7. Bat
seven
Bat
Ihovered near the ceiling, wisps of my form barely holding together. Every attempt to solidify made my edges blur further. Like trying to grasp smoke.
Empty.
Completely and utterly drained.
In all the years of being dead, I’d never pushed myself this hard.
The cat had been one thing. I’d managed to maintain that small, feline body for several hours.
Watching Charlie sleep, the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Staying curled against him through breakfast, feeling his fingers scratch behind my ears.
But Brad? Possessing a full-grown human? That had taken way more energy than I had left by that point.
I’d barely lasted ten minutes before I felt myself unravelling, my consciousness tearing at the seams. One second, I’d been brushing Charlie’s wonderfully soft and fluffy golden hair behind his ear. The next, I’d been ejected from Brad’s body like a cork from a champagne bottle.
Now I could barely maintain a visible form.
And now lovely Charlie lay on that sofa, staring at the ceiling with those blue eyes gone glassy and lost.
My dead heart ached.
Made sense that he’d look like that. Made sense that he’d be spiralling.
I’d be upset too, if I’d been bitten by a rabid ghost child, jump scared by a one-eyed maid in a cupboard, tumbled down a flight of stairs hard enough to leave a bump on my skull, then cradled tenderly by someone who immediately denied the whole thing had happened.
Okay. Maybe that last part was my fault.
But I’d been trying to help.
Trying to comfort him.
And instead, I’d made everything worse. Made Charlie question his own sanity.
God, I was an idiot.
Molly glided through the wall, her bloodstained cloth stark against the pallor of her face. Phantom hands smoothed non-existent wrinkles from her apron.
“Master Bartholomew.” Her voice carried the crisp formality of someone who’d spent her entire life—and death—serving others. “You seem upset.”
“I am upset,” I seethed, what remained of my form crackling with agitation. “You traumatised him! You, and Lady Grimthorne, and the twins!”
Molly’s single visible eye blinked.
“But… that’s what we do, Master Bartholomew.” Her tone carried no malice. Just confusion. “That’s what we’ve always done. Under your instruction, if I may remind you.”
She was right.
Of course she was right.
For as long as I could remember, I’d orchestrated their chaos.
Directed their hauntings like a conductor leading a particularly violent symphony.
The Lancasters wanted their manor cleared of squatters and vandals?
Fine. We’d send them running. Developers wanted to gut the place? We’d make them regret it.
The twins barrelled past, giggling maniacally. They played tug-of-war with what looked like a length of torn wallpaper. Or maybe intestines. With those two, it was hard to tell.
“You two!” I shouted after them.
They ignored me completely. Rosemary’s pigtails bounced as she yanked the prize from Henry’s grip.
I turned back to Molly, my form flickering with frustration. “But I said last night he wasn’t to be harmed!”
“I didn’t harm him!” Molly’s posture straightened, indignant. “You know Rosemary can’t resist a good chomp every now and again, but all I did was show myself to him! Offered him tea, like a proper hostess should!”
“Molly.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. Or tried to. My fingers passed through my face twice before I gave up. “You’re a one-eyed maid covered in blood with half your face hidden under a cloth. You materialised in a dark cupboard while he was hiding. You’re terrifying.”
She touched the stained fabric self-consciously.
Molly had been forty-three when she died. 1817. A lifetime of service to the Grimthorne family, and what had it got her? A jealous lady’s maid named Catherine who’d shoved her down the servants’ stairs because the master had looked at Molly too long during dinner service.
The fall had shattered her skull. Driven bone fragments into her brain. But she’d lingered for three days before the infection finally took her. Three days of agony, her left eye destroyed, her face a ruin of blood and splintered bone.
She’d died still apologising for the inconvenience.
And in death, she’d never stopped serving. Never stopped trying to dust and polish and offer tea to anyone who entered the manor. Even when those offerings came with a face that looked like it had been split open by a meat cleaver.
The anger drained out of me. Slowly. Like air from a punctured balloon.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s quite alright, Master Bartholomew.” She adjusted her cloth, tucking a strand of dark brown hair behind her ear. “You’re fond of him. That young chap.”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.
Because she was right about that too.
Molly was one of the few ghosts here I considered a close friend.
Not just an ally in the eternal war against the living, but someone who’d listened when I occasionally ranted.
Sometimes about being dead in general. Sometimes about being stuck at Grimthorne, with its forty-some residents there was no escaping.
Commiserations about dreams that died before they’d had a chance to live.
I’d even spoken to her a little about my parents.
“He played your guitar,” Molly said softly. “In the attic. I heard it. The one you sometimes hold but never play.”
I nodded, letting my gaze drift in the attic’s direction. Through all the floors and walls between us, I could still picture Charlie’s fingers on those strings.
“He was pretty good, wasn’t he?”
“Not a touch on you, Master Bartholomew.” Molly’s tone carried that particular motherly warmth I often craved. “Will you play us a tune on the piano one day soon? You haven’t done that in quite some time.”
The question hit harder than she knew. Yet I forced myself to nod.
Playing music—making music—it did something to me that nothing else in death could touch.
