Summary: Crystal is insistent that she doesn't need the dead boys to attend her graduation ceremony. But, Charles and Edwin would never let Crystal go alone.
AN: I got like halfway through this one and realized that schools in the UK probably don't have graduation ceremonies the same way American schools. They might not even have graduation ceremonies at all. BUT I HAVEN'T MISSED A DAY YET AND IM NOT GONNA START NOW SO YOU'RE JUST GONNA HAVE TO SUSPEND YOUR DISBELIEF. okay thanks.
“You guys can’t come to my graduation, okay?” Crystal said firmly.
It was a little hard to take her seriously when she was standing in a veritable ocean of clothes and shaking what looked like a very fancy sunhat at them, but her expression was very serious.
“My parents are going to be there and I don’t want any weird ghost shit going on, okay?” Crystal added. She threw them an exasperated look when both boys just stared at her with folded arms.
“They said they’re going to be there?” Charles asked with a raised eyebrow.
“They gave a very firm maybe, which is practically a yes for them,” Crystal snapped back.
Charles frowned at that, but Edwin spoke over whatever he was planning to say.
“Of course, if you don’t want us to attend your graduation ceremony, we will respect your wishes,” Edwin said benevolently.
“Thank you, Edwin,” Crystal said, with a pointed look at Charles.
“You’re quite welcome, Crystal,” Edwin said with a polite nod.
Crystal disappeared back into her walk in closet to continue to dig for something good enough to wear under her graduation gown. Charles turned to Edwin with a confused frown.
“There’s no way her parents are going to show up for graduation, is there?” he asked sincerely.
“Not a chance,” Edwin said, still watching the closet door. “I checked their calendar and they’ve already booked two interviews and something called an ‘experimental banjo sesh’ for the same time as the ceremony.”
“God, what arseholes,” Charles muttered. “Crystal deserves better.”
“Of course she does,” Edwin said with an arched brow. “That is why we will be better for her.”
Charles’ mouth stretched into a manic grin and Edwin’s own mouth twitched at the edges with infectious glee.
---
The day of her graduation, Crystal was sweating with nerves. She had opted to finish her degree online when her attempts to make up with many of the people in her class that she had wronged had gone badly, to say the least. It was the first time in months that she was in the same room with them. It was a big gymnasium, but it was hard not to notice all the venomous looks pointed her way from almost every corner.
Crystal wiped her palms on the fabric of her gown, but the artificial fabric did nothing to wick the moisture away from her skin. She wanted to touch her cap to make sure it was sitting straight, but was worried about knocking her elaborate hairstyle down. She had gotten up early to arrange her curls into an elegant bun at the nape of her neck. It had been a bigger challenge than she expected and as a result her hair was mostly held together by two dozen bobby pins and sheer determination.
Crystal’s parents had already been gone by the time she was ready to leave for the ceremony, but she tried not to let that get her down. She had just talked to them the night before and they had confirmed their definite maybe for her graduation. She just had to have faith. They probably were picking up flowers or a cake or something. They knew Crystal was very self sufficient and could call her own cab to take her to the school.
Finally it was time to line up and walk out onto the field. Luckily, Crystal ended up in line between two boys that she didn’t recognize and who didn’t seem all that interested in her. They walked out of the gymnasium and into the bright spring day outside. Crystal was briefly blinded, but as soon as her eyes cleared she looked out into the crowd for her parents.
The field outside the gym was absolutely packed with people. There were rows and rows of folding chairs set up for the students graduating. The line steadily filled the rows in, directed by teachers in suits and skirts. Around the folding chairs were metal bleachers packed with adults and other kids alike, everyone snapping photos and waving and shouting things as the students filing into the chairs occasionally picked someone out of the crowd and waved back.
She didn’t see her parents as she walked out, but it was a madhouse. Probably they were there and she just didn’t see them. That was fine. Crystal turned around during a speech started to try and look again and got hissed at by one of the teachers, so she turned back around and pretended to pay attention.
The speeches washed over her like so much noise. She couldn’t have recalled anything that was said even if her life depended on it. Her mind was on the crowd at her back and her parents, the anxiety of not knowing crawling up her throat and threatening to choke her.
Then, finally, they started calling names and it was time to walk across the stage and claim her diploma. The school had considered ‘Von Hoverkraft’ to be her last name, so she had to wait until almost every other kid had gone before she could stand up and walk across the small pop up stage to shake the hand of a sweaty middle aged man she didn’t recognize and take her diploma.
As she did so, a camera flashed from the crowd, loud and bright and briefly blinding her. Crystal felt tears pricking her eyes and it wasn’t just from the bright flash. Someone was taking her picture and she couldn’t help but hope it was her dad, memorializing her finally finishing high school, finally becoming an adult.
Her smile turning sincere for the first time that day, Crystal walked to the other side of the stage and back to her seat feeling breathless. They were here somewhere in the crowd. They had come. They had shown up for her.
A few more kids went up to get their diploma and there was one last short speech. Everyone was itching for the ceremony to be over, so the speech didn’t last for very long. Soon, the ceremony was over and the two crowds (students and families) rushed toward each other, students merging into the bleachers while parents and siblings ran into the lines of folding chairs.
Crystal stood up, but then she froze. She was short in her sensible flats and couldn’t see over the heads of the crowd to find her parents. She started to move toward the bleachers, but it was a wild press of people and she felt a surge of panic that she wouldn’t be able to find them in time, that the crowds would deter them and her parents would leave without her seeing them.
Halfway to the bleachers, Crystal felt a man’s hand on her upper arm, pulling her to a stop. Crystal whipped around, not sure if she should be ecstatic or vicious, and looked into a familiar face. Familiar, but not the one she was hoping for.
An older man, maybe in his fifties, with red hair almost completely turned white and distinguished rimless glasses was smiling down at her. It was Charles in his living person disguise.
“Crystal, this way!” he said over the low roar of the crowd, guiding her away from the bleachers and through them toward the parking lot.
Briefly, Crystal felt irritated. She had told them not to come. But, she couldn’t hold onto her frustration for very long. She was scared and upset and hopeful by equal measures and Charles’ presence was a comforting. She eventually shook his hand off her arm so that she could instead grab his hand in hers and he smiled down at her again.
Charles led her out of the crowd and around to the back of the metal bleachers, where Crystal saw a woman in big acrylic frames wearing a little maroon beret over blonde hair peppered with white. Edwin.
“I told you guys I didn’t want you here,” Crystal muttered. “I have to get back. My parents might leave if they can’t find me.”
Charles and Edwin exchanged a speaking look and Crystal’s stomach dropped.
“We weren’t going to come,” Charles started to say. Crystal realized suddenly that he was wearing a big old fashioned camera around his neck by a strap. She swallowed around a lump in her throat.
“But, we also weren’t about to leave you here alone if they didn’t come,” Edwin said quickly.
Crystal felt her eyes filling with tears and firmly told herself not to blink. If she blinked, they would fall and if they started to fall, they might never stop.
She looked at Edwin. Edwin would tell her the truth, even if it hurt. She could trust him to do that for her.
“I’m sorry, Crystal,” he said quietly. “I followed them all morning. We only came once we were sure they were not going to make it to your graduation ceremony.”
It didn’t matter that Crystal hadn’t blinked, the tears began to fall anyway. She dashed them away viciously but they just kept falling.
“God, you must think I’m so naive,” she laughed. “You must have wanted so bad to tell me how stupid I was being. So, go ahead. Say it,” she glared at Edwin, but he only stared evenly back. “Say I was stupid for believing in them! You would be right!” she cried.
“Crystal Palace, you are the farthest thing from stupid,” Edwin said, like it was the most factual thing in the world.
“You’re a good daughter,” Charles said gently, “and you love your parents. That’s not a fault, Crystal. It’s admirable that you keep trying.”
The tears were coming faster now and Crystal gave up on trying to preserve her mascara and eyeliner and instead rubbed at her eyes, probably smearing black makeup everywhere.
“Eds! The flowers!” Charles whispered while Crystal tried desperately to get her tears under control.
She heard rustling and then when she opened her eyes it was to a huge bouquet of lilies, big pink ones with little brown spots exploding out from yellow centers, filled in all around with delicate baby’s breath.
“You got me flowers?” Crystal wobbled, fresh tears threatening to fall.
“And a balloon, but I sort of forgot those things float and it got away from me,” Charles said with a hangdog expression.
Edwin sighed at the mention of the balloon, but shook it off quickly. He stepped in to run his thumbs delicately under Crystal’s eyes, clearing away the smudged makeup along with a few stray tears.
“And, we will be taking you to that awful raw fish buffet that you like,” Edwin said as he cleaned up her makeup here and there.
“It’s called sushi, I know you know that. And, I don’t think they’ll let you come in if you aren’t going to eat anything,” Crystal sniffed.
“I dare say you will eat enough raw fish for the rest of us,” Edwin said, dry as the Sahara desert.
“And, we’ll tell everyone within hearing distance how proud we are of our amazing daughter who just graduated from high school!” Charles added with a grin.
“Yes, she’s quite amazing,” Edwin said, stepping back and judging Crystal’s makeup good enough so long as she didn’t start crying again. “Neither of us ever finished high school. She’s the first in our family to do so.”
“We’re proud parents, we are,” Charles said, elbowing Edwin with a grin that earned him an eye roll and a reluctant smile.
“You guys…” Crystal trailed off, sniffing. She clutched the flowers closer to her chest, the paper crinkling against her graduation gown. Golden pollen smeared against the cheap polyester and stuck to it, but she couldn’t possibly bring herself to care at the moment.
“Please, Crystal, no more tears. I just fixed your mascara,” Edwin complained, stepping in again to fan at her face with his hands like maybe he could dry the tears before they fell.
Crystal hiccuped around a sound that might have been a sob or a laugh, even she wasn’t sure. She threw her arms around both of their necks, drawing Charles and Edwin into a group hug. The bracketed her sides and the flowers crinkled against their backs. She felt their arms settle around her waist, their heads tilted against her own.
Summary: Crystal, Edwin, and Charles attend a party and then promptly shut the whole thing down.
It started like this: a middle aged woman stopped Crystal in the street as she exited an ice cream shop.
"Crystal?" she asked, looking surprised. She was well dressed with funky glasses, flowy green dress, and salt and pepper hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun that looked too coiffed to actually be careless. "Not Crystal Palace Surname Von Hoverkraft?" she asked, her face struggling toward pleasant but not quite getting there.
"Actually, I just go by Crystal Palace now," Crystal responded hesitantly, shooting a look at Edwin and Charles over the woman's shoulder. She wasn't used to being recognized on the street, but she supposed she was back in London and in a nicer neighborhood. It wasn't out of the question that people from her old life might recognize her.
"Oh, of course," the woman said with a crinkle to her brow. "I suppose your full name is a bit of a mouthful," she laughed.
Crystal didn't laugh with her. She glanced at Edwin and Charles again. Edwin was looking exasperated and impatient, while Charles looked curious but patient. She gave Edwin a small shrug. What was she supposed to do, just shrug the woman off and keep walking?
The woman glanced over her shoulder to where Crystal was looking and the crease between her brows grew deeper.
"I'm sorry, I thought you were talking to someone earlier?" the woman asked. Her smile was fixed on her face in a way that Crystal didn't like and her hand was still on her elbow.
"Uh, no?" Crystal said uncertainly. A second after her eyes darted to Charles and Edwin she realized her mistake. But, it was too late. The woman's eyebrows raised and she too glanced back to the boys, but obviously didn't see them.
Edwin rolled his eyes so hard his whole head rolled with them and started to walk away. Charles snickered and hopped after him, heading toward the subway.
"Sorry, I've really got to go," Crystal said, trying to delicately step around the woman, but her hand clenched down hard on Crystal's jacket.
"Do you recall your fifth birthday?" the woman asked frantically. Her eyes were wide, the whites showing all the way around her dishwater gray eyes. "Do you remember you told me you saw my husband?"
Her heart pounding in her chest, Crystal shook the woman off and took two quick steps back. "Sorry," she gasped, "Sorry I've got to go."
Crystal hustled away as the woman called after her "Nice seeing you, Crystal! Tell your mom I said hi!"
---
Or, maybe it started like this: a text from Crystal's mother saying she was invited to go to a party with her.
"Can you believe it?" Crystal smiled, looking down at her phone screen. "It's just so out of the blue!"
Charles' pointy chin hooked over Crystal's shoulder as he read the text message chain along with her. Crystal had read and reread the messages so many times, but she couldn't get enough. Her mom! Wanted to hang out! With her!
"She's not really inviting you here, though," Charles said uncertainly, frowning down at the phone screen. "She says here you have to go."
Crystal yanked the phone screen away from Charles with a thunderous frown. "She can be a little abrupt, but that's just my mom. It doesn't mean anything," Crystal said.
Charles frowned harder and opened his mouth to say something else, but Edwin cut him off.
"Of course," he said curtly. "You would know her best, Crystal. We trust your judgment," he said with a pointed look at Charles. "It's wonderful that you are reconnecting with your mother."
Charles frown lessened, but didn't disappear completely. "Yeah," he said slowly. "We're happy for you, Crystal."
---
No, how it really started was this: Crystal in the back of a cab sitting between Edwin and Charles on their way to an event at a haunted manor north of London.
"I still don't understand why we have to tag along," Edwin sniffed from Crystal's right. The cab that was driving the three of them trundled slowly down narrow country lanes, making all three of them sway side to side together. Crystal had airpods pressed into her ears and her phone out in her hand to at least attempt to make it look like she wasn't talking to herself in the back of the cab.
"Because, I'm nervous, okay?" Crystal snapped. That was the third time Edwin had complained about tagging along since they got into the car well over an hour ago. "My mom never asks me to come along to any of her stuff, but she asked me to come to this," Crystal continued miserably, her anger disappearing in a puff as soon as she let it out. "What if I mess up and she never asks me again?"
