The Old Straight Track, Part 2
Part 1
It gets old pretty fast, not being able to talk to Gerard, or communicate with him in any way. It's pretty quiet in the house alone when one of the people living there thinks he's alone. Gerard doesn't talk to himself nearly enough to satisfy Frank’s need for sound. He just walks around, thinking thoughts inside his head that Frank can't understand. He studies Gerard's expression, his body language, gets pretty good at knowing what that certain frown means, when Gerard's hungry before he gets up to get food, but it's still not the same as talking and just when Frank thinks he might go out of his mind with not hearing anything, with not hearing Gerard say words with his voice, Mikey calls, or Gerard will answer the door and chat with the delivery guy, or Ray will stop by.
But it's been a long weekend and there's been no mail, no packages, and Mikey's gone, Frank remembers Gerard saying something about having a good time in the city. Gerard hasn't spoken a word in three days and Frank is going completely insane with the lack of sound. He's tried to talk himself, but it doesn’t do any good, and Gerard can't hear him, can't answer back. Frank stands in the stairwell and shakes his fists, stomps his feet. Shouts out Gerard's name. There's no sound. Gerard doesn't answer.
Finally, finally, there's at least bed, where Gerard can't be expected to speak, where Frank can sit in the corner of the room and relax into the quiet. Frank's gotten into the habit of watching Gerard sleep, because it's the closet thing he gets to rest, watching Gerard's face relax against the pillow, watching him sprawl out, his mouth open, the sheets bunching around his knees. And if Frank thinks about Gerard, thinks about Gerard's body, about the sounds he would make, if Frank thinks about what it would be like to touch Gerard like this, open and undone, if Frank thinks about kissing Gerard breathless, if he thinks about it every night as he watches Gerard lie down, adjust his pillow, close his eyes and drift off, then Frank can't really be blamed. What else is he supposed to think about with Gerard like this, half naked, disarmed, not moving or fidgeting, all of Gerard's body laid out before him? And maybe it’s creepy, but Frank doesn’t really have a choice here - everything he does is creepy here, silently watching Gerard all of the time.
Frank sits down on the pile of blankets in the corner and wishes he could curl up in them, wrap one of them around his shoulders, let his eyes fall closed the way Gerard's are right now, letting go of the concerns of the day for the weird, strange time of whatever happens during sleep, rest and dreams. He wishes, at least, that Gerard would say goodnight, would speak just that one word aloud to the house. He closes his eyes, wishing for it, straining his ears in case Gerard whispers it, in case it comes out on an exhale the very second before he's asleep.
"Hi," Gerard says and Frank's eyes fly open. They're standing in a different room - a kitchen somewhere that Frank doesn't recognize. Gerard is wearing the same flannel pajama shorts and overly large, randomly stained grey t-shirt that he fell asleep in.
"Hi," Frank says, because Gerard is looking at him, waiting for an answer.
"Aren't your feet cold?" Gerard asks, and Frank looks down and his feet are bare. He hasn't been aware of his shoes, his clothes, for some time now, but he feels his bare feet on the linoleum floor, his t-shirt under a sweater vest that he was just about to think about throwing out for good before he died wearing it, jeans that fit perfectly and could have lasted a few years except for the possible pneumonia contagion or whatever. But here he was, wearing them.
He shoves his hands in his pockets and says, "No, I'm ok. It's good to feel them again."
“Can you see Elena, where you are?” Gerard asks. Frank doesn’t want to have to tell Gerard that he can’t, doesn’t want to see the disappointment on his face.
Finally, he shakes his head no. “She’s not here,” Frank says, his voice heavy with apology. “There’s just me.”
“But why are you all alone?” Gerard reaches out to touch Frank, his fingers just resting on Frank’s arm.
The moment Frank realizes it's a dream is the moment he's no longer in it. It has to have been Gerard's dream, because Frank doesn't dream, can't even sleep, and Gerard is still asleep. He feels like everything is sharp and bright, like he can see everything clearly for the first time since the day Gerard moved in. He stirs slightly when Frank gets up and leans close, peers into Gerard's face and wonders what in the world just happened.
Mikey comes by the next morning, and the first words out of his mouth are that he’s sorry he brought up ghosts. “I didn’t mean to freak you out or anything, or make it seem like I was being disrespectful to the guy who died here,” Mikey says all in a rush.
Gerard looks serene, has all morning since after the dream, and Frank understands why as soon as Gerard answers Mikey. “No, it’s ok, Mikey, I’ve thought about it and think you’re right. I think I do have a ghost, and I think it’s Frank.”
Mikey’s face goes blank, but Frank’s heart explodes with happiness because Gerard knows he’s here.
“Look, you’re the one who said I had a ghost, and now I tell you the thing that makes the most sense, that it’s the ghost of the previous resident and you get all judgmental.”
Mikey just shakes his head. “Ok, maybe it’s this guy. Frank.”
Gerard's expression has stretched into a tight frown. "So, Mikey, tell me everything you know about ghosts. What am I supposed to do?"
"You're supposed to help me," Frank says, without really meaning to say it aloud.
"I know I'm supposed to help him,” Gerard says an instant later. “Help him move on or whatever but - " there's a long pause, "what if he doesn't want to move on?" Gerard says and he sounds really concerned. "What if he wants to stay?"
"I do," Frank says, "I do want to stay," but he's not even sure what that means anymore. He doesn't want to stay stuck in this house, like this, incorporeal, powerless, unable to even step outside, or smoke a cigarette, or eat anything ever again. But he knows he doesn’t want to leave Gerard, can’t even bear to think about it.
“I just think - “Mikey says, and then the kitchen lights start to flicker. Then, with a bang, the basement door, the door to the coat closet, and the front door fly open. Mikey shouts, and a gust of wind too large to come from the outside blows a pile of Gerard’s mail left by the door, and then two pairs of shoes right up into the kitchen. Gerard rushes forward and has to put all of his weight against the front door to make it shut. The wind stops. Frank looks the whole time for the shadow, for some explanation, but he’s fixated on how shocked Gerard looks.
“Ok, you really have a ghost,” Mikey says, once Gerard picks up the mail, the shoes, and shuts the closet and the basement door.
Mikey pries open the silver pourer on the 2 lb cardboard canister of salt and starts pouring it in a steady stream across the inside of Gerard's doorway. Small granules of salt scatter all over the floorboards and under - or through - Frank's feet.
"What are you doing?" Gerard exclaims, but Mikey doesn't stop to look up at his brother until there's a carefully poured line of salt across the front doorway.
"Protection," Mikey says. "Salt stops evil spirits from crossing the threshold."
"The ghost is inside my house, it's not like it's going to cross any thresholds, it's already here." Gerard stands with his legs splayed wide and his hands on his hips, like he's trying to take up more space than his brother.
"This is only the first door," Mikey says. "I'm going to do them all."
"Mikey, Mikey, cut it out, you're making a mess," Gerard says, sounding more and more annoyed. "Plus, didn't Mom teach you that spilling salt was bad luck?"
"I'm not spilling it, I'm pouring it, and salt is a very strong protection."
"I don't need protecting!" Gerard says again. "The ghost isn't going to hurt me."
Frank feels a swell of warmth that Gerard knows Frank isn't there to hurt him. Mikey continues to pour salt across the threshold of the coat closet.
And then Frank gets curious, because what if Mikey's right, and salt is going to protect Gerard from ghosts, which means something will happen to Frank when he tries to go across the door, from one way or another. Normal people went through doors, and Frank still thinks he's more normal than anything. What if he's not, though, and what if the salt really can hurt him. He imagines dissolving like the Wicked Witch of the West, or getting burned. Frank wonders if it can get through his sneakers, but then he remembers that his sneakers aren't really real.
He tries it, stepping over the salt line as soon as Mikey pours it across the entrance to the living room. Nothing happens. He's fine.
"You've got to be careful," Mikey says. "Spirits are dangerous."
"Frank's not a spirit, he's a ghost," Gerard says, and Frank feels dumb with happiness at Gerard saying his name.
“Let’s not use his name,” Mikey says nervously. “What if it’s not him?”
"No, no," Gerard says quickly, running over his brother's words. "I just....." Gerard waves his hands above his chest, like, Frank thinks, that he's about to put his hand to his heart. "Know," he finishes quietly.
"You're scaring me, Gerard," Mikey says.
“I’m sorry, but I just, I know this,” Gerard insists.
It’s like a jolt of energy every time Gerard says Frank's name. Gerard knows Frank is here. And he doesn't want to hurt him, with salt or anything else.
Mikey insists the best course of action is research, Frank thinks also because he’s still trying to disprove Gerard’s insistence that the ghost is Frank, and he spends the rest of the afternoon with his nose to the screen of his laptop, calling out random facts from sites that tell you how to determine whether or not you have a ghost, and periodically checking on the salt lines.
“What is it that you’re checking for,” Gerard asks finally, after the fourth time Mikey gets up and makes a circuit around the house.
“Whether or not any of them are broken,” Mikey says like it’s obvious. Frank walks over another one of the lines to stand in the kitchen with them and it doesn’t break.
“And that will tell us we have a ghost?” Gerard asks.
“It will tell us something,” is all Mikey says.
Gerard maintains an air of indulging Mikey, though Frank catches him peeking at the salt lines in the hallway.
“How do you know all this, anyway?” Gerard asks Mikey, while Mikey scrolls and clicks through pages with pictures of abandoned houses and pictures of orbs that look like blurry Christmas lights.
“I went ghost hunting with Pete,” Mikey says without looking away from the screen.
“You went into an abandoned house with Pete?” Gerard’s whole body posture changes, and he looks torn between being furious and scolding.
“Pete’s not like you think he is,” Mikey says, and there’s something in his eyes that Frank can’t read, something like delight.
“I never expected him to take my little brother on one of his insane ghost hunts.”
“We went after work with Schechter,” Mikey says, like it explains it all, and Gerard just shakes his head.
“Pete and Schechter are two different conversations,” Gerard says, “Just because he’s your boss doesn’t mean you should go with him and Pete on a midnight ghost hunt.” He cocks his head when he notices it sounds as if there’s a tea kettle whistling, and Gerard actually looks at the stove before he realizes the sound isn’t actually a normal household sound. It gets louder, eerier, makes Frank’s ears ache, makes him close his eyes with the change in pressure in the air. When he opens them again, blinking, Gerard has yanked Mikey up from the kitchen chair and pulled him to the very corner of the kitchen, away from the hallway where the sound seems to be coming from.
Frank tries to take a step forward to look into the hallway, see what’s making the horrible, earsplitting noise, but he can’t seem to move forward, like he’s walking against the wind except he can’t feel any wind, just the resistance, pushing against his chest. He feels drained the longer he fights it, and so he steps back, moving closer to Gerard. The sound suddenly stops, but Frank’s ears are still ringing, and so, it seems, are Gerard and Mikey’s. Gerard’s eyes are wide. Mikey pulls away from where Gerard has his hand on his arm and runs out into the hallway. He stops, and sighs, and then turns and waves Gerard forward.
Gerard goes hesitantly, and Frank follows. The hallway is covered in a fine dusting of salt. Every single one of the salt lines is gone, scattered all across the floor.
