satyricon au go go

Night and Day

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It had been a long, slow and tedious day and Keel was out of sorts, having just lost a bid on Ebay for a unique piece of religious arcana.

Paul had grumbled something about everyone wanting to be the new Lourdes, with some obscure reference to fence posts and fool's errands and fools and their money easily parted as he made his futile attempts to bring some order to Alva's chaotic filing system, tossing files into two loose piles of complete rubbish and cases that had possibilities, but still unlikely. Paul was in a foul mood, and having been a debunker of frauds and charlatans, he tended to be very bitter and cynical about such alleged miracles.

There were few carnival tricks Paul couldn't see through in seconds, and sometimes the sight of an intelligent man like Keel falling for these cons made him wonder why he bothered most times. Alva's childlike belief could be endearing at times, after all, even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had fallen for fairies at the bottom of the garden, but more often than not, Paul just wanted to slap him and shake some sense into the man. Paul had never been a violent man, but Alva Keel had an uncanny knack of knowing exactly where to stick the needles.

 

“Maybe there are still a few holy Doritos you can go and bid on,” Paul sneered, not even looking up from the folder he was flicking through, not even bothering to sit down, more than ready to leave for the night. “I hear there's one for sale that looks just like Elvis.”

Keel just shot him a withering look in reply, the way only a Scotsman could. He was really quite tired of Paul's attitude of late, and told him so, without actually getting to the real bone of his contention, that Paul was keeping secrets from him. That Paul deliberately withheld information of what he'd seen, experienced and been told. Things that could be earthshakingly important, real prophecy stuff. And yet Paul kept his secrets. From Keel. Out of petty, childish spite.

They had even fought over it, the lies and secrets. Actual brawling. A complete break in civilised behaviour. It was as physical as Keel had even been with Paul, but then, that was to be expected. Paul had the whole repressed Catholic thing down pat. He could have won an Oscar for it. Even now, he barely even looked at Keel.

Keel ceased talking eventually, letting his words fall to the floor. At first he'd been annoyed, very much aware that the surly young man had lied to him earlier, to his face, no less, and Keel, preferring not to notice or press the point, had started discussing another case entirely, just to fill the empty spaces. But now he could see how heavily Callan was leaning on the table, how lost in thought he was, how Keel's words floated past him without even making the impact of raindrops.

"For God's sake, sit down before you fall down," Keel snarled, dragging a chair close and shoving the exhausted young man, startled and confused, into it.

Paul blinked and squinted as Alva brought a desk lamp close to his eyes, Alva's hand tilting and twisting Paul's head this way and that, checking for signs of the latest concussion Paul had sworn he was over.

"You've got nine lives, Paul, but I think you've already used up more than half of them," scolded Keel.

Keel half perched on the end of the table, leaning close to carefully peel away the bandages and gently examine the deep gash that was only just beginning to knit together along Paul's cheek. For a man who had recently been hit by a train, caught in an explosion, assaulted, overcome, struck by flying objects, and nearly murdered by a lunatic, Paul Callan was holding together remarkably well. The surface damage was visible only in faint scars that could been seen under the light, aside from his most recent beating. There more serious damage, the damage that had Keel worried, was the damage that he could see in the dark brown eyes that watched him carefully.

The thousand yard stare, they called it. Eyes that had seen too much, eyes that had seen more that heart and soul could hold, eyes that were weary of this world, yet terrified of the next.

Those eyes now sought Keel's for answers, answers that Keel couldn't give, not yet. Not because he was trying to hold onto a hand of poker, but because he didn't know enough yet to show his hand. He regretted not laying all his cards on the table from the start, he regretted not talking to Paul as an equal, a kindred soul. He regretted that he'd played games with Paul, just to test him, to see which way he would fall. He regretted it because Paul's eyes were closed to him, reflecting only his own. He'd lost Paul, in such a careless, stupid way, and now his heart twisted, knowing his mistake could mean more than just a loss of trust between two men. So much more.

Keel was still carefully studying Paul, still holding his face so gently, cupped in his hand, still leaning so close.

Paul saw it again in Keel's eyes: desire and hunger. Keel made no effort to hide it.

Keel had stalked Paul, both in paper and in fact, curious, desperate to know everything about the man, inside and out. Keel was obsessed by Paul. Paul was a puzzle Keel needed to solve. Obsession and passion had intertwined, and now Keel's thumb stroked Paul's cheek as they were held there, breathless, for moments.

Then Keel just closed the tiny space between them, covering Paul's soft lips with his own.

Paul opened to the kiss, his heart hammering, mesmerised by Keel, sinking back in the chair, flooded with a drunken desire that drowned his veins and seemed to pool in his lap, twitching him awake at last. He reached up, grabbing Keel by his coat and pulling him close, returning the kiss, hard, for a moment, then pushing him away with a jerk, pulling back as if stung, wiping his hand on the back of his mouth, keeping his eyes downcast.

Keel, surprised and topsy-turvy, could have almost have sworn that Callan was shaking.

Keel sank down, kneeling before Paul, taking Paul's hands in his and trying to sooth him.

“It's alright. I know how alone you must feel, but you don't have to be.” He let his hand rest lightly on Paul's thigh, making his point.

“No,” Paul whispered. “You can't, I'm…”

“Not a priest. Not yet. Maybe not ever. And it's not something your brothers in holy orders abstain from, and you know that, I can see it in your eyes.”

Paul flinched, but still he didn't pull away, held there gently by Keel, transfixed by his eyes and soft, calming voice.

“Let me do this for you. Let me give you some comfort. Let me give you…release.”

Callan watched with wide, darkened eyes, not moving, not saying a word, as Keel slowly and carefully, as though tending a skittish animal, unbuckled Paul's belt and pulled it away, and then slowly but surely dragged the zipper down.

The world stopped for a moment, then turned upside down.

Paul pushed back on the chair, head tipping back, eyes shut tight, mouth slightly agape, breathing fast and shallow as Keel kissed him there, Keel's fingers made him hard, Keel's liquid warmth swallowing him whole.

Paul's heart was beating fast and loud in his ears, but he couldn't hear it. He was unaware of anything: his hands gripping the armrests, the sound of his breath, ragged in his throat, the slow steady tick of the old clock on the wall. All was lost save what it felt like as Alva washed up and down like a quickening tide, faster and faster.

Please, he thought. Please, stop, stop now, just, no, don't, please, don't, stop, don't stop, more, faster, just there, again, oh, God, he was, he was going to, going…uh.

Paul slumped back in the chair, arms hanging limply by his side, breathing again at last, sound and sight slowly returning. Eyes still closed, he felt Alva bestow one last, long slow sucking kiss to his cock. He opened his eyes lazily, meeting Alva's.

Alva didn't smile. He just watched Paul with his usual intense concentration, more the scrutiny of a scientist than the gaze of a lover, which made Paul shiver, just a bit, under such a reptilian gaze, and his hand moved of its own accord to cover his exposed flesh.

Alva brushed the hand away, heat returning to his eyes. He watched Paul watching him as he slid his tongue slowly along Paul's cooling length, swirling and kissing the tip.

Paul groaned and arched a little, hitching forward on the chair, and Alva kept kissing, pushing up Paul's shirt and singlet, kissing his way across Paul's taunt and fluttering stomach. Paul pushed forward suddenly, tearing his own shirt over his head and throwing it aside. He reached down and dragged Alva up into his arms, kissing him like a lover. They kissed like starving men, grabbing at hair and skin in a desperate grapple.

Then just as quickly, on the tick of the clock, the switch flipped again and Paul stopped, like a man waking from a dream, confused, unsure of where he was or what he was doing.

“It's alright,” Alva soothed in a murmur, pressing a gentle kiss to Paul's forehead before neatly tucking Paul back into his boxers and carefully zipping up his fly. Alva dabbed discretely at the corner of his mouth, then gave Paul a reassuring half smile.

“Turn around.”

“What?”

“On the chair. Turn around,” Alva explained patiently, as though to a child, stirring his finger clockwise in the air as a visual aid. He stood to help Paul stand with him and turned him around so that now he was sitting on the chair backwards, resting against the back of the chair in the slightly evocative pose beloved of infamous mistresses.

Alva leant close to Paul, his hand lightly in the centre of Paul's back.

“Now, just close your eyes and relax. Trust me.”

He rubbed his hands until they were warm, and then slid them down Paul's arm and down his spine in long, stroking sweeps, skimming across flesh that dimpled in his wake. Then he began to slowly rub at Paul's flesh, following the ways he'd been taught, a long time ago.

By the time he had finished, Paul was more than half asleep, his head pillowed on his arms, so deeply relaxed he was almost boneless, groggy and pliant.

“Come on,” Alva cajoled, pulling Paul up and into his arms. “You need to sleep. When did you last sleep?”

“Don't. The dreams,” Paul mumbled.

Keel just stared hard at Paul, noting the dark circles, the pinched and pale skin, marked with fines lines and the dark, haunted eyes that he dared not look into too closely. Dear God, why hadn't he noticed. Had their relationship deteriorated that badly?

“Come on, then,” was all he said.

Arm around Paul's shoulders, the two men swung slightly drunkenly away from the table, up the creaking stairs to the grim little room where Keel slept, no more than a bed-sit with a fold out bed and the most basic of amenities. Just about every surface was covered with untidy piles of books and notes. Alva kicked a pile off on old chair before he sat Paul down in it while he struggled with the couch, tugging and swearing at it until it finally gave with a shudder and unfolded, already made with crumpled sheets.

Not that Paul would care right now. He was easily rolled into the bed, and barely murmured as Alva carefully removed his shoes and stripped him bare, tucking the blankets around him.

Then Alva sat back in the chair, jotting down in the notebook that he'd drawn from his coat pocket that Paul had not been sleeping on account of disturbing dreams, but, after putting his notebook away, he just watched Paul sleep, and thought deeply upon the young man in his bed.

Alva's mind tumbled over everything he knew about Paul and everything he didn't. The mystery of who he was, what he was, why everything that was happening seemed to focus more and more on Paul, on how Paul's powers seemed to grow daily. A sceptical and empty young man at their first meeting, Paul had now communed with spirits and not only had prophetic dreams himself, but had featured in the dreams of others. Paul saw portents and omens, and they all seemed to point to him, in some way. Alva had studied Paul for years and now, close up, the young man offered nothing but deepening mystery.

Maybe that's what drew Alva to him, like a moth to a flame. Maybe it was a chance to touch the divine, through Paul's flesh. Flesh that was smooth, paler than it should be. Skin that stretched taunt over a face so haunted, and yet so handsome. Was it part of same grand design that Paul should be so damned beautiful, that he should raise such fires in Keel, once long dormant.

Flowing thoughts along that line led Keel to spilling his need into the toilet and flushing it away, ashamed, almost shaking with his base and mortal desires. Yet he did desire. He glanced back at the man who lay sleeping. He desired the taste of his flesh, the warmth of his skin, the feel of him, moving beneath him.

Keel flushed the toilet again and washed his hands. He returned to the chair and dozed a little, but his back nagged him and, being suddenly bold again, he slipped beside Paul in the bed, and Paul didn't stir for a second.

Paul twitched and moaned and then jerked awake, breathing hard, to find Alva beside him, very, very close, almost touching, watching him.

Alva pressed on Paul's throat gently, checking his pulse.

“Bad dream?” he asked.

Paul nodded, but would say nothing more. There was terror still bright in his eyes, and Alva touched the fluttering skin of Paul's throat again, feeling the tremor.

“I'm sorry,” Alva offered quietly. “I'm so sorry that this had to happen to you. I know you didn't ask for it, but you were chosen, and that makes you very special.”

“Cursed,” Paul disagreed quietly, then a single tear rolled down his cheek.

Alva gently brushed away the tear with his thumb.

“We all have our crosses to bear.”

Paul started to turn away angrily, but Alva turned him back.

“It's not meant to be easy. There are meant to be tests.”

“I'm not strong enough.”

“You are. You can be.”

“No.”

“Yes. Let me be your strength.”

The two men stared at each other. Paul tried to move away, but Alva held him. He tried to struggle, but Alva had him pinned. Paul thrashed but Alva wouldn't let him go. The thrashing turned to wrestling and then they were twisted around each other, sweating and grunting, and soon they were kissing, fiercely and savagely.

Keel twisted and rolled them onto their sides, pushing his hand between them and finding the erection that was digging into his side. He worked it hard, up and down, and Paul gasped against his shoulder, tensing, arching, no longer struggling.

Keel rolled Paul onto his back and went down on him again, watching the way Paul's throat moved as he swallowed breathlessly, watching Paul twist and bunch the bed sheet in his fists. He had to hold Paul down to keep him still, as Paul was twisting this way and that and trying to thrust up into Keel's throat, making him choke.

