Chapter Text
Despite their circumstances, Charles really had hoped that the ghost mailman joke would land.
“Time check, Crystal?”
“Three minutes! ” Crystal calls, her voice hardly carrying through the floor-to-ceiling shelves that make up the corridors of the bookshop.
Edwin huffs in some sort of concentrated response, the sound clearer as it filters between the slim spaces in the shelf separating them. Charles takes the opportunity to make a gap between two eye-level books, pushing one aside with each hand and resting his chin on the shelf to get a better view of his partner. Edwin catches the movement immediately, eyes darting to Charles’ hands, and he raises an eyebrow expectantly.
“Anything?”
For a moment, Edwin doesn’t reply, simply meeting his gaze with a stricken sort of look. The lack of a reply has Charles’ brain scrambling to fill the empty air, but his mouth doesn’t really get the memo.
Instead, his attention fixates on the way that Edwin’s eyes seem to steal all of the light from the room for themselves. Like they’re taking the sparse lamplight the bookhouse has to offer, and are sparkling with it.
But the sight is ripped away when Edwin’s gaze dashes to the side, and it’s insulting in a way Charles doesn’t quite get.
All too belatedly, Charles shuts his slightly opened mouth with a clench of his jaw.
“Nothing,” Edwin confirms his suspicions after a beat, clearing his throat. It’s all too quick and all too dismissive. “No magic doors, no suspects, no sign of this ghastly character Sable referred to.”
“Nothing in that book of yours either, yeah?”
Subconsciously, Edwin reaches to tap two fingers just above where his heart would rest, presumably to ensure that the notebook in question is still safely tucked away. It’s something he does often, as if he’d ever misplace the thing.
“I’m beginning to believe that in this instance, we may need to rely less on our client’s intel.”
“You think she was mad?”
Edwin blinks.
“She did not seem particularly angry, no. Distressed, maybe.”
Charles all but suppresses a knowing sigh.
“No, mate— like mental , mad.”
“Ah,” his partner hums. “Not definitively, per se— rather, that was just an idea. Her retelling of events truly makes no sense. I’m not quite used to working with such little intel.”
“So. . .” Charles hums, using one hand to push himself away from the shelf and back upright. The small leather book he’d plucked from one of the shelves slides neatly back into its home between two others. He takes a step or two back towards the main aisle, and can hear as Edwin shifts to do the same.
“Have we got a game plan for what to do if the walls start shaking? Or if books start flying about all Ghostbusters like?”
Edwin falls silent as they walk back up their respective corridors. Charles can imagine the confusion worming its way onto his face, and he lengthens his stride as Edwin’s starts to trail off in front of him.
“Have I still not made you watch that film?” Something warm emanates from the words as understanding hits him. Edwin still remains silent, and finally, Charles turns to phase his entire upper body through the obstructive bookshelf.
“Oi,” he calls softly, and Edwin turns to face him all too quickly. There’s something on the tip of the latter’s tongue, in the way he parts his lips with a quick inhale— but it dies with an exhale, and Edwin shakes his head curtly.
“Oh.”
Charles can only watch the way Edwin surveys him, the coils in his nonexistent muscles wound tighter than ever. He supplies a small grin, one he hopes isn’t too obvious in the way it wobbles against his lips.
“We’ll uh. . . we’ll watch it, yeah?”
“Two minutes! ”
Edwin, if possible, stills further. Something cracks in his gaze, and Charles only just notices the unfocused look it harbors before it hardens into something much more defensive. Charles’ smile falters.
“No. We do not have a plan to account for flying books.”
The boy turns back on his heel, reaching the mouth of the aisle and disappearing around a corner. Something jumps in his chest the moment Edwin is out of his sight, and Charles allows himself to phase fully through the shelf before following in his path.
No? Why no? No like, ‘No, Charles, we are not prepared,’ or like, ‘No, Charles, we are not watching Ghostbusters' ?
