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To his left was a bed made of thick wood set up against the wall with the window that faced Carolyn’s room. It’s blue plaid sheets and solid gray comforter was unmade, as if it had just been slept in, and there was an indentation on the pillow. Was Pamela sleeping here, or was this the untouched form of a fourteen-year-old dead boy?
Straight ahead was another window that looked out onto the front of the house, and to the right was a closet with sliding doors closed and posters of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and A Clockwork Orange tapped to them. Next to him on his left was a matching wood dresser, the top of which was covered in dust, and there was a pile of folded laundry on top—a pair of jeans, two pairs of slacks, and boxer shorts—as if still waiting to be put away by Bailey nine years later.
Aaron released a quiet shudder and made his way to the dresser, where on top was a spiral notebook with white loose-leaf paper covered in black scribble.
“Chase.” He pointed to the notebook.
Aaron swallowed hard and Chase looked at him awestruck, as if trying to form the words to express his surprise but finding none to be adequate.
Aaron Christopher was written repeatedly on the paper, at first staying within the lines and margins, but then breaking and covering the page erratically.
“Do you think Bailey did this?” Aaron asked.
Chase looked from the paper and then towards the door.
“Or Pamela?” he suggested.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t look new. The paper is yellowed and the thing has dust on it like everything else,” Aaron observed.
He reached down and took hold of the top drawer. It struggled as he pulled it open.
Inside were rolled up socks, boxers, and sweat pants. All neatly folded and waiting to be worn just as the clothes on the dresser-top waited.
Aaron sighed and stuck his hands into the clothes, moving beneath the cotton and searching the drawer with his fingers. He felt a folded piece of paper in his hand and pulled it out, his hand shaking nervously as he did so.
The air lingered with him. The faint smell of his CK1 and teenage musk still lingering in pockets of molecules, as if Pamela had done all that she could to try to preserve him.
“Here.” Chase reached out and took the folded piece of what appeared to be sketchbook paper with something else taped inside.
Aaron watched as he unfolded it, and they both let out a gasp when a seventh grade yearbook photo of Aaron stared back at them in black and gray gloss paper. His sad eyes were covered by a mop of dark hair, and his bottom lip was in a seductive pout.
It had made Aaron too pretty, a boy whose looks raised questions, and made him an easy target. Beneath the picture the words kill him from the inside were scrawled on it, and there were yellowed and dried stains of what they both knew to be semen on the paper.
Aaron became dizzy, and his insides felt as if they had cramped up and he braced his stomach and locked his grip on Chase’s shoulder.
“Shit.”
“Babe, are you okay?” Chase asked, his face wretched with concern.
Aaron nodded. “Yeah, yeah. I just—I need a second.”
Chase looked down at the spiral notebook with Aaron’s name scrawled all over it and picked it up, flipping through some of the earlier pages and finding mostly math notes and random scribbles in ink.
Towards the first few pages of the notebook was something substantive in Bailey’s hand. Chase began scanning through it, then he stopped and looked at Aaron, his mouth agape.
“I know I should read this to you or let you read it, but, I also kind of don’t want to....”
Aaron furrowed his brows and looked at the page.
“What?”
Chase looked it over again and shook his head.
“Maybe you should sit down....”
Aaron scanned the room.
“No. I don’t want to sit on anything in this place. Just tell me or let me read it myself!”
Chase grunted and his shoulders fell in defeat as he picked up the notebook and began to read in a loud whisper.
“You don’t walk by anymore but you know that doesn’t mean much. I still always find you. I’ve been in you and I have felt you crushed against me so close and I’m holding so tight, that sometimes I imagine pressing my fingers into you, until I break through and grip your bloody struggling heart and squeeze with each thrust, until I cum and you die in my hand as it happens.
“Do you want me to stop?” Chase asked him.
Aaron shook his head.
“There’s more?”
“Yeah, yeah there is.”
Aaron rolled his eyes and nodded. “Go on....”
