Down

"Tell him," a raspy whisper hissed by his ear.

But there was no one there. Paul clutched the edge of the counter and promised himself, no one's there.

"Tell. Tell. Tell!"

"Nothing," Paul said in a small voice, willing himself to ignore the wraith's hiss. "Nothing happened. Just a shitty weekend. But, hey, what do you think of the fiancé?" he asked, trying to sound like he wasn't completely falling apart.

***

When Zach left for school, Paul passed out on the couch, and slept for three straight hours for the first time in days. But somehow he felt even more wretched after his nap. He forced down a meal, hoping something warm and nutritious would settle his nerves some. After that and a hot shower, he felt a little calmer.

Down the hall, he could hear Zach, back from school, talking to someone. A girl. Probably a study buddy. The kid had told him straight out he never got any action.

Paul must have fallen asleep again. He didn't remember lying down, but he woke up on his bed, lying on top of the covers. Now there were different sounds coming from down the hall. Like maybe Zach's luck had turned.

It tasted like something had died in his mouth. Paul fought the impulse to go downstairs and wash the flavor away with a few gulps of whiskey, and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth instead. When he flicked the light on, his heart cramped.

The mirror reflected his face, a wet, red hand print on his cheek, the fingers disproportionately long, like they'd slid over his skin in a bloody caress.

He ran toward those sounds coming from Zach's room, flung the door open, charged at the thing on top of his son, dragged it to the floor.

"Dad! Jesus Christ, Dad!"

Just a girl. Like Lena, when he'd first known her, eyes and hair and skin all pale, everything about her small, delicate. But not Lena. But she looked up at the man on top of her, pinning her to the floor, and hissed, "Tell him!"

"Dad! Get off her! What the fuck are you doing?" Zach screamed, yanking on his arm now, trying to drag him off the girl.

Looking down at the girl, a stranger, Paul staggered to his feet, shaking, feeling like he was about to blow apart, like the painful pressure in his chest was a bomb ticking down to explode.

"I'm sorry," he breathed at the frightened girl lying on the floor, while Zach put himself between them.

"What's wrong with you, Dad?" Zach asked, sounding more scared than angry, now.

"I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry." He started backing away from them, his son and the girl who looked like Lena, who'd hissed at him like the thing that was haunting him. "Zach. I'm gonna call your mother. I'm gonna have her come pick you up. So stick around and wait for her, okay?"

"Okay," Zach said, surly, mistrustful. But he'd wait. Zach was a good kid, that way.

Who knew what the girl would do? Maybe later that night or the next morning Paul would be getting a visit from the police. Assault, or some charge like that.

Paul got Rachel on her cell and, thanks to the unfamiliar note of fear in his voice, or the fact that he was asking her for help for the first time in their twenty years of knowing each other, she promised to drop everything and come straight over. No questions asked.

While he was still on the phone he heard the front door slam, and when he glanced out the window he saw a slight figure with long blond hair running down the street.

***

God damn, wasn't Brian ever going to get there? Maybe this was better. In the bar he felt safe. Surrounded by familiar strangers. And not a blond sylph in sight. When Brian showed up, he'd have to talk. Paul wasn't sure he'd be able to do that.

Even two whiskeys in, it was hard to imagine saying, "I'm being haunted." But it was impossible to picture not saying it. Talking about anything else.

Something touched his shoulder, and Paul jumped, his thighs hitting the table, sloshing whiskey over the edge of the glass.

"Jeez, man. Take it easy," Brian said, settling down into the chair opposite Paul. "What's going on with you?"

"I don't know."

"Well," Brian said, signaling to the bartender for his usual whiskey rocks, "you think you're jittery now. I just got a call from some friend of Jennifer's. Deb. Man, Luc's dead."

"Dead?" Paul couldn't breathe. It was like someone had filled his chest with cold, wet sand.

"Suicide, they think. Something about the bottoms of his feet being all chewed up, like he'd been wandering the streets, barefoot, for days. And some other shit, I don't know, that Deb chick wouldn't say everything. But I guess he jumped. A freeway overpass."

Dead. So, that's where this was going. She'd started with Luc. And now it was his turn. He was already going fucking insane. Terrified of being alone, scared shitless of being around anyone else, losing it, nearly beating the shit out of Katya and that girl his son had brought home. So, what? In a few days they'd find him splattered under a bridge somewhere, or dangling from his own belt?

"Paul?"

