NOTE: This chapter is available in audiobook format on the TLHOC Podcast. Access previous chapters of the book on the Table of Contents page.

Twenty minutes later, the trio had migrated to Nordstrom’s, looking at ties. And as Richard watched them poring over the styles and colors, something that felt as big as a buffalo crashed into him.

He hadn’t moved—the crash was all in his head. But it left him disoriented and with a feeling of anxiety that nearly drove him to his knees. He whirled around, trying to see whatever was frightening him, but there was simply nothing there—just the circular racks of clothes and his husband and his friends, hovering over a glass case and pointing at ties.

The crash came again, and this time it felt wet and cold, like tentacles wrapping around his head and squeezing. The pain was both physical and mental, and Richard actually clawed at his face and head, surprised that his fingers found nothing there. A low whimper came out of him, as if it was being squeezed out by the pressure in his chest. In a panic, he stumbled against the racks and whirled around, searching for a means of escape. But there was nowhere to run, and the panic was now at such a pitch that he couldn’t even think. The fear was all around him, and the cold tentacles were coiling about his head and throat, cutting off his air.

In that instant, Richard reverted to age six, when he had often gone shopping in the stores with his mother. Back then he had loved to crawl under the hanging clothes on their racks and hide. Something in that memory now drove him down onto his hands and knees, and he skittered like a bug under the suit coats and shirts.

He’s found me, Richard thought, as he cowered under the hanging clothes. It’s what Billy told me would happen!

He just knew—this was the Wanderer. But Billy’s description hadn’t given him any warning that he would feel a presence this horrifying, this unmistakably dark and evil.

And then—as quickly as the snapping of a camera shutter—Richard was no longer in Nordstrom’s. He was no longer hiding under the clothing racks like a little boy. And the fear and terror and the pressure in his skull disappeared.

Instead, it was night. The air was chilly. Above him was a wheeling blush of stars, partially obscured by rising clouds of steam. He looked down, and saw that he was chest deep in roiling, black water. The white foam rose and burst and rose again, churning like a witch’s cauldron.

He knew instantly where he was. This was a memory he had cherished for more than a decade. He was back in the hot tub in Park City—the one where he and Keith had first kissed…

I can’t panic. This can’t be real…

“The Wanderer lies,” Billy had said. And truly, this was a lie. Nothing about the scene even seemed real. The colors seemed muted and strange. The steam was rising as if it was painted on a silk curtain before him, rather than swirling from the waters. And sitting across from him, he could see the vague outlines of not one, but two men. Was it Keith and his jilted date from that evening?

As the steam cleared, and the moonlight washed over the scene, Richard could see that he was half right. One of the two was definitely Keith. His lover was young again, looking exactly the way he had when they met a decade ago. But he wasn’t naked in the hot tub. He was dressed in his new suit coat, a pressed blue shirt, and a red striped tie, which floated lazily on the foam.

The man next to him was naked. But it was not his jilted date from that weekend.

Richard wasn’t sure he’d ever seen a man so old. And certainly, he’d never seen one so old, who was also naked. The flesh on the man looked like wax that had partially melted and then solidified in folds of gray, spotted with flecks of brown and streaked with yellow. The man’s face was pitted and cracked, like a lump of clay left out in the desert. And his long white hair, now wet and plastered tight to his bony skull, hung down in stringy clumps over his knobby shoulders.

Richard tore his gaze from the old man and looked back to his husband. Keith didn’t look at him. He looked as if he might be asleep, or just enjoying the warm feeling of the waters, as they caressed his body. But the Wanderer—for Richard knew immediately that this was who it was—had one bony and naked arm around Keith’s shoulders. And he was looking around the scene, as if he was as surprised as Richard at where they had found themselves.

“Hello, Richard Pratt,” said the old man, in a voice far higher pitched and normal than Richard had expected. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Richard suddenly felt exceptionally calm. The fear and the anxiety he had back in Nordstrom’s was now all but gone, leaving just a trace of itself behind. He looked directly into the old man’s eyes, and despite the malice he saw there, he did not blink, and he did not look away. Richard wanted to leap at the man, and tear his arm away from Keith’s shoulders, but he stopped himself. He knew this was all an illusion, conjured from his own memories. The man really didn’t have his arm around Keith. None of them were really there at all.

“I was told you’d come. What took you so long?” Richard said, his eyes not wavering from the old man’s face.

