Chapter Fourteen: Bent-Neck Boy
An image of Matthew hazily comes into focus, wavering like a far-away radio frequency, an incomplete connection. He sits behind a worn oaken desk, his handsome face bent low over papers, his long hair pulled up into a messy bun. His brows are drawn together, as if troubled, his mouth set into a thin line. This troubled expression gives way to an expression of pained surprise as he suddenly straightens, clutching at his own neck. His eyes bulge as he coughs roughly, once, twice, eyes rolling briefly back into his head as he gags, before suddenly, it's over. He looks pale and shaken, horrified. He reaches for a phone on his desk, snatching up the receiver, beginning to dial, before hesitating. He's looking at something on his desk, trembling and confused. His face crumples and he begins to cry, hanging up the phone before covering his face with his hands. His shoulders shake with sobs. He cries like that for quite a while before he eventually tires out, scrubbing his bloodshot eyes with clenched fists. He eventually goes back to reading, taking his pen in hand, muttering to himself.
A far-away clock eventually announces the hour, a bell chiming a melodious tune, and Matthew packs up his things into his bag and stands. Jonah follows behind him, gliding along a few inches above the tiled floor, as Matthew travels through the old-looking building and into a lecture hall. Jonah occupies a chair in the very back as Matthew delivers a lecture about the history of exorcism to a handful of students, all with expressions ranging from bored, to incredulous, to rapt with attention. Jonah follows like this the rest of the day, hovering along as Matthew drives home, as he eats dinner with a young man Jonah doesn't recognize, as he showers and brushes his teeth, as he changes into his pajamas, as he downs two pills with a heavy chug of thick blue liquid in a medicine bottle. Jonah watches from the foot of his bed as the man succumbs to a fitful sleep, tossing and turning, muttering Jonah, Jonah, Jonah, a thick smell of smoke and decay wafting from him. Jonah is loathe to consider what he may be dreaming, or remembering, determined to never, ever trespass again. He doesn't deserve it, is not meant to be here, still roaming this Earth.
Still roaming this Earth?
Jonah comes back to his body with the force of a car crash, a shock of sound and color and sensation. Judging by his unexpected insight into Matthew's life, he'd been out of his body for almost an entire day. His limbs feel numb and heavy, and his neck throbs dully in pain, the rope still tight and itchy around it. Jonah stares into the darkness of Hell House, the stillness of night, and laughs. It leaves his broken windpipe in a strangled, strange popping sound, like the teeth of a comb on an edge of a table.
Wouldn't this just be his fucking luck? What are the fucking odds that this damned, organic creation of a body, a mockery of a life, is unable to die? At least, unable to die unless Matthew wills it, considering his existence is the creation and extension of Matthew's life. Jonah wonders if Matthew would have even guessed it, would have been able to guess that Jonah's physical form is unable to be extinguished unless purposely unraveled by its creator.
Now this is a predicament, Jonah's horrified, maniacal brain supplies. Not only is he unable to die, but now he's stuck fucking hanging here, hanging here in shame of his failed suicide, malformed but still very much "alive".
Jonah struggles, a pathetic, slow-moving struggle, as he painfully raises his arms to grip the knot of the noose, fingers uncoordinated and run through with pins and needles. He tries for what feels like ages to untie it, before giving up, uttering that horrible, haunting popping sound again. He instead reaches higher and turns himself, an arduous task, and begins to try to pull himself up on the rope. It's insanely difficult, hauling his dead weight up a rope above his fucking head, but he does, hand over hand. Jonah isn't a weak boy by any means, strong and wiry after years of hauling around coffins, dead bodies, and sacks of sand all on his own, his aging father the one too weak to help. Oh, how Ramsay Aickman must be laughing, rolling in his grave, chortling to himself in Hell as he watches his pathetic son struggle.