The phantom sensation of an arm settling over her shoulders gave her a little bit of comfort. "Hey, that's not going to happen, all right?"
Crystal could feel Charles giving Edwin a look over her head, but it still felt good to hear him agree with Charles. "Of course. You're a lovely young woman and your mother will be happy to spend time with you."
Unfortunately, Edwin was not a very good liar, especially for those who knew him well. She appreciated him trying, though. It wasn't like it was outside the realm of possibility that this could be the beginning of a renewed relationship with her mother. But, she suspected that she and Edwin shared a certain kind of pessimism that made even entertaining the thought feel frivolous.
Crystal looked up into Edwin's face, which was carefully folded into a kind and encouraging expression. The kindness was real, she could tell from the way his eyebrows tilted up and his eyes crinkled a little at the corners. But, the smile was fake. She could tell he wanted to frown in concern. Not that she could blame him. She did too.
The manor, when they reached it, was a huge stately building that was in need of some repair. But, it was still impressive, despite the cracks in the stone and the sagging of the doorways. The garden huge and lush, the drive curving around an old dry fountain with a praying angel in the center, wings spread wide, with huge red painted double doors set at the top of three curving marble steps. It was like something out of a regency romance novel.
Except that the circular drive was packed with posh high end cars parked every which way in the grass and on the gravel drive, so that the cab had to drop her off a ways off or risk getting trapped in the chaos. Crystal immediately regretted wearing sleek black stilettos as she struggled to toddle her way across the gravel on the balls of her feet. Holding onto Charles' and Edwin's hands helped, but once they got closer to the entrance and the slow moving knot of people moving inside she had to make her way on her own or risk embarrassing her mother in front of all her friends.
Inside, the manor was much more richly decorated. It was the height of summer, but it seemed like whoever designed the event had something Halloween adjacent in mind. There was glittering black velvet drapes everywhere along with sparkling purple spiders hanging from gossamer webs, waiters walking through the crowds were carrying trays with shots bubbling with dry ice and atmospheric music piped through the dark wooden halls. It sort of clashed with the warm air and orange summer sunlight cascading through the tall windows, but whoever had set it up obviously was making a big effort to stick to a theme.
Crystal looked around the foyer for her mother, scanning heads and faces with the help of the little bit of height her ridiculous shoes gave her. She could feel Charles and Edwin hovering at each of her shoulders, which certainly helped her to straighten her back and focus. She could do this.
Her mom had left directly from the gallery. She was busy, obviously. She was always busy. But, she would definitely be at the party and Crystal was at the party now too and that was all she needed.
She started to weave through the party goers, her eyes on the lookout for her mom's distinctive hairstyle, her tall willowy body shape, her intelligent (and judgmental) eyes that Crystal knew as well as her own face. It didn't take long to find her.
In what was probably a ballroom in the manor's heyday, her mom was trapped talking to a woman who looked vaguely familiar. The tense smile and crinkled brow were a combination Crystal remembered from a lot of stiff adult parties she was dragged to as a little kid. Obviously her mom needed a rescue and Crystal was ecstatic to provide it.
"Mom!" she exclaimed, stepping up to the two older women with a wide smile. She didn't even have to fake the smile, she was so happy to have found her mother in the press of strangers. She felt more than saw Edwin and Charles hang back a little, but they didn't go far. When she glanced over, both Edwin and Charles were bent over Charles' hands, looking at them like they were the most fascinating thing in the world. The urge to hiss at them to knock it off was strong, but Crystal swallowed it down at the last moment.
"Crystal! So glad you made it!" her mom enthused, a little stiff but sounding sincere enough. She pulled Crystal in and kissed the air by each of her cheeks while Crystal did the same. If she noticed Crystal glance at the empty space behind and to her right she didn't mention it.
As she pulled away, her mom turned to the other woman she had been talking to. "You remember Kat Runnover? She's been so excited to see you," her mom enthused.
As Crystal turned to her, she suddenly remembered where she had seen her before. The woman who had accosted her outside the ice cream shop stood before her, now dressed in a tasteful black cocktail dress, martini glass in hand, her eyes wide and wet and shining as she pressed the pads of her fingers to her mouth.
"Oh, Crystal! It's so good to see you again! I'm so glad you could make it," Kat warbled before pulling a frozen Crystal into a hug. Her perfume was strong, but didn't quite mask the scent of her hairspray. Crystal hesitantly patted the other woman on the back.
"Now that you're here, we can finally start the party! Just a moment I have something I have to set up. Be right back," she sang, waving with the fingers still clutching the stem of her glass before dodging through the crowd toward the back of the room.
The second the woman was gone, Crystal turned back to her mother. Gone was the warm socialite smile. Instead her mother looked tired and cranky, her eyes roving over Crystal's dress and heels and hair, her mouth twisting into a moue of distaste.
"It certainly took you long enough to get here. Did you walk all the way from London?" he mother snarked, snatching a cocktail from a wandering waiter and almost downing the whole thing in one swallow.
"There was a lot of traffic," Crystal said awkwardly. She tried to pull down the hem of her skirt, but there wasn't a lot of give to the fabric. She felt incredibly self-conscious under her mother's gaze and already resented that she had made her feel that way. "Kat, huh?"
Her mother scoffed. "Poor Kat. She's never been the same since Stephen died. This is another one of her awful death day celebrations. They just get more unhinged every year." Crystal's mother stopped and gave her another assessing look. "She asked for you specifically, but wouldn't say why. Did you do something?"
"Just stumbled into her outside an ice cream shop. I didn't recognize her, but she recognized me," Crystal said with a shrug.
Her mother sighed heavily and knocked back the last swallow of her cocktail. "I guess it would be hard for her to forget you. After that whole fiasco back then."
Crystal frowned and forced herself not to fidget. She saw the flash of Charles' red polo in the corner of her eye moving closer, but forced herself not to react. Even if it wasn't warm and fuzzy, this was more words than she'd heard from her mother in the last month combined.
"What fiasco?" Crystal asked.
Her mother raised an incredulous eyebrow. "You really don't remember? At your fifth birthday party, you insisted that you could see her husband right behind her. Sent the poor woman into hysterics," she said with a curl of her lip.
Crystal winced. She did vaguely remember that, now that her mother brought it up. It had often been cited as the reason why her parents didn't celebrate her birthday, even if it had long ago become clear to her that holding the actions of a five year old against her was more than a little unfair. She hadn't realized the woman from the memories was Kat, though.
"I haven't seen any other ghosts here. At least the poor man has moved on," Edwin's voice came from just behind Crystal's left shoulder.
"Wow, even as a toddler Crystal was psychic," Charles chuckled from her right side.
Crystal wasn't sure what her face was doing, but was extremely thankful when someone tapped on a microphone, effectively distracting her mother from frowning at her face.
Kat had stood up on a low table and addressed the crowd, thanking them all for coming. Crystal tried to push her emotions down and watch dutifully, but it was hard when the boys were still talking in her ear.
"We do have a bit of a situation, Crystal," Edwin said stiffly, stepping up to her side so that she could see him clearly out of the corner of her eye. He was rubbing his hands together in an unusual gesture for him.
"Not sure who set it up, but this room must be enchanted," Charles contributed. "Seems like we're corporeal, while we're here," he explained, snapping his fingers and startling a few people who unfairly shot Crystal a dirty look. She shrugged apologetically and then shot Charles a dirty look once they had turned back around.
Kat had moved on to talking about death and her love for her husband, but Crystal was barely listening by that point.
Covering her mouth with her hand, she whispered, "What do you mean you're corporeal? Can people see you?"
"Not as such," Edwin sniffed. "But, they can feel us, we take up space, and we have weight, so long as we are under the effects of the spell."
"Why would someone put an enchantment like that on this room?" Crystal hissed.
"Crystal, hush!" her mother said from the corner of her mouth.
"Maybe someone set it up and then forgot about it?" Charles suggested.
"Or perhaps our host is about to do something ill advised..." Edwin said slowly, frowning at the front of the room where Kat was still talking, but much more emotionally now.
"I believe that the dead walk among us right now!" Kat was shouting into the microphone, mascara running down her cheeks with her tears. "I believe that with the right tools, with the right help from the right people," she smiled wetly right at Crystal, "we can finally see what's been right beside us all along."
"Oh, god," Crystal's mother groaned.
A second later, there was a mechanical thunk, and then hundreds of little fabric balls were hurtling down from the ceiling onto the crowd of people below. As they landed softly on hair and shoulders and backs, they exploded into clouds of bright primary colors, puffs of vibrant shades covering all the tastefully neutral colors of the crowd.
People started shouting right away, complaining about their designer clothing and their hundred dollar hair styles, literally shouting their fists at Kat who still stood on the table, her eyes desperately scanning the crowd.
And then people were screaming in a very different way.
"Oh, bugger," Charles grumbled, looking down at himself.
People started falling over themselves to get away from Charles and Edwin. Both of them were absolutely covered in paint, the colors clinging to them in a way that looked normal to Crystal but probably looked like something out of the Invisible Man to everyone else in the room.
Crystal was nearly bowled over at least three times as people rushed to get away from Charles and Edwin who stood placidly in the center of the room. Crystal fought against the pull of the crowd until she was able to break through and back into the empty space around them. When she turned back toward the doors, it was to see only the backs of dozens of people as they shoved at each other to escape. She couldn't see her mother anywhere.
"Really, this is quite childish," Edwin sighed, trying to brush a splash of bright red paint off of his sleeve and only succeeding in smearing the color around more.
Kat was screaming from somewhere in the house. Crystal thought she might have seen some muscular guys in off the rack suits tackle her out of the room once everyone started stampeding, but she wasn't sure. Everything had happened so fast once the screaming started.
Looking out the tall windows, she could see scores of people sprinting for the mess of cars in the circular driveway. The people who were already in their cars were laying on their horns and bumping into each other in their haste to escape.
"I don't know, mate. I think you look good in red," Charles said. Crystal turned just in time to see him wink at Edwin. Edwin scoffed in return, but looked pleased nonetheless.
"Well," Crystal said. She threw her arms out in an exaggerated shrug and then lets them slap back to her sides. "So much for mother daughter bonding."
"There will be other chances," Charles said, his expressive eyebrows folding in sympathy.
"I'm quite sorry, Crystal. Perhaps we should not have come along, after all," Edwin said quietly, his eyes looking old and tired in a way that was familiar, but that Crystal hated to see.
Crystal huffed a breath out her nose. She tried to imagine coming to the party by herself, riding in the cab by herself, talking to her mother without backup, inevitably going home to an empty flat all by herself. Maybe if Charles and Edwin hadn't come along she could have spent an interminable evening being stiff and unhappy beside her mother at the party, but somehow the prospect didn't seem more appealing than being covered in paint in an empty Manor with her two favorite dead boys.
"Nah," Crystal said with a lopsided smile. She leaned over and picked up one of the little fabric balls off the floor. It felt like a hacky sack in her hand, but was powdery with pale blue paint. "And miss you covered in paint? No way."
With a hard throw, Crystal nailed Edwin right in the chest with the ball and it exploded all over him in a pale blue cloud.
"Crystal!" he shouted, scandalized.
Charles was cackling, already loading his arms with a dozen discarded paint balls. "Yes, Crystal! That's my girl!" he laughed, whipping a bright yellow ball at her head and covering her in paint while she squealed.
And, maybe this is how this story ends: with three teenagers in various stages of life and death laughing in an empty house. With their laugher and playing spilling out of the house and onto the lawn until the paint balls finally run out of paint and they lay panting in the grass, covered in all the colors of the rainbow. And maybe the boys can drop their corporeal aspect and let the paint fall off them like a slowly dissolving paint palette while the girl has to find a shallow stream to wash the worst of it off. And maybe later they go back to the boys' office and sit in a circle on the floor and play board games until the sun comes up and the girl is snoring on their small worn love seat.
And, maybe it's a happy ending after all is said and done.
Summary: Edwin agrees to go to a Halloween party with Charles. When they both start drinking enchanted alcohol, things get out of hand.
AN: Written for Dead Boy Ween, Day 11, prompt: Halloween.
Somehow these fills keep getting longer and longer. This is another one that I would be open to writing a sequel to, if there's interest in it. It ends on sort of an ambiguous sad note.
“The two of you are going to a house party? On Halloween?” Crystal asked incredulously.
“What, you think we can’t fit in at a house party?” Charles asked, sincerely puzzled.
“You, I understand. It’s Edwin that I can’t picture partying, let alone somewhere as informal as someone’s house,” she said with a pointed look at Edwin. He was seated behind the desk, occasionally moving papers from one pile to another in a transparent attempt to look uninterested in the conversation.
“It is not my preferred activity for revelry,” Edwin said, dry as the desert.
“Do you have a preferred ‘activity for revelry’?” Crystal asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I think it’s wonderful,” Niko interrupted them to add. “It’s like an iconic teenager experience. I’m happy for you guys.”
Edwin frowned faintly in Niko’s direction, but held his tongue like Charles expected. Edwin was incapable of saying anything even vaguely not nice to Niko.
“Thanks, Niko,” Charles grinned, throwing himself onto the couch, even though there was definitely not room for him on the tiny loveseat. He ended up mostly sprawled across the girls’ laps, Crystal groaning and slapping his arms away and Niko humming happily and resting her bubble tea on his stomach.
“We’ve had a standing invitation for years, but this one,” Charles gestured at Edwin, who huffed and put his nose in the air, “has never been open to going.”
“Oh? Why the sudden change?” Crystal asked Edwin, her tone a little arch but mostly curious.
Edwin sighed and fiddled with the papers again. “No particular reason,” he mumbled, unusual for him but maybe he disliked all the attention.
Charles didn’t want Edwin to get self-conscious about agreeing to go to the party and change his mind, so he quickly changed the subject. “It’s like the biggest ghost event of the year! It’s super fun.”
