Page 32 of Giving Up The Ghost
“I’m a skinny streak of piss,” he said quickly. “I can get in easier than you can. Not that you’re not slim just… Ugh! Help me!”
I nodded. I might be long and narrow, but I was also taller than Ezra, less flexible, and had a bit more padding than he did. The window was barely large enough for him, I realized as we worked to pop it open. “I’ll call 911?”
“999,” Ezra corrected. “And wait a minute. If it’s just his migraine, he’ll give us shit for years about calling an ambulance.”
“But if it’s not…”
Ezra shook his head, turning his attention toward wiggling through the window feet-first. He kicked his shoes off ahead of his wiggle, the clunky boots hitting the cellar floor with an audible thump. Wincing, he slipped through the metal-lined opening, hissing as it scraped his skin. For a moment, it looked like his head wouldn’t make it and I had a hysterical vision of the pair of them spending eternity like some horrible Shirley Jackson ghosts, one forever contorted in pain on the floor and the other dangling from the window by his neck. Then, with a gasp and a squirm, Ezra hit the floor in the cellar. “Oz,” he said loudly. I peered down, watching as he shook Oscar gently, checking his pulse and breathing. He gave me a thumbs-up and then patted Oscar’s face again. “Ozzy, you arse! Wake up!”
Oscar made a low, pained noise in his throat before rolling to one side, vomiting as Ezra murmured soothingly, pushing his hair back from his face. “He’s alright,” Ezra called. “Kind of.”
“Let me in,” I shouted back. “I’ll meet you at the front door.”
Oscar was woozy and slightly disoriented when they met me at the door. “Stop it,” he grumbled when I tried to guide him to the sitting room to lie down. “I just want to go to bed for a bit. My head…” Even as he said the words, a sort of realization dawned in his eyes. “Oh, shit. My head. We need to go back down. I think… No, I know, there were ghosts. So many.” He clutched at my arm and Ezra’s shoulder, looking between us wildly. “They were a swarm, a mass of them. I don’t know why… It’s like they were trapped.”
“Trapped,” I repeated. “How could they be trapped? They’re ghosts.”
“It’s possible. I think. I’ve heard.” He winced as he shook his head. “Damn it. I’m going to be sick again.”
“Come on,” Ezra urged. “Let’s get you down. They’re dead, yeah? They’re still going to be dead when your head stops hurting.”
Oscar gave in, face drawn and pale, as we manhandled him up the stairs. Again, mostly Ezra, with me just providing moral support and a hand to hold. We got him to our shared room and arranged on the bed—shoes and waistcoat off, cravat draped over the nightstand.
Ezra found a bottle of paracetamol in the bathroom that hadn’t expired and set out some tablets with a glass of water. “It won’t do much,” he admitted as we huddled in the doorway, our voices low and quiet. “But it’ll help take some of that hangover feeling away when he’s up again.”
I nodded. “What he said about the ghosts in the cellar… Being trapped?”
Ezra made a face at that. “I don’t know. I’ve heard most of the same stories he has but I’ve never seen it myself. Tethered to a place, certainly, or a person, or even an event, buttrapped?”
I watched Oscar stir fitfully on the bed, my heart cracking just a little at his obvious pain. “We need to do this,” I said. “We need to?—”
“Look into Charlotte and this house,” he supplied. “What? That’s what you were going to say, right?”
“Yeah. I’m just a little worried that we’re in sync here.”
“Yeah. Always did like Backstreet Boys better.”
Downstairs, the front door opened then shut firmly, not quite a slam but definitely a displeased thump. “Backstreet Boys suck,” I whispered as Charlotte stomped up the stairs, her mouth set in a grim line that only grew tighter upon seeing us.
Ezra flipped me off low and subtle. “Be quiet,” he said firmly. “Oscar needs rest.”
“We found him on the cellar floor. Locked in,” I added. Ezra nodded, confirming this supposition. “What’s the meaning of that?”
“The cellar door sticks,” she sniffed. “And is he alright? I can call the doctor in Avesdale. They make house calls, I believe. Let me?—”
“No.” I shifted to stand in front of the door, blocking her entrance. “He’s fine as-is.”
She regarded the pair of us steadily, her face relaxing into a false smile with obvious effort as she gestured towards the stairs. “Maybe we should all go have some tea, maybe a late lunch? Oscar needs rest, as you say. And later I can keep an eye on him while you take one of the other rooms.”
“No, we’re good, thanks.”
Charlotte’s jaw worked mutely, her gaze heating as she glared between Ezra and me. Finally, she nodded once, sharply, and turned away. “Lunch will be in an hour.”
Ezra waited until she’d gone downstairs, and we heard her clattering in the kitchen before speaking again. “I’ll start now. Keep an eye on him.”
“Always.”
CHAPTER 8
