21. Bat
twenty-one
Bat
As I watched myself on that screen, it was like seeing a ghost.
Which, considering the circumstances, was bloody ironic.
There I was—alive, electric, completely lost in the music.
My fingers flew across the fretboard like they had minds of their own, hair whipping around my face as I screamed the chorus to “Midnight Frequency.” The camera wobbled, but I could still make out Jezza behind the kit, completely off his head on whatever cocktail of substances he’d consumed before we went on.
Ollie swayed beside me, bass thrumming through the speakers, that massive grin plastered across his face.
God, I remembered that night. The Cavern in Bristol, packed to the rafters with sweaty bodies and cigarette smoke.
Ollie had shown up absolutely steaming—three pints and two shots deep before soundcheck.
We’d spent twenty minutes in the toilets, forcing coffee down his throat and slapping his cheeks.
“You’re going to be brilliant,” I’d told him, steadying him against the sink. “Just don’t fall off the stage.”
And he had been brilliant. They both had. We all had.
I remembered the drive home afterwards, the three of us crammed into our knackered Transit van, buzzing with adrenaline and cheap lager.
Jezza had nicked a traffic cone and wore it like a hat whilst Ollie sang sea shanties at the top of his lungs.
We’d laughed until our sides hurt, convinced we were going to conquer the world.
Twenty-three years old and completely invincible.
“Look,” Charlie said excitedly, scrolling down to the comments. “Your bandmates left messages.”
I leaned closer, squinting at the screen. JezzaTheMaaan and OllieOllie—of course they’d picked such ridiculous usernames.
Ollie, you have no idea how much seeing this meant to me. Those were the times, right? And Bat, if you’re reading this… hope you’re shredding it up, wherever you are.
You know he is, mate! Love you, man. Hope I see you soon x
My throat constricted. “Two thousand and nine,” I whispered. “That’s… so long ago now. They’ve probably forgotten all about me.”
Charlie’s face snapped towards mine, eyes fierce behind his now-wonky glasses. “Are you mental?”
Before I could respond, he reached for my face. I summoned what little energy I had left, forcing myself solid just as his palm cupped my cheek.
“Nobody could ever forget you, Bat.”
Then he kissed me, soft and certain, and for one perfect moment I felt properly alive again. Not the pale echo of existence I’d grown accustomed to, but genuinely, vibrantly alive.
“Are there…” I cleared my throat. “Any more videos?”
Charlie shook his head apologetically. “This was the only one I could find. The account doesn’t have any other uploads either.”
I nodded, trying not to look too disappointed.
“But,” Charlie continued, “if you tell me their full names, I can google them.”
I sighed dramatically. “Why is everyone nowadays always banging on about ‘Google?’ Whatever happened to good old-fashioned detective work?”
“Bat.”
“Fine, fine. Jeremy Collins… Jezza. And Oliver Thompson… Ollie.”
Charlie’s fingers raced across the laptop’s keyboard. Within seconds, images began loading. Photos of men I barely recognised—older, greyer, wearing suits and wedding rings and proper grown-up expressions.
But still unmistakably them.
I watched in stunned silence as Charlie scrolled backwards through years of their lives. Jezza at what looked like his wedding, beaming beside a woman in white. Ollie holding a baby—his child. Christmas photos, holiday snaps, birthday parties. A whole lifetime I’d never been part of.
“Bat?” Charlie’s voice was gentle. “Should we stop? You’ve gone very quiet.”
I shook my head, unable to look away. “No, it’s… I’m obviously glad they’re having good lives. It’s just so funny seeing them old, you know? In my head, they’re still twenty-three.”
Charlie scrolled to a beach photo—Ollie, definitely Ollie, despite the grey hair and laugh lines. He was shirtless, arms stretched wide towards the camera, and there on his left shoulder…
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
The bat tattoo. Exactly the same as mine, still dark against his weathered skin.
I rolled up my sleeve, staring at my own version. Three drunk idiots in a Bristol tattoo parlour, swearing eternal brotherhood over the buzz of needles and terrible techno music.
“You guys really did go all in on the bat theme.” Charlie grinned.
Something spread through my chest—not the usual chill of ghostly existence, but something properly human. Connection. Belonging. The knowledge that somewhere out there, Ollie still carried a piece of our band on his skin.
“Right, then,” Charlie said, fingers poised over the keyboard. “Bartholomew Frederick Whitmore.”
He’d remembered my full name in all its atrociousness.
The loading icon spun. I held my breath—or pretended to—waiting for something, anything, to appear.
