Chapter 15 - Mood Lighting.

Now that Brian had his GhostBoy talking, he figured the rest of his plan should go much more smoothly. He would slowly reaccustom the boy to being around people, get him out of that fucking crawl space he was living in and then . . . Well, Brian hadn’t really thought beyond that point in his plans, but he assumed something would come to him by then. Based on how skittish Justin was, it would likely still be a very long time before Brian got there anyways. He had plenty of time to figure that part out.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” Brian greeted the boy as soon as his ghost had answered the FaceTime call. “You ready to get to work? This fucking novel isn’t going to write itself. And, with all the distractions I’ve had lately, I feel like I’m falling behind.”

Justin’s face, haloed by darkness again, smiled into the camera and the boy nodded his readiness. Brian had his phone set up on the little stand Justin had made for him, which worked perfectly to allow him to FaceTime with the boy at the same time he was writing on the desktop computer. From the picture he was getting on his phone, it looked like Justin was lying down with the tablet propped up on his chest. Brian liked this arrangement, since it allowed him to actually see all of Justin’s face at one time, up close even. He could see the new pillow he’d purchased for the boy the day before was propped behind the boy’s head and covered with the pillowcase from his new set of sheets. So, where was the damned light he’d bought the kid?

“Does the lamp not work?” Brian asked, momentarily distracted from the writing by this collateral question. “You don’t have to sit in the fucking dark all day, you know.”

“It works. I’m just used to it like this, I guess,” his ghost answered, sounding apologetic and maybe a bit guilty.

“Yeah, well, I’m not,” Brian grumbled. “Shit, maybe you are a ghost after all, since all I can see is your head floating around in the darkness. Although I’ve never heard of anyone being haunted via FaceTime before.”

That little joke earned Brian another smile and a tiny breath of laughter. He decided to capitalize on the moment and immediately launched into the question he’d been mulling over about his next chapter. Justin quickly opened up the word processing app in a split screen and the two of them went to town, writing, talking over their ideas, Justin making small editing changes and even adding some of his own ideas. Speaking, instead of typing all their comments via chat, definitely hurried the process along, and they made substantial progress on the next scene. Before too long, the boy was so caught up in the work process that he had lost virtually all of his fear and was talking pretty much regularly.

“You just need one last paragraph there - or even just one sentence - something to tie the theme of the chapter together,” Justin opined, so focused on the document he was reading that his face had lost all self-consciousness.

Brian was momentarily distracted from his writing, captivated by the boy’s intent look and the soft tenor voice which sounded so pleasant, even coming out of the small speaker on his phone. Luckily he caught himself before the ghost noticed the way he’d been gazing at the screen or his silly little smile. He wiped his face blank and tried to return his attention to the work at hand, but it wasn’t easy. There was just something about this shy little twink that seemed to repeatedly sidetrack him. Maybe moving out to the boonies of West Virginia had warped him in some way. Made him go soft. Caused him to grow a twat and turn into a total lesbian . . .

“How’s that?” Justin asked, looking up from the document and smiling directly into the camera with one of THOSE smiles - the one that caused something in Brian’s gut to flip-flop. “I managed to include the same phrase you used in the first paragraph. See how it all ties together? What do you think?”

Brian blinked, breaking the hypnotic pull of the sweet smile, and forced himself to read through the passage the boy had just added.

“Not bad, Ghost,” Brian pronounced proudly. “Not bad at all. And it sets up the beginning of the next chapter perfectly. See, we can have Brett go question the father . . .”

When they finally finished off about an hour later, Brian was impressed with all they’d accomplished. They really did work well together. He thought the kid’s suggestions were pertinent and his writing was stylistically elegant. It was definitely making his book better.

“Let’s call it good for today, Ghost,” Brian suggested, logging out of the document. “I’m starving. And I’ve got a shitload of work I still have to finish on the house today.” Then Brian slipped in the announcement that he’d been holding back. “Oh, by the way, the plumber is coming tomorrow to finish installing all the new fixtures, and he’s probably going to have to get into the crawl space since the outlet to the septic system goes through there. He’s going to be here early, too, so be ready.”

There was complete silence on the other end of the FaceTime call. Brian watched as all the blood rapidly drained from the boy’s face and his eyes got wide with panic. For about half a second, as Justin’s breathing got faster and faster, Brian even worried that the kid might actually hyperventilate and pass out.

“No.” The word, when it came, was uttered so quietly that Brian could barely hear it over the FaceTime connection. But then Justin looked up at Brian with tears brimming in his sapphire blue eyes. “Please don’t do this . . . I . . . I can’t . . . It’s the only place I have . . . Please don’t make me leave. I-I-I can’t leave. I can’t go . . . I have nowhere else . . .”

