Part 5 (BBB 2012)

[pinkichan]

←
Tom and Sean get the salt out of Sean’s room and Ross wakes up sometime after that. Sean is expecting Tom to ask about Ryan while they’re cleaning up, but he doesn’t. They were hardly being quiet; Tom probably heard everything already. With the salt cleaned up and Ross awake, Sean waits to see if his spirit will take over again. The attachment around Ross is weaker today than before, so Sean figures it took a lot out of a low-level spirit to speak to him for as long as it did. He probably won’t be able to get any more information out of it. That means he either has to go looking for the ghosts or wait for them to come to him.

“What are we going to do about Nick?” Tom asks when Ross is out of the room. They’re sitting together at the kitchen table and drinking beers that Sean dug out of his vegetable crisper.

“We’re going to find him.”

“What about Ryan?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t think he wants to speak to me.”

“This is weird,” Tom says. “This isn’t something normal bands have to deal with. He probably needs time. I don’t know, not everyone can deal with it, I guess.”

Sean takes a swig from his beer. “Maybe I shouldn’t have ever said anything. It’d be easier that way. No one would have to worry and no one would get involved.”

“But then you’d be handling it all on your own and that can’t be good for you.”

“Still, I think Empires would be better off with a normal lead singer.”

Tom smiles at him. “Then we wouldn’t be Empires. This isn’t your resignation, is it?”

“No,” Sean laughs, but it comes out wrong, too bitter. “I’m here if you’ll still have me.”

“I’ll help you, you know? You can come to me.”

“Thanks, man,” Sean says, but it doesn’t make him feel any better. Nick is still in danger, Ryan is still pissed off. He’s lost control of almost everything in his life besides the music.

“Hey, I’m starving. You wanna go out to dinner?” Ross says as he comes back into the room.

“Yeah,” Tom says. He looks at Sean.

“No, I’m cool. You two go ahead.” He needs to stay here to see if a spirit will come to him.

Tom looks like he doesn’t want to leave Sean alone, but Sean smiles at him, urging him to go. If he’s alone, it’ll increase the chance for the spirits to come to him. Tom leaves and promises to check in on Sean in a while. When he’s all alone, Sean opens the door to his balcony, the cold fall air rushing inside his living room. He sits on the floor of his living room and waits.

The thing about the ghosts always being there is that he didn’t have to learn how to call them to him. He’d just open his eyes and they’d be there. Only recently has he tapped into repelling them and, now that he has, he has to figure out a way to send a signal that he wants to talk.

He tries to keep himself calm, keep an open mind, make sure he’s being inviting. He does this for a half-an-hour until he figures that he might need more. “Hey,” Sean says to the room at large. “I need to talk to someone. I need some help. I’m not resisting anymore.” He feels a little stupid talking to himself, but if it works and he can fix everything, he’ll gladly do it.

He cracks an eye open and scans the room around him. There’s no spirit to be seen, so he closes his eyes and keeps talking. “Please, this is important. Someone I care about could be hurt. All I need is one of you who know something about the collector.”

Still no spirit comes to him. Sean sits there and waits, talking about what he needs until his hands and feet are freezing from the open door. By the time Tom texts him to check on him, he’s been sitting there for close to three hours. He stands up to close the door but, before he does, he checks the streets below just in case he managed to get a spirit to show up. There’s no one down there, so Sean goes back inside, locking up his door.

He’s not sure what to do now. He’ll have to keep trying or go out and look for ghosts somewhere else in the city. Sean lies in his bed. His last hope is that one of the spirits will come to him in his dream like the dead girl did. He’s tired, both physically and emotionally, and he falls into sleep soon after he shuts his eyes.

***
He never dreamed that night and no spirits were waiting for him when he woke up. Sean spends the morning on his laptop looking up all the information he can on the people who’d gone missing. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He doesn’t think he can find something that the police haven’t yet, but he still looks up the locations of the people who were kidnapped, where they were living before they were taken away from their homes and their lives.

He can’t see a connection. The missing people aren’t strictly just from the city - there are some from the suburbs - but most are from the city. Sean doesn’t find anything about suspects - of course not, because the news isn’t trying to solve it, they’re just telling you about it. This isn’t a movie and Sean isn’t a genius. He really doesn’t know what the fucking world expects from him.

When Sean’s found everything he could about the case, he calls Tom. He’s not sure if he and Ross are still hanging out or if they had a late night, but it isn’t too early, so he figures he’s safe. Tom picks up pretty quick and it kind of surprises Sean.

“Hey, I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No, I was just hanging around here. What’s going on?”

“I wanted to know if you wanted to go scrounge up some ghosts with me later?”

“Are we going to have to sit in a cemetery at midnight or some shit?”

“Well, I’m definitely going to add ‘cemetery’ to the list.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t have any visitors last night, then?”

“No, I didn’t. How’s your Ryan?”

Tom laughs but it sounds off. “He’s as normal as he can manage to be.”

“Have you talked to…”

“No,” Tom says without making him finish. “I think he just needs some space right now.”

Sean sets his laptop aside and lies in his bed, looking up at the ceiling. “Right.”

Tom still doesn’t ask about what’s going on between the two of them. He’s got to know that it has to be more than just the ghost shit, but he doesn’t ask. Sean would probably tell him if he did ask. He has a habit of talking about something to unload it, spread the weight around, but telling Tom about how he and Ryan almost fucked and are sort of maybe in love with each other just defeats the whole purpose of Sean trying to protect anything.

“When do you want to do this?” Tom asks.

“In a couple hours? It doesn’t matter; ghosts aren’t limited to a certain time.”

“Alright, I’ll be over there soon.”

