House Haunted (24 page)

“Don't . . . worry about . . .
me
, sugar.”

Brennan felt trapped. Even the black cat seemed to have him, pouncing on his foot each time he slid it away, holding and biting at it beneath the sheets.

Beauvaque turned around. As abruptly as his outburst began it was gone. He wiped at his eyes with one hand, holding his robe tightly closed with the other. “Don't mind me.”

“Are you sure—”

“I was just being foolish. And
old
.” He smiled, unconvincingly. “That's what I am, you know.”

Brennan said nothing.

“Tell me,” Beauvaque said, sitting back on the bed. His dried eyes were focused on Brennan with full attention. “What happened in that apartment yesterday?”

“I went blind,” Brennan said.

Beauvaque motioned impatiently. “I
know
that already. Tell me what
happened
.”

Brennan considered, saw no harm in being honest (thumbnail of Beauvaque: old queen capable of spite and kindness but not dishonesty; likes gossip but doesn't like getting involved. Safe—thank God).

“I think,” Brennan said, “I was attacked.”

“Ah,” Beauvaque said. He added, unblinking, “By
who
?”

Brennan sat up, putting his back against the backboard. The cat followed his movements, jumping twice at folds in the blanket before finding Brennan's foot. “I don't know.”

“You think something didn't want you snooping in there, sugar?”

Brennan's mind, recalling the mixture of hope and fear he had felt the previous day, missed the urgency in Beauvaque's voice.

“Something . . . bad?” Beauvaque said, in a tone so sharp that Brennan's attention refocused on him.

''Yes.”

“Ah.”

Beauvaque rose, clutching his robe closed as he paced the room. He stopped before the blinds, toyed with the rod to open them, kept them closed. “Dr. Brennan,” Beauvaque said, slowly, turning to face him. The look was the angriest he had seen yet from the landlord. “I. . .”

His face collapsed into anguish, and once again he bit his knuckles, so hard that Brennan was alarmed to see a thin trickle of blood run down the back of Beauvaque's hand.

“God. . . you just don't
know
how much it hurts, Dr. Brennan.
No one knows
. . .”

“Maybe if you told—”

“I'M TRYING TO TELL YOU!” Beauvaque shouted. His face, flushed red, was twisted in anguish. He thrust his bloody knuckles back into his mouth and then covered his face with his hands. A sobbing groan escaped him. “Oh, God . . .”

Brennan's fingers had strayed to rub the belly of the black cat, which had rolled onto its side in the hollow of the thigh, accepting his gift with typical feline nonchalance.

“I'm sorry,” Beauvaque said. He lowered his bloody hand, dabbing at it with a handkerchief produced from the pocket of his robe. With relative success, he composed himself. He walked to the end of the bed, began to lower himself to sit on it, changed his mind. He stood straight; still uncomfortable, he walked stiffly back to the window. Once again, he fingered the rod that opened and closed the blinds, opening them a crack this time and staring out.

“I have a very strange story to tell you.” He looked quickly at Brennan, catching his impassive look. “Will you listen?”

“Yes.”

Beauvaque went to the club chair in the comer and sat down. His face fell in half-shadow. When he spoke again, his voice had assumed the dreamy cadence of painful recollection. He looked toward the window that held out the day, staring at it in a kind of trance.

“He was a beautiful boy.” He cast a sharp look at Brennan. “Of course, that's how you would expect me to start something like this.”

Brennan said nothing.

“But he
was
beautiful,” Beauvaque continued, dreamily. “I don't think many people—even gay people—understand that a person can be truly loved for his beauty alone, without all the sexual business entering into it. Believe me, Dr. Brennan, it can happen.”

Again Beauvaque looked to Brennan for reaction. Brennan said, “I understand.”

“This was almost four years ago. He lived in that apartment you were in. The one that girl was in. He was eleven then, he would not have been fifteen, yet.”

Beauvaque paused. “You must remember how hard this is for me.”

“Yes.”

Beauvaque stared at the window. “He was so beautiful. When I first saw him, his mother was holding his hand. They were moving into a new apartment, and she kept him close to her.

“God, how I wanted to be that woman. I wanted to hold him the way she was holding him. He was the kind of boy who was lost. He needed to be protected. You could see that on his face, Dr. Brennan. Even his mother knew that.”

Beauvaque took a deep, shuddering breath. “So they moved in. And I acted like a fool. The mother didn't see through me—at least not at the beginning. She was a fluttery type, so caught up in her own little problems that the rest of the world barely existed for her. But Jeffrey knew from the start. He knew why I was always making excuses to see the two of them, to check up on the apartment, make sure the heating was working, the plumbing was all right, to share a particularly nice flower I had found while walking. Oh, yes, I'm sure he knew about me. It was terrible of me, Dr. Brennan, but I just couldn't keep my eyes off him. I began to dream about him at night, about enfolding him in my arms like a baby. In my dreams I sang to him. Oh, God. . .”

He took another halting breath and, after a brief pause, continued. “Perhaps if I describe him to you. He was frail, but not short. Almost as tall as his mother. I never saw him play ball. I never saw his mother let him play with another child. For that reason alone I pitied him, because
I
would have let him play, would have encouraged him to make friends.

“It was his face that captivated me, Mr. Brennan. It had the beauty that only some Mediterranean faces can have. His skin was dark, his hair the deepest and straightest black I've ever seen. He was always pushing it up and to the side because it would hang down over his right eye. And his eyes. They were set deep in his face. They were the most liquid brown I have ever seen. They say it isn't the eyeball itself that makes the eye, that it's the expression of the facial skin around eyes that make them expressive, but in this case I would have to disagree. I would know those brown eyes, that color of brown, anywhere. I'm sure no one else on earth had those eyes.

