Haunted by Jay Mirano (the reading list book txt) 📕

deep breathing, happy thoughts.
   "Alyssa, we aren't doctors, we can't sway their decision we just―"
   "Shut up, Avery!" I could feel my skin prickling all over, like static electricity was humming in the air. My vision was blurring, getting overtaken by red, powerful rage. I could see Mason moving towards me, his mouth working as if he were speaking, but I couldn't hear a word. All I could hear was that damn white noise, and that ba-dum, ba-dum that kept growing louder and louder. 
   I felt like I needed to get out, to get away. I shut my eyes, clamping my hands over my ears to try and stifle the white noise. If anything it only got louder, drowning out everything like a hurricane, whirling around and around in my mind. 
   I shot myself up into the air, trying to escape the loudness of the room. I felt myself bounce off the roof, then bounce off the wall, then collapse in a heap on the ground. I opened my eyes, the room barely keeping its shape around me. Avery was pushing Mason back behind her, her palm turned upwards towards me like she was trying to keep me away. I could hear a distant screaming, and just as I realized it was me, I was flying again. No, I was being pulled. Pulled towards Avery like I was being sucked into a vortex, my entire form rippling and blurring at the edges. I tried to claw onto nothingness, anything to keep me from being swallowed by this blackhole.
   And then...
   ... Everything stopped.
   The white noise was repalced by a crushing silence, the only sound in the room being my own frantic breathing. I opened my eyes, shocked to see Mason standing so close. His hand was on my shoulder, his eyes boring into mine. I tried to move, but I felt like I was weighted down by a million stones. But one thing was clear: Avery was gone.
   "Where is she?" I whispered, but my voice sounded alien and hoarse. "Where's Avery?"
   Mason's mouth gaped open and closed, his eyebrows furrowing together. He gripped me by the elbow and pulled me to my feet. 
   "How can you touch me?" I asked, buckling as I struggled to stand. I felt like I'd been hit by a truck.
   Mason steered me towards the fireplace, positioning me in front of the mirror hanging above it. It took me a few seconds to register. Why was Avery in the mirror, staring back at me? I raised a hand to my face―fighting against the pull of gravity―and recoiled as I saw Avery do the same.
   "What the hell!" I shrieked, stumbling backwards. I looked down at my hands, except they weren't mine anymore; they were Avery's. I clawed at Averys clothes, at her hair, at her face. "What happened to me?"
   Mason ran a hand down his face, shaking his head. "Aly," he said, his voice strained. "I think you just possessed my Mom." Alien

 

 

 

"What the f―"
   "Okay, let's just not freak out," Mason's pacing the room, chewing on his bottom lip so hard I'm sure he's going to draw blood. 
   "Let's not freak out?!" My heart―wait, it's not even my heart!―is thrumming wildly in my chest, banging against my ribcage like a bird trying to break free. "I'm in your Mom's body and you're telling me not to freak out? Because I am seriously freaking out right now!"
   Mason stops his pacing and stares at me, his eyebrows furrowed. "This is so weird. You're in my Mom's body. I can't get over you speaking in her voice."
   "Are you kidding me? It's weird being in here!" I was finding it hard to get used to standing again, so I was sprawled out on the ground like a toddler post-tantrum. I pulled myself up into a sitting position and drew my knees into my chest. "Did I... Did I kill your Mom?"
   Mason tore his hands through his hair. "No―No, I don't think so. I think you've just... Possessed her."
   "So does that mean that she's," I indicated to my body. "In here somewhere?"
   Mason looked at me like I'd just thrown up a whole egg. "I don't know, do I look like an exorcist!" He looked away, biting his lip again. "Sorry, my mind is just kind of blown about all this. How did you do that, anyway? Possess her I mean."
   "I don't even know. I don't know what any of that was. It was like I was on the outside looking in, I didn't have any control over anything.
   "Do you think you could try and... Get out?"
   I cocked an eyebrow at Mason. "I don't think it's as simple as that."
   "True," he started pacing again. "What does it feel like, being in there?"
   I stopped to think about it. "It feels like home. It feels comfortable. It feels... Warm. You know, I kind of miss actually being warm."
   "Okay, well don't get too comfortable in there. You may be pretty cool, but you can't have my Mom's body," he was smirking at me, his dimples creasing the middles of his cheeks. 
   I tried not to look too flustered. I hate it when he got his dimples out. "So, what are we going to do? Are you legitimately going to take me to an exorcist? Because I swear to god if you start spraying me with Holy water I will never forgive you."
   Mason crossed his arms over his chest. "There is one person would could help."

