“There wouldn’t be.”
“Anyway, people who venture up here at night have heard the speakeasy,” Max went on. “There’s ghostly singing, talking, the floor creaking like people are dancing. And then,” he said, and turned around to look at Sloane for maximum effect. He pointed his flashlight up at his face.
After a moment, Sloane made an unimpressed Well? gesture with her free hand. There was a smudge of dust on her forearm.
“A gunshot,” he said.
Sloane waited for a moment, like she thought he wasn’t done. Then she swung her flashlight around at the walls. No bullet holes.
“So someone got shot in the Bellwether speakeasy, and now the ghosts replay it every night?”
“That’s the story,” Max said. He shrugged and kept walking. “There’s no official record, obviously, but the rumors are that some organized-crime guy from Chicago came in and thought he could big-time the locals out of business. They put an end to that. Then they stuffed his body into a whiskey barrel and threw him out to sea.”
The corridor turned sharply right. Max put his hand on the wall that was now in front of him. It was slightly warm. He was pretty sure it was the south-facing exterior wall, so that made sense.
“That’s a terrible way to get rid of a body,” Sloane said. “It would float back to shore immediately. Are we going the right way?”
“I don’t think that part of the story is true,” Max said. “Makes for a good haunting, though. And yeah, as far as I can tell the map says?—”
The map was a liar, because two steps into the new corridor was a weird wall.
“Huh,” said Sloane. She was behind him, close enough that he could feel her breathing softly onto his shoulder. Her arm brushed his as she held out her flashlight, and Max took the chance of glancing over at her.
She was flushed light pink, color blooming along her cheekbones and down the side of her face. There was a cobweb in her hair. Her jaw was clenched, the muscles flexing under her skin as Max watched.
“That’s weird, right?” she said after a moment. “It looks different from the other walls. It’s different wood or something. And it doesn’t…”
She elbowed past him to stand in front of it, running a few fingers lightly along one edge. “It doesn’t connect to the wall here,” she said. “Not like the other side.”
“And there are footprints in the dust.” Max pointed his flashlight at the floor.
“Definitely fuckery afoot,” Sloane muttered. “Or something. Probably not ghosts.”
“Could be ghosts.”
“Ghosts do construction now?”
“The spirit world is mysterious and unknowable.”
That earned him a look so haughty and dismissive it made his toes tingle. Max ignored it and tried for nonchalant.
“Poltergeists throw things. Allegedly. Maybe they can also put up weird walls.” They both looked at the barrier in front of them for a moment. Then Max leaned in. “That plank looks weird.”
“Yeah,” Sloane agreed. “Can you?—”
She gestured, and Max held the beam of his flashlight on the wooden piece that was darker than the rest. It was a little shiny, like it had been handled, but probably not by ghosts.
“That looks like it might have ghostly traces on it,” he said. “We should take it with us so I can scan it later.”
Sloane was busy frowning and wiggling the plank. If she was ignoring Max’s nonsense, at least she didn’t seem as stressed as she had a minute ago.
“It’s sort of loose,” she was saying. “I think if I just…” Sloane bit her lip and pushed the plank up and in, then jumped when it popped back out. Carefully, she pulled it through the hole it had left, maybe two feet long and four inches wide. Then she looked at it in her hand.
“Huh,” she said, and then she and Max looked at each other. “I was kind of hoping for something cooler. Do they all come out?”
“I don’t think so,” Max said, and stepped in so he could see into the gap. Sloane moved but not much, and as he shone his flashlight though the hole, he could feel all the places they were touching: thighs, shoulders, her elbow brushing against his rib cage as she peered through next to him. Her stray hairs tickled the side of his face from two inches away, sending little shockwaves cascading down his neck.
“I don’t see anything,” she said, and right, yeah, they were looking at ghost shit.
