I arrived home before the sun went down and poured myself a glass of wine. Irritated that Gabriel wasn’t back yet, I paced the hardwood floors and stomped up the stairs to his room. This would be the first time I snooped through his things. It wouldn’t be the last. I headed straight for the bong and pulled it out of its nook, searching behind all the books on the shelf for more hidden treasure. I found some. Stashed behind three hardback books, I pulled out a crucifix and a black, unlabeled video tape. Clicking on the small television in his room, I plopped down on the bed and popped it in the VCR. I braced myself for raunchy porn. I lost my breath when I realized what I was looking at.

A group of nine individuals stood in black robes around a candlelit altar, chanting in what sounded like Latin and passing around a silver goblet. A small bundle lay upon the altar crying. A tiny fist reached out from under the blanket. One of the robed individuals stood at the head of the altar and held up a long skinny knife. Another individual held the goblet at the edge of the wooden slab beside the baby’s neck. I looked away and turned down the volume to silence the child’s cries. The door slammed downstairs and I clicked the “off” button but remained seated on the bed. Gabriel called out and announced his return. I waited for him to find me. He approached his room and stood in the doorframe, red-eyed and open-jawed.

“What’re you doing?” he asked.

I pointed the remote and clicked on the television. He blinked and rubbed his eyes.

“It’s not what you think,” he said. “I’m not into that kind of thing. It’s just research.”

“Research?” I asked. “Why’s it hidden?”

He gasped and rolled his eyes, “Because I knew you’d freak if you saw it.”

I shook my head and turned it off. “Where did you get this?” I asked.

Gabriel shifted his weight and crossed his arms, “What’re you doing in my room anyway?”

I held up the bong and slammed it back down spilling bong water onto his bed. “The video, Gabe, where did you get it?”

He dropped his arms and slinked into the room. Our fat cat jumped into his lap as he pulled up a chair and explained that a woman at school had given it to him. She approached him in the courtyard on his lunch break and handed him the tape, offering that it might help with his research paper. He assumed she was a teacher and stuffed it in his bag.

“I don’t know where she got it,” he said. “I figured maybe it was some kind of hoax when I watched it, like staged or something.” He dropped his head and slowly scratched the side of the cat’s face, gently smiling as it purred and rubbed its head against his leg. A tear fell onto its back and it jumped down, swooshing its tail as it exited the room. Stricken with a barrage of questions, I asked him to describe the woman to me: slender, dark hair, brownish green eyes, young and spoke with an accent. He wasn’t sure, maybe French, but he never saw her again. I ejected the tape and directed him to follow me downstairs.

Gabriel curled up on the couch with the cat while I cooked dinner in the kitchen, boiling a pot of water and seasoning the marinara sauce. Terror gripped me. I resisted the urge to call Michael and smoked a cigarette through the kitchen window, temporarily refreshed by the cool late-October air. Halloween was just around the corner, next Friday in fact, but I would be in New Orleans backstage at a Limbo Diver show. Despite my better judgment, Gabriel would be with me. I had no choice. I couldn’t let him out of my sight, not on Halloween. I always feared that one day someone would take him away from me, if not the authorities, then the people responsible for leaving him on that floor. Why didn’t they kill him, like the baby in the video, or the dead cat lying next to him? Why were we the only three people left in the house? As if being tested to see how we reacted, like lab rats being observed by the white coats, where had everyone gone? These questions I’ve asked over and over again throughout the years. Intuition told me that Gabriel’s insertion into my life was by no means an accident. The water boiled over as I looked out over the city and wondered if anyone was looking back.

It’d been a different sort of party that night. Michael and I hung out at one of the clubs notorious for looking the other way when it came to young working boys. We always tried to make deals together, two-for-the-price-of-one type thing, but that night had been pretty slow. Michael suggested we go elsewhere, but just outside the bar, a tall man with a thick black beard invited us to a party in The Heights. Michael said “no.” I said “yes.” He pulled me aside and said he had a bad feeling about this one, that the guy looked shady. I said I’d go with or without him and hopped into the man’s black Cadillac with dark tinted windows. Michael followed. The tall man sped through traffic lights wearing a pair of dark sunglasses at ten o’clock at night. We stopped abruptly at a boarded-up building. Turning and glancing at the backseat, he killed the engine and stepped out of the car. Michael kept his hand on the door latch, his leg tapping the floorboard and his face white. He urged me to jump out of the car with him, but that night, I guess I didn’t care what happened. Two weeks after the whipping, my wounds infected and painful, I was ready to self-destruct and check out. I told Michael to leave, but he released the handle and remained by my side. The tall man returned with a brown paper bag in his arms and set it down on the passenger-side seat. He said nothing. Starting the car, he peeled off into the night with two thirteen-year-old prostitutes in the back.