"Something's after me," he breathed.

"What?"

"Something's after me. I'm going crazy. Just like Luc."

"What are you talking about."

"There was a girl. A long time ago. Lena. She's...she's..."

"What? Like, stalking you, or something?"

"Maybe."

"Why? Who is she?"

"She was one of my first girls. A long time ago. Before we had Zach."

"And, what, you think she's got something to do with Luc?"

"Maybe. Yeah."

"What could she be doing? I mean, what, a girl like that, almost twenty years later. Probably strung out on smack, or—"

"She's dead."

"She's dead," Brian echoed the statement, as if to force Paul to hear how silly it sounded.

"She looks dead. And she...materializes. And then she's gone."

"You know how fucking crazy you sound right now, Paul."

"Yeah."

"Look, you're just freaking yourself out. You're weirded out about Luc, and your balls deep with another little Russian bitch."

"No. She wants me dead. Brian, I can feel it."

"Why? What did you do to her?"

"Nothing. Nothing special."

"Well, I guess the usual's enough, isn't it," Brian cracked, laughing over the rim of his whiskey.

"What's that mean?" Paul felt like he was sinking down, like the floor had gone soft under his chair, and was slowly swallowing him.

Brian emptied his glass and, still chuckling, said, "It means you're a fucking prick to those girls."

"You should fucking know," Paul growled. "It's sure as shit not like any of them ever wanted to fuck you, is it?"

"Jeez, man," Brian said in a soft little voice, looking like he'd just been slapped. "I just meant, you know..."

"Yeah. I know. You don't mind banging the girls I give you, but you sit there judging me. Just like everyone else. When you know fucking well if it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have gotten one single fuck in the last five years. You fucking hypocrite."

Fuck Brian. Fuck 'em all. He was on his own. Like always. People pretend to be your friend. Pretend to love you. But the whole time they're thinking they're better than you. The only person you really loved him was Zach, and Paul wanted to keep him far from all this. So he'd cope on his own until it was over.

And it would be over soon. One way or another. The wraith Lena would disappear. Or he'd end up like Luc. Dead. Paul almost didn't care which it was, so long as the feeling of losing his mind stopped.

Paul charged out of the dark bar, into the dark night, ignoring Brian's whining pleas, "Come on, man, chill. I didn't mean..."

Christ. It had been light when he'd parked. Now he'd have to walk down that piss-stinking street in the dark to get back to his car. And of course it was parked way the hell down there. Fucking perfect.

Not half way there, two characters emerged from the dark, lurched through the cone of pale orange cast down from the streetlight, and faded into darkness again. But they were there, Paul knew, coming toward him. Hell, the state he was in, he half wanted them to start some shit. It would feel good, swinging hard, really laying into something. Having a chance to fight back.

Sure enough, instead of stepping into single file to let him by, the two lurching shadows came to a halt, shoulder-to-shoulder, barricading the sidewalk. His fists clenched, Paul took a stance, ready to get to it.

"Hey, looky here," one of the shadows said, his face no more than an outline, but his smile audible in his taunt. "Who's this pretty little thing?"

Great. Paul just loved a mugger with a sense of humor.

"Hey, baby, what are you doing all alone in a bad neighborhood like this after dark? You need a chaperon?" the other purred.

"Fuck off, assholes, I am not in the mood."

"Don't say that, baby."

One of them reached out and touched his hair. What the fuck? Goddamned freaks!

Paul took his best shot, putting all his weight into a brutal punch, his adrenaline surging through his arm like a hydraulic pump. But his balance was off, or something. He'd swung wide, and instead of breaking teeth, his fist limply grazed a shoulder.

"Haha! Baby's got spunk! Sweetheart, you're gonna be a lot of fun!"

Paul turned and ran. For the first time in his life, he was too afraid to take his lumps. It wasn't a beating that scared him. It was a heavy, cold feeling those fuckers had something else in mind.

But he pulled up short before he'd gone ten feet. Three more guys had him penned on the bar side. Darting between two parked cars, Paul sprang into the street, but they had him surrounded. Every punch he threw was short, or wide, or landed soft. The blows he was waiting for never came. The five men just jostled and grabbed, until they had him caught tight between them, and carried him off, down the dark, stinking street, further and further from the bar, down a flight of steps, into a dark, damp cellar. Paul heard a metal door clang shut, and they let go of him.