“Well— just a good precaution to take, innit?” Charles all but shouts instead, jogging to trail behind his mate. Edwin only stalks forward, past rows of novels and haphazardly labeled strips of paper that assign each shelf to its genre. He lowers his voice considerably when he finally matches Edwin’s stride. “She definitely caused this mess, yeah? And if she can do that by just crying, then how are we meant to stop her by sittin’ around and watching her?”
“And what precisely do you suggest we do otherwise?”
The pair come to stop at the bottom of a staircase, Charles slowing more out of shock than anything. The bite in Edwin’s tone isn’t lost on him, and something within Charles aches at the knowledge that it is, once again, directed at him.
“Hey . Not for nothing, but it’s not like I’m trying to stop you from figuring this out—”
“Well then do be helpful and keep searching for clues before our guest arrives.”
Do be helpful .
The words pierce his lungs, poison tipped arrows.
If Charles were alive, he suspects that Edwin would be much more aware of how lethal his words can be, considering how very dead Charles would be by now.
“S’not easy to be helpful when I’m right here and you won’t let me be.”
The words hardly register as they tumble from him, and Charles regrets them the moment they do.
For a moment, Edwin watches him from a few stairs up. Maybe it’s a trick of the light, or maybe it’s intentional, the way Edwin’s eyes are shadowed from his view just so. But Charles can’t read them like this regardless, and that’s wrong , this is all wrong. He wants to find the perpetrator behind all of this wrongness in Edwin’s eyes, fish it out with gentle reassurances and crush the damned thing until the eggshells under their feet disappear.
“It’s 11:59,” Crystal interrupts then, appearing by the front door and crossing the room towards them. Her boots trample scattered shards of glass from one of the destroyed display windows.
“Do we have any idea where this damn door is?”
Edwin once again closes his mouth from where it had hung open in preparation to respond— retaliate, argue, whatever . His sealed lips quirk in a frustrated frown, eyes not leaving his polished boots beneath him. Even if he squints, Charles cannot catch a single glimpse of Edwin’s eyes.
It’s infuriating how Edwin acts like it’s the easiest thing in the world to avert his gaze from Charles’ own. Especially when it was so easy , in Hell, for Charles to duck his head down and catch the former’s gaze before the self-doubt brewing there swallowed Edwin where he stood.
His fists find his pockets easily, and he painstakingly drags his attention from Edwin to face Crystal as she approaches.
“Dunno,” he coughs, the air suddenly too thick for his liking. “There’s nothing around here but dust and old books. ‘S bullshit.”
In lieu of a response, Edwin only brushes past Charles, wandering past Crystal and off to continue traversing the first floor. His forearm radiates with the sudden touch, and the even more sudden lack-thereof.
Crystal eyes search him slowly, clearly trying to pick up the pieces of whatever conspired just before she arrived.
“Did he. . . are you—”
“Just brills, Crystal,” Charles snaps, with no real heat behind the words. In a way that nods to their developing ability to communicate complex feelings with one another, yet refuses to do so now.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Their heads jerk in tandem to the watch strapped to Crystal’s wrist, the clock’s hands overlapping as midnight tolls quietly through the room.
A splintering crack quickly overtakes the chimes. Dust rains abruptly from the ceiling between them, knocked loose by the sudden and invisible movement.
A sudden, white flash blinks from around a far corner. Burning panic rises in Charles’ throat like bile.
His feet are stumbling beneath him in an instant, Crystal a mere few paces behind him as they bolt to the source of the action. They fly by the till and the front door, skidding to a halt at the opening to the widest corridor between the brimming shelves.
“Fucking hell ,” Charles pants.
A brilliant pale light bathes the bookshop’s main aisle, pouring into the cracks of the wooden floors and through sparse gaps in the book stacks. It fills any crevice left as a result of the haunt’s destruction, the room almost pulsing with luminescence.
What would be an unassuming white door stands planted in the middle of the space, as if it hadn’t ceased to exist only seconds prior. Just beyond it is the obvious source of the now dimming light, what appears to be a solid wall of pure white peaking through the ajar door.
Edwin stands only a few meters ahead of them, something combative in his stance, in the way his hands flare out almost dramatically by his sides. Charles steps up to be by his side in an instant, and Edwin takes a step back to meet him, Crystal flanking his left.