“I didn’t realize ghosts had a social calendar,” Crystal said with a raised eyebrow.
“There are certain days of the year when spectral energy waxes and the veil that separates the living and the dead thin,” Edwin explained in what Charles thought of as his professor voice. If he was professor-ing at them, then Charles’ distraction must have worked, and he was back to feeling comfortable. “Both Samhain and Beltane mark days when the balance between light and dark, summer and winter, are perfectly balanced. This makes them ideal days for rituals regarding the dead.”
“He means that Aleister Crowley enchants a whole house every year and throws a crazy rager in it where ghosts can actually interact with the living and get drunk and all that,” Charles adds with a grin to the two girls.
“I suppose, if you want to be crass, you could explain it like that,” Edwin said crossly.
“Aleister Crowley is a ghost?” Crystal asked with big eyes “A ghost that throws Halloween parties?” she added, sounding even more surprised.
“He’s completely off his chump,” Edwin snapped, “A fake in all but the most rudimentary of magicks,” he added with a curl of his lip.
“We don’t like him, as a rule,” Charles said with an apologetic look at Edwin. Edwin was too busy scowling down at the surface of the desk to notice. “He called Edwin a, uh, what was it, a poodle something?”
“Poodle-faker,” Edwin spit, then winced, like just saying the word left a bad taste in his mouth.
“Yeah, that,” Charles sighed.
“I’m sorry, but what does that mean? Poodle-faker? Off his chump?” Niko asked quietly.
Edwin made a face like he’d rather chew on a shoe than explain what those words meant, so Charles quickly answered, “Off his chump is like, he’s totally nuts, off his rocker like. Poodle-faker is like an old timey insult that means you hang out with women too much,” Charles added that last explanation carefully, hoping that his tone got across how stupid of an insult he thought it was. He didn’t totally understand what it meant or why that was an insult, but he knew that Edwin had been in a properly awful state for days after that casual insult, so it must have meant a lot to him.
“So, he’s a monumental dick,” Crystal said dryly.
“Yes,” Edwin agreed enthusiastically.
“Why do you want to go to a party thrown by someone who’s a monumental dick?” Niko asked as sincerely as she asked every other question that ever escaped her perfect pink lips.
“Because I’ll be there to kick his spectral ass,” Crystal said with a grin that showed the sharp points of her teeth.
“No way!” Charles exclaimed, sitting up fast enough that Niko’s tea almost spilled, though her quick reflexes saved it from toppling off of Charles’ stomach and all over the girls’ laps. “You guys can’t come,” he said frantically.
“Why not?” Crystal asked, her eyebrows communicating that she was two seconds away from wanting to fight him about it.
“Because any party thrown by Aleister Crowley is a dangerous place for the living to be,” Edwin said darkly, giving Crystal a severe look. “He has no respect for anyone, but he especially does not respect the living. Or women,” he added with a troubled frown.
“Ew,” Niko said quietly before sucking her drink loudly through her straw.
“We can all go to Miss Ava Gardner’s party on Beltane,” Edwin said with a nod, like it was already decided. “She is a consummate host and a lovely woman. You’ll be safe as houses there.”
That set them off on a completely different tangent, with Crystal and Niko asking Edwin and Charles how many dead movie stars they knew and how many lived in London and what Crystal and Niko could possibly do to earn a polite introduction.
They never quite circled back to why exactly Edwin wanted to go to Crowley’s Halloween party. Charles was happy that Edwin wanted to go, he had been trying to get him to agree to go for literal decades after all, but the lack of explanation was concerning. Crowley was shite, but the party was fun and it was a huge get together for all of undead London. Charles had been a ton of times, though it was a lot less fun without Edwin there.
Charles tried to push his concerns down. Edwin had agreed to go. Charles didn’t have to be let in on every little twist and turn of his best friend’s thoughts, he could just be happy that they were together.
---
The night of the party, Charles was a mess of nerves. Edwin seemed nervous as well, though Charles expected that had more to do with his anxiety over running into the host and less to do with the party itself. Charles got the impression that Edwin had never been comfortable around people when he was alive, based on the stories that Edwin told. But, Charles had never seen Edwin act anything other than confident and self-possessed in person. Still, Charles wanted the night to go well so badly that he could almost feel his stomach doing flips below his ribcage.
The girls had decided to aggressively have fun without them. They were both decked out in beautiful creative costumes. Charles definitely appreciated all the bare skin and glitter and makeup and Edwin seemed to be fascinated with the pageantry of it all.
Crystal was dressed in huge curling demon horns, red glitter, and a series of sinfully suggestive black leather body harnesses under a tiny halter top and distressed shorts and huge platform boots that looked like they were built with curb stomping as the one and only activity in mind. Niko looked like a dream in pastels and holographic fabric, every movement she made shining and glittering back in prismatic halos of color.
“I’m an angel alien. I think,” she said, adjusting a headband with pink pompoms on bouncing springs on top of her head. The pompoms bounced cutely every time she moved.
Charles barked out a laugh. “Hell yeah you are,” he agreed with a grin.
Edwin curiously fingered her plastic holographic skirt, watching the play of the warm orange light of the office lamps play across it. “You look enchanting. I can barely bring myself to look away from you,” Edwin said with a smile that Niko shyly returned.
“Am I enchanting?” Crystal asked with a teasing smile.
“You’re terrifying,” Edwin said, straightening from examining Niko’s outfit and trying to suppress of a smile of his own.
“And hot,” Charles added with a wink.
“Perfect,” Crystal declared, “Just as I intended.” She flicked a curl over her shoulder while Niko giggled.
Not much later, they were all off. The girls had an impressive itinerary of clubs and bars and parties planned out, but the boys had only one location in mind.
Every year Crowley’s Halloween party was held in a different location. That year it was being held in the Ragged School turned museum down in the East End.
By the time that Charles and Edwin got there, just as the sun set below the skyline, ghosts from all over the city were flowing into the building. The lights were on inside, making every old broken down window shine out into the near darkness of the crisp autumn night like a beacon. Music poured out of the open front door, an odd mix of music from all manner of eras and time frames. The nearby canal gave the chill a humid tinge, making the air around them feel even colder than it really was.
“It feels morbid, doesn’t it?” Edwin asked, frowning up at the squat square facade of the school. It wasn’t grand or beautiful like some of the old buildings left behind from Edwin’s time. Charles thought he might have read somewhere that the building was a warehouse before it was converted into a school for the city’s poorest children sometime around the end of the 1800s.
“Suppose it’s just because we’re school boys, init?” Charles asked. The building did look a little ominous, even with the bright lights and music and all the ghosts slowly making their way inside.
“You ready?” Charles asked with a smile, thinking it was probably better to move inside rather than linger and wonder about times past.
Edwin took a deep breath and visibly straightened himself, his chin tilting up, his shoulders pulling back.
“As ready as I’ll ever be, I think,” he said doubtfully, despite his stiff posture.
“Brills,” Charles smiled. “Let’s head in.”
The inside of the Ragged School was absolutely packed with an eclectic mix of people both living and dead with the odd scattering of other kinds of supernatural creatures. The museum itself was pretty sparsely decorated, from what Charles could see through the press of the crowd. It definitely looked like a school, with glimpses of old wooden desks in big empty classrooms and a nice open staircase in the front hall with a polished wooden balustrade. It was obvious that the bits near the front entrance had all recently been repainted and polished up. Charles wondered if it would continue to look that way through the whole school.
Charles and Edwin didn’t have much of a chance to investigate, as they were quickly recognized by a knot of ghosts lingering near the front door.
“The Dead Boy Detectives themselves!” a pretty young man with curly hair and mutton chops said with a cheer.
“You’re both here!” a young woman with her dark hair shaved close to her head exclaimed in surprise. She was hanging from the neck of the young man who had spoken first, her dress so tiny that Charles would have blushed if he was able to.
“Are you on a case?” an older woman with a mischievous smile asked from their other side.
Charles recognized most of them from previous cases, though it was hard to remember while he was trying not to look at all the soft dark skin the young woman had on display. He thought that the guy with the mutton chops might have been haunted by a devil dog or something twenty years ago.
“Not tonight,” Edwin said shortly, nodding to them all.
“Yeah, just here for a bit of fun,” Charles said, winking at the older woman, even though it was the young couple who laughed.
“If you want to avoid Crowley, stick to the first floor,” the older woman said to Edwin with a knowing smile. “He thinks he’s holding court up there, but really he’s just making it easy for rest of us to avoid him.”
Edwin perked up a bit at that, some of the tension leeching out of his shoulders. “Thank you for the tip. I will do that.”
And then they were being buffeted through the crowd, bouncing from one group of ghosts to another. It was almost like a who’s who of spirits that the dead boys had helped or talked to or bargained with in the past thirty years. Everyone seemed happily surprised to see them and everyone was eager to talk. It was times like this that Charles was reminded of how deeply they had ingrained themselves into the supernatural tapestry of London.
Charles felt a little bit like he understood why girls fantasized about being the prettiest girl at the ball, because that night Charles certainly felt like one.
At some point, someone pressed a red solo cup into each of their hands. With a laugh, the ghost had explained, “It’s enchanted!” which made Edwin frown and Charles smile.
Edwin opened his mouth, probably to ask for the exact specifics of what kind of enchantment was on the cup, but Charles was already knocking it back.
It bubbled across his tongue in a familiar tang of sour and hops that Charles recognized from the bottles of bitter he and his friends used to sneak behind the school gymnasium after games. The taste of nostalgia was so strong it almost brought tears to his eyes. He had almost forgotten what it had tasted like, but that was it exactly.
“Charles,” Edwin sighed in exasperation. “Really. You should not drink things handed to you by a stranger.”
“I’m not a stranger,” the stranger said. “You boys saved my pet goldfish from a hungry selkie three years ago. I owe you one.”
“See?” Charles said, elbowing Edwin gently with what he knew as a cheeky smile. “He’s an past client. We can trust him. Try it!”
Edwin looked doubtfully at the liquid in the cup. It looked like nothing more spectacular than tap water, but Charles knew that it wouldn’t taste like it.
After taking a bracing breath, Edwin tipped the cup up and took a sizable swallow. When he brought the cup back down, his eyebrows were raised in surprise.
“Oh,” he said faintly. “That tastes just like the wine tonic my mother used to make me take as a child.” He turned to Charles in surprise.
“To me, it tastes like the beer me and my pals used to sneak after school,” Charles said.
“And to me, it tastes like Jack Daniels and tears,” the strange man said mournfully. “Cheers, boys. Enjoy the party,” he said and then wandered off, sipping from his own red solo cup.
The party got noticeably more blurry after that.
Charles and Edwin kept their cups in hand and kept drinking from them. No matter how much they drank, the cups never seemed to empty, so they never had to wonder where they could get more and didn’t keep much track of how much they had drank. At least, Charles certainly didn’t. He couldn’t speak for Edwin, but it felt like he was keeping pace with Charles.
Edwin had stuck close to Charles since they entered the party, but the drunker they got, the closer they became. First, they started leaning on each other, then Edwin looped Charles’ hand around his elbow when he started stumbling, until eventually they were mutually clinging to each others’ arms to stay upright.
The happiness that Charles had felt when they first entered the party just kept building. He felt warm and comfortable, even more so when his own enjoyment was mirrored in Edwin’s face. Everyone was so happy to see them, they laughed when the boys stumbled and helped right them again, pretty men and women kept touching Charles’ sleeve hair and older women carefully fixed Edwin’s hair or righted his bow tie.
Charles felt like he was on top of the world. So, when he heard one of his favorite songs come on over the speakers set throughout the house, he didn’t hesitate.
“Come dance with me!” Charles insisted, already dragging Edwin into the middle of a nearby classroom that had been repurposed into a dance floor. The desks had all been pushed into the wall, a small knot of people already swaying in the center.
Edwin stumbled, his hair falling over his forehead for the thousandth time that night.
“Charles,” he mumbled, “I can’t dance.”
“It’s okay. It’s not that kind of song,” Charles assured him, pulling him into the knot of other dancers.
England Belongs to Me by Cock Sparrer was blaring over the speakers and people were jumping and banging their heads, but Charles wasn’t paying attention to anyone but Edwin. Edwin looked uncertain and ungainly, his long legs becoming so much less certain as they both became more and more drunk. But, his eyes were stuck on Charles, watching him, waiting for him, and it made Charles feel like he was at the center of the universe.
“It’s easy!” Charles shouted over the music. “Just bounce up and down!” Charles said, grabbing both of Edwin’s hands in his and popping up and down on the balls of his feet to the rhythm of the music.
Edwin tried to follow his instructions, but he looked self conscious. He squeezed Charles’ hands in his and looked down at their shoes which was just not the thing, was it? Charles let go of Edwin’s hands after the second verse and instead wrapped his arms around his waist and pulled him close.
“Just move with me,” Charles said with a grin and a squeeze. Edwin still looked completely lost, but now he also looked a little flustered which was perfect in Charles’ opinion. Charles kept bouncing, but now he also swayed side to side. After only briefly hesitating, Edwin put his arms around Charles shoulders and let him move him.
And then the song changes and Pure by The Lightning Seeds came on. The crowd around them was laughing and dissolving and then coming back together as new people took to the floor. Charles and Edwin stayed where they were, swaying, pressed together.
Charles looked into Edwin’s eyes and they were so intense and pretty in that moment. Edwin was a pretty boy, Charles thought, in a different way that people sometimes called Charles a pretty boy. People called Charles pretty because he had an earring and he styled his hair. Charles thought Edwin would look pretty no matter what he wore or what he did with his hair.