Paul arched as though jolted with electricity as he came, then seemed to fall back, almost shuddering, as though fitting.

Keel quickly scrambled up to Paul, patting his face to bring him round, soothing sweat glued hair back as blurry eyes finally focused on him.

“Are you alright?” he asked, anxiously.

“No,” Paul answered dully, eyes shutting down again, yet he turned to Keel, burrowing against him, burying his face in against his shoulder, and Keel had no choice but to hold him, stroking him like a sleeping child.

But Paul wasn't asleep, and the insistent rutting soon started up again, rubbing himself against Keel, undulating with mad friction, panting and gasping until Keel, pushed over the edge, rolled Paul under him, skin pressed to skin.

They writhed like snakes together, mouths swallowing mouths, until Keel felt a liquid warmth spreading over his stomach. He held Paul tight and followed him, grunting his release as he felt the young man gasp and shudder in his arms.

Then Paul seemed to snap to again, tensing as he felt Keel's semen spill all over his thigh. He pushed Keel away as if burned and fled into the bathroom.

Keel sat up in the bed for a moment, catching his breath, and heard the shower twist on, hard. And either too hot or too cold, he'd wager. Most probably all the way up cold, as if Callan could purge himself by freezing his nuts off. He shook his head at Callan's twisted up morality. Keel himself was open to all experiences, perhaps a little too open, he chided himself, shaking off the memory of some ill fated experiments.

By the time Paul had finished scrubbing himself furiously with Keel's soap in Keel's shower, he emerged, still wet and blinking to find Keel up and dressed and his own clothes folded neatly on the bed, waiting for him, including his shirt and coat which Keel must have fetched for him from downstairs.

Keel turned his back like a gentleman as Paul dressed, and said or did nothing to stop Paul from fleeing out of his door.

The next morning they said nothing, barely looking each other in the eye, communicating in grunts and monosyllables, and only when absolutely necessary, each occupying their own corner of the office.

Evelyn felt the new chill in the office, but only partly guessed at the causes of their estrangement.

Each man still brooded over their secrets, and the secrets that the other jealously guarded, and it gnawed at them, from the inside out, making them hollow.

Every time Paul looked up, Keel was watching him, studying him. It unnerved him and disturbed him. Keel knew things, things about himself, things that would explain what was happening, things that would tell him why. And yet Keel kept those secrets from him, as though he were a blind test in some lab experiment. It made his skin crawl, and it made his flesh creep even further to remember what he'd done with Keel, how he'd let Keel touch him, when he didn't even trust him, or really know him.

It ate at Paul day and night, the secrets Keel kept from him, and then an opportunity had presented itself in the form of a young delinquent amongst the group of wayward youths Paul was still working with at his old orphanage, still unable to completely break with his old life.

The twelve year old trouble maker had been bragging loudly of his light fingered skills, and, granted a quiet moment, Paul had asked the boy to teach him.

The arrogant young picklock had been suspicious at first, suspecting some sort of entrapment, but Paul had been so keen to learn that they had soon fallen in, literally as thick as thieves, with Paul set various tests he had to pass before progressing to the next stage of his education.

Paul had seen the large, locked cabinets in Keel's room, the man giving more trust to paper than disks. Paul knew these must be Keel's most secret, most important papers, and, after his ham-fisted attempt to break into Keel's office before, he was pretty sure that these cabinets contained all of Keel's files about him. Paul could only think of those cabinets, and the answers they would hold. He was a man obsessed.

Every day Keel watched Paul walk through the door of their dark little office. He would watch as Paul hung his coat, and watch as he poured himself a cup of coffee, and twist with jealousy as Paul and Evelyn talked softly together and laughed. Keel would turn back into his own office and shut the door against their laughter. He would then proceed with his daily ritual of scanning the newspaper clippings and newsgroups he subscribed to, noting down anything that took his interest or he thought might be significant, but his heart was no longer in it. He was merely repeating empty actions to occupy the day.

Everything that truly mattered lay beyond that door, in Paul. The young man was an enigma, a gifted psychic with no training or means of control, a man without a past, a man who had risen from the dead, and a man who seemed to be the focus of increasingly worrying occult activity. If Paul was the answer, then what the hell was the question?

Keel was loathe to interfere, to take Paul under his wing and teach him, to give him that much needed guidance. The scientific method preached impartial observation, but what if leaving Paul to his own devices was the wrong thing to do? What if finally giving into his primal urges had already pushed Paul in one direction, the wrong direction?

What if just meeting Paul had changed destiny? And yet Alva could not distance himself, not even with the heavy wooden door between them. Paul fascinated him, body and soul, and he couldn't stop thinking about him, night and day, day and night. He was a man obsessed.

At last the opportunity for resolution came. Keel would be away for a week, visiting his homeland. He'd muttered something about following up leads, or old acquaintances. Paul hadn't been paying attention, he'd just wanted Keel gone.

Bypassing the locks on Keel's door had been easy enough, breaking into the cabinets was much harder and Paul felt himself starting to sweat, expecting Keel to walk in the door at any moment, snap on the light and catch him red handed.

But Keel never came and he finally wrenched opened the first cabinet open, the one he'd been most drawn to, trusting his gut instinct. His instinct had been right, but it hadn't prepared him for the bitter truth. The cabinet held his entire life, to date, in exacting, bureaucratic detail.

His stomach churned in acid as he sat on the floor, pawing through the files, surrounded by his life in paper. Everything was recorded, from his school records, to paintings crudely etched in childish, paint cover fingers, his driver's licence, his passport, newspaper clippings, transcripts of eyewitnesses, photographs from school age to the present, taken from every angle. Keel had been stalking him for years, that was the horrible truth of it, but the depths of his intrusion into the smallest detail Paul could not have guessed at, until he sifted through every medical record of himself, from childhood colds to the tox screen from his accident with the train. Employment records all carefully documented, his movements over the last few years all carefully noted and recorded and photographed.

In was in the file marked with the date of the accident that he found what shook him to the core. Photographs, grainy but still quite clearly of himself, lying broken and bleeding in the mangled wreck of the car, the torn and tangled remains of a man, ripped apart by glass and metal and his own bones, speared through flesh. He'd been dying, when Tommy had appeared. This was the evidence Paul had sought, but the photographs showed nothing but Tommy lying next to him, slumped, his body growing slowly cold. And the words, the words written in Paul's own blood that had poured away across broken glass, the words that Keel had first confronted him about.

Paul crumpled up the photograph in his fist, biting back the tears. Keel had done nothing to help. He'd just watched. What kind of a man would just watch, and let a boy give his life for another. What sort of man…what sort of man would accept such a gift, but he pushed that thought away. He hadn't wanted it, but it had happened, and he knew it had changed him, forever.

Something, somehow, had singled him out, and not just Keel. Keel had just followed the clues, and they had all led him back to Paul, time and time again. Though his life was spread before him, there were no answers here, for even though Keel's files had recorded his life in excruciating detail, they had missed one document, the one he wanted most of all: his real birth certificate.

Even with the contents of three cabinets and several years of research, Keel was no closer to the answers than Paul was. Paul put the papers away, not bothering to tidy them, not caring if Keel knew if he'd been there or not. Keel didn't have the answers. That must be why he was keeping Paul close, just watching and waiting. Keel wanted to know the reason why, as much as Paul did. Maybe more so.

Keel had been back for three days before he'd called Paul into his office. Perhaps he'd been waiting for Paul to admit, explain or apologise, but nothing had been forthcoming, and their cold war had continued.

“Close the door,” Keel added, and Paul did so, knowing full well where this was going.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Keel asked without even looking up.

“You were following me. You have been following me. For years.”

“I told you that. All roads lead to Rome , or, in this case, you. You're a convergence, a node, a nerve bundle in, whatever this is.” He waved his hand dismissively. “I've never made a secret of my longstanding interest in you, Paul.”

“Do you want to fuck me?' Paul asked flatly.

This time Alva met his eyes.

“Yes. A rather abrupt change of topic, but yes.”

“If I let you, will it get it out of your system?”

“Quite possibly.” Alva paused to consider the offer for a moment. “And what would you get out of our little bargain?”

“It would be over and done with.”

Keel nodded. The oppressive atmosphere had worn on both their nerves. He rose and extended his hand over the desk to Paul, who shook it and agreed.

“Now?” Keel asked, a slight quiver of anticipation in his voice.

“Now,” Paul answered, just as flatly.

Keel came to him and Paul let Keel hold him and kiss him as though he was being paid for it. He watched dispassionately as Keel once again unbuckled his belt, unzipped his fly and brought him to the brink of arousal.

Keel carefully slid a condom on Paul, but did not go down on him again. Instead he turned Paul to face the nearest bookcase. Paul propped himself against it as Keel, obviously and, perhaps, smugly prepared for such an eventuality, lubed and prepared himself with supplies he'd kept in his bottom desk drawer. He held Paul tight, his body pressed along the length of his. He kissed the nape of Paul's neck tenderly and then slid in.

Alva closed his eyes, overwhelmed with the sensation, the heat, the realisation of where he was and what he was feeling, of what Paul was giving to him. Slowly he pushed his way further in, without much resistance. Paul was gripping the bookcase tightly, eyes shut tight, but his whole attitude belied the coquettish virgin he tried to play.

Paul had done this before, and the knowledge of this coiled desire tighter in the pit of Alva's stomach. Alva pushed deeper and faster, and his hand wrapped around Paul and he began to pump in time with his deep, driving thrusts.

From her desk, Evelyn could hear the creak of moving furniture, the steady thump of an old bookcase against the wall, the scrape and shuffle of shoes and the muffled groans of two men reaching a point very quickly. At least it would take the edge off, she hoped. Those two had been circling each other for months, and the storm had to break.

Then there was silence, an embarrassed silence as two men fell apart, neither looking at the other, each guilty for having taken more pleasure from the act that they admitted to.

Paul ripped the condom from himself as if burned and threw it in the bin, then he zipped up and left without a word.

Keel, too, tidied himself, but as he dropped his own rubber into the bin, he fetched out Paul's. Holding it pinched gingerly between two fingers, he opened his desk drawer with his other hand, rummaged about for an evidence bag and dropped the condom in, which he then sealed. The spermicides would have made the sample unviable, but it was solely Paul's DNA he was after. The idea had come to him as he'd changed the sheets after their last encounter. If he couldn't trace Paul's genealogy, blocked at every turn by sealed, lost or destroyed records, then he could at least take a peek into the parts that made up Paul, and perhaps read an answer to piece of the mystery.

He could also try to circumvent sealed records by bribing an acquaintance into searching for a DNA match in as many databases as he could get access to, which could also throw up answers, or possibly more questions. Either way it was a chance, and, together with the stray hairs that Paul had left on his pillow, he could at last ask the questions that had been burning in both of them. Who was Paul, and where did he come from?

Paul had fled from the office and run home, to the only home he knew, the one refuge he kept returning to, over and over.

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned, it has been three weeks since my last confession.”

“Go on,” prompted the voice from the other end of the screen.

“I've had sex with a man.”

“The same man as before?”

“Yes.”

“Did you want to do this?”

“No. But I needed to.”

“Need? How?”

There followed several beats of silence as Paul mulled over the question. To say it had simply been a matter of expedience, or a bargain, would be a lie. A part of him had wanted, had desired. A part of him was drawn to Keel. He didn't want to think why. Keel scared him, infuriated him and intrigued him. Keel offered him a role, a little respect, and some form of friendship, though Keel was such an odd duck and there were so many conditions attached that Paul, unused to such complex relationships, simply floundered.

He couldn't accurately describe Keel, both master and acolyte, teacher and groupie. Keel wanted so many things from Paul, things Paul wasn't sure he could give, yet he could feel that Keel wanted to give, as well, he wanted to teach and guide, yet something held him back. Certainly Paul had pushed him away, kept him at arm's reach.

Paul found himself ridiculously jealous of Keel, jealous of the love Keel had for his mother, a mother's love Paul would never know. He was jealous that Keel seemed to know himself and be comfortable in his own skin more than Paul ever would. He was jealous that Keel seemed to have a peace that eluded Paul, even in sleep.

“I respect him, I want to be with him. I need to be with him,” Paul corrected himself.

“And what of desire?”

“I need…”

“A connection,” the voice finished for him. “I understand, Paul, but you know it is wrong.”

Paul hung his head, guilty as charged.

“I cannot offer you absolution when you are not truly sorry, but if you want to discuss this further, you know where to find me.”

Paul was onto his third beer and had a really good buzz on before Poppi finally slid into the booth opposite him.

“Am I talking to Father Calero or Poppi,” Paul had to know, before he spoke further.

“Whom ever you wish,” Calero offered, the closest thing a father Paul had ever known, and yet also the furthest. The laws of their calling lay a gulf between them, especially now. Calero could never approve or condone what Paul had done, or even understand, but he did want to know why.