Sean hangs up with Tom and then goes to take a shower and change his clothes because he hasn’t done that in a while and it makes him feel human again. Before Tom comes over, he tries to summon a spirit to him again. He talks to them, tells them about Nick and how he’s looking for him, for wherever he’s at. Again, no one responds to him. What shitty, rotten luck that he’s been cursed with this ‘gift’ in his life and, when he actually needs it, it decides to shit out on him.

Tom arrives soon enough. He’s driving Ross’ rental, but Ross isn’t with him. “Where to first?” Tom asks.

“I wanted to go to that park where the girl was killed.”

“This shit is pretty fucking morbid.”

“Yeah. Do you know how to get there?”

Sean figures the park is a good place to start. The girl was distraught, probably not the kind of ghost to just accept that she died. She’s the kind who acts out, gains legends and attention, and wants to get revenge for her death. She’ll probably still be in the place she died, maybe hoping that her killer will come back again.

Tom parks in the dirt-packed lot and they get out of the car. To Sean’s surprise, Tom brought a camera along with him. “Don’t look at me like that. It might come in handy,” Tom says. Sean doesn’t fight him on it. It helps the two of them look like they’re wandering around the city with a purpose, at least. They walk to the center of the park and Tom snaps a few pictures of a fountain. “Now what?” he asks.

“Now we see if I feel anything.” He closes his eyes and tries to focus. He likes to imagine pushing waves out from his mind, reaching out to find anything that’s there. He can’t find anything at first glance. He’s too aware of Tom next to him, watching him. He’s got his eyes closed, but he hears the click of Tom’s camera and wonders if Tom is taking pictures of him.

“Hello?” Sean says quietly. Even though he’s with Tom, he still doesn’t like the idea of talking to spirits in public. “Is anyone out there? Anyone I can talk to? Does anyone need help? I’m here. Please, just come to me.”

He waits. The sounds of the park darken for him and all he can hear is his and Tom’s mingled breathing. The minutes of silence stretch on long and, with each second without feeling a spirit’s presence, Sean’s hope dies piece by piece.

“Maybe somewhere else?” Tom asks.

Sean finally does open his eyes and nods. “We could. There’s an old hotel I remember seeing a lot of ghosts hanging around at.”

“Spiritual hotspots,” Tom says.

They drive to the hotel. There aren’t any spirits hanging around outside, but it might be because there’s construction taking place outside of the hotel. Spirits aren’t much different than the living, so Sean can see why they wouldn’t want to hang around a bustling, noisy area.

“I’m not getting anything here,” Sean says. Tom frowns next to him, but starts the car.

The next spot is outside the city, an old asylum that Sean found while surfing around on the internet. He’s never been there, but he figures it’s worth a shot.

“An asylum? These are the worst clichés,” Tom says. “Maybe the ghosts are just snubbing us. No humans allowed.”

“I doubt it,” Sean says. “I’m apparently the only one in the whole state who can talk to them. They need me.”

“You could always try to talk to Ryan’s spirit again?”

“It came to me last time, but it’s pretty weak. Who knows how long it will take it to be able to take him over again?”

“Speaking of Ryan, do you mind if I talk to you about him?”

“Sure, is something going on? Are you two, like, official?”

Tom shrugs and he frowns at the steering wheel. “I’m not sure.”

“You spend a lot of time with him.”

“Yeah. I like it. I like him a lot, actually.”

Sean turns from where he’s looking out the window to Tom. “Then what’s the problem?”

“He’s not over Jon.”

Sean isn’t surprised. He’s going to judge Tom’s observational skills if he never noticed that fact. “You don’t say?”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Tom says. “I thought he came here because he wanted to see me. I thought he was staying here all this time because he liked being around me, but now, I think it’s just because he misses Jon and I’m as close as it gets.”

“He can still like you and miss him.”

“But can he be in a relationship with me if he’s still hung up on Jon?” Sean doesn’t know. At this point, he thinks he’s probably the least qualified person to give advice on a healthy relationship. “I was there the first time they met, you know?” Tom says. “I wasn’t with Jon anymore, but I still recognized that look in his eyes - complete adoration. Ryan was easy to read. It was obvious they were connecting. I didn’t know he was still - ”

Tom stops himself and looks out his own window. Sean thought that Tom wasn’t heavily involved in Ross as something serious, but this reaction is proving otherwise.

“Not everyone can get over Jon as fast as you did, Tom.” They dated when they were younger. Sean didn’t really hang out with either of them back then, but he knows the story, knows it was an amicable ending, and he and Jon have been just as close ever since.

“Jon left because of their break-up. It was hard on him, too,” Tom says. He taps his hands against the steering wheel. “He went to do some soul-searching and meanwhile Ryan is tearing himself up with a broken heart in L.A. What happens when Jon comes home? That’s what I’m afraid of. I like Ryan. I want to be with him, but I don’t want to be the second choice.”

“Maybe you should tell him that? That’s my advice. Just tell the truth.” If there is anything Sean learned during this back-and-forth with Ryan, it's that being honest right away is probably the best thing you could do.

“I don’t even think he means it,” Tom says. “He doesn’t mean to still be hung up on Jon. I don’t even think he wants it. I think he wishes he didn’t feel like that at all, but the fact is that he still loves him deep down. I don’t fucking blame him, but I think I’m falling for him, Sean. Either way, someone is getting hurt.”

“Does he know Ryan’s here?”

“No, he’s too busy sending me pictures of his neighbor’s cat and battling hermit crabs. Besides, I don’t want to know what he has to say about it.”

They settle into silence again. Sean almost tells Tom about him kissing their Ryan, but if he gets pissed, he doesn’t want to be trapped in a car with him for that long so he stays quiet. At least with Tom talking about his love life it cut some of the tension of the day, took their minds off their failures in ghost hunting so far. They reach the asylum shortly after that. Right away, Sean can feel something in the air.