They swayed together, looking into each other’s eyes for longer than either of them would have been capable of doing sober. Charles remembered the song that was playing, the way he used to listen to it on loop the month before he died. The guy who was on the cover of the cassette, Ian Broudie, was cute in a way that Charles hadn’t let himself think about back then. But, when he would lay on his bed and close his eyes he would imagine that the singer was there in his room with him, singing him a love song with soft lips and softer looking hair and big glasses that made him look sweet and inviting.
Before Charles noticed it, Edwin’s lips were on his, soft as the Charles back then had imagined the boy in the song’s might be, sweeter than any kiss he’d had before then.
Charles barely got a chance to kiss back, before Edwin was pulling away. His brow was crumpled and his eyes were afraid. Charles tought that Edwin shouldn’t look so afraid, especially not right after kissing him.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t,” Edwin swallowed and his throat clicked, his adam’s apple bobbed against his collar. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“I liked it,” Charles said. He heard the slur on his voice, so he repeated himself just in case. “I liked it,” he grinned and leaned in. “Do it again?”
Edwin met him halfway and they were kissing and swaying and music was playing. Someone whistled and clapped and Charles had enough thought to take a hand off of Edwin’s shoulder and point his middle finger in the general direction of the whistler to the raucous laughter of the crowd.
They kissed and danced and the music kept changing. It felt a bit like the room was spinning, but Edwin felt solid and perfect, so Charles just held onto him and kept kissing him until long after a living boy’s lips would have gone numb.
---
At some point, Charles and Edwin ended up on a couch.
“This does not seem historically accurate,” Edwin had muttered into the couch cushion, but by that point Charles was too invested in kissing every square centimeter of Edwin’s long beautiful throat to bother engaging in talk about Edwardian furniture.
“Perhaps you boys should get a room,” a feminine voice laughed from somewhere nearby. Long acrylic nails glided through Charles’ hair, scratching his scalp. “I think you’re scandalizing some of the geezers.”
“Don’t care. Fuck off,” Charles grumbled, waving a hand to banish the heavenly nails. Whoever she was, she laughed and removed her hand. Charles fumbled around until he found Edwin’s hand on his waist and slapped it onto his head instead. Edwin seemed to get the message and started scratching his short nails through Charles’ hair.
Edwin was laid out on a hideous plaid couch, his long limbs splayed out, his bow tie long gone, his shirt unbuttoned. His hair was a mess and his lips were wet with Charles’ spit. Charles had no idea how they had gotten to the couch or even a vague idea of where they were in the building, but he was glad to whatever drunken stumble or nice friend had gotten them there. They must have been at the edge of the party. There were a few people talking or necking in the room with them, but it was a lot wherever they were than it had been earlier.
Charles was cradled in the basket of Edwin’s legs, his strong thighs squeezing Charles’ hips every time he did something especially clever with his mouth. Somewhere in the back of Charles addled brain he knew he was hard and that Edwin was hard and that he had been rocking himself into Edwin for however long it had been that they’d been making out.
A small voice was starting to panic somewhere in the soupy mess of his brain. Edwin loved him. Charles had told Edwin that he didn’t love him like that. And now Charles was grinding Edwin into a dusty couch in the back of a house party while they were both drunk off their asses. That was not a respectful way to treat a friend.
Charles reached over the edge of the couch and grabbed his solo cup, tipping a huge swallow down his throat. His thoughts became pleasantly unfocused again.
Pushing himself up Edwin’s body in an indecent drag, Charles mouthed at Edwin’s ear. “You feel so good,” he groaned, thrusting down hard. Edwin gasped and moaned, thrusting up to meet Charles, the hand not buried in Charles’ hair reaching down to grab Charles’ ass and pull him against him harder.
“Oh-kay. Everyone out,” the woman’s voice from before called out through the room.
There was grumbling and laughing as ghosts and creatures started to slowly trickle out of the little back room.
“Who gave them solo cups?” someone asked in exasperation as they walked by. “They’re practically babies.”
“Jerry,” someone said with a snort.
“Jerry!” a number of people chorused their discontent with poor Jerry, but Charles didn’t want to hear that. He didn’t want to think about the cup, he just needed every thought that wasn’t about Edwin and how to make him make that sound again to go away.
Charles reached over and fumbled for his cup again, almost knocking it over. He tipped it back, his throat working to swallow and swallow and swallow until his stomach rebelled at the thought of swallowing more. Then, he passed the cup to Edwin, who wobbled his way up onto his elbows so that he could do the same.
Whatever happened after that was indistinct. Charles remembered more moaning, from both of them but especially from Edwin. He remembered the taste of Edwin’s skin and the feel of his soft hair between his fingers. He remembered pleasure singing up and down his spine and burning low in his gut.
He remembered that they clung to each other afterward and whispered sweet words against each other’s lips and nuzzled together so tenderly. No one had ever touched Charles as gently as Edwin did, but Charles would never be able to remember the words they whispered to each other as they did so.
And, even though ghosts don’t sleep, something like it must have stolen over them eventually, because Charles couldn’t remember anything after that.
---
If Charles had felt like a princess during the party, he felt like the scum of the earth the next morning.
It didn’t seem fair for ghosts to be able to get hang overs, but Charles couldn’t come up with any other explanation for why his head was pounding like it was. Even when he was alive, he had never gotten a hangover before, but he supposed enchanted endless solo cups were probably stronger than the cheap beer that his mates would steal from their parents.
Charles pried his eyes open to blink at the sunlight bright room and saw Edwin blinking tiredly at him from about two inches away. Charles screeched, lurched backward, and fell painfully onto the dirty floor beside the couch.
“Charles?” Edwin asked sleepily, leaning over the side of the couch and looking at Charles with concern.
But, Charles couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t look at his pale throat still plainly visible against his open collar, or his mussed hair that had felt so soft between Charles’ fingers, or his frowning mouth that had gasped and moaned just the night before.
“I know what he sounds like when he cums,” Charles thought wildly, before shooting to his feet in a burst of adrenaline as that thought seared itself into the inside of his skull, something he could never unthink or undo or bury.
“Are you alright?” Edwin asked, looking distinctly more concerned.
“Yeah! Brills! Perfect!” Charles shouted, his voice strangled and awful even to his own ears. Edwin’s face was folding into a more severe frown. Charles had to do something to salvage the situation. “My head is killing me, though. Can’t remember a thing about last night,” Charles laughed, wincing and pressing a hand to his forehead. Luckily, his head was actually killing him, so he didn’t even have to pretend to wince.
Edwin’s face went startlingly blank, the frown and the furrowed brow dropping off like they’d never been there. Charles held his breath and felt like the world did too.
After what felt like an eternity, Edwin faintly said. “Yes. Me too.” He looked away and swallowed and very briefly a pained look flitted across his face that cut Charles to the quick.
“No no no,” Charles thought. “That was wrong. That was the wrong answer! Fuck!”
Edwin sighed and began doing up the buttons of his shirt in sharp yanks and twists of his elegant fingers. “You really should listen to me, Charles. I told you it was foolish to accept mysterious drinks from strangers. Now we might as well have not come to the party at all.”
“Ah, well. I mean. It wasn’t that bad,” Charles stumbled. His heart was pounding in his chest and Edwin wasn’t looking at him. “It was a lot of fun before we started drinking, yeah?”
Edwin ignored him, running a hand through his hair to try and neaten it, though the effort was wasted. His hair was too mussed to be fixed by a little bit of finger combing.
Climbing to his feet, Edwin began to pull his clothing straight. But, it still looked rumpled, even to Charles’ untrained eye. He wondered why Edwin didn’t just imagine his clothing neatened like he usually did. He wondered if Edwin was as flustered as he was.
“We ought to be getting back to the office. The girls are likely wondering where we are,” Edwin said stiffly, opening the old wooden door out to the corridor and striding out. The school looked different in the daylight. The glass was old and dirty in the unfinished part of the museum, making the early autumn light look strange and anemic on the peeling paint and scuffed wood.
“Wait, Edwin,” Charles hurried after him, but Edwin didn’t slow down. His long legs ate up the distance down the corridor toward the general direction of the front hall. “I said wait!” Charles grabbed Edwin’s wrist.
Edwin stopped suddenly, twisting his head to the side to pin Charles with a venomous look.
“Do you have something you want to talk about, Charles?” he snapped.
Charles felt pinned to the spot, like Edwin had pinned him to a piece of corkboard like a bug. “Well,” Charles mumbled. He hesitated. He knew what he should say. He knew he should come clean and admit that he did remember what had happened, but there was a rock in his stomach and his tongue felt too numb to get the words out. “Well, no, I guess-”
“If you have nothing to say to me, then let’s get on with business as usual. Shall we?” Edwin asked.
He looked brittle in that moment, like he had spun himself up a facade made of glass and if Charles so much as touched him the wrong way he would shatter. Charles had done that to him, to his best friend in the world.
Charles let go of Edwin’s wrist. He felt small and pathetic and that he likely deserved much worse than Edwin snapping at him.
“Yeah. Okay,” Charles croaked.
Edwin looked at him for a long time, but eventually he nodded and turned back around. He started walking again, this time at a more reasonable pace. Charles walked just a step behind him and tried to force down all the feelings swelling up in his chest with nowhere to go.
He would follow Edwin and protect him and be his best friend as well as he could, Charles decided. That was all he could do.
Summary: Charles and Edwin tap into their worst emotions to disguise themselves as vengeful ghosts. Certainly, nothing could go wrong.
“If the wanker is collecting vengeful ghosts, why don’t we disguise ourselves as vengeful ghosts to lure him in?”
As bad ideas go, Charles was king. He knew that, Edwin knew that, even Crystal knew that after only knowing him for a short period of time. But, even he could admit with time and the power of hindsight, that this was probably one of his worst ideas to date.
“Charles, that might be one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard,” Edwin said crossly from where he was seated behind the big solid oak desk.
“Okay, hold on, slow your roll,” Crystal said, holding a hand up to forestall the rest of what Edwin was about to say. “None of us have any better ideas, so let’s just hear him out, okay?” she gave Edwin a warning look which he returned with a scathing eye roll, but Charles ignored that. That was baby level Crystal/Edwin bickering. He could ignore that in his sleep. If he did sleep, which he didn’t, seeing as he was dead and all.
“Right, okay,” Charles said, rubbing his hands together. It was his time to shine, both of his favorite people had their eyes focused on him, and he was ready to impress them both. “Like I said, this arsehole wants vengeful ghosts? Why don’t we give him some to hunt? You can plant some rumors about poltergeist activity online, Crystal. We know which message boards he’s been watching. And then I can disguise myself as a vengeful ghost to lure him in and then bam! We’ve caught him!”
Charles looked between the two of them with a grin. Edwin was wrinkling his nose like he smelled something bad, which was funny because neither of them had much sense of smell anymore and Crystal was rubbing a hand over her eyes. Maybe she had a headache. Charles thought he should probably try to get her to drink less coffee. Maybe she’d be open to switching to chai.
“Charles,” Edwin said slowly. “There is one very large flaw in your plan.”
“Just one?” Crystal sighs, taking her hands off her eyes so she could look at the ceiling.
“There is no way we can disguise ourselves as vengeful ghosts. If the sorcerer comes to our location and can’t feel a restless undead, they will leave,” Edwin continued, ignoring Crystal. “Also, why are you the bait in this scenario?” Edwin asked sounding significantly more stressed over that.
“Sure, we can!” Charles responded, ignoring that last bit. It seemed pretty obvious to him why he needed to be the bait. It wasn’t like he was going to let Edwin be the bait, that was just mental. “I just, you know, let myself get a little in my head, feel a little bit vengeful and tada! To the uninitiated I’ll look just like a vengeful ghost,” Charles finished with what he felt was his most winning smile, the one that made the corners of his eyes crinkle up in a way that Crystal had once assured him was ‘sinful’.
The silence that hung in the office after his explanation was long and loaded enough that Charles eventually let the grin drop and instead put his hands on his hips to glare back and forth between Edwin and Crystal.
“‘Feel a little bit vengeful’…” Crystal repeated, her voice dripping with derision.
“Charles, what-? No!” Edwin shouted, shaken out of whatever stunned stupor he had been stuck in by Crystal’s voice. “You can’t just-” Edwin’s long elegant hands flailed in front of his chest for a moment before finally digging into his carefully coiffed hair, sending all the strands astray. Charles wasn’t sure he had ever seen Edwin react like that before. He felt a little accomplished. It was hard to get a new reaction out of someone you’ve known for thirty-eight years.
Edwin took a deep breath and put his hands down flat on the surface of the desk. His hair was still sticking up in all directions. Charles suppressed a smile at the sight of Edwin so rumpled, but it was hard.
“Charles, you cannot just,” Edwin’s face spasmed a little and then he pulled himself back under control, “think yourself into becoming a vengeful ghost. It does not work like that.”
“I mean. It does a bit, doesn’t it?” Charles asked with a frown.
“No. It does not,” Edwin said with a much bigger frown.
“You’re telling me you’ve never gotten really mad or really sad and gone a little…” Charles grimaced and tilted his hand side to side, not sure what word would best describe the feeling of his physical form getting away from him a bit, like the floor going soft beneath his feet and his bones turning syrupy in his flesh.
“No,” Edwin bites out. “And even if I did, I would certainly never try to feel that way on purpose,” Edwin said acidly.
“It’s for the case, Eds!” Charles exclaimed. “It’s not like I’m saying we should make it our new hobby!”
---
In the end, no one could come up with a plan that was better than “become a vengeful ghost for like an hours tops and trick an evil sorcerer into coming to us”. There was a lot of shouting and arguing and by the end, Edwin’s hair was so crazy that he looked like he had put his finger in a light socket, but ultimately Charles’ very bad no good idea had carried the day.
