#lillithorn

The man looked rather taken aback to be facing so many people. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb the whole household,” he said. “Do you all live here?”

Edgar hesitated for a moment. “Yes,” he replied, as that seemed the simplest answer.

“Um, no we don’t,” Lenore argued. “None of us do. None of us live anywhere.”

“So it’s true? You’re all ghosts?” asked one of the women. “How thrilling!” she cried when several of them nodded.

“That’s one word for it,” drawled another of the women.

“I’m sorry, but who are you?” Edgar asked, casting an apprehensive glance at the gorilla.

The third woman spoke. “Wineshine. Fig Wineshine, Private Eye. That there’s my assistant, Ford Phillips.” She pointed at the man.

“Fig, we’ve been over this. You’re my assistant-”

“These two are famous actresses, Wilhelmina Vanderjetski and Vivian Nightingale. I’m sure you’ve heard of them.” Fig’s confident grin faded in the face of so many blank stares. “Anyway, they’re in a major, supernatural pickle, a sort of ghostly jam, if you will, and rumor has it this is the most haunted building in the country, so if you spirits will lend us a hand, we’ll crack this case faster than an otter cracks a shellfish with a rock, and then we’ll get straight out of your hair.”

The stares of the ghosts had become, if possible, even blanker.

“Was she speaking English?” Louisa May Alcott whispered to Fyodor Dostoevsky.

“I’m not sure,” he whispered back.

In the midst of this confusion, the costumed person dramatically whipped off his gorilla head. “I’m Dash Gunfire,” he told them, “and I can promise you that I’ll crack this case better than Fig and Ford put together!”

“May we come in?” Ford asked Edgar, ignoring the gorilla man. “I promise I can explain why we’re here better than my assistant just attempted to,” he added, glaring at Fig.

“Edgar, I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Annabel whispered warily. “What if they…?”

“What can they do to us? We’re all dead!” Lenore pointed out.

“You’re right,” Edgar admitted. “Welcome, new friends,” he said to the strangers, beckoning them into his house.

Ford, Fig, Wilhelmina, and Vivian hurried inside and slammed the door shut before Dash could follow them. Once again, the ghosts stared. “Trust us, you don’t want him to get involved,” Ford told them.

Edgar led his guests and friends into the living room. Once they had all found seats, Ford asked, “You’re Edgar Allan Poe, aren’t you?”

“Yes, and these are my friends:” – he pointed them out as he introduced them – “Lenore, Louisa May Alcott, Mary Shelley, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Agatha Christie, George Eliot, H. G. Wells, Ernest Hemingway, Oscar Wilde, and the beautiful Annabel Lee.”

“Who’s that?” Wilhelmina asked, indicating the ghost whom Edgar had skipped.

Edgar hesitated. “Oh, that’s…that’s Emily. Emily…Brontë.”

“Dickinson,” she corrected wearily.

“Oh, I love your poems!” Wilhelmina exclaimed.

“Thank you,” said Edgar, appreciatively. “I worked very hard on them-”

“Not your poems; Emily Dickinson’s!”

“Who?”

“Can we please get on with this?” snapped Vivian Nightingale, who looked as though she would rather be anywhere than in Edgar Allan Poe’s living room.

“Absolutely,” Ford replied. He addressed the ghosts. “Vivian and Wilhelmina are working on a motion picture-”

“A WHAT?!” Ernest cried, accidentally spitting out the swig of whiskey he’d just taken.

Ford looked taken aback. “A…motion picture. You know, a movie, a film, um…it’s like…”

H.G. stepped in. “It’s like a play, but they use cam-eh-ras to capture the actions of the actors instead of performing live. You really should consider tagging along on some of our time travel escapades, Ernest.”

“No, thank you. I prefer staying in the here and now.”

“Speaking of which,” H.G. turned back to Ford, “when precisely is the here and now?”

“December 1940,” Ford replied. “Vivian and Wilhelmina are working on a modern adaptation of Jane Eyre, but-” he stopped abruptly. No one had spoken, but it was as though a shiver had passed through the room. “What is it?”

“Jane Eyre,” George Eliot repeated. “As in, the novel by Charlotte Brontë?”

“That’s right,” Wilhelmina nodded. “I’m playing Jane; Vivian’s playing Rochester’s crazy first wife.”

Vivian looked none too happy to be reminded of this, but her discomfort was nothing to the ghosts’. After several moments, Dostoevsky finally broke the awkward silence. “Charlotte Brontë buried an ax in my skull.”

“She helped bring about most of our deaths, even if she didn’t directly perform the murder,” Agatha Christie added.

