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The bookshop ghost was a more friendly fellow than advertised.
Aziraphale could hardly have afforded a shop in London with his small savings if the rent had not been seriously reduced, due to the rumour of the ghost and the hard fact of the murder of a gang member on the premises in the 1950s. Tenants never stayed, complaining of strange sounds and being kept awake in the small living premises above the shop.
Aziraphale didn't fret about painful history. The shop had been a bookshop back then, too, and none of the abandoned books in the backroom showed bloodstains. No one taking in his neat, camp figure would know he was almost inured to violence and tragedy. He'd been a chaplain in war zones, and he was simply glad any violence in his shop belonged to the past. Murders in Soho’s hectic past meant as little to him as did the unsuitability of the location for an antiquarian book dealer.
In any case, even a poltergeist was company, of a sort.
The ghost was mischievous, naturally. Customers who opened the door in bad weather found a sudden change of wind and swirling rain drenching their clothes, unpleasant smells followed them around the shop, anything they put down relocated itself to the strangest positions. Worst of all Aziraphale's books were put in neat order, taking him quite a lot of time to rearrange into the idiosyncratic chaos he preferred.
He didn't mind. His pension and savings would last long enough to tide him over, and customers only got in the way of the sheer, unadulterated pleasure of owning a book shop. Hundreds of books all his own, so long as no one bought them. He had his own reasons for not worrying about long-term profitability. Just now, he felt like all his childhood dreams had come true. He learned the meticulous work of repairing boards and spines, re-sewing pages, preserving treasures he unearthed at estate sales he caught the bus around England to find, returning always to his shop. To his ghost.
The poltergeist was unexpectedly solicitous. Aziraphale's cocoa never grew tepid or congealed no matter how long he neglected it. The smells that distracted his customers never lingered around him, vermin never ventured in to bother him and his books.
The strangeness of the bookshop ghost was somehow one with the utter, incomprehensible magic of a bookshop all to himself. It reminded him of a childhood book… What was it again? One of the Just William books, where William had had a sweet shop all to himself for a day, king of his domain. There was a bright line of first edition of the books on one of his shelves. Aziraphale had a moment of worry that his urge to find the exact story was a surge of childishness, but he repressed it. If he couldn’t be childish now, all the responsibilities of his job gone, when could he? He drifted off over it in his armchair, chuckling to himself.
He woke with a cushion behind his head and a rug tucked around him.
"Thank you, Anthony," he said, smiling into the shadows. Aziraphale could sense wary surprise from the darkness, as if it hadn't occurred to the ghost that he would look the unfortunate victim up in old electronic newspaper records, as if he’d have no curiosity about his housemate.
Anthony Crowley had been slender and no longer young, his face half hidden in the blurry photo, but with large round eyes, the creases around them obvious even in so poor quality a reproduction. It seemed all wrong that a man with eyes like that had fallen into crime. Aziraphale kept thinking about those eyes, the astonishingly open and questioning look to them, the way the surly mouth betrayed tenderness. Or maybe that was his imagination, prompted by the tokens of always hot toast. But he wondered about those eyes, about what colour they might be, about how they might look when happy.
He fell asleep again, and when he woke, the bookshop felt slightly different. More expansive, as if some painful barrier had been broken.
“Good morning,” he said to the empty spaces between bookshelves, and was sure he sensed a flicker of guarded interest and pleasure. “I’m sure you know, but I would like to formally introduce myself. I am Aziraphale, and I thank you for letting me share your space.”
He made his breakfast, and settled down with tea and his book. Perhaps, he thought, he should read aloud. Anthony might appreciate something funny.
After that, the sense of his poltergeist was more apparent during the day. It was incomprehensible, how the man’s simmering, wicked, unexpectedly kind personality seemed more real and vivid than those of the living humans Aziraphale spoke to. Perhaps he was developing a touch of psychic ability as he grew older. Of course, speaking to the dead was a sin in the Old Testament, but while Aziraphale was a man of faith he was also a man of pragmatism who knew books were written by mortals, and it seemed silly to think of being kind to a ghost as some kind of evil necromancy. He wasn’t using Anthony for fortune telling, after all. Just company.
