Page 3 of The Prestley Ghost

“Yes. Well. I have banished ghosts—well, two, anyway, the stone-thrower at Dean and that little girl in Asheton—and I’m pretty sure I can handle you too.”

This time the young man simply looked at him; and it was a wicked look, an invitation and an evaluation, taking in Charles’s height and shoulders and thighs and even, he realized with a thrill of awareness, the length of his prick under the fabric of his trousers.

He heard his own words—I can handle you—and felt his cheeks warm: with the appraisal, with the terrible phrasing, with the shock of horribly sweet temptation.

He managed, “I didn’t mean it like that!”

“Didn’t you? How unfortunate.”

“What do you want?”

“I thought I just—”

“I meant, if you can tell me, it’ll help you go on. Vanish. Find peace. Whatever’s waiting.”

“You don’t know?”

“No.” Charles did not mean that answer to come out so sharp. He cleared his throat. “No. I don’t know that. I just…see the spirits, more than most people. I can usually figure out what they need. Even if they’re not the noisy kind.”

“Charles. Was that an insult?”

“No! I just…” He gave up. Leaned both elbows on the stone. Leaned more weight on the wall, sagging. Himself and the rocks. “I don’t know everything. I can try to help you. I might be able to. That’s all.”

A pause happened. The ghost hopped up on the wall next to him, and somehow managed to perch on old stones, legs swinging.

The sun had gone past the trees now; color blazed across the sky.

Charles needed to get home; John would be worrying, yet again.

The tiredness lurked in his bones like quicksand, lying in wait for a weary traveler’s misstep.

Evidently he was thinking in dreadful adventure-novel terms now. “How can you actually sit on a wall?”

“The same way I can talk without a body, I think. I concentrate on it, and I know how it should feel.” One buckled shoe, slightly heeled, tapped against the wall.

“My name is Alex, by the way. Alexander Leonfeld, not that it’ll mean much these days.

The family name’s likely gone; I was an only son, and my older sister had just married an earl and gone away up into Yorkshire, and it was just us, as far as siblings. ”

Charles had to look at him, both for the casual admission of wealth—having a sister wed to an earl—and for the recurrent emotion, that thread of wistfulness again, a broken thread in the glittering embroidery.

So alone; and that was not something he had considered, when reading his parents’ notes or finding the missing will of the stone-throwing ghost in Dean: the weight of loss, of being tied to a place or an item, watching as everyone familiar slowly passed away.

“Don’t worry,” Alex said, too lightly. “I’ve had some time to grow used to it.”

“Do you want me to try to…help? To give you peace?”

“Oh, go on.” Alex did the eloquent wave again, fingers fluttering through the air. “You seem so confident. Make an attempt.”

Charles did not feel as confident as he’d been trying to sound—generally he would’ve resolved whatever unfinished business existed, solved a puzzle, salted and burned an artifact, and he had none of those things to go on—but he’d made the claim and he was being watched.

He straightened his shoulders. “You like helping people. If that’s your tie to this earth… then you need to fulfil that.”

Alex said nothing, only put his head on one side and regarded Charles as if trying to sort out a puzzle on that side as well.

“You need to feel that you have helped someone,” Charles said. “For peace. And so…yes, you have.”

Alex laughed, not unkindly.

“No,” Charles said, “I mean that,” and he heard the words, he felt them, a drawing-in and coiling of his own power, the gift that let him see and hear and absolve and release.

He’d never known exactly how to describe it.

Like a tightening, he’d said once to John.

Like the moment before a jump or leap or a gulp of air.

Like the crackle and hum before lightning.

None of those were the right words, but they were close: a gathering of possibility, of insight, and then a push and a sense of unlocking.

It’d worked before. It might now. “You did help me. I wasn’t planning to throw myself into the river like a sensation-novel heroine, but I was feeling…alone, and angry, and guilty, and then you were here. You made me smile. So, yes, you helped.”

The words had power—it was the right key, the right shape—but not enough. He said the last part again, because it was true, and honest; he put his heart into the words, because he had to, to make it convincing.