A silhouette stands out starkly against the scene, its shadow stretching enough to almost reach the trio’s feet. It’s a mound of something indistinguishable, and Charles itches to prod or yell at it until it does something .
His eyes rack the chipped paint on the bottom of the door, watching as it reveals thicker, aggravated strips of bare wood. Five or so lines run in tandem down the bottom third of the door, and other clusters reflect a similar pattern of scraped paint.
Claw marks , the detective in him eagerly supplies.
Charles’ hand twitches where it rests in front of Edwin’s torso. Only then does he notice the shift in their positions, the way he’s stepped to place Edwin behind his arm without realizing.
Ignoring the sudden stutter of his breathing, he shrugs his backpack to the floor from his other shoulder in one swift motion.
A hand rests on his arm, fingers hovering lightly on his sleeve, and Charles’ eyes snap to Edwin; Edwin, who only minutely shakes his head, eyes never leaving the form in front of them. Charles gets the memo instantly, slowly pulling his hand back from where it has reached to open his bag.
The shadow shifts, causing the three of them to jump.
It untangles itself slowly, and the sudden creaking of joints and the stretching of skin fills the air. Crystal visibly flinches in his peripheral vision, and even Charles rolls his bottom lip beneath his teeth, mentally battling a phantom nausea.
Charles reaches again for his bat, more on instinct than anything— yet Edwin tugs at his elbow this time, and Charles can do nothing but wait under his insistence.
With a few more seconds and a resounding pop , the shadow of a young woman stands at her full height in front of them.
The ground splinters beneath their feet, more ceiling plaster disintegrating around them as two earth-shattering cracks slither outwards from her feet.
Charles wishes, however difficult it would have been to move his arm from in front Edwin in that moment, that he’d allowed himself time to cover his ears.
Because in that moment, a low chittering reverberates down the aisle, and the lady wails.
Charles’s hands fly to cover his ears now on instinct, curling inward at the horrible noise. Edwin does the same with impossibly wide eyes, and Crystal practically keels over, leaning harshly against a nearby book stack with her eyes screwed shut.
In an instant, the specter is rushing towards them, and it takes all of Charles’ concentration to stumble to the side and allow the ghost to fly between him and Edwin. An all–too familiar ringing leaves his head spinning, and he shakes it rapidly until it starts to subside.
Charles is the first to recover, bracing his hand against the shelf beside him to regain some sense of balance. Edwin and Crystal lean against each other for some semblance of support, Edwin muttering something to her as her eyes remain screwed shut.
“We have to stop this before she leaves again,” Edwin practically yells to him over the retreating sobs. Crystal winces next to him at the volume.
“I can’t even hear myself fucking think! ” She cries, eyes finally opening as she looks between the boys.
Charles’ eyes search Edwin’s again, and a familiar electricity hums there. Edwin’s eyes, although tinged with distress, mirror the same fiery resolve he feels— alight with that familiar passion to close a case that powers the lurching engine in Charles’ head.
“Aces . So what are you thinking?”
“We—” Edwin starts, before a particularly loud cry interrupts him. Edwin flinches intensely, taking a moment before squaring his shoulders.
“We should talk to her.”
Charles doesn’t miss the shake in his voice.
“Talk to her? ” Crystal spits. “You said that Sable tried that already!”
Adrenaline finally jumpstarts him into action, and Charles’ eyes dart between his friends. For what it’s worth, Charles would rather stop that blasted sobbing first , and talk to the woman second — but Edwin, as he tends to be, is probably right.
Determination sets in Charles’ jaw as his fingers find the strap of his bag. Edwin doesn’t move to stop him this time, only shooting him a calculating look.
“I’m with Edwin on this one. Whatever that is, ‘s likely not all that good, but she needs help.”
Something glimmers in Edwin’s eyes as they jump to meet his. If he were to name it, Charles might try for something like hope.
With a curt nod, they’re all in agreement.
