The Old Straight Track, Part 3
Part 1
Part 2
Frank falls back out of the dream feeling better than he has in weeks, and he thinks it's the happy sated feeling, and that was just really ridiculously hot and strange but so, so good. Gerard smiles before he opens his eyes and reaches out for Frank. And then Frank's bliss vanishes because Gerard looks wretched, alarmingly pale with dark circles under his eyes. He looks like he hasn't slept in weeks. Frank backs up, backs away, and Gerard is still smiling, though he winces when he sits up.
"Frank? I know you're there," he says. He swings his feet over the bed and is all unsteady. "Thanks," he says shyly, and then stumbles into the bathroom.
Frank is suddenly afraid that he’s not really doing Gerard any good. Sure, he can try to protect him from the bad spirit, but Frank doesn’t really have that much power, to protect Gerard from whatever it is that makes Bob sound so apprehensive, so tight-voiced and sober.
Frank’s not helping, and maybe he’s making Gerard weaker. He remembers what Schechter said - any contact with a spirit is draining your energy. Spending too much time with that will make you the same. If Frank stays here, he’s eventually only going to make Gerard like he is, lost and groundless, a pointless existence with no way out. Frank can’t let that happen to Gerard.
Frank follows Gerard downstairs. Bob’s drinking coffee from a travel cup and he hands one to Gerard, and he grabs Gerard under the chin for a minute and looks at him, turning his face from side to side like a mom checking to make sure her kid has washed. He lets Gerard’s chin go, and then beckons him over to his equipment, like he’s going to show Gerard some readings, but then he says, in a hushed voice, “Has Frank tried to contact you? Have you spoken to him?” Gerard startles for a moment, and Frank wonders how much Bob can divine about what happened from just how Gerard looks.
“Did you find something out?” Gerard asks, instead of answering. He looks happy that Bob’s talking about Frank like he’s a real person, not using air quotes around his name or anything or making fun of Gerard.
“Just the beginning of a theory,” Bob says.
“Are you going to tell me the theory? This is my haunted house.” Gerard tries to be defiant, but he looks too weak, too hollow around his cheeks, dark shadowed eyes, and Frank hangs on the word haunted. Gerard does look haunted.
“If you tell me whether you talked to Frank last night,” Bob says, a stretch of a smile of defiance.
Gerard deflates. “How do you know?”
“It’s hard to explain,” Bob says. “I don’t know, that’s the real answer. I just thought that might explain some of the data. And,” Bob hesitates, “The way you look.”
Bob answer is confirmation enough for Frank that this was Frank’s fault. Gerard rubs his hand over his face. “What?”
“Gerard, you look like shit,” Bob says. “And I bet you don’t feel any better.”
Gerard looks about to protest and then he stops. “Yeah, but it was such a great night,” he says, and then stops. Frank wants to tell Gerard to tell Bob all of it, because if it’s his fault that Gerard looks like this, if he’s putting Gerard in danger than he should be sent to wherever it is he’s supposed to have gone. Even if it means leaving Gerard.
There’s a flicker on Bob’s face but he doesn’t say anything, just waits for Gerard to continue.
Gerard sighs and takes a long sip of his coffee. “It was a dream,” Gerard says, and then sips more of his coffee before continuing. “Except, it was - well, it had to have been a dream, because I was asleep, and there were all those things that always happen in dreams, where you’re talking in metaphors and time moves fast in ways that wouldn’t make sense otherwise.”
“And Frank was in this dream?” Bob asks.
Gerard nods. “Frank was the dream. He and I - “ Gerard starts to color a little bit.
“You slept together,”
“No!” Gerard says, loud enough to make Schechter look over. Bob waves him away.
“Hey, sorry, I’m not saying anything about your virtue or whether you’re an easy first date or anything,” Bob says.
“We just kissed,” Gerard says after a moment, and Frank can’t help but remember, let his mind wander over how it felt. When he looks up at Gerard, though, at how worn he is, the thought deflates. “But it felt like - “
“Sex,” Bob finishes for him. Gerard nods. “Yeah, ok. And have you and Frank - “
“No!” Gerard says again, and this time both Ray and Schechter look over.
“But you’ve communicated, other ways.” Gerard nods again. “Ok, I need to do some research,” but Gerard stops him with a hand on his arm.
“You said, if I told you, you’d tell me your theory.”
Bob cracks a smile. “That’s right, I did,” he says. “Ok, then, well here’s my theory, and do me a favor and don’t tell the rest of the gang here. I don’t like to spout theories without more research, but you deserve to know what I’m thinking, even if it turns out later that I’m wrong. And that could happen, ok?”
Gerard agrees, and Bob says, “I think your Frankie here is drawing energy from contact with you. The more intimate, the more energy.”
Gerard’s face is wide open with shock. He whispers, harshly, “Are you saying you think Frankie is….an incubus?”
Frank is horrified. He’d guessed, especially after this morning, that he was taking something from Gerard, but if he’d been doing it all along, but from the very first day Gerard was here - if he’d been existing be feeding off of Gerard, taking his life from him - the thought is repulsive. And the more intimate, the more energy, it meant that he - that the reason he felt so incredible when he was that close to Gerard wasn’t just because it was sex, it was because he was tapping into Gerard like he was some sort of battery.
Bob kind of shrugs and holds his hands up at the same time. “Sort of,” Bob says, but that’s all.
Gerard looks positively insulted. “That’s not - Frank’s not like that.”
Bob just shrugs. “I said I’m not sure what exactly’s going on, now don’t get mad or hit me or something for insulting your boyfriend. It’s just a theory. I’ve got to go do some research,” Bob says. “You call me if you hear from Frank, ok? Otherwise, I’ll be back this afternoon.”
Frank does his best to stay away from Gerard for the rest of the afternoon, hiding upstairs in the guest room, watching out the windows, going downstairs when Gerard comes up, as though by staying as far away as possible he could make up for what he had taken. It doesn’t really work, though, because Frank finds himself drifting towards Gerard, pulled inextricably toward him, and the minute he loses focus on staying away from Gerard, he finds himself standing right next to him again, watching as Gerard watches the rain.
Frank hates the rain. He especially hates it when it rains at night. He remembered that it was always so gloomy and cold, and it made the night seem endless, water droplets hitting the window as a reminder that he was inside and alone, the house filled with the sound of rain until Frank put something loud on the stereo to drown it out. The swishing of the trees, the creaking branches and shushing leaves. Thunder too, he hated. Thunder was the worst. It came out of nowhere, shook the house, shook his heart, rattled his nerves. Like something cosmic was happening outside, something way beyond his power to affect or avoid, a storm that felt like it swirled all around him. Frank drank his way through rainstorms, and when he didn't feel like drinking, he hid his way through them, pulling the curtains even when it was the afternoon. It was as dark as if it were nighttime, anyway. Sometimes when he'd be brave enough to check to see if the storm was over, he'd pull back a shade and be blinded by sunlight, and sunlight after a rainstorm was gorgeous, sure, brilliant and sparkling and yellow and warm, but the thing was, Frank resented it, just a little bit, for leaving him.
Gerard, it seems, loves the rain, though, and will pull back the curtains and press his face close up to the glass of the window as soon as the rain starts. Two nights in a row, when the rain starts just as the sun is going down, but is hidden by heavy storm clouds, making everything grey, Gerard pulls the stinky armchair up to the window, folds his legs, and just looks outside. No dinner, no cup of coffee in his hands, no drawing pad, nothing. Frank watches him for a minute before having to move himself, walk around the room. He can’t understand how Gerard isn’t bored out of his mind, just watching it rain. But then maybe he isn’t watching the rain at all, or isn’t just watching it. Maybe he’s thinking, and the rain helps him think. That seems like Gerard, sure, to be captivated by the storm outside, to watch how it appears just through the rectangle of his window.
Frank steps closer as though he can get into Gerard's thoughts, peek into them the way Gerard watches out the window. The house has gotten dark, and Gerard, who's been sitting in the chair since it was daylight, doesn't seem to notice or doesn't care. It's the calm kind of darkness, with headlights passing by on the street, rain looking black against the pavement, the lawn, the front porch. Frank thinks he could probably learn to like the rain, or like sitting like this in a rainstorm, if he were with Gerard, Gerard's calm, and no thunder. Frank doesn’t think he'd ever learn to like thunder, unless someone could tell him seconds before it was going to rumble, so he could be ready, so he could know the sound was coming.
"Lightning," Gerard says quietly to himself, and then counts, "Two, three, four," and then the thunder sounds, a low rumble. Frank, fascinated, steps closer to Gerard, squints at him, at the window, looking for more lighting. Wanting Gerard to count for him again. The lightning flashes again, a sharp crack coming with it, and then Gerard whispers, "two, three..." and before he can get to four, there's the thunder again. Frank is sure Gerard is counting for him.
Frank presses his face close to the window, looking out for more lightning, Gerard right next to him. The lightning flashes, lighting up the whole street with white for a second, and Frank can see it against his eyelids, so bright. Gerard blinks, too, and counts, "Two, three," and then he gasps just as the thunder sounds.
Gerard is looking at Frank's reflection in the window.
"Frankie?" Gerard says, the same quiet voice he used for counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder. Gerard turns and looks over his shoulder, where Frank is standing, where Frank would be standing if Gerard could see him, but Frank watches as Gerard looks through him and past him. But when he looks back at the window, Gerard beams, because he's looking at Frank's reflection again, looking right into Frank's eyes reflected in the rain-spattered window.
"Hi," Gerard says, and Frank's heart somersaults.
"Hi," he says, but there's no sound, only his mouth moving in the reflection.
"You're really here, aren't you? I knew it," Gerard says, and Frank doesn't know what else to say, because Gerard can see him. Gerard knows he's there. "You're hot," Gerard says, and then flushes, and Frank can feel the grin stretching across his face, wildly pleased and amused. He wants to say, “So are you," but he's afraid it will be unreadable, and will make Gerard nervous or frustrated that he can't figure out what Frank's saying. So he tries to say it with his eyes, putting everything he feels into the way he's looking at Gerard's reflection, Gerard looking back into his eyes.
Gerard seems to understand. Of course Gerard understands, Gerard has understood everything about Frank since he moved here. Gerard is the only thing stopping Frank from going crazy, stuck in the house, unable to go anywhere, do anything, live or move on. Gerard has been company for Frank, a friend, someone who cares about him, and Gerard has given Frank something to do, someone to watch over, someone's life to share. Of course Gerard understands. Frank doesn't need to say anything at all.
The lightning flashes, even brighter than before, and Frank blinks away the shock of light, and when he looks back, Gerard's eyes are searching the window. He can't see Frank's reflection anymore, even though Frank is still in the same spot, still looking at Gerard, there eyes won't meet.
"I'm not gonna let anything happen to you, Frankie," Gerard says, to the window and then to the empty room. "I'm going to watch out for you."
Frank thinks it strange that that's the exact thing he was thinking about Gerard.
Ray brings over some paint supplies to touch up what he said was what normal wear and tear had done to the wainscoting in the hallway, and he’s just setting the drop cloth and dipping the stir stick into the paint when there is a knock at the door. Gerard, who had been picking cereal from Mikey’s bowl, jumps, and then steps into the hall.
“That’s the door, right?” he asks, before he goes all the way down the hallway. No one disagrees with him, and Frank knows before Gerard opens the door that it’s Bob.
“Schechter’s picking up a couple of things for me, will you meet him outside when you hear his car, he’s gonna need a hand with all the boxes,” is the first thing out of his mouth.
Ray says, “Sure,” and Bob cocks his head and then flashes Ray a smile. Ray smiles back and them immediately returns to his paint stirring.
“Did you find anything?” Gerard asks as soon as Bob’s in the door.
“I did,” Bob says, and sits down at the table and takes out a notebook, flips a few pages in. Frank is unsurprised to see that Bob’s handwriting is small, perfectly legible block letters. “I found a lot of things that didn’t make sense.”
Frank watches as Gerard’s face falls and he goes and stands closer, wishing he could wind his fingers in Gerard’s.
“So, before I start telling you about things that don’t actually make sense, I need you to tell me more about this house.”
“But - ” Gerard starts to protest. Mikey hands him his cereal, and Gerard, not sure what else to do in the face of Bob’s questioning, drinks the leftover milk.
“What do you need to know?” Ray asks, wiping his hands on a well-worn rag.
Bob smiles at Ray again, and Ray kind of twists under the smile, and oh, Frank thinks, oh, that’s what’s going on. He can’t help but feel jealous of the look, because they can share it, because no one should be looking at Bob like that when Bob is the one who can send Frank away. Gerard puts Mikey’s cereal bowl in the sink and it clatters and the long look between Bob and Ray breaks.
