Part 1 (BBB 2012)
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Sean doesn’t remember the first time he ever made contact with the other side, so to speak. He assumes it had just been happening all his life. There was never a solid moment where Sean stopped and said “Oh, there’s something happening here.” It was always just…there. They were always just there. Sean once had a conversation with his parents about his childhood; his mother said something offhand about how Sean never seemed lonely, how he’d be sitting alone in his room babbling about nothing like he was having the best conversations in the world. Right away, the true nature of that memory climbs inside Sean’s mind and settles there, awakening a long sleeping thought. The ghosts have been speaking to him before Sean could even form words.
He doesn’t think it’s something you necessarily get used to. Sean just - he’s there, and the ghosts are there. He once tried to explain it to Max, which was actually really fucking difficult because Max is all logic and figuring out the rational aspect of things. Sometimes, Sean can’t believe that it was so easy to convince even Ryan and Tom of his “condition” - he doesn’t like calling it a power. That’s not really…accurate. To Sean, a power should be something grander, something that really matters, that could help the living instead of the dead. But he couldn’t figure out how to explain it to Max. He couldn’t clarify his ability to be able to live a semi-normal life, at least one where he’d be able to focus on music and not ghosts. He ended up comparing it to how some people are able to tune out a song they’ve heard one too many times or background noise, like a rerun of a sitcom you’ve seen a million times. It’s noise, but it isn’t the focus.
“Maybe we shouldn’t even be making music,” Ryan says as he hefts his drum kit into the back of the trailer. He’s nursing his index finger where there’s a partially deep cut. Sean is so used to Ryan injuring himself that he barely bats an eye at it anymore. “We could open our own psychic place. Have Sean read people’s palms.”
“That isn’t what I do, asshole,” Sean says.
“Then Tom will read palms,” Ryan says. “You’ll host séances. You know, connect people with their loved ones?”
“I’m doing what to people’s palms?” Tom asks. He drops his shit at the mouth of the trailer and pulls a cigarette from behind his ear, stealing a lighter from Max.
“Ryan wants us to become professional supernatural enthusiasts,” Max says.
“Then what will you and Max do?” Tom asks. He flicks off the lingering ash on his cigarette and smiles because that’s usually how Tom is. He talks more than he smokes and then bitches when his pack is gone. “And remember, being handsome is not an option.”
“Hear that, Max? Tom thinks we’re handsome.” Ryan plasters on his shit-eating grin and then elbows Max in the side. Max on his part just ducks his head and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“Then my work here is done,” Max says.
Sean likes that they can joke around like this. His condition doesn’t have to be serious; it doesn’t have to take away from the music or his friendships or his life if he doesn’t let it. It’s always a fight, though, because Sean is trying to tread between maintaining the living and the dead. He falls into the line in between far too often for his liking.
Sean is halfheartedly listening to Max and Tom argue over who has to pack up the merch table. He’s about to take the job himself when he feels a hand on his shoulder. He turns as a reflex, expecting a fan to be there. What he isn’t expecting is to see a spirit hanging around here. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. It’s not like a cartoon or something. There’s nothing that looks like sheets with eyeholes cut out floating around and it’s not quite like they’re see-through. He’s done a lot of reading on the subject by now, but a lot of the facts with his own condition come right from his own experiences, like the spirits just taking on a corporal form. Maybe it was who they were when they were alive or maybe who they wish they could’ve been.
But again, there are no real dead giveaways as to this girl standing behind him being a ghost, aside for the seasonally inappropriate clothes she’s wearing. She isn’t shimmering or floating, her eyes aren’t hollow, pitch-black holes.
“You’re the one who can hear me, right?” she asks him, her voice watery.
“Oh,” Sean says. He can feel the other three regard him. They can’t see her, so they mostly go off of Sean’s body language, his side of a conversation that’s lost to them. “I guess so. I’m Sean.” He goes to offer her his hand, a reflex, and then feels stupid.
“Sean?” Tom asks. “Is there one right now?”
Sean nods and his friends fall silent behind him.
The spirit looks beyond Sean to the building behind them. It’s the venue they just finished playing at. “This place was an opera house when I was alive.” Her eyes shift to Sean. “I was a performer here.” The ghost tries to start telling Sean her story. He doesn’t want to listen. Of course, there’s a part of him that is curious and wants to know. But knowing means he becomes invested and he doesn’t know if he can do that at a show.
Sean looks at her - dark hair piled up into a plait, equally dark, sorrowful eyes. “It doesn’t look a thing like it used to,” she tells him. Sean looks back at the venue, a rundown, little place with a sketchy bar and some of the worst bathrooms he’s ever seen. He can’t even imagine an opera house ever existing here.
“Time has a funny way of evolving the world around us,” Sean says as he looks back at her. He thinks of Chicago and how, each time he comes home from tour, he doesn’t come home to the exact same place he left. Even if it’s just something small, maybe a coffee shop closed down or someone painted the apartment buildings near Sean’s first apartment, it’s never the same. Nowhere is ever the same as the moment you’re standing there.
She smiles at him. Sean is keenly aware of his band edging in behind him. This ghost, though, she’s beautiful and a performer. She’s the kind of girl Sean would write a song about. He’s screwed himself because he’s pretty interested in her.
“I can’t do much for you,” Sean says. “I’m leaving this city in four hours.”