***

We pulled up outside what can only be described as a dilapidated shack. It was ringed in wire fencing, its lawn nothing more than muddied mulch. Paint was peeling off its wooden walls, rain drops dripping off a rusty, corrugated iron roof. The windows were covered with dust and dirt, their curtains closed tightly from the inside.
   "Are you sure this is it?" I asked, trying to keep the skepticism from my voice. I mean, after driving close to two hours through winding country roads, I was expecting this place to be more... Mystical. 
   Mason peered at the house through the windshield, eyes narrowed. "Yeah, this is definitely it. Hey, do me a favor? Try not to stare at him. He doesn't like it."
   I felt my stomach drop a little. "Please tell me he isn't a mutant or something."
   "No, not a mutant. Just... Don't stare."
   I followed Mason up to the house with a building dread in the pit of my stomach. There was no birdsong, no wind, not even the sun felt warm out here. There was a serene eerieness about everything that made me feel extremely uneasy.
   Mason knocked on the door, the termite-ridden wood making hollow noises against his knuckles. We waited there for a few moments, and when there was no response, Mason shrugged and tentatively pushed the door open with his fingertips. It squealed with protest, then yielded against his touch, swinging open into the dim house.
   "Hello?" Mason called. "Uncle Zeke?" 
   I clung to the back of Mason's shirt as we blindly made our way inside. My eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, revealing rows of wooden boxes stacked against the walls, slicked with dust. Things made with feathers and string and bone hung from the ceiling, rustling softly as we moved underneath them. A white pentragram was painted on the floor, surrounded by mounds of half-melted candles, their wax pooling out in tacky puddles beneath them. A floorboard squeaked behind us, and I felt Mason's body stiffen.
   "I thought you might be coming," a hoarse voice sounded loudly, and I couldn't help but jump a little. "A little bird told me."
   "Uncle Zeke," Mason turned around, simultaneously pushing me behind him. "We need a favor."
  I could see why Mason told me not to stare. His uncle―although I'm not sure they're actually related―looked like he was from another world. His beard hung down to his waist, black and wiry and streaked with shocks of white. His face was creased with deep ravines, spidering across his cheeks and chin, meeting at a delta on his chest. He was shirtless, save for a thick, wired necklace made of colored bone and wood. It jostled and clacked together as he crossed the room the meet us.
   His gaze was intense and unnerving, one eye a bright, almost pale blue, the other a deep onyx. "You aren't Avery, that much is clear. So, what can I call you?"
   I shot Mason a tentative glance, swallowing away a lump in my throat. "I'm Aly―Alyssa."
   "A strange creature, aren't you? Not sure you're dead, knowing you're not alive. What a peculiar state of being."
   His voice was a melodic baritone, almost hypnotic. I felt myself nodding along with everything he said.
   "She doesn't know what happened," Mason said. "She doesn't know how she... Possessed... Mom."
   Zeke's eyes were roving my face; I felt naked, stripped to the core. "Interesting. Please, sit."
   He indicated to the pentagram behind us, and I felt a sudden surge of terror. This wasn't really an exorcism, right? Oh god, what if it hurt?
  I lowered myself to the ground, self-conciously tugging on the hem of Avery's yoga top.
   "Now, tell me how you came to be here. Start to finish."
   I wrung my hands in my lap, heart hammering out of control. "I had just come back from the hospital―from seeing... Me."
   Zeke's eyes narrowed. "Ah, I knew you were a different one. So, you're still alive. Coma?"
   "I think so. Car accident."
   "Interesting. I've only heard of this happening once before―"
   "So it has happened?!"
   "To my knowledge, yes. Modern medicine can be a pesky thing sometimes."
   I felt my eyebrows pull together. "What do you mean?"
   "When it's your time, it's your time. A simple concept, but when the body clings to life after the soul has already left, you can get trapped between two planes like this."
   "So how do I get out?"
   "We'll get to that later. Now, continue. You'd just gotten back from the hospital."
   "I was telling Avery about what had happened, about how my Dad wanted to... Turn me off," I felt my voice getting shrill. "I was just getting angrier and angrier, until I couldn't control it. I felt like I was getting sucked into a black hole, and I was trying to fight it but I just couldn't. And then I was... Like this."
   Zeke wound a strand of beard around his leathery fingers. "I thought as much."
   "So how does she get out? And how does she stay out?"
   "I can draw her spirit out, but if Alyssa doesn't keep a handle on her emotions, she's just going to get sucked back in again," Zeke turned his attention back to me, and I fidgeted under his gaze. "A spirit's emotions aren't the same as when they were a human; they're much more potent. The most dangerous of them is anger. If anger is left to fester unchecked, that's when a spirit can become a much more powerful force. A sprit under the influence of fury can, as Alyssa did, possess the living, or if its strong