Charlie
thirteen
Freedom at last.
At least, that’s what it should have felt like, zooming away in Brad’s car. Instead, it felt weird. Wrong. Lonely, almost, all by myself in this car, driving in this foreign place.
My hands gripped the steering wheel too tight.
The car lurched as I shifted gears, grinding them in a way that made me wince.
Like riding a bike, I’d convinced myself as I’d turned the key in his ignition.
But it was at least five years since I’d last driven anything, and Brad’s car had this clutch that felt nothing like I was used to.
I could have sworn the pedals sat in different positions.
I jerked forward, stalled, swore under my breath.
Started again.
The engine roared as I pulled onto another narrow country road, hedgerows blurring past.
Bat’s face flashed through my mind. That hopeful expression when he’d asked if I was coming back. The way his voice had gone small and uncertain.
You’re coming back, right?
That hand holding. My palm still tingled. Us just wandering around the manor whilst Bat introduced me to ghosts like we were at some sort of supernatural networking event. His palm against mine, so bizarrely cold.
Then there was the bathroom.
The ghost who’d touched me all over, then moaned in my ear—
“Fuck.”
The car swerved slightly. I corrected, gripping the wheel harder.
Was that Bat? Had to have been, right?
Stop. Don’t think about it.
But my brain refused to cooperate, replaying the sensation of phantom fingers exploring my skin, curious and tentative and then increasingly confident. The breathy moan that had answered mine.
My stomach clenched every time I rounded a bend. What level of insurance did Brad even have? Would it cover unauthorised drivers?
More importantly, would it cover theft, if I decided to be sensible and not return to the manor?
But I wasn’t going to do that.
Bat needed books. Needed chess pieces. Needed someone to talk to who wasn’t a dead Georgian aristocrat or a drunken Hollywood actress or a pair of Victorian children with concerning hobbies.
And I needed…
What did I need?
To understand. To figure out what the hell was happening in that house. To help somehow, maybe. To see Bat smile again, the way he’d smiled when I’d agreed to play his guitar again.
To… feel his hand in mine again?
Bloody hell, Charlie. Get a grip. He’s dead, for fuck’s sake!
Luckily, the town wasn’t far. Five minutes of white-knuckled driving brought me to a weathered sign: Grimthorne Village - Please Drive Carefully.
I parked badly on the edge of it, one wheel mounted on the kerb, the back end sticking out at an angle that would definitely get me a ticket in London. I switched off the engine and sat there for a moment, hands still shaking slightly.
The sunshine held, warm through the windscreen. Birds sang somewhere overhead, and for a moment I let myself appreciate the little town sprawling in front of me—all honey?coloured stone and flower boxes bursting with late summer blooms.
Shame about the name, really. Grimthorne. It wasn’t exactly tourist-attracting material.
Still, it didn’t feel dying the way some small towns did.
The high street stretched long, lined with shops that actually looked open.
A bakery with steamed-up windows. A butcher’s with enough hanging meat in the display to please Brad.
A newsagent’s with postcards spinning lazily in a rack outside.
Further down, a small church spire reached towards a cloudless sky, its stonework dark with age.
Quaint. Alive. A breath of fresh air compared to the manor.
I climbed out of the car, my ExorSquad jumpsuit crinkling as I moved. Great. Nothing said “normal person going about normal business” quite like a navy boiler suit with a cartoon ghost on it.
My eyes drifted to the supermarket at the far end of the street. Small, but functional. I was here to buy food, really. Not to dilly-dally and play tourist.
Yet.
Yet, I was going to have one angry ghost on my hands if I came back empty-handed.
One disappointed ghost, my brain unhelpfully corrected. And you don’t want that, do you?
“Shut up,” I muttered to myself.
A woman pushing a pram gave me a wide berth.
Right. Pawn shop first. Grimthorne Antiques and Collectables, wedged between a florist and a place selling orthopaedic shoes.
The bell chimed as I pushed inside.
My nose was instantly assaulted by old wood and mothballs and something vaguely metallic.
Shelves crammed with clutter lined every wall—china figurines, tarnished silver tea sets, vinyl records in milk crates, a taxidermied fox with one glass eye missing.
I shuddered at the idea of how many spiders had made homes within all the crap.
Behind the counter sat a woman in her seventies, grey hair pulled back in a severe bun. She wore reading glasses on a chain and was thumbing through a catalogue.
Shuffling up to her, I was acutely aware of how ridiculous I looked. How ridiculous this all was. I placed the three items Bat had given me on the counter. The silver letter opener. The crystal inkwell. The jade figurine.
