Chapter 7 - Visitations.

The morning after Brian’s little eidolon education experiment, the man was puttering around in his kitchen, dressed only in a pair of baggy sweat pants, and taking his time about getting started on his day when he was startled to hear the doorbell ring. He’d never had any visitors other than that one time that Lindz and Mikey had come for their tour, so he wasn’t really expecting anyone. The noise must have surprised his resident ghost too, since he heard a distant slamming noise coming up the stairs from the basement about thirty seconds after the bell went off. Hmmm. That was odd - Brian usually only heard those noises at night. But he didn’t have time to think about that anomaly too much as the bell was rung a second time, insistently, and Brian figured he should probably go answer it.

When he pulled open the door, Brian was confronted by a smiling group of about half a dozen ladies of a certain age, all bearing casseroles, pastry boxes or some other container of food, who were all happily ogling Brian’s bare torso. Even for a guy who’d never before minded being naked in public, this much attention was a little much. The tricks cruising him in Babylon were less obtrusive than this bunch of middle-aged ladies. He even thought that one in the back was drooling a little.

“Ladies . . . ?” Brian took a step back from the open door, unsure how to handle this welcoming committee.

“Surprise!” one voice from the middle of the group piped up, and then all the others echoed the sentiment.

“We’re sorry to intrude on your morning, Mr. Kinney,” said a diminutive, grey-haired little woman who seemed like she barely came up to Brian’s elbow. “We just wanted to officially welcome you to the neighborhood.”

“And, since I KNOW you can’t survive on what little you’ve been buying in my store, we brought food,” Brian’s number one fangirl, Sue Ann, announced as she stepped forward holding out a casserole dish in her hands.

“Uh . . . Um . . . Well, thank you . . . I guess . . .” Brian stammered as the heavy and still warm dish was thrust into his hands.

“Now, no standing on formality, Sweetcheeks,” Sue Ann insisted, shouldering her way past Brian and leading the rest of the gaggle of ladies inside after her. “We know you’re still not all moved in or anything, and we don’t give a flying goose fart about it. We’re just here to make sure you have everything you need to get settled. Especially since you don’t have a woman . . . or should I say, a partner . . . to help you with that kind of stuff.

“Here you go. This should help,” yet another lady interjected, holding out a large wicker basket filled to overflowing with an assortment of cleaning supplies - spray cleaner, scouring powder, glass cleaner, sponges, brushes, a duster, basically everything any dirty householder could ask for. “And if there’s anything else you need, you can just call and one of us can more than likely help you out.”

“We even made up this handy phone list, with all our numbers on it so’s you can always get hold of your neighbors if you need anything. Anything at all,” directed a dark-haired, slightly younger woman with a bounteous bosom who held out what appeared to be a laminated card. “I’m Helen Henrick, by the way. I live over off of Turnage Road, so I’m only about ten minutes away if you ever need anything.”

Brian shifted the casserole so it was braced against his hip and accepted the basket of cleaning supplies with his now-free hand. He didn’t have a way to grab the offered phone list though, so Helen simply slipped it in among the items in the basket. He didn’t miss the flirtatious smile she slipped him at the same time.

“Sorry to invade like this, Brian,” Penny apologized, emerging from the back of the group of women, nudging Helen out of the way and offering up yet another basket of something. “But it’s your own fault, you know. You can’t expect to move in here - a handsome, charming, single man - and NOT expect to get the attention of every nosy old biddy in a twenty mile radius.” She cackled with self-deprecating laughter, which was taken up by the whole coterie. “You’re just too tempting, you know. Anyways, I figured it would be slightly less painful if I was to just up and bring the whole passel of us over at once. Otherwise, you’d a been subjected to visits from all of them one just after another, and you don’t want that. Trust me.”

“Now, Penny, you make us sound like a bunch of snooping busybodies. Don’t pay her no mind, Mr. Kinney. We always welcome any newcomers, don’t we ladies?” This new voice went along with a stout little lady with short-cropped, salt and pepper hair and a big, open smile. “I’m Tracy Percy. And the rest of these folks are what passes for the Weirton Quilting Club. You already know Sue Ann and Penny. And that’s Bea and Gloria and Connie and Mary Elizabeth. And of course, Helen too.” Tracy pointed out each of her ladies in the process.

