Page 9 of The Prestley Ghost

“Oh. No. Well…years to be any sort of coherent. I was awake almost instantly. Genuine shock, I think. I didn’t believe it, at first. I knew myself and I knew I was alive—how could I not be? But I was looking at my own body.”

“But you did figure it out.”

Alex put a hand on his knee, under the shared huddle of their church doorway. The hand was very cold, but it had weight, presence, existence.

Charles said, “I went back. To the spot where—to where our parents died. Not right away. Not until I knew John would—would live. But I tried. I tried to talk to them.”

Alex’s hand tightened. He did not interrupt.

“I’ve always…some ghosts can make themselves heard.

To anyone. I’ve always seen them, heard them, even if they weren’t trying.

A gift. I thought—if anyone could come back, our parents could.

They knew so much. They knew about spirits and hauntings.

They loved us. And so I thought…of course I’d be able to hear them.

They’d talk to me. And maybe they’d be angry, maybe they’d blame me—as they should—but I could beg for forgiveness, and they could go on, and it would work. ”

“But they weren’t there.” This time Alex actually put an arm around him, awkward due to respective sizes and solidity, not to mention the tiny shelter. It worked, though. “Were they?”

“No. Never. I tried twice—I did try. Everything I knew. There was no presence, no residual energy, nothing. They were just…gone.”

“Not everyone stays,” Alex said. His eyes were golden-brown and full of emotion, so close. His hair, indistinct at the floating tips, was gold and silver, a wash of waves over stone beyond. “I should know, being here. I don’t know why, though.”

“Neither do I.”

“And you never got to…ask for forgiveness. Unresolved.” Alex hesitated, not out of doubt but about gentleness; it was in his face, that poet’s empathy. “Do you want to tell me?”

“John should hate me. He doesn’t, because he’s John. But he should.”

“Well, I’ve known you for a far shorter time, but I’m fairly sure I’m not inclined to hate you, if it helps.”

Charles nearly laughed, found himself trembling with emotions, leaned into Alex’s cold support, and discovered himself talking, abruptly. Words spilling out. All of it.

Himself admitting that he did have the gift, that confirmation of everything their parents had pursued and studied and written about for years.

Studies, tests, exploring his abilities.

Travels across the breadth of England in search of more and more interesting manifestations for him to handle.

More and more dangerous, because by God the Hayward family would help people, if they could.

He whispered, “I was the one who heard about the drowned man, at Twin Mills. I said I could handle it. They were thrilled.”

And the night, the terror, the grief—the graves, two of them together, James and Eliza, buried while the sun shone as sharp as a scythe.

The way John had had to learn to walk again, agonizingly, when Charles himself had been all but unscathed, and it wasn’t fair, it would never be fair. It wasn’t right.

He said so, and then said it again, and somewhere along the way he was crying, not much but tangled into the words; and Alex just let him talk and held onto him, there in the rain in a doorway, Charles’s umbrella a crumpled wet dark heap upon old stone beside them.

Eventually he ran out of words or emotion. He swiped a hand over his face. The rain was dwindling but not gone. He’d no idea how long it’d been, but the skies seemed somewhat lighter, less dull leaden grey. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I mean, I’m supposed to be here to help you. I promised.”

“Hmm.” Alex still had an arm around him, although—as Charles vaguely noticed—the edges of buckled shoes, the flare of the gaudy coat, were less distinct. “Perhaps my job is to help you, have you thought of that? Why I’m here.”

“I…don’t think it works that way.” Even though now he wished it did. “You didn’t know I existed.”

“I do now. And I like you, Charles.”

Charles tried to snort at him, laugh, dismiss the thought—and couldn’t, because Alex was holding onto him. And because the thought, the words, snuck into his chest and wrapped around his heart like a bandage over wounds he hadn’t realized still bled, until someone offered aid. “I’m not worth that.”

Alex actually glared at him. The hand, cold, flicked Charles’s ear. “Ouch!”

“You deserved that. What you don’t deserve, though…” Alex put the hand on Charles’s chest, this time. Over his heart. “Is all the guilt. The weight of it.”

