Page 16 of Giving Up The Ghost
Geoff, Stephen’s grandson, swung over and we gave him our orders, collected our drinks, and dutifully settled ourselves in one of the booths near the entrance to the beer garden. It didn’t take long for our food to arrive and Geoff to offer refills of drinks. Finally, we were left on our own, the smell of sausages and chips making my stomach cramp with hunger. We ate silently for several minutes before Ezra, the edge taken off the bottomless pit of his stomach for a moment, spoke.
“You know what’s so weird about this whole trip?” Ezra asked, poking desultorily at his steak and kidney pie, which I knew for a fact he didn’t really care for, but I suspected he was harboring some sense of duty to the home country after being away for so long that could only be satisfied by offal and gravy.
“Is it possibly Charlotte?” Julian asked. His garden plate seemed to be a vegetarian version of Ezra’s own choice and looked, if not better, less grim. Far less gray though the preponderance of pea shoots seemed to be a bit concerning for all involved.
“Yes, but also the lack of ghosts at the house. We’re usually tripping over them, everywhere! Hell, Oscar saw one before we boarded the plane, standing next to him in the loo.”
“What?” Julian asked on a half laugh. “Seriously? Why didn’t you say something? I was in there too!”
“Well,” I drew out, “it’s awkward, isn’t it? Can’t very well try to talk to a fellow while we’ve both got our pricks out. Present company excepted.” Julian saluted me with a mushroom as I took a bite of one of the thick-cut chips. “And Ididhear a ghost last night. Crying, it sounded like.”
“Did you see them? Was it a woman?” Julian pushed his plate aside and leaned forward, wrists braced on the table. “I saw something—someone—this morning. A young woman dressed a bit dated but not more than twenty or thirty years out of style.” He pointed at Ezra and his open mouth. “No jokes about my sense of style.”
Ezra crossed his heart solemnly and held up a hand to promise, “I would never joke about something so tragic.”
“Children,” I scolded, unable to hide my smile as they flipped each other off, Julian trying to hide it as an eye itch and Ezra not even bothering to be subtle. “Easy now. There are families present.”
A ghostly assemblage sat near the hearth, their table was long gone so they had an odd effect of being in very intense crouches as they sipped from pewter mugs and a baby cried silently, throwing their old-fashioned dummy into the ether. They didn’t pay us any mind and didn’t seem in distress. Just existing, in some way, in a loop, caught up in a favorite memory perhaps or some significant day for them. They wouldn’t give a solid fuck about Ezra and Julian making rude gestures.
“Anyway. I saw her this morning when I came down looking for you,” Julian continued, pointedly ignoring Ezra. Or trying to. Ezra made it difficult to pretend he wasn’t there, and Julian’s lip twitch told me he was well aware of the fact. “She seemed upset. I heard her crying, but she didn’t try to talk to me. Just… did this vanishing and reappearing thing.”
“Where’d she reappear?” I wondered, picking at the very well-done edge of my bacon. “Last night, the woman I heard crying was in the front entryway and sounded like she was moving towards the back of the house.”
“She reappeared near the cellar door, but that was it. Just disappeared entirely then.” Julian pulled his plate back, picking at the shoots as he frowned thoughtfully. “Likely was the same woman. I wonder if any of those binders have information about former residents from the last, say, forty years.”
“You’d have to bare-knuckle brawl Charlotte for them,” Ezra said around his bite of mushrooms. I made a face, a frown more than anything, and Ezra sighed at me. “Oscar, come on. You’re not still riding theshe’s just awkwardtrain, are you?”
“Maybe,” I said slowly. “I just can’t reconcile her actions this morning with the person I’ve been speaking to for the past several months.”
Julian pushed the remains of his lunch aside, leaning in so we could hear his lowered voice. “I think she threatened me this morning.” He quickly and quietly, with a few glances to make sure Stephen, Geoff, and the incoming customers weren’t listening, told us about Charlotte’s rant at him earlier that morning. “I’m sorry, Oscar, but I agree with Ezra here. Something’s not right with her and whether it’s, as you say, social awkwardness or something more… intense, she’s decided Ezra and I are somehow getting between the two of you.”
“And holding you back,” Ezra reminded me. “She’s about five minutes from boiling a bunny here, man.”
“Oh, for god’s sake,” I grumbled, pushing the remains of my roll to one side. “I’ll talk with her when we get back. It’s still my home, technically. I won’t let her push you from it.”
Julian arched a brow at that. “That’s a very interesting point there. It’syourhome, isn’t it? It was willed to you by your grandparents.”
“Yes…”
“So why did she just decide to set up camp there like she owns the place?”
“She’s a Fellowes, too,” I said, face warming under the twin scrutiny from my best friend and my partner. “When we finally got in touch over the summer, she mentioned finding it difficult to secure long-term housing without committing to a rental here.” I looked up to find them both staring at me, expressions so carefully neutral I almost wondered if they’d been turned into mannequins while I wasn’t looking. “It’s empty almost year-round,” I added. “Only the cleaning service Grandmere’s used for decades comes by, and Sinjun before he retired would pop in now and then.”
“Violet’s neighbor asked about her earlier, while I was waiting for y’all. Sounds like she came out more than you realize if he has a recent memory of her visits,” Julian said, torturing another sprout between his fingers before popping it in his mouth.
“It doesn’t matter.” My tone was harsh around the edges, defensiveness making me antsy. Why was this so hard? “The house is mine to do with as I like. Except for sell it, as it’s entailed.”
“You couldn’t sell it even if you wanted,” Stephen boomed, coming over with a chair in hand to join us.
Julian coughed, that sprout fighting back after all. “How can it beentailed? You’re not gentry.”
“In the old sense,” I muttered. “Ages ago, one of my ancestors did something for a member of the royal family and we got some land out of the deal.” It was never that big of a topic of discussion in the family and, really, it wasn’t a huge deal around town or anything either. “We’re not titled or anything like that. Or sitting on some ancient treasure. They just handed out land like candy in those days.”
Ezra rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’s why so many of us are lounging about in our old family homes on acreage in expensive areas.” He nudged me with his foot under the table, telling me he was teasing, but still, a twinge of guilt for being better off than Ezra, from being the one who had all the things he never did, nibbled at me.
Stephen chortled. “One of them Fellowes helped lay a ghost to rest that was torturing either Richard the third or was it William the third?”
“Richard,” I admitted, Julian practically vibrating with excitement beside me. “And yes, there’s some parts of the house that date back but not many. Most of them were destroyed in one of three fires over the centuries.”