“I need to know when this house was re-built, and what it was before, and who built that,” he says directly to Ray, and then directed at all of them, “and I need to know everything you know about ley lines.”
Frank has never even heard of ley lines, but as soon as Bob speaks the words, something seems to shift in the air.
“The house was built probably around 1890,” Ray begins, “though there was never any official deed. The earliest date we have is when my grandfather bought it in 1907 and he guessed how old it was. And I don’t know anything about ley lines,” Ray adds as an afterthought.
Gerard and Mikey shake their heads in twin brotherly motions. “Never heard of them,” Mikey says.
“I’ve only read about them mentioned, as a guide for where old churches and things were built,” Schechter offers. “But I’m not really sure what they are.”
“And not a lot of people are even sure they exist.” Bob says. “It is, however, entirely possible that the person who built this house was a mystic, or something like, someone who believed in ley lines and built it exactly where it is for a specific purpose.”
“Purpose?” Ray asks, “You mean it was something other than a house?”
“It was a stopping point. A marker indicating an intersection of ley lines.” Everyone had a similar face of confusion, except Schechter, who was frowning.
“Houses aren’t really supposed to be part of ley lines,” Bob says. “They’re supposed be made up of geographic and naturally occurring things, like mountains and stone outcroppings. It’s supposed to be the spiritual world that designs the ley lines, and buildings and things can be built along them, but not - not as a part of them.”
“I still don’t understand what a ley line is,” Mikey says.
“They’re invisible mystical pathways,” Bob says. “Power naturally flows along them. Sort of a spiritual energy superhighway.”
“And this house is a part of a ley line?” Schechter asks. “It’s actually inside the line?”
“Inside two,” Bob says.
“I still don’t understand what it means.,” Gerard says. “So the house is on some mystical line. Is that why Frankie became a ghost when he died here?”
Frank fidgets and runs his fingers over the tattoos on his arm.
“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple,” Bob says. “From all the information I could get my hands on about the ley lines, a death in a house like this was more likely to go directly and instantly to the spirit world and move on completely. It would be like arriving in the Grand Central Station of the afterlife. So it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense that we’d have a ghost here, of all places.”
“Are we sure it’s Frank?” Mikey says.
“Of course it is, who else could it be?” Gerard says instantly and Frank so desperately wants to throw his arms around Gerard, even hold his hand, twine their fingers together reassuringly, smile at him so Gerard knows Frank needs his faith in him. But all Frank can do is stand there and listen.
“But what about the thing that attacked you? You say it’s not Frank, that he wouldn’t hurt you, but then - ”Mikey trails off, worry creasing his face.
“That’s another thing,” Bob says. “You tell me that there are two ghosts,” and Mikey tries to protest but Bob holds a hand up. “I’m not here to argue right now. If we’re mystically not supposed to have a ghost in this house and we do, it’s not that much of a leap to consider that we might have two.”
Schechter presses the backs of his hands to his eyes. “We saw something with the séance, and it said it wasn’t happy,” he says. “Is there some chance that….” He hesitates and looks at Bob before going on, and Frank can tell that he’s making sure with Bob that it’s ok that he poses this question, and it amazes Frank that Bob seems to already know what Schechter’s going to say. “Is there some chance that there was already something here in the house, and Frank got caught by it?”
Gerard looks perfectly horrified. “Something caught Frank?”
“It’s possible,” Bob says calmly. “It’s possible that it’s something else more complicated than that, too,” Bob says, but when Schechter raises his eyebrows, looking for an explanation, Bob just shakes his head. “I said I found a lot of things that didn’t make sense.”
“Can’t we just, like, do an exorcism on the house?” Mikey asks.
Bob just frowns. “I’d considered that, though exorcisms are kind of like taking a hacksaw to your arm because you’ve got a splinter in your finger.”
“And in a house that’s mystically charged in some way we don’t understand,” Schechter says.
“Schechter’s got it. That would be more than ill-advised.” Bob says.
“So what do we do, then?” Ray asks.
“I have an approach I’d like to try,” Bob says.
“What kind of approach, what’s it going to do?” Gerard demands, and Frank had wants to shout the same thing. He doesn’t like the way Bob isn’t saying everything, doesn’t like the way it’s clear Bob doesn’t want to explain what he is going to do next.
Bob’s face hardens a little bit. “I’m going to try and rid your house of spirits, isn’t that what you want?”
“It’s not what I want,” Gerard says.
“But that’s because you don’t understand,” Schechter says. “You can’t see the danger.”
“You can’t see Frank!” Gerard protests.
Frank, who has been getting angrier and more nervous through the escalation of this conversation, stops suddenly when Gerard says his name. It’s then that he notices the sound, not the tea kettle whistle this time, but something sharper, like a car alarm on helium. He’s afraid that he’s the only one who can hear it, but then he sees Bob’s posture change and Bob shouts, “Everyone stand still.”
Frank gets right up in front of Gerard, his back to him, trying to get Gerard to back into a corner where Frank can protect him from all sides. He sees the shadow, the shimmer of air all around, but not in one spot, not like before when it was attacking Gerard. Frank gets the horrible feeling that this is what it looks like before it attacks, moving everywhere at once, deciding.
Mikey takes a step toward his brother and Bob and Schechter call out at the same time, but it’s too late, because Frank sees the thing rush for Mikey, toss him up and back like it’s tossing something far lighter and less fragile. Mikey hits the wall and actually slides down it, Schechter and Ray both rushing for him and Bob shouting something Frank can’t understand and waving his hands incomprehensibly. Gerard is frozen behind Frank, his eyes slack. Frank realizes a second later why - the shimmering air has collected above Gerard and is swirling downward, headed right for him.
Frank reaches for Gerard and can’t touch him, and he feels the panic starting to make him both stupid and slow, and so he tries again, knowing that if he fails, the thing’s going to get Gerard, just like last time. Frank tries again and again until he gets Gerard right around the ribs and he sees Gerard’s painful intake of breath. Frank shoves so that Gerard goes down and Frank feels the cold crash over him, feels all his thoughts fade, sees only the telescoping darkness closing in and he sees Gerard see him, their eyes meet for just a second before Frank slips into the dark and the cold.
When Frank comes to, it’s to a cacophony of voices. Ray seems to be the only one who’s not shouting, and Frank thinks it’s because he’s deliberately taken himself out of the conversation to inspect a crack in the ceiling from the safety of his three-step ladder. Mikey and Gerard are shouting at each other and at Bob, Bob is trying to talk over both of them, and Schechter seems to be shouting at no one in particular, a string of curses echoing around the hallway.
“It was Frank, I saw him,” Gerard shouts. “He saved me.”
“I am not arguing with you about what you saw, Gerard,” Bob says, his voice forceful.
“But you’re not understanding that the significant part of what just happened was entirely about the thing that was attacking you.”
“And what’s worse, it wasn’t just fucking about you,” Schechter says.
“If you think you’re in danger, then you should - ”
“You watch your fucking mouth,” Schechter says and Gerard looks startled. “I’m talking about the fact that it attacked your little brother.”
Gerard pales when he looks at Mikey and Frank notices for the first time that Mikey’s bleeding from a bump on his forehead.
“I think it wouldn’t hurt all of us to calm down for a minute,” Ray says, from the ladder, and everyone goes quiet. “Mikey, I think your head cracked this wall but good,” Ray adds, and Mikey actually laughs.
“Hard-headed, just like my brother,” Mikey says, a little weakly, and Gerard rushes forward and hugs Mikey, but winces when Mikey wraps his hand around his ribs. Frank thinks perhaps he took Gerard down a little too hard.
“You’re the one who supposedly knew all about ghosts. Oh, I went into an abandoned house at midnight with Pete Wentz,” Gerard says, mocking Mikey, and Schechter cackles.
“This is not what I thought was gonna happen ghost hunting,” Mikey says.
“This isn’t ghost hunting,” Bob says, and he looks quite sad.
"What's the difference between ghost hunting and.....this?" Ray asks. “What you do.”
"I don't look for ghosts," Bob says, and pushes his sunglasses up onto his forehead. "I don't go looking for them because I don't like what has to happen when I find them."
“What do you mean?” Gerard asks. “What happens to them?”
“They move on,” Mikey says quickly.
“You’re not here to help Frankie, are you?” Gerard says hotly. The temporary truce and the calm of Ray’s joke are gone again. “You’re here to send him away.”
“He doesn’t belong here,” Mikey tries to say but Gerard waves a hand at him.
“Where are you going to send him?” Gerard demands from Bob. “What happens when you send him away from here?”
“I don’t know,” Bob says.
“What the hell does that - “
“I don’t know!!” Bob shouts and Gerard goes silent. “I don’t know what happens next, okay? I don’t know what comes after this world. I don’t know whether ghosts go somewhere different, whether they go to heaven or hell, whether there’s actually a thing such as heaven or hell, if even people really go anywhere, or whether I’m just shuttling them off to some other place where they’ll be half-whole, tortured and lonely and sad.”
“It just seemed like,” Gerard starts and then stops. “It just seemed like you should know, since this is what you do.”
Bob laughs, and it’s not a happy laugh, it chills Frank. “Do you want to know why this is what I do? Why I own a grimoire and know Latin and own expensive recording equipment that’s better than most professional musicians afford?” Bob doesn’t wait for an answer, and Frank thinks none of them seem ready to refuse the explanation. Schechter even looks curious. “This isn’t on the regular tour,” Bob says. “It’s not good for everyone to know where you come from, sometimes makes them nervous. To see how you got started. Makes them think they might end up like you, driving hundreds of miles in a weekend, paranoid as all fuck.”
Ray, Gerard, Mikey, and Schechter are all rapt, and Frank is, too, drawn to this sudden change in Bob’s energy, this break in his cool, this raw feeling coming from him, still dangerous, but somehow less of a threat now that he is talking about himself and not coming after Frank.
“I had an imaginary friend, when I was a kid. Seemed normal enough, even to my parents. Except that I could see my friend. He was transparent, but I thought it was normal. We played, he listened to me. Then the dog got sick. Then my parents got sick. Then I got sick.” Bob stops. “I got so sick I almost died. Then someone who does what I do now came and sent my invisible friend away. The thing was, he was too late, because my parents had become like him. They were ghosts. The fucking dog was a ghost. And I lived with them in the house for years, once my grandmother had moved in to take care of me. I talked to my parents every day, to their ghosts, but it wasn’t really them. I never really got better, and so the guy came back, but I had to help, because all the ghostly energy, it was centered around me. So, I learned how to send my parents and my pet dog and my fake invisible friend to the great beyond. And there was really nothing else to do after that, it’s not like I was going to go to college.”
Everyone’s silent. Gerard’s the one who steps forward. “I’m sorry,” Gerard says, resting his hand on Bob’s arm. Bob nods, and slips his sunglasses down over his eyes.
“So, are we gonna do this thing?” Bob says. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen, I never know, but I either try and fix this tonight or I leave you and you don’t call me back, you don’t ever tell me what happens to you, ok?”
Everyone looked to Gerard. “We’ll do it tonight,” Gerard says after the longest moment, and Frank thinks he can feel his heart break right there. It’s good though, it’s good, it’s time for Frank to go, he knows it. It’s time for him to leave Gerard, and trust that Bob will get rid of the other spirit when he sends Frank away, too. As long as he gets them both, Frank thinks, it’ll be ok.
“Let me know when you’re ready,” Bob says.
Gerard comes to get Bob just as it is getting dark.
“You’re not telling me everything,” Gerard says. Bob laughs.
“What is it you want to know?”
“You know something about the two ghosts,” Gerard says. Bob doesn’t try to disagree. Frank wonders how Gerard knows that Bob has left something out, whether Gerard is better at reading Bob when Frank’s been too scared of him to pay attention.
“The thing about Frank,” Bob says and Frank startles when Gerard does at the mention of his name, “is that he probably wouldn’t be here, if you hadn’t moved in. He would have just found his way back onto the path.”
Gerard looks stricken. “It’s my fault?”
“No,” Bob says quickly. “No, it’s not like that. But you’re part of the reason he’s still here.”
“So,” Gerard says, and Frank feels Gerard consider the question like there’s a limit and he has to ask the right one. “If I’m keeping Frank here, I’m somehow….giving the other ghost power, too?”
“Something like that,” Bob says. “That’s why it’s your decision, what we do next.”
Gerard studies Bob’s face, and then he looks around the room, his eyes going unfocused. Frank thinks maybe Gerard is looking for him.
“I’m ready,” Gerard says, looking back at Bob. “I mean, I guess, I don’t really know.”
