postcognition

by Snickfic

Summary:

Barrett listened with bright, sharp-eyed attention, and yet he was untouched by any of Fischer’s stories. Barrett already knew them, of course, and no doubt that had a good deal to do with it, but there was complacence there, too. He’d come to conquer Belasco House, and he did not fear it.

Well, you damn well should.

Notes:

• For skazka.

The introductory tour of the house paused only very briefly in the kitchen. The four of them would have no need of it, since the couple from Granite Falls would keep them fully provisioned. Barrett’s wife gazed into the cavernous space, clearly awaiting some phantasm to emerge from the shadows, and Fischer was tempted to tell her and Barrett of the butchery that had happened there. No euphemism, that; the story went that in those final years, virgins were tied down in that very kitchen while one Belasco acolyte or another wielded the knife. Rumor said they’d used the blood for fevered, ecstatic rituals and the meat for roasts and stews.

Barrett and the missus were already turning away, and there was no reason for Fischer to make enemies of them if he could help it. He kept his mouth shut.

He found the Spiritualist looking at him thoughtfully. “You hate this place,” she said. Her gaze flicked to the kitchen and back again, and her eyebrows peaked in concern. “It preyed upon you.”

Fischer said, “I hate every stick and stone of this miserable heap.” Candle in hand, he turned his back on the kitchen and let it be consumed again by darkness.

---

He must have had opinions at age fifteen. Preferences. Afterwards, he could never remember what they’d been. He’d already been several years into puberty, and, in the way of fifteen-year-old boys, he’d spent as much time with his hand on his cock as he could find opportunity for. What visions had he brought to mind as he fondled himself? One of the girls from the cinema, with her round hips and her gaze tossed saucily over her shoulder? Or more of a girl-next-door type, brown-eyed and sweet?

Perhaps he’d thought of nothing at all. One didn’t really need to, when one was fifteen.

---

At Barrett’s suggestion, Fischer told some of the house’s history over dinner. The women’s responses were predictable: Edith shrinking and squeamish at these revelations of human depravity; Florence gently, virtuously pained. It was Barrett that Fischer found himself addressing most often. Barrett listened with bright, sharp-eyed attention, and yet he was untouched by any of Fischer’s stories. Barrett already knew them, of course, and no doubt that had a good deal to do with it, but there was complacence there, too. He’d come to conquer Belasco House, and he did not fear it.

Well, you damn well should.

Maybe Fischer’s own first-hand experience of the house would have shaken Barrett, but Barrett didn’t ask about that—perhaps to avoid scaring Edith—and like hell was Fischer going to volunteer any of it. Instead he let the history report wind to a stop, and he sat back to let Barrett lecture on his theories. It was all tedious, self-important nonsense, and Fischer only half-listened. Instead he watched Barrett’s hands. Barrett often gestured as he spoke. What good looks he might have had in youth had long since faded, but he had fine hands, long-fingered and articulate.
.
An inquiring glance from Barrett made Fischer realize he was staring. He turned his attention to his plate. Soon enough the table was being cleared for Florence’s first sitting, and that was as much distraction as Fischer could wish for.

---

The others had gone to bed. Fischer tossed and turned for a while on his mattress in the airless bedroom. Eventually he tired of trying, and he made his way downstairs with his flashlight. Its light barely reached to the bricked-up windows, but that hardly mattered. Even with his eyes closed, Fischer could feel the bricks choking the house, like some kind of psychic blockage in its structure that kept the natural world out and Belasco’s evil in.

They weren’t, of course. They were only brick, and no house had a psyche, not even this one. Still, Fischer would have given a lot for even one real window, open wide to the frigid night air and whatever fetid stink might float in from the tarn.

In the stale, unmoving air of Belasco House, every room was the same, every one of them as black as the bottom of a coal mine. Fischer wandered, barely noticing where his feet took him until all at once, with a chill, unpleasant shock, he found himself at the doorway to the kitchen. Beyond the reach of the beam of his flashlight, the space was a infinite cavern, utterly silent except for the sound of his memories.

