Chapter Text
Charles remembered Edwin running—
his feet’s pap pap pap on the rusted iron stairs,
a frantic rhythm,
a heartbeat outside his body.
‘I love you,’ he’d said. ‘As more than a friend, I’m afraid.’
Said it like an apology. Like it was wrong. Like something dreadful—
Charles had taken Edwin by the shoulders,
about to speak—comfort—let him know they’re okay,
then—
The clack clack clack of the doll spider’s legs, a horror scraping after them, a screech that bit metal, bit the air where their scrambling legs once were.
Charles grabbed Edwin by the undershirt, wrenched him, yanked him, begged him forward, run, go, out, please. Breathless, terror-struck, breaking into the realm beyond. The door slammed. The Night Nurse, chest heaving, arm waving, framed in the doorway like the end of a prayer.
A rupture through the world.
Gravity, pulling into a body.
A thud—Charles hit the floor and it hit back, hard, cracking up his elbow. A cry tore its way out his throat. Pain, real pain, wired pain, pain made of all nerve endings, needles, and heat. He turned over, gasping, half-expecting Edwin’s hand to pull him up—but there’s no second thud.
‘Edwin?’
His fingers crawled blindly along the floorboards, palm aching from the memory of Edwin’s shirt,
except—
no shirt,
no Edwin.
There was no second thud beside him.
The floorboards creaked under his hands, the weight of him shifting. The weight of him—the weight of him:
heavy,
solid,
real.
Air burned in his throat.
Charles scrambled up, heartbeat a battle march. ‘Edwin!’
The name felt liverish in his mouth, off-centre but certain like calling into a house you know is empty but your mouth betrays you anyway.
He threw the door open, wild, expecting, hoping, dreading, but—
No Hell lay there. Charles’ Hell was in the room.
No. No, no, no.
His fists beat against the wood, again again again, like he could beat it back to life. But the door was just a door. And the wood was just wood.
He staggered back.
‘I had him,’ Charles choked. ‘I had him. I know I did. I swear—’
—
Charles’ hands outstretched. Grasping for a boy already gone.
Charles lay before him, writhing, crying out, arms reaching through him. Like he simply was not there.
‘Charles?’
Then Charles was up. He was running, running—
through him—
through him—
his body slipping through Edwin like mist, like breath,
as if stepping through a shadow cast by something already gone.
‘Charles, what—’ said Edwin, his eyes darting, searching, hoping. ‘I’m right here. You did it.’
But—nothing. Not a flicker of recognition crossed Charles’ face. Not a glance, not a smile, not a frown—only raw panic cracking at the seams. An anger that Edwin could not soothe.
A pain bloomed deep in his chest, raw and wrong and worse than Hell itself. He stumbled. Because Charles’ gaze kept passing through him. He pressed his hand to his chest, clenched his fists, squeezing short, sharp, shaking—to know for certain that he had not gone. That he was still there.
‘Charles?’ Edwin cried, voice a hairline fracture.
Edwin’s hands reached for him, pulling at his shoulder.
Charles was not looking.
His eyes did not find him.
A hand on his shoulder,
but Charles did not feel it—
did not feel him.
It was a vile thing. Inexplicable. Utterly and completely incorrect. It churned in Edwin like repulsion, like bile sliding up his throat.
‘But I am here,’ he said. Stifling. ‘Charles, I am here.’
Charles was already clawing at empty space, raking his fingers through the air, screaming at the door, the walls, the wrongness of it all—
He threw his fists at the door like hitting it would aid him. Panting, chest-heaving, done-screaming.
‘I had him. I know I did. I swear—’
A drop.
Impossible blood trickled from Charle’s elbow.
And a slow, sickening thing writhed in Edwin’s gut.
For ghosts cannot bleed.
—
The Night Nurse watched Charles with granite eyes, mouth pulled to a tight, flat line. The kind of look with which someone views a child throwing a tantrum over a misplaced toy.
‘I had him,’ he repeated, louder, surer, wilder. ‘This wasn’t the deal. What have you done with him?’
Her voice, cool as marble, ‘I haven't done any–’
‘Liar.’
Charles’ fury cracked open.
His body moved before thought, before reason. It sprung up tangled and panting, molten hot. His muscles pulled taut as he lunged.
Her collar in his fists. He slammed her back. The wall thunked, his weight against hers.
Infinite trans-dimensional entity or not, she wasn’t taking Edwin away. Not again. Never again.
‘Where is he?’
Her head tilted, her expression hardly shifting.
She wasn’t fighting back.
She wasn’t doing anything.
She wasn’t even looking at him.
She only made him angrier.
Charles’ hands wrung tighter about her collar. Shook her. His voice a snarl, a threat, ‘If you’ve sent him back there, I swear to God—’
She didn’t seem to care.
And then—worse—worse—her eyes flicked past Charles again, off somewhere else. Into the middle distance. Away. He could have his hands around her throat in an instant and she wasn’t even looking at him.
‘The fuck are you even looking at?’ He spat.
‘How do you put up with this temper?’ she asked nothing, talking to the air.
‘Look, I'll do anything. Put me there, take me! Just leave him alone, alright?’
‘Charles!’ A voice. Real. Urgent. Niko.
He didn’t look away. ‘Not now, Niko!’
Niko’s hands were gentle on his arms, pulling.
‘It’s okay, Charles,’ she said. ‘Edwin’s right here’
A bark of a laugh, sharp, bitter.
