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There are many stories told about the man who lives in the woods.
Some say he went mad and ripped apart his family with his bare hands, coming to his senses once the deed was done and hiding the bodies in the walls of his home. Others say he ran away from home and an arranged marriage, a woman he did not love, and the one he did love turned him away.
When he is seen in town, they smile polite smiles and ask him about his day and how he enjoys the weather.
He is a scientist, after all, of course, he pays mind to the weather. The state of his hair is chaos, the dark strands in disarray as he wanders through the small market to find his weekly groceries. He inspects the fruit with a hand to his chest, his thin fingers fiddling with the locket he wears. The gold shimmers in the sunlight and catches the attention of others, but he waves off their questions. An old family heirloom, he explains with a tight smile on his lips. It belonged to my mother, may God rest her soul.
No amount of prying will reveal what happened to her.
It keeps the rumors alive, the air thick with them whenever he is out of earshot. His pants are well repaired, the cuffs darned neatly, and his shirt is of a good quality, but there is little to suggest wealth other than the locket.
At the end of the day, he wanders off to his car once more, his arms loaded with groceries as he hums to himself. The sky above him holds his attention and he nods in response to something in his own head. That is the last they'll see of him for seven or eight days, they know, and once his car is completely out of sight, the rumors fly once more.
~
"They think you mad," comes William's laughing voice as Wilson settles into his car, his groceries in the backseat. "Every last one of them."
"They can think it all they want," he mutters, smoothing his thumb over the locket once more. He hasn't lied to them, it was his mother's locket and when she passed away it was given to him by post. It had come with a letter from his father that had gone ignored on the kitchen table until William had pointed it out to him with a look on his face. "Perhaps I am mad."
"Consorting with ghosts and the like, oh perhaps you are quite mad," William agrees jovially as he slips carefully into the passenger seat of the car. It held him, his long legs pressing against the floor, but he still looked wary. "Brilliant scientist as well as a brilliant magician," he praises the smaller man.
"When I held your skull, you were physical to me," Wilson starts the car and drove carefully away. "I could touch you, could feel your skin against mine. A tooth is much easier to hide and the locket is perfect for holding it. With the two combined, you can almost touch the world again. I am honestly glad for it, I have never liked shopping alone."
William smiles at him. "I do not know of anything you like doing alone," he chided gently. "I still wonder why it is that you moved out into the woods on your own."
"Perhaps it was fate," Wilson shot a glance at him. "Perhaps something told me to so that I could meet you."
"Perhaps you are avoiding the question," William shot back quickly.
Wilson glances over at him, a wry twist in his smile now. “Perhaps.” He sighs, leans back in his seat somewhat, then nods. “The stars should be seen clearly tonight,” he mutters. “A good time to watch for the arrangements of them, see what I can map of them.”
“Hardly seems like your sort of science, pal,” William allows the conversation to shift, happy to watch Wilson’s face as his hands wrap firmly around the steering wheel.
“It feels like I need to,” he explains softly, his voice fading out as if he were the ghost instead of William. “After digging you up, I feel a certain…Gratitude to the moon and the stars. With them, I found your bones.” He glances back at William again. “And I will never be unhappy with that fact.”
“Charming words,” the ghost smiles again.
~
The thing about being seen as mad is that it oddly changes your life expectancy.
~
Something was wrong.
William fidgeted, his hands in his lap as he watched Wilson sleep. He held a book in his hands, his eyes on the scientist instead of the pages. There was something in the air, something that felt wrong. Wilson had only just gotten to sleep, he thought as he rolled it over in his mind. The man slept so little, tending to collapse as he had. He still wore his shirt and vest, the buttons of the vest undone.
A noise outside had William putting down his book, getting to his feet and mimicking what would have once been a stretch.
There.
The noise of a car door, the sound he recognized from going to that market with Wilson.
William frowned and headed towards the door, relishing the feel of the floor under his feet. He still could not interact with things that were not directly connected to Wilson, but that was alright. The man had bought a few things on a whim, simply for the sake of the expression William wore when they were presented to him.
But the current problem.
The noises were louder now, and he saw bright lights through the window. “Wilson Higgsbury!” Some man’s voice shrieked in the darkness. “Show yourself! We do not wish for devils to exist among us!”
“Nor do we consort with murderers!”
William, if he had been in possession of a still-beating heart, would have felt it thud heavily in his chest. The rumors around the town, the ones Wilson had merely laughed at.
He glanced through the window and cursed, glad that he could not be seen by those outside.
A mob had gathered, as they had in long gone history, for the burning of something. William saw wood in their hands, effigies of something. Perhaps they meant for the fear to build from seeing something burn so close to a home.
Several of them were stumbling.
William winced, turning on his heel to race to Wilson’s bed and shake him awake. “Wilson,” his voice stayed low and he glanced back at the door.
If he had to guess what had happened, he would say that the wives of the town had gossiped over his scientist and word had gotten to their husbands. Perhaps some of them were genuinely concerned about Wilson’s presence on the edge of their lives and their husbands had translated that fear into something they needed to defend against.
Especially after drinking at the local pub.
Wilson groaned in his sleep and rolled over, burying his head in his pillow. “Wilson,” William felt like laughing and sighing all at once. The man was oddly entrancing, even in his sleep. “You must wake up.”
“HIGGSBURY!”
William looked back at the door. “There are men with torches,” he urged.
