Work Text:
Time moves differently when you’re dead.
It had been a century and a half or so—or had it? The skull couldn’t tell—since his untimely demise, and the skull had grown bored. Yes, he was now free from the confines of his jar, but there were other restrictions that came with being a ghost.
For one, it hurts to go out in the daylight. Normally, the skull wouldn’t have minded this so much, but not many living people were out at night, and he wouldn’t dare pull the Happy Farmhand on yet another agent who was trigger-happy with the aluminum flares. He still felt the stinge on his ectoplasm from the blast.
The dead of London were no fun either. Brainless things, content to floating around and wailing. “Woe is me!” they seem to chant, night after night after night. “I’m dead, so I’ll just sit and wait until a kid with a glorified toothpick pokes around and extinguishes my existence!”
The skull can’t help but scoff.
What the skull really was—though he’d never admit it—was lonely. He missed having someone to talk to. It wasn’t like he could go back to Portland Row; Lucy had grown up and her attentions couldn’t be entirely devoted to him anymore. It was no fun to annoy an adult who had to do taxes.
He was still tied to the old skull, which sat on Lockwood’s dining table—no, Lockwood and Lucy’s dining table; the two were married now, which he often forgot, even though he had observed the wedding—as a centerpiece, often to the befuddlement of dinner guests. Yet he could wander a good radius around the house, and hadn’t been back there in quite some time.
Now, in the dying hours of the day, he sat in the shade of a great tree, watching as a mother hurried her children home. The ghost light was flickering, and the skull was going stronger every minute that the sun sank.
“Come on, Sam,” the mother called out, extending a hand to a boy who couldn’t be over six. “It’s getting late out.”
The boy—Sam—looked over where the skull sat. “There’s someone there, Mummy.”
She squinted her eyes in his direction. “There’s no one there.” Her eyebrows shot up, suddenly aware that there definitely could be something there, something she couldn’t see. “Let’s get going, Samuel.”
And with that, she was off, toddler in arms and child by her side, with a distinctly brisker pace than before.
The skull yawned, or as well as one could yawn when dead. He had half the mind to follow Samuel and his mother, seeing how well he could frighten them. But something stopped him. . . was it the boy’s name?
Samuel was a name the skull often heard, when he was alive and dead. It was one of those names that never quite went out of style, one that fit whatever time period it was plopped down in. A good, strong name for a good, strong boy.
Samuel, Charlie, Clarence. . .
Elmer, Benjamin, Herman. . .
The skull could picture faces from his youth for every one of those names. Boys he saw in the street, boys he saw glimpses of through stagecoach windows.
Peter, Andrew, Walter. . .
Here, a crooked smile. There, a secret exchanging of coins.
Pearl, Hattie, Maude. . .
Eva, Catherine, Florence. . .
How could he recall the gaggle of young girls watching a puppet show and the sweeping of a grown woman’s petticoats as she makes her way to a tea party, but he cannot remember his own name?
What was his name? Who were his parents? Did he have parents at all? Had they died? Did they worry about him?
Frank, Howard, Earl. . .
Ida, Clara, Louise. . .
WhatwashisnamewhatwashisnamewhATWASHISNAMEWHATWASHISNAME.
The memories stopped, flipped off as suddenly as a light switch. The skull didn’t need a name, or parents, or anything. Hell, he was all buddied up with Edmund Bickerstaff before they both died, and the skull had talked with the Marissa Fittes. Sure, at that time she was still a young woman and not the murderous-granddaughter-possessing-psychopath that they all knew and loved, but the sentiment still stood.
And, on top of all that, he had nearly convinced Lucy to start Carlyle & Skull.
The final bit of sunlight dipped below the horizon, plunging London into the dark of night. The skull sighed, stretched his ectoplasm to the best of his ability, and went on his merry way.
On his rounds around the neighborhood, the skull spotted a figure moving roughly, as if thrashing about would make it easier to move. A raw-bones, if he ever saw one.
“You should invest in a jar,” he said. “Need something to keep your bones from falling apart if you won’t use your skin.”
No reply. Typical.
The skull sighed and continued. He passed a glimmer and a shade, but nothing more. There were less and less ghosts every day, and it was predicted for all ghosts to be gone in the next two decades.
All ghosts. Including him?
He banished the thought from his mind. He was content here on Earth and didn’t want whatever waited for him on the Other Side.
Eventually, he found himself on a familiar stretch of road. 35 Portland Row looked almost the same, except with a fresh coat of paint and a maintained garden.
He didn’t know what he was doing back here, but he figured that the pull of his source was too much. Of course that’s what it was. No other reason. No other reason at all. He was tied to the old, moldy skull, and that was it.
The kitchen light was turned on, the table set for five. Laughter floated in from the living room, and for a second, it was fifteen years ago.
“I should go put the kettle on,” the skull heard somebody say. Lucy.
The door to the kitchen swung open, and Lucy made her way to the counter, not noticing the figure by the table.
“Ahem,” the skull said.
Lucy jumped. “Oh, it’s just you.”
“Just me? I thought I’d get a warmer welcome for being one of your oldest friends.”
“I’ve got friends older than you.” She froze, pondering her words. “Well, actually, you are my oldest friend, I suppose. But that’s beside the point. You must be bored coming back here.”
“Well, when only one person can see and hear you, you tend to run out of options.”
Lucy let out an exasperated sigh. “Have you seen the tea?”
“In the cabinet.”
She found it and leaned up against the counter, facing the skull. “So, what do you want to bother me with?”
“I’ve got a business proposition.” She raised an eyebrow. “You, me, this house. You’ve got the tea, and I’m sure you keep some type rat poison around. What do you say? Get rid of old Locky and the rest and restart Carlyle & Skull.”
“That was never a thing.” She drew herself to her full height and made her way out of the kitchen, pausing in the doorway. “And I’m not murdering my husband and friends. Do that on your own time.”
“Where’s the fun in that? What about teamwork?”
The door swung closed and she was gone.
The laughter resumed, and the skull settled down onto the floor. The playful banter between him and Lucy had remained the same, which he was happy for, but they never talked much. But as the laughter resumed, a smile crept its way onto the skull’s face.
He was happy here, he discovered, content with the small family he had found. Him and the only person in the world that could talk to him—and the rest of the crew, of course.
He liked these people, watched them grow and flourish, from kids to adults. He felt like a proud father. . . one that routinely suggested ways to murder his children.
If he could have this forever, he would. He didn’t need a name, or parents, or anything like that. He didn’t even need Bickerstaff anymore.
Who knows, if Lucy ever died, he might just get someone to stick her skull in a new jar right next to his.