his mother even after it's obvious that she's gone, her car missing from the driveway. They walk back to Grant's room, which is as dim and quiet as the rest of the house. The place has an evacuated feeling, like it's been abandoned in a hurry and no one will be back. Brandon stays close to Grant, who is looking up at the corners of his bedroom ceiling, hugging his elbows.
"It's not gonna come when you're here," he says.
"Why not?" Brandon asks. "It opened the door when I was here. It played that music."
"Maybe that was something else," Grant says. "Some not-evil spirit. This thing waits until I'm by myself."
Brandon puts his hands on Grant's hips, lips against the back of his ear. He wants to tell him he loves him, to give that to him like a charm he can keep with him when he's alone, but he doesn't want the presence in this house -- whatever it is, even if it's just something he's imagined -- to use it against them.
"Okay," Brandon says. "I'll go into the living room. You shut the door. If anything happens, just shout, and I'll come running."
"It won't work," Grant says. "I'll know you're out there."
"Just try it." Brandon will not let him go crazy. He just won't allow it. He wants Grant to be his boyfriend and take him to prom and marry him in Massachusetts and do all the stupid fruity things that used to terrify him so much that he couldn't even think about the fact that he beats off to thoughts about other guys beating off, like they're cheering each other on. He's starting to feel like himself, and it's easier than he ever imagined, and he won't let some black cobwebs take it away.
Grant agrees to the experiment, and Brandon waves to him somberly before shutting him inside his room. He lingers out in the hallway for half a minute, listening, but he only hears Grant sit on his bed, two quick squeaks of the mattress springs. He lets out his breath and walks into the living room, steps up onto the fireplace to look at the family pictures lined up on the mantle. There's one of Grant when he was a kid, gap-toothed and grinning with a t-ball bat slung over his shoulder. Brandon looks at it until his eyes sting, and he hurries back down the hall, throws open the door of Grant's bedroom. He's just sitting there on the bed, and he tries to smile when Brandon walks inside.
"See?" Brandon sits behind him, pulls him close and wraps his legs around him.
"Yeah." Grant puts his hands over Brandon's. He doesn't really sound convinced.
*
Monday morning is cloudy and cold, the sky paved gray and the kitchen windows frosted with a few delicate ice crystals. Brandon makes hot chocolate while his mother stands at the sink, her coffee cup hugged to her chest.
"Mrs. Johnson called me," she says. Brandon puts a mug full of milk into the microwave.
"Who?"
"That lady who lives in Dorset Falls, you know, in the house behind ours? Stephanie's mom."
"Oh, right." Stephanie was the bane of Brandon's childhood, a jock who always organized the other neighborhood kids into games that involved constant running. Brandon eventually gave up their company for video games.
"She said you had someone over the other night. A boy."
Brandon keeps his eyes on the mug, which is turning in the microwave. He hasn't had a lot of time to envision his mother's reaction to Grant. It's been just the two of them since his dad died when he was thirteen, and he's never really had a reason not to tell her everything.
"I smelled smoke in my car," she says. "Is he a smoker?"
The microwave beeps, and Brandon jumps. He doesn't know how to answer that question. Yeah, Grant smokes, but is he a smoker?
"I'll make him quit," Brandon says. His face is burning, and suddenly the hot chocolate seems unnecessary. He dumps the Swiss Miss powder into the steaming milk anyway, stirs it up vigorously. His mother touches the back of his neck, rubs her hand across his shoulders.
"I asked Mrs. Johnson if he was cute," she says. "She looked at me like I was nuts. She's a nosy bitch, but I knew that already."
"Yeah." Brandon grins down at his hot chocolate, blows on it.
"So is he?"
"Jesus, Mom. I don't know. Yes."
She drives him to school. He usually walks, but it's cold, and in the moment he loves his mother and their non-haunted house so much that he doesn't mind the extra time with her. They listen to the horrible Top 40 radio show on the city's "number one" station. They're doing a feature on ghosts for Halloween, playing alleged EVP recordings from listeners' homes.
