Dear Reader: I originally released this story in serial form. I decided to put it all in one volume for convenience sake. I hope you enjoy it. All the characters in this story are 18 or older.
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Prologue:
James sighed and looked down at his former best friend. It was hard to believe the end was near, but he could not discount the evidence of his own eyes. Arthur's face was a map of wrinkles. His lips were thin and trembled slightly with each labored breath. What hair was left on his splotchy head was wispy and white.
Arthur was the very image of a dying old man, skeletal chest rising almost imperceptibly with each shallow breath. The room smelled of piss and decay. James could barely stand it. But he was Arthur's only friend left in the world. Although they'd had a falling out a few years ago, he felt he owed it to his old friend to stay on until he'd breathed his last.
Damned fool Arthur,
thought James,
you never did know when to quit.
He looked around at the lavishly appointed room. The furniture in the bedroom alone was worth more than James' entire home. Arthur had become quite rich in his old age, apparently. Not surprising one bit, all things considered.
The nurse came in and turned Arthur gently on his side, checked his blood pressure, and glanced at his catheter bag. She looked up at James, but his thoughts were elsewhere.
What a handsome young man
, she thought. He had dark hair, cut short, and though his face was troubled, there was a calm confidence about him that was both comforting and attractive. She put his age in the early thirties.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and said, "Was he your grandfather?"
James was startled out of his reverie. "No, we went to college together," he said with a sigh, looking down at the wasted old man in the bed.
"College?" she said with confusion, "I don't understand, was he a professor?"
He turned to her and seemed to really see her for the first time. "You mean you don't know?" he said softly. "Arthur Ellis is exactly the same age as I am: twenty-six."
She looked at the desiccated old man on the bed and shook her head. "Surely you're joking. This man is in his eighties if he's a day old."
James shook his head gently and told the lie he'd been telling everyone else. "He has a rare genetic disease that accelerated his aging. All we can do now is try to ease his passing."
The nurse put a hand to her generous bosom and looked down at Arthur. "The poor soul! He won't get his fair share of years on this earth." She did a quick sign of the cross; forehead, chest, shoulders.
But James was deep in thought again. Arthur had no rare disease. The truth was much stranger.
It was an unbelievable tale of supernatural forces beyond understanding. A tale of perversion. A tale of utter and naked debauchery. A tale of the corrupting influence of boundless power, of brother against brother.
And, he hoped, perhaps by the end of all this, a tale of redemption.
PART 1:
James and Arthur ran at breakneck speed through the forest. James was lagging behind, as usual. Though he was larger and stronger than his best friend, Arthur was fleeter of foot.
He watched his friend running ahead of him, the rays of the late-afternoon sun slanting in bars through the forest canopy. Arthur's golden hair flashed brightly every time the sun touched it, and James once again felt a surge of love for his good friend. Arthur, the golden boy. Popular and engaging, complexion like warm sunshine, he could have had anyone on campus for a best mate. James often wondered why he'd chosen an introvert like himself.
But not today. Today was not a day for reflection. Spring was in full riotous explosion all around, and their finals were done as of twenty minutes ago. They were free for the summer, having finished their first full year of college. The world was theirs!
He felt the warm burn of muscles worked hard, and his body positively thrummed with youthful health. Blood surged through his veins and his breath came fast and strong in his chest. He felt the soft soil of the forest floor pushing back against his feet, and he knew there would never be a day to match this one.
The boys finally came to their destination. The woods opened up to the blue sky above a deep pond. A waterfall tumbled down from a cliff on one side, and the pool overflowed into a creek bed on the other.
It was idyllic; a perfect, secluded swimming hole.
The boys stripped off their clothes and jumped in the cold water, screaming at the outrage of the shock. They swam around, playing and splashing for a while, and it almost seemed like they were boys again, without a care in the world beyond saving for their next comic.
After a while, they got out of the water and luxuriated in the heat of the sun on their naked bodies. They were not in the least self-conscious around each other. They'd been friends much too long for that. Going out for sports together, learning about girls together, they'd seen each other nude enough to take any novelty out of it.
James looked over at Arthur and felt the old pang of jealousy. Arthur was like a Greek god. Perfectly proportioned, finely muscled, hairless, and completely at ease in his skin.
Not like James. He was dark complected, dark of hair, and dark of mood. His body was hairy where Arthur's was sleek, blocky and blunt-muscled where Arthur's was lithe. He knew he was a handsome man, in his own way, but compared to Arthur, he felt a brutish bear. Even his penis seemed comically large.