Brian had, by this point, mostly regained his aplomb and was about to invite the ladies into the kitchen, which was the only room that was tidy enough for guests. However, he never got the chance. Just as he was opening up his mouth to offer the invitation, Sue Ann took over the gathering.

“Okay. Let’s get Sweetcheeks settled here. Bring all the food into the kitchen. Tracy, you take over the cleaning stuff, please, before Brian drops it all. Penny, why don’t you see about fixing some tea for everyone, and then we can all have a nice long get-to-know-you chat.” Then she turned back to Brian and took charge of him too, pulling him to the side with a lingering hand on his strong biceps. “Now you, Sweetheart, should probably go put on something a little less  . . . revealing . . . don’t you think? Not that any of us MIND the view - cause I can tell you this is the closest a lot of this crew has got to a good looking man in more than a decade - but I don’t think they’ll be able to concentrate on their tea until you put a shirt on. And poor Bea, well, she’s got a heart condition, you know, and from the way she was panting over you back there, I suspect seeing you like this might be too much for the dear woman’s heart!” Sue Ann broke off, laughing at her little joke along with a few of the other ladies, most of whom were blushing like brides even while they all continued to ogle Brian without pause.

“I think you might have a point there, Ms. Sue Ann,” Brian agreed, with a wink to his admirers. “You ladies make yourselves at home - which, doesn’t seem like it will be all that difficult for you - and I’ll go put on my Sunday Visit clothes.”

Five minutes later, when Brian came back downstairs, this time wearing a pair of faded jeans and a muscle tee but still barefoot, all the Quilting Ladies were assembled in his kitchen and Penny was already pouring out tea while Tracy served out slices of coffee cake and petits fours. Brian chuckled over the scene. When the hell did he turn into the kind of person who had the fucking quilting club ladies over for tea? What the hell alternate universe was this? Maybe he was still dreaming? Shit. This was just so wrong, on so many levels.

“You just bring that pretty little tushy over here and sit next to me, Sweetums,” demanded one robust fiftyish woman who Brian thought was the one that’d been introduced as Gloria.

Gloria got him settled in one of his kitchen chairs and two of the other ladies brought him tea and a plate with an assortment of cakes and pastries on it. Brian meekly accepted his fate and let the ladies take over his kitchen, his breakfast and even his body, to the extent that several of them seemed compelled to touch him whenever they spoke to him. Gloria in particular seemed a bit handsy, petting his forearm whenever she commented on anything and sitting so close to Brian that her ample thigh kept nudging against his own leg. Brian knew they were all harmless - well, for the most part - so he just let them fawn over him and giggle like teenagers and practically fall all over themselves in order to get his attention. In fact, he secretly kind of enjoyed all the over-the-top cordiality.

After about ten minutes or so, though, they all seemed to calm down a bit, thank fuck. Once they had their tea and cakes and were well on the way to a good gossip, they stopped being so overt. The shift allowed Brian to relax a bit and he started to pay more attention to the conversation and less to Gloria’s looming thigh pressing against him under the table.

“Well, at least you seem to have made a lot of headway on the clean up, Brian,” Penny was saying. “From the way you made it sound, I didn’t think you’d dig your way out of the mess till Christmas, at least.”

“You haven’t seen the basement, I’m afraid,” Brian replied, shaking his head at the very thought of that mess.

“Well, just so’s you keep at it. You’ll get through it all eventually,” the more quiet and staid Bea intoned.

“As long as he gets it cleaned out before next summer, right?” Sue Ann added. “Once the hot weather comes back, that body hidden down there’s likely to get a bit ripe.”

This comment raised a round of nervous giggling from Brian’s ladies. He just shook his head, unwilling to comment for fear of encouraging them. He figured that the less he said, the sooner he could get them all out of there and back to their own homes.

“Now, Sue Ann, you don’t know for sure that anything of the sort happened. There’s still the possibility that the boy really was sent off to live somewhere else. That’s what Craig told us at the school, anyways,” Tracy corrected her friend.

“Then why wasn’t the Sheriff’s office able to find him after Craig died?” the quiet lady named Connie who had been hiding in the far corner of the kitchen spoke up. “My boy, Adam, worked on that case for weeks after Craig done himself in, trying to find the boy. They couldn’t find hide nor hair of little Justin. How ‘ya explain that?”

