The Bones Beneath My Skin

by TJ Klune

  Nolan switched off the satellite radio then.

  Sometimes it was better to listen to nothing at all.

  It was the middle of June, and the snow was mostly gone as he left Nain, Newfoundland, behind. It’d been a good winter, but Nolan was happy to see the green of spring. When the thaw had started in April, he’d felt like he’d been awoken from hibernation. It was by no means the worst they’d had since they settled in the cabin ten years ago. The winter of 2007 had been killer, and he’d been sure they weren’t going to make it.

  They had, of course, and had given serious thought to packing up and leaving, trying to find someplace new. But then spring had come, and summer, and Aaron had been taken on by a fishing boat out of Nain, and they’d been happy. They’d stayed. People in Nain knew them now, and they were friendly. Nolan helped at the shops in the summers when the cruise ships came, bringing tourists by the hundreds who marveled at such a quaint little seaside town before they climbed back aboard and disappeared.

  Somehow they’d made a home.

  Nolan heard seagulls calling through his open window. There was still a chill in the air, but he was used to it by now. It’d taken some time, but he’d figured out the more layers he dressed in, the better. He’d even learned how to snowshoe better than Aaron ever could, much to his chagrin.

  He smiled softly down at the gold ring on his finger, chipped and worn. Nolan and Aaron Callahan, going on eighteen years now and still as strong as ever.

  He was whistling by the time he turned down the old dirt road that led to the cabin in the woods, happy to be home from the grocery run. Aaron had volunteered to accompany him, but Nolan had waved him off. Aaron had only been back a couple of days after being out on the fishing boat for close to a month. He deserved his rest.

  The cabin wasn’t much, not really. A single story. Three bedrooms. One and a half baths. There was a deck on the back where they could sit and smell the ocean, though they were almost ten miles inland. It had a solid roof and a good foundation. It was home and had been for a long time. Maybe it wouldn’t be forever. He thought they were getting closer to an ending, on the precipice of a new beginning.

  It didn’t matter.

  Home didn’t always have to be a place.

  Home could be a person too.

  Sadie heard the truck first, tearing out of the house, barking as she nearly stumbled down the porch steps. She’d been a gift from Aaron a couple of Christmases ago, a black-and-white Alaskan malamute puppy with bright eyes and a cocky strut. She’d grown (and grown and grown) since then to the beast she was today.

  Said beast jumped up on the truck, front paws hanging on the door, frantically whimpering as she tried to reach Nolan to lick his face.

  “Hey,” Nolan said, laughing. “I was only gone for a couple of hours. Calm down.”

  “She’s been sitting at the door since you left,” Nolan heard a deep voice say. “Whimpering and everything. Like she thought you weren’t coming back.”

  Even now, even after all this time, his heart fluttered in his chest.

  Aaron Callahan stood on the porch, as large a presence as he’d ever been before. He was fifty-seven years old now to Nolan’s forty-four, but Nolan could only hope he’d look half as good nearing sixty. Aaron had always been a big guy. He was leaner now than he’d been at forty, but he was still strong. His hair was white, as was the full beard on his face, something he’d started to grow years ago, much to Nolan’s delight.

  Nolan wasn’t too shabby either, or so Aaron said. They were both older, maybe only a little wiser, but they hadn’t had to run for their lives in a long time.

  “We need to break her of that,” Nolan said, climbing out of the truck. “Separation anxiety is a bitch of a thing. I should know. I sit at the door whimpering until you get home too.”

  Aaron laughed as he walked down the steps, a throaty chuckle that Nolan still marveled over. Sadie licked his hands before she barked and ran around him in circles.

  It’d only been a couple of hours, but Aaron hugged him just as hard as he had when Nolan picked him up at the docks a couple of days before. Nolan felt his bones creak, not as young as he’d once been.

  “Happy you’re home,” he murmured into Aaron’s shoulder.

