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"That girl seems like a ghost."

Among the costumed within the crowded venue, there was a girl neither Larry Johnson, Strange Balmaceda, nor Sal Fisher knew. And that was rather unusual considering that, A) Larry was hosting the Halloween party in an abandoned house on the end of Spikelet Street, B) Strange was supposed to know everyone because Strange was that kind of person, and C) this was not Addison Apartments.

This was outside of Addison Apartments, of which was a hotbed for spectral transmissions and incorporeal visions despite being so normal. However, Sal Fisher hadn't completely concluded that Addison Apartments was the only place for ghosts▬think places pungent with death: Nockfell Senior Homes, Neveroak Cemetery, Wíshe Hospital. Therefore, a ghost being present at their party on Spikelet Street wasn't completely outside of the realm of possibility, and Sal Fisher wasn't too hesitant on pointing this idea out.

All three stood together as their eyes fixed on the 'ghost girl,' whose bulbous eyes, platinum braids, and black dress made her almost concealed with the crowd of fellow Halloween enjoyers. She looked... somewhat familiar, with her mouth open slightly ajar and her posture uncomfortably perfect in her black dress. It was entirely possible that she went to school with them, as most of those invited to this party were from Nockfell High School, yet something was very much off about her. She appeared to teleport to certain places▬or move very fast▬and she didn't greet anyone at all, just hovered beside them until they walked away out of discomfort.

Ultimately, Strange felt very bad. Rem fidgeted with the leather jacket of rems bat costume. "Even if she is, everyone's noticing her as if she were a part of the party. She looks lonely."

"You dudes need to get off the ghost schtick for one night," Larry said from behind Sal and Strange. He held a red cup in hand filled with whatever. "It's Halloween. Maybe a ghost just wants some fun."

"Shouldn't we still check the situation out?" Sal asked. Despite the blank-faced prosthetic he wore, even outside of what you'd imagine as Halloween, his tone was easy to discern. He was very much curious, and maybe a little worried.

"We've solved an in-house murder just last month," Larry scoffed. "This isn't murder, this is just some girl having a night out. And y'know what? Good for her."

Nockfell, Pennsylvania was some ordinary-ish town in the middle of nowhere. And both Sal and Larry had solved a gory mystery about their apartment neighbor after first meeting when the former had moved here from New Jersey. They had told Strange about this once Larry introduced rem to Sal, though rem just assumed it was an inside joke. Turns out, Nockfell had its less ordinary moments, and this piqued Sal's curiosity.

Ignoring the 'murder,' Sal then began to obsess over the idea of ghosts and had been discussing his theories for the past two days because he had... dreams. And saw invisible things. Or something. That convinced him Addison Apartments was haunted.

Weird, I know! Larry had lived there all his life, so he wasn't convinced, and Strange lived ten minutes away in the suburbs, so rem couldn't say anything.

"Let's at least be her friend," Strange suggested. "She looks nice." To this, Larry complied. Only because it was out of actual sympathy.

Before they could approach her, though, they watched Ashley Campbell beat them to it and compliment the girl's costume.

Sal blinked. "Oh."

Strange grinned. "Hey, Ash!"

At school, Ashley was the art kid, and she was also Strange's next-door neighbor▬a victim of having buñuelos de manzana shoved into her arms every time she visited▬and she was cordially speaking to whom Sal deemed the 'ghost girl' like it was nothing. And when Ashley turned around to greet Strange, rem dramatically gasped at her vampire costume and feigned buckling rems knees. Sal and Larry could only laugh behind rem as they waved to Ash as well, though it was noted that Sal remained fixated on the unnamed girl next to her.

"This is Winnie," Ash introduced her. The girl's eyes remained wide and she didn't follow those words up with a proper greeting. She just stared into the void.

Sal elbowed Larry, though Larry still wasn't convinced. He drank the last of his unspecified drink.

"God, I love your outfits, both of yours," Strange smiled. "It's like we have a real vampire and ghost at our party."

Winnie's eyes soon bore into Strange's figure, stayed focused there for a moment, before she finally spoke.

"I'm not wearing a costume, though." She barely whispered, voice muted beneath the grinding metal playing on the stereo and the voices of others surrounding them, and it seemed as if she leaned in closer to speak into Strange's ear.

Sal kicked Strange's sneaker heel. Rem almost-stepped on his toes in return.

"Well, it's your style, so that's more better," Strange shrugged. Rem pointed to the blue-haired boy and his tall companion. "This is Sal, and this is Larry."

"Hi, Winnie...! I hope you're enjoying yourself." Sal greeted. Larry followed with a dragged out "yooooo..."

"You can hang out with us if you want," Sal added as an afterthought, and he looked up at Strange to find an approving expression from rem. Okay, maybe he was on a paranormal kick, but he wasn't unkind. Winnie did seem nice, right?