“You think ghost hunts are insane now?” Mikey says. “I’m calling Schechter.”
Gerard only nods, and then says, after a swallow, says weakly, “For Christ’s sake, don’t let him bring Wentz.”
Mikey calls Schechter and as much as Frank tries, he can’t really hear the conversation. No matter how curious he is about what Mikey’s saying, he’s compelled to watch Gerard, even if the only thing he’s going is sweeping up the salt that’s blown everywhere, down on his knees with a dust pan.
Mikey hangs up and says, “He’ll be over Friday night, is that ok?” Gerard nods. “I have plans with Pete tomorrow,” Mikey says, and Gerard can’t keep the smirk off his face, “but I can come by, before.”
“To check on me? Mikey, I’m fine,” Gerard says. “Anyway, maybe I have plans tomorrow, too.”
“Sure you do,” Mikey says.
Frank figures Gerard is lying to mess with Mikey, but it feels like it takes Gerard ages to come home the next day, and Frank can’t tell if it’s just because he’s worried and waiting that it feels different. Gerard hangs up his jacket, turns on all the lights and closes all the shades, checks the messages on his phone, puts the tea kettle on.
Then he says into the quiet, empty room, "I went to your grave today, Frankie.”
As the first thing that Gerard has ever said to him directly, that wasn’t in a dream, it’s kind of weird. Frank walks into the hallway and stands next to Gerard, his hands opening and closing in fists. The idea of Gerard visiting Frank’s grave - the idea that he has a grave - is unnerving and foreign, like the obituary, which is still on the fridge.
"I thought it might be different, somehow, since I know you're here," Gerard says, "But it was just like a normal grave. I hope that doesn't hurt your feelings," Gerard says really quickly. "It was very nice, for a tombstone and all, shiny marble with your name. Francis Anthony Iero," Gerard says. "I like the name Frank, though. It suits you. Frankie." Gerard voice sounds scared and uncertain, like he always does when he starts talking to the house, but then he settles into it, and it feels like a real conversation. Frank pretends that Gerard is far away and calling him on the phone, telling Frank a story that he just listens to, like he doesn't have to say a word for Gerard to know he's listening.
Gerard says, his voice a little trembly now, "There's something weird going on with this house, and I wonder....I wonder if it's why you got stuck here, if there was something weird about the house when you lived here, and you're trapped somehow. It freaks me out, Frankie, this house, and all the weird things. I get worried that you're freaked out, too, stuck here when you probably should have moved on." Gerard is quiet for a long moment before he says, "I'm glad you're here, Frankie," and then he's quiet. Frank stays close by his side for the rest of the night until Gerard falls asleep. Frank knows that Mikey’s friend Schechter is coming tomorrow, and Frank wishes he could tell Gerard he’s worried about what’s going to happen, what it is that Schechter might do, but it’s all a vague threat, hovering just outside of Frank’s thoughts as Gerard drifts off and Frank gets as close as he ever can to something like sleep.
Schechter unpacks an enormous white candle from his messenger bag and slams it on the table like a gavel. "We need a séance," Schechter says. Schechter totally looks like the sort of guy who Frank would have met at a club if he hadn’t started getting too sick to wait in the lines and coughing too much to enjoy the music. He greets Mikey with a nod and Gerard with a handshake and then pulls out three more candles from inside his bag.
Almost immediately Gerard is speaking over Mikey, saying, "That's not real, séances are for palm reader tricks and fucking little girl sleepovers."
At the same time Mikey was saying, "Are you kidding? Those are dangerous and what if something actually spoke back and told us it wanted to eat Gerard's brain or whatever," and Schechter silences them by waving a bunch of sage tied with blue thread in both of their faces like it was a dangerous weapon - and Frank thought, maybe it was.
"Both of you shut the fuck up," Schechter says. "God, I knew you'd be a handful. One of you thinks a ghost in his apartment is like having a fucking friendly neighbor, and the other thinks that if you speak the wrong words in the wrong order you'll conjure a zombie on top of the ghost."
"But I don't want to upset - " Gerard says at the same time Mikey says, “What if it's like conjuring and it - "
"I said shut the fuck up, or I'll walk out this door," Schechter says, and then seems to reconsider. “No, actually, you know what, I won't walk out that door, because then if something happens to the two of you it'll be my fault, and you'll die thinking you were right about this zombie shit, and we can't have that." He surveys the room, with Gerard and Mikey now looking scolded. "I'm going to get a few things from my trunk and I'll be right back. Can either of you cook? Why don't we make something for dinner, there's no need to have a séance on an empty stomach."
Schechter comes back with a carefully labeled tackle box filled with what Frank thinks looks like the contents of a gourmet kitchen's spice rack. Over his shoulder he has a backpack which reveals itself to be carefully packed with candles, flashlights, and an assortment of small gadgets that Frank thinks could be a picklock set.
He sets it down on the table and begins unpacking carefully selected items.
"We're having a fucking séance and that's the end of it," Schechter says, and sounds like he means it. "What are you making us for dinner?"
The séance involves candles which Gerard worries might cause a fire, chalk which Mikey protests loudly as not going to be as effective as grease pencil and a silver bowl filled with water - probably holy water, Frank thinks, and a flash of Schechter in church dipping a measuring cup into the font. Although from what Frank's seen of Schechter, he probably got it wholesale mail order from a church supply company. Schechter also has four cloth bags which Mikey demands to know the ingredients of and which Schechter, finally exasperated, tells him are fucking lavender sachets to make the place smell nice.
"It's for protection, isn't it," Mikey says, as Schechter finishes outlining the chalk circle and begins lighting the candles.
"Yes, lavender-scented protection," Schechter says dryly. "Get the fuck in the circle."
Schechter begins reading from a spiral-bound notebook, something that Frank thinks must be Latin because of all the weird unfamiliar sounds. Gerard has his fingertips on the bowl of holy water like he's waiting any minute to use it to put out the fire. Mikey looks around like he's expecting a shimmering vision to appear before them. And Schechter is speaking like he's reading out instructions how to put together a particularly complicated piece of assembly-required furniture, eyes serious, jaw set, fingers moving down the text as he reads.
He stops, and looks up, looks around. He looks through Frank, who's standing just to the right of the circle. Frank isn’t putting money on whether this séance would work - as serious as Schechter seems about it, Frank doesn’t feel like he’s being summoned. He doesn’t feel anything different. Schechter's eyes sweep the room and he looks through Frank again. Frank moves in front of Gerard, waves feebly. He even tries Mikey. None of them see him.
"Nothing's happening," Gerard says, and Schechter glares at him.
"It's a ghostly phone call," he says. "Ghosts don't have to answer." But then suddenly there's a...thickening in the air. Like steam or heat waves moving opposite Frank's side of the circle. Frank's the first to see it. Schechter and Mikey and Gerard notice it a minute later, when the hissing sound starts, just like a tea kettle, or the heat from an old radiator.
"There we go," Schechter says softly, and then he takes out the book again, starts reading in Latin.
"Christ," Mikey says. "I can see it."
Gerard is quiet, and Frank looks closer and Gerard is squinting into the steam. Frank is heartened to think Gerard might be looking for him.
"Someone's answered the phone. Go on, ask a question," Schechter says.
"Hi," Gerard says meekly, and Mikey sighs. "Hi, I'm Gerard," he says more boldly.
There's a louder hiss. Frank almost thinks it sounds like an answer. The thing is, it isn't Frank. He wasn't sure, at first, whether the steam was him, whether he was doing it, some unknown ghost power. But it's not Frank, he's sure of it. The steam, the heat, the moving waves is something else - someone else, and Frank suddenly understands. This thing has been making the lights flicker, making the cold spots. Moving things, breaking things. It's completely clear to Frank, much clearer than thinking he was doing it without realizing it, doing things that spooked Gerard when he didn't want to at all. This made much more sense - there wasn't just one ghost in this house, there were two.
Frank tried to think if he'd ever felt the cold spots when he'd lived here, ever seen flickering lights or mysteriously opening and closing doors, if he ever felt a presence. But like everything else that happened before he became a ghost, it's clouded. He knows he has the memories, he just can't quite reach them, like they're dust, impossibly small and far away, slipping right through his fingers.
"You used to live here, didn't you," Gerard is addressing the spirit. A magazine flips open on the floor, a few pages flip by.
"That's probably a yes," Schechter says. "I figure it wouldn't say anything if it wanted to say no."
"Are you......happy?" Gerard asks. There's no answer. Gerard looks stricken.
And it suddenly is imperative that Frank try to move a book, to show Gerard that he shouldn't be speaking to the steam, to the air, to whatever that is, because it's not Frank, Frank's right here and Gerard should be talking to him. But instead the other ghost, the other spirit, knocks over a glass from the table and the sound of it shattering shakes the three men in the protective circle, and Frank, who can't quite touch one of the books, abandons the task and rushes into the kitchen to see what's broken, to see if he can see the other spirit.
"Was that a yes?" Gerard asks. "You said, if it was a no, they'd just not doing anything, right?"
Frank watches from the kitchen, and even there he can see Schechter's expression is carefully shrouded. "I don't think that's a yes, Gerard," Schechter says. "Broken things aren't really ever a good sign."
Gerard seems ready with an answer, but he stops and bites his bottom lip. Frank wants to tell him that, with all the time he spends playing with his lip between his teeth, he should get a lip ring.
Schechter says, "Ok, that's enough long distance calls to the spirit world, let's wrap this up." Schechter's voice lifts in a loud Latin incantation, and he systematically blows out the candles, picks up the sachets in a clockwise order, and breaks the chalk circle.
Frank couldn't actually see the steam, the waves of the air for the last half of the séance, the thing that was the manifested other spirit, but he could feel it now, all of the time. He wondered if the séance had somehow awakened his ghostly senses, because he could feel the other ghost, the same way he knew that someone else was in the house. It was like something was out of place, like there was a weight, a magnet, pulling him, or repelling him from wherever the spirit was. He could feel it in the kitchen, but the closer he got, the slower he was moving. It had to be really powerful, Frank was sure, more powerful than he was, so maybe it was older. Maybe ghosts got more powerful the longer they were around. Maybe the séance kicked his powers into fast forward and he'd be able to warn Gerard when the spirit was getting near.
Because just like Schechter, Frank could tell the spirit wasn't friendly.
"Now don't get all freaked out," Schechter was saying, and he started collecting candles. Frank watched as a little hot wax spilled onto Schechter's fingers and Schechter just peeled it off. "I know what you were thinking, that you had a nice, friendly ghost, but there's a reason Casper's a fucking cartoon. There aren't really friendly ghosts."
"But - " Gerard protests, still inside the chalk circle but toeing at the mark.
"Hang on a minute," Schechter says. "I didn't say there aren't fucking real life Caspers out there to help you solve mysteries and save you from a burning building, but it's pretty rare. Even the good-seeming ghosts are dangerous," Schechter says, and he makes a face like he doesn't want to say what he's going to say next. "Even when they mean well, they're.....they're ghosts and so they don't always get things right. They're stuck, in our world but not entirely in our world, and it's not like they can just reach out and help us. Something's wrong with them."