“I think this will be our lucky spot,” he says. The building is abandoned and there are no trespassing signs up outside, but no one ever listens to them, seeing as half the building’s walls are covered in graffiti.

Tom and Sean walk around the building. Sean tries to see any spirits hanging around. When they reach the back of the building, they find a sprawling, makeshift cemetery.

“Cool,” Tom says. He snaps a picture of the old, worn headstones that pop up from the dirt.

It’s creepy as fuck, but they set up shop in the cemetery, sitting together on a little bench under a tree. Well, Sean is sitting. Tom is moving along the rows of headstones and reading them off. Most are too old to even have names engraved, just numbers.

“Hey, Sean, if we do run into a ghost here, since they don’t live in the city, how much help do you think they’ll be?”

He hadn’t considered that. Shit. “I think they all communicate. I imagine being dead means you’d jump on the first piece of gossip you heard.”

Sean tries to draw a spirit towards him while Tom takes picture. They sit there long enough that the sun begins to set. Sean doesn’t find much scary these days, but still, sitting at an abandoned insane asylum in the cemetery doesn’t rank on his list of things he likes to do. Tom is sitting with him now, having photographed as much as he could without going inside the building.

He’s on Sean’s laptop. He breaks Sean’s concentration by poking him in the side. “Hey, what is this?”

“What?” Sean asks.

“These lyrics: ‘Your first step feels like caving in.’ Did you write this for the album?”

Sean balks because that’s the song that sparked a fire in him, the one he hid from Max when he offered his new batch of songs, the same one he wouldn’t let Ryan read when he snuck into Sean’s bed. He feels suddenly stripped and exposed under Tom’s gaze. His face is blank in the blue light beaming off the laptop’s screen.

“Uh, yeah, it’s something.”

“I like it,” Tom says. “Sounds like a keeper.”

“Yeah?”

He nods. “Have you shown Max?”

“Not yet.”

“You should.”

Sean does like the song, but he can barely imagine singing it for Tom and Max, let alone singing it live. “I don’t think we’re going to get anything tonight,” Sean says. He's eager to change the subject. “Maybe we should head back?”

Tom closes Sean’s laptop. “Yeah, probably. Did you want to try another spot?”

“No,” Sean sighs. “I’m not sure what to do. Maybe wait for one of them to come to me?”

Sean and Tom tromp back through the small graveyard and around the building back to the car. A small, terrifying thought worms its way into the corner of Sean’s mind. What if, because he had been resisting his power and the spirits, it weakened his skill? What if it isn’t something that sticks with him, like a natural-born talent? What if it’s more like something he has to hone and keep sharp for it to even exist? It’s suddenly clear and scary to him just how much about his own power he doesn’t know.

“I want to stop somewhere before I drop you off,” Tom says once they reach the city. Sean doesn’t press about where to go. He doesn’t even feel like going home. Lately, he doesn’t like being alone in his apartment. It reminds him of all the mistakes he’s made.

Where they end up is a hotel downtown. Tom parks in the garage. “Is this where Ross is staying?” Sean asks.

“Yeah.”

“What are we doing here?”

“I just want to see something.” That’s all the explanation Tom offers as they board the elevator to Ross’ floor. Tom must know this place like the back of his hand because he doesn’t miss a beat all the way to Ross’ room. Instead of knocking, he gets his phone out and taps out a text.

“Really?” Sean says.

Tom shrugs. “He likes me to do that.”

Seconds later, the door opens and Ross is standing there, tucking his own phone away. “Glad to see you’re telling the truth this time,” he says to Tom.

Sean looks at Tom, who’s smiling all wide and idiotic. “Sometimes, I fuck with him and tell him I’m outside when I’m not.”

“When you said you needed to borrow my car, I didn’t think you meant all day,” Ross says, moving aside so that Tom and Sean can come in.

“That was my fault,” Sean says.

Ross smiles. “Well, that’s okay, then.”

Tom has got his camera out again and he’s messing with it. “You’re so much nicer to my friends.”

“That’s because I like your friends.”

Tom laughs and snaps a picture of Ross, catching him off-guard. Ross looks completely unsurprised that he’s become a subject of Tom’s pictures. Tom stalks over to Sean and curls his hand over Sean’s shoulder, his fingertips touching Sean’s neck. He uses his free hand to wield his camera. “I have good taste, what can I say?” Tom says before he snaps another picture of Ross.

“Do you want a beer?” Ross asks, while he ignores Tom. He shakes one in Sean’s direction.

Sean accepts and drinks half of it in one go. With the room settled, he can see Ross better now - and he can still see Ross’ attached spirit, glowing brighter than it was the other day, so Sean figures it’s getting stronger, that, if it comes down to it, he can try and draw this spirit from Ross to talk to him again.

“We just came to say hi,” Tom says. “I gotta get Sean here home.”

“Are you going to come back after?” Ross asks.

Sean drains the rest of his beer and sets the bottle on the table in the room. He glances at Tom. His face is blank and easy. His mouth curls up at one end. “If you’re lucky.”

Ross rolls his eyes. “Nice seeing you again, Sean.”

“You, too.”

On the elevator ride back downstairs, Sean looks at Tom. “You wanted to check on him.”

“I wanted to see if you could see his spirit.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, so?”

“I did. It still wasn’t as strong as the night it took him over.”

“But it’s getting stronger? That’s a good thing, right?”

“Yeah, always good to have a fallback.”