“We thought we’d heard the last of her,” Lenore groaned. “What does this Jane Eyre movie have to do with us?”

“Probably nothing,” Ford admitted. “It could all be a series of coincidences. But these dames tell me that strange things have been happening on set since filming started. At first, just little things. A few props went missing here and there, lights unexpectedly turning off, set pieces falling over. It happens. But it was happening more often than it should, and when people started hearing wailing and singing coming from empty rooms, they started saying the film was cursed. And then, the night before last, there was a fire in the sound stage they were using. No one was hurt, and the damage wasn’t too extensive, but they were forced to admit that things were getting out of hand.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you’re here,” Edgar pointed out.

Fig broke in. “All these strange goings-on…I’ll eat my hat if the cause isn’t something supernatural. And who better to help us crack a supernatural case than supernatural beings?”

“Are you suggesting one of us had something to do with this?” Ernest asked suspiciously.

“Detectives, I can assure you that none of my many friends would do anything like that,” Edgar asserted.

“Not even to prevent Charlotte Brontë’s name from becoming more famous?” Ford asked pointedly.

“Much as we all despise Miss Brontë, we don’t concern ourselves with the outside world,” Annabel informed him. “We rarely ever leave this house.”

“That’s not entirely true for all of us, is it?” Agatha Christie pointed out.

“You’re right,” agreed Mary Shelley. “Those two” – she gestured to Lenore and H.G. – “make frequent trips through time, or so they say. We don’t know what they’re really up to.”

“Are you serious?” Lenore asked. “You really think we have nothing better to do than haunt a film set? Who cares if they make a movie about Charlotte’s dumb book? And anyway, if I wanted to haunt somebody, I wouldn’t be stealing and wailing and singing and setting fires. Talk about lame.”

“I think we can all agree that we’re far too sophisticated for such childish antics,” H.G. added.

“And there wouldn’t happen to be any other ghosts around here who might perhaps be less sophisticated?” Fig pressed.

“The only ghosts allowed in my house are my friends, and all of my friends are in this room, and none of my friends would do such a thing,” Edgar informed them.

At that moment, a loud clatter startled them all.

“I thought you said no one else was in this house,” Wilhelmina commented.

“That was probably just a raven or something,” Oscar yawned.

Edgar looked genuinely alarmed. “No, all of the ravens left mysteriously after my dinner party, and I haven’t seen any since.”

“Huh. That’s odd. I definitely didn’t release them,” George Eliot lied.

“Friends, I suggest we split up to determine the source of the noise,” Ernest suggested.

“NO!” Dostoevsky shouted, startling most of the others. “Sorry,” he apologized in a quieter tone, “but in case you forgot, last time we split up I was murdered!”

“Yes, but darling, this time you’re already dead,” Oscar reassured him.

“They are not,” Fyodor retorted, pointing to Fig, Ford, Vivian, and Wilhelmina. “If we split up, what will happen to them?”

“Well, how else do you propose to find the source of that noise?” Ernest demanded.

“Perhaps, given that the crash came from above us, we could begin by checking the attic?” Agatha suggested reasonably.

No one could dispute this, so they all made their way upstairs. When they reached the attic, the source of the noise was immediately apparent. The shelves had all been emptied. Broken dishes, pieces from board games, some of H.G.’s old inventions, and various long-forgotten possessions of Edgar’s all littered the floor. Standing in the middle of this pile of junk was none other than the ghost of Charlotte Brontë herself.

“Sorry about the mess, I needed to vent,” she said nonchalantly, as though she hadn’t noticed the hostile glares directed at her.

“How dare you show your face here after what you did to us!” shouted Louisa May Alcott.

“Technically, I didn’t do anything to you. That was my sister,” Charlotte pointed out. “And even she wouldn’t have done that if she’d had a choice. It was all Eddie’s idea. We had to go along to prevent him from telling the police about Jane Austen. And that wasn’t my fault either. So you see, I was a victim, just like you.”

Lenore scoffed. “Nice try, but we saw that creepy neck touching. We know you had a thing for Eddie. Tell us what you’re really doing here.”

Charlotte sighed. “Fine. I’m here because I need your help.”

Several of the ghosts laughed incredulously. “You really expect us to help you, after everything you did?!” cried Oscar.

“You’re right, forget it. The world can fend for itself. You all were my last hope for stopping a terrible threat to humanity, but what difference does it make? We’re all dead anyway, who cares if everyone else joins us soon, right?”

“Wait a minute,” Fig broke in. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

Charlotte squinted at her. “Do I know you?”

