Chapter Eight: Alone With Everyone
Matt can barely remember the dream they'd had last night, but it hadn't been a good one. He'd woken in the middle of the night, disoriented by snippets of images, memories worn at the edges like tattered photographs.
Blood pooling on the wooden dining room floor of Hell House. Ramsay Aickman's rage-filled gaze behind glinting wire-frames glasses, reflecting pain and fear. Half-muted cries thick with fluid, a strange cracking sort of sound, a snap of leather.
A baby blue dress half-stuffed in a trash can, bloodied and fluttering in the breeze.
He'd woken a whimpering, crying Jonah from his nightmare, and had dosed the both of them with a strong serving of melatonin. Their sleep after that had been deep, and dreamless.
Matt fights the nausea down as he stirs plaster in a tub with a wooden ruler, spooning it on a spatula. Matt's vision swims with hazy tears as he spreads the plaster in lopsided streaks along the mortuary wall, carefully burying runes and sin, dutifully rendering it blank, willing his thoughts to do the same. It was no good dwelling on it. He'd known, deep down, that Jonah's father had been abusive, had at least been the corporal punishment type, he just hadn't known quite to what extent. He hadn't known that the teen next to him, who has rolled up his sleeves and is plastering the wall right alongside Matt, never one to turn his nose up to labor, had been beaten bloody under Aickman's belt.
They work silently together for quite a while, Matt rather mindlessly working, Jonah's gaze sneaking glances at his face every so often, entirely confused, saddened, and alienated by Matt's silence. Jonah truly has no idea what he'd dreamt of last night, what Matthew had seen. All he could remember was Father's face looming overhead, twisted into an expression of rage. Just as Jonah is about to ask Matthew just what, exactly, he'd seen—he's been working up the courage all morning, unwilling to accept Matthew's judgment of the memory—Matthew broaches the subject that Jonah has been dreading.
"So Jonah, your father, he…he was an awful man, wasn't he?"
Matthew's doe-brown eyes, finally looking Jonah in the face, are awash with concern and anger. Jonah can't make himself look for long, can't bear to see that look directed at himself. He instead chooses to focus on the work, on covering the rune-carved brick wall.
"He hadn't always been, Matthew. He wasn't always a bad man…he didn't start off that way, at least."
Jonah's reply is so quiet Matt has to really concentrate to catch it, nothing more than a far-off tune carried on a breeze.
"But?" Matthew prompts, turning back to his work as well, giving Jonah space. The medium can't help but smile thinly at this courtesy, though Matthew's curiosity on the subject, his push for more information, is entirely unwelcome. Considering the blow-up he witnessed between Matthew and his father yesterday, Jonah decides it's alright to share. Matthew may just be looking for a kindred spirit, after all.
"But…after Mother died, he changed. And he was never the same, after. I think her passing really broke something in him, turned him angry…"
"I'm sorry, Jonah. I'm sorry about your mother, and about your father…"
"It's fine, Matthew," Jonah interrupts, the tone in his voice morphing into one more akin to bitterness than grief, "everyone dies, and everyone grieves differently. Father just never quite left the denial stage, and then came to exist in his own stage—disgust." He laughs, a cold, chilling sound that makes Matt's stomach lurch.
Matt can't seem to make himself reply, can't seem to think of anything appropriate to say. He's no stranger to watching others experience grief, has seen grief manifest as anger in his own father, after his cancer diagnosis, had watched his dad's grief be flooded with alcohol and replaced by rage. He'd watched many a bottle sail through the air and break, he and Wendy had spent many a night huddled with the smaller children, listening to mom and him argue, ears keen and alert, waiting in devastation to hear blows that thankfully never came to fruition. But for Jonah, those blows had came and rained down all too real, and that kid? He'd had no one to share the fear with. Jonah and his father, alone in this house. Matt felt sick to wonder if anyone at all had ever known, had ever seen the bruises, welts, broken skin.
"He had me committed, if you'd believe it." Jonah states, after a moment of silence.
"What? What do you mean?"
Jonah turns to face Matt completely now, plaster forgotten. His pale, beautiful face, so much like his mother's, a benign mask of nothingness, his eyes distant and brooding.