“Um. Hi.”
The woman glanced up. Her gaze travelled from my face down to my jumpsuit, lingering on the logo.
“Haven’t seen you before,” she said.
“I’m… just passing through.”
“Right.” She set her catalogue aside, eyeing me with open suspicion. “And what exactly am I looking at here?” She nodded towards the items.
“Some stuff from my grandmother’s house.” I imagined Lady Grimthorne’s disapproving frown glaring at me. Or who knew, maybe she was about to pop up right beside me and tell me off. “My late grandmother. I’m not entirely sure what it all is.”
The woman sighed, a long-suffering sound, and picked up the letter opener first. She turned it over, examining the hallmarks. Then the inkwell. Then the figurine, holding it up to the light.
Silence stretched.
“Look,” she said eventually, setting the figurine down with a soft clink.
“I can’t be dealing with the trouble if anyone comes looking for these and sees them on my shelves.
” Her eyes flicked back to my uniform. “But I suppose I could sell them online.” She paused and I gave her my best Bat-worthy puppy-dog eyes.
Or at least, I tried to look desperate. “Fine. But I’m only giving you eighty max for the lot. ”
Was that a good deal? All I knew was that Lady Grimthorne was a woman of taste. “One hundred,” I blurted out.
The woman laughed. Properly laughed, a sharp bark of sound. “No. Eighty.”
My face burned. “Okay then.”
She opened the till, counted out four twenties, and slid them across the counter.
“By the way, do you have any chess pieces?” I asked.
She blinked at me. “Chess pieces?”
“A white knight and two black pawns.”
The woman frowned, clearly deciding I was the strangest customer she’d had all week. “Why don’t you try the charity shop on the corner? There’s all sorts of junk in there.”
Junk. Rich, coming from someone whose shop contained a one-eyed fox.
“Right. Thanks.”
Off I trotted to the Little Paws charity shop, three doors down.
The door stuck when I pushed it, then swung open with a creak that set off another cheerful bell.
Inside, I found a rush of synthetic lavender, racks of clothing that stretched from wall to wall, interspersed with shelves groaning under the weight of mismatched crockery, and stacks of books that leaned like the Tower of Pisa.
All in all, pretty similar to the last shop.
A tabby cat dozed on the counter, curled into a perfect circle.
I couldn’t help myself. On my way past the pet section, I snagged a packet of salmon?flavoured treats. Bat wouldn’t mind a minor deviation from his shopping list, surely.
At the counter, a middle-aged man with a woolly cardigan and kind eyes looked up from his newspaper crossword. “Can I help?”
“Actually… I’m looking for a few specific things. Chess pieces. A white knight and two black pawns.”
The man scratched his chin. “Chess pieces. Well, we’ve got a full set somewhere, I think. You can’t just buy the bits, though, obviously.”
“I guess I’ll take the whole thing, then.”
His eyebrows rose slightly, but he nodded and disappeared into the back room. While he rummaged, I wandered the aisles. Colouring books and pencils turned up easily enough—Disney princesses and mandalas. If they weren’t to Rosemary’s taste, she could always eat the pencils.
Books proved more challenging.
The fiction section sprawled across four towering shelves, organised by some system known only to the gods of charity shops. Romance mixed with thrillers. Literary fiction wedged between self-help guides.
Then I spotted them. The entire Outlander series, all eight massive volumes lined up like soldiers.
Time travel. Romance. Scotland. These had to tick at least some of Lady Grimthorne’s boxes.
Plus, the TV actor on the covers was droolworthy enough to make me pause, so hopefully the interior would satisfy Her Majesty.
I hefted the stack into my arms.
Now, Bat.
What did a dead emo kid want to read? I had no idea. He’d mentioned music constantly, so maybe biographies? But the biography section consisted of three books about Churchill and a memoir by someone who’d climbed Everest.
Science fiction, then. Space operas lined half a shelf—thick doorstoppers with embossed covers showing spaceships and distant planets. I grabbed a dozen or so. Even if they weren’t his thing, at least they’d keep him occupied for weeks.
My arms ached by the time I staggered back to the counter. The man had returned with a battered chess set, the box held together with sellotape.
“Right.” He surveyed my haul with undisguised amusement. “Let me ring you up.”
The till beeped. And beeped. And beeped.
Numbers climbed on the ancient display screen.
Forty pounds.
Sixty.
Seventy-five.
My stomach tightened.
“That’ll be eighty-three pounds even,” the man announced cheerfully.
“Really?” I couldn’t help but squeak.
He shrugged. “The chess set is an antique. The pieces are hand carved.”
Bollocks.