Upstairs, the house creaking and groaning with the sound of the oil-fired central heating starting up. I unpacked my bag, threw The Great Romantics on my bed, went to grab a jumper and there he was, lying in the bottom of my wardrobe. How did he manage that? As I opened the door he tumbled out. Oh, Algernon. Over his green jacket he had wound a red scarf around his scrawny neck and he was wearing a pair of brown sheepskin gloves on his long thin hands.
‘Those, Algernon Keats, belong to my father. How did you get them?’
‘I picked them up from the hall table. I will return them in the morning, I assure you, but for now,’ he said, snuggling up to the rapidly warming radiator, ‘they are keeping me warm.’
‘No. What I meant was, how did you pick them up? You can touch things?’ I patted the bed. ‘Sit with me.’
He sat, barely making a dent.
I held up his gloved hand. ‘I can touch you but no one else knows you’re here. Is that right?’
‘That is the glory of transmystification, if you must know.’
‘Which I must. That’s a very long word.’
‘The unaccountable mystery of things I can and cannot do.’
‘You’ve just made that up.’
‘Quite so. It is one of the perks of being in my position.’
‘And your position, Algernon Keats, is, shall we say, dead, but still alive? Right?’
He sighed and sat back on the floor by the radiator, warming his other-world bones. ‘I am, you might say, in a state of permanent flux. Oppositional, I think, but nevertheless true.’
‘What the hell are you talking about, Algernon?’
‘My particles are made of thoughts, depending on the energy, but I can change. Rearrange my atoms depending on who I am with. With you, Miss Budde, I become real. With others, less so.’
‘And if I change, what happens then?’
‘I will change also.’
‘How will that happen?’
‘Energy is not limitless here. A time will come,’ he said.
‘When what?’
The radiator creaked and gurgled.
‘What time, Algernon?’
‘It will come,’ he said. ‘It will simply come.’
I didn’t really grasp what he was saying. ‘More riddles, Algernon. Tell me, do you throw things around if you’re angry?’
‘No I do not.’ Algernon Keats, resident ghost, sat stiffly against the radiator. ‘But others may.’
‘Can you actually walk through walls?’
‘What would be the point of that? Transmystification has its limits.’
‘There are others here like you?’
He nodded.
‘In the church, the girl, long dark hair . . .’
He held up his hand. ‘Please do not continue.’
‘But, Algie—can I call you Algie? You said she was your sister so I know you know her.’
He paced up and down in my small room. He straightened his back, clicked his shoulders into place. Was he thinking of the darkness, of the damp disturbing earth? The rustle of leaves above him, faint voices he once knew crying in the wind?
‘What are you all? Spirits? Phantoms? Poltergeists? What are you all doing here?’
His face tightened with effort. Perhaps he did not want to remember the past. He wanted to leave it there unspoken, covering him like earth.
‘There are two of us, Rebecca. I may call you Rebecca, Miss Budde?’
The way he said my name so softly and gently calmed me.
He sat on my bed and held my hands in his. I didn’t care that they were cold and pale. ‘I must apologise for her, but as you now know, she is my sister. She does have certain peculiarities.’
‘You’re alike in different ways then.’
Algernon sighed deeply.
I felt a shiver of cold, of long-ago breath. He was here and I could see him and touch him but he wasn’t quite flesh and he wasn’t quite bones. What he saw I could not see. I saw only the night, black against the window, but he was leaning into his past, retrieving memories.
‘Listen.’ He folded his arms and spoke. ‘My mother told me she laboured for five days. October, yes autumn, it was autumn. My father prayed on his knees for all of those long days. He prayed we would both be saved and we were. We arrived in Brightley when I was three weeks old and still barely heavier than an empty basket. Two years later my sister was born. My mother said love was the only thing she wanted. My father said the Lord had saved me for great things. I did not end up doing great things. Teaching in the village school. I was not doing great things like my dear cousin Mr John Keats. He barely had the time to know his wonders. At least I had some years to see how truly great he was. But still I did not do great things.’
‘Oh, Algie. I don’t know what to say.’
‘Miss Budde I have heard you say many things. Speaking in your mind. To Jane.’
‘To Jane? Jane Eyre? But she’s a character in a book.’
‘I heard your voice. I knew you were the one for me. Your father chose Brightley like my father chose Brightley. They brought us both here. It was right. And so I came, through the darkness. To find you.’
In the distance of my present life my mother called up the stairs, ‘Rebecca? Dinner’s ready. Come and lay the table, please.’
‘Look, Algie, Algernon, Al, whatever you are, I’m fine with you being here.’
Leaves and earth and twigs and tiny stones dropped occasionally from his sleeves. Small stones trickled through his fingers.
‘Algernon? What are you doing?’ I grabbed an old shoebox from the wardrobe and held it under him. I scooped up as many stones as I could with the lid.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Transmystification. I am adjusting.’
His little stones covered the bottom of the shoebox. I ran my fingers over them. Some were coloured, some like quartz, some brown and dull as earth. ‘These are stones, Algernon. And you’re making a mess.’
His eyes were fixed somewhere I could not see and he was scarcely listening to me.
Was this because I took the turquoise stones from Wye? Did I cause some mad disturbance of the dead?
An autumn leaf fell from his hair.
‘These stones are making a mess in my room.’
I put the lid on the shoebox and shoved it under my bed, running my fingers over the carpet for any tiny stragglers.
‘Your sister. When do I meet her properly?’
‘One of us per house only.’
‘Oh, there are rules,’ I said. ‘Who writes these rules?’
‘I try, but sometimes things just happen. It is hard to know,’ he said.
‘Algie, I have to go and eat now.’
I tried to give him a hug but there was almost nothing to hold on to. My hands smelled of long ago. His jacket really did have the most ridiculous lapels.
My mother found me staring at the carpet, wardrobe door wide open. ‘Everyone is waiting for you and we are not waiting any longer.’ She closed the wardrobe door with a bang. ‘Dinner is ready.’ She marched out of the room.
‘Bye, Algernon,’ I whispered.
‘One thing is certain,’ he whispered back. ‘Everything is dark without the light.’
Mum marched back in and pulled me out of the room.
‘You’re worse than your father sometimes,’ she said, ‘and he’s bad enough.’