Back at home, Sean has one more idea on how to bring the spirits to him. He pulls out the bottle of hard liquor in the back of his fridge, shit that Ryan likes, and sits on his couch with the bottle in his lap, drinking from it. Right after tour, the spirits got into his room because they said he had lowered defenses when he was fall-down drunk. He’s not sure how much getting shitfaced will help him now, but it certainly can’t hurt him.

He gets drunk and feels like shit about himself. He hates that he let all this shit happen - he let Ryan slip away, let people get hurt. He knows that he shouldn’t blame himself, but right now, he wants to wallow, so he does. He sits there and hates himself - maybe that’ll work. He and the spirits can find common ground on how much they both hate him.

Sean passes out on the couch with the bottle on the floor next to his head. The couch makes him miss Ryan. When he wakes up, he’s gained nothing but a hangover. “You fucking ghosts better not even try to talk to me next time on tour,” Sean says to no one as he rolls off the couch.

He finds his phone in the kitchen, abandoned there since last night. He has texts from Tom and Max. Tom’s text is a picture and, when Sean opens it, he recognizes the hotel room from last night. It’s a picture of Ross, one of the ones Tom took while Sean was over there with him. It’s a nice shot (all of Tom’s shots are nice), but he doesn’t know what it means.

'Cool shot.'

'No, I was checking out the shit I took last night and I can see the spirit, too. I wanted to test that last night. If I take a picture while touching you, it lets the camera see what you see. Cool, right?'

It is cool, but Sean isn’t in the mood for it, so he doesn’t text back. He checks Max’s text and groans at what he reads. Tom told me you had something to show me. Meet me at 2?

He glances at the clock in the kitchen. That’d be an hour from now. Sean feels like crap, but he doesn’t feel like staying home, either. He thinks too much when he’s alone, especially now. He grabs up his jacket and his shit, pops a few aspirins, and then heads over to Max’s place.

“You look like shit,” Max says instead of a ‘hello.’

“I tried an experiment involving ghosts and my liver. It didn’t work.”

Max takes up his usual seat at his computer. “What have you got for me?”

“A potential song.” Sean opens his laptop and hands it off to Max.

If he didn’t feel like total shit, he’d care more about Max reading the words he had been holding so close to his heart. He kind of wishes Max drank so at least he could share his hangover remedies with Sean. Still, Sean’s stomach flips around because the song is different; it almost felt like it wasn’t even him writing, like he was just the conduit for the words to the paper.

Max finally looks at him and grins. “I think it’s fucking awesome.”

“Yeah?” Max nods. “Cool,” Sean says.

“But can I point something out, man?” Max adds a moment later.

“You know you can. I’m all ears.”

Max chews on his lip, like he’s deciding how to word what he wants to say. He goes over the lyrics again and then scratches a hand through his curls, “You know this song is about Ryan, right?”

Okay. Well, Sean wasn’t expecting that. “You…what?”

“Well, I just think it is,” Max says. “Far be it from me to tell you what you’re writing about, but this feels like…I don’t know, it feels like Ryan.”

It’s not surprising, not really. Sean’s kind of always know who the song was about, even if he didn’t want to admit it. It’s why he didn’t want to share it with anyone. It’s too obvious, too clearly a subject that’s close to Sean’s heart.

“It’s kind of obvious something happened. He’s not saying shit and you’re not saying shit, but that doesn’t mean Tom and I still don’t see shit.”

Max is the youngest out of them, but Sean is always forgetting that. Max has a way of talking to them like he has years of life experience beyond any of them.

“Something happened,” Sean says, “and it’s my fault. I don’t know how to fix it.” He can’t even look at Max; he keeps his eyes glued to the floor. If he had to share the song, then he wants it to be enough. He wants the song to tell the story for him if he must tell it at all.

“If the song is too personal, we don’t have to - ”

“I think I want to,” Sean says. “Use it, I mean.”

“We can record it after we find Nick.”

Even music isn’t safe from the reality of the situation. Sean still has to find Nick, somehow.

***
Sean goes home and tries to sleep off his hangover. He can’t fall asleep, though. He’s thinking about Ryan again. Max and Tom have got to know that whatever happened between Sean and Ryan was about more than friendship. They don’t know more than the pieces Sean’s given them in lyrics or their own drawn conclusions, but the fact is that they know. They know and they’re okay with it.

All this time, Sean was protecting the band because he was afraid they wouldn’t understand. He sacrificed himself for the music and he didn’t need to…he never did. All he needed was to be honest with himself, with his friends. He could be with Ryan. The thought aches in his chest as much as it also warms him. Maybe it’s not too late to apologize. Maybe it isn’t too late to be with Ryan in the way they both desperately wanted.

Lying here alone in his bed, he isn’t afraid to admit that he does love Ryan. He has for a long time, just under the surface. The only thing holding him back was ever fear and himself. He wants to go back, back to when he first kissed Ryan, and then never stop, or he wants to go back to the second time they kissed and stop himself from saying anything.

Right now, he wants to call Ryan, text him, beg him to come over so that he can apologize, can make it right. If he has Ryan back, the rest seems easy. He holds his phone in his hands and thumbs over Ryan’s name in his phone, debating whether or not to send a message. What would he even say? ‘I’m sorry,’ for one; that he made a mistake, that now he wants him when everything is broken and it’s already far too late to say that now he isn’t scared, that now he’s ready.

He falls asleep before he can decide whether or not to text Ryan.

***
When Sean wakes up, he feels better. He still wants to text Ryan, but he still doesn’t know what to say. He gets up, takes a shower, eats breakfast, and tries to summon the spirits to him. It still doesn’t work, but he keeps trying. Maybe, if he puts a constant signal out there, he’ll get something back.