At once, the detectives and their medium turn and race back down the aisle. They split as they approach the library’s front room, ducking into different aisles and around corners as cries reverberate from every surface. But that familiar panic doesn’t hesitate to make itself known the moment Edwin disappears towards the register.
Charles skids to the end of another corridor quickly, turning to run further into the absolute maze of bookshelves, when he spots her.
Shivering where she stands, the ghost weeps.
“Please ,” a sob tears through her hardly corporeal body, as if it’s physically forcing its way from her throat.
She doesn’t speak in his direction, let alone react as if she’s noticed him— instead, her eyes are keenly trained on. . . on a blank wall. A cracked and fairly bruised wall, sure, but there’s nothing there worth looking at like that .
“Um, Miss—”
His hand only hesitates for a moment before he reaches out, ready to draw her attention. It’s no use.
The nauseating crack of wood rings down the corridor as the woman rams the entire side of her body into the wall.
Charles’ thoughts sputter to a halt.
What the bloody hell?
“You— wait— ”
The deafening timbre of skin colliding with something all too solid echoes again.
Charles recoils.
She continues to throw herself at the wall, each thud of her semi-real body seeming to rock the very foundations of the bookhouse. Twice, three times, each movement ripping a violent whimper from her chest as it rapidly rises and falls.
He wants, no, he needs to interrupt her. That’s evident in the way endless cracks have started splintering through any surface around the ghost; books, trinkets, and anything of the likes are tumbling to the ground and rattling where they land. Nothing solid is left unscathed by the woman’s endless howling, her repetitive and evident self-destruction manifesting horribly in their surroundings.
Charles runs an unsteady hand over the strap of his backpack, faltering with indecision. Just walk away at this point, Charles chides himself, you might as well. Standing around and doing nothing isn’t helping shit.
The other curls its fingers into the base of his hairline, as if tugging at his roots will help jump-start a helpful train of thought. One foot shifts pointedly in her direction. He needs to do something , yet Charles feels entirely out of his element.
There’s a hesitation, just before the fourth time she collides with the wall, and Charles makes his move.
“Stop it! ”
His plea cuts through the wall of noise like a razor blade.
The woman falters, entire head swiveling to stare at— or through — him. Exhaustion pulls her to rest her head against the wood, arms hanging limply by her sides— lightly, without force. Her chest slowly curls in on itself, each shuddering cry pulling her rapidly to her knees.
The sudden pattering of feet only registers a moment before Edwin tumbles into view, and Charles’ mind immediately steadies. An almost-pleasant exhale escapes his lips.
“Charles, where on Earth—”
Edwin trips over his words, letting the rest of his question fall apart.
His eyes fall to the weeping woman on the floor between them, and Charles can’t help but watch his expression screw up in confusion, and how it creases in all of those familiar places— the pinch of his brow, the bridge of his nose.
After a moment too long, Charles’ eyes finally follow Edwin’s gaze.
Now that she’s more than a blur of movement, Charles can get a better look at her.
Olive skin sits desaturated and unflushed by death beneath her russet braids, the long strands curling softly at the base of her spine. A silken fabric practically pools from her limbs, as pure of a white as the door she entered the bookhouse from. It’s some sort of dress, he thinks, or maybe a more shapeless nightgown. The sheen of it is almost just as blinding, and Charles has to squint to get the full picture of the ghost trembling before him.
She proves to align accurately with Sable’s story, if only more visibly distressed.
The lady is still audibly weeping; Charles is just close enough to catch the way each tear trails down the apples of her cheeks, collecting at the tip of her chin before falling to the floor. It’s almost rhythmic.
He shifts his weight onto his outstretched leg, ready to slowly approach their side of the hall. A chunk of plaster crumbles beneath the toe of his boot.
The lady’s eyes snap to meet Charles’ in an instant.
And there it is. That look . Pure desperation, like she’s trapped in her own skin, bound and held hostage by some primal driving force behind her eyes.
Her eyes, cavernous and rimmed with a violent red, pool with an endless supply of unshed tears. The black of her pupils almost entirely overtakes the rich brown of her irises.