"He had me committed, after Mother's death. I guess he couldn't handle her passing, only to have a child that continued seeing her everywhere…he had never really truly tolerated us, Mother and I. He wasn't one for witchcraft, was one less so for clairvoyance," Jonah explains, his voice a monotone, "it may have been pretty in the beginning, celebrating God's creation, from birth to death. But after Mother wasn't there, to explain all the rites, to make them beautiful, he was stuck with only a child awash in second sight. So he took me to the hospital, left me alone to talk to that damned doctor…schizophrenia, he determined. Father was so relieved, I think, to have a scientific explanation. And so he left me there, to be sorted out. I was ten."
Jonah's voice is rising, his anger and bitterness growing more and more apparent. Matt's feeling of dread rises, listening in horror to the story. He can't imagine Jonah, so young and special, dealing with the death of the person who loved and accepted him the most, only to see her ghost everywhere, only to turn and confide in an intolerant father, who dumped him off on other uncaring adults to be 'sorted out', as Jonah had so bluntly put it.
Jonah has begun plastering again, completing the work in strokes much more efficient and confident than Matthew's had been. He rolls up his sleeves and hikes up his suspenders, eyes blazing and unseeing.
"But nothing they did seemed to fix it. In fact, I feel it made it worse. After a time, I actually began to feel crazy, and began believing them. They said the medicine would stop it, but all it did was keep me mute, make me closer to them, the damned, dead, and dying in that hospital, all around and so awfully loud.. I remember wanting to die, but then, I was worried I'd be like them, haunting those God-forsaken halls."
Plunk, scrape, swipe, as Jonah continues working.
"At least some of the drugs made things a little easier, just a little, blurring and muting things sometimes. But they also made it harder to stay awake, and made it easier to sleep. Made it all too easy to wander around the heads of the sick and insane and see their dreams, intrude upon the dreams of doctors and nurses. And what I learned," Jonah's seething now, his voice a quiet whisper of rage, somehow louder and scarier than yelling, "is that the patients were far more humane and sane than them."
"He let them do that to me, Father. He let them do that to me, and then he had the nerve to come back after I'd almost forgotten him. He came back, a poor and broken man, and he told me, all whispers and superiority, that he believed me now, that he'd been researching. That he wanted to talk to Mother. But really, all he wanted was to use me, like some sort of circus attraction."
"What...what did they do to you, Jonah?"
Jonah turns and levels Matt with a look that could kill, a searing wave of anger and pain so intense it knocks the breath from Matt's lungs. When Jonah steps forward, spatula still in hand, Matt flinches back. The conduit doesn't seem to notice, and motions with the spatula to his own wrist, exposed, turns it just-so in the light from the small mortuary windows. It's only now that Matt can see the blurred, soft scarring encircling the boy's wrist, usually covered by his shirt cuffs. Jonah catches Matt's eye, seeing the horror there, confirming it before flicking his hair behind his ear, motioning to his own temple and then the other one, so Matt can see the perfectly round scars on each, the shape and size of a quarter.
Jonah turns back to his work, eyes blazing. He's almost finished the whole wall by himself, now. His manic, phrenetic energy is almost palpable. Plunk, scrape, swipe.
"Wh-what, then?" Matt asks, voice quavering, "he came back and got you? When? Why?"
"After six long years," Jonah replies, grimly, "and to help at the funeral home, as well as serve as a trick pony, reading fortunes, interpreting dreams, talking to the dead, hosting sceances. You name it. And then he got started with that necromancy, or maybe he planned it that way, all along. I don't know. He just made sure that by the time things got too wrong, too black and damned, I couldn't leave."
Jonah finishes the wall with one clean swipe. He studies the rest of the mortuary, all freshly plastered, and nods to himself, as if satisfied. When his eyes rove over Matt, rest fleetingly under Matt's horrified, gawking stare, they are emotionless and cold. He dumps his spatula in the plaster bucket, turns on his heels, and leaves, rolling his sleeves down as he goes. He leaves Matt standing there, mouth agape, cold, stretched thin in the throes of Jonah's previously-unspoken past. For the second time since Jonah's reincarnation, Matt is struck with the knowledge that he knows absolutely nothing about the medium he has brought back to life, has thrust back into the pains of living.
