Jacob Michaels Is Not Here (A Point Worth LGBTQ Paranormal Romance Book 4) Read online

  Jacob Michaels Is Not Here

  A Point Worth LGBTQ Paranormal Romance

  Book 4

  By: Chase Connor

  © Copyright 2019 Chase Connor by Chase Connor

  All characters depicted in sexual situations in this publication are eighteen years of age or older. These stories are about fictional consenting adults. Nobody involved in the creation of this ebook, including authors, editors and models, support immoral or illegal acts in real life. Cover models are not intended to illustrate specific people and the content does not refer to models' actual acts, identity, history, beliefs or behavior. No characters depicted in this ebook are intended to represent real people.

  Models are used for illustrative purposes only.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  AUTHORS’ NOTE:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Point Worth is a fictional Ohio town. None of this is real.

  Cover Design by Dean Cole/Twitter @DeanColeWriter

  As always:

  To my beta-readers and “feedback crew”: I am so glad you are all here. And I am so glad you are all so blunt with me—even if I do what I want most of the time.

  To all of the readers: It has been quite a journey. I’ve loved every second of it. Let’s get to the end together, shall we?

  Also by Chase Connor

  Just a Dumb Surfer Dude: A Gay Coming-of-Age Tale

  Just a Dumb Surfer Dude: For the Love of Logan

  Gavin’s Big Gay Checklist

  A Surplus of Light

  The Guy Gets Teddy

  GINJUH

  A Tremendous Amount of Normal

  The Gravity of Nothing

  A Point Worth LGBTQ Paranormal Romances

  Jacob Michaels Is Tired (Book 1)

  Jacob Michaels Is Not Crazy (Book 2)

  Jacob Michaels Is Not Jacob Michaels (Book 3)

  Jacob Michaels Is

  Not Here

  A Point Worth LGBTQ Paranormal Romance

  Book 4

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Back Matter

  Chapter 1

  High heels with red soles were rare in places like Point Worth, Ohio. I only knew one person in the entire town who owned a pair of Louboutin heels, and that was because I had gifted them to her. The dead body laid out in the street was wearing a pair of Louboutin heels, and I knew without looking that they were on the feet of the person for whom I had purchased them. Point Worth was on fire. Well, maybe not in a ‘Sir Thomas Bloodworth was indecisive after a baker’s house went ablaze’ way, but fires were scattered throughout the town. It was the only light to illuminate Main Street as I stood there, my eyes lingering on the red soles of those shoes.

  Barkley’s Hardware’s windows were smashed out, and flames were flickering inside, smoke rolling out thick, black, and lazily towards the sky. The Sunny Side Up Café was decimated, only one wall was standing, and it was greasy with soot as smoke curled up from the foundation. The corner convenience store looked like a giant bonfire. The bank was basically a mound of bricks with more fire and smoke rising into the sky from the rubble. Lifting a hand to shield my eyes, I took in the devastation around me.

  Glinting glass shards caught the firelight and made the street and pavement sparkle around me. A dozen other bodies littered the walkways and the middle of the street, as though God had sprinkled finishing salt onto this little macabre scene of mayhem. Why weren’t their sirens or cop cars or firetrucks or the distant wail of help coming soon? I walked down the street, averting my eyes as I passed the body wearing the red-soled heels. Looking down at Carlita again was something I hoped I’d never have to do again.

  Where was Lucas?

  Oma?

  Were Ernst and Lena and all of the others okay?

  Was Oma’s house on fire? Razed?

  What had happened to Point Worth?

  “Hello?” I looked around, hoping I would find someone else alive.

  Seeing dead bodies, for some reason, had neither unnerved nor scared me—even though I had recognized the first one I had laid eyes upon. Something about the scene in downtown Point Worth felt odd. Even if I were able to remove the burning and decimated buildings, the broken glass, and the dead bodies, I still would have felt that something was off about the whole thing. Something about the air, the dark barely permeated by the flickering of nearly silent, roaring fires—all of it just seemed…off.

  Your home town on fire. That’s definitely not a normal occurrence. At least not one to be calm about.

  The scene would have felt odd, regardless of the circumstances.

  However, looking down the street laid out before me, littered with broken bodies, collapsed buildings, some on fire…it was like watching it on a 24-hour news channel. Like I had tuned into CNN for breaking news.

  “This just in! The tiny, forgettable town of Point Worth, Ohio, future potential locale for meth labs and esoteric cult compounds, is lit!”

  Something about how I was viewing the street unnerved me as I hesitantly took a step forward, intentionally making a wide berth around Carlita’s lifeless body. Shouldn’t I feel compelled to kneel down next to her, hold her broken body in my arms, and mourn her? Sure, I didn’t know her all that well, but I knew she was good people. Carlos was a great guy, and his drag persona, Carlita, was an angel. She didn’t deserve to be laid out in the middle of the street, her dead body exposed to the elements. Would anyone come to get her? Claim her?

