Chapter 7: The Debut from the Depths

"A haunted house?" I asked, my voice flat and devoid of all emotion. "You booked their debut performance at a seasonal, pop-up haunted house at the abandoned fairgrounds."

Joshua nodded enthusiastically, a promotional flyer clutched in his hand. It featured a cheesy-looking vampire and the words 'Fright-Fest 2024!' in dripping red letters. "It's perfect branding, Amy! Think of the mystique! Are they performers? Or are they actual ghosts? It's meta!"

"They are actual ghosts, you absolute turnip!" I hissed, smacking him on the arm with a rolled-up scroll of talisman paper. "The goal is for people not to know that! Putting them in a haunted house is like trying to hide a fish by throwing it back into the ocean!"

"Exactly! No one will suspect a thing!" he chirped, completely missing the point. "It's the last place they'd expect to find real ghosts!"

My arguments, as always, were like pebbles thrown against the thick, impenetrable wall of his enthusiasm. I argued about the risks of exposure, the potential for a mass panic, and the high probability of a ghost-hunting vlogger showing up and trying to exorcise the lead singer. He countered with words like 'buzz', 'viral potential', and 'unforgettable debut'.

And so, with a heart full of dread and a purse full of emergency talismans, I found myself in the dusty, cobweb-filled backstage area of the 'Mansion of Maniacs'. The air smelled of cheap fog-machine juice and desperation. Our "dressing room" was a storage closet filled with decapitated mannequins and boxes of fake blood. It was, to be frank, a little on the nose.

The Phantoms, however, were buzzing with excitement. Joshua had gotten them stage outfits. They were… a choice. He'd gone for a "haunted prince" aesthetic, which meant a lot of black leather, silver chains, and inexplicable frilly shirts. Kaito looked less like a pirate and more like a roadie for a goth-rock band.

"These britches be surprisingly comfortable for pillaging," he commented, doing a lunge that tested the seams of his leather pants.

"We look like the night itself, cloaked in shadow and romance!" Ren declared, practicing dramatic poses in a cracked mirror.

I was less concerned with their outfits and more with their stability. "Okay, everyone, listen up," I said, clapping my hands to get their attention. "This is a live performance with mortals. We need to be careful. Emi, no floating above the stage. Kaito, no phasing through the drum kit. Dullahan," I gave him a stern look, "you know the rule."

He nodded silently, patting his arm to make sure it was secure.

Joshua had somehow convinced the Fright-Fest organizer that the Phantom Idols were an avant-garde "ethereal wave" band. The stage was small, set up in the main hall of the haunted house, right between the 'Zombie Infestation Zone' and the 'Chainsaw Maniac's Lair'. The audience consisted of teenagers on dates, families with overly-excited kids, and a few goths who looked genuinely intrigued.

"And now," a pimply-faced worker in a vampire cape announced into a crackling microphone, "for a performance that will haunt you to your very soul… give it up for the Phantom Idols!"

The music started-a surprisingly catchy pop track Joshua had commissioned online. The Phantoms took the stage. For the first thirty seconds, it was… incredible. Their synchronized dancing was flawless. Ren's powerful voice filled the hall. They had a magnetic, otherworldly stage presence-literally.

Then, the chaos began.

The first hiccup was Kaito. During a particularly energetic spin, he got too into it, let out a mighty "Yarrrr!", and accidentally tossed his microphone into the air. His ghostly reflexes kicked in. Instead of letting it fall, his hand became transparent and phased right through the mic to catch it. A girl in the front row screamed, pointing. "Whoa! Cool special effect!"

My heart leaped into my throat. I slapped an 'Extra-Strength Corporeality' talisman onto a spare roll of duct tape and mentally willed it to stick to him from twenty feet away.

Next was Emi. During her solo, she was meant to glide gracefully across the stage. She glided a little too gracefully. Her feet lifted off the floor, and she floated a good six inches in the air for a full ten seconds. The crowd gasped. A guy with a phone yelled, "They got wires! That's awesome!"

I felt like I was going to have a stroke. My hands were already tracing the characters for a 'Gravity Reinforcement' charm on a napkin.

The grand finale of their disastrous debut, however, was all Dullahan. He was the center for the final dance break, a series of complex, powerful moves. He was nailing it. The crowd was going wild. Then, for the final, climactic pose, he was supposed to drop to one knee and strike the ground.

He struck the ground a little too hard.

There was a loud POP.

His head, which was not actually his original head but a very handsome, magically-sustained construct, flew off his shoulders. It soared in a perfect arc over the stage, a look of serene surprise on its face, and landed squarely in the overflowing popcorn bucket of a terrified-looking man in the front row.

Silence.

The music screeched to a halt. The other Phantoms froze in horror. The audience stared, mouths agape. My entire life flashed before my eyes. This was it. This was how we were exposed.

The man holding the popcorn bucket looked down at the handsome head nestled amongst the buttery kernels. He looked back at the headless body of Dullahan on stage. He looked at his friends. Then, he leaped to his feet and started cheering.

"BEST. HAUNTED. HOUSE. EVER!" he roared.

Suddenly, the entire crowd erupted in applause. "That was incredible!" "The effects are so realistic!" "Encore! Encore!"

Dullahan's body, acting on pure instinct, calmly walked off stage, retrieved his head from the popcorn bucket, tucked it under his arm, and walked back to center stage to take a bow with the rest of the group.

Backstage, amidst the decapitated mannequins, I was hyperventilating into a paper bag.

"Did you see that, Amy?!" Joshua was ecstatic, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "They loved us! We're a hit! The head thing was a stroke of genius!"

"It wasn't genius, it was a catastrophe!" I wheezed. "His head flew off, Joshua! His head! Flew! Off!"

Ren patted my shoulder. "'Twas but a happy accident, fair Amy. A twist of fate that has worked in our favor."

"We're famous!" chirped Lily, clapping her little ghostly hands.

I looked at their happy, excited faces. They had faced their first mortal audience and, through sheer, dumb luck, had won them over. My warnings, my carefully laid plans, my anxiety-all of it had been for nothing. I was living in a parody of a pop-star story, and I was the only one who seemed to realize how utterly insane it all was.

"I need a raise," I muttered, collapsing onto a box of fake spiders. "And hazard pay."