She frowns at him. “You don’t even know what I want.”
“Are we solving a murder again?” Ryan asks. Sean still cringes at that memory. It was the ghost of a teenage girl who asked them to report her killer to the police. That was…it was rough on all of them. She’d been dead since before Max was even born, but she still knew where the man who killed her was living. She’d told Sean that she haunted him for years, that she had evidence, and all Sean had to do was point the police in the right direction. Of course, it wasn’t that simple because it never ever is, because what police officer is going to believe that a band just happens to hold the key to a twenty-three-year old murder?
“If that’s the case, you’d better say no, Sean. Fucking last time we were held in that city for three days until shit was sorted out. We’re a band, not fucking Scooby Doo,” Tom sighs irritably.
Sean ignores his band. “Okay. Fair enough. What do you want?”
“I want you to deliver a letter.”
“A letter?”
She nods. “I died when my daughter was young…too young. There was a lot I wanted to say to her but never could. I have the chance now.”
Sean bites his lip. “Does she live in this city?”
“Sean, what are you agreeing to?” Tom asks. “We said we had to have a group vote before we decided whether or not to listen to your little friends, remember?”
“Not far from here,” the ghost says, shooting Tom a very nasty look. “Please.”
“Give me one second,” Sean says. The ghost nods and Sean expects it because, well, what the hell else does she have to do, right? He leaves her to go to Ryan, Tom, and Max. “She wants me to deliver a letter to her daughter. Apparently, she lives around here.”
“We gotta be to our next venue in ten hours to check in,” Max says.
“I know that.”
“Are ghosts even capable of writing? I was under the impression that they couldn’t touch human stuff?” Ryan asks. He’s by far the most curious about what Sean does, about what ghosts can do, and he seems to think that Sean is some expert on the subject when, really, he’s just kind of winging it as he goes along.
“I don’t know, man. Are we going to vote or what?”
“Yeah, all who want to help Sean’s ghost, raise your hands,” Tom says. Two hands go up instantly, those belonging to Sean and Ryan, while slowly, Max’s hand joins them.
“We should let Julio vote,” Tom says. He’s kidding, though, because no one outside the four of them knows about what Sean can see. Al didn’t even know - not that Sean wanted to keep it from him. By the time he was ready to tell them, Al had already left.
“I’ll make it quick, Tom,” Sean promises.
Tom may act pissed, but Sean knows that he doesn’t really mind this. It keeps the road mildly more interesting. Sean knows that Tom likes to act like the voice of reason, at least in these cases, even though the role rarely fits him in other band situations. Tom likes to remind them that they’re a band first and Sean’s shit comes second.
They leave the venue earlier than they might otherwise, which makes Sean feel a little bad. He likes to give as much time to the fans as he can, but if they want to keep schedule and still help this spirit, then they have to go now. The five of them pile into the van and MapQuest an address given to them by a ghost. Ryan had been correct in his assumption of spirits being unable to write letters because, right now, Sean is crammed in the backseat with Max, dictating what the ghost wants to write to him. Sean’s handwriting is practically illegible, made even worse when driving.
Tom pulls up a few houses away from the house where the daughter of the ghost woman lives. They slide the letter into an envelope and Max writes the woman’s name on it before handing it to Sean. There are cars parked in the driveway, so Sean figures the woman is probably home. He wishes he had more time. He wishes he had enough time to tell her that her long lost mother is right behind her and let them have a proper reunion, before he wraps everything up in a neat bow. But he doesn’t. This is as much of the story as Sean will ever get. He’ll never see the letter be read and he most likely won’t know what happens to the ghost afterward. He’ll leave the letter and drive to the next venue and try to forget about what happened.
Once he’s seated back in the van, Sean looks up to see the ghost woman sitting next to him where Max should be. She takes his one hand in both of hers. Sean’s skin crawls, but he tries not to let that show. Touching a ghost is…it’s weird to say the very least, like his hand is falling asleep.
“Thank you,” she tells him. Sean ducks his head and, by the time he looks up again, she’s gone.
The world settles normally around him and his chest feels lighter. He takes a deep breath and rubs at his eyes. Ryan cranes around from the front passenger side seat so that he can look back at Sean. “She gone?”
“Yeah.” Sean doesn’t know where, exactly. He feels like they expect him to know more about the spiritual world. Maybe he would if he cared about it as much as he does music. For now, he knows nothing of astral planes and why shit like this happens to him.
Nothing spooky happens between the venue they left and the next one they arrive at. Tom and Ryan argue over what stations to listen to and Max fucks around on his phone in between bouts of playing referee. Sean tries to sleep, but it never comes easy to him in the van, and he’d rather wait until they hit the city and check into a hotel. The tour they’re on is a small one, the dates not straying too far from home. They’re releasing the album soon and once that drops, that’s when they’ll do the long tours.
They get to the next venue late. It’s almost midnight and the show isn’t until the next night, so they just need to check in and then go crash at their hotel of choice. Sean stays inside the van during check-in. They don’t need him, but the others went inside to check the place out. Tangling with spirits drains him in a weird way that he feels like he needs to Google or some shit. The door to the van opens and Sean doesn’t even open his eyes to see who climbs inside.