Charlie’s shoulders slumped as he scrolled. “Huh. Nothing.”
“Well,” I said, trying to sound casual, “I died before all this Google hysteria.”
He tried again: Grimthorne Manor, Bartholomew Whitmore, Death.
Still nothing about me. A few articles popped up about its “grim” history. Lots about Vivian’s death. I recognised some of the photos—I’d seen them on various screens over the years, when new owners moved in and had… questions.
Charlie clicked through some of them, skim reading before closing it down and moving on to the next.
Then he typed in: Bartholomew Whitmore, Bristol, Missing
Eventually, he groaned, pressing his palms to his eyes. “I thought for sure there’d be something! You got fucking stabbed here! You just… disappeared! Wasn’t there like, a police investigation?!”
I touched his shoulder, feeling the tension coiled in his muscles. “Charlie, chill.”
“How can you be so chill about this?”
I shrugged, though my chest felt hollow. “Made peace with not knowing a long time ago.”
“Ollie and Jezza might not even know that you’re dead!”
“I think they would probably have guessed after a few years,” I said gently. “They probably think I got wasted without them, and fell into the river or something.”
“Surely they would have contacted the police, even if your parents didn’t?”
“Definitely. But people go missing from cities all the time. Probably hundreds from Bristol every year. A random twenty-three-year-old man wouldn’t have warranted a search party.”
“You weren’t a random man, you were a local rock star!”
“Local rock star?” I roared with laughter, the sound echoing off the bedroom walls.
“Mate, we had about three groupies, and one of them was this creepy old lady who Ollie was seriously considering taking a restraining order out against. She used to follow us to gigs and try to slip him her knickers.”
Charlie’s brilliant grin lit up his face. “Well, if I’d been around, I would have been your biggest fan.”
The words hit me square in the chest, bright and fierce and unexpected. For a moment, I could picture it—Charlie in the crowd at the Cavern, eyes bright as he watched me play, maybe catching my attention from the stage…
But then his smile faded, and I knew what was coming before he even opened his mouth.
“So… next shall I see if I can find your parents? Just to see if they ever tried to find you, at least?”
I shook my head quickly. “I’d rather not, if you don’t mind. Too many cans of worms being opened at once.”
Charlie studied my face for a moment, then nodded. “Fair enough.”
He turned back to the laptop. I watched him work, pulling up different websites, typing various combinations of my name and dates. His brow furrowed deeper with each failed search.
“Right,” he muttered, pulling out his wallet. “Official death records in England are only free up to nineteen fifty-seven, but there’s this other site…”
“Charlie, don’t spend money on that. You’re completely broke, remember!”
But he was already entering his card details, completely ignoring my protests. The little git.
More searching. More clicking. More frustrated sighs.
Finally, Charlie sat back, staring at the screen in disbelief. “There’s no record of your death anywhere, Bat. I mean nothing. No death certificate, no coroner’s report, no mention in any newspaper. It’s like you just… vanished.”
My phantom insides twisted unpleasantly. “That seems unlikely.”
“Was your murder covered up?” Charlie asked, his voice gaining momentum. “But… why wouldn’t the owners of the manor have reported finding a dead body? You know, this is all making me think that Michael didn’t die with you in that basement.”
“Maybe they never found my body.”
Charlie turned to face me fully, broken glasses sliding down his nose. “Have you considered the possibility that your body is… still here?”
The question hung in the air between us. Of course I’d considered it. Many, many times over the years. It would certainly explain why I’d ended up stuck here instead of moving on to whatever came next.
We both fell silent, the weight of the implication settling over us. That my bones were somewhere below us, the tattered ruins of these clothes of mine clinging to some remnants of flesh, hair, teeth.
“What’s your first memory as a ghost?” Charlie asked softly.
I had to think about that one. The early days were fuzzy, fragmented.
“It’s not from straight after I died. I think it was maybe even months later?
I was wandering the gardens, and Thomas found me, brought me inside to Molly.
The manor was empty at that point, nobody living here.
Molly says that sometimes spirits take a while to find themselves once they die. I guess that happened to me.”
“Huh.” Charlie reached for my hand, his lovely fingers tracing over the calluses on my fingertips, shivers sparkling through me. “Well, selfishly, I’m glad you finally found yourself and decided to haunt this manor.”
Heavy footsteps thundered up the corridor—unmistakably Brad’s rugby-player stomping.
“Quick,” Charlie whispered with a grin, “hide under the bed.”