Charles’s eyes unwillingly flit to Edwin.
Maybe in understanding, maybe for some sort of reassurance; Desperation for proof that Edwin’s eyes don't look like that anymore drives his gaze to meet the boy’s without hesitation.
Edwin’s eyes never leave her trembling body, but he must’ve grabbed his notebook at some point, his pen now resting still against it.
A puzzle piece snaps into place.
“She wants to leave,” Charles offers. It feels obvious. He hates that. “She keeps running into the walls, like she’s trapped. What if we show her the door?”
This finally earns him Edwin’s attention, yet his mate looks befuddled.
“And let her out into the streets ? Charles, are you quite alright?”
“Edwin ,” Charles hums, brain running steadily with this sudden confidence like a high. “She’s been clawing at her door and at the walls. Maybe she’s crying because she feels like she can’t get out.”
Without waiting for confirmation that he’s been understood, Charles begrudgingly shifts his focus back to the lady at their feet. He leans one hand against a nearby, hardly-standing bookshelf, and brings himself to a crouch. The woman’s carefully trained attention never leaves Charles, eyes twitching with every miniscule movement.
“My name is Charles Rowland,” he begins, willing every ounce of kind energy he can into the words. “And that bloke behind you is Edwin Paine.”
The woman hesitantly shifts her body to sit fully against the wall, eyes only flicking to see Edwin for a moment before coming back to him. Tears still pool freely against her eyes, though she makes no effort to brush them aside, and low whimpers and cries still prattle on from her lips.
“Are you— do you have a name?”
The tremble in her lips drastically upticks, her whole jaw shaking around them.
And she speaks — or doesn’t speak? — and it’s unlike anything Charles has ever heard.
Her mouth forms the obvious shapes of words, but not a natural sound comes out. Instead, as if a voice is speaking over her own, she drones out a nonsensical combination of letters and numbers. Strings of M s and V s, twenties and threes . The sounds come from everywhere and nowhere, not localized to her voice, her throat.
It’s incessant at first, before tapering off when the ghost must clock Charles’ lack of understanding. Tears continue to pool in her eyes as they shift to stare off in front of her, her voice returns to its babbling cries.
In the corner of his eye, Edwin is mouthing the combination repeatedly to himself, pen scribbling as he scrambles to make some sense of what they’ve heard.
Unsteady without his partner’s input, Charles pushes forward.
“We just want to help you.”
And that . That does something.
Her eyes jerk back to meet Charles’, brow furrowed in something alike intense anger or discomfort.
One of the hands resting by her leg flies to grab the wall beside her, and Charles can only watch as she digs , wood splintering around and beneath her grip. Edwin’s eyes jump to the action, eyes widening at the scene.
“H-Hold on—”
She’s scrambling to her feet in an instant, an amplified wail shredding through her as she stumbles into a sprint down an unoccupied aisle.
The ground beneath them shakes violently, Charles nearly stumbling.
In a flurry of color, Crystal stumbles into the aisle behind Edwin, eyes jumping between the boys.
“Where is she? ” She shouts over the incomprehensible wall of noise. The shelves around them continue to quake, books now spilling onto the shattering floor.
Charles startles when he finds Edwin’s eyes to already be locked on his.
“The door,” Edwin states, and Charles is already running.
The book stacks tremble on either side of them, and Charles leads the trio about halfway down the aisle before one particularly loud sob upends the floor just beneath his feet.
It’s stronger than he anticipated, and his goal-driven mind snaps back to reality the moment before the shelf tips, pounds of wood ready to flatten them whole.
“Guys—! ” He squawks, loafers sliding to a halt. Clocking his worry in an instant, Crystal halts abruptly by his side. They manage to catch the massive thing just before it collides with the next shelf over, and he groans under its weight as books scatter to their feet.
A blur of tweed barely registers as Edwin leaps over the surmounting piles of novels, continuing to sprint down the aisle. No, no no no.
With a sudden, impatient energy, Charles grunts as he shoulders the shelf back upright, Crystal panting with effort. He only falters for a moment before continuing after Edwin, not-so gracefully dodging the shit blocking his path.
