Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
He stepped into the ghost, and the nauseating sensation that had rolled through him was ice and heat and damp and bone-dry and wrong. Edgar had reeled back, losing his footing and falling, catching himself on his hands. His palms stung, but all he cared about was the looming, grotesque thing that looked like it could pull him apart and climb inside him, drag him screaming to hell, or obliterate him so entirely that Edgar would cease to exist.
It had been a man once, but now it was a lolling, shredded monstrosity, with eyes that burned into Edgar like twin moons, all reflected light and nothing inside.
Edgar didn’t know how he’d gotten to his feet and run away. But three blocks later, he glanced over his shoulder at a dead run and saw nothing there. He had a stitch in his side and felt utterly, painfully sober.
It was the second one he’d seen. Only he hadn’t been sure the first time. Maybe seeing Antoine Valliere one last time hadn’t been a ghost but a wish.
This time, however, he had no doubt.
Edgar fell to his knees and puked, only noticing that the pavement had grated his palms to blood when he left red smears on the thighs of his pants. He had a wriggly, tremblesome feeling in his knees, and his stomach attempted to flee his body by way of his throat. His head pounded, and his skin crawled. When he had finally dragged himself upright and made for home, he’d looked over his shoulder every other step, convinced something crept along beside him, hiding in every shadow.
He hadn’t had a drink since.
“Edgar!”
He startled back to awareness. Poe had called his name, and Jamie was squeezing his shoulder, looking concerned. Aunt Alaitheia watched him with narrowed, curious eyes.
“Where’d you go, dude?” Poe demanded.
Edgar blinked, having no intention of answering his question.
Aunt Alaitheia took his glass and downed the absinthe in a few long swallows.
“Now then,” she said. “What brings the Lovejoys back to Le Corbeau?”
It was Jamie who broke the silence. “You know how Edgar, Allie, and Poe see ghosts?”
Aunt Alaitheia was still for a moment, then nodded.
“Well, I guess we—oh, sorry, I’m Edgar’s boyfriend, by the way. I don’t see ghosts.” They grinned.
“Don’t you?” Aunt Alaitheia said softly. And before Edgar could ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, Jamie grinned.
“Nah. I create them though. I mean fake ones. I make haunted houses.”
“I know,” Aunt Alaitheia said.
“For real?” Jamie asked, clearly impressed. “Are you psychic too?”
“Sometimes,” she said. Then she winked at them. “But Allie told me.”
“Jesus, does she send a newsletter around or something?” Poe muttered.
“Edgar has all these theories,” Jamie continued, undaunted. “But he doesn’t know much for sure. Ghostwise, that is. So we were wondering if you had some insight into how it all works. How they work. Ghosts…” They trailed off.
“That’s a big question,” Aunt Alaitheia said.
“Yeah, I guess it is,” Jamie replied.
“What did your mother tell you?” she asked Edgar and Poe.
Poe snorted. “Fuck all.”
“She always said it was different for everyone,” said Edgar. “We tried to ask her, but she said it was like life or god or love—we had to decide what they meant for ourselves.”
“Like I said: fuck all.”
Aunt Alaitheia looked resigned. She poured them all another round of absinthe and, once more, downed Edgar’s herself. Then she leaned toward them, tracing patterns on the table with a wet fingertip.
“All I can tell you is what I believe,” she said. “Your mother and I did not agree on everything, not by a long shot.” There was a hint of bitterness in her voice, like wormwood. “But we do agree that the experience is different for everyone. What you think of ghosts depends on how you think of death. And, I suppose, on how you think of life.”
Suddenly Edgar wished they hadn’t come here. What had he been thinking when he’d allowed Jamie to give him hope his aunt might have answers that his own mother had never given him, answers that he’d never been able to figure out on his own? There were none here, just more questions: What really happened between you and Mom? Why did you always come for her but never for us? What do we actually know about you?
“For me,” Aunt Alaitheia said, eyes taking on a faraway look, “death is a liminal state, somewhere between life and nothingness. For some, it feels like an instant; for others, decades, centuries, millennia. Time has no meaning outside of life. Duration is only significant as a concept when there’s an opportunity for something to end. So a ghost doesn’t know that a piece of it has persisted past the point of physical death. In its mind, it isn’t lingering, because you’d have to understand time to know that. It doesn’t sense that passage of minutes or days any more than it can feel temperature without a body. It’s an echo, a presence that implies absence.”