Gerard's face kind of twists, and his eyes get sad. "But they don't mean to hurt us. They don't mean to break things. They're just....confused."
“Any contact with a spirit is draining your energy,” Schechter says. “There’s no such thing as positive contact - even if it’s not obviously harmful or violent, there’s something that’s not in the natural order with a spirit, something that’s gone wrong between living and death, and spending too much time with that wrongness, getting too close, will eventually make you the same."
"You watch over your brother," Schechter adds quietly as Mikey walks past, just loud enough that Frank can hear. Mikey nods.
Frank takes it as a charge for him, too. He's going to watch over Gerard. He's going to explore every corner of this house, try to figure out where the spirit is lurking, what it wants. No matter how hard it is for Frank to get close, he's going to find a way. Because he's figured it out. That's the reason he's here. To watch over Gerard. That's the reason he didn't move on or whatever it was that was supposed to happen to him after he died. He didn't get rid of this angry ghost while he was living here and so he stayed so he can protect someone else. Gerard, especially, who's special, who can see Frank. Frank can do it, now that he knows his purpose he feels even stronger.
Schechter leaves strict instructions to call if there are any more signs of ghost activity, and that he's going to go do some research. He pulls Mikey outside with him with the excuse of helping him get directions to the next ghost sighting he's going to, and Gerard goes to the kitchen and puts a piece of bread in the toaster and then lights a cigarette. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, and then takes a long drag of the cigarette. He jumps when his toast pops, and then Mikey is shutting the door.
"Look, you made me toast," Mikey says, and he feints stealing it but stops when Gerard doesn't respond to fight back.
"Don't freak out, Gee, so you have a ghost."
"Schechter said he was dangerous, but I don't think he is," Gerard says after a minute. He takes a half-hearted bite of his toast.
"You could move," Mikey says.
"No," Gerard says firmly.
"Ok, well, I'm staying the night, then," Mikey says.
Gerard nods, but he says, "I swear, I'm not in any danger. So what if the ghost breaks a glass. I just won't walk around barefoot."
Mikey goes upstairs to check on the status of the guest room and he promises Gerard he’ll take his bed if he doesn’t like the look of things. Gerard, seemingly at a loss for what else to do, makes another piece of toast. He seems to be looking all around his kitchen for some evidence that his apartment really is haunted, that he's not out of his mind, and Frankie wishes that he could reassure him, that Gerard does have a ghost - two ghosts - and that he's going to be ok. He pops the toast before it's done and butters it copiously. Gerard startles at a sound, but it's just Mikey walking around upstairs, the normal sound of a real person on the floor above. Frank sees Gerard relax when he realizes it and Frank's glad that Mikey's staying.
Not that he really needs Mikey there to protect him. Frank knows that Mikey's just watching out for his brother, but he's irritated, too, that Gerard's not in his normal routine, not able to settle down like he does when he's alone, drawing in the chair, watching out the window, sitting around in just a t-shirt and sweatpants.
Frank looks away from for just a second, and when he looks back, Gerard is lying on the tile of the kitchen floor, the fucking dirty floor, with his eyes unfocused, a string of saliva stretching from his mouth, his hands curled at his sides.
Frank panics and tries to shout for Mikey, but he can’t seem to make a sound, and he knows Mikey wouldn’t hear him anyway. He thinks that maybe Gerard is choking on his toast, except that something looks wrong about the way he’s lying there, like someone’s on top of him, and then Frank sees it, sees the shimmer of the other spirit, right over Gerard’s chest.
“No,” he shouts, and rushes for the spirit, his hands outstretched, trying to grab at whatever he can. It’s like diving from a cliff into freezing cold water. Frank feels his brain freeze at the shock of it, at the pain, at the cold. But whatever this thing is, whatever it’s doing, Frank has to stop it. He focuses all his energy on that, on stop and Frank feels the moment when he wins, when the thing lets Gerard go. And then Frank is touching Gerard. His hands are actually on Gerard’s arms and Frank pulls him away, away from the shimmering thing, from the wall of cold, and then he kind of lets Gerard’s arms drops because Frank can’t feel his hands anymore. He can’t feel his arms. He can’t feel anything. He drops to the floor beside Gerard.
Mikey seems to sense that something is happening because he comes pounding down the stairs and breaks into a full run when he sees Gerard on the floor.
“I’m fine,” Gerard gasps as Mikey comes crashing to his knees, checking Gerard all over. Red spots are blooming all over Gerard’s neck. They look like fingerprints. Frank is still desperately cold. The cold starts to get replaced with dizziness, and as Mikey tries to get Gerard to stand up so he can sit down in one of the chairs, Frank blacks out for a while, from what feels like exhaustion, like sickness, like a fever. He feels like he used to feel when the pneumonia or bronchitis or latest ear infection caught hold of his immune system and twisted it hard. He feels drained, like he can't move. When he comes to again, he's sitting on the stairs, his head in his hands, and he wants to go check on Gerard, even though he knows Mikey is here and Mikey will take care of him, and it's good because Frank can't move. For a moment it feels like when he collapsed in the hallway before - before he died, where he couldn't move his fingers, then his arms, then his head was too heavy, then the air was too heavy to breathe. Frank presses his hands over his eyes, listens to Mikey saying, "It's ok, Gee, I'll make you a cup of tea," and then Frank doesn't hear anything for a while.
When he opens his eyes again, he feels better - moving isn't as hard, he isn't as tired. Gerard is sitting in the kitchen, looking ragged, his hair messy and plastered to the side of his face, his face bent close to the steam of the tea. Frank goes and stands close, all but putting a hand on Gerard. He knows he can touch him now, if he tries hard enough, if he needs to. Frank starts to feel shaky just thinking about it, Gerard on the floor, choked, held down by something threatening and invisible.
Mikey comes back into the room and Frank startles, steps back from Gerard. "I called Schechter," Mikey says.
"What the hell does Schechter know about this shit?" Gerard's voice was hoarse. Frank could hear it, his throat rough and damaged by an invisible force, choking away Gerard's air.
"He knows a hell of a lot more than we do right now," Mikey says, and then takes Gerard's cup from him and refills it with steaming water, and, to Frank's amusement, a slice of lemon.
“He says he’ll be by tomorrow, with someone who knows even more than he does. He says his name’s Bob, and this sort of thing is his job.”
“Who does this for their job?” Gerard says, and Mikey just shakes his head.
That night, Gerard waits until he hears Mikey’s door close and then he says, “Frank?”
Of course Frank is there, hasn’t looked away from Gerard since. He’s sure if he’d just been watching more closely - and he wasn’t going to let it happen again.
Frank says, even though he knows Gerard can’t hear him, “I’m here.”
Gerard takes off his shirt and tosses it on the floor, and Frank feels warmth for the first time since before Gerard was attacked. His eyes are drawn to the expanse of Gerard’s back, and then to the red angry spots he can see on Gerard’s throat, already bruising. Frank wants to press his mouth to them, to lick away the pain, and he actually takes a few steps toward Gerard, thinking maybe he could try it, he could try and touch him again, give Gerard some comfort, kiss away the nervousness in his voice.
“I know you saved me,” Gerard says. “I could feel you, pulling me away. I don’t know what happened, but I could feel you. So it means you’re here, right?”
Gerard slides off his pants and Frank takes a step closer. Frank wants to slide his fingers along Gerard’s spine, hold him close against his chest. “I wish I could know if you could hear me,” Gerard says, and gets into bed, pulling the sheet up to his chin. “I guess I just have to assume you can, right?”
Frank sits on the edge of the bed and says, softly, “I can hear you. I’m here,” he says, and Gerard, obviously exhausted, is asleep before he can say anything else.
Bob looks like he gets a lot of sun, which, Frank thinks, is probably kind of weird for a ghost hunter. Bob is a guy who wears sunglasses indoors. His blonde hair is bright, and he moves like he routinely carries huge equipment around. What's more, Frank can feel him. He can feel Bob’s presence, in a way that’s different from how he feels Gerard, or Mikey or Schechter or Ray. It's freaky, and for the first time since he died, he's really, really worried.
Schechter explained while they were waiting for Bob that he worked a few hauntings with him, ran the sound equipment and gone out on errands for things Bob needed on the job. Schechter made it clear that Bob was way out of his league, a professional, much better able to handle the situation at Gerard’s.
Ray had spent the morning fixing supposedly creaking doors all around the apartment. It seemed that Gerard was trying to tell Ray in the nicest, most normal way possible that he thought he was being haunted by Frank. He didn’t want to freak Ray out, but he thought it might help for Bob to have someone who knew Frank around when he came over. Ray had looked totally alarmed but agreed without argument, and, unable to sit still waiting for the ghost expert, had apparently decided that WD-40 was the best way of coping with the weirdness.
Bob shakes Gerard's hand, slides his sunglasses down his nose and says, “Can I look at your throat?" Gerard startles, then pulls his collar back, and Bob leans in close to look at the fingerprint-sized bruises. He studies them for a long time, and then steps back, and Gerard, who had been holding his breath, lets it out in a rush. Frank goes to stand near Gerard, because he's concerned. He can feel Gerard tensing up, and he's not sure if it's the memory of the ghost attack or Bob himself, but Frank feels tense, too.
"That's some pretty serious bad spirit, leaving bruises." Bob says, and then he looks up at the ceiling, down at the floor. "Lots of spirits can choke you, but not all of them can actually touch you to leave bruises,” Bob says, and doesn't bother to explain further. "Show me where it happened," he says, and goes to his duffle bag, pulls out something that looks like a portable ham radio.
Gerard walks over to the spot on the floor where he fell, then points to the spot where he was dragged. He can't seem to speak. Frank walks over, too. Bob tunes his radio, and then points it at the spot in the hallway where Gerard is pointing. The machine makes a series of beeps, which Bob interprets with a nod.
"Is there some sort of spirit residue?" Mikey asks. Bob startles and looks up, then smiles at Mikey, huge and open.
"More like an echo, yeah," Bob says. "You're the brother?" Mikey nods. "You witness the attack?" Mikey shakes his head, looks pale.
"But my brother isn't making it up!" Mikey protests.
"Oh no, I'm not saying he did," Bob says. "People see different things." Bob is quiet again, and runs the machine around Mikey, then around Gerard, up his right side and down his left. It goes crazy when it points at Gerard's hand. Not his hand, though, Frank realizes a second later. It's pointing right at Frankie's chest.
"Huh," Bob says. He moves the machine toward Gerard's chest. The beeping stops. He moves it left again - right at Frank?. It goes crazy, beeping and crackling.
"Huh," Bob says again, looks at his machine, and looks Gerard right in the eyes and says, "According to this, you've got a ghost standing right next to you."
Everyone but Gerard and Bob take a step back. Even Frank, like for a moment he forgets he shouldn't be afraid of himself.
The thing is, Gerard is smiling. Not a stressed, frightened smile, but a real smile. "Oh, that's probably just Frank," Gerard says, and Bob opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again.
"Wait, what?" Bob says. Mikey is actually hiding behind his hands.
