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Henry wasn’t much of a social guy, so he didn’t make friends quickly when he moved into South Ashfield Heights, but there were a few things he did piece together right away:
- Eileen Galvin: hot.
- Richard Braintree: asshole.
- The superintendent, Sunderland: borderline wacko.
- The superintendent’s son: completely batshit crazy.
“Think it’s genetic?” Henry asked Eileen once. That was Before.
“He had to euthanize his wife,” she whispered.
“Oh.” Henry wasn’t good at flirting.
He liked watching, though. That was the highlight of what happened During. He would spend hours on his knees, staring at Eileen’s shapely ankles as she watched television on her bed. Sometimes the illicit voyeurism alone was almost enough to make him hard. But that was as far as it went while he was watching. Once, he laid down on his bed and jerked off to the thought of what he might see Eileen doing if he went and looked. He felt ill afterwards. He felt ill most of the time, During. All the killing didn’t help. But it didn’t hurt, either. Killing the monsters, that is. By the End, there was as much thrill in that as there had been in Eileen’s ankles, back before she got dragged into his nightmare. The first time he dared to jerk off After, it was to the memory of smashing Walter’s smiling face in with an axe, and it felt good. He didn’t feel ill anymore. He didn’t feel ill, and he didn’t move out of his apartment, and he didn’t take down his pictures of Silent Hill, and he didn’t see a psychoanalyst. He didn’t move his cabinet back in front of the hole in the wall, but he did tell Eileen it was there.
“Good,” she said. She didn’t move out, either.
The superintendent’s son moved into 207. He had a little girl with him, whom nobody had seen before. He said she was his daughter, which was plausible - they were both blonde - but by then Henry had picked up enough gossip about the bastard’s poor dead wife to know it wasn’t likely. The whole thing should have been sketchy as shit, but Henry didn’t care. It was good, like how Eileen thought it was good that he could see into her apartment (maybe sometimes she looked into his). It was good because they weren’t alone in their crazy.
***
Henry worked odd hours. Before, he had had a nice portfolio of landscapes and photo essays and even a few good outdoor portraits - engagement photos and the like. After, he couldn’t take those pictures anymore. People wanted beautiful, but he saw monsters everywhere.
“Don’t go through with it,” he told the bride-to-be on the first and only portrait job he had tried to complete After. “He’ll beat you to a pulp.”
Ironically, she was the one who smashed his nose. It bled but wasn’t broken, and neither was his camera. When he got home, he stuffed his bloody nose full of Kleenex, opened his portfolio, and chucked out everything that didn’t feel like it was full of ghosts. He spent days sitting on the floor, watching Eileen clean her apartment. Occasionally, he moved to cook or sleep or piss, but only when he absolutely had to. Eventually, she came and sat down on the other side.
“Are you trapped in there again?”
“I don’t know,” Henry admitted.
“That’s alright.” She sat there silently for half an hour, on the other side of the wall, breathing. Then she went back to her chores. Her apartment had to be the cleanest one in Ashfield.
Henry couldn’t stand the thought of moving out of 302, but, if he wanted to keep living there, he needed rent. He called the nice detective who had decided Henry hadn’t murdered anyone and told her he wanted to help other people like Eileen and himself. Crime scene photography turned out to be a very specialized profession, but Henry had a degree and plenty of experience with lights and lenses, and he wasn’t squeamish. Anymore.
So, Henry worked odd hours. When he came home in the middle of the night, he couldn’t see into Eileen’s room, so he sat in the dark and watched the people on the other side of the apartment building instead. Sometimes, Rachel in 106 got home from the night shift at the hospital and forgot to close her curtain while she changed. Sometimes, Peter, the painter who lived right under Henry in room 202, came over, and they fucked with the lights on. Henry wondered whether Peter had had a chance to paint him yet. What snide little note would he add to the picture? Sometimes, the superintendent's son sat on his sofa staring at pictures of his dead wife. He sat there all night - until the sun came out and the little girl appeared and asked for breakfast before he sent her off to school. Henry sat up with him. If no one else on the west side was up, Henry turned his light on, too. The superintendent’s son never seemed to notice.
***
Henry knocked on Eileen’s door. “You can clean my apartment next.”