He needed to be more careful. He knew exactly what kind of nightmare the house would lead him into, given the chance. He had to stay on guard. The evil in this place couldn’t touch him or work through him unless he let it. No tables would float on his account nor any ectoplasm appear. He was inviolate.

“Have you found something?”

Fischer very nearly dropped the flashlight. He turned to see Barrett looming behind him, candle in hand. “Nothing I didn’t expect,” Fischer said, rather than cursing Barrett for frightening him so badly. No doubt Barrett had made noise in his approach; even if not, surely Fischer would have noticed the candle glow if he’d been paying the slightest attention.

Barrett eyed him with a clinical, scientific skepticism. Damn you, Fischer thought. Barrett peered past him, into the kitchen. “Did you spend much time here thirty years ago?”

“Some,” Fischer said. He looked at Barrett’s profile, lit from beneath by the candle. A strange, wild impulse was overtaking Fischer, the kind he’d gotten often in those first fragmented, drunken years after Belasco House when all he’d wanted for most of hours of the day was to smash something. He’d outgrown those urges years ago, he thought, gotten past them, and yet now he was walking past Barrett into the kitchen, sweeping his flashlight over the cabinets and countertops, the big gas range, yet more blocked-up windows. He half-expected to see bloodstains on the tile floor from rituals of the far-distant past, but there was only dust.

He hadn’t intended to go anywhere in particular in the kitchen, and yet when he turned the corner of the huge center island, he knew immediately why he’d come there. Those particular floor tiles he knew quite well indeed. “You didn’t ask me about my stay in the house,” he said.

“Oh?” Barrett said. He’d stayed at the door. The candle’s wavering flame cast shifting shadows across his face. Fischer was very nearly out of its radius; probably he looked a sinister figure, looming there on the far side of the island, swallowed in shadow.

“At dinner,” Fischer said. “You let me tell them all the history you already knew. You didn’t ask about me, about what I saw here.”

“I thought it might be difficult for you,” Barrett said.

Would Barrett really care about that if he thought he could learn something important? Fischer thought not. “Say I give you a freebie. Ask me anything you want. Ask me about this kitchen.” He swept the flashlight over the room again. The light caught dully on a pair of bottles shoved in a corner, but otherwise the counters were empty.

Fischer returned his attention to Barrett, who for once seemed uneasy, as if even his stolid lack of imagination had been sparked briefly to life. “Or come here,” Fischer said, “and I’ll show you.”

“Show me what?” Barrett said, but at last he walked into the room. “I hope you’re not wasting my time, Fischer.”

“I’ll make it worth your while,” Fischer said. He took a step back, farther down the island, drawing Barrett forward until he came to the very spot Dr. Graham had stood on several occasions. Fischer had never been able to settle in his mind whether it had been two times or three. He clicked off his flashlight and set it on the countertop, sank carefully to his knees, and laid his fingers on Barrett’s belt buckle.

Barrett gaped down at him. “Mr. Fischer!” he said, in scandalized tones.

“It’s funny,” Fischer said. He thumbed back and forth across the end tip of Barrett’s belt. “By the time I woke up, got out of the hospital, they’d already boarded up the place. Nobody wanted to know my side of the story, not that I was really offering.”

“Here now,” Barrett said, but he didn’t say more, didn’t move an inch.

“They paid me a settlement fee afterwards, did you know that? Didn’t even ask what I’d seen. Just handed me some cash, told me to go away. I probably signed some papers, said I’d stay mum about the details, but that’s the thing. They never asked me the details. Like they were afraid of finding out. Like they figured something worse happened on our little expedition than just insanity and all the deaths.”

“Worse,” Barrett echoed. He seemed frozen stiff, his eyes wide and very nearly unblinking, his pupils huge in the dim light and, Fischer fancied, for other reasons. Suddenly he seemed to remember himself. He shrugged all over, as if breaking himself from a trance. “That’s quite enough, Fischer.”

