"No." Nathan steps away from him. They are in a black room again, and no moonlight seeps through any shuttered windows here. The room feels small. They withdraw from the doorway to a farther wall, where they know each other by touch, by voice. "But this place does feel like there's people in it. Don't you think so?"
Roy is frowning. "I don’t know."
"Did you ever come to a place and feel like you'd been there before?"
The frown deepens. "No." Silence. "Did you? Do you feel like you been here before?"
"Not quite." Whispered so quietly Nathan can hardly hear the words himself. "It's more like I'll never leave."
Then a sound, a footfall. Nearby.
Roy, by his stillness, makes clear that he hears too. "What is it?"
"I thought I heard somebody"
"It's probably the guys."
Then comes the sound again. A step, another. Another.
Too heavy for Randy or Burke. The sound approaches from the corridor beyond.
He draws Roy into the deepest part of shadow. The doorway is a lighter outline of gray against the strangling black of the wall.
Silence. Nathan holds his breath.
A figure in the door. A vaguer shadow. Someone stands there with his legs spread apart. He is sturdy, square shouldered, like Nathan's Dad when he was younger, like Preacher John Roberts. Like Roy. He is familiar. He makes no sound. He is another blankness of the house, a ghost who could be anyone, living or dead.
The moment broadens in some way, and divides. The sensation is explicit. There are two of Nathan, moving in different directions, and time is no longer a line but a knot, a maze, through which he must pick his way. The figure both remains in the doorway and walks away from it, and Nathan follows in each direction. The figure moves away, and Nathan follows, into the dark corridor, up the stairs, through walls, through ceilings and roofs, upward into air, into heaven and night sky.
But the figure also remains in the doorway and in the haze moves vaguely, like something out of a dream, so that it might be Dad taking off his clothes there or it might be the preacher opening the Bible behind the pulpit on Sunday morning.
And Dad's hand on Nathan's thigh.
Then Roy lays his hand on Nathan's shoulder and says, "What do you see? What's wrong?"
The shadow lingers in the vague doorway. The divided moment vanishes, converges.
"I thought I saw somebody"
He can feel Roy searching, can feel his strain. They are fixed together, invisibly linked. Roy's breath repeats itself along Nathan's shoulders and neck. He pulls Nathan to him with sudden fervor, his arms encircling, and there is insistence in his body, taut like a wire, like when he first touched Nathan in the graveyard. For Nathan the feeling is like a wind, scouring, and Nathan finds himself echoing with the gust. Roy jerks him close, almost brutish, and the thing in the doorway watches, and now the thing resembles Dad even more, from when Dad was young and strong; and the feeling is like there is something tearing in Nathan. That Roy can hold him roughly, like this. That he can squeeze too tight. The presence of the thing in the doorway robs the moment of any tenderness. Roy turns Nathan around to face him, Nathan's back is to the door, but he can still feel the thing watching. Roy says, "Don't look. I don't know what it is. But don't look out there anymore."
The plaintive note to the voice reaches Nathan.
They are together in the room. They are standing together, and Roy's hands are insisting, his body is insisting. His mouth crawls along Nathan's face and Nathan is tempted, for the first time, to push him away. There are eyes watching from all sides. Roy's heart pounds beneath Nathan's hand. Nathan sighs, and yields.
The need leaves Roy's body a little at a time, and it is almost as if Nathan erases the tension with his hands, squeezing it out through Roy's shoulders. They are together, they run together a little, their edges softening and blending. At first, for Nathan, resistance and anger prevent any pleasure. But this is Roy, not Dad. They are here together, they are safe.
Then, without a sign, Roy kneels in front of Nathan, and Nathan, dumbstruck, searches for his face in the shadows. Roy unfastens Nathan's pants, lets them down.
"What are you doing?"
