Page 10 of The Prestley Ghost

The hands slid under Charles’s clothing, and he thought dizzily about incubi and sex and hungry spirits; but he trusted Alex with all of him, and so he let himself feel it, let it all happen, the strokes and caresses and touches to his body; he was dimly aware that Alex was only semi-visible, tangible but shimmeringly luminous, and that he himself was moving and arching and shuddering in the grip of unseen pleasures, if anyone had happened to look; but he needed it, needed Alex, and he groaned and trembled and gave himself over to the cool delicious delirious command, as the throb of release pulsed through his bones.

He slumped back against the church, an act which was likely some sort of blasphemy. His trousers weren’t too messy, because Alex had pulled them open, being helpful. Most of the sticky consequences had ended up on the ground. He tried to collect scattered thoughts.

Alex kissed his neck again. “You did say you wanted depraved and disreputable.” He sounded tired, though.

Charles, alarmed—Alex hadn’t sounded tired before—attempted to touch him, to hold on. His hand went through a slim shoulder, an embroidered sleeve.

“I can manage a while longer,” Alex said, and his face and eyes were the same, not having faded, “but it does take some energy…I can offer more, though. If you’d like, sometime.

” His hand, more fleetingly real, caught Charles’s, pressed it to an obvious hard jut of stiff arousal, made manifest. “I can absolutely focus on that. Or the other way round, if you’d rather those positions. ”

“Both. Either. Whatever you like. But…do you need to rest? Or…”

“Maybe, for a few hours. It’s more or less like sleep. I don’t dream, though.” Alex paused, introspective. “I don’t think I do.”

“I’ll find you,” Charles said. “Or…I’ll figure out how to let you into the house. I don’t know. I just…” I don’t want to lose you. I can’t lose you. Please don’t tell me I need to banish you, to send you away. He couldn’t say that.

Alex blew him a kiss from pale fingertips, and vanished, not abrupt, but in a quick swirl of washed-out color, as if relieved of shape. Charles stared at the air. Touched his own lips, kiss-tender. Fumbled with his trousers.

The mist remained, but it wasn’t cold. His stomach made a sound; he hadn’t finished breakfast. He couldn’t not laugh: startled, alive, hungry, wanting and wanted, tremulous with reprieve, amazed at himself and Alex and whatever they were together.

He should go and talk to John. His brother deserved that, after this morning and after everything else, as well.

He’d have to explain. All of it: that he had indeed been seeing Alex, even letting a ghost touch him, seduce him, tell him that he was worth liking.

But he thought that maybe he could do that.

Maybe he needed to do that: because he did not know what to do, if his job was to banish Alex, or at least remove the ghost, as promised, because he did not want to do those things, and yet he wanted his Alex to be tranquil and at rest and fulfilled, too, and he could not reconcile all those aching bewildering needs.

He found his discarded umbrella around the front of the church, first. He went home through the twinkling hazy mists, across the lane.

Thomas opened the door, goggled at him, shouted, “Your brother’s home!

And all wet!” and hastily retreated, not paid enough to deal with the more troublesome mediumistic aspects of the new rector’s household.

The tap of John’s cane echoed fast; his brother was running, or near enough. John arrived breathless in the front hall, demanded, “Why are you soaked—you should change, you’ll be ill—where were you? Never mind, tell me after you’re warm—” and actually tugged at Charles’s greatcoat. “Give me that.”

“I love you, you know,” Charles said. His brother stopped mid-gesture, eyes and mouth wide and worried. “Charles—are you already not feeling well, I can send Thomas for the apothecary—I know you don’t want my assistance, but you’re my brother and I won’t lose you too—”

“I’m not ill. I promise.” He handed over the coat when Thomas materialized, after rescuing his book, Alex’s book, from the pocket. John was scrutinizing him as if unconvinced, but also resigned: as if knowing full well that any concern would be deflected or rejected outright.

Charles took a deep breath, and said, “I think I have a problem, and I need your help.”

And John’s eyes got even wider, and he started to speak, stopped, swallowed, restarted. “Yes. Of course. What do you need?”

* * * *

The afternoon, in the library, lay quiet around them.

The rain came and went, desultory, incurious.

