Charlie #3
Something cold flickered behind Father Ashworth’s eyes. “I see,” he said. “Tell me, Charlie, by any chance does ExorSquad peddle superstition and nonsense to vulnerable people, charging them exorbitant fees for the pleasure of their services?”
“Sort of,” I admitted. I could hardly lie to a man of the cloth. “But I’m broke and they were hiring.”
Father Ashworth’s lips pressed into a thin line before he made a small, disgusted sound in the back of his throat. “I see. Well, Charlie Hayes, I wish you luck with your… endeavours. You’ll be in my prayers.”
He turned away, black robes swishing, and disappeared through a side door. I caught the faint sound of muttering—something along the lines of damned charlatans and doomed youth of today.
Oh well.
I hurried back to the car, bags cutting off circulation in my fingers. By the time I collapsed into the driver’s seat, I was panting. Sweat stuck my jumpsuit to my back. I dumped the bags in the passenger footwell, fishing out my phone.
This patch of town had proper signal. Four bars. Glorious, functioning internet. I sent off Lily’s photo of the clawed foot, already imagining her baffled little face, then my thumb hovered over my other apps.
Yet I had no desire to doomscroll through whatever fresh hell social media was serving up today.
What I did have a strong desire to do was to google Bat’s Bats.
My thumb hovered over the search bar.
A flicker of doubt stopped me. This felt invasive, somehow. Like rifling through someone’s diary without permission. Or maybe I just didn’t want Bat to feel too real. Didn’t want to confront the reality of who he’d been. Who he’d never get to be again.
But I couldn’t resist.
I typed it in, heart thumping, and hit search.
Did you mean: bats bats
No, Google, I did not.
My heart sank as I scrolled through pages of results. Types of Bats in the UK. Adopt a Bat Today! Cricket Bats for Sale. A surprisingly comprehensive Wikipedia entry on the echolocation capabilities of the common pipistrellus.
Zero unfairly cute emo boys in sight.
I tried again: Bat’s Bats band
Somehow, even more cricket equipment. A forum discussing whether baseball bats counted as weapons.
I swapped to Spotify.
Nothing.
I stared at the blank screen, an unreasonable amount of disappointment sitting heavy in my gut. What had I expected? A verified artist page? A Greatest Hits album?
I almost gave up.
Almost.
I opened YouTube. It definitely hadn’t existed in the 90s. Even I knew that. But people uploaded old footage and such, right?
I typed in Bat’s Bats.
My heart stopped.
There.
Fourth result down.
A video. A grainy thumbnail showing three figures on a dimly lit stage. The title read: 10 years and we still miss you, dear mighty leader. Posted 2009. Eighty-nine views. Two likes.
I slammed my finger into my touchscreen.
The footage started shaky, someone’s camcorder wobbling as they tried to focus. Bass thrummed through tinny speakers. Drums crashed. Then the camera steadied, and—
There he was.
Bat.
It was unmistakably him. He looked exactly the same, down to the Bat’s Bats tee stretched across his narrow chest. Long black hair whipped wildly around his face while he screamed lyrics I couldn’t quite catch over the adrenaline roaring through my ears.
An electric guitar hung from his shoulders, his fingers flying across the fretboard.
Bat was here. Alive on my screen.
Any small part of me that thought he and the others were products of concussion or hallucination disintegrated. Bat was real!
Had been real.
“Hello, Bat,” I whispered at the screen.
Video-Bat took no notice of me, grinning brilliantly at the camera, all teeth and frantic energy and pure, unadulterated joy. God, he looked so… happy. In his element. Behind him, two bandmates—one on drums, one on bass—grinned just as widely, lost in their music.
They didn’t know their “mighty leader’s” gigs were numbered. That this was one of the last, or perhaps the last time that they’d play together.
My throat tightened.
I paused the video, zoomed in on Bat’s face. His eyes were closed mid-scream, mouth open, completely uninhibited. Free in a way I’d never seen him. The ghost I knew still had sparks of that energy, but muted. Dimmed by death and decades of isolation.
I scrolled to the comments.
Two of them.
The first, from JezzaTheMaaan, posted in 2009: Ollie, you have no idea how much seeing this meant to me. Those were the times, right? And Bat, if you’re reading this… hope you’re shredding it up, wherever you are.
Then, a reply from the video uploader, OllieOllie: You know he is, mate! Love you, man. Hope I see you soon x
My chest ached horribly in a way it had never quite done before.
I had a bizarre urge to reply. To type something like, He’s okay, you guys. Haunting a manor in Wiltshire. Doesn’t get to play music that much, but your dead friend is having a whale of a time scaring contractors.
I had so many questions. If I knew Bartholomew’s full name, I could google that. Find an obituary. A news report about his death. Learn what had happened to him.
But I didn’t.
So I drove back to the manor.