His phone rings around noon. Sean has a spike of wild excitement that it might be Ryan, that maybe he wants to reach out before Sean does. It isn’t Ryan, though. It’s Tom. Despite the disappointment edging up the back of his throat, Sean answers.

“Hey, Tom.”

“Hey.” It’s only one word, but Sean notices that Tom sounds off.

“Is everything alright, Tom?”

He’s expecting a ‘no,’ expecting Tom to launch into his latest problems with Ross.

“I don’t really know how to tell you this, Sean,” Tom says, and now Sean is getting scared because he doesn’t sound right at all. He sounds upset, sad, not at all like Sean is used to.

“Tom, whatever it is, just tell me…”

“Sean, Ryan called me today. He... He left the band, man.”

In one small second, Sean’s stomach drops and his whole world cracks around him. “What?” He’s not even aware he’s talking, just words, his body running on autopilot. “Tom, what?”

“He said he couldn’t do it anymore. All the shit with Nick and - ” Tom stops himself, but Sean finishes it for him.

“And me.” Ryan left the band because of him.

“No one said that,” Tom says. “Don’t do that to yourself.”

“Fucking Christ, he couldn’t even tell me himself?” Sean rests his hand on the counter in his kitchen. He feels sick to his stomach. It isn’t that he isn’t used to losing people, but after Al, they all made a promise to each other: they’d never back out, at least not without trying to fix it. Sean broke them so much that Ryan felt like he couldn’t even stick around to fix it. Ryan left because of Sean, because of how he is, because of the things he’s done.

“This is hard for him, too, I guess. I don’t think he wanted to hurt you or any of us.”

Tom’s practically a veteran at this, but his words don’t make Sean feel any better. He’s hurting, a solid ache up his chest. He thought they could get better, he thought they would. He thought he could make it up to Ryan and they’d all just go back to how they were before. That clearly wasn’t what Ryan wanted and, now, without the band tying them together and with all the hurt between them, there’s a very real chance that he’ll never get the chance to apologize to Ryan at all.

“He Tweeted it,” Tom says. “Just thought you should know that, too.”

So everyone knows. It hurts to know that they’ll hurt, too, but it hurts worse for him because it feels too final. Telling the band is one thing - telling the world makes it more tangible in a way to Sean.

“I’ve got to go,” Sean says.

“Okay,” Tom says.“We’ll be okay, Sean. We always are.”

Sean doesn’t think he’ll ever be okay. He paces his living room. He wants to scream and cry and punch Ryan in the face as much as he wants to apologize to him. How can Ryan just go? How can he walk away from what he helped create? Their new songs, the plans they made…he feels like an idiot. He fought against his feelings to protect the band, to make sure it stayed intact, and despite his efforts, he still lost both of them in the end - the band, as he loved it, and the man that he loved.

***
After Ryan leaves the band, Sean doesn’t know what to do. He knows it means they pick up and move on. They’ll figure out who will record the rest of Ryan’s drum parts on the songs they’ve yet to put down and who will tour with them. He’s not ready for that yet, though; he can’t picture someone else with them.

He ignores music after that. Everything is up in the air. He still writes, but he hates it all. Without music and without Ryan, he focuses on bringing the spirits back to him. He considers calling the police; he probably should no matter what kind of trouble that might put him in. Nick’s been missing for five days now and Sean’s starting to think he can’t do this on his own.

A few days pass by. He’s taken to walking around the city late at night, trying to feel anything, any sign that he’s going in the right direction. He never does find it. It drives him insane to know the man and Nick and all the other victims could be right under his nose, but he’s helpless to do anything. He finds books on spirits and reads them. He never felt the need to before, but he’s desperate for any kind of solution. He hasn’t been talking to anyone, either - not on purpose, but he doesn’t want to talk about Ryan or Nick or what happens to their album or if he has an idea for whom he wants to replace Ryan. He thinks that they’re just giving him space, but he also thinks that they just don’t know how to help. He almost hopes that Tom or Max could figure this out without him.

Finally, late into the night, when Sean is sitting on his bedroom floor, he feels something behind him. When he turns around, there’s a young man standing behind him. Sean is up in a flash. “Oh, my God, finally! Don’t leave, please. I need to talk to you.”

“I won’t leave,” the man tells him. “It’s not like I have a better place to be.”

“Do you know what’s going on in the city? Do you know about the man who’s kidnapping people?” He bites his lip. He looks young, barely twenty at most. “Did he kill you?”

“No,” the ghost says, “and I do know about the man, but we’re not supposed to say anything.”

“Not supposed to say anything? You ghosts were practically begging me to solve this case for you and now you’re silent? Is that why you’ve all been ignoring me?”

“There aren’t many rules in our world, but there is one that applies to this situation: only the ghost of a person who died at his hands can tell you where he is.”

“What the fuck? That doesn’t make sense. The spirit that told me about it had nothing to do with the man.”

The male ghost shrugs. “Some don’t follow the rules, even in death.”

“So you’re not going to tell me shit? You all come to me when you need something, but when I need your kind for once, you ignore me?”

“Even if we came to you, we wouldn’t have been able to give you what you wanted.”

“Then tell one of the victims to come see me. Tell them I need to talk to them.”

“If they’re not comfortable with you, then they won’t come.”

“One of my friends is in trouble! I don’t have time for them to get comfortable. I need to know where he is, even just his name. Please.” Sean knows it might be stupid to plead to a ghost, but it’s all he has to go on. “I want to get justice for them, too.”

“I can try,” the ghost says. “All I can tell you is that I’ll try to bring one of them here. I don’t know if they’ll come, but I’ll tell them you want to help.”

