Chapter Text
One of these days, Charles would have to ask one of these supernatural creatures why they so loved to send him hurtling through the air. And also how, but why first.
Because, if it was just the occasional witch or monster, it wouldn’t really matter to him. But lately, it felt like he was sailing into the wall, or the floor or, on one memorable occasion, a patch of angry, sentient zucchini, nearly every other case.
There had to be something to it, right? Something especially satisfying or effective about that particular move. Why else would Charles be peeling himself off the dirty concrete, again? Getting his feet under him and charging in, only to get blasted into a nearby stack of palates, again. Wincing as iron nails from the wood burnt into his back, again.
Maybe that last bit didn’t happen quite as often, but still.
“Charles!” That would be Edwin, sounding shrill, concerned, and impatient all at once.
Right, Charles wouldn’t be asking this supernatural creature for the particulars of its love for telekinetic chucking; that would have to wait for something a bit less hellbent on killing them.
Charles popped to his feet and gave his croquet mallet a twirl, shedding an internal tear for his cricket bat.
“Restoring magical equipment takes time and care, Charles, and the croquet mallet is the only other magical, non-lethal ‘weapon’ we have,” Edwin had explained, and Charles had pouted more quietly afterward. Still, it wasn’t nearly as badass to brandish a croquet mallet against the forces of evil.
But brandish he did, and made his way toward the entity currently wiping the floor with them in the formerly abandoned creosote factory turned inadvisable alternative music venue.
In their defense, the client hadn’t given them much to go on.
She was barely keeping it together, quite literally. Wisps of greyish smoke curled off her like steam from a cup of piping hot tea. She was mostly a young Italian woman with dark hair and sharp features. Mostly. She was wrinkling early, caught between the downward pull of weariness and the stubborn lift of youthfulness.
Again, mostly.
When she didn’t look like this, other versions of her face and body flitted across her form; like radio signals broadcasting on the same frequency. Sometimes, a shadowed, gray figure, devoid of any features. Sometimes, a child with the same dark hair and downturned eyes. Sometimes, a bloodied corpse with twisted bones and the still-visible imprints of old-fashioned shoes stamped into her flesh.
“The factory shut down after the accident,” the young woman said, face flickering with the shadow of a bootheel. “The foreman had locked the only door in or out so when the fire started…” she trailed off until Edwin cleared his throat, earning a halfhearted dirty look from Charles. She shook herself, suddenly sporting a younger, more bright-eyed version of her face over her work-torn clothes.
“Anyway, there were a lot of us still there as ghosts, at least until earlier this week.”
“What happened earlier this week?” Edwin asked.
In response, the woman gestured to her spectral form as it unraveled in grey smoke.
“I’m the only one left.”
Edwin figured a misery wraith was a likely candidate, since the despair of the woman’s past seemed to be literally consuming her, but it was still an incomplete picture. And, unfortunately, they didn’t have time to get a clearer one.
These days, the factory was a popular spot for squat raves; fringe indie bands, wannabe DJs, and really anyone willing to overlook the safety hazards and shit acoustics would take the building over on the weekends. Other than littering the place with trash and vomit, they didn’t bother the ghosts much.
Problem was, one such party was on for Saturday. And, of course, the client had arrived on Friday afternoon.
With no time to waste, they agreed to head straight there and try to put the case together on the go. Nothing they couldn’t handle. Probably.
Now, locked in active combat, Charles wasn’t so sure. The entity was humanoid, or rather, humanoids. One body that seemed to writhe with countless faces and shapes overlapping each other in a torrent of gray smoke that poured off every inch of it. It was hovering about five feet in the air, could manifest blasts of telekinetic energy, and looking directly at it made Charles want to throw up in the way that you sometimes feel when you need to cry or scream or both, but can’t.
