May timapple's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

May timapple wanted a band of ghosts, but no ghost would come when she called. For three nights she stood in the music hall and sang their names into the dark. The dead stayed put. She finally understood why. She had nowhere to offer them. A band needs a room. Restless spirits need a place to gather and make noise, and May had only borrowed corners and locked doors. She found the old recording studio at the edge of town. Its walls had cracked. Green slime dripped down the front. The windows were broken, and wires hung like dead vines. But inside, the air hummed. May pressed her palm to a wall and felt it shiver. Something had lived here once. Something might live here again. The door was chained. May had no key. That was when Candy Brownapple arrived. Candy had played in more failed bands than anyone in Applesville, and she carried bolt cutters in her bag like other people carried gum. She was May's oldest friend, the one who never laughed at the ghost idea. She snapped the chain in two quick cuts. "If this works," Candy said, "I want in. I'm tired of playing for the living." Inside, dust covered everything. In the corner sat a vintage reel player, its two silver circles still threaded with tape. Beside it stood a strange instrument with tall antennae and glowing symbols along its face. May had never seen anything like it. When she waved her hand near the antenna, it whined, and the sound bent the air. The side door opened. Mac Lanapple stepped in from the dark. May knew him by reputation. He wrote the heaviest songs in town. He had an album he could never finish, and he trusted no one who praised it. He looked at the broken studio with flat eyes. "This place is dead," he said. "That's why I want it," May said. Mac crossed to the reel player. He pressed a button. The reels turned. A low song crawled out of the speakers, slow and sad and bruised. It was one of his. The glowing instrument began to hum along, matching the tune by itself. Then the cold came. The dust lifted off the floor. Shapes gathered in the corners, faint at first, then clear. A girl. A tall man. A woman with hollow eyes. They swayed to Mac's song. One reached for the strange instrument and made it sing. May's chest went tight. They had come. Not to her voice. To the room, and to the music inside it. "They stayed for the song," May whispered. Mac turned off the reel player. The ghosts did not vanish. They waited. "Keep it playing," one of them said, "or we leave." May had her space now. She had her first spirits. But they would only stay while the music never stopped, and she did not yet know how to keep it going.