When he finally reaches the main aisle, Edwin has somehow placed himself between the weeping woman and her magical door. Has she gotten taller?
“Don’t!” Charles calls, throat tight with something worrisome. The air tenses, almost freezes.
Both Edwin and the woman’s attention lurch to Charles. Fury sits visibly in the lady’s posture, in the way she almost towers over him now, stepping in his direction at a creeping speed.
“The— the front door, it’s right back there.” Charles meets the woman’s gaze expectantly, something sincere undermining his words. “Why don’t you leave?”
The halo of light surrounding her falters in its intensity, if just for a moment, and Charles considers the idea that she may have heard him. He takes a step back, and then another, keeping a few meters between them as he blindly bumbles towards the foyer.
She lengthens her stride, as if to pass through him, and Charles flattens himself against the nearest shelf to let her pass him instead. The lady shoulders past him, striding once, twice, towards the door.
Edwin finally shakes free of his stupor, walking purposefully to meet Charles. They trail the haunt towards the exit, and hope bubbles dangerously in Charles’ chest as they inch towards a metaphorical finish line.
The woman’s sobs slowly quiet, until nothing but pitiful weeping trails behind her as she wanders towards the wreckage of the front of the store. The once quaking foundations and shuttering bricks slow in their quivering,
Crystal stands just behind the counter as the spirit passes by, and Edwin and Charles maneuver to stand by one of the tarnished windows, just by the base of the stairs. He places himself in front of Edwin without a second thought.
The specter’s eyes are unfocused, distant as they skim across each wall of the foyer. For an action so unnecessary to a ghost, Charles desperately holds his breath.
They don’t land particularly anywhere, glazing over every open door or shattered window as if they’re unimportant.
Something shifts in the air as she scans the room again, an intensity in her energy that has Charles’ arm hair standing on edge. Her eyes pass over the wall again, and again, before she begins to turn, eyes skimming every surface of the library. Her sobs slowly grow guttural, like her chest itself has opened to release the noises, and it’s amplified in a way they’ve yet to experience.
“You can leave, mate!” Charles tries again over the growing cacophony. “The door is right there!”
“She must not see the exit.”
Edwin’s body is still against Charles’ back, frigid as understanding powers the cogs in his head.
Charles faces Edwin instantly, almost missing the quiet observation. At some point, Edwin’s hand had landed to rest on Charles’ shoulder, and he doesn’t move to step away— even hesitating to move further at all. His eyes track each rise and fall of Edwin’s shoulders, the way his breathing slows as realization dawns on him.
Before Charles can even muster up a response, the familiar frantic energy behind those green eyes halts his thoughts. Yet it’s still there, that passionate determination in Edwin’s steeled gaze— a gaze that’s much closer than Charles had anticipated.
Edwin grabs Charles’ wrist. The grip burns, impossibly so, and he catches the skin of his cheek between his teeth.
“Her eyes, Charles. They are black.”
That low chittering from earlier starts again, something almost taunting, cooing. It’s not nearly as far from them as it should be.
Charles’ spectral heart sinks.
Without a word, Edwin turns and yanks him up the stairs, and Charles allows himself to be dragged, panic propelling them forwards.
A grieving howl echoes up the stairwell from the first floor, something much darker than the previous ones, and the building quakes with the visceral noise. The stairs tremble beneath their feet, and Charles can’t bring himself to look down.
The moment they hit the second floor, Edwin scampers to the furthest wall opposite the stairs. They stumble forwards, and Charles’ unoccupied hand flies to grip Edwin’s forearm as the ground shifts beneath him, colliding and caving in on itself all at once.
For a moment, Charles is sinking, and a gasp-like cry escapes him as he tumbles to right himself.
Edwin jerks to look at him, eyes darting between Charles’ and something just over his shoulder. A decisive panic sets in his stare and Edwin skids to a halt, shifting his arm until Charles is thrown ahead of him, colliding with the built-in shelves of the far wall.