Pretty much ignored him. Except for looking sideways, watching him, they left him alone. They were more interested in passing around a bottle of tequila and a pack of smokes.

"What the fuck, assholes?"

"Shhh, baby. Don't turn into a nagging bitch, already. We'll give you some attention in a little bit."

"Fuck this shit."

Paul charged toward the door, but two guys grabbed him before he could work the lock.

"I told you to settle down, bitch," the purring hair-toucher growled.

They dragged him across the cellar to a table, threw him down on his back and held him there while someone came up from behind and slipped a chain over his head, down around his neck, and clipped it to something under or behind the table. Then they did his wrists, strapping them down by his hips with two belts, and stuffed some foul rag into his mouth. And then they walked away, back to their corner to enjoy their smokes and tequila.

Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god. What the fuck was this? Some kind of homo freak sex den?

Paul struggled, trying to wrench or wiggle his wrists free of the straps, but got nowhere. And every time he tried to sit up or lift his head, the chain choked down on his throat.

At the edge of his vision he saw someone come up close to stand off by his left shoulder. Paul was breathing hard, starting to hyperventilate, as he strained his eyes, trying to see what was happening.

Not one of the men. The wraith, Lena. She laughed. A raspy hiss of a laugh.

His gut went icy, and his heart hammered. He fought the need to retch, not to choke to death on his own vomit behind that gag.

"Now you'll see," Lena's corpse hissed at him.

It was worse, not quite being able to see her, than having to confront that waxy face, those black eyes.

"This will be your life," she rasped.

The gag stopped him from screaming, "What? Chained up in a cellar like the fucking gimp in some Pulp Fiction homo circus?"

But she heard his thought. Of course she did. That's all she was. All she could be. His imagination. His own brain fucking him around. Not like those five assholes. They were real.

Again that awful laugh. "Nyet, Paul. They don't see you. They see me. Not as I am now. As I was. The pretty girl you stole."

She rasped in Russian, but somehow he understood every word. Like a dream.

"You are gone. For these five men, for the world, now you are just a girl. Small and afraid."

Lena was suddenly close, looking into his eyes with her dead black orbs, and she stroked his cheek with her cold, moist hand.

"There, Paul. I see that flame in your eyes. So bright. How alive you are, right now. The first will see it."

Closer and closer she drifted, her pale face, her black eyes floating so near he cringed, anticipating the touch of her lips, but she just breathed,

"Suffer what I have suffered, Paul. Me, and all of your girls."

Then she was gone.

Behind him, Paul could hear the men laughing, joking about "the girl." Again, vomit bubbled up in his throat, and he fought it back down. He had to wake up from this fucking nightmare.

The cold chain had warmed to body temperature, but it's weight on his throat made him feel he was being choked, that he was suffocating. And soon, those men were going to come over. He was helpless.

Something inside him broke. He was crying. Sobbing his terror, his disbelief.

Was this really some kind of punishment? For what he'd done to Lena? To the others?

He didn't want to go, but his mind dragged him back those twenty years, to that spartan, stained motel room where he'd first seen her, when Luc had dropped her off. The the flame of fear burning bright in her big gray eyes. He'd been surprised at how docile she'd been, how she seemed to have no hope, once she'd been stripped of her papers. How she seemed to understand there would be no wedding, and hardly tried to fight the wedding night. For weeks, she'd been delicious. Irresistible. But then, she'd cooled, the way they all did, eventually. She stopped trembling at the sight of him. That light in her eyes had dimmed. Even that first time he'd let Luc fuck her in front of him, no spark flared in her eyes. She'd just lain there, limp and crying.

"Good girl. You waited so patiently."

The big blond who'd purred and stroked his hair plucked the gag from between Paul's lips.

"I'm ready for you now, baby. I'll give you all the attention you want."

"This is fucking crazy," Paul barked at the guy. "Look at me! I'm a fucking guy! I don't know what kind of drugs that bitch put in the water, or what Russian voodoo bullshit she's working, but you need to fucking back off!"

The big blond turned and exchanged looks with the other four, who'd gathered around to watch the fun.

"What the hell is that? German or something?"

"Sounds like Russian," a guy with dyed black hair and brown roots said, his words snagging around the cigarette between his lips.

"Da?" the blond breathed tequila over Paul's face. "Izt Russky, ya?"

The blond leaned over and ripped Paul's shirt open.

"Look at those pretty little Russian tits."