To his surprise, the old man laughed. “You are not what I expected, Disruptor.”

“And neither are you. Although you do remind me of someone I once met in New York.”

The old man furrowed his brows. “So you have been expecting me. Who told you I would come?”

“It might,” the man said, his thin smile revealing irregular teeth, yellowed, blackened, and broken with age. Then, “No, I guess it doesn’t matter, really.”

“How did you find me?”

“Does it matter?” the old man asked, enjoying the turnabout.

Richard leaned back into the warm water, stretching his arms wide across the edge of the fiberglass tub. “As you say. No. I suppose not.”

The Wanderer looked around at the scene, drinking in the details. He turned his face and gazed at Keith, with a frankly appraising and even hungry look.

“This looks like it must be a splendid memory for you. It’s a shame that I had to intrude. You must feel that I’ve defiled it,” the old man said, spitting into the water. One bony knuckle caressed Keith’s cheek. “Perhaps you’ll never be able to return to this memory again, without thinking of me. That would be unfortunate.”

It was clear the old man wanted to get under his skin. Richard took a deep breath, and shrugged his shoulders, before interlacing his fingers behind his neck and leaning back.

“I don’t know you,” Richard said. “But I’m already learning that you seem to have an inflated sense of your own importance.”

Did the old man flinch? Perhaps he had landed a blow with that comment. If he had, it was a momentary blow, at best. Already, the smile had returned to the man’s face. He turned to his right and leaned his loathsome face closer to Keith. Richard’s fists clenched behind his head.

“And this must be Keith. I’d say there’s not much to him, but clearly there is some well-marbled meat on his bones. You like them young and chubby, I see. You nasty man. It’s a shame, what’s going to happen to him.”

Richard was silent, suddenly regretting the verbal jousting. He had been playing with a scorpion. For the first time since he’d looked at the old man, he felt cold in the pit of his stomach.

Can he really harm Keith? Or is his power limited to illusion and deceit?

“I… don’t believe you. I don’t think you can hurt Keith.”

The thing turned back toward Richard, and its eyes were black, like orbs of obsidian. “Perhaps not. But as you have already discovered, I have friends. In fact, one of my friends is an old friend of yours. Justin Kimball sends his regards, by the way. He tells me he almost took Keith out with a ballpoint pen a few days ago.”

Richard just stared at the old man. Of course he’s controlling Justin. That makes perfect sense.

When he didn’t speak, the Wanderer continued. “Although I guess it isn’t really accurate to say that Justin is my ‘friend.’ And certainly, he’s no longer a friend of yours either. But I understand you two used to be friends. The very best, or so I hear. In fact, he told me of all the things you used to do together. He told me how you seduced him, and how you stabbed him in the back.” The old man clicked his tongue against his gnarled, yellow teeth. “Such a shame. And such a sin! To have treated an innocent boy that way. To use him for your own pleasure. To steal his innocence, and then to toss him aside when you were done with him. It’s no wonder he killed you. And no wonder that he still wants to kill Keith.”

“What do you want?” Richard blurted out, not wanting to listen to another word this man, this creature, had to say.

“It’s not what I want, Richard. I’m here to find out what you want. If I’m Justin’s friend, then I can be your friend too. True?”

“You said you weren’t his friend.”

“Well, no, I guess you’re right. But he does what I ask.”

“And what have you asked?”

“For now, just one thing. I’ve asked him to leave Keith alone.”

That was not what Richard had expected to hear, and his eyes narrowed as he stared at the old man, trying to figure out his game—and whether he was lying.

The Wanderer lies, Billy had said.

“Why would you do that?”

“Because I want you to be my friend too, Richard. I think you probably know by now that you’re important. That you’re disrupting everything that I have planned. And I want you to be my friend, so that you and I can be on the same side. There is much that I can do for you, Richard Pratt.”

He laughed. “Like keep Keith alive for a start. Make sure he doesn’t perish along with the rest of this city. I’m sure you know now that if I don’t, then he’ll go up in flames with everyone else.”

Richard felt his tongue, thick in his mouth. And for a moment he thought he might launch himself across the hot tub and squeeze the life out of the old man’s throat. At least in this illusion, the old body looked so fragile. He pictured holding the thing’s withered head under the water until it stopped thrashing. And then holding it there for another hour, just to be sure.

“There you go again,” Richard said, “with that exaggerated sense of self-importance.”