Jonah eventually hauls himself up enough to grip the landing. He kicks his heavy, unfeeling legs. One of the columns supporting the banister cracks and splinters, supporting his body weight as Jonah finally swings a leg up, and then the other, pushing with his knees. He topples unceremoniously to the floor of the landing, gasping desperately for air, awarded to him by the new slack in the rope. He lays here like this for an undetermined amount of time simply collecting himself, rubbing his limbs together like a wounded cricket, willing his back-to-life body to work again. He's eventually able to work the noose loose and up and off him, over his head. It drops to the floor with a whump. It takes another long while for Jonah to be able to stand, to stagger painfully over to the full-length mirror by the bathroom. What he sees there is horrifying, a damned, cursed appearance that wrings another volley of sick popping and cracking sounds from Jonah's mangled neck.
His neck is bent. Horribly, at a very terrible and unnatural angle, his left ear resting on his shoulder. His neck is ringed in a livid purple bruise, textured by the rope, and his face is horribly swollen and bloated, unrecognizable, with white, hazy eyes staring out of his slitted eyelids, like slivers of a dead moon. The skin of his face is almost black with burst blood vessels and a lack of oxygen. From the neck down though, Jonah thinks he almost looks fine, still smart in the suit he hung himself in.
So much for my own fucking funeral, he thinks, disgusted at the whole situation.
Jonah staggers downstairs, turning on lights as he goes, viewing the world sideways. He pauses at a mirror in the hallway, staring at his own haunting image. I'm already looking a bit better, he thinks, giggling that same snapping, unnatural sound. A sound only the dead could make. He takes his head in both hands and violently snaps it over to the other side, settling his own head loosely back in place. It wobbles precariously, no longer attached by bone to the rest of him. He shrugs to himself and the head wobbles back to the side. Jonah is careful to keep one hand supporting it in place as he goes to the kitchen. He downs a glass of water and it feels weird…he wonders if it all goes down correctly, goes down the right pipes. His breath rattles, but it doesn't sound like he's aspirating. Jonah tucks his cigarettes in his breast pocket and goes out on the back porch, sits on the step, still supporting his heavy head with a hand.
He lights a cigarette and breathes it in deep, he can't help but smile at the rush of nicotine and menthol, a smell, taste, and sensation that he will never, ever be able to separate from memories of Matthew, now. He thinks of him, shamelessly, feeling rather impish, now that he's been able to cheat death. It seems the Devil is not too keen to get his hands on Jonah Aickman after all. He's living on a borrowed heartbeat, and is double-damned, anyway; who cares if Jonah spends this life living in sin, as he had his last? He finds this thought comforting and freeing, smiling to himself as he smokes. He purses his lips and blows a smoke ring, watches it drift up, the thick darkness edging a shade brighter as the sun works its way up, still a few hours to go.
Jonah is unabashedly thinking of Matthew, recalling the sound of his laugh, pondering the image of a cigarette delicately perched between two calloused fingers, when an unexpected sound startles him back to the present.
"Well, hello there," Jonah tries to greet the cat, but it comes out as a horrible sound. The cat darts away again, afraid, skirting around a few feet from Jonah, before it slowly edges closer, meowing at him again. It's a beautiful little thing, not very old, a puffball of long, reddish-orange fur no bigger than a half-loaf of bread. Jonah hums, a less terrifying sound, and offers his fingers. After a few long minutes, the cat comes forward to sniff them, and then turns to rub its whole face into Jonah's hand, slipping into a deep purr almost immediately. Jonah scratches under its chin and admires the creature, with its long catfish whiskers and eyebrows. It's a little snaggletoothed, with one fang sticking out over its pink bottom lip. It looks up at Jonah with huge amber colored eyes, and its gaze belies only trust and pleasure at having found a friend. It meows again, insistent, and climbs its way into Jonah's lap. Holding his cigarette between lips, Jonah gently coaxes the cat onto its back.
Ah, a boy cat, for sure. He thinks he'll name it Lazarus, for obvious reasons, and that way he can call him Rusty, for short. Suitable to the cat's rusty-orange fur.
Jonah snubs out his cigarette and, cradling his head, he opens the back door, holding it open expectantly, gesturing inside with the other hand. The cat goes inside without hesitation. He may not be the brightest, Jonah thinks, walking into Hell House without pause. Must be hungry, then. And so, Jonah goes to the kitchen, rooting around through cupboards before locating a can of tuna. He has to let his head dangle wrong, as he opens the can with a can opener, and he finds it quite painful, a deep, throbbing sensation. He eventually deposits a saucer of tuna on the floor, and the newly-named Lazarus tucks in audibly. Jonah smiles at the sound of it eating, and fills another bowl with cool, clean water.