”It’s ok,” Bob says, and gestures for everyone to come over.” “Everyone sit down,” Bob says, “in a circle.”
“No chalk line?” Schechter asks, hesitant.
Bob says seriously. “We’re the circle.” Frank is standing on the stairs, watching as everyone sits, and then Bob says, “No, no, no, Gerard, you go inside the circle.”
“What?” Gerard’s voice is small.
“You go in the circle,” Bob says gently. “That’s why it’s us. No chalk or salt or anything, but us, protecting you.”
Mikey looks the most nervous of them all, which Frank thinks has to do with the bump on his head and the realization of how much the spirits can actually hurt them, and how much responsibility they’re going to have to watch over Gerard. Gerard notices Mikey’s expression and he reaches forward and ruffles his brother’s hair. Mikey bats him away, but looks reassured.
Frank is skeptical of the whole thing, but if there’s a chance that Bob can make this work, can get rid of the other spirit, can make Frank stop hurting Gerard, than Frank is willing to do whatever he can to make that happen, even if it means enduring séances and spells and things that don’t work.
“Now I’m going to give each of you one of the things that Schechter brought back, and I want you to keep them facing the way I hand them to you, and don’t tear the tissue paper.”
“It feels like Christmas,” Gerard says.
“Are you going to tell us what they are?” Mikey asks.
“No,” Bob says. “Not yet. Opening their packaging is part of the ritual, ok? I need you all to make sure to open them in the order that I tell you. It’s a chain of power we’ll be building and we can’t break it.” Everyone nods solemnly. “I’ve got to set up the candles and read a few things from the grimoire, ok, so, you can all relax for a few minutes.”
Bob begins reading and lighting candles and Gerard breathes in and exhales loudly a few times. “Good, do some yoga there,” Schechter says, and Ray cracks up, and then Mikey shushes him.
Ray looks apologetically over at Bob, who shrugs at Ray and then, Frank can hardly believe it, he winks at him. Ray turns three shades of red. And Frank can’t tell if he’s offended or what, that Bob and Ray are still flirting. But then Bob tilts his head, and Ray puts his hand on Gerard’s shoulder. Gerard startles for a minute and then he leans into Ray’s hand. They’re all watching out for Gerard, Frank knows that. They’re here, and that circle is going to be strong, protecting Gerard from whatever is coming.
“I’m going to have to lock the grimoire up, now,” Bob says, “since we’re conjuring and we don’t want what we’re conjuring to read what’s in here.” Bob takes out an elaborate case which he locks with a combination of keys, and then he sets a white candle on top of the case.
“Ok,” Bob says. “I’m going to turn out the lights, and then as soon as I light the first candle, I need you all do to as I ask, no matter what happens. If one of us breaks the circle after we start this next part, we all risk getting hurt, and what’s worse, we risk Gerard, who’s going to be doing a fair amount of the work.”
“I am?” Gerard asks.
“Why do you think you’re in the circle?” Mikey asks, like this is his hundredth séance and Gerard is the new guy.
“Ok, here we go,” Bob says, and starts reading from a small, leather book, in Latin. The moment he turns a page, Frank can see the other spirit, a shimmery, steam-like, threatening thing on the other side of the room. After a minute, Bob sees it, too, and he puts his finger to mark his place in the text and says,” Schechter, you go around and light everyone’s candles. As Schechter lights your candle, place your hands on top of the head of the person to your right, like you’re blessing them, and repeat back what I’m going to read now.” Bob reads a short phrase in Latin, three times, and then Schechter lights Mikey’s candle. Mikey says the phrase over Ray’s head, Ray says it over Schechter, and Schechter says it over Bob. Then Bob gets up on his knees and says the phrase, and a few others, over Gerard.
“You ok?” Bob asks Gerard, who looks like he wants to answer no.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Here comes the hard work, then,” Bob says. “I need you to talk to Frank.”
“Ok,” Gerard says, and Frank can hear in Gerard’s tone that it’s not that hard at all.
“I mean, you need to talk to him, where you can see him. Like you told me you’ve done before, right?”
“In a dream?”
“Sort of,” Bob says. “I’m going to send you into a place that’s like a dream, but you won’t be asleep. Do you think you can get Frank to follow you there?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to him, is it?” Gerard demands.
“No, you’re just going to talk,” Bob says. “You’ll be in control of the situation, so you don’t have to ask Frank the things I ask you to, but you need to remember that if you don’t, we might not be able to get this other spirit to leave you alone. Remember what we talked about, Gerard,” Bob says, and Gerard straightens up at his name.
“Ok,” Gerard says. Bob begins by lighting a small bundle of dried herbs tied with a white string and blowing on them until they smoke. It smells rich and spicy, something familiar that Frank can’t quite place. Bob begins humming, a tune that feels the same as the smell, like a nursery rhyme that Frank recognizes from long ago.
There’s enough room in the circle for Frank, and so with one eye on the spirit who’s still hovering at a distance from the circle, steps in between Ray and Mikey and he sits down next to Gerard, their legs crossed and their knees touching. Gerard’s eyes are closed and so Frank closes his too, and listen to Bob’s humming, until he hears someone speaking. He thinks it’s Bob speaking the rest of a spell, but when Frank opens his eyes, he sees it’s Gerard who’s talking.
“Hi,” Frank says.
“You came,” Gerard says, looking surprised and pleased.
They’re sitting, like they were in the circle, but there’s no one else, just the two of them in the hallway of the apartment, in the spot where Frank died. And Frank feels it when Gerard reaches out for his hand, his fingers brushes lightly over the top of Frank’s hand.
“We shouldn’t do that,” Frank says, looking down at their hands. He can’t help but tangle his fingers in Gerard’s and he feels the rush. “I’m taking your energy.”
“You can have all you want,” Gerard says.
Frank hears what sounds like a hiss. It’s the other spirit, hovering just a few feet away from Gerard.
“We need to get rid of that thing,” Frank says. Gerard looks at it and then looks back at Frank.
“We’re going to,” Gerard says. He looks more confident here, calmer. “Bob says you know how.”
“Me?” Frank says, shocked. “If I did, Gerard, I promise you - “
“Shh, it’s ok,” Gerard says. “I’ll help you.” Gerard leans forward and kisses Frank and Frank gasps and then slides his hands into Gerard’s hair. They kiss like that for a long time, and Frank gets lost in the building feeling, the urge to kiss longer and harder, and when Gerard finally pulls away, Frank is practically panting.
“That feels so good,” Frank says, looking down at his hands and then into Gerard’s deep, open gaze. “It’s weird to think it’s not real.”
“Of course it’s real,” Gerard says, and Frank thinks he actually sounds a little hurt.
Frank reaches out for Gerard and kisses him softly, and then pulls back. Gerard smiles at him this time. “See?” Gerard says.
“But it has to stop. I have to send away that thing. I have to go so it can follow me, isn’t that it? Isn’t that what’s going to happen?”
“Bob says you can’t see clearly, and so that’s what this spell is for. We’re here to help you see.”
Frank blinks. “I don’t understand.”
“This was the easy place for me to meet you,” Gerard says, “But Bob says you need to come back with me, to the circle.”
‘We can’t stay here just a little longer?’
Gerard laughs and Frank feels warm.
“But they can’t see me,” and if Frank squints, he can see that he’s still in the circle.
“No, they won’t be able to see you, but I’ll still be able to, ok?”
Frank nods, and squeezes Gerard’s hand, and in the space of a blink, he’s there in the circle.
“Hi,” Gerard says to him.
“Can you see him? Is he there?” Mikey asks nervously. “Are you sure it’s him and not - ”
“It’s him, Mikey,” Gerard says calmly, his words stretched and slow.
“We’re going to help you see, Frank,” Bob says, and Frank shivers at the command in Bob’s voice. “Schechter, you start, open your box and hold it up, facing Gerard.” Schechter does, and when he holds it up, Frank sees that Schechter’s holding a square, silver-framed mirror. As each of them open their boxes, it’s the same. Ray, Mikey all have mirrors which they point at Gerard. Frank can see his reflection in them, it’s no trick, but they still can’t seem to see him.
Frank hears a rustle, and behind him, Bob is unwrapping a mirror for himself, and holding one out to Gerard.
“Now I need you and Frank to tell me where the other spirit is. I know Frank can see it, can’t you, Frank?”
Frank nods, and Gerard says, “Yeah, he can see it.”
“Ok, help us point our mirrors so it appears in every single one of ours, like a funhouse mirror, like a puzzle. Each of us needs to have the reflection of the thing in our mirror at the same time, ok?”
“What if it moves?” Ray asks.
“It won’t,” Frank says, because he can sense it now, more clearly than before. “It’s stuck.”
“Frank says it’s stuck,” Gerard says, because Frank keeps forgetting they can’t hear him, only Gerard can.
Bob nods. “Good.”
Frank tries to move one of the mirror but he can’t actually touch it. “Here, tell me where its supposed to go,” Gerard says, and Frank shows Gerard, moving around in the circle so that each of the mirrors are correct.
“Ok, what now,” Frank says, because he’s tense with waiting, he feels something hovering close and threatening.
“What now?” Gerard repeats.
“Hold your mirror up to Frank,” Bob says, and Frank can tell in his voice that he’s hiding something.
“What’s it going to do,” Frank demands, nervously, twitching, and getting ready to stand up. ‘Is the mirror magic or something, am I going to get trapped in it, is it going to steal my soul or something?”
“Shh, shh, Frankie, it’s ok,” Gerard soothes, though he sounds just as nervous. “What’s it going to do?” Gerard repeats the question back for Bob.
“I can’t explain it,” Bob says, “I mean, I don’t really know what Frank’s going to see. I just know this is what’s supposed to happen next.”
“Bob said I didn’t have to ask you to do anything I didn’t want to,” Gerard says to Frank. “And if you don’t want to do this, it’s ok, you don’t have to, we can find another way.”
“There isn’t another way, is there?” Frank asks. “Whatever this is going to do, I’m going to have to do it. The spirit can’t stay locked there, whatever Bob did do it. It can’t stay, can it?”
Gerard shakes his head, without having to ask Bob. He can tell, just like Frank now, that heightened sense of awareness. This is it. All he has to do is look in the mirror, whatever’s going to happen, this has to be it.
Gerard holds up his mirror, and Frank looks down, so he’s not looking in it, not yet. He looks past the mirror, up directly into Gerard’s face. "Am I going to die, Gerard?"
"You're already dead," Gerard says with a hint of a laugh, but when he looks at Frank, it’s all tenderness.
"But what's going to happen to me?"
"I don't know, Frankie. I don't know."
“Maybe I’ll see your grandmother,” Frank says, and Gerard’s eyes tear and he nods.
“Yeah, tell her I say hi, ok?” Gerard’s voice cracks.
Frank sees the spirit move all of a sudden and he looks into the mirror, and sees just himself, and then, in the reflection of the other mirrors, just his face a hundred times over, but then, something shimmers in the glass, something happens, and it’s just one face, like it’s not a reflection at all, Frank’s face, looking terrified and determined and frozen in place.
Without any warning, Bob reaches out and punches the mirror Gerard’s holding, smashing it to pieces.
Gerard shouts in surprise as Bob shouts, “Break them, on the floor, right now,” and they all do, shards of glass flying everywhere, the sound of smashing glass louder than explosions.
And then, Frank is there. Frank is whole, he can feel the glass under his hands, the cold floor, his own heart beating. For a moment, Gerard is hugging him and Frank can feel the tears running down Gerard’s cheeks, and then it all goes black.
“I don’t understand,” Mikey is saying. Frank tries to blink his eyes open but they won’t quite work, his eyes just fluttering under closed lids. He can hear the sound of a broom. “How did the mirrors let Frank see the other spirit?”
“It was him,” Schechter says, “The whole time, both spirits were him.”
“But he’s - he’s alive now” Ray says. “I mean, he’s not a ghost, right? He’s got a body.”
“So why’d he try to hurt Gerard?” Mikey demands. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“He was split in two,” Bob says. “Can you hand me that dust pan? Thanks.” Bob continues, “Everyone has an opposite side of themselves, tucked away, in the dark.”
“It was the house,” Ray chimes in, and from the sound of it, he’s the one with the broom. “My house is evil. Well, my side is perfectly normal.”
“It wasn’t the house that kept Frank here, but it was what stopped him from having the choice to move on. I still don’t know what it was that split him like that, I’ve never seen anything like it, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure the plan was going to work.”
“Your plan was to make him corporeal?” Schechter says, impressed.
“I didn’t know what was actually possible,” Bob says. “Until it happened, I didn’t know if it was even an option. I just knew Frank couldn’t know what we were going to do before we did it, it had to be his choice to see what he saw. So I couldn’t say anything incase he heard.”