If that’s the best deal Sean can get, then he’ll take it. He just needs Nick and the others to hang on long enough for him to be able to find them. Sean blinks once and then the ghost is gone without another word. He can only hope that this spirit will come through for him. It feels strange for the roles to be reserved, to be helpless and need the assistance of someone who either won’t listen or won’t help even when they can hear you. He suddenly feels like shit for all the times he was unable or unwilling to help the ghosts.

On the third day of his radio silence and not leaving his apartment, Tom and Ross show up. “So you are alive in here. We were worried, you know? Sending a text isn’t too hard, is it?”

“Sorry,” Sean says. He moves aside to let them in. “I’m so goddamn frustrated.”

“No luck?” Tom asks without making it obvious what they’re talking about. As far as Ross knows, they’re just talking about losing a piece of the band. Sean shakes his head. Tom looks back at Ross and tilts his head towards the bathroom. Tom wraps an arm around Sean’s shoulders and leads him to his bathroom, away from Ross. “Look, I get it. That’s why I’m here now. I brought him because I think you can try to talk to his spirit. Just don’t argue,” Tom says. “Take a shower and we’ll sort this shit out.”

“A spirit came to me last night, actually, but it was no fucking help. Apparently, they have a code or something.”

“But Ryan’s still talked to you?” Tom asks.

“Yeah, I guess it doesn’t care for the rules.”

“Then you can talk to it again?”

“I don’t know how to get it to talk to me first without freaking Ross out.”

“Maybe we should tell him?”

“Are you serious, Tom? How would we do that? I don’t want to be responsible for alerting him to the fact that he has a spirit living inside of him.”

“Just take a shower and we’ll figure it out,” Tom says. He slips from the room so that Sean can take a shower. He probably looks a mess. He hasn’t been showering or shaving, hasn’t been eating as much as he should. It’s a poor choice of words, but he almost feels like a ghost in his own life. He’s just kind of been there while the world spun around him.

He feels better once he’s out of the shower. He finds clothes stacked on top of the toilet that Tom must’ve brought in the room. He dresses and then meets Tom and Ross out in the living room. They’re sitting together on the couch, stuck in the dip the same way that Sean and Ryan used to sit. Ross’ leg is hooked over Tom’s.

“Hey, I was just telling Ross about all those missing people cases in the city,” Tom says, “and about Nick.”

“That’s really scary shit,” Ross says.

“Yeah,” Tom says. He looks at Sean, like Sean should be picking up on a cue here. He must want Sean to try and draw the attached spirit from Ross. It’s true that it’s looking stronger than ever, but he doesn’t know where to even start. He goes and sits next to Tom on the couch when an idea comes to him. He touches his fingertips to the back of Tom’s hand. Tom raises an eyebrow at him and Sean tilts his head towards Ross.

Tom follows his gaze and gasps a little before recovering. He must be able to see Ross’ spirit now. Ross gives them a funny look, but Tom recovers, probably because he saw it first in the picture he took, dissected it through his lens of the world.

“I wish we could help find those people,” Tom says, nudging Sean.

“Yeah,” Sean says. “I’d do anything to be able to find them and help them.”

Ross nods, but nothing changes. He doesn’t feel the prickling on his arms and the back of his neck like the night the attached spirit took Ross over. Tom glances at him and Sean shakes his head.

“We need help,” Tom says.

“Well, it’s kind of the police’s job,” Ross says.

“Yeah, but if we knew anything at all about where to find them, we could do our own part.”

“That’s honorable,” Ross says, and that’s it. He doesn’t change, doesn’t get taken over. Tom looks between the two of them and then sighs.

“I’m going to go have a smoke.”

He gets up and goes out to the balcony, leaving the door mostly closed, save for a tiny crack of space. Sean and Ross are still on the couch with the awkward, empty space between them. Ross looks at Sean and smiles. Sean tries to return it.

“It might not be my place,” Ross says a few minutes later, “but if Ryan isn’t talking to you guys right now, I think he probably will soon. When my band…well, when both my bands were falling apart, I didn’t talk to anyone I’d left for a long time afterward.”

He means well, but the thought that Ryan won’t talk to them for months sours his stomach. Sean scratches at the stubble on his chin. “It was pretty surprising.”

“That hurts, I know it does. That’s what happened with Jon. I mean, I knew things were getting shitty, but I didn’t know he felt like he couldn’t tell me about how he was feeling, how he took it upon himself to announce that we were on a break.”

Sean doesn’t know what to say because he barely knows Jon’s side of this. Tom is the one who knows, but Ross probably hasn’t talked to him about this subject. Ross’ eyes are all heavy and sad. Sean knows Tom’s right in thinking that Ross isn’t over the loss of Jon. He’s supposed to be trying to pull Ross’ spirit from him, but instead he feels like he’s looking into a mirror of sorts, a lost man who is hurting the same way Sean is now, reflecting a bitter truth right back at him. The difference is that Ross is trying to push through, to move on, and Sean is wallowing in it.

“Does it ever fucking feel any better?” Sean asks.

Ross glances at him and then at the balcony door, where Sean can make out Tom’s back facing them. “Sort of,” Ross says. “If you’re lucky.”

Ross’ spirit never comes and he and Tom leave for the night, though not before Tom makes Sean promise to text him at least once a day so he knows he hasn’t died in his apartment or some shit. Now they’re down to one option. The ghost needs to bring back one of the man’s victims just long enough that Sean can get some information from it.

Through some stroke of good luck or the universe finally deciding to give him a fucking hand, Sean’s woken up by the icy chill of spirits in his bedroom. It’s late, four or five in the morning, and Sean’s room is too dark to see them well, but he can make out two figures standing near the end of his bed.

“You came back,” he says, his mouth sloppy with sleep. Sean reaches over and clicks his bed side lamp on. He can see them better now. The same male ghost from the other night is standing there and with him is another male spirit, this one not much older than the first.

