Chapter 10 - Gift Exchange.

Brian was conflicted.

Now that he’d figured out that his housemate wasn’t a ghost after all, he didn’t know what to do about it. He was surprised he wasn’t more freaked out about the situation, but his confusion seemed to edge out his outrage. On the one hand, he had become kind of attached to the IDEA of his friendly ghost boy. It had been kind of fun thinking that he was living in a haunted house and that his ghost was a sweet, helpful, little sprite. He’d gotten used to thinking about the situation in that light and had been almost comforted by knowing he wasn’t alone in the big, old house. Brian also owed his ‘ghost’ for all the kind things he’d done since Brian moved in, like taking care of him while he was sick and saving Gus from getting hurt.

But, on the other hand, the kid WAS freeloading in Brian’s house, which rankled. Not to mention that Brian was pissed off he’d fallen for everyone’s hype and therefore believed the stupid ghost stories for so long. The kid had to have known that fact and milked it, while still taking advantage of the free room and board. Brian figured that, for legal reasons, if nothing else, he probably should take action and kick his stowaway out.

More than anything else, though, Brian was mostly just curious about the boy. He’d heard all the gossip about the Taylor family from his various visits to Sue Ann’s grocery and the times he’d gone next door to help Penny out. He had a lot of empathy for a kid who’d had to suffer through life with an abusive drunk for a father, so he could understand that the kid was traumatized and shy. But why had the boy just disappeared for all those years? Had he been holed up in the house all that time? Why? And why had the kid put up with it? Even more strange, why hadn’t he come out of hiding once his abusive prick of a father was dead? The mystery of the story was eating at Brian on a daily basis.

As conflicted as he was, Brian couldn’t make up his mind what to do about his ‘guest’. So, he didn’t do anything right away. Except for making sure he had more food in the house than he’d previously stocked, because, the kid had to be practically starving. He didn’t think it likely the boy ever left the house - if he had, somebody would have seen him before now. And, though it seemed a good bet that he’d had a large stockpile of food saved up in that freezer, now that that was all gone, he’d be totally reliant on Brian’s generosity.

It really didn’t feel like that big of an imposition to make sure there was plenty to eat around the house. In fact, he started making a point of actually cooking - well, to the extent Brian Kinney was capable of cooking, that is. He begged lasagnes and casseroles from Penny, Sue Ann, even Debbie. Those ladies were thrilled by the idea of Brian actually eating their creations and gladly provided as much as he could cram in his fridge. These were then heated up and apportioned out into single serving-sized containers in the fridge for later. When they would regularly disappear - the empty tupperware turning up a day or two later in the dishwasher - Brian knew all was well. He also made a point of always having extra fruit in the big blown-glass bowl he kept on the kitchen counter, plenty of beer in the fridge and he’d even started stocking more of those horrid cardboardy frozen dinners in the big chest freezer in the basement. And, just to round out the nutritional requirements for the household, he took to making his usual salads twice as big as what he could eat himself and making sure that the ‘leftovers’ were prominently displayed at the front of the fridge shelves.

But other than making sure his housemate was fed, Brian didn’t really know what other actions to take. It couldn’t be healthy for a youth that age to be hidden away in the fucking basement 24/7. Didn’t the boy need some kind of actual human contact? The few times the kid had interacted with Gus or himself over the past weeks, didn’t seem like nearly enough. And didn’t he need other shit besides food. Toiletries? Clothing? Just normal human shit? As far as Brian could tell, the boy had nothing to do all day other than watch him, and besides the fact that was inherently creepy, it wasn’t healthy either. Brian began making note of all the other things he thought the kid might need and adding them to his own shopping lists.

The next biggest consideration, though, was how Brian could help remedy all these deficiencies without scaring the kid off? Based on the fact that Justin hadn’t yet felt comfortable coming out of hiding, despite the fact that Brian had been in the house for a couple months, it seemed like he must be either incredibly shy or incredibly traumatized. Or both. They’d been operating under this unspoken truce for all that time, where Brian ignored the kid’s presence and simply let him stay hidden. It didn’t matter that Brian had thought his resident was incorporeal. Justin could have come out and cleared up that misconception at any time. The fact that he had let Brian go on thinking he wasn’t real for so long, told Brian that Justin really wasn’t interested in getting formally acquainted. But Brian was determined to change that.