"Frank," Gerard says again. "You didn’t tell him the whole story," Gerard says, turning on Schechter. "He can't be here if he's going to hurt Frank!" Gerard starts getting flustered, and Frank steps close again. Bob's machine goes wild.
"Ok, ok, calm down," Bob says, to Gerard, and, Frank thinks, to him, as well. He feels Bob's energy - feels Bob's presence - telling him to calm down. Gerard is still tense, and he splays his feet and crosses his arms. "Someone tell me who Frank is."
"He died here," Gerard says. "Before I moved in. Ray told me."
Frank listens to Gerard tell the story of his death, some of the things he hadn't actually heard, like how Ray unlocked the door when the postman saw someone slumped in the hallway, how Frank was already cold when Ray tried to check his pulse, see if he was breathing. Ray looks sad when he talks about packaging all of Frank's stuff up.
"Were you friends?" Bob asks, and Ray looks really thoughtful.
"Yeah, I guess," Ray says and Frank's heart breaks a little. He thought of Ray as a friend. But then Ray continues, "It's not like I didn't like Frank a lot, we grew up together, you know? But he was just - distant. You know, he never talked about the people he was dating, never really hung out with people."
Suddenly, Frank hears a crash upstairs. "Is anyone up there?" Bob asks, and without waiting for an answer, he takes off up the stairs two at a time.
Frank is the last to get upstairs, because after Schechter and Mikey and Ray bolted up the stairs after Bob, Gerard had turned to the empty kitchen and said, "It's ok, Frankie, I won't let anyone hurt you," and then went up the stairs himself, leaving Frank frozen in the kitchen, overwhelmed with shock, with how much he just wanted to touch Gerard again, even if it made him disappear for good.
Upstairs, the ugly lamp in Gerard's bedroom is smashed, the lamp base and the light bulb, and the small mirror Gerard had balanced on his dresser is smashed, and two of the dresser drawers are yanked out, their contents overturned.
"Oh, man," Gerard is saying as Frank gets up the stairs. "My lamp!"
"That was an ugly lamp," Mikey says. Gerard glares at him, then laughs.
Bob isn't paying attention to any of them. He is ignoring the lamp, the dresser drawers, all the debris, in favor of the mirror shards. He picks one of the smaller shards up, looks at it, then sets it down in what Frank thinks is exactly the same place. Bob doesn't even bother with his machine. He looks at Gerard and says, "We have a problem." Gerard pales, but Bob doesn't say anything more. He looks at Mikey and says, 'Come help me set up some equipment," and then, as he's disappearing, to Schechter, "Take my credit card, let's go get these good people some pizza."
While Gerard watches, Mikey and Bob set up equipment all over Gerard's apartment, video cameras, recording equipment, and a bunch of readers that spit out data into a small computer screen. Schechter comes back after about twenty minutes with four boxes of pizza, and Ray has gone next door and come back with a liter of Coke and a bunch of glasses, because Gerard only has two left.
Bob comes in with a book the size of a world atlas, but infinitely older-looking, gray like years of dust have soaked into the cover, with crisp, thin pages that look like they're going to crumble as soon as Bob touches them. Bob treats the book with respect, pushing the Coke and pizza aside and flipping slowly through the pages.
"This," Bob says, "is a grimoire. Do not, under any circumstances, open this or read anything, aloud or silently, without my supervision. I'm not saying you're stupid, just that this book has secrets I don't know yet, and we've already got enough trouble as it is."
"You keep saying that," Gerard says. "But you just mean that we've got an angry spirit who can break things, right?" Gerard is eyeing the grimoire with both apprehension and curiosity, and he nervously grabs a slice of pizza and takes a bite. It's still hot and Gerard spends a few moments making pained faces and trying to cool his mouth until Ray gives him his glass of Coke and Gerard takes a long sip.
Bob is focused on flipping through the grimoire, and he glances up at Schechter, clearly asking him to answer.
"You had your bedroom trashed while we were downstairs," Schechter says. "While the EMF said there was a ghost right next to you. So you've got a spirit who can move fast, move from docile to destructive- "
"Or there are two ghosts," Gerard interrupts.
Bob looks up quickly from the grimoire. "You think two ghosts is better?"
Gerard hesitates. "It's just - it just means that one of them is bad, and the other one's - the other one's just Frank."
Bob turns back to the grimoire without answering and Mikey comes to stand by Gerard's side. "Listen, Gee, I think maybe you're so focused on Frank that you're not seeing - "
"Don't argue with me about this, Mikey," Gerard says in a rare burst of anger. "You don't understand."
The room is quiet, and Bob, having found what he wanted in the grimoire, closes it and puts his hand briefly on the top as though making sure it's really shut.
Frank hovers far away at the door, because the grimoire makes him feel like Bob did when he first got here, like he's in trouble, like there's a power here that's stronger than him.
Bob says, "Whether we have a malevolent, powerful spirit here who can seem like it's two places at once, or whether we have two spirits, I need to take some measurements and readings, because I am still not entirely sure I know what's going on and we can't do anything until I have a better idea. We should take advantage of the trashed bedroom as a use of malevolent energy. Not that I want to diminish the danger, but things are always going to be quieter after a violent act like that." Bob tucks the grimoire under his arm, and says, "I hope you don't mind if I camp out in your living room. Normally, I'd say that we'd be sure to get the best readings at twilight or the middle of the night, but considering this thing doesn't mind trashing a room at supper time, I'd like to be prepared to gather some information at a bunch of different times."
Bob nods at Schechter, and then at Ray. “You look strapping, want to help?” Bob says, and Ray blushes and they both follow him out.
Gerard’s living room starts to fill up pretty quickly with Bob’s equipment, and Frank starts feeling like the place is too crowded. Gerard seems to feel that way, too, since he's never had this many people in his place, not while Frank's been watching at least, and Gerard keeps backing up against the wall to let Mikey or Bob pass by with some equipment. Finally, Gerard grabs his drawing pad and a handful of pencils and retreats upstairs and Frank follows.
It feels like what Frank's used to again, the calm closeness of being next to Gerard, the scratch of Gerard's pencil on the paper, the sound of Gerard's breathing. He sits down on the floor, his back to the bed. He imagines that if he were really here, if Gerard could see him, he'd reach out and absently pat Frank's head, maybe trail his fingers down his jaw. Frank likes that thought a lot, likes all the thoughts about Gerard touching him. He wonders whether this is ever going to be enough, just the thought of Gerard and not the actual touch, Gerard talking to the air where Frank may or may not be, the complete exhaustion after trying to talk to Gerard in his dreams. Frank knows he has to stay to protect Gerard from this other spirit, but he's not sure what will happen next, after Bob manages to get rid of it. Frank wonders if, over time, he'll get stronger. If he'll be able to do more things. If he'll ever be able to talk to Gerard, to tell him. Tell him how he feels.
Ray's gone home for the night, insisting he’s right next door if anything happens, Schechter is making coffee and Bob is sitting with a flashlight, a dagger, and sixteen pixie sticks lined up in front of his sleeping bag. Mikey doesn't like the guest room so he's sleeping in the hallway under a pile of blankets. Gerard is tossing fitfully in his bed, his arm out of the blankets. Frank stares for a long time at the frayed cuff of Gerard's shirt, and then he walks to the other side of the bed and lies down. It's probably a mistake, but in the dark of the house, Frank is scared - there's a ghost hunter here and Frank isn't sure that he's not fair game. He reaches out for Gerard, gently, like it’s a real touch, only Frank has to concentrate hard, has to think of this and nothing else. And that isn’t all that hard, to think of just Gerard. Only Gerard, Frank's fingers meeting the soft skin of the inside of Gerard's elbow.
Finally he manages to make contact and to feel it, to feel Gerard’s elbow move slightly under his touch, Gerard's skin warm under his fingers. Gerard takes a deep, sleepy intake of breath and then Frank is standing in the old kitchen again, looking down at the flower-pattered linoleum. Gerard is sitting at the table, reading Bob's grimoire. Gerard doesn't seem to notice him and so Frank clears his throat, and then says, softly, "Gerard?"
Gerard turns at his name but can't seem to see Frank for a minute, and Frank's chest aches with disappointment, because Gerard can't see him here, either. "I'm right here," Frank says, waving his hand feebly, and then Gerard turns back to the grimoire.
Frank collapses against the kitchen counter and wonders if this is all he's going to get, his hips poked by the sharp edge of the melamine counter, the smell of fried eggs and cigarettes, Frank lost in another foreign place, alone, unable to talk to Gerard even in his dream. He wonders if what happened before was some fluke, or worse, it means that he's losing his strength. He's losing whatever power he had that kept him here, and maybe he's just supposed to let go. It makes sense then that this is happening when is here. Maybe he should just let them banish him or exorcise him or whatever it is they're going to do. He should let them take him down like he's just as evil as the other thing in the house. Then at least he'd be able to feel something other than disappointment, despair, the loneliness of watching everyone's lives go on.
"It's not true," Gerard says, standing and closing Bob's grimoire. "I read this and I know all about ghosts now," Gerard says, gesturing to the grimoire, which is pulsing slightly on the table. "You're not bad, Frankie."
And it's when Gerard says his name that Frank looks up. Gerard is close, his feet practically touching Frank's, a small, tender smile on his face. "I've read this whole thing," Gerard says, pointing now at Frank's chest. "You're much easier to understand than that book."
Frank reaches up for Gerard's hand and presses it under his own, over his heart. "It's not working anymore," Frank says. Gerard only smiles.
"Yes, it is," Gerard says. "It's just very quiet." Gerard leans closer and presses his ear to Frank's chest. "I can hear it, though," he says.
Frank has to try several times before he can make his hand move to cup the back of Gerard's head, but when he does, he's rewarded with Gerard's sigh and the feel of Gerard's hair under his fingers. They stand there like that for some time, Frank isn't sure how long, and as much as Gerard says he can hear Frank's heart, Frank can't feel it himself, no matter how hard he tries.
Gerard stands up and Frank lets his hand slide through Gerard's hair, down onto his neck. Frank can feel the muscles and tendons, Gerard's pulse, his skin. Frank hasn't touched anything in so long and he's thought about this every day, touching Gerard. Frank feels Gerard's chest rise and fall with a deep intake of breath, feels Gerard's body shift so that he's closer, Gerard's hands settling on Frank's shoulders.
"Frankie," Gerard whispers and then he leans in and kisses Frank, as soft and as insubstantial as the whisper.
--
Frank can't help the sound that escapes his throat, and he chases Gerard's mouth, kissing him more deeply, his hands stroking the skin of Gerard's neck, Gerard's fingers caressing Frank's arms, over his shoulders, pulling Frank closer and closer until they're flush.
"I know how this story ends," Gerard says.
“Tell me,” Frank asks between kisses, sliding his hands across Gerard’s back and pulling him close.
“Like this,” Gerard says, and then, like a dream, because it’s a dream, they’re in bed, legs tangled, the sheet draped across Gerard’s bare back.
“Yes,” Frank says, and then Gerard is kissing him, moving above him, and Frank feels the same blinding ecstasy as the first time he watched Gerard in the shower, feels Gerard shudder above him, feels Gerard clutch at his arms, pressing messy kisses to his forehead and the side of his mouth.
