11. Charlie
eleven
Charlie
My trainers pounded against the attic floor. I grabbed the doorframe, momentum nearly sending me careening into the wall. The guitar clattered behind me—forgotten, discarded. My fingers wrapped around the banister. Tight. So tight the wood bit into my palms.
Down.
The stairs blurred beneath my feet. One flight. Two. My shoulder slammed into the corner of the landing. Pain flared. Didn’t matter. Kept moving.
The walls pressed close. Too close. The house watched me flee, amused by my panic.
Down. Down. Down.
Portraits leered from their frames. The grandfather clock ticked its disapproval. A door slammed somewhere above me, echoing through the stairwell like a gunshot.
Ground floor.
The front door loomed ahead. Massive. Oak. I hit it at full sprint, scrabbling for the handle. My sweaty fingers slipped once, twice, then caught. The bolt scraped. The door swung open.
Cold air hit my face.
I burst into daylight.
The gravel drive crunched under my feet. My breath came in ragged gasps. Don’t look back. Don’t think. Just run. Run through the mess of a garden.
The gate rose ahead. Iron bars. Closed.
Of course it was closed.
I reached it, hands wrapping around the cold metal, rattling the bolt. My chest heaved, my breath coming in horrible, ragged gasps.
“Wait!”
The voice rang out behind me. Male. Youngish. Desperate.
I spun, back pressed against the gate.
Nothing.
Just the manor. The overgrown garden. The gravel drive stretching empty between me and the house.
“Wait, please. Don’t go. Please.” The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “I need to explain.”
My head whipped left. Right. Nobody. Nothing.
Panic clawed up my throat. I twisted back to the gate, fingers scrabbling at the bolt again. Maybe if I climbed—
“Please!”
Closer now. Right behind me.
I lurched away from the gate, stumbling backwards into the garden. My heel caught on something. I caught myself before I fell, arms flailing.
“I won’t hurt you.” The voice said. “I would never hurt you.”
“Something in that attic just tried to kill my colleague!” The words burst out of me, shrill and breathless.
A pause. Then, “Oh, he’s fine.” The tone shifted. Less desperate. Almost… annoyed? “Don’t worry about him. He deserved it after he touched you like that.”
My brain struggled to process the words. The voice. The empty garden.
“That was…” I swallowed. “That was you?”
“You’re welcome.”
“I don’t want him dead!”
“I just told you, he’s fine.” Definitely annoyed now. “All that muscle would have protected his precious bones.”
I turned in a slow circle. Trees. Bushes. Crumbling stone fountain. No person.
“Where…” I wrapped both arms around myself. “Where are you?”
“You can’t see me.”
“No shit.”
Silence stretched between us. Me and the invisible voice. Me and the ghost.
Because that’s what this was, wasn’t it? A ghost. A real, actual ghost. Having a conversation with me in a garden while my colleague lay possibly unconscious or dead in an attic.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Do you…” The voice hesitated. “Do you want to see me?” Was he hopeful? Uncertain?
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Well, it might be more polite?” I paused, heart hammering. “As long as you aren’t scary looking, like that one-eyed maid.”
A weighted silence.
“I’m not… scary looking. Not like that, anyway.”
“Okay. Well.” I forced my breathing to slow. “Any time today, then.”
Nothing happened. Just the rustle of leaves. The distant call of a crow.
“Come under that tree.” He sounded… almost miserable? “It’s harder to see me in bright light.”
I glanced around. The nearest tree—a gnarled oak—spread its branches a few metres to my left. Its shadow clustered dark and cool beneath.
My legs moved before my brain caught up. I stepped into the shade.
And watched as reality tore itself apart.
First, just a shimmer. Like heat haze rising from summer tarmac. Then the shimmer gained depth. Substance. The vague suggestion of a shape, human-sized, standing directly in front of me.
Colour bled into existence. Black first—black hair, falling almost to his shoulders in a curtain of darkness.
Black T-shirt. Black jeans, ripped at the knees.
Then pale skin, so pale it seemed to glow in the shadows.
A face materialized. Young. Sharp cheekbones.
Kohl?rimmed eyes. Multiple ear piercings glinting silver.
A ghost.
A real ghost.
Standing three feet away from me.
His weight shifted from foot to foot. One hand rose, gave a small, awkward wave. “Um… hello.”
The laugh that burst from my throat sounded manic even to my own ears. High. Breathless. Bordering on hysterical.
“You’re really a ghost.”
“Yes.” He watched me carefully, head tilted slightly. “Really a ghost.”
If I didn’t know better, I’d think he seemed nervous. But ghosts didn’t get nervous. Did they?
“Um… thanks for showing yourself to me?” It came out stilted. Formal. Like I was thanking someone for holding a door open.
