Carter's Echo - Prologue. Prologue

Act I: The House of Hissing Shadows

The silence in Brody’s house wasn't peaceful; it was a sentient, malevolent entity. Peter McCormick felt it the moment his key clicked in the lock—a dense, watchful hush that swallowed the sound of the summer street behind him. It didn’t hang in the corners of the vaulted living room; it lurked there, coiled and waiting. It was the kind of silence that followed a scream, that lingered in a hospital corridor after bad news had been delivered. It made the fine hairs on Peter’s arms stand up. He stood in the grand foyer, a single heavy box of books and clothes braced against his hip, and stared at the cold expanse of tile stretching before him. The house, a sprawling monument to Brody’s brief, benevolent reign as a sort of unofficial foster-father to lost boys, felt like a beautiful, empty skull.

He was seventeen, a high school graduate of precisely ten days, and a walking, talking exposed nerve. The two people who had ever truly mattered to him—who had seen him, the messy, artistic, anxious core of him—were gone. West was in England, the phantom pain of his absence so acute Peter sometimes forgot to breathe. Will Carter, the man who wasn’t his brother by blood but was by every measure that counted, was in Toronto, swallowed by a corporate job and a life that had no room for a clingy, heartbroken teenager. The one-two punch had left Peter reeling, untethered. He felt like a ghost haunting his own life, and now he was supposed to haunt this mausoleum.

He dropped the box. It hit the floor with a crack that was too loud, a violation of the quiet. The sound echoed, a single gunshot in a cathedral, then was absorbed. He didn’t call out. He marched, his boots heavy and deliberate on the polished floor, toward the sunken den.

He found the epicenter of the decay. The den, once a place of roaring fires and louder poker games, was a pit. The heavy velvet drapes were drawn tight, casting the room in a perpetual, bruised twilight. The air was thick with the sweet-sour stench of melted ice cream and unwashed laundry. On the enormous cognac leather sectional—a purchase Brody had made because it “screamed successful bachelor”—lay a shapeless lump beneath a grey afghan. The smoked-glass coffee table was a graveyard. Not just of Ben & Jerry’s pints (Chunky Monkey, Americone Dream, a fossilized-looking Phish Food), but of civilization: empty water glasses with murky dregs, a scattering of law textbooks splayed open like dead birds, a single, lonely sock.

Peter stood over the lump. “Andrew.”

The lump didn’t move. From the depths of the wool, a pale hand emerged, groping blindly across the cluttered table until it found the remote. The massive television, currently showing a muted soap opera where a woman wept soundlessly in a hospital bed, flickered off. The room plunged into a deeper gloom.

“Go away,” came the voice. It wasn’t gravelly with sleep; it was hollow, scraped clean of any emotion beyond a profound weariness. “Whatever you’re selling, we’re bankrupt.”

“It’s Peter. I’m moving in. Remember? Brody’s email? The guest room?” Peter’s voice was flat. He had no patience for this. His own grief was a sharp, desolate thing; Andrew’s felt wet and formless, and it pissed him off.

The afghan shifted. One bloodshot blue eye peered out, set in a face that was pale and stubbled, the bones too prominent. Andrew Highmore, twenty-four, former hockey coach, current law student, looked like a man who had been left out in the rain for a month and then hastily wrung out. “Peter,” he croaked. He blinked slowly, as if processing the information. “You’re late.”

“I’m not late. I’m exactly on time for the apocalypse,” Peter said, kicking a stray pizza coupon out of his path. “Where is he?”

Andrew’s eye closed. A tremor went through the blanket. “Upstairs. End of the hall. Don’t… don’t expect a welcome wagon.” He swallowed, the sound painfully dry. “Will took the blender, Peter. The Vitamix. The one that could puree a brick. Six years. He gave me six years and took the goddamn blender to Toronto.”

