Charlie #2
“It’s true, though.” The words tumbled out before I could stop them.
“I’ve always had a habit of starting things and then walking away when they get hard.
I can’t… I can’t seem to keep anything. Jobs.
I’ve gotten fired for arguing about the stupidest things.
Company policy on water breaks. Whether the systems in place make sense.
I just—I can’t let things go.” My throat tightened.
“My younger sister Emily? She’s a doctor.
Married, has a daughter, owns a bloody house.
With a driveway. And I live in a shit flat-share, working minimum wage for a ghost-hunting company run by a conman who thinks travel expenses are optional. ”
“Sounds like you’re doing just fine to me.”
“I’m a mess, Bat.”
“Join the club.” He spun me again, gentler this time. “Tell me more.”
So I did.
Bat listened carefully as I recounted the major disasters—dropping out of my music production degree in the final year because Mum needed money and I convinced myself I’d never be good enough anyway, bouncing between jobs that never stuck, my dad dying when I was seventeen and how I’d spent years angry at everything and everyone.
The words poured out in fragments, disjointed but honest.
“Emily kept saying she could see Dad’s ghost in the house after he died,” I said quietly.
“She was only thirteen. Mum got so upset every time Emily mentioned it. So I…” I swallowed hard.
“I ordered Emily to stop. Said she was making things worse, that Dad was gone, and she needed to accept it.” My heart seized, a sudden visceral pain gripping it tightly. “But now…”
“Hey.”
Bat’s hand left my waist to cup my cheek. Cool fingers, gentle, deliberate. The touch stole my breath away—so exactly like that phantom caress in the attic, the dust motes swirling against my skin.
“You couldn't have known,” Bat said softly.
I couldn’t speak. Just nodded and let him guide me back into our awkward dance.
“What about now?” Bat asked after a moment. “Your life in London?”
“London.” I tipped my head back, staring at the sky.
Stars scattered across the darkness like spilled salt, impossibly bright out here away from the city’s glare.
When had I last noticed stars in London?
“I live in a tiny flat with one housemate who makes it his mission in life to avoid me. Pretty sure he’s terrified of me, actually.
Scurries away whenever we’re in the same room. ”
“Why?”
“No idea. Maybe I’m just naturally off-putting.”
Bat snorted. “Doubt that.”
“I used to live with housemates who felt like family,” I continued.
“We’d stay up all night playing video games, arguing about music, cooking elaborate meals that always ended in disasters.
But they all moved away. Got proper jobs in other cities or moved in with partners.
Now it’s just me and the guy who thinks I’m some kind of serial killer. ”
“London, though!” Bat’s face lit up, eyes bright with excitement. “I loved visiting London. Couldn’t imagine the excitement of actually living there. All those venues, the gigs every single night…”
“It was fun in my twenties,” I admitted. “Gigs and clubs and house parties that lasted until dawn. Meeting new people constantly, everything feeling electric and possible.”
I paused, searching for the right words.
Loneliness was a funny thing. It crept up on you slowly, like moss spreading across stone. You didn’t even notice until one day you looked down and realised you were covered in it.
At first, you didn’t feel lonely at all. You were busy. You had plans. You turned down that invitation because you were tired. Let that text go unanswered because you’d reply properly tomorrow. Didn’t return that call because what would you even talk about?
Tomorrow became next week. Next week became never.
The thing was, I’d lived with Marcus, Javi, and Ben for four years.
Four years of chaotic Sunday roasts and impromptu kitchen dance parties and arguments about whose turn it was to buy toilet paper.
We’d shared everything—meals, secrets, that one horrific bout of food poisoning from Marcus’s experimental curry.
They’d been my family, no question about it.
Then Marcus announced he was moving to Bali to teach surfing.
Just like that. One conversation over beers and he was gone three weeks later, posting photos of turquoise water and sun-bleached hair while I packed his room up for the landlord.
Ben moved out next. He got a promotion, was suddenly in with a new crowd at work. Could now afford a fancy studio by himself in Canary Wharf.
Javi lasted another six months before he met Jessica. Sweet, brilliant Jessica who worked in marine biology. They got married in a tiny ceremony in Edinburgh, then relocated to Scotland for her research position.
I was invited, obviously. Stood in the front row wearing a fancy suit, smiled through all the photos, gave a speech about the time Javi tried to rescue an “injured” pigeon that turned out to just be extremely fat.