“I just told you—”

“You offered to use your gifts, yes. You were thirteen. Your parents, and your older brother, chose to go to that spot, to use you. I’m not saying they deserved what happened, either—don’t interrupt—I’m saying they were older than you, and you were young, and they made that choice about what they wanted to risk, so don’t take that responsibility away from them.

And I know about choices. I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on mine. So trust me.”

Charles stared at him, wanted to throw himself into Alex’s impossible arms, and said helplessly, “You don’t think it was my fault.”

“No, I don’t. I think you did what any thirteen-year-old would do, one who loved his parents and was excited to work with them, to help them with their dreams; and I think you saved John’s life by dragging him out of the river, and I think you know that too.”

Charles shut his eyes. “He said he knew I’d saved him. He told me the rest wasn’t my fault.”

“Well, he’s right.” That was matter-of-fact, and oddly believable. Alex added, hand remaining over Charles’s heart, right where he’d put it, “You got rid of the murderous ghost, too, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what I did. That was the first time I went back, looking—you know. I panicked and sort of…pushed, that’s how it feels, and he wanted to hurt people, and I told him he had, he’d hurt my family so badly, he’d done that, and he should go, and something sort of cracked open and he did.”

“You saved more people, then.”

“And fainted in a river, swallowed water, and got pulled out by the miller, on his way to inspect the wheel.”

“No wonder John worries about you.” But Alex was smiling, and someplace in the gold of those eyes lay serenity and sunlit meadows and poetry, a whole world of connection and life and wanting to feel; and Charles tried to talk and couldn’t and just leaned in and tried to kiss him.

He forgot that he couldn’t. He remembered, when the first touch of lips felt too airy, too insubstantial; but then Alex murmured something and the lips were firmer, the hands were firmer, cold and light but definitely kissable, mouth and tongue and sweetness there to be explored.

Alex kissed back with no reservations, open and yielding to Charles’s desperate need to feel him, and wove chilly fingers into Charles’s hair.

Charles stopped, breathless, panting. He felt too much; he had to talk, he had to look at Alex. “I’ve never kissed a ghost before.”

“Neither have I, so that makes us even?”

Charles laughed, kissed him again, heedless of icy cold—and caught a glimpse of the rest of him, and froze. “You aren’t—”

“Ah.” Alex made a face. The face, the hands, were very much there; quite a lot of the rest had lost more definition, a hazy chalk-under-rain shadow. “It’s just that it takes focus, I said. I’m not thinking about my elbows much just now. I’m still here, though.”

“You said it takes effort.”

“It does, and I’ll be tired, but I can do a lot.

” Alex’s smile widened. “I could do a lot with you.” One ghost’s hand slid over Charles’s thigh, making the point.

“But—not here in a doorway in public, I think. I was disreputable and scandalous, not depraved enough to make you spend yourself in your trousers on the church steps in full view of the village.”

“What do you mean, past tense,” Charles said, once he could talk.

“You say things like that, out loud, and expect me not to want you to do it?” And he meant more: he meant that, yes, he wanted this, he wanted Alex, he wanted Alex to see him and know him and tell him again that he was worth caring for, that he was not at fault for all the pain.

He could not entirely believe it, but he did trust Alex, and he thought that maybe if Alex said it again he could try to listen, and perhaps he’d be ready to hear it, if John said it as well; maybe it was true.

That was still a maybe, and the dark screaming water hadn’t gone; but he wondered if he might be ready to see a path that did not end up there.

He did not know how to explain the magnitude of that, so he only added, “I like depraved disreputable poets,” hopefully, and thought that Alex would understand.

Alex did, from the heat in those eyes, from the brush of kiss like winter against Charles’s mouth. “You read my book. You talked to me—really talked, I mean. I didn’t expect—oh, Charles. I do want you.”

“Please,” Charles said, “please—” and Alex tugged him to his feet, out of the doorway, into rain-mist like hanging crystals, around behind the church in the tall green grass, between the building and the fields.

No one was in sight, and not likely to be.

Charles let himself lean back against the damp stone, let himself be kissed, kissed Alex in turn.

Sensation shivered through him: like ice, but not badly so.

A tantalization, in fact. Cold that prickled into want, as if his senses were heightened by sharpness.

He moaned softly when Alex kissed his throat, nibbled at the skin there.

Those libertine’s hands knew what they were doing; even as a ghost Alex was thoroughly talented.