“So you believed me,” Gerard says. “You really believed he was there.”
“Yeah,” Bob says, and then shrugs it off. “And look, I was right.”
Frank tries to sit up and feels dizzy. It takes him a minute to realize he’s slumped awkwardly in Gerard’s favorite armchair.
His aborted attempt at movement seems to have caught Gerard’s eye though, because he runs over and kneels beside the chair. “It’s ok, Frankie, it’s ok,” Gerard coos at him. Frank can’t really focus, but he sees Gerard is smiling up at him, and, very hesitantly, brushing Frank’s hair back from his forehead.
“Hi,” Frank says croakily to Gerard and Gerard’s face lights up.
“He’s awake,” Gerard calls and Frank watches as the blurry figures coming to stand around the chair resolve themselves into Mikey, Ray, Schechter, and Bob.
“Hey Ray,” Frank says, and Ray nods at him and smiles. “Hey, I guess I haven’t really met you guys yet. I’m Frank, I used to live here,” he says, uselessly, and everyone laughs.
“So, my work here is done,” Bob says.
“Hey, wait,” Frank says, and Bob stops. “Thanks,” Frank says, because he doesn’t know what else to say, he can’t say everything, and this, this he really means.
“Oh, you’ll see me again,” Bob says. “That’s my hoodie you’re wearing.”
“What?” Frank says, and then he realizes he’s not wearing anything but a hoodie and a blanket draped over his legs. “Oh my god,” he says.
“Yup. We’ve all seen you naked,” Schechter says. “My very first naked re-corporealized ghost,” Schechter says.
Frank looks at Gerard, who’s blushing. He smiles at Gerard, small and tender, and says, “Can I borrow a pair of your pants?”
Gerard nods. “I’ll go get some right now. You close your eyes if you want. You look like you haven’t slept in months.”
“He died and became a ghost and now he’s here, in Gerard’s armchair,” he hears Ray saying as he drifts off. “How are we going to explain that to people?”
When Frank opens his eyes again, Gerard is sitting on the floor next to Frank’s feet. Frank’s wearing a pair of jeans and two mismatched socks, and still, Bob’s hoodie. “Hi,” he says croakily and Gerard hastily hands Frank a cup of tea.
“I’ve missed this,” Frank says.
Frank takes the tea, wrapping his hands around the mug. He inhales the steam. It’s still hot, Gerard must have just made it a few minutes ago. It tastes amazing and familiar, and he takes a few long sips and hands the cup back to Gerard and then he reaches out and tugs at Gerard, asking him to come closer.
“Where is everyone?” Frank asks, because the house is strangely quiet, but he can still see the remnants of Bob’s equipment and Ray’s broom leaning in the corner.
“Mikey’s upstairs,” Gerard says, “Taking a nap. Schechter’s in the back burning all the mirrors,”
Frank startles. “You can burn mirror glass?”
“Apparently,” Gerard shrugs. He settles himself next to Frank in the chair. There’s just enough room for Gerard to fit with their sides squished up next to each other. Frank pulls the blanket over Gerard’s legs and leans into his side, his head just on Gerard’s shoulder. “And Ray is showing Bob his side of the house.”
“I bet he is,” Frank says and Gerard laughs and Frank can feel it in his chest.
“You think they’re - “
“I think there’s something,” Frank says.
“And what about us?” Gerard leans down, his chin on Frank’s head, his lips pressing lightly and for a moment to Frank’s forehead .
“I think there’s definitely something,” Frank says and turns so he can kiss Gerard. Gerard sighs against his mouth and then his hands wrap around Frank’s shoulders so that he’s flush against Gerard, comfortably tight in this chair that he’s wanted to feel for so long.
Mikey comes down the stairs, and he makes a disgusted sound when he sees them, though Frank wonders how much of it’s just for show. “My brother and his ghost boyfriend,” Mikey says. “Pete’s coming to pick me up,” Mikey throws out. Frank feels Gerard tense at Pete’s name. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell him Frank used to haunt you.”
Ray and Bob knock, with Schechter following behind them, the air of wood smoke around him.
“So the mirrors are all set. I buried what was left along the ley line, facing south.” Bob nods, but when Gerard catches Frank’s eye he sees that he doesn’t understand either and they smile at each other. Frank stands up, a lot les wobbly than he thought, though Gerard rushes to his side, incase Frank needs something to balance on.
“I want you to call me if anything is strange with Frank,” Bob says to Gerard.
“You mean besides the fact that I’m alive?” Frank says, and Bob winces.
“This house is still mystically charged,” Bob says, ignoring Frank, and something might try to take the place of all that energy we just released. I’ve set up a few things around the house, they shouldn’t get in your way, but if you see something’s moved weirdly, you call me. I’ll be back to check on things tomorrow and take some readings.”
“And for dinner,” Mikey says, looking between Bob and Ray. Schechter actually snickers.
“So, kid, want to give me a hand with some of this,” Schechter says, to Mikey, and Mikey lifts up the other end of one of Bob’s equipment cases, Ray and Bob lifting another.
“Hey, you forgot this,” Frank says, reaching for a small silver bottle. The cap isn’t on all the way and some of whatever is in it that spills on Frank’s hand. It’s intensely cold and then it burns like it’s eating Frank’s skin. He screams and drops the bottle, which clatters on the floor.
Bob and Schechter drop their ends of the cases and rush over to Frank, who is shaking his hand, trying to get the pain to stop. Gerard rushes over to him, too, but a second later, Gerard pushes Frank behind him and stands in front of him with his arms outstretched.
“What the hell was that,” Frank hisses but when he looks up, Bob and Schechter are both standing very aggressively toward Gerard. Frank sees the silver glint of a knife in Bob’s hand. Mikey and Ray are frozen, staring off to the side.
“Back off,” Gerard says firmly.
“What just happened?” Mikey demands.
“Frank just spilled holy water,” Schechter says.
“I don’t understand what that means,” Mikey says, sounding more and more distressed.
“That wasn’t holy water, that was acid or something,” Frank says. “Look, it burned me.” He tries to hold out his hand to show him, but Gerard forces Frank behind him, his arms still up, protecting Frank.
“Stand back from him, Gerard,” Bob says calmly. “Step out of the way.”
“You did this on purpose,” Gerard shouts at Bob. Frank’s heart is pounding. It feels unnaturally fast, but possibly just because it’s so unfamiliar.
“I swear, Gerard, I didn’t think anything was wrong with him,” Bob says. “But I don’t actually know what we’re dealing with here and there are always consequences to messing with things we don’t understand.”
“Everyone relax and tell me what the hell it means,” Ray shouts, standing in-between Bob and Schechter and Gerard and Frank. Bob still has the knife in his hand, but he lowers it when Ray steps forward.
“It means he’s not human,” Bob says, his voice dangerously low. It takes a long time for the words to make any sense to Frank. He stares at Bob, and then at the knife.
“So we did something wrong?” Mikey says.
“I don’t know,” Bob says. “But this is not right.”
“Is it maybe just - I mean, he really died and now he’s back so isn’t that, like, something not human?” Gerard asks.
A horn honks outside. “It’s Pete,” Mikey says, and then he catches Gerard’s eye and says, “He can wait.”
“You have to explain it better,” Ray says, to Bob. “Can we break up this aggression, here, and everyone take a few steps back?” Ray looks at both Gerard and Bob, who nod. Gerard lowers his arms so that he’s not standing directly in front of Frank.
“Frank, can we all see what happened to your hand?” Ray asks.
Frank doesn’t really want to show them, not if it’s going to prove Bob right, but Ray’s being reasonable and so Frank agrees. He steps aside from Gerard, but Gerard catches his sleeve and holds him back. They all look at Frank’s hand, which is burned in a splash pattern, like oil, red and angry.
Ray goes and gets the bottle that Frank dropped, and splashes some of it onto his hand. “No, don’t, you’ll get - ”Frank shouts, worried Ray will get burned, but Ray doesn’t get burned at all. He’s just holding a palm full of water.
The horn honks again outside.
“Oh my god,” Frank says, looking directly at Bob. “So this means, I’m, like, what, a living ghost or something?” He doesn’t know what question to ask first, or what the question even means.
“I don’t know,” Bob says. “You could be some kind of corporeal spirit.”
“There is nothing wrong with him,” Gerard says. “I think you all need to go.”
“I can’t leave here with him like that,” Bob says. “I did that, and if he’s a danger, if he hurts anyone - “
“He’s not going to hurt anyone,” at the same time Frank says, “Could I hurt someone? Like, without meaning it?”
Bob nods.
“It’s the same as before, Gerard,” Frank says, turning back to him, and though he doesn’t want to look away, doesn’t ever want to look away from Gerard’s worried eyes, he knows what he has to do. It was too good to be true, that he could just come back from the dead. “I could hurt you without meaning to, like when I was the other spirit. So we’d better just get it over with.”
Frank takes a few long strides toward Bob, who raises the knife again.
Gerard rushes forward, tackling Frank around the waist as Ray reaches up for Bob’s arm, saying gently, “Ok, slow down everyone, put the knife down before one of us gets hurt,” and Mikey’s tugging at Gerard to let go of Frank while Schechter’s trying to pull Mikey away.
They all freeze when the front door bursts open. “Fucking Jesus Christ, what’s with the dagger?” Pete says, standing in the doorway, his keys dangling in one hand. And then, more cautiously, “Mikey?”
“Pete this, uh, isn’t a good time,” Gerard says as Frank struggles to get out of Gerard’s grip.
“Yeah, I’m kind of sensing that. Sorry, I was waiting, and then I heard shouting, and I was worried, and - “
“It’s fine,” Mikey says through gritted teeth. He moves side to side, dodging Schechter.
“Ok, but, I’m just saying, it doesn’t look fine,” Pete says. “It looks like someone’s about to get murdered, but, if you want me to go back outside and drive off and pretend I didn’t see anything, sure, whatever you say, man.”
“Wait,” Frank says. Everyone stops. He has to make Gerard understand. “Bob said I could hurt someone even if I didn’t mean to, so let me just go outside with him and he can exorcise me or whatever.”
“He’s not going to exorcise you, Frankie, he’s going to kill you,” Gerard shouts. Frank wishes he could reassure Gerard, but he thinks Gerard might be right. If he’s already dead anyway, though, it won’t make much of a difference. He was ready before, ready to move on, if that’s what was going to happen. This had just been another delay.
“Wait, is this a ghost hunt?” Pete says, “Because this is not normally how they shake down in my admittedly limited experience. I mean, I’ve never needed a fucking silver dagger.”
“Well, then you’re about to get in way over your head, Wentz,” Schechter says, and Pete frowns.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Gerard says, as Frank tries to pull away. “Bob, please,” Gerard begs and Bob tucks the knife back into his boot, comes up with his palms open.
“Ok,” Bob says, “Ok, I’m going to open up this case,” Bob says in the same explanatory tone he used during the ritual. “I’m going to get the grimoire, but there’s another knife in the case. I’m not getting the knife, just the book.”
“Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?” Pete asks, though it’s more a hesitant request.
“Shh,” Mikey says and Pete looks scolded.
“I’m gonna read something that’s going to tell me something about what’s going on with Frank here,” Bob says, holding the grimoire open in his hands.
“You won’t do anything to hurt him?” Gerard asks. Frank struggles in Gerard’s grip. “Stop it, Frankie. He’s not going to do anything to hurt you.”
“I’m not going to hurt Frank,” Bob says over both of them. “It’s like a request that the house give me a hint about what’s happened to you, that’s all. It’s a question.”
“Like the mystical phone call Schechter did?”
Bob nods. “Sort of, except I’m talking to the house, which may or may not want or know how to talk back. This house, though, seems alarmingly sentient.”
“Hey, I told you, my half is normal!” Ray protests.
“What do you mean, he’s not human?” Pete says in a hushed voice, but Bob begins the incantation.
“Frank, you might feel something, static, dizziness, I’m not sure, but it’ll only be for a minute, just tell me what happens.”
Frank braces for it, for whatever’s coming, and Bob continues reading. He finishes the last sentence, and gently closes the book, and then Gerard sways on the spot and passes out, his grip on Frank going slack, Frank catching him so he doesn’t hit the floor hard. It takes a minute of Frank shaking him in panic and Mikey calling his brother’s name for Gerard to blink his eyes open and say, “I’m fine, I’m fine, it was just - really dizzy.”
“That was not what was supposed to happen,” Bob says quietly, checking Gerard’s pulse. Then he stands up and says, as though asking the house, “What the hell is going on?” and Frank gapes at him, because Bob’s the one who’s supposed to know.
