The Dark at the Bottom of the Stairs (conclusion)

"Are you sure you're up to this?" Corb asked me, as we made our way downstairs, and the overpowering sound of what seemed a thousand screaming teen-aged girls started to fade.

I nodded, looking around cautiously, peering down the stairs to make certain the coast was clear, that the corridors were empty. I was half expecting a janitor to pop out from some dim corner, sweeping a broom, accosting us with a "Hey! What are you two doing down here?"

But the halls appeared to be empty. The corridor was dimly lit, with only one overhead at the bottom of the stairs. The rest of the area was shrouded in darkness.

Corb stopped on the last step. "Which way do we go?"

"To the right."

To the right. A short walk, and then an entrance to an even darker corridor, and then a quick right into what used to be the boy's locker room.

"Do you want me to stay out here?"

"No, it's okay," I said. "I don't need to do this alone. I just want to see what it actually looks like, now, after all these years."

Nevertheless, I paused for a moment, staring at the open door in front of me.

Eddie...

He wants you, Eddie...

I shrugged it off and entered, and Corb followed me, into the darkness. We fumbled around in the dark for a few moments, looking for a switch; finally finding one right by the doorway. I remembered, when I had been in junior high, we used to wait there at the entrance after class, waiting for the bell to ring. I'd hear the yells and laughter of the guys in the showers, getting ready, although I would always just hurry up and change.

Corb snapped the lights on, and the darkness was washed away. And with it came a new reality. That place. THAT place. Now.

I was amazed at how small the area looked. Maybe it was because the locker room was no longer used for gym activities, but as a storage space. There was no need for a locker room, any more, ever since the had been downgraded to an elementary school, after the new middle school had been built. The lockers still remained, rusted and decaying, but they were mostly hidden behind boxes of Xerox paper, classroom seats, and cans of paint.

But even so. I found that I could still raise a few ghosts, if I tried hard enough. A few feet away, to our right, was the corner where I would always change for class, near Josie's brother Chris with the hairless underarms, and Morris, and Randy. To the right, leading into the showers, was the--

Eddie

Back when I was smaller, pathetically skinny, the room had seemed so cavernous. Not any more. It's amazing how the demons of your past shrink as you get older, as you grow up. And I thought back, to the one and only other time I had made this journey...

(Warning—explicit language)
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I was the one to break the silence. Corb gave me all the time that I needed.

"Thanks for doing this with me," I said, and hugged my big guy.

"Are you all set?"

"I am," I said. "This place doesn't scare me any more."

"It's just a place."

"I know," I said, holding tightly. It had always been just a place, too. I had just allowed it to carry more significance in my head than I should have.

But it's funny, looking back on the entry I wrote just four years ago. Back then, the echoes had been so pronounced, the wounds so close to the surface. All that has occurred since then, however, has gone a long way to helping those echoes fade, until they're nothing more than a distant rattle in the far of distance.

Finding myself, finding Corb, has gone a long way toward silencing those ghosts of the past, particularly my memories of junior high, particularly my infatuation with Steven. Nowadays, I tend to look at the angst I went through and think, what was THAT all about? As if it were nothing more than the afterglow of a party gone slightly out of bounds, complete with the sinking realization that I misbehaved horribly.

There are far, far worse things that could happen in a life, than boys behaving badly.

###

I actually did take one more trip, alone, two weeks later.

I wanted to take some photos, which I knew Corb would never have allowed me to do. So, one night after dropping Ashes off, I snuck downstairs. If the cheerleading coach (who I did speak to, both before and after), wondered why I was carrying a camera, she didn't say anything.

I shot the photos in the dark, so it was a bit of a guessing game. When I was done, I stood there for a moment, looking to see if I could catch one more ghost from the past.

Eddie...

But it didn't scare me any more. Because I realized that Dana had been even more closeted, even more troubled than me. What had driven him to approach me that day, after all? He had found himself sporting an erection, and needed to find a way to redirect his embarrassment onto someone else. Someone weaker than he was.

Someone that shared a bond.

That was of course why he always picked on me. He was what I was. And he hated himself just as much as I had.

And also, ultimately, he was the weaker one, not me. Because he was never able to move beyond that self-hatred. Ultimately, that's what consumed him. He tried drugs, he tried prostitution, but he was never able to find a way out of that maze.

What happens to monsters that lurk at the bottom of the stairs? When you expose them to the light of day, they're sad, really. That's what Dana had to face, when he looked in the mirror, day after day. But somehow, I made it through the maze.

Goodbye, Dana.

I'll never have to make this visit again.