Hole: A Ghost Story Read online

  Dean’s face was covered in blood, and both his eyes were bright red. The veins in the older man’s temples stood out like scrawling blue worms. They were so swollen and knotted they looked like they were about to pop.

  Finally, Steve lowered his hand.

  “Where’s Hank?” he asked, surprised how level and strong his voice sounded.

  “Upstairs,” Dean answered mildly. “You distracted me when you pulled in the driveway. He got away and ran up there. I don’t think it’s going to do him any good, though.” Dean glanced up the stairs, still smiling. “In fact, I think he might be dead already.”

  “No more, Dean. This is it. It’s finished,” Steve said.

  Dean laughed, looking from the stairs to his brother. “Really?”

  Steve nodded.

  “When did you grow a pair?” When Steve didn’t respond, he cocked his head to one side. “You’re my brother, so I’ll give you one chance. Back off right now. Our distraught brother-in-law is committing suicide tonight, and that’s all you need to know. You mind your business like a good little faggot, and maybe you’ll live to suck cock another day.”

  “No,” Steve said.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Then it looks like I’m finally going to skullfuck you like I’ve been promising all these years.” Dean held up a finger, eyes flashing like he’d just had a brilliant idea. “Hey! Maybe I’ll pile the two of you on top of one another and fuck both your corpses! How’s that sound?”

  “I’m not afraid of you anymore,” Steve said, and he smiled because he realized it was true. Now that he had committed himself, whether he lived or died, the fear was gone. There was only grim resolve.

  Steve narrowed his eyes and made a sweeping gesture with his arms, putting all his strength into one epic attack. He knew he would only get one shot at his demented sibling, and he spent the sum of his power on it.

  Dean flinched as the photos on the walls, the dining room chairs, the silverware and dishes and all the little glass knickknacks and home furnishings in the immediate vicinity converged on him at once, moving with sudden deadly velocity. Steve even managed to fling some small kitchen appliances at him.

  He propelled them all at the monster he called his brother, firing them from the cannon of his soul.

  For half a second, Steve Klegg marveled at his own power--

  --and then great black sunflowers exploded in his vision.

  Something in his brain had ruptured.

  Mother said once— on one of the rare occasions that Dean had pushed her past her limits— that she’d considered aborting him after she left the sorry son-of-a-bitch who’d sired him. This was when Dean joined the military. He’d enlisted rather than go to jail on drug possession charges but went AWOL shortly after, shaming the man who’d adopted him.

  You should have done it, Ma, Steve thought bitterly. You should have aborted all three of us! There would have been a lot less misery in the world!

  Dean reacted instinctively, deflecting the hail of projectiles whistling toward him. For a moment, the interior of the Stanford home was like a hurricane in a bottle. The windows exploded outwards. The chairs flew apart. Glass shards from all the shattered picture frames and ashtrays and knickknacks peppered the wallpaper.

  Steve was thrown into the air sideways, his lanky body crashing into the upper kitchen cabinets before being flung violently into the den.

  Flying debris caromed off the walls and tumbled to the floor. Then, stillness. Forks and spoons were embedded in the plasterboard. The wind blew in the broken windows, making the tattered curtains billow.

  Dean cautiously straightened, impressed by his younger brother’s display of power. He surveyed the destruction around him, brushing bits of broken glass and splintered wood from his hair. He never knew Little Stevie had it in him!

  It’ll have to be a fire now, Dean thought, glancing toward his brother, who lay motionless in the doorway of the den.

  Dean had planned to force Hank to slash his own wrists, just like his poor flaky sister had. It was murder, he knew, but it wouldn’t be the first time Dean had killed. Sometimes sacrifices had to be made.

  There was too much destruction now, however. Suicide would not explain the wreckage all around him.

  He heard a thump from upstairs.

  Not dead yet?

  He couldn’t take any chances.