Leaving his new housemate to eat in peace, Jonah sits at the table and rolls a joint one-handed, something he hasn't done since days before Matthew's departure, which must have been several weeks ago by now. He holds the filter-end gingerly in his teeth as he goes upstairs, stopping by the living room to halt the skipping sound of the victrola, the record scratched all to hell for being left on for who-knows how many hours. Jonah kicks his shoes off and arranges himself in Matthew's bed, carefully propping his neck into the right, natural position with some pillows and a rolled-up blanket. Once settled, he lights his joint, letting the sweet, soft haze of it muddle his brain and mute his pain. He lays like this for a long while, gently smoking, watching the night brighten further and further into almost-day outside the window. The sun finally rises, bloody and bright through the trees, as the joint is finished. A meow vaguely startles Jonah, and Rusty suddenly hops up onto the bed, wandering this way and that, pausing here and there to let Jonah pet him, before settling down into a rumbling little ball of fluff on Jonah's chest. They both doze off like this, comforted by the weight of the other, lulled to sleep with matching heartbeats.
Jonah wakes an unknown amount of time later, the sun outside bright, sounds of life and traffic filtering through the window. Jonah feels horribly stiff and sore all over, and he sits up with a groan, disturbing the napping cat on his chest. Rusty stays close, though, as Jonah gingerly feels his neck with his hands, poking and prodding. It doesn't feel, well, as loose, anymore, standing in a natural position by itself, and he finds he can turn it, though it's very sore and stiff. He turns his head this way and that, his neck emitting a few dangerous-sounding pops and cracks, but it's solid. How marvelously insane, Jonah wonders, amazed. It seems the bones of his neck fused back together into the arrangement they're meant to be in, knitting together and healing in just a few hours.
Jonah stands and crosses to a mirror, further shocked to see his face looks pretty much back to normal, his blue eyes clear and unclouded, his face pale and smooth again. His neck, however, is still heavily bruised. In the hallway, Jonah shucks off his formal clothes, and he goes to his room, rifling through his things before finding a turtleneck, soft and cream-colored. Putting it on honestly kind of hurts…he'll have to be careful for the next few days, so that he doesn't accidentally injure his newly-healed bones and tendons. He goes downstairs, bare feet on wood, clad in a pair of tan knicker pants, suspenderless.
Jonah prepares a fresh dish of tuna and Rusty eagerly comes running, wolfing it down in minutes flat. Jonah puts on coffee and rolls another joint, both hands this time. He gives in and rolls several, actually feeling quite calm and strangely happy. He blames his newfound good mood on having cheated death, his decision to accept his sinful nature, and on Rusty the cat, of course. Having another breathing, living thing to keep him company is exciting and comforting, makes him feel less lonely in this big, empty house. Lighting and smoking the joint, Jonah goes to the telephone in the hallway. He stands in front of it and coughs a few times, roughly clearing his throat (this hurts and stings, too), and says a few test phrases out loud to make sure his voice sounds decently normal, and not the haunting, ghostly crackle of yesterday. Hello, yes, this is Jonah Aickman…over here in Hell House…wait. No. Hello? Yes, this is Jo, over on Green Street…
He dials the grocery store's number and explains to the man that he needs to add a litterbox and scoop to the next order, as well as cat litter and cat food (both wet and dry) to his recurring weekly order, along with cat treats for good measure. The grocer writes it all down and repeats it back to the teen for confirmation. He explains that the next delivery day is tomorrow, meaning it's only been a week and a day since Matthew left, a realization that leaves Jonah feeling ashamed and unsettled. It has felt like a month, at least. The grocer asks if Jonah would like to add anything else before hanging up. Jonah gets off the phone feeling bold, and brave, like he's accomplished something. He debates calling the university again before deciding not to…if he calls the department again and gets Eric, the angry man may block the number.