“This man takes you further and further away from us,” Calero shook his head.

“It's not like that. You know I was having questions, before.”

“Before you left.”

Paul nodded silently, studying his beer coaster.

“I never told you what really happened to me down in Arizona .”

Calero leant closer. The question had plagued him. Paul had left the Church in such a rush, such torment and confusion. Calero blamed Keel for taking advantage of Paul, for preying on Paul when he was obviously vulnerable and uncertain, yet Keel had not been the cause, merely the benefactor.

“I died,” Paul answered simply. “In the train crash, I died. Just for a moment or two, but I was gone, and Tommy, he brought me back. He healed me. He died, for me. I know no one believes me, but he did. Keel was there, he saw the whole thing. I saw his notes. He was following me.”

“Have you asked him what he saw?”

“No,” Paul admitted.

“So you had this near death experience, and it made you question your beliefs.”

“It made me question my non beliefs. Since then I've had premonitions, I've seen and talked to dead. The miracles I couldn't find before, now they won't leave me alone.”

“Be careful, son. Such talk could get you in trouble,” Calero warned, hoping Paul would take his meaning.

He wished now he'd told Paul that certain sections, certain people within the Church were taking an unhealthy interest in his activities, especially now. He would hate for Paul to be charged with heresy, or worse. He wished he could warn Paul, but it wasn't his place to speak. He had hoped the boy's much relied upon common sense would prevail, but that trait seemed to be suddenly lacking in the young man he saw before him now.

Cerebral hypoxia, Calero decided. It could explain the sudden personality change. Some undetected brain injury stemming from the accident causing some sort of religious mania. He'd seen such cases. Paul had, too, only now the boy seemed incapable of making the connection. It saddened him beyond words to see his most promising pupil, a boy he had raised to manhood, now labouring under the beginnings of madness.

Yes, he agreed, the accident had changed Paul. He was not the same man as before. Certainly the accident would explain so much in Paul now: the unnatural desires, the haunted appearance, the nervousness, the hallucinations, the obsessions.

“Do you truly believe you have seen such things?” Calero asked at last.

Paul nodded, the haunted, troubled looking pinching his handsome features more.

Oh, my poor boy, Calero wept inside himself.

“I cannot tell you to stay away from Keel, that you must decide for yourself, but as to what you've seen, or what you think you've seen, I would like to discuss this with you further, perhaps even formally, and I would ask you to reconsider your decision to leave us. In the meantime,” he pushed a large heavy silver crucifix across the counter to Paul.

“Take this. I will pray for you, and I hope you will find some comfort, and remember the man you used to be. The man,” he reminded, not the callow youth or the child, but the man Paul had been.

Paul fingered the cool metal of the figurine beneath his fingers. He could barely remember the man he'd been, it seemed another lifetime to him now. He had been so sure of his work, his purpose, but had he, really? Had he been just lying to himself all this time, lies he could no longer hide from? He didn't know who he was, and he couldn't make decisions about his life until he did.

+

The bookcase shuddered and thumped as Paul rocked it back and forth, echoing every thrust that speared inside him. His bare shoulders were tensed, his eyes shut tight. He seemed a thousands world's away, striving to see some deeper truth while Keel strove to reach the man.

Keel bit down on Paul's shoulder, smothering a grunt, then stilled. Paul finished himself off, coming into his hand, and the ripples of pleasure dragged another heavy breath from Keel.

Still inside Paul, Keel kissed the shoulder his face had rested against, then the throat.

“What do you see?” he asked, nibbling an earlobe, but Paul didn't answer, he never answered.

Paul let Alva kiss him, though, no longer remote and shut down. He returned the kiss, and, as Alva slipped from him, he turned to continue the kiss, slowly stroking tongues and lips for several long minutes.

Then they parted, Alva passing the tissue box as a matter of course. Paul had previously refused Alva's offer of a condom. It was unnecessary as they knew he'd been long celibate and he had Alva's assurances as to the same. Perhaps all that chastity made him burn for Keel's flesh now. Paul wanted to feel Alva pushing and rubbing inside him, it helped him, he could ride it while he tried to reach out and see flashes, images, something that was just beyond his reach. Something that hovered on the very rim of his consciousness, something he could only begin to see in those few moments when he relinquished all control.

Paul was buckling his belt when Alva's phone startled them by ringing, and Alva waved him out, not really paying attention, trying to answer over the stream of abuse Paul could almost hear as he walked out the door.

“You cocksucking bastard! You set me up!”

Alva held the phone a small distance from his ear, wincing slightly at the onslaught.

“That is the last time I ever do a favour for you, you fucking…”

“You ran the sample?”

“Yeah, and it rang every damn red flag in the place. I had to explain where I'd gotten the damn sample from.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That I didn't know, it must have been contaminated in the lab. You knew this would happen.”

“No, not really. I can't say I'm surprised though. So you learnt nothing?”

“No. They took everything away. Whatever the hell it is you're mixed up in, stay the hell away from me.”

The call ended abruptly, and Alva contemplated his desk absently for a while. The mystery surrounding Paul's origins had deepened, with that particular avenue closed. Somebody who matched Paul's DNA profile was being protected at a very high level.

Alva plucked a stray strand of hair from his jumper. He could still just drop a strand of Paul's hair off to a garden variety pathologist, under the pretence of some paternity suit, and see what sort of results that might reveal, or if the red flags went up again. No, surely not. Paul had been in and out of hospital all too frequently of late, and his records had been easy enough to obtain, especially since Paul had drawn up a living will, giving Alva the power of life and death over his care. Paul had strong views on the matter, which were entirely understandable, given what the young man had been through.

According to Paul's medical records, there was nothing especially special about his blood. There had never been this sort of kerfuffle when Paul had been attending any emergency rooms of late. Yet Keel had seen the words that had sealed off parts of Paul's records. The brick walls thrown up were tangible, and not merely the products of paranoid delusion.

Alva might have dismissed all of Paul's claims to see and hear things as the hallucinations of a brain starved of oxygen, but for everything else. The mystery went deeper, and he was intrigued. There was an answer as to who, or what Paul was, and if it couldn't be found in modern databases, then he would continue to look elsewhere. He needed to know why Paul was so special, because everyone else seemed to know, and it bothered him.

Paul was a strange young man, and at least Keel was blessed with the opportunity for continued study, at close hand.

+

Paul glanced up from the book he was reading, and was caught for a moment by dust motes dancing in a square patch of sunlight that angled down onto the floor, as though it were some sacred spot in an ancient tomb on midsummer's day.

The yellow square was so bright, and moving so very slowly as the earth turned away from it. Soon it would drag itself back across the floor and up out the window. But for now it was proof of life, of a natural world that existed outside the bricks and glass that presently entombed him, a tomb of books and papers that held him here, like a spirit, sleeping until the end of time.

It was dark in his little corner of the office. Dark and airless, but here was this little patch of light to remind him that life went on, at least outside these walls, that there was still beauty in the world. All he had to do was wake up, walk outside and find it.

But he didn't move. He stared at the silver little dust motes, dancing in their golden beam, turning this way and that, around and around in some strange waltz he couldn't quite catch the beat of. He strained to hear, to see a pattern in their movements as he watched them spin and whirl around and around.

Evelyn was shocked from her own work by the sound of Paul crashing to the floor.

“Alva!” she called, but Keel was already in his doorway, as shocked as she was.

They rolled Paul onto his side. His eyes were open but he was unresponsive.

“What's wrong with him?” Evelyn demanded.

“It looks like some sort of mild seizure, the kind that involves just blanking out, without all the flipping about like a freshly landed fish.”

“Is he sick?”

“I don't know. He shouldn't be. His MRI came back okay. He shouldn't be doing this.”

“MRI?”

Keel gave her a ‘not now' look.

Evelyn fixed him with a ‘yes, now' look right back.

“He was attacked with an iron, a large glass bowl and a vase in quick succession. I was relieved when he had himself checked out properly.”

“That's it?”

Keel gave her a ‘really not now' glare, but at that precise moment, Paul started to come out of it, gasping and blinking, and Keel carefully cradled him in his arms.

“What happened? What did you see?”

“Light, just light. It got inside my head. It just got really bright, and then – I don't remember.”

“Never mind, it's alright. I think you just put yourself in a trance.”

“I can do that? Clever me. Remind me not to do that when I'm driving.”

“Agreed. Can you get up? Do you want to lie down?”

“Maybe, yes,” Paul answered, in sequence.

“He needs a doctor,” Evelyn insisted.

“No.” They answered in unison, and met each other's eyes.

“Tea?” Keel offered, now that Paul was sitting up in his chair again, slightly the worse for wear.

“Please,” Paul agreed, grateful when Keel placed the warm cup in his hands.

“What did you see?” Alva asked again, crouching down beside him.

“Just the light, shining. It was mesmerising.”

“Indeed,” Alva agreed. “And you can't remember anything else?”

“No.”

“You'd tell me, though, wouldn't you?' he had to ask, but Paul didn't answer.

Keel knew Paul still kept things from him. He knew there were times when he was inside Paul, riding him hard, and Paul would be away, seeing something different entirely, but he never spoke of it. Keel always wanted to ask Paul what he saw, where he went, but he knew he'd have to wait until Paul was ready to trust him enough to tell him. It made their relationship so one sided, that he could grunt and sweat over Paul, or babble his deepest secrets in a desperate attempt to forge some sort of connection, and yet Paul remained aloof, closed to him, as silent as a statue.

Keel patted Paul's arm and let him be. He knew he'd made mistakes with Paul, mistakes Paul had not yet forgiven, despite the tenets of his faith. Keel knew he must have really hurt Paul, to be denied the care and compassion Paul gave so easily to others.

“Thanks,” Paul called to his retreating back.

Keel stopped walking and turned, and gave Paul a nod. Well, it was better than nothing.

By the time he reached his door, Evelyn was already at Paul's feet, and Keel closed his door to block out the sound of their quiet voices, talking together, just talking in a way that was denied to him.

Paul let Keel touch his flesh, but no other place, and Alva ached, having only the smallest part of Paul, yearning for the rest.

Keel sank behind his desk, unlocked the top drawer and drew out the journal he kept there, flipping open to the last page. He made another note with the date and a brief description of what had happened. He hoped that his journal might provide some clue, show him some pattern, some reason for why everything that had happened had to be, but he feared it would only serve as testimony, after the fact.

Evelyn was shining a penlight in Paul's eyes, despite his insistence that she stop it, that she wasn't a doctor, that it wasn't going to tell her anything anyway. He was fine, he was just tired at all. He hadn't been sleeping well.

He didn't tell her why. He didn't tell either of them about the dreams, or that he was spending too many of his night with Keel. Though, to be honest, the times he was with Keel were often the few times he could drift off into a dreamless sleep. He felt safe enough with Keel to sleep, and he supposed that was something.

He glanced towards the closed door. He shouldn't have brushed off Keel like that, but he'd felt frightened, and embarrassed. It was still hard for him to let Keel see him in such moments of weakness. He knew Keel cared, in his own awkward way, and yet he knew he was still just another case to Keel, a problem to solve. Push came to shove, Paul wasn't at all sure that Keel would put his safety above an answer. Keel just wasn't wired that way.

+

Evelyn didn't even let him take his coat off, dragging him over to her desk.

“I found this while doing some research last night. Alva's name was mentioned, so I clicked on it, and, look.” She dragged Paul closer so he could see her screen.

It was a paper Keel had presented when he had been the hot young thing at Harvard, full of zeal and passion. The paper had been delivered at some conference, and there were photos.

Paul stared. There was Alva, looking decades younger though it had only been eight years ago, happy, smiling, looking so smug and confident. Turned out splendidly in a dark suit, he was the very image of a bright young thing. Paul was struck, suddenly seeing Keel with new eyes.

The first thud hit him so hard Paul had to hold onto the edge of the desk. A second and third thud pulsed through him and Paul swallowed, light headed, mouth dry as memories of Keel's skin sliding beneath his fingers, the taste of Keel's skin in his mouth, the smell of Keel's hair, brushing against his cheek, thundered through him in quick bursts that left him dizzy. A sudden rush of blood surged elsewhere and Paul realised he was transfixed by the darkly handsome and cheerful young Keel that beamed up at him. He could have fallen easily for that Keel. The Keel he knew was a far more prickly, less likeable character. He wondered what on earth had happened to Keel, to kill the light in those eyes. Was it just one thing, or did it sneak up on Keel, without him noticing?

“He looks so…” Paul began.

“Young? Dorky?” Evelyn teased.

“I was going to say happy. He looks happy, confident, like he had the world at his feet.”

“Maybe he did.”

