By: Hazy
Copyright: 2002

Chapter 1

~Present

"We’re here!" Joey exclaimed and parked the car in front of the southern mansion. He got out and immediately walked around the car, stopping beside the passenger door with his hands on his hips, waiting for me to get out. The look on his face was evident, he was enjoying this. I’d only gone along with this because it was he wanted. To settle down in the south in a mansion. I would rather be in New York in a penthouse sipping wine, but no, Joey had to go and pull the puppy eyes on me and beg me to move to the south.

"Baby, get out of the car, I swear you won’t regret this." Joey said and pulled the car door open. From my spot in the car, I fell out of the car, and onto Joey.

"Chris, now how many times do I have to tell you not to lean on the car door?" Joey said and pulled me into a stand position. That was when I got my first glance of the house. Besides the fact that we were practically in the middle of nowhere, the house didn’t even look that great. Sure, it was kinda big, but it was in need of desperate help.

"Why did you drag me here again?" I asked Joey. I leaned into him and put my arm around his waist.

Because it’s always been a dream of mine to live in a house like this, and now I get to." He said and shook me slightly.

"But it’s…. It needs a lot of work." I complained, thinking of the money that would be going down the tube. A car horn honked and we turned our heads to the car coming up the long dirt driveway. An old beat up pick-up truck slowly made its way up the driveway with supplies in the back, mostly the things we would need for the next few weeks until we got a room decent enough to sleep in.

"Howdy," An old man said as he got out of the truck. "I have the supplies ya’ll wanted, sure it’s enough?" He asked. Joey rounded the truck, looking over the supplies.

"Sure, it looks good, if we think of anything else, we’ll be into town in the morning." Joey smiled. He was loving this experience. I groaned and moved closer to the house. Something about the house was unsettling, almost ghost like. A chill went up my spine and I shook myself to get rid of it.

"That was weird." I muttered and moved closer to the house still. Stepping carefully over the weeds, vines, and upturned bricks on the pathway, I made my way to the front porch. It was rotting away, paint was chipped, if there was much there at all. The windows were intact, which I was thankful for. But to tell the truth, it wasn’t much to look at.

"I’d be careful around here." The old man said calmly. His voice didn’t waver, but something in it made me question the thoughts behind the words.

"What do you mean?" Joey said, his smile not yet dropping.

"This house is haunted. By what, I don’t know." The man said. He moved away from his truck, moved closer to where Joey and I stood and looked around. "Place used to hide them Negro and faggot slaves. Not a good place, no one in his right mind would want to stay here. I give you boys a week, tops." The old man said and spit out his tobacco onto the weeds.

"Well, I give it more than a week," Joey stated and hoisted a box onto his hip. "Thanks for dropping off the stuff, we’ll be seein’ ya."

"I hope so."The old man said and went back to his truck, got in, and backed out of the driveway. Joey walked up onto the porch.

"Come on, Chris, grab a box and let’s get movin’, I’m tired, and I want to clear a room before night falls." Joey said and took out the keys to the house. I sighed, grabbed a box and walked up onto the porch, stopping on the third step. Another chill. I shook it away and looked at Joey who was watching me.

"What’s wrong, baby?" He said carefully.

"Nothing, just got a chill for a moment, nothing to worry about." I smiled and stood next to him while he pushed open the door to the house. Cobwebs hung everywhere in sight, and I cringed at the work that would need to be done. Joey moved away from me, and I slowly followed behind, looking into the dark spaces between the walls that I would eventually find to be rooms, hopefully.

"So what do you think?"

"Don’t know yet, could be anything, like last time."

"Last time was a fluke, shouldn’t have happened."

"Yeah, but I thought we actually had something."

"Hoped to much, can’t have it happen again."

"The others were just after us, these want the house itself."

"Yes, but they don’t know we come with it."

"The short one knows something, not sure of what though."

"Wishful thinking?"

"Probably."


I turned my head, something moved. Biting my lip, I practically ran to catch up with Joey."