“HIGGSBURY, I WANNA SEE YER SORRY ASS OUT HERE NOW!”
“Wilson,” William smiled when the man’s eyes finally opened, both of them looking up when they heard shattering glass.
Wilson bolted out of bed, still half-asleep as he started to move towards the stairs. “If they’ve hit my experiments with a roc-“
The world exploded around them.
~
The woods were silent, in the morning after.
~
Wilson woke up in the forest, rubbing at his head.
The air was still, not even birdsong disturbing the silence. The ground was scorched, earth blackened and cracked, but he seemed to mostly be alright. There was a twinge of pain on the side of his head, but reaching to touch it produced no more than a faint soreness.
There was no blood on his fingers when he pulled back.
“William?” he called out quietly, fingers clasped around his locket. “William, are you here still?”
His house, when he turned to look at it, was shattered. The front door was blasted apart, hanging from the frame at an angle that would put the slant of a mountain to shame. The windows were gone, crackles of glass strewn across the ground before him.
Wilson frowned at them, then turned away.
There was still a small fire going in the back of the house and he groaned. “Of course they hit that experiment,” he muttered, walking towards it. “The expansion of gasses in a compact space…” he sighed, kneeling down to inspect the damage.
“Wilson?”
Turning, Wilson smiled. “Hello William,” he clasped a hand around the locket again.
William, reserved William, William who respected boundaries and always asked before doing anything, lunged at Wilson and wrapped his arms around him. The shorter man was pulled to his chest, one large hand in his hair and William curling around him.
“…William?”
“You haven’t noticed yet,” he whispered.
~
When the police finally made it out to the house, there was nothing but a pile of rubble.
~
“Haven’t noticed what?” Wilson drew back and William let him.
William’s eyes were wide and dark, the same as the night Wilson had found his bones all over again. “They had torches. I suspect that one of them threw one through a window.” He swallowed a noise, his thumb stroking over Wilson’s cheek. “You went racing for the stairs.”
He could remember that now.
William had been waking him up, intent on telling him of the men outside. Armed with torches, one of them yelling. Something about…
Fire.
Wilson sat up a little straighter, eyes wide as he tried to remember. “I was running for the stairs. There was…” he looked around them again, at the ruins of the house he had built. “There was fire, it came to greet me. Came down while I was going up.”
“Does your head hurt?”
“Mm,” Wilson nodded slowly, wincing when it sent a bolt of pain through him. “It does.”
One of William’s hands wrapped around the side of his head, inspecting as he pursed his lips. “Does this make it worse?”
“No.”
William nodded, drawing back after a moment. “Wilson?”
“Yes?” Wilson spotted the mangled mess that had once been his telescope. “Oh bother and blast them, telescopes are expensive.”
“Wilson.”
Finally looking at the ghost, Wilson blinked a couple of times. “Sorry?”
“Look over there,” William’s voice was gentle. “At least it will not, with some hope, be as shocking for you as it was for me.” He took Wilson’s hands in his own, sighing quietly. “Of course, I do sometimes wonder if there is any way to predict how you will react to things, strange as you are.”
“You enjoy my oddities,” Wilson said, distracted by the thing William was pointing to.
It looked like black fabric from this distance, crumpled in a heap on the floor. William held him back for a moment before letting him walk to it, helping him stand and steady himself. Balance, it seemed, had abandoned him. The shape on the floor was curled in an odd way, like a bug that had suddenly found itself deceased.
Wilson stepped closer again, trying to ignore the feeling of dread in his stomach. “Ah.” He said quietly. “I see.”
~
Carter Valley really was quite a long way off from the main town, they rationalized it. Time was precious and maybe if they had been faster, there could have been a success.
~
His own face was staring back at him, half-blackened by the marks of a wild fire that he had seen all around him.
“So I am…Dead.” Wilson said it slowly, his bottom lip rolling as he pinched it between his teeth. “Like you,” he turned to William. “The fire killed me?” he looked at his own corpse again, ignoring the shudder of nerves working through him. Were they still considered nerves when you were dead? “No, it wouldn’t have. Quick burst, I could have made my way through it.”
He pressed careful fingers to the side of his head again, noting the location on his body.
There was a shard of glass embedded in his skull, it looked to have come from the window pane. Wilson sighed as he kneeled down, resting his hands in his lap and looking at his corpse. “So I died,” he said quietly.
“You gave me quite a scare,” William kneeled down next to him. “Your body was empty and I could not find you.”
“I can, with a certainty born of knowing, promise it won’t happen again,” Wilson sighed, gesturing at his own body and closing his eyes for a moment. “I was barely awake when it happened. What was occurring outside? You mentioned torches and a mob of sorts.”
“I suspect that the rumors grew,” William’s voice was soft as he curled his hand around Wilson’s cheek. “And drunken men are always fools.”
~
Men were imprisoned for it, at least. Justice found in the drops of blood burned into the ground.
~
“Perhaps death is just another sort of life,” Wilson mused as he flexed his hand, watching the imitation of muscles twitch beneath the ghostly skin. “If this is the way it reacts.”
William stood up slowly, offering a hand to Wilson. “Shall we find out together?”
“Of course,” Wilson stood up as well, cupping a hand around the locket. When he opened it, the tooth he had placed inside of it was still there, barely an afterimage as it shifted around. “I still have this.”
“Strange things will always happen with you,” William laughed. “I will never be bored.”
~
“Have you ever seen the two ghosts of Carter Valley?”