The Wounds in the Walls (5 page)

Mike
stood at the end of the bed with his hands in his pockets and waited.

Pete lay on the bed before him, propped up by pillows, attended by the soothing whispers and gentle touches of the ghost. The ghost, he reminded himself once more. Not “the boy.”

The ghost wasn’t focused on Mike; it was too busy taking care of Pete. It had taken some doing for the specter to get Pete onto the bed, because first it had to defuse the alarm Pete had felt at the room, which he said had “changed again.” Mike had wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but a professional instinct told him to keep quiet. He did, and he waited, watching Peter Eason’s every move.

There was little left of the taciturn, dismissive man who had stood in the living room and joked about leprechauns. Pete was agitated and pale, and it had to be an illusion, but he looked thinner and slighter. The shadows in the room made his hair seem darker. The curtains were drawn tight against the windows, and it might as well have been night outside for as dark as it was in here. A small lamp cast incandescent light over the faded dusty quilt and the rough hem of Pete’s jeans and button-down shirt. His cap had come off somewhere, and his curly hair had straightened, going dark and spiky.

Mike frowned, thinking that didn’t quite make sense.

But Pete was looking down at himself in alarm. “Oh God. I’m wearing his clothes.
Fuck
—I’m turning into him!” He turned to the ghost, looking sick. “I’m turning into
you.
”

“It’s reaching out to you,” the ghost said, trying to rub soothingly at Pete’s shoulder, but mostly it was clutching at his shirt. “You have to resist, Peter.”

“I saw it,” Pete said, looking down at his hands. “The past. I saw Peter Underwood. I saw them. I saw it all.” He looked back at the ghost, terror in his eyes. “I felt it coming. The bad thing.”

“Push it away,” the ghost whispered.

Mike could keep quiet no longer. “Pete, you’re remembering a past life. This is all perfectly natural. You have nothing to fear.”

“
Fuck you,
” Pete said, turning on him. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew it was going to do this to me. You stupid piece of shit! I
wish
all you’d wanted was a fuck. God damn, but I wish it.”

Mike tried to shutter himself. “Pete, what happened just now, on the floor—that was just my weakness—”

Pete’s laugh was dark. “Jesus. Ara, you’re right, he doesn’t fucking change. That’s the same shit he said to you, isn’t it?”

Mike blinked, confused.

“He doesn’t know,” the ghost said to Pete, sounding sad. “He never knows who he is. Don’t bother trying to convince him. It won’t work.”

“I’ll fucking make it work,” Pete said.

Mike was beginning to feel uneasy. “This isn’t my past,” he said, trying to be gentle. “I’m just a researcher, an academic. This is an old case, one of high intensity, and I—”

“Shut up.” Pete rode over his protests, aiming a shaking finger at him. “Just shut the fuck up. You’re the tutor, you dumbass.” When Mike drew back in alarm and started to sputter, Pete drove on, merciless. “I saw you. I watched it all, and it’s
you.
His name was even Michael. Michael Emery.”

“Just because our names—” Mike began, but Pete leaned forward, red-faced in his fury.

“
It was you.
You sat up in that room and jerked off the same way he did. And eventually you kissed him and sucked him and fucked him and even taught him how to fuck you. Not that he needed teaching. Jesus, you’re thick. You think you’re leading this dance, but you’re not. You think you’re controlling this, think you’re impartial, but you aren’t. You’re as neck-deep in this as I am.”

It was all nonsense, but suddenly Mike felt ill and exposed. “No,” he whispered. “No.”

Pete turned to the ghost. “You keep saying ‘he always’. What do you mean?”

The ghost cast a sad glance at Mike. “He comes back. Every time he is reborn, he comes back to try and save me. He buys the house. Usually he comes with a family, though he always ends up here a bachelor. But it always ends the same.” The ghost’s tone indicated this end was never good.

Mike tried to give a calming, belittling smile, but inside he was reeling. He was not the tutor. He couldn’t be.

Because if he were—

The ghost looked thoughtful. “He’s unsettled.
That
, Peter, has never happened before. Not like this.”

Mike worked to keep his voice even and controlled. “Pete, don’t let the spirit lead you into its madness.
You
have the control here.
You
are the one who is living. Whatever visions it shows you, whatever lies it tells—it is not real. Only you are.”

Pete glared at him. “And what about you, wise guy? Are you real?”