For a second, Peter’s cold anger thawed into a pang of something like pity. This wasn’t about a kitchen appliance. It was about the brutal, mundane logistics of a breakup. The dividing of assets, the physical evidence of a shared life being cleaved in two. Will’s departure hadn’t been a dramatic fight; it had been a quiet, devastating surrender to diverging paths. It left no one to blame but fate, which was somehow worse.

“Forget the blender, Andrew,” Peter said, but his voice had lost its edge. “What about you-know-who?”

Andrew pushed the blanket down to his chin. He looked up at the ceiling, his expression one of naked fear. “He’s… he’s in the big room. The one with the twin beds. The guest room is a storage unit for Brody’s ego—skis, golf clubs, a broken rowing machine. You’ll have to bunk with him.”

Peter stared. “You’re joking.”

“I haven’t had the energy to joke since the wedding,” Andrew said, his voice a dull monotone. “He shouldn’t be alone up there. And frankly, McCormick, neither should you. It’s not a punishment. It’s… logistics.” He said the last word like it was a death sentence. “He’s a feral cat, Peter. A feral cat with a broken arm and a look in his eyes like he’s waiting for the walls to start bleeding. I bring him food. He tells me to fuck off. I ask how he’s doing, he asks me if I’ve ever considered swallowing bleach. I’m… I’m out of my depth. I’m so far out of my depth I can’t see the shore.”

The raw confession hung in the stale air. Andrew wasn’t just grieving; he was terrified. The responsibility that had crashed into his life alongside Jason’s battered duffel bag was too heavy for his bowed shoulders. Peter felt his own selfish anger recede another inch, replaced by a cold, grim sense of duty. Someone had to be the adult. It looked like it was going to have to be him.

“Fine,” Peter said, the word tasting like ash. “I’ll go negotiate the armistice.”

The upstairs hallway was a tunnel of warm, still air. The central air conditioning clearly didn’t bother with the second floor. The door at the end was shut tight, a solid slab of dark wood. No light leaked from beneath it.

Peter didn’t knock. He turned the handle and pushed the door open.

The smell hit him first—a complex, awful bouquet of antiseptic wipes, old sweat, the coppery tang of fear, and beneath it all, the faint, sweetish smell of infection. The room was pitch black, the heavy curtains not just drawn but seemingly fused to the window frames. For a moment, Peter saw nothing. Then his eyes adjusted to the sliver of light from the hall.

He wasn’t on a bed. He was in the far corner of the room, wedged between a massive oak wardrobe and the wall, seated on the floor with his knees drawn up. Jason Jensen. He was shirtless, the left side of his torso a spectacular canvas of violence. A heavy white cast encased his forearm and wrist, held awkwardly in a sling. His ribs were a landscape of yellowing bruises, with darker, angry purples and reds at their centers. A jagged line of black stitches marched from his hairline into his scalp. But it was his posture that was most alarming. He wasn’t slumped in defeat. He was coiled. Alert. His head was up, his eyes—two points of reflected hall light in the darkness—fixed unblinkingly on Peter.

“Close the door,” a voice said. It wasn’t the fragile whisper Peter had half-expected. It was low, raspy from disuse, but utterly flat. A command.

Peter stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind him. They were plunged into absolute blackness. He heard a shift, the rustle of fabric, a sharp, indrawn breath that was probably pain.

“I said get out,” the voice came again, from the same corner.

“Can’t,” Peter said, his own voice sounding too loud. “I live here now. Andrew’s idea. We’re roommates.” He reached out, fumbling along the wall until his fingers found the light switch.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Jason snarled, the flatness evaporating into something vicious.

Peter flipped the switch.

The overhead light was cruel and fluorescent. It exposed everything. Jason flinched violently, throwing his good arm up to shield his eyes. In that unguarded moment, Peter saw it—not just the injuries, but the profound exhaustion beneath them. The dark circles that rivaled the bruises, the sharpness of his cheekbones, the way his skin seemed stretched too tight over his frame. Then the arm lowered, and the eyes that glared at Peter were full of a feral, intelligent hatred. This wasn’t a scared child. This was a cornered animal who had learned that attack was the only reliable defense.

