“His slutty hole?” Tobias put his sandwich down with a smack as his stomach did a weak somersault. “That is highly inappropriate and disgusting.”
“He licked his lips, dude,” Hylas said with a shudder. “He wanted up on me bad. Apparently in his slutty hole. I felt so violated. I still feel violated, tell you the truth. That was not kosher behavior. I was sixteen, damnit.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone?” Tobias said. “Father or Nick’s manager friend or… I don’t know. You could’ve told me.”
“I should’ve, yeah,” Hylas said. “At the time though I was worried that if I told, it would start a bunch of shit and my plans would get ruined and Stevie might end up bashed or something because back then people thought being gay automatically made you a pervert. And he was a pervert, but not because he was gay. It was more like, he was a pervert who happened to be gay. But I didn’t want to start up some kind of homophobic shit storm.”
“I think you’re giving yourself a little too much power when it comes to inciting riots of homophobic outrage,” Tobias said. “But I see your point.”
“Thank you,” Hylas said. “It’s just fucked up to me that even in the afterlife, Stevie Buttons still wants to molest me.”
“You should tell him to stop,” Tobias said.
“I have told him,” Hylas said. “He doesn’t listen.”
“I see,” Tobias said.
He thought that even if Stevie Buttons would not listen to his brother, he would listen to him. When Tobias walked through the tunnel, the restless spirit of Stevie often became hysterical, the sound of his frightened wailing nearly deafening in the confined space. Stevie Buttons feared him and this one time, Tobias would use that to his advantage because the more he thought about it, the more annoyed he became. He wasn’t angry, but he was definitely not pleased with what Hylas had just told him. It had an amusing quality to it, but that was more Hylas’s storytelling style than anything to do with Stevie Buttons.
Hylas was younger than Tobias by forty-nine minutes, which made Tobias his big brother and also meant they had not been born on the same day. The clock had rolled over past midnight while Hylas was still in transit, subsequently Tobias had been born November second, Hylas November third. It was Tobias’s job to look after Hylas, he’d been doing it their entire lives and wasn’t about to stop. He was responsible for Hylas, both out of love and out of guilt. Hylas had been so late coming along because it had been necessary to cut him from their dead mother’s womb. Tobias had killed her, everyone said it wasn’t his fault, but he felt like he alone was responsible for the hemorrhage that left their mother bleeding to death while they cut his umbilical cord.
At times, Tobias felt an almost overwhelming urge to apologize to Hylas for leaving them both motherless, for having the audacity to rupture something so precious inside of her that she never got to hold her sons or look at their rumpled red faces. One of the few times Tobias had ever gotten drunk, he had puked everywhere and cried all over Hylas after. He had apologized then and Hylas said it was okay, all was forgiven, but Hylas had thought Tobias was talking about the vomit.
Tobias finished his sandwich and brushed the crumbs off his fingers while Hylas dozed on the stool across from him. He roused himself with a soft sigh and looked at Tobias with a smile on his face. Hylas was always smiling, at ease and content with the world around him; comfortable with it and in it in a way that Tobias had never been (or been allowed to be). He envied Hylas that, but never resented him; Tobias was as swayed by Hylas’s laconic charm as everyone else who met him. Though he did believe he was able to see through Hylas’s bullshitting much better and would not let him get away with it like other people often did.
“So, what did you do tonight?” Hylas asked.
“I went to work and prepared a suicide for burial tomorrow,” Tobias said. “Then I came home and pruned my espaliered trees; the apples are looking especially lovely this year. After that, I had a bath and read for a little while.”
“That sounds… uneventful,” Hylas said. “You should go out, Tobias, party a little bit, maybe do some dancing.”
“I would be dancing with myself,” Tobias said. “You know that as well as I do.”
“Yeah… but…” Hylas frowned and huffed out a breath. “That still sucks, you know and I don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to get it,” Tobias said. “Just accept it, Hylas. I have.”
“It still sucks monkey nuts,” Hylas said.
“And how do you know what sucking monkey nuts is like?”
“Illegal porn downloads,” Hylas said with a quick grin.
