The Neverloving Dead (Haunted Hearts)

CHAPTER 1

RULE 1: EMOTIONS ARE DANGEROUS

PATRICK

Absolve, we ask, O Lord, the soul of your servant,

So that dead to the world he may live for You.

And whatever through the frailty of flesh he committed through human interaction,

Wipe away by the forgiveness of Your most merciful piety.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

( Prayer of Absolution for the departed )

T onight’s dinner – a stout, bearded man in his forties who was far easier on the eye than Patrick had ever been – was sprawled on the grey bedsheets, naked in London’s muggy July heat. His head was angled to one side, exposing a rosy throat. A steady pulse. One hand covered a nipple, the other hung over the bed’s edge. The dense fur of his groin was damp with sweat. His cock was half-hard, hovering just proud of his upper thigh, aroused by some dream.

That was good, Patrick thought.

The ones already lost in pleasure were the ones least likely to wake.

He bent low, reminding himself as he always did before feeding, of the need for caution. Firstly, if the man awoke and panicked, his stronger energy could drain Patrick’s in seconds. Patrick was trying to build energy, meal by meal, until he had a proper body again: fully visible, fully solid, with all its senses. One he could enjoy this time.

Secondly, he knew all too well how easy it would be to submit to the monstrous craving to live – to feel again – and take everything. He knew, because he’d done so once, long ago. Consumed a man beyond his final spark of life. Devoured that spark. As if he were a vampire.

He wasn’t; but he’d seen what vampires got from it. The energy had been electrifying: a banquet a thousand times as invigorating as any of these ‘meals’. An entire, intact life. All in one go.

Snuffed out. Because he’d lacked self-control.

Even now, nearly two centuries on, he carried the guilt into every feeding: a warning of what he was capable of without discipline. His meals might not be willing – how could they be, when they could neither see nor hear him? – but he mustn’t become debased.

He had to deserve his second chance at life.

Slipping his lips around the tip of the man’s penis, he sucked the thick shaft in, inhaling as he went, testing himself. Sometimes, he thought he could smell things. Other times, the wisps seemed nothing more than memories and wishful thinking. Phantoms.

Like him.

Tonight, there was a faint, salty pungency. Perhaps real. He could feel the weight on his tongue, the fullness on his upper palate as he began to fellate the man in the monotonous, metronomically smooth way he’d honed over those centuries.

Restraint , he urged himself. He’d have his body soon. So long as he was careful.

He dropped into his usual rhythm, watching the man’s eyelids, willing him to stay asleep. He’d been a priest in life, obsessing over the morality of even quite small things, but he’d learned it was better this way: for his energy and their sanity. More than one man had woken in the past – become aware of some unseen force sliding back and forth along his prick...

Patrick might once have thought ‘miraculous masturbation’ would delight most chaps. The ones who didn’t mind were rare as corpse flowers. Most were panic-stricken, fleeing their rooms, shrieking about demons at volumes that suggested they were already falling into the fires of Hell.

Damned by pleasure.

As I was.

He flinched, pulling too hard. On the bed, the man’s breath caught, hairy belly rounding.

Patrick froze, cursing his lapse. Crushing his feelings. Readying himself to flee the instant he was noticed...

The man exhaled. A breeze Patrick couldn’t feel nudged the curtain. The cock in his mouth slowly stiffened and filled.

Nothing else happened.

After a while, tentatively, he sucked downwards again. Pulled up. Slid down. Repetitive. Painstakingly even.

The circumstances of his death no longer mattered, he told himself as the man’s breath settled. He’d fornicated with a man, punished himself, then succumbed again, four times. That was all. He’d been hanged for ‘perversion’, wearing this cassock and clerical collar as a deterrent to other priests, then damned: “To Hell,” the minister had shouted.

Hell would have been better.

It would have been a death.

All being damned did was trap one here , though, in the bodiless void of limbo – alone, save for the odd ghost with unfinished business, who could give up and leave at any time. Unlike them, Patrick would be here forever. For all time. Doomed to watch, as others enjoyed their bodies.

Their lives.

Again, he smothered the feelings. The desolation. All that mattered now was his body. His life.