“Whoa, Justin, slow down. I never said . . .” Brian tried to interrupt but the boy was already off on a tear.

“I know it's your house now. I know I don't have any rights to say anything. And, of course, you wouldn't want someone like ME here . . . After what I've done . . . I'm bad. I've done so many bad things. I’m so bad . . . But that's why I can't leave. I can't go out there. Please don't make me leave, Brian. Please. At least not yet. Not till I . . . Till I figure something out, you know? Please.”

“Justin, I . . .”

“I swear I won’t be a bother to you. You . . . you can take back all these things you bought me and return them for the money. I’m sorry I’m causing you so much trouble . . . Fuck, maybe I should go. You don’t need to deal with my shit . . . I’m so fucking useless. I ruin everything I touch. Why do I even bother. I should just do what my father told me to do and save everyone the trouble of dealing with me for good . . .”

“NO, Justin!” Brian was now the one panicking. “You’re not going to do anything, alright? Fuck your damned father. If you ask me, fathers are the ones who are useless. They just fill your mind with crap that fucks with your head. You’re NOT useless or a bother, okay?”

Brian paused, noting that his little ghost had at least stopped spouting off. Justin was now just lying there, his eyes squeezed shut, sniffling while a stray tear or two leaked from the corners of his eyes every so often. But that was better than the almost hysterical threats.

“Listen, Ghost. Are you listening?” Brian got a tiny nod. “You’re not a bother. You’ve been helping me with my fucking novel, right? How’s that being a bother, huh?” Brian got a half shrug. “And I didn’t say anything about you leaving. If I’d wanted you to leave, I would have said so. All I said was that the plumber needed to get into the damned crawl space. But, fuck it . . . How about if I reschedule with the plumber and see if the electrician can come out tomorrow instead?”

The face on Brian’s phone screen nodded again, still without opening it’s eyes.

“Fine. But you DO know the fucking plumbing needs to be hooked up eventually, right?” Brian asked, receiving no answer at all. “Damn it . . .”

So much for his plan to get a look into the Ghost’s Lair. If the kid freaked out this badly at just the suggestion of a workman going into his hole, there was little likelihood of Brian getting Justin out of there. And what the fuck was all that shit about Justin being useless and bad and a bother? Or his father telling him to off himself? That fucking infuriated Brian. No wonder the kid was a fucking basket case with his father saying shit like that to him. Fucking fathers!

All of a sudden, Brian realized he had reached his limit for emotionally trying twinks for the day. “Well, if I’m going to be ready for the electrician, I’d better get a move on. Later, Ghost,” Brian signed off and quickly disconnected from the FaceTime call without waiting for a response from the boy.

What had he just been thinking about how smoothly his plans were going? Yeah, right.

“Even if it met code - which it doesn’t - there’s no way that old box is going to be sufficient for what this house needs,” Shanti, Brian’s electrical contractor, declared as she looked at the ancient fuse box in the corner of the basement. “First off, you’re going to have to switch to breakers, not fuses, but on top of that, you really need to upgrade to a bigger box with more circuits and a hella lot more amperage. And if you really want to be safe, you might want to consider rewiring - it looks like you’ve still got some old knob-and-tube wiring from back in the 1920’s or so. This stuff is bad news,” the knowledgeable woman asserted, running her hand over some exposed wiring with disdain.

“Shit. That sounds expensive,” Brian fretted.

“Yeah, it’s not cheap, but this old stuff won’t hold up and it’s not safe,” the tall, statuesque blonde woman asserted knowledgeably. “You can’t run modern day appliances - which require a lot more juice to operate than what this wiring is capable of handling - without a major upgrade. And considering the fixtures and appliances you were telling me about, you’re going to need a butt load of juice. If you don’t fix it now, you’re not only looking at a lot more expense down the road, but you’re basically asking for an electrical fire in a year or two. You’re better off just doing it now before you start on the drywalling and finish work.”

Brian exhaled sharply but then squared his shoulders and faced the electrician. “Well, if it has to be done, it has to be done. Let’s just hope I can turn this place around and sell it for enough to cover all this shit.”

“Trust me, you won’t regret it. I can’t believe you haven’t had problems already, considering this old fuse box,” Shanti slammed the small metal door closed and dusted her hands off.

“Well, I don’t have too much hooked up yet. I’m living out of one bedroom, the kitchen and part of an unfinished living room right now,” Brian explained as he turned and led the way back upstairs. “Which is why you’re here. So, what’s the plan?”

