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'It was really nice of Willie to show us this place.' Luke slung his arm over Alex's shoulders as he sat down in between him and Reggie. The small fire in front of them crackled away, despite none of them being able to feel it. 'I didn't think anything like this even existed.'
'Yeah, he said he was so stoked when he found it, he couldn't wait to share,' Alex responded. 'He really didn't think he'd find anything like this again. I mean, not after all the stuff with the...'
'Yeah,' Luke finished. An awkward silence came over the three for a moment.
'How did Willie even realise this was here? I wouldn't have even thought to walk in.' Reggie shuffled closer to the fire. 'And who stoked the fires? Who's playing the music?'
'You know, I actually just wanted to trespass,' Willie replied cheekily from behind the three of them, coming around and sitting down beside Reggie. 'I saw a foreclosed mall and, as I do, decided I'd just...' He used a gesture to punctuate his point. 'Slide through the locked door.' He giggled a little. 'And then? Somebody over on that ottoman?' He pointed to a leather pouffe about halfway down the concourse. 'Turned and stared at me!'
'No way,' Luke replied, grinning from ear to ear.
'Yes way! And then we had this whole pointing match, like-' He began reenacting it. '-can you- Can I? I can- but you? You can- Can you? Ghost?' He broke out into a fit of giggles, only calming down after about half a minute. 'That was Finola who spotted me, by the way. She's over there.' He pointed to a shorter girl with fiery red hair sitting by a nearby fire. 'I think she basically runs this place. She sets all of the operating hours and stuff.'
'So she sets the fires?' Reggie asked.
'Nah, that's...' He looked around the room for a moment. 'There. Jean.' He pointed to a man on the other side of the concourse, dressed from head to toe in Old Navy- clothes he'd definitely sourced from the mall itself. 'Apparently he's an actual Neanderthal, and the old ghost magic is like... a lot. And tends to be about fire.'
'Whoa...' Reggie looked starstruck.
'Yeah.' Willie grinned. 'I don't know where the music comes from, actually. I should probably ask Finola about...' He trailed off, his gaze now stuck on the girl.
'What?' Alex asked in a hushed tone. 'What's up?' He followed Willie's gaze to Finola. She was speaking to several other ghosts in the mall, pointing hurriedly at various locations.
'I don't know,' Willie responded.
A loud voice, one that seemingly belonged to someone who thought the mall was empty, then came from the other end of the mall. 'You know, I've heard this mall produces some of the highest EMF readings in the whole of Los Angeles!'
The four turned to look at each other. 'Oh shit.' Willie was grinning again as he said it.
'What? What?' Alex asked again, confused at Willie's apparent excitement.
Realisation dawned on Luke's face then, and he gave a mischievous grin. 'Oh my god are we haunting them?'
'We might just be.' Willie stood up and went over to Finola, dropping into the conversation, as Jean began coming over to each fire and snuffing them out with a wave of his hand. The ghosts still had no idea how, but the music had stopped.
Willie jogged back to the group, and helped pull each of them up to standing. 'We'- he gestured to their group of four- 'have to go to the Footlocker and wait for our cue.' Willie giggled. 'Finola saw one of them had a camcorder, and she really wants to play it up.'
Reggie looked almost awestruck. 'Wicked!'
The four walked over to the Footlocker just to their left, effortlessly phasing through the shutters on the storefront, and took up a station by a display in one of the windows.
'What does she want us to do?' Alex asked as they took position.
'The most,' Willie replied.
Luke made his acoustic appear in his hands, the light thunk of it familiar to the other three.
The four watched, transfixed, as two people, maybe in their early twenties, turned the corner onto the concourse where the ghosts had been gathering, completely absorbed in noting down the readings on their tech, and playing it up for the camera.
'I know Julie told us about this, but wow that's a small camera,' Reggie commented. Alex shushed him, even though he would have been inaudible to the explorers.
'Alright guys, we're in the part of the mall that's said to have the highest amount of activity,' one of them said, turning the camera to the other. They nodded in agreement with their head down, still focused on the numbers. 'Yeah, and like it's getting really creepy, it's super dark, so smash that like and subscribe to wish us luck down here guys!' The two pointed downwards to the not-yet-existent subscribe button, the other investigator still with their head down.
'You've gotta be kidding me, vloggers?' Alex remarked before being shushed in turn by the others.
'Watch,' Willie whispered, pointing to the front of a Barnes and Noble very nearby the explorers, where several ghosts were currently crouched down.
