Pat worked on his sketch until late afternoon, ate the sandwich and drank a bottle of water. But the drawing kept him involved, as did the thoughts in his head. Over the course of the day the lighting changed and clouds drifted in and out casting the house in shadow. That was distracting enough to make Pat pack up his gear and head back down the driveway.

John Parsons had said he could stay and walk around. Maybe he knew the drawing couldn't be finished in one day, it might take weeks. The man had set no time frame on his permission so Pat just assumed he would be welcome to come back. Only John would know since his father couldn't look out the front windows.

A year ago Jenny had drowned and Pat imagined Mr. Parsons' life had changed for the worse. Somehow he felt the two incidents were connected, but he couldn't imagine how. Barry would be back in a few days and they could talk about it. But even as he thought that he knew he didn't want to show anyone the drawings until they were done.

The distant rumble of thunder grabbed his attention and Pat decided he had chosen a good time to get indoors. His steps on the driveway quickened until he reached the end and looked out at the highway. There was an eight foot grass median that divided the two sides of the roadway so he looked left and watched as a few cars zoomed by. Once it was clear he hustled out to the grassy strip.

A car coming the other way honked at him in warning and Pat waved, waiting for a break in the traffic. The curve of the highway made it difficult to see very far but he chose a long open stretch between cars and ran across the asphalt. He was on the small rutted section of the unused road when the rain started. Damn. Pat ran for the trees and the pathway leading up into his backyard.

The backpack was supposed to be waterproof, but they never were. He rushed across the yard and ducked in under the porch roof just as the skies opened up. A few minutes later and he would have been soaked. Pat entered the house and found his brother on the back porch playing a video game on the small television.

"Where have you been?" Mike asked.

"Out hiking, almost got caught in the rain," Pat replied.

"Mom says she doesn't want us down at the river. Some jerk in the neighborhood told her it was dangerous down there."

"It would be if you fell in, but there was a kid down there with a BB gun shooting at people so maybe she's right."

Mike grinned. "But that won't stop you from going, will it?"

"Nope. I'll take you down there sometime," Pat said.

He liked his little brother, the boy was smart. But he was in that changing stage of life and would bear watching. McGinty men were always into something their grandfather used to say, and it wasn't always good. Mike had been four when the man died, too young to really appreciate the wisdom the old man used to dispense. That made Pat think of the elder Parsons, it might be cool to talk to the man if at all possible. Maybe he could come to some understanding about what happened.

Mike was back into his game, and it seems his mother had taken off with Darlene to go shopping. Women always stuck together and his little sister adored being dragged around on these little shopping excursions. Pat went back to his room and shut the door.

He set the backpack down and pulled out the camera, setting it on his desk beside the computer tower. Wonderful things computers, he could do a lot to the photos with the right program. He nudged the mouse and the screen came back to life so he could enter his password. Pat knew better than to trust his little brother to stay off the computer the minute his back was turned.

The photos of Berger and the boys took all of three minutes to download, and now Pat could get a close up look at what he had captured. He called up the photoshop program and dummied up a copy of Berger performing all by himself. He left Perry out of the image but made sure that Neil's body could be seen in the background. It looked like Berger was in the company of others while he was performing his act ... perfect. Now all he had to do was figure out how to use this damning photo.

It would be fun to glue dozens of copies to the walls of the bowling alley stairwell where everyone could see it. They might be there for days before Berger found out or Mr. Long scraped them off. It would make the boy the laughingstock of the neighborhood, at least for a while. The best part was that Berger would have no idea who had taken the photo.

It would seem grand to make Berger grovel at his feet, but what Pat decided he really wanted was an introduction to this boy named Perry. There was something about the guy he found attractive, or maybe it was just the contrast to that idiot Berger. No, Perry had a cute face and a much nicer body. Pat had to smile at his thoughts. He was attracted to a boy, didn't that mean something?

A family evening, dinner and all that entailed. Pat had printed out a copy of the photo he took of the front of the mill house and showed it to his father.

"Oh my, that is impressive," His father said. "Where is that?"

"The guy who owned this land before Woodlake was built converted the old mill into a house. It's right across the highway up in the woods."

"That's private property, you shouldn't be up there."

"I spoke with the owner, he gave me permission," Pat said.

"Then that's different, just don't make a pest of yourself."

