Beyond - Volume 1 (YA Paranormal Romance) (18 page)

“Damian told me about you,” he says
, and I see them watching each other. Damian’s face turns red, and Jianyu sniggers.

“Is this it? Or are there more of you?” I snap. I feel a bit embarrassed by what Jianyu said, so I’m not really in the mood to talk about my relationship with Damian.

“No, there are only three of us. If there are more people capable of doing this, we don’t know for sure yet,” Jianyu says as he walks to Damian to give him a firm handshake.

“Hey Stone,” Joey says.

I roll my eyes and frown.

“I hope I didn’t upset you with what I did in your room the other night, with the diary and stuff. I just couldn’t resist. I just didn’t know you’d be so jumpy about it
. Sorry, Cutie.” Joey tries to hug me, but I push him away.

“I’ll call you poltergeist from now on, alright? Because you’re such a pain in the ass. And by the way, how is it possible anyway that I could only see these ghosts after I touched the Ouija board? I never saw them before that,” I ask, now that Joey started
on the subject anyway.

“I have no idea,” Joey says
, shrugging.

Damian walks over to us with one eyebrow raised.
“She keeps getting closer to us every time. We really have to start watching ourselves,” Damian says.

By
“she,” I guess he means the lady in the gray dress.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll protect this chick when she attacks again. No problem.” Joey puts his arm around me, but I turn away.  Then I step closer to Damian and glare at him, hoping he can make Joey stop.

Joey stays put for a few seconds, and then a contemptuous smile appears on his face. “Whatever, I don’t care. You can have her. She’s not my type anyway,” he says. He runs his fingers through his hair and then walks off to Jianyu, who’s behind the laptop. As if he ever had a shot. I’m not for sale. Damian and I eye each other, trying to hold in our laughter.

“If I may,” Jianyu says. “The reason you saw those ghosts the moment you touched the Ouija board might be because you were suddenly vulnerable to them. Like you opened up to them. Before that, you always blocked them out. Your brain constantly told you no
ne of it was true, until you touched the Ouija board and started believing in them. It was enough to break the barrier in your mind. Now the big question is where this blockage came from,” he explains.

I lean against the table and let everything sink in. So all these years I thought I was hallucinating, I’ve actually just been shutting myself off from ghosts. I could’ve been seeing them my entire life, but I
chose to ignore them and to tuck the memories away somewhere deep inside myself.

“Why do you all know so much about this? Where do you get all that information?  I ask.

“Damian ‘taught’ us how to do it,” Joey says, making air quotes with his fingers.

Damian scratches behind his ears and sighs.

“Look. You have to think about death and what you would look like if you were dead. So a ghost,” Jianyu explains. “But you can only do that if you know what they look like, so you have to see them first. Otherwise the spirit just crosses over. To become a ghost you must have a reason. Call it an assignment.” Jianyu turns his face toward the laptop screen again and starts ramming on the keyboard.

“So you guys have an ‘assignment’?” I ask
, making air quotes like Joey did.

“Yeah. Catching ghosts,” Damian says blunt
ly, and he signals Joey to come to the laptop. Why is Damian cutting me off? Is he still keeping secrets from me?

“Why?” I continue, but Damian throws me a piercing look and then gazes at the laptop again.

“I do it for the power, the kick,” Joey says. “When you’re a ghost you can go anywhere you like and do anything you want. Nothing’s impossible. Or am I saying too much now?” he asks while turning to Jianyu. He only shakes his head and doesn’t even make an effort to speak.

“Moving yourself with a blink of an eye, picking things up and making them float. When you’re really practiced, you can even touch people,” Joey says as he pinches my arm.

In secret I watch Damian. I know he can touch me, because he kissed me in his spirit form.

“But there is a catch,” Joey continues. His jaw tighten
s, and he presses his lips together. It’s as if he’s actually serious, which I find highly unusual for Joey. “The power is addictive. You’ll only understand it once you’ve done it yourself.” He takes out a packet of cigarettes and lights one up. “You can even get so addicted you don’t want to return to your body.” Joey blows rings of smoke, making me cough. “The only ghosts you’ve seen so far are those who can’t return to their too badly damaged bodies. Just regular dead people.”

Fascinated
, I listen to his story, hoping he continues so I can understand more about what it is they do. The ghosts I see every day can’t return to their bodies. They’re stuck here. They chose to haunt our world forever.