But afterwards, I’d felt something crack open inside my chest.
Not anger. Not even sadness, really.
Just this vast, echoing awareness that they’d moved forward and I’d stayed exactly where I was.
Strange sort of heartbreak, that. Losing friends not to arguments or betrayal, but to life simply pulling them in different directions. No dramatic ending. No closure. Just gradually diminishing texts and promises to visit that never quite materialised.
The worst part? I couldn’t even blame them. They’d found their paths. Their purposes. Their happiness.
And I was still here, stumbling through jobs I hated, living in a flat that didn’t feel like home, wondering when exactly I’d stopped being the person I thought I’d become.
Bat’s thumb brushed across my knuckles, dragging me back to the present.
“Charlie? You alright?” he asked softly.
“Sorry… it’s just, I’m thirty-four now. Most of my friends have either moved on to become proper boring adults—mortgages and children and dinner parties—or they’re still living that party lifestyle and I’m just… too tired to keep up. Does that make sense?”
“You’re in your thirties?” Bat stopped dancing, staring at me. “Seriously?”
I laughed. “Yeah. Thirty-five in a few months. I’m just lucky I have a baby face.”
“You don’t look thirty-four.”
“Is that a compliment or…”
“Definitely a compliment.” Bat grinned. “Besides, I’m probably still ancient by comparison.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re way older than me?”
“Well, technically, stuck at twenty-three forever.” His voice carried something wistful. “Lucky me.”
The words landed oddly.
“Twenty-three?”
“Yep. Born nineteen seventy-six. Died in ninety-nine.”
That would make him fifty years old. Laughter threatened to bubble out of me.
“And… how did you die?” The question escaped before I could stop it. Blunt and graceless. I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry. Bat’s hand stayed steady on my waist, but his smile turned sad, like he’d been expecting me to ask this all along.
“I don’t know.”
The words didn’t compute. I blinked at him. “What?”
“I don’t know how I died.”
“You don’t know at all?”
“No.” He shrugged, the movement stiff. “Sorry. Not much of an answer.”
My mind spun. “But—did you live here? At the manor?”
“I don’t think so.” Bat sighed. “Some of the ghosts here seem to remember their whole life, and death, in perfect clarity. Lady Grimthorne can recite her lineage back six generations. Molly remembers every piece of manor gossip from her living years, remembers serving the family.” He paused, staring past me at the glowing flowers.
“But for me… it’s like the more time passes, the hazier it gets.
I remember where I lived—in a house with my two bandmates in Bristol, and then before that, my childhood home with my parents. But I have no memories of living here.”
“But… you must have died here.”
“Yeah. I guess so. Everyone else died here. None of them know how I died, though.”
The pond reflected the ghostly garden in perfect stillness. A lily pad drifted across the surface, trailing light.
“Aren’t you curious?” I asked.
“Yes and no.” Bat’s fingers tightened on my waist. “There are some clues, I suppose. Firstly, I know that’s my acoustic guitar. The one you found in the attic. I remember it. Remember the weight of it in my hands. Remember playing it. Definitely mine.”
“And secondly?”
“Secondly, there’s… this.”
Bat pulled back slightly, one hand still resting on my arm, his other gripping the hem of his black Bat’s Bats shirt.
He lifted it.
Pale skin emerged, stretched taut over a frame so skinny I could count every rib, shadows pooling in the hollows between bones. The sort of body that belonged to someone who forgot to eat when they were focused on music, who lived on cigarettes and black coffee and ambition.
And there, between two ribs on his left side—
A wound.
Not fresh. Not bleeding. But unmistakably there. A puncture, dark and precise, like something had been driven straight through the flesh and into whatever vital organs lay beneath. The edges looked strange. Not torn or ragged, but almost… clean. Deliberate.
My stomach lurched.
Bat dropped his shirt quickly, smoothing it down. “So. Yeah. That.”
“That’s—” Words tumbled over themselves. “That’s how you died. Something stabbed you. Or—or shot you? Was it a bullet wound? It might be a bullet wound. Or a knife. Did someone stab you? Bat, someone killed you. This wasn’t an accident, you were—”
“Charlie—”
“We need to investigate. Look for more clues. I’ll help you.
If you tell me your full name, there’ll be something online.
Newspapers, police reports. Maybe someone in the town knows.
Father Ashworth might even know something even if he’s a judgemental prick.
And your guitar being here means you definitely came here before you died, so there has to be a reason—”