No, Jonah thinks his best course of action to speak to Matthew again would simply be to show up in person, considering he can't get ahold of the man over the telephone. A damn near impossible feat for sure, but Jonah has nothing but time. He has nothing but time and resources, all of Matthew's witchcraft books and supplies left behind, to research this possibility and hopefully bring it to fruition. What's the worst that could happen? His physical form dissolves into ash, scattered to the wind? That would be doing him a favor, for Christ's sake.
Jonah makes a pit stop onto the front porch to retrieve Shannon's monstera and bring it back inside, now that he's going to be staying in Hell House for some time longer. He waters it and gives it a good home in Matthew's study, lush and green by the window seat. He gets to work then, inspecting the books in Matthew's study. He pulls out books such as Black Magic of the Medieval Era; Necromantic Practices; The Old Ways; Vudu and its History of Manipulation; and finally, Reincarnation: Bringing a Past Life into the Present.
He carries these over to the window seat along with a pen, paper, and a newspaper he's ripped into bookmarks. The hours stretch long, interrupted here and there with activity. The teen fetches his watercolors at one point, to color-code his notes and bookmarks, dragging over a side table, and then another. He pauses for lunch, this time feeding Rusty some of his scrambled eggs, along with some milk. He makes a pitcher of sweet tea and carries it to the study, along with a plate of fruit. Jonah studies on in silence, the only sound the turning of pages, the occasional scribble of his pen, the ripping of paper as he makes more and more bookmarks. He doesn't even notice the sun going down, or coming back up again, working through the night with breaks here and there to go to the bathroom, stretch his stiff joints and neck, and eat some more. He's cleared the entirety of Matthew's books from his Black Magic, Necormancy, Reincarnation, and Talismans sections of his library, slowly but very fucking surely reading through each one. Though some of them conflict with each other at times, Jonah is surprised at just how much they overlap, just how much magic has been discovered and written down, tried and true practices to raise the dead, to reanimate a spirit, or reincarnate an entire person down to their birthmarks and personality, as Jonah had been.
I'm so very lucky…fucking blessed, Jonah smiles to himself. Thank God Matthew spent half his life compiling these materials, just so I can power through them in a matter of days.
Jonah is interrupted at some point by the grocery delivery. He spies the large white truck rumbling up the street, driving all the way up onto the lawn and to the porch steps, carelessly rutting up the lawn. The delivery man is young, no older than Jonah in body. He's quick and efficient as he dumps bag after brown paper bag onto the porch, careful not to linger on Hell House for longer than necessary. He's brave enough, at least, to come up and ring the doorbell before practically running back to his truck, tripping over himself to get inside, slam the door, and fumble with starting the automobile, turning the engine over only to tear away from the house immediately, spewing grass and dirt up with his tires. It takes Jonah considerably longer to bring them all inside and put them away.
Jonah sets up Rusty's litter box in a nook at the very end of the hallway, by the back door, and sets up a feeding station in the kitchen, filling his bowl with a mixture of wet and dry food. Jonah takes a break from his studies to root around the house, locating an empty basket and a worn red cushion, with which he makes a cozy little bed for the feline in the living room. Jonah uses yarn and scissors to create several pom-poms of varying sizes and colors. Rusty takes to them immediately, his claws skittering on the hardwood floor as he bats them around and chases them up and down the hallway. Satisfied, the medium gos back to the kitchen and surveys his new groceries. He walks the old pot of soup and the loaf of bread, baked on that fateful day, outside to the compost bin. He washes the pot and puts it away.
Feeling more productive and energized than he has, well, since Matthew left, Jonah turns on the radio and gets to work chopping, stirring, cooking, and baking, making himself a fine dinner of cornbread, beans and bacon, and collard greens, spicy and vinegar-strong. As the conduit eats his dinner, he ponders his plan, pieces together the bits of research he's completed in the last two days. He still has a ways to go, but it's surely a start. The dinner is fantastic, settling warm and uncomfortably heavy in his empty stomach. It makes him tired, though. A glance at the kitchen clock reports that it's six in the afternoon on Sunday, meaning Jonah has spent around thirty hours researching, since he had the wild idea that he may be able to actually leave Hell House, without Matt's assistance.