“You are vile,” Tobias said.
“I’ve never actually watched that shit, come on,” Hylas said. “Nick’s never even told me a hooker story with that kind of stuff in it. It’s just a figure of speech.”
“I am aware,” Tobias said. He decided to change the subject. Zoophilia was not something he wanted to discuss, even in hypothetical or figurative terms. “I had the dream again tonight.”
“Like, the dream?” Hylas asked. “That’s crazy. You’ve been having that damn dream since… um… A long time.”
Tobias nodded with a slight smile. “A very long time, yes,” he said. “The tugging was in this one.”
“That’s always creeped me out,” Hylas said. “Something’s weird about that.”
There was a split second where Tobias decided he wouldn’t tell Hylas about what woke him up, but then he did it anyway. When he was done, Hylas stared at him, big blue eyes huge in his face.
“Whoa,” he said. His sleepy, stoner voice, thick with a southern drawl to boot, always made Tobias grin and Hylas shook his head. “Do not smile about this, Tobias. It ain’t funny and you know it. That is some potentially diabolical shit and you should be freaking right the fuck out about it.”
“I have trouble doing that,” Tobias said.
He did know he should be freaking out; a lingering sense of unease had dogged him from the moment he woke up. He felt like he had forgotten something very important, had left it in the wrong place and then lost track of even what it was. There was guilt in that and a quiet kind of sadness that, while it wasn’t overwhelming, still sat on his heart and made it ache.
“That’s why you get in shit,” Hylas said. “You and Nick both. You’re too goddamned pragmatic about everything and so, you carry blithely on and walk right into the crocodile’s mouth.”
“There is nothing blithe about myself or Nick,” Tobias said. “We are not cheerful people, though I am not an unhappy person. Nick doesn’t seem to be either. Furthermore, since when have you ever known me to get into shit, as you so inelegantly put it?”
“Hey, asshole, don’t criticize my parlance,” Hylas said. “I know words. I’m just not so prim that I refuse to use the dirty ones. I like the dirty ones best.”
“Oh and how,” Tobias said. Cursing did not offend him, he just seldom ever did so himself.
“And another thing,” Hylas carried on, ignoring Tobias for the moment. “Blithe also means ‘thoughtlessly indifferent’. So there.”
“Yes, you certainly told me what’s for,” Tobias said. “I am neither thoughtless nor indifferent, if I was then I would be terrible at being pragmatic. Your argument is therefore invalid. Rephrase or shut up.”
“I love you, man,” Hylas said after a drawn-out silence. He positively beamed at Tobias. “You’re the only person who can argue words with me.”
“I love you, too, Hylas,” Tobias said with a soft laugh that got louder when Hylas got up from his stool, walked around the counter and hugged him.
“We are not too manly to profess our fraternal affection for one another, no sirree,” Hylas said.
Tobias patted his back and breathed in the sleepy, warm, slightly smoky smell of his brother. “Who needs manliness when you’ve got us, hmm?”
“The narcoleptic and the dude with the skin condition,” Hylas agreed. He stood away from Tobias and tipped his he
ad back in thought. “You know though, our childhood was strange.”
“You’re only now realizing this?”
“Nah, just putting it out there,” Hylas said. He yawned and rubbed at his eyes. “I need a nap.”
“Always,” Tobias said.
“No, not always, just usually,” Hylas said. “There’s a difference.”
Hylas swayed and his eyes drooped closed. He was going down for the count. Typically, when Hylas announced he was sleepy then sleep itself was right around the corner. Tobias shook him gently and Hylas opened his eyes again, but it looked like it was a struggle. There was a distant, glazed look in them when he looked at Tobias and he didn’t really focus.
“Come on,” Tobias said as he began to steer Hylas out of the kitchen toward the living room. “To the couch with you.”
“I’m okay.” Hylas mumbled it so it sounded like m’okie.
“Yes, I know you are,” Tobias said as he eased Hylas down on the sofa.
