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Edwin Payne was raised to be a liar.
He was raised to be many things, in fact, most of them purposefully. Studious and respectful, well-kept and well-mannered, stoic and of a mild disposition. Some lessons stuck better than others, but the one that truly stayed was how to be a liar, because while he struggled to conform to every expectation put upon his shoulders, it was easier to pretend to be the perfect son than to actually become one. He was not all that respectful in his head, to be honest, and he had far from a mild disposition. Too opinionated. Too irritable. Too quick to judge everyone around him and yet, at the same time, terrified of how he did not seem to fit into place among them, him with the wrong words about the wrong things and the nerves that turned his limbs into stretched rubber. It was better, he learned early on after a few too many talks with his father, to pretend that he fit, to recite the right words and pretend to care about the right things, because trying to carve himself into a person that actually did was only hollowing him out.
So the lies accumulated over the years, right up until the end, little puppet of a perfect son, or as close as he could manage:
“No Father.”
“No Mother.”
“Yes Father.”
“Yes Mother.”
“Nothing is wrong.”
“Everything is fine.”
“School is going very well.”
“I’m very happy here.”
“Yes, lots of friends.”
So it is natural, in the second beginning, that his friendship with Charles starts with a lie.
No, not an outright lie, really. Not in words. But it is a deception. He is exhausted to depths he didn’t know could exist and can still feel the hands of sinners trying to drag him back down the circles when he spots the drama going on outside the boarding school, an irony of bookends that doesn’t escape him. He left the mortal realm at the hands of bullies and arrives back in it watching boys be just as cruel as ever, existence itself mocking him with the fact he can’t escape wickedness. It’s a stain on him now. Still, Edwin waits until the bullies have wandered away before he finds the lantern. He is able to touch it quite easily. That’s a bit of a surprise. He has a lot of things to learn about being a ghost. No one he met in Hell had been willing or able to give him many details.
He’s not even sure how many years it has been since he was taken to Hell. The fashion looks quite different from his day. Still, being able to physically touch things makes it easier to light the lantern, and then Edwin makes his way to the attic to where that poor boy had escaped. He will simply drop off the lantern and leave. Warmth and light, warmth and light. The two things he had never found in Hell. Before he leaves this infernal school behind, at least he can give warmth and light to this bookend of his, this other boy proving that humanity has not gotten better in the years Edwin has been gone but maybe Edwin can be a little better just this once.
Needless to say he isn’t expecting to be seen.
Which is where the lies start. Because the truth is that Edwin is very much not alright and shivers occasionally with the phantom pain of being ripped apart and would also like to get some distance between him and where he clawed his way back through into the living realm i.e the basement. If Hell is after him, the stupidest thing to do is to wait right here for it to find him. But Charles—his name is Charles, a classic sort of name—is dying and cold and alone and Edwin can’t…leave…him. So the lie that he tells, not in actual words, but in manner, is that he’s quite alright actually, and he feeds it as much to himself as to Charles. He’s quite alright.
When Charles smiles at him, Edwin can almost believe it.
He learns a lot of things, those few hours as Charles slowly succumbs to the cold and the injuries that leave him hissing for breath when he moves too fast. He hasn’t been a full day out of Hell yet so there is quite a lot to learn, and with Charles watching him, Edwin wants to be able to pretend he already knew, that he isn’t lost and confused and desperately trying to figure this out as he goes. It makes him feel more in control, a feeling he hasn’t had in such a long time. And it makes Charles happy. When Charles asks why Edwin doesn’t just fall through the floor, Edwin has no idea whatsoever. Ghost rules. Ghost rules, he says, and Charles sees right through him so he is forced to change his answer. It has been a very long time since someone saw through Edwin’s lies so casually.
“Because I choose not to fall through the floor. Happy?”
And Charles laughs. Edwin is alright. It feels like less of a lie with every passing moment.
