“Why?”
Tomas had shrugged. “Who knows? The Spanish spread rumors of curses and something they called 'clay demons.'” A laugh. “Silly stuff, I know. I used to be a tour guide. We always talked about how the clay was a metaphor for the way myths and legends could be shaped to fit each new culture but at night here, after all us drunks pass out, it's easy to mistake the wind rushing through the alleys for whispering.”
“You must have been one hell of a tour guide.”
They shared an electric smile.
Gabe had fought the temptation to put his arm around the young man. He'd known Tomas was gay after hearing him mention an ex-boyfriend, but Gabe was straight. He had been married for twenty-three years and had two grown children. He had thought about men at times, but not until Tomas had the urge gripped him so strongly.
They passed the funeral home where Dr. Karl Von Costle had kept the body of Elena del Hoyos for seven years. He remembered how Tomas had grabbed his hand for the first time that night while standing in front of it, telling how the doctor had loved her so much that he had stolen her body from its tomb and brought it home, coating it in wax and replacing pieces with the softest velvet. She hadn't loved him in life, but in death he molded her into the Elena that he dreamed of, an Elena that would never leave him. It was a disturbing tale, but Tomas had found the beauty in it.
Now they walked by without a word.
At home, Gabe poured a glass of juice and sat on the back porch. A breeze blew in, heavy with the smell of the sea, and caressed his face. He leaned back, the rough wicker chair groaning under him, and examined chipping paint overhead. The porch's ceiling, like most in Key West, was painted sky blue, an old sailor's tradition to keep evil spirits away. He wished it worked.
“Are you going to sit here for a while?”
“Yeah,” Gabe said. “I’ll probably read some.”
“Okay.”
Tomas went inside and pounded up the stairs. The attic door opened and closed.
Gabe cried.
*
The accident had changed everything.
They had been married for less than six months. It wasn’t official as far as the State of Florida was concerned at the time, but Tomas attended a Unitarian church that had been thrilled to perform the ceremony. Gabe had moved into the bed and breakfast Tomas managed a few weeks before the ceremony. It was supposed to have been the start of a new life.
Then Margot’s breakdown came. He loved his now ex-wife and hated what his midlife coming-out had done to her. But how could he live a lie? It wasn’t fair to her or him. He had driven north to Orlando, desperate to visit her in the hospital. His children refused to let him into the room. The things they said that day still kept him up at night.
Distraught, he had sped home, down interstate 595 through the Everglades, a storm battering the SUV. Vicious winds threatened to blow it from the road and Gabe’s knuckles had gone white from gripping the wheel. As the storm intensified, he crept along and planned to take the next exit to wait out the rain.
That's when the little blue hatchback pulled out in front of him.
The brake hit the floor but the SUV kept barreling on. Gabe cut the wheel to the right, tires grasping at the ground and slipping, the world spinning around him, white streaks of rain swirling into the windows. He tipped, wet concrete rushing up to his window, the bag in the passenger seat crashing into his shoulder.
Black.
Tomas was with him when he awoke in the hospital. A dozen broken bones wrapped him in pain. His hip had been shattered and, though it was eventually rebuilt, the nerve damage kept him from being able to live life to its fullest. He had to reinvent himself, learning how to walk again and how to define a relationship without physical intimacy. He was told that as he adjusted to the pain medication he may one day regain sexual function, but every month spent unable to make love to his husband sapped whatever hope he had in that regard.
It was determined the brakes had been faulty, a factory defect that had gone unnoticed. The settlement was enough to buy the bed and breakfast, closing it off to the public and converting it into their home. Those renovations were some of Gabe's happiest memories, the newlyweds joined together in painting and decorating their new home with gorgeous antique furniture. The settlement ensured neither of them would ever worry about money again.
But they soon had bigger things to worry about.
*
Gabe woke to a scream.
Covered in sweat and shadow, he struggled to remember where he was. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was after three in the morning.
The screaming echoed through the house, high pitched and watery.
It was that goddamned thing in the attic. Tomas had sneaked out of bed and gone up there. Whatever they were doing, it was enjoying itself. Another scream shot through the place and the windows rattled with ecstasy.
He fought his way from bed and hobbled over to the bathroom, not even bothering to grab his cane. Splashing his face with cold water, he caught sight of the ruined lines of surgery after surgery peeking above the waistband of his pajamas. A bottle of prescription sleeping pills sat on a shelf in the medicine cabinet and he shook one out. He downed it with a palm of water and paused, examining the bottle. How easy it would be to swallow them all, to lie down and never get up again.
Tomas stepped into the bedroom a few minutes later, a streetlight cutting through the window and igniting red scratches on his chest. They locked eyes.
“I… I’m sorry we woke you,” Tomas said and crawled into bed.
“Are you?”
A sigh. In the dark, the blankets rustled.
“Tomas?”
“What?”
“Listen. I was thinking we should take a trip. Maybe go to New Orleans. There's a blues festival.”
“I don't like blues.”
“You used to.”
More rustling. “No. You like blues. I only tolerated it.”