His parents didn't know about the lake or the stories about what had happened up there. Pat certainly wasn't about to tell them either. But what he did was go online to the White Oak High School website and call up the yearbook photos starting four years ago. He found a picture of Jennifer Hudson among the junior class, which meant she had probably been a senior when she drowned.

The poor girl had an attractive face with long dark hair spilling down onto a black blouse. It listed her interests as the school chorus and the art club. Pat didn't know the school had an art club ... he would have to look into that. But her eyes were covered in too much makeup while her lips seemed to have no color to them at all. The effect made her look weird.

The website only had photos and a small sentence beneath the name, hardly any information at all. Pat moved from that site to the one for the County Gazette newspaper and went straight to the search engine. The name Jennifer Hudson gave him a list of five articles to read, all from June of the year she died. Pat clicked on the first one.

Jenny's image was shocking because it was so different than the yearbook photo. She looked slightly older but she was still dressed in black.

"Jennifer Hudson, 18, drowned in a lake near the White Oak River this past weekend. Police and rescue teams searched for ten hours in the small lake before her body was found floating on the surface near the dam. There was no sign of trauma to the body but an autopsy will still be performed to determine the cause of her death."

No mention of Parsons who owned the lake and Pat wondered why. The other four articles were similar repeats of the first, except in the last one they quoted a school official about the girl.

"Jenny was a very talented young lady and we were very sad to hear of her death. She performed with our concert choir and her works of art have been admired by all the students who attend this school. Jenny will be missed."

Art work ... and then Pat knew he had seen one of her paintings before. WOHS thought of itself as a progressive school, and so the students had been allowed to become involved in various facets of decorating the building. Pat had stood in the south stairwell of Building 'D' and stared up at the castle on the hill.

The painting was huge, perhaps eight feet high and six feet wide. It had been executed on a sheet of canvas which was then laminated to the wall giving it that look of parchment paper which he thought very clever. But the dark and brooding castle sat on a hill surrounded by a deep forest with a lake in the foreground.

The sky above the castle was filled with rain and lightning, and yet a single light burned in the window of one of the crenelated towers. The swirling clouds held strange and indistinct shapes, patterns that seemed to defy interpretation. To Pat's artistic sense the painting was wonderful, if more than a little disturbing.

Pat's first impression had been Frankenstein's Castle or some strange twist on the Harry Potter novels. But now he had a different impression. Had Jenny been making a statement about the Parsons' mill? He scrolled back to the yearbook photo and looked at her. What had the girl been trying to say?

He heard a knock at his bedroom door and cleared the image off the screen. It was Mike, looking bored and wondering if Pat wanted to watch a movie. He acceded to his brother's wish, but only because he knew the boy wanted to watch the film on the television there in his room. He just hoped the boy didn't fall asleep on his bed like he usually did.

The parental units didn't allow Mike to watch 'R' rated films or anything else that might have a violent content. Enforcement of this rule was left in Pat's hands, and so it wasn't always followed very closely. Tonight it was one of those cars and road rage films Mike selected from the online store and he called up the family account on Pat's computer.

Pat propped pillows against his headboard while Mike sprawled on his stomach facing the screen. After watching ten minutes of the opening sequences Pat knew why his brother had chosen this film, it was filled with half naked women and large breasts. Pat kept the remote in his hand in case one of his parents came to the door and he had to kill the television screen.

With all that booty in the film there was bound to be a sex scene, or two or three. When it happened Mike would react in a predictable manner and Pat would have to stifle his laughter. Sure enough, the minute the kissing and groping started Mike began to squirm. Perhaps he was consciously stimulating himself, but that lump in his shorts would not be satisfied.

Sure as shooting, the minute the sex scene ended Mike excused himself to the bathroom and hurried from the room. Pat paused the film and tried not to laugh. But now Mike would relieve the pressure between his legs and return satisfied until he lay down again, and then he would fall asleep.

He empathized with Mike, although the sex scenes in the film did nothing to stimulate his own feelings. Somehow he had to discover who Perry was and where he could be found. But Pat had no car and he didn't drive except with his parents on a provisional license. Even if he did meet up with Perry it would be difficult to develop a friendship much less something sexual. He didn't like the idea of having sex outdoors and Perry would agree with that once he saw the photos.

