What October Brings Read online

“Will you now?” The skull wheeled about, leering over the humped shoulder like a Halloween mask. “Is that what your life is worth, Mister Locke? Your body, your soul? Ransomed for a few portraits of Benjamin Franklin on cheap green paper?”

  Confused, he tried again. “What do you want? Whatever it is, I’ll give it to you.”

  The skull grinned. “Why, yes. I believe you will, Mister Locke. Young Thomas certainly gave me everything I asked, and more! I’ve missed him since he ran away, more than I can say.”

  The old man turned back toward Tommy’s table. “I cannot thank you enough for returning my beloved nephew to the fold, Mister Locke. If not for you, I don’t believe he would have come within a hundred miles of here. Why, without your very special relationship… I might well have died.”

  A withered hand reached out toward Tommy’s face. The old man ran a palsied fingertip over the drool-slick chin and trailed it along Tommy’s lower lip. He bent forward, bringing his face in close to Tommy’s, shoulders hunched.

  “Stop it! Don’t touch him.” James felt his mouth fill with red copper as he struggled against the straps, trying to work his arms free.

  The old man ignored him. “Now then,” he crooned to Tommy. “Let’s get reacquainted, shall we?”

  Tommy shuddered and squirmed at every touch, desperately trying to prevent contact with his skin, but it was no use. One gaunt hand closed around his throat, the other stroked his sweating, weeping face tenderly. “There’s a lad.” He sounded almost gentle. “You remember. Breathing in… breathing out.”

  Tommy’s eyes rolled up into his head, the whites showing stark as his muscles locked into rigor and began to shake. His whole body trembled, an earthquake ripping through muscle and bone. His breath roared in and out of his chest in huge gusts, like a bellows.

  “Stop it!” His shout was an agonized gasp. He was crying now himself. “You’re killing him!”

  Tommy lay flat on his back on the table, his chest rising and falling, the blood visibly pounding in his temples. The old man unbuckled one of his wrists and tilted his head back, like a doctor trying to clear the airway of a patient having a fit.

  The horrible liquid gurgling sound began, coming now from Tommy’s open mouth, as if some invisible thick slime was pouring down his throat. His tremors increased in strength one last time, his heels drumming the table top like fists on a tin roof. Then he was quiet—his breath had stopped.

  James held his own breath, paralyzed with horror, until Tommy’s lungs filled with a sudden clear whoop of air. The old man slumped back in his wheelchair as Tommy breathed in deep.

  “Tommy?” James whispered. “Are you… okay…?”

  Tommy answered with a low, deep groan of pleasure.

  One hand had been unbuckled from the leather cuff. He reached up now with that free hand, slipped the retaining band of the dental gag up over the back of his head, and carefully removed the appliance from his face. When he had teased it out of his mouth, he tossed it casually on the metal tray beside the table.

  “Woo! God Almighty, what a thrill. It never pales.”

  James felt his breath catch in his throat, going shallow and rough. Tommy always had a Southern accent. He’s playing with you. Doing an impression.

  Tommy’s movements were swift and sure as he unbuckled the strap around his chest, then rolled to free his right hand, and sat up to unbuckle his legs.

  He tried again. “Tommy?”

  Tommy looked over at him, his eyes blazing brilliant blue as he swung his bare legs off the side of the table. “Never fear, Mister Locke! Tommy Baird is right as rain.” He ran his hands over his naked anatomy with almost gluttonous delight. “Tommy Baird…will do very nicely indeed.”

  He hopped down lightly, stood on his tiptoes, and threw up his arms in a long, balletic stretch. At the peak of the movement he laughed out loud, so full of triumph and joy that James almost wanted to smile with him—he had never seen Tommy this happy before.

  “Tom…” James hesitated. “Can you help me with these cuffs?”

  Tommy dropped his arms to his sides and smirked. “No…I’m afraid you’ll have to sit tight for a bit longer, Mister Locke. I have some business to attend to.”

  “What…?” James flexed his hands into fists. “Are you kidding? Let me out of these straps, Tom!”

