Cursed Cruise

Chapter 1

Chrissy

A chorus of wailing cries echoes over the hills, a sound that could easily be mistaken for wind by an untrained ear, but not by me.

“That sound is the pain of death. The anguish of lives cut short; souls trapped in time by a grave injustice.”

My narration borders on melodrama.

But hey, it’s a living.

My name is Chrissy Looper and I’m the resident psychic of the newly YouTube-famous-ish Ghost Gang. The video we’re currently editing is episode 65--“The Wailing Witches of Salem”--and our 1.3 million subscribers are expecting it to drop tomorrow. They will rage if we don’t get it to them on time; they spend the entire day leading up to a new release commenting “where is it?” and “u still alive?” until we give them what they want.

It’s a valid concern, since last year we did almost die filming one of our episodes at the infamous Hearst Hotel, when a serial killer (and Ghost Gang fan, yikes) stalked us all the way to downtown Los Angeles. He killed two members of the hotel staff, stabbed one of my best friends and then lured me to the roof, where he planned to kill me, too. Luckily, girl power goes beyond the grave and the slain women from his past made sure he got exactly what he deserved: to become a human-shaped stain on the sidewalk below.

I shudder, remembering the feel of his cold evil lips on mine, wishing I could go back in time and not be romantically entangled with a sadistic killer.

It’s close to midnight in this cramped New York City hotel room, and we’re going through the final cut, looking for last-minute tweaks, hoping we don’t find any more so we can all finally catch some z’s. I try to ignore the scratching sounds only I can hear coming from the closet, where earlier I saw the spirit of a dark-haired man slumped against the wall, hands tied behind his back and a bullet hole between his eyes. This hotel is “historic” (aka old as dirt and haunted as hell) with a history of mafia activity in the ’70s, so mob-related deaths replay themselves over and over. I take deep breaths and try to play it cool, even though the rest of the Ghost Gang would run out of here screaming if they could see what I see.

I did tell them to steer clear of the closet. They’ve learned not to ask me why.

“What the hell was that?” I hear Kiki Lawrence’s voice squeak out of my boyfriend Chase Montgomery’s computer speakers. Kiki’s on-screen persona is exactly who she is in real life: magnetic and charming and terrified of her own shadow.

“That was the freakiest wind I’ve ever heard in my life,” Kiki says from where she lounges on one of the beds, her chartreuse-braided head in her girlfriend Emma Thomas’s lap while they both scroll on their phones.

“It wasn’t just wind,” I say, the piercing cries of the victims--innocent men and women falsely accused of witchcraft and executed at Proctor’s Ledge--still ringing in my ears.

The fluffy hot-pink slipper that dangles from Kiki’s dark-brown foot hits the wood floor with a loud crack.

We all jump.

Kiki lets out a squeak and cuddles closer to Emma, who is not mad about the proximity. Emma drapes an arm casually over Kiki’s shoulder. They’ve been a couple since that fateful night at the Hearst Hotel when Emma was stabbed and left for dead by our stalker.

A chill fills the room and Chase shudders beside me. I watch as the closet door creaks open. Chase looks at me, searching my face. To him, it looks like a draft has pushed the door open. Only I can see the body slumped against the other side--lifeless eyes peering at me through the crack, a single bloody bullet hole between them.

Kiki’s shoe hitting the floor must have signaled the dead man to replay the horror of his own death. The Sicilian kiss of a revolver ending his physical body and dooming his spirit to a near eternity of opening a closet door--just a crack.

My face must say it all, because without a single word, Chase stands up and tiptoes across the room in his socks to shut the door. He slides a heavy duffel bag full of camera equipment in front of the door to keep it from opening again. Luckily, Kiki and Emma don’t seem to notice, or maybe they just pretend not to.

It’s me, hi, the psychic medium of our group of ghost busters.

I’ve been able to see ghosts since I was just a little girl with a dead mom and a sad dad. I’ll spare you the saga, but long story short: I’ve learned how to live harmoniously with the dead. And help them sometimes. And nowadays, not absolutely hate it, mostly thanks to my ambitious (and adorable) best friend–turned–boyfriend, Chase, who helped me see my curse as a blessing.