So, instead of looking, Charles took a heavy swing at the back of the creature’s knees, hooking it with the croquet mallet and sending it into a spiral. The screech it let out rattled the factory walls, but it had the desired effect of getting the thing to forget all about Edwin, who was flipping through a tome on entities that feed on spectral energy. Charles allowed himself a small smile in Edwin’s direction; if anyone could figure this case out mid-fight, it’d be him.
When he turned his gaze back to the creature, it was already lunging for his chest. He managed to narrowly dodge to the side, though not without its claws catching the very edge of his jacket.
Charles glanced down to survey the damage to his favorite peacoat and saw shallow claw marks in the dark cloth (the waterlogged remnants of his shirt [the ratty blanket trapping what little warmth he had left]).
As impossible as Edwin would tell him it was, Charles felt his mouth go dry. But there wasn’t time for that. He wrapped a tight fist around the clothing as if to suppress the effect. But, between his gloved fingers, he could see the edge of his past iterations hemorrhaging through the fabric of his spectral form.
Uh oh.
The creature looked back at Charles from where its attack had overshot him and grinned. Charles’ stomach turned.
“Edwin!” He called, a little frantically, though he didn’t think anyone could blame him for that.
“Keep distracting it! I’m narrowing it down.”
“I don’t think this is a ‘Redirect and Research’ kind of fight, mate!” Charles called out, backing away from the creature as it advanced. His heart couldn’t pound but something was thundering in chest, something that saw the creature’s hungry expression and wanted Charles to get out.
“I’m sure it’s here!” Edwin responded, not looking up from the pages as he whipped through them.
The creature lunged again. This time, Charles threw his entire body to the side, knowing not to risk even a little scratch. He crashed through a few of the cheap stage lights and glanced up to meet those eyes. Eyes upon eyes upon eyes forming two inky, bottomless pits.
Charles swallowed, hard, and got to his feet. He gave the croquet mallet a twirl and dropped his weight low, ready to strike.
If Edwin said he had this, then Charles trusted him. And if he needed some time, then Charles would get him that time.
Unfortunately, before he could make any headway with his newfound determination to be a good distraction, Crystal became a much better one. The creature’s eyes rolled back, a hundred eyes as one, and turned pearly white. Charles looked over to see her with her hands pressed to the concrete, now cracked beneath the force of whatever psychic power she was unleashing.
The creature screamed, clutching at its head, and Crystal groaned with effort, the cracks spidering further under her palms.
“It’s a ghost,” she ground out, every word pained. “No, dozens, hundreds of them!”
Edwin finally looked up, a deep crease sinking into place between his brows. “How is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” Crystal wheezed, “there are so many of them, it’s too loud.” The creature thrashed in the air, trying to shake Crystal from its mind.
Edwin pushed past his confusion in an instant and returned to his tome with renewed focus.
“Do you see a tree? Or some kind of woodland grove?”
That was exactly the kind of blunt, unelaborated question Crystal would normally scoff at, but nothing came from her but ragged breaths.
“No tree,” she said, shaking her head and sending drops of sweat rolling down her temples.
Charles ground his teeth and gripped the croquet mallet so hard he thought the handle might crack. There was no hit to deal or take, all he could do was look back and forth between his companions, feeling completely useless.
“What about an object? Something small, old-fashioned, likely handmade?”
At that, Crystal gasped and flung her head back.
“Yes! I see it! It’s one of those—those dolls! Oh, fuck me, what are they called?”
Before she could ponder it further, the creature shattered the connection between them and sent Crystal flying back into the wall.
“Crystal!” Edwin shouted. The creature had its sights set on her, claws already taking shape from the gray smoke and reaching for her throat.
But Charles was ready —this, he could do —and he swung the croquet mallet low into the shattered remnants of the pallet he’d landed on earlier.
This was the one nice thing about the mallet, its enchantment allowed him to strike anything he wanted, even very heavy things, and send them flying into a target of his choice. Croquet ball meets wicket and all that.
Except, in this case, the wicket was the creature and the ball was the exact pile of nails that had scorched his back earlier.