Mike tried again for that calm, clinical smile. “I am merely a facilitator—”

“Why are we here?” Pete shot back. “Why did you bring me here?”

Mike laced his fingers together in front of himself. “Because you’re Peter Underwood reincarnated. A psychic told me your name now, and where you were—”

“Why are you obsessed with this case, Clarke?” Pete dogged.

“I’m not obsessed. It’s just very compelling. It’s a very intense haunting: the house looks different to almost everyone, and the ghost is very aggressive. It affects the whole landscape, all the way to the—”

“Famous in the paranormal history books, is it?” Pete asked.

“Well—no, I discovered it myself,” Mike admitted.

Pete’s smile was knowing. “How’d you do that? Just wandered by?”

Mike didn’t like this line of questioning. “I was led to it in a dream, which is a perfectly legitimate—”

“Funny, isn’t it, how I’m named Peter and you’re named Michael?” Pete’s gaze was like a dagger, pinning Mike into place. “Except I insist on being called ‘Pete’. I wonder how firm you are about being ‘Mike’. And isn’t it interesting how we’re both gay? Just like them? And here we are, both of us back at this house where a Peter and a Michael were lovers. What’s the history here, Clarke? What’s the story of the Underwood family?”

Mike was reeling. “Not much is known. The father was very strict. I suspect he might also have been borderline psychotic—”

Pete grimaced. “He was a bastard. Hopefully he’s in hell.”

Mike ignored him. “There was a tutor, as you say. And you remembered the name correctly, too, which is a good sign. There were rumors of an affair between him and young Peter, but they couldn’t be confirmed. What is known is that the tutor turned up drowned in the lake, and Peter Underwood’s body was never found. The official declaration was that they were swimming and drowned. But the servants whispered that there had been a murder. Those servants later turned up dead as well.”

The ghost had gone quiet. It always did, when Mike spoke of this story. Mike waited, hoping now that it would tell the truth to Pete, that he would hear, and the energy would at long last be released.

But it was Pete, not the ghost, who spoke.

“That’s not what happened,” Pete said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what actually happened, but it wasn’t that.” He turned to the ghost, and Mike held his breath.

But the ghost just looked sad. It was also looking at the walls.

Pete did then, too, in apprehension. “Is it coming?”

The ghost shook its head. “Not yet. It’s hard for it to come in here.”

That didn’t seem to comfort Pete much. “I can’t see the end. I can feel it coming, but I can’t see it.”

Mike placed a hand on the end of the metal rail of the bed. “Tell him,” he said to the ghost. “Tell him what you need him to hear, and you’ll both be free.”

The ghost looked at him in deep pain. “You think it’s so easy, don’t you? You always do. You won’t see. You never will.”

Mike refused to back down. “Stop trying to connect with me. Connect with him! He is who you are!”

“And who are
you
, Mikey?” the ghost shot back.

Except it wasn’t the ghost speaking, not this time. Pete Eason had leaned forward, and it was he who had said the words, but it was in a voice that was not his own, or at least was not his alone. Man and ghost had merged, one overlaying the other, and when they spoke, it was as one.

“When will you see us and believe?” they asked him, their voices full of hurt and pain and betrayal. “When will you know the wounds in these walls as your own?”

It was as if the words were a bell, tolling deep inside Mike, its rumbling reverberations shaking his very core, rattling a wall of glass he hadn’t known he kept inside him. Man and ghost reached toward him, but could not touch him through the barrier, and he understood now that it was a barrier he’d put up himself. For a moment, the whole world held its breath.

Then Mike reached forward, and the glass cracked and shattered, falling like dust to the floor as three hands touched, and the walls of the room breathed and ached, and waited.

The Tutor’s Room

This
was the day, Michael Emery knew, when everything would change.

He touched the lapel of his jacket as he bounded up the stairs of the house two at a time, his heart quickening with every step. The tickets were there, tucked inside the letter. He knew Peter would balk at first, but this was the right decision. Peter needed to see something besides the madness of his father’s house. He needed to experience the world. Very probably he needed to have other lovers. Michael didn’t like that part, but he accepted it. He’d need to teach Peter how to be discreet, how to keep others from finding out. How Carl had not found them out yet was a mystery he’d never understand, but then, the man was clearly disturbed. Perhaps the boy’s aunt was right. Perhaps the father
should
be committed.

Whether that happened or not, Peter needed to leave this place. And by God, Michael was going to be the one to get him out.

