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The case tonight was turning out to be slower than molasses. Lucy was so bored, she’d taken to spot-checking the spare iron chain in her kit from within the safety of the other iron chain, which they’d laid out in the mansion’s kitchen.
Lockwood and George were patrolling the upper levels, chasing after phantom skirts that allegedly belonged to the previous owner’s favourite daughter. She’d been a ballet dancer in life—by all accounts, graceful, fleet of foot, and quiet as a mouse.
Lucy wasn’t used to being useless on cases from lack of talent. Overwhelmed? Entranced? Sure, but never apathetic. This feeling sitting in her chest was something in between relief and disappointment.
But babysitting duty wasn’t so bad. She’d brought her sketchbook tonight, and passed the first two hours trying to get the contours right on her rendition of the other ghost in the house—the dancer’s suitor. His shade stood despondent in a corner, and made no acknowledgement of Lucy’s presence at all. Every once in a while, he walked over and opened the refrigerator.
It was quiet. Everything was so bloody quiet.
“HELLLLLLLP!!!!” A voice suddenly cried. Lucy was standing at attention, rapier drawn and ready at her side, within moments, but not quickly enough—the skull was already laughing at her before she’d realised what had happened. She sat back down, straightening the iron circle where she’d kicked it out of place.
“Every time! You fall for it every time!” the skull cackled. “Oh, there are some things I’ll never get tired of.”
“Next time you pull that, it’s off to the furnaces,” Lucy threatened. Skull stuck out his—hm. Calling it a ‘tongue’ would be generous. But whatever you call it, it was grotesque and wagging at her. She turned away and stuffed the spare chain back into her canvas bag.
“You always say that. Yet here I am, still stuck going on these dreadfully boring stakeouts with you week after week.”
“Nothing holding you here.” She shrugged, picking at her nails to project an air of nonchalance that Lucy was incapable of actually feeling around the skull. He knew how to push her buttons too well. “Why don’t you go wherever it is you go whenever I actually need your help?”
“Got bored.”
“And this is better?”
“No, not at all.”
They fell into silence. Lucy could hear the constant hum that emanated whenever the skull was around, she could hear the house settling around her in distant creaks and groans, but she couldn’t hear anything interesting from upstairs. She wondered if George had brought any comics with him for the stakeout, and if he’d be willing to share.
But she couldn’t leave her post. They were still unsure whether or not the house’s two ghosts were connected somehow. For all she knew, Mr. Fridge over here would go berserk once the ballet dancer was cornered by Lucy’s teammates.
Another hour passed.
Eventually, curiosity drove Lucy to ask, “Where do you go, anyway? You’ve never told me.”
“Haven’t I?” The skull said, like that was an answer. Lucy stared at him owlishly.
The skull stared back.
She blinked.
He blinked.
She stared some more.
“Oh, fine! If you must know, when I’m not gracing your unworthy self with my delightful presence, I exist on a void plane outside time, space, and physics. It’s like a really, really big white room.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all? Is an independent consciousness that exists extradimensionally from all known laws of the universe not impressive enough for you?” Lucy wondered when the skull had been set by one of George’s science books long enough to learn all those fancy words. She didn’t even know he could read.
“I guess I just expected something that sounded more interesting. What do you do with a big white room?”
She could swear the skull’s voice had a distinctly defensive colour to it. He was taking her disinterest in his void personally. “When I’m there, I can summon anything I imagine. There’s no difference between my mind, my imagination, and what’s ‘real’ in the void. I can conjure up gold, jewels, mountains, anything a skull like me could ever need. Sometimes I visit Paris, make an impossibly soft feather bed and jump on it till it pops, or go swimming in the Red Sea from one end to the other.”
“That actually sounds nice. Can’t imagine why you choose to hang around and try to get me killed when you could be there, doing anything.” She looked at the peeling floral wallpaper to her right, imagining a real meadow of heather in its place. “Hey, right now I think I’d rather be there too.”
The green glow emanating from the jar suddenly darkened to a dangerous emerald. “Don’t say that. Don’t even joke about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because—because I said so!”
She snorted. “As if that’s ever been a good reason.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“I do! This is the first interesting thing you’ve ever told me about the Other Side. All this time, you’ve apparently been splitting your time between my dusty loft and actual, literal Heaven.” Lucy crossed her arms in frustration. It figured that the skull would be difficult about this too.
“You don’t get it.”
“I don’t get it? Then explain it to me.”
“Fine. Okay, it’s like this. Imagine, right now, that I recreated your happy place in my void. Imagine we’re standing on a street corner in Marylebone, right outside Arif’s with a fresh box of jelly donuts. The sun is shining at just the right angle, it’s chilly enough out for you to wear your favourite blue jacket but not so cold it’s uncomfortable.”
“You can walk around this memory, you can sit on the grass and feel it between your fingers. You could take a donut out of the box and eat it, feel the individual granules of sugar press against your fingertips, taste the jam and know Arif’s wife made it because she always adds a little rose to her homemade strawberry jam that you never taste in the generic store bought stuff.”
“Except she didn’t make it. No one did, or maybe you could say I did. But it was effortless. I didn’t spend time sweating over the hob canning last summer, I didn’t shape or knead that dough, I didn’t throw an extra chocolate donut in your order, despite knowing I could have sold it to the Smiths and been one pound closer to that Paris vacation the missus is saving up for, just because I know you like them.”
“Does it still taste as good?”
“You can feel the pavement under your boots, you can see 35 Portland Row from where you’re standing. But if you walk over there, who will be inside? Does it still feel like home if you know George and Lockwood will never walk through the door? What’s the point, Lucy, of being able to make my own paradise when all I want is what I can’t have?”
“Oh.” Lucy said, stunned. “But… you could have it. You told me once, that you choose to cling to life. You could let go, move on for real, maybe even see your family again.”
“Oh, could I? Wow, Lucy, I never thought of that!” The emerald light flared, the hollow body of the man in the corner refracting it all over the room like a prism. It coated furniture and agents alike in a sickly pallor. “You’re just a stupid little girl. What would you know?”
Just as quickly as he appeared, the skull vanished and took his glow with him. He wouldn’t be back again tonight, Lucy knew.
She picked her sketchbook up from where it’d fallen on the floor, and tried not to think about how the house felt even emptier without that low hum vibrating in her chest.
Halfway through her next sketch—the sharp curve of a jaw, two gaping sockets, a certain spark that refused to be drawn right, surrounded by an endless expanse of nothing instead of silver-glass and steel—thumps rang out above her head. Someone let out a victory cry, and all of a sudden Lucy was alone in the kitchen. The suitor was gone.
Gone, just like that. He’d been alone for years, appearing in this neglected little kitchen and waiting, his love moving above his head every night but always out of reach. Would they finally be closer, after the furnaces, or further apart than ever?
Lucy shivered. She hoped Lockwood and George would come down soon, so they could go home to 35 Portland Row together. She’d had enough empty houses for the night.