“Fig Wineshine, Private Eye. I’m not dead yet, and I’d like to keep it that way for a while, so would you mind explaining what you need help with?”

All eyes were on Charlotte, who was relishing the spotlight. “Are you sure you want to listen to me, a dastardly villain, a macabre murderer, a-”

“Get on with it!” snarled Ernest.

“Very well. While we were in prison, my sister Anne stopped speaking to me when she found out that Eddie and I had been romantically involved. I died alone and friendless, but I thought I’d finally be with my beloved again in death. Sadly, he’d moved on to my other sister, Emily. They’re still very happy together, as far as I know, but want nothing to do with me.”

Edgar rounded on Emily Dickinson furiously. “Emily, how could you betray us like that? Tell us you haven’t really been dating Eddie!”

“I’m not Emily Brontë!”

“That’s a different Emily,” Oscar whispered to Edgar.

Edgar didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure?”

“I’m Emily Dickinson, and I have literally never left this house since I died in it!”

“I was so lonely,” Charlotte continued, as though there had been no interruption. “I couldn’t stand having no one to talk to, so I decided to test the limits of my ghost powers and see if I could bring one of my characters to life.”

“You fool!” gasped Mary Shelley. “Did my book teach you nothing?”

“As if I would deign to read anything written by any of you!” Charlotte jeered.

“And why exactly should we help you?” Mary wondered.

“Regardless, I tried to create my great heroine, Jane Eyre, but that didn’t go well, nor did my attempt at Rochester. In fact, of all the characters I created on the page, there was only one whom I could successfully bring to life: Bertha Mason.” She paused dramatically, but it did not have quite the effect she desired.

“Who?” asked Emily Dickinson.

“Yeah, who’s Bertha Mason?” asked Louisa May.

“I am,” replied Vivian. The people standing nearest her backed away uncomfortably.

“Wait, I thought your name was Vivian Nightingale,” Wilhelmina began slowly. “Oh, is that just your stage name, and Bertha Mason’s your real name?”

Vivian rolled her eyes, took a deep breath, and gritted her teeth. “No, Willie, Bertha Mason is the name of the character I’m playing in our movie, Rochester’s first wife, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” Wilhelmina said as everyone else relaxed.

“I see where this is going,” Ford said.

“Of course,” agreed Fig.

Charlotte continued, “I tried to control her, but I didn’t quite know what I was getting into. I wasn’t expecting her to go rogue and love setting things on fire.”

Vivian raised her eyebrows. “Really? That surprised you?”

“Well, no, but I thought perhaps, if I created her from scratch, without her tragic backstory, she’d be a little more…”

“You’re lying,” Lenore interrupted quietly. She’d been listening patiently to Charlotte’s story, but she could stand it no longer.

Charlotte laughed nervously. “I beg your pardon?”

“What are you trying to pull? We all know that ghosts can’t create people. Hello? We’re ghosts.”

“Just because none of your author friends have figured out how to bring their characters to life doesn’t mean-”

“No, Lenore’s right,” H.G. asserted. “I’ve read the ghost handbook dozens of times, and it expressly states that ghosts can neither summon nor create other ghosts, spirits, or any similar being, either living or undead.”

“You are such a nerd,” Lenore teased. “And I love it.” She turned back to Charlotte. “So, Pinocchio, why not try telling the truth for once?”

Before Charlotte could reply, a loud ringing startled them all.

“I didn’t realize the phone still worked,” Lenore commented.

“We have a telephone?!” gasped Agatha.

“I’d better answer it,” said Edgar. “You all can keep an eye on Charlotte.”

“No, I want to go with you,” Charlotte told him.

Poe raised an eyebrow suspiciously. “Why?”

When Charlotte shrugged, Annabel volunteered to accompany them, and Ernest and George both insisted on providing protection. Eventually, everyone followed Edgar to the kitchen, where the phone was still ringing.

“It’s getting so I can’t do anything alone anymore,” Edgar muttered as he picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Ford?” asked an unfamiliar voice on the other end.

“No, you’ve reached Edgar Allan Poe.”

“Oh good. Is Ford Phillips there? This is Roger Haircremé. I’m the one who hired him to investigate the ghost thing. We’ve got kind of a situation at the studio right now, and I need to talk to him.”

Charlotte had begun edging toward the outside of the group. “Hey! Stop!” cried Emily, trying to block her way, but Charlotte walked right through the poet, glided through the wall and out of the house. No one else noticed any of this.

Edgar had already handed the phone to Ford before Roger finished introducing himself. “What’s the situation?” Ford asked.

