Had she forgotten her name? My mind buzzed with questions. Would it be impolite to push? To ask?
As if sensing my distress, she patted me on the hand. Her touch was warm and gentle. "Hayward, lovey, Bonnie Hayward. You may call me Mrs. Hayward."
Another name. Another ghost. "Did - did the person who killed Gr-Theodore," I corrected quickly, but she waited with a smile, stirring the stew as I gathered my thoughts. "Did the person who killed Theodore kill you too?"
"Oh, no, dear, I died in my sleep. Six children, ten grandchildren at the time - thirteen by the end of things - I had a wonderful life. My husband went a few years later, lovely man," she told me. Her eyes sparkled. "I’m so excited to see him again. He’s been so patient, waiting for me while I’ve been here - continuing my work, but he understood."
"What do you mean?"
Pressing a hand to her breast, she shook her head with a sad smile. "Why - I couldn’t leave her. Not when she’d been through so much, and everything that came out afterward - dreadful business. Truly dreadful. But when you’re dead, one year blurs with the next, and they’ve only just scheduled to break down the foundation this year, so I couldn’t convince her to move on until now, and the business with Theodore. My goodness, my afterlife has been rather busy."
All around us the manor creaked. It almost sounded like footsteps, but then the walls would follow. Thuds and groans.
"What happened to Theodore?" I pushed when the biscuits drew her attention away from our conversation.
She hummed, glancing over her shoulder at me. The heat of the oven accentuated the glow of her cheeks. "Hm? Oh, you should eat that scone, lovey. Does you no good in your hand. Same with the tea."
But I couldn’t. I’d seen the movies. Heard the stories. Eating food in the underworld never ended well. I set the scone back down, pushing the teacup and saucer back.
"What happened to Gray?"
The cook sighed, brushing off her hands as she lowered the heat and placed a lid slightly off-kilter on the pot. "Oh, lovey, he died."
"But how? Why did he get locked up in here? Could he see you? Before he died? Could he talk to ghosts? Who killed him?" Question after question. They all rushed out of me.
"The smoke killed him, so we were able to pull him in between before the fire destroyed his body," Mrs. Hayward explained. Taking my cup of tea, she sipped it. Her fingers curled around the cup rather than the handle. "He was such a gifted boy. Did you know he can read minds? It’s how he used to tell the difference between ghosts and humans until the medication took that away. He was so confused, the poor thing, when he lost that. Couldn’t tell who was alive and who was dead."
"Telepathy?" I gasped. My mind stumbled over the new information.
She nodded - not even seeming to notice my panic. "Likely how that nasty business started."
The thudding grew closer. As I struggled to find a way to push her leisurely way of speaking to answer my questions faster, the door flew open, and a man flew into the room, sliding and falling down onto the floor. Wrapped in a straight jacket, the figure had sweatpants and bare feet. Long, dyed black hair knotted in tangles which veiled his face, trailing down past his shoulders. Scruff - not a beard but an attempt at one - covered his face, and a mad glint sparked his eyes.
Mrs. Hayward clinked the teacup as she dropped it back into the saucer to rush to the stove where her stew bubbled over. Her murmured, "Oh dear, behave yourself!" faded as the air churned, panting - quick harsh breathes from the newest phantom as he flopped, wriggling across the floor to stand without the use of his hands. His eyes focused on me. Frozen in place, I couldn’t even scream as he lunged, and everything went dark.
But I didn’t wake up. Instead, I slipped from one strange dream world into another. Just as dark. Just as smokey and hot, but the heat wasn’t welcoming. It didn’t smell like cooking meat or bread. Something slick caught in the back of my throat. An oily web dug in my throat, finding a way to drag me under and keep me afloat at the same time.
And there he sat. A blur like an oil painting made phantom. "I believe you’ll find not every phantom in Crables Manor is as welcoming as our dear Mrs. Hayward."
I blinked, trying to see through the fog clinging to my eyes. "Where’s Gray?"
My heart raced, but the blurred man shifted. "I’m afraid I’m uncertain who you mean."
"Theodore," I said. "Where’s Theodore?"
He sighed. "Elsewhere."
