16. A Ghostly Reintroduction #2
She tilts to the side with an uncanny full-body flop, then slithers down onto the floor. She cracks her limbs audibly, twisting and curling in a way that looks painful as she lurches towards the little boy.
I chance a look at Liam, whose eyes are so wide he looks like he’s just been permanently traumatised, and will never, ever, ever come back from this.
“Lacey!” I snap at her. “Walk properly! We have guests.”
She turns her head around slowly, one hundred and eighty degrees, then breaks into a loud cackle.
With that, she jumps up, reverts to a completely normal-looking girl, who grasps Fred’s hand while he too has a laugh about their good joke.
“Come, Fred,” she says. “Let’s go find someone more interesting to haunt.
” And they skip off through the wall together.
I rest a hand on my hip and let out a long breath. “So that’s… That was Lacey. And Fred.”
Liam finally stops staring at the wall, and with a shaking hand, lifts his tea. “H-how many others do you have?”
His attempted casual delivery is peak adorable.
“I’ll be frank about it.” (No, I won’t.) “I’m not entirely sure. She’s been here… a few years now. But she wasn’t here when I moved in.”
“And when was that?” Liam asks, now, oddly, studying my left hand. I flex it by instinct, flashing the jewel in my ring, and he seems to zero in on the movement, his brow pressing like he’s trying to figure something out.
“Bought it maybe five years ago now. It was a bit of a fixer-upper, but we got the job done.”
“We?” he asks, pausing with the tea at his lips.
“I had a whole team. Of humans, not ghosts. You know, decorators, construction workers, an architect.”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” He sips it, sets it down, glances at Fabian, who’s busy eating a danish. “And then… you moved in?”
“Yes?” What is he trying to get at?
“You just… You moved in?”
“Yessssss…?”
Fabian, watching Liam back now, cracks something that looks suspiciously like a smirk.
“Did you move in alone?” he asks me, and Liam’s face switches up to slightly panicked, his eyes flaring at Fabian.
But Fabian’s smirk only gets deeper, as if there’s something going on here that I’m not quite catching.
A sound cracks into the room from the stairs—a creaking of the boards, heavy.
And the very last thing I need…
“Out, Simon!” I yell up the stairs.
“Simon?” asks Fabian. But he says it like he expected this, his chair scraping back as he stands to behold his entrance.
“Stay in your chair,” Liam warns, and I appreciate that, even though Simon assured me he would be on his best behaviour and absolutely not kill anyone today. But then he also promised me that he wouldn’t come in here.
That same familiar darkness stretches into the room ahead of him, as if he’s setting the lighting on a stage for his own soliloquy.
He couldn’t have a more attentive audience.
Liam, just as wary as yesterday, but intrigued.
Me, feeling like I’m about to explode. Then Fabian…
arranging his hair? Pulling his sweater back to reveal a little collarbone? What the…
His mouth drops wide open.
Simon enters as extravagantly as ever, advancing to the far side of the coffee table to stand, or more, pose, lifting a cigarette between long fingers, and blowing a ghostly mist into the air.
Fabian remains standing despite Liam’s warning, and therefore Liam stands too, slipping around the table and putting a hand on Fabian’s arm before he can move any closer.
But Fabian doesn’t look like a threat to me, and I don’t think Simon’s seeing him that way either.
In fact, Simon’s just standing there, preening, watching him back, smoking, like he’s at a ball, quizzing the room from the punch bowl.
“It’s you,” Fabian whispers, eyes glued to Simon.
Liam reacts by weakening the grip on his arm, as if he’s a little taken aback, which, fair. So am I. He’s who?
Fabian follows it up with, “You’re magnificent.”
Before either of us can speak, Simon, who never talks to anyone new, says, “Do you really think so?”
Fabian lets out something akin to a sigh, but louder, breathier.
And Simon smiles. At him. In a very particular way. Then walks straight through the wall, outside of the house, taking all the darkness and weirdness with him.
“Oh my god,” Fabian rasps. “Did you see that?” As if we could have missed it. “Did you see that?” And he starts straight for the door.
“Hey, stop!” Liam dodges in front of him. “It’s your first day! Where do you think you’re going?”
“We’re here to see ghosts, aren’t we?” Fabian virtually shouts at him, eyes digging into Liam as if Liam were the odd one.
“It’s not safe,” Liam reminds him. “That ghost almost killed someone yesterday.”
Fabian’s fingers twist around the collar of his sweater. “Oh, did he?”
There’s something so… I don’t want to say ‘sexual’ in his speech, but it sounds quite sexual. And it worries me. And I’m not sure this guy should be here at all.
