A Gift or A Curse

Chapter 35

Blake snapped open her eyes. Once she realized that the whole world around her was real, she scrambled in panic, searching for a face. A presence that left her alone under a tree with fallen leaves, having nostalgic conversation with her long lost brother. She needed to see that face now. But strangely she woke up to familiar surroundings. Very familiar. She recognized those pile of books that stacked up against her wall until it reached the top of her dresser. She came to recall those old framed pictures of her family that only collecting grey dust instead of hanging on the wall.

She slowly looked down to her body. She was dressed in a pajama, feeling lost and oblivious. Her head winding up blank blotches, empty screen with no trace of memory at all.

What just happened? Why am I here, back in my own bookshop? Who brought me here?

Jimmy Sullivan.

"Jimmy? Jimmy! Jimmy!" she called anonymously, scraping away from her blanket and ran downstairs to meet her haunted bookshop interior. No one was there to greet her. No popping teleported ghost, no annoying voice singing Seize The Day for her, no nothing.

"Jimmy...?" she wailed again. It was shattering to see how dark and lonely her life really was before the ghost came in. She broke down in rumbling tears, groaned and screamed loudly while her posture drooped down on the stairs, not able to balance her weight anymore.

She wondered whether Jimmy Sullivan and his amazing friends really were just a dream. Those short moments they had together seemed real, and did she really had the ability to talk to ghosts? Blake got up to her feet, wiped off her tears and ran upstairs. She needed to find out the truth.

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Ontario and Alberta was quite far, so Blake had to take a train there. Along the way she cried so much thinking about how could Jimmy had left her without saying goodbye and at the same time, confused between dream and reality.

Two children passed by her coach, running back and forth screaming and giggling - sometimes making her feel annoyed. She glanced at them once and decided to tell their parents to watch over their kids. She saw a boy and a girl running - wearing clothes from the 1930's - brown in color and the boy was wearing a worn hat with shorts and socks high to his knee. The girl wore a white knee-length gown with ribbons on top of her head.

Blake wondered, was there a costume party nearby? She jerked her head out of the coach to look but the children were no longer there. The rest of the coaches looked quiet, no signs of children appeared whatsoever. Blake frowned. Just two seconds ago those children were running across and now they were gone like the wind?

Her heart pumped faster. She started to think that the dream, wasn't a dream at all. She can really see ghosts and entities. She remembered something, and quickly looked down to her wrist. The Forever tattoo was still there, inked and unharmed. That means, Jimmy was real!

"Boo!"

Blake jumped and screamed, glancing to her side revealing those two kids laughing their asses off at her. Their faces pale, and their clothes looked really old. Blake couldn't say anything. She was frozen to the state that only her eyeballs were moving. Those children ran away with laughter still hadn't come off and disappeared into thin air in mere seconds.

"Shit." Blake closed her eyes and rubbed her chest to calm herself down. She should have gotten used to this, since Jimmy always teleported here and there.

The train finally stopped, indicating that she had arrived in Ontario, the home of her parents. She hadn't seen them in 3 years, after her brother went missing and now that she knew he died on duty, she had to let him go.