A shotgun spray of iron tore into the creature and sent it sprawling backward in a cloud of dozens of smoking limbs. It crashed through the makeshift stage, which was really just a few cracked flats of wood balanced on three rows of crates. When it screeched, its voice was a choir of agonies.
“Still a ghost, aren’t you? Gotta play by ghost rules,” Charles said, giving the mallet another cocky twirl.
A little ways away, Crystal sat up and shook the dust from her hair and clothes. She threw Charles a relieved smile as she walked to join him, still a little shaken. The grin he threw back was bright and easy.
“Excellent work, Charles,” Edwin proclaimed, jogging over. Charles let the praise wash over him and warm him to his toes. Figuratively speaking. “Now, Crystal, what kind of doll did you see?”
“Ugh, I don’t remember the word for them.”
The creature, still knitting its many forms back together, rose and looked over its shoulder. Its eyes settled on Charles, solidifying into one dark point of utter hatred. A cacophony of voices whispered in his mind.
Protective, aren’t we?
“Uh, guys?” Charles tried, choking up his grip on the mallet as a chill raced along his spine. Behind him, thank goodness they were at least behind him, Edwin and Crystal kept going.
“Describe it then.”
“I don’t know they’re like—they’re like the thing.” Crystal gestured with her hands, vaguely moving her palms toward each other from a few angles without letting them touch.
“I will need you to be more specific,” Edwin snapped.
“I’m trying! You don’t what it was like in that thing’s head; you’re lucky I can talk at all.”
“Lucky is not the word I would use.”
The creature finished condensing back into a singular form, draped in smoke that was quickly sharpening into points at the ends of its fingers. The voice in Charles’ mind came again, drowning out the sound of Crystal and Edwin’s bickering.
Which one would break you more to watch die?
He shook his head as if to knock that awful muttering loose. The creature advanced a step and Charles fought the instinct to step back, to flee. He couldn’t, he needed to keep his friends behind him.
You’re already broken, aren’t you?
“Guys!” Charles called out, growing desperate. They needed to get out of here. Whatever the creature was, they weren’t prepared, not even close.
“I’m telling you! It’s like that ring-stacking thing they give to babies!”
“And I’m telling you, that clarifies absolutely nothing!”
“GUYS!” Charles shouted, and the two broke out of their squabble at last. They followed his attention to the creature looming over them from the stage and roiling with a malicious appetite.
“Shit,” Crystal breathed.
“We need to find the doll,” Edwin stated, voice maintaining a strenuous calm.
At the mention of the doll, the creature’s gaze snapped to Edwin and something like, yet so much worse than, a growl rippled from its throat.
In an instant, Charles could feel its intent shift to his best friend. He could taste the ash of Edwin’s spectral form as the creature imagined chewing him in its myriad teeth, crushing every version of him that had ever been into a mulch of nothing at all.
No.
“Find the doll, got it,” Charles said, and sprinted past the creature deeper into the factory.
“CHARLES!” Edwin and Crystal screamed in unison, but he couldn’t turn to look. If they were afraid for him, that meant it had worked; that meant the creature was coming after him instead of them.
Whatever the doll was, this entity didn’t want them finding it, that much was obvious. But, despite the thing clearly wanting them dead, it hadn’t tried to trap them inside; the path to the lone exit was still open. Instead, it had stopped them from moving any deeper into the building, as if protecting something.
Charles doubted the ghost would wander far from an important talisman, if it even could. So, if the doll was anywhere, it was here, somewhere in the far end of the factory.
An enraged screech shook the earth just behind his heels, and, beneath the rising panic, Charles congratulated himself for his deductive reasoning. If he got to see Edwin again, he hoped he’d be proud.
Once he was done chewing Charles out, anyway.
Charles phased through a wall into the mangled remains of the factory’s assembly line: a vast room tangled with the dim shapes of old conveyor belts.
