Unnatural Souls (2 page)

Only stress didn’t explain the events
that followed.

My first night home, I swore my bags
had unpacked themselves. No one else admitted to doing it, and I
knew I hadn’t. Which seemed … well, weird. Once again I tried to
explain it away—mental exhaustion, I thought. I’d done it myself,
and then forgotten. Or something.

But as the days and weeks went by and
the odd events continued happening, I began to doubt it was just
stress. Then one day it all came to a head. My phone fell behind my
bed, which wasn’t light, but a solid wood, sleigh-style bed. When I
pushed it, using the strength it would normally take to budge it
even an inch, I ended up sending the thing sliding across the
length of my room and slamming into my desk.

I stared at the bed, panicked, and
knew there was no way the doctors’ excuses explained that one away.
That’s when the objects began to move right in front of my eyes. I
picked up my phone with a shaky hand, and the bed moved back into
place on its own.

I tried to ignore it all
but it continued, and the more time went by, the more freaked out I
became. Still, it wasn’t until the day I was running late for
school that I truly had to accept that something was seriously
wrong with me. I had the thought that there was no way I’d make it
to school in time, and
boom
, in the blink of an eye, I
found myself standing alone in the girl’s bathroom right outside
first period. Just in time.

Or I would have been if I hadn’t
completely freaked out and spent my first class curled up in the
fetal position.

I didn’t know how, or why, but
something else had happened to me the night of the accident. It
hadn’t been a dream, I realized—that scene that I’d seen was real.
My brother had made a deal with the devil—or maybe something
slightly less dramatic—to bring me back.

But what did he bring me
back
to
?

What happened after he made the deal
for my life, and what did it have to do with what was going on with
me now? I didn’t know, but it had to be connected. Had that man
truly given me my life back? Had it been tainted by whatever magic
he’d used to do it?

A pillow hit the wall with
enough force to send feathers flying, and I buried my head in my
lap, holding back a scream of frustration.
Go away, please stop
. But my silent
pleas didn’t help. They never had. I could hear the objects moving
and hitting walls but refused to watch, feeling like a little girl
hiding from the bogyman. It would stop soon. It always did. I just
had to wait it out.

Please.

A soft knock came at the door, and I
whipped my head up from my lap, petrified that someone else would
see. What would they think if they saw what was going on? Running
away screaming would be a great reaction. Something involving a
priest flinging holy water in my face and chanting “Be gone,
devil”?

Worse?

Everything froze for a moment, then
fell to the ground … right before my mom poked her head
in.

“
Grace, honey.” It was the
voice I had come to think of as my mom’s “soothing” voice, which
made it sound like she was talking to a child, or trying to talk
someone out of jumping off a bridge. She was still treating me as
if I might break down at any moment.

It wasn’t far from the
truth.

I remained glued to the wall, and my
mom looked at me with a raised brow. “I’ve been calling you for
breakfast.” She glanced around the room, but said nothing about the
disarray.

I couldn’t recall my mom ever needing
to tell me to clean my room, though, and I knew she was probably
thinking the same thing. But what could I say about it? How did one
go about explaining that they had new powers they couldn’t
control—without being put on crazy pills for the rest of their
life?

“
Sorry,” I replied with a
shaky voice, my body still plastered against the wall.

“
Are you okay?” My mom
stepped further into the room and I finally managed to move. My
limbs felt heavy, and I couldn’t stop shaking, but at least I was
moving. It was a start. Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed,
I rose and wrapped my arms around her waist. I had lost count of
how many times she had asked that question. Hundreds, thousands
maybe? My answer was always the same.

“
I’m fine,” I lied.
I’m just a freak surrounded by supernatural
oddness every day, and I’m slowly losing my grip with reality. Oh,
and it’s because your son sold his soul to save my life. No big
deal, right?

“
It’s just…” Mom started,
avoiding eye contact with me. Her hand ran up and down my arm, and
she abruptly bent down and picked up a few books, placing them on
the empty desk. “You haven’t been the same since…” Her voice
trailed off, as it always did. I knew what she meant, and also knew
that she was never able to finish that sentence.

None of them could.

The tightness returned to my chest,
and tears threatened to fall again. My shoulders sagged. My parents
had almost lost their little girl, and my brother did something
horrible to save me. I had to deal with this, fix it if I could,
but I couldn’t let anyone know how broken I felt right now. Not
when they’d already been through so much.

You will not
cry.

“
Mom,” I sighed, not
wanting to go through this again, “I’m really okay.”

“
No,” my mom insisted,
finally making eye contact. “You haven’t been yourself. You’re
jumpy. I’ve been ignoring it. You went through a lot and I knew you
would need time to heal, mentally as much as physically. It’s been
months, though. Your friends are always calling, but you never go
out. I know it’s scary, honey, but you have to get back out
there.”