“In my dream I dig a hole in my backyard. A hole to put my favorite things in. At night I dig this hole and in the dark I wait, and then you come. You come as if you are meant to come, as if you are coming for me because you know that’s what I want. You walk by and I take the shovel and knock the shit out of you.
“I bring you into the yard and I lean down and kiss your bloody head. I kiss your closed eyes and your unconscious lips, and then I wrap my fingers around your neck and I squeeze. Your body trembles and you struggle against me, trying to come out of it but then you are quiet. You are still. I lay beside you and listen to the stillness of your heart, and feel you slowly grow cold against me in the moonlight.
“I put you in that hole behind my house. That hole I dug to hide my favorite things. The things that I like the most. You are that thing. You know what you did. You know what you do. You wanted me to feel this way. Every tear, every whimper; you do it to make me want you.
“You make me want to do it again. You like when I do it.
“Chase doesn’t get it. He’s been infected by you. Just like you infected me.
“But he doesn’t get it. You want someone who gets it. Why else did you walk by my place almost every day last summer? You could have gone any other way, but you picked my street. You wanted me to see you.
“Fucking faggot. I get it.”
They were quiet.
Aaron’s eyes began to well with tears. He had to swallow them, though. He refused to give anything of himself to Bailey, especially his tears. Bailey had gotten too many of those, and crying in his room would be Bailey’s ultimate victory from beyond the grave.
“Do you think he was actually planning on killing you?” Chase tossed the notebook back onto the dresser, and stuck the picture back into the drawer.
They both looked around the room, searching to see if there was anything else worth taking a look at.
There was a Green Day poster and a Rage Against the Machine poster, both of which came from music magazines, and when Chase slid the closets open, all they found were clothes on hangers. Jerseys and tees, and loose polos, and sports gear on the floor next to his old sneakers and cleats.
“I don’t see anything else. I don’t think anything else really matters at this point. We learned that Bailey had fantasies about killing me while he raped me, and that he frequently dreamed about burying me in his backyard.
“But I don’t think we’re going to find something in this room that is going to tell us who or what is wanting to kill me now.”
Chase put his hand to his head and pushed his black bangs away from his face and glanced back at the pile of clothes on the dresser.
He walked towards it and Aaron watched as Chase reached back and pulled out a framed picture—the same picture as the one that was in Chase’s room.
“That’s right, we all had copies of this picture.”
The room suddenly seemed to grow colder, darker, and from the corner of his eye, Aaron had thought that he had glimpsed the silhouette of a man in shadow standing on the other side of the window that faced the street.
“Shit!”
He jumped back and stared directly at the window, but all he could see was the shadowed form of branches from the hedge on the side of the house.
“What happened?” Chase asked him, his eyes wide and his voice panicked.
“Nothing. I just—I thought—nothing. Nothing.”
He gave a weak smile and Chase gripped the back of Aaron’s neck and drew his boyfriend into him.
“Let’s get the fuck out of this room,” Chase suggested.
Aaron let out a deep sigh and nodded his head against Chase’s.
“You don’t have to tell me twice!”
The two men crept back out of Bailey’s room and into the hall, finding more light waiting for them than what they were leaving behind. Aaron closed the door without a second glance.
There was nothing he needed to see, nothing he needed to mourn or say goodbye to. There was nothing good in Bailey Nguyen. He had wanted to kill Aaron and that was enough for him.
He didn’t need to have one last look into that room swallowed in shadows. He didn’t need to risk seeing Bailey’s apparition standing there staring at him, trying to lure him back in. If Bailey wanted Aaron he was going to have to come for him.
Aaron Christopher knew better than to go looking for the devil.
––––––––
They were standing in the dining room by the time Aaron and Chase came around the corner, they were visibly shaken and their eyes gave away their unease. Pamela was muttering about how she had failed twice and then suddenly changing course and once again talking about making changes to the dining room, when she stopped and looked at both boys.
First, she looked at Chase and a sense of recognition seemed to pass over her, and then she looked at Aaron and took a sip of her cocktail.
“Aaron Christopher....”
