Coal to Diamonds (6 page)

Cole thought he’d finally find satisfaction once he quit his job to write his novel. Three novels, actually. He intended a grandiose trilogy to rival Tolkien. He loved the seclusion of the cabin, the absence of the whispers and stares he’d come to expect in town. He didn’t even mind the extra work required to heat and maintain the little place. But as one year turned into two, he found himself sitting more and more on his porch, watching the sunset gild the trees and aching for Cam and Bobby. He saw them so clearly sometimes that it made him weep: the exact brown of Bobby’s hair or crescent crinkle of Cam’s eyes when he smiled. He took out his wand, that slender piece of boyhood he’d managed to clutch when everything else had been irrevocably lost, and remembered the nights in the tree house. How he wanted those nights back! He’d been happy, complete, in those twilight hours, like never before or since. Together, the three of them held all of the elements in balance. Bobby and Cam had shattered their perfect thing into pieces, and Cole willed it whole again. Often he sat for hours under a sky that shifted from rose gold to indigo and stroked the wood in his hand, tracing over the sigils with his fingers. He pictured Cam and Bobby from their toenails to their eyelashes. He pictured what it had been like to be with them, what it would be like if they could be together again. Evening became night, autumn winter, and winter spring as he skulked among the trees, twirling the wooden stick in his long fingers, dreaming, longing.

Casting.

Summoning.

Though he hadn’t intended to, Cole had called Cam and Bobby back to his side. But they returned to him damaged, broken in ways he couldn’t believe. Cam had injured his ankle and lost his dancing job. He’d resorted to stripping in an upscale gay club. An irresponsible doctor prescribed Oxycontin, Vicodin, and hydrocodone to alleviate his aches. He eventually became too addicted to even keep his job at the club, and found himself on the street, giving twenty-dollar blowjobs so he could afford a night in a cheap motel, a sandwich, and, of course, his pills. Some nights he didn’t earn enough for the food and the room, and he slept on the street. Finally, after months of being fucked by every piece of trash with a few crumpled bills, being beaten and robbed, he’d had enough and returned to his hometown to kick his habit. His parents didn’t accept Cam or his lifestyle, but they let him use his old bedroom while he cleaned up.

Bobby cheated on his wife with another lawyer at his firm. The former Mrs. Forester suspected and hired a private investigator. When she secured a dozen photographs of her husband and the other man, she used them not only to claim most of their shared property and custody of their child, but to humiliate the husband who’d scorned her. She sent copies of the pictures, which showed Bobby in the most intimate of situations, to his employer and all of their friends. Predictably, the law firm demanded both men resign. At the divorce hearing, the judge and attorneys bore witness to Bobby’s indiscretions in all of their close-up detail. From the stand, Mrs. Forester declared that yes, that was her husband’s penis, and no, that certainly wasn’t her ass. Bobby was well-known enough that the incident warranted a brief column in the paper. Once proud, strong, and respected, Bobby became too mortified to show his face in Boston. He retreated to the only place, and the only person, who wouldn’t pass judgment.

Cole knew his spectral hand had snagged Cam’s graceful foot and made him fall, his distant whisper made Mrs. Forester wonder why her Bobby worked late so often. He hated himself for it, wished he could undo it. Never had he suspected he’d harm Bobby and Cam by simply missing them. He’d never thought his power was that great. He’d gladly have gone back to his bleak solitude, even relinquished his magic, if it would fade the scars the past year had left on his lovers. But it was beyond his ability to change the past, so he would mosaic them back together as best he could. The cracks couldn’t be filled completely, though, and Cam cried sometimes when he did his morning stretches. Cole found Cam now and then staring into the empty medicine cabinet in the cold little bathroom. He kept in shape with yoga and Pilates, but Cam no longer danced. And Cole would catch Bobby looking over his shoulder, afraid of unseen eyes and being watched. Never again would he be the proud young man who ran across the football field after a victory, arms raised and perfect smile flashing.

The boys they’d been were gone forever. Cole would defend them now, even if it meant scaring them away, losing them for good. He owed them that much after he’d inadvertently shattered their lives. Then, he’d wrap his wand in a square of cloth, put it under his bed, and never lay his hands on it again.