  “Me too,” Aaron said. Nolan leaned back, and Aaron kissed him. His beard was scratchy, and his lips were slightly chapped, but it was still the best feeling in all the world.

  Nolan sighed and melted into the kiss.

  “The groceries can wait, right?” he muttered against Aaron’s lips. “What say we get back inside, lock the bedroom door, and see what we see?”

  “How’s your back?” Aaron asked, eyes glinting.

  Nolan rolled his eyes. “It’s fine.”

  “You sure? You were bitching about it quite a bit yesterday.”

  “I can’t bend like that anymore,” Nolan reminded him. “Not that you have any room to talk. Remember what happened when you tried to fuck me up against the wall the last time?”

  Aaron’s eyebrows dipped, as they often did when he scowled. “I was having an off day.”

  Nolan snorted. “Sure. Keep telling yourself that, buddy.”

  Aaron kissed him once more, swift and sweet. “Rain check, okay?”

  Nolan heard it then. In his voice. Saw it in the way he carried himself. And maybe, if he really thought on it, he’d known this day was coming. For weeks. Maybe he couldn’t have said it would be right this moment, but he wasn’t surprised.

  “It’s time, isn’t it?” he asked quietly.

  Aaron nodded. “Think so.”

  He didn’t know how to feel about that. They’d made this place for themselves. Made a home, hidden away from the rest of the world. This could change everything. Scratch that. It would change everything. Eventually. It was going to take time, but once the decision was made, there would be no going back.

  Nolan nodded tightly. “Yeah. Okay.”

  Aaron looked worried. “Hey. Hey. What’s going on in that head of yours?”

  Nolan shrugged. “I don’t—I’m just overthinking things, I guess. It’s just… everything is going to change.”

  Aaron reached out and stroked his cheek. “It will.”

  “We might not ever get this again. This moment. This quiet. This… place.”

  “Maybe,” Aaron said. “But you’ll always have me. No matter what. No matter where we are, I’m going to be right by your side.”

  Nolan smiled. “You sap.”

  “Your sap.”

  “Yeah. I just… I’m scared.”

  “I’m not going to lie,” Aaron said. “It might get rough. It—there’s going to be many people who won’t understand. People who won’t believe. People who will know nothing but fear. But it’s going to be our job to help them. To show them the way. To let them know that there is nothing to be afraid of. It’s just the next step. For all of us.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  Aaron hesitated. Then, “Do you trust me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you—do you regret… this? Any of this?”

  “No,” Nolan said as honestly as he could. “Never. I never have.” And that was the truth. For a long time, Aaron had felt guilty over… everything. The life they’d left behind. Cutting off all ties. Pulling Nolan into all of this. It’d taken a while for Nolan to convince him, but every now and then, Aaron’s uncertainty still made an appearance. “Not one second.” He paused, considering. “Well. I take that back. I could have done without the farm.”

  Aaron shook his head, a look of fond exasperation on his face. “I think all of us could have done without the farm.”

  “And then there were your so-called friends after. I regretted that quite a bit.”

  Aaron winced. “Yeah, that was probably on me.”

  “Hippies, Aaron. Your friends were hippies. And we had to stay with them. For months.”

  “You ever g
oing to let that go?”

  Nolan sniffed haughtily. “Probably not.”

  They were laughing when they kissed again. Nolan liked those types of kisses very much.

  “We’ll lock the bedroom door later,” Aaron promised him in a low voice, reaching around and squeezing Nolan’s ass through his jeans.

  “Gonna hold you to that, old man. Help me with the groceries?”

  Aaron did.

  The hippies had told him it’d be tough, but he had to stop thinking of himself as Nathaniel Cartwright. “Even when you don’t realize it,” a woman with glassy eyes and dreads had told him, “you think of yourself as Nate. It’s all you’ve ever known. It happens unconsciously. You can’t do that anymore. You have to be aware. You have to think it. You have to live it. Nathaniel Cartwright is no more. You’re Nolan Callahan now.”

