The Last Handful of Clover - Book 3: The Stone in the Stream

3.40 In the Stone Fortress

June 16, 2:35 pm

It was as if Howard's invitation had purified and sanctified them both.

Richard's regrets and guilt over what he had done to Justin, although they were not healed, were set aside for a moment, the way a drowning swimmer might strip himself of wet clothing that threatened to drag him to the bottom of the sea. He instantly knew what had happened, although he did not know how Howard had achieved it. He knew what it was like, not only to use the Fourth Gift, but also to share the mind of the possessed. But he did not know how a medium could be so powerful as to actually pull in a ghost's soul, rather than the other way around.

Let alone two at once.

When he and Justin had been inside of Pil, they had battered each other physically, and that memory was still fresh in Richard's mind. He knew that in this realm, the one thing that he had been unable to overcome in the world of the living might no longer be an obstacle. No longer would Justin's fists pass through him like smoke. And no longer would Richard's arms find nothing but air when he tried to embrace the boy.

Here, just maybe, it can all be different.

But as his vision cleared, the landscape in which Richard found himself was strange. He expected to find them once again in the house where he had died, or in some distant memory from the past that he and Justin had shared. But instead, he recognized this place only from stories the boy had told him, as they had held each other naked on countless evenings over the sweltering summer they had spent together.

On those nights, Justin had told Richard everything. He told his mentor and lover of growing up in a mountain town outside of Salt Lake. And how he had found solace from the doubts and fears of his adolescence in long hours of solitude, on a hillside overlooking the town. There was an outcropping of rocks there, Justin had told him, that loomed twenty feet tall, with nooks and crannies where the adolescent boy could easily hide. He confided in Richard how he had confronted his fears and his longings there. He had brought books that challenged his mind, studying languages and reading the works of Bradbury and Tolkien—imagining himself anywhere but in his lonely mountain town. He had written those dreams down in his journals and drawn creatures both beautiful and monstrous in the margins. And especially, he had explored his own body, stripping himself naked and inflicting both pleasure and pain on the flesh that seemed so eager for all of it. He would purposefully press the sharp rocks into his arms, legs, buttocks, and scrotum until tears ran from his eyes. He would tease and explore and stroke his tender flesh until it responded with ecstasy, and then he would stare, fascinated by the pearly semen that dripped from the lichen-covered rocks.

The stone fortress was the perfect sanctuary for a lonely and sad boy, desperately dreaming of a world outside of the one he had been born into.

Richard climbed to his feet and saw Justin there now, huddled low among the rocks, looking as young as the day they met. The boy cowered in the rock alcove as if he was confused about not only how he had gotten there, but about who he was.

Howard's invitation has stripped even more from him than it has from me, Richard thought.

Before Justin could get his bearings, and before he could react and decode in his mind who this man was standing above him, Richard dropped to his knees, next to the boy he had loved so much that summer so long ago, and folded him into his arms.

Richard let out a desperate sound as he realized that yes—this was not a ghost he was holding. The boy in his arms was the one he remembered. He was alive! His shoulders were firm! He could smell the boy's skin, and (oh god!) he could feel the boy's arms that were wrapping themselves around him now with an intensity and a quivering need that tore loose sobs from Richard.