And it was true. Alex had distracted him and made him smile, and Charles had thought for a heartbeat about flirtation and teasing and the simple pleasure of quick sparkling conversation, instead of leaden guilt and ever-present haunting reminders.

He had felt better, with Alex there.

And the slender shape of the Prestley ghost, embroidered waistcoat and all, faded and grew less defined, more blurry, like watercolors in rain; Alex might’ve been smiling, but then the smile dwindled to a whisper and was gone too, leaving only the stone wall and the lowering streaks of rainbow in the sky.

Charles stood very still. It could not have been that simple. He could not have done this so easily.

He could not have banished Alex—because that would mean he did not get to speak to Alex again, and of course this was good for Alex, it meant that Alex had moved on and found peace—but that peace lay in some far-off green country and not here, not here to smile at him and tease him about chivalry and heroic rescues—

He breathed, “Alex?”

No sound stirred aside from the wind; no embroidery-sparkle lit the air, other than the sunset.

Charles shut his eyes. Exhaled. He should be pleased. He should be—

He opened his eyes. Just in case.

Still nothing. As expected.

He felt the weight on his shoulders, felt the cold through his shirtsleeves.

Home, then—down the path, in the fading light, where he’d apologize again to John, as he always had to, it seemed.

The walk appeared to be a long one, more so than he recalled on the way here.

He should probably make himself take a step. Or two. Or just one.

“It’s growing dark,” said Alex’s voice at his ear, “and those stepping-stones over the river will be tricky; would you like help?”

Charles tripped over astonishment and relief and his own feet, collided with the wall, clung to it. “You’re not gone.”

“I’d planned to let you think you’d been successful, if that’s what you wanted, but then you didn’t look happy, and I had some concerns about those rocks in the dark.” Alex materialized at his side, far too smug for someone so illusory. “Shall we?”

“You’re here.”

“Yes?”

“You’re…coming home with me?”

“I’m offering to walk you home, yes.” Alex outright grinned at him. “Offering assistance.”

And flirtation. “So that is what you need, then. To help.”

“Something like that.” A gust of ice touched Charles’s wrist, he yelped. “Sorry,” Alex, said, not sounding at all so. “You should start walking; it’ll be colder up here soon.”

“It’s cold now. Because of you.”

“And I’m helping.” The cold poked Charles’s arm again. It was not unpleasant. “Come along.”

Charles stared at him, at the path down the hill, at the river-crossing and slippery stones below, and back at Alex.

In the fading light, the beauty was an ancient portrait, a classical sculpture, too pale to be human; but the glint in those owl’s eyes was entirely real.

And warmer than any spirit had a right to be.

He was tired and perplexed by ghosts and aware of his many failures, and he’d have to try again, both for the village and for Alex’s peace.

He knew that John would want to help everyone, and he knew that he needed to be dependable, reliable, good at his primary useful skill.

That was what they did: John was the researcher and the clever one and the hero, and Charles was the blunt instrument, because by some horrible luck he’d been the one to inherit psychical gifts, and he would do whatever John asked, from banishings to household accounts to making tea.

And maybe someday the guilt would lift from his shoulders, though it hadn’t yet, and he did not expect it.

Alex was a puzzle. A challenge.

Some hauntings were merely patterns, repetitive, going through motions, unable to communicate well; some were more articulate, specific about their unfinished needs, requiring a chance to tell their story of the finding of a treasure or the carrying-out of a proper burial.

Alex could certainly communicate, but seemed disinclined to explain, even if an explanation might help him move on and rest at last. That was not, in Charles’ experience and in their parents’ notebooks, usual.

One more mystery, one more responsibility. But Alex had also made him smile; had made him forget, for a moment, some of the weight. Even more complicated.

Charles did not want to deal with complications.

Not this moment, anyway. He wanted, just for a moment, despairingly, to know what simplicity felt like.

To enjoy the brightness, when a luscious young man smiled at him and openly flirted with him and offered to walk him home, under a sky like jeweled grey silk.

Alex hadn’t said anything for a second or two, obviously aware of when not to push, which made him even more attractive, aside from the significant fact of not being precisely alive. But he did lift both of those swooping eyebrows, a comment.