18. Charlie #4
“They look fucked,” Brad observed helpfully.
I didn’t bring a spare pair. Never occurred to me I’d need them for a simple ghost investigation. Now I’d have to cope with everything being a blurry mess for however long we stayed here. Didn’t seem terribly sensible in a place where things were quite possibly out to kill you.
My legs trembled as I climbed to my feet. The world swam in and out of focus, shapes bleeding into indistinct smudges of colour.
Something long and pale dangled from Brad’s fingers.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.” Brad’s fist snapped shut, shoving whatever it was into his pocket.
“Charlie,” Bat said sharply, floating closer. “He’s got one of her fingers.”
My stomach dropped. “Is that one of her bones?” I demanded. “What are you playing at? We don’t need a bloody souvenir from that experience.”
Brad sniffed, wiping some mud off his cheek with the back of his palm. “It’s an insurance policy.”
“Insurance—”
“So she doesn’t murder us in our sleep,” he said, words clipped. “Separating bones weakens the spirit. Basic containment protocol.”
I stared at him. The man had just kicked a centuries-old woman’s remains into a hole like rubbish, and now he wanted to keep bits of her as protection? After she’d specifically told us not to disturb her bones again?
“Put it back.”
“No.”
“Brad, I’m not asking—”
“And I’m not taking orders from a rookie with no field experience!” Brad’s voice rose. “You don’t know what she’s capable of. This gives us leverage.”
The pain in my ribs flared white-hot. My hands shook. The blurred world tilted sideways, and I had to lock my knees to stay upright.
“Put. It. Back.”
For a long moment, Brad held my gaze. Something passed across his blurry face—calculation, resentment, maybe a flicker of uncertainty.
“Fine!” He wheeled around, boots squelching in the mud as he marched back towards the grave. “Bloody fine!”
He crouched at the edge of the hole. His arm extended downward. After a moment, he straightened and turned back, brushing his hands off on his jumpsuit.
“Happy now?”
Not remotely. But at least the bone was back where it belonged.
Brad grabbed the shovel and began kicking dirt back into the grave with a lot more force than necessary. Each impact sent clods of earth tumbling into the darkness below.
“Right, listen, I need a break,” I said, voice hoarse. “I want to be alone for a bit.”
Brad frowned, studying my face with something that might have been concern, but more likely, definitely wasn’t. Eventually, he nodded. “Fair enough. Sorry she decided to take it all out on you.”
Before he started talking shit about how much better he would have handled being flung against a tree, I turned away to stumble back towards the manor, each step feeling even wobblier than the last.
“Charlie.” Bat’s voice, small and uncertain. “Do you need a break from me too?”
I paused. Quite frankly, I needed a break from my entire life. “I… just need to sit down for a bit. Somewhere quiet.”
Bat bit his lip, conflicted, but he kept following as I forced myself up the manor’s enormous staircase. My legs were jelly by the time I reached the upper-floor corridor where we’d discovered that single bar of mobile signal.
I needed a tiny sliver of normalcy right now. A.k.a. civilisation.
Gingerly, I lowered myself to the wooden floor. Everything ached—my ribs, my back, my head where it had struck the tree. Bat settled nearby, careful not to touch me. Probably his idea of giving me space.
I opened my phone and scrolled through my contacts, hovering over “Mum” before zooming past. I’d neglected calling her for weeks, and couldn’t cope with her mothering right now.
I tapped on my chat with Emily.
Emily
Lily says it’s a toenail. A giant’s toenail specifically.
Second guess - dinosaur claw.
She’s very confident about the dinosaur claw btw. Says you found a fossil.
My thumb hit the call button before I could think better of it.
She’d probably panic. I hadn’t actually called her in years, only messaged. The phone rang and rang. Made sense, she was probably treating patients. It was the middle of a workday, after all. Then—
“Charlie?!”
“Hey, Emily.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah… sorry if you’re working.”
“I just happen to be on a very short break. What’s up? What’s wrong? Is your stomach still bothering you?”
Bat tilted his head in confusion.
Right. I’d lied about missing her celebration dinner last week, claimed stomach problems when really I’d been too broke to afford the train. And the food. And the service charge.
“No, no, it’s um… much better. I just wanted to, um… check in.” I just got attacked by a murderous not-witch and almost died, so I needed to hear your voice.
“Have you started your new job this week?” she said brightly. “You said on our chat you got some sort of delivery gig?”
Ah. Another little white lie.
Bat raised his eyebrows at me.