“Exactly!” Mary Elizabeth insisted, so adamant about the point that she even spilled a little of her tea in the excitement of the moment, but still carried on. “And, Tracy, you’re the one who told us all about how crazy Craig got when the boy got into that scuffle at school. If the man was that out of control over just a little fisticuffs, you just don’t know WHAT he’d do, now do you?”

“Well, I probably shouldn’t say anything, since Principal Wright ordered us to keep it confidential-like . . .” Everyone could see that Tracy was struggling to keep whatever it was she wanted to tell secret - and could also see the moment she lost the battle. “But, since the Taylor boy seems to be long gone and all . . .” All the ladies leaned in, eager for what looked like it was going to be a juicy piece of gossip, and Brian found himself doing the same. “Well, there was more to that little scuffle than you’d think. You see, the Hobbs boy was saying things . . .” Tracy looked over at Brian with an apologetic smile that was explained by the rest of her tale a minute later. “Christopher told everyone that the reason he’d gone after little Justin was because the boy had made ‘advances’ at him.”

“Advances? You mean . . .” the ladies gasped, all apparently scandalized to hear that their supposed victim had hit on the big, bad, high school jock.

“That’s EXACTLY what I mean.” Tracy nodded around at them all. “Which is what caused Craig to get so flustered, you see. He was ranting and raving, saying no son of his was going to be ‘gay’. Craig even tried to take a swing at Principal Wright when he tried to calm things down. But that’s why I figure Craig really must have sent the boy away - he was yelling about how he wouldn’t have a fairy living under his roof and the boy was either going to shape up or he could just leave . . .”

“Well, if the asshole was that much of a homophobe, it’s not really that big a jump to imagine him killing his son over it,” Brian asserted, engaging in the conversation for the first time. “If the kid tried to stand up for himself, I can easily see Taylor losing it and going into a rage. Trust me on this, ladies - the same fucking thing happened when I finally came out to MY father. Only difference was that I was thirty at the time and he was already dying of lung cancer, so when he tried to hit me I was able to hold him off. But this kid doesn’t sound like he would have been much of a match for some drunken, angry bigot.”

There were murmurs of shock and agreement but none of the ladies spoke up. The mood of the little gathering had turned too somber and the happy, gossipy air had instantly evaporated. Nobody knew what to say to Brian. He was fine with that though. He was more than ready for this tea party to be over.

After only about ten more minutes, the ladies had cleared away all the dirty dishes and the food had all been put into the refrigerator. Brian thanked them for the food and cleaning supplies, as well as for the visit, and promised to call them if he needed anything. Then he saw the gaggle of quilters back to the door, accepting goodbyes and even hugs from many of them as they filed out the door.

It wasn’t until he saw the last of them piling into their cars and pulling out of his driveway that Brian finally stepped away from the door and closed it with a firm thud. He turned, leaned back against the closed door and looked around him at the big empty house. Somehow the entire structure seemed much more sinister now that he’d heard more of Justin Taylor’s story.

Brian’s presumption that his little ghost was gay had been proven true based on the new information he’d heard that morning, but it no longer gave him any joy. He knew too well how harsh the world could be for an unprepared gay boy. And, based on his own past experiences, Brian was more than cognizant of the dangers of an abusive, homophobic father. In his mind, the probability of Justin’s untimely death at his asshole father’s hands had just increased exponentially.

If so, it was really no wonder the boy would haunt his father’s house after the fact, Brian thought.

??

To Brian’s chagrin, the Quilting Ladies had brought more than just food and cleaning supplies with them when they’d visited.

By the next morning, Brian was feeling the beginnings of a cold coming on. It started with a scratchy throat and the slight achiness that foretold the beginnings of a nasty virus. He tried to ignore it, hoping that maybe it was caused by all the dust he'd been inhaling down in the basement or something else that would quickly go away. He hated being sick. He was lucky that he normally had a very strong immune system - probably because he regularly exposed himself to all the germs he could come across in the baths, bathrooms and the backrooms of Liberty Avenue - but, apparently he’d been absent from the scene for long enough that he’d lost some of his protections. Either that or the quilting ladies had brought him some killer germs never before seen near Liberty Avenue. Even the application of a gallon of hot coffee didn’t seem to be helping much that morning.