Mike came back in the room, plopped down on the bed without a word and Pat resumed the film, but his thoughts were elsewhere. How simple the life of a twelve year old when masturbation could end the pressing sexual thoughts. At his age that quick release didn't satisfy enough to bury the desire to find someone else ... someone to explore the possibilities.

Pat had never had sex with someone else and in that sense Perry was far ahead even though he looked a year younger. How had he reached the point of doing anything with Berger? If Perry had initiated the activity then he had found a more than willing partner in Berger. But the clues lay in the actual performance Pat had witnessed.

Perry had just seemed more experienced and willing to take it to an explosive conclusion. Berger was just going through the motions while Perry was watching. Yes, he had noticed Perry looking at the other two and especially watching Berger. Perhaps he had a crush on the boy, and maybe they had done other things in private.

In Pat's mind anyone who was willing to bend over and spread his cheeks had to be a gay boy. Straight boys just didn't do that, it was too submissive. Of course he had never tried it either so this was all speculation. But under the right circumstances he was willing to give it a try, if only to discover the truth about his own feelings.

Pat smiled when he realized Mike was asleep. This business of ejaculating and then falling asleep was something the boy needed to get over. It would not serve him well if he had a girlfriend. Fortunately those days were far in the future and Pat could only imagine what he might tell his brother when those questions started. Would he have the courage to tell his brother if he was gay?

He turned off the television and went back to his computer. He rummaged in the desk drawer and pulled out an empty flash drive. He dumped all the photos into the drive's memory and wiped them out of his computer's hard drive. He was under no illusion that Mike was incapable of hacking into his computer. The boy had a frightening knowledge of the electronic world and passwords would only slow him down.

Pat woke the kid and sent him off to his own bedroom. He would have allowed Mike to sleep in his bed, but with the advent of puberty he didn't think that was a good idea anymore. Now he had to hide the flash drive in case Mike should 'accidentally' discover it while he was snooping through Pat's room. Yeah, the kid did that as well.

Pat opened his closet door and looked at the clothes hanging there. Too obvious, he needed someplace private. He'd seen those sneaky fake electrical outlets that were actually small boxes in which you could hide things, but he wasn't about to spend thirty dollars to buy one. He walked into the closet and looked up over the door frame thinking maybe he could put a shelf up there, and that's when he saw the hatchway in the ceiling.

He had considered himself lucky that his room had a six by eight foot closet space. Boys his age had a lot of stuff and this had been a blessing. But he had never bothered to look closely at the ceiling. Most houses had a way to get up into the attic ... he had just never thought it would be there in his closet ceiling.

This one didn't have a string hanging down so maybe it wasn't one of those spring loaded fold down ladder affairs, but on examination he saw a hole where the sting was supposed to be. Pat pulled the chair away from beside his dresser and stood on it. His fingers could not wedge between the plywood door and the frame, he needed a screwdriver or something to pry it down.

He fetched the letter opener from his desk and worked it in the crack until something popped and the little door almost dropped on his head. The springs didn't seem to be working and Pat caught the door in his hands. He stepped down off the chair and allowed it to swing down. The ladder unfolded easy enough and Pat looked up before he began to climb.

It was dark up there, damn dark, but he caught sight of a string hanging down from the single light fixture and pulled on it. The bulb lit up, but it was blue and provided little light. What the hell? Pat climbed back down and unscrewed the hundred watt bulb from his bedside lamp and went back up to install it.

Even a hundred watts was barely enough to see into the corners, but what he did see was shocking. There was a whole row of framed canvases leaning against one of the roof trusses, a cardboard box filled with books and something else shrouded in what looked like a pillowcase. He stared at these things from the top of the ladder, and then crawled up onto the floorboards of the attic.

There were five paintings and he was sure Jenny Hudson had placed them here. He pulled them away from the roof truss and spread them out. The first one was of a young guy, perhaps one of her classmates at school. He was blond, handsome, but half of his face had been distorted by the artist as if expressing some outrage by mangling his features. It was disturbing.

The second painting was of a girl who might have been pretty but her features had been aged until she was now ugly. Jenny had created these works to make a statement and Pat was beginning to see the art as expressing some inner emotion bordering on madness.

