18. Charlie
eighteen
Charlie
“Right. We need to find the witch.”
I turned from the counter where I’d been staring at my now-cold tea. Brad stood in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, expression set.
“What?”
“The witch. Margery Darke. These spirits—” Brad gestured vaguely at the empty air. “They must be drawing on her power. That’s why they’re so strong. Why they can manifest physically, throw things, bite people.”
I’d only just managed to stop my hands shaking from Harrison’s extended rant. He’d stood amid the shattered crockery for twenty minutes, alternating between despair and demands to clean up the mess immediately.
Brad had puffed up like an indignant peacock. “That’s not in our job description. We’re Spirit Extraction Specialists, not housekeepers.”
“I don’t care what your bloody job description says! Look at my kitchen!”
“Your haunted kitchen. Which we’re here to sort out. For a very reasonable fee, I might add.”
“Reasonable?!” Harrison’s face had gone an alarming shade of purple. “You call this reasonable? You’ve been here three days and things are getting worse!”
“Worse? Sir, do you have any idea how powerful these entities are? There’s a very real chance of death—”
I’d stood frozen throughout the entire exchange, desperately trying not to look at Bat, who’d been doubled over with silent laughter, occasionally wiping phantom tears from his eyes. “This is way better than telly,” he’d whispered.
Eventually Harrison had stormed out, threatening to call Gerald, his solicitor, and possibly the prime minister.
The front door had slammed hard enough to rattle the remaining intact crockery.
“Let’s just leave it for the ghosts to clean,” I’d said without thinking.
Brad had stared at me. “You think the ghosts will clean up?”
It would certainly give Molly something to do.
Now Brad strode past me towards the back door, boots crunching on porcelain shards. “I want to see what you found last night. This grave.”
“Right. Yeah. Okay.”
Bat straightened from where he’d been lounging against the wall. “Oh, this should be good.”
The garden sprawled before us in the afternoon light—overgrown, wild, the maze of pathways disappearing between untended hedgerows and tangled flowerbeds.
Brad charged ahead like he knew exactly where he was going.
I followed, almost losing sight of him as he rounded a corner between two enormous rhododendron bushes.
“Brad, slow down. You don’t even know the way!”
Brad turned and glowered at me. “Speed up, then! Where are we going?”
I stopped at a fork in the path. Left or right? Both looked identical—narrow gravel tracks disappearing between walls of green.
Bat? I silently pleaded, glancing around at him.
He materialised beside me, hands in his pockets. “You’ve already been there once. Don’t you remember?”
“It was so dark last night,” I ground out to Brad/Bat.
Brad sighed.
Bat grinned. Didn’t move.
“Please?” I silently mouthed at Bat whilst Brad studied the manor’s facade.
“Since you asked so nicely.” He floated past me down the left path, glancing back over his shoulder. “Keep up, Charlie. I know how much you like running.”
I jogged after Bat, who’d picked up speed, weaving between overgrown rose bushes and beneath a crumbling stone archway.
The path twisted, doubled back, opened into a small clearing with a broken fountain, then narrowed again.
“This place is massive,” I muttered.
“Yup,” Bat said cheerfully. “Thomas has been tending it for two hundred years. Still hasn’t got it all under control.”
Finally, blessedly, the apple tree appeared ahead—gnarled branches spreading wide, the space beneath its canopy darker than the surrounding garden.
Brad stood with his hands on his hips, staring down at the patch of bare earth. “This it?”
“Yeah.”
The wrongness hit me again as I approached—that same sensation of something fundamentally off about the ground beneath the tree. Like the earth itself was sick.
Brad crouched, reaching for the small rock that marked the grave. His fingers traced the carved initials: M.D.
“This is it? Just this?”
“And the dead earth.” I gestured at the barren patch. “Clearly, nothing grows here for a reason.”
Bat floated above the grave, arms crossed, watching Brad with narrowed eyes.
Brad’s hand hovered over the dirt. Hesitated.
Then he pressed his palm flat against the ground.
“Brad, don’t—”
His body went rigid. Eyes rolled back. Mouth opened in a silent gasp.
I lunged forward, grabbed his shoulder, yanked him backwards.
Brad sprawled on the grass, chest heaving. “What—what the fuck—”
“I tried to warn you! That grave almost… yesterday it felt like it was trying to pull me in. Or something. I don’t know exactly what happened, but it felt bad.”
Brad scrambled away from the bare earth, face pale. “Christ. That’s—” He pressed a hand to his chest, breathing hard. “That’s not normal haunting energy. That’s something else.”
“No shit.”