For a while, perhaps, he tricks himself into thinking that they can stay like this, the two of them, trapped in time: Charles doesn’t have to die and Edwin doesn’t have to leave. Because those are the endings destined for them. Maybe after reliving the same nightmare in Hell over and over—for seventy years, he learns, and tries not to look sick with shock—he has gotten used to the idea that the same moment can play on repeat. Apparently only the bad moments can. Well, it is a bad moment, because Charles is dying, but is Edwin a bad person for being glad his first real interaction out of Hell is with this boy who smiles as he dies and thinks Edwin is worth directing that smile at?
Charles Rowland does not deserve to die, so Edwin tries to make it as peaceful as possible. A nearly imperceptible slide from one state of being into another. He tries to make it everything his own death wasn’t. And he must do a decent job, because even he doesn’t realize it at first when Charles passes.
“I did not want to scare you,” he says, and that at least is truthful, because his death was not peaceful and his death was terrifying, so if he can trade Charles his smiles and laughter he’d given in return for a simple lantern for the past few hours Edwin did not have to be afraid either, that is a fair exchange.
He had learned of Death, at least, in his time in Hell. She comes in a flash of red, for all those he met in the circles, but they told of a blue light as well, for those who belonged somewhere else. It makes sense that it is blue light that appears to take Charles away. Charles could never belong in Hell. It’s a pity to say goodbye.
…and then Charles decides to stay. Which is ludicrous. Doesn’t he want eternal peace? Edwin doesn’t even know how to put up a proper argument against a mindset so entirely opposite his own.
(He had spent seventy years creating a map in his head, moving strategically, working out every exit that was simply an entrance into a deeper Hell until he found the actual exit upwards, chipping away at walls so he could one day squeeze through, every second planned to avoid being ripped to pieces as few times as possible as he tried again and again and again to find the way out. Acting on impulse would have meant running screaming down those dark hallways. Rationality was his closest friend. Emotion had been tamped down, a useless thing. He had no need of it. Strange how easily it could reappear when Charles shot him that first crooked grin. Still, emotion is dangerous. Reason is the only true way to make decisions. It is how Edwin was raised, and then it was baked into his soul.)
Charles should go with the blue light. Edwin is trying to be selfless here. But for some infernal reason, Charles wants to stay with him. Based on feelings. “I’m not good with other people,” Edwin argues back. It’s the truth, again, the truest truth he can conjure up.
“Well, I’m aces with other people.”
Edwin does not point out that Charles literally got stoned to death by other people. He doesn’t think it would do any good.
“Looks like you’re stuck with me.” Charles almost looks smug as he says it, as he offers up his own light and his warmth—the lantern built into his soul—after only a few hours of idle conversation. Edwin doesn’t understand it, but the first person he meets out of Hell is the one who ends up saving him, because he doesn’t know how he would have made it on his own. Or maybe he would have made it, and of course it would always be worth escaping Hell, but existence in the mortal realm would have been very lonely. Unbearably so. So Edwin offers a lantern and Charles offers everything, probably without even realizing it. They run from Death for the first time.
Having Charles with him does, of course, mean more lying. Charles is new to death and Edwin is not, but they are both new to being ghosts. Yet Charles looks to Edwin for guidance so Edwin learns quickly. Luckily, he has always been a quick study. He figures out mirrors soon enough and Charles seems to assume he came equipped with the skill, the knowledge. Iron burns. Cat scratches smart. Near-death experiences leave humans with the ability to see them. None of these are things Edwin knew before, but he delivers the information casually, partly because he’s always liked being thought of as brilliant, partly because he thinks that being a knowledgeable ghost will make Charles more likely to keep sticking around, and partly because he likes the way it makes Charles look at him.
Like he is worth something.
Edwin isn’t used to being worth something. He quite likes it. Everyday he worries that Charles will see him as not worth something anymore and let Death find him, will take away that light and warmth that Edwin is not entitled to. If Charles makes the decision to leave, then Edwin will pat his shoulder, wish him the best, and lie to both of them when he says it’s fine.
A year passes, and Charles doesn’t leave. They spend their time drifting from place to place and eventually end up in London. Edwin can’t quite remember who has the idea of becoming detectives first, but it becomes a fever dream between them. Charles wants to do good. Edwin also wants to do good, but it’s not such a pure motivation. He needs as much good in his ledger as possible if he does ever get dragged to Hell again.