He flicked his cigarette into a puddle, and it hissed out. He’d go inside and apologize to Bobby and Cam, even though they didn’t know the extent of his offenses against them. Whistling to Vixen, he turned the cold knob of the door. Even the dampened light outdoors made the cabin’s interior gloomy in comparison. Bobby and Cam stood by the sink. They’d cleared away the breakfast dishes and were kissing by the steaming suds in the dishpan. The robe Cam wore hung open, and Bobby rested his right hand on his hip. Bobby had tangled his other hand in Cam’s hair, holding his face close. Cam’s arms hung passively at his sides. His entire body formed a streamlined arc that linked with Bobby at the center. Bobby’s pants did little to hide the swell forming where his crotch intersected with Cam. While they certainly heard Cole enter, they ignored him. Cole closed the door as quietly as he could and slumped against the porch railing, lighting another smoke.

Cole craved his walk. He thought best when he moved briskly along the dirt roads, passing his familiar places with Vixen trotting ahead. Walking would dissipate his doubt and tire him enough to dull the edge of his anger. With the mist burning away and the piles of bright leaves rustling in the wind, the forest felt welcoming and innocuous, not menacing, as it had under darkness. The glorious disorder of nature beckoned him. Cole slapped his thigh and his Labrador joined him. Before departing, Cole traced a heart and some symbols made up of their secret language in the foggy film on the door’s window: a love spell and a blessing.

As he crossed in front of the cars, Cole inhaled the heady aroma of soil, pitch, and leaves, everything made more fragrant by moisture. Under the vegetative smell, though, he detected something else. As soon as he crossed the unseen barrier their enchantment had forged, he saw it. A dead doe lay on her side, about ten feet behind Bobby’s truck. Her head was bent so that her brown ears nearly touched her back, and her long, red tongue lolled out. Purpling gums pulled back from square teeth. Gnats crawled over the glossy surface of her open eye. Cole couldn’t see any wounds on the animal. Hunting season was in full swing, but he saw no blood.

Cole didn’t think much of the sight at first. As he’d tried to explain to Cam and Bobby, nature struck down living things all the time. Nature recycled. She was ruthless and efficient. The deer corpse would feed insects, worms, and maggots. Cole would drag it well into the woods, where it would fertilize the ferns and ivy and oak. Nothing, Cole thought, biting the filter of his cigarette, was more routine than death.

Then he saw the rest of them. Just off the driveway, beneath the trees and partly obscured by leaves, lay two more deer, their spindly legs tangled together. Another doe had fallen on her white belly. A spiky-horned buck’s black hooves jutted against her back legs. Half a dozen squirrels, their bodies gray balls, scattered the ground between the larger animals. A fat raccoon lay on its back, and a red fox, looking like Vixen in miniature, curled near the trunk of a hemlock tree. All of the forest creatures faced the cabin, forming a disorderly parade of death.

Realizing what he was looking at, Cole screamed, his breath condensing in a cloud around him. He staggered back a few steps and clutched the bed of Bobby’s truck. His cigarette dropped from his hand. He doubled over, grabbed his stomach, and puked.

Cole was still bent in half, holding the truck for balance with one hand and his gut with the other, when Bobby and Cam came, blinking, to investigate the commotion. Cam’s robe wasn’t tied, but held shut at the chest by a wobbly hand. Bobby balled his pants in front of his groin. His bare feet slapped the wet clay as he ran to Cole’s side. Straightening slowly, still dizzy, Cole pointed. Bobby gasped and Cam reacted to the line of carcasses the same way Cole had. Vixen lapped at the sick, and Cole didn’t have the vigor to kick her away.

Both Cam and Cole had to hold on to one of Bobby’s elbows to make it up the porch steps and inside the cabin. They collapsed in front of the fire, each sitting on his heels. They scooted in until their knees touched. They bowed their heads and rested their foreheads against each other for support. They crossed their arms over each other’s backs, forming a snug pyramid of rickety bodies.

“Holy shit,” Cam whispered.

“I never thought—” Bobby began. Unable to finish, he tightened his grip on Cole’s shoulder.

“It’s a warning,” Cole said. He was still nauseous and thankful there wasn’t anything left in his stomach to come up. “He wants us to see what he can, and will, do. We have to kill him.”

“No,” said Cam and Bobby together.

“In the name of the gods, why?”