John, sitting next to Charles on the overstuffed sofa—it’d been the closest, and it fit them both—said, eventually, “That’s…

certainly a problem.” He’d listened silently while Charles rambled about poetry and promises and wanting to help, and only blinked once at the admission of mutual desire—Charles left certain details out, given that this was his older brother—and nodded when Charles had said the bit about Alex not harming anyone. “He seems…kind.”

“He is, and I want him to be at rest, and I know you promised the village, and I can’t stop all of that just because I like him.”

“It sounds like more than that.”

Charles bent forward. Elbows on knees. Both hands over his face. “I think I might be in love with a ghost with zero inhibitions and a libertine past and eyes like sunshine and also no apparent desire to move on and about fifty million complications, yes.”

“Well,” John said, after a considering second, “that sounds about right for someone you’d fall for, yes,” and Charles kicked him, because that was the uninjured leg, but gently.

John laughed. “So you’re doing better.”

“I feel better, around him. Lighter. I don’t know. He makes me happy.” He sat back up. “I don’t know what to do. You know about research. Tell me something.”

“Hmm. You said he doesn’t seem to have anything unfinished, so normally we’d do something with the body, which we do have, but that doesn’t solve your problem.” John nudged him back. “Which is our problem, because I like the idea of you being happy. It’s been…some time.”

“I know,” Charles said. “I know. I…think I might be better, about that, too. But not about this. It’s impossible, isn’t it?”

“No. I’ve been thinking about Mesmer and the theories of fluidic substance, and also the old Agrippean argument that a soul and body—some sort of physicality, anyway, to give shape and comprehension to experience—have to exist in harmony.

I’d meant to do something with it for Eleanor’s journal, but—what if your Alex isn’t meant to move on, but to stay?

He doesn’t have anything to finish, but maybe that’s not what it’s about. ”

“What?”

“We’d still need some sort of anchor, though. Something physical.” John eyed the book, which Charles had slid onto a side table. The cover had some rain-splotches, but no real damage. “The question is, what?”

“Wait.” Charles’s head hadn’t caught up yet. Unlike his heart, which was spinning. “We could…what? Bring him back?”

“Well, not in that original body, unless you’ve discovered how to reverse fifty years of decay.

And maybe not exactly a—a body, I think he might be still sort of an ethereal existence, but probably enough that he’d exist and walk around and talk to people.

It’s what we’ve been working on, as far as the theory.

But it’s never been done, and you’d need an object as an anchor, plus a good medium who’d be willing to be tied to that anchor—as a model for living existence—and a spirit that isn’t homicidal or vicious, is mentally coherent, and has both the desire to stay and the will to focus on that.

” John paused. “So…quite possibly, yes. But you’d need that anchor and you’d both need to be willing. ”

“You…I asked you for help, and you…”

“It’s not an easy answer. I don’t have an answer. I’ve got a theory that we were planning to leave theoretical forever. But.” John’s smile emerged and lingered, in his eyes, around his mouth. “You asked for my help. And you care about him.”

“I do,” Charles whispered. “So much.”

“I’d like to meet him. I know you said he needed to rest, but perhaps tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Charles said. All he’d had to do was ask.

He’d had John at his side instantly; he’d had Alex, earlier, a strength when he’d needed to fall apart.

He had people who wanted to help. The thought lay like lace over old gravestone marble, delicate, incongruous, a fragile gift resting there. “I would like that.”

* * * *

Tomorrow proved cold but not rainy; the sun had come out, a low amber orb amid autumn-bronzed trees and village lanes and grasses, a world made of the scents of hay and the spice of apple cider, the gathering of pumpkins and the thin busy rustles of rust-colored leaves.

Charles tried to suggest they wait to put plans into motion, despite his own pounding heart, because he did not want slippery ice and he also wanted Alex to have some time to recover.

John shook his head, found the cane, and insisted on opening up the church doors and being present, not giving any sort of sermon—it was a Friday, in any case—but hearing troubles and giving advice, for a few hours.

Charles settled into a pew. Watched. His brother was so good at that: caring for people.

Being heroic, even when Miss Primrose attempted to flirt with him, and the butcher simply wanted to complain about a neighbor’s fiddle-playing.

A life, quiet and domestic. A home, here in the village.

Not avoiding family gifts or notoriety—using it when necessary—but building something new.

John thought they could do this. Perhaps they could. He had an unaccustomed sensation like hope, in his chest, and it wanted to lift his feet.

After John was done being responsible, they went out to the churchyard, together.