Page 52 of Giving Up The Ghost
“What about Charlotte?” I demanded, stomach churning.This is my fault. If I hadn’t been so insistent on doing this damned digging, if I hadn’t pleaded with her to help me…
Ezra hummed to himself as he worked for a bit then shrugged. “She’s all over the place. Her cards, such as they are, are in use. She’s about maxed out on all of them though. I don’t know who gave her credit cards when her bank account was so deep in the red they had to invent a new shade for it. Calls on her most recent number, purchases between here and London as recently as last night when she stopped at The Box for something. Shit… She went to The Box!”
My mouth went dust-dry, breath catching hard in my chest. “Mick,” he said. “Call Mick!”
Ezra grabbed his phone and was dialing before I even finished the sentence. “No answer. Shit! I’m going down there.”
I nodded. “If… If you find that he’s had a fall too…”
Ezra nodded grimly.
We followed him downstairs in silence, standing at the door and watching until he turned onto the lane. Charlotte was still rampaging above us, shouting at someone now. I winced when something heavy crashed to the floor. “She’s castigating someone for being useless. For being a liar still. Says to whoever it is that they’ve fucked and it’sall your fault, you bitch.”I looked up at Julian, determination overcoming my trepidation at that moment. “Now’s the only chance we’re going to get. I’ll go check on the cellar and see if there’s anything we can take with us easily. Julian?—”
“I’ll try to get hold of Nadine again. Ezra has her number on that pad by his laptop.”
I nodded. “Meet back here in ten minutes?”
“Don’t wait if she comes back,” he said quietly. “Get out alright? Just go. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Julian.” His name came out nearly a whine. “Please.
He kissed me hard and fast. “Promise. We’ll do this, be fast. But promise me, in case we’re not…”
I hated it. I wanted to shake him, to say fuck all this, let’s just go. But I knew I couldn’t. “Fuck. Okay. I promise.”
* * *
The cellar was a shambles.She’d torn out the glittering stone, thrown the boxes around, and even torn and smashed some items. A pained, keening sound tore from my throat, startling me before I realized it was my own body making the sound, my own grief ripping free as I hurried down the last steps. I hesitated, eyeing the oldest boxes before bolting for the last in the row. My parents. They’d been upended, contents scattered and mixed together. Tripping over box lids and scattered papers, I slipped and slid my way to the far end of the cellar, dropping to my knees with a thump I knew would hurt later. My parents, my grandparents, and even my own life scattered like so much roadside litter, papers torn and mementos shattered.
My hands shook with near violence as I scooped things back into the tub. My father’s school reports, letters, and notes passed in class that had made their way down to the cellar. Pictures—I choked on a dry sob at the sight of my parents newly married, showing their gold bands to whoever took the photo, standing in casual wear outside of the clerk’s office and grinning like they’d won the lottery. Mum cradling me as a newborn, both of us red-faced and crying.
“Hello,” I sniffed. “Hi, Mum.”
There were others—my parents together, alone, with me, me on my own. The entire remains of our life as a family shoved into a plastic tub and set aside, part of this bizarre collection Charlotte had created.
I felt sick. Beyond sick. Empty and wrung out and hot and cold, everything twisting up inside me as I forced myself to keep moving, to keep putting things back into the damned tub. There was no way I could get it all—everything had been torn apart, upended. Charlotte had been remarkably, horrifically violent in her spiral.
“Oscar.”
My hands froze over the tub’s lid. “I hear you,” I murmured. “You saw what she did. Are you… are you alright? All things considered?” I didn’t want to look. For the first time in a very long time, possibly ever, I was afraid of ghosts. No, not ghosts. The mass of spiritual energy that had become entangled in the cellar. The horde. The tortured knot of them, all waiting.
“Oscar. Look at me.”
Slowly, I lifted my head to look at the source of the voice. The eyeless ghost stood mere feet away, her hand raised, pointing towards the storage bench. Behind her, the shadows swelled and shifted, energy gathering into form.
“Help me, Oscar. Help. Me.”
She drifted closer, unchanging in expression or posture. I scooted back, duckwalking towards the low bench with the sliding door beneath it. She stopped just past the ruined line on the floor. Ghosts were moving from the mass now, spreading across the basement.
The silence was heavy. Expectant.
“Can you tell me what’s happening?” I asked, voice rough and barely a whisper. “Are you trapped here? Is that really what’s happening?”
The eyeless woman surged forward, her cold shape pressing into me, through me, leaving me gasping for breath as she vanished. I staggered back, landing on my arse against that damned bench.
The ghosts drifted closer. Almost curious, it seemed—quiet and watchful.
Shifting to my feet, a rustle of plastic broke the silence. There, beneath my feet, sticking out of the gap between the bench door and the floor, was a bit of plastic. Thick, opaque, and jagged edged, it flopped out like a tongue from the narrow opening. I reached down to give it a tug, wondering if it was some part of the destroyed items, some bit of material that belonged to an ancestor of mine, to one of the ghosts watching. The plastic stuck, something thumping behind the sliding door as I gave it a pull.