Back to the beginning
Back to Part 2
Part 2
Frank falls back out of the dream feeling better than he has in weeks, and he thinks it's the happy sated feeling, and that was just really ridiculously hot and strange but so, so good. Gerard smiles before he opens his eyes and reaches out for Frank. And then Frank's bliss vanishes because Gerard looks wretched, alarmingly pale with dark circles under his eyes. He looks like he hasn't slept in weeks. Frank backs up, backs away, and Gerard is still smiling, though he winces when he sits up.
"Frank? I know you're there," he says. He swings his feet over the bed and is all unsteady. "Thanks," he says shyly, and then stumbles into the bathroom.
Frank is suddenly afraid that he’s not really doing Gerard any good. Sure, he can try to protect him from the bad spirit, but Frank doesn’t really have that much power, to protect Gerard from whatever it is that makes Bob sound so apprehensive, so tight-voiced and sober.
Frank’s not helping, and maybe he’s making Gerard weaker. He remembers what Schechter said - any contact with a spirit is draining your energy. Spending too much time with that will make you the same. If Frank stays here, he’s eventually only going to make Gerard like he is, lost and groundless, a pointless existence with no way out. Frank can’t let that happen to Gerard.
Frank follows Gerard downstairs. Bob’s drinking coffee from a travel cup and he hands one to Gerard, and he grabs Gerard under the chin for a minute and looks at him, turning his face from side to side like a mom checking to make sure her kid has washed. He lets Gerard’s chin go, and then beckons him over to his equipment, like he’s going to show Gerard some readings, but then he says, in a hushed voice, “Has Frank tried to contact you? Have you spoken to him?” Gerard startles for a moment, and Frank wonders how much Bob can divine about what happened from just how Gerard looks.
“Did you find something out?” Gerard asks, instead of answering. He looks happy that Bob’s talking about Frank like he’s a real person, not using air quotes around his name or anything or making fun of Gerard.
“Just the beginning of a theory,” Bob says.
“Are you going to tell me the theory? This is my haunted house.” Gerard tries to be defiant, but he looks too weak, too hollow around his cheeks, dark shadowed eyes, and Frank hangs on the word haunted. Gerard does look haunted.
“If you tell me whether you talked to Frank last night,” Bob says, a stretch of a smile of defiance.
Gerard deflates. “How do you know?”
“It’s hard to explain,” Bob says. “I don’t know, that’s the real answer. I just thought that might explain some of the data. And,” Bob hesitates, “The way you look.”
Bob answer is confirmation enough for Frank that this was Frank’s fault. Gerard rubs his hand over his face. “What?”
“Gerard, you look like shit,” Bob says. “And I bet you don’t feel any better.”
Gerard looks about to protest and then he stops. “Yeah, but it was such a great night,” he says, and then stops. Frank wants to tell Gerard to tell Bob all of it, because if it’s his fault that Gerard looks like this, if he’s putting Gerard in danger than he should be sent to wherever it is he’s supposed to have gone. Even if it means leaving Gerard.
There’s a flicker on Bob’s face but he doesn’t say anything, just waits for Gerard to continue.
Gerard sighs and takes a long sip of his coffee. “It was a dream,” Gerard says, and then sips more of his coffee before continuing. “Except, it was - well, it had to have been a dream, because I was asleep, and there were all those things that always happen in dreams, where you’re talking in metaphors and time moves fast in ways that wouldn’t make sense otherwise.”
“And Frank was in this dream?” Bob asks.
Gerard nods. “Frank was the dream. He and I - “ Gerard starts to color a little bit.
“You slept together,”
“No!” Gerard says, loud enough to make Schechter look over. Bob waves him away.
“Hey, sorry, I’m not saying anything about your virtue or whether you’re an easy first date or anything,” Bob says.
“We just kissed,” Gerard says after a moment, and Frank can’t help but remember, let his mind wander over how it felt. When he looks up at Gerard, though, at how worn he is, the thought deflates. “But it felt like - “
“Sex,” Bob finishes for him. Gerard nods. “Yeah, ok. And have you and Frank - “
“No!” Gerard says again, and this time both Ray and Schechter look over.
“But you’ve communicated, other ways.” Gerard nods again. “Ok, I need to do some research,” but Gerard stops him with a hand on his arm.
“You said, if I told you, you’d tell me your theory.”
Bob cracks a smile. “That’s right, I did,” he says. “Ok, then, well here’s my theory, and do me a favor and don’t tell the rest of the gang here. I don’t like to spout theories without more research, but you deserve to know what I’m thinking, even if it turns out later that I’m wrong. And that could happen, ok?”
Gerard agrees, and Bob says, “I think your Frankie here is drawing energy from contact with you. The more intimate, the more energy.”
Gerard’s face is wide open with shock. He whispers, harshly, “Are you saying you think Frankie is….an incubus?”
Frank is horrified. He’d guessed, especially after this morning, that he was taking something from Gerard, but if he’d been doing it all along, but from the very first day Gerard was here - if he’d been existing be feeding off of Gerard, taking his life from him - the thought is repulsive. And the more intimate, the more energy, it meant that he - that the reason he felt so incredible when he was that close to Gerard wasn’t just because it was sex, it was because he was tapping into Gerard like he was some sort of battery.
Bob kind of shrugs and holds his hands up at the same time. “Sort of,” Bob says, but that’s all.
Gerard looks positively insulted. “That’s not - Frank’s not like that.”
Bob just shrugs. “I said I’m not sure what exactly’s going on, now don’t get mad or hit me or something for insulting your boyfriend. It’s just a theory. I’ve got to go do some research,” Bob says. “You call me if you hear from Frank, ok? Otherwise, I’ll be back this afternoon.”
Frank does his best to stay away from Gerard for the rest of the afternoon, hiding upstairs in the guest room, watching out the windows, going downstairs when Gerard comes up, as though by staying as far away as possible he could make up for what he had taken. It doesn’t really work, though, because Frank finds himself drifting towards Gerard, pulled inextricably toward him, and the minute he loses focus on staying away from Gerard, he finds himself standing right next to him again, watching as Gerard watches the rain.
Frank hates the rain. He especially hates it when it rains at night. He remembered that it was always so gloomy and cold, and it made the night seem endless, water droplets hitting the window as a reminder that he was inside and alone, the house filled with the sound of rain until Frank put something loud on the stereo to drown it out. The swishing of the trees, the creaking branches and shushing leaves. Thunder too, he hated. Thunder was the worst. It came out of nowhere, shook the house, shook his heart, rattled his nerves. Like something cosmic was happening outside, something way beyond his power to affect or avoid, a storm that felt like it swirled all around him. Frank drank his way through rainstorms, and when he didn't feel like drinking, he hid his way through them, pulling the curtains even when it was the afternoon. It was as dark as if it were nighttime, anyway. Sometimes when he'd be brave enough to check to see if the storm was over, he'd pull back a shade and be blinded by sunlight, and sunlight after a rainstorm was gorgeous, sure, brilliant and sparkling and yellow and warm, but the thing was, Frank resented it, just a little bit, for leaving him.
Gerard, it seems, loves the rain, though, and will pull back the curtains and press his face close up to the glass of the window as soon as the rain starts. Two nights in a row, when the rain starts just as the sun is going down, but is hidden by heavy storm clouds, making everything grey, Gerard pulls the stinky armchair up to the window, folds his legs, and just looks outside. No dinner, no cup of coffee in his hands, no drawing pad, nothing. Frank watches him for a minute before having to move himself, walk around the room. He can’t understand how Gerard isn’t bored out of his mind, just watching it rain. But then maybe he isn’t watching the rain at all, or isn’t just watching it. Maybe he’s thinking, and the rain helps him think. That seems like Gerard, sure, to be captivated by the storm outside, to watch how it appears just through the rectangle of his window.
Frank steps closer as though he can get into Gerard's thoughts, peek into them the way Gerard watches out the window. The house has gotten dark, and Gerard, who's been sitting in the chair since it was daylight, doesn't seem to notice or doesn't care. It's the calm kind of darkness, with headlights passing by on the street, rain looking black against the pavement, the lawn, the front porch. Frank thinks he could probably learn to like the rain, or like sitting like this in a rainstorm, if he were with Gerard, Gerard's calm, and no thunder. Frank doesn’t think he'd ever learn to like thunder, unless someone could tell him seconds before it was going to rumble, so he could be ready, so he could know the sound was coming.
"Lightning," Gerard says quietly to himself, and then counts, "Two, three, four," and then the thunder sounds, a low rumble. Frank, fascinated, steps closer to Gerard, squints at him, at the window, looking for more lighting. Wanting Gerard to count for him again. The lightning flashes again, a sharp crack coming with it, and then Gerard whispers, "two, three..." and before he can get to four, there's the thunder again. Frank is sure Gerard is counting for him.
Frank presses his face close to the window, looking out for more lightning, Gerard right next to him. The lightning flashes, lighting up the whole street with white for a second, and Frank can see it against his eyelids, so bright. Gerard blinks, too, and counts, "Two, three," and then he gasps just as the thunder sounds.
Gerard is looking at Frank's reflection in the window.
"Frankie?" Gerard says, the same quiet voice he used for counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder. Gerard turns and looks over his shoulder, where Frank is standing, where Frank would be standing if Gerard could see him, but Frank watches as Gerard looks through him and past him. But when he looks back at the window, Gerard beams, because he's looking at Frank's reflection again, looking right into Frank's eyes reflected in the rain-spattered window.
"Hi," Gerard says, and Frank's heart somersaults.
"Hi," he says, but there's no sound, only his mouth moving in the reflection.
"You're really here, aren't you? I knew it," Gerard says, and Frank doesn't know what else to say, because Gerard can see him. Gerard knows he's there. "You're hot," Gerard says, and then flushes, and Frank can feel the grin stretching across his face, wildly pleased and amused. He wants to say, “So are you," but he's afraid it will be unreadable, and will make Gerard nervous or frustrated that he can't figure out what Frank's saying. So he tries to say it with his eyes, putting everything he feels into the way he's looking at Gerard's reflection, Gerard looking back into his eyes.
Gerard seems to understand. Of course Gerard understands, Gerard has understood everything about Frank since he moved here. Gerard is the only thing stopping Frank from going crazy, stuck in the house, unable to go anywhere, do anything, live or move on. Gerard has been company for Frank, a friend, someone who cares about him, and Gerard has given Frank something to do, someone to watch over, someone's life to share. Of course Gerard understands. Frank doesn't need to say anything at all.
The lightning flashes, even brighter than before, and Frank blinks away the shock of light, and when he looks back, Gerard's eyes are searching the window. He can't see Frank's reflection anymore, even though Frank is still in the same spot, still looking at Gerard, there eyes won't meet.
"I'm not gonna let anything happen to you, Frankie," Gerard says, to the window and then to the empty room. "I'm going to watch out for you."
Frank thinks it strange that that's the exact thing he was thinking about Gerard.
Ray brings over some paint supplies to touch up what he said was what normal wear and tear had done to the wainscoting in the hallway, and he’s just setting the drop cloth and dipping the stir stick into the paint when there is a knock at the door. Gerard, who had been picking cereal from Mikey’s bowl, jumps, and then steps into the hall.
“That’s the door, right?” he asks, before he goes all the way down the hallway. No one disagrees with him, and Frank knows before Gerard opens the door that it’s Bob.
“Schechter’s picking up a couple of things for me, will you meet him outside when you hear his car, he’s gonna need a hand with all the boxes,” is the first thing out of his mouth.
Ray says, “Sure,” and Bob cocks his head and then flashes Ray a smile. Ray smiles back and them immediately returns to his paint stirring.
“Did you find anything?” Gerard asks as soon as Bob’s in the door.
“I did,” Bob says, and sits down at the table and takes out a notebook, flips a few pages in. Frank is unsurprised to see that Bob’s handwriting is small, perfectly legible block letters. “I found a lot of things that didn’t make sense.”
Frank watches as Gerard’s face falls and he goes and stands closer, wishing he could wind his fingers in Gerard’s.
“So, before I start telling you about things that don’t actually make sense, I need you to tell me more about this house.”
“But - ” Gerard starts to protest. Mikey hands him his cereal, and Gerard, not sure what else to do in the face of Bob’s questioning, drinks the leftover milk.
“What do you need to know?” Ray asks, wiping his hands on a well-worn rag.
Bob smiles at Ray again, and Ray kind of twists under the smile, and oh, Frank thinks, oh, that’s what’s going on. He can’t help but feel jealous of the look, because they can share it, because no one should be looking at Bob like that when Bob is the one who can send Frank away. Gerard puts Mikey’s cereal bowl in the sink and it clatters and the long look between Bob and Ray breaks.