  Straightening his jacket, Dean trod across the broken furnishings that littered the dining room floor. He paused at the foot of the stairs, ever the cautious one. He listened for a moment. When he felt certain that his brother-in-law wasn’t going to ambush him from some hiding place at the top, he started up the stairs. As he climbed, he wondered what Hank would do when he got up there. Cry? Beg for his life? He felt a pleasant pressure in his crotch.

  Dean reached down and touched himself.

  He was rigid.

  He tittered at his own sexual arousal. He didn’t actually intend to rape either of their dead bodies. He’d learned his lesson with that stupid cunt in Houston, the one who’d tried to blackmail him. He thought he was going to prison over that one for sure, but he’d finally managed to convince investigators he’d left the hotel an hour or two before she swallowed all those pills. He’d gotten away with it, though the scandal had ruined any chance he might have had of making it big on the Glory to God network. The Rises had washed their hands of him.

  Still, the thought of such defilement never failed to get him excited. It was the ultimate power trip. There was no degradation more profound.

  As he climbed the stairs, he was careful not to touch the railing. He didn’t want to leave any fingerprints.

  That was one of the advantages of psychokinesis: little forensic evidence.

  33.

  Hank raised his head when Dean stepped into the bathroom. He didn’t have the strength to be afraid, but that wasn’t too surprising. He was almost bled out now. His lap and the carpet beneath him were soaked in his blood. There was so much, it made a squishy sound when he moved.

  He wouldn’t have believed there was that much blood inside a human body if he hadn’t seen it for himself, but apparently there was. There were gallons of the red stuff inside a person. He looked like a bit player in an 80’s slasher movie. Blood dripped from his fingertips. His crotch was sopping.

  Dean stopped in the doorway and looked down at him with a strange expression. It wasn’t angry or threatening. It was more of an expression of satisfaction. He’s smiling like the cat that got the cream, Hank’s granny would have said.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Hank asked. His voice was weak, exhausted. He’d always feared—when his mind turned to such morbid thoughts—that death would be a painful affair, but it didn’t hurt much at all. The wounds in his shoulder, the gash in his belly, they all seemed far away. He was just tired. He wanted to shut his eyes and go to sleep.

  There wasn’t much fear either. None of this seemed real. Dean… death… Maybe it was a dream, and in dying, he would wake up. He would wake up and all would be right in the world again, Mary sleeping on her side in the bed next to him, her dark hair spread out on the pillow, the sane light of day filtering in through their bedroom curtains. The blanket warm and cozy. The bare skin of his feet brushing against the bare skin of hers.

  It was a comforting thought.

  Dean grinned down at him. He had the same dark eyes Mary had. Strange eyes. Almost black. They were rimmed red, now, though. Whatever it was he could do--his strange powers-- it had ruptured all the capillaries in the sclera. His gaze was devilish, his entire lower face covered in a crackling glaze of dried blood. The veins in his temples were standing out too, pulsing and purple. Maybe his entire head would pop in a moment like a big rancid zit and spill out all the rotten stuff he’d kept hidden in there all these years.

  Dean had attended Hank’s wedding. Dean and his family had visited on holidays and special occasions. They’d never been close, the two of them. Dean’
s had never lived nearby, and the two men had little in common, but they had always been coupled to one another, even if it was tenuous, by the connection they shared with Mary.

  And here they were now, the threads of their fates tangled in a snarled Gordian knot, one that Dean intended to solve, Alexander-like, with one final stroke.

  Hank expected anger, hatred… but he only felt regret.

  He wished he had the strength to resist his brother-in-law. Justice for this wolf in sheep’s clothing was long overdue.

  “Be still and know that I am God,” Dean whispered.

  Hank felt that terrible, invisible force seize him around the throat. His breath was cut off. He was shoved against the wall behind him, lifted just a little off the floor. Blood throbbed inside his skull as the pressure built up. Black spots twinkled in his vision.

  Dean cocked his head to the left, his eyelids narrowing. Red eyes, black corneas. The veins in his temples pulsated. He licked the corner of his lips.

