Into the Gloaming

by Mercy Celeste

  “Come on, no one will find us here.” Opening the door to the carriage, Osh waited for Heath to catch up. “And it’s cooler in this part of the stables, anyway. Away from the fires and the horses.”

  “Osian?” Heath felt his lover’s name bubble up from his chest. He loved saying it. Almost as much as he loved the stolen moments with Osh. “We can’t. Not out here. Wait an hour and climb up to my window. My room is the coolest in the house. And away from the others. We won’t be heard.”

  “That’s what you always say. Last time I nearly got caught when your aunt came snooping. She even checked under the bed. Remember?” Osh scrambled into the carriage and situated himself in the deep leather seat at the far corner in the deepest shadows. “Come on, Heath. We don’t have much time left. I’ll be returning to Savannah soon. My brother went to the war, and my Da needs me back there.”

  Heath shucked his shoes and climbed in behind his friend. He sat in the front seat instead of joining Osh on the seat his father usually occupied. “You sound like you’d prefer to stay. I can convince my father to arrange for you to stay.”

  “No… I mean… I do want to stay with you. But… I’m afraid of the horses. Not much of a stable boy who fears the creatures he has to clean up behind. Am I? Working for my Da isn’t much better. There aren’t any horses. But you won’t be there either.” Osh’s nimble fingers, gleaming white in the shadows, slowly undid the buttons on his work shirt. Revealing white skin that gleamed in the night. He wasn’t small, despite his age, but he wasn’t as big as Heath either. He could lift a grain sack on his shoulder in one swing. He’d grown so much this summer Osh now gave the old bastard in the stables a moment’s pause before he took the strap to him. If Osh had a temper, he wouldn’t have ever let that bastard lay a hand on him. And there were so many times Heath wished he would stand up for himself.

  Or that Heath could stand up for him, without calling attention to his interest in the boy. God. Boy… Osian wasn’t even two years his junior. And the only person on this wretched patch of earth close to his age. Of course, he’d taken an interest in Heath.

  “You’re thinking too hard. We don’t have much time.” Osh left his shirt on the seat and slipped onto the floor. His hands gliding up Heath’s thighs startled him. Once was a time Osh wouldn’t dare be so bold. Not with him. Heath had to coax him out of his timidity.

  On their rides into the valley this past spring he’d found the creek his father used to take him to as a child, and they’d strip to their skin. Heath had never known what it would be like wanting a person in such a way. In a way that he couldn’t hide from Osh. So, they’d stopped going. Until after his step-mother had passed. The new baby screaming to be fed. Another sister.

  Those couple of weeks in which the household and his father and aunt had been preoccupied had been glorious. He and Osian had walked in the woods for hours until early summer. Eating fruit right off the trees and swimming in the creek. Touching.

  He’d been the first to touch, and Osh had responded in his hand. Shame in his eyes as Heath kissed him. His body so hungry for touch he’d… done the unspeakable and disgraced himself without so much as even his own hand on his prick.

  And that Sunday just a few weeks ago, he’d tasted Osh in his bed. Bringing him pleasure. Heath would please him for the rest of his life if he could.

  “Osh-ian,” he pleaded. He knew not what for. Osh’s hands worked the buttons on Heath’s trousers, pulling them down to his ankles before leaning over him with a moan of pleasure coming from his sweet mouth. The first lick of his tongue over his engorged prick had him spurting. “Let me taste you too.”

  He pushed Osh onto the floor and stripped his shirt off, none too gently. Buttons flying everywhere. He didn’t care. He kicked his trousers off and his skivvies while Osh fumbled with his own. Heath pushed him onto the seat he’d just left and swallowed his prick in one slow gulp that had Osh crying out his name.

  “Did you bring the oil, Heath, did you?” Strong callused fingers gripped his hair, pulling him off his favorite part of Osh’s body. His strong legs spreading wide for Heath to… give in to temptation.

  “In my pocket. It’s not much. Just a bit of butter left from supper. It’s probably melted by now.”

