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  Obsidian

  Todd Young

  Published by Mercurial Avenue

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 Todd Young

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright holder.

  Published in the United States of America

  1st Kindle Edition

  Photo-manipulation and cover design by Justin Baxter

  Warning: This book is not suitable for readers aged under 18. It contains sexually explicit descriptions. All characters depicted in sexually explicit descriptions are aged 18 or over.

  [] [] []

  Books by Todd Young

  Corrupted

  Dressing Up

  Jumbo

  Subject 19

  Naked

  Angel

  Owned

  Fracture

  Jism

  Clone

  [] [] []

  James was soaping his back when he saw a face at the window. It was there for a moment, and then it was gone. A man’s face. Someone young. Not someone he’d seen before, and he’d figured he was all alone out here.

  He rinsed the soap from his body and got out of the shower. The odd thing about the shower was that it was out on the enclosed veranda, a single stall without a curtain. The whole house was like this — oddly constructed. Originally, it must have been four single rooms with a veranda all the way around. But the veranda had long since been enclosed, allowing a bathroom and kitchen and a great deal of extra space. But for some reason the shower stall wasn’t in the bathroom. It sat alone, in its own alcove, and there wasn’t even a curtain.

  He dried himself, dressed quickly, and then made his way tentatively to the window where he’d seen the face. He was all alone out here, miles from anywhere. There was one other house, a mile or so up the road, and then this house. Oh — and supposedly another. The farmer who’d rented him the house had a son, and apparently he had a house too, though where it was, James didn’t know.

  Was it the son? Was that who’d been at the window?

  If so, then that was very strange. But who would come out here, miles from anywhere, and look through his window while he was having a shower?

  It was raining again, a light mist falling, but beneath the louvered window, James could see a milk carton. It might have been there before. He didn’t know. He’d only been here three days. But it seemed very convenient nevertheless.

  Hell, he thought, running his fingers through his hair. He put on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. Then he walked around the inside of the house, closing all the louvered windows. It was getting cold anyway.

  [] [] []

  In the morning, James remembered what had happened, but he dismissed it as his imagination. Who, after all, would want to look at him?

  After he’d eaten breakfast, he walked around the house, and found, as he supposed, that there was no milk carton. It must have been his own invention. The louvered windows were high, and if there had been someone here, then they definitely would have needed something to stand on.

  He searched around for a moment, found a log by a tree, and dragged it toward the windows. He balanced on it precariously, holding onto the window ledge, and found that he did have a very clear view of the shower stall. It was right across from where he was standing.

  Even so, it didn’t seem very likely. He must have imagined the face. He hadn’t seen it very clearly, but it was someone with shaggy, sandy hair, and if he saw it again, then he supposed he’d know it instantly.

  He wandered into the backyard and looked out over the mountain. The view really was spectacular. Before he’d come here, when he’d lived in New York, he’d imagined just such a place. Or not exactly. He’d imagined a stone house by a lake. But this was better. The house so old and rickety, and no one for miles around. It was just possible to see the farmer’s house from a certain angle through the trees at the front of the house, but why would the farmer be looking?

  No.

  He was all alone, something he’d been craving all his life.

  [] [] []

  Ed came by around seven. James had eaten by then and tidied up a bit. He had a problem with the fire alarm going off, and he mentioned it to Ed.

  “That’s the mist,” Ed said. “The mist and the rain. You really have to keep those windows closed.”

  James nodded, but didn’t really get the point.

  “It’s like smoke,” Ed said. “The mist gets into the alarm. I can disconnect it for you if you like?”

  James nodded distractedly, and Ed disappeared. A few minutes later he was back with a ladder and a screwdriver.

  “This house’d go up like a tinder box,” he said, “so you’ll have to be careful.”

  James only understood right now that he was disconnecting the fire alarm, and he began to panic.

  “You think it’ll be okay?” he said.

  “Should be. This house has been here for more than a hundred fifty years. It ain’t going to blow down anytime soon.”

  Even so, James smoked, and he hadn’t told Ed this. What if he failed to ash out a butt properly? What then?

  Ed pulled the battery out of the fire alarm and tossed it into the air. “If you want it back on, let me know.”

  James nodded. He knew he ought to mention smoking, that he smoked, but as he opened his mouth to say something, he found that he couldn’t. What would Ed think of him?

  [] [] []

  At around ten thirty, James got into the car and drove to Lincoln. Thirty-eight miles — the closest town. He’d carefully made a list of everything he needed, and said to himself ruefully that he was nesting, the way women did, making everything comfortable in the house. His major project was to make some curtains for the front windows. He supposed he could buy some, but it would be just as easy to get some calico and run them up using the old machine his aunt had given him.

  He bought food of course, a stack of it, and wheeled everything out to the car, the trolley piled high. There was a deep freeze, which was necessary, and he’d even had to buy long-life milk, which he hated. He had seven cartons of cigarettes, which he’d hidden carefully. That ought to last him a few weeks, and really, it most likely would be a while before he came into Lincoln to do any shopping again.