But he’s also quite good at being a detective, as it turns out. Being meticulous and ever suspicious are good traits in that particular field. He tries not to feel all jumbly warm inside when Charles gets ahold of a cricket bat and smacks an animated clay statue into pieces before it can get close to Edwin on one of their first cases.
“I’ve got your back, mate,” he says, spinning the bat around. “Always gonna.”
Edwin really likes the word ‘always’. He likes being worth protecting.
A bit of professionalism always goes a long way. They locate an office. They come up with a name. Edwin likes the alliteration. Dead Boy Detectives. It’s their claim, in a way, of owning exactly who and what they are. They are dead boys. Like the Lost Boys from Peter Pan . He’d read that story several times through when it was first released. And then a few times later, when he was older, dreaming of an escape. He and Charles are dead boys, boys who never got the chance to live full lives, lost boys in their own right. But detectives. Distinguished detectives with time. Dead boys who have found purpose in being dead, and that is something to be proud of. There is no shame in death. No shame in being so young when their lives were cut short. And certainly no shame in being detectives.
Edwin takes no small amount of satisfaction in tapping their first completed case into place on a little library index card. A bit of good done. A point on his side against eternal damnation. Case accepted, case closed, case tapped into place. Edwin prefers this repetition over being ripped apart time and time again. Obviously. But he recognizes just how much he grows to rely on the routine of it all. He was always assured by schedules and habits, and now the habit of being a Dead Boy Detective takes over the repetition of Hell and he feels like he’s shedding a skin. He’s not just a plaything for a spider made of baby heads, but an actual person, a person who, at least for one other person in all the planes, is worth something.
Because Charles still doesn’t leave. While Edwin amasses books, he makes use of a knapsack used as payment from one of their clients, a bag of tricks that can hold an infinite number of objects. It’s quite impressive how skilled he becomes with it as the years pass by in reassuring repetition—case accepted, case closed, case tapped into place.
They encounter Death for the second time. Or rather, avoid an encounter with Death by running as fast as they can in the other direction and hiding in some shrubbery. Blue light begins to glow. Edwin is breathing fast—a habit he can’t seem to shake—and his hands tremble somewhat where he has them clenched in his lap.
“Hey.” Charles reaches over and places a hand over his own, steadying them. Steadying him. He ducks down low so Edwin has to meet his eye. “You ain’t ever going back to Hell, mate. I won’t let them take you.”
He is still worth protecting. The fact is like the air he gulps for but will never fill his lungs.
“They’re never splittin’ us up. Ever.” Charles grins as the blue light fades and places his other hand alongside Edwin’s face. Ghosts don’t feel. Edwin feels this touch like fire. He can always feel Charles. “Stuck with me, remember?”
“They’ll never split us up,” Edwin agrees, and hopes that he is not lying.
He has become dangerously reliant on Charles, he realizes. He doesn’t need to be dragged to Hell for the afterlife to become torture. If Charles leaves him now, taking that light and that warmth, will it really be worth sticking around? Edwin may have never been good with people, but he works so hard to be good for Charles. To be clever. To be knowledgeable. To be competent. To be someone that Charles will—-strangely and miraculously—see as more important than a beautiful afterlife. Charles has proved, after all, that he acts on impulsive emotion. So Edwin has to keep what is between them good. He has to keep it pure. He has to be the one worth sticking around for. There is the unfortunate fact of his personality, something he has trouble keeping under wraps without the authoritarian rule of parents and instructors, but Charles actually seems to like him for it, which is as strange as anything else. Because Edwin really isn’t good with people. He is never lying when he reminds Charles of that. When they’re working cases, he is the cold and rational one. Charles is the one who coaxes the stories out of clients with a dashing grin, who jokes and keeps both him and Edwin smiling even while running for their afterlives but also is quick to pull out his cricket bat and swing hard the moment the danger becomes real. He is the hero of their little detective story. Edwin is the moving encyclopedia. And yet, Charles stays, because the only person Edwin is good with is Charles. And that is enough. He begins to think that for all those years he never fit into place with those around him—how he molded himself into some other type of boy and lied and lied and lied—all that time he was just waiting for Charles, who fits beside him just perfectly and accepts the shape he is, all those jagged edges and places that Hell chipped away at. He hopes to whatever deity might be watching over dead boys that Charles feels the same way, knows that Edwin will accept him without question, all his own edges and corners worn down. At the same time, Edwin doesn’t even have the words to describe to himself what Charles has become for him. How can Charles even begin to understand the overwhelming, unknown emotion Edwin can’t even keep contained inside his chest?
