Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The Captain wasn’t much interested in what seemed to completely enrapture the attention of the people surrounding him. It was Friday night—the night that Alison dedicated almost entirely to bonding with the ghosts, and the strategy she chose to employ to advance such bonding was letting one of them choose a film for the entire house to watch. It was on a rotation, an eight—sometimes nine-week ordeal which the Captain only fully enjoyed one night of.

Nearly every Friday when it was his turn to choose, he would get shouted at by the more emotionally unstable beings of the house that documentaries didn’t really count as films, and so each time he chose, he decided on A Song to Remember. He wasn’t particularly fond of the film, in all honesty, he only chose it the first time because it was the first he could remember from when he was alive, and it kind of stuck because it kept the aforementioned emotionally unstable beings quiet. All but Julian tolerated the film, if not genuinely enjoyed it. His not enjoying it much with each watch was only a minor sacrifice to see Katherine enjoying it entirely as if it had never graced the television before.

This Friday was not the Captain’s night. It was a Titanic night, as chosen by Thomas. The Captain didn’t mind the film, though he desperately wanted to hate it. As a man who’d lived through 1912—sure, as a child, but lived through the year nonetheless—he kept his eyes wide for any sign of horrifying inaccuracy, but he’d never actually climbed aboard the ship itself, so couldn’t comment on anything that truly mattered. There was a man in his unit whose father had gone down on the Titanic, though he had no other expertise on the matter. He was young when it went down, he was rather more focused on his schooling and music than a big ship he’d never cared for.

Some half of the film was over and the Captain had his eyes closed, not desiring to defile such a young actress with his gaze despite countless people doing so with no second thoughts millions of times. It was rude and needless nudity at the girl’s expense, unfair in every sense of the word. He’d have no issue if it were the boy getting undressed along with her, in that case, it would be more acceptable, but he couldn’t believe such an image in its current state was so welcomed by so many.

“Oh, there we go!” Julian shouted, perched upon the arm of the sofa, and the Captain could only imagine what image was upon the television, “putting her talent to good use.” He had a dreamy tone to his voice and the Captain clicked his tongue with dissatisfaction.

“Oh, my God, Julian, that is totally inappropriate,” Alison groaned, and the Captain pictured the way she shook her head and looked over her shoulder at Julian.

“Thank you, Alison,” the Captain said with a pointed nod.

At the same time the Captain spoke, Michael asked, “what? What’d he say?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Alison assured him.

“Oh, come on. You’re always talking to them, I just want to know what they’re saying.”

Alison hesitated. In the moments of silence she gave, Lady Button, quite pointlessly, told Michael that he definitely did not want to hear what Julian had to say. The comment was responded to with an offended yell from Julian, then followed by a defence from Fanny, and it all quickly fell into the chaos of Julian desperately trying to defend himself and Fanny arguing with him and plenty of others shouting for peace and quiet and to simply enjoy the film. The Captain stayed quiet through it all, opening his eyes merely a smidge for a moment to be sure the young girl’s breasts were put away, and surely they were not. He cursed slightly under his breath, adding to the chaos.

Alison shouted a long call and the chaos came to a halt quickly. “Shush! One night of silence, that’s all I ask! Not another word, please!” She reprimanded, then presumably turned back to Michael, “he was objectifying Kate Winslet, if you really want to know.”

“Ah,” Michael hummed and the Captain could imagine the way he was nodding then looking up into the air when he spoke, “we don’t do that anymore. Totally inappropriate, mate.”

They were quiet for a minute-or-so more, during which Patrick informed the Captain he could open his eyes again, and which ended with Michael leaning over to Alison and saying, “are you sure there’s no way for me to see them? You’re the ghost expert, you have to know some way.” He’d definitely overestimated the limits of Alison’s ghost knowledge.

Alison sighed loudly, “if there were some way, I’d let you know, but as I’ve said before, unless you want to literally die for five minutes, I can’t do anything.”

“I mean, I can look online. There’s probably something that works, somewhere out there.”

“Remember what happened last time? You, like, traumatised that poor model. I wouldn’t risk it,” she shrugged, “now, shush. Movie time.” She hugged his arm and settled in for the second half of the film. The Captain got quite bored over the remaining hours, despite the chaotic action of the ship sinking, and when the film finally ended, silence filled the room, disturbed only by impolite snoring. Both Michael and Alison had fallen asleep on the couch and so could not turn the television off.

“Their backs won’t be happy with them in the morning,” the Captain said. He thought back to nights during the war when he’d be up late enough that he’d fall asleep right at his desk or sitting in one of a pair of armchairs in front of the fireplace downstairs, and the way his back would crack and creak with pain when he finally awoke in the morning.

“Come on, they look peaceful. Very happy and in love,” Katherine said. Her eyes all but glowed as she looked at the pair asleep on the couch, and the Captain couldn’t disagree with her. She was correct, of course, but he was slightly more concerned with practical matters and their physical wellness. If he could do nothing concerning his own, he’d always keep Alison and Michael’s in mind.

“I suppose so,” he pursed his lips, “though it seems rather uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Humans were not made to sleep upright like that.”

“Being uncomfortable doesn’t matter if you’re in love,” she said with a massive grin on her face. She began on her way out of the room and he followed instinctively, and continued listening as she spoke further, “like Jack and Rose! I can’t imagine they were very comfortable floating in that freezing water, but they still loved each other until the end.”

“I don’t think they had much of a choice in the matter, Katherine.”

“Oh, well, I suppose not,” she paused for a few moments as they walked side-by-side, then spoke again, “do you think Jack is a ghost?”

“Well, Jack is not real. He is a fictional character played by an actor.”

“Oh, yes.”

“But, I suppose if he were real, there would be nothing stopping him from being a ghost. But where would he be? A perpetual state of swimming in the Atlantic?”

Katherine laughed at that, though the Captain didn’t understand why. He was merely thinking out loud and considering the logistics of a ghost who died at sea. If someone died on a boat, would he be confined to that boat for eternity? What if the boat sank, or was simply torn apart? And drowning victims, what would happen to them?

It was a shame that he couldn’t leave the grounds of Button House, it would be fascinating to learn about ghosts of all kinds.

“It’s a shame it’s only the nine of us,” he said wistfully, “it would be very interesting to hear the accounts of other ghosts.”

“Yes, it would,” Katherine agreed, “we could ask Alison to go out and find some others. She could interview them for us!”

“I doubt she’d be very keen to do that. She can hardly stand us alone, I’m sure in her time away she does not want to bother herself with more ghosts.”

Katherine stayed quiet for a moment too long, and the Captain, with shocking ease even to him, understood that he’d upset her with his words. He stuttered out a continuation of his explanation.

“By which I mean, Katherine, is that—uh—we can be quite the handful, and Alison may not want to take her attention away from us, particularly you, in favour of—of,” he struggled to come up with someplace another ghost might be, and gave up his search quickly, “it’s not to say she dislikes us, rather the opposite, of course.”

He could hear Katherine swallow heavily as she took in his words, and she accepted them with a nod and shaky, “of course.”