He knew he’d have to go slowly at first, though. Justin wasn’t going to just open the door for him if Brian walked up to the crawl space hatchway - which is where Brian assumed the kid was holed up - and knocked. He was going to have to coax him out gradually. Get Justin to trust him. And then, once he had the boy out of that hidey hole, Brian could talk to him and hopefully figure out what to do next.

To that end, Brian made a special trip into Pittsburgh for some supplies that couldn't be purchased at Sue Ann’s grocery mart. He started at the mall where he hit some stores he normally wouldn't be caught dead in and came out with a nice assortment of clothes he thought a twenty-year-old would enjoy. He had no idea what size to get. All he had to go on were the few pictures he'd seen of the boy - all of which were more than three years old - and for all he knew Justin had grown half a foot taller and now weighed three hundred pounds. Although he hoped that wasn't the case. It would be beyond sad if that gorgeous young twink in the picture he had next to his computer no longer existed. But, since he was forced to guess at sizes, he opted for items that stretched or were baggy and hoped the kid wouldn't mind.

He also visited the bookstore, a pharmacy and an art supply store. He hesitated outside the Apple Store but then decided, ‘What The Hell’ and went in. By the time he’d reemerged, he’d added the latest tablet computer to the haul of purchases he was toting around. When he couldn’t think of anything else that a twenty-something boy would want or need, he finally headed back to West Virginia.

Back at home, Brian stowed the majority of his booty in his room. He didn't want to shock his Ghost Boy by giving it all to him at once. His plan was to start out small. And the first step was to take the beautiful drawing of himself and Gus, which the ‘ghost’ had given to his son, put it in the frame he’d purchased, and display it along with a tin full of new drawing pencils and a fresh sketchpad on the kitchen table. He also added a yellow sticky note to the top of the tin that read, ‘Thank you’. Then he turned off the light in the kitchen and headed up to bed, reining in his curiosity about what his resident spook would think of the gift.

When Brian got up the next morning, he was happy to see that the art supplies had disappeared. In their place, Justin had left him another drawing - this one showed Brian dressed in old, holey jeans, a rumpled wife-beater tee, and work boots. There was a tool belt slung low across his hips. He had work gloves on his hands and was carrying a saw. His hair was standing on end from where he had pushed it back when it got sweaty. You could even see the beads of sweat dripping down his neck, cutting through the layer of grime that had accumulated there while he was working. He looked a mess. But the title of the picture - written in precise lettering in the lower right-hand corner - was, ‘Beautiful’. It made Brian smile.

“Thank you, Justin,” Brian yelled to the walls, more impressed than he could say. “This is . . . amazing . . . artwork. You’re incredibly talented. You made me look hotter than even I imagined I could be.”

Brian thought he could hear a very muted laugh coming from the corner of the kitchen, although it was so quiet it was almost inaudible. He made a mental note to go examine that corner of the room more carefully at a later time. Considering how stealthily Justin moved around the house, Brian was sure the boy had more than one entry to his hiding place. But, all that could come later. Much later. Searching for a way into his ghost’s lair was step number three in Brian’s plan - maybe four - and he was still working on Step One. The ‘Making Friends and Building Trust’ Step. Which, judging by his new portrait, was going pretty well.

Over the course of the next few nights, Brian continued to leave small gifts out on the kitchen table. He started off simply, beginning with some additional art supplies – a mixed box of charcoals and pastels, an artist quality pigmented ink pen set, even some fun-looking prismacolor markers. Based on the two samples of Justin's artwork he’d seen so far, he knew these would all be a big hit. If the kid truly hadn't been out of that hole in a couple years, he had to be pretty short on supplies, so Brian assumed that the drawing materials would be highly prized. He had wanted to add in some materials for other art mediums, but he didn't know what the boy was into so he figured he’d just wait on that stuff till later.

Once he’d exhausted his cache of art supplies, Brian opted for leaving some of the books he’d picked up. He figured reading would at least give the kid something to do other than watching him all day. Since he had no idea of the kid’s taste in literature, he’d picked a wide variety of books, including both fiction and nonfiction, a mystery or two (Brian's personal favorite), a quirky-looking humor selection by a well-known celebrity, and even one trashy, soft porn, gay romance novel that he'd heard Emmett gushing over for weeks. He hoped the kid would get a kick out of that one.