“Hey,” Sean hears Ryan say, and now he cracks his eyes open so that he can see Ryan taking up the space where Sean’s knees are bent. “Venue looks pretty cool.”
“Awesome, should make for a good show, then.”
Ryan nods, but then he looks at Sean, considering him. “Tired?”
Sean smiles and presses his head back against the cool glass of the van. “Drained.”
Ryan takes on a serious look. “From that ghost today?”
Sean shrugs. “I think so.”
“You ever think it’s like sapping your life from you or something? That could be dangerous, Sean.”
Sean looks back to Ryan. “It could be, but it feels like they just need help.”
“You’re way too nice.”
“Someone’s gotta help them, Ryan. What if I’m the only person who really can? What if they’ve been waiting for so long for someone to talk to? How can I just turn away like that?”
Ryan waves a hand at Sean. “Alright, alright. Don't start with your whole heroism speech.”
Sean smiles and closes his eyes again. The van is quiet. There are times when Sean is trying to fall asleep, when he’s tired and his brain is slow, and he can hear the faint whisper of voices. They’re too far away for him to decipher properly, but he knows they’re ghosts. Whether they’re talking to him or just talking in the hopes that someone out there can hear them, Sean doesn’t know. He’d be more disturbed by the disembodied voices if he hadn’t heard them all his life. Right now in the van with Ryan, he can’t hear anything, no voices, just Ryan’s steady breathing and the quiet tapping of his fingers on the keys of his cell phone.
The hotel is a different story. It’s an okay place, nothing flea-bitten, but from experience, Sean has found that even the most average places are crawling with ghosts. From the second he leaves the van, they turn to him. There are at least ten of them in the parking lot, suddenly chattering all at once. He shrugs his backpack over his shoulder and swears.
Ryan bumps his shoulder. “You okay?”
“They’re everywhere.”
The spirits are talking so loud, so much all at once that Sean only catches pieces of words, things like money, my wife, please. But he can’t…it’s way too much and he isn’t good at saying no. Not yet, at least.
“You dead need to get a life,” Tom snaps. He really has a low tolerance for Sean’s uninvited guests.
A male ghost says, leaning in close to Tom, “Sure, how about we take yours?” Tom can’t hear him, of course, and Sean wonders if he’d have half the attitude he does about the situation if the spirits were something more tangible to him. What he’s really wondering is if Tom would be scared.
“Not tonight, guys,” Sean says. The ghosts don’t appreciate his answer and Sean is hit with a wall of incomprehensible noise. He hurries into the hotel even though the ghosts know no physical boundaries - they could just as easily follow him to his bedroom and pester him all night long if they really wanted to.
“Isn’t there something you can do to ward them off?” Ryan asks. “Garlic?”
Max snorts. “That’s for vampires.”
When they take their rooms, Ryan pairs up with Tom and Max with Sean. There’s no real order, but Max is quieter than Ryan or Tom and Sean is feeling pretty low-key himself, so it all works out. Sean drops his bag at the foot of his bed, toes off his shoes, and strips off his jacket and hoodie before he collapses on the still-made bed in just his jeans and a sweat-stained t-shirt.
Max doesn’t call him on it or tell him to change. Sean just listens to him putter around the hotel room, the creak of Max’s bed as he settles down. “Mind if I watch TV?” Max asks.
Sean rubs his face into his pillow. “Go for it.”
Max hums and then he hears the static-y flicker of the TV snapping on. He doesn’t know what Max is watching, he can’t hear more than the faint mumbling of whatever it is he found. Sean stretches out on the bed. The button of his jeans digs into his stomach. He knows that he should change clothes and not sleep in his stage clothes, he should probably shower while he’s at it, but he’s feeling too tired to do much but strip off his clothes and crash face-down in the mattress.
“Salt,” Max says a few moments later. Sean still hasn’t moved, but he rolls over on his side and peeks over at Max.
“What?”
Max sets down his phone. “Salt wards off spirits. Well, at least that’s what the internet says.”
“Well, there’s no source more reliable than the internet.”
“They have a book,” Max says. “Ghost training 101,” Sean quirks an eyebrow and Max laughs. “I’m being fucking serious, dude. I wish this thing didn’t exist.”
Sean rolls his eyes but pushes off the bed to change his clothes. “How much is it?”
“Sean,” Max says. He sounds disappointed that Sean would actually consider this.
“What, dude? It might be legit! I mean, I never had some mystical teacher that emerged from the shadows to teach me about what I can do. It’s all kind of - ” Sean waves his hand around. “Guesswork.”
Max folds his arms against his chest and rolls his eyes. “I’d bet a fairly big amount of tour money on the fact that you know more about spirits and shit than whoever wrote this book.”
Sean pulls on a shirt, one that isn’t fresh and clean but doesn’t smell worse than the one he was just wearing. “Then I’m worried for the whole ghosting community. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. All I have is shit that would scare my mom.”
“I don’t know, Sean,” Max says. He scratches a hand through his hair. “I think you have a knack for this. I really don’t think any of the rest of us would be faring as well as you are.”
Sean finishes undressing and doesn’t say anything else. He lies down and thinks about what Max said. He doesn’t consider it a skill, not really. It’s just something that was always there. Sean feels like the last person to be qualified to say how the ghosts should be handled. It isn’t like singing (not that Sean thinks he’s the best at that, either); at least with singing, he knows he isn’t fucking up too badly. With ghosts, every day is a worry that Sean will fuck up and no one will be able to fix it.
