Spirit (14 page)

He twisted around on the bed until he faced the other way, and as I slipped my mouth around his cock, he did the same to me. This time we knew what we would find, what to expect. We even knew a bit of the responses we would receive, one to the other. This time we were not traveling blind. We had fed from each other before. And that knowledge, that familiarity, made the coupling more deeply satisfying, and yet, more
urgent;
more exciting
,
and yet more
trusting.
It made it—a
comfort.

And exciting as hell.

A beautiful eternity later, our juices spilled, our thirsts slaked, we fell asleep.

The night slipped by us unnoticed, unheard. We lay in each other’s arms, spent and happy.

It was Timmy’s screaming that finally woke us up.

S
TARTLED
OUT
of our minds by that piercing knife of sound emanating from the baby monitor and stabbing out across the room, we flew from the bed and hastily donned our shorts after scrambling around and bumping heads a couple of times trying to find where we’d tossed them. Once that was sorted out and we were halfway decent, we took off running down the hall to Timmy’s room. Even through a two-inch oak door, we could hear him screaming a high-pitched wail of a screech that made the little hairs on the back of my neck dance around. It was the creepiest sound I had ever heard.

We barged through Timmy’s door side by side, and once inside, we stopped so quickly that Sam’s feet would have flown out from under him if I hadn’t caught him by the elbow to keep him upright.

The first thing I saw was Thumper sitting up in the middle of the bed. And when I say sitting up, I mean
sitting up.
She was perched on her butt, her little front legs held high and waving around. She was panting her laughing pant, pink tongue flopping around all over the place at one end and little brown tail flopping around all over the place at the other end.

One happy-ass dog.

I only tore my eyes from Thumper when a hand came up in front of my face with a pointing finger poking out of one end of it. It was Sam’s hand, Sam’s finger. “Look,” he said. “Look at that.”

I followed the pointing finger and spotted Timmy standing on the stuffed chair in the corner. He had his arms straight out to his sides like Jesus Christ on the cross, only Jesus Christ never wore rocket-ship pj’s, at least not in the paintings I’ve seen.

Timmy seemed to have landed himself in the middle of a wind tunnel. His pajamas were flapping around his little body like a flag in a typhoon. I could actually hear the fabric whapping against itself. Timmy’s mutilated hair was all over the place, whipping this way and that, slapping him in the face one second and blowing straight up into the air the next. While Timmy’s eyes were bright and fearless as he squinted into the wind, there were tears skittering horizontally across his face, first heading for his hairline, then sliding toward his nose as the gale-force wind kept shifting from one direction to the other.

Timmy’s cheeks were pruning and undulating like an astronaut’s cheeks when he’s sitting in one of those centrifugal force machines down at NASA. With his cheeks slammed back like that by the force of the wind and his lips pushed back and out of the way, every one of Timmy’s tiny baby teeth were on full display and a pretty good river of spit was sliding across his face mixing with the tears.

The kid was a mess.

Oh, and did I mention he was laughing? That was the horrible screeching sound we had heard, the happy wail of a four-year-old screaming in euphoria, just so goddamn happy he couldn’t hold it in. While the gale tossed him back and forth, damned near knocking him out of the chair every now and then, Timmy howled with laughter and wailed and giggled and sputtered, and if he didn’t stop soon, I was pretty sure he would probably pee in his pants—and in my chair. And all the time he was wailing and laughing, he held his arms straight out to either side as if begging for more.

The boy was fearless.

But where was the wind coming from? Nothing else in the room was moving. Even the curtains were hanging limp and still. What the fuck?

I was so shocked I couldn’t think straight. It took a minute for me to realize Sam was saying something.

“What?” I yelled over the roar of the wind. “What did you say?”

When Sam didn’t answer, I tore my eyes from Timmy long enough to see what he was doing.

And when I
did
see what he was doing, I couldn’t believe it. There was a grin splitting Sam’s face wide open. He was watching the kid laughing and chortling, and when Sam turned his eyes to me, I guess the shocked expression on my face really cracked him up. Sam bent over and slapped his knee like some old guy who’s just been told a really good Social Security joke.

“He’s playing with him,” Sam said, pointing at Timmy again, snorting with laughter. “Look. Don’t you see? He’s playing with him.”

I gawked at Sam like he had just sprouted a pineapple out of his forehead. “What are you talking about? Who? Who’s playing with him?”

Sam was laughing so hard now he had snot sliding out of his nose. But he wasn’t laughing at me anymore. He was laughing at Timmy. He was laughing
with
Timmy.

Jesus, could these two get any happier?

“The ghost,” Sam gasped, tears squirting from his eyes, giggling like a four-year-old, giggling like Timmy. “The ghost is making him laugh. Don’t you see? The ghost is playing with him!”

I followed his pointing finger back to Timmy and just stood there watching him.

In the middle of everything that was happening to him, Timmy managed somehow to spot me across the room. He stood there, buffeted by the wind. And while his pajamas whipped around him and his hair flew every which way, he erupted once again into a merry, tinkling laugh and waved hello with both hands. Just waved and waved and giggled and laughed.

Sam waved back. A minute later, with a dawning grin creeping across my face, I hesitantly returned Timmy’s wave. It was impossible not to. He looked so happy.

And the moment the first chuckle escaped my lips, the wind stopped.

Just like that.

The room fell suddenly silent. Timmy’s laughter died. His face instantly sobered. Even his flapping pj’s settled limp and still around his body.

It was the saddest thing I had ever seen.

“Don’t go,” Timmy whispered to the room around him. Then he turned his eyes to Sam and me. He hiccupped and wiped the tears and slobber of laughter off his face with the sleeve of his pajamas. Thumper whimpered from the bed.