Along with his nightly gifts, Brian made a point of always setting out something substantial for the kid’s dinner. He even routinely added sweets and desserts to the spread, thinking that a twenty year old kid would appreciate the addition, although he himself wouldn’t touch that crap and couldn't believe he actually had a stash of carb-laden junk food in the house. Since all of his offerings disappeared with regularity, though, he figured Justin must have approved of his presents and his meal options.

Every morning, Brian’s generosity was reciprocated by little gifts in return. Mostly these were comprised of drawings or other creations utilizing the art supplies Brian had given his resident artist. It became sort of like an alternative method of communications for them. Brian would always leave little post it notes with comments on his presents, but Justin never wrote back in words. His pictures, on the other hand, were often just as effective at conveying his message. So, when Brian's note advised Justin to help himself to the extra Lemon Bars in the fridge if he wanted more, because Brian didn’t want them around or he’d eat them and ‘blow up like a blimp’, Justin answered with a colorful caricature of Brian as a blimp drifting around the vaulted ceiling in the living room. Or, when he left another note telling Justin he would be gone for two days because he was going to a comic book convention with Michael, he came back to a large ink drawing of himself and Michael dressed in spandex and caped like superheroes. Even better, the morning after he left that trashy gay novel, Justin gifted him back with a gorgeous charcoal drawing of himself, lying in bed, naked, with his sated dick resting, spent, against his stomach. Brian loved it and loved the idea that Justin was indeed watching him at night even better.

When Brian thought they’d developed enough of a rapport with the gift exchange thing, he decided to notch things up another level. Instead of relatively impersonal gifts, he moved on to leaving more suggestive, personal items. The night he set out the new sweats and hoodie he’d picked up, Brian left a note saying that he thought Justin might like these since it was starting to get a bit cold in the evenings. The implication that Brian knew his housemate was human enough to feel the cold, was obvious and intentional. He knew he’d struck a nerve when the clothing was still sitting there untouched the next morning. Brian simply left them there on the table, and added another note that evening saying, ‘Don’t be a twat, Justin. Take the fucking clothes so you don’t freeze to death.’ After thinking about it, he also added a postscript, ‘PS. Ghosts don’t need to eat, don't drink beer, and I've never heard of one that can draw, either.’ The next morning the clothing was gone, and in it’s place was a pencil sketch of the kitchen table showing a bottle of Brian’s favorite brand of beer sitting there with a man’s slender, long-fingered hand curled around it.

“So, we’re finally being honest, eh?” Brian murmured, smiling at the corner of the kitchen where he suspected there was a hidden blond boy watching him from inside the security of his walls. “Good.”

That night Brian left out an assortment of new toiletries including a bottle of shower gel, a new razor and shaving cream, a fresh toothbrush and toothpaste, lotion, and some fluffy new towels. The rattling of water running through the pipes started up within minutes of Brian retreating to his bedroom and carried on for a long, long time. He was surprised the hot water would last that long. And he was glad he’d thought of such a simple, yet well-appreciated, gift.

In the morning, the thank you he found on the table was a beautiful, hand-carved, tiny wooden car. It was obviously carved out of a single piece of the scrap lumber that Brian had discarded from his reno project. It was shaped like a little toy truck, very lovingly detailed and had wheels that actually turned. The perfect finishing touch was a miniature license plate carved on the car’s back bumper that read ‘Gus’. Brian was amazed at the skill and care it had taken to create such a thing, not to mention the time put into it. He knew Gus would love it. Brian loved it too.

It made him even more eager to finally meet the incredible craftsman and artist who had been hidden away for so long in the moldy depths of some ramshackle, dilapidated house in the wilds of rural West Virginia.

When Brian got a call from Penny later in the week, asking him to come over and help her clear some branches that had fallen on her shed after a big storm blew through, he thought he’d take advantage of the opportunity to learn more about his stowaway. Brian promptly agreed to help his neighbor and was over to her place in under an hour. When he arrived, he was surprised to see another car in the driveway and, when the door was opened to him, even more surprised to see Oscar sitting at Penny’s table.

“Thanks for coming over, Brian,” Penny greeted him with her usual friendly, gap-toothed grin. Then she leaned in to murmur more quietly, “Oscar was going to help, but I didn’t want him lifting those heavy branches all by himself, you know.”

“I may be getting a little hard of hearing, woman, but I still have two good eyes and I can tell when someone’s talking about me,” Oscar cautioned with fake anger. “Afternoon, Brian. Care for a mug of coffee before we tackle that mess out in the yard?”

