The Ghosts Of The City (And A Boy Called Bran)

Trigger Warning; swearing, mentions of child abuse

Bran knew that Halloween was important, but he never could truly express why it was in words. It was more of a gut feeling, a feeling that gnawed at his soul each year he spent inside his empty dark space of a room rather than outside in the streets. His room wasn’t the problem anymore, though it had been when he was first placed here with the foster program; it felt like a prison with blank cream walls and a single square window that was too high up on the wall to see out of, and the bed made for toddlers holding itself together with its own sheer will. Sadly, it was only seen as a problem through his own eyes, and not the social worker who left the apartment with an extra hundred dollars and back conveniently turned to the living conditions of the couple who resided in the place. 

But the foster system be damned, Bran knew if he couldn’t get out of this room Thursday night for the festivities, the apparition known to him as Mixie would make his life a living hell. 

The only thing this new couple - that sounds too nice, maybe “pair of gross beings” was more fitting - had given the eight-year-old was an old porcelain doll. They had claimed it was the only thing that truly belonged to him because they wanted him to take it with him when he inevitably left. However, the spirit inhabiting the doll seemed to disagree heavily with this statement. 

“I live in this body and I found it first, therefore it is mine!” Mixie had argued (they weren’t really arguing, Bran didn’t want the doll either). “It’s not yours just because the Toad Man gave it to you!”

All things considered, Mixie wasn’t a horrible roommate. Bran had had worse ghosts share his living space before; there were ones that thought it was funny to try and terrorize him. The one that hung from the ceiling fan in the group home was probably the nicest he had truly talked to, but it was challenging to do so because people could see and hear Bran talk to them, and they always wanted to talk about everything. As much as Bran enjoyed talking to ghosts and spirits, the more he talked to them, the less the people around him that were “living” by the biological standard would talk to him. Believe it or not, not many people liked talking to the kid that laid on his back and stared straight up at the ceiling talking to nothing. 

But regardless of his adventures at the group home, he talked to Mixie and was beginning to regret it because of her endless nagging this week. All she could talk about was how perfect it was that everyone was going to be in costume, and how hundreds of spirits would be close to the line. Bran usually could ignore her - she also got this way at the beginning of November claiming that another culture, one that the fosters - she called them Toad Man and Twig Woman - often looked down upon disgracefully, celebrated the dead quite thoroughly and that he should be involved. He would, but he just wasn’t quite sure how to. He wasn’t exactly sure how to participate in Halloween either, seeing as he was stuck in his (this) room. 

It was Wednesday, and Bran was resigning to his fate, listening to the porcelain doll with springy curls and obnoxious blush marks yell about him going outside the next night when the door to his room opened. Mixie did not stop her lecture, but Bran wasn’t listening anymore, too busy staring at the Twig Woman looming in the doorway, casting an impossibly long shadow across the carpeted floor. She motioned for him to come with a pinched expression that looked as though she was struggling to put a pleasant smile on her face in the vicinity of Bran. 

He followed her anyway, letting her lead him into the living room that consisted of a dull maroon sofa, and a Lazy-Boy chair that the Toad Man sat on reclined, both facing a small TV on an even smaller stand. The Toad Man smiled a crooked grin as Bran entered the empty room. He gestured to the TV. 

“Didja know?” he asked, his face twisting in glee. “People have stopped giving out candy and would rather just hand out cash on Halloween, especially if children have allergies.” He rocked slightly in the chair, the poor thing groaning under his weight. He looked to the television, and then back to Bran. “You have allergies, no?”

Bran did not, but Bran was also not an idiot, and he wanted more than anything to go trick or treating. He nodded. 

The Toad Man nodded back slowly, in an almost comically evil way. “I used to make costumes out of my sheets when I was your age,” he announced to the dark air, the lighting in the room changing with the changing of commercials on the muted TV. “Take one of your bedsheets and cut some eye holes into it; I’ll buy you a trick-or-treat basket tomorrow.”

Bran clutched his hands together to keep from trembling. He stood there mutely, nodding his head. The Toad Man looked unimpressed. “Is that how you're going to thank me?” he snarled. Bran spit out a thank you, ducking his head, making the man laugh, the sound bouncing off the walls. “Brat,” he laughed, his face twisting again. “Get the fuck out of my sight before I reteach you those manners.”

Bran ran back to his room as fast as he could, grabbing a pair of scissors quietly out of a pen bin in the hallway on the way. Bran was still shaking in excitement (he told himself it wasn’t fear because he was going trick-or-treating, he was going outside) as he ran to his room, trying to ignore the way the Toad Man’s laugh shook the walls of the apartment.

..-*-..

The hallway to the apartment was dark, but that didn’t matter. Bran was outside of the room, outside of the apartment, on Halloween. He stood still, dazed, taking in the scent of vodka and cigarettes and weed that were seeping through his neighbors' walls. Toad Man and Twig Woman had told him to wait outside of the apartment while they finished getting ready. The pale ghosts that lived in the hall were watching him, some with curiosity, and some with the blank stare those who were dead for so long often had. He made eye contact with a spirit about his height with pigtails down the hall and watched as she smiled and waved to him, before floating down the stairway.

Without a second thought, his legs moved to follow her, taking shaky steps that got increasingly faster as he began to run down the stairs, away from the room and the Toad Man and the Twig Woman, and into the lobby of the building. At some point, the girl stopped and waved again, and he waved as well as he could, covered by the heavy stolen bedsheet, continuing on until the turning doors were pressing against the tips of his fingers. Nearly falling in his rushed excitement, he pushed through the glass barrier and stepped out into the night air of New York City. 