She laughed. “Why didn’t you ask through the wall?”
“Sometimes I like to make sure my door works. And yours.”
“Will you watch me?”
“From in here?” he gestured towards her apartment.
Eileen shook her head.
“Okay.”
She left the door ajar and came back with a vacuum and an assortment of rags and chemicals. Henry held his own door open.
He sat on the sofa until she kicked him off to vacuum it. He moved into the kitchen and made them some food. After they ate, she went back to cleaning, and he watched. By the time it was dark, he was sitting cross-legged on his bedspread, and Eileen’s face was shiny with sweat. He stood on top of the mattress in his stocking feet and put the ceiling fan on high. Dust showered down on top of him.
“I can’t reach the fan blades,” Eileen said, “The ones in my apartment are still filthy, too.”
“Tomorrow, I’ll ask Sunderland for a ladder.”
Eileen finished with the baseboard, took off her shoes, and climbed up onto the bed with him. The mattress shifted as they struggled to balance. Eileen dusted Henry with a feather duster, and he sneezed and sat down, suddenly. Eileen stood over Henry for a moment, then laid down on the bed, still holding the duster. He laid down next to her, just far enough away to keep from touching. Together they stared up at the ceiling fan, spinning so fast it was just one transparent circle instead of a collection of blades.
“Do you touch yourself when you watch me?” Eileen asked at last.
“No. Only in here. But I thought about it once. About watching you.”
“Only once?” Eileen teased.
“It was During,” Henry said. “I didn’t feel particularly sexy.”
“What about now?”
Henry took a deep breath. “Now, I think about other things.”
Eileen looked at him but didn’t prod.
Henry went on: “I think about killing. Killing him. I was very good at it.”
“I know.”
“Sometimes I think about your bare back crawling with blood. And killing. The two of us, killing together.”
“Show me.”
Henry looked at her sharply.
“Show me,” she insisted.
Henry looked back up at the fan. He unbuttoned the fly of his jeans and slid them down just far enough. He pulled his cock out through the fly hole in his boxer briefs. He closed his eyes and thought of smashing mutant monkeys with a shovel. When he was close, he pulled his underpants down past his cock and pushed his shirt up his chest and came on his stomach.
“I think about you,” Eileen admitted. “But, I don’t want you to touch me. I’m not sure I want anyone to touch me ever again.”
“I understand.” And Henry did.
“Next time, do it in your living room so I can watch.”
***
The cops called Henry in at 2AM, and he got home at almost five. It was winter, so they were in for three more hours of darkness. Before he settled down to nap, he peeked into Eileen’s room. It was dark, but he could hear her get up off her bed and come to crouch beside the hole. Henry stood up and took off all his clothes in the middle of the room. He turned on the light, closed his eyes, and thought about Eileen massacring two-headed monsters with a machine gun while he bludgeoned them with his axe. The warm, slick pre-come on his cock reminded him of blood. More than once, the monsters’ blood had spattered into his mouth, but he hadn’t become one of them, he didn’t think.
“You're so good at this,” Eileen whispered through the hole.
Henry came with an involuntary shout. He couldn’t remember the last time he had moaned during any kind of sex; he had had few partners, but all of them complained about his silence. He stood stock still for several minutes, listening to the soft hum of Eileen’s vibrator in the other room. She cried out when she came, too. When he opened his eyes, the light was on in 207, and the superintendent’s son was watching. Henry turned off the light.
Eileen showed up with breakfast.
“That was beautiful,” she said as soon as Henry opened the door. She handed him a coffee and a muffin.
“You were beautiful, even though I couldn’t see.”
Eileen laughed and took a bite of her own muffin as she slipped past him into his kitchen. “Your shoes are in the middle of the floor,” she complained.
“I just tossed everything around. They got possessed once, in the kitchen, just like that.”
“Delightful. You might want to close your blinds next time. I’m not the only one who saw.”
“I know.” Henry blushed, but he wasn’t particularly bothered. He had been waiting months for the crazy bastard to notice him. “He’s almost always up at night. I wasn’t thinking. Do you think he will come over here?”
“I think he’ll keep on doing what he does. He didn’t look exactly mortified.”