Shanti explained that she didn’t have the materials to upgrade the box with her. She’d have to come back the next day with all that. But she did have enough wiring and other stuff in her van to at least get a start on installing some of the new light fixtures Brian had selected. They could also run the high-speed telephone wiring, fiber-optic and coaxial cables which Brian wanted to add for computers and internet and other such modern conveniences.

The homeowner and the electrician spent the rest of the day running wires and installing new fixtures throughout the upstairs and the main floor. With the both of them working together, it wasn’t too difficult, just time consuming. Shanti was right that it was far easier to do this with the walls open to the bare framing. In the few spots where Brian hadn’t yet started his reno work - like the kitchen - it was a lot more difficult, so they saved that for last. In there, they had to fish the new wiring through the closed walls, punching out holes in the old plaster where needed to hook the new wiring into the old, and jury rigging what they could so that Brian would still have a working kitchen until he was ready to start in on the real work in that area.

“Okay, I think that should hold,” Shanti stated, climbing down off the ladder she’d been on to work with the new overhead lighting that Brian had wanted over the island he was installing in the center of the kitchen.

The clear glass pendant lights would look fabulous with the brickwork tile and chrome accents Brian had planned. It had been a bit tricky to get them up though. Good thing his butch electrician was stronger than she looked. And they hadn’t even started on the canister lights that would be over the counters or the huge new exhaust fan which was waiting in the corner of the room. But there was no sense in starting on that stuff until he was ready to replace the cabinets. For now, he’d have to be content just to have the ugly, cheap, old fluorescent ceiling fixture replaced.

“Okay, I think that should be good enough for now, Brian. Although, since we had to splice the new fixture into your old wiring, it’s a little dicey. When you gut this room, we definitely need to replace that old wiring in full. Then you’ll be able to add the rest of the lighting you want in here. I don’t want to hook anything more to this circuit for now or we’ll overload it,” Shanti advised, taking the flashlight from Brian, who’d been holding it so the electrician could see her work better in the failing evening light coming through the windows from outside. “I’m gonna go down and turn the power back on. Cross your fingers that I don’t blow a fuse.”

Brian waited upstairs in the twilight-shaded kitchen, holding his breath and hoping that this would work. As they’d been working, he’d become almost as worried about the state of the house’s wiring as the electrician. The old aluminum wiring was so brittle that it had actually broken in places as they were trying to work on it. The insulation on many sections of wire was also frayed and, in some spots, missing entirely. He now understood Shanti’s earlier comment that it was amazing he hadn’t had more problems already. When the new fixture actually lit up a minute later, Brian was surprised that their jury rigging had worked.

“Well, so far, so good, huh?” Shanti commented, appearing in the entrance to the kitchen with an unsure smile on her face. “So, I think we still have time to get started on those pocket lights for your storage cabinets out in the Greatro . . .”

The electrician’s words were curtailed by an audible popping noise coming from above their heads before the lights throughout the room flickered and then went out. Brian, who’d been just about to flip the wall switch and turn the light off before leaving the room, received a small shock to his hand. It wasn’t enough to do any serious damage, but it hurt like a motherfucker. He and the electrician both started cursing - the foul language coming out of the female electrician surprising even Brian for a moment.

While they were fumbling around in the dark, trying to find the flashlight so they could see what the hell had happened, they heard another series of popping and crackling noises, this time coming from inside the walls. A half a minute later, there was a muffled cry from somewhere downstairs. Before either of them could react to that, though, the first tendrils of acrid smoke reached them, wafting up through the small holes they’d drilled in the kitchen wall.

“Fuck!” Shanti yelled, and ran from the room, flashlight in hand, headed out the front door to her truck where there was a fire extinguisher waiting.

Brian, meanwhile, rushed down the stairs, oblivious to the possibility of any fire. He stumbled around in the dark, almost missing the last riser on the stairs and knocking his shin against the weight bench in the corner of the basement as he tried to feel his way over to the crawl space hatch. Not surprisingly, when he did find the hidden doorway, he couldn’t get it open. His ghost had been holed up in there all day, quietly hidden from the bustle upstairs, and had obviously locked himself in. He pounded on the panelled door, yelling his head off, but there was no response. The electrician, who had no clue what was going on, arrived a minute later, her large, industrial-sized flashlight cutting through the pitch dark of the windowless basement.

“Help me get this fucking hatch open,” Brian ordered, looking frantically around the room in the erratic light from Shanti’s flashlight

Fortuitously, his gaze landed on the big sledgehammer sitting on the floor amid a pile of other tools waiting in the corner. Brian vaulted over the treadmill, seized the tool, and turned back to the crawl space entrance. With half a dozen strong blows, he managed to break through the wooden door, creating a hole big enough to crawl through. He grabbed hold of the flashlight, squirmed his body through the narrow opening and desperately flashed the light around the dank little room he found behind the door.