***
The next morning, Sean feels like his old self again. He showers before he changes and goes to meet the others down in the lobby for breakfast. The ghosts are still outside and Sean blows them off as they load their shit back into the van. Sometimes, he just has to, he can’t do it all. He’s thinking about tonight’s show and how music will always beat the spirit world - always. He’s surprised the ghosts are tamer than last night. Maybe, when you’re dead, you don’t tend to get your hopes up as much.
Their meal comes from a greasy diner near the venue. Sean takes his backpack in with him. They spend half the meal ironing out the details of their set: which songs to cut if they run out of time (their sets always seem to be getting cut as of late), whose gonna run the merch table first, shit like that. They all chip in for the meal and, when Sean digs through his backpack for some cash, his hand brushes something weird. It’s papery and hard and he closes his hand around the cylinder shape, tugging it out of the bag.
Sean sets the can on the Formica dining booth in front of him, nudging his plate out of the way. He raises his eyebrow at the label. “Salt?” he asks the table at large. “How did this get in my bag?” He immediately looks at Max, last night’s conversation coming back to him.
Max takes a bite of his pancakes and shakes his head. “Wasn’t me, man.” He tilts his head to the opposite side of the table. Tom has already wandered away from them to go and play with the dimly lit jukebox that's tucked into the back of the diner; only Ryan and Julio remain. Sean really doubts the can came from Julio or Kodak, so he eyes Ryan.
“He told me about it,” Ryan says, like even though he was the one who bought the salt or at least put it in Sean’s bag, it’s still Max’s fault for giving him the idea. “I figured it was worth a shot.”
Julio looks confused, but if he thinks anything is strange, then he doesn’t say it. Sean turns the salt around so that the ingredients are facing him. “Let’s see…potassium iodide, glucose, calcium silicate, but nothing about ghost repellent.”
Ryan frowns. “Very funny.”
Max laughs and Sean smiles, trying to fight his own laughter down because, okay, it was nice of Ryan to try to help him. Sean picks up the can of salt. As he hefts the weight in his hand, he thinks of something. This morning, when they left the hotel, the ghosts seemed more placid, subdued, not one of them yelled at Sean for leaving without helping them. Could it really be because Ryan had slipped salt into his backpack? Sean doesn’t have time to think about it, though, because it’s time to pay for their food and head to the venue. In the end, he slips the salt back into position beside his wallet and notebooks. He definitely doesn’t miss the look Ryan gives him from across the table.
The show goes fine; only one song from their set list gets cut because the band before them ran on too long. “I swear to God, each of their songs were, like, six minutes long,” Tom says around the butt of a cigarette as he and Max enjoy a post-show smoke outside the back of the venue. Sean is sweating and still running on stage endorphins. Ryan is inside selling merch - the crowd was good, receptive, so Sean hopes for a good haul.
Max and Ryan switch positions so that Ryan can join them outside. Their gear is already loaded up and Sean and Tom are talking to some girls who are outside while Ryan takes his turn smoking. When the girls leave them, Sean is surprised to feel a presence behind him. He turns and it’s a man - well, a male ghost, but whatever. He’s older and looks like someone’s dad, like he’d hate the kind of music Sean’s band makes.
“You can see me?” he asks, his voice rough, echoing like it’s trapped between two giant cavern walls.
Sean nods. He doesn’t want to speak yet if he doesn’t have to. There’s no need to alert Tom and Ryan to the fact that there’s yet another ghost approaching him during one of their shows.
“Really? You? The way they were talking, I was expecting someone…else.”
Sean glances over his shoulder at Tom and Ryan and slips his cell phone from the pocket of his jeans, motioning towards the van like he’s going to take a call. Tom nods at him; Ryan doesn’t seem to notice his departure at all. The ghost follows him to the side of the van and Sean presses his phone to his ear.
“Who’s been talking about me?”
“The other ghosts, of course. They kept saying they could feel you. ‘Someone who gets us!’ they said! ‘Someone with power!’ I gotta say, I’m not impressed,” the ghost says as he sizes Sean up.
“Is this your way of asking for help? I gotta say, it could use some improvement.”
“Yeah, I did want something. Now, listen, I’m not going to beg or anything like that. It’s just…my kid is here tonight. She must be a fan or something. I want to talk to her.”
“So you want me to recite what you want to say to her?”
The ghost shakes his head. “No. I want to talk to my daughter.”
“She can’t see you, though?” Sean asks.
“No shit. I want to borrow your body.” The ghost must see the look on Sean’s face because he waves a hand at him. “Now, don’t go looking all terrified. I’m not going to keep it. I just have some stuff I want to say to her and you’re the only one who can see me.”
“She won’t know it’s you! She’ll think she’s talking to me and she’ll - ”
“She’ll know it’s me,” the ghost says. For the first time, his voice becomes softer. “Trust me.”
Sean bites his lip. He’s only done the body swap thing a few times before. The first time, he was too young to realize what he was doing and he let a fellow “child” take over his body so that he could hug his mother one more time. The second time was when Sean was a teenager. The spirit was a classmate from his school, no one Sean knew personally, but sort of a person on the fringe of Sean’s social circle. The kid had wanted to go look at his house one more time before he left for good. That was it. Sean likes to think he’s smarter now, more cautious, and this ghost isn’t giving him the best vibes, but…he thinks of his own parents and how much he loves just hearing their voices while he’s on tour. If they were…fuck, he’d want someone like himself to do this for him.