It then occurred to him that they’d been walking quite aimlessly down the corridors and were nowhere near where either of them frequented. He was sure that Robin’s bedroom was only a few doors away, and he did not want to subject himself to that sort of environment. He stopped abruptly in his tracks and it took Katherine a few more steps for her to realise his disappearance from her side. She turned to him.

“What?”

“Our bedrooms are up the other way. Why are we down here?”

It occurred to her then too where they were and she laughed. She turned and led the way for them to make their trip to the opposite end of the house together. They chatted with ease about nothing of worth, as much of the conversations within the house went, until they came upon first Katherine’s bedroom. She retired happily and the Captain continued on his merry way down to his own bedroom. He hummed the song they’d heard at the end of Titanic to himself as he walked and promptly got himself comfortable atop his bed. He pretended to ignore the chatter of ghosts who preferred to stay up later for a reason the Captain could not comprehend as he stared up at the ceiling.

He didn’t totally understand why he, or any of the others, as ghosts, required sleep, but he could not deny the way tiredness hung over his head by the time the sun sank below the horizon each night. The exhaustion was never a physical sensation—when he was alive, his joints would ache and his eyes would turn blurry if he lacked a satisfactory amount of sleep, but now, it was as if he were simply recalling those feelings and describing them to himself. And despite none of those feelings being real, he was quite programmed to believe that they were. It was hard to describe. It was the same sort of sensation as the way his knees would creak and crack when they bent in any dramatic way—there were no bones to actually be making the noise, but there was the memory of them and a memory that refused to banish itself from the Captain’s conscience.

He sighed, feeling the rumblings of some sort of emotional vulnerability coming in from the distance, and cursed them away at once. It was a regular part of his nightly routine. He lifted his swagger stick into the air, above his head, and pointed at a water stain on the ceiling. Steady, steady. He closed one eye and stared down the stick, forcing himself to focus on it more than anything else. His hand waved slightly in the air and the concentration it took to still it completely was the thing which scared the rumblings away for good. He hummed happily and lowered his stick back to rest upon his stomach, but did not look once away from the stain on the ceiling. He wondered vaguely if it had gotten larger since the last time he studied it—a mere twenty-four hours, but a lot could happen in a short amount of time such as that.

He was part of a damned World War, no one knew better than he how drastically things could change in a matter of a day. Perhaps others understood, but he felt special in his role somehow. It was the people who surrounded him. It was the men in his unit, training and bonding together, in a way the Captain had never observed in soldiers before. He attributed it to his own good leadership, allowing his men to feel secure enough that they could develop true friendships and keep morale very high. He himself had quite a true friendship for a time while stationed at Button House.

But it was useless to dwell upon the past in the way he was. All those men were dead, long dead just as he was, and he’d never see them again. As much as he’d like to return back to the early years of the War and shake those men’s hands again, it was impossible. He pointed his stick back up to the ceiling, focused, then lowered it again. This time, he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

The Captain was doing his usual rounds of the house, a leisurely walk around the very perimeter of the property Button House rested on. It was mid-November and there was a pre-winter chill in the air, felt in the same way he could feel tiredness or sore joints, though with each breath out, a mist gathered in front of his mouth. He’d stopped pondering the logistics of it long ago. His walk was a nice one, often claiming he was doing a simple survey of the house, keeping watch in case there was some sort of vagrancy or vandalism taking place on the grounds without Alison’s knowledge, but it was only a minor part of his walks. Really, the country was beautiful, and he never tired of the sunrise each morning. He’d stop at the lake, always timed just right enough that he could look over the water and observe the sunrise over its stillness. If he could, he would cry. He’d been dead for the better part of 80 years and not once did the sunrise over the lake fail to make him emotional.

Just as he was coming back to the main grounds within the gate, he caught Lady Button pushing herself up off the ground and dusting herself off, as if the dust on the ground could remain on her being for longer than fifteen seconds.

“Good morning, Fanny,” the Captain said politely as they matched strides and made their way inside together. It had become an unofficial part of their routine.

Inside, the rest of the ghosts were beginning to wake, though Alison and Michael were still fast asleep upstairs. At some point during the night, they’d made their way to their bedroom and awoken the Captain from his comfortable slumber in the process, and a part of him still cursed them for it. He could feel those fifteen minutes of lost sleep like a twenty-pound weight on his back. He gazed up at their bedroom window as he and Fanny approached the front door of the house, and wondered how long it would be until they’d be awake. It was a Saturday, so they’d undoubtedly sleep in later than they did on weekdays. He didn’t mind it much.

During the war, Saturdays were the only day the Captain would let his men sleep longer than usual, perhaps not an entirely good action on his part, but it definitely made him more likeable, and thus they became more receptive to his orders. Sure, he never allowed them to sleep much longer than an hour after sunrise, but the difference was felt. He wouldn’t let them sleep late on Sundays, however, opting to wake the house at its usual time and hold a brief Sunday Mass service, though the Captain was not Catholic himself. In those days, it was far more standard and expected for some sort of religious rituals to permeate every aspect of their lives, and he knew a great deal of the men in the unit were Catholic, so he put up with each makeshift service as best he could. It was perhaps the only thing he didn’t miss from his life.

Patrick and Katherine were already wide awake in the main living space when the Captain and Fanny entered, clearly waiting for the rest of the ghosts to arrive for their morning meeting. The Captain didn’t understand why Patrick absolutely insisted on a meeting each morning, but who was he to disobey orders? Lady Button took a seat on one of the couches and the Captain stood behind it, posture straight and with an impatient twist to his mouth. It was always a tossup as to how long they’d have to wait for the remaining ghosts to arrive. Tardiness was unacceptable in the Captain’s opinion. He remembered his childhood and how his emphasis on punctuality had been alive even then, as opposed to his family’s disregard for it. If they ever had to be anywhere at a certain time, he’d found his family would begin to be told the event began a half hour earlier than it did, and it resulted in plenty of near-breakdowns on the Captain’s part. In the war, the focus on punctuality was not only encouraged but enforced. The Captain would wake his men most mornings by waltzing down the hallway with a handheld bell in his hand, ringing the bell and shouting the wake-up call.

“You’re a well-loved captain, sir,” his lieutenant told him one afternoon in late-1939, not long after their being stationed at Button House, “but I’m not sure how much longer it will last if you continue nurturing your relationship with that bell.”

“We’re soldiers, lieutenant. Soldiers must make the most of every second of daylight we can get,” the Captain said, then added, “and moonlight.”

The Captain had caught a brief smile upon Havers’ lips then, and his heart skipped a beat knowing that he’d been the one to cause it. He looked away at once, not allowing any more amount of tenderness to leach into his heart than already had. They were at war—there was no room for tenderness, especially for his second in command. It was inappropriate and unprofessional, and above all, illegal. The Captain didn’t know what would have happened if he’d ever been found out, and it was one of the only areas of mystery he’d never given into the morbid curiosity of. It was illegal, and that was all he had to know. He’d lived quietly, keeping the romantic parts of him buried deep, close to his chest so that no one but he could ever sense it. It was the reason he’d joined the Army in the first place—it was not suspicious if he was a soldier and never married.