  Hank clawed at the invisible hand squeezing his throat, but there was nothing there, only that weird, magnetic field, like the air had thickened.

  Mary--!

  Blood coughed from the drain in the tub then, black and putrid. It speckled the mirror and tiles. Even over the rushing in his ears, Hank heard the pipes gurgling, thudding inside the walls. It sounded like something powerful was racing through the lines.

  Blood blasted from the drain, blood and scum and all manner of filth, all the nastiness that people scrub from their flesh every day. It geysered from the drain, a torrent of muck, black as sin. It rose up, a trembling and gelid tower almost eight feet high, full of hair and shit and piss and cum, and then it collapsed into the tub with a dense and meaty splash, some of it lapping over the rim.

  Spplluuussshh!

  Dean stepped back in surprise, his eyes widening.

  Hank slid down the wall, gasping, as the invisible force released its grip on his throat. He turned his head and, through the dark spots stippling his vision, saw a human-like form begin to rise from the pool of filth rippling in the bathtub.

  “No,” Dean said.

  It was skeletal and hideous at first, the human figure rising from the tub, but then the fluid filth congealed, color running across its surface like light glinting on a bubble, and its features began to fill out.

  As the protean mass shifted and surged, tangled human hair migrated to the scalp. The eye sockets sank in, then filled with waxy soap scum, and suddenly there were two human eyes blinking out at the men in the bathroom, or at least an eerie approximation of human eyes, and all too familiar to the men standing nearby.

  “Mary,” Hank croaked. “Oh, God, baby!”

  “No!” Dean cried in horror, looking frightened for the first time, unsure and ashamed.

  The thing that looked like his wife—wet, black, bloody, tangled—turned its head and regarded Hank for a moment, its feelings, if it had any, writ inscrutably on its half-formed features.

  Then it turned to fix its sibling with its hideous gaze. More blood and filth erupted from the drain and it pulled the matter into its form. The revenant solidified. It stepped from the tub. First the left foot, then the right. Slowly, the wavering black mass put itself between Hank and his attacker.

  “Abomination!” Dean condemned. “Unclean spirit!”

  “No,” the terrible thing replied. Its voice was the gurgle of dirty water swirling down a dark drain, bubbly and inhuman. “You!” Then it raised one spindly and rippling arm and pointed an accusing finger.

  Dean howled and lashed out at the creature with his power.

  Hank winced as the pressure of Dean’s attack pressed him back against the wall.

  For a moment, the glittering revenant fell beneath that force, its form threatening to lose coherence, slumping a little like a wax doll sagging beneath a rush of hot air, but then it gathered itself and stepped forward.

  “Can’t… hurt me… anymore,” it gurgled. “Already dead.”

  Dean shrieked, his eyes so wide they looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets. Blood spurted from both nostrils as he released another great bolt of psychic energy.

  The thing that rose from the drain swept its hand to one side like it was batting a fly. Dean’s second attack was turned, shattering the mirror over the tub, wrenching the shower door from its hinges, shattering the commode. The walls of the bathroom groaned and fissures like black lightning bolts raced up the plasterboard.

  Dean put his hands to the sides of his face, pressing his attack. One of the veins in his temple popped, and a jet of blood sprayed up and to the left.

  The thing walked forward, pushing into the onslaught like it was a strong wind. As it leaned into the invisible force, it grew more solid, more human. “You know… what’s really sad?” it asked, and it wasn’t the voice of a horror show monster anymore. It was Mary’s voice. Mary’s sweet, contralto voice. “Despite everything you did to me, I still loved you. Do you know what it’s like to have your heart torn apart like that?”

  Mary reached out, placed her palm on his chest. Inside his rib cage, Dean’s heart exploded.

  Dean stared at her in disbelief, his teeth bared, his eyes bulging. Then he fell.

  He was dead before he hit the floor.

  “Now you do,” Mary said softly.