“Turn it off,” Jason hissed.

“No,” Peter said. He looked around. The room was large, with two twin beds separated by a single nightstand. One bed was a chaotic nest of twisted, sweat-damp sheets. The other was neatly made, untouched. A battered green duffel bag sat unopened by the dresser. “That one’s mine,” Peter said, pointing to the clean bed.

“Like hell it is.”

“Like hell it isn’t,” Peter shot back, his own temper sparking. He was tired, he was heartsick, and he was done with the cryptic, wounded routine. “You don’t own the place, Jensen. You’re squatting. I’m renting. We’re sharing air. Get used to it.”

Jason slowly, painfully, pushed himself to his feet, keeping his back to the wall. He was taller than Peter, but so thin he looked breakable. The defiance in his stance was a stark contrast to the physical wreckage. “I don’t want a roommate.”

“Tough. Neither do I. You think I want to be here? You think I want to listen to Andrew mourn a kitchen appliance while I’m trying to mourn my entire fucking life?” The words burst out of him, hot and sharp. “My boyfriend is in another country. The only person who ever felt like family left for Toronto. I’m stuck in this museum with a depressive law student and a hostile convalescent. We’re all having a shit summer, Jensen. You don’t get the monopoly.”

Jason’s eyes narrowed. He was assessing Peter, not as a threat, but as a phenomenon. “So go somewhere else.”

“This is my somewhere else.” Peter walked over to his chosen bed and dropped his box onto it. The thump was final. “Rules. You don’t touch my stuff. I won’t touch yours. I’m opening that window because this room smells like a foot. You can hide under the covers if the fresh air offends you.”

He strode to the window, ignoring the way Jason tensed. The curtains were held shut with duct tape. Peter ripped it off, the sound harsh in the quiet room, and yanked the heavy fabric aside. Late afternoon sunlight, golden and thick with dust motes, blasted into the room. Jason recoiled, a hiss escaping his lips, turning his face away.

“Jesus, McCormick,” he spat.

“Better,” Peter said, leaning on the sill and looking out at the overgrown garden below. His garden. Or it had been. Now it was a testament to neglect. He felt a pang that was entirely separate from his grief for West or Will. “I’m going downstairs. There’s pizza. If you’re hungry, come get it. If you’re not, don’t. I don’t care.”

He turned to leave. As his hand touched the doorknob, Jason’s voice stopped him.

“Your brother.”

Peter froze. “Will?”

“Yeah.” Jason’s voice had lost its venom, replaced by something colder, more observational. “Last winter. When it was bad. He used to leave the back door unlocked. On the nights he knew. He never said anything. Just… left it open. Like I was a stray cat he was feeding.” There was no gratitude in the statement. It was a fact, delivered with a twist of old bitterness. A charity that had been necessary, and therefore humiliating.

Peter’s throat tightened. He hadn’t known. Will had never mentioned it. The image of Jason, fifteen years old, slipping into this house in the dead of a Canadian winter because his own home was a warzone, was unbearable. It reframed Will’s quiet kindness and Jason’s desperate survival in a new, terrible light.

“Will’s a good person,” Peter said finally, his back still turned. “I’m not as nice.”

A sound from behind him—almost a laugh, but devoid of humor. “Good. I hate nice people.”

Peter didn’t reply. He walked out, closing the door softly behind him. He stood in the hallway, his forehead pressed against the cool wood, his heart hammering. He’d expected a victim. He’d found a spiky, hostile, heartbreakingly sharp survivor. It was infinitely more complicated.

Downstairs, Andrew had migrated to the kitchen, drawn by the scent of the delivery pizza he had ordered before coming upstairs. He was standing at the granite breakfast bar, staring at a slice on a paper towel as if it were an alien artifact.

“He’s alive,” Peter reported, grabbing a slice for himself. “And he’s an asshole.”

Andrew picked at his crust. “Told you. How’s the room?”

“It’s a fucking nightmare. But it’ll do.” Peter took a savage bite. “We need groceries. Real food. And you need to shower. Like, with intent.”