"So what do you think about this room, honey?" He asked.

"For what?" I asked, stupidly.

"To sleep in, stupid. It seems the safest, and the clearest."

"Okay, let’s set up the mattresses then." I said and set the box down at my feet. Another chill. "Damn." I said softly and looked around. I bent over and pushed the box against the wall, my cross falling out of my shirt in the process.

"He’s got a cross, that’s a sign."

"A sign of what though?"

"Okay, wishful thinking, I know."

"Do you think he is?"


Sounds of whispering filled my ears. "I am." I said to the air around me. The whispering stopped.

"Honey!" Joey called from the foyer.

"What?" I called back.

"Come help me with the rest of the boxes."

"Why not just leave them in the car? I mean, if we are starting tomorrow, that stuff will only get in the way."

"He is going to trip over that loose board in the foyer, they always do."

I sidestepped the loose board with ease. "Thank you." I said to the air.

"Well that answers one question."

"Certainly does, maybe there is hope after all."


I helped Joey move out things into the foyer and he locked the door behind him.

"No electricity, right?" I asked. The sun was at the verge of setting. We gathered the candles and flashlights, and found our way back to the only room we know so far. We lit candles around the room, and slipped between the sleeping bags. I lay back on the pillows and sighed. Resting my head on my hands, I closed my eyes.

I felt Joey’s hand cup my face. His lips softly touched mine, almost unsure. I pulled him on top of me and dove my tongue into his mouth. Somehow my undershirt came off, just like his, and my mouth left his, as I gasped for breath. Joey’s mouth moved from my lips to my neck, then down my chest and stomach. I moaned, edging him on. I lifted my hips, allowing him to pull of my boxers.

"You would think they would have the decency to do that while they are alone."

"They think they are alone."

"That’s not the point."


I shot up off the mattresses.

"Baby? What’s wrong." Joey said. I looked around the room, looking for something…anything, but I found nothing. I sighed.

"It’s stupid." I said softly.

"What?"

"I thought I heard something, it’s probably just the house." I paused, knowing it wasn’t. "I’m just not used to it." I said.

"Well," Joey started. He pulled me back down and wrapped his arm around me. "I can take your mind off the house, if you let me." He said seductively. I watched him lick his lips and felt his hand massaging my bare hip. It was a tempting offer. I bit my lip.

"And how do you plan to do that?" I asked jokingly. His hand reached down beneath the sleeping bag and stroked me.

"I think you know." Joey whispered in my ear and nibbled on my neck. I moaned, reaching my hand into his hair and pulling his lips down to meet mine.

"Show me." I said and kissed him, hard on the lips. And that’s how the night was spent.

The next morning was spent working outside, trying to clean up the appearance of the house. It was a mess, to say the least. I spent the better part of the morning clearing the pathway to the house, which actually wasn’t as bad as it had appeared to be. I cleared the path, and dug all the moss, and dirt out of the cobble stone path and then began on the porch, stripping the paint mostly. Joey got out the weed whacker and killed all the weeds that had over grown the flowerbeds and brick driveway, which I hadn’t known was brick, I thought it was dirt, but after 2 hours of working on it, Joey discovered that it was, indeed, brick.

Stopping for lunch at 1 proved to be a much needed break.

"I have an idea." Joey said suddenly, mouth full of his sandwich.

"What’s that?" I said and took another bite of my apple.

"Let’s look around the house, see if we can find anything. I think that would be cool, we can check out the rooms too. To see where we want things to go." Joey was getting excited about this. He paused for a moment, looking at the work we had accomplished since we had started at 8 am and then looked at me. "It will be less stressful." He said, and that was all it took to convince me.

We started in the "dining room" taking down cobwebs and sweeping what we could see of the floor.

"Oh, wow, hardwood, probably original." I was amazed at the facts that Joey had picked up. "Can you think of the feet that walked across this floor? Who they were? What they did for a living?" Joey asked, not to me, but to the floor. I stood, leaning on my broom and shook my head.