“But there are also ghosts who can go back
. They just don’t want to. They could go back anytime, yet they try to stay dead for as long as possible. Those are the ones addicted to the power. Damian knows one …” Joey throws a dirty look at Damian, who in turn glares at him.

“We’re starting
. Get over here,” Damian says bluntly, cutting Joey off.

Joey
shrugs and does what he’s told.

Damian knows one? What does he mean
, and why isn’t he allowed to tell me about it?

I stand closer to the laptop and see Jianyu configuring something in an unknown program. “Wrote the code myself,” he says when he sees my fa
ce, while I gape at the screen.

“Are you serious? You did this yourself?” I ask.

He nods and then says, “Ready!”

The
guys each sit down on a different chair and then pull off their shirts. Around each of their torsos is a band that holds a tiny box right on top of the heart.

I stare at the
guys, especially Damian, whose exposed chest makes me want to touch him. I shake my head to get myself together. In the meantime, Jianyu sticks electrodes on their bodies and connects them to the beeping machine behind the chairs.

“What are those for?” I ask.

“I have to keep track of the time, so I know how long they’ve been dead. Plus, I need to know if everything went well when they come back. Monitoring their heart rates is important,” Jianyu says.

Joey points at the machine. “We stole it from the hospital as ghosts a long time ago.” He chortles.

I’m surprised how easy going Joey is, talking about all this. Then it hits me what they’re about to do.

“Wait,
hold on a second … you guys want to die, right here, now?” My tone of voice is higher than usual. “Why?”

“The woman you saw—” Jianyu starts.

“Where she goes, the other one follows,” Damian interrupts him. “Put on your timers.” The guys turn the button on their watches, short bleeps come from the clockworks. So that’s how they do it. That’s how they kill themselves.

Five. My heart beats like a pair of drums. Six. The bleeps are getting faster and faster. Seven. My chest is going up and down with the heavy breaths I take. Eight. It’s almost time. Nine. Damian closes his eyes
, and Joey steadies his hands around the elbow-rests. I hold my breath. Ten.

The watches send signals to the boxes on their chests. Damian’s face winces in pain. His lips curl downward, making his teeth visible. Shocks travel through his entire body, and he wobbles up and down. Then he’s still and lies motionless in the chair. From his body a glowing ghost emerges and floats away through the wall. It’s like his soul has gone to heaven.

I clamp my arms around my body to stop myself from shaking. A tear runs down my cheek. My breaths are short and ragged. Panic is the first thing I feel when I realize the
guys in front of me, lying in the chairs, just died.

No, I have to pull myself together. It’ll be alright. They do it often. This is normal to them, I tell myself. But it doesn’t feel right. Last time at school, Damian spit up blood
. That can’t be healthy.

“Don’t worry, they’ll be back wi
thin two minutes,” Jianyu says.

Two minutes, is it that short? Can they do so much in so little time?
Joey said they can go anywhere they want, wherever they want.
But how can they find what they’re looking for in this huge world with just two minutes?

I don’t want to look at them. “What are they doing now?” I move my chair
away from the table and sit beside Jianyu, so I can look at the laptop. The constant bleeping of the machine that monitors their flat-lined heart rates makes me nervous. Acid reflux burns my throat, from thinking about the dead bodies.

“They’re looking for … someone,” he
wavers while peering at the clock on the screen. I watch too and count the seconds in my head. Someone. Again, such a vague answer. Why are they still keeping secrets from me?

“How do you do it then?
Do you know where all those ghosts are? At least, I’m assuming he’s looking for one,” I ask. What else is he supposed to look for? If it was a normal person, he wouldn’t do it by dying, I’m sure.

“Yes and no. Limbo isn’t like our world, the one you’re seeing right now. It’s a shadow realm, in ash gray colors, with lost souls wandering around everywhere in the never-ending emptiness. Only
, people who can come back to life see it in different colors.”

My breath stops. The place he’s talking about
, I’ve seen it. When I fainted at Lillian’s party, I was there.

I’ve already seen the ghost world, Limbo.

“I was there!” I scream, a bit too loudly maybe. I shrink back in my chair.

“That’s possible, yeah. Did you faint or lose consciousness?” he asks. I nod. “People who faint or end up in a coma
sometimes get connected to Limbo,” he continues. “It’s because they’re unable to live in our world at that moment. How do you say it … they’re temporarily separated from their body, but only a tiny fragment. People who end up in Limbo like that can’t go anywhere, not like real dead people. Though I haven’t been able to study it yet. There are only few people who can do it, I believe.”