I lunged forward through the fog, stumbling and falling somehow backward into a chair. Heat flared to my right. Everything tumbled. Spinning like sitting on a whirling top. Every curse I knew flew from my lips as I growled, "Where’s Gray?"
Tearing apart at the seams. These tiny pieces broke off of me. Fragments of my mind reaching out. I just wanted to hold his hand. I just wanted him back. Real or a dream. Dead or alive. I just wanted him. My whole body rejected his absence like a lost limb. Each step a reminder of what was supposed to be there - another foot to catch me. A hand to entwine in mine. Somewhere in this labyrinth of rooms and smoke - somewhere in this ghostly manor, Gray existed. In some form or another. Somewhere. And I was going to find him. Find him and never let go - never again. Because we belonged together. Two parts of the universe who had found their way back together. As insane as it sounded. As crazy as I had felt every step of the way. Gray was a piece of me, and no matter how much I tried to pretend it to be a lie - to be some consequence of repression - none of that mattered because he was mine, and I was his, and the space and time which existed between us - inconsequential as starlight.
"You’re in love with him." An epiphany. Eyebrows rose, and eyes widened.
Denial wove a web around me, sputtering at the insides of my lips, but the secret wormed its way out of me. A small and quiet: "Yes."
The man sat back in his chair. His hands falling into his lap as he studied me. There was no particular color to his gaze. Everything about him blended in hues of brown and white and black and gray. No particulars. Just a blur of color from the moment he brought me in until he drummed his fingers against his thighs - growing clearer and clearer until a man in a wool suit sat across from me.
"If that is the case, I’m all the happier to have saved you…"
"James," I told him my name with no further prompting. The answer jumped from me. Others hummed along the surface. Bubbling beneath my skin.
"James," he repeated. Sinking deeper into the chair, the new phantom tilted his head, considering me a moment before he offered, "I am Dr. Ose, James. It is a pleasure to meet you."
A doctor. They suspected the staff had killed him. What if this doctor killed Gray? The flames - small tongues of fire - danced in their glass lamps. Balanced on copper piping, their fogged panes occurred as much as they illuminated, but the more my eyes trailed up and down his seated form, the more at ease I became. He’d died before the 1900s. The cut of his suit - or more correctly the knee breeches and stockings marked him as from an earlier century.
"Nice to meet you too," I offered. "So…you know Gray?"
Back in elementary school, all the kids used to draw on the corner of their textbooks. Some made flip books. Little animations where stick figures walked across the pages, smiled and waved, or tipped their top hats. Dr. Ose smiled like a flip book stick man. Slow and incremental. Jarring. His off-white teeth glimmered in the gaslight. Pins and needles tingled across my skin, making my whole body shiver as his eyes narrowed.
"Of course! Though I knew him as Theodore," the doctor explained. "A bright boy. Eager to please. Shockingly well-behaved, considering his father had all but abandoned him for little to no reason. He could, after all, actually commune with the dead."
"So Gray - he’s Theodore."
"Yes, in that, my good sir, I can say the Cook was honest. Beyond that, her words are rather - well, she has certain flights of fancy owed to a limited understanding of her own demise. It takes a well-trained mind to recognize when one has moved beyond the mortal coil." Just a
fluttering as it had appeared, the smile waned to an almost neutral expression. Only the ends of his lips curved upward.
My stomach churned - slow and sloshing. A kind of sick. Strangely mesmerizing in the way it rose up, numbing the tips of my fingers before I even recognized what it had done. Turning my left hand over, I stared at the lines of my veins. Almost purple beneath my skin. I had never been kicked from a dream into another dream before. From one phantom to the next. Was I even still in Crables Manor?
The floors looked the same. Rich and dark. Molding squared and precise along walls, a fortress within gray walls. Bookshelves everywhere. A desk - ornate and large and already old - at the other end of this new room. A fireplace opposite - leaking heat against my right side. Across from me, the doctor sat in his straight back chair. The back towering above his head. A crown of studs - almost like used bullets - pinning the leather in place along its frame above his head.
"Do you know?" I asked.
The words slipped - tumbling out. Curling around me. Each blink lasted longer. Shadowing me in darkness as those strange narrow eyes stared. No threatening. Not looming. Just observing. Taking in everything I did - weighing and measuring me.