  Putting one foot in front of the other, I pushed the thought out of my mind. Carlita was dead. There was nothing mourning could fix about that. Mourning would come later.

  A lot of mourning would come later.

  My feet automatically stopped when I stepped directly in front of Barkley’s. The front entrance to the store was unusual for me to see since Oma and I had always packed at the back of the store whenever we came to Barkley’s. My throat felt tight as I looked at the store before me, windows were blown out, fires were roaring from inside, the front door was hanging on by a single hinge. Had Lucas been at work when this happened? My whole body tensed at the thought of my boyfriend being anywhere nearby when this…mayhem…began.

  What had started all of these fires?

  Had there been an explosion?

  Had this been caused by gangs?

  Vandals?

  Terrorism?

  White nationalists and other extremist groups had absolutely no reason to want to live in Point Worth, let alone make it a target for terrorism. My mind began to replay things I’d heard in the news and read about online, trying to formulate a theory as to why Point Worth had been…attacked? Who or what would want to attack a tiny town in Ohio? What did my minuscule town have going for it that would make it a prime target for such an act? Even if a
wanton act of terror was not the reason for the devastation, random violence and vandalism were rare in Point Worth, in general, to begin with. The town was too tiny to have any real gangs…wasn’t it?

  Why hadn’t I seen anything in the news about the things going on in Point Worth?

  Why did I have to discover what was happening on my own?

  Why hadn’t I known the town was on fire until I arrived on Main Street?

  This was something that seemed like word would spread about quickly.

  Then again…

  Why didn’t I know where Oma and Lucas were and if they were okay?

  Why didn’t I know if Oma’s house was affected?

  Why didn’t I know…anything?

  Putting one foot in front of the other, I entered Barkley’s, not feeling the heat of the random roaring fires still burning inside. I walked through the vacant and desolate store, stepping over toppled and spilled paint cans, piles of tools, puddles of screws and nails, fallen ceiling tiles and exposed wires, wondering how a once thriving business could suddenly look like a scene from a dystopian novel. I walked down aisles, unsure what I was looking for or how I would find it. The shelves on either side of me littered with detritus and a few lucky products that had not been damaged. The raging fires cast eerie shadows throughout the store as I made my way to the rear of the store.

  The check-out counter and register area had completely folded in on itself, a pile of useless technology and wood, charred and sending up wisps of smoke. I stood there, staring down at the piles of…nothing…wondering once again whether or not Lucas had been present when the store had been…attacked? More questions swirled through my head that I knew I would not get answers to that would satisfy my curiosity. The scene laid out before me inside of Barkley’s Hardware let me know that nothing would diffuse my confusion about the things I was seeing. As I strolled through the store, it dawned on me that I could not feel the heat of the fire or smell the smoke. The soot and ash did not settle upon my skin and make me feel dirty. It was almost as though I was removed from the situation in which I found myself.

  Exiting through the automatic sliding glass doors into the back area of the store that contained gardening items and lumber was easy. The doors had shattered outward, spraying glass all over the concrete beyond; I merely had to step through the frame of the door. Outside, in the dark of night once again, fires raging in the town around me, I found that the back part of the store was just as bad as the interior. Plants were strewn about, bags of mulch and soil and concrete mix had been blown open, spewing their contents like the world’s dingiest New Year’s Eve party had ended. Standing there just beyond the doorway, I surveyed the damage, still going over a list of questions in my head.

  Groaning sounds, as though being broadcast through water, emanated from a few yards away on my right. Without a second thought—though I felt that I was not being led by my own thought processes—I turned robotically on my heels and headed towards noise. In the corner, sat on the floor, his back against a pile of half-disintegrated bags of mulch, was Mr. Barkley. His face was bloodied, half of his face indistinguishable from a flat of hamburger meat as he groaned and gasped, his chest heaving and falling with each panicked breath.

  His shirt was in tatters under his overalls, and the legs of the garment were shredded and charred by the fire. Most of his hair had been burned away, and I wasn’t sure that his eye on the wounded side of his face was completely intact. Mr. Barkley looked like he had been worked over by a meat grinder. A meat grinder that had also been on fire. When I approached him, his eyes darted up to mine, stricken with fear. Our eyes locked as he gasped a final time.

  “He’s coming.”

