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There was a full moon when he went wandering into the darkness and the trees.
Somehow the brightest of days could not breach the foliage but the light of the moon, oh the brilliant touch of silver moonlight could help him see just fine. In his hands, he held a shovel and a lantern. It was unlit, the decision made the moment he had stepped foot outside of his door and seen how bright the sky was. There were the tools necessary in his pocket but he did not reach for them.
His footsteps took him deeper into the trees, deeper still until he was at the stone marking the final resting place of William Carter.
The unlit lantern set on the ground, he took his shovel in both his hands, felt the heft of it, the swing and the girth. "I have done much research," he whispered into the night. "There is a surprising amount of lore to read, books to page through, information is written down to survive the ages with. I have read of ghosts, of monsters and ghouls and ghasts. You," he breathed deeply, his eyes sliding up until they were focused on the moon. "William Carter, are an extraordinary being.
"If you will forgive," he continued, planting the edge of his shovel in the dirt. "I have read of ghosts going mad when untethered. Digging up your grave will surely anger you, but I want you to know that it is with the best intentions. I am a scientist, I have no need for a touch-starved ghost gone mad."
He began digging, his words trailing into silence as he grunted with the weight of each shovelful of dirt.
The moon stayed high in the sky as he dug, the piles of dirt around the grave growing larger as the night wore on. "I have also been told," he grunted as he hefted another shovelful up and away. "That you were buried without a coffin. I must be careful, do not wish to damage my prize."
The grave was shallow, in the end.
William Carter's skeleton lay only three feet down. His bowtie was a brilliant red, even in the touch of silver kissing the earth around him. The chest of his suit was torn and ragged, blood-stained and fragile looking. The blasted pole, the rod of metal that had injured his assistant, had taken his life in an instant. Snuffed it out as a candle flame beneath a snuffer.
His glasses were folded into his pocket, lovingly wrapped in a handkerchief of the same red - blood red, ruby red - of his bowtie.
His skull was shapely and Wilson could remember the sharp cheekbones of the man. It seemed that the shape of them went the furthest down it could go, beneath layers of flesh and blood to the bones. The elongated chin, the cheekbones to cut glass, he could see them as if an overlay was before him.
Grasping the skull in both hands, his touch gentle and cautious, Wilson lifted it off the rest of the skeleton. "I apologize once more," he whispered as he held it to the light. The delicate points and edges were mostly unharmed as he looked at it. "William Carter, you extraordinary man."
"I have never been called that before," came another voice.
He kneeled at the edge of his own grave, his hands pressed flat on top of it as if the earth were still below them to give him support. His eyes were wide, almost hollow looking as he met Wilson's gaze. "No one has called me anything other than plain before. I called myself amazing," he explained in an awestruck voice. It was as if Wilson had offered him the secrets of the universe in the palm of his hand.
"You're beautiful, as well," Wilson continued after a moment, stroking a loving finger over the line of his skull's jaw. "Well formed and with an edge to your features, both flesh, and bone."
The ghost, if he could have been breathing, would have stopped in that moment.
"You think me beautiful?" he asked quietly.
Wilson nodded slowly, settling his skull on the ground and reaching back for his glasses. "I think you're gorgeous."
He reached for the ghost's cheek, managed to make contact with it. He felt like ice, like cold stone and the walls of a tomb, smelled like dust and graveyard dirt. Under his fingers, he felt solid, like any other living person. "I know how you died now, William. I know how to keep you from going mad in these woods, living an echo every day. You will never be alone, so long as I live."
"I would accept that," William leaned into his hand. "Keep me sane, Wilson Higgsbury, and I will be yours."