Now we have a hit YouTube show that we all, especially Chase, are hoping gets picked up for TV.

Chase gives my shoulder a reassuring all-clear squeeze before he slumps back down into the hotel desk chair. He’s wearing a hoodie up over his tousled black hair, his sharp eyes bloodshot from exhaustion and editing footage on his computer for hours. Most YouTubers with over a million subs hire pro editors to do this part for them, but Chase refuses. He’ll hand over the reins when we get a TV pilot, but not a second sooner.

After the news of what happened to us at Hearst Hotel went viral across the interwebs, our subscriber count skyrocketed and our now-manager Jerry Scott (who everyone but Chase refers to as “Where-y” because he disappears for months without explanation) reached out to sign us. Chase jumped on it and regretted it fast when the second we signed the contract, Jerry was on a boat in the Bahamas and only reachable through his assistant, Clayton, who we’re pretty sure is his son (Hollywood nepotism at its finest). Clayton has less than two brain cells to rub together and refers to us as “those ghost guys” even though three of the four of us are girls. We’re certain not a single message we leave with Clayton gets through to Jerry in the months we don’t hear from him.

Imagine our surprise when last month Chase got a call from Jerry out of the blue with an opportunity to submit a demo reel to Creep TV. If they like it, we’ll shoot the pilot episode, and if they like that, we’ll go to series and Chase’s Hollywood dream will be reality TV.

Chase worked for seventy-two hours straight on that reel, stopping only because Emma locked him in his room after he started hallucinating voices coming through his headphones. He slept for almost twenty-fours hours while Emma and Kiki finished rendering the video to send to our contact at Creep.

It’s been three weeks and we still haven’t heard a peep from Jerry. I’m starting to wonder if he bought a house on a remote tropical island with no Wi-Fi or cell service.

A sharp cry slices through my ears, dragging my attention back to the screen.

“The witch,” I say on-screen, and my skin looks ghostly white.

This is where the episode starts to get really interesting.

“You can hear it?” Chase asks. He’s off camera, and the shot we see right now is of me. White as a sheet, watching something move through the woods. Tracking it with my eyes.

“Not it,” I say, my voice soft, my eyes mesmerized. “Her.”

What isn’t on camera are all the sounds and sensations I felt. The things I saw.

A soft white light floating among the trees. The wind whipping my hair around my head as the so-called Wailing Witch walked--no, floated--through the ravine, her form materializing as she drew closer and closer.

“She’s coming,” I say on camera, and Chase uses a wide shot from the tripod. It’s eerie, our light kit turning the fog from the dropping temperatures into a halo. I remember her eyes like dark saucers, her mouth warped wide from centuries of weeping in anger and despair. Her neck hangs at an odd angle, her shoulders racked by silent sobs.

I watch my own eyes on-screen, and a knot in my stomach tightens.

It’s just footage, not happening again to me in real time, but it never, ever gets easier to see the way my whole face changes when I’m in the presence of a spirit. My eyes get this distant dark gleam in them, the lost expression of a girl in an intimate dance with the barrier between life and death. I wonder, more than I would ever tell my friends, if one of these days I’ll get too familiar, drift too close, and fall all the way into the void between realms.

“We came here to help you.” The sound of my own voice speaking to the witch jerks me back to the hotel room and out of my whirring thoughts. “Sarah Good.”

What you can’t see on camera is that her hollow black eyes connect with mine and suddenly she’s right in front of my face, her hands around my neck, my hands around my neck too. I can feel centuries of pain, of torment--an eternity of suffering for the crime of being a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time. I visibly shiver on-screen as the balmy night air of early summer in Salem slips down to freezing.

In the present, I tuck my hands into Chase’s hoodie, my body temperature dropping as the sound from the footage causes the memory to wash over me like it’s happening in real time.

