Page 13 of The Prestley Ghost
“What if he’snotmeant to go?”
“Charles—”
“I know.” Charles pushed his own plate away, staring at the remnants of toast. “Iknow. What’s natural, and what isn’t. I know I’m hardly a sterling example of good wholesome society. I’ll do what I said I’d do. I’ll take care of this too. You don’t have to lecture me.”
After a second, John said, “I’m not.” His voice was quiet,and a bit uneven; his hands did not move, holding onto a teacup. “Have I ever said I don’t approve? Of you, of—of anything? I trust you. You’re my brother.”
“Your brother who talks to ghosts and scandalizes town officials and got us both thrown out of Oxford after the affairandthe argument with the professor of divinity, you mean.” He couldn’t say the other part. The older, shattering, broken part.
“All of that,” John agreed. “And you were right about animal manifestations and souls. Though one might wish you hadn’t shouted it at him on a staircase while half-naked.”
“It’s not my fault he couldn’t see the bear.” Charles poked his toast with the tines of a fork. He wanted the humor to feel natural, reassuring, their usual relationship. He was so tired. “I know I promised. You promised. I’ll take care of this.”
“Sometimes I think I’m asking too much of you.” John’s eyes were too serious, too apologetic. “I want to help people, I want to use it—I can’t do what you can do, I can help with research and with being your anchor, and I wish I could do more—but it costs you so much, you seem so unhappy, and I thought having a home would help, but if you’re only doing what I want—”
“Which is what I want, so don’t worry about it.” He got up from the breakfast table. Grabbed Alex’s book. “I’m going…somewhere.”
“In this weather?”
“Why not?”
“It’s storming!”
“I don’t mind being wet.”
“Charles…”
“Are you meeting with that committee about charity works at eleven? Make Thomas get the door for them. You know how weather makes your leg ache.”
“I’m fine,” John snapped. “Except, no, I’m not, I’mworried that you’re about to walk out into a thunderstorm and catch pneumonia or a fever, because you’d rather do that than actually tell me what’s wrong. Let me help. Whatever it is.”
Charles, at the door, looked back at him. Himself, standing. John seated, hand out, asking. Warm and safe and protected. As John should be.
He said, “I’ve done enough to you, and you know it. Meet with the charity. Help them, if you want to help someone. Be a part of the village and the parish.” He did not mean it angrily, and he thought the words did not come out that way; he meant them with sincerity. John was the good one, the hero, the one who accepted missions and vowed assistance with local hauntings and still somehow fretted over him, Charles, when Charles deserved none of that care. John was too kind and too forgiving, and Charles could not ever make it right, and he knew that John must know that as well, deep down, and everything inside burned and gaped open and screamed like the drowning ghost had, that night.
John’s face was pale. One hand still clutched the tea as if he’d forgot to let go, shocked. “You’ve done enough—is that what this is about? Why you’re trying to sacrifice yourself to a village ghost—because you think I want that? You think I blame you for—everything, Mother, Father, that night—I knew you said so, then, but it wasn’t your fault, I told you—no one blamed you, you were thirteen—you can’t still think—”
“You don’t know what I think,” Charles said, keeping his voice even with the aid of years of practice, because he would not shout at John, “and you don’t need to worry about me. I’ll figure this out. I always do. I’ll take an umbrella. I’ll be back for supper.”
“Charles!”
He let the door close, hard, on his way out. He stood on the step shaking, for a moment, in grey whipping wind andsideways rain. The skies rumbled.
He had snatched up his coat and an umbrella because he did not want to lie, and he also couldn’t give himself a fever or pneumonia and cause John more concern. He was already wet through, but he opened the black curve of it in any case. His fingers fumbled, slick.
He was still holding Alex’s volume of poetry. A few drops had flecked the cover. He shoved it into a coat-pocket.
He could not go home, but he had nowhere particular in mind. He stumbled down the steps, out into the lane, in the direction of the churchyard. No one else was in sight; the village had more sense than to be out in this weather. Mud splashed his boots.
“I was trying to give you space,” said a light golden voice beside him, “or me space, or something, and also you’ve got splendid house-wards, but—really? In this weather? Was it urgent?” The rain went through him, sleeting lines of silver; it underscored the ways in which Alex was not alive, not real, except that he was so real, affectionate and teasing and here at Charles’s side.
And Charles was so tired of everything, just then. “I did our house-wards. I don’t want to talk about it.” In the end he just went across the lane to the church, which was locked, but there was a small covered space on the steps under the arch at the door, which was dry. He sat down on the dry spot, pulled his knees up, leaned back against heavy wood and stone, did not care about dirt and flying rain.
Alex sat down beside him, stretching ghost-legs out along the steps and into the weather. The drops flickered through him and did no harm. “You don’t want to talk about your house-wards? Fair enough, I imagine it’d be like telling a thief the secrets of your personal newly-invented lock.”
“I don’t care if you want to show up at the house,” Charlessaid wearily. “You wouldn’t hurt us. I don’t know how to do exceptions, though, other than physical objects.”
Alex blinked. “You’d trust me in your house?”