  Tommy chuckled. “Might do, yes.” He spoke lightly. “Eventually. But not before I’ve applied myself to a fine steak, a bottle of brandy, a pitcher of good cream and a nice, big slice of pecan pie.” He licked his lips and smiled. “One must have priorities!”

  He strode to the door, confident and careless in his nudity as a Greek statue. “Be a peach and wait patiently, won’t you?” He turned to look back over his shoulder. “If you need something to occupy your mind, Mister Locke, I’ll tell you a secret. The rats in this basement get mighty bold, when the lights are out. Back in my undertaker days, I used to keep a nigger down here at night to guard the bodies. Keep them from chewing on my clientele.” His eyes danced with humor. “Those coloured boys carried a broom and a coal shovel, but they were always getting bit.”

  Then he flipped the light switch and closed the door, leaving James in darkness.

  ***

  He waited a full minute before he closed his eyes, and let the tears of rage flow freely. Even in the midst of those tears he struggled for control, breath hissing between his teeth, trying to calm himself and think, damnit. Think.

  Tommy is gone.

  It was a barbed thought, a crown of thorns laced around the inside of his skull. Every time he tried to touch the idea, it hurt, and he could feel himself tearing inside. It was the mental equivalent of trying to swallow with his torn throat.

  Some part of him was being ripped to shreds--maybe the part that believed the world made any kind of sense.

  One half of him knew the truth: that Tommy Baird, the man he loved, had gotten up off the examination table, laughed in his face, and left him here to die.

  The other side of him knew another truth: that the man who walked out that door was no more Tommy Baird than the Man in the Moon. He was someone else entirely, looking out of Tommy’s eyes, talking out of Tommy’s mouth, and joy-riding in Tommy Baird’s beautiful body like a thief in a stolen car.

  James clenched his fists and rotated his feet in their cuffs, listening to the clink of the chains that secured his ankles and wrists to the table. He could keep working them, but the odds of breaking free of medical restraints were low. They were designed to hold violent patients in place for many hours.

  Tommy—or whoever it was passing for Tommy—had left him alone. That would normally be a foolish thing to do, if a person could scream and call for help. But he felt a cold certainty that his power of speech was gone for a reason. They had done something to him, while he was unconscious.

  Will I ever be able to speak again?

  No. Not a good thought. Think something else.

  As it stood, he was likely to remain alone down in this basement until Tommy (Ezekiel… his name was Ezekiel) came back.

  Alone except for the rats.

  And the old man in the wheelchair.

  Speaking of the old man…was he still breathing?

  James tried to be still, to slow down his own shaking breath, to quiet the heartbeat that pounded like thunder in his ears. The wheelchair should be off to his right, next to the table where Tommy was strapped down. Was it still there?

  Had he heard the creak of a wheel? A wheeze of labored breath?

  Something soft, wet and cold touched his hand in the dark, and he jerked away, moving so fast and hard that the chain rang against the table like a bell. He began thrashing and fighting with all his might, hoping to frighten away whatever had come nosing around looking for a mouthful of meat.

  “James.” The sound was like a rusty hinge. “Be still, hon. I’ll try t
o get you loose.”

  Tears once again flooded his eyes. “Tom.” The instrument was wrong, weak and reedy, but there was no mistaking the music. He would know that voice anywhere.

  “I’m here.” James heard the trembling hiss and felt the cold wet touch again, this time on his wrist. Chilly fingers fumbled with the buckles of his cuff. “Try not to move. These hands don’t work so good.”

  “How…?” His questions swarmed up into his mouth, all of them too crazy to ask. Finally he settled on, “How did this happen…?”

  “I can’t explain what he does, James. He’s always done it.” The shaking hands finally seemed to conquer one buckle. They crawled on, reaching for the next one. “There’s a trick to it—some of him has to be inside you. I saw him take a man once by spitting in his eye. That wasn’t the way he took my father, though. Or my mother. Or me.”

  James swallowed hard, grimacing as he did. “Your father…?”

