Page 9 of The Prestley Ghost
“Weare not involved with my romantic entanglements, andyou’regoing to write up your notes about today’s reckless and unapproved spiritualist encounter for our records, before you go to bed.”
“Does she like quiet country villages? Or Mrs Davies’ chocolate biscuits? I’m not above bribery on your behalf.”
“And you’re going to bed early, because you tried to do a banishment without preparation and you’re probably going to see your ghost again tomorrow, because you’re an idiot and youpromised and he’s already deceived you once.”
“I can offer my older brother as a sacrifice,” Charles said. “Lectures about responsible behavior thrown in for free. Here, do you want a better pen, for that letter? The nib on that one needs mending.” He got up to do that, and also obediently found the current record for notes, for posterity.
The fire crackled, low and cozy. The library held warmth, knowledge, commitment. Himself and John, doing what they did. The family business, as it were. What they knew.
It was a place that could feel like home: a settled house, a comfortable village, a life that did not pull them to spectacle after spectacle, haunting after haunting, in their parents’ quest to find and document the ghostly world. It was a place they could help.
And yet, amid the warmth of tea and the soft leather of the journals and the mending of a pen, it was not right. It was not perfect. Charles finished with the pen, handed it over. John took it with thanks, without getting up; and that reminder always lay coiled like a sharp-fanged adder, waiting to bite if Charles even once forgot that so much pain had been his fault.
Pain, and Alex. Who’d died, decades ago, also in pain. Charles did not like thinking that; it made his heart twist in his chest.
He would give Alex peace. He did not know how, yet. But he would figure it out. He would make that, at least, right.
He sighed, and found his own pen, and started a new entry.
* * * *
The morning crackled with ice, as if a frost-fairy had been by to drape tiny diamonds across tree branches and swinging shop signs. Fairies were not, as far as Charles knew, real; ghostsand residual presences were, however, so he supposed other forms of existence might be possible. The snow had not come—too soon for that—but the days were drawing shorter, and the nights gathering strength.
He walked with John across the lane to the solid late-medieval bulk of the church, left his brother to do administrative rector’s duties such as collecting charitable donations and meeting with the present Lady Rookwood from the manor house about funds for the orphanage, and went out to the quiet of the gravestones, around the west, in the hushed green grass. His footsteps left prints, shining, in the frost.
The Rookwoods of course had a family plot, and he wondered whether Alex would have been permitted that; but no, apparently. He moved a row over, near a large drooping tree with swaying branches.
“Ah,” said an instantly recognizable voice at his side, and Alex shimmered into view, dressed in the same old-fashioned green and gold and tapestry flowers, hair like old coins, eyes like treasure. He looked young, Charles thought; so young, only twenty-one when he’d died, though of course Alexander Leonfeld had been twenty-one for fifty-two years. “You found me.”
“I hadn’t, technically, yet.” He had, though: just the instant before. The stone was tastefully ornate, not terrifically overdone, but decorated with scrollwork and an overlay that draped like fine lace across a curve of marble, gifted work by talented hands. The inscription was simple: Alex’s name, and the dates. “You’re here at Prestley, not at home.”
Alex paused with one unquiet hand lifted. “You did find me.” His tone was different, this time.
“They buried you here.” And Charles did not know whether that was a question, and if so, which one. Would it help to relocate Alex’s resting place? Or did he simply want to knowwhy here, and how Alex had felt, and if he had been loved?
“Oliver…” Alex shook his head, but he was smiling, with fondness. Not as if recalling a great grief, though, or Charles thought not. “Oliver. I—” He broke off, and faded from view, as Mayor Mirrison and his wife appeared: sweeping into the churchyard upon a tide of self-importance.
“Where,” inquired the mayor, “is your brother?”
Charles looked at the church. He truly did not mean that to be a sarcastic look; but the glare he received in response indicated that it had been taken so.
The mayor huffed at him on top of the glare. “So he is not performing his duty.”
“He is the rector,” Charles said, “and he happens to be in the church, so…”
“Don’t be impertinent. I meant your duty, as well. Ridding Prestley of our ghost.” One large finger wagged at him. “We saw you speaking to the ghost, didn’t we, Martha?”
“We did. And you seemed happy to do so.”
“Perhaps it is a scheme.” The mayor inflated further. “You and your brother. Arranging for a haunting, ensuring our goodwill. Relying upon your family name and our goodwill.”
“Why on earth,” Charles demanded, “would we do that? Especially if we plan to live here.”
“Who knows what you might do,” Martha Mirrison observed, with a sniff, “you are out of doors without a hat or gloves, and those trousers are decidedly inappropriate.”
Charles looked at his trousers, inadvertently. He couldn’t see anything terribly wrong.
“You are,” suggested the mayor, “a Hayward. Perhaps you wish to use our distress to increase your family’s reputation. Perhaps you wish to write a book. But that would invite scandal. Discussion. Disreputable visitors. Are you planning to invite disreputable visitors, young man?”