Bobby pressed his temple against Cole. “I worry for you, baby,” he said. “Don’t be so eager to kill. I don’t want you to become Darius Thorn. I don’t want to lose you.”

“Is that what you think?” Cole asked. “That I’m like him?”

“No,” Cam said, rubbing the back of Cole’s neck. “I think it’s possible that your power could change you. If you let it.”

Maybe they were right. Look what the power had done, almost behind his back, to Bobby and Cam. Cole suddenly felt so guilty he feared he’d start sobbing and tell them what he’d done. He wanted to unburden himself, but he feared he’d really lose them if they knew what he was capable of setting in motion. He inhaled, collecting himself, focusing.

“The two of you mean everything to me,” he said. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t kill him.”

Cam kissed his cheek and Bobby rubbed his back.

“We’ll have to do a binding and a banishing,” Cole continued. “I think I know how. We all have to be at our best. There are three of us and one of him, but it’s still going to be rough, I’m afraid. I’m really going to need you guys.”

“You got it,” Cam said, and Bobby nodded once, decisively.

Without discussing it, they sat cross-legged on the floor next to the stove. Cole took a few sheets of yellow notebook paper from the drawer below his dusty computer. One practice he’d embraced over the years was the use of sigil magic. It fit well with his love of symbolism and language, and the construction of the sigils came to him organically when most struggled with them, or so he’d read.

Bobby and Cam joined hands. Then, each of them placed his free hand on Cole’s knee. Cole concentrated on the rhythm of his breath until he felt the current of power flowing through the circuit their limbs formed. Confusion led the mind to gnosis, forced it away from linear thought. Cole quickly performed an exercise he’d devised, picturing a series of random items: a spoon, the TV remote, a cake of soap, a lit match, a round stone from the creek, Bobby’s leather wallet. As he imagined them over and over, the connections between them grew apparent. Clarity issued forth from the nonsense, and Cole began writing.

We will banish Darius Thorn
, he wrote in their clandestine script. According to the Chaos school, it didn’t matter that they’d made it up. All language had been imagined by someone at some point. Cole knew it held just as much power as any established magical alphabet, maybe even more. Cole quickly crossed out any repeating letters. They’d eliminated vowels from their language already. Cole pushed the paper aside and slid a fresh sheet in front of him. Next, he arranged the remaining letters into an artful, round design without any conscious intent, almost like automatic writing. If he tried to pay attention to what he did, he’d never be able to make the letters fit together. Cole barely looked at his hand as he worked, and in only a few minutes, he’d finished. All of them stared down at it. To Cole, it resembled a skull, but he also saw the suggestion of three bodies.

“How should we charge it?” Bobby asked. Once created, the sigil needed to be activated with a burst of power—the stronger, the better.

“With our love,” Cam said.

In silent agreement, each of them reached to his right and grasped his partner’s cock. They placed their left hands, one on top of the other, above their sigil, so they could channel the power of their release into it.

I
NSTEAD
of isolating himself in the woods like Cole, Darius Thorn lived in the center of the six-block square that passed as downtown. The main thoroughfare boasted some fine old houses that had once belonged to those who’d owned the coal mines. Most had been converted to cheap apartments, but Thorn had paid to restore his mansion to its former glory before arriving. Rather than standing to the side, Thorn insinuated himself into the wholesome rhythm of the picturesque main street. Inside his grand Victorian house, with its cream-colored siding, turret, wraparound porch, and burgundy and teal gingerbread detail, he held his debauched rites with his three reluctant apprentices while parents hurried children to school, wives retrieved the mail, and husbands hung Christmas lights. Cole thought Thorn liked the idea of being the gaudy whore among the modest congregation, the cancer in the healthy body.

It snowed the night the three of them called on Thorn, dusting the scroll work of the house with a dry sparkle. Inside, they sat in the room Thorn called his study. The round space on the second floor contained no furniture except bookshelves. The shelves held not only antique tomes that Cole would have killed to possess, but various jars and vials. A pile of cushions and pillows made of decadent fabrics, silks, and velvets, sat at the center. A medieval-looking iron chandelier that was parallel with Cole’s face when he stood provided the light. It sometimes dripped hot wax on their bodies as they reclined on the cushions, as they did now. At times, Cole enjoyed it.