“I’m working up to it,” Andrew mumbled. But he took a bite of pizza. It was progress.

He stood there, his normally neatly center-parted blond hair stuck up in a tangled mess. His face was almost a beard, his eyes red and raw, as if he’d been crying far too much. The "together" guy that had always seemed to have a plan had become undone. The loss of Will was having a profound effect on him, the heartbreak raw and on display.

Peter got it; Will and Andrew had been having problems for months. Will, drifting through his life, slowly fading away, and Andrew had been too stubborn to realize they were having problems. Too overconfident in Will-Andrew forever that he hadn’t seen the ground drop out from beneath them.

For Peter, that bedrock, the foundational relationship that had defined almost all of his teenage life, was now gone. He felt like the kid of a divorce, sitting there chewing pizza, stuck with the dad that now lived in a cheap apartment in a bachelor motel, trying to pretend that his life wasn’t falling apart. Sad… wow… a year ago Peter would have bet money on Andrew being the strong one. Not this way around… it was weird, it was broken, and it just felt wrong.

“What?” Andrew asked, chewing his pizza slice, as he noticed Peter was watching him.

“Nothing, Andy,” Peter said, picking the mushrooms off of his slice. “Just thinking…”

“You don’t think quietly,” Andrew gestured with his food. “You telegraph your thoughts around the neighbourhood… you want to ask, just ask.”

“What did you do?” Peter asked quietly, the question that had been burning inside him since the breakup.

Andrew looked about ready to burst into tears again, his lip worked. And he turned away. “Perhaps a bit too early to ask that, huh?” he said softly.

Peter nodded. “Ok, but we’re all we’ve got to talk to about this stuff, so… you know… if you want to talk, I’m here.”

Andrew nodded. “Yeah, I know, Sprog. Just give me some time on that one, ok?”

Peter shrugged. “Sure, just… you know… if I needed to talk about breakups, and you have ears… you know… would you want to maybe… listen and give me a hug like… um… you’re kinda all I got too.”

Andrew turned his head. “Any time you want, Pete. Just… you know… give us both a chance to get used to this single-crap, ok?”

The evening bled away into a tense, quiet night. Peter heard the floorboards creak above him once, then the sound of the bathroom door closing. Later, the soft pad of footsteps descending the stairs. He stayed in the kitchen, pretending to read a book, as a shadow paused in the doorway. He saw a thin, bruised arm reach into the fridge, pull out two slices of cold pizza and a bottle of water, and then retreat. The footsteps went back up. Jason had ventured out. Another small, silent victory.

When Peter finally went up to bed, the room was dark again, but the window was still open, the curtain moving slightly in the night breeze. The medicinal smell was already fading. Jason was a lump in the other bed, facing the wall, perfectly still. Peter changed in the dark, slid into his own bed, and lay staring at the ceiling. The silence between the two beds was a tangible, humming thing.

He must have dozed off, because he was jerked awake by a sound. Not a scream, but a choked-off gasp, followed by the rustle of frantic movement. Jason was having a nightmare. Peter lay frozen, listening to the ragged breathing, the muffled whimper that was quickly bitten back. He didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t Will. He wasn’t kind in that way.

The sounds subsided into quiet, shaky breaths. Peter waited a full five minutes.

“You awake over there?” he whispered into the dark.

A long pause. “No.”

“Sounded like you were wrestling a demon.”

“Mind your own business, McCormick.”

“Hard to do when your business involves whimpering like a stepped-on puppy three feet from my head.”

He heard Jason shift, the bedsprings groaning. “Fuck you.”

“Charming.” Peter rolled onto his side, facing the vague shape of the other bed. “So. You’re gay.”

The silence that followed was so complete Peter could hear the blood rushing in his own ears. It was a reckless, stupid thing to say, born of sleeplessness and the strange intimacy of shared darkness.

“The fuck did you just say?” Jason’s voice was dangerously low.