Paul was still staring at the photo, transfixed, like a deer in the headlights. Evelyn glanced from the picture to Paul, and she realised for the first time that the intense fascination or whatever it was between them did not rest solely with Keel. It was there, in Paul, and he seemed as surprised by the discovery as she was. Until now she'd thought Paul had merely been going through the motions, to please Keel. Maybe he had. Maybe Paul had started to care more than he thought, and maybe it had surprised him.

Was he so shallow, Paul wondered, to see Keel only as others saw him? Or was it because the change in the man was so acute, so striking that it elicited his sympathy. Something had happened to Keel, something so shattering it had not only driven Keel from his career, his tenure, respect and friends, it had broken the man within, so that only pieces of Keel had remained. It made Paul sad to think of such a light struck down, and it made him want to know more about Keel, instead of squirming away any time Keel tried to speak to him honestly. He wanted to know, now, what had happened to Keel. It had to be more than just hearing a voice on a tape, it had to be.

“That was a long time ago,” Keel interrupted them, making Paul jump out of his skin.

“If you're interested in the subject matter, I'm sure I could bore you stupid with a discourse on the topic, but if you're just laughing at my 90s hair then I'm sure you both have better things to do, don't you?”

Cheeks flushing quietly, Paul slunk away, fully aware of Alva watching him, with eyes that were so haunted and sad.

“Has Evelyn gone?” Keel asked, emerging from his office at last, clutching the ever present manila folder to his chest.

“She had to pick up Matty early,” Paul answered, not glancing up. He knew Keel wouldn't mind. One of the reasons Evelyn had stuck with the job was because Keel was at least accommodating to her family responsibilities, even if he was amusingly uncomfortable around small children.

Keel wandered nonchalantly over to where Paul sat, flipping through old case notes out of boredom. Keel was feigning casual interest, but Paul could feel the frisson, like ozone before a storm, as Keel bent just that little bit too close to read over his shoulder, the gesture becoming intimate.

“If you're interested in the hungry ghost festival, I have more files and photos upstairs. The customs vary from region to region, but I do like the idea of bribing ghosts to go away. So pragmatic.”

Paul grinned, both at Alva's dry humour, and the invitation to continue his research upstairs. He raised an eyebrow, teasing. Alva might have well have invited him to peruse his collection of etchings, because Paul knew that he was being offered more than a chance to rifle through more of Alva's almost painfully dense academic notes and observations.

And yet he still followed Alva upstairs, anticipation already pricking at him and thrumming through his blood in a steady beat. Alva might be a freak, but he was a learned freak and that knowledge extended far beyond the missionary position. Paul had found himself an eager student and open to experimentation, finally shucking the confines of his previous life.

Limerance, Alva's notes called it. It was more than mere lust, it was the pleasure principle, a wash of intoxicating dopamines that kept all addicts coming back for more. Paul's years of celibacy made the effect Keel had on him a particularly potent brew. Alva made him feel good, ecstatically good, even if it was only fleeting, but like any junkie, he kept coming back, trying to hit that high.

It was more than mere pleasure, though. Alva understood him, and understood his work, his need to know, more than anyone else and, trawling through the obscure minutiae of the beliefs and customs of another culture, they were happily bonding in the academic pursuits, firing ideas off each other, which was almost as heady as the sex, maybe even more so. Finally, they were reaching some sort of accord.

Paul had collapsed on the couch, nursing the beer Keel had tossed him out of the little battered bar fridge, giggling over the pile of old photos of Keel he'd found in amongst the folders, Keel looking keen but woefully out of place in some overcrowded market in Kowloon. Since Paul had been so suddenly interested in his past, Keel had thrown him a packet of old pictures, just so Paul could get it out of his system. Now Paul couldn't stop tittering away.

Keel had ignored him. He'd just rolled a cigarette and lit it, and, just when Paul was reflecting on the fact that he hadn't known that Keel smoked, he'd caught the sweet smell. Then Keel had passed it to him and he hadn't said no.

Keel passed over the hand rolled cigarette and Paul took a long drag, eyes half closed like a cat's as he exhaled, passing the cigarette back. Keel handed over another handful of miscellaneous photos which caused Paul to laugh like a monkey. The light behind Paul flickered on and off again, much as the tiny television hissed static as he had walked past it on the way in.

“You've got some seriously loose wiring in here, it's a damned fire trap,” Paul complained, still giggly as he flipped through the photos. “Where were these taken again?”

“Deepest darkest Peru . I was researching ayahuasca visions.”

“Did this involve sampling the merchandise?” Paul arched one eyebrow.

“Yes, yes it did.”

“What did you see?”

Keel shrugged. “Not much. I'm not you Paul. In fact, I'm frightened to think of what would happen to you if you tried ayahuasca or peyote. You might not come back to us, at least, not in one piece.”

He passed the cigarette back again, and watched, curious, as the light kept flickering. He noticed that a lot, when Paul was around. Televisions, radios, computers and phones all seemed to hiss white noise whenever Paul came too close some days, like cats with hackles raised. Keel had already checked with NASA, and it couldn't be entirely put down to sun spots.

The light kept flickering as Paul kept rocking back and forth in his amusement. Maybe it was just a trick of coincidence, Keel thought, watching now as Paul drank his beer, wishing for a moment that he was that beer bottle, that it was he being brushed and suckled by Paul's lips. No, it was just bad wiring, playing tricks with his mind. He took another drag on his cigarette. That was the problem with trying to see higher truths, sometimes you got lied to, sometimes what you saw wasn't what was there at all. It was all magic, and the power of suggestion. Not everything about Paul had to have an explanation that confounded science or reason.

Paul took another drag and blew another perfect smoke ring, impressing Keel. Obviously life wasn't as cloistered in the cloisters as it once had been.

For Paul's part, he'd been surprised when Keel had lit up, but it had explained why Keel's room had always smelt vaguely of bong water. He shouldn't have been surprised, he wasn't any more. Keel's tales of studying world myths and religions had involved a fair bit of experimental pharmacology. Deep down, Keel was just an old hippie, like Ginsberg and Leary before him.

Paul blew another smoke ring and took another swig of beer. He was acutely aware of Keel watching him intensely, half lover, half scientist. Paul needed one, not the other, tonight. He swung around and flopped down in Keel's lap, grinning up at him. Keel was too mellow to evince surprise. He just brushed Paul's cheek with his thumb.

Keel plucked the cigarette from Paul's lips and placed it between him own. Paul arched as Keel's hand skittered up and down his ribs, moving freely under his shirt, tickling his flesh. Keel's other hand rubbed up and down Paul's thigh absently. Paul just chuckled, deep and low, making his adam's apple bob up and down so enticingly.

“I thought you were only interested in my mind,” Paul teased.

Keel grinned. “I prefer a more holistic approach: body and soul.”

Paul chuckled, a chuckle that was choked off into a gasp as Keel pinched his nipple.

“This vile body,” Paul whispered as Keel's hand spread out reverently over his chest.

“That's what they teach you, to hate and fear the needs of the flesh. There is nothing to be ashamed of, and there's nothing vile about you,” Keel paused to exhale another lungful of smoke. “Divine is the word I'd use. They certainly knew what they were doing when they made you, quirks and all.”

Paul's eyes drifted into a faraway look.

“I don't even know who I look like, my mother or my father. The man who sealed my records, I was told he didn't look anything like me, but I don't even know if he was my father.”

“It was unfortunate that you couldn't be there to meet him.”

Paul's eyes focused again. “Why do you care whether I find my father or not?”

“Because it's important to you, and because I'm as curious to know your background as you are. I couldn't even find any record of the death of your mother, no certificate, no hospital records, no pauper's grave. I don't doubt your recollections, but the lack of paperwork before you came to St Jerome 's is puzzling, to say the least. You're an enigma, Paul, but whoever your parents were, and whatever happened to them, they must have been fine looking people, because you're so very beautiful.”

Paul glanced away, uncomfortable when Keel said things like that, the way he looked at Paul when he said them, wanting so much more than Paul felt he could ever give.

“I wish I knew where I came from.”

“I know,” Keel murmured. “But right now, I just want you to come.”

Keel took another long drag, leaned down to Paul, cupped his face in his hands and blew the smoke into his mouth in a smoky kiss. Paul chortled a little, took a drag himself and repeated the favour, easing into warm, silky, smoky kisses that soon became the only sound in the room. That and the ticking of some cheap clock on a bookshelf, the creak of the couch and the rustling of clothes, and the soft moan as flesh that needed to be touched was touched.

Keel's hand slid down the front of Paul's pants and Paul arched again, exposing that beautiful throat, hissing slightly as Keel's touch teased him.

God, he was beautiful. It made Keel almost afraid to touch him, but he needed to touch him, so very badly. At times, he could think of little else, so much did his world revolve around Paul.

The boys were nowhere in sight when Evelyn arrived in the morning, but a moment later the sound of competing gasps and grunts hit her, and she knew exactly where they were, what they were up to, and that they would be a while. The moans grew to a crescendo, then fell silent, and Evelyn started to quietly make the coffee, knowing they would be down shortly.

She didn't mind. They had hardly kept it a secret, neither being terribly discrete, and she was happy they at least had each other. These last few weeks, she'd found she'd much preferred their sudden obsession in each other to the tensions that had previously reigned. She was glad their friendship had been renewed and deepened, and she was relieved that Paul had finally chosen Alva.

She loved Paul, but he scared her, and she'd had her fill of men who scared her, so she didn't begrudge him to Alva. Though that wasn't to say she didn't feel Keel's jealousy spike every time he thought she was too close to Paul.

And it wasn't to say she didn't feel her own green eyed monster kick in when she saw Paul with Alva. Especially that time she'd been about to knock on their motel door when she'd seen them, through a gap in the blinds. Paul had been astride Keel in the bed, riding him hard, arching back, pumping himself. He'd started to come a second later and she'd pretty much fled, retreating to her room to use up all the coffee, knowing they would be at least another twenty minutes or so before they came knocking on her door, freshly shaved and showered, trying to look as innocent as two naughty schoolboys.

Then there was the time she swore Paul had sunk down in the back seat of the hire car and given Alva a blow job, but she'd just turned the radio up and tried not to notice. They never said anything. It was the large elephant in the room that nobody talked about, that Keel was fucking Paul.

Then there was the even bigger elephant they tried to ignore, the one about them not knowing who or what Paul was, or if he had a purpose or destiny, if any. Despite all of Keel's research, they had no real facts about Paul, other than he existed. Even that could only be proved by the evidence of their eyes. Any trace of his origins had been obliterated, sealed, destroyed or obscured. Any attempts to trace said origins, either by paperwork or science, came to abrupt ends.

It made her worry, it made her believe there was more to Paul than Keel's wild theories, or that there might be something to Keel's thoughts on the matter. She worried to that Keel's obvious feelings for Paul might be blinding him to the truth. They didn't really know Paul, and she herself no longer felt she could trust him, not entirely. She loved him, but she knew from hard experience that love counted for nothing when it came down to it.

The same was true for Paul. Who could tell where his true loyalties might finally reside. Sometimes, Paul, and what he could do, it really scared her. Sometimes she worried that Keel was clutching a viper to his chest.

They never talked about it, though, and when they finally emerged, she smiled sunnily to them, as if there were nothing in the world to worry about, nothing at all.

+  

Paul tipped back the clear liquid, grimaced as it burned away the soft skin of his mouth, and set the shot glass down very carefully on the table, leaning back in the booth, almost sliding to the ground if there wasn't a table blocking his way. He was quite drunk. Poppi had been buying him tequila shooters all night, which wasn't fair, because Poppi knew Paul was a two pot screamer at the best of times. Four shooters had him practically paralytic.

“What about that nice girl you work with…” Calero was uncharacteristically matchmaking, preferring to see Paul with anyone but the one he had chosen.

“Evie?” Paul helpfully supplied.

“The one with the eyes.” Poppi added, like a dog with a bone.

Paul shrugged. “I like her, she likes me. I think we both thought maybe, but when it comes down to it, I unnerve her, and she can't deal with that.”

“Unnerve her?”

“What I do, it scares people. I meet someone, I tell them what I do, and if their eyes don't glaze off or they don't run away immediately, maybe, just maybe, I'll see them again, then something will happen and…” he gave a defeated gesture. “At least if I start speaking in tongues when I come with Alva, he finds it a turn on. Oops.” Paul grinned, realising that he'd spoken the last part out loud.

Calero grew stern. “I cannot understand your relationship with that man.”

Paul shrugged again. “It's nothing, really, just two lonely guys, passing the time.”

“Find another hobby.”

Paul grinned again, sliding even further back in his seat. “I've tried abstinence, Father, it didn't work for me. And Alva isn't without his better qualities. He knows all this tantric stuff so that when he goes down on me it feels powerful and divine-“

Calero struck the table, making Paul stop.

