Page 55 of Giving Up The Ghost
The only response was the soft, ragged sob of a ghost as I reached the cellar door.
CHAPTER 14
OSCAR
“You found me.”
Charlotte’s soft, singsong words preceded her down the stairs. She smiled sweetly as she reached the bottom, ignorant of the twisting mass of spirits waiting there. “I wondered if it would happen,” she continued conversationally. “She said it would happen, but she was a liar.” She glanced around, searching for something she couldn’t see, before turning her sugary smile my way. “Are they truly here? She said they were. But, as I said, she is—well, was—a liar.”
Keeping my voice soft and calm, I said, “Charlotte, who are you talking about? Is this… is this Nadine?”
She frowned thoughtfully, padding towards the body. A few ghosts reached for her, dark tendrils and pale fingers grasping as she passed. Charlotte stopped just short of the body and, with a sigh, crouched to peel back the plastic. “We looked alike—the Fellowes genes are strong, eh? But her hair,” she pointed to the lank, drying hanks of reddish hair wrapped around the corpse’s face, “it is dyed, see? Without the box, she was almost all grey. Mine, it is more real than not,” she added with a giggle.
“Mothers and… Charlotte, who is this?” I knew, though. I knew already. The woman I was talking to wasn’t Charlotte. The corpse at my feet, though…
“Use your head, Oscar,” she chided. “She was such a liar. She lied to me. And to you.” She threw up her hands as she rose to her feet, glaring down at her mother’s body. “She lied to her clients. She lied to the government, to the landlords, toeveryone. Nothing was too small for her lies. But the big things?” She shook her head, grinning. “The big things were her favorite. She wanted to shape reality, no? Make her lies real.” With a barely stifled growl, she kicked the body. Part of Charlotte’s face caved in, and that putrid, sweet stench filled the cellar. “That felt lovely.” She sighed, giving her another kick, then another. “My sole regret in killing her is I didn’t do thisfirst!” One more, to the ribs, and another crunch and squish.
“Nadine, stop!”
A heavy thump sounded above us, the sound of Julian shouting and then the door rattling.
The ghosts stopped moving, holding still and waiting.
Please don’t, Julian. Please don’t…
Nadine rolled her eyes. “He is a pest, your Julian. I thought perhaps he might have an accident too, but he is never alone, hm? Not where it matters.”
My stomach lurched and rolled at that. “Hitting Ezra wasn’t an accident.”
She shot me a disbelieving look. “Of course, it was! I was trying to killyou!”
The door creaked open finally and Julian, breathless, started down the steps. “Oscar!”
“Don’t,” I called. “I’m alright. Julian, I need you to leave. Now.”
Nadine bared her teeth up at him. “No, join us! Let’s get this over with, hm? Get it all out. Where’s your Ezra then?”
Julian shuffled down another step, then another. “Charlotte?—”
“Nadine,” I said quietly. “She’s Nadine. Charlotte is… She’s dead.”
Julian stopped mid-step. “Oh… Oh, shit.”
“She is a Fellowes,” Nadine murmured. “But useless, hm? Not that the rest are helpful. Is it me?” she asked plaintively, turning pleading eyes on me. “I thought, hoped perhaps, they’d speak with you. That they’d respect you a bit more, hm? My shortcomings… I thought perhaps they were too ashamed to speak to me,” she whispered.
“Oscar, what is she talking about?”
“The lines.” I pointed to the broken pattern on the floor. “You were right. It’s like a cage.”
“A cage,” Nadine repeated, her lips curving just a little. “Yes, I like that. They are all here. Well. The Fellowes are. The mediums… I tried. But they would not cross for me. They wouldn’t stay.” Her tone was petulant, childish. She glared at me, pouting. “I triedeverything, Oscar! Everything!”
The ghosts were massed at the foot of the stairs, some overlapping one another, some eveninsideothers, spectral forms having no boundaries, no fleshy barriers to limit their movements or arrangements. Only a handful were corporeal enough for me to discern as individuals. Many were misty shades, shadowy forms, or unsettling energies. The very embodiment ofthat weird cold spot upstairsorI feel like someone’s watching me at grandma’s house.One stood out from them all, though. A man, about my age, thin and all angles, drifted forward. His face was sharp and familiar, realization settling in my bones before the word even left my lips. “Dad,” I breathed. “Dad, no…”
He smiled at me, hands spread in awhat can I dogesture. He looked past me Char—No, Nadine! Fuck, Nadine!—and frowned.
“Dad, you can’t be here,” I whispered.
Nadine kicked her mother’s body again before finally growing bored of the abuse and stalking towards me. “He is,” she chortled darkly, “and he can. He was one of the easier ones to bring across. Do you know why? Because Violet kept his ashes here, in the cellar. She knew what this place was. She couldn’tstandhaving them with her in London. Or anywhere else. Her baby boy reduced to a handful of bone char and dust? And the only thing that would make it worse was seeing his ghost.” My stomach lurched. My first thought—My father’s been here, this whole time, I could’ve seen him! Any time I wanted!—was chased swiftly by the truth of what Nadine was saying. “Is that why you chose this house? Because she kept his remains here? And you thought he could teach you, like Clothilde did her children?”
