Page 48 of The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy

Edgar

Edgar stared miserably out the truck window as Poe drove.

“Are you okay?” Poe asked after a while.

“No.”

Edgar was not in any way okay. His wonderful Jamie had invited him to be their date, and he had utterly failed them.

He’d wanted one night, just one, where he could stand next to Jamie and make them proud.

Where he could prove that he could be a partner to them.

And his fear—his exhausting fucking fear—had made it impossible.

“I’m so goddamn sick of this,” he said. “I’m so sick of being scared all the time. I—it was okay when I was alone, but—”

“No, it fucking wasn’t,” Poe said.

He spun the wheel and pulled into an empty parking lot. The baby gurgled in the back seat. Poe threw the truck in park and turned to Edgar.

“So glad you pulled over just so you could glare at me more effectively,” Edgar muttered.

“Brother,” Poe said. “This isn’t about Jamie. It isn’t even about the ghosts. This shit is about you. Please listen to me. I’m not trying to be a dick. I’m just…fucking bad at talking to people sometimes, okay?”

He raked a hand through his hair frustratedly but looked right at Edgar.

“It fucking kills me to watch you,” Poe said. “I can’t even imagine how Jamie must feel. You’re…you’re a fucking prince, man. You’re smart and kind, and you manage to put up with dipshits like me. This isn’t any fucking way to live. You have to listen to me, please.”

Edgar couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard Poe say please to anyone, and now he’d said it twice in the span of a minute. He was desperate. And he was right. It wasn’t any fucking way to live.

“You’re right,” Edgar said.

Poe immediately opened his mouth to protest, then registered what Edgar had said. “Wait, what?”

“You’re right. It’s no way to live.”

“Oh. Well then. Good.”

The germ of an idea tickled Edgar’s brain. Tonight was the end. It was easier to think of it as being about Jamie. But Jamie was not the reason; they were the reward. Getting to have a life with them. Getting to have a life at all.

“I’m gonna fix it. Now.”

“You’re…what?”

Yes, this was right. “Can you drop me off at Lafayette Number One?”

“It’s closed by now.”

“I know,” Edgar said.

***

The cemetery was six blocks from Edgar’s apartment, and he’d avoided even walking past it ever since he moved in. Now he was seeking it out for the same reason he’d always avoided it.

Poe pulled up in front of Commander’s Palace, the cemetery gates looming, and Edgar got out.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Poe offered.

Edgar was sorely tempted to take him up on his offer. Just imagining Poe holding a baby and a kitten was enough to make seeking out a ghost seem less scary. But this was something he had to do on his own.

“No, thanks. I’ll be okay.”

Poe raised a hand, like he wanted to reach for Edgar, then let it drop back into his lap. “Do you want me to wait?” he offered.

“Now who’s scared?” Edgar teased. He tried to hit Poe with a reassuring grin, but his teeth chattered.

“Text me when you get home,” Poe said, sounding a lot like Allie.

“I will.”

Edgar closed the truck door quietly so as not to disturb Nour.

“Bro,” Poe called as he turned away.

When he looked back, he saw something new in Poe’s expression. Now, in addition to the concern he tried to hide, Edgar recognized something he thought might be pride.

“I love you,” Poe said.

Then he screeched away before Edgar could respond.

Edgar tried to hold on to the positive feeling as he turned toward the cemetery. The air had cooled a touch. Lights were on in the houses that faced the cemetery, but the streets around Lafayette No. 1 were quiet.

The breeze rocked the skeletal branches that reached above him into the sky, making them sway. Edgar knew he’d find a ghost near the cemetery as surely as he knew how he felt about Jamie. Just like those feelings, he didn’t know how he knew, but he was certain.

He turned the corner as a peal of laughter rang out from a balcony nearby. He hoped Jamie was managing to have a good time with their family. He hoped he hadn’t ruined that for them.

Click clack, click clack , his heels drummed as he walked the second block that surrounded the cemetery. He’d walk the perimeter as many times as it took until he found one.