Beneath him, the sleeper let out a murky rumble, lips smacking. Sweat glistened, just visible in the early dawn. Another salty, musky waft drifted up Patrick’s nostrils.

It was so potent – so full – that he shut his eyes and opened his throat, pressing his nose into the pubic thatch, stifling a tiny explosion of hope that the aroma even might be real. He mustn’t hope. The strongest emotions were the most dangerous: giving a burst of solid form, then draining everything.

Avoiding them was his cardinal rule – though admittedly that felt twice as difficult with a man as alluring as this one in his mouth. Some men just seemed to spill scent and flavour. Seemed to .

He could have laughed at himself.

As if he could tell.

All the same, he didn’t want to leave the rich nest of hair. Just in case.

As a concession, he began contracting his gullet around the glans, swallowing to massage it. Without the need to breathe, he could do this indefinitely, and it was subtler than up-down movements, allowing him just a little longer to fill his nostrils...

Perhaps the action was pathetic; but he’d once thought the worst of limbo was the fact he couldn’t die. He’d tracked down every priest in the city to read the Prayer of Absolution so he could move ‘on’– only to be damned as a demon instead. Eventually, he’d understood.

The worst of limbo was this .

Never smelling or tasting anything again. Never feeling warmth or cold. Never being touched again, or heard or felt or seen by another living being – except passingly, and as an object of demonic monstrousness.

Now, nose-deep in the man’s fur, he just wished he’d known it sooner. He’d have lived so differently: grasped that only the most sadistic God would give people senses, then punish them for enjoying them. For enjoying each other. Themselves.

Not just punishment: infinite suffering and torment.

God could keep Heaven and absolution, Patrick had decided. He no longer wanted them. When he had his body, he’d explore his senses freely: smell seasons, the traffic, the myriad foods now filling London; feel sun and rain. He’d taste the men he sucked and be seen as he did it. Enjoy sex. Perhaps even know love one day. If that was possible for one such as him.

The idea of so much goodness was practically unbelievable. Too extraordinary to contemplate.

The man muttered, cock swelling distinctly in Patrick’s throat, emitting another drift of musky maleness that he strained to capture. He was aware he should cut himself off. This was why he chose semen, though, and not blood as vampire ghosts did. Because all life force was intoxicating, but semen stopped by itself.

There was less chance the hunger would take over...

The sleeper was hard as a stave by now, balls damp and baking in the summer heat. Patrick was sure the flavour of pre-come was strengthening. He squashed another errant pulse of excitement. Taste and scent were signs he was getting closer to his goal – he mustn’t jeopardise that. He must conserve energy, practise detachment, ward off any joy from this act.

Reluctantly, he moved from throat-compressions back to up-and-down sucking, keeping it composed and measured, teasing the gentlest forefinger over the man’s anus, resisting the desire to press into the heat, just to see if he could feel it. The man murmured, shifting as if he might wake. Patrick only had to keep going a little longer – a minute perhaps – and he’d have his payoff. Another small deposit towards the more lifelike life that would eventually be his. He watched scrupulously for the telltale movements of waking. The man made a contented suckling sound.

Patrick continued with the same angle and rhythm, so nothing might alert the man to the fact he was having anything more than an intensely pleasurable dream. If he woke, and Patrick stopped quickly enough, the man wouldn’t see anything of course – but maintaining enough solidity to fellate a fellow cost Patrick. Not getting the energy he was here for would leave him further from his body than when he’d begun.

He kept working, ignoring the impulse to speed up as, at last, a deeper hardness began to rise through the cock. The anus began to contract. The testicles were already high and tight. A few seconds later, the sleeper murmured again and fluid spilled into Patrick’s throat. A surprising amount of it.

He binged noiselessly, feasting from the cockhead, doing his best to keep the whole affair clean. A few stray spatters of ejaculate upon waking would hardly trouble the man, but Patrick needed every drop. A man like this was a veritable windfall. With each squirt, a faint wash of strength rippled through his ‘cells’, as he liked to think of them. He fed until the spark appeared – a faraway glimmer, throbbing with appeal.