“Don’t go, indeed,” Sam muttered, taking my hand, still staring at the boy.

Together we strode to Timmy and scooped him up off the chair. Just as he began to cry.

“Make him come back. That was fun,” Timmy sniffled, wrapping his arms around my neck and laying his head on my chest. Sam stroked the boy’s back under his pajama top and buried his face in Timmy’s chopped up hair. His other hand came up to caress the side of my face.

“Who, baby?” Sam asked softly. “Make
who
come back? Who were you having fun with?”

Timmy gave a long, shuddering sigh, and said, “Daddy.”

T
IMMY
WAS
screaming again. This time it was a normal four-year-old’s scream (they do it a lot, I was learning), and it was directed at the gaming monitor in the sunroom. He was taking my most recently released video game,
Killer Jeeps,
out for a spin. It was the simplest game I had designed, a driving game, perhaps the only game suited for a little kid because of the ease of the controls. The label said it was rated for teens because of a few bloodthirsty monsters scattered around here and there. But hey, since Timmy wasn’t squeamish about dealing with a real ghost, I figured he was perfectly capable of whomping ass with a digitally enhanced homicidal maniac or two.

Timmy had three pillows stuffed under his butt so he could see over the edge of my desk. Thumper was sitting at his side, craning her neck and staring at the screen. She growled every time one of the monsters showed up. Timmy’s happy screams were interspersed with an occasional hoot of laughter. He was having fun. He was liking the shit out of those monsters.

Sam and I were in the backyard just on the other side of the sunroom windows where we could both see Timmy and get to him at a moment’s notice if the need arose. We were speaking softly and discussing just what we were going to do about the fact that Timmy thought the ghost of his father was hanging around the house.

While I wielded the garden hose, spraying my beloved trees and flowers so they wouldn’t shrivel in the heat, Sam rattled on about the ghost and the fact that he thought Timmy was absolutely right in his suspicions. I didn’t. And I said so every time I opened my mouth. Even I was getting tired of hearing my own denials. Perhaps the largest obstacle to my believing Timmy’s dad was haunting the joint was the fact that I simply couldn’t bring myself to believe Paul was actually dead. It seemed to me if the man had died, someone would have mentioned it by now.

However, ghosts were not the only things on our minds. Sam and I were constantly reaching out to each other too. Touching. Caressing. Flirting. I was nuts about Sam, and God help me, I was pretty sure he was nuts about me too. Neither of us really saw that coming, that intense attraction, so we were still tap dancing around the reality of it a bit, not sure where it all would end or how far we would be willing to let it take us. All I knew was I enjoyed being with Sam, and he didn’t seem too annoyed about being around me either.

It had been a week since we first made love, and we were sleeping together now on a regular basis. We still played the chaste uncles around Timmy, but he wasn’t dumb enough not to get a whiff of what was going on now and then. I caught more than one snicker on Timmy’s face on those few occasions when I glanced at him out of the blue. I was seriously contemplating sitting the kid down and explaining to him that Sam and I were an item, so if he inadvertently caught us sneaking a smooch now and then, he should just ignore it. But I wasn’t sure if adults actually did that with four-year-olds. Not having any kids of my own, I was in unexplored territory here. So was Sam. Besides, I didn’t want to
presume
that Sam and I were an item unless I talked it over with Sam first. In spite of all the clandestine smooching going on, he might be of a differing opinion. And boy, wouldn’t
that
break my heart.

Still, I had to admit we had more pressing matters to worry about than our puny little love affair, no matter
how
hot that affair was.

During the past week, I had fielded two more phone calls from my sister, and so far, she still had no inkling Sam was in the house. I was beginning to feel sneaky.

Sam was still gaga over the whole haunted house thing. Couldn’t stop chattering about it. He probably loved spooky movies too.

“I can’t get over that wind blowing around him the other night. Did you see it, Jason? What the heck was it?”

I was still just as flabbergasted about it as Sam. If I had known Sally’s house had a resident ghost, I probably would never have bought the place. Maybe. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Timmy was the only object in that room the wind touched. Did you notice? Nothing else moved.”

Sam and I had been beating the subject to death ever since it happened. You would think we’d get tired of talking about it. But no, here we were, getting excited all over again and blathering on and on and on.

“And what about Thumper?” Sam asked for the twentieth time. “Did you see her begging? Who was she begging to and what was she begging for? A Milk-Bone from beyond the grave?”

The sun was beating down like a forest fire. We would have to go inside soon before I keeled over from heat prostration. “Stop talking about graves! I don’t care what you think or what Timmy says, Paul isn’t dead. He took a powder to get away from my bitch of a sister. That’s all. One of these days, he’ll show up at the door asking to see his son.”

Sam smiled a wise smile. There was a little bit of sad in that smile as well. “I think he already did. In fact, I think he blew him a kiss.” After a beat, he added, “He just wrapped it up in a tornado first.”

I smiled, remembering Timmy’s laughter that night. “The kid really loved it, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, well, he’s a kid. I personally would have been in cardiac arrest after the first puff of air blew up my rooster bloomers.” Sam stuck his face into one of my tree roses and inhaled the scent. “How’s your new phone working?” He seemed to be asking the blossoms.

“Great. Don’t stomp on it.”

Sam held his hands up in the air like he was stopping a bus. “Boy, make one little mistake and you hear about it the rest of your life. Grouch.”

I laughed.

I watched Sam sniffing at the flowers. There was a lazy smile on his face that was very attractive. His hair was damp at the back of his neck from his sweat. We had been working in the yard for over an hour.