As I made my way over to Goss, I couldn’t help thinking back to how Bobby had reacted when I brought up Sean. 

What was up with him just now?

As soon as I confirmed that Sean Mori was the one I was going to meet up with, Bobby’s whole energy had shifted. And the direction it took felt negative, that was for sure.

The strange thing was, Bobby hadn’t technically said anything that would put Sean’s character into question. In fact, he hadn’t said anything about Sean. He just wanted to leave all of a sudden. Compared to Elliot’s openness with talking about Sean, Bobby’s behavior seemed kind of off. 

Maybe I was thinking about this too hard. Bobby could just be one of those people who didn’t like to gossip. Maybe he already knew that Sean had all of these crazy rumors flying around about him being a ghost hunter and he just didn’t want to add to the exaggeration. 

I wasn’t sure whether or not it would be strange to ask Bobby about Sean again. How would I even phrase my concern?

So I noticed that you completely avoided talking about Sean Mori last time we were hanging out. Tell me more about that.

Yeah right. That sounded so intrusive. And it didn’t matter how I rephrased my concern over and over again in my head, nothing seemed right.

The only other option I had was to ask Sean.

I found him waiting for me just off to the side of the sliding glass doors that were no longer operable. He was still in his arcade uniform. He had his hair pulled back in a low messy knot, which I guess was his version of professional. 

As I waved at him and approached, I was fully ready to ask him if he knew Bobby Reyes, but then I noticed something in his eyes.

Is he nervous?

At least that was the vibe I was getting from him. His hands were in his pockets and he seemed to be working his jaw a lot. He hadn’t even opened his mouth to say hello to me yet.

I decided to leave the Bobby stuff for another time. If Sean was already on edge, I didn’t want to make it worse.

Instead, I asked him if everything was okay.

“I was just thinking,” Sean said while staring at the gutted store lobby, “that the carousel might not be how you remember it. I don’t know if you still want to see it.”

I gave the inside of the old Goss a hard look. “Is that where they’re keeping it?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sean scratch the back of his neck. “For now, yeah. It’s in there. Just up the escalator.”

“And you can get us inside?” I looked up at Sean as I said it. We locked eyes and for a moment and I felt the hairs at the base of my neck stand up. As if in no certain terms I was saying: It looks creepy as hell, but I want to go in there with you.

There was something unflappable in Sean’s swampy green eyes. Something that said when it came to the weird stuff in this mall, he’d seen it all before.

“Yeah.” He took my hand. “I can get us inside.”

You can trust me, Aqua. I know what I’m doing.

Those were words that he didn’t say, but I couldn’t deny that was what I felt when his hand closed securely around mine.

He gave my hand a gentle squeeze.

“Let’s go.”

Since Sean was a mall employee, he had the keys to the internal corridors that served as a pipeline to the biggest retailers. As it turned out, the back doors of Gossamer weren’t completely sealed off to those hollow concrete hallways.

My heart was beating so hard, I was too scared to ask if what we were doing was allowed. Sean didn’t seem on edge anymore. In fact, ever since we started holding hands, he appeared calmer and more in control. 

It was already quiet in the corridor, but once we passed through those doors and closed ourselves inside of Goss, the silence reached a whole new level. Maybe it was the wall to wall carpet absorbing what little sound was left in the air. Maybe it had to do with the total lack of life and activity in what was supposed to be a place that had both.

If it hadn’t been for the pale emergency lights, we would have been wandering around through the dark. Still, Sean held my hand and pulled me along. At one point, he stopped and asked me if I wanted to keep going.

“You’ve never brought anyone back here before, have you?” I asked. It was a wild guess, but maybe that’s why he was so nervous earlier.

For a moment, Sean’s eyes got kind of wide, but then he broke out into a sheepish grin. 

“Not… not in a long while, no.”

He was still smiling, but he didn’t seem like he was going to elaborate, so I said, “I didn’t come all this way to go back now. I want to see my carousel.”

Sean’s smile grew wider as he laughed at my impatience. “Okay, okay. It’s right up here.”

The walk up the broken escalator was… about as creepy as you might expect. I could hear each of our footfalls reverberating off of the groovy metal in the escalator steps.

When we reached the top of the lift, Sean let go of my hand. He started scratching the back of his neck again. Then he stepped off to the side and gestured ahead of us. 

“It’s right over there. In the old bed and bath section.”

I jogged ahead of him, careful to avoid any piles of fallen light fixtures. I was out of breath by the time I reached the spot in the store where the ceiling sloped into a dome – the only shape that could contain the tiered roof of the carnival ride.