Henry filled up his mouth with muffin. He had not been mortified, either.
Eileen watched him chew. “Do you take it up the ass?”
Henry felt his eyes go wide. He swallowed. “Not habitually.”
“You have, though.”
Henry nodded. “I like women,” he stated, just in case Eileen thought he wasn't interested in her beyond the thrill of voyeurism, “You can fuck me with a strap-on if you want. I wouldn't have to touch you. Or we could do more normal things.”
“Like watch each other through the wall.”
“That's not all that abnormal.”
“Neither are strap-ons.”
Henry shrugged.
Eileen finished her muffin. “I think I’d like to try that once. I might feel in control. I'll go to the store and we can try once it gets dark.” ‘So he can see’ remained unsaid.
While Eileen went to the sex shop, Henry walked down the stairs and around the hall and knocked on 207.
The superintendent’s son answered the door. “I'm sorry,” he stammered.
Henry looked at him closely. He was not so tall as Henry and less lanky, his face and shoulders much more square. He had a wrestler's body, Henry a runner's. And a fighter's, apparently.
“Really, I didn't mean to look,” the other man went on. Henry had forgotten to answer.
“I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable,” Henry said belatedly. “I forgot you would be up.”
The superintendent’s son narrowed his eyes. “Are you saying it's ok that I was spying on you because you habitually spy on me, except you forgot about all that last night when you decided to have a naked beat off in the living room?”
Henry shrugged. “I guess.”
The superintendent's son laughed. Henry had not heard a real laugh in quite some time. It was good to get out and meet the other crazies.
“Fine. Whatever,” the other man said. He was older than Henry, maybe thirty, and he had a serenity about him Henry had not noticed last time he had seen him. Henry used to be an easy going guy. He missed that feeling.
“I'm crazier than you now,” Henry said, thinking aloud.
The superintendent's son looked at him sharply. “I know all about crazy. I'm better than I was - went on a journey of self exploration, I guess you'd call it. Terrifying.”
“Did it help?”
The other man shrugged. “Maybe. Laura's here. That's good.”
“Good.” Henry forced himself to smile. “Come by sometime. I'm Henry.”
“James,” the superintendent's son said. It suited him.
They shook hands, and Henry left.
***
“In the bedroom,” Henry suggested.
“The view won't be as good.”
“I know. I don't want to push too far. And this is for us. Mostly.”
Eileen agreed. They stripped, and Henry watched her cover up her pubes with the strap-on. It was purple and not particularly large, for which Henry was thankful. He hadn't been with a man since art school, three years ago, and he had only been with a few women since. None of them had done this - he'd only offered because Eileen had seemed intrigued, and, if he turned around right away, he wouldn’t be tempted to touch her with his hands.
They left the light on, but Henry didn't look to see if James was watching. He got on his hands and knees facing the headboard, and Eileen climbed up behind him. She was clumsy, inexperienced, but Henry was hard as a rock. He would have come easily from a few extra pulls on his cock if she hadn’t asked him not to touch himself.
“I want to be in charge,” she said, echoing her earlier sentiment.
“You are in charge. It feels nice.”
“Does it hurt?”
“A little bit. I'm not exactly used to it.”
“Part of me wants to hurt you,” she admitted.
“Because I got you into this?”
“He got me into this. Because you weren't possessed. He didn't rape my body, but he beat it, and he raped my mind.”
“You were strong, though.”
“Because of you. I hate that.”
“Not only. Fuck me harder, then.”
At the moment of orgasm, he looked up over his shoulder and saw the ceiling fan.
“I forgot to ask about the ladder,” he blurted mindlessly.
Eileen burst out laughing.
***
A week later, Henry sat up with his light on in the middle of the night, watching for a matching light in 207. At last, the light flicked on, then off again before Henry could catch sight of James. Five minutes later, a knock sounded on his door.
Henry opened it. Opening his door was one of his favorite things.
“James. Come in.” He stood aside, and James Sunderland edged nervously into the room. He eyed the hole that led to 303 speculatively for a moment, but then he saw the picture of Toluca Lake. He stood and stared.
“Your father gave it to me,” Henry said. “I’m a photographer.”
“Mary and I bought it for him on our honeymoon. He took it down after she died because it made me so upset,” James said.