Case accepted, case closed, case tapped into place. They gather quite a lot of index cards in neat little rows. A good deed done, a defense against Hell. They nearly encounter Death twice more, and it’s Edwin’s time to offer reassurance that he will never let them be split apart. Charles grins at that, and Edwin wishes Charles could understand what lengths Edwin would go to protect him, his light and his warmth, even if Charles is the one who whacks things with a cricket bat. They can protect each other in different ways. Edwin amasses as much knowledge as he can and crams it into his head. He learns spells from ancient manuscripts and teaches himself a brand new type of chemistry that had not existed for his living self. He takes his already considerable grasp of languages and learns Aramaic and Sanskrit and Sumerian cuneiform, which actually come in handy, both for his expanding library and on cases. It’s amazing how much Aramaic you can find in the broader London area.
Each year is like some small weight of Hell is lifted from his shoulders, because each year is another chance to leave that Charles doesn’t take. If Charles stays for seventy years, will Edwin forget the feel of porcelain hands tearing him apart? Their office begins to look like what Edwin thinks a home should be. They get paid in knickknacks so often, knickknacks being more useful than money for a ghost, and these take their place on empty shelf space and on top of file cabinets, each one with a story behind it, a story that they wrote together and tapped into place on a little library index card. The first time Edwin is truly scared that Charles will leave is when he brings home the dog. Ghosts can’t take care of dogs, not even strays, but Charles doesn’t feel like listening that day. The dog is better off with a proper living family, Edwin argues. People who can actually go to the store and buy him food rather than digging around alleys for scraps. No, it doesn’t matter that the dog was almost hit by a car. Just because it can see them doesn’t mean they are capable of looking after it.
Edwin calls it all a ridiculous debacle. Charles latches onto the word later, apparently liking the taste of it in his mouth. But for three days, they are not on speaking terms, and when Charles leaves to take the dog for a walk, Edwin sits and wonders if Charles will finally welcome the blue light. He finally did it. He finally ruined it. He stares around their little home of bric-a-bracs and hates himself for snapping, for getting so riled up over a dog, for being so not good with people that he scared the only one who’s ever put up with him off into a peaceful afterlife. He jumps to his feet, hands on the desk, when Charles comes back through the door. “You’re still here?”
Charles stares at him like he’s grown a second head. “Yeah, mate. Where would I go?” He gestures to his side where a dog most definitely isn’t. “City picked her up. Still looked like a stray with just me there, didn’t she?”
“Oh.” That seems to end the debacle, but Charles is moody all afternoon. That night, as he plays around with a football, Edwin steps through their office mirror and checks the local shelters until he finds the dog. Perhaps he fiddles with some paperwork to make sure she is featured in the next adoption event. A week later, he guides Charles through the mirror into a middle class home, where the dog now named Sadie is curled up on the bed of a young boy as he sleeps. She has a nice green collar with visible tags, and while she thumps her tail when she stirs and sees Charles, she does not try to follow them when they leave.
“Thanks mate,” Charles says when they step back into the office, and his hand on Edwin’s shoulder is so warm. Edwin can relax. Despite a debacle, Charles is still here.
Slowly, slowly, they build their home. Charles wanders around in his white tank top. Edwin strips off his suit jacket and rolls up his sleeves, because home is where you are safe. Charles finds all sorts of oddities to put in the backpack. Edwin amasses books.
Case accepted, case closed, case tapped into place.
