For Love of the Dead

by Hal Bodner

  The moment dragged on and on, somehow miraculously delayed though Jake knew his body lacked the capability to endure it. Tongues, fingers, mouths, dicks: all withdrew, and when he opened his eyes, Jake saw his lovers were gathered around Daniel, sharing his obvious pleasure in simply watching what was about to happen. Jake began to grab his dick, to end the delicious torment of restraint by jerking himself off. Even the merest touch would unleash a torrent of come, he knew. But before the impulse could pass from his brain to his hands, his body was racked by a violent shudder as his dick surged on its own and unleashed the river it contained.

  He roared with the abandoned deep-throated cry of a carnal beast, the tendons in his neck standing out as if the blood vessels underneath would burst. Jake felt the semen as it traveled along the canal within his dick as if he were part of it, the volume so great and rushing through the tiny tunnel, filling his shaft, so impatient for release it was as if his cock would be peeled back from the inside like a banana or shatter like an old cartoon blunderbuss. His shout rose in volume, ragged and hoarse, and sperm exploded from him in a hot torrent, not in the pulse of a normal ejaculation but in a long streaming gush, a raging waterfall long contained by a dam which crumbled and now sought to flood the valley below in a single, uninterrupted cascade.

  It hurt. God, it hurt! The thick, milky fluid was wrenched from inside him from what seemed like the very depths of his soul. The single stream of the first pulse seemed unending. Surely his body would take mercy on him and eventually, a long moment after the first spew, it did. Then came the second pump.

  More sperm shot forth, arcing in the air, much more than Jake had ever imagined a single man could contain. It splattered across the top of a nearby bench so forcefully that drops were propelled into the air again to plop onto the glittering sand at the edge of the lake. Jake’s knees grew weak and he wanted to collapse, but his dick had other ideas. A third pulse, not as long this time; then a fourth, less intense. He stood, swaying dizzily, while his hips bucked and his cock pumped until finally, just fractions of a second before his legs gave out with a last shudder, his coming stopped. Only a last welling of almost-clear sperm oozed from the end of his dick and dripped to the ground.

  Before he could recover his senses, the men were upon him again, leading him into the coolness of the lake, tending to his hot flushed body and washing him with the pure water.

  “He fucked me,” the bald man whispered into Jake’s ear as he bathed the younger man’s chest. “I had never done it before but with him, I was willing. He said he loved me but the very next day he had me fired. My career. Ruined. I had nothing left, no choice but to end everything. But with you...” His tongue reached out and licked Jake’s ear and the blue-eyed mortician shuddered with the deliciousness of the sensation. “To you I would have given myself completely.”

  “It was a new car,” the blond man murmured. “He wanted to see how fast it would go. I was frightened but he wouldn’t listen. I wanted him to let me out and he got angry. When he drove off, he didn’t care that I was still standing in front. He seduced me.” Dark umber eyes gazed into Jake’s almost turquoise ones, filled with sadness and regret for a life unfulfilled. “I had no family and I left my lover for him. It was stupid, I know. He left me there, broken, and never looked back. You...you could have been my family. With you, I would not have been alone.”

  “I was inconvenient,” the surfer blurted out with boyish eagerness to share his story. “And clingy, he said. He was my first time.” His faced twisted with sorrow. “But not my last. It hurt and I begged him to stop but he wouldn’t listen. He drove me to a very bad part of town, at night, and locked me out of the car. A pretty blond boy. They raped me over and over before the end. He sat there while I was screaming, begging, safe in his car and laughing. He only left when they swung a piece of pipe at the fender.” He shrugged. “I guess he didn’t want the paint scratched.”

  His face split with a smile, sweet with the shyness of youth. “I would not have been just a thing to you, though, would I? Just a pretty.. .thing? I could have been comforted in your arms.”

  “I refused him,” the gymnast added. “I wanted to date first. Meaningless sex was never my thing, no matter how beautiful he was—like an angel. He was so attentive, so caring. I didn’t know about the drugs. I was sober for years and I never...” He paused for a moment, anguished. “Home cooking, he said, to show how much he liked me, with his secret ingredients. Just for me. It only took a couple of times and I was hooked again. Then...I just couldn’t...stop.”