He put his hands in his pockets and whistled, pretending not to have a care in the world. It seemed that ghosts appeared to him more when he was least expecting it. Here, wearing a suit and strolling slowly, he had to seem like the perfect mark. One of them would find him.

His footsteps echoed even louder around the next corner. Maybe it was in his head? No. There it was, the familiar sensation of sounds swelling and then bleeding together right before—

A cold, viscous sensation prickled at the back of his neck and slid down his spine.

There it was. Somewhere up there.

Edgar forced himself to keep walking even as he started to tremble and sweat. He got halfway down the block when it oozed out of the cemetery and stopped in the glow of the streetlight before him.

Edgar froze.

The ghost had once been a young man, perhaps around his own age. But now, what had been a slicked-back coiffure was mangled and bloody. What had once been broad shoulders were twisted strangely in on themselves.

Edgar shuddered as the thing turned blank bluish-gray eyes toward him. They quivered like jelly.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Edgar chanted.

He told his foot to lift off the ground and move forward, but it didn’t obey him.

He sucked in a breath through his nose and blew it out slowly through his mouth, attempting to get his body under control. Every single instinct he had was screaming at him to turn and run. To get as far as possible from this unnatural creature that caused nothing but terror.

Can you describe it? Jamie had asked when they were planning the makeup they would use to transform Edgar into a ghost for Amelia’s film.

And when Edgar had said he usually tried not to look, Jamie had asked questions.

Can you tell how it died? Can you tell when it was from?

What does their skin look like? Their hair? Their fingernails?

Now, Edgar risked a look at the ghost in front of him and began with the smallest details.

He wasn’t close enough to see the ghost’s fingernails.

He took a step closer. The ghost didn’t move.

Another step closer, and now he could see in the glow of the streetlight.

Its nails were buffed to a smooth shine.

In fact, its hands could have been living hands if they hadn’t been so pale, so still.

It wore a gold band on its ring finger, polished to a twinkle.

Edgar frowned and took another step forward, eyes on the ring.

The ghost had been married. When he’d died, someone had mourned him, as Edgar had mourned Antoine.

There had probably been a funeral, maybe a second line.

The man’s family and friends would have gathered to comfort one another in their loss.

Edgar imagined how he would feel if he lost Jamie. If it was Jamie whose fragile human body had been torn apart by violence.

He choked on it.

The ghost’s head swung in Edgar’s direction, as if it could sense his sadness. But still, it didn’t move toward him.

Edgar’s gaze followed its hand up its arm to its shoulders.

They had been crushed toward each other somehow, giving the ghost a hunched silhouette.

It must have been excruciating, whatever had caused such strong bones to crunch.

Edgar winced, imagining what it might have been: a car accident, mishandled farming equipment, a plane crash?

He took another step toward it, trying to find answers.

Wondering slowed his heart and made his breath come easier. When he looked for answers, he focused on details. It was the opposite of focusing on what his own body was doing in response.

Curiosity was the opposite of fear.

This, he realized, was what Jamie had been trying to help him do when they asked him to look at himself as a ghost. But no one could do this for him.

Edgar took another tentative step toward the ghost. He was now twenty feet away, and the ghost stayed put. At ten feet away, Edgar could see everything.

He could see the small wire-rimmed spectacles that had perched on the man’s nose before he died. They’d been smashed, the glass digging in around his eyes. Blood seeped from the wounds as if he had cried crimson.

Edgar’s hand went to his own face. The ghost’s hand drifted up in a strange echo of Edgar’s gesture. It touched the bits of smashed glass and the blood around its eyes. Its eyebrows drew together.

Edgar took a step closer. He touched his hair. The ghost touched its hair, fingers exploring the wound that mangled its head. On its face were confusion and pain. Edgar would know the expression anywhere.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry for whatever happened to you.”

Edgar didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until his voice startled him in the dark quiet.

The ghost didn’t respond, but its arm dropped back to its side.

Edgar took one last step toward the ghost. He was now standing closer to a ghost than he ever had, except when one blasted through him, like on his first date with Jamie.

Usually he fled long before they had the opportunity.

He was still trembling slightly. But his feet were beneath him, his head functional. He couldn’t believe it.