“How long would you want my body for?” Sean asks.
The ghost opens his mouth to answer, but someone else talks first.
“Sean?” Ryan asks. Sean turns around. Ryan is there, his eyebrows knitted together. He glances over Sean’s shoulder, like maybe he expected someone to be there.”Who are you talking to?” Sean looks at the ghost, who seems rather irritated with Ryan’s presence, and it’s enough for Ryan to get it. “One of them is here, aren’t they?”
“Come on,” the ghost says. “Just for a little while. Enough time that I can talk to her. You’ll be safe, I swear.”
“Sean,” Ryan says again. Sean looks at him - he’s got his chin tipped up, all defiance and challenge. If Sean is going to do this, then he can’t exactly lie about it.
“There’s a spirit here, yeah.”
“And it wants…what, your body?”
“Yeah,” Sean says. “So he can talk to his kid.”
Ryan crosses his arms. “And you’re actually considering it? Sean, what the fuck?”
“It’s just so that he can talk to his kid, Ryan. I mean, he said he’d keep me safe.”
“Sean, are you even listening to yourself? That’s not...that’s dangerous, Sean.”
“Ryan, you can't see him, but I can. He just wants to be able to tie up his unfinished business. That’s, like, the most important thing for ghosts.”
“Come on,” the ghost urges again. “I’m losing time here.”
Sean looks at him and raises an eyebrow. “I thought time was all you had?”
“If she leaves, I’m fucked, smart ass.”
“Sean, don’t do this,” Ryan says from behind Sean.
Sean closes his eyes. “Make it quick,” Sean says. The ghost nods and the last thing Sean hears physically is Ryan swearing.
Being taken over by a ghost is weird. Sean doesn't leave his body or switch places with the ghost. It’s like he’s shelved, demoted to a passenger inside of his own body. Sean would say it feels like when you’re beginning to fall asleep, that loose feeling of leaving your conscious mind.
He’s only mildly aware of what's happening on the outside. He can hear the ghost and the breathing of his own body but with the added fact that it’s not him that’s controlling it.
***
Ryan can’t see the ghosts, but he knows the second that Sean isn’t really Sean anymore. His eyes close and then they open and sweep over Ryan. When their eyes meet, it just doesn't feel like Sean anymore.
“Sean?” Ryan says even though he knows it isn't Sean in there. “Please tell me you didn’t do it, Sean.”
Whatever is inside of Sean’s body raises its (Sean’s) hands and blinks, opening Sean’s mouth all the way like he’s testing the hinge of Sean’s jaw.
“Your Sean is a good person. Not the smartest, but good,” the ghost in Sean’s body says. Even his voice sounds different - Ryan thought he had heard Sean’s voice in nearly every imaginable way, thought there wasn’t a tone he’d never heard before, but the way Sean’s voice feels now...no, Ryan has never heard that before.
“Where is he?” Ryan asks. His blood is running cold in his veins. He thinks he should call for Tom or Max, but he’s stuck in place by the thought that Sean might be lost to them now.
Sean’s body takes a shuddering, sloppy step. He looks at Sean's feet. “Walking doesn’t feel like it used to. The air feels different.”
“Where is Sean?” Ryan asks again. Sean’s eyes fall on him again and his face curves into a smile.
“He’s in here.” The ghost touches Sean's chest. The words don’t do anything to comfort Ryan. He can’t see Sean (not the real Sean, anyway) and he can’t feel Sean. The ghost’s words mean nothing.
“Then let him go,” Ryan says. “Give him his body back.”
“But I’ve got business to attend to,” the ghost says, taking another jerky, off step with Sean’s body.
“Your kid, right? Where is she?” Ryan scans the few fans milling around in the parking lot.
“About that…I kind of stretched the truth.” Sean's mouth is smiling again. Ryan feels sick to his stomach. Before he can do anything, the ghost inhabiting Sean’s body takes off at a run across the parking lot, dipping through the spaces between parked cars and heading towards the street that leads away from the venue.
Ryan doesn’t even give himself a second to think or to call for Tom or Max. He takes off after Sean’s body; the ghost seems to have gotten the hang of walking once again, because he’s fast. He runs seamlessly, just like Sean. Sean’s body is longer than Ryan’s and he has longer legs - he’s quicker, but where Sean’s body has him on speed, Ryan has him in tenacity.
He’s able to catch up to Sean pretty quickly, though his chest is burning. He isn’t sure if the ghost being inside of Sean gives him some sort of super human stamina. “Stop!” Ryan yells. They’re near the end of the parking lot, away from the fans and the venue but way too close to the fairly busy main street that the building sits on. The ghost ignores him, of course, but as luck would have it, he stumbles over some loose concrete. On one hand, Ryan almost wants Sean to fall so that he can at least catch him, but on the other hand, he doesn’t actually want his Sean to get hurt.
With that small fraction of time where the ghost inside of Sean lost its momentum, Ryan is able to close the distance between them, and though it's just barely, he grabs the sleeve of Sean’s jacket, tugging back hard so that Sean’s body falls backwards against him. He closes his hand around Sean’s arm because he isn’t thinking, because he was too worried about catching the ghost to remember Sean’s warning.