“Oh… well.” His teeth caught his lower lip. “That’s okay. It’s just… I wasn’t sure if you’d um… like my appearance.”
Up close, I could see more details. The small bat stitched on his chest. The black wristbands.
The thin leather collar he wore, with its tiny silver rings.
The way his long hair obscured half his face.
The faint, almost imperceptible glow emanating from his skin—like moonlight trapped beneath the surface.
He was… pretty. In an edgy, alternative, definitely would’ve had posters of him on my wall as a teenager sort of way.
“Well,” I said carefully, “you have both of your eyes, so that’s a good start.”
He said nothing. Just stood there, watching me with those dark-rimmed eyes.
“So that was you?” I gestured vaguely back toward the house. “In the attic, just now? You threw Brad across the room? After pratting around with the Ouija board?”
He didn’t look like he could throw anything, being so skinny. Slimmer than me, even. All sharp angles and delicate wrists. If I reached out to touch him, would my hand pass right through him? His shimmering translucence seemed to suggest so.
The ghost nodded.
“Yeah, look, thanks for your help, but it’s probably best if you don’t intervene next time.” I ran a hand through my hair. “I’ll be semi-fucked if Brad dies. For a start, he’s my lift home.”
The ghost snorted. Actually snorted. “It’s all my fault, though,” he said quietly.
I blinked. “Huh?”
“The fight. Between you two.” He shifted his weight again. “It was my fault. I feel bad.”
“What was your fault? You’re not responsible for that dickhead’s actions.”
The ghost shuffled on the spot. Hands shoved deep into his pockets. Eyes fixed somewhere over my left shoulder.
“Are… are you?!”
“Do you promise not to be mad at me?”
I stared at him. At his nervous posture. His bitten lip. The way he couldn’t quite meet my gaze.
Cool dread seeped through me. “No,” I said flatly. “No, I do not promise not to be mad at you.”
The ghost said nothing. Just stared at me with those kohl-rimmed eyes.
I stepped towards him. One step. Two. Close enough now that I could see the individual piercings lining his ear. Close enough to notice how the dappled light filtering through the leaves didn’t quite behave around him—didn’t cast proper shadows, didn’t illuminate him the way it should.
“What’s your name?” The question surprised me. Why did I suddenly care what this ghost was called?
The ghost looked panicked. Proper deer-in-headlights. “Well, my parents named me Bartholomew… but… I’ve always gone by Bat.”
“Bat.” I rolled the name around on my tongue. My eye caught on the tiny bat stitched onto the front of his shirt. “Bat.”
Weird name, for sure. But… I’d heard that word. Really recently. But when?
Brad. Brad had said it… yesterday, in the kitchen.
Ice crept through my veins. “Bat,” I said again. “Bat’s… Bats.”
Fear flashed across the ghost’s face. Unmistakable fear.
“Brad asked me to play Bat’s Bats yesterday.”
The pieces crashed together. Brad’s odd behaviour. Brad’s confusion. Brad’s insistence that last night had never happened.
The kitchen.
The tea.
The talk about feelings in the basement.
The carrying me to the sofa and stroking my hair.
The promising to protect me.
“You,” I breathed.
I stumbled backwards. My shoulders hit the trunk of the oak. Bark dug through my jumpsuit.
“That was you yesterday, wasn’t it? And the day before?”
The ghost said nothing. Just looked sad. Miserable, even.
“You… what… did you like, possess him?!”
Finally, Bat nodded.
My heart pounded louder than any drum I’d ever heard. The garden tilted. Spun. My knees buckled.
I slid down the trunk, landing hard on the damp ground. Moss soaked through my trousers.
“And… and…”
The touches in the attic. The way the air had felt alive around me.
The bathroom.
Oh god. The bathroom.
I opened my mouth to shout at him. To ask if it had been him this morning, or some other creepy ghost with boundary issues. But I found I didn’t even want to know. Couldn’t bear the mortification of knowing that this ghost had watched me wank. Had touched me. Had moaned in my ear.
“Why?” I eventually managed to say. “Why did you possess him?!”
“I had to! The first time, you were hurt!” Bat’s voice climbed higher, and he dropped to his knees in front of me. “You’d fallen down the stairs!”
“Because of all the ghosts!”
“I wanted to help you. To see if you were okay. To… to make you feel better!”
Something in my chest softened. Just slightly. Against my better judgement.
“But what was all that in the kitchen yesterday?”
Bat looked at the ground. His hair fell forward, obscuring his face completely. “Yeah. That was probably too far.”
“You think?!”
“It’s just…” He glanced up through his fringe. “You’re the first human I’ve spoken to since I died. I got a bit carried away.”