“Besides,” Paul continued, “You wouldn't want me with Evie, either. Thou shalt not commit adultery. She's another man's woman. Where did you think Matty came from, or didn't they teach you that when you were at school?”

Calero bridled. “You're not too old for a good trashing you know, and you'll get one if you keep being so cheeky, and don't you dare blame it all on the tequila, I know you better than that, Paul Callan.”

And so he did. Paul had known Poppi all his life.

“I still don't understand why you left, why you joined this…organisation. What are you seeking, Paul? What can they give you that we can't?”

Paul picked at the wall behind him. “Acceptance, belief, trust, respect. We do good work, Poppi. It's not on the same scale but I believe I've really helped some people, that I've brought them peace, laying their ghosts to rest. Keel says that's what a shaman does. It might be all show and suggestion, and there might have been nothing there but their overactive imaginations, but if I can help them sleep easier at night, I feel I've at least done something. It's like a placebo. Faith can work miracles, but sometimes it needs a little push. That's what I do. I help people.”

Calero shook his head. “You would have made a good priest. I should have sent you to some mission somewhere, instead of letting you go.”

“Keel says you should have, too. He said it would have been good for me to meet with my own kind, other shaman, people like me who have seen the other side.”

“Is this about the crash, Paul? Is it still about that?”

“It changed me.”

“I can see that,” Calero noted sadly. “It's not too late, Paul. You say the word and I'll have you booked on a flight, anywhere, all you have to do is ask. You can and you should be doing so much more with you life. Let me help you. I hate to see you floundering like this.”

“I'm not floundering. I'm not wasting my life.”

“I think you are. I think you know you are. Keel can be charismatic, and I'll grant you that, but that's no reason to join him on whatever fool crusade's his on. It's not your mission, Paul, it's his.”

“You don't like him.”

“It doesn't matter whether I like him or not. I don't trust him. I don't trust him with you. I think he's led you astray, seriously astray, like some mad pied piper, and I think he'll get you into serious trouble. Do not mistake his infatuation with you for concern for your well being. They are not the same thing and can frequently be at odds, especially in a man like Keel. He's dangerous, Paul. Stay away from him.”

“Is this an intervention? Is this what this is?” Paul demanded, suddenly very, very angry.

“It's a word of advice, from a friend. I don't think it's healthy to be around Keel.”

“You want me back with the Church.”

“Yes.”

“Doing my old job.”

“No, we could send you to a mission, if you like. Anything you want, all you have to do is ask. Just come back to us, Paul.”

“You say us, but I don't see anyone else asking. The Monsignor certainly didn't get down on his knees and beg me to stay.”

“Is that what you want Paul? Do you want me to beg?”

Paul shook his head, realising that he couldn't cross that line. He couldn't ask that of this man, who was near enough begging as it was. He couldn't take Calero's dignity as well.

“I'll think about it,” Paul promised, in a desperate bid to head off this conversation. He didn't like it, he didn't want to choose. He thought he had chosen, but Poppi kept trying to draw him back in, and sometimes Keel was so impossible Paul was ready to quit. He'd even said it out loud, a couple of times.

Maybe he didn't belong with either of them. Maybe he belonged somewhere else. He just didn't know where. That was the problem with being an orphan. He didn't have any roots, no place of origin. It was hard to know where to go, when you didn't know where you came from.  

+

“Come on, Paul.”

Alva clapped a hand on his shoulder, which Paul regarded with some alarm, the same way as when an over enthusiastic salesman latched onto his person.

Alva looked downright maniacal.

“We've got a haunted house to investigate.”

“Where?”

Alva just shook his car keys at Paul. Wherever it was, it was probably going to be a very long drive.

The kilometres passed, marked out by telegraph poles and white lines painted at regular intervals on the road. It didn't take too long before Paul was nodding off, and then, rounding a slight bend, he just slumped against Keel. And stayed there.

Keel was surprised by the sudden warmth and weight pressed against him, all too aware of the scent of some generic shampoo in Paul's hair as it softly brushed the skin of his throat, but he was hardly surprised Paul had dropped off.

It was no secret to even the most disinterested observer that Paul had been having trouble sleeping, still. Either that or it was some secret double life that had him blearily creeping in every morning with panda eyes. Paul was also extremely susceptible to suggestion and this made Paul all too easily entranced by the steady dash, dash, dash of the lines painted on the road and the dots of light from every street light they passed.

Keel really didn't mind Paul leaning so heavily against him, in fact he found the sensation rather pleasurable, but it made it difficult to drive, and it took a couple of really solid nudges to dislodge him.

Paul smiled sleepily through his fringe in that coy little way of his, such a coquettish little smile it made Keel's heart skip, and then the moment was gone and Keel began to doubt that he'd seen that little smile at all. In any case, Paul was now drooling onto the passenger side window.

The hours drove on and Keel, now blinking tired, was concentrating solely on the road ahead. Paul was still leaning against the window, but he was now looking inwards rather than outwards, studying Keel, really studying him, as though seeing him for the first time. First impressions had not been kind, but Keel had rather barged into his life at a particularly low point.

Now he tried to see past his irritation with the persona, to see the man that lay beneath. A handsome man, with pale eyes that could bore through solid steel if they chose to. Dark wavy hair, just little too long, giving him an attitude of academic unkemptness. It was a face that had known happiness, but also great sadness, and pain. It was a face Paul had grown accustomed to, a face he now looked for in a crowd. A face he found comforting and familiar. A face he trusted.

Paul closed his eyes again. It was about another hour to the next town, and his turn to drive, if Keel trusted him to do so.

They would probably stop at some shitty motel instead, with Keel just crashing and snoring. Keel was loathe to let Paul drive these days, lest he have another ‘episode' at the wheel. Honestly, you had one revelation, you collected one fence, and people thought you were unsafe to drive. It was so unfair, Paul mused, not entirely unable to see Keel's point of view.

Keel hadn't told Paul anything of detail about the house, its history or the reported phenomena. He wanted Paul to go in cold, more curious to see Paul's reaction than the house. It was another test, and it rankled Paul, just a bit. He'd hoped that Keel had offered him a job as an investigator of paranormal phenomena because of his experience as an investigator for the Catholic Church, debunking bleeding statues and the like, but no, Keel was mostly interested in Paul, and his own paranormal activity. It annoyed him, and creeped him out, just a little, that Keel was more interested in his latent abilities as a medium, than his skills in the forensic sciences.

They walked up the steps together, Alva jangling the key the real estate agents had given them.

The house exhaled as Paul opened the door, blowing a stale sickly perfume over him.

“Air fresheners,” Alva visibly shuddered.

“Lavender,” Paul agreed. It smelled like the old clothes he'd once sorted for charity, old faded cloth that always smelt of stale sweat and cloying lavender water. The odour surrounded him now, and it smelt like death.

He glanced up to see Alva scrutinising him closely, like a hunter watching for the slightest quiver from his best dog as Paul sniffed the air.

“Well?” Alva asked impatiently.

“Yes, I think so,” Paul conceded. “Let me walk around, get a feel for the place.”

“So long as you're not looking to buy,” Alva groused, following Paul inside.

They walked through each room of the house, Keel noting down temperature and humidity and taking a photograph of each room, while Paul ran his hands along the shelves, looking for, what? A vibration? A feeling of dread? He could feel nothing, and it frustrated him, as though he was afraid of failure, afraid of failing Keel.

Paul turned the light on in the walk in wardrobe, peering into the corners. He felt Keel pressing close behind him, really close, as though trying to play a game of sardines. Paul turned and was backed into the wardrobe, Keel following him in.

Paul was quickly pressed up against the far wall, in between the coathangers, eyes closed, his mouth in a tight line, one hand curled in Alva's hair as Alva bobbed up and down before him. A knock on the door startled his eyes open.

“We're just checking for vibrations,” he managed to find his voice, slightly tremulous and breathy, and the shadow went away. He tilted his head back as Alva drove him to the finish. Oh, please, yes, he needed this.

He drew Alva up and kissed him hard, tasting himself on Alva's lips. He brushed his cheek against Alva's, just a fleeting moment of affection, and then they zipped and buttoned up, making themselves presentable again, leaving the wardrobe as po faced as possible. Yet when they looked around, they could find nobody else in the house but themselves.

“Well, somebody didn't like the idea of you going down on me in the closet,” Paul voiced his thoughts, to the house as much as Keel.

“Well, we're out of the closet now,” Keel jested dryly and Paul gave him a sarcastic grimace.

They slowly walked back down the stairs to the first floor, Alva's instruments still barely detecting a quiver that couldn't be explained by air currents and the like.

Paul walked around the front room slowly.

“Getting anything, any feelings, any cold spots?” Alva enquired, all serious and all business.

“No,” Paul smiled at him as if he were daft. “So, you said you did a case history, what's the story here? Horrible grisly murder? Indian burial ground? Because I've seen that movie.”

“Very funny,” Keel sniffed at him.

Paul ignored him, brushing his hand along an antique dresser. He suddenly shivered.

“Paul?”

Paul glanced up at the walls, tilting his head.

“Have they redecorated in here recently?”

“Yes, why?”

“Is that when the troubles started?”

Keel gave him a look.

“Are you saying all this is over new curtains?”

“It's about a place, a sense of ownership, of belonging, a sense of violation. Trespass. We're not wanted here. Something bad happened here. Something is here.” He turned around, sensing something, a slight trembling in the curtains, a tiny flickering of the lights.

“Haunting or poltergeist?” Paul asked of Keel, pacing the lounge room that looked extraordinarily ordinary, with awful beige carpets, awful pink frilly curtains and cheap, awful knick knacks arranged on the mantelpiece and every other surface.

“Haunting. Poltergeist activity is the result of intense frustration on the part of a living occupant of the house, usually sexual.” He raised an eyebrow at Paul. “I've made a brief sexual history of the clients and discounted them, and I've defused you, so any phenomena we observe we can safely ascribe to a haunting.”

“Defused me? Is that all that was? Do you think I'm…”

“Repressed? Just a little. Perfectly understandable, given your upbringing, and nothing to be ashamed of, really. I just needed to eliminate you from the equation.”

“And nothing else?”

“Paul,” Alva turned intense pale eyes on him. “How could you even ask that?”

The phone suddenly started ringing, making them both jump.

“What?” Paul asked, seeing keel's expression change, from irritation to surprise.

Keel just switched the phone to speaker, so they could all hear the static hiss and splutter, and hear the name “Paul” spoken over and over again quite clearly.

“Are you sure there isn't anything you want to tell me?” Keel asked, hanging up.

“Like what?”

“Oh, say, that this isn't all new to you, that you've been haunted before.”

Paul blinked and looked wounded, and Keel knew he had scored a bullseye. Keel tilted his head, waiting for Paul to proceed with the story.

“When I was young, I was very sick, and I remember, I had the dreams, half waking dreams, a sense of other things being in the room, scary things. Shadows, voices, odd scrapings and rustlings and things moving and rolling off shelves. Strange, terrible fever dreams. Eventually I got better and the dreams stopped. Poppi told me it was just the fever and I did my best to forget it had ever happened.”

“But now you remember.”

“Bits. Flashes here and there. A horribly familiar sense of absolute dread and terror just before I wake, a moment or two of not being able to move, of something indescribably evil pinning me down. I'm sorry, but I tried to forget about it, forget all of it.” Paul became agitated, eyes welling up.

“It's all right,” Alva assured, as gently as he could. “If it's important, you'll dream it again. I've got no doubt about that.”

“But why me? And why did Poppi-“ Paul never finished his sentence. The house knew he was here, and the house had a message.

“Paul?” Keel started to ask, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck all snap to attention, but he stopped.

An invisible breeze swished angrily at the curtains, rattling the Venetian blinds. The door to the kitchen started banging open and shut. Books and trinkets started rolling and falling off the shelves, one by one.

A vase suddenly smashed into the wall, missing Keel by millimetres.

“Get out!” Paul cried to Keel, but it was too late.

A large lamp whipped itself off the counter, slamming straight towards Paul, but Paul just snapped around, glared at it instead of ducking and it bounced away, shattering into the other wall.

Keel was shocked. He'd never seen Paul stand up and fight back. Not like this. Never like this.

“Paul?” he had to ask, suddenly afraid.

Paul shook himself. “I don't know, I just, I just made it happen.”

“Can you talk to the spirit, try and calm them down?”

“I don't know. I-“

“Come on, Paul,” coached Keel. “Get a hold on it and bring it down. Don't let the tail wag the dog. You're the most powerful thing in this room, and it knows it. It's afraid of you.”

Paul was glancing around nervously as the banging door grew more insistent.