The door behind Charles burst open and he instinctually spun and struck the nearest piece of equipment. The dolly that found itself on the end of Charles’ croquet mallet sailed right into the entity’s midriff, knocking it back into the wall.
Alright, he’d bought himself a few seconds, but he needed to think. The doll couldn’t be just anywhere. People put special things in special places, and if this was a ghost on some level, it had to think like a person on some level.
Charles’ eyes darted everywhere, hoping the faint evening light seeping through the filthy, dust-covered windows would show him the way. Distantly, he heard Crystal and Edwin calling his name.
Then, Charles saw it. At the far end of the factory, behind a tall cluster of machines, a mess of scorch marks stretched in all directions. The origin of the factory’s accident; of course.
Where better to hide some evil bloody doll?
He heard a voice, dozens of voices, wailing behind him, closing in. If this wasn’t the answer, well, he didn’t want to think about that. He had to run either way.
Charles got his legs pumping and concentrated on moving straight through all the obstacles in his way. He didn’t risk a glance over his shoulder to check on either the creature or his friends; he could do that once he’d smashed the doll into a pile of stuffing with the croquet mallet. If it had stuffing. Maybe he’d be smashing it into a pile of woodchips or something.
Whatever the doll was made of, Charles would find a way to break it. He was good at that kind of thing. Edwin could use his big brain to make it not-evil afterward.
Nearly there, Charles pushed every last bit of energy he had into a final, mad sprint for the center of those awful burn marks. Darkness enveloped him as he passed through the wall of machines. A moment later, he saw a gnarled crater in the floor, scarred with melted metal and bleached pale by unimaginable heat. At its fringes, everything was charred and black, features erased in a blast of fire.
The crater itself was full of trinkets: wallets, keys, glasses, dog collars, and other miscellaneous pocket scraps. Charles had a sinking feeling that not every ghost devoured by this thing had been a ghost before it found them.
He crashed to his knees and frantically dug through the objects with one hand he while raising the croquet mallet to strike with the other.
For a split second, he saw it. It was bright red and round at the top, buried in coin purses and wedding rings. The moment his finger brushed it, nausea rolled through him and settled cold into his gut. He heard a hundred screams, not from behind him, but from within, begging to be set free.
He swung the mallet down and—
Pain. Searing pain coursed through his arm. He opened his mouth to scream, but more pain exploded in his sternum and his voice left him.
He glanced toward his arm, still poised to take the swing, and, through the tears in his eyes, saw the grey claws of the creature piercing his wrist. Looking down, he saw the thing’s entire fist punched clean through his chest.
Everywhere it touched, grey smoke rose and curled in the air, taking little bits of him with it. His form flickered around the spectral wound. His favorite red shirt became (his drenched white tank top became [the bruises from the rocks and the wounds they’d left inside him]).
As the croquet mallet clattered to the floor along with Charles’ backpack, all he could think was that he’d been too slow. He’d failed. And he hoped more than anything that Crystal and Edwin had left him behind.
He knew they hadn’t.
The ghost dragged him away from the shiny red top of its doll, the source of its power, he was now sure. He could only watch his own heels leaving trails in the soot as he choked on his pain and lifted into the air.
He dangled in its grip and felt himself turn, more points of pain driving into him as the ghost shifted its many hands across and through him so he was looking into its eyes.
I will make you suffer, it snarled into his mind.
Charles threw a weak punch with his free hand. It passed through the smoke of the ghost’s face as if there was nothing there.
Soon, there will be no fight left in you.
“Fucking try me, mate,” Charles spat.
The claws sunk between his ribs and deep inside. Charles could only groan, tears slipping down his cheeks, as the memory of hypothermia sunk into his bones. The cold, excruciating, then the numbness, even worse. Around and around they went. Cold, numb, nothing at all. Cold, numb, nothing at all.
A scream, just one voice this time, echoed across the walls from below. Edwin? Crystal? Charles couldn’t say.