After dinner, Jonah fixes himself a very, very potent highball, six shots in total, and it surely does its job, further compounding his exhaustion, making the world soft and fuzzy, a swirl of color. Grinning goofily to himself, Jonah sings along to the radio, some new, up-beat sounding tune, the woman's voice delightfully jazzy and playful, almost nasal. Oh baby, baby!
Jonah puts all the food away, refreshes Rusty's water dish, and does the dishes, swaying drunkenly to himself, his eyes feeling heavy. Once finished, he trudges upstairs, discarding his clothes and running himself a steaming hot bath. He's brought the radio with him, and the rest of his highball, vibing along as he rolls one last joint to enjoy during his bath. On a whim, he fetches his sketchbook and a pencil, along with the tray he usually arranges food on. He enjoys himself immensely, soaking for the next few hours, smoking and drinking on and off. If Matthew was there, he would've laughed. A silly, drunk little goose! A very crossfaded goose, for sure, as Jonah sings along to the lady on the radio—Britney Spears, the announcer, well, announces, at one point—he calls it a 'marathon'-as he sketches and sketches, tossing them to the dry bathroom floor as he's done. Matthew, chopping wood. Matthew, smoking a cigarette. Matthew, sleeping, shirtless, twisted up in his own sheets. Matthew, that one time Jonah spied him in the shower, all naked limbs and bare skin, his flaccid penis and well-rounded scrotum hanging heavily from his groin, resting, steamy-sticky, on his broad thighs.
This sketch in particular makes Jonah blush, giggling to himself as he pencils in the fine, curly hair dusting his strong legs, his muscled chest, his taunt stomach, all the way down to the curly thatch of it nestling the afore-mentioned privates, which Jonah was sure to carefully detail, foreskin and all. Later, after he has finished his bath, Jonah takes this sketch with him, gazes drunkenly at it in the low light of the bedside lamp, tucked securely into Matthew's bed, soft and smelling of him, of cigarettes and patchouli and something else, the deep, rich smell that clings to Matthew's shiny, bouncy curls, a smell like a forest in heavy rain, woody and spicy and earthy.
The smell pervades Jonah's brain, familiar and comfortable, settling like a blanket in the teen's pliable, crossfaded thoughts, swirling and colorful. His past horror, embarrassment, and shame is like a distant memory now, silly, misinformed thoughts. A homophobic strawman, shaped like his Father, burnt up in Jonah's acceptance of his own love for Matthew, reduced to ash in the force of his newly-found desire for a full life with Matt, sticky fumblings and sweet nothings, all that beautifully bombastic, beat-heavy jazz.
Jonah wishes now that Matthew's dream, that damned, ill-fated, innocent enough dream of a loving handjob on the creek bed, had been from Jonah's perspective. He does his best to recreate it, to imagine Matthew looming heavy over him, shielding and cherishing him, bent low over his own writhing body to love him, good and thorough.
Jonah imagines an epilogue, now, of boldly and assuredly undoing Matt's jeans to take the man in hand, imagining how big he would've been hard, based off of what he spied in the shower. Jonah stares at this sketch as his imagination takes over, his own genitals swelling full and erect as he imagines wrapping his hand around Matthew, unable to close his fist completely around him as he tugs and loves up the slick, hard length. His daydream quickly escalates to Matt gripping his hips in those big, beautiful hands, rucking them up as he grinds down low, effectively rubbing them both together, an unbearably hot and slick coupling that all but forces Jonah's own hand to wrap around himself. He kicks the blankets off of his sweating, frustrated form, wriggling down his drawers and tugging up his shirt, drunkenly doing his best to match the rhythm dream-Matt and his dream-self have established. It doesn't take long like this, with the active stimulation, for the dream to reach a conclusion, the pace of the two men quickening, erratic and desperate before stilling, a mixture of groans and sighs as they come to completion together, spilling hot and vulgar over dream-Jonah's bare and bitten chest.
Jonah, real Jonah, in the here and now, does the same, an insanely forceful release that causes him to see white, to shriek into the still, empty silence of Hell House, arched and trembling as he paints himself, so much of it, spattering along his own stomach and chest. He falls asleep like this, uncovered and sticky, cooling in the night air, Matthew's name repeating like a mantra in his head, his sketch crumpled in his sleeping fist.