“I need to know when this house was re-built, and what it was before, and who built that,” he says directly to Ray, and then directed at all of them, “and I need to know everything you know about ley lines.”
Frank has never even heard of ley lines, but as soon as Bob speaks the words, something seems to shift in the air.
“The house was built probably around 1890,” Ray begins, “though there was never any official deed. The earliest date we have is when my grandfather bought it in 1907 and he guessed how old it was. And I don’t know anything about ley lines,” Ray adds as an afterthought.
Gerard and Mikey shake their heads in twin brotherly motions. “Never heard of them,” Mikey says.
“I’ve only read about them mentioned, as a guide for where old churches and things were built,” Schechter offers. “But I’m not really sure what they are.”
“And not a lot of people are even sure they exist.” Bob says. “It is, however, entirely possible that the person who built this house was a mystic, or something like, someone who believed in ley lines and built it exactly where it is for a specific purpose.”
“Purpose?” Ray asks, “You mean it was something other than a house?”
“It was a stopping point. A marker indicating an intersection of ley lines.” Everyone had a similar face of confusion, except Schechter, who was frowning.
“Houses aren’t really supposed to be part of ley lines,” Bob says. “They’re supposed be made up of geographic and naturally occurring things, like mountains and stone outcroppings. It’s supposed to be the spiritual world that designs the ley lines, and buildings and things can be built along them, but not - not as a part of them.”
“I still don’t understand what a ley line is,” Mikey says.
“They’re invisible mystical pathways,” Bob says. “Power naturally flows along them. Sort of a spiritual energy superhighway.”
“And this house is a part of a ley line?” Schechter asks. “It’s actually inside the line?”
“Inside two,” Bob says.
“I still don’t understand what it means.,” Gerard says. “So the house is on some mystical line. Is that why Frankie became a ghost when he died here?”
Frank fidgets and runs his fingers over the tattoos on his arm.
“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple,” Bob says. “From all the information I could get my hands on about the ley lines, a death in a house like this was more likely to go directly and instantly to the spirit world and move on completely. It would be like arriving in the Grand Central Station of the afterlife. So it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense that we’d have a ghost here, of all places.”
“Are we sure it’s Frank?” Mikey says.
“Of course it is, who else could it be?” Gerard says instantly and Frank so desperately wants to throw his arms around Gerard, even hold his hand, twine their fingers together reassuringly, smile at him so Gerard knows Frank needs his faith in him. But all Frank can do is stand there and listen.
“But what about the thing that attacked you? You say it’s not Frank, that he wouldn’t hurt you, but then - ”Mikey trails off, worry creasing his face.
“That’s another thing,” Bob says. “You tell me that there are two ghosts,” and Mikey tries to protest but Bob holds a hand up. “I’m not here to argue right now. If we’re mystically not supposed to have a ghost in this house and we do, it’s not that much of a leap to consider that we might have two.”
Schechter presses the backs of his hands to his eyes. “We saw something with the séance, and it said it wasn’t happy,” he says. “Is there some chance that….” He hesitates and looks at Bob before going on, and Frank can tell that he’s making sure with Bob that it’s ok that he poses this question, and it amazes Frank that Bob seems to already know what Schechter’s going to say. “Is there some chance that there was already something here in the house, and Frank got caught by it?”
Gerard looks perfectly horrified. “Something caught Frank?”
“It’s possible,” Bob says calmly. “It’s possible that it’s something else more complicated than that, too,” Bob says, but when Schechter raises his eyebrows, looking for an explanation, Bob just shakes his head. “I said I found a lot of things that didn’t make sense.”
“Can’t we just, like, do an exorcism on the house?” Mikey asks.
Bob just frowns. “I’d considered that, though exorcisms are kind of like taking a hacksaw to your arm because you’ve got a splinter in your finger.”
“And in a house that’s mystically charged in some way we don’t understand,” Schechter says.
“Schechter’s got it. That would be more than ill-advised.” Bob says.
“So what do we do, then?” Ray asks.
“I have an approach I’d like to try,” Bob says.
“What kind of approach, what’s it going to do?” Gerard demands, and Frank had wants to shout the same thing. He doesn’t like the way Bob isn’t saying everything, doesn’t like the way it’s clear Bob doesn’t want to explain what he is going to do next.
Bob’s face hardens a little bit. “I’m going to try and rid your house of spirits, isn’t that what you want?”
“It’s not what I want,” Gerard says.
“But that’s because you don’t understand,” Schechter says. “You can’t see the danger.”
“You can’t see Frank!” Gerard protests.
Frank, who has been getting angrier and more nervous through the escalation of this conversation, stops suddenly when Gerard says his name. It’s then that he notices the sound, not the tea kettle whistle this time, but something sharper, like a car alarm on helium. He’s afraid that he’s the only one who can hear it, but then he sees Bob’s posture change and Bob shouts, “Everyone stand still.”
Frank gets right up in front of Gerard, his back to him, trying to get Gerard to back into a corner where Frank can protect him from all sides. He sees the shadow, the shimmer of air all around, but not in one spot, not like before when it was attacking Gerard. Frank gets the horrible feeling that this is what it looks like before it attacks, moving everywhere at once, deciding.
Mikey takes a step toward his brother and Bob and Schechter call out at the same time, but it’s too late, because Frank sees the thing rush for Mikey, toss him up and back like it’s tossing something far lighter and less fragile. Mikey hits the wall and actually slides down it, Schechter and Ray both rushing for him and Bob shouting something Frank can’t understand and waving his hands incomprehensibly. Gerard is frozen behind Frank, his eyes slack. Frank realizes a second later why - the shimmering air has collected above Gerard and is swirling downward, headed right for him.
Frank reaches for Gerard and can’t touch him, and he feels the panic starting to make him both stupid and slow, and so he tries again, knowing that if he fails, the thing’s going to get Gerard, just like last time. Frank tries again and again until he gets Gerard right around the ribs and he sees Gerard’s painful intake of breath. Frank shoves so that Gerard goes down and Frank feels the cold crash over him, feels all his thoughts fade, sees only the telescoping darkness closing in and he sees Gerard see him, their eyes meet for just a second before Frank slips into the dark and the cold.
When Frank comes to, it’s to a cacophony of voices. Ray seems to be the only one who’s not shouting, and Frank thinks it’s because he’s deliberately taken himself out of the conversation to inspect a crack in the ceiling from the safety of his three-step ladder. Mikey and Gerard are shouting at each other and at Bob, Bob is trying to talk over both of them, and Schechter seems to be shouting at no one in particular, a string of curses echoing around the hallway.
“It was Frank, I saw him,” Gerard shouts. “He saved me.”
“I am not arguing with you about what you saw, Gerard,” Bob says, his voice forceful.
“But you’re not understanding that the significant part of what just happened was entirely about the thing that was attacking you.”
“And what’s worse, it wasn’t just fucking about you,” Schechter says.
“If you think you’re in danger, then you should - ”
“You watch your fucking mouth,” Schechter says and Gerard looks startled. “I’m talking about the fact that it attacked your little brother.”
Gerard pales when he looks at Mikey and Frank notices for the first time that Mikey’s bleeding from a bump on his forehead.
“I think it wouldn’t hurt all of us to calm down for a minute,” Ray says, from the ladder, and everyone goes quiet. “Mikey, I think your head cracked this wall but good,” Ray adds, and Mikey actually laughs.
“Hard-headed, just like my brother,” Mikey says, a little weakly, and Gerard rushes forward and hugs Mikey, but winces when Mikey wraps his hand around his ribs. Frank thinks perhaps he took Gerard down a little too hard.
“You’re the one who supposedly knew all about ghosts. Oh, I went into an abandoned house at midnight with Pete Wentz,” Gerard says, mocking Mikey, and Schechter cackles.
“This is not what I thought was gonna happen ghost hunting,” Mikey says.
“This isn’t ghost hunting,” Bob says, and he looks quite sad.
"What's the difference between ghost hunting and.....this?" Ray asks. “What you do.”
"I don't look for ghosts," Bob says, and pushes his sunglasses up onto his forehead. "I don't go looking for them because I don't like what has to happen when I find them."
“What do you mean?” Gerard asks. “What happens to them?”
“They move on,” Mikey says quickly.
“You’re not here to help Frankie, are you?” Gerard says hotly. The temporary truce and the calm of Ray’s joke are gone again. “You’re here to send him away.”
“He doesn’t belong here,” Mikey tries to say but Gerard waves a hand at him.
“Where are you going to send him?” Gerard demands from Bob. “What happens when you send him away from here?”
“I don’t know,” Bob says.
“What the hell does that - “
“I don’t know!!” Bob shouts and Gerard goes silent. “I don’t know what happens next, okay? I don’t know what comes after this world. I don’t know whether ghosts go somewhere different, whether they go to heaven or hell, whether there’s actually a thing such as heaven or hell, if even people really go anywhere, or whether I’m just shuttling them off to some other place where they’ll be half-whole, tortured and lonely and sad.”
“It just seemed like,” Gerard starts and then stops. “It just seemed like you should know, since this is what you do.”
Bob laughs, and it’s not a happy laugh, it chills Frank. “Do you want to know why this is what I do? Why I own a grimoire and know Latin and own expensive recording equipment that’s better than most professional musicians afford?” Bob doesn’t wait for an answer, and Frank thinks none of them seem ready to refuse the explanation. Schechter even looks curious. “This isn’t on the regular tour,” Bob says. “It’s not good for everyone to know where you come from, sometimes makes them nervous. To see how you got started. Makes them think they might end up like you, driving hundreds of miles in a weekend, paranoid as all fuck.”
Ray, Gerard, Mikey, and Schechter are all rapt, and Frank is, too, drawn to this sudden change in Bob’s energy, this break in his cool, this raw feeling coming from him, still dangerous, but somehow less of a threat now that he is talking about himself and not coming after Frank.
“I had an imaginary friend, when I was a kid. Seemed normal enough, even to my parents. Except that I could see my friend. He was transparent, but I thought it was normal. We played, he listened to me. Then the dog got sick. Then my parents got sick. Then I got sick.” Bob stops. “I got so sick I almost died. Then someone who does what I do now came and sent my invisible friend away. The thing was, he was too late, because my parents had become like him. They were ghosts. The fucking dog was a ghost. And I lived with them in the house for years, once my grandmother had moved in to take care of me. I talked to my parents every day, to their ghosts, but it wasn’t really them. I never really got better, and so the guy came back, but I had to help, because all the ghostly energy, it was centered around me. So, I learned how to send my parents and my pet dog and my fake invisible friend to the great beyond. And there was really nothing else to do after that, it’s not like I was going to go to college.”
Everyone’s silent. Gerard’s the one who steps forward. “I’m sorry,” Gerard says, resting his hand on Bob’s arm. Bob nods, and slips his sunglasses down over his eyes.
“So, are we gonna do this thing?” Bob says. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen, I never know, but I either try and fix this tonight or I leave you and you don’t call me back, you don’t ever tell me what happens to you, ok?”
Everyone looked to Gerard. “We’ll do it tonight,” Gerard says after the longest moment, and Frank thinks he can feel his heart break right there. It’s good though, it’s good, it’s time for Frank to go, he knows it. It’s time for him to leave Gerard, and trust that Bob will get rid of the other spirit when he sends Frank away, too. As long as he gets them both, Frank thinks, it’ll be ok.
“Let me know when you’re ready,” Bob says.
Gerard comes to get Bob just as it is getting dark.
“You’re not telling me everything,” Gerard says. Bob laughs.
“What is it you want to know?”
“You know something about the two ghosts,” Gerard says. Bob doesn’t try to disagree. Frank wonders how Gerard knows that Bob has left something out, whether Gerard is better at reading Bob when Frank’s been too scared of him to pay attention.
“The thing about Frank,” Bob says and Frank startles when Gerard does at the mention of his name, “is that he probably wouldn’t be here, if you hadn’t moved in. He would have just found his way back onto the path.”
Gerard looks stricken. “It’s my fault?”
“No,” Bob says quickly. “No, it’s not like that. But you’re part of the reason he’s still here.”
“So,” Gerard says, and Frank feels Gerard consider the question like there’s a limit and he has to ask the right one. “If I’m keeping Frank here, I’m somehow….giving the other ghost power, too?”
“Something like that,” Bob says. “That’s why it’s your decision, what we do next.”
Gerard studies Bob’s face, and then he looks around the room, his eyes going unfocused. Frank thinks maybe Gerard is looking for him.
“I’m ready,” Gerard says, looking back at Bob. “I mean, I guess, I don’t really know.”