Winnie gave them a silent thank you, something of a nod or bow, and just stood there afterwards with eyes wandering around them. This party didn't really seem like her scene, even if she fit the mood. While she was the ghost and Ashley the vampire, Strange was a bat, Sal was a clown, and Larry was a scarecrow. And Winnie seemed to have the most convincing costume (regardless of how Ash looked drop-dead in her vamp gown!).

"So," Larry broke the silence. "What do you guys wanna do?"

What exactly happened at a party? Though Strange and Larry were more experienced in this kind of stuff, Sal wasn't, and Ashley went sparingly. Others who came were talking, dancing (jumping up and down, if you could call it dancing), having a bite or two, but that was really it. Given that this was an abandoned house Larry found on his way back from school, noise complaints weren't exactly likely but they could still erupt if this worsened, so nothing wild was happening under his watch.

"Well, since you can't exactly leave," Strange gestured to Larry, "maybe we can just take a walk outside? If you don't want to keep standing around here, Winnie."

Winnie nodded again, and Strange gestured for Sal to follow rem as rem walked to the side door.

Begrudgingly, Sal followed along out of courtesy, though he was still staunch in his suspicions. As Winnie followed his friend, the soles of her Mary Janes were light on the plank floors, and she seemed to skim the surface area of the room.

Upon returning home, Sal Fisher was still entirely convinced that Winnie was a ghost.

Apparently, she lived in Addison Apartments▬which he had no idea of, even if he greeted all the neighbors the first day he moved here just months ago▬and she lived in the room with the most noise complaints. Ironic in view of how quiet she was, but after Larry offered her a ride home, she briefly explained (by whispering to Strange, who relayed it to the others): "My sister plays drums."

He at least knew someone definitely played drums in that room. The person that lived right next to his apartment room, Harper, would always be annoyed whenever she'd open the door to him, saying that the residents beneath her sounded like they were making a racket at three in the morning. However, Sal never met Winnie, nor her sister, just the people who were their parents, Mikhail and Ambre, who seemed rather mild-mannered to be noisy drummers. Then again, you can't judge a book by its cover. While they took a walk outside, Winnie seemed to be more comfortable in the quiet rather than the loud, albeit her eyes would wander back to the entrance of the house where Ash idled away every time she, Sal, and Strange circled the block. Not like she was heartless since they watched her visually contemplate whether or not to invite her new friend outside. In the end, Ashley was busy talking to someone else, so Winnie held back for the time being.

After some time, Strange brought this point up to Sal, who corrected rem and said that ghosts were still people. Keyword, were: not referring to the writing structure of a third person past tense but the actual past they once existed in.

So what they knew was that Winnie may or may not have been a ghost, seemed to find herself attached to Ashley Campbell, and that her sister played the drums back at the apartments, on the third floor. Maybe Winnie was possessing a neighbor's body or something, or maybe she was recounting events from her mortal life. Somehow, she could maintain herself when attending the Halloween party. Anything could be possible now, especially after Sal had previously encountered a murderous pony enthusiast, inconsiderate cops, dreams, and a red-eyed shadow manifesting in every dark corridor of Addison Apartments that he couldn't shake.

That'll all be explained later. For now▬Winnie the ghost. Larry had only seen her once before, finding her standing menacingly silent in the halls on his way to help his mom with work upstairs, however he'd never seen her again until tonight. Even so...

"I still doubt the apartment is haunted," Larry told his friend after dropping him off at his door. They had stood in the elevator for what felt like minutes (though we all know it was just for a few seconds) with Winnie in silence before she left for the third floor, and Larry had accompanied Sal as a means of solidarity. Now on the fourth floor, Sal stood in his clown costume at his doorway, where the analog clock hanging above the dining table read one-thirty-seven. The hallway lights created a low hum when Sal and Larry took the time to listen to what they thought was silence, and the air conditioning added to that uncomfortable noise.

"Anything is possible, really," Sal said.

"Cheesy," Larry groaned.

"Organic," Sal joked, and Larry snickered.

"Just don't get wild about it. We barely know her," Larry reminded him. "And even if she's a ghost," he suggested, albeit sarcastically, "who's to say she's evil and shit? Strange was right about her being nice, even if she looks kinda creepy."

"Now that I think about it, she refused to talk to us openly," Sal muttered. "She kept whispering into Strange's ear for rem to tell us, like a game of telephone."

Larry gave him a concerned look, and replied, "there's a lotta ways to go around shyness, dude. Let's warm up to her first and see how it goes. We're always down to make some friends."

"Yeah. Yeah, friends first." Sal stepped into his doorway and turned back at Larry.

"Nighty-night, Sally Face. I hope you had fun tonight."

"Thank you. Night, Larry."

After closing the door, Sal took off his clown hat and imitated the sound of kicking his shoes off by the entrance. He looked behind him, seeing that his father's bedroom was closed shut and that the kitchen lights were dimmed awaiting his return from the party. Despite this, following the next few minutes, he decided to head to the fifth floor.