Part 3
It gets old pretty fast, not being able to talk to Gerard, or communicate with him in any way. It's pretty quiet in the house alone when one of the people living there thinks he's alone. Gerard doesn't talk to himself nearly enough to satisfy Frank’s need for sound. He just walks around, thinking thoughts inside his head that Frank can't understand. He studies Gerard's expression, his body language, gets pretty good at knowing what that certain frown means, when Gerard's hungry before he gets up to get food, but it's still not the same as talking and just when Frank thinks he might go out of his mind with not hearing anything, with not hearing Gerard say words with his voice, Mikey calls, or Gerard will answer the door and chat with the delivery guy, or Ray will stop by.
But it's been a long weekend and there's been no mail, no packages, and Mikey's gone, Frank remembers Gerard saying something about having a good time in the city. Gerard hasn't spoken a word in three days and Frank is going completely insane with the lack of sound. He's tried to talk himself, but it doesn’t do any good, and Gerard can't hear him, can't answer back. Frank stands in the stairwell and shakes his fists, stomps his feet. Shouts out Gerard's name. There's no sound. Gerard doesn't answer.
Finally, finally, there's at least bed, where Gerard can't be expected to speak, where Frank can sit in the corner of the room and relax into the quiet. Frank's gotten into the habit of watching Gerard sleep, because it's the closet thing he gets to rest, watching Gerard's face relax against the pillow, watching him sprawl out, his mouth open, the sheets bunching around his knees. And if Frank thinks about Gerard, thinks about Gerard's body, about the sounds he would make, if Frank thinks about what it would be like to touch Gerard like this, open and undone, if Frank thinks about kissing Gerard breathless, if he thinks about it every night as he watches Gerard lie down, adjust his pillow, close his eyes and drift off, then Frank can't really be blamed. What else is he supposed to think about with Gerard like this, half naked, disarmed, not moving or fidgeting, all of Gerard's body laid out before him? And maybe it’s creepy, but Frank doesn’t really have a choice here - everything he does is creepy here, silently watching Gerard all of the time.
Frank sits down on the pile of blankets in the corner and wishes he could curl up in them, wrap one of them around his shoulders, let his eyes fall closed the way Gerard's are right now, letting go of the concerns of the day for the weird, strange time of whatever happens during sleep, rest and dreams. He wishes, at least, that Gerard would say goodnight, would speak just that one word aloud to the house. He closes his eyes, wishing for it, straining his ears in case Gerard whispers it, in case it comes out on an exhale the very second before he's asleep.
"Hi," Gerard says and Frank's eyes fly open. They're standing in a different room - a kitchen somewhere that Frank doesn't recognize. Gerard is wearing the same flannel pajama shorts and overly large, randomly stained grey t-shirt that he fell asleep in.
"Hi," Frank says, because Gerard is looking at him, waiting for an answer.
"Aren't your feet cold?" Gerard asks, and Frank looks down and his feet are bare. He hasn't been aware of his shoes, his clothes, for some time now, but he feels his bare feet on the linoleum floor, his t-shirt under a sweater vest that he was just about to think about throwing out for good before he died wearing it, jeans that fit perfectly and could have lasted a few years except for the possible pneumonia contagion or whatever. But here he was, wearing them.
He shoves his hands in his pockets and says, "No, I'm ok. It's good to feel them again."
“Can you see Elena, where you are?” Gerard asks. Frank doesn’t want to have to tell Gerard that he can’t, doesn’t want to see the disappointment on his face.
Finally, he shakes his head no. “She’s not here,” Frank says, his voice heavy with apology. “There’s just me.”
“But why are you all alone?” Gerard reaches out to touch Frank, his fingers just resting on Frank’s arm.
The moment Frank realizes it's a dream is the moment he's no longer in it. It has to have been Gerard's dream, because Frank doesn't dream, can't even sleep, and Gerard is still asleep. He feels like everything is sharp and bright, like he can see everything clearly for the first time since the day Gerard moved in. He stirs slightly when Frank gets up and leans close, peers into Gerard's face and wonders what in the world just happened.
Mikey comes by the next morning, and the first words out of his mouth are that he’s sorry he brought up ghosts. “I didn’t mean to freak you out or anything, or make it seem like I was being disrespectful to the guy who died here,” Mikey says all in a rush.
Gerard looks serene, has all morning since after the dream, and Frank understands why as soon as Gerard answers Mikey. “No, it’s ok, Mikey, I’ve thought about it and think you’re right. I think I do have a ghost, and I think it’s Frank.”
Mikey’s face goes blank, but Frank’s heart explodes with happiness because Gerard knows he’s here.
“Look, you’re the one who said I had a ghost, and now I tell you the thing that makes the most sense, that it’s the ghost of the previous resident and you get all judgmental.”
Mikey just shakes his head. “Ok, maybe it’s this guy. Frank.”
Gerard's expression has stretched into a tight frown. "So, Mikey, tell me everything you know about ghosts. What am I supposed to do?"
"You're supposed to help me," Frank says, without really meaning to say it aloud.
"I know I'm supposed to help him,” Gerard says an instant later. “Help him move on or whatever but - " there's a long pause, "what if he doesn't want to move on?" Gerard says and he sounds really concerned. "What if he wants to stay?"
"I do," Frank says, "I do want to stay," but he's not even sure what that means anymore. He doesn't want to stay stuck in this house, like this, incorporeal, powerless, unable to even step outside, or smoke a cigarette, or eat anything ever again. But he knows he doesn’t want to leave Gerard, can’t even bear to think about it.
“I just think - “Mikey says, and then the kitchen lights start to flicker. Then, with a bang, the basement door, the door to the coat closet, and the front door fly open. Mikey shouts, and a gust of wind too large to come from the outside blows a pile of Gerard’s mail left by the door, and then two pairs of shoes right up into the kitchen. Gerard rushes forward and has to put all of his weight against the front door to make it shut. The wind stops. Frank looks the whole time for the shadow, for some explanation, but he’s fixated on how shocked Gerard looks.
“Ok, you really have a ghost,” Mikey says, once Gerard picks up the mail, the shoes, and shuts the closet and the basement door.
Mikey pries open the silver pourer on the 2 lb cardboard canister of salt and starts pouring it in a steady stream across the inside of Gerard's doorway. Small granules of salt scatter all over the floorboards and under - or through - Frank's feet.
"What are you doing?" Gerard exclaims, but Mikey doesn't stop to look up at his brother until there's a carefully poured line of salt across the front doorway.
"Protection," Mikey says. "Salt stops evil spirits from crossing the threshold."
"The ghost is inside my house, it's not like it's going to cross any thresholds, it's already here." Gerard stands with his legs splayed wide and his hands on his hips, like he's trying to take up more space than his brother.
"This is only the first door," Mikey says. "I'm going to do them all."
"Mikey, Mikey, cut it out, you're making a mess," Gerard says, sounding more and more annoyed. "Plus, didn't Mom teach you that spilling salt was bad luck?"
"I'm not spilling it, I'm pouring it, and salt is a very strong protection."
"I don't need protecting!" Gerard says again. "The ghost isn't going to hurt me."
Frank feels a swell of warmth that Gerard knows Frank isn't there to hurt him. Mikey continues to pour salt across the threshold of the coat closet.
And then Frank gets curious, because what if Mikey's right, and salt is going to protect Gerard from ghosts, which means something will happen to Frank when he tries to go across the door, from one way or another. Normal people went through doors, and Frank still thinks he's more normal than anything. What if he's not, though, and what if the salt really can hurt him. He imagines dissolving like the Wicked Witch of the West, or getting burned. Frank wonders if it can get through his sneakers, but then he remembers that his sneakers aren't really real.
He tries it, stepping over the salt line as soon as Mikey pours it across the entrance to the living room. Nothing happens. He's fine.
"You've got to be careful," Mikey says. "Spirits are dangerous."
"Frank's not a spirit, he's a ghost," Gerard says, and Frank feels dumb with happiness at Gerard saying his name.
“Let’s not use his name,” Mikey says nervously. “What if it’s not him?”
"No, no," Gerard says quickly, running over his brother's words. "I just....." Gerard waves his hands above his chest, like, Frank thinks, that he's about to put his hand to his heart. "Know," he finishes quietly.
"You're scaring me, Gerard," Mikey says.
“I’m sorry, but I just, I know this,” Gerard insists.
It’s like a jolt of energy every time Gerard says Frank's name. Gerard knows Frank is here. And he doesn't want to hurt him, with salt or anything else.
Mikey insists the best course of action is research, Frank thinks also because he’s still trying to disprove Gerard’s insistence that the ghost is Frank, and he spends the rest of the afternoon with his nose to the screen of his laptop, calling out random facts from sites that tell you how to determine whether or not you have a ghost, and periodically checking on the salt lines.
“What is it that you’re checking for,” Gerard asks finally, after the fourth time Mikey gets up and makes a circuit around the house.
“Whether or not any of them are broken,” Mikey says like it’s obvious. Frank walks over another one of the lines to stand in the kitchen with them and it doesn’t break.
“And that will tell us we have a ghost?” Gerard asks.
“It will tell us something,” is all Mikey says.
Gerard maintains an air of indulging Mikey, though Frank catches him peeking at the salt lines in the hallway.
“How do you know all this, anyway?” Gerard asks Mikey, while Mikey scrolls and clicks through pages with pictures of abandoned houses and pictures of orbs that look like blurry Christmas lights.
“I went ghost hunting with Pete,” Mikey says without looking away from the screen.
“You went into an abandoned house with Pete?” Gerard’s whole body posture changes, and he looks torn between being furious and scolding.
“Pete’s not like you think he is,” Mikey says, and there’s something in his eyes that Frank can’t read, something like delight.
“I never expected him to take my little brother on one of his insane ghost hunts.”
“We went after work with Schechter,” Mikey says, like it explains it all, and Gerard just shakes his head.
“Pete and Schechter are two different conversations,” Gerard says, “Just because he’s your boss doesn’t mean you should go with him and Pete on a midnight ghost hunt.” He cocks his head when he notices it sounds as if there’s a tea kettle whistling, and Gerard actually looks at the stove before he realizes the sound isn’t actually a normal household sound. It gets louder, eerier, makes Frank’s ears ache, makes him close his eyes with the change in pressure in the air. When he opens them again, blinking, Gerard has yanked Mikey up from the kitchen chair and pulled him to the very corner of the kitchen, away from the hallway where the sound seems to be coming from.
Frank tries to take a step forward to look into the hallway, see what’s making the horrible, earsplitting noise, but he can’t seem to move forward, like he’s walking against the wind except he can’t feel any wind, just the resistance, pushing against his chest. He feels drained the longer he fights it, and so he steps back, moving closer to Gerard. The sound suddenly stops, but Frank’s ears are still ringing, and so, it seems, are Gerard and Mikey’s. Gerard’s eyes are wide. Mikey pulls away from where Gerard has his hand on his arm and runs out into the hallway. He stops, and sighs, and then turns and waves Gerard forward.
Gerard goes hesitantly, and Frank follows. The hallway is covered in a fine dusting of salt. Every single one of the salt lines is gone, scattered all across the floor.