If he hadn’t been in such a rush he would have stopped in sheer awe of the city. He hadn’t been outside in a while, and he had almost forgotten the feeling of seeing the city of concrete dance with sparkling advertising lights, of watching the people who were living in their own worlds walking amongst others who were also so absorbed that they could barely acknowledge the existence of the other’s universe. But all of the lights and oblivious people could never touch the overwhelming feeling of seeing the spirits that filled every unoccupied space on the ground, the spirits that floated over the streets with a sense of haziness that accompanies death.

But Bran didn’t stop to bask in his wonderment. Instead, Bran was running, his tired feet slamming the ground through worn shoes bought for scraps at the thrift store two years ago, his hollow, orange plastic pumpkin smacking his legs as he searched with rushed awe for something he couldn’t name. The streets were packed with people, but with Bran trying to avoid stepping through the specters and phantoms, it was like trying to move through a wall. Eventually, Bran gave up and used the spirits as his path through the crowd. He ran through the parents taking videos of their kids, through the groups of teenagers sharing candy and sharing “sugar,” through the businessmen and women in stiff suits and the pranksters intimidating them in overly ironed coats, loud words, and overly large hand gestures. 

 He ran past other kids in elaborate costumes, dragging parents behind them that adorned costumes that either covered everything or covered nothing at all. Past teens with cat ears and devils tails, and teens with elaborate face paints and beloved costumes based on characters from cartoons made overseas. There were masks as well, some with blood oozing out of them, and others with colorful patterns and shapes. Bran didn’t have a preference for any of it; any costume was better than no costume, something told him. Much better. 

However, Bran didn’t bask in his admiration for the costumes either. His heart - his soul perhaps, something in his torso - was pulling him forward, and soon he began to notice that the apparitions were moving the same directions, though at a much slower pace. He turned to look up at the sky above the street and struggled to run straight as he watched huge elk-like creatures slowly stalk down the street, moss and flora growing downwards towards the ground, invisible to the rest of the world except for Bran alone. He began to look more closely at the phantoms around him, taking in the large ball gowns rotting with the lavender growing out of the seams, the faceless creatures with thin limbs and torso that stretched impossibly long, and the spirits that took the forms of animals like herons, decaying even in that form.

He was following a butterfly spirit adamantly when he ran into the person in front of him. He froze, small hand clutching at the handle of his pumpkin basket, his eyes widening through the oval openings of his sheet costume. The man, towering over him, slowly turned to look down at him. Bran stared up at him paralyzed, and the man stared back, with a soft look of confusion playing on his features. He asked Bran if he was alright. When Bran didn’t respond, the man furrowed his eyes a bit. Bran saw this and apologized. When the man’s eyes furrowed more, Bran began to think of an appropriate response to the situation, knowing that when adults were upset it was better to stay put and deal with it, no matter how much he wanted to run away.

Just as Bran was beginning to panic, retreating into his head rather than realizing the man was trying to talk with him with a rather concerned look, he caught sight of the butterfly again. He blinked, watching the whitish-green silhouette of the butterfly flap up and down lazily, oblivious to the man crouching down and trying to get his attention, or the other bystanders turning to look towards them. It didn’t really matter anyway; what mattered was following the butterflies; it drifted over the man’s shoulder and down the sidewalk, moving in the direction that the apparitions were moving. He giggled as the man reached out, bounding past the man’s outreached arm and down the sidewalk towards the street. 

He saw as the spirits congregated around something in the street, the smallest cat ghosts to the giant elk creatures with vulture phantoms circling around the rotting vine falling from their bus length antlers. As he drew closer he began to see that they were standing around a puddle of dark water in the middle of the crosswalk. Instantly, he was focused on the puddle, so much so that he could barely see the cars driving through it and breaking the calm surface, barely hear the man behind him calling for him to stop, barely hear the engines of the cars on the road to his left that were barely three steps away. 

What he could hear though were the shadows of the living around him, calling him, begging him, to touch the water, to open the gate between their world and the world of the living, in which he resided but never truly lived in. Part of him didn’t understand its importance, but that thing in his chest did. He had spent so many dreams walking around this city, yet at the same time, not this city at all. He remembered staring up at the sky, a black void before looking down to see that the ground wasn’t quite solid - instead it was an endlessly deep body of water that he walked so effortlessly on. Remembered placing his hands on the water, and watching the world of the living continue on easily without him below the waterline, remembering the solid figures of apparitions standing with him above the water. 

The spirits began to sing with approval at his thoughts, confirming his notion of the puddle - it could be used as a doorway for the spirits, and he could let them in. Tonight was a perfect time as well - the living were dressed in costumes, so maybe they would mistake the spirits for other living initially, only to realize how wonderful they were when they discovered the truth. His breathing hitched excitedly as he neared the edge of the curb, the cries of a man desperate to stop someone fading into the corners of his subconscious. He could let them ALL in, and then people would be able to meet his friends, his family; they would take back all those cutting words (crazy, stupid, insane, delirious-) and they might even apologize to him. Bran couldn’t help but feel the corners of his mouth turn upwards; he had never had an apology before, and maybe when he forgave them, they would become friends with the spirits as well, and Bran could finally feel as though he belonged in the world of the living because there wouldn’t be a line dividing his worlds into two. 

Bran laughed joyously as he launched himself off of the curb into the air over the street, the specters’ energies screaming around him in anticipation, louder than the wail of desperation from someone behind him, over the screech of brakes and burning rubber skid marks. None of it mattered as the puddle neared his feet as he descended back to the ground, nor did it matter when he hit the surface, the feeling of endless water echoing his impact below him seeping through worn plastic soles and into his feet. 

Bran continued to laugh as he bounced back up into the air, oblivious to the shockwave that threw back the car heading towards him and the people standing at the edge of the curb. He danced on the crosswalk oblivious to the silent horror that had befallen the city, and he was too busy reaching for a butterfly to hear the screams that filled that silence.