Brian accepted the offered coffee, joining Oscar at the table. Penny puttered around the kitchen, offering to make them food, and otherwise seeing to her men. She seemed flustered by all the maleness in her kitchen. Brian also noted the little, extra touches and attentions the older woman was paying to Oscar. Obviously, there was something more than met the eye going on between the two of them, but Brian didn’t ask because, the only thing more frightening than straight people having sex was OLD straight people having sex. Gross. So he kept his eyes on his coffee cup and tried not to even think about such things. After a few minutes of this, when the oldsters seemed to be done with their strange, hetero, mating displays, Brian finally looked up from his coffee and broached the subject that he’d been hoping to talk about.

“So, I’ve come across a few more things of Justin Taylor’s. A couple of drawings,” Brian ventured, not explaining that the drawings had actually been given to him rather than unearthed in the cleanup process. “He seems like a really good artist.”

“Oh, Lordy, yes. That boy was amazing when it came to getting a person’s likeness down on paper. He was always scribbling away, every time you’d see the boy. He did this one picture of my Roddy . . . Now, where did I put that . . .” Penny scurried away, ruffling through some papers in the big roll-top desk in the corner and eventually coming across what it was she was looking for. “Here it is. That sweet boy drew this of Roddy one afternoon while we were having a cookout. He claimed it was just a doodle, not very good, but I just loved it. It captures Roddy’s sense of humor perfectly. Don’t you agree, Oscar?”

Brian looked at the rough charcoal sketch and was impressed. It really did show the man’s wisecracking nature. And the artist’s use of negative space was inspired. Brian couldn’t believe this had been done by a teenager.

“It’s just a shame what Craig did to that boy. But then again, he was always so hard on him. I think it was because he just never got over what happened with Jennifer,” Penny explained in a hushed voice, looking on the the drawing with a melancholy air.

“I’m sure it was just as hard on Justin - losing your mother at such a young age has to be as difficult, if not more so, than losing a wife,” Brian argued, really not inclined to give an abusive prick like Craig Taylor any leeway.

“I agree with you, son,” Oscar interjected with his fatherly air. “But rightfully or not, Craig always did blame Jennifer’s death on the boy to some extent.” Brian looked at the man with confusion, prompting a fuller explanation. “You see, the weekend that Jennifer and her daughter were killed, Craig had taken Justin to a choir competition over in Wheeling . . .”

“Oh, that boy could sing like a canary,” Penny interrupted, adding her piece to the story. “He had such a sweet voice, you know. But Craig was always so dismissive. Apparently, singing wasn’t manly enough for Craig. It weren’t til the high school choir won that award and got into the state championships that he took it serious, like.”

“Which is why Craig and the boy weren’t in the car with Jennifer and little Molly when they got killed,” Oscar took up the narrative again. “They were in the middle of the competition when Craig got word of the accident. And he always blamed the boy afterwards. I heard him say, many a time, how it was Justin’s fault he wasn’t there and that, if he hadn’t been farting around with the fairy choir boys, he would have been driving that day and he’d have been able to avoid the truck that plowed into their car. Which is a load of horse-pucky, if you ask me. But Craig was always railing on the boy about it nonetheless.”

“Fucking bastard,” Brian mumbled, even more angry at the brute than he had been before. “Blaming his son for something the kid had no control over. Typical.”

“I have to agree with you, Brian. I felt just THAT bad for the boy - hearing Craig telling him over and over it was all Justin’s fault. That he was a ‘bad apple’. A ‘bad seed’. That his mother and sister would be alive if it weren’t for him . . .” Penny shook her head sadly. “That’s what makes it so much sadder that Justin disappeared. With his daddy gone, Justin might have been better off. But now, all that potential is wasted.”

They all turned their eyes towards the beautiful drawing once again. Two of them sadly lamenting the boy they thought was lost and the third becoming more determined than ever to bring his ghost boy back to the world. From what Brian had heard so far, the ‘Bad Seed’ of the family wasn’t the young artist hiding in his walls. The bad one was thankfully dead and Justin would, hopefully, be out of hiding soon.

“Well, enough of this palavering,” Oscar announced, draining the last of his coffee and getting to his feet. “You gonna sit around all day gossiping, or you gonna lend me a hand with those fallen branches, Kinney?”

“Lead the way, Oscar,” Brian handed off his mug to Penny and followed the older man out to the yard, happy to put in a little more labor in exchange for all the additional information he’d gained about his Ghost Boy.