But the third painting was definitely of the Parsons' house, only it showed the lake-side of the building in ruins with the roof caved in. What could have possessed Jenny to create such a thing? There would, of course, be no answer to that now. And then painting number four shed a little more light on the artist.

This was a painting of the lake with the pier running out into the water. Lying on the wooden deck was a naked girl, her features quite obvious ... it was Jenny. Her breasts were full, nipples erect and her legs slightly spread as if in invitation.

A hand was buried between her legs providing the sexual stimulation that was plainly depicted in the look of pleasure on her face. But it was her skin that drew Pat's focus. It was covered in faint markings, swirls of color that accentuated her swollen stomach. My God, Pat thought, the girl was pregnant.

He would have no way of knowing if the tattoos were real. Would an eighteen year old girl have such a large number of marks on her body? There were stars in a collar around her neck, similar marks on both her wrists and a dark pentagram nestled between her breasts. The image was sexy and scary, but painted darkly, very much like everything else Pat was learning about the artist.

The fifth and final painting was outright fantastical pornography ... there was no other word for it. Again Jenny was the girl in the painting, but now she was on her knees and bound by the wrists to the bollard on the end of the dock. Hovering over her upturned buttocks was a monster of a man. Like the other painting this one was dark and brooding.

The creature had huge bulging muscles, made evident because he was completely naked and aroused. Horns protruded from his animal-like head and the face was a mask of swollen flesh twisted in an evil grin. The beast's hands were huge and they were grasping Jenny's waist as his enormous penis hovered over her rear getting ready for the plunge.

The artist had spent some considerable time in showing the finer details of the male and female sex organs. The monster's cock was dripping fluid and the vagina was open and swollen with lust. Pat sat and stared at the painting, in awe of what it portrayed and horrified at the conclusion he had reached. Jenny Hudson was one screwed up girl.

It was late, much too late to do anything with these paintings, but Pat knew he had to make them disappear. If his parents ever saw this stuff it would cast terrible suspicions on his own art and he would never hear the end of it. He wondered if Jenny's parents had any idea of the strange incomprehensible thoughts running through their daughter's mind.

Not that he had much understanding of what she had painted, but the ugly portraits of the boy and girl spoke of betrayal. Had the girl stolen her boyfriend? The sexy nude was probably meant to convey what Jenny wanted to think of herself, except the tattoos only seemed to accentuate her swollen stomach. The final painting spoke of rape and Pat could only imagine if something like that had actually happened to the girl.

His eyes shifted back to the painting of the crumbling mill house. Was this something she wished would happen, wanted to happen? The nude on the pier, the rape on the pier, it all led back to the house. Something had happened to Jenny while she was there, something before she drowned. Pat slid the paintings back where he had found them. That mess would keep for another day.

He shifted his attention to the box of books, and what he saw went a long way towards explaining Jennifer's mindset. There were books on witchcraft, voodoo and the dark mysteries of the Middle East. He found a book on tattoos and their significance, and another on drugs and their effect on the mind. Jenny had been dabbling in all kinds of strange things.

Pat tossed the books back in the box and turned to look at the pillowcase covered object. After all he had seen did he really want to see what lay hidden? It was the last thing and perhaps held the final secret that would unlock the girl's mind. He reached over and pulled off the shroud.

His first reaction was to laugh out loud, but it was late and he worried the sound might carry downstairs. The wooden carving was so lifelike, but huge beyond belief. No human or beast could have something this big. But the details were all there and it made him wonder how Jenny had managed to create something like this. Every guy had intimate knowledge of what his penis looked like, but this representation of the male cock was damn near perfect.

It sat about three feet tall and had all the veins and folds of skin Pat had seen on his own equipment. It had to be about four inches in diameter which looked about right for the absurd length. Fully erect, it had a mushrooming head and a perfectly formed opening at the tip. It could not be a real dildo since no one in the world could handle something that large.

But it sat on a base formed by a large set of balls and since it was all made of wood the only thing missing was a fringe of hair. Pat turned it to view the profile and saw the seam down one side at the base. He turned it the rest of the way around and saw that there was a little compartment built into the base with a small latch.

He twisted the latch and the compartment opened revealing a space inside big enough for something made out of soft black material. Pat tugged on the fabric and a small elongated bag slid out onto the floorboards. The top of the bag had a drawstring but Pat already knew what was inside as he pulled apart the strings and slid the dildo out into his hand.

