Chapter Text
The first time I see the ghost, I think it’s a drunken hallucination.
I’ve stumbled down the hallway and into my room, struggled to lock the door, and given up. There’s no point to it really. Father could say my name and I’d have to come out anyway. The lock is really just to make sure I’m properly alone whilst getting drunk out of my mind.
I can feel the newest bruise blooming at the corner of my jaw, and when I press my hand to it, my fingers come away stained red. Right. His signet ring must’ve caught me.
If I had anywhere to be, I might bother with trying to patch it up. If I had anyone to call, I’d probably cover the bruise and sneak down the hall and go out to get someone to distract me. But Richard bloody Peele just left through the window and won’t be back anytime soon, and it seems rather pathetic to call Jeanne when a bottle will have roughly the same effect and I’m so tired and miserable that she might not get anything out of it.
If I could just find the goddamn bottle. It’s under my bed, I know it. I lay flat on my stomach and swipe around wildly with both arms under the frame until my hand smacks into glass. I fish it out and prop myself up against my bed before taking a swig. It’s expensive, stolen from Jeanne’s boyfriend’s liquor cabinet, but it still tastes like bile.
I settle back and spend the next half hour finishing off the bottle and hating myself. And hating Richard Peele. It was so stupid to let him up here, he’s not even good enough in bed to be worth the risk, and yet. And yet I let him in anyway, because I’m pathetic and desperate and I’d spent dinner quarreling with Felicity and avoiding Father’s eyes and needed to feel something other than shame or irritation.
That worked out well.
Then, I blink, and there’s someone sitting at the foot of my bed.
It’s a specter, bent over a pile of immaterial papers, their curly hair falling in their face. They’ve got skirts piled around them and are wrapped in a blanket as they curse under their breath and trace lines of text with their finger.
I freeze. Surely it’s not real. Surely this is some kind of prank-show scenario, and any second now Felicity is going to jump out from my closet cackling and reveal the hidden series of projectors and mirrors that have made this thing appear. Or maybe Jeanne’s boyfriend spikes his liquor with psychedelics. Or maybe I’m just seeing things because I’m tired and drunk and in pain.
The specter looks up and locks eyes with me, and I flinch. They flinch back, eyes wide. “What the hell ?”
I look back to the bottom of the bottle to make sure that there’s not any liquor left, because if I’m going to be haunted, I’m not quite drunk enough for it yet. “Oh, fuck off.”
“I’m sorry?” the specter asks, their voice pitching higher, and I roll my eyes.
“Jesus Christ, just go away .”
The specter’s face twists. “Fucking bastard.”
I smile. “I’ll own that.”
The specter shoots me another glare, and for a moment I’m certain I’m about to be brutally killed and strung up from the rafters and have all manner of terrible things done to my body, but they just get to their feet, huff, and vanish before they can draw another breath.
I laugh, and tip back an empty bottle.
…………
It’s three days later that the specter returns again, and I’m sober this time, which doesn’t bode well for the chances of it being imagined. I’m slipping upstairs with an iced coffee and my shoes in my hands (it’s only two in the afternoon, but my father’s office is down the hall, and I’d rather not draw his attention) when I cross the doorway to my room and see the same ghostly figure propped up on my bed reading a book.
I nearly drop my coffee out of surprise, then shut the door behind me and say “You’re back.” The specter looks up, startled, and I sigh. “You don’t get to be surprised when you’re the one haunting me.”
“I’m— You’re— I’m not haunting you , you’re haunting me ,” they splutter, shutting the book and swinging their long legs over the edge of the bed to stand and pace. “Because I’m alive , so how could I be haunting anything?”
“Well, I’m alive too,” I challenge. “You haven’t got a bloody monopoly.” I sincerely cannot believe that I’m arguing semantics with a ghost, but it seems a rather important point to get across. I survey their outfit, which has a series of wide skirts and a tight-laced bodice that seems straight out of a history textbook. “Besides, you look like you’re from about a thousand years ago, so you’ve got to be the dead one.”
“I’m from now , not a thousand years ago.” They squint at me. “I don’t know when you’re from.”
“2021, darling,” I say, sipping on my coffee and collapsing on my bed. “You?”
They stop their pacing, eyes wide, and turn to me. “1726.”
I laugh. “Well. That’s. It’s something.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What has he got to do with this?”
The not-ghost sits down beside me, twisting a curl that’s escaped from its knot around their finger. “God, I must truly be mad.”
“That makes two of us. You’re certain you’re not dead?”
“ Yes .”
“Right. Do you want to know anything?”
“Do I want to know anything?”
“You know, about the future? Any burning questions about the fate of humanity? It’s rather shit at the moment, I must warn you. There’s a goddamn plague on. Although I suppose you’re used to that, with the black death and all.”
“That was three hundred years ago,” they say, frowning.
“Damn. History never was my strong suit. I fell asleep a lot at Eton.”
“Eton’s still around?”
“Unfortunately.”
“My cousin’s away there right now.”
“Send him my condolences.”
The specter cracks a smile. “I’m sure that he’ll be fine.” They look me up and down again, like they can’t believe they can see me, which I suppose makes sense. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Okay?”
They wince. “It’s going to sound terribly rude.”
“I’m sure I’ve heard worse, darling,” I say, leaning back so I can stare up at the ceiling.
“Are you… a molly?”
I snort. “Am I a what ?”
“Oh, god, is there a different word for it in your time?” The specter wrings their hands. “I mean, do you… enjoy the company of men? As a man?”
I’m about to make a comment on how I don’t enjoy anyone’s company when I realize what they’re asking, and I freeze. Oh god, am I about to be shouted at by some eighteenth-century religious nut? I choose my words carefully. “On occasion. Why?”
The specter lays back, but the mattress doesn’t bow under their weight. “I… I’m a bit worried.”
“About what?”
“Well…” I’m looking at them properly now, but they’re rather determined to not look at me, and their words come out in a jumbled rush. “I feel as though I’m a man. Maybe. But I also rather like men, at least, in theory, and the two facts seem contradictory except in cases like yours, and also I don’t understand why I feel like a man when no one else sees it, and I’ve not been able to talk to anyone about it because they won’t let a lady into the molly bar in town and I don’t know what to do.”
Oh. I’m suddenly feeling even more out of my depth, like I’ve been drowning this entire conversation and something from the bottom of the ocean has just reached up to grab me and drag me down further. “Well. Er. Thank you? For telling me?”
The specter laughs. “I’m terribly sorry for unloading that on you. God, I must sound deranged.”
“No! No, it’s fine. I just… don’t know what to say? No one ever tells me these things.” I rub my eyes with the heel of my hand and pull on my hair. “But you’re not deranged. They’re not contradictory, necessarily. I mean, I also enjoy the company of women. And I’m not all the way a man. So, there’s that.”
“How can you be not all the way a man?”
“The same way you’re a man but no one sees it? There are words for things like that now, but they won’t mean anything to you.”
“Oh.”
I try for a grin. “So, if you’re deranged, I am as well.”
The specter grins back, picking at his fingernails nervously. “Small comforts, I suppose.”
I roll to face him and stick a hand out to shake. “I’m Monty, by the way. Sorry about being a prick last time we met.”
He reaches for my hand, but mine passes through his like it’s nothing. He flinches, but recovers nicely. His smile makes crescent moons of the freckles beneath his eyes. “I’m Percy.”