floating in a tin can

It happened in June; a terrible explosion in Bed-Stuy, not far from one of those cheap pay-by-the-hour roach hotels the city is always trying to shut down. Nobody is sure what caused it, and actual reports of the incident vary wildly, most reporting things so obviously impossible that nobody's eyewitness testimony can be trusted. The media briefly speculated terrorism, but the panic over that died down quickly when it turned out no one was hurt and nobody stepped forward to claim credit for it. The incident eventually came to be buried under various and sundry more pressing tragedies that garnered more ratings.

Two weeks later, overnight, the building was standing exactly where it had been before, not a single brick out of place. Nobody could ever explain it.

——

In late July in District X, a shopfront that had stood empty for years (nobody is falling all over themselves for real estate here, and it's not the best neighbourhood to open up a business) takes down the 'For Lease' sign; a few days later the door is unlocked. There's no sign and the window displays are empty, a white backdrop hiding the inside from street view. You have to know where you're going to find it, it's word of mouth only.

People claim they saw a tall, angular man with salt-and-pepper hair and a goatee hanging around the neighbourhood. Not a mutant, they say, but... something Other.

Inside the store, it's as run-down as ever, the walls waterstained and ceiling cracked, with shitty dim fluorescent lighting. But it's full of stuff, now, locked glass countertops full of things — small amulets in the shape of eyes and hands, old coins, small slips of paper in glass bottles. It doesn't take long for it to build a reputation. People say it's haunted, that you can see ghosts hovering in the corners, disappearing if you look at them directly; they say you can hear noises from it at night, and strange lights.

But the front door jingles when you open it and an iPod in an old speaker tucked in the corner plays quiet indie rock and 60's folk, not the Gregorian chanting you'd expect from a supposedly haunted occult store.

They're standing with their back to the door, grinding some kind of leaf into a paste with an old-fashioned stone mortar and pestle when the door gives off its tell-tale jingle, but they don't turn around right away; they're a tall figure in a white v-neck and skinny jeans rolled up at the cuffs, bare feet, blonde hair reaching their shoulderblades. “Just a minute,” they say in highly accented English.