This was crazy. Jenny had hidden a dildo inside a statue of a penis. There was no figuring out why unless this was some kind of strange ritual thing, but again, there would be no answers about any of this. Okay, now he had a huge statue of a penis to add to the stuff that needed to disappear from his house. Well, except maybe for the soft pliable dildo in his hand.

It was much the size of his own penis, which was small comfort when he realized the girl may have used this on herself. He dropped it on the floorboards and wondered if there were any germs on it. He didn't see anything, it looked clean. Oh well, he could always wash it off, and suddenly he had the urge to clean his hands.

He slid the compartment shut, put the pillowcase over the statue and slid himself over to the ladder. The rubber dildo was back in his hand and that made him smile. Perhaps he would find a use for it after he had scrubbed it off and doused it in rubbing alcohol.

Pat turned off the light and climbed back down the ladder. Now he had the chance to examine the simple catch that had held the door shut. It was spring loaded and he must have tripped it open with the letter opener. He folded the ladder up and pushed on the door until he heard it click shut in the frame.

A trip to the bathroom was in order where he scrubbed the dildo and his hands in anti-bacterial soap. Then he poured about half a bottle of alcohol over the darn thing before he was convinced it was now sterile. Then he went back to his bedroom.

The dildo was about ten inches long, but at least two of those inches were part of a flattened T-shaped handle on the bottom. It was about an inch and a half in diameter and that reminded Pat of something. He went to his bookcase and reached up to the top shelf, pulling down a book. English in the Modern World the title read. It was a text book he had acquired in seventh grade.

The minute he had finished that course the book became something else, something Pat viewed as a little more valuable. He opened the book and removed the squirt gun from the hollow he had created inside. It had taken lots of glue and a very sharp knife to remove the middle of those pages. But now the dildo fit right inside, although he had to set it diagonally.

He tossed the squirt gun in a junk drawer and placed the book back up on the shelf. That was one thing he owned that he doubted Mike would ever bother to look at, the boy hated the subject of English. Pat yawned and stripped off his clothes, turning out the lights and sliding in bed wearing just his boxers.

It would be a long time before he slept because of what he'd seen in the attic. The big nagging question was whether or not Jenny had been raped on that pier over at Parsons' house. His thoughts flipped back and forth between the two paintings. The one with a naked Jenny covered in tattoos and pregnant, the other a scene of rape. One was seductive and the other ... but which had been painted first?

If it depicted a brutal rape, then why all those fine details of the sex organs on both characters? A beast with horns had always been symbolic of the devil, although a rapist would also be considered a horny devil. The appealing sexual nature of the painting belied any attempt to label it a picture of forced rape, the girl may have been bound but she wanted to have sex.

So who was the rapist? Was it someone she knew? Jennifer was definitely screwed up, either by the drugs she might have taken or by a mental problem. Pat didn't think there were any other girls who had a three foot dildo statue. Could she have tried to use it? Could anyone fit four inches of hard wood up into ... no way.

But now he had a real dildo and Pat wondered if that damn thing would fit where the sun don't shine. If he could handle something like that then he could face someone like Perry with confidence. But Pat doubted it would be that easy unless he had lots of practice.

The rest of the week moved slowly. Pat convinced his father to take them all on a hike in the regional park, which just happened to be where the headwaters of the White Oak River began. It was also a sneaky way to get his father to ride by the gates of the vineyard on the way and he pointed them out so his father wouldn't think he'd been telling tall tales.

They enjoyed the family hike and the picnic lunch his mother had fixed. His little sister picked wild flowers while Mike ran in circles around the trees. His parents sat at the picnic table and watched their children enjoying themselves, a wonderful family moment.

The next day Pat walked back up the driveway to continue his drawing and found an old table with a chair sitting in the tall grass by the trees. It seems John Parsons was willing to accept his presence and this just proved it. But although Pat spent four hours at that small table he didn't see a soul all morning long.

His innate sense of curiosity led him to get up at one point and approach the house where he looked at the details of the third floor. The tall thin windows carried around to both sides of the house and that seemed odd. But he did not approach the back of the house since he didn't want the elder Parsons to see him if indeed that was the view he had from his bed.