Leaning forward, he reached a pale hand toward me. "Perhaps I’ve kept you too long."
"Do you know?" The words came out, repetition even though the details slurred together.
Dr. Ose sighed, jostling my knee gently. The world sharpened once more. A panic rising in my chest. My heart raced. On the back of my neck, cold sweat gathered.
"Do I know what, my dear boy?"
My nails dug into the upholstery. Treated cowhide curling beneath my fingers - like mummified flesh as my mind summoned the words. "Do you know who killed him?"
Pages flipped. The smile came back. "Oh, James, you already know who did that."
"The Governess."
It came without question. The plopping stones of her heels echoing - almost as if her title summoned her. A flood surged - putting out the fire, cutting the gaslights. Bubbles rushed from the piping, but the cold poured over me - one-two, one-two. Suffocating. All the air in my lungs pulled out until bubbles rose from my mouth and nose. Grabbing my throat, I wriggled like a fish caught on a hook.
Then I woke up. Panting. Sweating. Alone in the dark of my room. Early enough to not need to be awake but late enough to know I couldn’t go back to sleep.
She had killed him. Gray trusted her. Thought she meant to keep him safe, and she had betrayed him. Tricked him. Trapped him. Burned him alive. Tumbling one thought into the next, I sunk down into my sweat-soaked sheets. She had killed him, and she knew I knew it too.
Chapter Sixteen
Can the dead be saved?
Religion and I rarely got on even before my stunning epiphany back in middle school, so drawing from theology to answer this newest riddle seemed inane. Heaven hadn't come for Gray, and Hell hadn't hunted the Governess. Both seemed like signs that neither really existed, but if the afterlife resided on Earth - a pale reflection of life hidden in a realm of dreams, what then could I do for Gray?
Nothing. Little next to it. The universe never cared for fairness. It sought stillness - balance. A rapid expansion toward a frozen return to nothingness - just spread a bit further apart than before. Entropy. Why would death be any different?
But a living object could be removed from its environment. Maybe it wouldn't survive, but if Gray had already died, what risk did I have in finding a way to keep him with me? Tie him to me so thoroughly that Crables Manor and the Governess couldn't reach him. Maybe she was powerful, but I could find the source of that power. Train hard enough. Work with Gray - the two of us, maybe with Dr. Ose's help or Mrs. Hayward's even - we could outmatch her. I just needed to work harder. Research her - find the names and dates to identify why she had such sway over the house. Why she had been able to attack Gray in the first place.
Which drove me online. Drove me to pictures I should have never clicked to see larger. Never opened at all. Because I didn't have the Governess's name. I didn't know her timeline, but I knew Gray's.
Pacing the gap between my bed and Tom's, I counted each step, pushing the rest of my panicked thoughts aside. Every time I drew close to my computer, I stirred my gaze away, but out of the corner of my eyes, his picture stared at me. Boston's famous young medium - available to those wealthy enough to pay the doctors to look away - or his father.
He sat at a plain table. Nothing to make him seem like anything more than a normal teenager sat with his father standing behind him. Two nurses - the only ones smiling in the picture - stood to his father's right between him and the doctor, who crossed his arms, looking severely put out by the whole affair, but with some rich widowed heiress sitting in one of the other seats - I doubt anyone hadn't had their pockets lined to ensure the picture ended up happening. Well, anyone except Gray. While the heiress would head off back to her mansions, he would remain locked with a ward - medicated for the very power he had been roped into displaying.
And it was him. Formal outfit - dark hair and bright eyes - tired eyes. The point of his chin and the firm set of his lips - traced, smudges overlaid on my screen as I yearned to reach through the monitor and drag him out of time - out of place. Anything to just see him. To hear his voice. Gray's gaze weighed on me. A reminder that he wasn't just a figment of my imagination. No, he was real, and I had abandoned him. Treated him as a thing for my own amusement - my own pleasure and loneliness, and the whole time, he had suffered. Murdered. Burned alive.
"A problem shared is a problem halved," his calm voice suggested from where he sat on my bed.