They will watch me eat you to your core. Then, I will devour them too.
The claws sunk deeper, moving beyond Charles’ ghostly body and into something beyond that. He could feel, on some level, as the talons became teeth chewing into his very soul.
It didn’t hurt, like he’d expected. It was a hollowing sensation. His anger, his fear, his sorrow, felt carved out of him, shaved off one after the other. The emptiness left behind was quiet and placid, devoid of any desire or repulsion. Like an exhale that never stopped; everything inside pouring out out out, asphyxiating all the while, but unable to do anything but relax into that impending doom.
Except.
Except there was something way down in there that, when the claws (the teeth [the hunger]) touched it, they simply glanced off. They couldn’t so much as scratch the surface and, through the smoke of his own form disintegrating, Charles remained.
What is this!? The creature roared.
Charles would have answered if he knew. But, the more this thing at his center remained, the more the rest of his self grew back around it, even as the creature kept trying to devour him.
Where is your despair? The ghost asked, voices a torrent of angry confusion.
Charles met its eyes, this time, without a trace of fear or nausea, and dug a smile up from the depths of his pain.
“‘Fraid I’m all out.”
And he kicked both feet into the thing’s chest as hard as he could.
The claws slid out of him as he fell. Thankfully, by the time he hit the factory floor, hard, he couldn’t feel anything again. Small blessings and all that.
“Charles!” Edwin was on him in an instant, hands frantically checking him over. Crystal was not far behind, grabbing fistfuls of his lapels and shaking him.
“What the hell were you thinking?!” she snapped, voice cracking and eyes shining. “That was so stupid I could kill you!”
“For once, we are in complete agreement,” Edwin tacked on. Charles could see him trembling.
“Had to do something, didn’t I?” he argued. In truth, they were completely right. But he knew being angry with him was better than being afraid for him. He could handle a scolding if it helped keep everyone level.
However, his cocky façade dropped the instant he registered a gloved hand on his cheek, pulling him to look into a pair of soft green eyes.
“Don’t do that to me, ever again,” Edwin whispered, and Charles could only swallow thickly and nod.
A horrible, ear shattering screech broke the three apart. Charles still felt like his cheek was burning. Which was, of course, impossible.
The detectives stood shoulder to shoulder and faced the ghost. It was an absolute mess of limbs, clawing at the air and at its own form. But its eyes remained fixed and hungry.
“Please tell me you at least found the doll,” Crystal grit out.
“Course I did, thing wanted me gone for a reason.”
“Excellent. If we can destroy it, the entity should revert to an ordinary spirit,” Charles explained.
“I think we can manage a regular old ghost, yeah?” Charles replied, raising his fists in anticipation.
NO! The ghost screamed. This time, Edwin and Crystal flinched too. Clearly, they could hear it now.
You are MINE, I will devour you. It snarled.
“Didn’t work out so well last time,” Charles challenged, “can’t eat my despair if I don’t have any.”
The thing grew very still and bored into him with its gaze.
Then I will sow despair within you.
Charles had all of a split second to brace, feeling Crystal’s hand jump to his shoulder and Edwin’s hand find his own in a desperate grasp. The creature bellowed, voices coalescing into a pulse of energy that crashed into the three of them. Through squinted eyes, Charles could just make out its form growing smaller and smaller.
Whatever it was doing, it seemed to shave layers of its body off, as if it was expending them. He held tight to Edwin’s hand as the force buffeted them. So long as Edwin was there, he could bear it. He could bear anything.
Then, just as quickly as it had come, it was gone.
Charles blinked at the empty expanse of the factory, no sign of the ghost anywhere.
“Where’d it—” Charles began, but stopped short when he turned to his side and saw no one there. He looked down to his hand, where he’d felt Edwin just a moment before, and saw it clutched around nothing.
He twisted to his other side and saw no trace of Crystal either.
“Edwin?” he shouted, “Crystal!”