”It’s ok,” Bob says, and gestures for everyone to come over.” “Everyone sit down,” Bob says, “in a circle.”
“No chalk line?” Schechter asks, hesitant.
Bob says seriously. “We’re the circle.” Frank is standing on the stairs, watching as everyone sits, and then Bob says, “No, no, no, Gerard, you go inside the circle.”
“What?” Gerard’s voice is small.
“You go in the circle,” Bob says gently. “That’s why it’s us. No chalk or salt or anything, but us, protecting you.”
Mikey looks the most nervous of them all, which Frank thinks has to do with the bump on his head and the realization of how much the spirits can actually hurt them, and how much responsibility they’re going to have to watch over Gerard. Gerard notices Mikey’s expression and he reaches forward and ruffles his brother’s hair. Mikey bats him away, but looks reassured.
Frank is skeptical of the whole thing, but if there’s a chance that Bob can make this work, can get rid of the other spirit, can make Frank stop hurting Gerard, than Frank is willing to do whatever he can to make that happen, even if it means enduring séances and spells and things that don’t work.
“Now I’m going to give each of you one of the things that Schechter brought back, and I want you to keep them facing the way I hand them to you, and don’t tear the tissue paper.”
“It feels like Christmas,” Gerard says.
“Are you going to tell us what they are?” Mikey asks.
“No,” Bob says. “Not yet. Opening their packaging is part of the ritual, ok? I need you all to make sure to open them in the order that I tell you. It’s a chain of power we’ll be building and we can’t break it.” Everyone nods solemnly. “I’ve got to set up the candles and read a few things from the grimoire, ok, so, you can all relax for a few minutes.”
Bob begins reading and lighting candles and Gerard breathes in and exhales loudly a few times. “Good, do some yoga there,” Schechter says, and Ray cracks up, and then Mikey shushes him.
Ray looks apologetically over at Bob, who shrugs at Ray and then, Frank can hardly believe it, he winks at him. Ray turns three shades of red. And Frank can’t tell if he’s offended or what, that Bob and Ray are still flirting. But then Bob tilts his head, and Ray puts his hand on Gerard’s shoulder. Gerard startles for a minute and then he leans into Ray’s hand. They’re all watching out for Gerard, Frank knows that. They’re here, and that circle is going to be strong, protecting Gerard from whatever is coming.
“I’m going to have to lock the grimoire up, now,” Bob says, “since we’re conjuring and we don’t want what we’re conjuring to read what’s in here.” Bob takes out an elaborate case which he locks with a combination of keys, and then he sets a white candle on top of the case.
“Ok,” Bob says. “I’m going to turn out the lights, and then as soon as I light the first candle, I need you all do to as I ask, no matter what happens. If one of us breaks the circle after we start this next part, we all risk getting hurt, and what’s worse, we risk Gerard, who’s going to be doing a fair amount of the work.”
“I am?” Gerard asks.
“Why do you think you’re in the circle?” Mikey asks, like this is his hundredth séance and Gerard is the new guy.
“Ok, here we go,” Bob says, and starts reading from a small, leather book, in Latin. The moment he turns a page, Frank can see the other spirit, a shimmery, steam-like, threatening thing on the other side of the room. After a minute, Bob sees it, too, and he puts his finger to mark his place in the text and says,” Schechter, you go around and light everyone’s candles. As Schechter lights your candle, place your hands on top of the head of the person to your right, like you’re blessing them, and repeat back what I’m going to read now.” Bob reads a short phrase in Latin, three times, and then Schechter lights Mikey’s candle. Mikey says the phrase over Ray’s head, Ray says it over Schechter, and Schechter says it over Bob. Then Bob gets up on his knees and says the phrase, and a few others, over Gerard.
“You ok?” Bob asks Gerard, who looks like he wants to answer no.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Here comes the hard work, then,” Bob says. “I need you to talk to Frank.”
“Ok,” Gerard says, and Frank can hear in Gerard’s tone that it’s not that hard at all.
“I mean, you need to talk to him, where you can see him. Like you told me you’ve done before, right?”
“In a dream?”
“Sort of,” Bob says. “I’m going to send you into a place that’s like a dream, but you won’t be asleep. Do you think you can get Frank to follow you there?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to him, is it?” Gerard demands.
“No, you’re just going to talk,” Bob says. “You’ll be in control of the situation, so you don’t have to ask Frank the things I ask you to, but you need to remember that if you don’t, we might not be able to get this other spirit to leave you alone. Remember what we talked about, Gerard,” Bob says, and Gerard straightens up at his name.
“Ok,” Gerard says. Bob begins by lighting a small bundle of dried herbs tied with a white string and blowing on them until they smoke. It smells rich and spicy, something familiar that Frank can’t quite place. Bob begins humming, a tune that feels the same as the smell, like a nursery rhyme that Frank recognizes from long ago.
There’s enough room in the circle for Frank, and so with one eye on the spirit who’s still hovering at a distance from the circle, steps in between Ray and Mikey and he sits down next to Gerard, their legs crossed and their knees touching. Gerard’s eyes are closed and so Frank closes his too, and listen to Bob’s humming, until he hears someone speaking. He thinks it’s Bob speaking the rest of a spell, but when Frank opens his eyes, he sees it’s Gerard who’s talking.
“Hi,” Frank says.
“You came,” Gerard says, looking surprised and pleased.
They’re sitting, like they were in the circle, but there’s no one else, just the two of them in the hallway of the apartment, in the spot where Frank died. And Frank feels it when Gerard reaches out for his hand, his fingers brushes lightly over the top of Frank’s hand.
“We shouldn’t do that,” Frank says, looking down at their hands. He can’t help but tangle his fingers in Gerard’s and he feels the rush. “I’m taking your energy.”
“You can have all you want,” Gerard says.
Frank hears what sounds like a hiss. It’s the other spirit, hovering just a few feet away from Gerard.
“We need to get rid of that thing,” Frank says. Gerard looks at it and then looks back at Frank.
“We’re going to,” Gerard says. He looks more confident here, calmer. “Bob says you know how.”
“Me?” Frank says, shocked. “If I did, Gerard, I promise you - “
“Shh, it’s ok,” Gerard says. “I’ll help you.” Gerard leans forward and kisses Frank and Frank gasps and then slides his hands into Gerard’s hair. They kiss like that for a long time, and Frank gets lost in the building feeling, the urge to kiss longer and harder, and when Gerard finally pulls away, Frank is practically panting.
“That feels so good,” Frank says, looking down at his hands and then into Gerard’s deep, open gaze. “It’s weird to think it’s not real.”
“Of course it’s real,” Gerard says, and Frank thinks he actually sounds a little hurt.
Frank reaches out for Gerard and kisses him softly, and then pulls back. Gerard smiles at him this time. “See?” Gerard says.
“But it has to stop. I have to send away that thing. I have to go so it can follow me, isn’t that it? Isn’t that what’s going to happen?”
“Bob says you can’t see clearly, and so that’s what this spell is for. We’re here to help you see.”
Frank blinks. “I don’t understand.”
“This was the easy place for me to meet you,” Gerard says, “But Bob says you need to come back with me, to the circle.”
‘We can’t stay here just a little longer?’
Gerard laughs and Frank feels warm.
“But they can’t see me,” and if Frank squints, he can see that he’s still in the circle.
“No, they won’t be able to see you, but I’ll still be able to, ok?”
Frank nods, and squeezes Gerard’s hand, and in the space of a blink, he’s there in the circle.
“Hi,” Gerard says to him.
“Can you see him? Is he there?” Mikey asks nervously. “Are you sure it’s him and not - ”
“It’s him, Mikey,” Gerard says calmly, his words stretched and slow.
“We’re going to help you see, Frank,” Bob says, and Frank shivers at the command in Bob’s voice. “Schechter, you start, open your box and hold it up, facing Gerard.” Schechter does, and when he holds it up, Frank sees that Schechter’s holding a square, silver-framed mirror. As each of them open their boxes, it’s the same. Ray, Mikey all have mirrors which they point at Gerard. Frank can see his reflection in them, it’s no trick, but they still can’t seem to see him.
Frank hears a rustle, and behind him, Bob is unwrapping a mirror for himself, and holding one out to Gerard.
“Now I need you and Frank to tell me where the other spirit is. I know Frank can see it, can’t you, Frank?”
Frank nods, and Gerard says, “Yeah, he can see it.”
“Ok, help us point our mirrors so it appears in every single one of ours, like a funhouse mirror, like a puzzle. Each of us needs to have the reflection of the thing in our mirror at the same time, ok?”
“What if it moves?” Ray asks.
“It won’t,” Frank says, because he can sense it now, more clearly than before. “It’s stuck.”
“Frank says it’s stuck,” Gerard says, because Frank keeps forgetting they can’t hear him, only Gerard can.
Bob nods. “Good.”
Frank tries to move one of the mirror but he can’t actually touch it. “Here, tell me where its supposed to go,” Gerard says, and Frank shows Gerard, moving around in the circle so that each of the mirrors are correct.
“Ok, what now,” Frank says, because he’s tense with waiting, he feels something hovering close and threatening.
“What now?” Gerard repeats.
“Hold your mirror up to Frank,” Bob says, and Frank can tell in his voice that he’s hiding something.
“What’s it going to do,” Frank demands, nervously, twitching, and getting ready to stand up. ‘Is the mirror magic or something, am I going to get trapped in it, is it going to steal my soul or something?”
“Shh, shh, Frankie, it’s ok,” Gerard soothes, though he sounds just as nervous. “What’s it going to do?” Gerard repeats the question back for Bob.
“I can’t explain it,” Bob says, “I mean, I don’t really know what Frank’s going to see. I just know this is what’s supposed to happen next.”
“Bob said I didn’t have to ask you to do anything I didn’t want to,” Gerard says to Frank. “And if you don’t want to do this, it’s ok, you don’t have to, we can find another way.”
“There isn’t another way, is there?” Frank asks. “Whatever this is going to do, I’m going to have to do it. The spirit can’t stay locked there, whatever Bob did do it. It can’t stay, can it?”
Gerard shakes his head, without having to ask Bob. He can tell, just like Frank now, that heightened sense of awareness. This is it. All he has to do is look in the mirror, whatever’s going to happen, this has to be it.
Gerard holds up his mirror, and Frank looks down, so he’s not looking in it, not yet. He looks past the mirror, up directly into Gerard’s face. "Am I going to die, Gerard?"
"You're already dead," Gerard says with a hint of a laugh, but when he looks at Frank, it’s all tenderness.
"But what's going to happen to me?"
"I don't know, Frankie. I don't know."
“Maybe I’ll see your grandmother,” Frank says, and Gerard’s eyes tear and he nods.
“Yeah, tell her I say hi, ok?” Gerard’s voice cracks.
Frank sees the spirit move all of a sudden and he looks into the mirror, and sees just himself, and then, in the reflection of the other mirrors, just his face a hundred times over, but then, something shimmers in the glass, something happens, and it’s just one face, like it’s not a reflection at all, Frank’s face, looking terrified and determined and frozen in place.
Without any warning, Bob reaches out and punches the mirror Gerard’s holding, smashing it to pieces.
Gerard shouts in surprise as Bob shouts, “Break them, on the floor, right now,” and they all do, shards of glass flying everywhere, the sound of smashing glass louder than explosions.
And then, Frank is there. Frank is whole, he can feel the glass under his hands, the cold floor, his own heart beating. For a moment, Gerard is hugging him and Frank can feel the tears running down Gerard’s cheeks, and then it all goes black.
“I don’t understand,” Mikey is saying. Frank tries to blink his eyes open but they won’t quite work, his eyes just fluttering under closed lids. He can hear the sound of a broom. “How did the mirrors let Frank see the other spirit?”
“It was him,” Schechter says, “The whole time, both spirits were him.”
“But he’s - he’s alive now” Ray says. “I mean, he’s not a ghost, right? He’s got a body.”
“So why’d he try to hurt Gerard?” Mikey demands. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“He was split in two,” Bob says. “Can you hand me that dust pan? Thanks.” Bob continues, “Everyone has an opposite side of themselves, tucked away, in the dark.”
“It was the house,” Ray chimes in, and from the sound of it, he’s the one with the broom. “My house is evil. Well, my side is perfectly normal.”
“It wasn’t the house that kept Frank here, but it was what stopped him from having the choice to move on. I still don’t know what it was that split him like that, I’ve never seen anything like it, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure the plan was going to work.”
“Your plan was to make him corporeal?” Schechter says, impressed.
“I didn’t know what was actually possible,” Bob says. “Until it happened, I didn’t know if it was even an option. I just knew Frank couldn’t know what we were going to do before we did it, it had to be his choice to see what he saw. So I couldn’t say anything incase he heard.”
