So Long, Not Goodnight

Chapter Three

Frank shrugs and gets up to remove the lit torch from the wall. The cigarette hangs from his lips holding on by some exemption of gravity as Frank extends his hand to Gerard. Gerard looks from Frank's fingers to his eyes in unsettled confusion. "Come with me if you want to live, fair damsel."

Gerard gasps and chokes on intake. Frank's eyes lighten. "I've... I've always wanted to say that."

"Fuck! You scared the shit out of me!" Gerard harshly takes Frank's hand and gets to his feet.

Frank leads Gerard down the dark hallway leading him closer to the pinprick of light. The torch illuminates the hall showing dirt crusted stones, moss kissed rock, and more and more empty sconces. The further down they hall they went, the colder the air around them grew. The fogs of their breath grew cloudier and cloudier with each step they took. Gerard could feel his fingers and toes growing numb as the temperature continued to drop. His teeth began to chatter causing gaps in the fog that emitted from his mouth. Frank carried on seeming to notice none of the changes and kept guiding them both into the neverending darkness of the tomb. After what felt to Gerard to be miles of walking, they made it to another dimly lit alcove, the origin of the light source that Gerard first saw as his welcoming to the tomb. It reminded Gerard of the small crawl space from The X Files pilot where Scully and Mulder found a cocoon of regurgitated bile from some creature they were hunting, only this wasn't as gross; it was homey in a way. There was a small table with candles that were leaving trails of wax down the table legs, a large glass jar of what looked like black salt crystals, stacks of aged cloth covered textbooks with stained pages, a decanter of water, and a black beaded rosary with a cream cross that appeared to be made of ivory. There was a pile of dingy pillows thrown on the floor in a kind of makeshift mattress with a very thin tissue of a blanket thrown atop. A wooden crate was upturned spewing it's contents of miscellaneous plastic bags and envelopes onto the cold floor. Gerard's breathing became stagnant and he could feel his head become dizzy whether it was because of the cold or the pressure or the claustrophobia, it felt like it was intensifying by the second. It almost felt like he could hear each breath of his hit and echo back to him from the walls. He could feel each letter from each psalm carry back to him and feel his heart mimic the numeric code of each verse. Frank looked up from a book that he had open and was referencing and saw Gerard's face was gleaming with a clammy sweat. "Shit! Gee! Are you okay? Here, sit down."

Frank guided Gerard over to his makeshift bed and sat him down. "You're ice cold, man."

Frank wrapped the dingy blanket around Gerard's neck and torso. He noticed Gerard's hair was streaked with sweat and blood. "How long have you been bleeding? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I," Gerard's lips felt chalky and dry. "I thought it stopped."

He brought his hand back up to the nape of his neck to run over his wound again and felt the warmth of his blood transfer onto his palm. "Shit, I... I must have torn it back open somehow." Frank sat beside Gerard and pulled up his dark hair from his neck to get a closer look at the wound. Sure enough, the gash was leaking blood onto Gerard's hoodie and the crust of his forming scabs mixed with the new flow of blood and pooled onto the fabric of his jacket. Further examining his cut, Frank noticed an inflamed pockmark right below where Gerard's right shoulder blade met his neck. It almost looked like a large wasp sting. Frank brushed his fingers over the bump and Gerard grimaced and hissed through his teeth. "I thought the cut was on my neck." He swatted Frank's fingers away from the mark.

"Hold on, let me see," Frank gently brought his hands back to the circular patch and examined it. "Jesus, Gee, that looks like..."

"What does it look like, Frankie?"

Trying to ignore the way Gerard said his name, Frank continued. "It looks like an injection."

Gerard almost vomited onto the floor but held it in. "But... But... How?"

"Maybe I was wrong... Maybe that isn't a demon, but a... a person?"

"How could it be a person? It left footprints, but there wasn't a body... It was hovering while it was chasing me... It basically disappeared into thin air and reappeared." Gerard felt his mind go frantic with questions and disbelief.

"Well, I don't know how else to explain it..." Frank trailed off.

"Wait..." Gerard shivered and his voice was barely a murmur. "Before you pulled me in here..."

"What?" Frank brushed the hair from his eyes and Gerard could see Frank's eyes tearing up.

"It... It..." Gerard could feel the darkness swallowing him up again but he fought it; he swam against it's current, but it was just too strong. "It..."

Gerard babbled the word over and over and over again until his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and the cool hearth of the mausoleum turned to a cold casket six feet under.

*

Gerard's head swam with static and ghosts. He was running in slow motion, the cloaked figure gaining on him. He pulled down every rotting headstone he passed into it's path, but it still gained on him. "Gee!" He could hear faintly in the distance shining besides the pinprick of light. "Gee!"

The figure had him by the ankle. Gerard fell face first into the weedy turf of the graveyard. "Frankie!" He tried to call. "Frankie!"

Because even though the boy from the tomb and he had just met, Gerard couldn't help but feel that he needed Frank to keep him safe. He needed his ghost boy from the mausoleum to keep him safe. "Gee!" Gerard heard again, faintly, as the dark entity pulled him closer and closer towards its being.

Gerard watched his own footprints, the stripes and star stamped into the mud, dissolve into nothing, almost like he never stood there running for his life. "Gee!"

The cloaked figure lifted Gerard by the hood of his jacket as Gerard clawed all around screaming for Frank. "Frankie! Frankie! Where are you? I need you!"

The hooded figure held Gerard upright as Gerard still clawed, completely terrified, and caught the creature's hood in the cracked skin of his nailbeds. As the hood slowly fell, Gerard thought he saw...