In room 503 once lived a small family, yet all that remained▬at least, discernible to the eye▬was the ghost of Megan Holmes, stuck in seven-year-old limbo on the dingiest floor of Addison Apartments as she was bound here by death. For the record, this apparition was, in fact, quite real in the face of her incorporeal appearance, and Sal had only encountered her and befriended her through what was essentially a dare given to him by Chug Cohen, a neighbor that lived on the third floor where Winnie's drummer sister resided.

(He wondered if that sister had a band. If so, did they always rehearse downstairs? His neighbor claimed they were often noisy.)

The elevator was vacant as its metal doors slid to the side for him, and he stepped in. Unlike others, there was no music. The walls were stripped bare, except for the small poster behind him advertising a concert that'd be playing in the empty lot by the local Chinese grocery store▬naming a band he had never heard of, yet he assumed it was the aforementioned▬and the buttons had water stains and grime between their slots. He pressed the "5" button, above all the buttons and the basement card slot, and the elevator speakers chimed.

The lightboard above the floor buttons glowed a garish orange, with a pixelated number and upward arrow showing him his ten seconds (or less) itinerary.

The fifth floor of Addison Apartments was the worst of them all, pitifully so, with boarded doors, dirty carpet floors, and the unexplored within every black room. Mr. Addison, who owned this place, did care for it dearly, but even so he didn't have enough funds to fully renovate the fifth floor of this place▬yet, at least. The room plaques were beginning to rust, and as Sal left the elevator and approached Room 503, he took note of this, as he had always, and reached for the dirty handle with the key in his other hand.

Huh. The door was unlocked.

Inside were a pair of Mary Janes placed perpendicularly to the couch by the entrance.

Sal stared down at these Mary Janes, and then hesitated to step in the direction of the bathroom at the end of the main room. The murky lights and putrid smell of this apartment didn't help him once he snuck a peek through the bathroom entrance, with a door that was slightly ajar.

"My ghost impression is working...!" He heard Winnie's silvery voice. "Maybe one day, I can be just like you..."

"Hehe, maybe. We can be them together Winnie," Megan's voice followed.

Sal's eyes widened, and beneath his prosthetic, his mouth fell slightly open. He tried to step closer and take a better look, but the apparition of Megan took note of him straight away.

"Sally!" She smiled, with her sickly-blue lips and thinned skin. Her eyes were pale, surrounding flesh darkened, and sunken into her skull, and her nightgown melted into the bathroom floor, enforcing her tie to this apartment forevermore. Veins saturated in color all over her exposed face and neck.

Winnie turned around sharply from where she knelt, and her bulbous eyes fixed on Sal like how they did before▬very much creeping him out, as if she, who was just lively and speaking to Megan, was now frozen in place, almost like some living being stupefying into a porcelain doll.

In fact, Megan seemed more full of life compared to her. Winnie was right about... oh, what was it again? Her ghost impression.

"So this was an impression?" Sal echoed his own thoughts. Winnie's expression remained stagnant, and he felt the need to explain himself. "Well, consider me fooled. And impressed. I thought you were one back at the party."

Hearing that statement caused Winnie to shift slightly, her posture straightening and her hand twitching in some sort of way. She didn't blink, but she looked less gloomy and more blank and curious, almost happy with just those eyes. She then nodded, which was the most reactive Sal had seen her. Thank you, she seemed to say.

"Are you guys friends?" Megan asked.

"We met today," Sal informed her, "at the party I told you about."

"She told me," Megan giggled. She sighed. "I wish I could go to those parties."

Sal felt the prominent pit of his stomach convolute with his pity and sympathy all at once.

He then suggested that, "We could have a small party here."

Remembering Winnie, he added as an afterthought, "If you'd like to join us."

The girl looked down at Megan's hopeful smile, and then Sal's prosthetic facial features. With a blank expression still, she nodded. A ghost party. How charming, her wordlessness seemed to say. Only for ghosts and their friends.

To her, she counted as a ghost. And Sal Fisher found that incredibly fascinating, yet also dreary, because who would want to be dead for the sake of it all? Did Winnie know that the bones of those who once lived here were tied to the apartment infrastructure? Megan had described this as the 'scary house,' where her mommy was crying and her daddy was always angry, and a hellbeast lurked amidst those drenched in resentment for the lives they lived.

After a moment, Winnie ran off, and following those ten minutes alone and speaking to Megan about mundane things▬why he chose the murder clown route for his costume, her favorite Halloween things, scary things she found▬Winnie returned with what looked to be a small movie projector.

(She gestured towards Sal, holding it out to him and showing the things she brought along with it: a recording of Edward Shovelhands.)

For a moment, Megan, this singular ghost, could idle her time without so much fear of whatever lay in her realm compared to the material.

📦 yummmm ghoooostssss
📦 22 march 2024