“What do you want me to find here?” William tried again. “This well?”
Still, they didn’t answer. Not because they were ignoring him. It was worse. One of the phantoms opened their mouth wide, lips cracking, skin splitting like the seams of old clothes, and revealed a bloodied stump between their jaw.
Whatever had happened to them, whatever horror they’d experienced, was right before William.
Their tongues were missing. A gargled, wet sound broke free of their chests. It was all desperation and pleading. William wanted to clap his hands over his ears to stifle it. But he couldn’t bring himself to move.
A distant bang sounded at his back. Blood drained from his body, and he spun around, his eyes settling in the direction of the noise. He expected another spirit to have joined this strange party, but no one was there.
Only the gatehouse. The noise had come from inside it – as if someone was there, beckoning him.
“Edward!” William exhaled, the two spirits no longer on his mind.
In response, the thumping sound came again. An answer to a call.
William waded back through the overgrown weeds towards the stone building. His mind told a story about what must’ve happened after Edward tried breaking into his car. Maybe he had seen the spirits as well, got spooked and hid from them.
Hehadto be inside. William practically knew it as a fact as he ran around the building. The windows were dirtied from time; the glass weathered so poorly that he couldn’t see inside, even if he wanted to.
William didn’t bother to knock before opening the front door – it was his property, after all.
The gatehouse was shrouded in shadows, the only light coming from the beams that made it through the dirtied windows. William cast his eyes around the overturned furniture and the leaf-strewn ground until his eyes settled on the body on the floor.
Laid out on his stomach, the back of his head matted with blood, his once-white T-shirt now splattered brown, was Edward.
Time stood still as if the universe took a breath in and refused to let it out.
William threw himself to the ground, knees cracking against the harsh stone slabs. Before his hands could touch Edward, he paused. Besides the wound on the back of his head, there was no saying what other issues affected him. Williamhadto be careful.
Time resumed when Edward slowly lifted his head and met William’s panicked, tired gaze.
“Oh, my God, Edward. You’re alive.”
Out of all the things he expected him to reply, what came out of his cracked lips was not one of them. “You need to. Get out. Of here.”
“Fuck that,” William snapped, gathering Edward up, helping him turn his body until his cracked head was laid out on his lap. “We need to call an ambulance… what the hell happened, Edward?”
“Hell… exactly.” He expelled a groan just from the slightest of movements. “I didn’t see them. I was attacked. Run, Will. Leave – ah. Go. Hanbury will–”
“Shh. Just slow down,” William begged, hyper aware of how slow Edward’s heartbeat felt as he clutched his hand to his chest. “You’re not making much sense.”
William had to stop Edward from lifting trembling fingers to his head. From the angle William had him at, there was no ignoring the nest of blood and tangled hair. He couldn’t see through the mess to know just how bad the wound was.
“I told you – go.”
“What do you mean you were attacked?”
“There’s no time to explain… they’re going to come back,” Edward said, drawing William out of the trance the wound had put him under. “Please, go. Go. Go…”
Edward broke down with every word spoken, his tongue filling his mouth until he sounded drunk.
The car – the one he watched drive away. “Who? Who’s coming back?”
Edward’s face screwed up, the shadows beneath his eyes so prominent they looked like fresh bruises. No, they were bruises. His face was covered in them, the perfectly lined crack over his bottom lip as anger as the mark on his skull.
“I didn’t see. I don’t… I don’t know. But I heard them talking aboutyou. I thought they’d…” Frantic hands reached up and grasped at William, fingers pinching into flesh, just to prove how panicked Edward was.
“Thought they’d what?”