“He liked to draw. I was able to study his hands. They were long-fingered. He bit his nails. I would have persuaded him to stop that terrible habit. . .”

He stopped; and Brennan took the opportunity to shift his back, which had begun to hurt. He moved his leg away from the lounging cat, which rolled farther onto its back than it wanted to. It gave Brennan a reproachful look before settling into a new position.

“Dr. Brennan, I must admit I had fantasies of stealing that boy.” Beauvaque's voice was a near-whisper. “I went so far as to make a plan. I was going to take him to Vancouver with me, to a place where I had been once, a resort town that would be safe for us. I was going to raise him myself.”

A smile touched and then abandoned Beauvaque's lips. “I never got so close as to actually try it, though. The planning was a way of relieving my agony. Then a real agony came, Dr. Brennan, which began as the sweetest time in my life.”

Beauvaque rose, began to pace. “I began to see Jeffrey, on my own. His mother had come to trust me. When she started to work hours that would not get her home in time to meet Jeffrey's school bus, she allowed me to keep him company for an hour. She was very grateful, Dr. Brennan.” Again the sad, fleeting smile.

“I don't think I'd ever been happier in my life. I don't think Jeffrey minded me. I think he sensed that I would be better at the job than his own mother. After a while I think he began to rely on me. We went places during our short time together each day. We went for walks or shopping at the market. He let me arrange his clothes. His mother even let me buy him clothing. His wardrobe certainly improved.”

Beauvaque's voice softened to a chilling whisper. “And then he changed.”

A line of cold crawled up Brennan's back. Beauvaque stood rigid in the half light, staring into nothingness. Brennan could almost physically feel the loss the other man was expressing.

“It happened quite suddenly, Dr. Brennan. At first, I became afraid that he had said something to his mother about my attentions, how I doted on him, or sang to him, or read him poems or brushed his hair. But that wasn't it.

“It was a Friday, I remember very clearly. His mother had asked me to keep him longer because she had to work late. I, of course, agreed. But I had to show an apartment, and so I arranged for Jeffrey to stay locked in his home between four and four-thirty. Then, I told him, I would take him for ice cream. That had seemed fine with him. I still remember his smile as he closed the door, promising not to open it for anyone else while I was gone.

“I was gone no longer than forty-five minutes. A young man and his bitchy wife went over every inch of the empty apartment, then began to haggle about the rent. After wasting all of my time, the woman—I can remember her bad blonde hair coloring: the roots showed mousey brown—took her husband by the arm and said, 'Let's go.' They left without a word of thanks.

“I was angry. By the time I arrived at Jeffrey's apartment, I was talking to myself, venting my spleen. I froze at the door because I heard voices within. Two voices. Jeffrey's and another. A woman's, but not his mother's.

“I knocked. I'm afraid I lost my composure. I was fearful he had opened the door to a stranger. I knocked very hard. I shouted, 'Jeffrey, open this door at once!'

“There was silence inside. I shouted louder. Then he opened the door and stared at me. He looked . . . guilty. As if I had caught him doing something bad.

“'Jeffrey, who is in this apartment with you?' I said. I stormed past him to see who it was he had been talking to.

“Well, Dr. Brennan, the apartment was empty. I checked it top to bottom. When I confronted him, he shrugged evasively and said it was the television I had heard.

“I knew it wasn't the television. I knew it. I was sure he was lying to me.

“The rest of the afternoon was a disaster. I think my own mood eventually turned Jeffrey sour, also. We ended up not speaking to one another. Even his cow of a mother noticed that something was wrong between us when she got home.

“I don't know if he said something to her then. But for the next two weeks I barely saw him. His mother was on vacation and was there to spend time with him. But it seemed that something had happened to turn her against me. As the two weeks came to an end, I delicately asked if she would need me to watch him again, and she declined. She was gracious enough. I would have to say she looked genuinely perplexed. Which led me to believe the breakup was Jeffrey's doing.

“Of course I was in agony. I blamed myself for my outburst. I told myself I should have trusted him when he told me no one had been in the apartment. There is nothing worse than mistrust. I began to have terrible dreams of Jeffrey going away, leaving by himself, leaving me behind.

“Dr. Brennan, I took to doing terrible things. It was unbearable for me not to see him. I began to sneak around, trying to catch a glimpse of him. But during those two weeks he never left his apartment, and after that, he left only to go to school. He stayed in when he came home. His mother had not been able to find anyone to watch him for the hour after school, and so he locked himself in the apartment alone each day.

“I stood outside the apartment when I couldn't stand it any longer. I was like a lovesick adolescent. I suppose that's what I was. But then I began to hear that voice again and became mortally afraid. My vigils became motivated by fear for his safety.

“I never heard the words that were spoken between Jeffrey and that voice, Dr. Brennan. They were just below my threshold of hearing. I think they were back in that room where Miss Hutchins did those horrible things. I can't be sure. When I did see Jeffrey, as he left for school in the morning or returned in the afternoon, he looked terrible.

“He looked haunted, Dr. Brennan. As I said, he was not a healthy-looking boy to begin with, but now he looked as though what health he possessed was being drained out of him.

“I was frantic. One night, when I couldn't sleep, I snuck like a thief and stood outside their door. I think I wept. Then I heard that high, thin female voice, and Jeffrey's voice in answer, and I suddenly became very jealous and angry. I nearly pounded on the door.

“There was only one thing for me to do. The next evening, when Jeffrey's mother came home from work, carrying a bag of groceries, I was waiting by her apartment door.

“She would not look at me, Dr. Brennan. She tried to hurry past, as if I had some sort of disease. I think she was
afraid
of me.

“I tried to speak to her, but she turned red and tried to push me away from her with the bag of groceries.