  Then school would start, his reason for being here. He’d secured a position at the local grade school in Lincoln, but as he was driving home, it occurred to him what a chore it would be each day. The road wasn’t paved, and it was difficult to negotiate the ruts in the old Chrysler. Additionally, there was barely room to pass another car, and you did occasionally see another car.

  About five miles from the house, the country opened up and there was nothing. Nothing for miles around. He’d been craving this isolation all his life, he felt. New York had been crazy. School there had been crazy. And his family — well.

  He pulled into the drive and was surprised to find it packed with gravel. It had been a little muddy, and he’d worried about getting stuck. Even so, Ed had gone and done this without telling him, and now, most likely, he would be expected to walk up to Ed’s house and thank him.

  It took him more than half an hour to unload the car. Then he set about making the curtains. He wanted to feel safe more than anything, safe that someone driving into the drive would be unable to see into the house.

  The sewing machine wasn’t as sturdy as he’d supposed. Every now and then the material caught, and he had to backtrack. It took him hours, until it was almost dark, and by that time he’d only
done one curtain, which would be good for one side. Even so, he took a great deal of pleasure in hanging it up.

  Then he went and had a shower.

  [] [] []

  In the morning, James considered what a fool he’d been not to buy a shower attachment for the tap in the bathtub, the sort of thing with a cord that you held in your hand. That way, he would have been able to shower in the bathroom, but he hadn’t even bought a shower curtain, something that had been on the list. He’d looked at them in the hardware store, but he hated shower curtains, hated the way they attracted mold. Really, you only had to have one for a few weeks before it became unusable.

  As he was eating breakfast, he found himself worrying about school. He had three weeks until classes began, but it was his first post, and in a day or so he’d have to go in and meet the principal, a woman he’d spoken to on the phone. He hated this sort of thing — meeting people. He was good with children, but when it came to adults, no.

  As often seemed to happen, the morning had dawned fine. It was eight a.m. but incredibly hot. Already he was sticky, and no doubt later it would rain. It rained every day, Ed said, or at least it mizzled, which James supposed was some sort of confusion between mist and drizzle.

  He got up from the table and washed up. He liked to keep everything clean. When he lived with Tina, for that hellish three months in New York, she’d liked to make fun of him, telling him he was nuts about cleanliness. She even went so far as to suggest he should eat some bacteria, as that was most likely the reason he was always getting sick — food poisoning and so on, though he seemed to be prone to colds as well. He’d rubbished her, and then, that same night, had seen something on a documentary about how people had become too clean during the nineteenth century. They even wanted to blame tuberculosis on that!

  He put some fruit into the blender, a kiwi fruit, an orange and a pear, and then sat on the back step and drank it. The sun was killing him, and he’d be brown before he knew it. He tended to tan very easily, and someone had once asked him if he wasn’t Swedish or Norwegian or something. It was the blond hair, he supposed, though that wasn’t something he was fond of. It tended to attract attention, and everywhere he went, people seemed to be looking at him.

  [] [] []

  At around eleven, he’d had enough. It was simply too hot, and he wanted to go in search of the stream the house drew the water from. It was pristine, Ed said, coming straight down from the mountain, so there was no concern about it making him ill.

  He put on a pair of shoes and set off across the backyard. There was a fence, with a gate, and on the other side of it, cows. They frightened him, but Ed had told him to walk confidently by them and they’d leave him alone.

  “Just don’t go near anything with horns.”

  “Horns?”

  “A bull, I mean, but I only have the three at the moment, and they’re over in the home paddock.”

  The gate unlocked easily, and he locked it again before a cow could get out. Then he walked through them gingerly, trying to appear confident, but gazing at them nevertheless. They were just so freaking big. And their eyes! It unsettled him, and he was glad when he reached the other side of the paddock.

  Then it was a gentle incline, down toward the stream, which he could see in the distance. The grass was so green it was a pleasure to walk on, and when he reached the stream, he took his shoes off. He really ought to have brought a pair of shorts, he said to himself, something to swim in. As it was, he was wearing jeans. He sat for ten minutes or so, and then decided he really did want to swim. Ed’s house was so far from here, and just this morning, he’d seen him on his tractor, heading in the opposite direction.

  James guessed he could swim in his jeans, but that would be a pain. He was wearing underwear. Surely that would be acceptable. He glanced around, glancing one way and the other, but the only thing to be seen were cows and the mountain itself, which loomed over him on the other side of the stream, the highest mountain in the state, Ed had said. It had once been a volcano, apparently. And it rose, like Mount Fujiyama, into a single point.

  He unbuttoned his jeans and drew them over his thighs. Once, when he was young, he would have swum in a T-shirt. But that had stopped years ago now. He’d had a depressed sternum, what amounted to a hollow in his chest. But his parents had taken him to a very good pediatrician when he was seven, and through some careful exercise, he’d managed to do away with most of it. It still bothered him. There was a depression, but one day when he was swimming at the local pool in New York, a girl had come up to him and said, “I love your pecs.”