  “And what about him?” Nate (Nolan) had asked, nodding to where Alex was sitting, a frown on his face as his friend had him sitting in front of a blue screen, getting ready to take his picture. “Who is he going to be?”

  The woman had grinned. “Aaron.”

  “Oh, that’s—”

  “Aaron Callahan.”

  Nate had choked. “Like… brothers?”

  “Oh, I don’t think he meant like brothers when he suggested it. Not like brothers at all.”

  Alex had refused to meet his gaze for a while after that.

  It had been difficult. He never knew just how much his identity was wrapped in the two words Nathaniel Cartwright. The woman had been right; even if he didn’t think those words, he was Nate. He had been for damn near thirty years.

  So it didn’t happen overnight.

  Hell, it didn’t even happen in the first couple of years.

  There’d been quite a few awkward moments, new people met when he’d stumble over his name, dragging out the N and the A until he corrected it to Nolan, making it come out sounding like Nnnnaaaa-olan. Nolan. My name is Nolan.

  He’d gotten a few funny looks over the years.

  But there came a day when he realized he wasn’t Nate anymore.

  Nathaniel Cartwright had been a good person, mostly. He’d made mistakes, sure, but he’d always tried to make things right. He’d been lonely and lost. Directionless. It wasn’t until the very end of being Nate Cartwright that it really hit him.

  It hadn’t been easy remembering to be Nolan Callahan.

  But it had been easy to agree to become him.

  All he’d had to do was look at Alex Weir.

  He followed Aaron into the cabin, arms laden with bags of groceries, Sadie following her favorite human close, lest he decide to leave her again.

  They set the bags down in the kitchen, and Nolan cocked his head, listening. There were the usual sounds of the forest filtering in through open windows, and the cabin creaking, but nothing else.

  They didn’t move to unpack the groceries. Nolan knew Aaron was waiting for him to ask. They weren’t telepathic. They couldn’t read each other’s minds. But there had always been the intuition there because of Artemis Darth Vader. Even after the Dingess Tunnel, they’d been connected in ways that others were not.

  Nolan thought about what was most important. What needed to be asked. “Why now? Why after all this time?”

  Aaron looked out the window. His face was lined. He still looked tired, not having yet caught up with his sleep after his time at sea. But he was still as handsome as the day they’d met. “We promised her that her story would be told. That the world would know what happened.”

  “I get that,” Nolan said. “I do. But it’s been over seventeen years. I thought—haven’t there been so many moments where the truth should have come out? After everything that’s happened in the world. The deaths. The destruction. The disease and famine. We are compassionate, but we destroy everything we touch. How can we deserve this? Why is it now?”

  Aaron looked over at him, eyebrows bunched on his face. “I don’t always know.”

  Nolan sighed. “I know. I’m just… scared, I think. For us.”

  “C’mere,” Aaron said, raising an arm.

  Nolan went. Of course he did.

  He fit perfectly under Aaron’s arm, just as he always had. He wasn’t sappy and maudlin enough to think that they were made for each other. That they were meant to be. But he remembered when she’d looked at him, back at Herschel Lake. A grunt had been standing behind her, braiding her hair, and she’d asked a man named Nate Cartwright if he believed in fate. In destiny.

  He hadn’t then.

  But sometimes he wondered about that. About it all.

  He looked out the window.

  A young woman sat in a small clearing outside the kitchen window next to the cabin. She was facing away from them. Her hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail. She wore black leggings and an oversized flannel shirt. It looked like one of Aaron’s. She sat cross-legged, her feet bare, hands on her knees. A pair of bright purple sunglasses rested on top of her head. Her shoulders rose as she took a deep breath and fell as she let it out slowly.

  Around her, between the blades of grass, flowers began to bloom.

  Nolan Callahan felt it in his head, as much as he saw it with his own eyes, a bright burst of colors that he felt down to his very bones.