In one second, Charles is slammed against the brick, knocking the wind from his chest. In the next, he’s turning to reach for Edwin, to pull him away from that thing.
In the third second— the third, impossibly long second— the weeping woman has Edwin pinned to the nearest shelf by the lapels of his coat.
In the moment between seconds, Edwin blinks.
When his eyes open, they immediately slam shut— before squinting open again, adjusting to a sudden and intense brightness that envelops his senses. It’s a dizzying contrast from the harrowing bookhouse, and his eyes struggle to make sense of his new environment.
Or, his. . . altered environment. He’s not quite sure.
The white door is just off to his left, only now, a pulsating darkness seeps through the sliver of the opening it provides. If he focuses on it enough, he’s positive that he can make out a shelf of books just past the doorway.
Edwin’s hand shifts with the desire to shield his eyes from the intensity of the room, vying for more information as to his whereabouts. Yet despite his best efforts, his hand remains firmly planted on— on something.
His attention darts to his palms, where they rest on someone’s forearms. As his awareness of his corporeal body slowly returns, Edwin shifts his gaze up the offender’s arms where they cage him against some solid surface.
Edwin’s eyes meet the woman’s before him, vast and all encompassing.
The environment just beyond them, beyond her, is crudely magnificent.
Stairs spiral out around them, and there must be thousands of them, all cascading and shifting in every direction. Where one set ends, another begins, endlessly traipsing in the space surrounding the landing they stand on. Where the stairs don’t exist, shelves do— mountainous runs of an endless collection of books that stretch further than Edwin’s mind can comprehend. The spine of every book is identical, yet they all seem to change appearance each time he shifts his focus. It’s dizzying and enthralling and utterly terrifying , and Edwin’s hands ache to grasp at the fabric above where his thrumming heart would be.
The whimpers emerging from the girl are whispers in comparison to the grandiose sobbing that had left Edwin’s ears ringing in its wake. It’s relieving to have one of his previously occupied senses finally freed from that chaos, and Edwin takes a hefty breath, if only to hear himself do so.
It’s. . . quiet, otherwise.
And it’s all too unimportant with the sudden and intense lack of Charles’ presence.
Edwin squirms against his immobility.
A sniffle echoes indefinitely throughout the place, and Edwin’s eyes dart back to the woman’s, her eyes mostly shielded beneath dark, full lashes.
“I think I fucked up,” she finally begins, voice hardly a whisper.
Edwin panics at her sudden acknowledgement of his presence.
“He always told me he’d meet me here, you know? That he’d spend the rest of my life searching for an answer.”
Edwin’s brain absorbs and studies her dialect passively, and her words more intentionally, aching for valuable information. The way her words crack every few syllables, her voice hoarse from what he can assume is a lack of use. His fingers itch to dig the notebook from his chest pocket.
“But he was wrong. There’s nothing. . . wrong with me.”
Edwin closes his eyes, as if it can help him focus his attention on the sporadic stream of thoughts.
“I do not think. . .” Edwin starts, each word oddly spaced and carefully considered. His panic is obvious, as much as he tries against it. “I do not think I understand.”
The maiden’s eyes are trained on one of his own when his open, thoughtful and cavernous.
“He thought there was something wrong, and I never believed him. But he said he’d meet me here. Every day, he told me he’d meet me here anyway, when the time came, because he was certain the answers were somewhere in these books. He wanted to help me get better.”
Her voice snags on that word, like it has offended her to say.
“But I don’t — I don’t bloody need help,” She spits, and Edwin flinches at the sudden venom to her words.
Where is here, and who is He ? He wants to ask. Or, better yet, What has happened to you ?
“I told him it was pointless, coming here, because I was fine, and I think. . . I think he gave up on arguing with me.”
In a sudden effort to keep collecting intel, Edwin finds his words again.
“What is wrong with you?”
He regrets his choice of words instantly, but the girl must catch his lack of judgment behind the question; If the question offends her, she does not let it show.
“I am just so, so . . . so fucking sad.”
Diagnostic assumptions present themselves easily at the forefront of his thoughts, and Edwin blinks to bat them away.