  Daniel, still on the shore, captured Jake’s glance and nodded. “Mark Hartner,” he mouthed silently, confirming what Jake had feared.

  “All of them?” He was aghast with disbelief and shook his head. “This many of Hartner’s”—he fumbled for the right word—“victims at Gentle Rest? That kind of coincidence...”

  Daniel interrupted. “Fate leaves nothing to chance, Jake Marshall. The Dead love you. From birth, you have been their friend.” He smiled as if tolerantly indulging some small silliness. “Do you think it was an accident that you were drawn into doing what you do? Why do you feel compelled to cherish their... our...memories? Why, when you have been so desperately looking for love, have you sacrificed it in our favor? How many times has your shrine of pictures frightened away a man with whom you believed you could have been happy? How many nights have you spent with a beautiful stranger, opening yourself up to our memories and not to the true possibilities that slept peacefully beside you? Love will come to you, this I promise, but you must do what you were born to do first. The gods do not torment mankind at whim. For every great evil they create, there is a good which can overcome it. Are you strong enough, Jake Marshall, to do what must be done? Can you resist the dire foulness hidden within a shell of great beauty?”

  “I don’t know,” Jake whispered.

  His eyes took in the men surrounding him, looking at him with desperate, hopeful pleas in their eyes. He saw the curls on the blond man’s chest, matted now with both the vestiges of water from the lake and his own sweat. It was a chest that should have pillowed a lover’s head, his cheek resting in the curly fur; it should not have been treated like some castoff tin can to be casually crushed under the wheel of Mark Hartner’s car.

  The dark-haired gymnast, his body so sleek and toned with powerful shoulders and rounded arms that he could have inspired a sculpture carving from purest marble, a body now probably naught but dust, destroyed by its time in the grave and by having provided Mark Hartner with a momentary liaison. The bald man, his career and his life both cut short by Hartner’s vicious whim. Jake didn’t know the details, but if Mark held true to form, the man’s life had been ruined by nothing but the fiend’s caprice.

  The worst, for Jake, was the heartbreaking look in the young surfer boy’s eyes. So much potential, so much life, so casually cast aside so cruelly. Who knew what this beautiful youth could have grown into? His prettiness would have roughened with age and taken on new dimension; his slim, toned physique would have thickened and developed into a spectacular body, if Jake was any judge. His eyes gleamed not only with intelligence but also with a depth of feeling, a warmness which showed his beauty was not just on the surface, that had he been allowed to live, he would have been capable of love, a love which might have fulfilled the lives of those around him, and perhaps, if he was lucky, might have given completion to the life of some special someone—perhaps even Jake himself.

  Jake wanted to help. He did! Standing in the middle of the ring of Hartner’s victims, knowing the beast had used people, raped them and, yes, even committed murder, Jake’s soul cried out for justice. Yet Tyler Deauxfines’s words haunted him and even though Mark Hartner was technically only a walking corpse, Jake did not know if he would be able to muster the fortitude to send him back to the grave a second time.

  “I don’t know,” he repeated. This time, there was mourning in his voice, grief that he might not have the strength to do what he
felt he should.

  “An honest answer,” Daniel nodded, as if approving. His eyes narrowed and with a calculating expression, one which Jake found discomforting, he added, “They cry out for vengeance. Will you not be their weapon?”

  Jake’s skin grew clammy. There was something in the way Daniel posed the question that was anti-attractive. So far, his sojourn into this mystical cavern of his imagination—for he was not yet able to grasp that the emergence of the dead men from the lake and the orgy that followed was quite the stuff of reality and not just in his mind—so far, the scene had been suffused with a languid, peaceful sensuality, a warm and kind sense of loving and of being cared for in return. It was something Jake had striven for in his own repeated fruitless attempts to make more than mere physical contact with the men he so often brought back to the cottage. It was everything he had dreamed of achieving emotionally. It was—perfect.

