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He couldn’t get it out of his head.
Edgar Lancer had initially hoped that the reprieve of yesterday afternoon, and a quiet night at home with good wine and an even better book, would have been enough to help him to process the previous day’s incident.
The fluorescent light flashing green in Daniel Fenton’s eyes brought it all rushing back, and Lancer forced himself to take a deep, shaky breath. It was nothing more than a coincidence. Surely Daniel had just been thanking him for the afternoon off, or something similar that had slipped Lancer’s mind thanks to yesterday’s drama.
So, he turned his attention back to his job. The minds of his students might not be eager and ready to learn about adverbs this early in the school day, but he wasn’t going to delay just because the majority of them would rather be on TikTok right now.
He rubbed his fingers together, feeling for the slimy residue of ectoplasm that had taken forever to wash off the night before. Logically, he knew his hands were clean, but Lancer could still smell the acrid, sickly tang of the stuff. He’d spent the entire night double checking that it really was gone, that it hadn’t soaked into his skin or stayed stuck beneath his fingernails.
He fought back a shudder and tried his best to teach. Standing before the class as they carried out their assigned writing exercises, he found himself watching each student.
They were all so young, just on the cusp of truly beginning to find themselves. He remembered being their age and finally feeling like he really knew who he was, what he wanted and who he wished to be. The thought of a premature end, of everything just stopping before his life had even truly begun, turned his throat sour with stress.
He took a sip from the bottle of water on his desk, gripping it harder than normal in the hope that his trembling hands wouldn’t be noticeable.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get the thought out of his head.
Phantom was a child who had died.
Lancer had been telling himself ever since the previous afternoon that logically, he’d already known that. Death didn’t tarry until you were ready to walk through the proverbial door into whatever afterlife truly waited for all. It came whether you wished it to or not, drawing its shroud over your existence whenever it so pleased.
The bell startled him, and Lancer blinked as chairs scraped against the floor and the chatter of young voices washed around him like an incoming tide.
Students trickled out of the room like receding water, and Lancer stayed standing beside his desk, staring at his shaking hands again in that constant search for any ectoplasm he’d missed.
A prickle passed across the back of his neck, cold like the touch of death, and he jerked as Phantom materialised in front of him with a sheepish “Hey.”
He stared at the ghost, taking a moment to form his thoughts into something coherent. “Is… is everything alright? How are your wounds?”
Phantom scrunched up his face, moving to close the door. “Sore. I’ll get there. Thanks again, by the way.”
Lancer blinked at him. He wasn’t sure the ghost had thanked him before, but his thoughts had been so overwhelmed since then that he couldn’t actually be certain. “Any time,” he managed to croak, and took another sip of water to try to clear his throat. “To what do I owe the visit?”
Phantom sighed softly, and it echoed with an even gentler reverberation that was almost too quiet to hear. He floated back across the room, settling to sit on top of a desk in the front row. “You helped me yesterday,” he said, leaning in a way that would probably be taking pressure off his injured side. “There’s clearly something wrong though, and I can’t help thinking that it’s something to do with me. So, what’s up?”
Lancer stared at the ghost of a child who looked like he had never had the chance to hit his growth spurt. “You want… to talk?”
Phantom shrugged, with more emphasis on the shoulder on his uninjured side. “I wanna know what’s got you so upset. It’s not like I’ve got anywhere better to be, and besides, you look like you didn’t sleep at all last night. You’re not trying to figure out who I was, are you?”
Lancer slowly sank into the seat behind his desk, thoughts shooting through his mind so quickly that he could barely focus on a single one.
What was Phantom truly concerned about here? The teacher’s wellbeing, or the risk that Lancer would try digging up the past?
Those acrid green eyes were bright and focused, and as Lancer stared into them, he made up his mind.
He’d figure out what had happened to this kid, and support him however he could. Helping kids was his passion after all, and if Phantom needed help working through whatever had happened to him…
Well, at least Lancer wasn’t a ghost, like that horrid wellbeing officer had been. He just hoped that it would stay that way.
“Alright,” he said, settling more comfortably into his seat. “Let’s have a chat.”
Phantom sighed, but smiled. “Great. Where do you want to start?”