“You think ghost hunts are insane now?” Mikey says. “I’m calling Schechter.”
Gerard only nods, and then says, after a swallow, says weakly, “For Christ’s sake, don’t let him bring Wentz.”
Mikey calls Schechter and as much as Frank tries, he can’t really hear the conversation. No matter how curious he is about what Mikey’s saying, he’s compelled to watch Gerard, even if the only thing he’s going is sweeping up the salt that’s blown everywhere, down on his knees with a dust pan.
Mikey hangs up and says, “He’ll be over Friday night, is that ok?” Gerard nods. “I have plans with Pete tomorrow,” Mikey says, and Gerard can’t keep the smirk off his face, “but I can come by, before.”
“To check on me? Mikey, I’m fine,” Gerard says. “Anyway, maybe I have plans tomorrow, too.”
“Sure you do,” Mikey says.
Frank figures Gerard is lying to mess with Mikey, but it feels like it takes Gerard ages to come home the next day, and Frank can’t tell if it’s just because he’s worried and waiting that it feels different. Gerard hangs up his jacket, turns on all the lights and closes all the shades, checks the messages on his phone, puts the tea kettle on.
Then he says into the quiet, empty room, "I went to your grave today, Frankie.”
As the first thing that Gerard has ever said to him directly, that wasn’t in a dream, it’s kind of weird. Frank walks into the hallway and stands next to Gerard, his hands opening and closing in fists. The idea of Gerard visiting Frank’s grave - the idea that he has a grave - is unnerving and foreign, like the obituary, which is still on the fridge.
"I thought it might be different, somehow, since I know you're here," Gerard says, "But it was just like a normal grave. I hope that doesn't hurt your feelings," Gerard says really quickly. "It was very nice, for a tombstone and all, shiny marble with your name. Francis Anthony Iero," Gerard says. "I like the name Frank, though. It suits you. Frankie." Gerard voice sounds scared and uncertain, like he always does when he starts talking to the house, but then he settles into it, and it feels like a real conversation. Frank pretends that Gerard is far away and calling him on the phone, telling Frank a story that he just listens to, like he doesn't have to say a word for Gerard to know he's listening.
Gerard says, his voice a little trembly now, "There's something weird going on with this house, and I wonder....I wonder if it's why you got stuck here, if there was something weird about the house when you lived here, and you're trapped somehow. It freaks me out, Frankie, this house, and all the weird things. I get worried that you're freaked out, too, stuck here when you probably should have moved on." Gerard is quiet for a long moment before he says, "I'm glad you're here, Frankie," and then he's quiet. Frank stays close by his side for the rest of the night until Gerard falls asleep. Frank knows that Mikey’s friend Schechter is coming tomorrow, and Frank wishes he could tell Gerard he’s worried about what’s going to happen, what it is that Schechter might do, but it’s all a vague threat, hovering just outside of Frank’s thoughts as Gerard drifts off and Frank gets as close as he ever can to something like sleep.
Schechter unpacks an enormous white candle from his messenger bag and slams it on the table like a gavel. "We need a séance," Schechter says. Schechter totally looks like the sort of guy who Frank would have met at a club if he hadn’t started getting too sick to wait in the lines and coughing too much to enjoy the music. He greets Mikey with a nod and Gerard with a handshake and then pulls out three more candles from inside his bag.
Almost immediately Gerard is speaking over Mikey, saying, "That's not real, séances are for palm reader tricks and fucking little girl sleepovers."
At the same time Mikey was saying, "Are you kidding? Those are dangerous and what if something actually spoke back and told us it wanted to eat Gerard's brain or whatever," and Schechter silences them by waving a bunch of sage tied with blue thread in both of their faces like it was a dangerous weapon - and Frank thought, maybe it was.
"Both of you shut the fuck up," Schechter says. "God, I knew you'd be a handful. One of you thinks a ghost in his apartment is like having a fucking friendly neighbor, and the other thinks that if you speak the wrong words in the wrong order you'll conjure a zombie on top of the ghost."
"But I don't want to upset - " Gerard says at the same time Mikey says, “What if it's like conjuring and it - "
"I said shut the fuck up, or I'll walk out this door," Schechter says, and then seems to reconsider. “No, actually, you know what, I won't walk out that door, because then if something happens to the two of you it'll be my fault, and you'll die thinking you were right about this zombie shit, and we can't have that." He surveys the room, with Gerard and Mikey now looking scolded. "I'm going to get a few things from my trunk and I'll be right back. Can either of you cook? Why don't we make something for dinner, there's no need to have a séance on an empty stomach."
Schechter comes back with a carefully labeled tackle box filled with what Frank thinks looks like the contents of a gourmet kitchen's spice rack. Over his shoulder he has a backpack which reveals itself to be carefully packed with candles, flashlights, and an assortment of small gadgets that Frank thinks could be a picklock set.
He sets it down on the table and begins unpacking carefully selected items.
"We're having a fucking séance and that's the end of it," Schechter says, and sounds like he means it. "What are you making us for dinner?"
The séance involves candles which Gerard worries might cause a fire, chalk which Mikey protests loudly as not going to be as effective as grease pencil and a silver bowl filled with water - probably holy water, Frank thinks, and a flash of Schechter in church dipping a measuring cup into the font. Although from what Frank's seen of Schechter, he probably got it wholesale mail order from a church supply company. Schechter also has four cloth bags which Mikey demands to know the ingredients of and which Schechter, finally exasperated, tells him are fucking lavender sachets to make the place smell nice.
"It's for protection, isn't it," Mikey says, as Schechter finishes outlining the chalk circle and begins lighting the candles.
"Yes, lavender-scented protection," Schechter says dryly. "Get the fuck in the circle."
Schechter begins reading from a spiral-bound notebook, something that Frank thinks must be Latin because of all the weird unfamiliar sounds. Gerard has his fingertips on the bowl of holy water like he's waiting any minute to use it to put out the fire. Mikey looks around like he's expecting a shimmering vision to appear before them. And Schechter is speaking like he's reading out instructions how to put together a particularly complicated piece of assembly-required furniture, eyes serious, jaw set, fingers moving down the text as he reads.
He stops, and looks up, looks around. He looks through Frank, who's standing just to the right of the circle. Frank isn’t putting money on whether this séance would work - as serious as Schechter seems about it, Frank doesn’t feel like he’s being summoned. He doesn’t feel anything different. Schechter's eyes sweep the room and he looks through Frank again. Frank moves in front of Gerard, waves feebly. He even tries Mikey. None of them see him.
"Nothing's happening," Gerard says, and Schechter glares at him.
"It's a ghostly phone call," he says. "Ghosts don't have to answer." But then suddenly there's a...thickening in the air. Like steam or heat waves moving opposite Frank's side of the circle. Frank's the first to see it. Schechter and Mikey and Gerard notice it a minute later, when the hissing sound starts, just like a tea kettle, or the heat from an old radiator.
"There we go," Schechter says softly, and then he takes out the book again, starts reading in Latin.
"Christ," Mikey says. "I can see it."
Gerard is quiet, and Frank looks closer and Gerard is squinting into the steam. Frank is heartened to think Gerard might be looking for him.
"Someone's answered the phone. Go on, ask a question," Schechter says.
"Hi," Gerard says meekly, and Mikey sighs. "Hi, I'm Gerard," he says more boldly.
There's a louder hiss. Frank almost thinks it sounds like an answer. The thing is, it isn't Frank. He wasn't sure, at first, whether the steam was him, whether he was doing it, some unknown ghost power. But it's not Frank, he's sure of it. The steam, the heat, the moving waves is something else - someone else, and Frank suddenly understands. This thing has been making the lights flicker, making the cold spots. Moving things, breaking things. It's completely clear to Frank, much clearer than thinking he was doing it without realizing it, doing things that spooked Gerard when he didn't want to at all. This made much more sense - there wasn't just one ghost in this house, there were two.
Frank tried to think if he'd ever felt the cold spots when he'd lived here, ever seen flickering lights or mysteriously opening and closing doors, if he ever felt a presence. But like everything else that happened before he became a ghost, it's clouded. He knows he has the memories, he just can't quite reach them, like they're dust, impossibly small and far away, slipping right through his fingers.
"You used to live here, didn't you," Gerard is addressing the spirit. A magazine flips open on the floor, a few pages flip by.
"That's probably a yes," Schechter says. "I figure it wouldn't say anything if it wanted to say no."
"Are you......happy?" Gerard asks. There's no answer. Gerard looks stricken.
And it suddenly is imperative that Frank try to move a book, to show Gerard that he shouldn't be speaking to the steam, to the air, to whatever that is, because it's not Frank, Frank's right here and Gerard should be talking to him. But instead the other ghost, the other spirit, knocks over a glass from the table and the sound of it shattering shakes the three men in the protective circle, and Frank, who can't quite touch one of the books, abandons the task and rushes into the kitchen to see what's broken, to see if he can see the other spirit.
"Was that a yes?" Gerard asks. "You said, if it was a no, they'd just not doing anything, right?"
Frank watches from the kitchen, and even there he can see Schechter's expression is carefully shrouded. "I don't think that's a yes, Gerard," Schechter says. "Broken things aren't really ever a good sign."
Gerard seems ready with an answer, but he stops and bites his bottom lip. Frank wants to tell him that, with all the time he spends playing with his lip between his teeth, he should get a lip ring.
Schechter says, "Ok, that's enough long distance calls to the spirit world, let's wrap this up." Schechter's voice lifts in a loud Latin incantation, and he systematically blows out the candles, picks up the sachets in a clockwise order, and breaks the chalk circle.
Frank couldn't actually see the steam, the waves of the air for the last half of the séance, the thing that was the manifested other spirit, but he could feel it now, all of the time. He wondered if the séance had somehow awakened his ghostly senses, because he could feel the other ghost, the same way he knew that someone else was in the house. It was like something was out of place, like there was a weight, a magnet, pulling him, or repelling him from wherever the spirit was. He could feel it in the kitchen, but the closer he got, the slower he was moving. It had to be really powerful, Frank was sure, more powerful than he was, so maybe it was older. Maybe ghosts got more powerful the longer they were around. Maybe the séance kicked his powers into fast forward and he'd be able to warn Gerard when the spirit was getting near.
Because just like Schechter, Frank could tell the spirit wasn't friendly.
"Now don't get all freaked out," Schechter was saying, and he started collecting candles. Frank watched as a little hot wax spilled onto Schechter's fingers and Schechter just peeled it off. "I know what you were thinking, that you had a nice, friendly ghost, but there's a reason Casper's a fucking cartoon. There aren't really friendly ghosts."
"But - " Gerard protests, still inside the chalk circle but toeing at the mark.
"Hang on a minute," Schechter says. "I didn't say there aren't fucking real life Caspers out there to help you solve mysteries and save you from a burning building, but it's pretty rare. Even the good-seeming ghosts are dangerous," Schechter says, and he makes a face like he doesn't want to say what he's going to say next. "Even when they mean well, they're.....they're ghosts and so they don't always get things right. They're stuck, in our world but not entirely in our world, and it's not like they can just reach out and help us. Something's wrong with them."