“I’m sorry. Shit. She was sick?”
James didn’t take his eyes from the print. “Sick,” he echoed.
“I’m, um, sorry for your loss,” Henry put in uselessly. Then, with more confidence, “Wine?”
He steered James away from the picture of the lake and down the hall into his bedroom. Of course, there were pictures of Silent Hill in here, too.
“Sorry,” Henry said again. “I took these. Is it better? I can take them down.” He sat on the bed and took a swig of wine from the bottle.
“It doesn't matter,” James said. “Thanks for trying. Isn’t it funny? I was supposed to be moving on, and I am, really, but I still think about her all the time.”
“I think that’s normal.” Henry thought about monsters and violence. He wasn’t moving on. He was still living in room 302.
James laughed, but not as openly as he had that time before. He took the bottle from Henry and sat down next to him on the bed. They got drunk.
“It’s got some sort of psychic power, did you know that?” James slurred and pointed at the picture of the church in Silent Hill.
Henry shook his head. James blurred into a mass of pale skin and golden hair.
“That place,” James said, “Mary and I were drawn to it, and other people, too. Messed up people. Killers and abused people. And me, after Mary. And cults.”
“I know about the cults,” Henry put in. He’d read a lot about that During, and he’d seen the results for himself. “Resurrecting god or something, making other worlds.”
“Yes!” James grinned. The slur in his speech ebbed away. “These people go to Silent Hill because it’s magic. Magic really works there. I passed through judgement. I gazed into the abyss, and then I faced my past and came back here with Laura. It made a place of judgement for me because I wanted it so much in here.” He touched his head, then let his hand slip down his face until it rested over his heart. “It was full of monsters.”
If Henry hadn’t been drinking, he wouldn’t have said what he said next. “Walter Sullivan was from Silent Hill. His world was filled with monsters, too, and he pulled me into it. All I think about is killing them.”
There was a long silence. Henry should not have spoken. He was crazier than James, now, after all, and drunker, too, it seemed. James edged closer to him on the bed and put his hand on his face. The one he had had over his own heart a moment ago. Henry wondered whether he was feeling if he had a fever.
“Then you know,” James whispered almost silently.
Henry nodded convulsively.
James kissed him.
Henry melted down into his bedspread, and James came with him: hard and hot and solid and alive. When they parted for air, Henry said, “If we’re going to have sex we need to do it in the other room.”
“So she can see?”
“Or hear. Whatever.”
“God, you’re so fucked up.” James pulled Henry’s shirt up his chest and kissed his skin.
“I told you I was crazy.” Henry rolled out from under James and peeled his shirt the rest of the way off. He weaved down the hallway to the living room, enjoying the sensation of drunkenness, and closed the blinds. He took down the picture of Toluca Lake and leaned it up against the back of the sofa, backside out. Then he got on his knees a few feet away from the hole in the wall. His senses were too dulled and loopy for him to be sure whether Eileen was moving around in her apartment, but he wasn’t afraid. “Isn’t it wonderful that we can get drunk? We can get drunk and nobody’s coming to get us.”
James lingered at the edge of the hall. He had the bottle of wine with him, and he took a long swig, tipping it up toward the ceiling.
“Braintree was an asshole,” Henry babbled, filling the silent space. “I can’t believe you live in his apartment. Did you know I saw him killed there? Aren’t you coming?”
James laughed into the empty bottle, then set it down on top of Henry’s storage chest and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He was smiling as he started to undo his fly. “Not yet.”
***
“I think that we should swap apartments.” Eileen was up on a ladder, and Henry could see up her skirt. They were in her apartment, and Henry was holding Sunderland’s step ladder steady while Eileen dusted her fan blades. Her panties were white. Cotton, probably. With little pink somethings - dots or flowers.
“They’re almost exactly the same,” Henry reminded her. Because they were frank with each other, he added, “What are the pink things on your underwear?”
“Hearts.” She spread her legs a little bit, and Henry thought he saw a wisp of dark brown pubic hair sneak out under the seam. It might have been his imagination - it was still dark under there, but he could tell the dots were hearts now that she’d told him.
“Thanks. Why do you want to swap?”