He was asleep again in moments, the sweat sprinkling his flesh carrying that sour scent. Gabe watched him drift off, grabbing his cane and gripping it until his hand went numb.
The ceiling creaked.
He stepped into the hall. The shadows were thick on the staircase, rinsing it in black. The door at the top was a yawning mouth and he was afraid Tomas had left it open. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out the shape of the deadbolts fastened along its height.
Curiosity nagged at him and he struggled up the steps. At the top he pressed his hand to the wood of the door, imagining he could almost feel his husband’s lust threaded into the grain.
There was a shuffling on the other side.
How many times had he stood here, fantasizing about murder? But he was afraid of going into the attic, afraid of facing his sins and finding out what the repercussions might be for stopping what he had set in motion.
A pathetic moan leaked into the hall. It reminded him of the sound Margot used to make when he had worked her up enough to almost beg for him.
Gabe’s hand went to the locks. For a moment he thought he felt warmth blossom in his groin, a stirring he hadn’t felt since the accident. He shrugged it off as a trick of the sleeping pill taking hold and made his way down the stairs.
There was a scratching at the door behind him.
*
Tomas began cheating on him mere months after the accident. He had turned a blind eye to it at first, knowing his husband had a need that Gabe could no longer fill. When Tomas came to him one day and told him he was in love with another man, Gabe’s heart broke.
“It’s not that I don’t love you,” Tomas had said, tears in his eyes. “I’m just confused, you know?”
“Are you leaving me?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to leave you, but…”
He had trailed off, eyes fixed on his lap. Gabe had wanted to punch him, to feel his jaw shatter. But, more than that, he wanted to grab him, to pull him close and make love to him.
/> And he couldn’t.
He knew who Tomas had been seeing. He was a sculptor who made his living as a tour guide, a young man with sandy hair and piercing eyes named Kyle. Kyle ran ghost tours in the evening, ending in an alley behind one of the bars on Duval Street after midnight. The tour always finished with a ridiculous story about how the land behind the alley was cursed, how when the Spanish came and found bones stacked three feet high that the ones found in that small area were too gnarled and deformed to be considered human.
Gabe found him there a few nights later. They argued, Kyle telling him he was an inadequate old man who needed to let go and get on with his life. The cane had connected with the tour guide’s skull so hard that the sound was like thunder echoing from the walls. Frightened and horrified, Gabe knelt over him and checked his pulse.
“Please, God,” he’d whispered, searching for the rhythm of Kyle’s heartbeat on his throat, “let him be okay.”
Tears streaked Gabe’s face.
“I didn’t want to hurt him.”
Kyle’s blood dripped onto the cobblestone.
“I just want Tomas to be happy at home again. Please.”
*
The setting sun shot streaks of purple through the sky. Gabe watched it sink, remembering how he and his husband used to be awed by escape artists and fire-breathers during the evening celebrations at Mallory Square. He wondered if they could make it to the coast before everything ended while he stirred the alfredo sauce. Gabe had made carbonara for his husband on the first night of their honeymoon and hoped that the recipe held some kind of magic to rekindle their fire for one another.
Tomas had been in the attic most of the day. More and more of his time was spent behind that locked door and Gabe worried what went on in there. The sounds of sex filled the hallway several times a day but other times, times like now, there was only silence.
He took a pan from the stove and removed the bacon. He poured the grease carefully into an empty peanut butter jar and crumbled the red strips into the sauce.
“Tomas!”
No answer.
“Tomas! Dinner’s ready!”
Silence.
He grabbed his cane and fought his way to the attic door. He raised his hand to knock, but stopped.
The soft rustle of whispering leaked through the cracks.
Ear to the door, he recognized his husband’s voice. The speech wasn’t discernible. But the hushed tones, the lilt in his words, told Gabe what he needed to know.
Downstairs, he ate dinner by himself, not bothering to wipe the tears from his face.
*
The night was quiet. Gabe sat in the dark kitchen, shadows draping him, and watched the acorn shape of a cotton seed bug climb the outside of the window screen.
A creak. The attic door opened. Stairs groaned as Tomas shuffled down. He passed through the kitchen as quiet as a ghost and opened the fridge. White light spilled across the linoleum.
“I made carbonara.”
Tomas jumped. “Gabe? What are you doing sitting in the dark?”
“You’ve been up there all day. I figured you had to eat some time.”
“Sorry. Time slips away from me in there.” He pulled a Tupperware dish from the fridge and walked it to the microwave. As he passed the table, Gabe caught a whiff of the thing’s musk. It made his stomach convulse.
“What have you been doing in there all day, Tomas?”
He shut the microwave door and pressed a series of buttons. It hummed to life. “You know what I do in there.” He walked back to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water.
“You haven’t been doing that all day.”
Tomas shrugged. He unscrewed the cap on the bottle. Took a large drink. Wiped his mouth with his forearm. “We just…”
“Just what?”
“Just held each other.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What? This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Gabe stood. “What are you talking about?”
“Never mind.”
He wanted to go to his husband, to hold him, but the four feet across the kitchen might as well have been miles. “Tomas, let's leave here.”