We pulled into a long driveway leading to a grey two-story house with a steep over-hanging roof and red stairs leading up to the porch. A much smaller house compared to the older mansions, it would have seemed out of place if not for the limousine parked out front. The tall man peered back at us and held up the brown paper bag. “Take this,” he said, “but don’t look inside.” Michael glared at the man with crossed arms. I reached over and grabbed the bag. Neatly folded down like a lunch bag, it appeared empty. The man then ordered us out of the car. “Say hello to the golden boy,” he said, before peeling out of the drive. We turned and stared at each other before looking down at the bag. I unfolded the top, quickly glanced behind me, and peeked inside. Michael moved in closer, craning his neck to see what I saw – a lightweight object wrapped in white tissue paper. I reached in to pull out the flat mystery item, but the front door opened, and a masked man invited us inside. Just before crossing the threshold into the house, he took the bag off my hands. Michael followed close behind whispering in my ear, I have a bad feeling about this place. I shushed him and wandered deeper into the house, enthralled by my surroundings. Dim lights cast a soft yellow glow throughout the downstairs level, and white candles flickered from small nooks set deep in the walls. Red velvet curtains draped across the glass-sliding door where guests filed in and out of the gated courtyard. A black iron chandelier hung from the high vaulted ceiling, a massive structure interwoven with thick chains and painted antlers that dangled like black icicles. A long table in the middle of the room offered a wide range of appetizers, but the centerpiece caught my eye more than the foreign cuisine. A golden birdcage sat atop the table with long horns protruding from the top and a green apple placed inside. The door hung halfway open. Plastic doll parts adorned the rest of the table. A leg here, an arm there, and about five heads lay about with missing pieces in various places. One was missing an eye, two others were missing chunks out of their foreheads, and another severed head was propped up on its neck blindfolded. We were told to make ourselves at home.

Most of the guests wore masquerade masks, some simple and elegant, and others quite extravagant. The budding artist in me leapt with visual pleasure. I surveyed the room and picked out my favorites, unable to decide between the two-faced man and the long-nosed birdman, but all were men. I turned to find Michael a few feet away surrounded by four of the masked men, one of which was helping him undress. Hidden behind a black and white comedy mask, the two-faced man unbuttoned Michael’s red-flannel shirt and slowly slid it off his shoulders. His thick, stubby fingers dragged down his small chest and landed on his waist. Grabbing the front of his pants, the man pulled Michael closer, placed his hand over his head, and pushed him down onto his knees. I made my way over and went through the same motions with a fat man in a gold half-mask. Like a crumbling Roman statue, I dropped to my knees beside Michael.

We followed the drill for most of the night, standing around shirtless and donning small black silk masks; we partook in whatever drugs were being pushed. I counted about ten of us, the entertainers, the young rent boys, entrepreneurs you might say, enjoying the lavish lifestyle and pretending that we belonged there, that everything would be okay, and that we were in no real danger. About an hour past midnight, the devils came out to play. It happened at all the parties, the ones with the high-ranking politicians, the doctors, the pillars of society, those were the parties where bad things happened to the young hired help. We both saw it coming. The masks came off and the real fun began as, one by one, we boys disappeared into a back room. Different men wanted different things, but with this type of crowd, we knew to expect humiliation and pain. Michael grabbed my arm and pulled me along until we reached a small hall closet. We closed the door behind us and stayed there for the remainder of the night.

My biggest fear was that they’d find us. Huddled together in the closet with a pile of stolen goods (drugs, silverware, gold watches), I dreaded the day when that door swung open and we were dragged out by our hair, strung up and tortured to death, but it never happened. Michael and I spent a dozen or so of those parties hidden away in closets until the boogiemen had their fill and went home to their families. The party where we found Gabriel was no different, but the noises that night were wholly unique. Amidst the groans and thumping beds, we heard men chanting in an upstairs room directly above us, their low baritone pitch seeping through the floor and burrowing under my skin. I curled up in the corner next to Michael and wrapped myself around his trembling body, both of us jumping when a series of knocks came from the ceiling. Knock. Knock. Knock… Knock. Knock. Knock… Knock. Knock. Knock. It was as if someone was waiting to be let in. We held each other and stared at the ceiling, the knocking having seized, and the chanting gone silent, but a low growl sounded from the other side of the closet. I stared into the darkness and fumbled with my lighter while Michael bowed his head and prayed.

I didn’t hear the baby cry until the next morning when we emerged from the hall closet. Right on cue, he cried for me, as if the sound of the opening door prompted him to cry out for help. The pentagram was drawn on the ground directly above the hall closet, and a brown paper bag lay discarded next to the skinned cat. Blood covered the white tissue paper, and Gabriel was wrapped in a thin layer of gold leaf paper under the towel. I sensed someone watching me as I scanned the room. Keeping a careful eye on the closet, I swooped down and quickly picked him up. I heard the silent alarm bells sound and expected the trap to close down and snap my neck, but the fatal blow never came. Fourteen years later, I’m still waiting for it.

I sat in front of the television flipping through the channels while Gabriel loaded the dishwasher. He stood as I stood, with one foot resting against the other, back straight and head gently tilted. He wrestled with his shirt, pushing up the red-flannel sleeves each time they got too close to the water.