When my fingers found the keys of the manor’s grand piano, when I coaxed sound from strings and wood, the world narrowed to just that.
Pure creation. Pure expression. The same rush I’d felt on stage with the Bats, with our amps cranked high enough to rattle teeth and our lyrics screaming defiance at a world that wanted us silent and compliant.
For those moments, I felt alive.
And then the song would end.
And the silence would crash down like a wave, drowning me in the reminder that I’d never write another track. Never record another album. Never tour beyond these walls. The dreams I’d had—the music I’d wanted to share with the world—had died with me. Twenty?three years old and already finished.
The joy and the grief came as a package deal. Couldn’t have one without the other.
But Charlie had made it sound different. Fresh. Like hearing a song for the first time, even when you knew every note by heart.
Nothing lasts forever, that’s what they all say.
The line hit me like a punch to the gut. Always did.
It had been the opening of what I’d been convinced would be our breakthrough track.
The song that would get us noticed. Get us signed.
Get us out of dingy pubs and into proper venues with actual sound systems and crowds who came to hear us, not just whatever band happened to be playing while they got pissed.
I’d written it a couple of days before I died.
Scribbled the lyrics on the back of a takeaway receipt at half-past two in the morning, melody burning so bright in my head I couldn’t sleep until I’d got it down.
Jeremy had been round the next day, drumming out rhythms on his knees while I played the chord progression.
Ollie had already started working out a bass line that would’ve made people move.
Nothing lasts forever, that’s what they all say.
But I could only remember that one bloody line. The rest of it—gone. Wiped clean like someone had taken a cloth to my memory. Twenty-seven years of being dead, and that fragment still circled my brain like a vulture. Taunting me with what I’d lost. What we’d all lost.
The song that might have changed everything.
An almighty bang echoed from somewhere. Then another. And another, in rapid succession.
Molly and I exchanged glances.
“The kitchen,” she said.
We glided through the walls—no need for doors when you were incorporeal. The scene that greeted us was pure comedy.
Brad’s face was twisted into an intense scowl. He stood in the centre of the kitchen, clutching his ridiculous SpecterTrack Monitor thingy. The device beeped frantically, lights flashing across its surface like a disco ball having a seizure.
Behind him, a cupboard door swung open with enough force to bang against the wall.
Brad whirled, the monitor thrust forward like some kind of sword.
The cupboard slammed shut.
Another cupboard—this one to his left—flew open. Packets of pasta tumbled out, scattering across the counter.
“Got you!” Brad lunged in that direction.
The cupboard closed. A third one, near the sink, popped open. Then shut. Then open again.
The twins flickered into visibility for just a moment—Rosemary grinning with those too?sharp teeth, Henry’s hand frozen mid-pull on a drawer handle—before vanishing again. Their giggles filled the air like wind chimes made of broken glass.
Brad spun in circles, his monitor beeping uselessly in every direction.
“See, Molly?” I crossed my arms, leaning against the doorframe with satisfaction warming my dead chest. “I told you there was no reason to worry about these so called ‘spirit exterminators.’”
When we’d overheard the Lancasters talking about their arrival, it had caused a ripple of excitement throughout the manor. Trained professionals who promised to permanently remove spirits from your home? We’d never had that before.
A few of the other ghosts had even worried. Lady Grimthorne had retreated to her library, muttering about “intruders” and “violations of sanctity.” Thomas, the groundskeeper who’d drowned in the well in 1823, had spent an entire evening moaning about finally facing the “true end.”
Lots of them thought we might be in “danger.” Whatever that even meant. Sometimes I hated my existence. Cursed the fact that I hadn’t moved on like most do when they die. That I was stuck here, trapped in this building, unable to leave even if I wanted to.
Even if there’s no heaven, did I want to leave a place that often felt like hell?
But that was melodramatic. Unfair, even.
My afterlife wasn’t that bad. I had friends here. Purpose. I kept humans away from the manor. Away from harm. Away from the thing lurking in the basement. Away from joining our numbers.
That counted for something, didn’t it?
“I wouldn’t be so sure yet, sir.” Molly’s voice carried a note of caution. “They’re just getting started.”
“They’re just poseurs playing dress-up.”
Though I had to admit, Charlie’s ass looked incredible in his silly ghostbusting outfit. The jumpsuit hugged his frame in ways that should be illegal. I mean, blessed. Depending on your perspective.
Brad cursed as another cupboard banged open. He grabbed his EMF reader from his belt—because of course he wore a utility belt, the absolute tosser—and waved it around like a magic wand.
A drawer shot out, nearly catching him in the stomach. He stumbled backwards, crashed into the kitchen table, and sent his monitor clattering to the floor.
The twins materialised fully now, standing on top of the refrigerator. Rosemary clapped her hands in delight. Henry stuck his tongue out.
They vanished again.
Brad scrambled for his equipment, muttering an obscene amount of curse words.
Then he fled the kitchen at a near-run, his footsteps echoing down the hallway.
Molly made a small, approving noise.
“Now, then.” She smoothed her apron, that wonderfully familiar gesture. Her gaze turned toward me, expectant and hopeful. “Tea, sir?”