Page 12 of The Prestley Ghost
John outright took a step, and another: down the steps, into the wet grass. Charles clung to the horror of that—he’d made his brother venture onto dangerous terrain—as a fixed point in his whole shaken universe, and ran that way.
* * * *
The rest of the day was interminable. Charles spent part of it in the bookshop, part of it helping John organize the parish records and do the accounts, and part of it hovering in the churchyard in case Alex reappeared. That did not happen, and a storm blew in, blustery and crackling and lashing him with rain. He gave up and went home, dripping.
He’d wanted to be there. He’d wanted to—
To help. To say, simply: I didn’t know you then, but I know you now, and from everything you’ve said, I still believe it: you haven’t hurt anyone. You couldn’t.
He liked being with Alex. He liked the way Alex thought about light and dark, and language, and kindness. He did not think it was love, based on two encounters and historical research, but—
But he’dthoughtthe word love. Which meant that maybe hewasthinking it, and maybe he was horribly afraid he was falling, or starting to fall, for a ghost he’d promised to banish from the village of Prestley.
John had asked whether he was well. Whether that had been another encounter, another attempted banishment. No, Charles had said. I wouldn’t try, without you.
He’d promised that, too. So many promises. And he was only himself, not good enough, only good at causing hurt. The opposite of Alex.
John’s leg had been hurting a bit, and he was in bed early,though he’d said he stay up reading for a while. He’d asked whether Charles had anything more useful, a means of settling this ghost into a peaceful rest, a task to finish or an object to salt and burn and ritually cleanse. Charles did not have any of those. His ghost seemed to just want to be here and alive, or not alive; there was not a specific task. There was a body, but that would mean digging up Alex’s grave, and—
And, selfishly, he wanted Alex here. All gold and warm, even if cold to the touch, and bright and inviting. Short and petite and utterly mesmerizing, talking, telling stories. No wonder he and his friends had been so merry and beautiful and glorious together; Charles could see it, with Alex at the center, laughing, blond hair tied back in a queue or falling into his face, dressed in ridiculous foppish colors, alive in the world and in each moment, passionate about a play or a dancer or a poem.
Reminded, inspired, he went back to the rectory’s small library. The rain drummed upon the roof, and over the windowpane.
The shelves had his and John’s books and family records now, of course, but some of the collection had come with the house. And he had a guess. They’d all been artists, Alex had said: violin and painting and poetry. And Alex spoke like someone who loved words, who told stories.
His guess turned out to be right: there was one small slim volume on a shelf, bound in green, published as simplyPoems by A.L.He took it down, and curled up in a chair, while the rain pounded.
His first honest impression was that Alex had also been honest: they weren’t brilliant. They were in the sort of meter that’d been fashionable in the later eighteenth century, and somewhat stylistically overdone, and very ornate, in the manner of a young man trying to be clever.
But here and there small flashes of truly memorablephrasing flickered through. Moonbeams like dry bones and heartache. A road taken, one’s back turned to the past. A taste of wine like fire and sugar and need that wouldn’t be fulfilled, because the desire was for something more, unnamable even to the speaker, but the sweetness was here and now, and so he’d drink from it and forget.
Alex was at his best when he forgot to be decorative and clever, and instead simply wrote about feeling, with the kind of loneliness that Charles knew, because he knew how it felt to be alone in a crowd, how to pretend to smile when wanting the world to be different. He shut the book but left his finger in it, to mark the spot.
Of course Alex had been a poet. Stories and stories, and Charles wanted more. And he wanted Alex to be at peace, at last.
He could not have everything. He never could. He knew.
He took Alex’s book to bed, and read about stars like jewels, for a while, which was not an original comparison, but got astonishingly erotic as the metaphor became much more about decorative jewelry in interesting places. That was flowery and couched in euphemistic terms, but impressively filthy in terms of fantasies, or possibly reality, if Alex and a lover had indeed put certain jeweled objects certain places. Charles was a bit unclear on the specifics, but it was enough to make him blush. He got over the blushing, though.
He liked Alex’s words. He liked the imagery. He liked the freedom, and the sensuality, and the love of the world. He wanted more.
* * * *
The rain did not cease, all morning. Charles paced, found a thick cozy banyan in quilted brown softness and made sure John was warm enough, and got more and more restless. He didnot know what to do. He did not like not knowing what to do.
He brought Alex’s book to breakfast, because he was still thinking about words like quicksilver and unfinished business and the way Alex had said, half-laughing, half sad,of course we weren’t very good…
Perhaps that was the tie. A need to leave more words, more storytelling. But that did not feel right, precisely; Alex had had a book published, and seemed to have an accurate sense of his own accomplishments, and had mentioned that only in passing, not as a desire.
John, looking over at the plain green cover, inquired, “A useful artifact?” The storm hummed and sang, outside. Charles and Thomas, walking over in the wet to earn his pay, had lit fires and made the house snug and secure.
“Poetry,” Charles said, and felt his hand tighten on the cover, an impulse. “I don’t know whether it’s useful.”
“Might you be able to burn or bury it? If it’s a representative object?”
And either Alex would be gone, and they’d never have—whatever this was, which they perhaps did not have, because Alex had vanished—or it wouldn’t work and he’d’ve burned Alex’s words for nothing. “No.”
“We did agree to help.” John regarded him levelly across tea and toast and bacon. “And it’ll be good for the village and for him. Finding peace. Where he’s meant to go.”