The final plan looked something like this:
Crystal leaves rumors about a nearby abandoned hospital being haunted by a vengeful spirit that only appears at very specific times all over the web
They booby trap the hospital ahead of time with various hidden wards and barriers that they can lead the sorcerer into
Crystal, Charles, Edwin and a mirror travel to St Hilarion’s together
Charles and Edwin return to the places of their deaths to attempt to tap into their vengeful feelings
Once they are sufficiently vengeful, they use the mirror to travel to the hospital just at the time that the alleged haunting should occur
They lead the sorcerer into one of the various traps in the building
They release the ghosts and do something threatening to the sorcerer or something
Case closed
Charles was still not particularly happy that Edwin would also be turning himself into bait, but who would play the part of bait was a point that had been an especially sore spot for both of them. Eventually, Crystal had suggested that they both act as bait just to get them to stop shouting at each other.
Returning to St. Hilarion’s was also not his favorite part of the plan, less because he hated the place (although he absolutely did hate the place) and more because he would have to leave Edwin alone there. The timing was important, so they both would need to change as close to the same time as possible. Because they hadn’t conveniently died in the exact same place, they would have to split up for that part.
Charles didn’t like it but, Charles knew that if he voiced his discomfort, Crystal and Edwin would be eager to toss the whole plan and go back to the drawing board. Charles couldn’t bare the idea of letting the man they had been chasing go on hurting ghosts any more than he already had. So far as they could tell, the sorcerer was using vengeful ghosts and their powerful and volatile emotions to power his own magic. Even if they were vengeful, that didn’t mean they deserved to be used up and destroyed by some asshole hungry for power.
If Charles’ plan had a chance to work, he had to take it.
Once the bus dropped them off at the school, they walked to the mid point between the pond that Charles had taken his death blows in and the dormitory that Edwin had died in the basement of.
“This will work,” Charles assured Edwin one last time, his hands tight on Edwin’s shoulders. “As soon as you start to feel a little off, get back here, okay? Then we’ll close this case, eh?”
Edwin stared down at his hands where they fiddled near his waist. He hadn’t looked at Charles in the past hour and it was turning Charles’ stomach to knots, but he couldn’t toss the plan because of a little anxiety. It would work. He was confident.
“Yes. It shouldn’t take long,” Edwin said faintly. Then he turned abruptly, knocking Charles hands off his shoulders as he did so, and began to walk briskly across the crunchy brown grass toward the dormitory.
Charles and Crystal watched Edwin’s retreating back until he phased through the back door and disappeared inside.
“Maybe you should go with him,” Charles said uncertainly.
“Somehow, I don’t think Edwin will be able to focus if I’m there,” Crystal sighed. “Just hurry up and traumatize yourself so we can get this over with,” she added before stalking away toward the water.
With one last concerned look at the big hulking square building Edwin had disappeared inside of, Charles turned to follow Crystal.
It was the dead of winter, just like it had been the day that Charles had last went into the pond. The trees were bare of leaves, the grass was dry and dead beneath Crystal’s boots and the air puffed in little clouds as it exited her mouth. The water looked still and cold, even to Charles, who rarely sensed temperature unless it was fairly extreme.
All he had to do was go in the water and think bad thoughts. It wasn’t so hard. Charles could do it.
Becoming a vengeful ghost was nothing to sneeze at and it also wasn’t like an on or off switch. There was a sliding scale between ghosts who were very stable and those who were not. Ghosts were basically memories and emotions tied together by energy. The memories and emotions worked together to create the image that they presented to those people able to perceive them. A vengeful ghost was just a ghost that was trapped in a loop of negative emotions or memories. Often this loop would cause their outward appearance to warp, most often to more closely resemble their appearance at death or some negative perception they had of themselves.
Charles knew that he had let his appearance warp a few times in the past, by accident. He had always been a little susceptible to thought spirals, even when he was alive. Sometimes, when he was alone and his mind was wandering down dark paths that were better left unexplored, he would look down and see that his clothes were completely soaked. That was usually enough to shake him out of whatever mire of dark thoughts he had gotten stuck in. He would go find something fun to do or go find Edwin or just focus on breathing air into lungs that he didn’t have until he finally went back to looking like a better version of himself.
It wasn’t that bad. It happened and maybe it wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t the end of the world.
But, Charles still couldn’t bring himself to step into that cold water on his own.
Crystal was looking at him with sympathy in her big pretty eyes. Charles forced himself to take a breath and take a big step forward. His foot broke the water and even his incorporeal skin could feel the shock of how cold the water was. Or maybe he was just remembering.
Either way, once he took one step it was easier to take the next, and the next, and the next until he was in the water up to his waist and shivering.
Charles closed his eyes and he was back there. He wrapped his arms around himself and he felt himself shivering with cold. He took a shaking breath and he could hear his old mates shouting at him, hear the splashing of the water as rocks broke the surface around him. His next breath was ragged, almost a sob. His stomach hurt, the pain so intense he almost felt sick. Yet, he had lost all feeling in his fingers and toes. That was bad, probably. It was too cold to be outside and wet. He needed to run, needed to get away, needed to-
“Charles!” Crystal was shouting his name in his ear, her small soft hand tight on his shoulder and turning him around.
The sight of Crystal shook him out of the trap of his own memories. She wasn’t there that night. If she was there, then he wasn’t still back then.
“C-c-crystal?” Charles stuttered, his teeth chattering too hard to get through her name on the first or second try.
“Shit,” she spit, her eyes huge and terrified in her pretty round face. “Okay. Out. That’s enough. Out of the water,” Crystal demanded, putting her arms under Charles’ armpits and physically dragging him out of the pond.
“Y-y-you’re w-w-wet,” Charles chattered, his wet clothes quickly soaking through her own soft t-shirt.
“You really have no room to talk right now,” Crystal grunted as she tossed him onto the dry dead grass right beside the mirror that she had abandoned on the bank.
“Fuck!” she shouted, stomping her feet and trying to wring the water out of her clothes. She was wracked with fine shivers as well, completely soaked from her ribs down. “This is such a goddamn! Awful! Idea!” she shouted at the sky.
“S-s-sor-sor-” Charles stuttered.
“Shut up!” Crystal shouted at him. “Dammit, where the fuck is-” Crystal cut herself off with a shriek so loud that it echoed off the treeline back at them.
Charles scrambled to his feet, his numb limbs barely obeying him, his legs feeling fawn weak. Somewhere in his mind, he still expected his old mates to come running at him and Crystal from some nearby hiding place, fists and rocks ready to finish what they had started.
What Charles saw instead was Edwin, or what he thought might be Edwin. It was a boy about Edwin’s size, with skin as pale as Edwin’s and hair as dark as Edwin’s. But, he was so incredibly caked in blood and burns and viscera that it was hard to make out any other features.
“I’m here,” the boy who might have been Edwin said, in a blank empty voice. The voice sounded like Edwin’s, soft and a little high, even if was breathy and barely above a whisper.
“Oh, god,” Charles groaned, stumbling toward Edwin. “Mate, w-what-” he stumbled over his words, his eyes roving over Edwin’s face. His nose, usually straight and perfect, was split in the middle, a deep gash right across the bridge that leaked thick clotted blood down and his face and over his lips. There was blood everywhere, in his hair, dried into his eyebrows, caked into the curves of his ears.
It looked like he might have been in pajamas or something like them. The clothing might have been white once, but it was burnt and dirtied and bloodied and it was hard to tell what the original color was underneath.
Everywhere that Charles looked at Edwin he found new wounds. His arm was broken, his stomach was slashed, there was shards of glass in his leg. His bare feet were blistered, at least two toes completely missing. To make matters worse, his injuries kept shifting. The second that Charles dragged his eyes away from one part of Edwin’s body to look at the next, the injury changed. Missing toes became broken ankles became a completely missing foot.
“Jesus,” Crystal sobbed from somewhere behind Charles. He could hear her gagging, but if felt like it was happening far away. He felt like he was at the bottom of the ocean with just this broken wraith of his best friend, trapped with the consequences of his own actions, in his own awful version of hell.
“Charles,” the boy who probably was Edwin said faintly. He pressed his hand to Charles’ cheek and his hand was tacky with blood. His thumb was missing. “You’re cold,” he said.
“Fuck,” Charles sobbed, tears he hadn’t realized were gathering in his eyes spilling down cold blue cheeks to wash some of the blood off of Edwin’s fingers.
“Nope, no, fuck, I’m not doing this,” Crystal said, grabbing both Charles and Edwin by their elbows and pushing them. Her eyes were squeezed shut, but she had an excellent sense of direction, because she shoved them right into the mirror. “Get that fucker and then go back to normal, you dickheads!” she shouted through her tears as Charles and Edwin fell through the mirror.
---
In the end, catching the sorcerer had been easy. He was drawn to Edwin and what he had dubbed his ‘vortex of pain and suffering’ like a moth to a flame. It had killed Charles to sit Edwin down at the end of a hallway and ask him to stay there, but it had worked. The sorcerer had walked right across one of the wards that Edwin had drawn on the floor in that very hallway hours ago and was trapped.
Charles had swung all the way around from terrified to fucking pissed by that point and took great pleasure in smashing his cricket bat into the man’s face over and over before smashing all the glass vials full of vengeful ghosts that he carried with him onto the dirty tile floor.
Spirits had run screaming in all directions, but it didn’t miss Charles’ notice that none of them got within spitting distance of Edwin.
Then it was over. The sorcerer was bleeding a lot, but Charles still felt like a ship at sea and an evil man’s suffering was too hard to hold onto and care about. All he cared about was Edwin.
He had stopped walking a while ago, the motions that the living went through to move felt far away. He floated to Edwin and collapsed by his side against the wall. Charles felt insignificant and empty, like a boy made of tissue paper that someone had breathed their sorrows into. He pressed himself up against Edwin and at least he felt solid and real.
He looked down at Edwin’s feet where they pressed into the dirty floor. They were pale and narrow, the knobs of his ankle sticking out below the hem of his pants. Charles didn’t remember Edwin having bare feet in hell. Somehow that felt like a big injustice, that someone would drag Edwin out of bed without his shoes and socks, let alone the full outfit that he wore to face the outside world like armor. Someone forced Edwin to walk into hell itself with his pale pretty feet exposed and that seemed like the kind of injustice that Charles would happily kill for.
“I’m sorry,” Charles murmured, barely more than an exhalation.
“Whatever for?” Edwin asked. His voice sounded stronger, but still sort of dream like. But, maybe that was just Charles. Everything felt like a dream a little bit just then. He felt so unreal.
“I hurt you,” Charles whispered after a moment.
Edwin took Charles’ hand in his. Edwin had beautiful hands with long deft fingers and carefully shaped nails. Charles could see Edwin’s hand through his own, which seemed wrong, though Charles couldn’t exactly put his finger on why.
“You would never hurt me,” Edwin said with surety.
Charles looked toward Edwin and Edwin tilted his head to look back. It occurred to Charles then that Edwin had much less blood on his face than he remembered. The cut on his nose was back, but it was much smaller and no longer bleeding down his face. There was still some blood crusted around his hairline and ear, but otherwise his face was clear of injuries. Edwin’s hand wasn’t hurt either, all his fingers and toes were accounted for.
“I made you look like this,” Charles said, squeezing Edwin’s hand in his and reveling in how solid he felt. Charles felt certain just then that if he could just hold onto Edwin, he wouldn’t float away or break apart.
“No,” Edwin said, frowning faintly. “A lot of other things and people hurt me before I ever met you, Charles. That’s why I look like this.” Edwin glanced down, looking at their joined hands, Charles’ blue fingers looking more solid every second that Edwin held them tight in his own. “I trust you completely, Charles Rowland. You would not hurt me.”
“Oh,” Charles said. He looked into Edwin’s eyes as they turned back to him. He looked so sure, sure enough for both of them. “I feel the same,” Charles said, gratified to see Edwin’s eyes widen a little at that.
Then, he sighed and pressed in closer to Edwin. He felt good and solid and the closer Charles got to him the more good and solid he felt. They stayed pressed together until Crystal finally found them huddled together, two dead boys in their school uniforms, not a hint of blue or blood between them.
Summary: Niko, Charles and Edwin are trapped inside a haunted house with an angry poltergeist when Charles and Edwin are poofed. Niko then has to save the day with only two chatty orbs for company.
London was very different from Port Townsend, not that Niko thought that was a bad thing. She had grown up in Tokyo, so it wasn’t like she wasn’t used to big cities. But, it was certainly a big change from the small relatively quiet town of Port Townsend.
Niko had expected that it would be hard to convince her mother to let her transfer to a school in London. But, she maybe underestimated how much her mother was willing to do to finally get a response back to her letters. If Niko thought about that for too long, it made her feel sad and guilty. So, she did her best to not think about it.
Reconnecting with her mother was hard. They were very different people and Niko didn’t feel like her mother understood her even a little bit, though it did seem like she was trying very hard to do so. Niko hadn’t even gotten close to broaching the subject of her new friends, living and dead, and her new interest in being a detective. Not only would her mother not understand, she probably wouldn’t believe her.
Admittedly, Niko thought most people wouldn’t believe that she spent most of her free time these days helping two dead boys solve mysteries for other dead people. But, she liked the new turn that her life had taken. Even if it ended up with her locked in a very haunted house by herself with only two floating orbs for companionship.
“Oh no!” Niko exclaimed. “How did this happen?” she asked, reaching out a hesitant finger toward the glowing bluish ball of light that she assumed was Edwin. He bumped into her finger and she was briefly assailed by the smell of old paper and a faint feeling of warmth, like warm buttery sunlight on a bright summer day.
“She dropped a piano on us,” Charles said in a wry tone, his own warm red orb sailing in circles around herself and Edwin.
Niko glanced over at the huge upright piano that was currently half embedded into the floor of the parlor.
“Wow,” Niko breathed, tilting her head a little to better see how deeply the piano had sunk into the next level of the house. “She must be a really strong ghost. I wonder what her work out routine is like…”
“I don’t believe her calisthenic habits have an effect on her ability to throw heavy objects,” Edwin said testily.