The old man actually laughed, and if it hadn’t been for the strange circumstances, it might have sounded almost like the normal laugh of a friendly old man. The laugh you might hear your grandfather utter while watching I Love Lucy. But these were not normal circumstances, and Richard felt a chill in his shoulders, despite the warmth of the water.

“Well, then how about this,” the Wanderer smirked. “What if I were not only to save Keith from the flames, but what if I were to give him back to you? Or more precisely, what if I were to give you back to him?”

“I…” Richard began, but had to swallow to continue. “I don’t believe anything you say. So save your breath.”

“Don’t you? You saw Justin possess that boy in the courtroom. So you know what he can do. What any ghost can do, with my help. I’m the one that taught him how to do that little trick. How would you like to learn it as well?”

Something in Richard’s face must have betrayed what he felt, although he was struggling not to react.

“Oh! I see!” the old man said with a grin that made his face look like a Halloween mask. “You’ve already been thinking about it, haven’t you? I wonder if you’ve already picked out who your host will be.” The old man drew Keith closer against him, but his eyes were locked on Richard. “Can’t you just imagine it? Being in a living body again? Suddenly, all that cold concrete would once again be soft, gentle, alive flesh. That blank gaze that your lover gives you now would be gone. Instead, he’d look at you with the love in his eyes that you remember.”

“And not just the love. But also the desire. Look at him,” the old man said, his gray hand caressing Keith’s cheek, while his head rolled forward. There was a smile on the boy’s face now, like he was in a happy dream. The front of the suit coat floated up now on the warm black water and opened. The shirt clung to his chest and became almost transparent. His tie writhed back and forth in the foamy water like a living thing.

“Imagine not just the love, Richard. Imagine the desire,” the Wanderer continued. “Imagine Keith giving himself to you. Imagine the feeling of his body yielding under your touch. Imagine the feeling of being naked with him. Imagine him holding you hungrily. Imagine being inside him…”

Choking, Richard turned his head away and closed his eyes.

The Wanderer just laughed. “I see you don’t need me to describe it to you. I see you’ve already been imagining it. Now let me tell you a secret: As much as you need it now, as much as that desire is already torturing you, it will not go away. You will only need it more in a week. Even more in a month, or a year. In five years or ten years, it may devour you. After a lifetime, there will be nothing of you left. Imagine the years marching by, and your loneliness eating away your soul like a cancer. All the while, knowing all you need to do is give me the word, and it would all be over. You would have Keith again. And that torture would end in bliss.”

And Richard did imagine it. Even though he knew the Wanderer lied, he knew this much was true: There was no way he could suffer this loneliness and this longing for eternity. He didn’t have the strength.

“It’s useless to fight against it, Richard. You may be strong. But you’re not that strong. Nobody is.”

Richard’s eyes flashed back to the old man, his fury finally overcoming his fear and helplessness.

“You seem to know a lot. But let me tell you what I know, old man.” He filled the last two words with as much venom as he could muster. “I think you lie. And I think you’re a phony and a fraud. You lied to Justin, just like you lied to all the other ghosts that make up your sad little army. I think you’re pathetic. I think you’re nothing more than a dead man, just like me. You tell them all you’re God. But you’re not. You tell them they’re angels, but they’re not. You’re terrified they may find out that you’re really nothing. Nothing but an angry old ghost with delusions of grandeur. You’re pathetic. And I pity you.”

The old man couldn’t hide his anger. “I see what is in your heart though, don’t I, Richard Pratt?” He spit the words at him with such malice that it made Richard flinch.

“That’s no fucking impressive feat, you psychopath. You’re not omniscient. You can’t read my mind. You’re bluffing. And you’re weaker than you pretend.”

The look of vitriol on the old man’s face suddenly seemed more amusing to Richard than frightening. He was right. This was just a ghost, like him. Older, certainly, and thus more knowledgeable about this world than he was. But certainly he was a slave to the rules of this world in the same way that Richard was.

Richard was suddenly reminded of the way he used to toy with telemarketers. How he would make them believe he was buying their scam, just waiting for them to humiliate themselves so he could laugh and hang up on them.

But the stakes here are far higher, a voice in his head shouted. Are you sure you can afford to ridicule this… thing? This isn’t toying with a salesman. This is facing off with a cobra.

