#<<< eventually

It didn’t take long, after he woke up on the floor of the new house that first morning, for Tommy to figure out what happened to his mom.

He blinked his eyes open, crusty from poor sleep and dried tears, and peeled himself off the floor enough to sit. At first, he squinted around at the walls, peeling in a different way from what he was used to: decay from age, rather than abuse. It only took a second for the memories of the past night to come rushing back, slamming into Tommy’s psyche like a truck.

She was gone. She was all Tommy had and she was gone now. A wave of grief washed over Tommy, making him curl forward as both his hands hit the ground.

After a few moments of dry-heaving and trying to take breaths that weren’t just stuttered gasps of air, something caught Tommy’s attention.

There was a strange buzz coming from the floor, faintly there, but there nonetheless. It was soothing and familiar. After a second, Tommy could feel it move through his body, in his veins, in his bones. The soft, almost melodic vibrations filled his chest and he realized what they were: the remnants of his mother’s magic. It was a feeling similar to the vibrations vocal chords make when someone is singing. Like the perfect lullaby meant to calm him down and ground him.

Tommy stood up, shaky, filled with a new kind of manic energy. He started feeling all over the strange, somewhat rundown house. His hands brushing the walls, the furniture, the railing up the stairs. He could feel her everywhere. He took a deep breath and found himself standing in front of an attic door. He opened it, the vibrations even stronger from within, and before him was a room full of boxes, each labeled in his mothers looped handwriting, not as neat and perfect as it once was, but still legible.

Evan is twenty-one the second time he ends up at the haunted house. He doesn’t go looking for it. He, once again, just kind of ends up there, on the street in front of the house, looking up at the seemingly abandoned structure.

Was there even a street here last time? He honestly cannot remember, he can’t even really remember how he got to the house this time either. All Evan knows is one second he was driving away from Maddie’s house in the jeep she gave him, feeling hurt and betrayed and so alone, and the next, he found himself pulling over onto a side street in front of a familiar hill.

Evan, admittedly, hasn’t actually thought about the house in years, a realization that makes guilt settle in his stomach even if he’s not sure why. The ghost stories that it was the focal point of in middle school evolved as he moved through high school and eventually into his brief time at college. He knows most of them were bullshit. He knows that the people who bragged about staying the night in the house or hooking up in it were lying.

He knows this because he’s been to the house before. He’s been inside it for… well Evan can’t actually remember how long he hung out in there for, but he knows it was significant. He can’t remember what happened the last time he was in the house but he knows for certain that it was important and that none of the others would have been able to get in. He wonders if he’ll be able to this time.

He can’t remember what he had to do to get in before but he figures, what does it matter now? He’s got nothing to lose and nowhere to go, might as well be here.

Evan parks the car and starts making his way up the hill. He takes a deep breath in front of the rickety door of the seemingly long abandoned house and thinks, “Fuck it.”

Tommy lets Evan ramble on about the bike tricks he was doing in the forest and the cool bugs he’s been seeing there lately and his earth science class, which is the only class he really cares about right now.

Tommy listens patiently, asks follow up questions, and looks genuinely interested in what Evan talks about. Evan isn’t used to that. His friends at school aren’t super interested in hearing him sidetrack all the time, much more into daring each other to do random stunts, and his parents pretend he doesn’t exist until one of those stunts gets him hurt. So between the conversation, the fire, and the warm stew settling in his stomach, Evan is the most comfortable he’s been since Maddie left, maybe even since before that.

He tells Tommy as much after he explains who Maddie is and Tommy asks if that’s the reason he doesn’t want to go home to his parents, “Because you don’t feel comfortable there?” There’s an expression on Tommy’s face but Evan can’t quite figure out what it means.

“Yeah, kind of,” Evan starts and finds himself explaining that his house has always felt haunted by something he’s never been able to see or understand but has always felt the weight of. He talks about how his parents go through the motions of taking care of him but only really pay him any actual attention when he’s messing something up or getting hurt.

Evan looks up after he stops talking and notices that Tommy is still listening to him, giving him his full attention, that same expression still on his face. Their eyes meet briefly, before Evan gets flustered and looks away. He glances around, one again taking in just how empty Tommy’s house is.

“What about you?” Evan asks and Tommy raises an eyebrow in question, “What about your parents?” he clarifies.

“Oh,” Tommy says, surprised, and he kind of hesitates before telling Evan that his mom passed away when he was younger.

“I’m so sorry,” Evan starts. He’s almost afraid to ask but, “What about your dad?”

Tommy just brushes him off and says that his dad isn’t around anymore either. Evan thinks that must be lonely, Tommy living all by himself for who knows how long. At least Evan has Maddie, even if she doesn’t live at the house full-time anymore. It doesn’t seem like Tommy really has anyone.

Before Evan can go too far down that rabbithole, Tommy clears his throat a little and says that he thinks the rain has stopped. Evan looks up and sees Tommy looking over his shoulder, out the window. He turns and, yeah, it looks like the rain has stopped. Evan feels kind of disappointed, he doesn’t want to stop talking to Tommy. He doesn’t want to leave the warm house and the ease he feels when being near Tommy and he doesn’t want to go back to his house where his parents drift around like ghosts and he constantly feels like he’s getting in the way.