Charles’ little blush colored ball curled tighter on his next orbit around Niko and bumped affectionately into Edwin, knocking him a few inches to the left. There was a little burst of light when they hit that left sparkling afterimages on the back of Niko’s eyes.
“Oi, how do you know?” Charles asked with a laugh. “I don’t see you doing any squats. Maybe this calls for an experiment. We can work out every day and then see who can lift a piano easier.”
Even without a face Niko could tell that Edwin was rolling his eyes. “Really, Charles,” he said.
Charles laughed, his ball doing a little spin and then looping in a circle before he went back to orbiting Niko’s head. Edwin instead floated closer to Niko, getting close enough to her shoulder that she could feel a bit of the cold radiating off of him through her jacket.
“I suppose I’ll keep an eye out for falling furniture,” Niko said faintly as she turned back the way she came and started back toward the kitchen.
“Oh, shite. I keep forgetting you’re mortal,” Charles said. “We really need to get you of here. If this ghost can move pianos, then she’s too dangerous for you to be around.”
“So long as our poltergeist friend is holding all the doors and windows shut, I don’t think Niko will be able to make her exit,” Edwin muttered near her ear. He sounded like he was just right there, so it was strange to think he was just a little orb hiding behind her hair.
Niko put her fingers up to where Edwin’s voice had come from and he bumped against her fingers again in a friendly sort of way. This time she smelled kerosene and tasted some kind of very sweet candy. It was very pleasant.
“Don’t worry about me, guys,” she said. “You just focus on helping this poor ghost out. I know how to take care of myself.”
Charles scoffed, doing another little loop at the edge of Niko’s vision. “Yeah, well. I’d have said the same thing about us a few minutes ago and look where that got us.”
“Discorporation is just a small set back,” Edwin said stiffly. “Once we gather enough energy from the nearby surroundings we will be back to our normal selves. We can investigate just fine as is.”
It was handy having the boys as orbs for the time being. The servant corridors leading off the kitchen were narrow and had no wiring for electric lights, but their orbs cast enough light for Niko to see where she was going.
“What does it feel like to be an orb?” Niko asked curiously. Turning right, she found herself at the bottom of some very narrow, very steep stairs. They looked sort of dangerous. She imagined that it was probably really hard to navigate them when your hands were full of towels or a tea tray or whatever servants for fancy english nobles had to carry around these tight passageways.
“It’s sort of like if you had to sit in a little dark cramped room and like you have a controller with just a joystick to control your body and you can only see out of a little tiny window the size of your hand,” Charles explained, doing a few more flips in front of Niko’s face. It was distracting, but if that was what it felt like to be an orb, maybe Charles was feeling under stimulated. Doing flips might be the only way he could try and make his sensory input a little more interesting, poor thing.
“A very apt explanation, Charles,” Edwin said, sounding impressed.
Charles must have been happy with the compliment, because he started to spin in tight circles around Edwin, occasionally brushing against him in little flashes of light.
“Charles! Charles, enough! You’ll make yourself dizzy!” Edwin exclaimed, though it sounded to Niko like he was trying very hard not to laugh.
“I don’t think I’ve been dizzy a day of my afterlife, mate,” Charles said with a laugh, but did stop spinning around Edwin. “Can you get dizzy without an inner ear?”
They had reached the landing at the top of the stairs. Niko inched the door open slowly to reveal a very tastefully decorated sitting room on the second floor.
Charles dodged past her as she opened the door, his orb partially phasing through her neck as he did so. The flavor of hot spicy curry and thick fluffy rice exploded on her tongue as he did so.
“Mmm!” Niko hummed, pressing her fingers to her lips. The taste and the feel of the rice felt so real on her tongue that she almost thought there really was food in her mouth. “Oh, curry!” she exclaimed after a second. “I love curry,” she sighed.
“Me too!” Charles exclaimed. “There used to be this little place on the way home from school. God, they had the best curry. When I was a lad, it was so hot it almost burnt my tongue off, but I just couldn’t get enough!”
Niko smacked her lips a few times, savoring the lingering flavors that were quickly fading from her mouth and stepped into the room. “Well, you have excellent taste. I think I’d die for a whole plate of that,” she said very seriously to orb Charles.
Charles stopped his constant movement for a second.
“Wait. I’m sorry, did you just taste my favorite curry?” Charles asked.
“When you two bump into me I smell and taste all kinds of interesting things,” Niko explained.
“Whoah. That’s-”
Whatever Charles was about to say, it was cut off by Edwin talking over him. “Charles, Niko! Our ghost is here!”
When Niko turned to look she found that Edwin was right. There was a middle aged woman in a very tight and modest gray dress buttoned up to her chin was standing in the corner of the room glaring at her. The color had completely washed out of her, like she had stepped out of a grainy black and white film, and her eyes dark pits in her angular face.
“No one ever understands,” she said, her voice wobbling. Her hands were clenched in trembling fists by her side. “No one ever NOTICES!” she shouted, black tears overflowing and running down her face. “No one ever APPRECIATES all that I DO!”
“We’re not your family, lady! Give it a break!” Charles shouted, darting over to hover protectively between Edwin and Niko and the angry ghost crying in the corner.
“Charles, please do shut up!” Edwin shouted back, sounding stressed and more than a little scared.
“I’m sorry that nobody appreciates you,” Niko piped up, clasping her hands in front of her. “That must be really hard.”
Both of the orbs floated closer to Niko, but she kept her eyes trained on the crying woman. She looked so sad. It didn’t excuse her dropping a piano on her friends, but Niko still felt bad for her.
“It… It is hard,” the woman agreed after a long pregnant moment. She dashed her tears away with long delicate fingers and frowned out the window. “It is very hard when you work your hardest at something and never receive a single compliment or thank you.”
“You’re so right,” Niko nodded along. “One time I volunteered to make the collage for a group project in one of my classes. And, I spent all day gluing photos and glitter hearts and string to poster board. And the day of the presentation, none of my classmates even said thank you or said anything about my glitter hearts. That really hurt my feelings.”
The woman started to cry again, pressing her own elegant looking hands to her chest. “That’s just awful! I am not sure what ‘glitter hearts’ are, but I would have complimented you for the effort!”
“Thank you,” Niko said sincerely. “You seem like a really kind and thoughtful person.”
The woman started to cry harder. “Thank you,” she gasped.
“What is happening?” Charles whispered, though it was too loud to go unnoticed in the small room.
“Be quiet!” Edwin hissed.
“I know that it doesn’t feel nice when you have to point it out, but can I ask what you feel is going unappreciated?” Niko asked gently.
The woman threw her arms out wildly, tears still streaming down her face. “Everything!” she exclaimed. “I built this house from the ground up! I practically drew up the architectural plans myself, because James was just useless at it. I picked out all the furniture, saw it all delivered and arranged, picked out the rugs, the drapes, the decor! I built this home entirely by myself so that my family could live here and be happy and then I worked myself to death to make it so!” the woman sobbed loudly, the sound wracking her whole body and making her tremble. Faintly, the objects on the shelves began to vibrate. “All of that and now they’re just going to tear it down and turn it into-into-” she took another great gasping breath “a strip mall!” she shouted before collapsing into tears.
They all stood awkwardly for a while, avoiding each other’s eyes while the lady ghost in the corner cried and sobbed.
“The drapes are really very lovely,” Niko commented, reaching out a finger to carefully trace the line of a faded green stem woven into the heavy fabric.
“They really are,” Edwin agreed. “They draw the eye and really warm up the room.”
“Thank you,” the woman sobbed. She took a few steps forward and collapsed onto one of the nearby settees. The objects on the shelves stopped shaking. “I worked so hard while I was alive because I loved my family. But, all my work went ignored and now it’s been completely forgotten. It makes one feel rather unloved, doesn’t it?” she asked tearfully.
Niko walked over to sit beside her. She took her delicate hands and folded them between her own. The woman’s hands were ice cold, but they were also soft and small, like her own. These hands had worked tirelessly and she loved them just a little bit for that.
“I don’t believe for a second that you were unloved,” Niko says firmly. “Sometimes people get caught up in their own stuff and have a hard time seeing things. But, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t love you.”
The spectral hands she held in her own squeezed, sending a cold ache up Niko’s arms. The woman’s face was folded into bittersweet lines.
“You’re right,” she sighed. “Of course you’re right. Perhaps I’m the one who is ‘caught up’ as you said.”
“Maybe,” Niko agreed with a tilt of her head. “It happens to the best of us.”
“Quite,” the woman agreed with a wet sniff.
Then, the room was flooded with a soft blue light.
“Edwin!” Charles shouted, spinning around Edwin in the fastest circles that Niko had seen yet.
“Don’t wait for me! Just go!” Edwin shouted back, already speeding off through the wall in what Niko thought was probably the direction of the foyer.
“I have to go,” Niko said, turning back to the woman’s ghost. She was frowning in confusion at the wall that Charles and Edwin had just disappeared through. “But, a nice woman should be coming to talk to you soon. You should listen to what she has to say,” Niko explained, climbing back to her feet.
The woman nodded, turning toward where the blue light was strongest. She looked younger and happier, the light washing years off of her lined face.
“Yes, I will,” she said, not looking at Niko.
Niko gave the woman’s profile a smile. She would be okay. Niko had faith.
She exited through the door in the wall that Charles and Edwin had flown through. It lead to a hallway that took her back to the foyer with the piano in the floor.
“Niko! Thank God,” Edwin exclaimed, flying up to make his own nervous circles around her as Niko emerged at the top of the staircase.
“Hi, Edwin!” Niko said, happy to see him doing well. She cupped a hand around his orb and he obligingly settled into it, his touch giving her the scent of beeswax and the taste of honey. “I’m glad you two got away fast enough. I think our ghost friend will be okay now.”
“Glad you’re okay too, Niko,” Charles said warmly, settling his orb near Niko’s other shoulder. She cupped a gentle hand around him and smelled fresh cut grass and tasted sweet black tea.
The quiet moment was broken by Crystal slamming through the front door, her eyes wild, her hair a cloud of wayward curls flying around her head, and a huge pickaxe held in her hands. The outward facing side of the door had clearly seen the wrong end of said pickaxe, judging by the huge gouges in the ancient wood.
“Crystal!” Niko said happily, letting go of Edwin and Charles so that she could descend the stairs.
“Niko!” Crystal exclaimed, looking distinctly more ruffled than Niko herself. She threw the pickaxe to the side and then threw herself at Niko so hard that she nearly fell over backward. Crystal’s tears quickly soaked through the shoulder of Niko’s jacket and her thin strong arms were tacky with sweat. “God, don’t scare me like that! Do you have any idea what awful sounds that were coming from in here!?”
“Did it sound something like a piano falling through the floor?” Charles asked curiously.
His voice sounded much stronger than it had for the past two minutes, so Niko partially extracted herself from Crystal so she could look up at him. He and Edwin were both standing at the bottom of the stairs, now in their normal dead boy shapes.
“Oh. Yeah, it did,” Crystal said, turning from Niko to frown at the piano that was still partway through the floor a few feet from them.
“Aw,” Niko said, turning back toward Edwin and Charles. “No more orbs, huh? I’m going to miss Chorb and Orbwin.”
Charles’ eyes went huge with amusement while Edwin winced like he was in pain.
“Chorb!?” Charles shouted.
“No,” Edwin said faintly.
“And, Orbwin!?” Charles shouted.
“No, absolutely not,” Edwin said louder.
Charles turned to Edwin with a feral grin. “Chorb and Orbwin! Mate, that’s us. That’s our orb-sonas.”
Edwin squinted at him. “I don’t know what that is and I don’t want you to explain it to me this time.”
“Guys, this is cute and all, but can we please get out of here?” Crystal asked, looking frazzled. Niko reached out to hold her hand and felt blisters where the pickaxe handle must have rubbed her hands raw. Niko frowned and pressed Crystal’s hand tighter in her own.
“What an absolutely capital idea, Crystal,” Edwin said stiffly, walking across the foyer and toward the front door with long strides that made him look like he was gliding. Edwin had such a pretty way of moving. Niko really envied him that.
“We can get curry,” Niko suggested, giving Crystal’s hand a pat. “Charles knows a good place.”
“I’d like that,” Crystal sniffled, following Niko and Edwin out of the house.
“Oi, it’s been like forty years. The place probably isn’t still around,” Charles said doubtfully as he followed them out of the house.
But, Charles was wrong because the little curry place near his old school was still in business. Even though he couldn’t eat any of his favorite menu items, Niko was more than happy to order them and assure him that it was just as good now as it was back then. Charles looked a little misty eyed to hear that.
And Crystal fell asleep on her shoulder on the cab ride back into the heart of London. And Charles did eventually explain to Edwin what a -sona was, even if Edwin looked like he wanted to phase through the floor the whole time.
And, overall, it was another excellent investigation completed by the Dead Boy Detectives (plus psychic (plus Niko)) and another great day for Niko Sasaki and her friends.
Summary: Charles and Edwin go to a park to see some ducks and Charles gets into a fight.
AN: check the tags on this one, just in case. there is comfort, but you gotta make it to the end!
It was a rare day that saw Charles and Edwin spending time together without Crystal about. But, as she had so firmly told them "these curls don't maintain themselves" and had warned them in no uncertain terms not to bother her while she was at the salon or she would "punt them directly into the sun" they decided to honor her wishes and give her a day to herself.
So, Charles and Edwin found themselves with a whole day to fill, with no pressing cases to work on and no Crystal to bother.
After a few minutes of the both of them puttering around the office uselessly, Charles said, "We haven't had a day out ourselves in, God..." Charles looked up at the ceiling like it would have his answer.
"Not since April," Edwin helpfully supplied. That day had been quite lovely. Charles and Edwin had attended a performance of Shakespeare in the park and then spent the afternoon in a nearby combination coffee shop / bookstore where Edwin was able to peruse both the interesting people and the new releases just put on the shelves.