No response but the metallic echo of his own voice.
Fighting the urge to panic, Charles jogged back to the crater where he’d found the doll before. Wherever this thing had taken his friends, it couldn’t keep them there if it didn’t have its powers.
However, to his dismay, the scorched hole was completely empty. No trinkets, trash, or old pairs of glasses, and no doll.
At least the ravers and punk rockers arriving tomorrow would be safe.
His croquet mallet and bag of tricks were still there, though, and he counted that as a victory. He scooped them up and ran back into the factory proper. He didn’t stop running until he’d checked every inch of every corner of every room, investigating every abnormality for evidence of secret rooms or hidden doorways. Nothing.
Back on the main factory floor, he returned to precisely where his friends had stood at his sides.
“Ok, ok, just think,” Charles muttered to himself between heaving, frightened breaths. “They were here, I know they were here. They can’t have just, disappeared.”
Images, unbidden, formed in his mind of Crystal and Edwin disintegrating, that awful gray smoke absorbing them into the creature’s body to join with the countless other souls screaming in pain.
“No, no,” Charles reasoned aloud, fighting against the feeling that the room was spinning, “if it could do that, it would’ve done it to me before, when it had me in its claws.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself to stay calm and put the clues together, like Edwin would.
“That’s it!” Charles exclaimed. Edwin had figured something out, seen something in his book about the doll and what kind of spirit they were up against. All Charles had to do was piece back together what Edwin had learned and add a few missing bits. Once he knew what had done this, he could undo it.
He had to.
With that in mind, he pulled the tall mirror from his back of tricks and propped it against the wall. He wasn’t great at mirror hopping, but there wasn’t time to waste. Charles was almost certain Edwin had a larger compendium with a chapter on ghost-eating entities and cursed objects. Since the more specialized book was gone along with Edwin, it would have to do.
With a bracing breath, Charles stepped through the mirror.
He was grateful that his stomach no longer dropped with the sensation of falling, but it didn’t make the falling bit much easier. Fractals cascaded past him with reflected and re-reflected scenes from mirrors across all of London. He had to concentrate on his destination and direct his fall through dozens of other looking glasses, each one further from the factory and closer to home.
A few reflections down, he saw the office, and bent his knees for impact.
At his willing, he passed through the mirror and back into the real world. Despite his efforts, he came out horizontal and the excess momentum launched him feet-first into the desk.
The impact knocked him on his ass and several books onto the floor.
“How the hell does he do that so easily?” Charles griped, pushing up to his elbows from a sea of scattered papers.
Right by his feet, he saw a small, green volume. “Ghostly Diets: An Encyclopeadia of Phantasmavores” the cover read, and Charles cocked his head. That was the book Edwin had in the factory; he was sure of it.
The light clicked on and Charles scrambled to his feet. His eyes immediately snapped to the figure in the sitting room doorway whose hand was hovering by the switch. A tall, pale, thin boy in a white shirt and navy waistcoat. Coiffed brown hair, sharp features, and green eyes.
“Edwin?” Charles gasped. He could have cried. Oh, he was crying. With an incredulous laugh, he lurched across the room to drag his best mate into the tightest hug of his afterlife.
Before he could, though, the other boy jumped back fearfully and grabbed the nearest book. He raised it over his shoulder as if to strike (with his form, it wouldn’t have been a very strong hit, but still), and Charles stopped in his tracks.
Edwin looked afraid. Afraid and confused.
“Eds? What’s with the—”
“How do you know my name?” the boy asked, and Charles’ heart plummeted through the floor.
“I—”
“Edwin? What was that?” Crystal barged into the room from the other side, looking sleep-rumpled and grumpy. She frowned at him blearily, brows creasing, before looking over to Edwin.
“Who’s this guy?” she asked.
Charles felt like his whole world was caving in.
“My question precisely,” Edwin stated primly. When he turned his gaze on Charles, it was cold and unfamiliar.
“Who are you?”