As if he truly could read Richard’s mind, a sly smile spread across the old man’s face. He removed his arm from Keith’s shoulders and slowly stood up in the hot tub. Richard was so appalled by the old man’s withered body that he almost had to turn away. What had been hidden by the water was even more gray and wretched than the man’s face.

“You are brave, Disruptor,” the Wanderer said, spreading his arms out so that Richard could not help but see the ruin of his old body. “You are brave, but I do not believe you are strong.” The skeletal form reached a hand behind Keith’s head and began to draw his face toward him. Keith’s eyes remained dreamy, and his mouth was slightly open. In horror, Richard realized that the old man was pulling Keith’s face down toward the wet, withered flesh that hung in folds between his legs.

“Are you really strong enough to turn me away, when you know Keith can be back in your arms tonight? I know you’ve been thinking about it. I bet you’ve even found the right person to possess. It would be so easy! Let me show you how. Let me give Keith back to you. You could spend an eternity trying to learn how to do it on your own and still fail. And Keith doesn’t have an eternity! His days, like everyone in this valley, are numbered.”

Keith’s mouth was opening now, passively drawing his lips toward the limp, flaccid cock of the thing which dripped with disease two inches above the water of the hot tub. All at once the smell of the thing overcame Richard. The flesh of the old man was peeling from his very bones, rotting and falling into the water, even as he watched. Keith’s mouth drew closer. The smell of rot was nauseating, but also strangely intoxicating. Keith closed his eyes and opened his mouth…

This is the old man I never wanted to become, Richard realized. This is the body that I hated seeing emerge from my own with each passing year, like a demon that wanted to suck the life and the youth out of me. It’s the body I tried to deny through every naked embrace with every young man I fucked over the past thirty years. This is the evil old man in Alphabet City. This is the demon I’ve been running from ever since I knew that death was coming for me.

With a roar, Richard stood up, naked in the water, and leaping forward, he felt his hands close around the bony neck of the old man.

Like a paper sack stuffed with curtain rods, he thought.

Keith fell back, and Richard had just a moment to see the look of confusion and shock on the old man’s face, before he brought up a knee into the thing’s disgusting groin, and then thrust the wretched face under the churning water. The long and withered limbs writhed and scratched at him, but Richard’s fury was so intense that he felt none of it. All he could see through his roaring, fiery rage was the white hair, floating around his wrists like tentacles, and chunks of flesh like feces breaking off into the black water. The creature’s hair swirled and coiled about Richard’s wrists as the Wanderer slashed and writhed. Richard thought the hair was like Medusa’s snakes, trying to bite and rip his hands away, but he held tight, and he squeezed…

For the first time he felt what he had wanted from the old man: He sensed fear. And it was delicious.

And then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. Richard was back in the store, screaming and thrashing under the hanging clothes, which were as unmoving as stone. With one final roar, he crawled like a crab out from under the rack and collapsed on the white tile floor, next to a group of teenage girls.

He stumbled to his feet and whirled around, looking for any sign of Keith, Michelle and Pil. But they were nowhere to be seen. And he could tell from the fading light in the store window that a lot of time had passed. Perhaps hours.

Richard was shaken and knew he needed to rush back to Keith. He could already feel the tug in his mind, pointing the way. But more important now even than Keith was a single thought.

I have to find Billy.

Everything the boy had told him was true. But he had failed to register the import of what Billy had said. Things were much, much worse than he had allowed himself to believe..

Keith is in danger. Everyone in this valley is in danger.

With a moan, he realized how great of a mistake he had made in walking away from Billy three days ago. He was gone, and now Richard had no way to find him. Perhaps Billy would eventually return to him, but he didn’t know how long that might take.

For days he had been feeling that the time rolling out ahead of him was going to be unbearably long. How strange it felt to know that time was actually so short. He didn’t know how much of it this city had, but it was likely measured not in months or even weeks, but in days and hours.

Richard stood for a moment, trembling among the mannequins, feeling like he was one of them. But only for a moment. Then he allowed the tug in his head to turn him. And he rushed off to return to the man he had loved since that night in the hot tub, so many years ago.

The Last Handful of Clover is a supernatural thriller by Wess Mongo Jolley. Thanks for reading! If you are enjoying this story, please consider supporting the author on Patreon.

For more information (including maps of the story’s world and a contact form) visit the author’s website.

To read previous chapters of this book, go to the Table of Contents page.

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