Beyond - Volume 1 (YA Paranormal Romance) (17 page)

He plucks a few grass tufts. “I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now. Ever since my real mother died …”
The tufts in his hands are squashed to shreds.

I gulp.
So his real mom’s dead.
To me it’s so obvious and normal to have a mom. I didn’t even think about the people who might not have one.

“When you realize you’ll go to the end of the earth for someone, you can. I just have to kill myself to do it,” he says.

Killing yourself. He talks about it like it’s the most normal thing in the world, when I’m so shocked I almost fall over. Luckily the tree is supporting me.

“And then you become a blue ghost?” I ask
, gawking. There’s no other way I could put it, but it does sound awkward.

“Yes and no. The reason I’m blue is not because of being a ghost
. That’s just me.”

Now that he’s talking about it, the pieces of the puzzle fall back in place inside my head. Those ghosts I
see are different colors; sometimes they’re blue, sometimes black, sometimes even yellow.

“Why
are they different colors, then?” I ask.

He throws away the tufts of grass. “The colors stand for
the emotions you had when you died. Black is dangerous, it means you feel anger and hatred. Those ghosts can attack people, with and without objects. They try to scare you, because they get energy from it. They need the energy to remain in our world. In order for them to not dissipate, they need to feed on your fear. Except of course the ones that can come back to life.”

So that’s why that black phantom was constantly haunting me. A hostile
ghost that could’ve hurt me real bad if Damian hadn’t come to my rescue.

“Anyway, these ghosts
want to remain in our world. That’s the only reason there are any ghosts; they all don’t want to cross over into heaven or hell. Instead, they just hang somewhere in the middle, in between everything. You know, some people call it Limbo.” He grabs a few more grass tufts and pulls them from the ground.

“What about your color?” I ask
, fidgeting with the leaves on the ground too.

“Blue means the spirit is benevolent. It’s not common, because most ghosts aren’t ghosts for a very good reason. You wouldn’t stick on earth if you
were happy. So you can pretty much assume that the blue ones are always real people that can come back to life,” he says.

So that’s how I
can recognize them. The blue ghosts are all people defying death, just like Damian. Could there be more people who do this?

“I don’t understand how I didn’t recognize you after you came into my room as a spirit. I mean, I met you afterwards, yet I still couldn’t see it was you. I only found out after our kiss.” My face starts to glow when I think about his lips pressed upon mine.

“I can decide what I look like to the rest of the world in spirit form. There are restrictions though. I mean, I’ll always look like a human and much different than the ones that are permanently dead, but I can hide my face. I can mask it and make it an unrecognizable shape.”

“Okay. Well, that explains it. I already thought it was weird that I didn’t see it before,” I say.

“Yeah, I thought I did a good enough job changing my face so that it would stop you from seeing who I was. But then I met you, and I totally blanked out and forgot about our kiss in your room. Of course you’d recognize me after our kiss.”

I giggle a bit and my cheeks flush.

“But you can just float through walls, pickup objects and kiss me, as a ghost?” I ask. “How can you touch something when you go through it at the same time?”

“I can choose to be transparent. I can also choose to take a solid shape. If you quickly alternate the two, you c
an do anything.”

“Okay, I get it. And what about that yellow color
?” I ask.

“The yellow one means it’s a poltergeist. They’re only here to have fun scaring people, but they don’t do any harm. They’re in this world because they can’t say goodbye to the life they had
, and they try to continue it in their death.”

“So that means Joey.” I throw away the leaf I crumpled in my hand.

“In theory it’s possible for a ghost to change colors, yeah, but those are usually only the spirits who can return to their bodies. With us, our color is dependent on our mood,” Damian explains. “I should have a talk with Joey about harassing innocent girls.”

On Damian’s face is a cynical smile. Then he throws the grass at me.

While I wipe off the mess, Damian’s up and running. I sprint after him through the grass, flower petals crushed under our feet. I rip off some leaves from the trees around me and catch up to Damian. Just before he turns around, I jump on top of him, toppling us into the grass. I scatter the leaves all over his sputtering face. We’re right beside the pond now.

Laughing, we gaze at each other. His cheeks turn red
, and I can feel the excitement when I realize I’m right on top of him.

I’m sitting on Da
mian Hayes, and I’m enjoying it.

He lifts his hand and caresses my cheek with the
tips of his index and middle fingers. His touch tingles my skin, and I love it. I don’t want to get off him. I just want to kiss him on the lips, but my anxiety holds me back.

Then, from the corner of my eye, I spot dark brown shoes and the bottom of a gray dress. My breath falters while looking up. On
the woman’s head is the unmistakable weird metal construction.

I fall backward, my eyes widening, and see Damian frowning. “What’s the matter?” he asks with a worried voice.

My wobbly finger points at the woman in front of me. He turns his head at the same time I get
off the ground. My heart is racing, and my breathing is ragged.

Damian says nothing. He only stares at the lady in the gray dress. She seems to be looking into nothingness, not even at us, but I know she can see us. She’s just not taking any action.

Then she disappears. With my mouth wide open I gaze at the spot where the woman vanished within a fraction of a second.

“Who is that? I saw her at school too,” I ask, still catching my breath.

“A ghost,” he answers and scours the spot where she stood.

“How’s that possible? She doesn’t have a silhouette or
a color, like you. She’s not even translucent.”

Squatt
ing, Damian meticulously searches the grass. “Some ghosts can make themselves look like people of flesh and blood, almost undistinguishable from the real thing. At least, that’s our theory. A friend of mine says it’s possible these individuals are very powerful. We call them the Nimbles.”