Inside, crumpled on the floor next to a small table in the corner, was his resident ghost. On the table was the smoldering remains of what looked like it had once been an electric teapot, still hooked up via a timeworn electrical extension cord to an outdated outlet on the wall beside the hatchway. The cord itself was still crackling and sparking. Even as Brian watched, a pile of papers that had been sitting on the table next to the now-melted appliance - maybe some of Justin’s drawings - caught fire as well, adding to the miasma of smoke in the room.

Shanti, who had reached through the broken hatch, undone the latches on the inside and pulled the door all the way open, brusquely stepped past Brian with her fire extinguisher in hand and quickly put out the small fire before unplugging the damaged electrical cord. Brian, however, was oblivious to all of that - he was completely focused on the boy lying in a heap on the floor. He’d dropped the damned flashlight as soon as he found Justin and now couldn’t see anything in the dim blackness of the tiny room, so there was no way of knowing how badly the boy was hurt. All he could do was grip the younger man under his arms and drag the limp body out of the smoke-filled place.

Once he was free from the hole, Brian dropped to his knees and pulled the smaller body into his arms. There wasn’t any more light in the basement than there had been in Justin’s little hole, so he couldn’t see much. What scared him the most was that his hand, which was propping up the boy’s head, had detected a small wet patch on the right side of the younger man’s scalp. That couldn’t be good. His fingertips fumbled around until he managed to locate the pulse throbbing along underneath the kid’s right ear. Which was at least somewhat reassuring. And, before he could get too freaked out, Brian’s GhostBoy began to stir in his arms and make little mewling noises.

“Wha . . . Wha happen . . .” Justin’s voice asked from out of the darkness, the words coming faintly at first and then gaining volume as his anxiety began to take over. “Where . . . where am I? W-what happened?”

“It’s okay, Justin. It’s okay,” Brian shushed him, running his hand through the sweaty hair and down the side of the boy’s face, trying to calm his little stowaway. “There was an electrical fire. We had to break in to put it out and I found you collapsed on the floor. I can’t tell how badly you’re hurt. The lights are all out and I think we fried the fuse box.”

“You two okay there?” Shanti asked, crawling back out of the crawl space hatchway and finally bringing some light to the situation with her trusty flashlight.

Now that he could see what was what, Brian was appalled to find what appeared to be a large gash on the side of Justin’s head. It didn’t seem to be too deep, but it was still oozing blood. Other than that, though, he couldn’t really tell much about the boy’s condition - the kid’s face was grimy and smoke-blackened, so it was impossible to tell if he had any other serious wounds.

“I’m okay, but I think Justin here has had better days. I can’t tell how bad it is though. You better call for an ambulance so we can get him to a hospital and get him checked out,” Brian directed, pulling off his shirt and using it to press against the kid’s broken open head at the same time.

“NO! No hospitals. I can’t . . .” Justin yelled, bolting up into a sitting position and pulling away from Brian’s grasp in one violent motion. “I can’t go to a hospital! I can’t go out there!”

Justin was now on his feet, backing away from Brian and Shanti, stopping only when he came up against the solidity of the door to the garage.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Brian climbed to his own feet and tried to approach the frantic little blond. “Justin. Stop! JUSTIN!”

The frenetic phantom was long past being able to listen to anything rationally. Justin was backing away from the other two, acting like a scared and cornered animal. He kept muttering loudly -  ‘No, no, no’ - and shaking his head. Every time Brian tried to reach out and touch him, Justin flinched and twisted away, eluding his grasp. Finally, Brian got frustrated enough that he simply threw himself at the scrabbling blond target, using the entirety of his body to pin the smaller man to the wall.

“Justin, will you fucking stop already,” Brian shouted in exasperation. “I won't make you go to the damn hospital, okay? I promise. Just calm the fuck down already. It's going to be okay.”

Brian felt the smaller body gradually still, although the boy continued to shake and sob into the bare flesh of Brian's chest. He carefully let go of Justin's hands, which he'd been holding immobile above the boy’s head, and gathered the trembling body into a tight embrace. He didn't know what else to do. Comforting desperate, slightly delusional, twinks wasn't exactly Brian Kinney’s thing. But right at that moment, he couldn't really think beyond the exigencies of the moment or past the blond boy clinging to him like Brian was his last hope of salvation.

