The Ghost Breaker

Moonshine stills cool behind them, two fugitives—one laconic, one Black and brimful of side-eye—burst out of Appalachia only to be hijacked by a flapper heiress whose pearls gleam like subpoenas. She lures them to a crumbling Castilian fortress where moonlight drips through iron grilles, turning corridors into accusatory ribs. Inside, shadows double-cross themselves: a suit of armor clanks sans knight, a harpsichord sighs without fingers, and the scent of tuberose hangs thick as perjury. The hauntings, orchestrated by a debt-drowned Duke, are capitalist allegories wearing ectoplasmic drag—each ghost a ledger inked in fear. Our hero, half-huckster, half-virgin, negotiates trapdoors, secret Jesuit vaults, and his own cowardice while the manservant’s rolling eyes puncture every pretense of white chivalry. When the castle’s heart finally disgorges a chest of Aztec doubloons, greed pirouettes into slapstick: spangled flappers chase flaming shawls across the parapets, the Duke’s moustache wilts like week-old lettuce, and the real phantom turns out to be the American conscience, rattling chains forged from Manifest Destiny and unpaid wages.