Everyone looked from Pamela to Aaron and back again.
“What was that?” Carolyn asked her, placing her hand gently on Pamela’s frail shoulder.
“Aaron Christopher... that’s what they said the boy’s name was.”
She took another drag.
“Kill him from the inside....”
Aaron and Chase exchanged glances, and the veins in their throats tightened.
“Pamela, it’s me, Chase Sheppard... Pamela, what does that mean?”
Pamela Nguyen walked on uneven bare feet towards Chase, inspecting him and taking in the sight of him.
“You were supposed to be his shining light. You were supposed to be his example. His beacon. You were supposed to keep him on the straight and narrow....”
Chase glanced at Amanda, but she shrugged and shook her head.
“I don’t understand.” Chase reached out for her hand, but Pamela yanked it away.
“You were what he was supposed to be, but you always had to be the one on top. The golden boy with the blond hair and the good looks.
“But then, you’re one of those people who could still look good even if he was wearing animal carcasses.”
Chase sighed and shook his head.
“I couldn’t save Bailey. No one could, and you guys probably didn’t even try. Did you?”
Pamela snorted.
“You have to want it to try. I didn’t. Van did, but Van’s family wasn’t very affectionate, and Van didn’t know how to be. He didn’t get any better with Bailey. You can’t fail twice and we did.”
“What does that mean, Pamela? What does it mean that you ‘failed twice.’?” Aaron asked her, speaking to Pamela for the first time.
The middle-aged woman looked at Aaron, inspecting his boyish features—the shape of his lips, the soft head of chocolate hair, and the warm and expressive hazel brown eyes—and she sighed.
“You know when something’s broken—defective—and even if other people don’t want to see it, you can’t help but only see it? The more it’s ignored, the more glaring to you the defect becomes.
“People can be defective too. Children especially, only more parents don’t want to see it. But I saw it. Van and I both saw it, and Van didn’t want to put up with it and he wanted to get it out of him.”
“So he hit him,” Carolyn added.
“He thought he could beat it out of him; he thought that would work. I guess I knew it wouldn’t—deep down—only I convinced myself that it would, at the very least, make him play inside the lines. Perhaps the problem had been that we hadn’t tried.
“So we tried. I thought maybe it could save him. It hurt inside. In the beginning. To hear him cry out like that and everything. But then I just learned to turn the TV up. He stopped crying pretty soon thereafter.
“When he ripped his hamster apart....”
Pamela pursed her lips and shook her head.
“That’s when I knew there wasn’t any other option.”
“What about a doctor?” Amanda asked, mortified.
Pamela turned and looked at her and chuckled.
“Van didn’t believe in paying someone a hundred-plus an hour to talk to Bailey about his feelings. That’s not how things were done. I guess we should have tried, but we didn’t want it to get out that we had a kid in therapy.
“So, this is the price I pay. Bailey’s always here. Bailey will be coming... he always does.”
“That’s why you haven’t changed his room? That’s why you left everything as is, because you think he’s coming here? Why haven’t you changed his room?” Chase asked her.
Carolyn, Tammy, and Amanda all looked at each other, and the mortified surprise over this revelation was evident on all three of their faces.
“I couldn’t change it after... I wouldn’t let Van touch it, and then I knew Bailey didn’t want me to. He was everywhere in this house. Every room, every shadow; he was there. He was still with me... what kind of mother would I be to erase him?”
“But, he’s dead. He’s been dead....” Chase’s words trailed off.
Pamela began to make her way past Chase and back towards the living room. She stopped as soon as she was level with Aaron and placed her hand on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry. I’m glad to see my son failed. I always feared he hadn’t.”
Aaron gasped and his eyes grew wide as he looked at her. Pamela smiled and gave him a pat on the arm before passing him and moving back out into the front of the house.
“Van will be home soon. You shouldn’t be here. He’ll be angry if you’re here.”
She shuffled along to the front door, squinting as the light poured in as she pulled it open.