‘Fuck off, Niko.’ He shook her off. ‘I’d know if my best mate was standing right next to me, yeah?’
But Niko wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was looking at the air beside him. At the empty air beside him.
Then—
Pressure.
It ghosted over Charles’ shoulder, feather-light, cold as grave dirt, atoms away from nothing at all. His body locked up, breath still.
His grip faltered about the the Night Nurse's collar. His hands slipped down.
‘Charles,’ said the Night Nurse, smooth, calm, awful, ‘your friend is standing beside you.’
He turned his head.
‘I—I don’t see anything,’ said Charles, more like a plea. ‘If you're having me on this really isn't funny, yeah?’
Niko shook her head. Slowly. Sad. ‘You can’t see him?’
A terrible, gut-deep stillness spread through him.
His hand crept up to the fabric on his shoulder, where the echo of something shivered. He held it like it might anchor him. Beneath his fingers, the canvas of his jacket was—coarse. Fabric on skin. He could feel it. Actually feel it.
Charles staggered back, shallow, sharp, struck. His hand shot to his chest—his own chest—rising, falling, breathing. The thump thump thump of a heart beating there.
Pain flared up his elbow.
A human pain.
A living pain.
When was the last time he hurt like this? He looked down at his arm, red blood streaked down from elbow to fingertip.
Flesh.
Blood.
Bone.
‘Wait—what?’
‘You’ve really done it now!’ said The Night Nurse, eyelid twitching. ‘By some great cosmic muck-up, have resuscitated yourself. God, this is all I need.’
‘What the bloody hell is going on?’
She paced. ‘How you’ve managed it I have no idea. But you, Charles Rowland, appear to once again be a living, breathing, mortal boy.’
The words scraped against his skin, raw, unreal, wrong.
Alive. Alive?
‘What about Edwin?’
‘As far as I'm concerned,’ sighed the Night Nurse, pinching her nose in frustration, ‘Edwin is as he should be. You, on the other hand, have thrown a rather infuriating spanner into the works.’
‘But—’ His throat burned. ‘How can I be alive when he’s still—’
Dead.
The word stuck. Refused to be spoken. Refused to be true.
Niko and the Night Nurse turned, listening to the empty air.
‘Yes, Edwin,’ the Night Nurse spoke to nothing, ‘By all rules, this should be quite impossible. But, here we are.’
No. No way this was happening.
‘Right, well,’ the Night Nurse continued, brushing off her sleeves. ‘I will have to return to my office. My word, you boys are the cause of ceaseless trouble.’
‘No, no,’ said Charles, grabbing her arm. ‘Where are you going? Why can’t I see him? You can’t just leave us like this! What about Edwin?’
‘If I am to ascertain exactly what has happened here, I will need to review our case files. In. My. Office.’ She pulled her arm sharply away from Charles. ‘As well as completing several lengthy forms.’
‘I don’t give a toss about your paperwork, alright? What the fuck is going on?’
He stepped towards her again, ready to do something Edwin would call reckless.
She raised a single finger, shaking it in the air. Tut tut-tutting.
‘Ah-ah, none of that,’ she said. ‘Don’t think I will forget your indiscretion. That is the second time I have had to put up with being assaulted by you. The Lost & Found Department does not treat employee abuse lightly.’
She stomped. Final.
Flames swirled. So close they nearly singed off his eyebrows.
The empty room pressed inwards, too big, too quiet, too high.
Now that he was alive, he figured this might just kill him.
For so many years, he’d been nothing, not even atoms, a shadow never cast. Never touching, never feeling, just a memory of a person clinging on a night’s-edge.
Now, he was everything, everywhere.
He was his breath in his lungs. He was the sting in his eyes. He was in the heartbeat that kept on pomp pomp pomping. He was his stomach as it churned its hungry bellow. He was his elbow as it bled, bruised, blackened.
—
Edwin wished with all he had that this might be an illusion, that he might still be in Hell. Perhaps, he mused, he had been traded to some demon of hallucinations. Perhaps the dean of nightmares himself, Epiales, decided to get his claws into him. Yet, as much as he wished it otherwise, Edwin was no stranger to the illusions of Hell. They had their infarctions, their refractions, their tells. To his dread, he found none of them here. It was incontestably real. One does not have to visit the Dreaming to recognise their nightmare manifest.
Charles was in one world, and Edwin in another. Poles apart.
They had been together for thirty years—always together—never separated for long. The very notion of such a rupture, so absolute, so primordial, was fundamentally, inexcusably, cosmically incorrect.
This could not stand. He would not let it.
Something would mend it, and he would find it. Knowledge was power. Knowledge was preparation. There had to be an answer.
And he would not rest until he had it.
‘Stay where you are, Charles. Wait for me,’ said Edwin, his voice firm. ‘Do you understand? Just wait for me.’
—
Niko flinched. Looked past Charles into nothing. ‘Edwin says…’
A pause. A beat long enough to wound.
‘He says to stay put. To wait for him.’
‘Wait?’ The floor tilted under Charles, the world shifting off its axis, everything collapsing inward. ‘No. No fucking way. I need to talk to him. Wherever he goes, I’m going too.’
Her eyes shifted—to the mirror in the corner of the room. Edwin was already going. Edwin was already gone.
‘Charles.’ She touched his arm and, for the first time, he could feel it. ‘He’ll be back. It’s Edwin.’
‘He just left? Just like that?’
Niko nodded.
‘I needed to talk to him,’ Charles exhaled, eyes burning.