With life.

He distanced himself from it, releasing the man’s penis, letting it slump on the sweaty belly, spent. The man half-rolled onto his side, making a satisfied sound. Patrick took a few moments to study his own pale hands: the macabre, raw-boned knuckles and long fingers. Were they a shade less transparent than they had been?

He couldn’t be sure. After a while, he retreated a few feet – far enough from the man that he could relax his form and become fully insubstantial again, retaining as much of the absorbed energy as possible.

A mosquito trundled in beneath the curtain, buzzing like a siren, landing on the man’s neck, beginning to feed as freely as he had. As stealthily.

Patrick watched. This wouldn’t last forever, he thought for perhaps the millionth time. He was nearly free. As soon as he had solidity and visibility together, he could finally live again...

And really, he was lucky, wasn’t he? His current ‘life’ might be cheerless, but damnation had given him the opportunity for another one – which most people would never have. He mustn’t waste it. He had to be like the mosquito: drifting from meal to meal, scavenging his nightly fill, beginning afresh the next evening. Not thinking about it all so fucking much.

He turned away.

Someone was here.

Staring.

At him.

The anomalous sight had barely registered before the man hissed, “What the bloody hell are you doing?” The accent was broad Welsh. The man was blond. Mid-thirties, maybe. Absurdly handsome. Wearing a colourful, bicep-hugging Hawaiian shirt.

He looked so bright, so vibrant, so there , that for a few seconds, Patrick actually thought he’d done it: achieved corporeality – that this was the sleeping man’s lover, returned to find a real human here, fellating his boyfriend. He knew a moment of euphoria, a brief, shimmering opening in the ceaseless wall of his existence; then he realised he could see the sleeping man’s mirror through the newcomer’s body, glinting in the semi-gloom.

A ghost, after all.

Disappointment swamped him.

As with every other feeling, he pushed it away.

The ghost stepped forwards, fists balled, intent clear. Phantoms could punch each other. Indeed, so long as both were solid or both were insubstantial, they could touch each other generally. But it was a mockery of earthly touch. Everything in limbo was a mockery – Patrick was inexpressibly tired of it. And he was tired of spirits who’d been driven into madness by whatever purpose they clung to. Revenge, usually.

“What are you doing ?” the ghost repeated. He looked livid. Horrified. Out of his mind about something.

Of course – that must be why he’d looked so alive for that moment, Patrick thought: rage had made him temporarily solid. The thought brought the thinnest tug of concern. Until their emotions wore off, berserk ghosts could wreak havoc. And if the man on the bed awoke, he might not see them , but he’d notice things soaring around without explanation, smashing into walls. If that happened, if he flew into a terror.. that could drain both ghosts and... Patrick raised a hand in his best once-priestly fashion. “Let’s calm down, shall we?”

The ghost’s face twisted. “I’ll kill you!”

What on earth was wrong with the chap? “Well, we’re already–” Patrick began reasonably.

The ghost charged , emitting a grating, ear-splitting roar. It sounded like seized farm machinery being forced back into motion. Patrick was shocked. He had the unprincipled thought – just fleetingly – that he should stay insubstantial and let the ghost run through him: the newcomer’s energy clearly wasn’t as steady or as strong as his own, which meant Patrick would absorb bits of it every time the ghost attacked, bringing him closer still to his goal of living again. The ghost would weaken, and Patrick would grow even stronger...

He'd sworn not to kill anyone else, though.

Even if they were already dead.

He made himself solid, resenting the fact this was going to cost him hard-earned energy, wondering again what the ghost was doing there. Why on earth he was this angry.

The ghost bulldozed into him.

Patrick grunted. All ghosts had a ‘feeling’ to them, he’d found. Dishearteningly, this one’s was stubbornness. The Welshman glared up. He was several inches short of Patrick’s six-foot-two, but built like an ox. Before their deaths, Patrick wouldn’t have stood a chance. “Look, whatever you think you saw–” he tried.

The ghost swung his fist into the side of Patrick’s head, harder than expected. “You bastard!” he screamed. “You fucking perverted bastard!”