A shiver runs along my spine. So that’s why I was there when I fainted at Lillian’s party. I couldn’t move, because I was still alive, but I saw the ghosts
, so I know what the ghosts look like there.
If I want to become one, I could. When I die.

“Anyway,” he rambles on. “In Limbo we follow different rules. Ghosts can literally ‘feel’ each other’s presence there. We can sense when there are other ghosts around, plus you can travel a lot faster than a normal human being. One minute
to travel around the world, so to speak.” He laughs convulsively and taps his fingers on the table.

A v
iew of the entire world in such a short time? That would be amazing. So ghosts aren’t bound my earth’s rules. They could abuse that, like those ‘evil’ ghosts.

So Damian’s looking for someone
, and it’s got something to do with the lady in the gray dress, with the pins in her head.
But why won’t he tell me what’s so important about finding her?
I want to know what’s going on.

“So they only need two minutes to find her or this other person,” I say like I already know, even though it’s actually more of a question.

“No, probably not. Usually Damian only just finds them, and then they slip through his fingers. Of course he probably wants more time, if only he could have it, but we’re bound to two minutes. If you stay longer than that, your brain starts dying.”

I swallow. It’s a heavy load to process. Two minutes
. The clock is literally ticking, and time is ebbing away. If Damian doesn’t come back soon, he might be dead forever. Returning to his body isn’t possible if his brain doesn’t function.

It makes me think of all the times Damian saved my life
: in the pond, in my room and in the basement below the school. He took the risk of not being able to return to his body if he stayed dead longer than two minutes. For me, he risked his life three times.

That last time was also the only time he succeeded in catching the black ghost.
If that one was so tough, then how hard would it be to catch that woman?

“Why is D
amian risking his life for me?”

“What, now?” Jianyu asks
, wincing.

“No, I mean at school and at my place.”

He seems dazed by my question and looks up from his laptop. “Damian told me he liked you from the moment he saw you. Kind of odd, for a guy like him, if you ask me. He’s hard as rock and doesn’t show the faintest emotion whatsoever, except rage.” Jianyu snorts. “But with you … it’s just different. I can’t describe it. He’s just off.”

So even Jianyu notices Damian and I have this weird connection. But it makes me blush talking about it. I squirm around in my chair. I barely know Jianyu
, and we’re talking about relationships. This is bizarre.

“What are those watches and those straps around their bodies? Where’d you get them?” I ask to change the subject as quick
ly as possible.

“I made them using some techniques I learned at school and from the
Internet. It’s too complex to explain, I think.” Jianyu fumbles with his watch and eyes it, like it’s somehow worth a huge amount of money. I wonder if he’s wearing the box on his chest too. Guessing from the watch on his wrist, he is.

I
n silence we both look at the laptop screen, where a display counts down the seconds.

Fifteen seconds. That’s how long it will take until they’ll return from the dead. If everything goes as planned. Who knows, maybe something
will go wrong, but  I shouldn’t think about that. I shouldn’t allow myself to even consider Damian not coming back.

I’ll just have to wait and hope for the best, just like last time.

Only now do I realize I’ve been talking to Jianyu all this time while there are two corpses in this room. Two dead bodies of people who probably, but never with certainty, will come back to life.

The watches on their wrists begin to beep again
, and my own heart rate rises. I want to sit closer to Damian, so I can listen to his heart thumping the blood through his vessels, but I don’t. I’m afraid Jianyu might think it’s odd, and I’m still questioning how far I can go with Damian. He’s been so distant sometimes.

The last beeps emanate from the watches.
Lights flicker on inside their boxes. They shake and quiver, and then a shock runs through their bodies, making them jolt up a little. Rhythmic beeps come forth from the machine connected to the electrodes. The dead beep is gone, just like my fear.

I heave a sigh to release the tension from my chest. Damian cracks his eyelids open
, and I glance at his weary face.

Did they find what they were looking for?

Every time he goes through so much trouble to find this ‘person’ I want him to succeed, so he doesn’t have to die anymore. I don’t want him to suffer and bleed. Dying and coming back to life isn’t good for a human body.

Then the look on his face changes. He stares right in front of him
. His brows nearly touch each other. His teeth are clenched together. Not a second after he rips the electrodes from his body and jumps out of the chair.

“Wait! Hold on a second
. You just woke up.” Jianyu tries to stop Damian. “You can’t walk around already. You’re not fit enough yet.” But it’s no use.

“Let me go!” Damian screams. A drop of blood drips from his nose.

