Page 31 of The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy

Edgar stared at the tabletop. It was buffed shiny, but the wood was deeply scarred and stained, a record of the years. He hadn’t realized how angry he still was. His aunt had been the one person who knew their circumstances, and she hadn’t done anything to help them.

Jamie put a hand on his knee.

“They terrify him,” Jamie said. “They jump out at him and melt through walls to startle him, and if they touch him, he feels cold and ill, and they won’t leave him alone. Do they have… unfinished business? Something that they need him to help with before they move along?”

“Horror fan, are you?” Aunt Alaitheia said.

“Well. Yes.”

“I’ve never found that interpretation very compelling,” she said.

“Mainly because I don’t think ghosts experience time linearly.

I don’t think they would be invested in getting revenge on a person or revealing a secret, because that involves understanding that something in the past is still affecting the present. ”

She raised the absinthe bottle, the green liquor glowing where light shone through it, and offered it to Jamie.

“That stuff’s strong,” they said but motioned for her to fill their glass again. Poe did the same. For the third time, Aunt Alaitheia drank both her own and the one she poured for Edgar.

“One hundred and forty proof,” she said in agreement. “Just like Mama made it.”

“So you think they’re detached from their human lives and are what—just popping up wherever, with no rhyme or reason, and we see them because we’re fucking cursed?” Edgar demanded.

It came out sounding childish and irritable.

But once the question hung there between him and Alaitheia, he found that anger burned through his veins.

She had never once tried to help them when their mom had left them alone for days at a time.

Or when, Edgar’s junior year of high school, his mom had brought home Marcus, who took over their house for a year, treating it like a bachelor pad, leering at Allie and ordering Edgar and Poe to bring him beers or fetch him cigarillos from the corner market.

Here she sat, apparently as unbothered about ghosts as she had been about him, Allie, and Poe for all those years.

“You’re saying that after they die, there is no right or wrong? What the hell good does that do me?! Even if they have no intentions or don’t understand their existence, I still experience the consequences. And they’re awful .”

His voice broke. He was breathing shallowly and blinking fast, trying to keep from crying. Jamie rubbed his leg, a reminder that he wasn’t alone anymore.

His aunt’s expression was somber but curious. “You feel malice from them?” she asked.

“Hell yes, I feel fucking malice from them. They’re ghosts ! They shouldn’t be here! It doesn’t make any sense.”

He slumped in his seat.

Aunt Alaitheia regarded him calmly, her expression calculating.

“What is it that you believe then? What explanations have comforted you by making sense?”

Suddenly, Edgar felt like a child. Sense .

What did that even mean? So little in the world made sense.

People spent their lives amassing money and did nothing good with it.

People hurt one another constantly. They destroyed their home planet with no thought to the future.

They were hateful and capricious and selfish and unkind.

Nothing made sense. Why should ghosts be any different?

He squeezed his fists together, fingernails cutting into his palms, the way he had as a teenager, so full up with feelings he needed a way to keep them inside.

“I guess I don’t have one,” he said finally. “We came here because I hoped you might know something. But I guess not.”

Poe lurched across the table and grabbed the absinthe bottle. He put a sugar cube directly into his mouth, then swirled a pull of liqueur like mouthwash and swallowed. His cheeks were flushed and his dark hair wild.

“See, that’s always been your problem,” he said to Edgar.

“You think sense equals good and nonsense equals bad. But most people just want whatever makes them feel not like shit in the moment. They’re acting out of desperation or desire or whim.

” He tossed back another absinthe, eyes wild.

“ You’ve decided that ghosts are an aberration because they scare you.

Being scared of something doesn’t give you the right to try and obliterate it.

When people try to do that, we call them villains. ”

Edgar blinked, stomach gone hollow. It was more than he’d heard Poe say at one time since he’d left New Orleans six years before.

Shame rolled through him, and he couldn’t find a single thing to say.

Was Poe right about him? Was he so sunk in his own fear that his whole worldview had been constructed on it? Was he a villain? Maybe he was.

“I agree with you,” Jamie said to Poe, and fear lanced through Edgar. “But your brother isn’t trying to control anyone. He’s not trying to obliterate ghosts. He’s just trying to get through the day.”

Jamie squeezed Edgar’s leg.

“You’re talking about his fear like he has control over it.

But ghosts appearing for him might as well be like, like…

a seizure disorder or something. A stimulus causes a reaction that has really negative effects on him.

It’s something so unpredictable that he’s constantly afraid of it happening, even when it’s not.

So there’s the terror of when he does encounter a ghost. But the other three-quarters come from your brother being stone-cold terrified to leave his fucking house most days because he might encounter them. ”

Jamie’s voice was getting more heated. They leaned in toward Poe. “It’s a disability! He’s in a state of constant fear. He can never enjoy himself because he feels like the second he lets his guard down, that’s when he’s at the most risk.”

Poe was listening calmly, eyes narrowed in the suspicious I’m not sure I buy this expression that had infuriated authority figures since Poe was little.

“Maybe you should try an antianxiety med, bro,” he said mildly.

Jamie knelt up on their chair, impassioned.

“Yeah, okay, maybe he should!” They shut their mouth and cut an apologetic look to Edgar.

“But I don’t get how you can have no sympathy for your brother.

What, when you see ghosts, you’re super chill about it?

You’re like, Hey, ghost dudes, like my cool leather jacket that I wear when it’s a hundred and four fucking degrees ?

Seriously, how are you wearing that in New Orleans in the summer?

Anyway, I’m curious. Are you just super brave or have no startle reflex or what? ”

Poe didn’t reply, but Edgar didn’t think Jamie had really expected him to.

“Just maybe start with a little damn sympathy before you lump your terrified brother in with villains and hate-mongers.”

When Jamie sat back down, Edgar could feel them trembling with anger. That their anger was on his behalf warmed his heart. The only person in recent memory who’d stuck up for him was Allie.

Poe gazed steadily between Jamie and Edgar. Aunt Alaitheia watched them as if from a far distance but said nothing.

Poe nodded as if in conversation with himself. He pushed himself up, palms on the tabletop, too-long jacket sleeves slapping zippers against the wood.

“I’m gonna go. Aunt, a pleasure. Jamie, I like you.”

He turned to Edgar. There was concern in his expression but also resignation. “I do have sympathy, Eddie,” he said. “But ask yourself this: Can you remember a time when you weren’t afraid? Even before the ghosts? Because I can’t.”