“Please sit down,” Liam insists, gesturing to the chair, but unwilling to move first, as if Fabian might run off ghost-chasing the second he steps away.
And Fabian does eye the door a few seconds longer, as if that were his intention. But then, “Fine!” He flops into his chair like a petulant child and starts tearing into a friand.
“You should know,” says Liam, with an authoritative note in his voice that I’ve never heard before, “we’re not here for these ghosts.”
Fabian’s mouth opens, but Liam talks over him, some rather sweet confidence replacing the shyer man of yesterday. “There’s something in this house that is… evil. Isn’t that right, Mr Gravely?”
‘Mr Gravely.’ I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of this. “Yes, that’s right. I think it’s actively evil, whereas Simon is just… morally grey?”
“Morally grey?” A low, slow whine pours out of Fabian, and he looks like he might make for the door any second.
I think I might have to talk to Gerald about this one. As well as my other two hundred and fifty pounds.
But Liam seems to have this under control.
“This evil thing,” he says, sharply insistent towards Fabian, “can create illusions. Very strong and severe illusions that… They seem to manifest in some physical ways. Last night, it attacked me, and I have this.” He points to the scratch on his cheek, which makes Fabian cock his head with a touch of interest.
“So you can physically feel them?” Fabian asks. “Without being dead?”
“What?” Liam asks, somewhere between annoyed and confused. “Yeah, I could feel the hallucination.”
“No, I mean ghosts,” Fabian explains. “You can feel them?”
Liam’s brow pulls tight. “This isn’t a ghost that we’re talking about. That’s what I’m trying to explain to you.”
“Oh…” says Fabian. “Oh.” Then he looks out the window. “But Simon, he’s a ghost, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“So can he, uh…” He drops a spoon of sugar into his tea, stirs. “Can he… touch?”
“What?” Liam repeats, more harried than before.
“Me?” asks Fabian. “Could he touch me? Or-or anyone? Just asking because… Um. Touching. It’s… physical.”
“Yeah?” Liam breathes, looking as befuddled I’m beginning to feel.
This must be my place to step in, especially as Liam seems to have lost his train of thought entirely in the oddness of this discussion. “Simon can manifest touch,” I explain. “Movement. He’s an advanced-level ghost. But he’s not what we’re worried about here.”
Fabian’s eyes light on me. “So your other thing… it’s… in the house? Somewhere?”
“Yes. Upstairs in the attic. But don’t worry, it’s never come down here, and—”
“So…” Fabian interrupts. “So, I might be better off… Or w-we might be better off, Liam, if you, as the more experienced of the two of us, took the house, and that thing, and if I, say, for example, watched the perimeter? Maybe went outside? To see if, um, I can distract any other ghosts, that might still be out there, from bothering you? While you’re working? ”
He’s got the jerky movements of a junkie desperate to score his next fix. And he’s a bizarre situation I’ve never yet found myself in.
“I’d rather we stick together,” Liam tells him firmly.
I think maybe Fabian and I both have our fair share of disappointment with that comment, for different reasons, even if it is a very sensible suggestion.
“You do realise,” Liam says slowly, “that ghost out there is a killer?”
Again, that soft groan-whine from Fabian.
Just what the fuck?
“Anyway,” I attempt to pull things back on track, “it seems like we’re all on the same page now. About addressing the thing upstairs.”
“We are,” says Liam, trying to speak for both of them.
“What about the history of the place?” asks Fabian.
Finally, a perfectly reasonable, normal reaction from him.
“That’s what I was asking yesterday,” says Liam, needlessly, but with an interesting air of ownership about it. “Mr Gravely says he has no record of any official deaths here, is that right?”
“Correct, Liam.”
“Well, have you looked?” Fabian asks. “In my experience, ghosts don’t just turn up at your house for no reason.”
Unfortunately, he is right about that. Or he would have been. Until recently, when ghost activity started going crazy. Either way, it’s not something I need Liam looking too far into.
“Just because there’s no record doesn’t mean nothing happened here,” I argue. “This place has been here some four hundred years. A lot can go down in that time without it being recorded.”
Fabian pushes his chair back, standing again. “I’d like to leave. Um. Go look into the history of the place. I might go to a local library, or council, or um, something.”
“But that’s not what we’re here for,” Liam sighs out in sheer frustration. “Mr Gravely is fine with his ghosts. We’re here to fix the thing in the attic. You need to forget all about the ghosts for now.”
“But…” Fabian throws frantic eyes on the closed front door. “But we should try to research! It’s a basic part of a ghost hunt!”
“But we’re not on a ghost hunt!” Liam yells back. “And how do you even know that, anyway?”