"You used to be so into that stuff," his mother says.
"I still kinda like it," Brandon admits.
At school, he sits through first and second period anxiously, his right leg jiggling under his desk. He waits at Grant's locker after second, when he usually changes books, but doesn't see him. Third period seems to last an eternity, and he goes to the typically deserted bathroom by the orchestra room, where they usually meet before fourth. He's not in their stall, not anywhere. Brandon waits as long as he can, and he's late to class. He wishes for the first time in his life that he had a cell phone.
When Grant is not in their usual lunch spot out by the soccer field, he walks to the parking lot, his heart pounding. A cursory examination from the top of the front stairs tells him Grant is not here, or at least his car isn't. The sight of the lot, filled with taupe SUVs and silver Corollas, is entirely too depressing without Grant's bright yellow Mustang dressing it up a bit. As the bell for fifth period rings, Brandon walks away from the school, toward the woods.
The small pine forest between the school and Hickory Pines is quieter than usual, no pot smokers standing in giggling circles or shouts from the Phys Ed classes that practice on the soccer field. The sun is still hidden behind a flat wall of clouds, and the day is abnormally cold for October. Brandon walks quickly through the woods, troubled by the feeling that he's being watched. He thinks of the kid who got kidnapped right under his babysitter's nose, and the sitter running through the woods with the other kid's hand tight in hers, screaming his name. A squirrel shimmies frantically up a tree behind him, and he breaks into a jog, startled by the sound even after he turns back to see the animal staring at him in equal terror.
Grant's car is parked out in front of the house. Brandon pounds on the front door, but no one answers. Afraid that he's in there, trapped by a ghost or maybe even hurt, he takes the key from under the front mat and unlocks the door.
"Hello?" he calls. "Grant? Anybody here?"
He races down the hallway toward Grant's bedroom when he gets no answer. The door is hanging open and the room is empty. Brandon walks inside, his breath coming fast and loud, the key for the front door squeezed so hard into his hand that it cuts his palm.
"Grant?" he says weakly, though he knows now that he's not here. He stands in the middle of the room and tries to quiet his breath. The silence hums around him like florescent lights, though the whole house is dark. He knows he should leave, but he wants to prove either that there is nothing here or that there definitely is something. He can't decide. If there is nothing, that might mean Grant really is crazy, and he'd accept any reality before that one. He turns around with the terrible feeling that he'll see someone standing in the hall and staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes, and gasps even when he finds the doorway empty.
Suddenly, a door slams. Not the one in front of him, or across the hall, but it came from somewhere in the house, and the sharpness of the noise was unmistakable. Whoever or whatever slammed that door was angry.
Brandon tears out of the house, a frightened whine building in the back of his throat. He doesn't look at anything, and is afraid that when he tries to pull the front door open, whatever is in here won't let him leave. When the door opens without resistance he flings himself outside, trips down the front stairs. He's flooded with the feeling that if he had stayed in that house for five seconds longer, he'd be dead. He runs from the house with the key still clutched in his hand, his heart pinballing like it's going for the high score.
He runs all the way to his house as if he's being chased. For all he knows, he is. The satisfaction he expected to feel upon learning that Grant is not just seeing things is overshadowed by a mealy, rotten new awareness: there are evil things in the world, and they mean to do harm. Being alone in that house left him with no doubt.
He rounds the side of his house, headed for the backyard and the door to the basement, and he screams when he sees someone sitting on the concrete platform by the air conditioning unit. It's Grant, jacket-less and white-faced, staring at him with the wide eyes he was afraid he would see inside his house.
"Grant!" he says in a huff, bent over, his exhaustion catching up with his adrenaline. "What are you -- I was looking for you --"
"It was there, at school." Grant's voice is a tiny, stepped-on thing, his eyes unfocused. "I saw it in second period, spreading across the whole ceiling. I don't know. I ran."
"Fuck," Brandon exhales. He pulls Grant up and hugs him hard. He's stiff and cold, unresponsive, like he doesn't know where he is.