He can tell the difference in the world instantly. With his hand on Sean’s arm, Ryan can see what Sean sees all of the time. He looks at Sean and almost screams. He can see the ghost now - a man, looking nothing like Ryan was imagining. It’s so fucking weird that Ryan almost can’t even wrap his mind around what he’s seeing.
There’s Sean’s body, but the man’s spirit is outlined over Sean. Ryan remembers being younger, in science class - his teacher had a book about the human body with clear, plastic pages. The book was made so that you could lift each layer of a person’s insides, the skin first, then muscle, organs, and bones. Seeing the ghost inside of Sean is kind of like that. Sean’s body is one layer with the ghost fitting as another layer directly over that.
“What the fuck?” the ghost says. It sounds mystified, stunned, maybe even a little scared.
Ryan doesn’t let go of Sean; if anything, he holds on even tighter. He can feel his nails digging into Sean’s jacket.
“Let go!” the ghost hisses. He can’t even move Sean’s body now, not for lack of trying.
“Sean,” Ryan says. “Come on, come back.”
“No! No!” The ghost is shouting. When Ryan looks beyond Sean and the ghost of the man, he loses his breath. There are more ghosts out here, standing in the road, sitting on hoods of cars, just watching them. None of them are quite as scary as Ryan imagined, but his heart is still pumping a mile a minute.
He closes his eyes and tugs Sean’s body closer, like this is a game of tug and war with Sean’s physical form being the prize. “Get out!” he yells at the ghost, and then there’s silence, and then Sean feels lighter. Ryan snaps his eyes open and the male ghost is nowhere to be found.
“Sean?” Ryan asks.
Sean turns his head, eyes heavy like he’s just waking up.
“What happened?” Sean asks.
Ryan lets out the breath he’d been holding, relieved that it’s really Sean again. Over Sean’s shoulder, he can still see the ghosts milling around, watching them. Ryan hesitantly lets go of Sean’s sleeve. The world snaps back into place after that. No ghosts, nothing but he and Sean and the cars whizzing down the street that Sean had been so close to running out into.
“You’re an asshole,” Ryan says to Sean, because he realizes that Sean's still waiting for an answer. He leaves then, leaving Sean standing there, dumbfounded.
***
“So it didn’t work out like I thought it would,” Sean says. They’re back in the van, Max and Julio in the front seats and Ryan asleep in the far back. He’s pissed off at Sean and wouldn’t even talk to him after Sean came back to his body. Apparently, shit with the ghost didn't go well, according to what Ryan told Tom.
Tom shrugs. “He's pretty freaked out. He saw what you see and I’m guessing that it’s not so nice if you aren’t already used to it. He’s not wrong, Sean. That shit was dangerous.” Sean makes a face at Tom, like he's saying 'you, too?’ Tom sighs. “Don't look at me like that. You're not a kid, you should know lending your body out to anyone, ghost or not, is a bad situation.”
“And as an adult, I think I’m above lectures. You and Ryan aren’t my parents.”
“No, but we’re your friends. We’re your band. Ryan was worried about you.”
Sean leans his head back against the side of the window. He doesn’t want to even look at Tom because he’s so embarrassed. He hates when he fucks up, especially when it comes to his power. It isn’t the same as fucking up a note or tripping on stage - that kind of stuff happens to everyone. This ghost shit only happens to Sean.
"Yeah, I know. I should’ve told that spirit ‘no.’ It’s hard, Tom.”
“Because you want to help.”
“Yeah.”
“That's just the thing, Sean. You can’t help everyone. As people, we accept that we can’t help every other person who may need us. It’s just too much. We can’t do it.” Tom points at Sean. “You need to apply that to ghosts, too. You can’t help them all.”
“There’s a difference. With people, yeah, I can't help them all, but someone else could. There could be another person right around the corner who could help them more than I could. For a spirit, who knows if there’s anyone else who can see them like I do? If I turn my back on them, how do I know if anyone else will ever help them?”
Tom tilts his head. “You don’t.”
Sean nods. “And I hate that.”
Tom picks at his nails and Sean watches his hands. He’s still afraid to catch the same snatch of disappointment that was so evident in Ryan’s face. “Don’t you have the basic instincts? You’re supposed to value your own survival, you know?”
Tom doesn’t sound mad - he sounds irritated, but fondly so. It’s pretty much the way he always sounds. He understands their anger, though. It’s stressful enough to be in a band away from home, but it’s even harder to be a relatively small band. What they don't need is the fear that their lead singer is going to go and get himself lost in the spirit world. Sean’s pretty lucky that they put up with him at all.
It’s not often that Sean gets burned by the spirits. Most of the ghosts that he’s interacted with have been like the woman who wanted to leave the letter for her daughter, honest spirits who wanted honest help. He can count the angry spirits he’s met on one hand at this point. But the meeting with this last spirit has him feeling reluctant to go out and talk to them again.
“I’ll be more careful,” Sean promises. “Really, I will. No more ghost shit at venues. Just music.”
Tom smiles. “That’ll be nice for a little while.”