“So I can watch him fuck you in the bedroom. Or the other way around. You know.”
“Oh.” Henry was really hard now. “We’re not going to do it again, are we? You and me?”
“I think I’d like this better.”
“Alright.”
They moved most of their things in the middle of the night - with the lights on, so James could see what they were doing. The print of Toluca Lake stayed in 302, but Henry took the photos in his bedroom with him. They swapped their clothes and sheets and blankets, but most of the furniture stayed the same, and they didn’t bother to inform the superintendent. They were living together, really. All they’d done was swap bedrooms.
Henry left his light on whenever he was up at night. James did not come.
After a week, Henry went to see him. It was a school day, so the little girl was gone.
James grimaced as he opened the door, so Henry didn’t come in. He lingered in the hallway feeling awkward like he always used to feel Before. He didn’t like the feeling. “I was hoping you’d come back,” he stammered.
James looked a little ill. “I don’t want to talk in the hall.”
He stood aside, so Henry edged inside the door and closed it. He stayed in the entryway, though. The smell of Richard Braintree’s roasting flesh wafted through his sensory memory. He waited for James to say something.
“You were drunk,” the older man grumbled at last, looking at his shoes. “I took advantage.”
“I don’t feel taken advantage of. I wasn’t drunk the other times.”
James scoffed. “What other times?”
“You know. The times you saw.”
“Henry, you’re involved with your neighbor. You’re in love with her. I don’t care what you get up to with all your little shows, but I’m not really into that. You’re young, and you’re recovering from trauma, and that time last week we . . . you were drunk. I promise you’ll regret it later.”
Now it was Henry’s turn to look down at his shoes. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I don’t think I will. Regret it. But you do, so that’s that.” His beeper went off, and he nearly dropped it on the floor trying to get it to shut up. He hadn’t been so clumsy since Before. It had been wonderful to touch and be touched by someone who understood, but involving James had been an error after all. He was regressing. “Duty calls.”
***
The murder he had gone to photograph was on the news. He sat on the sofa in 302, at the opposite end from Eileen, and watched the stern-faced news reporter jabber on about the horror of it all.
“Is there an end to it?” he asked. “Even with Sullivan and Silent Hill dealt with, bad things still happen all the time.”
“There was an end to it for us. You don’t have to keep doing that job,” Eileen reminded him.
Henry shook his head. He liked the job. “I think it helps as much as killing monsters.”
“James hasn’t been to see you.”
Henry shook his head again. “He’s uncomfortable with our arrangement.”
“And you?”
The question sat between them like a person in the empty seat.
“It’s right for us.”
“But James?”
Henry shrugged. He smiled at Eileen and sat on his hands to keep from pushing her hair behind her ears.
Eileen frowned. “Do you want to switch back?”
“No.”
Later, he laid on his bed in 303 and palmed himself through his pyjama bottoms in the dark. Light ghosted through the hole that led to 302, and the television on the other side of the wall mumbled. Henry moaned loud enough for Eileen to hear, and the TV sound went off. He slid his PJs down his hips, caressed the silky skin of his hard cock, and then began to stroke himself in earnest - fast but gentle. His wrist flew. He made high keening sounds just like he had around James’ cock and thought of how his sturdy, calloused hands had felt when he had brought him off afterwards, his strong chest pressing Henry into the hard floor, his tongue licking his open mouth. On the edge, he rolled over to fumble his lube out of the unfamiliar bedside table drawer. He stripped naked, settled on his back again, and moaned deep as he penetrated his own body. Could Eileen hear the slurp of lube as his fist returned to its task, tighter than before? He hoped so.
***
The next time Henry got back from a crime scene just before dawn, he passed James’ little girl, Laura, waiting at the bus stop. There was a little crowd of kids there, but Laura stepped away from her friends and into Henry’s path.
“I know who you are,” she said. “You’re Henry.”
“That’s right. I live across from you and your dad. In 302.”
She looked him up and down. Henry could only imagine what she saw; he had been up for twenty-five hours.
“I’m making lots of friends,” she said at last, jerking her head toward the kids at the bus stop, “but James needs a new friend now that Mary’s gone.”