Antoine’s ghost had floated away from him. Why wasn’t this ghost? Was it tethered to the cemetery? Did it like the light?

“Why are you here?” Edgar asked. “Do you know you’re dead?”

The ghost just stared. Not at Edgar exactly, but around him.

“When did you die?”

The ghost didn’t respond. Edgar supposed he hadn’t really expected it to.

“What do you want with me?” This was the real question.

The ghost’s gelatinous eyes blinked, but it said nothing.

Edgar slumped against the cemetery gates.

It had been wishful thinking to imagine a ghost would have any answers for him.

This had been stupid, and he was angry with himself that he’d thought it might change things.

Suddenly he wanted to tear the ghost limb from limb.

How dare it just stand there staring when it and ones like it had ruined Edgar’s life?

“Why won’t you leave me alone?” Edgar yelled at the ghost.

Edgar’s words echoed around them, and he punched the stone wall surrounding the cemetery. Fuck, that hurt, and Edgar roared his pain out into the uncaring night.

He blew out a furious breath and looked at the ghost. It had moved. Edgar watched as it took a step away from him, then another.

“Are you…?”

Edgar’s brain supplied a truly hilarious thought: The ghost is afraid of you . But that was absurd, right?

He stood tall once more and yelled at the ghost again. Again, it stepped away from him.

“Wait,” Edgar said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The ghost stilled.

“I didn’t even know ghosts could get scared. See, I don’t really know much about y’all, even though I’ve seen you my whole life. It’s not your problem, I realize. I just really need to get over this fucking terror.”

Great, now I’m making a ghost my therapist.

It did feel good to talk to someone though.

He’d talked to Allie about it, sure, and even Jamie.

But always there was the pressure not to worry them.

To keep them from knowing how utterly undone he was by fear, because if they truly knew, then they would understand that he was beyond help. Beyond hope.

But the ghost just listened. Or not. Who could tell? But it stayed. And Edgar poured his heart out.

He didn’t know how much time had passed before he’d exhausted himself talking. But when the tears came, he let them fall. The ghost stood in the pool of light once more, and Edgar lifted himself to sit on the wall of the cemetery across from it.

Now that Edgar had gotten used to the particulars of the ghost’s configuration, they lost some of their grotesque impact.

He was able to imagine what the man’s face would have looked like when he was alive.

Handsome, probably. Blue-gray eyes a little like Jamie’s.

Dark hair a little like his own. About their age when his life was ripped from him.

“Thanks for listening,” Edgar said.

Still, the ghost said nothing. But they both stayed there, looking at each other for a long time. Something like peace settled around Edgar.

He’d done it. He’d faced a ghost directly. He’d spoken to it—hell, he’d yelled at it. And here he stood. The ghost hadn’t harmed him. His fear hadn’t killed him.

Now he could walk away.

He eased down from the wall and addressed the ghost for the last time.

“I’m gonna go home now. Maybe you can go wherever you belong too. Or if not, maybe I’ll see you around sometime.”

The ghost’s expression was neutral now, and Edgar did something strange.

He reached out his hand and offered it to the ghost. The ghost slowly raised its own hand.

Edgar reached for it very, very slowly. When his fingertips touched the ghost’s, a cool, minty sensation crept up his wrist. They clasped hands.

Edgar got a flash of confused thoughts that felt like a different texture than his own and feelings that felt just like his: fear, sadness, the desperate desire to be with his love. Then Edgar let go, and it was all gone. He was only himself.

The ghost—no, no. His name, Edgar realized, had been Benjamin—looked different now. Less…mangled? Or was it simply that Edgar had gotten used to it?

No, Benjamin looked less. Less mangled, less corporeal, less everything. He looked like he was fading away.

Edgar was overwhelmed with sadness and relief. Maybe ghosts were just looking to be witnessed. To be truly, accurately seen.

After all, wasn’t that what most people wanted?

He stayed until Benjamin was gone. Gone where, he didn’t know. Back inside the cemetery or somewhere else in the city or perhaps nowhere at all. It wasn’t for him to know.

Then Edgar Lovejoy dusted himself off and walked slowly toward home.