But he also doesn’t want to leave Tommy all alone again, so when Tommy walks him to the door and hands him a bag that holds his newly dried clothes, Evan offers to bring Tommy with him. He starts rambling about how Tommy can stay at Evan’s house and that his parents might not even notice with how quietly Tommy moves around.

Tommy kind of laughs sadly and says that he’d love to but he can’t leave the house. Evan’s skeptical, but the guarded almost skittish look in Tommy’s eyes stops him from pushing it.

He’s about to walk out the door when he remembers that he’s still wearing Tommy’s clothes.

“You can keep them,” Tommy says when he offers to change back into his own, “it’s not like they fit me anymore.” He gestures to himself and, yeah, Tommy’s kind of a big guy, tall if nothing else. But Evan can tell he has some muscle too, even if he hides it under that baggy flannel. Evan bets girls go crazy for him, with all of that plus the soft hair and those blue eyes, it’s a good look.

Evan makes his way outside and turns around before he leaves the doorway. “I’ll be back again soon,” he says, and we can be lonely together Evan thinks, then immediately feels weird for thinking that.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Tommy says. He sounds genuine, but something in Tommy’s expression makes it seem like he doesn’t believe Evan will be back. His small smile looks almost sad. “It was lovely to meet you Evan.” and oh, no one’s ever said his name like that before. He can’t really describe it but it makes Evan feel good, like how he felt talking to Tommy on the couch: warm and comfortable.

Evan’s going to prove him wrong, he will be back and he will make Tommy less lonely.

They say their goodbyes, Tommy closes the door behind Evan, and before Evan knows it, he’s at the bottom of the hill without his bike. He quickly runs back up to the tree where he hid the bike hours ago and looks up at the house. Once again, there’s no sign of anyone inside of it, it looks completely abandoned. There’s no smoke coming out of the chimney, no light in the widows, no garden in the back like Tommy had claimed. If Evan hadn’t just spent the last few hours in the glow of Tommy’s presence, he wouldn’t believe that anyone had touched the place in years.

Tommy didn’t see what happened next. One second he was there, in the house that had been slowly crumbling away for years, the house that had finally collapsed under the weight of his father’s anger and greed, taking his mom with it, and the next he was waking up on the hardwood floor of a different house. One that was so much colder without his mother’s warmth.

Later, Tommy would wake up, cheek against the floor, and he would recognize the soft vibrations of his mother’s magic humming through the foundations of the house. Later, Tommy would walk through each room of this new house and discover each piece of his mom that ended up embedded into it. Later, Tommy would realize that she wasn’t completely gone, that the house might be the only thing he had left of her now, but it was still part of her. It was the last remnants of her magic and her strength and she had weaved both into the house so that he could be kept safe. Later, Tommy would think of his mother’s love for him and, in her honor, start trying to make the house feel like a home.

It’s not long before Tommy’s back with the clothes and tells Evan, while gesturing to the door by the stairs, that he can change in the bathroom. When Evan makes his way back out and lays his clothes in front of the fireplace where Tommy directs him to, Tommy offers him some of the food that he had been making before Evan showed up.

Evan tries to protest, he’s already intruded on Tommy’s house, dripped all over Tommy’s floor, and taken Tommy’s clothes, but Tommy doesn’t take no for an answer and soon they’re sitting across from each other on the loveseat and eating the stew that Tommy made. Evan tells Tommy that it might be the best stew he’s ever eaten and Tommy laughs shyly and says that it’s probably because he used fresh vegetables from the garden. 

“The garden?” Evan questions.

It’s been a little over a month since Maddie left for college, all the way in Boston, and Evan has never had to navigate life without her for this long, until now. He doesn’t know how Maddie even slightly managed to keep the full force of their parents’ dissatisfaction away from him, but he’s so grateful she ever did now that he knows what it feels like without her.

The weight of their disappointment is so heavy that it pushes him out of the house most days. He’s usually at one of his friends’ houses, or climbing something he shouldn’t, or, like today, biking through the woods and using the old fallen tree trunks as jumps.

On days like these, Evan gets out of the house as fast as he can. He bikes far and fast, without thinking of where he’ll end up. He doesn’t even notice when it starts to rain until his clothes are beginning to get soaked. Staying out here any longer would be miserable, a feeling Evan was trying to avoid in the first place. He keeps riding until he finds a path that will hopefully lead him back to civilization and one of the town moms that doesn’t ask him too many questions about why he’s out alone and where his parents are.

Instead of finding another neighborhood, however, Evan suddenly finds himself standing in front of the haunted house, his bike hidden behind a nearby tree, debating whether or not to knock. He’s not really sure how he ended up here, it’s never happened to him before, but the house looks dry at least, and maybe warm.

All he knows is he’s not ready to go back home to his parents scolding him for getting the floor wet and crying out “What were you thinking? You could have gotten sick or hurt biking in a storm like this.” And really, how bad could this ghost be? His parents are practically ghosts already with their cold and quiet disappointment, his father’s apathetic glances, and his mother’s shrieking wails.