GHOST STORIES
“We can get some great establishing shots in the foyer,” says the ghost in Bransen’s body, pacing out the creaking floorboards, framing the clouded windows with his fingers. “Real spooky. Very atmospheric. But I’m telling ya, we gotta mic the attic.” It turns his head to the ceiling, as if sensing some invisible current, like a shark following its prey, and then turns his head to me, wearing his smile. “That’s where they died. That’s where all the ghosts are.”
I give him the thumbs up and I try to smile back.
It’s been three weeks since Missouri.
—
The footage is good. No, the footage is fantastic. Lately everything we try is pure fire. Bransen’s on the screen, lit an eerie green from night vision, his pupils luminous. He is speaking as he ducks under the rafters, his voice hushed, breathless, mesmerizing. The attic is filled with shapes, shadows that shift as I follow Bransen deeper in, utterly and unmistakably haunted. I turn up the background audio.
It’s nothing at first, static. But the longer I listen I start to hear whispers, voices formed by ambient noise. Feet creaking. Muffled shrieks. Sounds so soft you might almost manage to convince yourself you were imagining things. The words of ghosts, saying everything and nothing. Rorschach blots of white noise. Hissing. Screaming. Weeping. Mourning.
A hand touches my shoulder.
“See?” says the ghost in Bransen’s body. “What’d I tell you?”
—
“So,” says Dev, “what happened with the two of you in Missouri?”
Dev is Bransen’s boyfriend. Bransen’s been insisting that we socialize more outside of work, and so here we are making small talk in his apartment while Bransen’s gone to fetch the dessert. “He, uh, he hasn’t told you anything about it?” I say, hoping to probe for more details. “You, uh, haven’t seen the footage?”
“He’s been very vague,” says Dev, rolling his eyes. “Playing coy. ‘I just decided to start appreciating what I have,’ he says. Which is nice, but, y’know. There’s got to be more to it than that.” Dev drains his glass. “And the footage, no offense, but it’s all the same, ha ha. I’ve told him that myself. The two of you wandering around in the dark, bumbling, some noise happens off-camera and then you jerk around and nobody sees anything.” He leans over, smiling. “Just tell me the two of you didn’t have a torrid affair out there, and now he’s overcompensating out of guilt.”
“I -” I’d dropped the camera when it happened. Of course. The one time something undeniably supernatural had happened, and I’d panicked and blown it. “Trust me, it’s definitely not that.”
Dev laughs, and that’s when the lights go out. Bransen enters carrying a tray of Baked Alaska, blue flames dancing eerily on its surface. “Ta-da!”
“Oh my god!” says Dev, delighted. “You are too much!”
“Gotta get in my practice,” says the ghost in Bransen’s body, grinning, supremely pleased. He sets the Baked Alaska down and Dev stands and embraces him, and I want to say, Your boyfriend’s been possessed. There’s a spirit living in his body, puppeting him, wearing him like a glove. The person you loved isn’t in there anymore.
But they are both laughing, looking in each other’s eyes, and in that moment I don’t know if it would be the truth.
—
Our newest video is trending, over half a million hits on YouTube and counting. My inbox is blowing up. I’m shaking. We’ve never done anything half this big before in all the years we’ve been doing this. Everything we’ve dreamed of when we first started out is coming true.
This is how deals with the devil work, I think. You give up your soul, and you get everything you’ve ever wanted.
I go into the bathroom to wash my face, stare at myself in the mirror, and when I come out Bransen is standing over my laptop, looking at the tab I had open on exorcisms.
“Hey,” the ghost in Bransen’s body says, and clicks back over to our YouTube page. “Not bad, huh? Ya know, buddy, I think we might finally be getting somewhere.”
I take a breath and swallow. “Is he still alive in there?” I say.
The ghost in Bransen’s body smiles, shrugs, rubs the back of his head. “Alive, dead, kinda fuzzy categories, don’t you think? That’s kinda the premise of our little peep show, isn’t it?” It casually begins to walk towards me. “Nothing ever really dies. Nothing ever really ends.”
“You can’t -” I say. Missouri. The Auden Estate. Bransen writhing on the floor, eyes rolled up into his head, a thousand tongues shrieking from his mouth. The screaming. Screaming. Screaming. “He was a person! He -”
“I was a person,” the ghost interrupts. It looks up at me with Bransen’s eyes. “And let’s face it, I’m doing better with his life than he ever did.”
“He was …” Fuck, why is this even a debate? Why did I never think to rehearse my arguments? “Okay, he used to be a jerk, sure,” I say, my voice shaky. “But he had it rough! This whole ghost hunter channel, this was his dream, and he put so much time and effort into it, and - and we just weren’t getting any viewers, and -“
“Weren’t getting any viewers,” the ghost in Bransen’s body says, glancing back at my laptop. “That little phase in our career is over know, thanks to me. Ya know what I think his problem was? Entitlement.” It spreads Bransen’s arms, boxing me in. “Just because he was alive he thought he deserved to be happy. Deserved to be successful. Waa-waa, just because my parents didn’t love me. Just because my career choices didn’t work out. I think that entitles me to be a sullen asshole, to yell at my partner, to stew in my own misery and be a generally awful person to be around!
“Everyone in the whole damn world is suffering!” says the ghost in Bransen’s body. “ Ya gotta have a Positive Mental Attitude! Appreciate what you’ve got! Treat each day like a new opportunity!” It leans in and I can feel its cold breath on my cheek. “Ya know what?” it says. “Life is fuckin’ wasted on the living.”
I am shaking, my knees unsteady underneath me, and it finally backs off, still smiling Bransen’s smile, and gently slaps me on the cheek. “Buddy, buddy, buddy. Keep your spirits up! We gotta upload something new, strike while the iron’s hot, take advantage of this momentum! C’mon, grab your camera. I’ve already scouted out our next location.”
It glances at my laptop as it leaves. “Oh, and that Latin shit? Sicut déficit fumus defíciant; sicut fluit cera a fácie ígnis?” It shakes Bransen’s head and laughs. “Nah, you gotta do better than that.”
—
“In 1926,” says the ghost in Bransen’s body, “all five members of the Coyder family were found murdered in their beds, all of them hacked apart with a butcher knife.” We are livestreaming, the abandoned farmstead behind him looming in the yellow grass, its windows dark, its face gray. He walks forward and I follow, the shot swaying with my footsteps like the opening to a horror movie, and I glance down at our viewer count and we are well into the thousands by now, and still rising. “Their killer was never found.”
He touches the doorknob and it creaks open into an empty house. “This is where they died,” the ghost in Bransen’s body says, and on his cue I pan across the dusty boards, the cobwebs, the empty bed frames as if they were still dripping red with blood, thousands of eyes upon us as if decades had not passed and the Coyders were dying still, screaming still, staggering with their guts hacked out; as if all the world was full of ghosts, watching and wanting and eternal.