“He’s the one who wants to catch the person who did this to you, Charlie,” the first male ghost says to the second. The one named Charlie looks at Sean with hesitation and Sean briefly wonders what sort of reputation he has in the spirit world.

“I do. My name is Sean and I want to help.”

“How can I help? I’m already dead. I can’t do anything.”

“That’s not true.” Sean stands from his bed. He’s taller than both of these ghosts. “You can tell me where he lives and where he kept you and the others. Do you know his name?”

“I’m not sure,” Charlie says. “It’s hard to remember now.”

“Just try. A lot of people’s lives are depending on this.”

“Not mine, though,” Charlie says suddenly. “No one was there to save me.”

“I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry no one could save you, but I have a friend who’s been taken just like you were. You could help him and so many others. You’re the only one who can.”

Charlie closes his eyes. “I remember it being really quiet. It was a long drive from where he took me. I couldn’t see while he drove. He told me that I’d love my new home and my new family. He didn’t even mean for me to die. He didn’t know I was sick or that I needed my meds and, without them, I’d die. He hates when people die because he loses a member of his ‘family.’ He wants to keep us all forever.”

Sean shivers at the story, his stomach rolling with the idea of Nick being trapped with a psycho like that.

“After I died, I went back to the house because I wanted to take my revenge, but the others - ” Charlie looks at the other ghost next to him. “ - the others told me not to because, if I hurt him, then no one might ever find these humans.”

“Tell me how to get there,” Sean says, “and I promise you’ll have your revenge.”

Charlie nods and then tells Sean the address - or what he thinks is the address - of the place where the man lives, the place where Nick is being held. Sean’s blood is on fire. He wants to go now, run there and find them, save them all, and beat the shit out their captor, but he knows he can’t. He shouldn’t go alone, for one thing; he needs a plan.

“No name?” Sean asks.

Charlie shakes his head. “I never heard it.”

“How many people were there with you? Where were you being held? Do you know if there was someone there named Nick?”

“I don’t remember. There were a lot of people; he could never get enough. I don’t remember anything else.”

“Do you have enough now?” the first ghost asks. “We need to leave.”

“I think I do. If I ask for you to come back again, will you come?” Sean asks. He doesn’t think he’ll need anything else, but he likes to know he’ll have this ace in the hole if he needs it.

Charlie nods and Sean smiles at them. “Thank you. You don’t know what you’ve done.”

The ghosts don’t say anything, but Sean can feel a change in the air in the room. It feels lighter, better, like Charlie feels as relieved as Sean does. After the ghosts are gone, Sean can’t go back to sleep. He wants to call Tom, but he knows he’ll have to wait at least four hours for that, maybe three hours for Max. Ryan, though - Ryan could be awake. He’d want to know about Nick.

Despite their lack of communication, Sean finds his phone and sends Ryan a text. Safety of their friend trumps the anger between them, he figures, and he tells him that he knows where Nick is, that he’s going to go and save him. He sends it off with nervous fingers. Honestly, he’s expecting a reply back, but a minute slips by and then two, three, and after five minutes, Sean thinks maybe Ryan is just asleep and he’ll text Sean when he wakes up. He wouldn’t ignore news like that, no way in hell.

Against his better judgment, he decides not to involve the police right away. He still can’t explain how he knew where the house was and, maybe selfishly, he thinks that this is something he has to do, not completely alone but not with the police force, either.

He goes out to his living room and turns on the news, lying down on the couch and watching for any stories about the man he’s going to see today. Sean falls asleep an hour into the news when the reports start to repeat. The next time he wakes up, it’s nine in the morning and, with barely-opened eyes, he calls Tom.

Tom sounds like he’s sleeping, too, when he picks up with a grunt instead of a ‘hello.’

“Tom, listen, you need to come over here now. I got it. I know where he is.”

“You fucking serious?” Tom drawls, his voice thick with sleep.

“Yes, I’m going to call Max. Just get over here.”

“Yeah, fuck, okay. I’m on my way.”

Tom hangs up and Sean calls Max. Tom must have been filling Max in because Sean doesn’t have to explain much to him, just that he knows where Nick is and that he needs to come over. Now that the time is closer to when they’ll go and do this, Sean’s heart is beating quickly in his chest. He won’t make Tom and Max do this with him if they don’t want to. After hanging up, he realizes that Ryan never texted him back. It’s weird and a little upsetting that he won’t even talk to Sean when it has to do with truly important shit. It only confirms for him that Ryan intends on never speaking to him again.

Tom gets there first, yawning with a cup of coffee in his hand and Ross’ rental keys hanging off his thumb. He takes a sip of coffee and drops down on Sean’s couch. “The spirit world finally taking your calls?” he asks.

“Yeah, I guess so. I got his address, but I’m not sure where it’s at, exactly.” Sean goes and gets the slip of paper he’d written the address down on and hands it off to Tom.

“I know where this is,” Tom says. “Not too far from the city. This creepy fuck has been this close all along?”

“The ghost said he’s got a lot of people,” Sean says.

“Should we be worried? I mean, do you think we should get officials involved?”

“I don’t know. I think…well, I was thinking that it’s something we’d just do, but it is dangerous.”

“No shit. We’re going to need a fucking good plan.”

Max shows up not long after Tom, looking more awake than Tom did. “So,” he says, “what’s the plan?”

Sean gives him the address. Max isn’t familiar with the area, so they have to rely on Tom for that one. The three of them sit on the couch together. It almost feels complete, if not for the aching spot that should be sitting to Sean’s left.

“Have either of you talked to Ryan? Told him we know where Nick is?”

Max shakes his head. “I called him but no answer.”