They go to eat dinner and Ryan still won’t really talk to Sean. It’s clear that he’s not going to let what happened go any time soon, or at least until Sean actually finds a way to talk about what happened with him. As it is, the tension is heavy in the restaurant. Tom is trying to ignore it while Max is sighing very pointedly at the lack of conversation.
After dinner is a drive to the next city. Tom grabs Sean’s arm on the way back to the van. “Hey, it’s your turn to drive while we sleep,” he says. Sean nods. Tom drops his cigarette on the pavement of the restaurant’s parking lot. “Ryan is co-piloting.”
“Okay,” Sean says. His stomach flops around as he prepares for the longest, quietest ride of his life. Ryan and Julio are the last to return to the van. Max and Tom already tucked themselves up in the back seats. Tom’s wearing his headphones, so he’s dead to the world. Sean is leaning against the van, watching Ryan talk to Julio and laugh at something Julio said. He hadn’t realized how much he missed the sound until Ryan stopped talking to him, stopped laughing and smiling in his direction.
“Hey,” Sean says once the two of them are close enough. Ryan stops, the smile on his face dropping off almost instantly. “Tom nominated us to drive to the next venue.”
“Okay,” Ryan says. He doesn’t sound mad right now. In fact, he doesn't really sound like anything. That worries Sean. “You driving?”
“Yeah.”
Ryan nods and then climbs into the passenger side seat of the van. Julio smiles at Sean and then takes his own spot in the back. Sean shuts the side door of the van before he walks around to the front of the van and takes his own spot.
They don’t talk as Sean starts up the van or as Sean flicks on the headlights or when Sean pulls out of the restaurant and heads towards the nearest highway.
Sean’s not that stubborn. He’d venture a guess to say that Ryan is more stubborn than he is - less than Tom and Max, but definitely more than Sean. He’s not talking to Ryan not out of stubbornness, but just because he doesn't really know what to say. It’s weird, because words are Sean’s whole life and now he doesn’t have any.
While Sean is searching for his words, Ryan surprises him by talking first. “Am I going to have to put salt packets in your pockets?” He’s clearing aiming for joking, which is better than him snapping at Sean, so Sean smiles at him.
“Would it help if I told you I’ve learned my lesson?”
They’re not looking at each other. The road in front of them is endless and dark. Sean can hear Ryan shifting around.
“Sort of? I don’t think you understand how scared I was, Sean.” Ryan's voice is tight and quiet. Sean feels really bad for being so impulsive.
“I’ve done it before,” Sean says. He still doesn’t look at Ryan. “Twice, actually, when I was younger. Nothing bad ever happened. It was like taking a break. I didn’t think that would happen.”
Ryan turns his head. Even though Sean isn’t looking at him, he can feel Ryan’s gaze hot on his face. “You didn't think he’d try to keep your body all for himself? Shit, Sean, I know you like to believe the best in people, but there’s a limit.”
“Tom said the same thing.” Sean looks at Ryan now. When their eyes meet, all the heat in Ryan’s gaze melts away.
“There are good people and bad people in this world, right?” Ryan says.
“Yeah? I guess so, but - ”
“But,” Ryan continues, "when those good people die, some of them might become good ghosts, right? Then when those bad people die, what do you think happens to them?”
“I’m not a fucking idiot, Ryan. I know there are bad spirits.”
“Then why aren’t you protecting yourself against them?!” Ryan’s voice rises to an angrier pitch. Someone shuffles around in the backseat. “Any spirit can give you a sob story and you’ll bend over backwards for them.”
“I feel obligated to help them, Ryan. I - ”
“I know your reasons, Sean.” Ryan’s voice is pitching weird, angry one second and then wavering the next. Sean doesn’t know whether to brace himself or not. He supposes not. He chose to do this and he needs to hear what the others have to say. “But while you’re off worrying about all the spirits, we’re left here to worry about you.”
“I wish I could just ignore them,” Sean says. “Really, I do. It’d be easier if I could just tell them ‘no’ and not listen to them and not care about them for one second. Maybe I could focus on my own life, on the band, not balance everything at once.”
“Before, I might have thought it was easy to do,” Ryan says. He had been looking out the window, but he looks back to Sean now. “But I saw the shit you see every day and now...I don’t know how you do it, Sean.”
“What did you see?” Sean asks.
“They were all just...looking at me…looking at me like they knew I didn't belong there. God, I just...it was terrifying to have them all focused on me at once. I didn't know what they’d do.”
“It’s harder to be scared of something that’s always been there.”
“You telling me you’re never afraid?”
“No, I’m afraid of a lot of things. I’m afraid of messing up, but I already did that now. I’m afraid of getting you guys hurt. I’m not afraid of the ghosts, but I guess I should be afraid of what they might do.”
“There was something else. I could see him inside of you - that ghost, I mean. He was outlined in your body, but your own spirit was nowhere. That was fucking weird. I don’t think I’ll ever forget what it looked like.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Ryan.” Sean grips the wheel tight until his knuckles turn white. “I’m sorry you had to see it.”
Ryan just shrugs and settles back into his seat. The tension is gone now and they ride together in semi-silence. Ryan fiddles with the GPS app on his phone and turns the radio on low, just quiet enough for Sean and Ryan to be able to hear the alt rock station that Ryan favors.
“I told Tom that I’d focus on the band when we’re on tour. No more ghosts at venues.”