Thoughts of falling in love and running away had crossed his mind, of course, but with every year that passed, that childlike dream slowly faded away into nothingness. By the time of his death, any hope of falling in love was snuffed out completely, as if it had ever been alight in the first place. He’d died alone, unloved. It was something he was quite content with accepting, knowing that it was always the safest choice.

Times had changed since his death, of course they had, and he’d learned of all the progressions regarding deviant sexuality from Alison. She very obviously knew what he was and was not subtle with the way she tried to push him along, and he appreciated it greatly, of course he did, but there was still a voice in the back of his head telling him that he’d be arrested, dishonourably discharged and stripped of everything he’d ever worked for. He would be a disgrace to his country and never be allowed to show his face in public again. So, even in death, even under its security, even amongst a group of ten people who could not spread the news any further than the land Button House was on, he kept his secrets buried deep, never to be let out.

On Saturday mornings, the ghosts would gather and act out a continuation of Film Club from the night before—discussing the film, the actors, what they liked and didn’t like. The Captain himself kept quiet, indifferent to most of the films they watched, but listened keenly to what the others had to say about the films. After the meetings would disperse, the Captain would go off on his own and hold his own, secret extension of the extension of Film Club, where he’d walk the grounds mumbling about the music of the film. He took keen notes but they were disorganised in his mind and came out as mostly nonsensical rambling—his isolated extension of the club something he did for the good of the group as a whole.

Slowly, the room filled with ghosts, each varying degrees of unhappy to be awake, and the meeting commenced. Patrick would speak first, as always, “well, I think it’s a mighty good film. Great story, that Titanic was quite the beauty and I like to think Jack and Rose’s story could have really happened. So many people, so many faces, most of them dead… hard to tell what really could have happened or not!”

“Definitely could never happen,” Fanny shook her head confidently, “the classes were kept far from one another, no chance a lady of such refine could even glance at a boy of such… filth! The self-disrespect of that girl.”

“We’re the lines really so rigid?” Patrick questioned aloud.

“I had hoped so. Of course, I was never lucky enough to experience it myself.”

“Isn’t that kind of a good thing? I mean, considering it…” Patrick mimed a ship sinking with one arm as the ship and the other as the waterline, whistling a long falsetto as he did it. The Captain found the performance reasonably amusing.

God, they needed better entertainment.

“She was a beautiful ship. Those people should feel lucky to have gone aboard her, no matter what happened.”

A silence fell around the room and Patrick shifted awkwardly where he still stood before everybody. It surely was a strange position for Lady Button to take and nobody knew how to respond to it. The Captain just gulped. He thought of the man in his unit, the one who lost his father to Titanic, and how he would have felt after hearing Fanny’s statement, and decided he would have felt justified in his offence, and so the Captain felt justified in his offence. Eventually, Patrick looked around the room for another participant. A collective groan filled the room as Thomas volunteered himself to speak.

“The most beautiful love story I’ve ever laid my eyes on, in my opinion. It matters not whether first and third class passengers could fall in love, it matters that love can penetrate any divide between the two souls destined to be together. I’d know better than any of you,” Thomas chuckled pathetically, “though, I wonder how that poor woman stayed quiet of the whole ordeal for eighty-four years. If my heart was so full for another, I’d speak of nothing but them for the rest of eternity.”

“It was too painful for her, Thomas,” Katherine said, “the Captain and I spoke of it, actually, and we decided that love is about sacrifice and, uh…” she turned to him, lost on what her next word was.

“Uncomfortable,” he supplied, “love is uncomfortable.”

“Yes, that!” She smiled wide and turned back to the rest of the group, “not about big declarations and that.”

Following his brief addition to the conversation, the Captain fell back into his usual silence, listening intently to each ghost’s opinion on and interpretation of Titanic. The meeting only came to a close when floorboards and water pipes creaking upstairs announced Alison and Michael’s waking, and when Katherine bounded out of the room to wish Alison a good morning. Breakfast preparations were to be underway soon enough and the Captain knew his supervision would be sorely needed. He fell out from the group following the unofficial closing of the meeting and headed straight for the kitchen to await Alison, Thomas’ words echoing in his mind constantly.

Love can penetrate any divide between the two souls destined to be together.

The Captain desperately wished he could believe it in its entirety, its hopeful view of the human condition and its ability to love, but no matter how many times it repeated, the Captain simply could not believe it. He’d given up on the concept of soulmates, the idea that love held enough power that it could change the world, years and years ago, and still Thomas’ words instilled a foreign sense of hope in the Captain that he wished he could banish away with as much ease as his emotional vulnerability banishments at nighttime. It was worth a try, at least, and when Alison entered the kitchen, the Captain’s swagger stick was accidentally pointed directly at her like a gun. He apologised profusely and she insisted it was just fine.

What I Did This Week Club took place after sundown every Saturday evening, and it was the only club the Captain could say he hated and be entirely truthful as he did. It was a waste of everyone’s time—they were ghosts, it wasn’t as if they could do much of anything, so the club was more of a reminder of how incredibly monotonous and hellish their eternal purgatory was. Possibly the most interesting thing the Captain had ever shared was when he once met a little grey cat ghost on the perimeter of the property and stopped to pet her smooth fur for a short while. He’d never seen her again, no happiness in the afterlife seemed allowed to last much longer than an hour or two, at least for the Captain, but still held onto a bit of hope that she’d reappear. He’d named her Beatrice—the first name that came to his mind when he asked her, in an embarrassingly juvenile moment, what her name was.

The Captain thought back to Beatrice as he pretended to listen to Robin speak—grunt?—about what he did that week. Robin always had the most to say, always getting up to this or that and never seeming to lose his sense of wonder for the world. Oh, how the Captain wished he could be like Robin in that regard, he would be an incredible man, but he was not and never would be. There were moments that he did find wonder in the world—watching the sunrise over the lake, getting lost in the militaristic lives of ants in the garden outside—but it never was worth sharing. They were rather private moments that he liked to keep to himself. He couldn’t imagine inviting someone to see the sunrise with him, not even Lady Button, who he supposed was the only ghost in the house who would appreciate it just as much as he did.

Robin brought his dramatic retelling of his Wednesday actions to a close, then his Thursday actions opened. The Captain rolled his eyes and looked at the time on the clock in the room—nearing midnight. It was getting late. He was standing at the back of the group, no one but Robin could see him, and Robin wouldn’t care a bit if the Captain snuck off. So, he did. He silently stepped away from the rest of the ghosts gathered in the ballroom and phased through the nearest wall and began wandering the hallways, humming to himself, much happier doing it than listening to Robin ramble about which leaf he chased for an hour on Tuesday.

“… and I could really use your help here,” the Captain heard Michael say into the air as he passed the master bedroom, “so, if you could like… linger around tonight, that would be great.”

Michael fell silent. The Captain stopped first in the doorway of the room, then took a curious step in. He observed Michael silently and wondered whether or not Michael could have been damaging his eyes by staring up in the air so intensely for so long. The Captain racked his brain for some way to let Michael know he’d heard him, but couldn’t think of one. Mary most definitely did not want to be walked through at this hour, Robin was giving his talk, and Julian would most definitely sooner spend ten thousand years with Robin than five minutes with the Captain. He supposed his proximity alone would be enough for Michael to know he was there—many still-living people would comment on how they felt a presence when ghosts were in the room with them, why would it be any different for Michael?