  But at Daniel’s words and at his tone, Jake felt uneasy, like a modern-day male Eve being tempted by the serpent. He hesitated, his mind racing as he examined the situation for hidden meaning, concealed traps. The little surfer stepped forward, his hand reaching out to brush Jake’s chest, but at a stern glance from Daniel, he resumed his place a few paces off and stood along with the rest, simply watching and waiting for Jake’s answer.

  “Revenge is a holy calling, don’t you think? Especially where a monster like Hartner is concerned.” Daniel prompted.

  Jake considered. Could he actually kill Hartner? Could he plunge a knife into that perfect, unblemished muscled breast and twist it to pierce the uncaring heart? Could he watch that angelic visage turn blue and swell while his fingers dug viciously into the smooth column of Mark’s throat? Could he stand over the beautiful corpse, dead a second time, and gloat at what he’d done, or even take a quiet satisfaction in knowing he’d performed as an avenger, his actions having helped lay these too-gentle souls who surrounded him now to their final rest?

  “No.”

  “No?” Daniel arched one eyebrow. He seemed almost pleased. “Why not? They are begging you. We are begging you.”

  “It’s...” Jake fumbled for words and in the end, decided simplicity might be best to describe the way he felt. “It’s wrong. Taking revenge...even on someone like Hartner, even after what he did you all of you and what he did to me...it seems...I don’t know...dirty?” He offered the final word tentatively, not sure if it adequately communicated what he meant. “This is all so...” He spread his arms to encompass the cavern and the men who stood within it. “So beautiful, so perfect, so...welcoming. To bring revenge into it seems like it would somehow, I don’t know... ruin things.”

  “Do you mean,” Daniel asked him gently, “it would be...ignoble?”

  Jake’s face brightened. “Exactly! It’d be like the way Tyler is. He’s been hurt. Badly. But there’s so much rage in him. It consumes him and, well...” He shrugged apologetically. “I just don’t think I’m the kind of person who could be like that.”

  “But you believe in justice?”

  “Absolutely!” Jake nodded without hesitation. “But that’s not quite the same thing as revenge, is it?”

  “No, it’s not. Not to you.” Now a brilliant smile grew on Daniel’s face, mirrored by the satisfied, approving looks on the faces of the gathered men. “And that is why we know you will be able to do what you must.”

  Daniel approached and the others moved out of the way.

  “Tyler’s spell was complex and he has offended the gods by casting it and will be...reprimanded. But they are even more offended by Hartner’s corruption of Tito, who was their chosen houngan. Mark Hartner has stolen from the gods and they claim the right to punish him.

  True, it must be one of the living who returns him to them, but he cannot do so from personal motives. You are quite right, Jake Marshall. Revenge is a personal emotion and it is alien to you. Justice, on the other hand, serves the greater good and you understand it well. Your heart is pure, Jake. You will take no pleasure in dispatching Hartner to justice and you will do it, knowing all the while that you are serving something bigger and more important than your own motives and protecting future innocents from his evil.”

  Daniel drew Jake closer and kissed him, long and deeply. Something passed from his mouth into Jake’s, a not-quite-substantial thing like the aftertaste of honeyed wine, causing his tongue to tingle, and he swallowed. He felt it flow down his throat and take up residence in the center of his chest, where its reassuring heat subsided into a dull glow.

  “You must be careful, though. Hartner is not without defenses. If he can draw you in with his beauty, seduce you, warp your purpose so you begin to love him even in the face of the horror he embodies, then all is lost and his power will be complete. You must be strong.”

  The walls of the chamber grew suddenly brighter, as if sunlight had penetrated the cavern to be reflected, blinding, from their crystalline surface. The faceted gems sparkled and the light motes danced in an ever-wilder pirouette until Jake’s eyes began to water. He blinked to clear them but the glare became only more painful. Involuntarily, his lids fluttered closed and once he could no longer see, he felt a searing pain lance through his body, brief but settling every nerve a-jangle.

  He heard Daniel’s voice fading into the distance. “Though we cannot interfere, when the time is right, we will be there. With you.”

