15. Spirited Away #2
I scrape my hands down my face. We are going to be here for ages. Franny will have finished her shift, and we’ll still be trying to get this ancient ghost to access the internet. “Is there anyone else who could possess Franny? Camille, you’re from my time?”
“Ooh, no. Not a good idea,” Camille says, shaking their head. “The first and only time I tried to possess someone, I almost blew them up.”
“Fair.” I think we have enough ghosts in our group without adding Franny to the mix. “Anyone else?”
Trystan raises his hands in a surrender gesture. “All this wireless shit is way before my time. I wouldn’t know what I’m doing.”
“Me neither,” Pixie agrees.
Beside her, Jeanie nods vigorously.
“Stove? When did you die?” I ask, feeling a little desperate.
“Two thousand and seven,” he says, but Pixie interrupts.
“We need Stove as the go-between. Otherwise, we’re totally cut off from the living realm.”
She makes a fair point. We also need his microphone, and I’m not sure how ghost objects transfer while possessions are in place.
“I’ll do it,” Josh says. “Being chronically online is kinda my thing, plus I know the hotel’s Wi-Fi password.”
I look at the others. I have no immediate objections, but they understand his capabilities and limitations better than I do. They shrug-nod. Like me, they accept we’re short on options.
“Okay, do it. Connect to the Wi-Fi and then find an app on my desktop called Sound Store. That’s the recording app.
Then you’ll need to go online and go to the PodStation website.
We’ll need to create an account or log into my old one.
The password is the same as my laptop’s. I wish I could write all this down.”
I have a pencil and paper in my pocket, but I know that Josh wouldn’t be able to see it once he’s viewing the world through Franny’s living eyes.
“It’s fine, I’ll remember it all,” he says. His voice squeaks up at the end, reminding me of just how young he is. Or was when he died.
“Petey?” Stove calls out, and Peter turns towards the direction of Stove’s voice. “Josh is going to take over. Make some space inside Franny.”
“What?” he yells.
“After three, you’re gonna switch. Ready?”
“No.”
“One. Two. Three.”
Josh slides his lanky fifteen-year-old body up to Franny’s right side, and half a second later, Peter is falling out of her left.
Franny’s eyes close, her chin drops to her chest, and then, as though someone has performed a restart function on her, she bounces back.
Eyes wide, roving around the room, and a maniacal grin on her face.
Peter crawls over to the chaise longue and collapses onto it. “Let me just . . .” And then he’s asleep.
“This is wild!” Josh exclaims, rolling Franny’s arms out at her sides like a giant wibbly inflatable showroom man. “Okay, here goes.” He steps towards the bureau and bumps into it. His hands, or Franny’s hands, slap heavily against the wooden lid. “Ouch, shit.”
Josh’s inexperience at possessions, or just being a ghost, or life in general, is manifestly evident.
He’s clumsier than Peter, his movements heavier, jerkier.
So much so that I’m baseline panicking about all the unidentified bruises Franny will wake up with.
I should probably get him to pop a couple of ibuprofen before he takes the housekeeper back to her office sofa.
Eventually, through some small miracle, he locates the Sound Store app and logs in.
“Tell him to go to settings and press ‘link new microphone,’” I say. “And then, Stove, use this AUX cable to connect your boom mic.”
I puff out a breath and cross my fingers as Stove slides the cable’s plug into the ghost microphone.
“Looking for devices . . .” Josh reads aloud from the screen.
We crowd around so close that we’re all pressed together. Stove on my right. Trystan on my left. Pixie at my front. Camille behind me.
A loading icon appears. A circle chasing itself like an Ouroboros and then . . .
“No new devices found,” Josh says.
I want to cry.
“Try again!” Stove yells before I can respond.
Josh hits the button again. The circle spins once more. Pixie blows out a shaky breath.
“Connect to Fox MZ seventy-two?” Josh asks.
I stare open-mouthed at Stove. Now I’m crying. It worked. Technology is able to operate on ghost frequencies.
I guess all that stuff about electromagnetic waves Ted was banging on about during induction actually meant something. Once again, I wish I’d listened and not dismissed everyone there as certifiable grifters.
“Yes!” Stove yells. “That’s my mic.”
Josh clicks connect, and a few moments pass by where we all stare at the screen. “It’s live. I think.”
I lean closer, practically pushing Pixie aside. “Testicles . . . Testicles . . . One, two, three.”
Nothing.
Fuck.
No vibrations are picked up on my laptop.
“Oh, wait!” Josh says, noticing what I’ve noticed the exact moment I notice it. He toggles the “mic on” switch to blue.
“Testing!” I yell.
A pink sound wave dances on the screen, and Josh practically falls backwards through us.
“I can hear you!”
This must be what surfing feels like. Must be why Trystan spends his time on the ocean surface, because right now, I’m riding some kind of wave, and it feels fucking fantastic.
“Josh?” I say. “While we have Franny’s body, I need you to log into the website that hosts the podcasts. Okay?”
“Sure, just walk me through it.”
“We’ll need a name for the new podcast,” I say into the mic. “The station owns the IP of the old one.”
Jeanie answers. “It’s Unalive on Air, and that’s that. If they want it, they can prise it from your cold, dead fingers.”
“What does IP mean?” Peter says groggily from the chaise longue.
“Yeah,” Trystan says. “What are they gonna do? Sue a ghost?”
I open my mouth to argue, but snap it shut again. “Excellent point. Unalive on Air it is.”
Josh logs into my account, then minimises the tab so that it’s ready and waiting for the next recording sesh.
I’m still not sure how we’re going to operate the computer without Franny’s body, or if we can continue to borrow her once a week.
That seems . . . morally questionable, especially if she’ll come out of it each time more bruised than a forgotten lunch-bag banana.
I don’t even know if I can edit the episode, so I guess we’ll have to aim for a one take jobby. Pretend I’m back on the radio.
“Right, now, let’s all look at Gary’s search engine history,” Josh says.
“HOLY FUCK, NO!” I shout into the mic. My words echo throughout the trophy room. I glance at Trystan, who says nothing but raises his brows. “Don’t you dare, Josh. I mean please, no.”
Josh bursts out laughing. It’s disconcerting coming from a sixty-eight-year-old woman, but my adrenaline is pumping so fast I hardly have space to consider this. “Just kidding, but now I’m very curious.”
Stove leans closer to me. “I knew you were a little freak like me,” he whispers.
“Right!” Jeanie shouts, cutting through everything. “Now we have all of that . . . stuff dealt with, how about we come up with some juicy revelations for the next episode of Unalive on Air?”
My heart rate is slowly returning to normal, but I’ve still got one eye on Trystan. What does he think I have in my search history? Does he even know what search engine history means?
“Yes, content! We need content for the next show. Something big that will suck in a whole heap of new listeners,” I say. I won’t look at him. I won’t find a way to explain those websites, those images. I won’t dig this hole any deeper.
“Excellent.” Jeanie slaps her hands together. “How about I show you the exact spot where my body was buried?”