When the tremors had finally died down and his GhostBoy was only breathing deeply, barring the occasional shuddering sigh, Brian loosened his hold enough to turn and look to the concerned and hovering electrician still lighting the scene with her flashlight. “I need to get Justin cleaned up so I can make sure he really isn't too badly hurt. Do you think you can get us some power so I can see what I'm doing?”

“Sure thing. Let’s get you two up the stairs safely,” Shanti gestured towards the steps, “then I'll just disconnect that kitchen fixture that caused the short before I turn the power back on. I don’t want to run the risk of starting another fire tonight, you know. It'll only take a minute.”

With Shanti lighting their way, Brian guided Justin up the stairs. Justin never let go of Brian for an instant, clinging to the taller man to the point that he actually made it difficult for Brian to walk without tripping. Somehow, though, they made it up the stairs and over to the couch. Brian wrapped Justin in the afghan, pried the boy’s arms from around his waist, and gently pressed until the younger man was seated back against the cushions.

“I'll be right back, Ghost. I'm just going to get us some water and something to clean you up with,” Brian reassured, letting his fingers trail along the pale, slightly stubbled cheek as he drew slowly away.

Justin stayed where he'd been put, his head bowed, staring numbly into the nothingness in front of his knees. Brian took a deep breath as he stepped backwards, taking several wary steps in that awkward manner, feeling like he was unable to turn away. It was almost like, if he took his eyes off the kid, Justin would disappear on him. So he kept watching the boy sitting in the moonlight on his couch until he reached the kitchen entrance and was finally forced to turn around and look at what he was doing.

Shanti was already there, up on her ladder, twiddling with the wiring of the ceiling fixture. Brian crossed to the fridge, pulled out two cold bottles of water, grabbed the towel that he always kept draped through the handle of the fridge door, and wet it in the sink.  

Before he returned to the Greatroom, though, Brian addressed his very helpful and resourceful electrician. “I'm sure that this . . . What you saw down there . . . Or, at least, what you thought you saw . . . Shit! I'm sure all this seems totally fucking weird to you and I'm not going to even try to explain because I'm not sure I know how.” Brian fumbled, feeling uncharacteristically tongue-tied as he tried to frame the request he meant to make. “But, if you could, I'd appreciate it if you didn't say anything about this to anyone.”

“Whatever. It's no biggie,” the electrician replied with a shrug as she descended her ladder. “It's none of my business. And even if it were, I don't believe in kink shaming anyone. If you want to keep your boy in a dungeon in the basement, who the hell am I to judge, right?” The tall, blond woman clapped Brian on the shoulder as she sidled past him. “Trust me, Kinney - you're not the first client I've wired a dungeon for and you won't be the last. As long as the kid is old enough to consent . . . He is, isn't he? He looks pretty young . . .”

Brian, who was still a little shocked at the turn this conversation had taken, nevertheless took the out he was being offered. “He's twenty.”

“Then we’re good,” Shanti confirmed with a curt nod in his direction. Then, as she was about to leave, the canny butch blonde turned around and winked at him over her shoulder. “And thanks for the idea, by the way. My Pookie might like to play with light deprivation some time.”

Brian stood there blinking for a good two minutes after that. When he finally recovered from the horrors of imagination his Dominatrix Electrician had imposed on him, and remembered he was still standing there holding water and a wet towel, he trotted back out to find his own little blond. Luckily for him, Justin wasn't nearly as butch as the electrician. The boy was still sitting where he'd been left on the couch, huddled under his blanket and looking lost. Brian seated himself next to his GhostBoy, handed the kid a water and demanded he drink.

“Did you notice, the world is getting weirder and weirder every fucking day?” Brian asked, drinking a sip of his own water as he draped an arm protectively around the stowaway’s shoulders.

They were still sitting there like that when Dom Shanti managed to get the power back on and the lights in the room flickered to life.

“Okay. That's it for me tonight, gentlemen,” Shanti announced when she reappeared at the top of the basement stairs. “You've got power for tonight at least. Please don't plug in anything you don't need - that old fuse box can't take it and it'll blow again. I'll be back tomorrow by ten with the stuff to swap it out for a new, high-capacity, breaker box. Then we’ll be cooking.”

“Thanks, Shanti. See you tomorrow.” Brian waved from his spot on the couch, not bothering to get up since that would dislodge his ghost’s head from where it was comfortably resting on Brian’s shoulder, and that just seemed like a bad idea. “Goodnight.”

“Night, gentlemen,” the woman echoed and marched out the front door, closing it firmly behind herself.

“Come on, Ghost,” Brian said, heaving himself to his feet and reaching out to help the boy up as well. “Let’s check you out and make sure you’re not in danger of becoming a real ghost anytime soon.”