Matt finishes cleaning up the mortuary before heading upstairs, careful and quiet, still reeling from all Jonah had had to share. A quick search of the house revealed Jonah to be gone, along with his art supplies. Matt's jar of weed, his grinder, and papers were missing as well. He couldn't blame the kid for self-medicating, for getting out of the house. After all, it's not as if Jonah has only good memories in the building…Matt wonders just how suffocating Jonah finds these walls, how many emotions they must hold for him, and once again regrets his own selfishness in bringing him back. As much as Matt loves Jonah dearly, as much as he had craved the medium's presence his whole life, he couldn't help but wonder if it had been best to leave sleeping dogs lie. He understands his Dad's anger and incredulousness, now. Matt is loathe to admit his father may have been right in his condemnation of Matt's life choices. And his dad didn't even know the whole of them.
Matt decides to give Jonah space, and instead goes to his study, preemptively locking the door. He unlocks the desk drawer containing his laptop and procures a journal and a pen, hunkering down to do his research. It turns out that sanitoriums were few and far between in Connecticut in the 1920s, and it doesn't take long for Matt to surmise Jonah was most likely admitted to a hospital called the Seaside Sanitorium in Waterford, Connecticut. The hospital was closed in 1996 after an investigation that unearthed the deplorable living conditions and treatment of patients within the hospital. Matt can only imagine what the conditions were like in 1920, around the time Jonah would have been confined there. It seems the hospital has been left to rot, the property surrounding it having been repurposed into a state park. As Matt scrolls through pictures of the dilapidated insides and outsides of the hospital, a sickening weight settles in his stomach, in his bones. He can clearly imagine Jonah's pale visage peering from the wide smoked glass windows, can imagine him alone but surrounded, hiding in the corners of tiny paint-peeling rooms. Matt comes across a floor plan admitting to solitary cells, a hydrotherapy room, a chapel, an electroshock room, and a mortuary and crematory, the later remnants of the days the hospital served double-time as a tuberculosis ward.
Matt scribbles these details down, even goes through the trouble of printing out some pictures, including the floor plan, which he tapes alongside his notes. A headache is mounting, along with his internal sense of foreboding. He leaves and returns with an ashtray and his cigarettes, absentmindedly lighting one. He takes a deep breath of smoke and nicotine before typing in his next Google search, mentally doing his best to prepare himself. It's not enough, could never be, as Matt quickly skims articles and medical records, his horror growing by the second.
Schizophrenia was, apparently, a rather shiny new diagnosis of the time, and was a field almost entirely unexplored, which led to quite a lot of trial and error and experimentation in terms of treating patients. Matt wishes now that Jonah would have been even more precise in disclosing his diagnosis. From what Matt can gather, schizophrenia, especially the kind that included hallucinations, which Jonah would have been diagnosed with, considering he literally sees the dead, was primarily treated via means of induced insulin comas, metrazol shock, electro-convulsive therapy, and frontal leukotomies. Matt thanks all the deities above, below, and around, including God, that Jonah was spared that last form of treatment, was spared the total removal of his mental faculties. Judging by the teen's scars, however, and comparing them to pictures of equipment at the time, he was very much subjected to electro-convulsive therapy, most likely several times, considering the conduction of electrical currents, focused on the temples, had left permanent scarring over time.
What had Jonah been like, before this? Before his brains were literally and figuratively fried by electrical shocks, drugs, and potentially medically-induced comas? Matt thinks back to Jonah's manic mental state in the basement, his subjective emotionlessness, displaced from his own suffering. The Jonah he knows and interacts with daily is a sweet and empathetic boy, quiet and reserved, artistic and cerebral. This other side of him, was that born of his mistreatment at the hands of medical faculty and his own father? Or had those traits always been there as well, lurking in the shadows, only coming to light when stressed?
Matt writes this all down as well, his findings and his thoughts. He fixes and downs a whisky neat, expression distant and ponderous. After a moment of consideration, he opens his laptop again, researching a topic much more benign, and potentially fun—popular cocktails of the 1920s. He jots down a list of ingredients, along with other necessities. He locks his laptop back away and is on his way to the kitchen to fetch his keys and cellphone as he passess the landline phone, a thought nagging at the back of his mind. Glancing down the hallway and out of the back door to ensure the medium is nowhere nearby, Matt summons every stitch of courage and forgiveness in his body and dials his dad's number. He answers on the fourth ring.
"Hello, Matt?"