“I said, you’re gay. So am I. It’s not an attack, Jensen. Just an observation. Calm down.”

“How?” The word was sharp, a demand. “How do you know?”

Peter sighed, plucking at his sheet. “Because you’re the worst-kept secret closet case in the history of South Carleton High. Everyone knew. You and Blake Wolochowski by the equipment room? Please. You had less subtlety than a marching band.”

He could feel the fury radiating from the other bed. “Fuck you, McCormick. Least I wasn’t voted ‘Most Likely to Ride a Unicorn Wearing a Feather Boa.’”

Peter snorted. “That was a smear campaign by Brad LaPointe’s goons, and you know it. You, on the other hand, were voted ‘Most Likely to Be Caught in a Police Raid of a Truck Stop Restroom.’”

“Go to sleep, fairy boy.”

“You too, Mister Tumnus.”

A beat of confused silence. “The fuck is a Tumnus?”

Peter grinned in the dark. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, for God’s sake. You need to read a book, Jensen, not just eat the pages. He’s the faun. The one in the closet. So far in it he’s through to the other side.”

Another pause, longer. Then, a grudging, almost inaudible response. “Fuck you, Edmund Pevensie.”

Peter’s grin widened. “You liar. You knew exactly what I meant. And why Edmund?”

He could almost hear the shrug. “Dude’s in a magical sleigh with a hot-to-trot MILF like the White Queen, and all he wants is Turkish Delight? Total gay boy. Besides, how many straight guys do you know rock a mink coat like that?”

A real laugh, short and surprised, escaped Peter. “True. Okay, fair point. So, Tumnus and Edmund, huh?”

“Shut up, McCormick,” Jason muttered, but the venom was gone, replaced by a weary amusement. “And stay on your side of the room. I’m not interested.”

Peter’s laugh died. “Where the hell did that come from? I never said I was interested in you either.”

“Sure. You just keep it that way.”

The conversation died there, strangled by the sudden, awkward awareness it had spawned. They lay in the new, more complicated silence, the earlier tension replaced by something stranger, more charged. Peter’s heart was beating too fast. He listened to Jason’s breathing slowly even out again, and eventually, he slept.

He woke to grey pre-dawn light filtering through the open window. Jason was still asleep, curled tightly on his side, facing Peter’s bed. In sleep, all the defensive sharpness was gone. He looked heartbreakingly young, the bruises a violent paint job on a canvas that was just skin and bones. Peter watched the slow rise and fall of his chest for a moment, then slipped quietly out of bed. He dressed in the hall and went downstairs.

He found Andrew already in the kitchen, which was a shock. He was wearing clean-ish track pants and a faded Ottawa University hoodie. He was staring at the kettle as if it were a complex piece of lab equipment.

“Tea,” Andrew announced without looking up. “I’m making tea. Will always made the coffee. I don’t know how to work the machine. The machine mocks me. Tea is… procedural.”

“Okay,” Peter said, moving around him to the fancy espresso machine Will had left behind. He knew how to work it. Will had taught him.

They worked in parallel for a few minutes—Andrew boiling water, Peter grinding beans—a silent, fragile mimicry of domesticity. The sound of slow, careful footsteps on the stairs made them both look up.

Jason stood in the kitchen doorway, blinking in the overhead light. He’d put on a long-sleeved t-shirt, one that Will had left behind, but it did little to hide the bulk of the cast. He looked from Andrew to Peter, his expression wary, closed-off.

“Sit,” Andrew said, his voice softer than Peter had heard it in weeks. It was his Coach Voice, the one that brooked no argument but wasn’t unkind. He pointed to a stool at the breakfast bar.

Jason obeyed, moving with the stiff care of someone whose entire body was one giant bruise.

Andrew placed a steaming mug of tea in front of him. Jason stared at it like it was a snake.

“It’s tea,” Andrew said. “You drink it.”

“I don’t…” Jason started, then stopped. He looked lost.

“Never had tea?” Peter asked, sliding onto the stool next to him with his own mug of coffee.