“But he loved me anyway, and I couldn’t lose that. So I stopped talking about it, even when he’d ask.”
Some amalgamation of confusion and disbelief pinches Edwin’s brow, and the woman before him tenses defensively.
“I had no desire to be fixed . I was fine. So when his time came, and he tried to promise, again, to search tirelessly for a cure in his afterlife, I. . . I wouldn’t let him.”
Her eyes must’ve unfocused at some point, but they fixate on Edwin’s now with an electric intensity.
“Why would he not try anyway?” She practically growls. “Why isn’t he here?”
They’ve wandered leagues out of Edwin’s element, he decides. But his back is still pinned to the wall, and the case has yet to be closed, so he slows his fleeting breath.
“I haven’t the faintest clue, if I’m to be honest with you,” Edwin tries, and hates the way that the girl shrinks inwardly beneath his words.
“I can’t stand it. He shouldn’t have listened to me. . .” She trails, and the black of her eyes only grows further. “He should be here. If he really cared, he’d be here.”
Her eyes dance between his. “Right?”
“You. . .”
He scrambles to find the logic immediately, something more decisive, more comfortable than whatever this is.
“You forbade him from utilizing his time before his afterlife to come here, and to help you. Without being allowed that unfinished purpose, Death must have come for him.”
His eyes cast a glance towards the door, catching in the grooves of the hashes in its wood.
“Ch— we showed you to the exit. The front door is open.” Charles’ question rings clearly in Edwin’s memory, and he repeats it.
“Why do you not leave?”
Confusion knits its way into the girl’s expression, brows furrowing.
“The door?”
“Yes,” Edwin nods. “The front door to the bookshop. If this man you speak of is not here, why do you wait?”
For a moment, a sliver of her iris is visible, and Edwin squints his eyes to observe the faintest spark of desire there.
Something beneath her pupil squirms, and Edwin stills.
She trembles violently, a wet half-laugh escaping her lips. It’s starkly different from her previous cries, much more wicked, and Edwin’s breath stutters.
“Because I don’t need your help either. You or your little team’s.”
And, oh .
Edwin can only gape at the picture of cyclical, horrible anguish in front of him.
“I’m sorry, did you. . .” she continues, an apologetic question half-forming there, their previous conversation forgotten. A deep timbre echoes in her voice, unfamiliar and all-too threatening.
Her arms deepen their hold against his collarbone.
“Did you say something?”
That noise. That low, desperate, miserable chittering.
In the blink— no, flinch — of an eye, the wraith’s fingers claw painfully into Edwin’s spectral skin, before the husk of the woman sinks to the floor before him.
The inconceivably infinite library is ripped from his sights, and a desperate gasp escapes Edwin’s lungs.
The handle of his bat had been a comforting weight in Charles’ palms, especially after it finally knocked the lights clean out of a misery wraith.
Or maybe a misery-wraith-demon. Or just a demon. Or some really fucking miserable bloke who’d inhabited some poor, even more-so miserable lady.
The open book he’d utilized as an emergency canvas, runes etched messily in pencil against the inked pages, disintegrates into her body where it lies incapacitated on the floor. The moment he spots that ghastly blue glow encasing her body, what Charles presumes is the woman’s spirit finally returning to a normal state, Crystal’s hand rests gently against his back.
Charles doesn’t have the energy to suppress his flinch.
“Take him and go,” Crystal murmurs, her touch unwaveringly firm, even as she pants from the exertion of their exorcism. “I’ll sort shit out with her.”
And Charles doesn’t hesitate, bat entirely forgotten at his feet as his arms reposition under Edwin’s. His unreal weight makes it easily to pull his best friend to his feet.
Edwin’s unblinking eyes never leave his, something desperate and fragile and understanding there, Charles’ coat tightening under his tight grasp against the fabric.
Edwin, who’s entire front is cast in a pale glow, one that highlights the bumps and ridges of his profile, one that halos the tousled state of his hair.
“Lets get home ,” Charles all but whispers, arms cradling Edwin’s.