✨A WATTYS 2022 PARANORMAL & "BEST CHARACTERS" WINNER✨
A college basketball star risks everything to prove his innocence with a girl who can communicate with ghosts.
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Ace Jones isn't certain about a lot of things in life, but basketball has always...
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MY AUNT sits back amazed, folding her arms. "For how long?"
"Since I was a kid."
"Devyn. This whole time? And you never said anything?" Her expression turns pained. "Not even to me?"
"I was scared," I reply defensively. "I didn't want to end up..."
"Like me." She puts her head down, scratching her scalp. "Shiit, can't say I blame you."
"That's just it though, Ti. I am you now. I started talking to a murder victim and I need your help. They've got the wrong guy."
For a moment, she mutters under her breath. But then her honey eyes—the same ones as my father—regard me with maturity. I'm no longer just her brother's quiet, awkward daughter. I'm her equal. We share an experience now.
"Listen, Devyn. Meddling in spiritual affairs can be dangerous. I've learned some hard lessons over the years."
I swallow. "Like what?"
"You and I are what the world calls mediums, but we are actually so much more than that. We're gatekeepers."
"Gatekeepers?"
"More or less." She pauses when a nurse trails by and then lowers her voice. "You know that feeling you get before a spirit shows face?"
I nod. "Yeah it's a heaviness in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes I even get goosebumps."
"Mhmm, well that same feeling, when channeled correctly, can open up a whole wormhole, linking spirits to the Primordial Light. To take those souls home."
"Primordial Light?"
"The first light of the Universe. The Big Bang."
I scratch my head. "So is this Light like Peace? How do you know all of this?"
"There's an entire community of people like you and me. Our kind has been around for years, Devyn. We just hide in the shadows and often suffer through this gift alone. I learned everything I know now from a spiritual woman I met in my late twenties. She taught me that we'll never truly understand the magnificence of the Universe, but one thing we can be certain of is that there must be a balance between light energy and dark energy."
"You mean like good and evil?" I ask, thinking of the harmless ghosts versus the dangerous ones.
"One can certainly interpret it that way, yes. And when I was your age, I got so caught up leading souls to Peace that eventually the bad souls tormented me until I let them through, too." She shakes her head. "The results were catastrophic. Light matter can't accept dark matter. It's just the rule of space. So after leading dark matter spirits to the Light, I started to get very sick and eventually lost my gift for almost a year."
My eyes bulge. "Oh no!"
"That's why you have to be smart about which spirits you reveal yourself to and which ones you don't. The moment my gift returned, I took that as a second chance from the Universe. And I haven't messed up like that since."
