Phantom Brewing Company
by Author
When I think back to my death, the sensations feel fresh. Gravel grits against my cheek. Blood pools in my arteries and my last breath hisses out of my chest. My body crumbles in on itself like sheet metal. I can taste the iron and salt and gasoline smoke. Death is a shadow, following dutifully by my side.
The other inhabitants share this feeling. The woman in the billowing lace nightgown on the third floor twitches every now and then at the memory of her snapping neck and flailing limbs as she flung herself from the third-floor ledge. The Union soldier on the first-floor winces as the crack of opening beer cans, as if the Confederate who killed him has returned for a second shot at his throat. And when I hear the roar of a car speeding too fast down the thin cobblestone streets, I feel death in my phantom bones. I feel my body tumbling across the pavement outside.
They call our building The Grand. Formerly The Grand Charleston Hotel, built in 1806. Three stories and a basement. The original owner and his debutante wife keep to themselves in the second-floor bedroom-turned-half-storage-closet-half-bathroom. After the owner died in 1852, the owner’s son chased sugarcane money down to the Caribbean and left the hotel for foreclosure.
Once the city of Charleston repossessed the property, the spacious building became a sick ward for kids dying of yellow fever, mostly the poor kids whose parents couldn’t afford to send them to a lavish, sterile facility further inland. The yellow fever kids are hard to tell apart because they died so close to each other, sharing filth and sickness as they passed. The lady in lace and the Union soldier like the staircases. But most often, I see The Poet.
The first ghost tour of the day traipses through the first floor. They try to be quiet, so as not to wake the spirits that lurk in their midst, but their steps fall heavily on the aching floorboards.
“They take up so much space,” I say to The Poet as we watch, sitting on the bar top. The air is suddenly thick and moist with their breath and sweat. One person looks in my direction, a girl about my age with a septum nose ring.
The Poet sighs noncommittally. I haven’t asked him his name yet. I’m not sure names matter here, though the tourists call him The Artist.
“Ladies and gentleman, ghosts and ghouls,” the tour guide bellows. They launch into a rehearsed monologue about the history of The Grand. I feel a collective shiver run through the room when they describe the Union soldier’s bloody death.
“They always get this part wrong,” The Poet says with a sly smile as the tour guide tells the story. “The second bullet hit him in the neck, not the chest. The yellow fever kids. They’re on the second floor, not the third. That’s why the guides think they’re so hard to find.”
I lift my focus to the ceiling and see a faint yellow aura oozing out between the cracks in the wood and around the nails that hold the materials in place.
He doesn’t get a chance to finish before the lightbulbs go dark and a few of the tourists shriek. The Poet laughs under his breath and, I don’t know how I know, but he has a beautiful, aching smile, even when he’s smiling at someone else’s expense. I find myself smiling, too.
The tour guide clicks on a flashlight under their chin, casting their features in bold highlights and deep shadows. “Are there any spirits in our midst tonight?” they ask ominously. The room falls oppressively silent as the group waits for a creaking floorboard, a scraping chair, a squeaking hinge.
“Should we do anything?” I ask, and a few of them shiver, including the girl who looked in my direction.
He looks at me, or what I assume he can see of me, and then stands. He walks over the air between the bar and the blackboard like a new floor rises under his feet. Then, his hand materializes into startling relief. For a moment, I could almost believe he is human. He rests his hand on the chalkboard and smears the beer names with his fingertips. After drawing an X in the chalk dust, he hops down on the floor and his feet fall like heavy boots.
Flashlights swing in our direction and discover The Poet’s work. He smiles boyishly, then walks through the bar to lean against it next to me. “They like it when I do the X,” he says.
The tourists crowd the bar, gazing at his handiwork. They press up the bar top, and we overlap them like highlighter over ink.
“My friends,” the tour guide says as he examines the chalkboard. “The Artist is among us tonight.”
The other inhabitants share this feeling. The woman in the billowing lace nightgown on the third floor twitches every now and then at the memory of her snapping neck and flailing limbs as she flung herself from the third-floor ledge. The Union soldier on the first-floor winces as the crack of opening beer cans, as if the Confederate who killed him has returned for a second shot at his throat. And when I hear the roar of a car speeding too fast down the thin cobblestone streets, I feel death in my phantom bones. I feel my body tumbling across the pavement outside.
They call our building The Grand. Formerly The Grand Charleston Hotel, built in 1806. Three stories and a basement. The original owner and his debutante wife keep to themselves in the second-floor bedroom-turned-half-storage-closet-half-bathroom. After the owner died in 1852, the owner’s son chased sugarcane money down to the Caribbean and left the hotel for foreclosure.
Once the city of Charleston repossessed the property, the spacious building became a sick ward for kids dying of yellow fever, mostly the poor kids whose parents couldn’t afford to send them to a lavish, sterile facility further inland. The yellow fever kids are hard to tell apart because they died so close to each other, sharing filth and sickness as they passed. The lady in lace and the Union soldier like the staircases. But most often, I see The Poet.
The first ghost tour of the day traipses through the first floor. They try to be quiet, so as not to wake the spirits that lurk in their midst, but their steps fall heavily on the aching floorboards.
“They take up so much space,” I say to The Poet as we watch, sitting on the bar top. The air is suddenly thick and moist with their breath and sweat. One person looks in my direction, a girl about my age with a septum nose ring.
The Poet sighs noncommittally. I haven’t asked him his name yet. I’m not sure names matter here, though the tourists call him The Artist.
“Ladies and gentleman, ghosts and ghouls,” the tour guide bellows. They launch into a rehearsed monologue about the history of The Grand. I feel a collective shiver run through the room when they describe the Union soldier’s bloody death.
“They always get this part wrong,” The Poet says with a sly smile as the tour guide tells the story. “The second bullet hit him in the neck, not the chest. The yellow fever kids. They’re on the second floor, not the third. That’s why the guides think they’re so hard to find.”
I lift my focus to the ceiling and see a faint yellow aura oozing out between the cracks in the wood and around the nails that hold the materials in place.
He doesn’t get a chance to finish before the lightbulbs go dark and a few of the tourists shriek. The Poet laughs under his breath and, I don’t know how I know, but he has a beautiful, aching smile, even when he’s smiling at someone else’s expense. I find myself smiling, too.
The tour guide clicks on a flashlight under their chin, casting their features in bold highlights and deep shadows. “Are there any spirits in our midst tonight?” they ask ominously. The room falls oppressively silent as the group waits for a creaking floorboard, a scraping chair, a squeaking hinge.
“Should we do anything?” I ask, and a few of them shiver, including the girl who looked in my direction.
He looks at me, or what I assume he can see of me, and then stands. He walks over the air between the bar and the blackboard like a new floor rises under his feet. Then, his hand materializes into startling relief. For a moment, I could almost believe he is human. He rests his hand on the chalkboard and smears the beer names with his fingertips. After drawing an X in the chalk dust, he hops down on the floor and his feet fall like heavy boots.
Flashlights swing in our direction and discover The Poet’s work. He smiles boyishly, then walks through the bar to lean against it next to me. “They like it when I do the X,” he says.
The tourists crowd the bar, gazing at his handiwork. They press up the bar top, and we overlap them like highlighter over ink.
“My friends,” the tour guide says as he examines the chalkboard. “The Artist is among us tonight.”
Annie Earnshaw is a writer and editor from Charlotte, NC. She has a BA in English from Elon University, where she wrote a short story collection entitled "Six Ways to Say I Love You" (2021). Annie’s work has been featured in Allure, Carolina Muse, The Merrimack Review, and Alchemy. She also writes Hello Heroine, a (sometimes) weekly lifestyle newsletter.