"Let’s keep going." I said simply. We pried the windows open, letting cool air flow through the house. It felt good, the cool air, since there was no air conditioning. I stopped sweeping and stared into space for a moment. I could actually picture Joey and I sitting on the porch with lemonade in our hands, laughing about something. I smiled.

"What’s that goofy grin for?" Joey, amused.

"Well, I was picturing you and me on the front porch, sipping lemonade." I said, looking over at Joey who was washing the windows. He stared off into space for a minute, then looked back at me.

"I can picture it too." He said and smiled. Maybe buying this house was going to be better than I had thought. Once the dinning room was done, we moved to the foyer. We had left the front door open, to let air in, and went to work. Joey worked on the front door and side windows; the front door was mostly maple wood, along with a beautiful round etched glass picture. I swept the floor, which I shouldn’t have done, because after that I began to strip the paint from the banister. The day moved quickly, and we decided that we had done enough, we didn’t bother with putting anything away because we had no worries of anyone stealing out things. We cleaned up and went into town for dinner. There wasn’t much of a choice to eat at, but we figured it was the best we were going to get.

And that was how the next two months were spent. Slowly cleaning the yard and little by little, the house. We’d moved everything out of the dinning room, and painted it, nothing fancy, just white, until we could compromise on something. We found the old dinning room table, with 10 chairs, and refinished the wood, and put it in the dinning room.

All floors in the house were left alone, until we could clean everything up enough, why scratch newly polished floors? Exactly my point. We cleared out the kitchen, patching and repainting the walls, fixing the doors, and polishing the cabinets. To tell the truth, I was actually having fun with the house. The yard was looking great, the front and left side yard anyway, hadn’t ventured into the back yet, didn’t have the guts. We had fertilized the grass, to get it to grow, pull out the dead bushes and flowers, replacing them, and we’d had a few trees taken out, the ones that were a danger to the house. We still slept in one of the rooms on the first floor. Still didn’t have electricity or air conditioning, or real food, but somehow, I didn’t seem to mind. It was all part of the experience I guess.

I stood at the base of the stairs and gulped. "Ready?" Joey said beside me. I nodded and we took the steps slowly, not sure if they were rotted through. We hadn’t ventured upstairs yet, more for the reason that we were scared to than anything else. We reached the top of the stairs and looked around. It was a hall, basically. Rooms going off to each side, and everything was covered. Windows were blocked, and old wallpaper barely stuck to the wall.

"Wow, looks like someone basically just up and left." I said softly. Joey walked over and pulled the cover off the window, letting light into the top foyer. There was a small balcony that overlooked the foyer below, and another balcony that overlooked the formal living room below, where we had been sleeping for the past 2 ½ months. We ventured through the rooms, slowly, almost memorizing everything. We pulled covers off windows and sheets off furniture and stood back. We were in the master bedroom.

"It does look like someone just left." Joey said. I nodded and looked around. Someone had literally just covered everything. Beside the huge king size bed nightstands stood on either side, on one side, books were piled and a pair of glass sat.

"Amazing." I said in wonder. On the floor along the wall, pictures stood, leaning against the wall.

"I thought it would be a whole lot more work." Joey said, coming up behind me and leaning against me. I nodded in agreement.

"I did too, I don’t know why, but I expected much worse than this." I said, still looking around the room.

"Let’s get to cleaning." Joey said and smacked my ass. I jumped and pushed him.

"What a way to break a mood." I practically shouted. We laughed and went back into the hall, to clean. 2 hours later we went back down into the kitchen, and sat at the kitchen table, which was a card table. We had stocked the pantry with things that wouldn’t go bad.

"Look at all they have done, I can’t believe it."

"I know, it looks just like it used to almost."

"And they’re still here, most had left by now."

"And they haven’t found any of the doors."

"True, I thought they would have by now."

"Well just have to wait and see."

"Yes, we will."

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