Still, Brian valiantly tried to fight it off. He took a couple pain killers and went back to his computer, attempting to write for another hour and a half. Unfortunately, the symptoms only got worse. He had to give up on writing when his head began to ache so badly he could barely see the computer monitor. He broke down and decided to go make himself a cup of the tea that Penny had left for him the day before. The heat from the tea did seem to help his throat, but only for a short while. An hour later, he had to admit that he was beaten.  

Brian crawled into bed with his phone, dialing Michael’s number and then sagging back against the pillows as the phone began to ring. Just as Michael answered, Brian was hit with the first bout of coughing. As soon as he managed to clear his throat again he informed his friend that he wasn’t going to make it into town for their planned night of carousing.  

“What the hell, Brian? This is, like, the third time you've cancelled,” Michael complained loudly enough to make Brian’s head ache even more. “What's your excuse this time? Are all the tricks in West Virginia keeping you too busy? Or did your ghost steal your car keys, maybe?”

“Ha, fucking, ha!” Brian croaked out. “I wish. No, it's worse. My new girlfriend brought her friends over yesterday for a tea party and I think they gave me Ebola or something. I feel like shit.”

“Oh, come off it, Brian! Can't you at least come up with a believable lie? Or maybe just tell me the truth for a change? I mean, how gullible do you think I am?”

*Cough, cough* “Whatever, Mikey. I'm too sick to argue with you. Just - if you don't hear from me in a week or so - send out the CDC to collect my body and make sure they're wearing hazmat suits to be safe.”

“You're serious? You're really sick?” Michael sounded worried. “But you never get sick, Brian”

“I know. Hence the need for the fucking hazmat suits.”

“Shit, Brian! Maybe I should come out there and make sure you're okay?”

“Nah. Save yourself, Mikey.” *cough, cough* “I'll probably be fine, and besides, you don't want to catch whatever this is. You boys have fun at Babylon tonight without me. If that's even possible. I'll just stay here and die quietly. Night, Mikey.”

“But it's only noon, Bri . . .”

Brian hung up the phone before he wasted more of his ebbing energy on arguing with his worry-wort friend. All he wanted to do right then was crawl under the covers and sleep. For about a million years. Provided he could finally get warm.

After that Brian lost track of time. He dozed off and on the rest of the day, only getting up to piss and take more pain relievers, not that they helped much, but he didn't have any other cold medicine in the house and was too sick to go out and get some. He actually thought about calling Sue Ann or one of her helpful, disease-carrying buddies, but the damn card with all their numbers was clear down in the kitchen and that seemed like an awfully long way for a dying man to walk. In the end he just gave up on the idea and went back to sleep.

At around two am, Brian woke up in such misery that he wished he would actually die. He was almost choking on the gunk dripping down the back of his throat. His head felt worse than it had after even the most serious hangover he'd ever experienced. And he had the chills so bad his teeth were literally chattering. All he could do, though, was lie there and moan as he rocked back and forth.

However even that small motion seem to cause aches and pains to ripple through his muscles. He blindly flailed around on the nightstand next to his bed, trying to find the glass of water he remembered leaving there, only to knock it over by accident. Brian was close to breaking down in tears by that point, and the only thing that saved him was that even that small effort was enough to tire him out again. Brian quickly drifted off into delirium-laced dreams. And, if he once or twice thought he felt a presence in his room, or maybe even imagined someone brushing his cheek or leaving a shy kiss on his forehead, he simply explained it away as a fever-induced fantasy.

The next few times he woke, he couldn’t actually tell if he WAS awake. He was drifting in and out of dreams so seamlessly that it was hard to tell what was reality and what wasn’t. At one point, he was caught up in a dream where he was standing in the middle of his bedroom, holding hands with Penny and Sue Ann, while the three of them stared down at the mangled body of a blond-haired boy. It was one of those curious dreams where he knew he was dreaming but couldn’t quite fight his way out of it. Dream Brian was crying and sobbing, with the ladies trying to console him, when Real Brian looked up and, through the bluish moonlight tinting the room, saw the face of a beautiful blond Angel Boy looking at him from out of the depths of the big, wall-length, clothes closet. The silvery light on the specter’s long blond locks created a halo effect that illuminated the boy’s face while leaving whatever else there was of him in total shadow. Brian felt incredibly comforted all of a sudden, just seeing the angel watching over him.