From which Patrick gathered he’d seen him suck the man off, anyway. His head rang. “It isn’t what you thi–”

A second and third punch connected. “Call yourself a bloody priest!”

“I don’t,” Patrick grimaced, concentrating on staying solid as a volley of punches landed, “anymore.” He blotted out the accusation of perversion, the words of the one who’d damned him as hundreds had watched. Restraint , he thought. He had to not react. The ghost had clearly been weak to begin with, since the punches were already becoming softer, some sliding through Patrick’s arm altogether. It was always the way with anger, he reflected, pleased he was squashing his own so well. It wasn’t just that it never lasted. It was the fact that when it left, it left nothing.

The ghost was making himself critically weak.

Patrick only had to wait. Stay cut off. Not have any feelings about assaults or accusations, about losing energy. It would be over soon...

“A pervert and a liar,” the ghost snarled savagely. His fist swiped through Patrick’s midriff, relinquishing yet more of his energy. He half-spun on the spot, staggering against the dresser, regaining solidity just long enough to send everything on it clattering loudly over.

“You’re draining yourself,” Patrick said, wincing at the racket, glancing at the bed as the man stirred. “You need to calm down. If he wakes, his energy will be too strong for–”

“ Don’t tell me to calm down! ” the ghost yelled. The sound was artillery fire. His irises were black as bullets suddenly, chest rising and falling manically as if he didn’t realise breath was useless here. Patrick wondered how long he’d lasted so far. Righteous anger only sustained a ghost for so long. Most didn’t survive a year.

He feigned an aloof smile. Plainly the man had died in a fight and was bent upon retribution, upon anyone. “Excuse me,” he said, starting for the wall. “I have better things to do with my time.” Better than staying here to be drained when the man woke and took fright – as he most certainly would if this went on.

The comment just seemed to inflame the ghost more. He roared again, kicking his violently red boot into a chair, which toppled, banging onto its side at Patrick’s feet. The boot blurred oddly, colour eking from it in a long red ribbon: the ghost’s energy unravelling at last. Patrick was surprised to see its brightness had hardly dimmed at all. Not just rage then, but something in the ghost himself. Or the man he’d been.

Before he could consider it, the ghost lunged again, unleashing an animalistic snort, losing so much solidity as he ran that he went straight through Patrick. Patrick felt some of the energy stick on its way – a delicious residue, slowly soaking in: compensation, at least, for what the exchange would be costing him. He folded his hands, trying to ignore an abrupt pang of hunger. “You’re making things worse for yourself.”

The ghost stumbled to his feet. The mirror shone through him, clearer than before. Again, he ran at Patrick, roaring. Again, he went straight through, gifting Patrick another, larger layer of energy. Briefly, Patrick closed his eyes, absorbing it, trying not to enjoy the way it fizzed lightly through him. I mustn’t kill , he reminded himself, like a child writing lines on a chalkboard. He thought of champagne and sherbet, neither of which he’d ever experienced, and imagined his body – the incredible things he would one day taste...

Behind him, the ghost made a strangled, dry sob.

Patrick turned.

The Welshman was staring down at himself, swaying. Around him, colours bled and slid in every direction. He looked like a blurred, multicoloured mummy coming undone, bandages dissolving in the air.

Without another sound, he collapsed just above the man’s floorboards, energy slopping all over the place.

He wasn’t completely drained, but he wouldn’t be moving for a few hours.

The bizarre onslaught was over.

Patrick stood there for a few seconds, gathering himself, trying to smooth away the discomfort – the suddenness of the whole thing. The shock. He could still hear the strange sob, rattling through him. After a while, he smoothed that away too. Whatever had happened to the man – now or in the past – he’d clearly brought upon himself by being deranged. Certainly, Patrick had done nothing wrong. Nothing to merit such a frenzy, he thought over a shudder of unease. The ghost had turned up, leaped to conclusions and cost Patrick.

Time. Life. Energy .

Patrick had done well, considering. Muted every one of his emotions. Acquitted himself perfectly.

He should have floated away at that point.

Left things there.

Resolved never to come near this bloody ghost again.

He almost did.