The house was oddly quiet as he entered. “Clara?” he called out, but the housekeeper didn’t answer. Michael peeked into the parlor, the dining room, the library, and then finally the kitchen, but the house was empty. It was very strange.

A muffled thump and a cry came from up above, and Michael looked up at the ceiling. Some instinct made him head for the back stairs instead of the front, and he crept quietly, pressing his hands along the walls as he ascended. The thumping was rhythmic now, as were the cries. They were coming from his own room, and they were… familiar. Heart in his throat and dread in his heart, Mike rounded the corner and listened—

—and then the dream stopped, and he was Mike Clarke again. He was on his knees and vomiting as the ghost ran through him, back and forth, its fury radiating in Mike’s bones.

“No!” it cried. “No! You remember nothing for over one hundred fifty years, and then you remember
that
? No!
No!
”

Mike tried to cry out, but he just heaved, over and over and over, until he began to bring up blood.

And then suddenly it stopped. He looked up, blearily, and saw the ghost and Pete Eason struggling on the bed, the specter flailing beneath Pete’s hold.

“You’re going to kill him!” Pete shouted at the ghost.

The ghost started to sob. “He wasn’t supposed to remember
that
!”

Around them, the walls of the bedroom began to swell.

Keeping the ghost pinned, Pete turned to Mike. “You okay?”

Mike couldn’t answer. He still felt sick, but some of it was from what he’d seen. He
was
the tutor. Pete was right. The ghost was right.
He always does this,
the specter had said. Which meant Mike had come here before. He was caught in a loop too. He and the ghost both were.

He looked up at Pete. “But not you,” he whispered. “We’re caught, but you’re not.”

“You remembered something,” Pete said, ignoring him. “So you admit now that you’re involved? That you’re Michael Emery in the same way that I’m Peter Underwood?”

Mike nodded and swallowed against a raw throat. “I’ve been a pawn. This whole time, I’ve been a pawn.”

And as he said the words, he heard them echo across time, and the present faded once again into the past. He was standing beside a lake, standing in the tall grass with Peter Underwood.

Peter was shaking. “I didn’t want you to know,” he whispered. “I never wanted you to know.”

Michael Emery laughed bitterly. “Of course you didn’t. I couldn’t look properly like a fool, could I, if I found out you were with another man?”

Peter began to cry. “Mikey, please,” he whispered, and then his voice deepened. “Clarke. Clarke!”

“Clarke!”

The past faded, and Pete Eason was gripping Mike’s shoulders. The ghost was hovering behind him, looking miserable.

“He remembers,” it was whispering. “He remembers what I did.”

“I don’t,” Pete snapped. “So someone had damn well better tell me what was going on.”

Mike looked at the ghost and felt his heart break from one hundred fifty years away. “I caught him. I caught him with another man.”

Pete frowned. “Really?”

“It’s not what you think.” The ghost was drifting now, rising up from the floor, and Mike could see through him. Past and present kept flickering before Mike, like a lamp with a bad connection, and then the past was back again, stronger than ever.

“It’s not what you think,” Peter Underwood whispered. But all Michael could see was that the boy’s mouth was swollen from sucking on another man’s cock.

“Here I thought you were an innocent. Here I thought—” Michael broke off, then began to pace. “And you did it in
my
room.
” The tickets and letter in his pocket were a weight now. He felt like such a fool.

“Mikey, please,” Peter begged. “Please, don’t—
please
!” He reached for Michael.

Michael tried to step back, but then the past flickered and returned to the present. Pete Eason was watching him intently.

“I need to get out of here,” Mike whispered. He tried to rise.

Pete kept him from it. “Ara?” he called, not looking away from Mike. “What happened to Mike the other times he came to this house? In his other lives?”

“Bad things,” the ghost said.
Ara.
Mike stared up at him, hating him, fearing him. Man, ghost—he couldn’t tell what Ara was anymore.
My ruin.

“I need to know what those bad things are,” Pete said, “or I can’t stop them from happening.”

“You can’t stop them.” Ara was drifting back, shaking his head, his gaze fixed on Mike. “I was a fool to hope. I was a fool to let you in, either of you. You can’t help me. No one can.” Ghostly tears slid down his transparent face, rivulets of energy that glittered in the lamplight. “You’re right, Mikey. I’m not real. I’m not Ara, and I’m not Peter. I’m not anything. But I can’t go back, can’t leave, can’t go anywhere, because there’s nowhere to go, nowhere for someone as awful as me.”

