Beyond - Volume 1 (YA Paranormal Romance) (12 page)

“Why did you write it?” I ask. “And what were you doing with Joey at the park yesterday?”

First he looks around to see if there’s anyone watching us, but we’re all alone. Then he comes closer to me. Instinctively I withdraw, bumping into the wall behind me. He pushes against my shoulder.

“Stop asking questions. It’s for your own good,” he whispers in my e
ar.

Is that
a threat?

“N
o, I won’t stop,” I answer and bite my lip. He frowns and pushes himself off me. Then he marches away fast. Again I’m letting him slip through my fingers. I can’t, I have to follow him. When I try to go after him, Lillian and Emma stand in front of me, gawking.

“What are you doing, Raven?
” Lillian folds her arms. “You shouldn’t hang around Damian. He’s not good for you, not for anyone. Look at how he behaves,” Lillian says. “Your date obviously didn’t go so well. I mean, look at how he ran off. Just let it go, Raven.”

“Our date went fine. He’s just angry about something else,” I lie. “Wh
y shouldn’t I hang around him?”

“Well, didn’t you see that house he
lives in? His parents are wackos and drunks! And look at Damian: he ignores school rules, does what he wants and regularly disappears off the planet,” she says, circling her finger around her temple. “I’ve heard people talking, Raven. It’s not good. They even say he uses drugs, because he’s never around and when he actually is, he looks stoned.”

I tap my
foot as Damian disappears from my sight.

“It’d be better for you if you didn’t hang around him,” she repeats.

“I can’t believe this crap is coming from your mouth. I thought you were my friend.”

For a moment there’s silence between us.

“Well, I can decide for myself who I hang with.” I barge away, infuriated.

“Fine. Why do I even care?
But don’t come crying to me when he’s done with you!” she yells.

I refuse to say anyt
hing to her.

Nobody tells me who to trust and who not to trust. I ca
n find out for myself. What on Earth is she thinking getting in my business anyway? I’m not helpless. Damian can’t hurt me. I don’t need Lillian and Emma to decide that for me.

I walk down the staircase
in the hallway up ahead as Damian sprints away toward another set of stairs. I’m not planning on going to my next class. I have to find out the truth.

I pursue Damian down the next set of stairs
, which have a sign on them saying ‘prohibited’. I arrive in the basement of the school. Spider webs hang from the walls and ceiling, and there’s a little room to the right which contains a couple of brooms, mops, some detergent, and a couple of old tables. The only source of light is a small light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

Damian is in the middle of the basement, a few steps away from me. His eyes find my face. Then they drift off toward something between us.
The black ghost is floating in the hallway. It’s flying a random pattern in between the wall and the ceiling.

My bag drops to the floor.
My hallucinations have now found their way into my school. I rummage through my bag, looking for the bottle of pills. With trembling fingers I take out two pills and bring them to my mouth. Then I see Damian’s eyes following Sam. I shudder with the pills clenched in my hand and realize what’s going on. Damian can see my hallucinations too.

I don’t have time to respond to what’s happening, because Sam flies toward me. I fall backward. He’s coming so close to me that I can see the smoke dripping off him like mud. His narrow eyes stare into my soul.

Why now? I don’t want this, not here, not now.

My whole body shakes as I crawl backward on hands and feet. I feel my way across the floor to get away, but he keeps following me. When my hands feel the cold wall, I know I can’t go any farther. What now? This thing seems to have focused on me. I’m trapped in a corner, with no way out.

Damian Hayes stares at the floating ghost.

“Get lost or I’ll make sure you regret coming here!” Damian yells.

I don’t think he’s talking to me, because he’s not looking at me. Suddenly he walks away and leaves me here alone with Sam.

“Wait!” I cry. “Don’t leave me!” But it’s too late, he already ran toward the room filled with mops and detergent. I wonder if he’ll come back.

I cross my arms in front of my face, hoping it’ll protect me and make this ghost go away. His disg
usting eyes look at me like I’m a toy, something to play around with. I feel paralyzed by the fear creeping inside of me. My heart begins to race again. I can’t run away, even though I’d love to. I’m nailed to the floor. This reminds me too much of that time on the road, when I first saw him at Lillian’s party. I see it all in my mind: a flashback of Sam with the wooden arrow in his hand, the ghosts that haunted me in the woods and Damian who brought me home on his motorcycle.

Then the blue transparent ghost appears again. Only this time he’s not in my room, nor at the pond, but in my school
, and he’s coming right out of the room that Damian just entered.

“Damian!” I exclaim, but there’s no response.

The blue ghost floats to the black one. In his hand he holds a device which I don’t recognize, but it looks like a wooden box. Sam turns around, sees the blue ghost and tries to flee, but it’s already too late. The blue one is chasing him around the room. They only have their eyes on each other now. This is my chance.

I push myself up from the floor and run as fast as I can toward the room Damian’s in. Maybe I’m safe here, for now, but I’m too curious to duck for cover.
I want to know more about this. I stop at the door to pant and watch the ghosts in action. I can’t keep my eyes off this spectacle. Their smoke fills the hallway, covering it in black and blue stripes.

Won’t they follow me? Wh
y are they here? Why are these delusions getting stronger?
I don’t understand any of this. I have to think of something to make it stop. Something I know that works.

The pills!

I glance at my bag that’s still on the floor, near the phantoms. The bottle is still in there. It’s impossible to reach without them seeing me and I don’t want to be seen, especially not by Sam.

The blue ghost
puts the box on the floor and makes such fast movements I can hardly keep up. They fight; the blue one is trying to get Sam near the box. It’s all going so fast that there’s only vague flashes of smoke when they move. They leave faint spots on the walls that fade after a few seconds, just like a handprint on a window.