He climbed to his feet, brushed grass from his shorts. His hand shook slightly as he adjusted the PolterPulse on his belt.
“Right. We need to dig up her bones.”
“What?”
“It’ll be the easiest way to talk to her. Force a manifestation. Make her deal with us directly instead of working through the other spirits.”
“But that is very much against the handbook! There’s literally a rule about this. Rule two forty-three. Do not attempt to dig up cursed remains.”
Brad waved a dismissive hand. “The rules are more like guidelines.”
“You’ve been citing rules at me since we got here! ‘Rule fifty-two, Charlie. There’s a rule for everything, Charlie.’”
“That’s different.”
“How is it different?”
Brad’s hand landed on my shoulder. Squeezed. Warm, heavy, proprietary.
Bat’s face twisted into the very picture of thunder. He drifted lower, eyes fixed on Brad’s hand.
“Listen, mate. I’m ExorSquad’s best Spirit Extraction Specialist. Gerald trusts me to make the right call in any situation. And I’m telling you—we need those bones.”
I wriggled out from under his grip, stepping sideways before Bat could do something spectacularly stupid like pick up that rock he was eyeing up and brain Brad with it.
“The handbook says we need a licensed occult archaeologist,” I said firmly.
“Where exactly do you propose we find one of those? Yellow Pages?”
Brad wasn’t going to let this drop. I’d lost this battle.
“Right. Shovels,” he said. “We’ll need proper ones, not gardening trowels.”
I followed him across the lawn, secretly hopeful. Surely the Lancasters wouldn’t have proper digging equipment just lying around. We’d need to drive into town, buy some, and I could stock up on more snacks.
Bat drifted alongside me. “He’s really going to do this?”
“Apparently,” I whispered.
“Right, because desecrating a witch’s grave—that’s not gonna backfire at all.”
Brad veered towards a small structure half hidden behind an overgrown hedge. A garden shed. Weathered wood, peeling paint, door hanging slightly askew on rusted hinges.
He yanked it open.
Inside, amongst the horrible number of cobwebs and garden detritus, stood three shovels in varying states of decay. Brad selected two of the sturdiest, tested their weight, nodded with satisfaction.
“These’ll do.”
So much for my snack run.
“Right. I’m going to go change. Meet you back at the tree.”
Brad thrust one of the shovels at me. I immediately dropped it, kicking it over with my foot to check for spiders. Brad laughed, then strode off towards the manor, leaving me alone in the garden with Bat.
I stared down at the tool. How deep had they buried Margery Darke? Six feet? More? Less? My arms already ached at the thought. I’d never dug anything larger than a hole for a fence post, and that had been in Emily’s back garden, supervised by her husband, Reuben, who kept correcting my technique.
“This is a terrible idea,” Bat said.
“I know.”
“Like, monumentally bad.”
“I know.”
“Brad’s an absolute bellend.”
“I know.”
Bat floated in front of me, blocking my path. “So why are you going along with it?”
“Because—” I hefted the shovel, adjusting my grip. “Because I don’t know what else to do. He’s technically my supervisor. And he’s obsessed with this witch being the source of the problem. A.k.a. you guys.”
“We’re not the problem! It’s the thing in the basement.”
“Well, I can tell Brad that, but he’ll pry that sealed door open if it’s the last thing he does.”
Bat’s brown eyes flashed wide. He opened his mouth to respond, then flickered slightly, gaze fixed on something behind me.
I turned.
Brad approached through the garden, transformed. Gone was his ExorSquad jumpsuit. Instead, he wore a black tank top that clung to his chest and arms, and tiny navy shorts that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. The fabric stretched tight across his thighs, riding up slightly as he walked.
I tried not to stare. Failed completely.
“You’ll be cold,” I managed.
Brad laughed a bark of amusement. “Cold? Mate, we’re about to work up a sweat. Trust me, five minutes in and you’ll be wishing you’d stripped down too.”
He carried an enormous bag of table salt in one hand, the shovel in the other. When we reached the apple tree, he set both down and hefted the salt bag.
“Stand back.”
He circled the grave, pouring salt over every inch of it. Then, in a thick white line that enclosed the bare earth entirely. The wrongness radiating from the ground pulled back, as if the salt created a barrier between it and the rest of the garden.
Bat flinched away from the salt circle, face twisted with discomfort.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
“Salt. Doesn’t hurt exactly, not me at least, but it’s… uncomfortable. Like standing too close to a fire.” He glowered at Brad. “I don’t like this.”
I shrugged helplessly. What could I do? Brad had already started digging, driving his shovel into the earth with glee.
“Come on, then,” Brad called. “Don’t just stand there.”