Once his ass touched the sofa cushions, all protests left Hylas. He stretched out slowly, turned on his side and was out like a light without another word. At least he hadn’t hit the floor because such things did happen. For many years, Tobias had wondered why their father always tried to talk Hylas into going as a football player, a construction worker or a soldier for Halloween. It was only when he got a little older that he realized he had done it so he could make Hylas wear a helmet. For at least one night of the year he could be totally assured of his son walking down the sidewalks without risk of a skull fracture.
It had been Tobias who often had the lousy Halloween adventures, but the candy had been nice. Sometimes people even gave him more candy in an effort to make him go away faster. It had been the same with the candy bar drives and magazine subscription fund-raising activities they’d had to do in school. Hylas had sold all of his candy and many, many subscriptions because people were so happy to buy from him. They had purchased subscriptions and waxy-flavored chocolate bars from Tobias because they’d been too afraid not to. If we just buy some damn candy, he’ll go away, Maude. Tobias still remembered that one. He had been a fifth-grader, but not a deaf one.
Such thoughts made Tobias tired and a little sad, though it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it used to be. He’d suffered from serious clinical depression for a large part of his childhood and it had started at a young age. By the time he’d reached high school, when most of his peers were only then really gearing up for the next four years of angst their hormones were going to put them through, Tobias was doing much better. He’d lived with it for so long that he had formed a kind of buffer and developed reams of coping skills to help get him through life. While his classmates had been unprepared for what hit them starting around seventh grade, Tobias knew how to deal with it. There had been no high school histrionics for him and now, in his thirties, he was calm and well-adjusted to the reality of living with himself. He took some small comfort in knowing that not a lot of people could claim such things.
He took a throw off the chair beside the sofa and covered Hylas with it.
“Sleep well, Hylas,” Tobias said. He patted his brother’s shoulder and left him snoring softly, his mouth curled up in a little smile even in his sleep.
He glanced at the grandfather clock inside the doorway of the living room and saw that it was a quarter to three in the morning. After a moment’s consideration, Tobias decided it was never too late—or too early—to go pay a visit to the annoying spirit of Stevie Buttons.
Tobias went upstairs and got dressed, gathered his wallet and cell phone then tromped back downstairs. He ducked his head in the living room to check on Hylas and make sure he hadn’t fallen onto the floor as he sometimes did. He found him slumbering on peacefully and carried on his way, snagging his car keys off the little peg by the door on his way out.
By a little after three a.m., Tobias was in Sparrow Falls, parking his car in the empty lot of Glynn’s. Across the road to the left was Laylie Park and to the right was the tunnel where Stevie Buttons was spending his afterlife. Tobias had never figured out the reason for the pedestrian bridge or the tunnel, but it had been there as long as he was alive and the same went for his father and grandparents. The tunnel and walkway that topped the arch was as old as Sparrow Falls itself, one of its well-known landmarks.
“Stevie?” Tobias called when he entered the tunnel.
Silence greeted him, but it was expectant silence; held breath silence. Stevie was there, but he was hiding from him.
“Come out,” Tobias said. “Don’t annoy me, little man.”
There was a soft, choked-off sound to Tobias’s left, but he didn’t turn his head to look. Stevie would come to him, not the other way around.
“I know you’re here,” he said. “Show yourself, Stevie Buttons.”
Tobias looked up at the ceiling of the tunnel, the pale scar in the stone where the point of the harpoon had buried itself. It was barely visible in the weak light that filtered in from the streetlights, but Tobias could see it well enough to know what it was.
“Come here,” Tobias said. “Right now.”
“I don’t want to.” The voice was soft and shaking.
“I do not care what you want, Stevie,” Tobias said. “Show yourself.”
“Bully.” The voice had taken on a petulant, ugly tone, but Tobias was not impressed.
Stevie Buttons appeared in front of him, looking like he’d never been dead at all, if one only ignored the gaping hole in his abdomen. He scowled at Tobias, but his bottom lip trembled, giving him away.
“There you are, pest,” Tobias said. He didn’t like doing this; it did make him feel like a bully. He was irritated though and where his brother was concerned, Tobias was willing to put aside his discomfort.