Or perhaps he wasn’t developing psychic powers at all, but slowly losing his grip on reality, as he chattered to the empty air and developed a habit of reading aloud. He wasn’t sure he minded which it was. What did it matter, in the end?
Aziraphale was grateful for his own happiness, whatever the cause.
The night before Halloween, a possibly blasphemous and very Americanised festival that Aziraphale nonetheless, his childlike streak becoming more apparent, embraced, happily, he was interrupted in festooning cobwebs by two thoughtful men. They didn’t look like book buyers, judging by the way they were lighting cigarettes in his presence, discussing the flammable properties of books.
“Low rent for Soho, here,” said one. “Lucky bastard.”
“I was indeed fortunate. You will not," Aziraphale said coldly, "smoke in my shop. Kindly extinguish those cigarettes.”
“Yeah, fags are bad for health,” said the second, deliberately dropping is cigarette and grinding it into the tiled floor. His expression made the double meaning clear, and for one moment Aziraphale resisted the urge to hunch his shoulders protectively. He had seen and risked much worse in his life than the mundane evil of these two thugs, he told himself. But he thought of Anthony, bleeding out, and there was a strange rush of fury and anger through him. It was as though a holy righteous rage was streaming through him.
“Bit of a waste of potential here,” said the first.
“My thoughts precisely,” Aziraphale said, keeping a tight grip on the rage.
“Still, none of our business. Thought you might like to invest in a bit of fire insurance. Unofficially, like.”
They probably wouldn’t burn his books. Probably. Too much risk, too much identification. But the rage streamed through him. Creatures like this had snatched away Anthony’s life, taken those curious eyes and snuffed out the light in them.
But the light was still there. Streaming around him, protectively, as if the bookshelf itself had reached out arms around him. His rage dimmed, and in its place rose an overwhelming sense of being loved.
“Young men, you need to consider your ways before Judgement Day arrives," he warned. There were two loud thumps. Not, Aziraphale noted appreciatively, against his precious books, but against the door, as the men were flung against it as easily as if they were children’s toys.. "Ah. It seems it's arrived a little early. Thank you, dear."
Aziraphale barely registered their panicked exit as he was pushed against the wall by some unseen force himself.
"I'm not afraid of you,“ he told the empty bookshop. ”I can sense love, you know." The wariness returned, and Aziraphale had a moment of inspiration. “My hero,” he breathed, and there was answering warm amusement, and possessiveness. Just a touch of preening, vain thing. But would a thug in a gang really have been praised much? Poor thing.
He closed his eyes, wanting to surrender his other senses to this, and felt the almost-sensation of ghostly kisses breathed across his cheeks, his eyelids, his neck. Not quite there, but physical. And he had been moved like one of his books, as had the men in the protection racket. How was this possible?
It was Halloween. Of course, Anthony's presence would be stronger now. The ghost's longing and loneliness thrummed like a vintage car's engine, resonating with his own aching heart.
He'd always held hopes of Heaven, especially after the diagnosis. He let them go. "Stay with me," said Aziraphale. "I'll stay with you forever if you wait for me."
He could almost feel the fierce embrace of the bookshop ghost. Almost.
Soon.
The next Halloween he came home feeling older and wearier and more confused than before. Aware of every ache in his bones, every twitch of his muscles, every tiny indication his mind was slowing.
“Doctor Kahn is a nice young woman,” he told the bookshop. “She asked if I had anyone who would be able to take care of me, if I needed help. I told her my friend Anthony and he would take care of me. Foolish, I know. But I rather like being foolish. If I can’t embrace it now, when can I?”
He couldn’t read the poltergeist’s emotions. They were churning too violently.
“Now, how do you feel about some Alice? I think you would enjoy the absurdity, and I find myself returning to childish things now more. Strange, really. I used to pride myself on my literary erudition. Now all I want is comfort. But then, Alice is quite intellectual still, taken the right wa y. “
That was the right approach. The mixture of baffled grief and protectiveness in the room became mocking, and Aziraphale chuckled to himself a little as he picked up the book.
The words swam before his head and he almost panicked, but they sorted themselves into reason. As much reason as one could have while worrying about a poltergeist’s feelings.
“Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice ‘without pictures or conversations?’ Ah, my dear, I suspect you and Alice are kindred spirits.”
Aziraphale froze. He had thought he heard a faint bark of laughter. But no, it had be his his imagination.
He read himself to sleep, imagining the weight of a thin man on the sofa next to him, and when he woke he was tucked up in a blanket, a hot cup of tea by his hand, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with a bookmark where he had stopped.
“Thank you, darling,” he told the room, and fancied he felt a kiss ghosted against his hand.
Sometimes Aziraphale feared a little for the end. If he had calculated wrongly, if he was giving up Heaven freely for naught and would be trapped alone in Hell, weeping eternally like Satan? But he knew he could not pass on, not to leave Anthony lonely in the shop, if there was any chance of easing his loneliness as his own had been eased.
Had not Doctor Faustus said it? Had I as many souls as there be stars, I’d give them all for Mephistopheles . Rather a different situation, and there would be no Helen before Aziraphale’s final reckoning, but he embraced the agreement willingly.
Anthony would probably enjoy Doctor Faustus. He seemed to like the funny ones. And Aziraphale could still handle the complexities of the language. There was no reason to be afraid, even if, even more than fearing the untold horrors of changing personality or the mundane torture of bedsores, he feared losing his reading most of all.
He found a public domain recording of the play, telling himself it was not that he feared the words, just that Anthony deserved to hear a full cast recording. He set it up on his ancient PC, through the tinny speakers, explaining to Anthony first about computers, and how they could play recordings. Then they sat and listened to Marlowe's mixed comedy and tragedy about demons and damnation. Somewhere at the edge of Aziraphale's hearing floated almost audible chuckles.
He couldn’t make sense of the book. They were so nearly finished with Alice’s adventures. Only a few chapters of Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There remained, and he had to get Alice home safe to her kittens, he had to… or Anthony would never know what happened.
He focused on the lines, his voice stumbling.
“’I dare—I dare say you’ve not had many lessons in manners yet?’
“’Manners are not taught in, in lessons,’ s-said Alice. “Lessons teach you to do sums, and thing—things of that sort.” Aziraphale paused, forced himself to concentrate. “’And you do Addition?” the White Queen asked. ‘What’s one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one… and one… one and one and one?’
“’I don’t know,” said Alice. “I lost count.’
“I lost count,” Aziraphale repeated, and he wasn’t sure if it was tears making the words swim. “I don’t know, I lost count, I don’t know…”
He bent his head to his hands, and wept.
He was roused by a voice. A strange woman’s voice, tinny and thin.
‘“Try another Subtraction sum. Take a bone from a dog: what remains?’
“Alice considered. 'The bone wouldn’t remain, of course, if I took it—and the dog wouldn’t remain; it would come to bite me—and I’m sure I shouldn’t remain!’
"'Then you think nothing would remain?’ said the Red Queen.
"'I think that’s the answer.”’
Nothing would remain. Nothing would remain… But Anthony Crowley had remained. His life had been snuffed out by violence, but he was still here, still kind, and Aziraphale would remain with him; to the end, and if he could manage it, beyond. No hospice, no feeding tube as his appetite faded, no hope of Heaven, but a poltergeist with wide questioning eyes who had learned to play books on a computer for him.
He closed his eyes, as Alice took tea with the Queens and her guests, and fancied he felt a head settle on his lap.
Sometimes Aziraphale thought he was imagining things. That there was some nurse, that made sure his glass was filled, his medications replenished, who held his hands. Perhaps he really was going mad, especially as he lost the ability to speak, the words receding from his brain.
It was Anthony taking care of him, able to touch the things around him more now Aziraphale was in this twilight world. He knew it was. He would pass gently, and then the wide eyes, the sensitive mouth that haunted him, would be his forever.
He didn’t expect to die by fire.
It hurt less than he would have expected. That was the smoke, he supposed, mercifully lulling him to sleep. And he would awake in Anthony’s arms. He was in them already, he could sense the desperate grip. Anthony was trying to pull him out of the building. Silly boy. He couldn’t touch the living so much, and besides, it was too late.