"I went to your house, looking for you," Brandon says. "I was in your room and I -- I don't know how, but I know it was there. And it wanted to hurt me, oh, fuck, Grant, but you're not crazy, don't worry, it's there."
"I know," Grant says. His face is vacant, almost unfamiliar. "I'm not worried about that anymore. I know it's real and it's going to kill me, Brandon. It's coming."
The panicked way he says so makes Brandon look over his shoulder, but he only sees the trees and bushes in the backyard, swaying against a breeze that is so delicate it seems menacing. He fumbles at the back door, trying to get it open, and curses himself when he realizes he's using the key to Grant's house. He finds the right one in his pocket and hurries Grant inside.
His mother will be at work until five, and he can't decide if he's glad or sorry about this. He takes Grant up to the kitchen and cuts him a slice of leftover lasagna. Grant sits in silence while it bubbles in the microwave, and Brandon paces, pulls his hands through his hair.
"Okay," he says. "Okay." He doesn't know how to continue.
"I think I have to burn the house down," Grant says. "I had a dream that I did."
Brandon waits for any indication that he's kidding, not really expecting one. The microwave goes off they both curse in surprise.
"No," Brandon says. He sets the lasagna in front of Grant and hands him a fork. "You're not burning your house down. Eat something, you look sick."
Grant holds the fork like he doesn't know what it is. Brandon peers out the kitchen windows, waiting for some approaching invisible force to show itself.
"I think we need to find that witch," he says. Grant looks at him like this is crazier than the idea of burning the house to the ground.
"What's she going to do about it?"
"I don't know, but I'm afraid -- I'm afraid. We could go back over to the house, just me and you, and try to tell the ghost to get lost, but I don't think it would work. I think it would go really badly, in fact."
Grant nods in agreement. He eats the entire plate of lasagna and then some Halloween candy from the bag Brandon's mother bought for trick-or-treaters. They move to the living room and Brandon puts the TV on; they both need a break from discussing the situation. They stare at Cheaters and Judge Mathis without really watching, Grant leaning limply against Brandon's chest. He checks the corners of the room periodically, bringing his eyes up slowly and shuddering even when he sees nothing there.
"Tell me if you see anything," Brandon whispers, like they're already hiding from it.
"It won't come when I'm with you." Grant sounds so certain. He presses his face against Brandon's neck, and Brandon can feel his eyelashes swipe down over his skin as he shuts his eyes.
"Get some rest," Brandon says. Grant sighs as if this is a preposterous suggestion and then promptly falls asleep, melting down to Brandon's lap and snoring in little outbursts every ten minutes or so. Brandon holds him like they're in a tragic oil painting, one hand in the indention before his hip and the other cupped over his head. He keeps his eyes on the windows, watching the blue-tinted landscape and the changes in the wind.
He carefully disentangles himself from Grant when he hears his mother's car pulling into the garage, and leaves Grant asleep on the sofa. He's had a few hours to think about how to present this situation to his mother, but hasn't really come up with anything. He stands near the basement door and listens to her footsteps, slow and heavy like it's been a long day. She opens the door and gasps when she sees him standing there, puts a hand over her heart.
"Brandon, you --" She frowns when he holds a finger to his lips. He points toward the couch and she chuffs in surprise when she sees Grant curled up under the red throw that she huddles under when she's watching movies late at night.
"Okay," she whispers. "What the hell?"
"C'mere." Brandon leads her down the hallway to his bedroom. He's got no idea how he'll explain what's going on, but he's glad to have an ally. Grant is involved in this to a terrifying degree, and he's not thinking straight. Brandon cares about him too much to be objective. Still, he knows his mother doesn't believe in ghosts, and there's always the threat of her getting the police or child services or some other judgmental bastard involved.
"Who is that boy?" she asks when Brandon's bedroom door is shut. "Is that the boy?"
"Yeah. Mom. He's in trouble. But don't freak out."
"What kind of -- oh, God, you were such an easy teenager for so long. I knew this kind of shit was gonna catch up with me and then some."