“I don't think it is. I think it wants…”

He never had a chance to finish his sentence. A large bound volume of the complete works of William Shakespeare tumbled off the shelves and struck Alva hard, and Alva sank to the floor in an untidy heap, but before Paul could say or do anything, every book on the shelves, soft cover and hard, hurled themselves at him, burying him under a pile of paper and cardboard. He tried to push himself up, but one clipped him sharply on the scalp, spilling bright red blood instantly down his face.

“Keel!” Paul tried to reach him but the mini maelstrom kept him pinned in his corner.

Paul managed to push himself free, and seemed to drive back the storm of cheap ceramics that pelted him. The house was having none of that, plucking Paul up like a rag doll.

Paul was suspended in the air and shaking. Before he could say or do anything he was suddenly whipped up into the ceiling and slammed there so hard he shook down rolling puffs of plaster and was pinned there, for several long seconds, before he was dropped.

He landed heavily on the Persian rug, barely catching a moment to breathe before he heard a rattling in the kitchen cupboards and stared in horror through the open doorway to the kitchen. There was a sudden crash of metal but the door slammed shut with an enormous bang, catching the knives in mid-flight, impaling themselves in the door so hard their points showed through.

Keel, who had been directly in their path, still lay there on the polished floorboards in corner, helpless.

Paul himself was standing now, battered and bleeding, blood staining down his shirt and looking as mad as anyone had ever seen him.

“No!” he screamed at the room and it slammed him into the other wall.

Then he was lifted up and slammed violently into the ceiling again and pinned there, jagged glass from the broken light fittings clawing into his back as he twisted like a trapped beetle.

Paul tried to push himself away from the ceiling, struggling hard. Then he just grew quiet for a second, very quiet, then, his eyes darkening, he told the unquiet spirit to get the fuck out.

Keel ran a hot bath while Paul stripped off his bloody clothes, leaving them in a neat pile in the corner. Keel was bemused, thinking that orphanage had drilled Paul well. It seemed at times simply impossible for Paul to be untidy, even when he was battered, bruised and beyond exhausted.

Paul, seeing that amused look, cocked an eyebrow, noting that Keel was still dressed.

“It's a little small,” Keel explained, indicating the motel bathtub that was barely big enough to wash dishes in.

Paul shrugged, stepped into the bath and sank gratefully into the steaming water up to his chin.

Keel was still loitering and Paul leant forward, suddenly self conscious, but it was a fleeting thought, forgotten the moment Keel began to scrub his back and shoulders. It felt so good. He closed his eyes as Keel gently ladled water from cupped hands over Paul, rinsing the plaster from his hair. A dripping washer slid along Paul's arms, running rivulets that twisted down his skin like snakes.

Keel followed long, lean legs down to toes poking just above the water line, which he scrubbed, tickling, making Paul squeal. Keel took Paul's right foot in his hands, pressing thumbs into flesh, making Paul groan as he hit the spot, just right. And then he kissed Paul's toes, a long sucking kiss. One that made Paul grip the sides of the bath.

Paul's hair was still damp, several strands hung forward, occasionally squeezing little drops of water from the tips that fell onto his face like tears.

Paul had pulled his jeans back on, just his jeans, because he didn't want to feel naked around Keel, though Keel always managed to make him feel naked, somehow, looking right through him. It was silly, really, after he'd sprawled this way and that in the bath as Alva had sucked on his fingers and toes and other parts. Strange, how they could be so intimate, and yet still feel vaguely awkward and embarrassed to be sitting side by side on a queen sized bed.

“You jumped,” Paul teased, smiling smugly as he poked around in the bottom of his chicken chow mien for another star shaped piece of carrot. “I saw you,” he added, chuckling.

“I most certainly did not,” sniffed Keel at the slight, but his tone was more for effect than anything else. He'd rarely seen Paul let his guard down and smile, at least, not like this, not with him.

They were lounging together on a too soft queen sized bed in a little motel, the man who'd looked them over once before handing over the keys obviously not believing for a moment they were just two co-workers, travelling through.

Keel set his container of cooling noodles aside, growing serious. “I should have never have taken you into that house, I'm sorry. It was too dangerous for someone as sensitive as you.”

Paul shrugged. “I've been in haunted houses before.”

“As an investigator, not a psychic trigger. The presence in that house, it tapped into you, it used you.”

“It spoke through me.”

“It did more than that Paul. You were bleeding from you eyes and nose. It picked you up and threw you like a rag doll. I thought I was going to lose you.”

“You didn't.”

“It was too close.”

“I'm fine. You think I don't know what I'm doing.”

“I don't think you do. Checking weeping statues for tampering is one thing, but being the cause of an actual manifestation is quite another. You're like a radio these things use to broadcast through.”

“I know. I feel it. I see it. If it scares you, then you have no idea what it's like to be me. You have no idea what I've seen or felt.”

“Then tell me.”

“Heaven. Hell. Raw, elemental, like being on fire, or electrocuted.” Paul turned away, unable to speak further. He scrapped at the bottom of his container. “I didn't cause what happened in that house. At least, I don't think I did.”

“Not even the vase that nearly missed me.”

“No. But you did jump,” Paul reminded, and there was the return of the slightest twinkle in his eye.

“Psychokinesis is it now, Mr Callan. Usually solely the pervue of sexually frustrated teenagers. Tell, Mr Callan, do you feel sexually frustrated?” he asked, sliding his hand between Paul's thighs.

Paul set his dinner aside on the bed table and settled himself closer to Keel, eager for the diversion, but Keel was still focused on business.

“Have you ever done anything like that before? The psychokinesis, I mean,” Keel qualified, and Paul was glad of that, worried for a moment that Keel was about to interrogate him on his sexual history, again. Sometimes it was hard for Paul to know which Keel he was talking to: the professor, the lover or the lunatic.

Paul turned away, picking up his noodles again, somewhat deflated.

“I don't remember, I haven't noticed,” Paul stumbled. “I really don't know. It just came to me, the way it all does.”

”You feel you don't deserve it because it comes so easily. I understand. If you could draw or play piano flawlessly, and I would still envy you those gifts, because I have neither, would you still feel so…unworthy?”

“I suppose not.” Paul answered, considering his noodles. He poked at them despondently with a chopstick.

“You know what I'd like? Just to spend some time like this, only without the shoptalk.”

“I'm sorry.”

“No,” Paul tried a placating smile. “It's okay, we're on company time, I get that. It's just, I don't know you, Alva. I think I'd like to.”

“Not much to tell, and I thought you'd googled everything about me.”

Paul grinned.

“Not everything. And I didn't mean your papers. I was thinking more along the lines of raw statistical data. Favourite song, favourite colour, favourite food.”

A noodle slipped from his chopsticks and fell onto the smooth skin of Paul's chest.

“Chinese,” Alva answered. “Tonight, it's Chinese.”

He drew close and licked the noodle from Paul's skin, then moved onto to his right nipple, making Paul's neck arch so beautifully.

Paul pushed his noodles away at last. This time he had Keel's full attention.

“I want you to fuck me,” Keel demanded between kisses. “And I want to see your face when you do it.”

That gave Paul cause for a moment, unsure of the intimacy. He'd rarely let Keel fuck him that way, not face to face. It was easier to just roll over and let Keel hump away inside him. Easier, but not honest. They clashed too often professionally and Keel's overtures at friendship and romance had so often been clumsy and off-putting, too cold one moment, too close and cloying the next, but Paul recognised a kindred lonely soul and deep down he did care very much for Keel, despite all his misgivings. It was there in moments, a real connection. Moments like this, when he knew he owed it to give back to Keel some of the pleasure and intimacy he had taken.

He shucked his jeans and he rolled Keel beneath him, bringing him close to the brink with lips and tongue. Then he drew back, kneeling, as Keel waited breathlessly.

Middle age had started to soften Keel, and he looked comically vulnerable, lying there and waiting. And yet there was still a dignity to him. Angry at the secrets Keel had been hiding, and egged on by Evelyn, Paul had engaged in a little tit for tat and had googled Keel quite extensively, pulling up papers he had published, talks he had given, but he had found pictures of Keel taken nearly ten years ago, Paul had felt desire thump through him, and now he had those eyes, those lips, waiting for him. He'd always been aroused by Keel, it was only now that he admitted it. He leant forward and kissed Keel, and then, still kissing him, he guided himself in.

Keel never saw Paul's face. He closed his eyes at the first touch, giving his senses wholly over to sense, and taste and smell. Paul was inside him, dragging up and down. That beautiful skin was pressed against him, those lips were touching him, and he came, too fast, too hard, but he couldn't help himself.

Paul was wetting his face with soft kisses, but Keel was having none of it, rolling Paul under him, opening him wide and taking him deep.

Paul stared at the ceiling as the bed squeaked and rocked back and forth to the sound of Alva slapping flesh and grunting against him. Alva's hands where on his thighs and Alva was shoving away inside him, but Paul was watching the dark line of a crack across the ceiling. It must be a trick of the light or his imagination, because it seemed to grow longer, deeper, by invisible increments, yet it seemed to grow bigger, but by bit, keeping pace with Alva's thrusts.

Alva suddenly changed the tempo and angle, and Paul tensed as if shocked, scrunching his eyes shut tight, suddenly back in the game. There, just there, right there, again, please, again, oh, yes, again, oh…oh. Yeah.

He slowly opened his eyes again and the crack in the ceiling was just a crack, and it wasn't moving at all.

Paul curled onto his side, still a little wired, a little restless, a little unsated. Alva half fell against him, all sticky and exhausted and already asleep, but Paul didn't mind. Alva made him feel safe, somehow, something real to hold onto when he imagined shadows moving in the far corners of the room. Alva's soft snoring was the sound of the mundane, drowning out the whispers and rustling that he thought he could hear. Alva kept the darkness at bay. Alva was like the blanket he used to hide under as a child, and pray that the ghosts went away.

Paul just closed his eyes and repeated the mantra that Keel had taught him, the one that told him his limbs were growing heavy, slowly sinking him into trance like sleep, and it was not long before he followed Keel down.

Keel was woken by an annoying chirping on the nightstand bedside him, and, cracking one eye painfully open, he saw that it was his phone, angrily doing a circular dance across the bedside table while on vibrate, like some demented bee. He snatched it up when he saw the caller ID and stepped quietly outside the motel room to take the call.

“Is Paul with you?” was the first question asked.

“Yes, we're working on a case.”

“The house, yes, I saw something about it on the news.”

“Then you already knew he was here with me.”

“I wanted to know if he was with you.” Now the inflection turned in an entirely different direction.

“That's none of your business.”

“His soul is my business.”

“You should have tried to keep him in the Church, then.”

“He's safer outside it.”

“Is he now,” Keel pressed, suddenly intrigued. “What does Paul mean to you?”

“I've known that boy all my life. It's my job to protect him.”

“You're doing a great job so far.”

“So are you. You're putting him in mortal danger.”

“Paul makes his own choices.”

“A real friend wouldn't let him risk himself like that.”

“What do you know?” Keel insisted.

“That Paul is a very sick boy. He was injured in that crash, more seriously than we knew. He's brain damaged, unstable, and you, Mr Keel, are playing into and preying on his delusions.”

“Delusions, is that all you think they are?”

“What would you call them? Divine visions, or the hallucinations of a sick young man. A sick young man who needs your help.”

“Paul isn't sick,” Keel started, but his words were cut off by a guttural groan from Paul. Keel glanced through the window and saw Paul arched up on the bed, almost bent like a bow, and then shaking violently, thrashing back and forth.

“What is it?”

“He's fitting,” Keel answered, dropping the phone and racing back inside to struggle as he tried to hold Paul down, forcing a chopstick through his mouth so he wouldn't bite off his own tongue.

Keel managed to finally subdue Paul, getting into some sort of wrestling hold and trying to sooth him, holding him quite still, until the ambulance came.

Paul woke to a haze of white and noise and chemical smells and struggled until a firm hand gripped his and a familiar British voice told him to lie still, that he was alright, that he suffered a seizure and he was now in hospital and everything was going to be alright.

Paul twisted painfully away from the light, grateful when a shadow fell across him.

“It's alright, Paul,” Keel's voice was telling him, though he sounded a room away. “They're just going to do an MRI, there's nothing to worry about.”

Paul felt Keel's hand wrenched from his as he was pulled away. He was wheeled down a long corridor, every bar of fluorescent burning into his brain until he was parked in a darkened room, forgotten like an abandoned shopping trolley as figures in rustling gowns glided around him, gathering and whispering in corners.

They roughly lifted him up onto the too hard vinyl bed and sent him down the torpedo tube without a word, just telling him to lie very still as the space closed in around him and the machinery began to thump and thud, driving into his brain.

Keel was sitting in an old vinyl chair in the corner, studying Paul's MRI scans by holding them up to the light, when a white coated young man who looked as though he had a hundred better and more pressing things to do swept into the room.