Except as he glanced back at the bed, the man he’d fellated was sitting upright atop the covers, staring at his dressing table, at the overturned chair in the dimness. His mouth was open. He looked pale. After a few moments, he swung his legs round and set his feet on the floor. Kept looking.

Patrick pushed down a minuscule throb of annoyance. Barely a feeling, really. All his meticulousness, all his discipline . He’d been getting so close to corporeality – right on the edge of it, he’d thought. And now...

He should leave the ghost here, he thought, more peevishly than he’d have liked. This one exchange had likely robbed him of who knew how much work. Weeks, perhaps. Months, even. The Welshman would deserve it.

The man rose from his bed, still staring at the chair, fumbling on his bedside table for the little rectangle people used these days as telephone, clock, torch, camera and everything else. Regardless of fear, he’d make his way over here soon enough, if not to investigate then to pick up his possessions.

Patrick glared down at the ghost. Its energy was drifting loose, wobbling in the air like a mirage. If the human got too near... if he stood where the ghost was now lying. Living energy was too strong. The ghost would dissipate entirely.

Die.

Could Patrick allow that – after the other one?

Then again, if Patrick took him somewhere else, he’d have to watch over him until he woke, and the ghost could be just as unhinged when that happened. What if Patrick had to become solid again? It was all very well doing so to extract life force from living people – the profit outweighed the cost – but fending off a rage-crazed ghost again and again would have the opposite effect. Even worse, what if to save him, Patrick had to feed him – siphon off his own energy in, basically, the same way he gained it? That could set him back years .

He suppressed the thought, appalled by it.

Stop catastrophising , he told himself. He could leave if the ghost got angry again. He didn’t need to feel anything about any of this. He’d been working towards his second life for the longest, bleakest two centuries imaginable. He was nearly there. A ghost in a gaudy shirt wasn’t a threat.

The living man began walking closer, peering around as if for a stray cat. Any moment now, he’d pick up the chair and stand in the ghost. Drain every bit of energy he had left.

If Patrick let it happen, it would be cold-blooded murder. All so that he could enjoy himself again.

Given that the other killing – the one where he’d fellated a man to death – had been an accident, he knew he was abominable for even considering it. The ghost obviously had a purpose for being in limbo. Who was Patrick to deny him that? To let him die for the ‘sin’ of being angry?

Patrick steeled himself, aggrieved at his own morals.

The ghost was probably as mad as all the other ghosts here, his reasons for staying lost in fury. So, if it looked like the only way to save him was for Patrick to feed him, he’d let him die after all – that would be his bottom line. Feeding was dangerous. Otherwise, he should do his best, he supposed. Monitor him. Keep him away from people and out of strong breezes until he woke up, at which point Patrick could find out why he was in limbo, so he could avoid him in future.

He dropped his solidity, becoming insubstantial so as not to absorb more of the ghost’s energy, then bent and gathered up the disintegrating, scrappy wafts of body. They clung together in a loose, roughly person-shaped bundle, almost weightless. A few feet away, the naked man shuffled nearer, setting the chair upright.

It was fortunate he’d been such a substantial meal, Patrick thought, casting a final eye over that meal. And that the Welshman hadn’t walked in until he’d finished. It would have been a pity to interrupt it.

A pity for his energy.

The man looked at the dresser, plainly taking in everything that had been knocked over. One hand went to his cock, tugging it absently. He blinked, frowning downwards, as if noticing it was a little sticky.

Patrick couldn’t feel any stickiness in his own mouth. He’d felt the creaminess to begin with, but now there was nothing – no sensations whatsoever, just like every other time he’d fed. He’d ended up no closer to his form.

Thanks to the ghost in his arms, he hadn’t gained anything.

He tamped down an upwelling of frustration. He mustn’t feel it. It, or the pain crashing in on its heels. The ghost had cost him too much already. Not just energy, but that small taste of hope he’d idiotically allowed himself as he’d pushed his nose into the man’s groin, trying to smell him...

He should never have let that happen.

Hope was the most dangerous feeling of all. He knew that.

Severing himself from it, he turned and drifted through the wall.