“Great. Team ghosts-Mike for the win,” Michael nodded with a proud smile on his face.

“Oh, this is a team,” the Captain’s eyebrows raised high on his forehead and he twisted his swagger stick awkwardly, “alright, well, hold on, Michael. Let me gather more power. We didn’t win the war as just two men.”

The Captain at once rushed out of the room and back to the ballroom, not pausing to hesitate and wonder why Michael needed the ghost’s help, nor where in the world Alison was. Surely, if he needed the ghost’s help for whatever it was he was doing, he could have simply spoken to them through her. It was suspicious, of course it was, but the Captain didn’t care much. He was focused on gathering more members of the team for Michael, as was his job.

Just outside the ballroom, he stuck his head through the wall and announced with as much casual air as he possibly could, “Michael needs our help.” It was all he shared and all he needed to share. At once, Katherine stood and came to the Captain’s side, a concerned frown upon her lips. He attempted to ease her anxiety with a small smile. It worked, but only minutely. Following Katherine were Lady Button and Patrick, both more at ease than Katherine, curious more than anything. The Captain accepted that the remaining four likely would not care a bit for the issue at hand.

“Stand-by, Julian, we may need your help,” he called as he left, leading everyone away as if a shepherd. Julian groaned. Annoyed at the mere prospect of being disturbed, how mature. Ah, he shouldn’t have expected much of anything else—Julian acted horribly disturbed if someone merely asked him to, say, step aside because they were passing in the hallway. The Captain thought back to his monitoring of the party Julian had died during, and noted the way he’d groaned and moaned about a colleague requesting he move in his chair a smidge as they passed. Horrible manners, and yet the Captain still knew that Julian would indeed help if called to, but he would stomp his feet and complain the entire time. A strange man, he was. A strange man indeed.

Katherine spat out questions at a dizzying speed as the Captain led the team back to Michael and Alison’s bedroom. Lady Button and Patrick, particularly the latter, did their best to ease her tongue, but they had just as much information as she did, so many of their answers were extremely vague, but the Captain absolutely refused to contribute. Not only did he only have a minimum amount of information more than they did, but he didn’t see why he should add to the chaotic interrogation happening behind him. It would simply be meaningless noise.

He finally hushed the team when they reached Michael, still in the bedroom, but by that point Michael was no longer speaking to ghosts, rather rummaging through a bedside drawer searching for something.

“Oh,” Katherine sounded quite disappointed when they entered the room, “he’s okay.”

“Well, yes, of course he’s okay. I would have been a bit more frantic if he weren’t.”

“Why’d he need our help, then?” Katherine peeked into the drawer Michael was buried in. The Captain himself took a curious look but did not pry, sure that whatever was so important was also somewhat private. And while Patrick stood back to supervise, maybe await further instruction, Fanny located Michael’s lap-top computer open on the sofa and let out a surprised hum.

“I believe it must have something to do with this,” she announced, still staring at the screen.

The team gathered round her, peered down to the lap-top computer, and let the Captain read aloud, “3 Fool-Proof Ways to Summon the Dead.” The title was written in a blood red colour, the letters themselves sharp and unnerving to look at. The Captain did not appreciate the subtext behind choosing such a colour and font—the implication that ghosts were evil. He cursed whoever designed the title with a tsk and shake of the head.

“Summon the dead!?” Patrick repeated, “we’re already here, we don’t need summoning.”

“What if he’s summoning a ghost ghost?” Katherine’s voice was absolutely rife with anxiety, and the Captain sighed, dreading going through that lesson with her again.

“We’ve told you before, Kitty, there’s no such thing as a ghost ghost,” Patrick said.

“What else could he possibly be summoning, then?”

“Maybe it’s what he needs our help with.”

Michael then returned to the sofa and sat with a grunt. He’d retrieved a notebook and a pencil, the pencil broken with a jagged end so it was only a few inches long. He silently took the lap-top computer onto his knees and began copying something from it’s screen onto a page from his notebook. His penmanship was horrible, so much so that the Captain did not see any worth in attempting to make out the scratch. The four ghosts stood around Michael and watched him write, remaining curiously silent, until every word was copied down in messy silver pencil. When finished, Michael ripped the page from the notebook and waved the paper around in the air, staring up and straight through Fanny.

“Now, see this?” He held the paper still for a moment, as if any of them could decipher what it read, “all I need is for you all to hang around and not disturb me. Don’t try to flicker the lights or push any buttons, alright? Alright. Perfect.” He then brought his wrist out in front of his eyes with a flourish, “okay, almost midnight. Perfect.”

Michael stood and went to Alison’s vanity, where a previously unnoticed group of candles sat, which Michael slid off the edge and into a pouch he created by loosely folding his tee shirt at the stomach. He said to the air then, turning in the vague direction of the ghosts still silently observing his madness, “follow me.” The Captain cleared his throat somewhat casually when Michael hopped a slight bit to secure the candles in his shirt-pouch and a large portion of stomach, and thus stomach hair, became visible. He then turned around and made his way out of the room.

“Where in the world are we going?” Katherine followed after Michael quickly, close enough that she would be stepping on his heels if she could. Patrick and Lady Button followed her, then the Captain himself at the back of the line they’d accidentally formed.

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” Patrick said.

“I suppose we’re about to find out.”

“We do seem to be on quite the mission,” the Captain called from the back of the pack, “though I hope this does not go on too long. It’s nearly gone midnight.”

“Never seen a man with such determination,” Patrick shook his head. The line headed through the ballroom, and the Captain observed Robin still, just as enthusiastically as before, giving his recounting of his week.

“You should have seen some of the men I served with. Legs blown off and still taking Jerry down,” the Captain remembered, with a somewhat bittersweet lens over his eyes, his time fighting in Belgium, “Michael surely has the physique, but not the discipline a man should have.”

“But he’s not a soldier, is he now?”

“We should all be held to the same standards. Soldiers set the standard, all men—”

“Oh, please stop,” Katherine called, still following close behind Michael while they descended the stairs.

“Yes. Much more important matters at hand,” Fanny sighed heavily, “no fighting, I beg.”

“Yes, Fanny,” the Captain held off saluting. The remainder of the trip through the house was quiet, only the quick shuffling of Michael’s feet and confused humming from Katherine creating the illusion of activity. Their mission brought them right through the ground floor of the house into the kitchen. The ghosts gathered around one end of the long table and watched Michael organise himself at the other end. He dumped his collection of candles into a messy pile on the table then turned to the cupboard tucked into the corner of the room. “What in the world…” the Captain wondered aloud, to a chorus of agreement from the rest of his ghosts.