Henry hoped to God she hadn’t seen his late night shows. He was pretty sure James kept her curtains drawn at night. “He knows where I live,” he told her, still a little hurt by the rejection.
Laura pursed her lips. “Well, he’s an idiot.”
The bus came, and she left without another word.
Henry stumbled up one flight of stairs and knocked on 207.
“I might actually be impaired this time,” he said when James opened the door. He weaved his way inside and sat down on his sofa.
“It's 7:15AM,” James said. Reproach was in his voice.
“And I’ve been up since six. Yesterday.” Henry laid down on the sofa with his feet off the end so he wouldn’t touch it with his dirty shoes.
“Why?”
“Oh, work. It’s not always at night, but, when it is, it’s brutal. That’s why I see you up so late, or early, or whatever.”
James stood next to the sofa with his arms folded across his chest. “What is it that you do exactly?”
“Huh?” Henry was starting to fade. Lying down in someone else's space might not have been a great idea. “Didn’t you know? I work for the police.”
“You’re not wearing a uniform.”
“No.”
“There’s no way you’re a detective.”
“No. I’m a photographer. Remember? Pictures of Silent Hill? I do forensic photos now.”
“That sounds . . . disturbing.”
Henry shrugged into a throw pillow. “I think it helps.”
“Why are you here?”
Henry yawned. “Laura said you needed a friend.” He drifted off to sleep.
***
It was afternoon when he awoke but not yet time for Laura to return from school. He was still on James’ sofa, but somebody had thrown a blanket over him. Yawning, he stretched, then cuddled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, savoring its warm and undeserved embrace.
“Sorry,” he murmured. Was James near enough to hear?
James snorted softly. “Your methods of friendship are a little unconventional.”
Henry blushed. He extracted himself from the blanket and folded it neatly. “I’m sorry,” he whispered again, to his shoes. He was sitting up, now, but he dreaded looking into James’ eyes.
“You need looking after.”
Now, Henry did look up. James was seated in a nearby armchair. A neat pile of ledgers sat on the coffee table, and an open one was balanced on the chair’s overstuffed arm. He peered at Henry from over the screen of his laptop.
Henry shrugged. “Eileen and I look after each other. Nobody else understands. Except you, maybe. I was wrong to press.”
“But then Laura told you I needed a friend.”
Henry shrugged again. “I told you: this morning, my judgment was impaired.”
James closed his laptop gently. “I spent four horriffic years looking after my wife while she wasted away.”
Henry stood up. “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “You don’t need to look after me.” He started for the door.
James didn’t move, but he kept talking. “Now, I’m looking after Laura, and it’s good. It’s rewarding.”
“I’m glad.” Henry smiled at the doorknob.
“What are my options here?”
Henry’s breath caught in his throat. Hand on the knob, he looked up. He could see the woodgrain on the door under the paint.
Behind him, James was moving. Pretty soon, he was right behind Henry. His breath teased the hairs on the back of his neck. Another inch, and they’d be touching.
“I . . .” Henry tried to answer and failed. He was breathing heavily. Suddenly his pants were tight. He moved his right hand from the doorknob to the cool, painted wood in front of his face. His fingernails were dirty.
“You’re in love with your neighbor,” James said, like he’d said that last horrible time - the time of the rejection.
“Yeah, I guess. It’s not . . .” He floundered, then tried James’ phrase. “It’s an unconventional friendship.”
“You look after each other.”
“That’s right.”
“But, something’s missing. For you.”
Henry breathed in, all ashiver. He confessed: “We switched rooms so she could watch you fuck me in the bedroom.”
James’ fingers found the bottom edge of Henry’s shirt. They pulled it away from his skin, then snaked around and came to rest on Henry’s belly, dipping underneath the waistband of his wrinkled work slacks.
Feeling brave, Henry added, “Or the other way around.”
James breathed a laugh in his ear. “And how about here? How about right here right now while she won’t be able to see us or hear us? Can I look after you in all the ways she can’t?”
He tugged Henry’s waistband to the side, and Henry turned around. He was already nodding. Somehow, they would find a way to make this work.
“Say something,” James prompted.
Henry swallowed, pleased to see James’ eyes drop to his neck. “You’d like that?” he asked tentatively. “Looking after me?”
“I’d like to give it a try.”