  “I hope not. Last time we tried without it… will it work? Will it hurt? Is it normal?” God, but Osian sounded so young and innocent. His voice cracking a little even though it had settled into a deeper timbre than Heath’s months ago.

  Heath recalled the first time his father had taken him down to Savannah, to the house with the women. He’d bought him a night. Paid for a young girl about his age. She’d touched him, and he’d shriveled. He’d never tell Osh of that night. When she invited one of the boys from the backstairs rooms… and Heath had learned of the trick… to grease the back hole… the boy, probably his age, had spent in his place in the girl and accepted Heath’s spend in his own body. With Heath’s father none the wiser. He’d been fourteen. And still ashamed of that night. Of his father inspecting the girl’s muff for spend before throwing her a gold coin.

  “Do you love me?” Heath asked, his heart racing as he waited for Osh to answer. He’d not loved the first boy he’d spent inside. Or the second or the third. Always in that girl’s bed. Never the same boy. Two years had passed since his father had taken him with him on his business trips. Two years since he’d spent inside another person.

  “I love you, Heath. So much.” Osh caressed his face with his callused fingers. “I trust you.”

  Heath buried his face in shame in Osh’s belly. God, he loved this boy. Enough to risk his entire life for this boy. “In January. When I am eighteen. I’ll come for you. I’ve been saving. As soon as I’m eighteen, I will enlist. If I can’t take you with me… then, I don’t know. We’ll run away together. Somewhere. Go to New York. Or out west. We could go to California. They’re looking for men to help rebuild San Francisco. We could go there. And work. And be together. I have… hidden enough to get us there. If you’d like that. Escape both of our fathers.”

  He caressed Heath’s face again. “I’d love that. You’ll come to Savannah for me. I’ll be waiting. Please, Heath. The butter, before it melts in this heat.”

  Sweat dripped from his skin when he spent, finally, taking Osh’s spend in his own body. He’d forgotten the time and where he was. They lay in each other’s arms on the floor, lips touching, soft words spoken, promises made. He’d not heard the horses. Or the angry voices. Until it was too late.

  His father raged as the groom dragged Osh from his arms.

  “Put your britches on, you sorry excuse for a son.” Heath barely had time to put one leg into his trousers before he was on the ground outside, his father dragging him by his hair behind the groom and the naked boy.

  “You dare to defile my property. Slaking your lust in a… no goddamn son of mine will be a sodomite. Not while I draw breath.”

  The groom threw Osh onto the ground in the stable. The horses, still saddled, not far away. The big stallion, his father rode, rearing up at the first sound of the lash. His fear infecting the gelding the groom rode. Intent upon the whip as it landed on Osh, no one paid any attention to the horses. His father pushed him to his knees, his hand firmly entrenched in his hair.

  Heath swung at his father, forgetting the man was larger and meaner than him. “Let go of him. Father. Let him go. It’s my fault. I forced him. He wanted nothing of me.”

  “We’re not blind, boy. That one has thrown himself at you since he got here. Encouraged your perversion. I’ll not have it. Not in my household. You will learn a lesson here tonight. You will learn where to stick your prick. Or you will join him.”

  “You’re one to talk… your own sister… father. Is that where a prick belongs? In sisters. Forcing children upon them. Taking those children away to pass off as other women’s children. My mother… is your sister—” he didn’t finish his accusation. His father’s fist laid him low on the ground, his booted foot holdin
g him down.

  “Finish the little cocksucker. My son needs a lesson.”

  Pausing in his punishment, that bastard of a groom turned to leer at Heath. He stripped to the waist and picked up the whip again. The gleam in his eyes growing eviler with each blow. The screams of the boy on the ground only adding to his lust for the blood flying from the end of the whip as it arched in the air.

  The stallion screamed and reared back on two legs, his nostrils flaring. His hooves hitting the ground with such a force that the ground shook beneath Heath. The groom, not caring that the horse wasn’t tied well, groaned as he beat Osh until Osh stopped screaming. His bloody body, limp on the ground. Mud, the color of rust, pooling around him. He breathed. Heath could see that much.

