Summer Sons

by Lee Mandelo

Sunset called to Andrew from a distance, as if reaching through time for him.

Ghoul joined ground, and a taste as fetid as rot seized the base of Andrew’s tongue.

“Are you going to narrate the whole thing?” he rasped. “Yes,” she said. “It’s soothing for me. I’d rather consider this as theory instead of practice.”

villain monologuing!!

The sorcerers in stories all fed ghosts blood to bring them life, and in this version, he was summoner and sacrifice at the same time.

He had become a passenger in his flesh, one half of a whole, as he’d thought of himself for so long.

If he’d found the richness of his fully realized power intoxicating before, the added burst of sustenance made him and the revenant feel like a small god in their new flesh.

After Troth had stitched Andrew’s disarticulated portion of the inheritance to Eddie’s haunting remains, carried within him now, he was less sure than he’d ever been of the neatness of his humanity. Maybe Sam was right to pull away.

He’d known Eddie to the bone, or so he thought. But having Eddie’s memories inside of him was different. The tender awfulness of remembering himself through Eddie’s eyes, beautiful and cherished and wanted with raw confused intensity, with ownership, a sublimated tangled connection that Eddie had never spoken or unpacked, though it loomed so large—that understanding was an answer to the things about himself Del had made him confront, that he’d started figuring out with Halse, but it didn’t help. Having been loved wasn’t the same as being loved.

The world where he was some sort of living ghoul, where he carried a curse that allowed him to murder with a thought, felt impossible juxtaposed against a sterile Nashville hospital room, a roommate doing homework during his visiting hours, and a sobbing parent.

Have some patience if he’s being selfish. He seems tough as nails, but he almost died.” “So did I,” he said. “Funny how different y’all feel about that.” The specter lifted their hand to hold the mug for warmth. Color drained from Riley’s face. The other boy’s laptop suddenly merited his dedicated attention. Instead of saying but I miss him,

“Can you see it?” “Yeah, at the corners,” he said. “So, that, be sorry for that if you’ve got to pick something. I didn’t want to join your cursed-haunted-bullshit club.”

“What are we doing?” The question loomed. Sam said, “Nothing, at this minute. That all right with you?” “No,” Andrew forced himself to admit. “Give me some consideration, Blur. If you’re going to be married to a fucking ghost, I’m not going to be your affair,” Sam said.

One time. He and Sam had managed one night together. His whole being remembered the stretch of his jaw and the grip of broad fingers on the base of his skull, thighs solid under his palms, sheets tangled around his knees. An abyssal gulf opened in him at the thought that he had wrecked the potential for that to happen again. The endless taunting text messages and the raw late nights, fistfights and firelight, the one bright savage thing he’d gained from all the loss since the turn of summer—nothing else kindled him to human, eager life. Sam Halse wasn’t going to be another almost. He’d made that mistake over and over in total ignorance for almost a decade, and he wasn’t going to do it again.

Andrew had to accept that he was going to take that maybe to his grave.

But alongside the fear came a worse impulse: interest, the temptation to give in. If Sam rejected him again, if this bought him nothing, he’d lose the last connection he had to Eddie and to his line. That thought—wasn’t his.

Eddie had left him this, all of this, but keeping it—allowing its horror to continue to thrive for another generation—struck him to the core as wrong. He would get closure, by force if need be.

Fire wouldn’t cleanse the history from that earth, but maybe it could put the bones to rest.

Unnatural chill rose from the gaping edge, the entrance to the caverns and the site of his first death. Eddie’s, too.

Come on. I love you, but this is no life. And, for once, it cooperated. His acquired memories slithered free with a mournful pang. “Goodbye,” he said. Then he pulled the ring off his finger and pitched it into the hole.

ahhhhh my heart!

Curses weren’t as simple to put aside as a ghost willing to be laid to rest; that grim weight would nest inside of him until the end of his life.

“I thought about the whole thing, start to finish. How much you did for me and how much I didn’t do for you, just kept taking. And I know I want to do shit for you, with you. I do.” He sipped a quick shaken breath and finished with crushing simplicity. “You’re worth it to me.”

Sam said, “I’m not jealous of him, it was never about that. It’s about reciprocity.” “I can do better.” “Prove it,” Sam said.

yes! go off, Sam!

Possibilities swirled in the smell of gasoline and the crisp October night. He swallowed, throat bobbing against the webbing of Sam’s thumb joint. His stare rested on Sam’s mouth—telegraphing his intentions, though the other man held him at a careful distance. Tension shivered between them. Then Sam said, with more gentleness than Andrew expected, “Nah, we’re a while from doing that again. Get back in your ride, Blur. Let’s try to start fresh.”