The Last Handful of Clover - Book 2: Gifts Both Light and Dark

2.12 Mr. Mac

Their laughter was like a gnawing rodent in Richard's gut. And it didn't even matter what Keith said, or what he did—whether they were words of suffering or words of hope. Every look and every syllable he uttered cut into Richard and left a mark.

I've lost everything...

Keith was still snickering while he took the new jacket and a pair of pants to the fitting room. He'd laughed so seldom these past days.

Why does hearing him laugh cut me just as deeply as seeing him cry? Richard wondered.

Of course he wanted Keith to heal. He wanted him to lose the burden of sadness that could otherwise drown him in despair. But these past few days it felt like his husband was not only losing his sadness, but that he had regained his hope. Richard wanted to believe that it was because of his constant presence—holding his lover's hand every night as he slept. But Keith gave no sign that it was anything other than normal healing from grief. There was a lightness in Keith's heart today that Richard didn't expect to see. At least not so soon.

And he had to admit, seeing it was painful. It felt as if he was being forgotten.

Keith once told him a legend he'd read, that somewhere there was a city of the dead where everyone who died had to wait. The dead would stay in this city and wait until the last person on earth forgot their names. And only then could they move on to whatever waited for them on the other side.

How long will it be before the last person on earth forgets my name? Richard wondered. And will anything be left of me then? Or anything left of this city?

More chaos had erupted in the Salt Lake valley since he had turned away from Billy. More murders, more suicides, more horrifying accidents that nobody could explain. The news and some religious leaders were finally recognizing and acknowledging that something strange was happening, but the responses so far had been limited to commentators and theologians beating their breasts about the breakdown of the social order. Richard had sat in bed with Keith the past couple nights, watching the news, and hearing those talking heads blaming the growing chaos on everything from video games to trans people in bathrooms. It was the typical masturbatory bullshit he'd had to listen to his entire life, and if he'd had any ability to use that remote, he would have snapped off the chattering baboons long ago.

But Keith watched, and Richard could see that it troubled him greatly. He wondered if Keith had connected the violence that had happened to them with the violence that was happening now across the city. To Richard it seemed obvious, but he had the benefit of insights that his husband simply couldn't have.

These past two days Keith had returned to work, and even had coffee one afternoon with some friends and colleagues from the library. Richard had followed, and as he did, he had been seeing many more ghosts. He didn't know if it was because he could see them now when he couldn't before, or whether he had learned better how to spot them. Probably many of the strangers he had seen at Liberty Park and even on the streets between the courthouse and the mall had actually been dead. But unless they were naked, or bloody, or wearing hospital sheets, Richard had probably just failed to notice them.

But now he saw them almost everywhere they went. And their helplessness and hopelessness scared him.

He had tried to talk to some. But most, as Billy had predicted, couldn't hear him at all. A few appeared to see him, but couldn't differentiate between him and the living. Some others clearly heard him and realized he was a ghost like them. But in all those cases, they had shied away, as if he was dangerous and threatening. And if he persisted, they fled.

And a few, but far too many, had that same madness in their eyes that he saw in Mattie.

The eyes of the angels scared him.