“Nice shot,” Emma says. She and Kiki are now hunched over behind me, watching the screen. I don’t remember seeing them move from the bed. “The drip of blood from her nostril looks freaky as hell in this light.”

One of my eyes peeks open to see.

“Chrissy.” Chase’s voice off camera is dangerously low; a warning. Ever since Hearst and his declaration of affection, he’s been increasingly uncomfortable with putting me in harm’s way for the sake of the channel. I don’t have to look at him now to know he’s still grouchy about this on-camera exchange. I try to ignore him.

On-screen, I lift my hand to silence him.

What doesn’t appear is the moment the witch passes through me.

They can’t see how I twist inside because her soul presses against mine.

None of them knows why, for a second, I lose my focus during the shoot. I stop describing what’s happening; I just stand there, clutching my chest, fighting something invisible inside me, trying to rid my body of her presence.

As it plays out again, my three friends lean in closer to get a better look at what’s happening on the screen.

But I remember the feeling of my throat being coated in thick molasses.

Scenes from Sarah Good’s death play out inside my head. The hanging tree with women dangling by their necks all in a row. Standing in a dissociative haze with a noose around my neck as my family, screaming, proclaims my innocence. The tightening of the rope as they hoist me into the air, the weight of my body held up by my neck. Unable to breathe, sparks explode across my vision before the world fades to black.

“Pull the plug, dude,” Emma says. I can’t see her. The shot is just me, tight, claustrophobic. My lips turn blue.

Chase is a bundle of nerves as we watch.

Kiki grabs my arm on-screen and it’s enough to break the witch’s hold.

Suddenly, I’m gasping for air and dropping back into Kiki’s solid, safe silhouette.

“That’s it. We’re done,” Chase says. The camera cuts out.

The episode ends with our confessionals where I try my best to explain what happened to me without freaking everyone out, and the rest of the group comments on how scary it was to see me like that. Chase looks especially shaken up but tries to keep his cool because we haven’t admitted to our fans that we’re an item yet--there’s an entire Reddit thread of Chissy shippers we’re not ready to give in to just yet.

We all cheer as Chase does a final render to prepare the video for upload--another great episode in the bag. Within minutes, Emma and Kiki are passed out in bed. It’s just me and Chase waiting for the video to finish rendering so we can upload it to our channel. The whole process takes a few hours, but we can sleep while the video finishes uploading to YouTube.

“You want to tell me what really happened there?” Chase whispers, finally looking at me. His brows are raised, tense.

“It’s no big deal,” I say. I’m the only one who can really get away with lying in this group, but I try not to. We’re better when we work together, when we don’t have secrets. What happened at Hearst Hotel taught us that.

I just don’t want them to worry when there is nothing to be worried about.

A strand of Chase’s swoopy hair falls down across his forehead, and I have the urge to reach up and brush it away, but I don’t. “Are you sure?” he asks. “You didn’t look right, almost like you couldn’t breathe.”

My eyelids are heavy from looking at the computer screen all day, but I squeeze his shoulder and try my best to fake a reassuring smile. He doesn’t buy it.

“Did something happen to you?” Chase asks, scooting the desk chair closer and taking one of my hands in his.

“It’s happened before.” I shrug.

“At Hearst,” he counters, referring to the climactic moment on the roof with a bunch of vengeful dead girls.

“This was nothing compared to that,” I say, squeezing his hand for emphasis. “I just need to set up better protections.” I lift the necklace of black tourmaline that’s secured around my neck and dangle it in the air for Chase to see. “I forgot to wear this at the Salem shoot.”

“Okay,” he says, too tired to keep pressing the issue. He stands up and stretches, revealing tanned skin and the silver band of his Calvin Klein boxers peeking up over his jeans. I bite my lip without thinking and he ruffles my hair. “Keep it in your pants.”

My cheeks heat up and he squats down between the legs of my fuzzy pajama pants to take a closer look at the opaque black tourmaline crystal I keep around my neck for psychic protection. “Just promise me this doesn’t come off your neck after we board the Queen Anne? Not even in the shower.”