They survive further debacles, and Edwin knows that the careful mask of competency and control he wears begins to slip. It has to. In their office, in their home, it feels safe to let the more…unpleasant parts of himself slip through. Opinionated. Irritable. Judgmental. Charles seems to find it delightful, the odd fellow that he is. It becomes alright for Edwin to make highly disparaging comments because Charles just laughs, human lantern of warmth and light, and fights back with light banter that Edwin is practically helpless against. He doesn’t have a defense for Charles’ smile as Charles proves just how easily he accepts all of Edwin’s hidden edges, pieces still sticking perfectly together no matter how spiky Edwin turns out to be. They were not made to match, but somehow they fit. They always fit. All the parts that Edwin kept hidden his entire life are suddenly just parts of him and Charles likes him, so it’s alright to just be him. It becomes alright to be incredibly competitive when playing Cluedo, because Charles is just as determined to win, just as stubborn and—it has to be said—just as sore a loser. Their games can last for full days, each of them employing the dirtiest psychological tricks to try to fool the other. (Edwin is better at this. Maybe it’s his personality. Maybe it’s the influence of Hell. Maybe it’s the fact he was brought up to be a liar. Either way, he is currently in the lead of Cluedo wins.) It becomes alright for Edwin to want to be silent. For so long, he felt it was necessary to engage in whatever conversation Charles started, to be interesting and knowledgeable and worth sticking around for. But silence between the two of them is never uncomfortable. They exist together, warmth and light, and Charles seems content to bounce a ball around or fiddle with their expanding collection of odd items as Edwin reads, and he seems to understand without a single word that this is a quiet sort of day. Never had Edwin ever found someone who understood that some days were simply built for quiet, and the fact that Charles is usually so prone to chatter makes it all that much more meaningful that he doesn’t break the silence. It becomes alright for Edwin to not know something because he has been lying about that for so long. There are only so many spells he can memorize. It’s alright. Charles carries his books around in the magic backpack. One day, Edwin’s not paying attention when he steps through a mirror and gets them hopelessly lost for a half hour until they can find another one. Charles hums a jaunty tune the whole time, and when Edwin finally leads them home, he tosses an arm over his shoulder and laughs. Their bodies slot together side by side, and how is it that Edwin feels more here than at any point in his life?
For the first time in his existence, Edwin sheds off lies, and wonders if those were the heavy things resting upon his shoulders. Of course, he is rather an expert on being dead by now, not just blundering along with Charles in his wake, but it feels like he could float away when he answers Charles’ questions with a truth he doesn’t want to hear, because he doesn’t have to lie and because Charles isn’t leaving .
Charles lets him be true. Edwin runs back through all the lies he was brought up to tell. Retells them with the strength Charles lends him.
“Yes Father, I like the detective stories quite a lot so please return them to me.”
“Yes Mother, I hate this suit. It itches and the shoes are too tight.”
“No Father, I don’t wish to go to boarding school.”
“No Mother, I don’t think it will actually turn me into a good Christian boy.”
“Everything is wrong at this wretched school.”
“Everything is horrible and lonely.”
“I can’t believe you sent me away.”
“I’m absolutely miserable.”
“These boys are going to be the death of me.”
One more truth though:
“I think it might have all been worth it, since I found Charles in the end.”
One day, he’ll have the courage to voice that truth aloud to the person who deserves to hear it.
Repetition makes the years slide by. Much like he couldn’t keep track of years in Hell, Edwin loses track of the number of years he and Charles have been together, and sometimes it amazes him when he sits down to do the math. Twenty years. Twenty-five. Thirty years of the kindest, best person Edwin has ever known. And though the threat of Hell lingers in the back of his mind, with every case tapped into place as part of his plea for mercy, the fear becomes easier to bear.
Thirty-five years. Charles’ laughter and his smiles, his warmth and his light, are something to be worth existing for. He is the sun and Edwin orbits him, each circle making him more and more certain that this is the sort of thing that can last forever. Funny how Charles is the more mercurial one and Edwin seems more steady. People would assume that he is the grounding force around which Charles circles, but no one on the outside could ever understand them. Edwin was never good with people, but he is good with Charles, and now? That’s the only thing that matters. It’s the two of them, together, and that isn’t going to change. Edwin can stay in this state of repetition for as long as he exists.
A demonic possession is an exhilarating challenge. Edwin wonders just what sort of odd knickknack they will acquire for their home.
He cannot lie and say he is pleased with the acquisition of a living girl.