“So you believed me,” Gerard says. “You really believed he was there.”
“Yeah,” Bob says, and then shrugs it off. “And look, I was right.”
Frank tries to sit up and feels dizzy. It takes him a minute to realize he’s slumped awkwardly in Gerard’s favorite armchair.
His aborted attempt at movement seems to have caught Gerard’s eye though, because he runs over and kneels beside the chair. “It’s ok, Frankie, it’s ok,” Gerard coos at him. Frank can’t really focus, but he sees Gerard is smiling up at him, and, very hesitantly, brushing Frank’s hair back from his forehead.
“Hi,” Frank says croakily to Gerard and Gerard’s face lights up.
“He’s awake,” Gerard calls and Frank watches as the blurry figures coming to stand around the chair resolve themselves into Mikey, Ray, Schechter, and Bob.
“Hey Ray,” Frank says, and Ray nods at him and smiles. “Hey, I guess I haven’t really met you guys yet. I’m Frank, I used to live here,” he says, uselessly, and everyone laughs.
“So, my work here is done,” Bob says.
“Hey, wait,” Frank says, and Bob stops. “Thanks,” Frank says, because he doesn’t know what else to say, he can’t say everything, and this, this he really means.
“Oh, you’ll see me again,” Bob says. “That’s my hoodie you’re wearing.”
“What?” Frank says, and then he realizes he’s not wearing anything but a hoodie and a blanket draped over his legs. “Oh my god,” he says.
“Yup. We’ve all seen you naked,” Schechter says. “My very first naked re-corporealized ghost,” Schechter says.
Frank looks at Gerard, who’s blushing. He smiles at Gerard, small and tender, and says, “Can I borrow a pair of your pants?”
Gerard nods. “I’ll go get some right now. You close your eyes if you want. You look like you haven’t slept in months.”
“He died and became a ghost and now he’s here, in Gerard’s armchair,” he hears Ray saying as he drifts off. “How are we going to explain that to people?”
When Frank opens his eyes again, Gerard is sitting on the floor next to Frank’s feet. Frank’s wearing a pair of jeans and two mismatched socks, and still, Bob’s hoodie. “Hi,” he says croakily and Gerard hastily hands Frank a cup of tea.
“I’ve missed this,” Frank says.
Frank takes the tea, wrapping his hands around the mug. He inhales the steam. It’s still hot, Gerard must have just made it a few minutes ago. It tastes amazing and familiar, and he takes a few long sips and hands the cup back to Gerard and then he reaches out and tugs at Gerard, asking him to come closer.
“Where is everyone?” Frank asks, because the house is strangely quiet, but he can still see the remnants of Bob’s equipment and Ray’s broom leaning in the corner.
“Mikey’s upstairs,” Gerard says, “Taking a nap. Schechter’s in the back burning all the mirrors,”
Frank startles. “You can burn mirror glass?”
“Apparently,” Gerard shrugs. He settles himself next to Frank in the chair. There’s just enough room for Gerard to fit with their sides squished up next to each other. Frank pulls the blanket over Gerard’s legs and leans into his side, his head just on Gerard’s shoulder. “And Ray is showing Bob his side of the house.”
“I bet he is,” Frank says and Gerard laughs and Frank can feel it in his chest.
“You think they’re - “
“I think there’s something,” Frank says.
“And what about us?” Gerard leans down, his chin on Frank’s head, his lips pressing lightly and for a moment to Frank’s forehead .
“I think there’s definitely something,” Frank says and turns so he can kiss Gerard. Gerard sighs against his mouth and then his hands wrap around Frank’s shoulders so that he’s flush against Gerard, comfortably tight in this chair that he’s wanted to feel for so long.
Mikey comes down the stairs, and he makes a disgusted sound when he sees them, though Frank wonders how much of it’s just for show. “My brother and his ghost boyfriend,” Mikey says. “Pete’s coming to pick me up,” Mikey throws out. Frank feels Gerard tense at Pete’s name. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell him Frank used to haunt you.”
Ray and Bob knock, with Schechter following behind them, the air of wood smoke around him.
“So the mirrors are all set. I buried what was left along the ley line, facing south.” Bob nods, but when Gerard catches Frank’s eye he sees that he doesn’t understand either and they smile at each other. Frank stands up, a lot les wobbly than he thought, though Gerard rushes to his side, incase Frank needs something to balance on.
“I want you to call me if anything is strange with Frank,” Bob says to Gerard.
“You mean besides the fact that I’m alive?” Frank says, and Bob winces.
“This house is still mystically charged,” Bob says, ignoring Frank, and something might try to take the place of all that energy we just released. I’ve set up a few things around the house, they shouldn’t get in your way, but if you see something’s moved weirdly, you call me. I’ll be back to check on things tomorrow and take some readings.”
“And for dinner,” Mikey says, looking between Bob and Ray. Schechter actually snickers.
“So, kid, want to give me a hand with some of this,” Schechter says, to Mikey, and Mikey lifts up the other end of one of Bob’s equipment cases, Ray and Bob lifting another.
“Hey, you forgot this,” Frank says, reaching for a small silver bottle. The cap isn’t on all the way and some of whatever is in it that spills on Frank’s hand. It’s intensely cold and then it burns like it’s eating Frank’s skin. He screams and drops the bottle, which clatters on the floor.
Bob and Schechter drop their ends of the cases and rush over to Frank, who is shaking his hand, trying to get the pain to stop. Gerard rushes over to him, too, but a second later, Gerard pushes Frank behind him and stands in front of him with his arms outstretched.
“What the hell was that,” Frank hisses but when he looks up, Bob and Schechter are both standing very aggressively toward Gerard. Frank sees the silver glint of a knife in Bob’s hand. Mikey and Ray are frozen, staring off to the side.
“Back off,” Gerard says firmly.
“What just happened?” Mikey demands.
“Frank just spilled holy water,” Schechter says.
“I don’t understand what that means,” Mikey says, sounding more and more distressed.
“That wasn’t holy water, that was acid or something,” Frank says. “Look, it burned me.” He tries to hold out his hand to show him, but Gerard forces Frank behind him, his arms still up, protecting Frank.
“Stand back from him, Gerard,” Bob says calmly. “Step out of the way.”
“You did this on purpose,” Gerard shouts at Bob. Frank’s heart is pounding. It feels unnaturally fast, but possibly just because it’s so unfamiliar.
“I swear, Gerard, I didn’t think anything was wrong with him,” Bob says. “But I don’t actually know what we’re dealing with here and there are always consequences to messing with things we don’t understand.”
“Everyone relax and tell me what the hell it means,” Ray shouts, standing in-between Bob and Schechter and Gerard and Frank. Bob still has the knife in his hand, but he lowers it when Ray steps forward.
“It means he’s not human,” Bob says, his voice dangerously low. It takes a long time for the words to make any sense to Frank. He stares at Bob, and then at the knife.
“So we did something wrong?” Mikey says.
“I don’t know,” Bob says. “But this is not right.”
“Is it maybe just - I mean, he really died and now he’s back so isn’t that, like, something not human?” Gerard asks.
A horn honks outside. “It’s Pete,” Mikey says, and then he catches Gerard’s eye and says, “He can wait.”
“You have to explain it better,” Ray says, to Bob. “Can we break up this aggression, here, and everyone take a few steps back?” Ray looks at both Gerard and Bob, who nod. Gerard lowers his arms so that he’s not standing directly in front of Frank.
“Frank, can we all see what happened to your hand?” Ray asks.
Frank doesn’t really want to show them, not if it’s going to prove Bob right, but Ray’s being reasonable and so Frank agrees. He steps aside from Gerard, but Gerard catches his sleeve and holds him back. They all look at Frank’s hand, which is burned in a splash pattern, like oil, red and angry.
Ray goes and gets the bottle that Frank dropped, and splashes some of it onto his hand. “No, don’t, you’ll get - ”Frank shouts, worried Ray will get burned, but Ray doesn’t get burned at all. He’s just holding a palm full of water.
The horn honks again outside.
“Oh my god,” Frank says, looking directly at Bob. “So this means, I’m, like, what, a living ghost or something?” He doesn’t know what question to ask first, or what the question even means.
“I don’t know,” Bob says. “You could be some kind of corporeal spirit.”
“There is nothing wrong with him,” Gerard says. “I think you all need to go.”
“I can’t leave here with him like that,” Bob says. “I did that, and if he’s a danger, if he hurts anyone - “
“He’s not going to hurt anyone,” at the same time Frank says, “Could I hurt someone? Like, without meaning it?”
Bob nods.
“It’s the same as before, Gerard,” Frank says, turning back to him, and though he doesn’t want to look away, doesn’t ever want to look away from Gerard’s worried eyes, he knows what he has to do. It was too good to be true, that he could just come back from the dead. “I could hurt you without meaning to, like when I was the other spirit. So we’d better just get it over with.”
Frank takes a few long strides toward Bob, who raises the knife again.
Gerard rushes forward, tackling Frank around the waist as Ray reaches up for Bob’s arm, saying gently, “Ok, slow down everyone, put the knife down before one of us gets hurt,” and Mikey’s tugging at Gerard to let go of Frank while Schechter’s trying to pull Mikey away.
They all freeze when the front door bursts open. “Fucking Jesus Christ, what’s with the dagger?” Pete says, standing in the doorway, his keys dangling in one hand. And then, more cautiously, “Mikey?”
“Pete this, uh, isn’t a good time,” Gerard says as Frank struggles to get out of Gerard’s grip.
“Yeah, I’m kind of sensing that. Sorry, I was waiting, and then I heard shouting, and I was worried, and - “
“It’s fine,” Mikey says through gritted teeth. He moves side to side, dodging Schechter.
“Ok, but, I’m just saying, it doesn’t look fine,” Pete says. “It looks like someone’s about to get murdered, but, if you want me to go back outside and drive off and pretend I didn’t see anything, sure, whatever you say, man.”
“Wait,” Frank says. Everyone stops. He has to make Gerard understand. “Bob said I could hurt someone even if I didn’t mean to, so let me just go outside with him and he can exorcise me or whatever.”
“He’s not going to exorcise you, Frankie, he’s going to kill you,” Gerard shouts. Frank wishes he could reassure Gerard, but he thinks Gerard might be right. If he’s already dead anyway, though, it won’t make much of a difference. He was ready before, ready to move on, if that’s what was going to happen. This had just been another delay.
“Wait, is this a ghost hunt?” Pete says, “Because this is not normally how they shake down in my admittedly limited experience. I mean, I’ve never needed a fucking silver dagger.”
“Well, then you’re about to get in way over your head, Wentz,” Schechter says, and Pete frowns.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Gerard says, as Frank tries to pull away. “Bob, please,” Gerard begs and Bob tucks the knife back into his boot, comes up with his palms open.
“Ok,” Bob says, “Ok, I’m going to open up this case,” Bob says in the same explanatory tone he used during the ritual. “I’m going to get the grimoire, but there’s another knife in the case. I’m not getting the knife, just the book.”
“Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?” Pete asks, though it’s more a hesitant request.
“Shh,” Mikey says and Pete looks scolded.
“I’m gonna read something that’s going to tell me something about what’s going on with Frank here,” Bob says, holding the grimoire open in his hands.
“You won’t do anything to hurt him?” Gerard asks. Frank struggles in Gerard’s grip. “Stop it, Frankie. He’s not going to do anything to hurt you.”
“I’m not going to hurt Frank,” Bob says over both of them. “It’s like a request that the house give me a hint about what’s happened to you, that’s all. It’s a question.”
“Like the mystical phone call Schechter did?”
Bob nods. “Sort of, except I’m talking to the house, which may or may not want or know how to talk back. This house, though, seems alarmingly sentient.”
“Hey, I told you, my half is normal!” Ray protests.
“What do you mean, he’s not human?” Pete says in a hushed voice, but Bob begins the incantation.
“Frank, you might feel something, static, dizziness, I’m not sure, but it’ll only be for a minute, just tell me what happens.”
Frank braces for it, for whatever’s coming, and Bob continues reading. He finishes the last sentence, and gently closes the book, and then Gerard sways on the spot and passes out, his grip on Frank going slack, Frank catching him so he doesn’t hit the floor hard. It takes a minute of Frank shaking him in panic and Mikey calling his brother’s name for Gerard to blink his eyes open and say, “I’m fine, I’m fine, it was just - really dizzy.”
“That was not what was supposed to happen,” Bob says quietly, checking Gerard’s pulse. Then he stands up and says, as though asking the house, “What the hell is going on?” and Frank gapes at him, because Bob’s the one who’s supposed to know.
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