  The pain subsided, just as suddenly as it had come. Jake groaned and opened his eyes to see the dirt and worn beams of Tyler Deauxfines’s basement ceiling once again.

  CHAPTER 5

  He was still pinioned to the altar, the muscles of his shoulders aching from the strain of his position, but mercifully, the intense heat of Tyler’s wicked unguent had abated. Jake’s naked body was covered, practically encased, in a shell of the potion which had mixed with his own sweat and had partially dried into a gluey sort of full-body shroud. He was exhausted, his muscles pumped from the effort of straining against the leather cuffs and chain, but at least the pain was gone—most of the pain, anyway. When Tyler’s handsome face moved into Jake’s field of vision above his prone form, he realized that though he may have already shot a load in the dreamland of the lake, in the real world he had not yet come. His dick was uncomfortable, straining against the skin encasing it, and his balls were hot and filled with fluid, feeling as if they might burst if he could not soon achieve release.

  “I have your permission, I see?”

  Tyler smiled and Jake could see the relief in his eyes. No matter how confident or how much in command of the situation the black man had seemed earlier, Jake realized now how he must have been tormented by doubt. He nodded.

  “Yes,” he croaked through a dry throat. “Now let me up.”

  Tyler waggled a finger playfully. “Not just yet. There is one final offering you must make to the gods before you can be released to carry out their will. But this time, it will not be unpleasant. I promise you that.”

  Jake quailed, not knowing whether to believe the voodoo priest or not. His concerns were soon assuaged, though not in any way he could have anticipated.

  Tyler moved away and returned with a large earthenware flagon. Without preamble, he upended it over Jake’s bound body, sluicing away most of the congealed remains of the awful ointment, leaving behind only a soothing residue of lotion-like consistency which was quickly absorbed into Jake’s skin. His belly fluttered and his muscles clenched and released as the liquid penetrated. It held some strange property and as it vanished into his body, it set his nerves to tremble, sensitizing his skin in a way Jake had never experienced before. The atmosphere of the basement room was largely still, with no windows or open doors for air to circulate. Nevertheless, Jake was acutely aware of a current passing over his naked body and it took him a few moments to realize he was now sensitive enough to experience even the tiny movements of air caused by its being heated by the fireplace and rising to circulate, almost imperceptibly, around the room.

  Tyler positioned his
hands palms down, a scant inch above Jake’s heaving chest. The young mortician was startled; even though there was no contact, he could feel a slight compression. He strained upwards but Tyler’s hands kept an even distance. Then they began to move in slow and wide strokes, miming an erotic massage of Jake’s body, and though they never actually touched his flesh, Jake could feel every movement.

  He moaned as his chest was tickled, goose bumps appearing on his skin. His nipples throbbed and hungered to be touched as the ghostly sensation continued. The tender, sensitive skin of his armpits ached when Tyler’s hands passed over. His inner thighs clenched and his toes curled when Tyler skipped over his groin to devote his attention to Jake’s muscular legs. His back arched. So absorbed was he in the pleasure coursing through his body, Jake did not realize his bonds had slackened enough to allow him some limited movement. Involuntarily, he pushed his hips forward, thrusting his straining cock into the air, supported only by the backs of his shoulders and his heels, straining upwards, ever upwards, silently begging, praying Tyler would touch his dick and provide him with the relief he so desperately sought.

  Jake opened his mouth and a low moan echoed across the basement. His body glistened with sweat. A high-pitched whine built in the back of his throat when Tyler’s palms finally moved over the head of his dick. Jake could feel the displacement of the compressed air on his cock head when Tyler began slowly massaging it in slow circular motions, never actually touching it but stimulating it all the same.

  The sensation was maddening. Jake wanted Tyler to grab his dick, to jerk him off, to even touch him casually—anything to provide even a minimum of friction to allow him to come. But the teasing, insanity-inducing massage of the glans went on and on. Jake bucked and thrashed, twisting his body from side to side, straining to make contact. Drops of sweat flew from his tortured brow and streamed from his sides until the altar beneath him grew so slick with it that he could no longer support his bowed back and he slammed down upon it.