Without his jacket or shoes, he seemed underdressed though his clothes were fancier than anything I owned. No socks. His pale, delicate toes and narrow arches pressed against my sheets. Shifting back and forth as if he could knot his toes in my blankets. Hide his exposed skin, but it was all I could see. Collapsing to my knees before him, I wrapped a hand around his thin ankle. My thumb rubbed at the soft skin - pressing gently over the bone, and he let me, watching with half-lidded eyes. His chin resting on his forearms which laid upon his knees. The pouting curve of his lips enthralled me.
By all reasoning, I should have confronted him then. Told him what I knew - that I knew he was real, a ghost, a medium - a victim. Instead, I rose. A serpent slithering to wrap around him. As if my body could shield him from the world.
And when his long fingers curled in my shirt - his knee shifting to bracket my body, I might have wept. Maybe. With the rain, I couldn't tell.
In my arms, he shifted. Rose. Arms wrapped around my back. Lips pressed against my throat, sending a shiver down my spine. Was love always this torturous? A possessive, practically insatiable desire to protect Gray swelled in my chest, and all I could imagine was keeping him here - with me - hidden from the world. Away from the Governess and the ghosts of Crables Manor, but how? I had no idea how we managed to find each other in the first place. Was this how Simon felt? Desperate and terrified?
For the first time since Reggie screamed at him in the debate room, sympathy bloomed in my chest for Simon. I quickly stamped it down. What Simon did wasn’t love, and this bordered on obsession.
"Gray?" I whispered. His name was a trembling question on my tongue.
His fingers pressed, pulling me tighter against him as he shook. Not answering. Just holding tightly to me. An anchor for him - a port in a storm I couldn't comprehend.
Huddled on my bed - afternoon sunlight filtering through the blinds before another torrent struck, we clung to one another. No reassurances. No definitive answers. Nothing but two men - only one, perhaps, alive. Holding fast. And for the first time in years, I prayed - begging whatever powers could hear me - perhaps even Gray himself: Save him. Make him not dead. I wanted him to be real - but not like this. Never like this.
"Stay," I pleaded. My heart sank - my body ached beneath the gentle weight of his arms around me. "You don't have to go back. Just stay here with me."
> Gray nuzzled against my neck. His breath hot - like fire against my skin. We tipped. Falling together, I pulled him tightly against me, and he burrowed - closer and closer against me until every nerve of my body screamed for him. Electricity jolting me, cradling me into the black.
Waking to an empty bed shouldn't have hurt, but cold and alone, I rolled over, scouring the room for any sign of Gray - not that he seemed to remain long in my world. His visits were short. There and gone. Enough to make me question my sanity and no longer. A cruel twist of fate. A joke without a punchline.
Tom typed at his computer. His back stiff in the rigid wooden chair as he gnawed at the skin around his thumb nail. When his eyes strayed from the screen to me, he smirked.
"You helping Chad? Or did you get hit with the Crables' bug?" my roommate asked, jerking his head to nod at my computer.
The screensaver hid the image - covering it in black as the computer hummed, waiting for a jiggle of the mouse pad to bring it back to the lock screen. Which meant he'd been here pretty soon after I passed out. And that I fell asleep quicker than I had thought.
"The whole thing is pretty weird, right?" He continued, leaning back in his chair with a grin. "If you sell a guy as a ghost-psychic or whatever, you'd think you wouldn't also lock him up as a schizophrenic."
"Yeah, you'd think."
Holding his pen between his forefinger and thumb, he wiggled it up and down as he pursed his lips together, humming. "Not like his dad remarried. No other heirs. Though he didn't really have a fortune, right? So you'd think he'd take the kid back when he started making money or whatever."
Another question to add to the pile I hadn't managed to get out when I last saw Gray. I couldn't even confidently lie and tell myself I would ask. My ribs tightened. Just the thought made my heart ache. If I saw him again, I'd probably just hold on for dear life. Not that he was alive. I couldn't save him. Ghosts might be real, but necromancy? Everything had a limit. Conservation of energy might explain ghosts, but what was the physics to convert the dead back to life? Another human sacrifice? Was I that desperate? Did I love him enough to kill?
All That We Say or Seem Page 8