  Since then, he’d felt a lot better about it. And though he always wanted to wrap his arms around his chest, he knew this was the wrong thing to do, and did his best to stand as straight as possible.

  He drew his T-shirt over his head and folded it carefully on top of his jeans. He was wearing the stupidest underwear, a red pair of bikini briefs which he knew had a hole in the rear. He stepped gingerly into the water, and almost overbalanced on a rock. Then he took a more careful footing. There were rocks everywhere, obsidian, he supposed, which had been mined and left everywhere, and had given the place its name.

  The water was surprisingly warm, and soon he was breast stroking across a wide pool. He stopped for a moment, ducked his head under, and then came up, smoothing his hair over his head.

  “Hey!” a deep voice said.

  James startled. He wrapped his arms around his chest and turned toward the voice. It was the face from the window, Ed’s son, he supposed.

  “How’s the water?”

  “Good. Fine.”

  “I’m Ben,” he said, and grinned widely. And as he grinned, James wasn’t so sure it was the face from the window. Surely he’d imagined that. Even so, Ben had the same shaggy, sandy hair. It looked as though it’d been cut with a knife.

  “You’re not swimming naked,” Ben said.

  James shook his head.

  “There’s no one to worry about around here. Just me and Dad, and Mom, of course.”

  James nodded, and removed his hands from his chest.

  “You’re pretty well built,” Ben said. “For a city guy. How the hell did you end up all the way out here?”

  “Oh, I wanted to. I wanted to get away.”

  Ben nodded. “I’ll be going, then. Work to do.”

  Again, James nodded. He watched Ben walk behind a stand of trees, and then ducked beneath the water. When he came up, he supposed he was all alone again. Then something very odd happened. One of the old trees hanging over the stream jounced, and James understood instinctively that Ben had climbed into it and was watching him.

  He didn’t immediately make the connection to the shower, and what had happened there, but he knew he was being watched. He ducked beneath the water in such a way that his butt broke the surface. Ben would have been able to see his ass, and the hole in his underwear. Then he broke into freestyle, and swam to the end of the pool. The tree jounced again, but he did his best to ignore it. Perhaps it was simply the wind. He told himself this, and then ducked beneath the water again, revealing his ass.

  Fifteen minutes later, he climbed out, not sure now whether Ben was in the tree or not. And he was too afraid to look. Ordinarily, he would have taken his underwear off and put his jeans on commando style, but he didn’t do this. He sat on the grass and pulled them on. Then put his T-shirt on and made for home.

  [] [] []

  It was a toss up between the curtain making and weights training. James was very conscious of what Ben had said about his body, that he was “built,” and that was simply because he’d been in training all his life, working on his chest, though he worked on the rest of his body as well.

  His underwear was annoying him, and he changed out of it, pulling his jeans back on over naked skin. That was how it should have felt when he got out of the water. And really, why hadn’t he taken his underwear off? There was no way Ben had been in that tree. People simply didn’t do things like that.
>
  He wandered through the house, feeling at somewhat at a loss, and then decided to do some training. He had some weights and a bench set up on the back veranda.

  Afterward, he showered, turning the water to cold, and then drying himself vigorously with a towel. It was darker now. The clouds had come down from the mountain and he supposed it would soon rain — or at least mizzle.

  He’d changed into a pair of athletic shorts after the shower. The weather was simply too humid to wear jeans. He glanced at the bolt of calico on the dining room table and sighed. He supposed he’d have to tackle it.

  Fifteen minutes later, he felt like tearing his hair out. Every now and then the machine jammed, and he had to stop and cut and tie what he’d done. There seemed something odd about it, as though there was some force taking control of the machine. It’d been working fine yesterday, but now, well, it wasn’t broken. It just kept jamming.

  At around five fifteen he finished, and again took great pleasure in hanging up the curtains, though this time on the other side of the door. Then he went outside, where it was utterly dark, and tried to see what he could see. Nothing. That was the answer. The calico hid everything, so he was safe, at least from the front of the house, and now that he considered it, he supposed he could go ahead and make curtains for the other windows as well. Ed might think it a bit strange, but so what?

  He wandered down the drive and onto the road, and then turned his head up and considered the stars. In New York, he hadn’t been able to see a single star, not that he could remember, but there were millions of them. He sighed, and then wandered back inside again.

  If he was going to make curtains for the rest of the house, then he’d have to wait until he went to Lincoln again. That was two days away now. Two days until he’d have to meet Sandra, his new principal.

  [] [] []

  The day dawned fine. He hadn’t slept well, but that was only to be expected. Sometimes he thought there really was something wrong with adults. Children were so much easier to understand, so much easier to get along with. He’d spent the night worrying about Sandra, and what she’d be like. She’d sounded a little frightening on the phone, and from what he knew of his teacher training, principals could be like that.