I stay put like a statue, looking at him with a raised eyebrow. “One of your friends? Not Joey? There are more who do this? Are you telling me you know more people who die regularly?” I ask.

He sighs and gets up. “We’ve got no time for questions now. We have to get out of here.” He grabs me by my arm, and I barely manage to grab my bag off the grass before he drags me to the motorcycle.

“Why?” I ask.

“I just told you they’re after me too. What part didn’t you understand? We have to get away from here, before she comes back. Or do you want to stay until it’s fully dark and see what happens?”

I glare at him, but he ignores me. Though I do believe he thinks that woman is a threat. From his pocket he fetches his cell
phone.

“Spotted her again
. Get to the Shack right away, guys.” He snaps it shut again, puts on his helmet and gets on the motorcycle.

“What do you mean? You
’ve seen her before?”

Instead of answering, he hands me my helmet.
Heaving a sigh, I hop back on, and we ride off again. That lady spirit in her gray dress isn’t bothering just me, then. He sees her often too.
What does she want with us? Why is she showing herself and then disappearing again? Why is she spying on us?
If I want to find out, I can’t let Damian turn me away. I need to go to this Shack he was talking about.

The wind is blowing through my hair
, and I hold onto Damian tight. He seems to hit the gas more than last time. The noise drowns any attempt I make at talking. I’ll have to wait until we stop again, wherever that might be. When I see we’re riding down the road that goes to my house, I yell, “I’m not going home. I want to come with you. You can’t force me to get off.” But he doesn’t respond. I almost lose my calm when he turns onto a trail in the middle of the woods toward an old, abandoned house.

So this is the Shack. An abandoned house with an overgrown yard and windows that are nailed shut. This house gives me the creeps just looking at it. Graffiti is sprayed all over the walls
, and roof tiles are spread across the ground. No wonder Lillian sees Damian as a druggy, if she saw him go here. I would think the same.

The motorcycle
slows down and stops right before the Shack. We take off our helmets, and I hang them on the handle bars again while Damian locks the bike to a tree with a big chain.

“Why are you letting me come along?” I ask.

“You said it yourself; there’s no way I can get you off my back. I couldn’t force you off.”

So he
was listening to me when we were on the bike. While I was thinking there was too much noise to hear anything. “Yeah, but I never thought you’d agree with me so soon.”

“Well,
if you want to know more, now’s your chance. It’s become clear to me I can’t get rid of you very quickly,” he says with a wink.

“Hey!” I say and give him a little push.

“I didn’t say I mind it.” He smirks and makes me blush.

We walk across the path overgrown with weeds toward a closed door. The stones underneath my feet wobble
, and it seems like there are all kinds of rodents and bugs living there that I don’t want to know about. After a few jerks on the door, Damian rips off the wooden planks blocking the way, and we sneak inside through a narrow opening.

It’s dark inside. The place is only lighted by a single flashlight that Damian grabs from a cabinet in the hallway next to the door. He even brought a matchbox
, which he uses to light a couple of candles. Now I can see the house a little. It’s dirty; everything’s covered in dust and webs, and there’s not a single light switch in the house that works. The floors are made up of dirty gray stones that must’ve been white at some point in time. Wallpaper is partially ripped to shreds and hangs down. In some places there are paintings whose canvases are so weathered and crumbled that there’s barely anything left visible on them.

Right in front of us is a staircase
that’s missing multiple boards, so it seems too rickety to walk on. To the left of us is a room shut off with wooden planks and to the right an open room.

“C
’mon.” Damian leads me into the open room. In the middle is a big wooden table, probably antique, with a laptop standing on top of it. There’s a lot of strange equipment in the room, ranging from pots with powder and jellylike substances to a chemistry set and three dental chairs. Behind them is a machine with cords and adhesive stickers that look like electrodes, a machine which in my belief belongs in a hospital.

Then Damian starts taking off his bike suit
, which makes my pupils enlarge. All kinds of images shoot through my head that are too dirty to think about, but I still do. I’m lucky he’s still wearing clothes underneath.

“So is this … where you become ghosts?” I ask, hesitating.

Damian nods, puts his suit on the table and opens the laptop. “An empty house is a perfect location,” he says as he taps the keyboard a few times and clicks the mouse. “They’re on their way, so it can’t be long.”

I don’t know who ‘they’ are
. I only know Joey, but I guess I’ll find out who the other mysterious guests are. On the laptop screen, death notices and reports of spirit sightings flick on and off. ‘They’ are really keeping up with who died and where the ghosts are hiding.

My stomach grumbles
, and Damian hands me some sandwiches he made before leaving. Four in total, two each. I’m glad he thought about it. I just barged out of my house without thinking about lunch. When I’m ready to start talking the door creaks, and I know we have visitors.

“Joey!” From his voice I can
tell it’s Joey Mason, calling his own name. Probably to let us know it’s him. Then I hear more wood cracking, and a next yell is audible. “Jianyu,” a guy says whose voice I don’t recognize. This must be another one who can become a ghost.

Curious, I look at the hallway where both guys stand. Joey, w
ith his sleek posture and blond hair where his fingers glide through every couple of minutes. And then there’s this other guy, Jianyu, a guy with hooded eyes, glasses and black hair that’s combed straight down. He’s wearing a neat striped shirt and fitted dark jeans. His long thin body makes me think he’s around eighteen years old.

Full of confidence they walk into the room, wh
ere I lean on the table. I don’t know what position or attitude I should take when Jianyu sticks out his hand to greet me.