A Town of Ghosts

People kept saying it was a ghost town, but none of them said it was a thriving place full of actual ghosts. Yasu could see the apparitions gliding along their day thanks to the sturdy steampunk-looking goggles over her eyes. Children came out of their burial plots and skipped to the playground next to the cemetery. The bottles lying around, which were empty before, were filled with a glowing substance. Yasu didn’t want to think about how there could be ghost liquid.

Next to her, her friend was in awe. “I didn’t know the afterlife could be like this,” Michael drawled in his Southern accent. “Makes death feel like a peaceful transition between stages.”

Noticing a firefighter with severe burns all over his body, Yasu quietly disagreed. The old building near them used to be a bar, indicated by the ghostly sign advertising free beer for every funny joke that made more than ten people laugh.

Michael dodged a very real dodgeball the ghost kids kicked, hitting Yasu in the leg. “Aw, they have so much energy!”

“Yeah, so adorable.” Rolling her eyes, Yasu scanned the bustling town for the next clue. Her client wanted a sterling silver hairbrush, and it needed the initials of a certain person branded on the sharp handle. The client didn't specify why she needed it, and she paid too much money for Yasu to care about the little details. On the yellowed map she brought with her, she noted several houses as potential hiding places that the brush could be. “Come on Mike, we’ll start there,” she said, pointing at the house closest to them.

“Ain’t no one call me Mike,” he muttered. “‘Cept my grandaddy, and that’s cuz I can’t stop ‘em.”

They walked past the ghosts. Michael dodged back and forth to avoid running into them, while Yasu simply walked through the apparitions, causing a mild disturbance and a middle finger at one point. It wasn’t until Michael mentioned they were in ghost territory and consequences were still real that Yasu followed his lead and avoided the ghosts.

The first house had been boarded up, which didn’t bother the resident in the slightest. A determined housewife from the 70s, the ghost sat the guests down and served them cups of tea, which were just cracked, empty teacups when Yasu took off her goggles for a closer look. Having spent most of his life catering to children, Michael swiftly played along with the lady.

“Mm, what a delightful taste, ma’am,” he said, rather too loudly. He made the gesture of bringing the cup to his lips and slurped air. Through the goggles, the glowing tea had spilled down his shirt. No one paid attention to the continuity error between realms. “Can I have another cup?”

Yasu stood up. “You can have mine. I’m not feeling too well,” she improvised. To the lady, she asked for the bathroom. Going up the molding, creaking stairs, Yasu followed the directions and went into the last room on the left.

The bathroom was just as moldy, if not worse. There wasn’t a toilet, to start with. Whatever happened so long ago, the toilet was ripped out. So was the sink. The medicine cabinets, however, were left untouched. Score!

Yasu opened the cupboards and was dismayed by the empty pill bottles and a used razor. No hairbrush here. Time to check out the next house.

“Michael, let’s go,” she called.

From downstairs, he whined, “Five more minutes. She’s in the middle of the greatest story I ever done did hear.”

Realizing he was using incorrect grammar specifically to annoy her, Yasu stayed silent and went back downstairs to join her companion. Four cups of tea and a dozen invisible scones later, Michael and Yasu left the house, both in opposite moods.

“Man, Daniel’s gonna crap himself when I tell him what he’s missing out,” he grinned.

“If we make it out alive, sure,” Yasu said. “We have four more houses to explore. The sooner we find the hairbrush, the sooner we can leave before disaster strikes.”

“What disaster?”

“The one that keeps finding you in every place you go,” Yasu pointed out. “I swear you have no reason to live other than to keep wreaking chaos all over.”

There was a pause. “That sounds like something Daniel would say.”

“Really?”

“Well, that an’ ‘I can’t wait to dance on your grave’. To which I always say, ‘Better start twerking. Go big or go home’.”

Imagining Michael’s 6’8”, 430 pounds, no-nonsense brother shaking his butt over the grave, Yasu shuddered. She was going to have nothing but nightmares tonight.

