Page 56 of Giving Up The Ghost
“Oh, you looked sosmarton TV.” She sighed. “No, you simple fool, I chose this place because it is where Maman decided we could finally, finally berealFellowes. Not languishing incette appartement merdiquein Rouen, barely making it week to week on handouts and shitty paychecks! We arenothingthere! Our birthrights were refused to us!”
“Nadine,” Julian said softly, a man talking to a rabid beast, “not everyone is born with the abilities Oscar has. Even if it runs in a family, it’s like… like eye color,” he suggested.
“Oh, fuck you, Doctor Weems,” she spat. “Fuck you! You have done nothing butruinOscar! He should have understood, should have known his duty to us as Fellowes! But he kept complaining aboutpoor me, poor me, what do I do, what do I know!” She slammed her hands against her thighs. “You knoweverything!”
“Nadine, I don’t,” I said urgently. “I really don’t. Charlotte promised me answers. She said she had things she could show me, that would help me understand the family history and where I’d come from and…” I trailed off. “Where did she get the artifacts, Nadine? If you were as hard up as you claim, where did she get all this?”
Her smile was dark, bitter. “From you, you arse. It’s been here this entire time. She knew you’d come running. She had her sob story all prepared, but that fuck up with the estate agent made her sloppy. She panicked. She needed money fast and was going to start selling this shit off. I found out a few weeks ago.” Her gaze traveled down the mess on the floor, skipping over the ghosts entirely before coming back to me. “She needed you here to sign some papers. She had them all ready. She had some buyers lined up too, for some of the items that are actually worth anything. But she was stupid, yes? Stupid and greedy.”
I couldn’t help the mirthless chuckle that came up when I tried to speak. “Your mother didn’t do her research very well, did she? I can’t sign away this house even if I wanted to. It’s wrapped up in all sorts of legal red tape that goes all the way to the highest level, thanks to some dead ancestor of ours doing a favor for Charles the Second. Even if she’d gotten my signature on something, it never would’ve been hers. Fellowes or no, the house is strictly handed down through one line. Mine.” I smiled, baring my teeth. “She’d have been fucked either way.”
Nadine looked, briefly, startled and hurt. The expression was gone nearly as soon as it appeared though, and she shrugged. “That is her problem, not mine. And she is dead so,” she smiled. “No problem, eh?”
My dad moved closer, anger clear on his face. I felt a warm, grateful pulse at the sight of him, knowing he was there, but at the same time, guilt. Because he should have been resting. Or with Mum.Or me, the little boy inside me wailed.Why can’t I call you, but she can?
“Tell me what you see,” Nadine whispered, taking another step forward. “When I found out her plan was not what she’d promised me, I was furious. Incandescent, yes? That’s the word, I think. Incandescent with rage. You see.” She pushed some of the debris aside with her foot, eyes searching my face for something she wasn’t able to find. “She promised me she would finally, finally, help me. All my life, I’ve heard how we are such amazing mediums, truly gifted. Not like those fake ones on TV or at the funfairs. It is our heritage, our birthright. But me? Nothing. I tried, Oscar. I tried so hard. Money spent on charlatans who promised to teach me. Charms worn at night so I would dream of my guide.” She laughed wildly. “Spells, salves, old wives’ tales meant to guide me in opening my third eye, whatever the fuck that means. But nothing. Even when others around me had the sight, I hadnothing. And then you, Oscar. You exploded.Boom.”
She flared her hands and eyes wide. “Fancy boy, hm?” She circled me, elbowing Julian back. He swore, grabbing for my arm, but she was faster, pulling me almost off my feet as she dragged me towards the stairs. “Fancy Oscar Fellowes who never had to work for it. Who was born so damn lucky. All of the Fellowes”—she stopped our forward progress and popped me on the nose with her fingertip—“wrapped up in you, without a single bit of the family legacy for the rest of us. No money, no ability,nothing.”
“Nadine,” I twisted free. “Let me try to help you. It may not be too late. Let me try.”
My father was circling us, lips tight as he glared down at Nadine. The other ghosts were restless, a moving mass of spirits that seemed to tangle in a snarl of anger and sorrow and fear. They pressed closer, forcing the breath from my lungs with their frigid touch, flashes of their endings, of their lives, zipping through my thoughts, dizzying me until I managed to push away from Nadine, away from their touch. “Whatever you need, I can try to help but there’s no way you’re going free now. You understand that.”
She smiled sadly, glancing back at her mother’s body. “I was never going to be free, not while she lived. All she wanted was more. More money, more men, more attention. The one thing she never wanted more of was me. Not until she decided I could be just,” she jabbed a finger into my ribs, “like,” my stomach, “you.” My throat. I coughed, choking at the sudden and intense pressure and pain. “Pretend, Nadine! They all do! It’s all a lie, Nadine!”
“But you knew better,” I whispered. “You knew better than her, didn’t you?It’s real. And you couldn’t experience it.”
She shook her head violently. “No. No, I could not.” She sniffed, looking past me towards the ghosts. “How many are there?” she murmured. “A lot? I tried to find as many as I could. To bring them here.”
“How did you manage it? If you don’t have the ability, how did you call them?”
“Sometimes the old ways are the best,” she smiled. “All of these things here. Violet had them in storage. Except for the cemetery Fellowes. Those, I had to bring myself.”
“And the mediums? Are they here too?”
She shook her head again. “The house would not hold them. This.” She tapped her foot against some of the broken silvery stone. “It was designed for the family. When it was built, it was built forus.”
“How can you do that?” Julian asked, openly curious. “How can you be sure it’s only the Fellowes ghosts who stay here and no one else? Is it something about the stone? Or the pattern? Or is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? They’re told they have to stay, that it’s for them, so they do?”
Nadine flushed red with embarrassment, glaring at Julian over my shoulder. “I do not know how it works, just that it does!”
I could practicallyhearhim making mental notes, “I fully expect there to be a chapter about this in your research.”
His laugh was dry and shaky. “Two, at least.”
“Enough,” Nadine bit out, “enough! It is over. You.” She closed the distance between us, pressing against me, uncomfortably hot and sweaty, sour-smelling with fear. “You have but one use for me and whether or not you meet it, you will be joining our family here today.”
“That’s hardly motivational.”
Julian limped towards us, passing through my father with a shudder. “Oscar, don’t.”
“It’s okay,” I said. feeling the ghosts at my back, moving in again, interest piqued. “The dead can’t hurt me, Julian.” I closed my eyes, reaching for that thread of light deep inside, the one that had been there since the beginning, that made it possible for me to talk to them, to call them and send them away. The thing that made ghosts see me when they couldn’t or wouldn’t seek out others.
I found that thread and I plucked it, visualizing the light growing, following the wave to expand and fill me, push out of me and into the spirits in the cellar. A soft sound, a wheeze of air, and a concussion like two hands clapping, filled the space and suddenly, the ghosts were everywhere. Drawing on my ability, on that light inside me, they had voice, form,contact. Howling shades plucked at Nadine, struck at her, and screeched in her ear as she finally,finally saw them. “They have nothing for you but pity,” I ground out, shaking with the effort it took to give them this much presence. “No lessons, Nadine. No advice. Just pity.”
Julian reached me, grabbing for my arm. “Oscar. Oscar, stop,” he whispered. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
I forced my eyes open. Julian was inches from my face and beside him, my father. The one spirit not attacking Nadine.