A close up revealed that the brick on the house was very old and in places it was crumbling. Standing by the stone foundations at the side of the house he could actually see powdered brick dust along the wall. Pat didn't know how long it would take, maybe another fifty years or so, but the mill building was going to fall apart.

He thought back to that painting. Was Jenny's wish coming true? It didn't seem possible that something this huge could just die without someone trying to save it. John Parsons would be the one to ask because perhaps they had a plan to fix the walls.

Pat studied the way the brick sat on the stones in the foundation wall. He also found a small door inset in the stone that must lead down into the basement. Here he could see that the foundation appeared to be about four feet thick, a massive construction.

But all that brick must weigh tons, and then there was the weight of the copper roof to consider. The mill had been built to last, and only the weather had managed to begin the slow march of decay. Pat wondered what was down in that basement, but he would probably never find out.

He worked on the drawings a bit longer and added a few more of the details that would build the final image. When he combined all the sketches into a full drawing of the house these little details would be important. Maybe he should copy the final product and give one to the Parsons. It seemed like the least he could do because in another generation or two the mill might be gone.

Barry returned the following day and gave Pat a call.

"How was the trip?" Pat asked.

"Boring ... my relatives are not entertaining people," Barry replied. "Anything exciting happen while I was gone?"

"You have no idea," Pat said. "I have something that is going to knock Berger right off the planet."

"Oh? That good?"

"Boot up your computer, I'll be right over," Pat said.

"Done deal," Barry said, and they hung up.

Barry was waiting at the kitchen door when Pat swung his bike up the driveway, noticing there were no cars in the driveway.

"Parents gone?" Pat asked.

"Yup, home alone here."

Pat slid the flash drive in the USB port on the tower and told Barry to hang on. The first picture to pop up was Berger going to town on his cock and Barry squealed.

"Oh My God ... where did you get these?"

"Fate was kind, and I was just sitting there with my little camera when the show began. Scroll on, it only gets better," Pat said.

Barry squealed and laughed through the whole slide show, and then went back to the beginning.

"Berger is a condemned man, no doubt about it," Barry said.

"Who is the other guy, the one he called Perry?"

"Oh, you could hear them talking?"

"Yeah, they were only like fifty feet away," Pat said. "So who is Perry?"

"Perry Long, you met his father at the bowling alley."

"The mute? Damn, that's probably where Berger met him," Pat said. "Do you know the younger boy?"

"No, did you get his name?" Barry asked.

"Neil, that's all they called him. But look, I think we ought to erase the images of him or at least blur his face. The kid was used by Berger and I don't want him to get in trouble."

"Why, Pat ... it sounds like you have a conscience. What about Perry, aren't you worried about him?"

"That's why I did the photoshop version and cropped him out. It's Berger we're after."

"No doubt about that, we have him by the balls. Perry is actually a pretty nice guy, but then his dad would kill him if he wasn't nice to the customers. I think he might be gay. He does act a little flaky."

Pat laughed. "That's pretty judgmental coming from someone like you."

"Yeah, everyone thinks I'm a total closet case anyways," Barry said.

"I've never said that," Pat replied.

"No, you wouldn't ... and that's why we get along. So what shall we do to Berger?"

"You have the motive for revenge. I think Berger would make a good sex slave for a dominant guy with the right photo."

Barry laughed. "Ain't that the truth. You think he's a good fuck?"

"You want me to ask Perry?" Pat said.

"Yeah, he would probably know. Let me think about this for a while. If Berger doesn't do anything else stupid this summer I might just wait until school opens in the fall. Imagine what a copy of this would do to a freshman in the right hands."

"We don't want him killed," Pat said. "It would be more fun to torture him with the threat of showing that to someone. Besides, he might be a good little fuck and the pleasure will be all yours."

"You are not right," Barry laughed. "I am not gay, slightly perverted maybe, but gay is just too hard for me to contemplate."

"Give it a few years, the idea might grow on you," Pat said, and then turned back to the image on the monitor screen. "Look at the way Perry is enjoying himself ... maybe he could give me some lessons on self-abuse."

"Ya think?" Barry said, and then he smiled. "I think your closet door is starting to open."

"Speaking of closets," Pat said, changing the subject. "Let me tell you what else I found."


On to Chapter Four

Back to Chapter Two

Chapter Index

Chris James Home Page