  When the light had faded at Dingess Tunnel, Artemis had still been standing on the road, an uncertain look on her face.

  Alex Weir had made a wounded noise, falling to his knees, spreading his arms wide.

  She’d run to him.

  She’d told them later she’d been given a choice.

  And in the end, she’d chosen them—chosen humanity—without hesitation.

  They hadn’t understood what it would entail.

  Not then.

  Not until she’d lost her first tooth three days later.

  It was… slower. The aging process. She looked like she could still be in high school. But she was tall, statuesque, and astonishingly intelligent.

  Artemis Darth Vader.

  Or Ellie Callahan, as she was referred to these days.

  Days which were apparently coming to an end.

  The flowers were in full bloom.

  She stood slowly, pushing herself up off the ground.

  She glanced over her shoulder, and the smile when she saw them was blinding.

  They ate dinner that night on the back deck. The evening air still had some bite to it. The stew was warm and the coffee hot. Aaron had made it just as Nolan liked it.

  “You’ve been quiet,” Nolan said to Ellie. She’d barely touched her food.

  She shrugged. “Just thinking, I guess.”

  Even though he knew, he still asked, “About?”

  “Tomorrow.” She looked at the flowers in the clearing. Sadie lay amongst them, gnawing on a bone. “I’m nervous. I didn’t expect to be.”

  Aaron reached out and took Nolan’s hand in his. “Why are you nervous?”

  “I don’t know. Just am, I guess. About what it means. What will happen next.”

  Nolan sometimes thought that she was the most human of all of them. Their sweet, fierce girl. “We’ll be right there with you.”

  She smiled quietly. “I know.”

  “And you’re sure?”

  She nodded. “It’s time. I can… hear them.”

  Nolan and Aaron exchanged a startled look. “Them,” Aaron said slowly. “As in…”

  “As in them.”

  Nolan’s heart was pounding. “When did it start?”

  She hummed a little under her breath. “A few weeks ago.”

  That old familiar scowl adorned Aaron’s face. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I needed time… time to figure out what it meant. After… after the tunnel, I knew I’d be cut off. That was part of the deal. Hearing them again, it—time is moving slower for me now. I understand it better. It took me by surprise.” She pushed her bowl away. “But they’re coming. T
hey have so much to teach this place. So much to show the world.”

  Gooseflesh prickled along the back of Nolan’s neck. “People won’t understand. Maybe a lot of them. And not for a long time.”

  She laughed. He loved that sound. “I know. But my story needs to be told. Our story. Before.” She looked up toward the sky. Aaron and Nolan followed her gaze. The stars were just beginning to come out. “This world is on the verge, I think. Of something bigger. Something greater. But it’s a thin line. The scales can be easily tipped. And it’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen. To make sure they don’t heed the call of the void.” She closed her eyes. “It will start small. The message. But it’ll spread soon enough. One day, and one day soon, they’ll be ready. The people. And we’ll be the ones to show them the way.”

  She hugged them before she went to bed, as she always did. She had a book in her hands, a dog-eared Louis L’Amour. She’d never stopped loving them, even after all this time.

  And later, after the dishes were done and Sadie let out for the final time, Aaron led his husband by the hand to their bedroom. He undressed Nolan slowly, worshipping every inch of bare skin he could find. They panted into each other’s mouths, skin slick with sweat, and at their release, those colors burst in their heads again and again and again.

  After, Aaron lay behind Nolan, huddled close, arm wrapped around his waist.

  “Tomorrow,” Nolan whispered in the dark.

  “I love you.”

  “I know.”

  “I should have never shown her that movie,” Aaron said with a sigh.

  But they laughed.

  And then they slept.

  It happened one foggy June morning, in a remote corner of the Canadian wilds.

  A camera was trained on a desk with three chairs behind it. It was live, streaming online for all the world to see. Only a handful of people would witness the initial broadcast, most of them stumbling upon it by chance. But within ten months, it would have spread across the world, shared far and wide by millions of people.