  She blinked at the body lying agape at her feet. His eyes had gone dull, his mouth lax.

  She didn’t look triumphant or even pleased at the sight, only pitying.

  Then she turned to her husband.

  34.

  Hank had struggled to his feet. Holding his guts in one hand, he stumbled toward her. His face was white from blood loss, his eyes sunk in and bruised. He fell on one knee and put his arms around her hips. “Baby, I’m so sorry—“

  Mary plucked his arms from around her. “We don’t have time for this,” she said. “I can’t keep myself together much longer.” She helped him to his feet. “Just hold me, Hank. Hurry. I want to feel your arms around me one last time.” He embraced her, and she tucked her cheek against his chest.

  Yes, this wonderful feeling… nothing else mattered.

  Mary opened her mouth to speak, pulling away from him a little to do so, but whatever it was she was going to say, it didn’t part her lips. There was a hole behind her husband, floating in midair. Not a dark one this time. A bright one, full of light, like summer sunlight reflecting off a field of wildflowers.

  So beautiful!

  It was pulling her toward it.

  She wondered what could be so wonderful and pure that it would give off such a glorious radiance.

  Mary thought, If I go there, I’ll know.

  Epilogue

  “To Jim,” Hank said gravely, and the four men standing on his back deck echoed his toast, raising their beers in the air.

  “It’s so pretty out here in the fall,” Steve remarked, after slurping down some of his beer. His eyes were still red and swollen. He’d cried all through his father’s funeral service.

  Mary’s brother looked so fragile, even now, a year after Mary’s suicide.

  Hank was glad that Steve had gotten back together with his boyfriend Preston. Steve’s lover had returned to his side after the “incident” last summer, had nursed him back to health. Hank wasn’t sure Steve would have pulled through if it weren’t for the older man’s dedication and love.

  Little Stevie...

  His brother-in-law still needed a cane to get around, and the right side of his face was visibly distorted by the stroke he’d suffered, but the slackness in his eyelid and the corner of his mouth was a lot less apparent since the last time Hank had seen him. And his speech was almost completely normal again. Preston might follow him around like a fussy nanny, but he was good medicine for the little fellow.

  Steve blinked thoughtfully at the woodlands surrounding Hank’s new home, a cabin Hank had bought in May, after selling the house on Birch Drive. “It’s so peaceful here,” Steve sighed. “I think hea
ven will be like this. Just... peaceful.”

  “I like it,” Hank replied, surveying his property from the rail of his deck. He had a content expression on his face. He was content. “I know it’s not much. Kind of a fixer upper, but I couldn’t stay in the old house any more. Too many… ghosts.”

  Hank and Steve shared a secretive look, and Steve smiled crookedly.

  Hank had almost died as well.

  Sometime during the final confrontation upstairs, Steve had regained consciousness and dragged himself through the debris littering the floor to call for help. How he found Hank’s cell phone in all that mess, Hank would never know. Probably some element of the strange gift Steve shared with his siblings. Miraculously, the cell phone had still been functional, and Steve had managed to dial 911 and summon paramedics.

  Hank had lost over six pints of blood, a little over half the blood in his body. He coded once en route to the hospital, but the paramedics brought him back.

  Dean was dead long before the ambulance arrived.

  The detectives didn’t know what to make of the scene—the blood, the gore, the rampant destruction. There was an investigation, but the police department finally bought Hank and Steve’s story.

  They told the cops that Dean had gone crazy following the confrontation at Mary’s funeral service. Hank had threatened to expose his sexual crimes, and Dean went on a rampage, destroying Hank’s house and nearly killing both of them with a butcher knife before falling to the floor dead. The autopsy confirmed their story. Dean Klegg had died of a heart attack.

  They even passed the lie detector tests. They weren’t, after all, actually lying.

  Dean’s wife had sued Hank for wrongful death, but the civil case was dropped after Steve threatened to reveal all the mental and sexual abuse he and his sister had suffered at her husband’s hands over the years.