"Right. That's way too long, probably," Charles said with a wrinkle of his nose. "Let's go out!" he said, clapping his hands and grinning at Edwin devilishly. Edwin firmly told his heart to go back where it belonged and stop trying to climb up his throat. Charles looked quite devious, but he often did. It didn't require that kind of reaction from him of all people.
Swallowing, Edwin turned on his heel to grab his coat and shrugged it on. "Capital idea, Charles. Lead the way."
They ended up in a park a bit farther away from the office than Edwin had expected. "I want to see the ducks!" Charles had insisted when Edwin asked why he had picked that particular park. He supposed that was as good a reason as any. Ducks were perfectly pleasant to look at.
It was a clear and warm autumn day, the strong buttery sunshine chasing off most of the chill. That being the case, the park was full of people, despite it being the middle of a weekday. True to his word, Charles went straight for the duck pond, crouching down at the edge and gazing intently at the ducks swimming in lazy curves along the flat mirror like surface of the water.
"D'you ever think it's odd that only cats can talk?" Charles asked idly as he frowned at a particularly round mallard duck that looped around to point one beady dark eye at him suspiciously. "I feel that if cats of all creature can talk, surely ducks can too."
Edwin frowned down at Charles. He looked again at the especially rotund duck who was apparently engaged in a serious staring competition with Charles. Sometimes, even after thirty-eight years of living together, Edwin still had no idea what went on inside Charles' head. When Charles wasn't speculating about the communication abilities of aquatic birds, Edwin could appreciate Charles' unique way of thinking as an asset to the agency and something to be admired. It was hard to remember that while he was staring down a duck.
"I'm certain I have no idea," Edwin muttered, despairing at the thought of what the rest of the day had in store for him. Hopefully not more ducks.
Whatever Charles was about to say in response was cut off by the sound of a loud smack just behind them. Before Edwin had even fully turned around, Charles was on his feet and walking fast.
Only a dozen feet away was the apparent source of the sound. A large man holding a now crying little girl by her upper arm and whispering fiercely at her. His free hand was still raised threateningly and she was holding her steadily reddening cheek in one little hand, her big brown eyes welling over with shining tears. It didn't take a detective to put the sound and the scene together and realize what had happened.
"Oi!" Charles shouted, still stalking toward the scene.
"Charles," Edwin called, hurrying after them. "They can't hear you," he said, already knowing that it didn't matter.
Charles got right up into the man's face, squaring up like he was ready for a fight. "Oi, you wanna do that again, mate?" he spat.
The man didn't react, of course. He couldn't see them. But, the little girls' eyes got even bigger as they focused on Charles and the way he had pushed himself between her and the man.
"Are you listening to me, you little brat?" the man shouted, giving the girl a hard shake.
"Get your FUCKING hands off her!" Charles shouted, giving the man a hard shove. The man went flying backward, his eyes now almost as big as the little girl.
When the girl stumbled, Edwin stepped in smartly to catch and right her before she could fall. She gasped at his touch and he took his hands away quickly. He understood that touching a ghost could be quite unpleasant for the living, but he didn't want to let the little girl fall either.
She turned her big wet brown eyes up at Edwin and he felt his heart melt a little despite himself. Her tears had stopped, but her cheek was already starting to swell, the poor thing. He tried his best to give her a reassuring smile and held his index finger up in front of his mouth.
"Oh," she said faintly and then nodded. She shuffled a little closer to him and Edwin tried not coo at her.
Just a few feet away, the man was shouting and cussing up a storm as Charles kicked his feet out from under him every time he tried to stand up. A small knot of people had gathered around to watch, a few of them with their smartphones out to record what to them likely looked like a man flailing about wildly and somehow failing over and over to gain his feet.
After almost a full two minutes of that, someone finally noticed the little girl standing back with a swollen red cheek and tear tracks on her face. A kind looking middle aged woman who had been watching the man in concern glanced over, her eyebrows shooting up her forehead as she saw the girl. She hurried over and physically put herself between the man and the girl, which Edwin approved of.
"Hello, dearie," she said as she knelt down to the little girl's level. She had a bit of a northern accent and she smiled kindly at the little girl. Edwin watched her closely, cataloging her appearance and temperament (the woman was wearing a cardigan, she had a purse and sensible shoes, she was wearing a wedding ring on her left hand third finger, the edge of a tattoo peaked out from beneath her collar) and found nothing to raise his concern. "How did you get hurt? Are you all right? Are your parents here somewhere?" the woman asked.
Behind them, Charles had stopped tripping the man and a few good samaritans had stepped forward to ask if he was having a seizure or a stroke and if they should call the paramedics. The man seemed shaken and confused and was having trouble answering.
The little girl looked up at Edwin questioningly. "I think you can trust her," Edwin said quietly. "Tell her the truth."
The little girl nodded seriously and then turned back to the woman. She was looking up at Edwin with a frown, but obviously couldn't see him. Her attention went right back to the girl when she looked at her.
"That's my uncle, Samuel," the girl said very clearly, pointing over the woman's shoulder at the man still slumped on the ground. "He smacked me for getting my dress dirty," she said sadly, fingering a little spot of mud on the end of her skirt.
"Wanker," Charles spat, stepping up behind Edwin. The girl's eyes flew to Charles and his own widened in surprise. "Oh! Uh, I mean. What a meanie?" Charles looked desperate to Edwin for help.
Edwin gave Charles an unimpressed look. "Really, Charles."
"Right. Sorry," Charles winced in apology. He turned back to the little girl to give her a big warm smile, the kind of smile that Edwin sometimes felt might be burnt onto the back of his eyelids because it was so bright and unforgettable. "Don't you worry about him, love. He won't be bothering you anymore, I don't think."
The woman, unaware of this little exchange, was already on her cellular device talking to emergency services. She had her arm tucked around the little girl's waist and was shooting nervous glances at the man who still seemed not to remember to look for his niece. Edwin thought this was quite right. It was gratifying to know that there were still good people in the world who would step in to do the right thing, whether he and Charles were there or not.
"Are you fairies?" the little girl asked Charles with her big shining eyes focused entirely on him.
"What?" the woman asked, a little shocked. She looked toward where Charles and Edwin were standing with concern and then demanded into her small rectangular telephone "Please hurry! She's in shock, the poor thing."
Edwin wrinkled his nose at the implication that he and Charles might be fey. "Absolutely not," he declared. "If you ever see a real fairy, do not speak to them. They are quite insufferable," Edwin informed her seriously. He and Charles had more than a few run in with fairies over the years of working cases and every one down the last was the most awful bit of nonsense he had ever had the misfortune of coming across.
"We're ghosts. Ghost detectives, actually," Charles explained. He then elbowed Edwin, which Edwin felt was quite uncalled for. "Give her our card, mate," he said with a smile.
Huffing, Edwin pulled one of their enchanted business cards from the inside pocket of his coat and offered it to the little girl. She took it very carefully, looking down at it like it was magic, which Edwin supposed it was. Luckily the woman had been too busy watching two police officers approach at a fast walk to notice the card appearing in the little girl's hand.
"You can tuck that business card into an envelope with a letter and then put it under your bed and it will be delivered to us," Edwin informed her.
"Or you can call the number on there," Charles said, pointing to the phone number printed neatly under their address. "We have one now. Right handy, it is," he said with a smile.
Edwin looked up at the clear blue sky and took a deep breath. A phone number just didn't have the same gravitas as a magical business card that could summon the dead postman who delivered their mail, but he couldn't begrudge Charles anything. Even ruining a good moment.
"Yes, or you can use the telephone number," Edwin sighed.
"Thank you," the little girl whispered, before the two police approached her and the woman and they were both pulled into a serious conversation about what had just happened.
Charles and Edwin stayed in the park for a long time. They watched the police talk to the little girl, and then more police arrived to speak to her uncle, and then more police arrived to put her uncle in the back of a vehicle in handcuffs, and finally the girl's mother, still dressed in an apron and non-slip shoes, ran crying through the park to scoop her daughter up in her arms. The nice older woman also stayed the whole time. Edwin had privately begun to think of the three of them as the little girl's volunteer security team. She certainly looked at all three of them like she trusted them to keep her safe. That was a feeling that Edwin would cherish for a long time.
The sun was setting by the time that the last of the police and the crowd of onlookers finally dispersed. The ducks, who had been avoiding the side of the duck pond that had been host to so much chaos, finally returned to swimming lazy half circles in the water near the edge.
Charles sat in the short brown grass watching them. Edwin wanted to scold him for sitting on the bank that was surely more duck feces than it was grass, but knew that it didn't really matter. It wasn't as if Charles' clothing could get dirty from something as mundane as duck poop.
After a long time spent with the two of them staring morosely at the ducks, Charles said, "Sorry for losing it there for a bit."
"Quite understandable," Edwin assured him quietly. He peaked at Charles from the corner of his eye. He was frowning at the shining surface of the pond, his eyes not tracking any of the ducks, his hands fisted in the material of his pants.
"It's not," he bit out. "If I was smart, I would have looked out for the little girl instead of just-" Charles bit off whatever he meant to say. Edwin actually heard his teeth click together as he did it. "You had your priorities straight. You kept her safe," Charles said, finally turning to look at Edwin. His eyes shined too much in the warm orange light of the sunset, betraying the tears swimming at the edges of his dark curling eyelashes.
Warning lights were going off in Edwin's head. This subject was a minefield and Edwin was uniquely unqualified to navigate it. He never knew what the right thing to say was, when emotions were involved. He barely knew the right thing to say when they weren't.
But, Charles looked so beautiful and tragic in the fading light of autumn, that Edwin knew he must try, come what may.
Hesitantly, Edwin reached out and placed his hand over Charles'. He carefully pulled the hand loose from his pants and weaved his fingers between his friend's. He looked down at their fingers twined together, because he felt if he looked at Charles' face he would never be able to put his thoughts together.
"Perhaps I stayed with the girl, but the only reason I could do that was because I knew I could trust you to keep that man away from her," Edwin said.
Charles made a strange sound and Edwin looked up at him. The tears had escaped and were running down Charles' cheeks, spectral fluid glowing a pale blue in the fading sunlight.
"Charles, you are kind, and strong, and most of all compassionate. I would never disparage you for being yourself, because I love the person that you are," Edwin said firmly.
And then he wrapped his arms around his best friend in the world and let him cry onto his shoulder as the sun sank below the horizon and the ducks finally left the pond to find their own place to roost.
Summary: The third time Edwin ends up in hell, Charles is there with him.
AN: Written for Dead Boy Ween Day 10, prompt: hell.
This is a little dark, though it does have a happy ending. If there's interest, I'd be down to write a follow-up oneshot about the fallout that happens afterward. Just let me know if you're interested.
Edwin thought that he was done worrying about hell after Port Townsend. Charles had proved he could rescue Edwin even from the bowels of hell, which was a balm for one of the oldest and deepest fears Edwin carried with him. Even more importantly than that, he was now directly in the employ of the Lost & Found department of the afterlife, which he felt meant a certain kind of safety from hell and those there who might still want him.
That was why he didn’t think twice before accepting a job to remove a demon living in and tormenting the inhabitants of an old run down apartment building. He was confident that he and Charles and Crystal were more than a match for the kind of tiny creeping pests that sometimes crawled up from the depths of hell to cause the kind of small horrors that could sustain their kind of paltry evil. It would be barely a day’s work to rid the world of the awful thing and they could pat themselves on the back and consider it a job well done. Or, a job jobbed, as Charles would often say.
Edwin hadn’t considered that the crack the demon had crawled out of might still be open underneath the tons and tons of concrete and rebar that made up the apartment building. He hadn’t considered that something might reach out from the crack and snatch him up as if he was nothing more than a naughty kitten wandering too close to a hawk. And, he certainly hadn’t considered that Charles would be pulled in with him.
He could still remember the look of panic on Charles’ face, as he lunged for Edwin, his strong fingers tangling in the fabric of Edwin’s coat, his teeth bared as he held on and didn’t let go even as they were both yanked backward and downward and into burning flames. After that, Edwin couldn’t remember anything but screaming, his and Charles’ screams mixed together in a horrible cacophony as they were pulled down, down, down, seemingly forever.
When the burning finally stopped, they were both in the dollhouse. Edwin was back in his underclothes and so was Charles. Edwin didn’t understand by what mechanism hell had decided that Charles deserved to be dressed similarly to Edwin, but he hated it in a visceral way he wasn’t altogether familiar with. Charles was dressed in soft flannel sleep pants and a t-shirt with the faded decal of what looked like a children’s cartoon on the front. The t-shirt was so thin and soft it looked like it would rip if someone pulled on it even slightly. The sight of Charles looking at him with terrified eyes, in his pajamas, on the floor of the dollhouse, broke something in Edwin.
He suspected he cried. He suspected he cried rather a lot and rather loudly, considering his only real memories of the next bit of time were Charles shushing him and dragging him along as they began to flee the spider demon that was already hunting them.
Edwin’s memory was a bit funny for a while. He felt the familiar heaviness of his body in hell, something he suspected was a construct that his soul was trapped inside of so long as he resided there, something flesh and blood with nerves and feeling that could only exist within hell itself. But, the feelings of his old hell body felt far away. His fingers tingled, his breath came fast and burning in the tightness of his chest, his legs pumped and his bare feet slapped the dirty concrete floor. But, it didn’t quite feel like it was happening to him.
Charles’ hand was warm in his own, the feeling of him, of the bones in hands shifting when Edwin squeezed them, of his short fingernails digging into the backs of Edwin’s hand, felt like the only real thing in the world for a while.
Until Charles grabbed him hard by the shoulders and shook him, his eyes big and scared, his normally warm brown skin tone washed out to pale gray.