“Right,” he began, sitting down and flipping through the notes on Paul's chart. He barely gave Paul a glance, having seen his fill of gaunt looking, nervous, medically subdued young men in his time.

Paul just sat in the bare wooden hair miserably, like a prisoner ready to talk, having been tortured to within an inch of his life, poked, prodded, bled, pricked, scanned and irradiated.

“Have you had any recent head injuries?”

“Yes,” Paul answered quietly.

“Problems sleeping?”

“Yes.”

“Bad dreams?”

“Yes.”

“Irritability?”

“Yes.”

“Sensitivity to light?”

“Yes.”

“Have you noticed any strange smells, maybe like something burning?”

“Yes. Tar, I've smelt tar in a room.”

“Have you seen objects or people that no one else could see?”

“Yes.”

“Heard voices?”

“Yes?”

“Had any irrational or violent outbursts?”

“Yes.”

“He didn't hurt anyone,” Keel added quickly, knowing full well where this interrogation was going, his stomach twisting, but he was silenced by a quick glare.

“Have you tried to kill yourself?”

There was a long pause.

“No.”

More note taking.

“Do you feel persecuted?”

“Yes,” Paul answered with feeling.

“Do you feel singled out, that,” the young doctor flipped over his notes, and raised an eyebrow. “That God is communicating to you… by writing messages in your own blood?”

“Yes,” Paul answered miserably.

The doctor frowned, scribbled some more and went away.

Paul slowly swivelled a hollow gaze towards Keel.

“He think I'm nuts, doesn't he.” It was a statement, not a question.

Keel nodded sadly.

Acute paranoid schizophrenia with accompanying epilepsy was the diagnosis. There had been some symptoms before the crash, but the crash and the suspected but unproven hypoxic brain damage caused by Paul's injuries and massive blood loss had brought on a full blown psychotic break, tipping Paul over the edge.

“When can I take him home?” was all that Keel wanted to know.

“We'd like to keep him in for a couple of days for observation, then we'll have to evaluate him before we could consider releasing him into your care.”

“What are you prescribing him?”

“Clozapine.”

“Damn you, you're just lobotomising him,” Keel ground out, furious.

“He's a very sick young man.”

“You'll destroy him if you give him that stuff. You'll destroy his mind, his personality, his spirit.”

“He'll destroy himself if we don't. Do you want that?”

“He's not suicidal.”

The doctor made a point of scanning his notes.

“He drove his car through a level crossing and into the path of an oncoming train.” The doctor countered.

Alva sat down, suddenly deflated, seeing a new spin on things. Had been wrong? Had he been caught up in what simply equated to mass hysteria, infected with the very same religious mania of the people he had once studied as mere subjects? Was it all just a delusion? Was Paul just simply very sick, like the doctor said?

Alva had seen things, he was sure of it, but had it just been suggestion and coincidence? Had he played into Paul's delusions?

Had Paul really seen those ghosts, or had he just been hallucinating? Had it all just been a gust of wind, a trick of the light, the shifting and sagging of old timbers and foundations, the power of suggestion and one very sick young man's fevered imaginings?

Alone in his darkened room, Paul studied the pills in the tiny paper cup. Like Alice in Wonderland, one pill would make him smaller, one pill would make him tall. Or rather the opposite. One pill and Wonderland would vanish completely, no more white rabbits. No more messages in blood.

He closed his eyes, tilted his head back and swallowed.

Paul set the empty plastic cup down and lay back on the coarse starchy sheets. He listened to the hum of the light above his head, which he left on, and he listened to the hospital noises, the sounds and shadows of other people passing outside his door.

He was scared, but he wanted this, he wanted a normal life. The sudden promise of everything returning to normal, of life being like it used to be, it had side swiped him. He'd been expecting a tumour, or worse, but to be told it was as simple as taking a few little tablets to make all the shadows go away, well, he'd shocked Alva by leaping at the promise with both hands. Alva had screamed at him that he was destroying his gift, but Paul didn't care. More than anything, he wanted a simple life.

He tried to sleep, but the room was too cold, the sheets too thin and every time he thought he might close his eyes, somebody woke him up by checking on him. He wondered where Alva was, what he was doing, what he would think. He wondered what Alva would tell Evie. He wondered if he was doing the right thing. He wondered if it could be really as easy as popping a pill.

Keel laid out a bottle of scotch, a glass and his phone on the table carefully, one by one. Then he sat there, contemplating which to do first, get blind drunk or tell Evelyn that Paul had been committed. Whatever people might say, this was never his intention, that it should come to this, that Paul should be driven to this.

The signs had all been there, he just hadn't noted them properly. He should have seen this. He should have done something. But no, he had to keep pushing and pulling at Paul, just to see which way he'd jump. Well, he'd jumped all right. He'd jumped ship, again.

Behind him, the sheets on the bed were still unmade and crumpled, still stained with Paul's sweat, amongst other things. He could crawl into those sheets and surround himself with Paul's scent, and remember how it felt, to have Paul here, arching up beneath him, but what would that serve? That way lay madness, too.

+

“I could never have believed Paul would just give up that easily. I thought this, all of this,” he made an empty gesture to their ramshackle office. “I thought it meant something to him. I thought he was on a quest. I thought he wanted to find the answers.”

“Maybe he thinks he's found the answer.”

“Or the easy way out.” Keel slumped in his chair. “This is all my fault. I knew he was struggling, really struggling. Paul's always been a little frayed around the edges, but lately he's been unravelling, and I only pushed him harder. I should have done something.”

“You reached out to him.”

“I think that just made things worse. This is all my fault.” Keel was hunched over, almost doubled over, being the brunt of the blame.

“I could have done more,” Keel railed against himself. “I should have told him everything. I could have taken him to meet other shaman. He could have learnt to focus and maybe even control his dreams, he could have been amongst his own kind, felt less of a freak. That we live in an age where we treat magic and insight as an illness that needs to be cured...”

“You really think Paul is some sort of psychic?”

“Oh yes, the real deal, and the most powerful I have ever met. Paul didn't choose this, he was chosen, and that makes him very special, indeed.”

It also meant that everyone and everything wanted a piece of him, from doctors to talk shows to unearthly spirits.

It wasn't as though Keel hadn't tried to protect Paul, it's just that his feeble efforts had been nowhere near enough. It seemed laughable that he thought the mere act of hanging a dreamcatcher in Paul's bedroom would help. It had looked incongruous, dangling beside the bare wooden crucifix that hung on the wall, and Paul had probably taken the dreamcatcher down soon after Alva had left.

For someone who claimed to keep an open mind, Paul could be extraordinarily close minded and rigid whenever anything abutted his indoctrinated dogma. Paul's faith at times reminded Keel of a child at a magic show, seeing and believing because he was told to, despite the fact that it was plainly evident that the coin was still in the magician's other hand. Humans loved patterns and order, and had an amazing ability to entirely discard, discount and ignore whatever didn't fit, even if it was right in front of their face.

Paul was more intuitive than most, but he would still try very hard to ignore the man behind the curtain, because he had been taught to.

Keel wished Paul had kept the dreamcatcher. Even if it was only a placebo, placebos could work wonders, and were entirely non toxic and without side effects, unlike the toxic junk they were feeding Paul now. Keel wished Paul had had more faith, but that was the problem, wasn't it.

They had been driving along a hot, dusty little goat track when Paul had seen them: a line of large and white clad rapturous folk, singing loudly as they queued in a line, each waiting their turn to be dunked in the river and elaborately baptised.

Paul had made Keel pull over and at first Keel had thought Paul had only been curious to watch the quaint little ritual as it played out. But no, Paul had gotten out of the car, and despite Keel reminding Paul sourly that he was a Catholic, Paul had lined up to be dunked like all the rest.

Paul had emerged dripping from the water, splashing to shore, white shirt clinging to him in a way that Keel tried not to notice. Paul had been ecstatic for the moment, but the moment had passed when he touched shore. As they walked back to the car, Keel had made a sneering comment about how Paul was going to leave water all over the seat, and then he'd asked Paul if it was worth ruining the car seats for, if he felt saved. It had only been a bitchy comment on the state of Paul and his clothes, and Paul being sidetracked again by his need to participate instead of just observe, but Paul had just stood there, looking gut punched, and Keel had wanted nothing more than to take back those words, but it was too late. Water had been still streaming out of Paul's hair, so he would never know for sure if Paul had been crying or not, but Paul was very subdued as they drove away from the singing Baptists.

It was then, and only then, when it was too late, that Keel should have realised that Paul's crisis in faith had hollowed him out.

He should have known then, down by the river. Or, at the very least, noticed something was seriously amiss with Paul. Instead he'd dismissed the tears as mild hysteria, an after effect of being caught up in all the carry on. Paul was, after all, what people would call a sensitive boy. It was part of his charm, and talent, but also a source of great irritation to Keel, who kept himself tightly under lock and key and who came from a culture far less emotionally extrovert than the American. So Keel had just ground his teeth instead of being more intuitive, like he should have been. He should have been a better friend to Paul.

Incidents had just piled up, one on top of the other. None more so than when Paul had been brutally stabbed. After the stabbing Paul had shut down, quite a bit, and Keel had let him be. He'd thought he was giving Paul space to work out whatever issues he might have. He should have pushed harder, made the effort to reach out, to grab Paul and shake some sense into him, if need be. He hadn't known just how perilously thin a thread Paul had been hanging from.

“I should have talked to him more, made him confide in me,” he remonstrated himself.

“You can't make someone confide in you,” Evelyn reminded gently. “If Paul wanted to talk about it, he would have. I just don't think he could find the words.”

Keel stared at her. She was right, and the full horror of Paul's loneliness hit him.

He sat down, or rather slumped down, under the weight of it.

Evelyn sat down beside him and they just sat quietly together, and tried not to think of what they were doing to Paul in that terrible place.

It had been the same when Paul had been stabbed, the horrible waiting, the self recriminations, the blame Keel had felt for letting Paul just wander into the church, alone, at night, as if Paul wasn't a grown man and perfectly entitled to do as he pleased without supervision. And yet Keel had felt helpless, so very helpless, when Paul had been lying in that hospital bed. Paul wasn't safe, as Evelyn had pointed out, and it had been a hard blow to be reminded again that some people, or something else, really wanted Paul dead. The attack had been so savage, so senseless and random that it was only Keel who could see a pattern to it, and one that had shaken him severely.

It was Father Calero who had really been struck a blow, having been the one to have found Paul, fallen where he had been kneeling and praying, his blood spreading out like a dark lake over the worn mute memorial stones where he lay, no matter how hard Calero tried to hold Paul's flesh together.

Calero had really thought Paul was going to die in his arms that night. Paul did die that night, but medical science had revived him, and though Calero would not say it out loud, inwardly he called it a miracle. He stood vigil in the hospital, taking Paul's pale hand between his, trying to rub warmth back into the flesh and he prayed, he prayed hard, though he was already exhausted with praying.

The attack on Paul had made the papers, which had horrified Keel, who quite rightly feared that it would draw even more lunatics from the woodwork, but he could take some small comfort in that only the local papers had bothered to run a photo of Paul to go with the story.

Evelyn had been a marvel, staying on the case, making a nuisance of herself with her old colleagues, bringing Keel every scrap of news she could get her hands on. They had found the attacker easily enough. He had dropped his knife and had waited up the back of the church, praying, thinking his job was done, and was no match for a scrum of angry priests, who, whatever they might personally think of Paul Callan, were not about to take lightly the striking down of one of their own, especially on sacred ground.

It had shocked Evelyn though. Not just the ferocity of the attack, or nearly losing Paul, but the fact that it had really struck both her and Keel hard, the realisation that Paul was in constant danger. That Paul was a marked man.

When Paul had been released from the hospital, Keel had slept on Paul's couch, keeping watch, and looking after him. Evelyn also took shifts, guarding him, changing his bandages, mothering him in a way that Paul found both embarrassing and comforting.

That first Sunday Paul had been home they had gathered around the table, all of them, including Matty, for Sunday dinner. Paul had said grace and had smiled at them, eyes moist with gratitude, and they had thought it was all going to be okay. That night Keel had stayed and he and Paul had made love. No penetration, just petting, but it had been nice, and Paul had drifted off to sleep in his arms, warm and buzzing. Keel had thought all Paul had needed was hot soup and a good blow job. Unfortunately, it was not.

“Paul has lost his faith, and that's a terrible thing to happen to any man. More so for Paul.”

“You mean leaving the church?”

Keel sadly shook his head. “No, and I should have seen it coming, though what I could have done, I do not know. I just know he is suffering, terribly. You see, it's not that Paul has turned away from God, it's that he feels God has turned away from him. He blames himself for Tommy's death, and everything else that has happened since, and it's been a hard time for Paul. He's been tested, physically, as well as spiritually.”