“Damian, are you okay? You’re bleeding!” I cover my mouth with my hand when I see more blood dripping from his nose like an open faucet.

“Again,
Goddammit! That bitch!” He kicks the wooden chair in front of him under the table, the one I was on only seconds ago. I want to put my hand on his arm to calm him down, but he pushes me away.

“Leave me alone!” he screams as he grabs his motorcycle suit from the table, storms
down the hall and disappears through the wooden door.

I clamp one hand around myself and with the other I clench the opening in the wall to the hallway, afraid of falling over. The person he’s looking for must mean a lot to him, if he’s acting out like this.

When Joey waddles over to me, I pull myself together and wipe away a tear under my eye.

Joey doesn’t look too good; he’s pale as snow
, and his eyes are bloody red.

Jianyu scoots a chair under
Joey’s butt and pushes him down. “Sit down, Joey. You don’t have to follow him. He’s got his own problems he needs to solve.”

Problems … what kind of problems does Damian have? How far in this is he? What’s he looking for? His real parents? He’s not telling me why he’s becoming a ghost to find this person. Why is he being so distant and rude to everyone?

I walk to the door and wriggle my way outside. There, at his motorcycle, Damian’s putting on his helmet, ready to leave. He’s already got his suit on. I want to walk over to him, but the look in his eyes stops me.

“Stay away from me,” he says, his teeth grating.

Tears well up in my eyes, hearing his words.

Why is he
acting like this?
When I see him drive off, I sink to my knees on the ground and sit down on the overgrown path. I clench my legs tight, providing me little comfort. Something Damian’s not capable of right now.

Behind me I hear footsteps and feel a warm hand gliding over my shoulder.

“C’mon. I’ll take you home,” a voice says. I can’t see him, because I buried my head between my legs, but I can hear it’s Joey.

I’d prefer
to turn down his offer, but I don’t know any other way to get home. Unless I walk, but that’s too far. Or I could stay here. No, that’s too scary. I’d rather be in a car with flirting slimy Joey than stay in this wretched death house.

I look up and see him sticking out his hand to me. I take it
, and he helps me up. I wipe my trousers and ask, “Isn’t Jianyu coming?”

“No, he’s staying there for a few, checking some data on his laptop. You know, smart-ass-people business we know nothing about,” he says, laughing.

“Well, don’t you look happy.”

“Yeah.” He walks to his car.

“But you didn’t catch the one you were looking for, right?”

“No.”

I walk after him. “Then why are you smiling?”

“Because it’s better to laugh than to cry at Damian.” Joey holds the door open for me
, and I shake my head while laughing, then I get in. I don’t know if I even want to go home, but anything’s better than being here. This place, the Shack, is ominous now that I know what they do here and how much Damian is driven by anger.

Joey’s
car stinks of cigarettes and old ladies’ perfume. Whatever happens here, I don’t want to know about it, but I’ll have to deal with it. Damian isn’t here. He’s gone, without me. Why, I don’t know, but I know there’s something wrong, and he just keeps pushing me away.

Joey starts the engine
. It makes a lot of noise, and he steps on the gas like a mad man. Like I suspected, he’s not really into safe driving. He’s driving at a tearing pace like a lunatic, and he makes wide turns.

The evening has already set
in, and I’m starving for dinner. Even after this hectic day my stomach can still endure food. I’d expected to throw up when Damian and Joey lay there in their chairs, dead, but I didn’t. I just had so much trouble breathing. Even now I do, though I don’t know if it’s because I’ve looked death in the eye or if it’s because of Damian’s reaction when he came back to life.

Staring out the window, I only spot a few headlights on the black road ahead of me and the shadows of the spruces that
cover the ground like eerie monsters. It’s so dark I can barely see anything. Perfect to be unseen.

“Is this why you guys become ghosts at night?” I ask. “So you won’t stick out?”

“Yeah.” Joey winks. I distance myself from him a bit.

“If you show yourself as a spirit during the day, you can get caught. There aren’t a lot of people who can see ghosts, but the ones that do, might get freaked out. We have to protect ourselves too. The darkness pretty much covers that part. But there are ghosts that show themselves during the day, although they usually do it on purpose. Real poltergeists or demons, the black ones. But we don’t want that, because then the entire world w
ould know what we can do and we’d be the center of attention. ‘Normal’ people don’t want ghosts in this world. They feel threatened. Which is obviously logical of course, if you think about what we can do.” Joey tugs the steering wheel from one side to the other, almost tumbling me around through the car.