They stayed completely still, entirely entranced by Michael’s continuously baffling actions. The Captain wondered where Alison could possibly be, why wasn’t she putting a stop to this? Or, at the very least, giving some sort of explanation as to what was happening. Clearly, an explanation wasn’t totally necessary in Michael’s eyes, and it brought an uneasy sense of rage into the Captain’s chest. He was following orders, as always, as was expected of him, but he didn’t have the slightest clue what the orders were for—even in the military, the actions he undertook had some sort of clear reason behind them, however minor they were. This, whatever it was Michael had him doing, had no rhyme or reason to why the ghosts needed to be around. He seemed to think he was summoning something, that was guaranteed, but he’d summoned the ghosts well enough simply by asking them to help him. The only conclusion the Captain could come to was that Michael was attempting to summon some sort of demon, which the Captain highly doubted was real.

But, then again, he hadn’t believed in ghosts when he was alive, and there he was, standing in the kitchen of the house he’d died in nearly eighty years previously, aged not a second beyond the moment his heart had stopped beating. Demons could very well be real, and Michael could very well be putting the ghosts in unimaginable danger. The Captain didn’t dare share this theory, he knew it was both ridiculous and would likely lead to a week of terrified wailing from Katherine.

“Maybe he’s setting up a date for Alison,” Katherine suggested.

“It’s very late, Kitty. Too late for a date,” Lady Button said.

“Ha! That rhymed!” Patrick had a massive grin on his face as he looked around at each ghost in turn.

“Unintentionally a better poem than anything Thomas has ever written,” the Captain recognized his words as a joke, but didn’t laugh along with Patrick following it. Katherine looked at him with a nearly-offended frown.

“It’s not bad poetry. It’s only difficult to remember because he can’t write it down.”

“It was just a joke, but I’m sure you’re right,” he pretended to agree with her, patting her arm, “Thomas’ poetry cannot be discounted.” He doubted the poetry Thomas had written when he was alive was much better than the work he came up with in the afterlife, but he knew Katherine had a strange affection for Thomas that everyone knew better than to deny her. A schoolgirl crush, Patrick had called it.

He swallowed loudly, twisted his swagger stick in his fingers to prevent him from pointing steadily at one of the candles on the table. “I also doubt it’s a date. I haven’t seen Alison in a long while,” the Captain brought them back to Katherine’s previous suggestion, “not since shortly after lunchtime.”

“I’ll find her!” Katherine bounded out of the room at once, far too enthusiastic to care for anything but Alison once she was mentioned.

The remaining three stared at the doorway she disappeared through for a long while after she left, until the Captain cleared his throat and spoke again, “do you suppose Michael is doing something he’s not supposed to because Alison, perhaps, is not here?”

“Very likely,” Lady Button agreed, “we must find a way to contact her and warn her of what Michael is doing.”

“I doubt it’s anything too bad. I mean, look at him,” Patrick pointed at Michael clearing out the cupboard of various foods and boxes of tea, “there’s clearly no reason to think he’s doing something Alison wouldn’t approve of.” Michael’s actions were bizarre, but the Captain supposed Patrick was right—there didn’t seem to be any sort of poor intent behind the actions, only baffling.

“Remember last time he was left home alone? There were burgulars,” the Captain said, “I surely doubt any of us want that happening again.”

“He’s not going to burgle his own house, mate. I think he’s just fine as he is. We can just watch.”

“Much better entertainment than listening to Robin ramble about God knows what all night,” Lady Button finally contributed.

“Well…” the Captain shamefully admitted defeat, and once again they fell silent and watched Michael work. They still had not the slightest clue what Michael was doing, but now the Captain didn’t care much for the answer. He’d find out in due time anyway, but now he supposed Fanny was right. Anything was better than Robin’s stories at the end of each week.

Slowly, Michael emptied the cupboard of every ounce of nourishment it could provide, and placed a handful of candles within it on the shelves and another handful in a crescent around the doorframe. The Captain tried to warn him of the fire hazard, but realised following the warning that it was completely futile, and fell to the back of his group shamefully. Michael stepped into the cupboard and lit each of the candles carefully, and in order to continue observing the show, the ghosts shuffled to the other side of the room and stood in front of the cupboard, still staring curiously. Michael then sat on the dusty floor and lit the candles that surrounded him.

“Alright. Mission Ghost-Vision-Mike underway,” Michael nodded proudly and took a quick look of his surroundings. The Captain kept a keen eye on the lit candles on the shelves behind Michael to be sure they didn’t light anything on fire, as if he’d be able to prevent any damage being done.

Michael took his notebook page from his pocket and shifted so light from the candle flames shone upon it. At the same time, Katherine, from somewhere distant in the house, called for Patrick.

“Oh, just as it’s getting good,” Patrick groaned unhappily but went to Katherine without any sort of hesitation in his step, calling back to her as he exited the kitchen, “what is it, Kitty?”

“A team of two is better than one, I suppose?” The Captain suggested to Lady Button, and was only met with a curt nod of agreement. He didn’t expect her to fully agree with his statement, he rarely did himself, but he mostly wanted her to stay so he could have someone with him in case Michael did indeed summon some sort of demon.

“Okay,” Michael said and cleared his throat, effectively getting both ghosts’ attention, and they watched as he read from the page held awkwardly ahead of him so it caught light, “I am aware of every creak. In the distance, I hear each shriek.”

“What, me?”

The Captain shushed her.

Michael continued reading, “Time has bled in the world of the dead, and as I live I plead—plead? Pled?”

“Oh, this is just awful,” Fanny rolled her eyes. The Captain had to agree.

“As I plant this seed—oh, it is plead. Alright,” Michael shifted on the floor and started over shamelessly, “I am aware of every creak. In the distance, I hear each shriek. Time has bled in the world of the dead, and as I live, I plead. As I plant this seed, make me unblind, grow to a cavern in my mind, in which our worlds become entwined…”

“This is ridiculous,” Fanny shook her head and left without another second of hesitation.

“Well—I—Fanny, no, I’m—” the Captain’s attempt to make her stay fell through as soon as he opened his mouth, and accepted as soon as she left the kitchen that it was now, once more, a one-man team. He listened to the words Michael continued to speak:

“… grow to a world where I take up stead, finding purpose for those already dead. Understand me, though I may be weak, and those I summon may be ‘tique, and with these sacred words I speak, please bring forth the spirit I seek.”

The Captain cringed at the poem, but understood what Michael was doing. He was, once again, trying to see ghosts with his strange Internet strategies. The Captain couldn’t quite wrap his head around why Michael thought this would work, when the strategies he’d previously employed hadn’t either, nor why Michael looked up into the air as if expecting to actually see a ghost.

“Is anybody there?”

“I’m afraid nobody but me.”

There were a few beats of still-expectant silence from Michael, and soon enough his shoulders deflated with disappointment. He looked around the room for any kind of answer to his so-called problem, then around behind him to the shelves in the cupboard.

“Oh!” Michael stood in a hurry, an excited hop to his step suddenly, “maybe if I don’t see it open, it’ll work.” The Captain still didn’t move from where he stood, but watched Michael continue to work. Michael blew out the candles on the floor and moved them out of the way, maybe only a yard-or-so, so that he could close the door of the cupboard, lit candles still burning within. It seemed very dangerous. But, then again, summoning a ghost seemed fairly dangerous.