Gerard's face kind of twists, and his eyes get sad. "But they don't mean to hurt us. They don't mean to break things. They're just....confused."
“Any contact with a spirit is draining your energy,” Schechter says. “There’s no such thing as positive contact - even if it’s not obviously harmful or violent, there’s something that’s not in the natural order with a spirit, something that’s gone wrong between living and death, and spending too much time with that wrongness, getting too close, will eventually make you the same."
"You watch over your brother," Schechter adds quietly as Mikey walks past, just loud enough that Frank can hear. Mikey nods.
Frank takes it as a charge for him, too. He's going to watch over Gerard. He's going to explore every corner of this house, try to figure out where the spirit is lurking, what it wants. No matter how hard it is for Frank to get close, he's going to find a way. Because he's figured it out. That's the reason he's here. To watch over Gerard. That's the reason he didn't move on or whatever it was that was supposed to happen to him after he died. He didn't get rid of this angry ghost while he was living here and so he stayed so he can protect someone else. Gerard, especially, who's special, who can see Frank. Frank can do it, now that he knows his purpose he feels even stronger.
Schechter leaves strict instructions to call if there are any more signs of ghost activity, and that he's going to go do some research. He pulls Mikey outside with him with the excuse of helping him get directions to the next ghost sighting he's going to, and Gerard goes to the kitchen and puts a piece of bread in the toaster and then lights a cigarette. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, and then takes a long drag of the cigarette. He jumps when his toast pops, and then Mikey is shutting the door.
"Look, you made me toast," Mikey says, and he feints stealing it but stops when Gerard doesn't respond to fight back.
"Don't freak out, Gee, so you have a ghost."
"Schechter said he was dangerous, but I don't think he is," Gerard says after a minute. He takes a half-hearted bite of his toast.
"You could move," Mikey says.
"No," Gerard says firmly.
"Ok, well, I'm staying the night, then," Mikey says.
Gerard nods, but he says, "I swear, I'm not in any danger. So what if the ghost breaks a glass. I just won't walk around barefoot."
Mikey goes upstairs to check on the status of the guest room and he promises Gerard he’ll take his bed if he doesn’t like the look of things. Gerard, seemingly at a loss for what else to do, makes another piece of toast. He seems to be looking all around his kitchen for some evidence that his apartment really is haunted, that he's not out of his mind, and Frankie wishes that he could reassure him, that Gerard does have a ghost - two ghosts - and that he's going to be ok. He pops the toast before it's done and butters it copiously. Gerard startles at a sound, but it's just Mikey walking around upstairs, the normal sound of a real person on the floor above. Frank sees Gerard relax when he realizes it and Frank's glad that Mikey's staying.
Not that he really needs Mikey there to protect him. Frank knows that Mikey's just watching out for his brother, but he's irritated, too, that Gerard's not in his normal routine, not able to settle down like he does when he's alone, drawing in the chair, watching out the window, sitting around in just a t-shirt and sweatpants.
Frank looks away from for just a second, and when he looks back, Gerard is lying on the tile of the kitchen floor, the fucking dirty floor, with his eyes unfocused, a string of saliva stretching from his mouth, his hands curled at his sides.
Frank panics and tries to shout for Mikey, but he can’t seem to make a sound, and he knows Mikey wouldn’t hear him anyway. He thinks that maybe Gerard is choking on his toast, except that something looks wrong about the way he’s lying there, like someone’s on top of him, and then Frank sees it, sees the shimmer of the other spirit, right over Gerard’s chest.
“No,” he shouts, and rushes for the spirit, his hands outstretched, trying to grab at whatever he can. It’s like diving from a cliff into freezing cold water. Frank feels his brain freeze at the shock of it, at the pain, at the cold. But whatever this thing is, whatever it’s doing, Frank has to stop it. He focuses all his energy on that, on stop and Frank feels the moment when he wins, when the thing lets Gerard go. And then Frank is touching Gerard. His hands are actually on Gerard’s arms and Frank pulls him away, away from the shimmering thing, from the wall of cold, and then he kind of lets Gerard’s arms drops because Frank can’t feel his hands anymore. He can’t feel his arms. He can’t feel anything. He drops to the floor beside Gerard.
Mikey seems to sense that something is happening because he comes pounding down the stairs and breaks into a full run when he sees Gerard on the floor.
“I’m fine,” Gerard gasps as Mikey comes crashing to his knees, checking Gerard all over. Red spots are blooming all over Gerard’s neck. They look like fingerprints. Frank is still desperately cold. The cold starts to get replaced with dizziness, and as Mikey tries to get Gerard to stand up so he can sit down in one of the chairs, Frank blacks out for a while, from what feels like exhaustion, like sickness, like a fever. He feels like he used to feel when the pneumonia or bronchitis or latest ear infection caught hold of his immune system and twisted it hard. He feels drained, like he can't move. When he comes to again, he's sitting on the stairs, his head in his hands, and he wants to go check on Gerard, even though he knows Mikey is here and Mikey will take care of him, and it's good because Frank can't move. For a moment it feels like when he collapsed in the hallway before - before he died, where he couldn't move his fingers, then his arms, then his head was too heavy, then the air was too heavy to breathe. Frank presses his hands over his eyes, listens to Mikey saying, "It's ok, Gee, I'll make you a cup of tea," and then Frank doesn't hear anything for a while.
When he opens his eyes again, he feels better - moving isn't as hard, he isn't as tired. Gerard is sitting in the kitchen, looking ragged, his hair messy and plastered to the side of his face, his face bent close to the steam of the tea. Frank goes and stands close, all but putting a hand on Gerard. He knows he can touch him now, if he tries hard enough, if he needs to. Frank starts to feel shaky just thinking about it, Gerard on the floor, choked, held down by something threatening and invisible.
Mikey comes back into the room and Frank startles, steps back from Gerard. "I called Schechter," Mikey says.
"What the hell does Schechter know about this shit?" Gerard's voice was hoarse. Frank could hear it, his throat rough and damaged by an invisible force, choking away Gerard's air.
"He knows a hell of a lot more than we do right now," Mikey says, and then takes Gerard's cup from him and refills it with steaming water, and, to Frank's amusement, a slice of lemon.
“He says he’ll be by tomorrow, with someone who knows even more than he does. He says his name’s Bob, and this sort of thing is his job.”
“Who does this for their job?” Gerard says, and Mikey just shakes his head.
That night, Gerard waits until he hears Mikey’s door close and then he says, “Frank?”
Of course Frank is there, hasn’t looked away from Gerard since. He’s sure if he’d just been watching more closely - and he wasn’t going to let it happen again.
Frank says, even though he knows Gerard can’t hear him, “I’m here.”
Gerard takes off his shirt and tosses it on the floor, and Frank feels warmth for the first time since before Gerard was attacked. His eyes are drawn to the expanse of Gerard’s back, and then to the red angry spots he can see on Gerard’s throat, already bruising. Frank wants to press his mouth to them, to lick away the pain, and he actually takes a few steps toward Gerard, thinking maybe he could try it, he could try and touch him again, give Gerard some comfort, kiss away the nervousness in his voice.
“I know you saved me,” Gerard says. “I could feel you, pulling me away. I don’t know what happened, but I could feel you. So it means you’re here, right?”
Gerard slides off his pants and Frank takes a step closer. Frank wants to slide his fingers along Gerard’s spine, hold him close against his chest. “I wish I could know if you could hear me,” Gerard says, and gets into bed, pulling the sheet up to his chin. “I guess I just have to assume you can, right?”
Frank sits on the edge of the bed and says, softly, “I can hear you. I’m here,” he says, and Gerard, obviously exhausted, is asleep before he can say anything else.
Bob looks like he gets a lot of sun, which, Frank thinks, is probably kind of weird for a ghost hunter. Bob is a guy who wears sunglasses indoors. His blonde hair is bright, and he moves like he routinely carries huge equipment around. What's more, Frank can feel him. He can feel Bob’s presence, in a way that’s different from how he feels Gerard, or Mikey or Schechter or Ray. It's freaky, and for the first time since he died, he's really, really worried.
Schechter explained while they were waiting for Bob that he worked a few hauntings with him, ran the sound equipment and gone out on errands for things Bob needed on the job. Schechter made it clear that Bob was way out of his league, a professional, much better able to handle the situation at Gerard’s.
Ray had spent the morning fixing supposedly creaking doors all around the apartment. It seemed that Gerard was trying to tell Ray in the nicest, most normal way possible that he thought he was being haunted by Frank. He didn’t want to freak Ray out, but he thought it might help for Bob to have someone who knew Frank around when he came over. Ray had looked totally alarmed but agreed without argument, and, unable to sit still waiting for the ghost expert, had apparently decided that WD-40 was the best way of coping with the weirdness.
Bob shakes Gerard's hand, slides his sunglasses down his nose and says, “Can I look at your throat?" Gerard startles, then pulls his collar back, and Bob leans in close to look at the fingerprint-sized bruises. He studies them for a long time, and then steps back, and Gerard, who had been holding his breath, lets it out in a rush. Frank goes to stand near Gerard, because he's concerned. He can feel Gerard tensing up, and he's not sure if it's the memory of the ghost attack or Bob himself, but Frank feels tense, too.
"That's some pretty serious bad spirit, leaving bruises." Bob says, and then he looks up at the ceiling, down at the floor. "Lots of spirits can choke you, but not all of them can actually touch you to leave bruises,” Bob says, and doesn't bother to explain further. "Show me where it happened," he says, and goes to his duffle bag, pulls out something that looks like a portable ham radio.
Gerard walks over to the spot on the floor where he fell, then points to the spot where he was dragged. He can't seem to speak. Frank walks over, too. Bob tunes his radio, and then points it at the spot in the hallway where Gerard is pointing. The machine makes a series of beeps, which Bob interprets with a nod.
"Is there some sort of spirit residue?" Mikey asks. Bob startles and looks up, then smiles at Mikey, huge and open.
"More like an echo, yeah," Bob says. "You're the brother?" Mikey nods. "You witness the attack?" Mikey shakes his head, looks pale.
"But my brother isn't making it up!" Mikey protests.
"Oh no, I'm not saying he did," Bob says. "People see different things." Bob is quiet again, and runs the machine around Mikey, then around Gerard, up his right side and down his left. It goes crazy when it points at Gerard's hand. Not his hand, though, Frank realizes a second later. It's pointing right at Frankie's chest.
"Huh," Bob says. He moves the machine toward Gerard's chest. The beeping stops. He moves it left again - right at Frank?. It goes crazy, beeping and crackling.
"Huh," Bob says again, looks at his machine, and looks Gerard right in the eyes and says, "According to this, you've got a ghost standing right next to you."
Everyone but Gerard and Bob take a step back. Even Frank, like for a moment he forgets he shouldn't be afraid of himself.
The thing is, Gerard is smiling. Not a stressed, frightened smile, but a real smile. "Oh, that's probably just Frank," Gerard says, and Bob opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again.
"Wait, what?" Bob says. Mikey is actually hiding behind his hands.