  The fingers shook as they worked, cold and clumsy. “Yes. After the War. I told you once that he shot himself… I didn’t tell you why.” The tongue of the buckle resisted, and Tommy cursed it quietly.

  “What happened to him?”

  “There was a lynching, down in Hendersonville.” The hands went still for a moment, then back to work more slowly. “My Daddy didn’t hold with the Klan, especially after he come back from France, but someone slipped an envelope under the door of his office in town. It was a picture of the necktie party, with the two black boys hanging from a pole. And somehow my father was there in the photograph, standing in the front row looking right at the camera with a big ol’ grin on his face.” A deep breath. “I found him in the parlor that night, just sitting with that picture in his lap and crying.” Another moment of silence, broken only by the whistle of bad lungs. “The next day he drove over to my Uncle Ezekiel’s house and rang his door bell. When the old man answered the door, he blew his brains out right then and there.”

  The second buckle gave way, and James felt the cuff on his wrist relax.

  “I wish I had done the same,” Tommy said quietly. “I wish you had never met me, James.”

  James wriggled out of the cuff, flexing his free hand…and then reached toward the hand that freed him. It was a gnarled, elderly claw, every joint a swollen and misshapen knob of bone. The owner of that hand could only be in constant pain—he had seen rheumatoid arthritis before.

  The hand pulled away from him after a moment, trembling, and he heard a strangled hitch of breath. “I’m sorry…” The squeaky old hinge wheezed laughter. “I’m afraid I’m not myself right now.”

  James reached up to the strap across his forehead. His own fingers were still nimble and swift, and he was almost free by the time Tommy could roll the chair across the room and find the light switch.

  “Cover your eyes, hon.”

  James lowered his head and closed his eyes, then opened them slowly. He was in a room with a floor of stained tile, sitting on a high table of cold steel. There were glass fronted cabinets and trays of instruments along the wall. A room for the preparation of bodies.

  He put a shaking hand to his throat, found the bandage and gauze that covered it. He took a deep breath and slid off the table carefully, extending his foot to catch himself—it was a long drop to the floor.

  He crept to the door, holding his genitals cupped in a protective hand. Outside there was a wide silent hall, leading to an old-fashioned Otis freight elevator. The room next door was a wood-paneled office, lit with banker’s lamps of brass and green glass. Through the open door he could see the bent figure in the wheelchair.

  “Tommy?” He put a hand to his throat and winced, moving into the room.

  The figure in the chair cringed lower, and did not face him. “Just trying to find your clothes. He’ll have them in a gunny sack somewhere. Ready to dress you again, if need be. Or to throw into the furnace, if…”

  He didn’t seem able to finish the thought. Instead he put his hands to the wheels and struggled forward a few more inches. “Soon as we find your clothes, you can slip out the old coal chute in the back. If you listen for the sound of water you’ll find Smith Mill Creek. And if you follow the stream downhill, it’ll take you all the way to the French Broad River. The black folks live around Burton Street. I reckon you’ll know it when you see it.”

  He would have continued rolling toward the wardrobe in the corner, but James stepped up around the chair, planted his hands on the armrests to stop it, and crouched low to look directly into his lover’s eyes.

  The man in the chair was not just old. He was ancient. James looked him up and down slowly. The ruined head was resting atop a scrawny chicken neck, all bone and wattled folds of leather. The starved frame was only loosely dressed, a thin robe belted at the waist and open to reveal slotted ribs and a shrunken belly. The skin was scaly grey and sick, covered with vivid purple spots and red, raw sores.

  He looked up into blue eyes milky with cataracts, and saw Tommy Baird looking back at him.

  “I used to love the way you looked at me,” the old man said. “Like I was everything good in the world.” He raised his gnarled hands to cover his face, bending his head to avoid his lover’s gaze. “I did wonder sometimes…‘Could he keep looking at me like that? When I’m old and grey?’” The chest hitched with something like laughter or tears. “Could anyone look at me like that forever?” He sucked in a hissing breath. “I guess now I know.”

  James reached out and pulled the tortured hands away from the old man’s face. The fingers were freezing cold, still damp, swollen with ague. Even touching them made Tommy’s face twist with pain.