“The soundstage is on fire again. We think someone’s in there this time.”

“Did you call the fire department?”

“No, I wanted to let you know first.”

“Well call the fire department! I’ll be there as soon as I can, but I won’t be able to do much about a fire.” Ford hung up. “What a clueless man.”

“Who was it, Mr. Phillips?” Wilhelmina asked.

“Your husband. Another fire. Looks like someone’s trapped in there. We need to get the truth out of this Brontë dame as soon as we can.” He looked around for her. “Where did she go?”

Emily was livid. “She left! I tried to stop her, and get all of your attention, but you-”

“I guess she snuck out somehow,” George Eliot concluded. “I was too focused on keeping an eye on our guests, making sure she didn’t murder them, to watch her.”

“Why would she come all the way here just to sneak out again?” wondered Mary.

“Ugh, I wouldn’t bother trying to find a reason for anything she does,” Lenore scoffed.

“I don’t know, Lenore,” Poe began doubtfully, “I think it would be an extremely unlikely coincidence that she would just happen to show up at the exact time someone was setting fire to the set of one of her adaptations. I think she was here to create-”

“A diversion!” Fig exclaimed excitedly. “I like the way you think, Mr. Poe. This Brontë’s gotta be involved somehow. But who’s she working with? She can’t have set the fire while she was here. What in blazes are you doing, Ford?”

Her partner was frantically searching through the room, pushing bewildered ghosts out of the way. “He’s not here,” Ford finally panted.

“Who’s not here?” asked Fig.

“Who always finds a way to follow us around as obviously as possible, no matter how many times we try to shake him?”

“Dash Gunfire,” replied not only Fig, but also Vivian and Wilhelmina.

“Well,” Ford gestured around Edgar’s kitchen, “where is he?”

“I don’t know…do you really think Charlotte Brontë is stupid enough to work with him?” Fig asked skeptically.

“Oh, sweetie, Charlotte Brontë’s stupidity knows no bounds,” Lenore assured her.

“So Dash has trapped himself in a burning building,” Ford concluded.

“Are we talking about the gorilla man?” Ernest asked. When the living people all nodded, Hemingway continued, “I don’t know, for some reason I kind of liked him.” He turned to his fellow ghosts. “Friends, I suggest we embark on a quest to rescue this man.”

“Are you kidding me?” cried Lenore. “Why would we put in a bunch of effort for a guy we met for like two seconds?”

“My dear Lenore,” H.G. implored, “where’s your sense of adventure?”

“It’s not as though we’re doing anything interesting with our afterlives,” Mary conceded.

“Besides, it’s the right thing to do,” said Annabel.

“How far away is the studio?” Edgar asked Ford. He considered the matter settled now that he knew where Annabel stood.

“Not far,” Ford responded.

“Good thing,” sneered Vivian. “You’ve all been chatting so long, it’s probably too late anyway.”

“Wait!” cried Lenore. “We’re like a hundred ghost years old! We can teleport!”

“And how exactly do we do that?” Oscar wanted to know.

“If we all hold hands, and the living people concentrate on the location, and the ghosts concentrate on the living people, that should work,” H.G. asserted. “At-at least according to the ghost handbook,” he added, sounding less certain.

Nobody thought this sounded plausible, but no one could come up with a better plan, so they all held hands and concentrated. To their astonishment, they suddenly found themselves standing outside a burning building. “It worked!” H.G. gasped in astonishment.

“Of course it did; you’re a genius!” Lenore cried.

A smartly-dressed man strode up to them. “Wow, you brought a lot of ghosts back with you! Hello, ghosts. I’m Roger Haircremé. The fire department still isn’t here, but I think I saw that sad little man who follows Fig and Ford around go into the building right before it caught fire. I never saw him come out again.”

Lenore looked around. “So now that we’re here, how exactly do we plan on rescuing this guy?”

Edgar reached inside his coat and pulled out a fire extinguisher. “Will this help?” he asked. The others gaped at him. “What? You think I’d light candles so liberally without safety measures in place? One must always be prepared.” He aimed the extinguisher toward the flames.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said a familiar voice.

“Charlotte.” Poe turned to face her, his voice dripping with contempt. “You can’t do anything to stop us; we’re dead.”

“Most of you are,” she acknowledged, “but not all.” She whipped out two guns, and aimed one at Ford, the other at Fig.

“Wow, you’ve finally figured out how to tell living people from dead people,” Lenore observed sardonically.

“Charlotte, there is only one of you, and there are many of us,” Fyodor said, bravely facing his murderer. “You cannot win this time.”