The next two houses didn’t have the hairbrush. By the fourth house, Yasu contemplated calling quits on this mission and refunding the advance. Seriously, why would anyone want an old hairbrush? What did her client live through to cling to such a small object? If it was jewelry, she could at least understand.

It wasn’t until she found the hairbrush not in the bathroom, but on the nightstand in the bedroom that she understood her client better. Next to the brush was a framed photo of a newlywed couple, admiring the many-tiered cake with a topper that matched them. The bride was red with affection, while the groom was deep in thought.

Now that she had a closer look at the item in question, the silver had chipped from years of use and some of the bristles were bent out of shape. Flipping it over, the initials spelled “P.E.W”, just like the client said.

“Okay, let’s go. We got what we need.” Yasu pocketed the hairbrush and started to leave the house. Michael’s hand flew out and grabbed her arm. “Hey! What gives?”

Without a word, Michael put a finger over his lips. Through the goggles, his blue eyes pointed to the left several times, causing Yasu to look out of the window. The ghosts were still around, but instead of being content like before, they were nervous. Anxious about their surroundings. There was a subtle, dark mist floating around them. Although Yasu couldn’t pick up the cause of this change, she still shuddered and kept her voice silent.

Mouthing, she asked, “What did you see?”

Peering out the window again, Michael took a slow step back. He gestured for her to follow his eyesight, which she did. Immediately, her eyes landed on a black, bobbed aura that slowly shifted toward one of the ghost kids. One of the women picked him up and slowly but surely floated away from the new guest. A gust of low and shrill wind could be heard around the town. Yasu shuddered harder.

A piece of paper fell off the fridge and landed on the floor. The sharp noise caught the aura’s attention toward the house. Michael and Yasu immediately ducked, unsure if it could see them but they weren’t willing to risk it.

Dumbly, Yasu moved to the fallen paper and picked it up. She placed it on the counter next to the fridge. The other papers, still hanging from the faded souvenir magnets, rustled gently. One of them caught her eye, with dark and crazy handwriting, as if someone clenched their pen and was in a rush to get the message out:

“When it’s here, you can’t go anywhere.”

Yasu couldn’t have shuddered worse than now. Great, this was the last thing she needed on this mission. Why didn’t she listen to her dad and work at the florist shop for the summer?

“We have to stay here until sunrise,” Michael deduced. He repeated himself several times since his mouth movements were too nonsensical for Yasu to translate. Pointing at the note, he added, “The implication is there. There’s nothing else we can do.”

For someone whose favorite hobby is going on dangerous missions like this one was turning out to be, Yasu asked him, “How sure are you?”

Michael clamped his thumb and finger together, and then they spread apart as wide as they could. He was more than sure. She bit back an aggravated sigh before looking at the other contents of the fridge. Maybe there was something that could help them escape sooner than expected. So far, there were reminders to call the plumbers and phone numbers to various restaurants, attached with takeout menus. She even checked the one that fell, but it only had stick figure drawings a child made.

Outside, the aura steadily floated by. A ghost had the misfortune to get too close to the visitor. The dark misty blob had an outline appear in the middle, and in a second, a wide mouth with sharp teeth flew out and consumed the ghost with such vigor and noise. Other ghosts quickly made their distance away from the scene, and one of the kids burst into silent tears. The sounds from the monster reminded Yasu of the fake moans female porn stars would make in the videos, the same ones she had to mute because of how annoying they were. This time, she didn’t have a way to mute the creature.

The monster took its sweet, annoyingly long time to finish the captured apparition. Once it was finished, the mouth slid back to the aura and faded into an outline, and then the outline disappeared. Satisfied, the aura slowly floated along as if nothing happened.

If the ghosts were terrified by the consequence, she couldn’t imagine how much worse it’d be for a human.

The papers weren’t much help aside from the warning. Yasu took a picture of it anyway. For what, she didn’t know aside from evidence for some future accusation.