Then a shock runs through the black ghost as
an electrical charge shoots out of the box. Sam disperses like clearing mist. The smoke in the hallway dissipates.

The blue ghost bends down and picks up the box from the floor. Then he turns around and starts walking toward me.

I shriek, cover my mouth with my hands and walk backward into the room.
Please don’t come to me, please don’t come any closer. Stay away.
I count down the seconds, hoping it’s all just in my head.

I slam the door and walk
farther backward. Every step I get farther away from those ghosts, the safer I feel, even if it’s only by a small amount. It makes no sense, because I’m stuck here. This is a dead end. There’s no way out. I’m stuck in a small room with just my fear and a blue ghost coming toward me.

Suddenly I trip over something and fall down to the floor. When I get up and look at what it was that made me stumble, I squeal.

It’s the lifeless body of Damian Hayes.

I put my hand over
my mouth to keep myself from screaming. I look up to see if the ghost isn’t here, then sneak closer to Damian’s head. He looks handsome, even though this is really not the time to think about that, but I just can’t keep my eyes off him. His eyes are closed. I put my head near his nose and listen, but I can’t hear anything. Not a snort, not a sniff, nothing. I press my finger against his neck and another one on his wrist. I swallow. There’s no heartbeat.

I have to do something!

I think about my mom and what she used to tell me about situations like this. Pinch the nose, blow air into the lungs through the mouth. If that doesn’t work, press two hands against his chest.

I pull up his shirt and see his muscular torso. Strapped around it is a band connected to a strange little box
that rests on top of his heart.

What the heck is that? Oh well, let’s try blowing some air into him first.

Just do it.
I pinch his nose, but before I can press my lips against his, a blue glow appears in the door-window.

The light grows and then comes right through the door. I look at the ghost while releasing Damian’s nose from my grip. I wonder what this ghost is going to do. A loud bleep goes off, somewhere close to Damian’s wrist. There’s a strange watch attached to him. When I touch it, the ghost raises his hand.

I release Damian’s hand. The bleeping sound repeats itself and then there’s a light buzzing coming from the little box on his chest. His body convulses, moving up and down again. Then the blue ghost in front of me dissolves and Damian’s gasping for air. When he opens his eyes I’m sure of it; he’s the blue ghost.

My head feels like it’s going to explode. There’s so much information I have to filter. I’m so confused. My hallucination isn’t
a hallucination; it never was. All this time I thought I was kissing a ghost from my fantasy, a somatic hallucination. But I kissed with a ghost before I kissed Damian and the feelings and kisses matched.
Damian really is that ghost!

He is a phantom
, but he’s alive too. I saw him walking, I felt his breath on my neck, and I kissed him. He’s real. Others can see him too and know he exists.
He’s not dead, but how can he be a ghost? How can a person be a ghost and alive at the same time?

Damian’s still coughing and tries to get up, but I stop him. “Wait,” I say and I walk into the hallway. My bag is still on the floor and some of the pens and paper tumbled out, but also my bottle of water. With haste, I pick everything up and bolt back to the room Damian’s in. I find him leaning against the wall.

I remove the cap from the bottle. “Here, drink it,” I say, and shove it into his hand.

“Thanks,” he says. He gulps down half of the bottle and gives it back to me.

“So, you can become a ghost?” I ask swiftly. It’s out before I realize it and I’m already ashamed of it. I shouldn’t be bothering him with my questions right after all this happened. He just died.

I put the cap back on the bottle as I keep my gaze on him. His eyes narrow and he frowns.

“Like I said, I’m not going to say anything.” He tries to stand up again by leaning against a table. “I think you’re daydreaming,” he says.

I form a ball with my fists.
How can he say that? How can he straight up lie to my face?

“I’ve seen you, Damian. You can become a ghost! It’s you, the blue ghost in the hallway, the same one I saw i
n my bedroom and at the pond.”

While saying nothing, he helps himself out the door by leaning against the wall. He looks weak. His legs are shaking
, and he can barely support his own body. I keep following him.

“You wrote in my diary, because they
are
real,” I yell. “You didn’t want to tell me, did you? Those ghosts I see are real!” I know he’s having a rough time, but I have to hear what he has to say. He’s just as stubborn as me, but I will find out the truth no matter what it takes.

“Why did you write that? If you deny everything anyway?” I ask.

Then he turns around to face me. “Because I didn’t want you to be afraid.” His eyes become big and he slaps his hand in front of his mouth. Then he turns around again and stumbles away, without looking back.

“What?” I stop in the doorway.
So he did lie about the fact that he wrote in my diary. I don’t see hallucinations, I see ghosts. Real ghosts.
“So you admit it! You knew all along I saw those ghosts in the woods and that they terrified me. You saw them too. And you chose to tell me through three words? By writing it in my diary?” I walk back to the room to get my bag and run after him again. I’m not going to let him walk away. Not when I’ve finally got him to talk.

Then he drops to the floor.

I bolt over to him. I try to help him get up, but he pushes me away while coughing.

“Why are you trying to keep everything a secret from me and still protect me? You were keeping an eye on my in the park, weren’t you? You were afraid I was going to say something,” I say, vicious.

“Aren’t you afraid of me?” he asks as he slides down against the wall.

“No,” I say, even though I’m not too sure about that.

“You should be.” His eyes are like fire, like he’s ready to attack me at any given time. I’m not afraid of his flames. “Why not?” he asks.

“All my life … I’ve been seeing these things. I know what they are now. I’m not afraid of them anymore, not now
that I know it’s all real. Those ghosts, I don’t want to be afraid of them anymore.”