"Hey, Dad. Sorry to call out of the blue…I've been thinking about what you said, and I wanted to call and apologize. I know you and Mom are just concerned, that you love me and want me to be happy…I'm not sure anymore either what I was thinking buying this house. I just thought it would fill this void I've had, forever, and…it has, kind of. But it's not all good. I'm not sure if I regret it, but I definitely didn't think I thought it out all the way through."
Matt finishes rambling, listening to beats of silence before his dad replies, his voice quiet and even, intoned with regret.
"Matthew, my son…I shouldn't have ripped you a new one for something you can't go back on. I am proud of you for having bought a house and settling down finally, even if it is that house. You were right when you said I can't control you…you're an adult now, and I need to love and accept you regardless of your actions. I really am sorry I lost my shit on you the other day, and especially since I lost my shit on your boy—er, roommate. The kid, Jo?"
Matt's blood feels like it's frozen in his veins, clenching tight around his heart.
"I should never have called him a slur, for fuck's sake. As you said, I was being intolerant. That's not a good look, and I'm working to do better, Matt. I mean, I'd prefer you with a girl, but… considering the shit you've been through, I honestly will be happy for you regardless, if you find a partner. You deserve love, Matthew, and a spouse, regardless of their, er…equipment…"
"Shit, Dad, fuck," Matt laughs, awkwardly and shrilly. His blood unfreezes, heart pounding double-time, loud and thick in his ears, "he's not my, ah, boyfriend, he really is my teaching assistant, he—it's not like that,"
"Uh-huh, yeah," Peter replies, voice mirthful as if he just heard the punchline of an elaborate joke, "if you're sure. He is awful young, though, Matt. Jesus, he's like half your age—"
"We are not dating, Dad."
"Yeah, well…I can't judge. Your mom and I are a full ten years years apart. What's seven or so more, between adults?"
"Ugh, fuck, Dad—"
"And anyway," Peter interrupts, tone serious, "I saw the way you both look at each other. That's gotta be love, I'm sure of it. There's no other feeling in the world like it, son, and I really am happy for you that you've found it, even if it's with a boy—"
"Ah, wow, Dad. That's great, really. I'm, uh…really proud of you for getting over your homophobia, " Matt states weakly, "but, uh…anyway. That's not all I wanted to call about, I have a favor to ask you."
"Go ahead, kiddo! I'm all ears!"
Jonah winds his way back up to Hell House, feeling worn out and tired, Matthew's canvas bag bouncing against his hip with each step. He hadn't painted much, actually, down by the stream, had settled more into a rhythm of wailing, crying, shouting, and throwing rocks. It hadn't been pretty, and he wonders again if maybe he should've remained locked up, as unstable and temperamental as he can be. Not even the Mary Jane had helped, had only served to cause his heart to pound faster, his anxiety and fear boiling, rather than being soothed and muted. He's usually lucky.
Coming into the house, he realizes Matthew is not around. A note by the telephone informs Jonah that Matthew has gone to the store, and to call if he needs anything. Jonah ignores this initially, pacing up and down the hallway with a cigarette in hand, before caving and calling the number, dialing numbers in a way that feels familiar to older telephones. Matthew picks up on the first ring. Jonah's face feels warm as he sinks to the floor, sitting there with the receiver cradled to his ear.
"Hey, Jonah, you alright?"
Jonah nods before remembering to answer verbally.
"Yeah, sorry. Yes."
Silence then, for a bit. Jonah can hear sounds in the background, the sound of people, strange beeping noises.
"Well, good. I'm glad you're fine, and back home. Do you need something?"
"Mm, uh—" Jonah draws a roaring blank. He stares down at the swirling grain of the floorboards and bites his lip, doing his best to compose himself. What he wants is Matthew back home, now, so he can apologize, so he can be forgiven, so he can look at him, be held, smell him—
"What, honey? It's loud in here, sorry?"
"Uh, well, um…I was wondering what you want me to put on for dinner?" Weak, Jonah thinks to himself.
"Oh. Kid, don't worry about dinner, I already figured it out. Do you need anything else?"
"Could you, um.." Jonah wracks his brains, thinking hard for something he actually needs, to justify calling Matthew like some lonely bird, "maybe bring back some seed packets? Or plants? Vegetables would be preferred, like maybe potatoes, carrots, beans…I don't have any of those."