“Edwin, where is the exit?” Charles hissed, the words the first to filter through whatever strange dissociative state he had fallen into.
Edwin shook himself and looked around. So much of the dollhouse looked the same that he couldn’t tell where they were from just the hallway they were currently standing in. It was Edwin’s turn to take Charles’ hand and begin dragging him around corners and creaking doors as he tried to get his bearings. Edwin was confident that once knew where they were in the maze, he could navigate them out. He had spent so long mapping the maze that even thirty years later he could probably do it in his sleep.
But, the more turns he made, the more doors he sneaked through, the more Edwin realized that he had no idea where they were. Hallways that should have turned left, instead turned right or didn’t turn at all. Grime covered windows that were meant to lead him to a different hallway instead left him in cramped closets or empty rooms. Nothing looked the way it was meant to or took him to the place it was meant to take him.
Finally, gasping for breaths that felt like drowning, Edwin had to stop at a crossroads. He turned to Charles, tears already gathering at the corners of his eyes that he didn’t care enough to dash away.
“I don’t know where we are,” he admitted in a faint voice.
“What do you mean?” Charles asked. He reached out with the hand that wasn’t held tightly in Edwin’s to clutch at Edwin’s shirt. Edwin could feel the back of his knuckles against his heaving stomach.
“The maze is different,” Edwin said, the tears starting to fall. “I don’t know where to go. I don’t know-”
“It’s okay,” Charles said, though his eyes were huge and glassy, his fingers trembling where they were still trapped in Edwin’s sweaty hand. “You found the way out of here last time. You’ll do it again.” Charles smiled, but his mouth wobbled and the sight of it only made Edwin gasp harder, his tears falling faster.
“That took seventy years, Charles,” Edwin said, his own voice breaking and falling apart. He could feel his legs shaking. He wasn’t sure if he could run anymore.
“That was then. We’re together this time,” Charles said and his smile solidified. He squeezed Edwin’s fingers in his. “Together, we can do anything.”
Edwin sobbed. Charles was so kind and sweet, his words almost hurt as they sank into the broken glass that it felt the rest of his chest was made of.
“Charles,” he gasped.
He wasn’t sure what he was going to say and they never did find out, because the spider found them then and all they could do was scream for the next few minutes.
---
After the spider got them the first time, it seemed the gloves were off. Edwin wasn’t sure if it was intelligent enough to let them run until they realized there was no escape, but the timing seemed too perfect to mean anything else.
They were caught in the hallway crossroads and torn limb from limb, both he and Charles crushed and killed quickly, only to come back gasping and quaking in each others arms just a few feet away.
Clutching at each other’s hands, they got up and ran away, but they didn’t get far.
They died over and over, crushed, dragged, bitten, and ripped apart, but always together. The spider seemed to realize fairly quickly that if it caught one of them, the other wouldn’t stray far and risk getting separated. It started grabbing one of them and taking its time making its prey scream and beg until it could find the other and repeat the process. For a while, Edwin and Charles got stuck in a loop of one of them dying slowly and regenerating just in time to listen as the other did the same, neither of them free long enough to run and not willing to leave the other behind to save themselves.
It was brutal. Edwin wasn’t sure if being in hell with Charles was better or worse than being there by himself. At least when he was by himself, he didn’t have to listen to the person he loved most in the world suffer and die over and over. But, in between deaths, the comfort and the sensation of touch was such a boon that it almost made up for it.
After what might have been days of dying over and over without respite, Edwin and Charles started to get better at losing the spider in the maze. Edwin was getting the hang of the new maze, muscle memory that had atrophied after years without use coming back in a rush. He dragged Charles around corners and into hiding places just in time to evade their pursuer, but they couldn’t linger anywhere long enough to risk it doubling back and being found. Even if the maze had changed, the spider itself seemed to be he same, and Edwin could anticipate the movements of the horrible thing better than he could those of his own body.
Charles, for his part, got better at staying quiet, at watching the tells of Edwin’s body for sudden turns or stops. It was hard to look at him sometimes, as he got quieter and his clothes dirtier and bloodier, the life draining out of his eyes with every death and near miss. But, Edwin couldn’t focus on that, only on trying to keep them alive for as long as he could. If they could get very good at evading the spider, he could start mapping out the maze again, if only mentally.
While they were hiding, they clung to each other. Edwin suspected that Charles drew as much comfort from their newfound physicality as himself.
As ghosts, they could feel each other more so than they could their physical surroundings or other living people. Ghosts gave off energy and they usually had strong memories or feelings about what they felt like, what their clothing and hair felt like, and some of that could be communicated to other ghosts through touch. Edwin had thought that he had been able to touch Charles before, but being in hell together made him think that he must have forgotten what touching another person felt like.
When Edwin dug his fingers into Charles’ back, crushing him against his chest, he could feel Charles’ shoulder blades flexing beneath his fingertips with each gasping breath. He could feel the humidity of Charles breathing against his neck. He could feel the warmth of his skin where his forehead pressed against his shoulder.
“You smell good,” Charles had whispered to him during one of their short breaks where they could hide, and hold each other, and shake.
Edwin was confused by the statement for a moment. There were smells in the dollhouse, but they were mostly awful. The stench of rotting bodies, of damp concrete, of dusty broken shards of ceramic. He pressed his nose into Charles’ hair and inhaled and he smelled all those things, but there was another smell too. Something warm and alive and human, something that must have been Charles’ smell, the confluence of his skin and sweat and blood coming together into something that belonged only to him.
He had to suppress a sob, the clicking of ceramic doll heads outside their hiding place loud enough to indicate the spider was only a hall or two away, still searching for them.
“You too,” he breathed against Charles’ hair. Charles clutched him tighter. Edwin tried to hold onto that moment, to that memory of some new aspect of Charles discovered only in the pit of despair.
---
Time is strange in hell. Edwin had little to no grasp of time his first time there. He knew he had been in hell a long time, but if he had been pressed to make a guess, he probably would have said that he was there a few years, maybe five at most. Finding out that actually he had been in hell for seventy years had been a shock, one he still wasn’t sure he totally had absorbed. He said it often: seventy years, seventy years, seventy years in hell, in the vain hope that if he said it aloud enough he would start to believe it, let alone understand it.
The second time Edwin was in hell felt much longer. The dollhouse had been the same, but either he had forgotten how to run from the demon chasing him, or the demon was just much more bloodthirsty and enjoyed the chase less, or maybe Edwin just wasn’t trying very hard to get away.
He had died a lot. There had been many times that he had died, woken up in a new body, and then sat crying and shaking until the demon finished with his old body and began to take apart his new one. It had been hard to work up the effort to run, to try and hope for escape after living so long on the surface and being so happy. He thought about how incredibly long seventy years was and about how long he could realistically expect Charles to wait for him. Maybe seventy years for a ghost wasn’t as long as it was for a living human, but Edwin still didn’t really understand why Charles had remained behind with him in the first place. Maybe with Edwin gone, Charles would have no reason to stay on the earthy plane. Maybe in seventy years when Edwin finally crawled out of hell for a second time, Charles would be long gone.
Without Charles to hope for, Edwin found it hard to work up the effort to try and escape. As a result, he died a lot.
His second stint in hell felt like seventy years, even if Edwin realistically knew that it wasn’t that long. Still, he would have guessed he had spent a year, at the least, running and dying and crying. To hear that it had only been hours at the most had been another hard thing to accept.
Edwin tried not to think about hell, once he was out again. Thinking about it only made his waking nightmares worse, which made Charles and Crystal worry about him more. So, it was better not to ponder the experience.
Still, when the office was quiet and Charles and Crystal were away, sometimes he would think about it and wonder about how time in hell passed. Did it really fluctuate wildly between too fast and too slow? Or was it that his own perception became untenable after only a short time under so much stress and pain and with no outside indications of the passage of time? It wasn’t like he could count the days by the rising and falling of the sun. If you could separate the horror of it all from the question itself, it was quite interesting.
This third time, he would have guessed they were there for months. He based that on nothing more than his own gut feeling and the slow deterioration of Charles’ usually optimistic personality to something more brittle and quiet. In reality, it was only three days.
After three days in hell, the spider changed its behavior. Edwin could tell immediately that something was different. He and Charles were running, their slapping footsteps loud in the empty echoing halls, the screeching laughter of the demon behind them drowning out their own loud gasping breaths. It should have caught them many times over. It had an opportunity to smash Charles there, a chance to throw Edwin into the wall at another point, but it didn’t take them.
Edwin had been so distracted by the sudden change in its behavior, that he looked over his shoulder while he ran, trying to find some visual clue as to what it was doing. A rookie mistake, one he was ashamed of making as soon as he felt a doll head crack to splinters under his bare foot and send him crashing to the hard stone floor.
Charles had been running hard enough that Edwin’s hand was ripped out of his when he fell. Charles barely had time to scream his name before the spider was on him.
But, there was another break from routine. Instead of crushing Edwin’s back beneath one of its awful feet or tearing into his flesh with its sharp teeth, it snatched him up, folding its cold arachnoid leg around his back and pressing him tight against his belly while he screamed and struggled to get free. Sometimes, the demon would drag them back to a certain area to kill them, but usually it wasn’t so careful not to hurt them. It could eat them just as easily with a missing leg or a crushed pelvis as not. Something was wrong.
“Charles! Run! Get away!” Edwin screamed, arching his back to try and see his friend.
Charles was hesitating in the center of the hallway, his arms halfway up, his hands clenching around air, likely wishing for his cricket bat more than anything.
“I can’t! Edwin!” Charles shouted.
Then, it was too late. The demon snatched up Charles, tossing him like a rag doll against it’s own body in a hard crack of flesh against porcelain. Charles was pressed roughly against Edwin’s side and then both of them were trapped again with one of the demon’s awful legs pressed like a bar across their back. It held them tight enough that it was hard to catch their breath between the pressure and the jostling of the demon’s running.
“What’s happening?” Charles gasped. So, he noticed the odd behavior too. Clever, as always.
Edwin fisted his free hand in the shoulder of Charles’ shirt and held on tight.
“I don’t know,” he said. He kicked and struggled against the demon, but only managed to cut himself on the sharp edges of the broken porcelain that made up its body.
They didn’t have long to wonder. After only a few seconds of running down the hallways of the dollhouse, the demon passed through wide wooden double doors that Edwin had never seen before and then unceremoniously dropped Edwin and Charles to the floor.
“Thank you. You are dismissed,” an unfamiliar voice said from in front of them. While Edwin gasped for breath against a dusty dirty rug, he heard the click of the demon’s many legs retreating behind him and the bang of the doors swinging shut.
Edwin forced himself to look up and take in his surroundings. He and Charles were in a room he had never seen before. The room had dusty warped wooden floors and wood paneled walls that weren’t in much better condition. There were decorations around the room that would have been at home in his own time, marble busts and heavy carved wooden furniture, but it was all aged and damaged and coated in as much dust as the threadbare stained carpet he was currently laying on. Charles was still face down, shaking and gasping into the old rug. Edwin put a hand between his shoulder blades in a move that was quickly becoming habitual and felt his friend struggle to control his breathing.
Standing over the two of them was an androgynous person dressed in all white that Edwin didn’t recognize. They looked down at him like he was a nasty cockroach they would very much like to crush beneath their boot. The other person in the room was the Night Nurse, looking as coiffed and perfect as usual, though her brow was wrinkled as she looked down at the two boys cowering on the floor at their feet.
“And, here are your two dead boys,” the androgynous person said with a lazy wave toward Charles and Edwin.
Night Nurse dragged her eyes away from them, turning toward the other person with her chin tilted up, a frown still making a little furrow between her eyebrows. “We appreciate your cooperation,” she said curtly.
Turning back to Charles and Edwin, she began to flap her hand at them. “Come, boys. Let’s go,” she said briskly, gesturing behind her.
It was only then that Edwin noticed the pure black rectangle in the shape of a doorway sitting strangely in the center of the room. Hope throbbed to life in him like a stab wound in his chest.
Stumbling, Edwin climbed to his feet, dragging Charles along with him. “Yes,” he breathed, “Thank you.” He held Charles by his hip and upper arm and hustled him toward the door. He didn’t dare glance at the mysterious person in white, though he could feel their eyes on him like a physical touch as he stumbled across the room and through the door.
The second he stepped across the threshold, it was like a film was peeled off his skin. He felt lighter, he felt less. Charles still hung from his arms, but he couldn’t feel his weight, or the warmth of his skin, or the texture of his clothing. Looking at Charles, the answer as to why that was quickly became evident. Gone were the soft pajamas coated in grime. Charles as back in the school uniform he had died in. Looking down, Edwin saw that the same was true for him.
And then Crystal was throwing her arms around both of their necks, crying and burrowing into their shoulders and Charles was throwing his arms around her waist and dissolving into sobs, his tears hidden in her soft brown curls.
Edwin put a hand each on both their backs, because it seemed like the thing to do, but he felt a million miles away. He turned to look back at the doorway they had just walked through, but it was already closing, Night Nurse latching it shut with a decisive click.
She turned to look at him and her face softened, which seemed like something her face shouldn’t be able to do. Edwin stared back at her while his friends cried in his arms. He felt hollowed out and empty. He felt that probably the normal thing to do would be to cry with them, but he was having trouble feeling much of anything at the moment and being a ghost again probably wasn’t helping.
Feeling the eye contact with Night Nurse had become uncomfortable, he turned his head and buried his face into the place where Crystal and Charles’ curls mixed. He breathed them in with lungs that didn’t exist. He pretended he could smell them both, the human smell of them. He tried to imagine what Crystal’s warm butter scent would smell like mixed with Charles’ scent, which he only had memories of because he had been dragged to hell.
He tried to press the thought of their smells into his heart, into its deepest most secret place, to remember if he ever needed it. And, he felt quite certain then that he would one day need it.