They chatted about classes, finals, and various professors for a while, letting the sun and the buzzing of insects calm and soothe them. After a while, Arthur suddenly jumped into the water again.
James just laid back and let the gentle breeze tickle his chest-hair. He looked at a lone cloud, far above, while he waited for the sound of his friend surfacing.
After what seemed like a couple minutes, James sat up and looked around. The pool's surface was placid, and Arthur was nowhere to be seen.
"Arthur!" he shouted, starting to get alarmed. No reply.
He looked around helplessly. The placid, late-spring scene was suddenly mocking.
Another minute passed, with no sign of his friend. He jumped in the water and began swimming around the perimeter of the pool, diving occasionally.
He was starting to grow frantic when Arthur suddenly emerged, next to the waterfall. He gasped hugely upon emerging, and turned a flashing smile to James.
"Jim, you gotta see this. There's a cave behind the waterfall!" With that he turned and dove under the water once again.
James swam over to the same general area, and dove as well. Keeping his eyes open in the clear, clean water, he could see dim shapes below, and when he looked up he saw the driving bubbles where the water was crashing down from above.
Sure enough, the lake bed went beyond and behind the curtain of churning bubbles. He swam back and surfaced on the other side of the waterfall. Indeed, there was a small cave carved out of the living rock. Arthur was just climbing out of the water onto a deep ledge in the back of the cave.
"Can you fucking believe this?" shouted Arthur above the din of the waterfall. "Look, people have been back here."
James swam over and pulled himself out of the water next to his friend. He saw that there were indeed signs of habitation. There was an old fire, now just ashes and blackened sticks. Some old animal skins were piled against the wall, and a pig-iron pot sat half-in the fire pit.
The two young men, flush with the excitement of a new discovery, went about searching the area for interesting relics.
In the end, they amassed a small pile of found items in the middle of the cave ledge. An old spoon that seemed to have one edge sharpened. A handful of leather strips or thongs. Three fine little arrow heads. What appeared to be a very old carved wooden boat. A chipped marble.
And that was it. James felt his shoulders sag. He'd been entertaining the adolescent fantasy of hidden treasure. It seemed there was none to be found.
But Arthur was not to be brought down. "Isn't this the best?" He said, his blue eyes flashing, "We found some old hobo's cave-house."
He looked around, eyes bright, and said, "I wonder if he was an Indian?"
The two young men looked at each other, and suddenly they were twelve year-old boys again, able to dream and believe anything.
Almost perfectly in time, they both began laughing. It was the free, open laugh you have when you realize you're being childish, and you don't give a damn.
They both laughed for quite a while, occasionally breaking into fresh gales. As the giggles finally subsided, James thought again what a good friend he had. He was not one to laugh much, left to his own devices, but Arthur just had a way about him. Good cheer and laughter surrounded him.
They were gathering up their loot and turning to leave when Arthur suddenly stopped and walked over to the moldy old furs against the wall. One of them looked more solid than the others, and sure enough, upon closer inspection, he found it to be a bundle, tied with more of the leather thongs.
This set James' heart beating again, as the child inside dared to dream of hidden treasure.
Arthur laid out the bundle and pulled at the ends of the leather strips, slowly undoing the knots securing them. Finally, he began to unroll the bundle.
After rolling the bundle fully open, they both gazed down at the strangest thing they had ever seen.
It was a human spinal cord, carefully cleaned and preserved. It appeared ancient, yellow-brown with age, and grotesque in its twisting nakedness.
James hated it, just a little, without knowing why.
Arthur and James looked at each other with a strange and unspoken fore-knowledge. They somehow knew their lives would never be the same.
PART 2:
The boys brought their loot back to their dorm room, and spent some time trying to reconstruct what kind of person might have lived under the falls. Possibly some old hermit or Native American holy man. James loved to create interesting imaginary back-stories in the world around him. He wanted to be a writer, and he knew the world was full of interesting tales, if you knew where to look.
Arthur, on the other hand, was not the creative type. He seemed to enjoy his friend's flights of fancy, but his own mind was much more practical. James would dream up an adventure, but Arthur was the one who could actually plan and execute it. It was one of the things about their friendship that made them so well matched. Quite different, but complimentary.
Arthur was sitting on the bed, examining the ancient vertabra, while James was rattling on about a crippled old native shaman and the people from the village who left food beside the waterfall. His attention was more inside his head than out, so what happened next was not clear until later.
