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He didn’t notice the ghost at first.
He certainly felt something there, in that attic, but then, so could anyone. The cobwebs alone could put someone on edge.
HG Wells had been working on his camera for four month️s. It was long, tedious work, but still it couldn’t distract him from the presence in his friend and roommate Edgar’s attic.
So he decided to ask.
“Um, Edgar,” he said nervously one morning.
“Yes?” Edgar replied, not looking up from the paper in front of him.
“Is there...something in the attic?” (Honestly, he was talking to his tea more than Edgar at this point.)
Edgar just barely caught the ink pot he had knocked over in surprise. “Well, technically yes, but don’t worry about it. It’s just Lenore.”
“Lenore?”
“My sister. She passed away before I met you. Our family got a medium to bring her spirit back, and so she kind of hangs around. She usually shows herself more, I don’t know why she’s been so reclusive.”
“Is she-is Lenore dangerous?” HG set down his mug and stepped back just so.
Edgar almost smiled. “She’s dangerous to people with a poor fashion sense. I think you can just try to talk to her. It’ll be totally fine.”
First, HG tried to speak to Lenore out loud, while he was working on his camera and sitting among brass and copper, along with an impressive amount of loose wire.
“H-hello. Lenore, was it? I am-well I’m your brother’s…” that had felt really stupid. He was almost positive he was talking to air. Even before he knew about the ghost, he had always felt her presence. But she wasn’t there. HG turned bright red and returned to his work.
A week later, his confidence newly restored after an hour spent researching spirit communication in the library, HG came home with a Ouija board.
Lenore liked to sit in the attic windowsill while HG worked. She knew more about him than he did her: he was Edgar’s roommate, he liked to invent things (or make other things better), and he was too awkward for his own good. Naturally, Lenore was interested. But she wasn’t ready to materialize yet. How would she go about introducing herself anyway?
“Hello, yes, my name is Lenore and I maybe died of food poisoning and now haunt my weird emo brother and also I’ve been watching you work for the past eight-and-a-half months.”
Yeah. So not normal.
HG would leave his bedroom (somewhere on the second floor, Lenore was sure, but she hadn’t followed him to find out where it was he slept. When he did. That would be, like, total stalker type stuff. Edgar’s forte, not hers.) and go downstairs for breakfast. It usually consisted of tea and toast for himself and bitter, black coffee and nothing else for Edgar. Then, he would spend the rest of the day in the attic, tinkering away and occasionally humming made-up songs to himself. Lenore found that part extremely adorable.
In a totally non-romantic way.
Totally.
Unfortunately, Lenore was not in the attic when HG spoke to her. She was downstairs, talking Edgar out of giving up writing forever. (She didn’t care about him or anything. She just thought that she should be a good sister. Besides, it wasn’t like he had anything else going on.) But she was in the same room again at dinner. She walked by the dining room and nearly dropped her plate when a voice made her lose focus.
“I tried speaking to your sister.”
“Did you?” Edgar said, barely listening from his hunched over position at the laptop in front of him.
“Y-yes. I don’t think it worked. I suppose I didn’t do it right. I’ll be off to the library, then. To find out more about ghosts and other such whatnot.”
Edgar merely nodded, and five minutes later he slammed his laptop shut. “I cannot write on this machine. I’m going to my study. To write with real things.”
“A computer is a real th-” HG replied, but Edgar was already gone.
And so it was unexpected, but not shocking, that HG bought a Ouija board.
Lenore was staring out of the attic window and thinking about brass goggles and stuttering British accents (for some unknown reason) when she turned around and saw him standing there, nervously tearing the cellophane off of the box and opening it. HG sat down, placed the planchette on the board, and put two fingers from each hand on it.
“Lenore, are you here?”
Lenore stumbled, shocked, and sat down across from him. Her fingers found the planchette and she moved it to yes .
“I’m HG Wells. Your brother’s roommate. Edgar’s roommate.”
Lenore took a deep breath and spelled, “I know.”
HG’s eyes grew wide as he asked another question. “You’re really a...ghost? A real dead ghost?”
“Yes.”
“H-how did you? Move on to the other side. I-If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Can I materialize?” Lenore’s heart would have been racing if it still could. It was kind of a big deal for her. She’d been hiding for so long, and HG had never seen her. It was like meeting an internet friend in real life for the first time. How would he know she wasn’t some sweaty forty year old? She wasn’t, obviously, but still. Lenore anxiously awaited his response.
“My dear Lenore, of course you can,” HG said through an unstoppable smile as Lenore suddenly started to appear. First came her dress, starting as pearly white fog and then forming a complete gown, and then came the rest of her.
And oh.
She was gorgeous.
“I…” was all HG could say. “Hello,” he added a few seconds later.
“Hi.”
“You’re…”
“Dead?”
“Beautiful.”
Having spoke at the same time, both of them blushed.
“It was my wedding day,” Lenore began, not making eye contact. “I was getting married to the love of my life, Guy de Vere.”
HG’s eyes fell, the slightest of frowns creeping onto his face. He wasn’t sure why. He had only just seen her. But her dark hair, her eyes, her magnetic, charismatic pull made it impossible not to love her. To see why others were in love with her. He wasn’t. Was he?
“That week,” she added quickly. “Love of my life that week. But I guess Lady Luck was mad at me, because she did the equivalent of bitch-slapping me at the mall: she gave me a bad batch of ribs at the bachelorette party. We think. Mystery illness. Happens all the time, even to us hot people. My family hired this really good psychic named Krishanti and she brought me back. I guess I owe her my afterlife.”
They both laughed quietly.
“I’m sorry,” said HG.
Lenore only shrugged, but then she smiled. “You know, I’ve kind of...been watching you. When you work. I hope that’s not creepy to you or anything. It’s calming and almost...therapeutic, in a way. Since Edgar broke the TV when he tried to befriend this raven a few years back, there hasn’t been anything to zone out to. Helps me sort out my thoughts.”
“I don’t mind. Not at all. I’ve sort of known you were here. If that makes sense. I’ve...sensed you. At first, it just felt like I was being watched. And then I realized that I was watching back. Trying to, at least. Materialization, et cetera.” He smiled. Lenore didn’t know why, but she was definitely starting to develop a tiny, minuscule, practically-non-existent crush on HG.
Little did she know, the feeling was mutual.
After that, Lenore just drifted into HG’s life, similar to how she had existed in Edgar’s, not alive but clearly visible, not breathing but talking and laughing. HG would make an extra cup of tea every morning, and five minutes later Lenore would appear from wherever it was she slept (it was not appropriate, in HG’s mind, to ask,) and the two of them would chat about everything they could think of: books and movies and inventions and fashion and friends and the lighter parts of childhood, the vanilla bean and lavender topics. And HG realized that he didn’t have just a measly crush on Lenore. But he didn’t know if he loved her, either.
What was it supposed to feel like?