“If any of you moves, I’ll shoot both of them,” she threatened. “I’ve already won, Dostoevsky. My goal was to ensure that the name of Charlotte Brontë lives on while preventing this deplorable, insulting adaptation from being made, and the Legend of the Fiery Spirit that’s currently spreading does just that.”

“And how exactly does Dash play into all this?” wondered Ford, in a remarkably calm voice considering the revolver that was pointed at his head.

“I needed an accomplice and he was just stupid enough to be useful. But thankfully, after tonight I won’t need him anymore.”

“So you’ll let him die?!” Wilhelmina gasped.

“You really are as despicable as they all said you were,” commented Vivian. “Even I wouldn’t stoop that low.”

Charlotte cackled. Then a loud siren rent the air, and she jumped and turned her head automatically. The fire trucks were coming. With reflexes born from his days in The War and honed by years of detective work, Ford took advantage of the ghost’s momentary distraction to snatch both guns from her hands. “Quick, ghosts, go get Dash!” he shouted in his excitement.

At that moment, Dash emerged from the soundstage, coughing frantically. “Ford!” he called hoarsely, when he recognized him.

“Dash! Are you okay? What happened?” Ford’s concern surprised even himself. He had always regarded Dash as a nuisance, but he couldn’t imagine life without his ridiculous rival tailing him while wearing terrible disguises.

“I’m fine,” he contended, panting slightly. “I was rescued.”

“What? But, we were here to rescue you,” Ernest told him, feeling slightly put out that he couldn’t take any credit for Dash’s survival.

“This ghost lady came in and moved a bunch of burning stuff so I had a path to get out.” He pointed to the ghost who had followed him out. She looked vaguely familiar to most of them.

“How did you do that without Charlotte seeing and shooting us?” Fig asked her.

“It’s one of the advantages to never being noticed,” Emily replied. “I was able to sneak away without anybody seeing.”

Edgar smiled at her. “Well done, Edna!”

Emily started to correct him, then shrugged. “Thank you, Edgar.” At least he wasn’t calling her Brontë anymore.

Dash rounded on Charlotte. “Was me dying part of your master plan?” he demanded.

Charlotte laughed uncomfortably. “No, sweetie, of course not. I told you, we can be partners in crime forever!”

“Well, I’m going back to the other side of the law and staying there,” he decided. “I’ve had enough of petty crime. Dash Gunfire is turning over a new leaf! Well, actually, it will be the old leaf, but not the current leaf…” He blabbered on for several more minutes, but no one else was listening.

As the firefighters doused the flames with their hoses, Roger approached Wilhelmina and Vivian. “I think it’s a good idea to scrap this Jane Eyre picture. The studio can’t afford any more damages.”

“Oh, what a shame,” Charlotte smirked.

Vivian had had more than enough of her. “You can leave now,” she spat. “Don’t come near any of us” – she motioned not just to herself and her friends, but to the other ghosts as well – “ever again!”

“Or what? You can’t do anything to me.”

“Oh, yes, I can!” Vivian reached into her purse and pulled out her script. “I can read this modern adaptation that ruins your story, out loud, in an obnoxiously inconsistent British accent.”

Charlotte gasped. “You wouldn’t.”

Vivian’s eyes narrowed. “Try me.”

Charlotte only had to consider for a moment. Then she was gone.

“Good call, Nightingale,” remarked Lenore, very impressed.

“Oh, no!” Dash suddenly wailed. “I’m going to jail now, huh? For arson and petty theft and…”

“Nah, it’s fine, the studio’s insured,” Roger assured him. “Just don’t do it again.”

“I never realized these Hollywood types could be so forgiving until I started taking Hollywood cases,” Ford remarked. He addressed the ghosts. “Well, I guess that closes this one. Thank you for your assistance, you can all head back to your place.”

Edgar Allan Poe found that he didn’t want to say goodbye to the detectives and actresses. “Feel free to come visit any time, friends.”

“Friends?” Ford repeated. “I don’t have friends.”

“I used to be like that,” Edgar confessed, “and I was miserable. But now, I’m surrounded by friends, and I’m much happ-, I mean, slightly less miserable. So maybe you should consider it.”

“Don’t worry,” said Fig when Ford continued to hesitate, “I’ll bring him around.”

Emily couldn’t help herself. She grasped Wilhelmina’s hand. “Please come visit me,” she pleaded. “Ordinarily I appreciate being left alone, but I’m so lonely!”

“Of course, I’d love to visit you!” Wilhelmina gushed.

“Okay, we’re all friends now, we get it, let’s move on,” Vivian groaned, rolling her eyes.