"It's fine!" Brandon says, though it isn't. "It's not a big thing. There's just some stuff going on at his house. His parents, uh. Found out he's, you know, and kicked him out."
"Poor thing." His mother frowns as if she knows he's lying, but Brandon has this delicate new understanding between them on his side, and she's willing to play along, maybe. "Do you want me to talk to his mother?"
"No, God no. She's actually not that bad. It'll probably be okay, they just need some time. You know? To think about it? Uh, or. Anyway, he's here. So that's why."
His mother takes a deep breath and stares at him, holding it, then lets it out. Brandon gives her a pleading look. They've had many conversations without speaking since his father died; there are some things that would only be cheapened if they were said out loud. Brandon has always felt lucky to have one of the few mothers in the world who seems to understand this.
"Do his parents know where he is?" she asks.
"No."
"Well, make sure they know he's safe. He can sleep on the couch, but I'm watching Dancing with the Stars in there at eight, so he'd better be otherwise occupied for an hour. And for God's sake, Brandon, tell me you're using condoms."
"Mom!"
"Excuse me? Don't give me that look, I'm completely serious. I'll go back out into that nasty weather right now and buy you some if you --"
"It's not, like, an issue!" Brandon holds his hands up and shuts his eyes, winces. "And anyway don't worry about it. I'm not stupid."
She gives him another long look of consideration, then makes an exasperated face in the direction of the ceiling. It's her way of consulting his father when Brandon drives her insane. He's always been jealous of her ability to do this, as if he actually answers.
"I'm taking a bath," she says. "Get dinner started for me and wake your little friend up. I'd like to meet him."
"Mom, God. Don't call him my little friend."
He goes back out the living room and sits beside Grant on the couch. He hears the squeak of the bathtub faucet in his mother's room, and then the water whining through the cold pipes. The wind has picked up outside. Brandon scratches Grant's back until he rolls over and blinks up at him. He's droopy-eyed, his hair sticking up crazily, and the color has finally returned to his cheeks.
"I will never let anything hurt you," Brandon says, so low and quiet that he thinks Grant might not have heard. He sits up with a groan and puts his face against Brandon's. His cheeks are hot and soft; he smells like sleep.
"I'd be dead already if you weren't around," Grant says.
"Don't talk about being dead."
"Okay. Sorry."
They eat dinner with Brandon's mother at the kitchen table. Dinner is usually served on the couch in front of the TV, so it feels like a special occasion; his mother even lights a few dusty candles. They eat stir fry with rice, and Grant at least pretends to like the tofu. He's surprisingly charming with Brandon's mother, all smiles, and only jumps once, when a branch hits the back porch.
"It's getting dangerous out there," Brandon's mother says. "Grant, do your parents know where you are?"
"Yes," he says, a lie. "Thanks for letting me stay."
"It's no problem. I'm glad to help."
Grant beams at her like she knows the whole story, like she's the witch who will save him.
"Where's your dad?" Grant asks later, when he and Brandon are down in the basement, Brandon's mother upstairs watching her show. They're curled under three layers of blankets, pressed nose to nose, the TV playing post-season baseball on mute. It gets freezing in the basement during winter, and this is the first time Brandon has had someone to pull under the blankets with him.
"He died three years ago," Brandon says. He's gotten good at saying it with a poker face.
"Oh." Grant's hand tightens on his side, underneath the blankets, underneath his shirt. "Shit."
"Yeah. An accident at work. I don't -- it was bad."
He lets Grant pull him in close like he's suddenly an invalid. This kind of sympathetic petting once made him want to break things, but he doesn't mind it so much now. Grant breathes into his hair, warm and Halloween-candy scented, and for a second Brandon thinks they can beat whatever is after them just like this, ducked under blankets, out of the wind.
"Do you believe in God?" Grant asks. He sounds like he's afraid someone will overhear. Brandon kisses the skin just under his chin, where he's softest and warmest and smells so good.
"I don't know," he says. "Sometimes."
*
Continued