Ryan peeks at Sean over his shoulder. “Even if they have the saddest story in the universe?”
Sean laughs and nods. “Even then, man.”
He doesn’t mention it to Ryan or anyone else that night, but as Sean drives through the darkness, he realizes that he hasn’t encountered any spirits since he took control of his own body. There was none at the restaurant - fuck, Sean hadn’t even seen the ghost that tricked him once he came back or any of the other spirits that Ryan had saw while touching Sean. It’s unusual; it’s been years since Sean’s gone half a day without seeing anything. It’s nothing he’s truly worried about; if he’s being honest, he’s relieved at the temporary lapse in his power. It’s nice to be normal for a change.
***
Sean sticks to his word, and at the next venue, there are a few ghosts. They don’t try to talk to him - maybe they can tell that he isn’t up for it, maybe they can feel the negative vibes pouring off of Sean. Either way, they don’t ask for help, so Sean doesn't have to say ‘no.’ He doesn't have to do anything except play their set, chat with fans, and have a few beers on the house. It’s actually pretty great.
At some point, Ryan plops down on the bar stool next to him. He’s got one of the free beers and nods at Sean, raising his arm. Sean catches his drift and mimics the action, tapping their sweating beer cans together. “This was a great show,” Ryan says.
Sean sips his beer and nods. “It really was.” It was a good show. Something felt different than the last few. Sean felt more energized, more alive, and the feeling was mutual between audience and band. Sean lives for shows like this one.
“Are they here?” Ryan calls out, trying to be heard over the headlining band.
Sean leans in closer. “Who?”
Ryan smirks around his beer. “The ghosts, dumbass. Are they here tonight?” He looks over both his shoulders, like he’s expecting to see a ghost behind him.
“Yeah, they are. Just a couple in the parking lot. They usually don’t come inside.”
“Did they want help from Sean 'The Ghost King” Van Vleet?”
“I don’t think so. They’re just hanging around. Maybe they like the tunes.”
Ryan laughs. “Ghost fans don’t help albums sell.”
The show is better, the band feels better, and somewhere in the back of his mind, it makes Sean feel worse. It’s a reminder, albeit a small one, of how much happier his band would be if Sean couldn’t see ghosts, or if he had just never burdened them by telling them about it, though the good feelings could also be attributed to how the tour is winding down and they’ll be home in Chicago in two shows’ time.
The ghosts are no longer hanging around the venue when Sean and the band pack up to leave for the night. It’s a weird, foreign thought, but Sean could kind of get used to this whole false normalcy thing.
***
Michigan comes before Chicago and it’s close enough to home to drive Sean a little nuts. The show is good, the crowd is good, and the ghosts are nowhere to be found. Sean’s really looking forward to home, even more so if this trend of the ghosts not bugging him keeps up. The first apartment he lived in in Chicago, flanked by gritty alleyways, had been a hotbed of supernatural activity. The building was old and Sean was never surprised to run into spirits dressed in centuries-old clothing. Even if the ghosts are still there when he gets home, he’s still looking forward to sleeping in his own bed again.
“I’ve been thinking,” Max starts. He’s leaning against the hood of the van, smoking. It’s cooler outside than it is in the venue; most of the time, if they don't have to play, Sean can find his band outside, cigarettes in hand. “You haven’t been seeing ghosts lately, right?”
Sean shrugs. “A lot less than usual.”
“About that…what if it isn’t because you're still carrying around salt? I think it’s because of the vibe you’re putting out these days.”
“My vibe?”
“Yeah, man.” Max flicks the ash off the end of his cigarette. “Typically, you’re a very open person, very willing, so you gave off this inviting sort of energy, the same kind of thing that makes you a good lead singer.”
“Not that I don’t love when you compliment me, but are you going somewhere with this?”
Max smiles. “Yeah, ever since your little body snatching fiasco, you’ve been hesitant about ghosts, right? You don’t want to deal with them during shows?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Every time Sean thinks about that time, he keeps remembering the look on Ryan’s face when Sean came back to himself. It makes his stomach hurt.
“The ghosts don’t like the bad mojo you're putting out,” Max says.
In a way, what Max is saying makes sense. Since Sean was a kid, there have been ghosts, so when he encountered them, he tried to do so with an open mind and a curious heart. Ever since he’d been burned by the ghost the other day, ever since he disappointed Ryan and the others, he’s been less open, less willing to engage. Max is probably on to something here.
“I never thought I had any control over it,” Sean says. “I’ve always figured I couldn’t stop them even if I wanted to. I never really tried before.”
“You might not be able to,” Max says. He’s finished with his smoke, so he drops it on the concrete before he scuffs it out. “I’m no expert.”
Sean shrugs. He kind of wants to practice the theory right now, try to open himself back up and see if more spirits show up. Right now, there’s none, not one hanging around them. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, quietly telling himself that they can come to him, he’ll help if he can. He tries to be positive, to change his vibe.
When Sean opens his eyes, he sees a ghost - just one, a woman. She’s flickering into view and smiling at him. Sean returns the smile, but then Max is talking and Sean loses his focus. He must close himself off without thinking about it, because the woman is gone then, disappeared like she was never there at all.
“I’m not going to lecture you like the other two,” Max says. “I just want to play music, that’s all.”
Sean is still watching the spot where the spirit had just been. “Yeah, me, too.”
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