“You’re a scientist, aren’t you, Barrett? That’s your whole gig. I’m offering you insight and you’re just going to walk out?” Without pausing to let Barrett argue that, Fischer slid the belt loose from Barrett’s buckle, slipped the button open on his slacks without any fumbling or hesitation. He had his own expertise, as hard-won as Barrett’s, if in a rather different field. He pulled Barrett’s cock out in one smooth motion.

Barrett laughed. It was a low, ugly sound. “Whatever vulgar point you’re trying to make, I think you’ll be disappointed.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Fischer said. He leaned in and sucked the head of Barrett’s cock into his mouth. Barrett smelled a bit musky with the day’s sweat. He was big in Fischer’s mouth, but not uncomfortable. That might change. Fischer found himself hoping it would change. He licked over the slit, and Barrett twitched between his lips. If it weren’t for the cock in his mouth, Fischer would have smiled at Barrett’s sharp, disbelieving gasp. Had he really not known the way Fischer leaned? Had he thought him innocent?

Never mind. Fischer had more immediate concerns. He began to work in earnest at bringing Barrett to hardness. Barrett didn’t take long to stiffen up, just like Graham hadn’t. Fischer sucked and licked, and he moaned appreciatively when Barrett rested his hand on Fischer’s hair.

He was too damn gentle. Fischer growled around Barrett’s cock and sucked him down a little further, so that the tip teased at the back of Fischer’s throat. He nearly choked. He wanted to choke. He moaned again, a wanton sound he’d never intended to make when he’d first knelt here, but it did the trick. At last Barrett began fucking Fischer’s mouth with short, quick thrusts. All Fischer had to do now was hold on, not let Barrett trigger his gag reflex, not vomit up their custom-catered dinner. All he knew was the ache in his jaw and the lesser ache in his knees, the silky heat of Barrett’s cock and the wet bitterness beginning to leak from it.

Barrett came with a sharp cry, almost one of alarm. Fischer kept sucking him until he’d finished, and then he spat Barrett’s spunk onto the tile floor.

The candle was still flickering gently on the countertop, where Barrett had set it. The shadows of Hell House loomed and danced at the edges of its light. Barrett stared at Fischer, as stricken as if Fischer were one of those ghosts Barrett professed not to believe in.

Hoarsely, Fischer said, “The first time I sucked a man off in this kitchen, I was fifteen. I don’t know if I wanted it. Rather, I don’t know if I would have wanted it if not for the house. I don’t even know if Dr. Graham wanted it. Maybe the house reached inside and twisted us both the same way. You see,” he said, dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, “I can’t remember what I was like before that year, and obviously I can’t ask Graham. He’s dead.”

“For God’s sake, Fischer,” Barrett said. It sounded like a plea. “That’s enough. I need to see to Edith.” He picked up the candleholder and began to back away. As he neared the door, he said, with the thinnest veneer of his usual confidence, “There’s no need to mention this to anyone. I certainly won’t. Good night.”

Just as he disappeared, candle and all, Fischer reached for his flashlight and flicked it on. He palmed himself, stiff in his trousers. He’d always gotten hard back then, too. He’d brought himself to completion on this very tile thirty years ago, but he’d no desire to do it now.

When he got back to bed, though, then it’d be worth doing. Then he’d be able to sleep.

He got to his feet and left the kitchen without a backward glance. He found he even had a bit of a spring in his step as he climbed the stairs. You couldn’t let the house in. He knew it, and now maybe Barrett knew it, too. Maybe he’d given Barrett just enough of a scare to save his life down the line.

He had six more days in this house from hell. He’d be all right, as long as he didn’t let it in.

---

After their eventual escape from Belasco House, Fischer and Edith met up every so often, like some sick survivors’ ritual. They understood each other, and there was something in that. Fischer thought they might have become lovers if he hadn’t been ruined for women long before he met Edith—and if, he began to suspect, Edith had ever been suited for men in the first place.

At one of these, a year or so after that fateful Christmas, Edith awkwardly confessed that Barrett had been almost entirely impotent—the echo of an earlier jibe Fischer had long forgotten. Are you impotent too? she’d asked him, once upon a time.

Polio, Edith was explaining now. Then she paused, peered into Fischer’s face, and asked if he was all right.

Really, was he quite all right?