Suddenly, one of the ghosts blew something from their hand, as if blowing a kiss, and a chill- that even the four could feel- ran through the concourse. The vloggers shuddered.
'Whoa, did you feel that?' The talkative one emoted to the camera, but it was evident they were already a little frightened, 'Alright guys, we just felt it get really cold in here-'
'A drop of over ten degrees Fahrenheit,' the second investigator interjected.
'Ten-point-eight! That's high-quality ghosting!' the ghost who'd created the chill shouted, inaudible to the vloggers. It took all of the four's willpower to not burst into fits of giggles.
'-Yeah, so again guys, don't come in here at 3am, and make sure to like the video to send us good vibes.'
'It's not 3am?' Reggie pointed to a art nouveau, wrought iron wall clock in the middle of the concourse, that was somehow still ticking, which proudly read that it was eight minutes to 5pm.
There wasn't much time to contemplate this point, as it was then that another ghost, this one crouched inside a display at a TJ Maxx, stomped the right foot loudly, and caused all the lights overhead to flicker rapidly on, and then burst just as quickly.
'Whoa!' The first vlogger pointed the camera up to the now-dead lights. 'I don't know if you guys caught that, but the lights just went on and then exploded! This place is so creepy, dude.'
Just then, Luke spotted Finola across the hall from them, miming someone shredding on a guitar.
'Guys, I think we got our cue.'
'Oh shit!' Alex whispered. 'What are we meant to do?'
'I don't know, but either way it looks like it's "Now or Never".' Luke grinned at his successfully pulling off that atrocious of a pun. Alex punched him lightly in the arm.
Running into the concourse, the three quickly set up, swapping Luke's acoustic for his electric and making Reggie's bass and the Alex's kit appear.
Alex only had to shout "One! Two! Three! Four!" and they were off.
"Now or Never" blasting everywhere but seemingly from nowhere, the vloggers whirled around, camera turning wildly.
'Guys, we're not kidding, it's getting really freaky in here!' The first vlogger had to shout to be heard over the song.
'Yeah, I can't get any read on where the music's coming from!' the second vlogger shouted, looking up for the first time. 'The volume is constant in every direction!'
It was then that Willie saw Jean put one foot forward and make a broad scooping motion, lighting tens of fires around the concourse, all of them roaring to life in unison.
'Are you guys seeing this?' the vlogger shouted.
Finola then stepped forward herself and, cupping her hands over her mouth, began to speak.
'We've been waiting for you,' she announced in a saccharine tone, her voice becoming a chorus of people speaking the same words, sounding from all heights of the building.
'Guys, this is crazy!'
Finola made a slicing motion with one of her hands across her neck, "Cut!", and it all died out abruptly. The voices stopped, Jean snuffed out all the fires and the boys killed the music, not even the buzzing of an amp left over.
'Whoa guys, that was one of the scariest hauntings we've ever seen.' Both vloggers looked shaken, but also thrilled.
Willie could see Finola mouth "one of?" to herself and then quickly point to him, an idea clearly having just formed. She began spinning her arms in a circular motion above her head, as though she were one of those inflatable men found outside a car dealership.
Willie knew exactly what she meant.
Spreading both arms out to his sides, Willie splayed his fingers, and set off every alarm in the mall.
The vloggers- finally- screamed. They turned tail immediately, and ran back the way they came.
Finola poofed out, undoubtedly to make sure they exited the building, and returned soon after, giving the thumbs up. Willie cut the alarms.
The Phantoms themselves poofed back into the Footlocker.
'Dude, you killed that!' Luke enthused, fistbumping Willie.
'Nah, it was nothing,' Willie dismissed. 'You guys, though, you really brought the house down! All of that-' Willie began imitating the riff from the introduction, headbanging while playing air guitar to it.
'Yeah but that was nothing compared to when you went all-' Reggie began making almost cartoonish "weewoo weewoo" sounds, and all four burst into laughter.
Finola poofed into the Footlocker. 'Great show out there, guys!' She high-fived each of them. 'Just one slight problem.'
'Huh?' Alex asked, suddenly confused.
'Because we set the alarms off, the cops will be on their way, so we gotta-'
'Scatter!' Willie shouted, grabbing all three boys' and Finola's hands and taking off running through the nearest wall to the outside.
'Yeah! That!' Finola shouted behind her to the rest of the mall.