I bit my tongue. It wasn’t
scary, it was
terrifying
. And it wasn’t the idea
of hanging out with people that I feared. It wasn’t getting in a
car again. It was … well, nothing my mother could imagine, and
nothing I could tell anyone about. They’d have me
institutionalized, and I couldn’t blame them. How do you tell your
parents that you see ghosts, and can move objects with your mind?
Worse, what if they witnessed it and wanted nothing to do with me?
I’d lose what little I had left, the small part of normalcy that
was keeping me sane…ish.

So I lied, as I slowly lost my mind.
Alone.

“
I know, Mom. I’m actually
staying after school today to study with the girls.” It wasn’t even
remotely true, but I could stay after and do some research in the
library, and let my mom think I was with my friends. It would keep
her happy for a little while, and the questions at bay. Maybe long
enough for me to figure out what I was going to do about this
mess.

My mom’s eyes widened and she smiled.
“Great,” she said, enthusiasm bubbling off of her. “Ash already
left with Jason. Do you need a ride to school?”

I nodded, and my mom—seeming to feel
better—left me to get ready. I cast a wary look around the room,
itching to pick everything back up, to put it all back in perfect
order. But I was so tired of cleaning up after the crazy
tornados—“craznados,” as I referred to them—that even though I
hated it, I left everything where it was. It wasn’t like cleaning
it up would keep it from happening again.

I grabbed my backpack, snatched up a
book that had landed on the windowsill and the homework that was
scattered across my bed, and left.

As I walked out of the room, I threw
one last glance behind me and sighed. Would my life ever be normal
again?

JOURNAL ENTRY—APRIL 5

NO INCIDENTS,
YET.

And the day was almost
over. A large grin spread across my face. One full day without a
single object moving. I hadn’t teleported home—which always forced
me to run back to school, since I couldn’t control the
teleportation well enough to get back. But there had been none of
that. And even better, there had also been no ghosts. I could
almost squeal in excitement for that one alone. It meant I could
pretend to be as shocked as everyone else when a door slammed shut
on its own. You jump back automatically. No need for acting there,
because I’m always genuinely surprised, too. Then you just look
around like,
Oh my gosh, that was so
weird, right?
Yeah, I had that
perfected.

Even when I’d been the one who had
closed the door.

It was much more difficult, however,
to explain why you were talking to someone no one else could see.
Mumbling something about memorization for a test always seemed to
work. Though there were a stressful few seconds as you watched the
other person’s face crinkle in confusion as they tried to decide if
they believed you, or heard you right, before they finally shrugged
it off and walked away.

Anyway, the day itself wasn’t quite
over—yet. School was though, and that was enough to give me hope.
Something I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

My classmates had scattered to their
lockers and out the doors to their cars, to practices and
afterschool activities. Which meant the place was empty. And I was
safe—for the moment. So, with hope in my heart, and surrounded by
peacefully vacant halls, I headed to the library for today’s
research.

When I entered, I headed straight for
the back. The old librarian didn’t even glance up from his phone
when I walked by. His glasses were perched on the brink of his nose
as he stared intently at the device, and I almost grinned. Of
course he wasn’t going to look at me—he was used to me by now. I
had been collecting stacks of books that might give me answers for
months. Some I had gotten from this library, some I had bought and
stashed here. After all, I didn’t want my mom finding them in my
room. The librarian didn’t seem to notice that I’d been adding to
the pile, though, and every time I came in it was
untouched.

Thank God.

I passed by rows and rows of books,
the room getting darker the further I went. There were cubicles
hidden away here that I was fairly certain no one ever used,
judging by the dust that had collected on them. That’s where I hid
my collection. Now, I was praying that my day of good luck might
just carry over into my research on how to get Ash his soul
back.

As much as I cared about controlling
whatever was going on with me so that I could one day lead a
semi-normal life, Ash was more important. My life might suck at the
moment, but his problem had a timer on it. Specifically, the time
he had left until he lost his soul. And it was ticking away faster
by the day. The memory of the night I should have died rolled
through my mind as I began combing through the stack of books I’d
compiled at the back. Images of Ash standing in a clearing with a
red-eyed demon, his hand extended.

I’d watched in horror as Ash shook
hands with that thing, agreeing to give up his soul in one year. In
exchange for saving my life.

An all-too-familiar ache spread
through my chest, constricting my lungs. My baby brother, so
overwhelmed with guilt because he’d been the one driving at the
time of the accident that put me in the hospital, had given up his
soul to save me. And there’d been no hesitation in his voice. No
sign of second-guessing himself. He’d been sure that he was doing
the right thing. It was the most loving token in the world—and at
the same time, the most heartbreaking.

I turned to the very back
corner of the cubicle where my stash sat and grabbed a handful of
books from the top of the third pile. Slumping into the seat, I
dropped the armful of books on the desk, a puff of dust surrounding
me when I did.
Goes to show how much
teenagers check out books in the library nowadays,
geesh.

I plucked up the closest
book, entitled
True
Believers
, and ran a finger down the
spine, sighing. I had searched through every book I could get my
hands on—and I’d been doing it for so long that I was starting to
forget why I kept at it. Nothing had worked, but I couldn’t just
give up. I split my time between books, websites, and online chat
rooms for believers just like the ones in these books. If I kept
looking, I had to find
something
.