“Don’t stay here, Pamela. You need help. This isn’t healthy,” Carolyn said to her, taking both of her weak hands into her own.
The glass was shaking in Pamela’s grip.
“My dear,” she smiled, though her eyes were becoming glassy with a sheen of tears. “This is my home. Where else would I be? Where else would I go?
“He still needs me.”
Carolyn sighed and kissed her on the cheek, knowing that she would never see Pamela Nguyen again.
“Have you had the phone calls?” Pamela suddenly asked Aaron.
He stopped, Chase stopped, and they all stopped.
“The phone calls...” Aaron whispered. His heart skipped unevenly, and his knees buckled. He took in breath after breath again, inhaling the cool damp air, trying to steady himself in the here and now.
Pamela nodded and placed her hand to his cheek, drawing him into her haunting brown eyes.
“Don’t be deceived.”
She caressed his face and pushed the door shut behind them, locking it and leaving them all there on her stoop in stunned silence, no doubt returning to her dead son’s bedroom-turned-macabre museum.
Chase looked at Aaron, saw the way his eyes drifted to the ground, his mind working overtime to try to piece together what she had meant.
What he and Aaron had seen in Bailey’s room had made their skin crawl and Chase could feel it all around him, clinging to him like spider’s silk. It was everywhere, and no matter how much he tried to feel for it and find it, he couldn’t pull it off of himself.
It made him think back to his youth and to the kid he had been, and to the boy he had known as his best friend, and it took it to a whole other level of perversion and psychopathy than he could have ever previously thought.
At first, when he had originally glanced it over before reading it aloud, he had thought perhaps it was just a fantasy, but upon reading it to Aaron, the more Chase could feel the sincerity behind it. The lust and the desire at the thought of seeing it through.
He hadn’t even known about a hamster. Bailey had never mentioned having one to him, and now he finds out that as a child his best friend had ripped one apart with his kid hands, and then he wondered if that was before or after he had crushed that injured bird with a rock?
“I just didn’t see it. I’m sorry. Babe, I’m sorry,” Chase said to Aaron, placing his hand on the nape of his neck, drawing Aaron’s eyes towards him. Eyes that were expressing a pain that only comes after the shock wears off.
“What did you guys find?” Tammy asked. She was holding tight to Carolyn’s hand.
“Oh, you know, Bailey fantasized about mutilating me when he was raping me and wanted to bury me in his backyard!”
“What?” they all asked in unison.
Aaron shook his head and looked across the street, houses covered by trees and a cracked sidewalk that sloped down reminded Aaron of how much he had enjoyed his walks to and from school, and how Bailey had taken all of that away from him. That’s all Bailey ever did, that’s what he was good at, stealing bits and pieces of everyone he came into contact with.
“Ask Chase,” Aaron said, hopping off of the stoop and crossing the grass to Chase’s car. “Let’s just get out of here.”
He walked over to the passenger side of the black Impala, and watched as the others joined him.
“Are we ready to get out of here?” Amanda asked.
“Yeah, let’s go get our stuff and head back to the ʼHam,” Tammy said.
“Let’s go see my grandma one more time,” Carolyn suggested, starting to make her way back towards the blue house next door.
“Oh, yeah!” Aaron said.
They made their way towards the front door of Carolyn’s grandmother’s house, passing the tall hedges that bordered the front property line between the two homes, and for a moment Aaron thought he glimpsed a face staring at him through the greenery.
It was a white face—white like paper, with firm and defined cheek bones, and what looked to be gold around large empty eyes and a wide-smile mouth lined in black.
Aaron blinked and looked towards the hedge, but saw nothing. He was certain something had been there. A face like a mask. Eerie and mysterious. Emoting nothing but the sculpted expression that it was given.
I had to be imagining that. God, I just want to get the fuck out of here!
Carolyn opened the door and once again they were greeted by the dogs, their wagging tails and excited barks distracting them all from the heart-to-heart they had just had with Pamela Nguyen, who was halfway between this world and the next, and it was obvious that she didn’t know which one she wanted to be a part of.