I don’t know what Sean was so worried about. Everything looked fine to me. Yeah, the ride was a little beat up and covered in dust and graffiti, but otherwise, it was everything that I remembered it to be.

“This is so cool,” I whispered under my breath, forgetting how eerie this all was. I took in everything, feeling my breath catch as I remembered how much I adored the braying horses mixed in with the lions and elephants. Back in the day, my go-to seat was a zebra frozen in mid-leap. 

Eager to hop onto my old mount for old times sake, I stretched out my hand towards the ride.

“You’re not going to ask about them?”

Oh. I stopped and looked back. I almost forgot about Sean.

“Ask about what?”

That nervous tension was back in the way he stood. His gaze followed the platform of the carousel.

“That.”

What did he mean? The graffiti? 

I looked again. Harder this time.

Then I… took a step back.

“What the…?”

This wasn’t your typical sort of street art. In fact, I take back even calling it graffiti in the first place. What I saw written on the carousel felt forced. As if the person who wrote it didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

And there were no words anywhere. Only numbers.

It didn’t take me long to realize that they were the same numbers written over and over and over. Sometimes vertically, sometimes in a circle or upside-down. But never backwards.

I read the numbers out loud. “0, 6, 0, 8, 8, 2, 5. What is that supposed to mean?”

Sean shook his head. “It’s 06, 08, 825.”

I didn’t think it would matter how the numbers were grouped, but apparently it mattered to Sean. And it didn’t take me long to find out why.

“How do you know?” I whispered, wishing that I had just kept my mouth shut.

“Because,” Sean said, his hand coming up to push some stray hair out of his eyes, “that’s how they show up in my mind whenever I see them.”

I looked over the strangled scrawlings made with black permanent markers. Sean must have gone through so many packs to get the numbers that big.

“Were they stuck in your head or something?” I asked, trying to sound casual. I didn’t like when Sean got so nervous because then he stopped talking. And I needed him to start explaining what I was looking at before this got too awkward.

“They’re still stuck there,” Sean whispered, closing his eyes. Then he inhaled and added, “It got to a point a few times where I thought my head was going to burst if I didn’t do something. I didn’t know what else to do, so I came here.”

Then I was right. Sean was in pain when he wrote the numbers. Based on the unsteady timbre of his voice, I’d say that he was still unsettled by it. 

I waved at the graffiti. “Is this not normal for you?”

For the first time in our conversations, I was drawing attention to the rumors about Sean. That there was weird shit happening in this mall and he was very involved in keeping it in check. I didn’t know if he cared about me seeing him that way, but for the time being, Sean didn’t seem caught off guard by what I was suggesting.

He looked hard at the numbers and crossed his arms.

“This? No. Not this. This is… new.”

Okay, well the way he answered that only made me want to believe in the rumors even more.

After that, Sean fell into another one of his silences. Guess he wasn’t going to give me anything else unless I dragged it out of him.

“Well?” I said. “Did writing them down help?”

Sean shrugged. “A little.” His sheepish little smile was back. “Not as much as you did.”

“Me?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “What are you talking about?”

Sean scratched the back of his neck. “Those headaches that I got? They were pretty intense. I hadn’t been seeing the numbers for very long. Maybe about four months or so. But with each week that passed, I was getting more of those unbearable migraines. Coming here and getting some of the repetition out of my system only gave me temporary relief. But then…”

Our gazes connected and I was hit with the memory of Sean zombie-walking past Elliot’s Emporium without a shirt on.

“Then one morning I saw you talking to Elliot and I swear after that, the headaches just stopped.”

Sean was so wound up that he had to catch his breath. 

That was either the most words he’d ever spoken all at once or a really major confession. The more time I spent with Sean, the more I got the feeling that he wasn’t used to talking to people about his personal experiences.

Before I had finished processing all of this, Sean added, “You saw the numbers and didn’t run away.” 

“Were you afraid of the headaches coming back if I had?” I asked, drifting closer to the carousel. Sure, it didn’t look as pretty as it used to, but if this was the only place Sean could get the numbers out of his system without being caught, then I couldn’t be mad about that.

Sean shuffled towards me, catching my hand before it could rest on the platform.

“Yeah, I was.” He was quiet for a moment, holding my hand but not quite grasping it as firmly as before. “I just felt like you had a right to know.”

He sighed and tugged a little at my hand. “Come on. We can go back now.”

I glanced at the carousel. “Can we stay a little while longer? I wanted to see if–”

Sean put his entire body between me and the carousel the moment I tried to reach for it again. A soft panic radiated off of him as he stood there, blocking me from coming any closer. 

“Um… you can’t.”