  Slowly, holding the Tommy’s eyes with his own, James raised those hands to his mouth and kissed them.

  “I still see you.” His whisper was hoarse and painful. “You still hear me?”

  There was a long moment of silence, and then Tommy shook his head. “Damn. I can’t even cry. The old bastard’s got no tears--he’s dry as a popcorn fart.” He looked away. “Get dressed, hon.”

  James went to the wardrobe. He found his clothing, wallet, watch and glasses in a burlap sack, along with the Green Book and the notebook and pencil he’d been keeping in his coat pocket. The socks and shirt were missing, but he put on his coat and stuffed his bare feet into his shoes with a grimace.

  There was a cracked mirror on the inside of the door, and he looked into it warily. A short, muscular black man with gold-rimmed glasses, his throat wrapped in cotton bandages showing a tell-tale splotch of red. He buttoned up the coat as high as it would go, hoping it would look more as if he was wearing a turtleneck sweater, and then turned toward the door.

  Tommy sat in the wheelchair, a massive pistol in his lap.

  “I’m ready. Just push me into the hall before you go. When he comes back down the elevator…I’ll be waiting.”

  James froze. “What?”

  “I’ll take care of him.” Tommy patted the gun. “Like my Daddy should have done.”

  “No.” James shook his head in slow disbelief. “You can’t…”

  “I’m dying, hon.” He put his free hand to his sunken chest. “I can feel it. This body…it’s so weak I have to think to keep the heart beating. And the only reason I’m not already dead is money, most likely. He probably needs a lawyer to sign papers, make sure he keeps his property.”

  James stepped forward. “Come with me. Forget him. Forget this.”

  Tommy smiled with genuine tenderness. “Tried that before, hon. And look where that got us.” He shook his head. “Just go. Leave me here. Let me do…what I have left to do.”

  James clenched his teeth and shook his head stubbornly.

  “I love you.” The words were painful, and tasted of blood. “I won’t ever leave you.”

  ***

  In the end, they waited in the dark for three hours before the Otis elevator returned to the
basement. Dawn was just starting to break, the first lark singing in the woods behind the house, when the door swung open.

  The report of the pistol was thunderous in the enclosed space. James held his head in his hands as it crashed three times, four…and looked up through the smoke to see a bleeding form still crawling in the hallway, dragging itself with a shattered spine toward the open lift door.

  He took the pistol from Tommy’s shaking hand and walked into the hall, aimed the gun at the back of a familiar head, and pulled the trigger twice more. The spray of blood and bone formed a halo around the ruined skull—he pulled the trigger again to be sure, but there was no more thunder. Only a dry click.

  James threw the gun away, turned his back on the mess, and walked back to Tommy’s side. The azure eyes looked up at him, warm and alive.

  “I love you,” Tommy whispered.

  James bent and gathered the frail limbs in his arms. He carried Tommy over the mess and into the study, settled him into the old wheelchair as gently as he could, and wrapped a sheet around his shoulders. Then he rolled the chair down the hall without looking back. He held the Dead Man’s switch as they rode up in the freight elevator to the ground floor, pushed Tommy out onto the front porch and down the ramp to the driveway.

  Tommy’s Bel Air was parked in the grass behind the house, the keys still in the ignition. James opened the passenger door and settled Tommy unto the seat, got behind the wheel, and mouthed a silent prayer as he turned the key.

  The car roared to life without hesitation. He put it in gear and drove through the grass and out into a rutted country road.

  “Which way?” he asked.

  “There.” Crushed by exhaustion, the bony hand twitched toward the left. James put an arm around Tommy’s shoulders and drew him close, pulling him into the warmth of his side as he drove.

  He went as fast as he could without bottoming out the car, following the lane as it turned from dirt to gravel. The pink glow of sunrise in the east was getting stronger, filtering through pines and the golden beech that crowded the lane on either side. Around a final curve, James saw an intersection with a paved road. He looked down at Tommy for further directions, but the head was nodding now, the rheumy eyes closed.