"Frank," Gerard says again. "You didn’t tell him the whole story," Gerard says, turning on Schechter. "He can't be here if he's going to hurt Frank!" Gerard starts getting flustered, and Frank steps close again. Bob's machine goes wild.
"Ok, ok, calm down," Bob says, to Gerard, and, Frank thinks, to him, as well. He feels Bob's energy - feels Bob's presence - telling him to calm down. Gerard is still tense, and he splays his feet and crosses his arms. "Someone tell me who Frank is."
"He died here," Gerard says. "Before I moved in. Ray told me."
Frank listens to Gerard tell the story of his death, some of the things he hadn't actually heard, like how Ray unlocked the door when the postman saw someone slumped in the hallway, how Frank was already cold when Ray tried to check his pulse, see if he was breathing. Ray looks sad when he talks about packaging all of Frank's stuff up.
"Were you friends?" Bob asks, and Ray looks really thoughtful.
"Yeah, I guess," Ray says and Frank's heart breaks a little. He thought of Ray as a friend. But then Ray continues, "It's not like I didn't like Frank a lot, we grew up together, you know? But he was just - distant. You know, he never talked about the people he was dating, never really hung out with people."
Suddenly, Frank hears a crash upstairs. "Is anyone up there?" Bob asks, and without waiting for an answer, he takes off up the stairs two at a time.
Frank is the last to get upstairs, because after Schechter and Mikey and Ray bolted up the stairs after Bob, Gerard had turned to the empty kitchen and said, "It's ok, Frankie, I won't let anyone hurt you," and then went up the stairs himself, leaving Frank frozen in the kitchen, overwhelmed with shock, with how much he just wanted to touch Gerard again, even if it made him disappear for good.
Upstairs, the ugly lamp in Gerard's bedroom is smashed, the lamp base and the light bulb, and the small mirror Gerard had balanced on his dresser is smashed, and two of the dresser drawers are yanked out, their contents overturned.
"Oh, man," Gerard is saying as Frank gets up the stairs. "My lamp!"
"That was an ugly lamp," Mikey says. Gerard glares at him, then laughs.
Bob isn't paying attention to any of them. He is ignoring the lamp, the dresser drawers, all the debris, in favor of the mirror shards. He picks one of the smaller shards up, looks at it, then sets it down in what Frank thinks is exactly the same place. Bob doesn't even bother with his machine. He looks at Gerard and says, "We have a problem." Gerard pales, but Bob doesn't say anything more. He looks at Mikey and says, 'Come help me set up some equipment," and then, as he's disappearing, to Schechter, "Take my credit card, let's go get these good people some pizza."
While Gerard watches, Mikey and Bob set up equipment all over Gerard's apartment, video cameras, recording equipment, and a bunch of readers that spit out data into a small computer screen. Schechter comes back after about twenty minutes with four boxes of pizza, and Ray has gone next door and come back with a liter of Coke and a bunch of glasses, because Gerard only has two left.
Bob comes in with a book the size of a world atlas, but infinitely older-looking, gray like years of dust have soaked into the cover, with crisp, thin pages that look like they're going to crumble as soon as Bob touches them. Bob treats the book with respect, pushing the Coke and pizza aside and flipping slowly through the pages.
"This," Bob says, "is a grimoire. Do not, under any circumstances, open this or read anything, aloud or silently, without my supervision. I'm not saying you're stupid, just that this book has secrets I don't know yet, and we've already got enough trouble as it is."
"You keep saying that," Gerard says. "But you just mean that we've got an angry spirit who can break things, right?" Gerard is eyeing the grimoire with both apprehension and curiosity, and he nervously grabs a slice of pizza and takes a bite. It's still hot and Gerard spends a few moments making pained faces and trying to cool his mouth until Ray gives him his glass of Coke and Gerard takes a long sip.
Bob is focused on flipping through the grimoire, and he glances up at Schechter, clearly asking him to answer.
"You had your bedroom trashed while we were downstairs," Schechter says. "While the EMF said there was a ghost right next to you. So you've got a spirit who can move fast, move from docile to destructive- "
"Or there are two ghosts," Gerard interrupts.
Bob looks up quickly from the grimoire. "You think two ghosts is better?"
Gerard hesitates. "It's just - it just means that one of them is bad, and the other one's - the other one's just Frank."
Bob turns back to the grimoire without answering and Mikey comes to stand by Gerard's side. "Listen, Gee, I think maybe you're so focused on Frank that you're not seeing - "
"Don't argue with me about this, Mikey," Gerard says in a rare burst of anger. "You don't understand."
The room is quiet, and Bob, having found what he wanted in the grimoire, closes it and puts his hand briefly on the top as though making sure it's really shut.
Frank hovers far away at the door, because the grimoire makes him feel like Bob did when he first got here, like he's in trouble, like there's a power here that's stronger than him.
Bob says, "Whether we have a malevolent, powerful spirit here who can seem like it's two places at once, or whether we have two spirits, I need to take some measurements and readings, because I am still not entirely sure I know what's going on and we can't do anything until I have a better idea. We should take advantage of the trashed bedroom as a use of malevolent energy. Not that I want to diminish the danger, but things are always going to be quieter after a violent act like that." Bob tucks the grimoire under his arm, and says, "I hope you don't mind if I camp out in your living room. Normally, I'd say that we'd be sure to get the best readings at twilight or the middle of the night, but considering this thing doesn't mind trashing a room at supper time, I'd like to be prepared to gather some information at a bunch of different times."
Bob nods at Schechter, and then at Ray. “You look strapping, want to help?” Bob says, and Ray blushes and they both follow him out.
Gerard’s living room starts to fill up pretty quickly with Bob’s equipment, and Frank starts feeling like the place is too crowded. Gerard seems to feel that way, too, since he's never had this many people in his place, not while Frank's been watching at least, and Gerard keeps backing up against the wall to let Mikey or Bob pass by with some equipment. Finally, Gerard grabs his drawing pad and a handful of pencils and retreats upstairs and Frank follows.
It feels like what Frank's used to again, the calm closeness of being next to Gerard, the scratch of Gerard's pencil on the paper, the sound of Gerard's breathing. He sits down on the floor, his back to the bed. He imagines that if he were really here, if Gerard could see him, he'd reach out and absently pat Frank's head, maybe trail his fingers down his jaw. Frank likes that thought a lot, likes all the thoughts about Gerard touching him. He wonders whether this is ever going to be enough, just the thought of Gerard and not the actual touch, Gerard talking to the air where Frank may or may not be, the complete exhaustion after trying to talk to Gerard in his dreams. Frank knows he has to stay to protect Gerard from this other spirit, but he's not sure what will happen next, after Bob manages to get rid of it. Frank wonders if, over time, he'll get stronger. If he'll be able to do more things. If he'll ever be able to talk to Gerard, to tell him. Tell him how he feels.
Ray's gone home for the night, insisting he’s right next door if anything happens, Schechter is making coffee and Bob is sitting with a flashlight, a dagger, and sixteen pixie sticks lined up in front of his sleeping bag. Mikey doesn't like the guest room so he's sleeping in the hallway under a pile of blankets. Gerard is tossing fitfully in his bed, his arm out of the blankets. Frank stares for a long time at the frayed cuff of Gerard's shirt, and then he walks to the other side of the bed and lies down. It's probably a mistake, but in the dark of the house, Frank is scared - there's a ghost hunter here and Frank isn't sure that he's not fair game. He reaches out for Gerard, gently, like it’s a real touch, only Frank has to concentrate hard, has to think of this and nothing else. And that isn’t all that hard, to think of just Gerard. Only Gerard, Frank's fingers meeting the soft skin of the inside of Gerard's elbow.
Finally he manages to make contact and to feel it, to feel Gerard’s elbow move slightly under his touch, Gerard's skin warm under his fingers. Gerard takes a deep, sleepy intake of breath and then Frank is standing in the old kitchen again, looking down at the flower-pattered linoleum. Gerard is sitting at the table, reading Bob's grimoire. Gerard doesn't seem to notice him and so Frank clears his throat, and then says, softly, "Gerard?"
Gerard turns at his name but can't seem to see Frank for a minute, and Frank's chest aches with disappointment, because Gerard can't see him here, either. "I'm right here," Frank says, waving his hand feebly, and then Gerard turns back to the grimoire.
Frank collapses against the kitchen counter and wonders if this is all he's going to get, his hips poked by the sharp edge of the melamine counter, the smell of fried eggs and cigarettes, Frank lost in another foreign place, alone, unable to talk to Gerard even in his dream. He wonders if what happened before was some fluke, or worse, it means that he's losing his strength. He's losing whatever power he had that kept him here, and maybe he's just supposed to let go. It makes sense then that this is happening when is here. Maybe he should just let them banish him or exorcise him or whatever it is they're going to do. He should let them take him down like he's just as evil as the other thing in the house. Then at least he'd be able to feel something other than disappointment, despair, the loneliness of watching everyone's lives go on.
"It's not true," Gerard says, standing and closing Bob's grimoire. "I read this and I know all about ghosts now," Gerard says, gesturing to the grimoire, which is pulsing slightly on the table. "You're not bad, Frankie."
And it's when Gerard says his name that Frank looks up. Gerard is close, his feet practically touching Frank's, a small, tender smile on his face. "I've read this whole thing," Gerard says, pointing now at Frank's chest. "You're much easier to understand than that book."
Frank reaches up for Gerard's hand and presses it under his own, over his heart. "It's not working anymore," Frank says. Gerard only smiles.
"Yes, it is," Gerard says. "It's just very quiet." Gerard leans closer and presses his ear to Frank's chest. "I can hear it, though," he says.
Frank has to try several times before he can make his hand move to cup the back of Gerard's head, but when he does, he's rewarded with Gerard's sigh and the feel of Gerard's hair under his fingers. They stand there like that for some time, Frank isn't sure how long, and as much as Gerard says he can hear Frank's heart, Frank can't feel it himself, no matter how hard he tries.
Gerard stands up and Frank lets his hand slide through Gerard's hair, down onto his neck. Frank can feel the muscles and tendons, Gerard's pulse, his skin. Frank hasn't touched anything in so long and he's thought about this every day, touching Gerard. Frank feels Gerard's chest rise and fall with a deep intake of breath, feels Gerard's body shift so that he's closer, Gerard's hands settling on Frank's shoulders.
"Frankie," Gerard whispers and then he leans in and kisses Frank, as soft and as insubstantial as the whisper.
--
Frank can't help the sound that escapes his throat, and he chases Gerard's mouth, kissing him more deeply, his hands stroking the skin of Gerard's neck, Gerard's fingers caressing Frank's arms, over his shoulders, pulling Frank closer and closer until they're flush.
"I know how this story ends," Gerard says.
“Tell me,” Frank asks between kisses, sliding his hands across Gerard’s back and pulling him close.
“Like this,” Gerard says, and then, like a dream, because it’s a dream, they’re in bed, legs tangled, the sheet draped across Gerard’s bare back.
“Yes,” Frank says, and then Gerard is kissing him, moving above him, and Frank feels the same blinding ecstasy as the first time he watched Gerard in the shower, feels Gerard shudder above him, feels Gerard clutch at his arms, pressing messy kisses to his forehead and the side of his mouth.
Part 3