Charles Rowland was a young boy from England that was murdered by three spirits from Hell after they returned to Earth. Another ghost; Edwin Paine came to his aid, and Charles chose to stay with Edwin as a Dead Boy Detective rather than passing on.
History
On December 1990, Charles turned thirteen, while his father was in Kuwait. So Charles was sent to the St. Hilarion's School for Boys, where he had been for a year and a half since his father left the country. His father was an architect, a tall, nervous man, who designed hospitals, and his mother was long dead. On tuesday. Charles went down for breakfast, but there was nobody there, and no breakfast in sight. Puzzled and hungry, he went to his locker, and got out his last packet of biscuits. Then he walked outside, and sat on the war memorial, and ate the whole packet. At lunchtime, when no one appeared in the dining hall, he went up to the headmaster's study.
Strange people, thought Charles. He found himself wondering about insanity; but adults were strange, and he had few criteria by which to judge them. Troubled he headed for the sanatorium, to talk to the matron, but she scared him with her experiments and he ran away. So Charles returned to the dormitory, hungry and scared. That evening he stared at the mist, as night fell. He watched as Alfred, the school grounds-man, ran past, wailing softly, pursued by a woman and a child. The mists swallowed the three of them; and he saw none of them again. He sat up in bed that night, hungry and frightened, and nobody came to turn off the lights. So Charles eventually fell asleep.
In the next day, Charles went to a classroom, hungry, surrounded by dead boys, and tried to focus on his text-book. After a while he became aware that no one else in the room was breathing. In the afternoon, the new headmaster sent the boys down to the school lake, to bathe. Charles felt hs lips turning blue. His fingers and toes became numb. No one else seemed to notice the cold. There was no food that night. After lighs out, when the other boys were laid out in their beds, Charles crept out of the dormitory driven by hunger, where he was tortured by some "bullies". Later, he was rescued by a dead boy named Edwin Paine.
Charles spent the next day unconscious on the floor of the attic. On friday, Charles was delirious; he talked to people who were not there, muttered snatches of gibberish and fragments of nursery rhymes. Edwin tended him as best he could. On saturday, Charles regained consciousness, although he was weak and in pain. Edwin offered to move him to the sanatorium, but he didn't want to go, and on sunday, Charles died. When Death came to take Charles to the Afterlife, he chose to stay on Earth with Edwin as ghosts. They later formed the Dead Boy Detective agency[1] and befriended Crystal Palace.
Powers and Abilities
Powers
- Ghostly Physiology
- Invisibility
- Intangibility
- Astral Projection
- Flight
- Teleportation
- Catoptric Teleportation[2]
Abilities
Related
- 27 Appearances of Charles Rowland (Vertigo Universe)
- 12 Images featuring Charles Rowland (Vertigo Universe)
- 7 Quotations by or about Charles Rowland (Vertigo Universe)
- Character Gallery: Charles Rowland (Vertigo Universe)
Footnotes
This character exists under the Vertigo Imprint which is intended for Mature Readers.Their continuity takes place within the context of Vertigo titles although they may cross over into regular DC continuity.