“Don’t call me names,” Stevie said. He backed away from Tobias and refused to meet his eyes; he never would.
“I’ll call you whatever I please,” Tobias said, following Stevie as he attempted to retreat from him. “Leave my brother alone.”
“I don’t know your brother,” Stevie said. “You don’t have one. You’re lying. Why are you doing this to me?”
His lip quivered even harder and Tobias sighed at the pathetic sight of him. Stevie Buttons had been a pretty boy, but he’d also been an idiot who was more than a little nutty. His persecution complex was not anything new or interesting.
“Hylas Dunwalton,” Tobias said. “He is my brother.”
“Hylas… Hylas… I don’t know any Hylas.”
Quick as that, Tobias was done with Stevie’s nonsense. He closed the gap between them in one long stride and grabbed the little idiot. Stevie shrieked like a banshee when Tobias took hold of him and shook him hard enough to rattle his bones, had he any to rattle. Stevie was so cold it burned to touch him and he was so light that it was as though the thin shell he manifested to show himself was filled with nothing but cloud residue.
“Do not lie to me, Stevie,” Tobias said. “You do know Hylas, just as I know what you do to Hylas. The things you say to him. The lewd behavior you engage in when he is present. I will say it one more time: Leave. Him. Alone.”
Stevie sobbed and shook and thrashed in Tobias’s grasp.
“Okay!” he wailed. “Okay, okay! Just lemme alone! Go away! I hate you forever!”
“I don’t care what you do or do not feel for me,” Tobias said. “But know that if I ever hear of you harassing my brother again, I will send you far, far away.”
“You can’t do that!”
“I am sure I could figure something out.” Tobias released Stevie with a light push that sent him floating toward the opposite end of the tunnel, a man-shaped piece of dandelion fluff. Tobias nodded to him as he sank to the floor, trying to glare and ruining the effect by sobbing. “Goodnight to you, Stevie.”
Tobias walked away from him, leaving him to his spectral hissy fit; he had done what he set out to do.
He stopped beside his car, keys in hand and ready to get in,
but then he looked across the way toward Laylie Park. It was quiet, serene and lovely that time of morning. There were no screaming toddlers on the swings near the entrance Tobias was closest to, no pedestrians, no couples necking on the benches resting beneath the oak-lined paths. The park was draped in shadows and splashed with light from the sodium arc lamps around which moths congregated like little winged hobos. A bat swooped through the light and a large moth disappeared with it as it swooped back into the sky.
Since he was already there, Tobias decided he would go for the walk he’d meant to go on in his own gardens. Laylie Park was a pretty park and it was not often that he got to have it all to himself. Sure, he had his own space since no one would really come near him, but it wasn’t the same. There was always the sense of being out of place and unwanted when he was there during the daylight hours.
He strolled across the street and into the park, breathing in the smell of green grass, dew and the sleepy chlorophyll odor of the old live oaks. Spanish moss hung from many of their limbs, drooping like the beards of old men hiding among the leaves. Tobias whistled softly as he walked, his step light, his mood good. Later, he would tell Hylas about his talk with Stevie Buttons, but he didn’t think he would tell him that he had actually touched the ghost. Hylas could see them, but he could not touch them; if he had tried his hands would have gone right through Stevie because even though he looked solid, he was not.
Tobias had first learned he could touch them when he was fourteen years old; he had held the hand of a little boy’s ghost while the boy asked him to please, oh please take him home. Tobias had run away from the crying child’s spirit, hand as cold as if he had dipped it in liquid nitrogen, head abuzz over what had happened. Guilt was a heavy burden on his back as he ran toward home because he had wanted to help the child, but hadn’t been able to.
Something else he had learned about ghosts over the years was that they either reviled him, adored him or begged and pleaded with him once they realized he could see them. Gary at the funeral home was one that absolutely loved Tobias and he often wondered: Was it strange that he considered a schizophrenic ghost to be one of his oldest friends? Probably, but Tobias paid it no mind. Weird was part and parcel of his life and Gary was only another part of the picture.
Falls the Shadow (Sparrow Falls Book 2) Page 6