“A bit carried away?! You made me think Brad fancied me! Then you made me feel like I’d made it all up! You made me—” The words stuck. Humiliation burned through me.
“I know.” Bat’s voice dropped to barely a whisper. “I’m sorry. I really am. It’s just… the way you played my guitar…”
I froze. “Your guitar? That’s your guitar?”
Bat nodded. “Thanks for tuning it for me.”
This was mental. Absurdity on another level. I’d been thanked by a ghost. For tuning his instrument. After discovering said ghost had been possessing my colleague to flirt with me.
“No worries,” I said, aiming for sarcasm but ending up sounding mildly amused.
Silence fell. Awkward. Heavy. I pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. Stared at the grass.
A ghost. I’d been flirted with by a ghost.
And… I’d liked it. Liked his gentle kindness. The way he held me after I fell down the stairs. The banter in the kitchen. His attention. How he asked questions like he genuinely wanted to get to know me. The little touches. The wanting to sniff my hair.
I’d also liked the way he’d—
No. Not thinking about that.
“Will you play it again?” Bat’s voice cut through my spiralling thoughts. Soft. Hopeful.
“What?”
“My guitar.” He shifted closer. “Will you play it again? Please?”
I looked up. Found him watching me with dark eyes. Eager. Desperate, even.
“No.”
His face fell. Proper devastation, like I’d kicked a puppy.
“Why not?”
“Because…” I searched for reasons. Any reasons that didn’t involve the fact that my brain had short-circuited and I needed time to process literally everything. “Because I’m meant to be here working, not entertaining ghosts!”
The words came awfully loud. Though why did I care about this ghost’s feelings? He was a pervert at best, Brad-murderer at worst.
Bat’s expression transformed. Eyes went wide. Luminous. Bottom lip stuck out slightly.
Puppy-dog eyes.
A ghost was giving me puppy-dog eyes.
And they were working.
His eyes were almost impossibly dark brown.
The deepest brown. Like rich chocolate or mahogany wood or expensive coffee.
The sort of brown you could get lost in, if you weren’t careful.
Which I absolutely wasn’t going to do. Because he was dead.
And had possessed my colleague. And had possibly watched me wank this morning.
But…
He’d said I was the first human he’d spoken to since he died.
First one.
How long had he been alone in this house? Decades, possibly, judging by his fashion sense. Just him and the terrifying maid and the giggling children and whoever else haunted these halls. No escape. No one to share music with.
Something wrapped around my heart and squeezed tightly.
“Fine.” The word escaped before I could stop it. “Maybe… maybe if there’s time. But I want something in return.”
Bat perked up immediately. Sat straighter. “What?”
“I want help with our… investigation.” I deliberately avoided saying extermination. Seemed rude, somehow. “Brad seems slightly out of his depth, and I don’t want to be stuck out here for weeks and weeks.”
Bat’s brow furrowed. The smile disappeared. Had I said something wrong? Offended him somehow?
“Look,” I pressed, “I just want to get this job done and go home. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”
The frown deepened. Lines appeared between his eyebrows.
Bollocks. I’d cocked this up. What if Bat decided to haunt us even more now?
“Well? Do we have a deal?” I forced the words out. Tried to sound confident. Professional. Like this was a normal business transaction and not a negotiation with a dead person.
Bat’s forehead smoothed. The lines vanished.
He extended his hand. Palm up. Long and pale fingers, black polish gleaming in the dappled light.
His lips pulled up into a smile. Not the nervous, bitten-lip expression from before. This one reached his eyes. Transformed his whole face.
I couldn’t deny it. He was… attractive. In his own quirky, emo-boy way. For a ghost. Obviously.
I reached out, fully expecting my hand to pass straight through him. To encounter nothing but cold air.
My fingers made contact.
I gasped.
Solid. He was solid. Cool skin beneath my palm. Not warm like a living person, but real. Real enough to touch. Real enough to feel.
I recoiled instinctively. Yanked my hand back.
Bat grabbed it. Fast. His fingers closed around mine, squeezing tight.
Not painful. Just… firm. Present. Undeniable.
The pads of his fingertips were rough. Callouses. Guitar callouses. I’d had those once, back when I played every day. Before I’d stopped. Before the melodies had faded, leaving my fingertips soft and useless.
“Charlie,” he said.
The way he said my name. Almost like a song. Like he was tasting the syllables. His smile widened, showing gleaming too-bright teeth.
Our hands remained clasped together. His cool. Mine warm. His thin leather collar around his throat caught the light, silver rings glinting.
Uh oh.
I suddenly got the feeling I should have probably consulted my handbook before making any deals with ghosts.
Especially ones capable of possession.
And flirting.
And puppy-dog eyes.