She took a step away, her foot landing on old wood with a loud creak. Gasping, she saw the aura turn its attention toward her. In a panic, she ducked, smacking her head against the counter which jostled her goggles out of place. The ghost reality slipped from her eyes for a single split second. Worried the aura would be right in front of her when she fixed her goggles, she pulled out the hairbrush, grateful that the handle would be sharp enough to make an injury.

However, when the goggles were adjusted again, the aura lost interest in her. Instead, it moved to a general store. She let out a deep breath of relief that she would live to see another day. Her heart was pounding after all this, but within the time it slowed to her resting beat.

Her brain slowly put together a theory. As an experiment, she lifted the hairbrush, kept her eye on the aura, and dropped it. The clatter got its attention. The aura slid to her, faster than usual. The ghosts that heard the noise took their opportunity to glide further away from the creature. Michael’s eyes couldn’t bulge more without popping out of their eye sockets with the sheer audacity of provocation.

“What. Are. You. Doing?!” he whisper-yelled.

Holding up a finger, Yasu took off her goggles. The ghosts were gone, and so was the danger. The atmosphere shifted from intense to calm. Five seconds passed, and she put the goggles back on. The aura, which should have been in front of her face, was meandering again.

Michael stared at her as if she professed her undying love to him and then demanded a wedding band made of his teeth. “Are you always this dumb?” he mouthed.

“Hey, wait a minute.” Pointing out the window, she said in a low voice, “It’s a threat because we’re seeing it.”

Scrunching his eyebrows together, Michael matched her volume. “Okay? That’s how threats work.”

“In the human world, yes. But if it’s ghosts?” Yasu took off the goggles once again. “We should be safe from it.”

Michael kept his goggles on. He crouched between the window and the door. “You can test that theory. I’ll just wait here and do some praying.”

“I already did, you big baby. Come on. We got the hairbrush. We don’t need to see the ghosts anymore. I’m not sure why we needed to see them in the first place.” Grabbing all her things, Yasu headed to the door. Expecting Michael to pull her back again, she quickly shut the door behind her and made a run for it. The town was small enough that if she timed it right, Yasu would be out of the town limits in five minutes.

“Wait!” Michael yelled. “Yasu!”

She didn’t respond.

Her chest started to burn, and she winced, crying out in pain. The burning sensation was deeper, possibly deeper in her core. In her mind, flecks of her being got chipped off. It was the middle of the night, and she wished she had a flashlight to lead her out of the town. Her feet slowed as if she was running in a dream. Breathing was hard, and she clasped the hairbrush. She didn’t dare put on the goggles with the theory it would make this pain worse.

The town border was getting closer, even as she moved like molasses. The burn spread across her chest and made its way to her limbs. Sheer pain had never been more excruciating in her life. Yasu was seconds away from dropping down and passing out.

She felt a strong arm wrap around her waist. Being held to his chest, Michael ran for both of them. The pain swiftly faded, but she felt his chest get hot, and his facial expression told her he was affected the same way, too. Nonetheless, he persisted.

As soon as they passed the sign welcoming people to the town, Michale collapsed to the ground. Yasu, with the last of her energy, dodged out of the way before he could fall on top of her. Both of them grabbed their chest, processing the pain that finally went away and recovering from what just happened.

“I can’t… believe…” She panted. “My theory… didn’t work…”

With a tormented grunt, he said, “Maybe if you didn’t run into the dang thing, it would’ve worked.”

“Is that what you saw?”

He nodded. “You also punted a child. But that’s neither here nor there.” Pointing at her bag, he asked, “Did you…(sigh)... do you still have the brush?”

With tired fingers, Yasu felt around her bag. “Yep. I still have it. Thank God.”

“Don’t thank Him. He watched us make idiots out of ourselves while eating popcorn.”

“Noted.”

They lay there, still catching their breath. Yasu made a mental note to charge the client extra for the trouble. If it turned out the aura was the ghost of her husband, then Yasu was going to charge a lot more. Whatever happened in that marriage should stay in it.

“I can’t look at Pac-Man the same way again,” Michael groaned. “It was my favorite game, too.”

She absently patted his head, still dazed by the disaster. “There are other fish in the sea.”