He was purring again as he undid Paul's belt and fly, and in one motion got his pants and shorts off, then dropped the whole wad on the floor. Paul ignored the chain biting into his throat. He had to see for himself he was still a man, had to see his cock, lying limp across its nest of black hair. That should scare the fuckers off, all right. Unless they really were a pack of faggot pervs.

"Now, spread those legs like a good girl," the big blond said, shoving Paul's ankles apart and climbing onto the table. Two of the others grabbed Paul's knees and wrenched his legs open, and the blond drove a finger up into his ass.

Paul screamed, shouted "No!"

"Bitch is dry as a sack of flour," the blond complained to his friends. "We got anything?"

"There's some packets of mayo."

"Nasty."

"Here, man." A guy with a shaved head threw a tube of lip balm to the blond.

"It's not mentholated or anything, is it? I don't want my dick to go numb."

"No, dude, it's just the regular vaseline stuff."

The blond squeezed a gob of the stuff into his palm, greased up his dick, and jammed it up against Paul's asshole.

"God damn, you're tight, baby. Don't tell me you're a fucking virgin!"

"Don't. Don't. Don't," Paul huffed, feeling the pressure of the blond's cock at his hole, then screaming, sobbing as the cock dilated, penetrated, filled his ass.

The blond grunted and huffed, pumping away at Paul's anus. "I swear to fucking god, boys, this is the tightest little cunt you ever felt."

Paul lied there under the grunting, humping blond thinking, "This isn't happening. No way is this happening."

But the burning pain felt real, the weight of the chain on his throat felt real, the hot, tequila stink huffing in his face every other second felt real, smelled real.

The blond started thrusting harder, faster. Then, his face all red, his teeth clenched, he tensed up suddenly, groaned, then collapsed, hot and sweaty onto Paul's chest. Without a word, then, he pulled out and went away, and two others started grabbing and pulling at Paul, yanking the chain up over his head, freeing his wrists from the belts, then hoisting him up and slamming him back down, onto his belly, bent over the narrow width of the table.

The one with the shaved head was getting his cock out, rubbing it in front of Paul's face. He waved a heavy iron pry bar before Paul's eyes.

"See this? This is what I'm gonna use to fuck you to death, if I feel so much as a tooth touch my cock. You understand me?" When he didn't get an answer, the bald guy slapped Paul across the the face, hard. "You understand me?"

Sobbing, Paul nodded. Behind him, he felt something prodding between his ass cheeks, and a few seconds later Paul screamed as a hard cock rammed into his sore hole.

"Little bitch likes it in the ass, don't you, whore?"

With a stiff cock plunging into his ass over and over, Paul felt the tip of the bald man's prick touch his lips. He gagged at the pungent reek of the man's crotch, but forced himself to put his lips around the fat cock head when the man touched his cheek with the cold pry bar.

"Suck it nice, bitch."

The man held Paul's head still and pushed his stiff prick deeper and deeper into Paul's mouth, until Paul was choking on it, and his whole body flexed and arched in a convulsive gag. The cock receded, then filled his mouth back up, gagging him again. Sputtering, eyes watering, Paul fought to keep his lips over his teeth, terrified of accidentally scraping a tooth against the cock raping his mouth, of having his insides torn apart by the pry bar. Meanwhile, the guy behind him was fucking him so hard, it felt like his asshole was being torn open.

"Use your tongue, baby. Suck it good. Make me come," the bald one was saying, fucking his mouth in a steady rhythm, now, as the one behind him grunted to a finish and pulled out with excruciating abruptness, and another cock poked into him with the same brutal indifference.

"Nasty little whore, you like getting it in two holes at once, don't you?" Whoever was on top of him now was saying while the bald guy went on fucking his mouth.

"Yeah. You like how Jimmy's fucking your ass?" The bald guy asked, his voice rough with his pending climax. "You want him to fuck you harder? Huh?" He pulled Paul down hard on his cock, and Paul felt a spasm ripple through the shaft, and tasted a spurt of warm come spray into his mouth. The fucker pulled back, and Paul felt the fat knob slide forward over his tongue, as glob after glob of thick semen oozed into his mouth. He gagged and started to retch.

"Swallow my shit, bitch. Or you'll be licking it up off the floor."

He fought to keep his lips closed around the fat cock, to swallow the spunk that was making him gag.

"Good girl. Good girl," the bald man cooed, stroking his hair, still fucking his mouth, but slowly, gently now. Finally he pulled out from between Paul's lips.