“Oh yeah… it’s going well. Usual boring delivery job crap. Hopefully I’ll find something better soon. Anyway, how’s Lily? Did she get that leading part in her school play?”
“No,” Emily replied, laughing. “I think her teacher hates her. Apparently Lily constantly raising her hand to answer every single question is ‘attention seeking behaviour.’”
I laughed, the sound unclenching something inside me, my muscles finally starting to relax. “Now, who does that remind me of?”
“I have no idea!” Emily said, mock-innocently.
My own school experience was the polar opposite of my boffin sister’s. Dossing around at the back with my mates whilst my parents despaired as Emily got perfect grades and I… definitely didn’t.
“Speaking of when we were kids…”
“Hmm?”
I took a deep breath. “So, this is random, but… you remember when Dad died…”
My throat closed. Just shut. Like someone had their fist wrapped around my windpipe.
What the fuck?
Silence. Then, “Yeah, surprisingly I do remember that pretty well actually.”
I swallowed hard, forced the words out. “But do you remember when you kept saying you could see him? Around the house? See… see his ghost?”
The tightness didn’t ease. If anything, it got worse. My eyes even started stinging.
Christ. Long day. That’s all. Just a really, really long day.
More silence. “Charlie, this is very, very random.”
“I just wanted to say… I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. And I’m sorry for being a complete twat, telling you to shut up about it. Saying that you were making Mum worse and everything.”
“Look, that was all a really long time ago—”
“I know, but I need to say sorry. And tell you that I do believe you. I’ve had some stuff happen recently which has, um… broadened my horizons.”
“You’re being haunted by ghosts?” she said teasingly.
I caught Bat’s eye. Those warm brown eyes crinkled with amusement, and he grinned at me, sending my heart all thump, thump, thump.
“Something like that.” I cleared my throat. “Did you see Dad much after I told you to stop talking about it?”
“Yeah. For a few more months. He didn’t ever talk to me or anything, but sometimes I’d hear him humming one of his favourite songs.”
A stab of pain shot right through me as a memory surfaced—Dad humming a rock song whilst giving me a piggyback, his voice rumbling straight into my ear.
I laughed. “His humming used to drive Mum mad.”
“Right?” Emily seemed to hesitate for a moment, then said, “I think… I think I saw him leave, by the way. Dad, I mean.”
“Leave? What?”
“So, you probably won’t remember this, but there was that one night when we were all in the living room.
And you had your guitar out for the first time in ages.
And you started making up stupid songs with rude rhymes about that postman who kept throwing our parcels at the door instead of delivering them properly. ”
I did remember that! “Yeah, and then Mum ended up laughing for the first time since Dad died. And she went hysterical with it.”
“Yes! And she had tears streaming down her face, and I thought she was sad again—”
“But then she said she was crying because she loves us two so much.”
I remembered that moment with crystal clarity. It was the moment I knew Mum was going to be okay again.
“Yeah, then we all had that group hug on the sofa,” Emily said. “What I didn’t say at the time was that Dad was watching the whole thing. And when we were cuddling and laughing together, he left.”
“Left?”
“He smiled at me. At us. Waved. Then walked through the living room wall.”
“Huh. Do you think he like… walked through ‘the door’ or ‘the light’ or something?”
“Maybe? To be honest, his is the only ghost I’ve ever seen, and the memories of it all are distorted by grief and time.” She sighed. “Probably just my imagination processing his death.”
“No!” I said. “I think it was real. That you really saw him.”
Bat reached over and gently brushed my cheek with his thumb. I’m crying. I hadn’t even realised. I reached for Bat’s hand, interlacing our fingers, the feel of his cold palm still somehow reassuring against mine.
“Charlie, I have to dash back to work,” Emily said softly. “But I’m bringing Lily down to London to see you super soon, okay? Maybe the weekend after next?”
“Thanks.” The word came out horribly rough, thick with emotion that refused to be swallowed.
“And Charlie? You can ring me anytime. I mean it. Anytime at all.”
She was worried now. I’d probably freaked her out with all the ghost talk and the random phone call. She’d be on the phone to Mum later, staging an intervention.
“Same goes for you,” I managed. “Love you.”
We said our goodbyes, and I hung up, staring at the phone screen for a moment.
“Are you okay?” Bat asked quietly.
“Yeah. Sorry.” I cleared my throat, wiping my face with my free hand. “It’s the witch’s fault. I mean, the non-witch.”
Bat’s eyes scanned my body, lingering on my ribs that got crushed when I fell to the ground. “Do you need to go to the hospital? It all looked properly vicious.”