"Oh yeah, sure thing kiddo. I'll pick up a whole slew! Call if you decide on anything else, alright?"
Jonah thanks Matthew and hangs up the phone with a sigh speaking to a crisis averted. Well, he thinks to himself, I've certainly cut some work out for myself, but it's been high time for a while.
With a new plan for his day, and most likely an hour at least before Matthew comes home, Jonah goes upstairs to dress appropriately for yard work. In the bottom drawer of his dresser, he settles again on his pair of bib overalls of navy-blue duck cloth, waterproofed. He settles on this alone, seeing as he doesn't want to dirty any other clothes. He surveys his drawer-full of pocket squares and handkerchiefs, bow ties and straight ties, and is pleased to find a simple black bandana big enough to tie around his forehead and the back of his neck, covering his hair and protecting him from the sun.
Jonah smokes a reefer before heading to the backyard with the portable radio, barefoot in the grass. A quick search of the shed awards him a shovel, trowel and hand rake, and, blessedly, some old two-by-fours. Jonah tunes the radio to some happy station. It's not really like the music he's used to from this age, and yet nothing like the music of his time. It's rich and funky, and the first song he listens to makes him smile.
"It's the time of the season, when love runs high…and this time, give it to me easy, and let me try, with pleasured hands…to take you in the sun, to promised lands…"
Jonah sings along, the chorus easy to learn as he maps out a long, wide rectangle with purposeful stabs of his shovel by the fence at the side of the house. Full sun most of the day, with shade in the afternoon. Perfect. The lyrics are a little raunchy, but no more or less than what he's used to, in the 20th and 21st centuries. Flushing red from the heat and the work, sweat gathers to trickle down his neck as he works to clear out the garden bed, digging a good foot down the entire surface area of the rectangle. He can't help but smile. He's always loved work like this, mindless and decently taxing, smelling fresh and green in the summer sun. Jonah's mother had always told him that a garden is a little slice of heaven right here on Earth, blessed and giving of life.
Matt hops out of his pickup truck, the vintage red Dodge his dad had owned, more rust than paint. He hears the music immediately, along with the faint sound of his fixation's voice, soft and clear, carried on the summer breeze. The words become apparent as Matt rounds the house and comes into the backyard, greeted with the sight of Jonah knelt down in the dirt, luminescent and bright, sweating in the hot summer sun. He's only wearing overalls, the lean muscles of his back and arms visible as he digs, bare toes curled and grass-stained underneath him.
"Hmm, you've got to pick up every stitch…two rabbits running in the ditch….beatniks are out to make it rich—Oh no, must be the season of the witch—"
Matt can't help but smile, intensely charmed by the medium singing along to 1960's Donovan, all too apt. He plunks the groceries down in the shade and shucks off his t-shirt, picking up the words to the song and singing along as he comes over to kneel beside his poppet, the fruits of his determination and loneliness. Jonah's smile, turned to him, so bright and full of joy, is all the confirmation he needs as he ties up his hair, before digging his hands down in the soft dirt, fascinated by the hands beside his. Hands like bleached tree roots, snow white in the dank, rich black soil, dirt gathered under half-moon nails.
"When I look out my window, what do you think I see? And when I look in my window, so many different people to be…it's strange, sure is strange…"
The two men work side by side, tunneling trenches through the dirt with patient hands, soil rich from Jonah's composting efforts, so many shades darker than the lifeless brown dirt of the yard. The seeds Jonah has so carefully gathered and dried, salvaged from the scraps of so many dinners made by patient, caring hands, driven home deep in finger-poked holes. Peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, and okra, Jonah informs him, carefully kept separate, planned out and planted, with vining plants by the fence. Watermelons too, at the far edge of bed. Matt leaves and returns with more seeds, and plants he purchased at the store, carrots, beans, potatoes, planted so carefully among the others.
"It's a little late in the season," Jonah informs him as they cover it all up, slinging soil with dirt caked hands, patted down with careful palms, "but they should take nonetheless. They have a good two months of growing still."
"I've never had a garden before," Matt states, as they fill a heavy-bottomed watering can with water from the back hose-tap. Jonah looks up at him, considering him with those lumescent aquamarine eyes, soft and curious. He pats Matt's dirty hand with his own, grass-stained and mud-smeared, lingering just long enough to summon a warm, giddy sort of feeling in Matt's soul.