The hum of the microwave filled the kitchen.
“Get out of Key West,” Gabe went on. “Go someplace where we don't have to deal with hurricane warnings and hundred-degree heat. We can sell this place.”
“This is our home.”
“Yeah, but we could buy a house anywhere. Or maybe we don't. Maybe we just travel. See the world. You always wanted to travel.”
“Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Making up what I want. You always do that. I never wanted to travel, I never liked the music you think I do. I don't even like Italian food, for crissakes. You have never known who the hell I am.”
“Don't say that. I love you.”
“No. You don't, Gabe. You love this... this idea of me that you came up with. You created the man you wanted way before your accident. The only problem is that I'm not him.”
A headache threatened to split Gabe's skull open. He took a deep breath and tried to stay calm.
Tomas chuckled and wiped a tear away. “He told me, Gabriel. He told me what you asked for.”
The microwave dinged.
“What?”
“He came here for a reason,” Tomas said, thrusting his finger toward the ceiling. “And you damn well know it.”
Gabe shook his head. “It can’t talk,” he said, refusing to personify the thing in their attic the way Tomas had.
“He can.”
“It never has before.” Aside from that first night in the alley, it had never done more than moan and shriek.
“Maybe not. Maybe he was waiting, I don’t know. But he told me what happened in that alley.” He pulled the Tupperware from the microwave.
Gabe’s blood went cold. “Nothing happened.”
Tomas hurled the dish across the room. It slammed into the wall, white sauce splattering, Tupperware bouncing from the floor. “Stop lying to me!”
His stomach felt empty, hollow, like his life had been ripped away through his abdomen and was never coming back.
“He’s changed, Gabe.”
“Changed how?”
“Go. See for yourself.”
They held each other’s gaze. Tomas’ eyes, so beautiful in the wan light leaking through the window, were cold and unforgiving.
Gabe nodded. Grabbed his cane. Hobbled up the stairs.
At the top, he fumbled with the deadbolts. The knob was hot and sweaty in his palm. He twisted it and opened the door.
The smell of the thing hit him in the face. He wondered why it was the dominant smell, why the thing never seemed to eat or piss or shit. The boards creaked under him as he stepped into the room and the stale scent of old sex drifted up from the floor.
A candle burned in the corner. A mattress sat beside it, soiled yellow and speckled with dark stains. The thing lay with its back to the door, its shadow twitching, distended ribs rising and falling with each breath. Across its misshapen back a dozen orifices glistened and pulsed, a body formed solely for sex.
Its head twisted around to peek over one shoulder. Warmth flooded Gabe and he was shocked to feel an erection straining against his pajamas for the first time since the accident. The thing smiled and he wanted to go to it, to feel it pressed against him, to taste each of those throbbing slits.
He took a step closer and gasped at piercing eyes and sandy hair.
It stretched onto its back, gnarled joints creaking as fingers too long to be human rubbed over pale flesh. Eyelids draped down, head straining back on an impossibly thin neck, a moan bubbling up its throat.
Gabe stumbled to the door. Slammed it. Slid the locks into place.
Its face, the hair, the eyes... There was no mistaking it. It didn't just look like Kyle anymore.
It had become him.
*
“Please, God. Please.�
�
He couldn’t find a pulse on Kyle’s throat.
Something shuffled through the alley behind him. He yelped, spun, fell hard on his ass.
“Please,” someone mimicked from the dark. “God. Please.” Cold fingers gripped him as he recognized his own voice. Had someone recorded the entire incident?
“I just want Tomas to be happy at home again. Please.” The recording grew louder, pounding in his ears as shadows dripped along the walls. The dark pressed closer, pulling tight around Kyle’s body.
“I just want Tomas to be happy at home again. Please.
“Stop it,” he said.
Kyle’s blood pooled under him, filling the cracks between stones and vanishing into the earth.
“I just want Tomas to be happy at home again. Please.”
“Stop it!” He clutched his cane to his chest.
The shadows wrapped around Kyle’s body.
Something moaned.
It scratched across the cobblestones on all fours. Pale skin ripped away from the shadows gripping the corpse, clambering on top of the body like a palsied crab. Its face was featureless, its flesh a sickly blank white. Malformed bones popped and cracked. It sat on Kyle's chest, the empty face cocked to one side as though it examined Gabe with eyes that did not exist.
Gabe's heart threatened to erupt from his chest.
Pale hands raised into the air on crooked arms, the head tipping forward. The gesture was surprisingly human. Well?
He understood. It was insane, he knew, but God help him he understood.
“Do it,” he said.
A long finger covered with skin like old paper tapped against Kyle's forehead. A ripple rolled over the flesh on its skull. Features pressed into the skin from behind, the vague features of a face.
“Tomas,” the shadows mimicked.
The white flesh scurried back into the dark, a wave of shadow crashing over Kyle's body.
Gabe fought to his feet and hurried from the rear of the alley. He rushed home and waited for the police to come and drag him off to an asylum, where they would hold him for murder and talk of clay demons.
Abominations of Desire Page 13