He was drifting back, farther and farther until he was all the way to the head of the bed.

“Wait!” Peter called, but then the ghost backed up into the wall, and then he was gone.

The walls, heaving heavily now like an animal pushed too far, expanded out. A deep, angry gash appeared above the bed, and as Mike watched, the wound began to bleed. And then the gash rent in two and peeled away into a crude, clumsy door, which opened on its own. A set of stairs appeared, leading out of the house, down into the woods, to freedom.

Feeling disoriented and heavy, caught between the sense of foolishness from the past and the confusion of the present, Mike surrendered.
He’s right, I can’t save him,
he thought, and rushed forward to his escape.

Pete
caught Mike by the collar and drew him up short. Mike struggled, but Pete held fast.

“You got a death wish, buddy?” he demanded.

“He’s letting me out,” Mike cried. “Let me go before he changes his mind.”

Pete looked at the hole in the wall, at the great gap where the wall had been but was now just empty space with jagged pieces of lath sticking out of it. He could still hear some of the plaster and siding hitting the ground below. “Yeah. I’m starting to get an idea of how the bad things happened before.” Had Ara done this? Was that what this meant? Had the ghost set all this up? Or was this some other force inside the house? How was he supposed to be able to tell? Pete suddenly felt very tired. “I am so fucking out of my element it isn’t even funny.”

Mike was swaying on his feet. “I keep having visions of the past. One second I’m here, and the next I’m back in 1856.” Tears were running down his cheeks. “I didn’t know. I swear to you, I had no idea I was the tutor. Good God, how could I not see it? How could I be so stupid?”

Pete looked around at the walls. They had calmed a little, but they were still breathing, and there was an apprehension about them now. “We need to figure out what’s going on. And you’re the psycho-whatever. This is your gig.”

“Paranormal psychologist.” Mike’s reply was shaky but, as usual, calling on his professionalism seemed to center him.

“Right,” Pete agreed. “So tell me, starting at the beginning, why you brought me here. And pretend, for the sake of argument, that absolutely nothing you say makes sense to me, so be extra clear.”

Mike swallowed and nodded. “I started researching this place about a year ago. You’re right—I was drawn here for reasons I can’t explain. I ran some tests, and then I met the ghost. It was the strongest apparition I’ve ever seen. And it’s hands-down the most determined not to be released of any I’ve encountered or heard documented.”

“So you do this a lot, do you?” Pete prodded.

“Yes. Ghosts are just energy trapped. Like an air bubble in a gas line. With care and focus, they can be worked through and released.”

“And that’s why you brought me here?” Pete asked. “To help release him?”

“It,” Mike corrected. He opened his eyes again, looking more centered, at least until he took in the heaving walls once again. “That isn’t Peter Underwood. It’s an energy manifestation.
You
are Peter Underwood.”

Pete grimaced. “But I’m not. I will buy that he and I seem to be connected, but I’m not this kid who had a fling with his tutor and got beat up by his dad. I’m Pete Eason, of Blackwater. My parents may have raised their voices to me on occasion, but that’s about it. They live in a house three streets over from me, and I still see them on Sundays for dinner. I’m not Peter Underwood. Not even by half.”

But Mike was looking intently at Pete now. “Carl Underwood beat his son?”

Pete shrugged. “In the memories I saw, he did. Or, I saw the after-effects at any rate. Carl was a real bastard. He was nasty to everyone and everything.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Mike insisted. “Carl was locked away most of the time. He was so ill he could hardly rise. I told you, he was borderline psychotic. Half the time he didn’t know his son was there, according to the reports.”

Pete felt cold dread rising inside him. “But that’s not what I saw. I had this—I dunno, it was like a movie of the past. I saw the dad running around, having his way with God and anybody. I think he murdered two of the slaves. I couldn’t look, so I’m not sure. And he always had the son in a locked room. When he came out, he was bruised and dejected.”

“That’s not possible,” Mike said, looking uneasy too.

Around them, the walls began to heave and groan.

No,
they whispered.
No.
The shutters on the windows banged open and shut, and a cold wind tried to suck them into the gaping hole in the wall.
No. Leave. Leave me alone. I don’t want you here anymore, Peter Eason. I don’t want you either, Mikey. I don’t want either of you to come ever again.