“Speak of the devil,” Tom says, holding his phone up. “He called me late last night while I was sleeping.”

“What? What time?”

“Three-thirty. He left me a voicemail.” Tom holds the phone to his ear to listen to the message. Three-thirty? Sean sent him a text around five. He doesn’t mind who gets to be the one to tell Ryan the good news, but he just wishes Ryan wouldn’t completely ice him out.

Tom makes a face at his phone. “Huh?”

“What is it?” Max asks.

“The message is weird. I think he pocket dialed me. I can’t really hear a lot, there’s someone talking in the background.” Tom listens to it again and hums. “Sounds like he was driving. Listen,” Tom says. He plays the message again over speakerphone.

The message is mostly idle silence, the static-y kind where you know you’re waiting for something. In the background, Sean can hear the dull roar of a car and then, near the middle to end, he can hear a voice, a man’s voice, one that doesn’t sound like Ryan’s. He’s scared to hear it. Sean’s scared that Ryan pocket-dialed Tom while he was out hooking up with someone he met at a bar. Then he hears something that makes his blood run cold. He isn’t sure…it could be a leftover from last night’s conversation with Charlie and the other ghost.

“Play it again, Tom,” Sean says, his voice a tight whisper.

Tom gives him a funny look but plays the voicemail over again. Sean leans in to the speaker and listens, eyes closed. That second time, he hears it. He hears the voice of a man saying, “You’ll just love your new family.”

Sean shoots out of his seat as realization strikes him like a bullet. “Jesus Christ,” he says. “No, no, fuck no!”

“What? Sean, what?” Tom says.

Sean can’t even talk, can’t even tell them, because he doesn’t want to believe it. He wants to be paranoid, to be hearing things, but inside, he knows. He knows what he heard and it’s not fucking good.

“Damn it, no. I heard - on the voicemail, I fucking heard the same shit that the ghost told me his kidnapper said to him. You guys, fuck, I think…I think he’s got Ryan.”

“How is that possible?” Max says. “Are you sure you heard it?”

“I am sure. I fucking heard him say ‘you’ll love your family’ and that’s his whole thing. He’s a psychopath who’s afraid to be alone so he kidnaps people to make them his family and now, fuck, now he has Ryan.”

Tom plays the message again and Sean can barely stomach listening to it. Tom has it pressed right to his ear so that he doesn’t miss a word. Sean knows he isn’t just hearing shit when Tom’s face pales. He gives the phone to Max for one final confirmation that Sean doesn’t need. It all makes too much sense. Ryan wanted to find Nick, he was frustrated with Sean, he went looking for the answers himself, and it looks like he fucking found them.

Sean’s knees go weak. He feels dizzy and nauseous and he wants to cry and kill that man dead in his fucking tracks but he can’t do anything. It’s one more thing that happened because of him and one more thing he couldn’t stop. Every time he gets one step ahead, the world knocks him three steps back.

“We have to go,” Sean says. “We have to go now. Ryan’s there. We…I have to go fucking get him.”

Tom stands up and grabs Sean’s shoulders, squeezing tight. “Stop, Sean. You’re no good to us freaking the fuck out. This is scary, yeah, it’s fucking infuriating and I’m pissed off too but we have to be fucking smart about this, okay?”

“The call came at three-thirty,” Max says from the couch. His face is tipped down and Tom’s phone is in his hand. “Either Ryan managed to call Tom on purpose or his phone dialed it on accident. The call only ended because Tom’s voicemail cut off. By that time, he was in the guy’s car.”

“Shit,” Sean says. “Fuck, no, last night after I got the information from the spirit, I texted Ryan and told him I knew where Nick was. What if that guy got his phone? What if he knows that someone knows where he’s at? What if he hurts them or moves them?”

Tom squeezes Sean’s shoulders again. Sean tries to breathe. He’ll never fucking forgive himself if Ryan shows back up as a spirit. He shakes the thought from his head - he can’t. He doesn’t ever even want to imagine that.

“We’ve got to go,” Sean says, his voice a whisper that only Tom catches.

“I know, and we will, but I don’t think we can go in the daytime. It’s better at night. Did you want to involve the cops now?”

“I want Ryan,” Sean says. “We’ll go there and, if things go to shit, we’ll call the cops.”

It’s a shitty plan at best, but it’s what they decide on. It’s the hardest fucking thing in the world for Sean to have to wait until nightfall to go and save Ryan and Nick. The guilt weighs on him like bricks on his chest. It’s his fault. Ryan wouldn’t have gotten involved in any of this if he didn’t know anything about Sean’s power, if Sean had managed to keep him in the apartment.

Tom and Max make Sean sit down while Tom goes out on the balcony to call Ross and ask him if he can borrow his rental for a while. Sean doesn’t open his mouth because he’s afraid he’s going to throw up. The dread in his stomach feels real and alive, like poison in his veins. Max pushes a hand through his hair and looks at Sean.

“None of us knew this would happen.”

Sean shakes my head. “It’s still my fault. I could have stopped this.”

“Don’t play with ‘what-if’s, Sean. They won’t help us now.”

“If something happens to him, Max, I - ”

“Nothing is going to happen. We’re going to go and we’re going to get him.”

Max sounds so sure. He doesn’t even sound scared or gone to have a smoke to calm his nerves like Tom is doing right now while he talks on the phone. It reminds Sean of being a kid and how you were only ever truly afraid if your mom was afraid. Max isn’t afraid - or, at least, he’s not letting Sean see that he is - and that’s enough to light a tiny hope inside of Sean.

Tom slides back inside and pockets his phone. “I got the car.”

“Okay,” Max says. “Now you need to tell us everything you know about this guy.”

→