The medical bills alone were enough to nearly cripple Keel. Paul had been beaten, shot, stabbed, blown up and clinically dead, just in the last six months. Paul seemed to be a walking Jonah when it came to trouble. Keel couldn't even send Paul off to babysit a couple of kids without ending up spending the night in a hospital waiting for Paul to come out of surgery, having been shot with a civil war bullet. It was a good thing something had slowed the bullet down, or Paul would have died that night, those soft lead bullets packing a lethal punch.

The stabbing was the worst though, and that's where Keel could pin point a definite change in Paul, as he had never been the same after that.

Paul, already deeply troubled, had still been sitting in the church after the late mass, trying to calm his churning thoughts as well as deal with the familiar, painfully aware of the looks he received from men he knew, men who now averted their eyes as they scurried away in their dark robes, leaving him alone.

And he had been alone, with nothing but flickering candles and unseeing statues to bear witness to the sudden, furious attack. Paul had been found minutes later, lying on the stone floor in a pool of his own blood, bleeding to death. He'd died twice that night, once in the ambulance and again on the operating table, but somehow he'd survived, but he'd never really been the same. He wouldn't speak of it, and whenever Alva tried to broach the subject, he was met with stony silence.

Alva had some idea of what the literally raving lunatic had said, having visited the deranged derelict in the police holding cells and recorded some of his rantings, but it was all jumbled, the usual paranoid ravings. The only two things that caught Keel's attention, and made his own blood run cold, were the fact that he called Paul by name, and repeated the phrase “God is nowhere.”

Keel had obtained, by spurious methods, photos of the crime scene, but the blood, Paul's blood, had been smeared and walked through by the paramedics and everyone else so that if there had been any message, it had been long since obliterated.

Paul had been so pale in the hospital. Even when the doctors had finally upgraded his condition to stable, he'd looked so pale, so fragile, so hanging by a thread. It was more than just the wounds, the shock or the blood loss. Something had broken inside Paul, only Keel had not realised how deep the break had gone. Keel had only assumed Paul's refusal to have any of the trappings of his faith in his hospital room a mere reaction against the specificity of the attack on him, the location, the circumstance, or perhaps a near death revelation that there was more than was written in the philosophies he had been raised in.

Keel had woken Paul with a start, tossing a couple of books onto his lap.

Paul had made a face at being so rudely awoken. Only Keel could be so bloody careless with other people's sensitivities. Then Paul had raised an eyebrow upon seeing the books.

“Comics? Did Matty pick these?”

“No, I did.”

“Comic books.”

Keel leant on the bed rail. “I know you're looking for meaning and guidance right now, and I also you were denied the pleasure of reading these when you were growing up, which is barbaric, if you ask me. I think you might find these instructive. They're about young men, like you, discovering that they've been gifted, or cursed, depending on your viewpoint, and what they choose to do with their lives. You know, with great power comes great responsibility.”

“Power?”

“You're an extraordinary psychic, Paul. That, unfortunately, is not something you have a say in. It's what you do with it that counts.”

“I'm not wearing tights.”

Alva couldn't hide his amusement. “I am disappointed.”

Paul closed his eyes, tired.

“He said I was evil. He tried to kill me because I was evil.”

“The man was a raving lunatic, Paul. A raving, homicidal maniac. Why would you take his opinion over that of those who love and respect you and who know you are a good man.”

“Do you think I'm a good man?” Paul asked, eyes searching Keel's for answers.

Keel smile softly, tucking a stray strand of hair behind Paul's ear affectionately.

“Yes. I've seen it. I know it.” He tapped the books. “They might be fictional, but they're archetypes that go back thousands of years. There are ancient stories, of men like you. You're the real deal, but I think you will find something in these to hold onto, and they're easier to read than some of the other texts that are in fifth century Welsh. All heroes choose their path, Paul. It's not who you are, it's the choices you make.”

Paul nodded. Keel thought he had made his point, but Paul was just paying lip service to Keel's enthusiasm, giving Keel what he wanted to hear, just to make Keel feel better. Paul knew there would be no ‘better' for himself.

Paul had recovered, several scars down his back as a souvenir, and a nagging pain in his shoulder where the knife blade had actually chipped bone, a pain that ached in damp weather, but it was what the man had said while cutting into Paul that had haunted him most.

Keel had never guessed at the true depths of Paul's crisis in faith. He'd tried, but he just couldn't imagine the extreme emptiness that was eating away at Paul from the inside. Paul felt like a spiritual leper, as though he were covered in open, weeping sores that no one could see, that parts him had atrophied and fallen away, and yet he still had to carry on.

It was Calero who had been made to bear the full brunt of Paul questioning everything, but himself most bitterly of all.

Paul had stood in the very corner of his tiny little kitchen, pressed right into the right angle, bounded by two walls of cupboards and benches. He was clinging onto his cup of coffee with both hands, arms defensively across his chest. If it were at all possible for him to have taken a step backward, he would have done so.

Calero had not expected this, and it had really sucker punched him. Paul was not only acting guilty, but he was afraid, afraid of punishment, afraid of disapproval, afraid of whatever Calero had come to tell him.

Hiding in his flat was no longer enough. Calero had finally caught him and cornered him.

“I haven't seen you for a while. You don't come to mass anymore.”

Paul smiled thinly, his whole attitude brittle.

“It's safer for everyone of I don't. Besides, I can pray here. The Lord should still hear me, if he's listening.”

That last comment caught Calero like a slap. So it was true, Paul's faith was slipping away, like sand through his fingers.

“You don't come to confession.”

Paul shook his head, tight lipped.

“If not in church, then here?” Calero suggested, realising that the attack had left Paul far more traumatised that he had admitted, including definite signs of increasing agoraphobia. It was only natural, Calero presumed, that Paul should now dread to walk into a church alone.

“I could take you back into the church. I could hold your hand if you needed, be there with you, never leave your side.”

Paul shook his head. “I'm not five any more, Poppi, and it's not the statues that I'm frightened of.”

“No, I suppose not. Will you sit with me now?”

“Why? Do you think I am so in need of absolution, so bursting at the seams with sin?”

“You don't come to mass. You lie with men.”

“ Man. Alva.”

“Why? You don't love him – don't lie to me, I raised you, I can see it in your face. He repulses you.”

“No, he infuriates me, he challenges me. I like that, more and more. He's opened me up, in many ways. He touches me and it feels so good and I need that. I need to be touched. I need to feel like that. I need to feel, to touch magic. How can anything that feels so powerful and so divine be called a sin?”

“You talk of heresy.”

“Maybe I do. Maybe I am. God spoke to me, not you, not the Pope. Ever since then –“

“You've turned your back on the church.”

“No, the church turned its back on me. The Monsignor called me a liar.”

“You said you had no proof –“

“After everything I've done, my word should have been good enough.”

“Is this about ego?”

“No, it's about believing, about having a little faith, and I realised the church had no room for that.”

“Paul, this is heresy.”

“And you won't absolve me.”

“I can't. You're not contrite. You do not ask for forgiveness.”

“No.” He was angry now, hands grabbing the sides of the bench, no longer crossed over himself, as though he were coiling to launch himself, ready to fight.

“Paul, I had such hopes for you.”

“Things change, people change.”

“Yes, they do.”

Calero pushed his cup away, the cold dregs untouched. He wanted to get up and walk out of here, flee, even, but that would deny who he was and what he claimed to be. Difficult cases like Paul were surely sent to test his own faith, and to turn away now would be a betrayal of all he believed in. He could only keep offering the hand of friendship, and hope that one day, soon, Paul would take it.

“I'm worried about you, Paul, body and soul. I wish I could separate the man from the priest as I stand before you but I can't, but do know that I love you, and that I'm here for you. Please, sit down, talk with me. I understand you have questions, that you're troubled. Please, do not burn all your bridges. There are many within the church who do love you and want to protect you. You would make us so happy if you would celebrate mass with us. But if you cannot, we will understand. But please, sit, Paul. I can't talk to you with you standing all the way over there. It's me, Poppi, you know I would never do anything to hurt you.”

“I've hurt you,” Paul realised, tremulous. “I'm sorry, I wish I could, but I can't go back. I just can't. There's something more, I feel like there's something more I need to see or be doing.”

Calero pushed out the old wooden chair.

“Then tell me. Tell me everything, Paul. We never used to have secrets between us. Talk to me, and I promise not to judge, only to pray for you, that you find the peace you so obviously need.”

Paul hesitated, on the brink.

“Please,” Poppi asked of him. “Please, Paul.”

Calero crossed himself and knelt to pray. He was kneeling on the stone still stained with Paul's blood, as no amount of effort or solvent could remove that stain. Cursed, they called it, and people skirted it widely when they came to pray, and no one stayed alone in the cathedral after dark. It was no longer a place of sanctuary, peace or safety, and there seemed nothing the church could do to exorcise the blood that had been spilled within its walls.

Paul thought it would make things better if he stayed away. It didn't. It made things worse. Rumour abounded, and most believed Paul had died in the attack.

Calero prayed but his hands were shaking. He was frightened, deeply shaken by the things Paul had said to him, and he was furious, his own faith was being solely tested by Paul's loss of faith, and the way it was eating him up from the inside out.

“Don't you do this, you bastard. Don't you do this to him. He's suffered enough. Whatever you want from him, you take it now. Don't you dare make him bear any further burdens. Please, he's a good man, he doesn't deserve this. Please, show him some mercy. Please, don't do this to him.”

He bent his head. “Please,” he begged. But Paul's lack of faith must have been catching, because Calero felt with a deep conviction that nobody heard him, or if they did, they didn't care. It was as though Paul was already damned.

+

The silence between them was only broken by the sound of Paul retching hollowly into the toilet bowl. It went on forever. Every time they thought he had stopped, he'd start up again.

“It's the meds,” Alva finally spoke, stating the obvious, but unable to stand it any longer. “He's having a reaction to the Clozapine they put him on.”

“Clozapine? Isn't that a little heavy? I thought you said it was just a breakdown.”

Keel scowled darkly towards the door.

“Well, he would just have to tell them about seeing messages from God written in his own blood, after he had that seizure after that particularly nasty bit of paranormal action, when he ended up in hospital. That's when they decided to strap him down and put him on the Clozapine.”

Keel thumped the table angrily, making Evelyn jump.

“It's a chemical lobotomy, and for a psychic like Paul, it's tantamount to a chemical castration.”

“He took it?”

“Yes, he bloody took it all right.” Keel grimaced, bitter and furious that Paul would destroy his gift so quickly, so easily.

“What are going to do?”

“Try and get him off them.”

“But what if he's…”

“Really ill?” Keel finished for her. “Paul is gifted, even without the sight. He's quick and he's clever and I won't lose him, I won't. Those drugs will destroy him, piece by piece, and I won't go through that again, I won't.”

Evelyn picked up on the word ‘again', but knew better than to press. There were dangerous undercurrents here she knew nothing about. She only knew Paul had chosen oblivion, and Alva would never forgive him for it.

The sound of more pained retching tore through them.

“He's clearly not well. What are you doing to him Alva, making him come into work? He should be at home.”

“No.” Alva cut her off, quite adamant. “That's the last place Paul should be. Do you want him isolated, alone, with nothing to do all day but stare at the walls, or would you prefer him here, where we can keep an eye on him, watch over him, look after him, keep him occupied and engaged? Which would you prefer?”

Evelyn nodded, the wind out of her sails. Keel had made his point. As painful as it was, Paul should be with them, he shouldn't be left alone.

“Occupational therapy,” Alva nodded to her quietly, as Paul finally emerged, pale and clammy and looking hollowed out.

Keel caught Paul before he fell down and sat him down at their sorting table very gently and put a bottle of water down in front of him.

“Drink it, you must be dehydrated.”

Paul's hands were shaking so badly that he couldn't even break the seal on the bottle. Evelyn turned away, unable to watch, but Alva just opened the bottle for Paul, as if nothing was wrong.

“Keel,” Paul whispered, after taking several long gulps of both water and air. “I don't think I can do this.”

“Yes you can. I have faith. It might take a while, but you'll get your sea legs back.”

“Alva, I –“

“Come on, I don't carry passengers. I've got a mail list that's in urgent need of updating, for one thing.”

He planted Evelyn's notebook in front of Paul, opened it up and turned it on, and dumped a sheaf of papers beside it.

The text swam before Paul's eyes, but Alva was leaning over him with expectations of productivity, and so reluctantly he began tabbing his way slowly through the entries.

“Good lad.” Alva patted Paul on the shoulder. He glanced up to see Evelyn hurling him daggered looks.

“I've heard of tough love,” she hissed, after Alva had dragged her inside his office to have it out with her. “But this-“

“This is what Paul needs: work, order, discipline. It's what he's used to. It's what he responds to. See?”

They peered around the door and Paul was still tapping away quietly.