  Another crack of the lash. And another. And the horse broke his bindings. His forelegs flying high in the air as he screamed, in outrage, and fear, and… blood lust, catching the groom as he raged. The lash flying from the groom’s hand as he landed some feet away, his face a bloodied mess. The horse, stomping his anger and fear into the ground at his feet. The river of blood scented mud all that remained of the boy Heath loved when the horse fled the stables.

  His father’s boot pressed him into the ground, as the horror of the last few moments… seemed so… surreal. Heath didn’t care that his father held him down. Or that he bled from his wounds. There was nothing left for him to do now but drown in the blood of the one he’d killed.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  “Heath?” Osian stood over his love’s prone body. The copper scented mud burning his nose. “Get up.”

  He wasn’t gentle about prodding the body on the ground. There was no more pain. It felt good to stand there and not feel anything for the first time in… how many lifetimes?

  Heath rolled over in the mud, his face streaked with blood, his hair caked with mud. The stench of it growing fetid in the hot summer air.

  “It’s over,” he said when Heath looked through him. Wasn’t the first time. But this time… there was a difference. The surrounding air tasted different now. Fresh… there was a sweetness to it too… didn’t matter, as long as it wasn’t of the grave.

  He spared a look at the bloody pulp in the middle of the stable… as it disappeared. The vile man by the wall stood and walked away. The Devil… lit his pipe and uttered the words he’d heard many times, but Heath never heard. Not once. “Clean up this mess. Take it to the angel. Dispose of it there. Leave no trace.”

  “What about the horse?” The vile man called from outside the stable.

  “Find it and put it down. Out in the woods. Leave it to rot. It’s useless to me now. Damn fine horse… wasted. Can’t even sell it to the knackers with all that blood on it. There will be too many questions. Put out the story you caught the boy stealing. He ran off instead of facing his punishment. That’ll be the end of it.” The boy’s clothes hit the ground, soaking in the blood.

  “Get up, Heath. It’s done. Can’t be undone. Never could be undone.” Osian watched the scene play out in front of him. He’d seen it. Many times. More times than he cared to admit. In dreams. So many dreams. That he couldn’t remember. Until the next one robbed him of sleep. The time his new father bought a horse… and he’d cowered under the bed in fear of it eating him alive.

  He’d wondered about that. The fear that his new parents didn’t understand. Even the mention of the word horse after that made him wet his pants. The years in therapy to deal with a fear that wasn’t his own.

  “You’re alive?” Heath sat there in the mud and blood, allowing it to soak into his fine trousers.

  “Unlike you.” Osian heard himself say, his accent gone now as this new life, and the previous, merged. The words made no sense to him. Heath was alive. He could see him. Feel him… taste him. He walked and talked and made life miserable for… Austin.

  The Heath lying on the ground held out his hand. It was tan from working in the sun. His body toned from the work that should have been Osian’s. His eyes… darting back to the bloody pile of rags that remained on the floor. That should be invisible now. Even to this Heath. While the other Heath, the one who refused to see past his grief… watched from the side.

  Osian looked past the miserable wretch in the mud to the other one. The one on his knees. His eyes, seeing nothing and… everything… probably for the first time in his life. That one held onto the frame of the portal into this nightmare.

  “Let go, Heath. You’re safe now.” Time was wasting. With the clock ticking down to something even Osian couldn’t define… yet. He felt as if he should know why the feeling of destruction loomed over him. As if he hadn’t just witnessed his own death. Again. And again. And again.

  “We were going to run away. We were going to the war. Or to San Francisco. In the morning. If… when the morning comes. We can go. I’ll be eighteen. I can enlist and there’s nothing he can do to stop me. I can be free of him. Of this… hell.” The Heath in the mud spoke. His spirit broken. Never to be healed.