“I don’t want you wearing that shirt,” I said. “Go change.”

Gabriel shut off the water and turned to look at me. Swiping the dark hair away from his eyes, he unbuttoned his shirt, tore it off and threw it on the floor.

I nodded and thanked him.

He kicked it across the floor and retreated upstairs to his room, stumbling on the last few steps as he often did. I asked if he was okay and was given confirmation by the slamming of his door.

I laid awake that night pining over the video tape, replaying it through my head, the baby, the chanting men with the hoods. I knew those men, perhaps not the same ones, but they were at the masquerade party from my youth, nine of them, standing in the shadows, watching. Those are The Watchers, Michael had said. They don’t want sex, they want recruits. Michael always said weird stuff like that, but I learned to tune it out. I accused him of being superstitious and altogether silly when it came to things like black magic, or jinxes and spells. I liked the idea of the supernatural but never bought into it. Back at the boy’s home, I’d move the plastic cursor when we played with a homemade Ouija board swearing to the others that it wasn’t me. I’d say I heard whispers when I didn’t or claimed to have seen a ghost when I hadn’t. I liked the idea of the supernatural but considered such things to be fairytale. I declared myself an atheist at age nine and have remained so ever since, but Michael believed in a higher power. He feared God almost as much as he feared the devil.

Gabriel’s box fan kicked on full blast as I tried to empty my mind and turned to check the alarm clock. Ten-thirty, just as I thought. He always went to bed at ten-thirty on a school night, like clockwork. I closed my eyes and slid deeper under the covers. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I awoke to find a dark figure hovering over my bed. I tried to move but couldn’t, nailed down to the mattress and sick to my stomach, I strained to speak but the words scrambled when they fell from my lips. The dark figure loomed closer, sucking away my breath and gaining density as it did so – it expanded onto the ceiling. It’s only a dream, I thought, and promptly jerked awake. I dragged myself out of bed and reached for the light switch, flipping it on and then off when the room failed to light up. I glanced at the alarm clock, twelve-midnight. I’m still dreaming, I thought, and jerked awake again. Darkness consumed me as I felt my way down the hall with my arms outstretched and hands following the bumpy wall. I appeared in the living room to find Gabriel seated on the couch in the red flannel shirt zipping up his backpack. I asked what he was doing.

“Getting ready for school,” he answered.

“But it’s five in the morning,” I said.

Gabriel stood and placed his hand on the front door, “Don’t bother walking me, Dad, I’m golden.”

I turned to see our fat cat skinned alive on the floor staring up at me, his tail thumping the ground as it swished back and forth. Chunks of his orange fur trailed off into a dark corner where a hooded figure stood watching. I jerked awake, this time to the sound of a ringing phone. Unknown name. Unknown number. I clicked the button and waited.

Whispers. An undecipherable foreign dialect taunted me on the other end, giggling and whispering nonsense, and then, through the chaotic static, a young boy spoke soft and clear, “They’re coming for us, Ash.”

“Who?” I asked, gripping the phone, but a dial tone ended the call. Green numbers glowing in the dark showed it to be 2:21 in the morning. I threw off the covers and reached for the lamp, relieved when the soft white bulb came to life. My feet hit the cold ground and I padded down the hallway, clicking on the light along the way and softening my step when I arrived at Gabriel’s door. I slowly turned the knob and peeked inside to see him curled up in bed, our fat tabby cat asleep by his side. Closing the door, I grabbed a glass of water and retreated to my room. The white closet door seemed like a mile away. I laid in bed staring at it from across the room. I didn’t want to do it. I felt stupid doing it, but I knew I couldn’t sleep until I entertained my overactive imagination. The covers came off and I padded across the room like a small child. After quickly checking the closet for the boogieman, I also peered under the bed. All clear. I laid back down and allowed the soft glow from the lamp to burn through the night.

I don’t believe in the supernatural, but our dreams are as wise as the owl, watching and soaking up everything, waiting for the right time to reveal itself and make its purpose known. My dreams haunt with disturbing accuracy, or likewise, with disturbing absurdity. I suffered both that night. I was chasing after a dog I didn’t know in the last dream, a dog I didn’t know but who needed to show me something, so I jumped into the bayou after him. I screamed obscenities as I swam through the muddy brown water hurling trash into the air until I came upon a bridge. The dog waved goodbye with his tail, and I climbed up the concrete wall. Michael was seated at the top eating a bowl of spaghetti. I sat down beside him and pulled off a string of marinated noodle that was wrapped around his wrist.

“See, that’s all it was,” I said, sucking it down like a worm.

Michael pulled away from me and clapped his hands three times, signaling a group of robed men to appear out of thin air.

“Great, now look what you’ve done,” I said.

They danced an Irish jig and sang a catchy jingle like some advertisement that forever finds a place in the mind.

“We’re here when you need us just clap your hands,” (clap, clap, clap) “just clap your hands.”