The Captain wondered what results exactly Michael had in mind as he half-listened to the second reading of the poem. Did he expect to somehow summon a ghost who already inhabited the house? How would that work, would they move from the ballroom upstairs directly to the kitchen cupboard downstairs in an instant? Did Michael even have a specific ghost in mind? The poem he’d found, regardless of how mindless the words actually were, clearly implied Michael would need to have a ghost he sought out to see specifically for it to work—not that it would work at all. Who would Michael want to see first, if the poem did work? Perhaps Julian, he did hear the most of Julian’s goings-on in the house from Alison, maybe he’d want to see it for himself firsthand, before he saw any of the other ghosts.

The Captain knew very well he’d be quite happy never having met Julian in the first place. The man was far too in-your-face, as Alison put it, for comfort. He thought of other ghosts who weren’t so in-his-face, and none of them quite were. All the ghosts in the house were very loud, very impatient in ways the Captain disliked. He could only recall one person he’d ever met who was like him: patient, with an appreciation for quiet and punctuality, who knew his morals well enough to know his judgement of others were well-placed. Kind, dark eyes, a crooked smile and smooth voice, broad shoulders and a neck the Captain wanted nothing more than to bury his face into.

He realised too late that he’d let his mind drift, and to come back to reality, he pointed his swagger stick, steady, steady, at the door handle of the cupboard still containing lit candles. A horrible fire hazard, and slowly the Captain came back to reality.

“… please bring forth the spirit I seek,” Michael finished speaking again, and for a moment nothing happened. The Captain was ready to retire to bed, but once he lifted his foot to begin his departure, the air in the room shifted. A bright light shone from the cracks between door and frame, lighting the floor a deep orange and gold. It seemed as though a chorus of angels sung as the light grew and grew, brighter and brighter, behind the door, within the cupboard with the candles. There was warmth, a genuine warmth that the Captain could actually feel on his face, that radiated from the door. It was an addictive warmth—though he supposed all warmth would be, considering he hadn’t felt it in the better part of a century. The warmth landed on his face and seemed to seep into his skin, filling his entire body with it, and it made him shake.

It all was over just as quick as it began.

Michael hadn’t moved. He stood in front of the cupboard, still staring at it expectantly. He looked around him awkwardly, stared straight through the Captain, so subsided the brief fear that Michael had unintentionally brought him back to life, then reached for the handle of the cupboard. The Captain stepped forward, shaking, wondering what possibly could have happened behind the door that left him feeling actual warmth for those few seconds of, if he were faced with it without any barrier, blinding light. Something must have happened.

Michael opened the door casually, clearly expecting nothing to have happened—so the light and warmth was only visible to the Captain—and the Captain felt his stomach drop when what was inside was revealed. There was a figure, not much taller than himself, that when he heard the door creak open, looked up and the Captain met his eyes. Those kind, dark eyes.

The Captain left the kitchen at once, before he fully could gather who he’d seen.

The night passed and the Captain did not sleep a wink. He laid on the floor beside his bed, silent, away from the door and completely still. He looked ridiculous, he knew that without a doubt, but it was a worthy sacrifice if it meant those kind, dark eyes didn’t lay upon him again. At points, it became tempting to shuffle beneath the bed and hide under it for the rest of time, until every other one of the ghosts forgot about him and moved on into the next afterlife and he would never have to see any of them again, but he supposed it would be too dramatic a reaction. He was a grown man, after all, not a child. Only a child would dream of hiding beneath a bed from possibly the only person he ever—perhaps loved was a strong word. Did the Captain ever love anybody?

He loved his mother, that was certain. And his sister, he supposed, though they often had their moments of contention. But those were a different sort of love, not the sort he reserved for potential lovers. Potential was a very hopeful word. They’d known one another for hardly a year by the time they were separated, and any chance the Captain had of ever expressing his affection was nonexistent—it was far too dangerous in every sense of the word.

But there was something he felt. Be it love or a mere schoolgirl crush, he wasn’t sure. He never had the time to figure it out properly, wasn’t born in the right time to do anything about it if he had. But he knew there was something in his heart for that man, something that made his mouth go dry and his hands begin to shake nervously. When he met those eyes, something made his knees weak, his head began to spin and an urge to laugh at nothing clawed at his throat, and those sensations all came rushing back the moment Michael opened that damned cupboard door. Sensations the Captain never thought he’d experience again—he hoped he’d never experience again. Only that man downstairs—it hurt to even say his name—had ever made him feel that way, and the Captain hated it. He hated that feeling more than any feeling he’d ever experienced before. It, to him, only meant grief and heartbreak and painful nights alone staring at his ceiling as he waited for the hours to slowly tick by.

He thought of those nights, exactly like the one he was playing on the floor then, sleepless as he thought of the man only a few doors away. He dreamed of being able to creep over to that room and crawl into that bed with him, share their warmth beneath thin military-provided blankets. He pondered the feel of arms around his body, strong arms, with dark hair running down to the backs of hands, which the Captain would hold close to his heart. Their hearts would beat in tandem, of course they would, and he’d feel a calm, even breath against the back of his neck. But those nights were distant dreams, long forgotten as the years wore on, impossible to act out even when he was alive, and yet they all came flooding back. He tried his damndest to banish the dreams, risking revealing himself by pointing, steady, steady, at the water stain on the ceiling, but they absolutely refused to leave him.

That man left him. When the Captain was falling head-first, his affections growing with every passing moment, every second they spent in one another’s company, becoming something closer to friends than mere soldiers stationed in the same house, that man left him. It was a betrayal more than anything else. The Captain knew it was their duty to serve their country, but could Havers not have accepted fully his position at Button House? Was he not satisfied with the work they were doing, with the friendship they were building? What could the Captain have done, if anything, to stop such a deep heartbreak from tearing him apart limb-from-limb?

Oh, he knew good and well these were inappropriate thoughts to let plague his mind, if not then where he laid on the floor, then especially during the war itself, but he couldn’t help it. Havers was never his, it was a fact that he was reminded of at every waking moment, but he could almost never accept it in its entirety. It was inevitable that they’d leave one another, they’d be restationed or they’d be sent out to fight on the front lines—a relationship that would never be broken was impossible to achieve, and the Captain let his affection cloud his vision. It was pathetic and embarrassing, the last thing any good captain should have let happen, and it hung over him like a storm cloud at every waking moment. Of all the things he did in the war, allowing himself to feel that sense of attachment, of longing for something more from his lieutenant, was the thing he regretted most.

And that damned lieutenant felt it acceptable to appear in Button House without any sort of warning and without any sort of way for the Captain to escape. It was unfair. The Captain had been left in the first place, abandoned in that very house, and God was playing a cruel trick on him by not allowing him to get his revenge. As if he’d ever be able to bring himself to act out revenge against Havers—he’d never hurt that man if he was paid a million pounds to do it.

It was 0200 hours when the Captain realised he’d been using Havers’ name. He cursed himself and whacked his forehead gently, still staunchly refusing to make any noise. It was after this that, from elsewhere in the house, frantic shuffling and shouting came alive, all voices excited and confused and evidently having discovered those kind, dark eyes that haunted the Captain. Katherine was particularly excited and the Captain listened affectionately, hoping her enthusiasm would be the thing to distract him from his dread, but the nature of it only brought the dread on heavier than before. He then strained his ears to listen for Julian, presuming he’d be the least interested in the situation, but he was nearly just as loud as Katherine. He shouted accusations of trespassing and fuelled Mary’s own of witchcraft, of some sort. The Captain didn’t understand how anyone but Michael could be accused of witchcraft that night.