"Well, now we have a garden together. With both of our efforts, it should grow lush and strong!" the medium reassures, and Matt can only nod, captivated by the teen's attitude, moved by the dead kid's ability to create something from nothing, to breed life from the scraps of living. Magic in its most basic form, sprung from earth itself.
After the garden is watered, Jonah unties his handkerchief, shaking out damp black hair before undoing the large wood buttons of his overall straps, shucking the entire garment off onto the porch, clad again in only his drawers, sticking and half-translucent with sweat. Matt follows his example, ditching jeans and socks and shoes. Jonah turns the hose on him them, spraying Matthew down unceremoniously with ice-cold water, jarring after these hours of toil. Matthew yells, chasing the impish teen around the yard before wrestling the hose from him, retaliating in a spray that makes Jonah shriek, a loud joy-fill sound that echoes across the lawn.
Matt holds the stream still, then, as Jo jumps through, shivering and goose-fleshed, flittering in and out from the spray as he washes the dirt from himself, muddy water in rivulets down slender, well-toned legs. The reincarnation cleans his hands and feet in the grass, rolling around in it only to rinse off again. Jonah helps Matt wash the dirt from his arms and chest. Matthew holds his breath, diverting energy into a clenched jaw and fists as Jonah laughs, carelessly scrubbing dirtiness free from Matt's chest hair. They're both clean, eventually, after much mischief, a veritable battle of spraying the other, water dripping from hair and noses and hands.
The dirty clothes are left on the back porch steps, to be gathered up by Jonah later in a big wicker basket. Matthew shows the kid how to load it all up into the new-fangled washing machine—Jonah's delighted with all the dials, and how it fills and spins itself, rumbling along all on its own—with soap and softener. Jonah sweeps the porch clear, and Matt brings out a pitcher of tea, their cigarettes, and playing cards. They play gin rummy together, as their underclothes dry in the warm summer breeze, the radio playing The Beach Boys in the background. Jonah still seems to win every time, but Matt would lose a hundred times over, if it meant that low, self-satisfied smirk would stay on Jonah's vintage face forever, a playful, contented thing.
Dinner is also a team effort, Jonah scrubbing the fuzz off of okra with water and salt as Matthew shucks corn, after a brief lesson of how to remove silks all in one go by the reincarnation. Matt carries the leavings out to the now-empty compost bucket happily, filling the bucket with more dirt, as per Jonah's careful instruction. He puts on fresh coffee as Jonah batters and deep fries okra, as he pan fries beef tips and makes a gravy from the fond with water and flour. Something from almost-nothing again, made with love and a happy smile. Matt wonders if Jonah has a concept of what a kitchen witch is as he watches the teen contentedly work, damn near divine in his peace and tranquility, as he always is, when cooking.
Irish cream and whisky are added to the coffees to ease the sores and aches of gardening, another spliff is sacrificed between two mouths, shy smiles and small talk, passed between fingers. A quick shower followed by a languid bath for the medium, reading the works of Langston Hughes aloud while Matthew shaves his face, carefully trimming his mustache. Two pairs of wandering eyes, brown and blue, never quite meeting as glances are stolen—a lean body, steam-pink in a tub, all knees and joints, a book in damp hands. A stubbled cheek and jaw pulled taunt, the clean path of a razor through cream, white scars uplifted in tanned, sun-worn flesh.
Bedtime is a ritual now, detaching from the hip to change in separate rooms, before coming together again, a long white night shift and drawers juxtaposed by a black wife-beater and boxers. They always talk before bed, two boys on sides, heads on crooked arms, inches away, warm breath against faces as they whisper in the dark. Matthew is describing the late sixties and early seventies, everything from free love and drugs to a race war, a self-fueling circle. Jonah, soft and considering, voices nostalgia for a future he never got to have, and a past he will never get to see.
"Things always seem to get better as it all goes on, right, Matthew? Better, then worse, worser still before better again, better or worse, of course, in different ways."
The teen succumbs to sleep first, his words slurring, stopping, and giving way to soft exhales, light snores huffing from a snub nose. The smell of floor-wax and antiseptic, innocuous at first, pulls Matt into sleep, following the seer into a dream of long white hallways and wide, blank windows.