“Help me, Justin,” both Real Brian and Dream Brian said together.

And then Brian startled fully awake. The scene around him looked just like it had in the dream, except that there was no dead body and, thankfully, no Quilting Ladies. Brian looked to his closet and noted it was just how it always was - the door ajar and the hangers full of his wonderful designer clothing - with no ghost boy in sight. Fucking Ebola-caused delirium . . .

Brian finally pried himself out of the sweat-rumpled sheets and groggily plodded off to the toilet. When he came back, he noticed that the pile of soggy, dirty tissues he’d been accumulating on the bedside table had been replaced with a fresh box of Kleenex and there was a sports bottle full of ice-cold water waiting next to it along with the painkillers. Brian gratefully took a long sip of the cool water, which did wonders for his sore throat, and popped two of the pills before climbing back into bed.

“Thanks, Ghostboy,” he mumbled before heading back to sleep, this time without the dreaming.

“You still alive in here?” Debbie’s brash voice projecting unexpectedly into his bedroom the next morning woke Brian.

“Debbie? What the fuck are you doing here? And how did you get in?” Brian rasped between a sticky cough and a gloopy sneeze.

“Nice to see you too, Kiddo,” Debbie replied jovially, setting down a large bag full of fuck-knew-what on his nightstand and handing him a tissue. “Michael insisted I come out here and see how you were doing. He was worried about you but couldn’t get away from work. He was babbling some shit about ebola or some such crap. Little nut. And I came through the fucking front door, is how I got in - don’t you lock your doors? All the way out here in the middle of nowhere, all alone in this big house, I’d think you’d lock up. Especially when you’re sick in bed and just anyone can come in . . .”

Debbie began bustling around the room, straightening things and cleaning up while she spoke, not really bothering to listen for a response from Brian. He was too weak to argue with her, although he was sure he HAD locked the door the day before. But whatever. In this house, you just never knew, right?

“Now, I’ve brought you the best chicken soup an Italian mother can make. It’s better than fucking penicillin and it’ll have you back on your feet in no time. Which is a good thing, considering all the work you still need to do on this place to make it liveable, at least from what I could see on the way up here . . .” Deb came to a rest in front of his bed with her hands on her hips, looking him over with a critical eye. “But first, we need to get you cleaned up. So, off you go to the shower. Wash some of that sweat off you and you’ll feel loads better. And meanwhile I’ll change these sheets. Go on, now. Get your ass moving,” Debbie ordered, holding out a hand to help Brian up and not even blinking an eye when he climbed out from under the covers as naked as the day he was born.

By the time he made it back from the shower - which had refreshed him a lot even though the effort of it tired him out all over again - Debbie had the room sorted and the bed remade. She hustled him back under the covers, propped his head up with a pile of pillows and poured him a cup of soup out of the extra-large thermos that was waiting next to his bed.

“Drink up, Kiddo.”

“Thanks, Ma,” Brian croaked and began obediently sipping.

“I’m not gonna stay,” Debbie informed him. “All you really need is rest and that chicken soup. You’ll be back to your old self soon enough. But, in the meantime, Michael insisted I also bring you some of this cold stuff,” she pointed to the box of cold pills sitting next to the thermos. “If you need anything else, you just call me, you hear? We don’t want our Family Stud out of commission with the flu for too long, you know.”

Brian agreed to call if he needed anything more and Debbie ruffled his damp hair affectionately. Brian had to admit he did feel better already, just from the company, the clean sheets, the shower and the soup. He supposed it wasn’t so bad being babied a little. Sometimes.

Deb left not long after that so she could get to her next shift at the Diner on time. Brian almost instantly fell back to sleep. But, when he woke again a few hours later, there was another fresh bottle of ice water waiting on his nightstand along with another cup of steaming hot soup that seemed to have been just poured and maybe even heated up. Brian happily rehydrated and sipped the soup, thinking to himself that he definitely approved of considerate ghosts.