At 0300 hours, the chaos quieted down, and Patrick sent everybody off to bed. The Captain was the most relieved that, in the midst of all the drama, it didn’t occur to anyone that he was gone, but such a disappearance only meant that it would be extremely apparent when they all woke in the morning. Maybe the Captain could sneak off and spend the rest of his afterlife in the forest, searching for little Beatrice until the world imploded in on itself. It seemed quite the plan, though quite a bit cowardly, and would require movement, and thus noise, and so the Captain remained silent and completely still on his bedroom floor.

“Mike!”

At some point in the night, the Captain must have fallen asleep. He awoke with a start before the sun had risen to Alison shouting. It took him a moment to remember where he was and why, and what Alison could possibly be so angry about, and when his mind decided to ease his confusion, he dropped his head back onto the floor and it met hard wood with a thump. He often forgot that things like that could happen, and rubbed the spot he’d hit with a cringe.

“Michael!”

Alison’s voice carried very well through the house. The Captain could hear her stomping through the lounge downstairs and up the stairs, and only when she came to the second floor could the Captain hear two more pairs of footsteps, along with anxious sputtering from Patrick. He presumed Patrick had stayed awake all through the night with their new housemate, awaiting Alison’s arrival so that they could ambush her in just the same way the Captain had been only hours previously. He could not believe it was only, what, some five hours since he’d left that kitchen and laid on his floor, hiding away from everybody in the hopes they’d forget him completely.

“Mike! Wake up, for God’s sake!” Alison could now be heard through the heating vents through the house, one in particular placed perfectly beside the Captain’s head so that he could hear exactly what she was saying with relative ease, if only Patrick would shut up. He almost wanted to shout such a demand, but it would reveal his disappearance and it would guarantee every single ghost in the house beginning a search to find him.

“Ali—what—what time is it?” Michael asked. His voice was hoarse with sleep.

“It doesn’t matter what time it is,” Alison was not quite as sympathetic to Michael’s slumber than she should have been, “may I ask you what you did while I was out last night?”

“I dunno. Watched some TV, went to bed.”

“Okay. And nothing to do with the ghosts?”

Michael didn’t respond.

“Did you summon a ghost?”

“What?”

“Because I came home and sitting on the couch downstairs was Pat and some other ghost I’ve never seen before and Pat is saying he was summoned somehow and you’re the only possible person who could have done that, unless Pat is wrong and you somehow missed someone getting stabbed to death on our property last night.”

“I—I don’t know—” Michael was suddenly much more awake than he was before, “I—I might have found a bit of a spell online, but I didn’t think it would do anything.”

There was a long pause of shocked silence. The Captain somehow knew that Alison thought she was losing her mind—a lack of adequate sleep, and all that.

“A spell,” Alison repeated, so quiet the Captain nearly couldn’t hear her, “a spell. You found a spell online and you—you what? What was your goal?”

“I just wanted to see the ghosts. I thought it would work. Reveal the spirit I seek, it said. Something like that.”

“Good God, Mike,” Alison groaned, “I can’t believe you. I’m… I want to talk about this later.” She paused and presumably turned to Patrick, “wake all the ghosts. Get them up, meeting in the ballroom right now. I don’t care what any of them have to say about it, we’re meeting.”

“Roger that, Alison,” Patrick accepted her orders and, the Captain could hear him leave the room, said, “come with me, Willy. Fair warning: Fanny is not fun in the morning. Don’t get on her bad side.”

The Captain sucked in a breath as he heard their footsteps grow nearer to his bedroom. He shuffled closer to the bed beside him and noticed the way the first few inches of his left side began phasing into the frame, and just hoped to God Patrick would not come into the room. He supposed that, around that time of morning, if it were a normal morning, he’d be doing his usual rounds of the property, so Patrick likely wouldn’t bother trying to wake him anyway. It didn’t seem Patrick was stepping into any bedroom, considering the speed he called each name with, which was a relief, and a greater relief when he didn’t call out for the Captain’s appearance.

The sky outside was rapidly turning from an inky black to gentle indigo as the sun began to rise, and the Captain knew that soon enough his absence would be realised and somebody would have to retrieve him. He’d have to reveal why he did not want to leave his room ever again, that he’d rather watch his own dead body be rolled out of the house a thousand times over than ever come face-to-face with that man again, and he’d become the laughing stock of Button House. He’d existed for eighty years in their eyes as an honourable soldier, a man who’d fought Nazis hand-to-hand for his country—he was not someone who held a childish crush to his chest and hid because he was embarrassed of said crush for an entire night. It was humiliating to even think about. He couldn’t overcome that level of humiliation if given a century to do so.

Grumpy stomping from ghosts filled the house with noise as they were all awoken earlier than they’d ever wished, particularly from Robin and Julian. The Captain listened to them complain together and yet not hesitate on their way to the ballroom. The Captain then, quite horrified to realise he’d forgotten, listened to Lady Button creep through his bedroom and be thrown out the window, her scream echoing far and wide, waking even birds outside, and cursed himself that he’d somehow forgotten the fact that they’d always make their way inside together following Fanny’s defenestration and the Captain’s surveillance. He hoped she’d forgotten about their routine in the excitement of the night previous. He hoped she understood, without explicit disclosure, that the real purpose of his morning walks was to observe the sun as it rose over the horizon, and that she supposed that particular morning had a particularly beautiful sunrise that he could not drag himself away from. It was very, very hopeful.

He listened to her carefully and noted her curious hum before another of acceptance, and then to her quickly make her way upstairs for the meeting. Not a single person, other than Lady Button, seemed to notice the Captain’s absence, and so nobody mentioned it, and so the meeting opened almost immediately.

“Okay!” Alison had clearly gotten into the habit of shouting to get the ghosts attention, though it was not necessary that morning because of their early-morning disturbance, “I want to get some things straight. I come home from a night out, away from all the chaos of this house and these ghosts, and I come home to find another one on my couch.”

“Very right.”

“Good observations.”

“This is pointless.”

“It is not pointless, because, if I recall correctly, I was once informed that ghosts stay where they die, so I’m wondering where in the world you came from.”

“Erm, Nottingham.”

The Captain’s breath caught in his throat at the sound of that voice, that wonderful voice. It had been eighty years since he last heard it, and despite all the stress the thought of it had caused him in just the last few hours, a wave of pure joy and calmness overcame him. Eighty years and that voice still had all the powers it did when they were alive. It took everything in the Captain not to completely melt into the floor.

“It was a rhetorical question, thank you,” Alison said, presumably with a pointed nod and eyes closed in frustration, “what I mean is, there are nine of you usually here and—” she paused for a minute, “nine—I only count eight. We’ve got Humphrey. Where’s…”

“I’ll find him!” Katherine volunteered at once. The Captain groaned. He began to panic as time quickly ran out. What would he do? What would he say? Was it smarter to attempt to get on top of his bed at this rate, or try to explain away his current position on the floor when Katherine inevitably found him? His legs itched for him to stand. But he didn’t, he could not bring himself to move. He could barely blink. Katherine skipped happily down the hallway directly to his bedroom, as if she knew where he was from the very beginning.