Jason shook his head, a tiny movement. “Breakfast was… whatever I could steal from the 7-Eleven before school. Or nothing.” His face burned in humiliation.

The statement hung there, simple and devastating. Andrew’s face did something complicated, a mix of pity and a dawning, horrified understanding of the scale of neglect they were dealing with.

“Well, today it’s tea,” Andrew said firmly, though his eyes were too bright. “And toast. Peter, make toast.”

Peter got up, putting bread in the toaster. As he turned back, he saw Jason cautiously wrap his good hand around the mug, absorbing its warmth. He didn’t drink it. He just held it.

Andrew sipped his own tea and let out a long, weary sigh. “Logistics,” he said to the room at large. “We need to talk logistics. I have class at ten. The Jeep… well. Will has it. In Toronto. Which is a problem.”

“I have a car,” Jason said, so quietly they almost missed it.

Both Peter and Andrew stared at him.

“You have a car,” Andrew repeated.

Jason nodded, still looking at his tea. “A Volvo. Old. It’s yellow. It’s… it’s out front.”

Peter remembered seeing a battered, banana-colored hatchback parked haphazardly up the street. He’d assumed it belonged to a neighbor.

“Does it run?” Andrew asked, a desperate hope creeping into his voice.

“Most days,” Jason said with a shrug. Then he looked up, meeting Andrew’s eyes directly for the first time. “You can use it. If you want. I’m not… going anywhere.”

The offer was staggering in its simplicity and its magnitude. It wasn’t just a car. It was a lifeline, offered by the person in the room who had the least to give. It was Jason trying to be useful, trying to pay for his space, trying to please the only authority figure who had ever shown him a shred of consistent, non-violent decency.

Andrew looked like he might cry. He cleared his throat. “That’s… that’s very decent of you, Jason. Thank you. I’ll get gas. And insurance. We’ll… we’ll figure it out.”

The toast popped up. Peter put two slices on a plate, hesitated, then slathered them with butter and put the plate in front of Jason. “Eat,” he said, in a creditable imitation of Andrew’s Coach Voice.

Jason looked at the toast, then at the bag of peanut butter M&M’s he had pulled from the pocket of his sweatpants and set quietly on the counter. He looked back at the toast.

“The candy is not a food group,” Peter said, taking the bag and tossing it into a cupboard. “Toast is. Eat the toast.”

For a second, Jason looked like he might argue. Then, with a surrender that seemed to cost him, he picked up a slice and took a small bite. He chewed slowly, methodically, as if relearning how.

They ate in silence, the three of them at the breakfast bar. The sunlight strengthened, streaming across the granite and catching the dust in the air. Peter sipped his coffee, the bitter familiarity of it a small comfort. He watched Jason navigate the simple act of eating breakfast with a concentration usually reserved for defusing bombs. He saw Andrew’s shoulders lose a fraction of their perpetual hunch, a tiny spark of practical purpose returning to his eyes as he mentally calculated his route to campus in a yellow Volvo.

The silence in the kitchen was different from the silence that had greeted Peter the day before. It wasn't empty. It was full. Full of the crunch of toast, the slurp of tea, the ticking of the clock, the weight of three shattered people trying, without a map or a clue, to build something resembling a morning.

Peter looked out the window at the tangled, overgrown garden. The lavender was a greyish smudge, the roses leggy and wild. It was a mess. But the sun was on it. And for the first time since the train had pulled away carrying West, Peter McCormick didn't feel like he was drowning. He felt, improbably, like he was planting his feet in thick, stubborn mud. It wasn't solid ground, not yet. But it was something to push against.

“After breakfast,” he said, his voice cutting through the quiet, “I’m starting on the garden.”

Andrew groaned. “He’ll hate it.”

Jason, who had just taken a cautious sip of his tea, wrinkled his nose at the taste but didn’t put the mug down. He looked from Andrew to Peter, his grey eyes unreadable.

“I know,” Peter said, a small, grim, determined smile touching his lips. “That’s why we’re doing it.”