  Then Mr. Barkley’s eyes closed, his chest heaved one last time, and he went still. Standing there, staring down at the body Mr. Barkley had once inhabited, I wondered why I was not panicking instead of planning to walk back through the store and out onto the street. But that was where I found myself suddenly, unaware of how I had arrived from the back of Barkley’s Hardware. The town was still partially and eerily illuminated by sporadic fires throughout town, but Barkley’s was no longer there. There wasn’t a pile of burning rubble or debris strewn about like after a major catastrophe. The lot to my right, where Barkley’s had been, was now just a slab of concrete on the street, as though waiting for someone to build a new store.

  I turned away, something about that blank space made it difficult to keep looking at it. Instead of looking at where Barkley’s used to be, I walked in an even measure down the street towards the Sunny Side Up Café. Why had Carlita been on Main Street in Point Worth? She lived in Toledo as far as I knew. What had brought her to town—especially on a night when something like this would happen? Of course, I had no idea what happened, so how was I to know if Carlita being in town was unusual? In fact, I didn’t know Carlita’s habits or anything about her life in general—other than she was a drag performer—so, it might not have been all that unusual for her to be in Point Worth at all.

  My vision suddenly blurred, and I felt a sharp pain right between my eyes, and I stopped in my tracks, wincing at the feeling emanating from within my skull. Instinctively, I bent down and put my hands against my knees, bracing myself as the lightning bolt of pain shot through my head and made everything in front of my eyes dance like I was on a bad acid trip. Firelight continued to dance, making everything I saw look like it was coming from behind a veil of gasoline fumes. As if out of place frames had been inserted into a glitchy reel of film, a dark figure appeared farther down the street, snapping in and out of the movie playing before me.

  Shaking my head to chase away the pain and to clear my vision, the figure blinked out of existence and the haziness altering my vision slowly evaporated. I kept my hands against my knee for a few moments longer as I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. The sharp pain in my head eased until I felt nothing at all. I righted myself and carried on down the street, looking around slowly for the dark figure. Without question, I knew it was crazy, but I knew the dark figure that had appeared in the street. Even with the pain behind my eyes and the hazy vision…I knew it.

  Outside of the café, I didn’t bother climbing the steps to enter but instead stepped around them to the side of the café to peer through one of the large windows. Just as I had expected, I was sitting on one side of a booth, and Lucas was across from me. Only, it was Lucas and me as we had been during our high school years. A little thinner, a little lankier, a little more awkward, a lot younger. We were talking animatedly to each other across the tabletop, smiling widely as we kept company with each other there in the Sunny Side Up Café.

  Only, that wasn’t true.

  The Sunny Side Up Café had not existed when we were in high school.

  It had been The Red Rooster Tavern.

  We never would have been allowed inside at night at that age.

  It had been twenty-one and up after dark.

  Neither teenage Rob nor teenage Lucas saw me standing there, staring at them through the window of the tavern. They continued their conversation, hands gesturing wildly and excitedly, smiles shared, stories told, obvious affection passing through looks and body language. I smiled tightly at the scene before my eyes. Lucas and I had never been to The Red Rooster Tavern at night, only during the day. But I liked watching the two of us there together anyway.

  Once, Lucas had taken me out onto the lake in a rowboat Jackson Barkley, his grandfather had owned. It wasn’t the only time we had found ourselves in the rowboat on the lake, but we had laid back together and watched the stars and talked about our dreams. We had imagined that each star was a dream we had cast out into the universe, begging for…something…to hear our desires. To grant us a wish. I remembered those dreams. Those wishes. None of my dreams or wishes involved becoming famous—in any way. There had been plenty of wild things I had wished and hoped for, but fame had not been one of those things. A single tear slid down my cheek, and I quickly brushed it away with t
he back of my hand.

  “Do you like remembering?”

  I didn’t even start at the sound of the voice.

  I had expected it. And I knew the voice.

  “This isn’t a real memory,” I replied evenly, my eyes staying on the two boys inside of the tavern.

  “No.”

  The hooded figure stepped up beside me, its face peering through the window as well. Glancing out of the corner of my eye, I could only see the figure’s nose peeking out from within the depths of the hood. My eyes went back to Lucas and me inside of the tavern.

  “Why is it here?” I asked. “This memory?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” The figure replied. “This is the memory of the time the two of you obtained fake identification and, even though Clancy knew you were not old enough, he overlooked it. Your first real date.”

  “That never happened.”

  “Are you so sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You remember everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you entirely sure?”

  I nodded. And I knew I should have panicked, remembering everything I had forgotten, all of the memories that had returned to my brain; but I wasn’t panicking. I just felt complete.

  “Seems Point Worth is on fire.”

  “Seems to be.”

  “There were no firemen to call.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s your fault.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t seem to care at all,” The hooded figure said.

  “I do,” I responded, still looking through the tavern window, though the scene inside was slowly growing dark, casting teenage Lucas and me in deeper shadow. “I just don’t know what other choice I had.”