He needed to tell Anthony he loved him, but there were no words.
Aziraphale slept.
Heaven came as a cold awakening.
“Well done, Aziraphale,” the angel said warmly. “Good job all around. Welcome to your reward.”
“There’s some kind of mistake,” he said helplessly. “You don’t understand. I chose. Anthony…”
“Yes, yes, very kind of you,” the angel said briskly. “Poor thing, but you know it was his choice not to move on. Too afraid of Hell; with good reason, I fear, although Michael has yet to do the sums. Quite a few petty crimes in that man’s past. Rather sad, but you know, I always say you can’t second guess free will. I mean—”
It was too late. Aziraphale had heard the words. He reached out, and it seemed to him he saw the Earth spinning, blue and green and gold, in the light. He cried out with all his heart:
Anthony
Or perhaps it was all just a hallucination due to smoke inhalation.
He heard the voice first of all, raw with grief and pain, the way he hoped never to hear it; cursing Heaven, and Hell, and humanity. Anthony, the never quite heard voice, that he had always imagined speaking to him with sweetness or mockery or teasing but never this agony.
“…killed my best friend. Bastards!”
Somehow it seemed right and appropriate that he first heard Crowley swearing. He tried to move forward. Being a ghost felt more corporeal than he had expected; unfortunately, his ghostly body was much the same as he old one, minus the various aches and pains and injuries. It was the bookshop, and the flames, that didn’t seem quite real.
What really was real was the figure hunched in the middle of the shop, weeping. Aziraphale had guessed Anthony’s hair to be black, but it was as red as the flames.
Aziraphale cleared what he supposed was his throat. Once, twice. And then finally he made some noise, and Anthony stumbled to his feet, staring at him with wide eyes.
“Aziraphale.” He squinted. “It’s really you?”
“I think so,” he said, cautiously. He had imagined; oh, he wasn’t sure what. Rushing to each other’s arms. A fantasy of true love built on whispers of kisses and cups of cocoa and his own imagination. Perhaps he was a fool.
“I tried to stop them.” Anthony’s eyes were still wide, but with grief and confusion. “I couldn’t save you. I let you down. After you read to me, and talked to me… my best friend…”
“I wanted to be so much more,” Aziraphale whispered, and then at last Anthony moved, Anthony flung arms around him and shook and pressed kisses to his forehead and cheeks and neck, muttering angel, angel between kisses.
“You gave up Heaven for me?” Anthony asked at last, bewildered and fierce.
Aziraphale took his head gently between his hands. It as so much more real than it had been on the scanned newspaper print. The wrinkles, the curve of the long mouth, and his eyes were yellow, how had he not known? All as familiar as if he’d known them all his existence. “You are the only Heaven I want, darling. I love you.”
There was such hope in those eyes, but also fear, as if it was too good to be true. “Your bookshop is gone.”
“My dear Anthony are we ghosts, or are we not?” And a ghost of a bookstore blossomed into life around them, more real, more solid than the flying ashes had ever been, each book real and solid. He extended one hand to brush some spines, but not for long; his arms belonged around his poltergeist.
He’d let him knock over some books, as a special treat, when he could bear to stop embracing him.
“You clever bastard,” said Anthony, admiringly. “No wonder I fell in love with you.” He looked around, his bark of a laugh not muted anymore. “I don’t even know how to read.” He hesitated. "Think I can get my car back?" he asked longingly. "Not a scratch on her until those bastards had her scrapped. "
"Of course you can," Aziraphale said, his heart singing at the confession of love. He had known, of course he had, but to hear it said was different. To hear Anthony's beloved voice at all was different. "You can drive?"
"Oh, angel. I'm a demon on the road. I'll take you anywhere you like, anywhere you want to go. I--oh, Aziraphale. Say again that you love me."
Anthony's lips were on Aziraphale's before he even had a chance to answer, soft and avid and possessive all at once. Aziraphale gasped against the kiss with a mouth that didn't need air, and felt Anthony deepen the kiss in response.
It was sweet and passionate and the kiss Aziraphale had, quite literally, waited for all his life.
A kiss for immortal love.