  “I died. My love. We knew… even when we made those plans that it would never come to be. But you could have lived.” He knew he lied as soon as the words left his mouth. The monster in the shadows of that Heath’s life would never allow his son to leave. He’d squandered most of his fortune to keep his son from that war. When the war department had called his draft number, he’d paid to send another in his son’s place. He found a wife. One with a questionable history. But money made her acceptable. He’d been forced to bed her. Forced to breed her. And he was trapped. In a never-ending cycle of greed and death and possessive insanity. That Heath would never be free. Even if he had lived. If either of them had lived. He knew that now. His love… was not meant to be what saved this man.

  “How could I? I am the reason you’re gone. I brought this upon you. My perversion. My want for… your smile. That should have been enough. To see you smile. I had to have more. I had to have your heart. And your body.” That Heath continued as if any of it mattered now.

  Osian wasn’t heartless. For the first time in all the years they’d played this scene out, he finally saw Osian. Maybe, by setting that Heath’s mind at ease, he could… maybe, finally have some rest from all of this… ceaseless agony… “It was mine to give. And I gave it, freely. All of it. All of me. To you. But we knew. We both felt it that night. In the very air, we breathed. The same as we feel it now.”

  Cold air took the place of the heavy summer heat that reeked of death and despair. Both incarnations of Heath huddled on the ground. The one in the background still holding on to the past as he held onto the door. “Let it go.” He looked past the ghost to the living man. “Like you let go… to save Austin. You’ve done it once. Stepped off the path. You’ll never live unless you let him go.”

  “I can’t,” Heath said from so far away. “If I lose you… him… again.”

  “If you continue to cling to a past that was not your own, you will never have him. Me. We both know this. We are here for a reason. The past that binds us. The future, we both fear, coming to fruition.”

  “He doesn’t love me. He loves another.” The Heath of this mortal plane refused to open his eyes and see.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. He has free will. And like you, his will is trapped in a past he has no memory of. Clinging to the hope of something that will never come. Tomorrow… tomorrow, I fear it will be too late. You must let him go, now.”

  “I’ll be eighteen tomorrow. I’ll be free. He’ll come with me. I can save us both. I know I can. From abusive, controlling, fathers. From… this life.”

  “You will be thirty tomorrow. With a life ahead of you. Or you will… follow me to the grave. Follow me, Heath. To the grave.”

  There was no other way. He held out his hand. The story he’d once read when he hid in his father’s attic, filling his head with stuff and nonsense… of the old miser and the ghosts of Christmas sent to save his rotten soul.

  Heath, neither Heath, had a rotting soul. He’d known this. Despite the horror, h
is Heath had committed… he had done so with pure intentions. His only real sin… was that he gave up rather than live. “Come with me, my love.” Osian held out his hand for this Heath. The other… lost to him a long time ago… forgotten.

  “Come with me. I have something to show you.”

  Heath took his hand. It appeared slender, and freckled and callused in Heath’s much larger hand. Though, this Heath’s hand was much paler than it had been in the other life... and softer. A life of luxury in a city far from here would change his love. As it had… Austin. Different parents. Different paths. All the books he could ever hope to read at his fingers. The adventures he’d longed to have… yet feared to take the step that would lead him too far away from safety. The fear of picking a place he’d only read about and going… just to be free. Because he could. “Come. It’s time to let this all go.”

  Heath rose to his feet, his hand still upon the handle of the past. “Where are we going?”

  This Heath had been so reluctant to leave his safe new world where his past didn’t exist, to come to this place. This place that had once been the death of him. Osian understood this. This incarnation of the man he’d loved, trapped in two worlds. One repeating. The other… Dreamless. Emotionless. Lonely. When he saved another rather than end his misery again, he’d broken the cycle. The first of many yet to break. The second… on the morrow. Epiphany. The day the final seal was laid in the ground.

  “To the ending of this story. It’s time. Time to finish this.” Osian tugged at his hand. “We’re wasting time. The sun is setting. So much left to say and do. Come. Let go.”