He chose to close his eyes and pretend to be asleep.

The skipping stopped at once as Katherine entered the Captain’s bedroom and she called out for him.

“Captain!” She hummed between each word, “Captain! Where are you, we’re looking for you. Captain! Cap—oh, hello. What are you doing down there?”

The Captain tried to make the opening of his eyes as natural as possible, but he sensed that even Katherine couldn’t believe his acting for a second. He blinked a few times and pretended to take in his surroundings, looking at her standing at his feet finally. “Ah! Good morning, Katherine,” he said, as if shocked, “I haven’t missed Fanny’s wake-up call, have I?”

“You have,” she told him, “why are you laying on the floor?”

“Am I?” He looked down and pretended to be taken aback by the dark floorboards beneath him, “oh, I wouldn’t know why I’m laying on the floor. Is there something you needed?”

“Yes, in fact there is!” She fell for his changing of the subject very easily, “we’re right in the middle of a meeting, actually, and you need to be there.”

The Captain lifted himself to his feet, “what about?”

“Well,” Katherine smiled wide, determined was she to build suspense, “there’s a new ghost! Alison is trying to figure out where he came from and how he got here.”

“Seems a matter I’m not actually required to be there for. I’ve got to do my rounds now, Katherine, but thank you for thinking of me,” the Captain stepped around her, excusing himself to disappear for the foreseeable future and beyond. She grabbed his forearm and stopped him before he could leave, however, and he turned to her like a child caught stealing sweets from the shops.

“It’s a new ghost, that’s very exciting! Come on, you must attend for that alone. It’s a whole new friend to make!” She tugged on his arm, then lowered her voice and leaned in, “and he’s very handsome.”

The Captain chuckled at that, staring down at his boots in a pathetic attempt to hide his smile, “I’m very well aware of that, thank you.”

“How?” Katherine’s grip on his arm loosened slightly but she still did not let go. He looked up from his boots slowly, not quite realising what he said until he saw the confusion on Katherine’s face. When the words he spoke echoed in his mind, his stomach dropped and he knew that, if it could, all the colour would have drained from his face. The horror set it quickly. He shook Katherine’s hand from his arm but did not run—rather took a seat at the edge of his bed and stared at the floor.

“Do you promise not to tell anyone this?”

Katherine sat next to him. He saw her nod in the peripheral of his vision.

“I… I—well,” he couldn’t figure out quite what to say, “I know that ghost. We were alive at the same time.”

“Oh! He’s already your friend! Oh, that’s wonderful, you must come out and say hello.”

The Captain shook his head, more of a twitch than anything, “I can’t do that.”

“Why not? If there was a ghost of somebody I knew when I was alive, I’d say hello to them immediately.”

“It’s rather not quite like that, Katherine, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

“I don’t understand.”

The Captain brought in a long, deep breath and let it out slowly. He avoided her eyes but could feel her staring at him still—a kitten staring at a toy it could not comprehend. How appropriate. He twisted his swagger stick in his fingers and cleared his throat finally, nervously, “You’re aware of my…” he wasn’t sure how else to phrase it, “abnormality, correct?”

“I still don’t enjoy you referring to it as that, but yes, I do.”

He stayed quiet for a few more moments and allowed her to put together the pieces he’d laid out. Anything to not admit it aloud.

“Oh!” She was slightly too loud for his liking, “sorry. Oh, Captain, did you love him?”

“Love is a strong word, but I suppose in the absence of a better one…”

He could almost hear her grinning ear-to-ear. “Did he love you back?”

“I don’t—well, it’s—it’s—I’m not…” he fell quiet again, composing his thoughts before he spoke words that he would regret, as though any word he shared he wouldn’t regret, “it was illegal, anyway, so it didn’t matter how he felt about me, but, no. He didn’t love me.”

“Oh,” Katherine deflated, disappointed, “I see. I wouldn’t want to see a ghost who didn’t love me in return, either.”

“Yes. Which is why I’m staying in this room for the rest of my life—er, afterlife and never speaking to him ever.”

Katherine was silent for a long while. The Captain, with each second which ticked by, became more and more fearful of what she was thinking. He wasn’t sure why, it wasn’t as if Katherine were capable of hurting a fly, she didn’t have a mean bone in her body, but somehow her silence filled the Captain with terror. She was not mean, but she was capable of unintentionally hurting others, and that was what he was scared of. He didn’t want her coming up with some plan to… reunite the Captain and Havers, force them to fall in love, and he didn’t want to face the pain that would follow him in the following decades, nor did he want that kind of weight on Katherine’s shoulders. She had good intentions, of course she did, but she understood when she did wrong, and the Captain did not want to be the source of the pain she would feel.

He slowly looked up at her.

“It’s been years since you’ve seen him.”

“1940.”

“Yes, exactly. That’s an entire lifetime, for some people. Maybe you’re no longer in love with him.”

“I don’t want to test those waters.”

“You have to leave this room sooner or later, Captain,” she stood with an air of finality, a sudden burst of confidence and maturity in her that filled the Captain with pride, “and I’m choosing now. You’ll be just fine. I doubt he’ll remember you.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“Sorry,” she took his hand and stood him up, “I can hold your hand for the meeting. I can be your… oh, that thing Mike was talking about weeks ago, for Alison.”

The Captain thought back to what she could have possibly been thinking of, and it became the first time in hours that he wasn’t picturing Havers’ face in his mind. He had to commend Katherine for managing that, at least. But what she was referencing did not come to him.

“My apologies, I don’t know what you’re…”

“It doesn’t matter. It will come to me eventually, I’m sure,” she swung their hands back and forth, “I can be there to support you, is what I mean.”

“Do I have much choice in the matter?”

“None,” she smiled when she said it, and the Captain couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him. He found himself following in her wake with hardly any difficulty at all, his legs not as wobbly as he thought they would be, and yet the closer they came to the casual chatter of the ballroom, the more and more nervous he became. But he continued on, ignoring the way his legs became more and more weak with each step he took, and the way his mind shouted at him to leave, leave, leave.

Somehow, Katherine’s reassurance that she’d support him through the meeting kept him going.

They entered the ballroom together, Katherine still pulling the Captain behind her, and a great portion of the ghosts—those who did not mind being awoken at such an early hour—cheered for their arrival. Havers sat in a chair with his back to the door, and when he turned to see what all the celebration was about, the Captain met those kind, dark eyes and he felt very sick all of a sudden. And yet still, he continued on further into the room, pulling his gaze away from Havers and desperately trying to ignore the way he was watched by those kind, dark eyes as Katherine led him to the spot they’d stand at.

“Apologies for the tardiness, Alison,” the Captain said in as neutral a tone he could muster, “I suppose trying to let myself sleep a smidge longer this morning was a tad too successful.”

“Yeah, well, you’re here now,” Alison waved him off.