Chapter 1: The Unknown
Every time I went outside at night, something was off. I looked out towards the trees, the rain falling quickly and splashing everywhere on the moist soil. At night, even if the sky was black from the clouds and rain, the forest seemed to have a purple glow inside it. Like there was a weird aura shining in the forest, waiting for some secret mystery that has yet to reveal itself. Why does the forest seem to have a purple glow around the trees and its trunk?
I sat outside on the porch, the lamp shining outside, and listened to the rain’s thumping sound over the roof of the porch and cabin. I had my book laid open in my lap, my hands numbly holding it from underneath the book, and my black bookmark saved my spot in a paragraph that I stopped at.
I had an expression of a combination of calm and boredom. My lips relaxed and full over my straight teeth. My perfectly pointed nose twitched whenever the smell of rotting tree trunks and mold mixed with the damp air and crossed through my nose’s path. My almond shaped eyes of black bore into the forest straight ahead, waiting for something to emerge from the black abyss that lay in front of my house. The moist air was dampening my midnight black hair, frizzing it up a little bit in my annoyance.
I listened carefully, now ignoring the rain and tried to listen what was roaming around the forest late in the night. I sat on a long bench that was chained to the ceiling, swinging soundlessly. My sock covered feet swung over the wooden floors and brushed against it if I pointed my toes.
I was bundled into three thin jackets to keep myself warm from the cold rain. Tight jeans that stuck to my legs like glue. My feet covered in heavy wool socks and Japanese slippers. I wore a sock hat to keep my baby hairs from sticking up on the top of my head, and my hair braided into one and hung loosely over my left shoulder.
When I was sure I heard a squishing sound that was coming towards my cabin, I heard a loud whistle break the sound of footsteps walking towards the house. Even if I couldn’t hear the sound anymore, I knew that it wasn’t coming back for a while, maybe not until I fall asleep.
I closed my book with the bookmark in place, jumped off the swinging bench, opened my squealing door, and walked inside the house with the door slamming behind me. The whistling sound came from my teapot, screaming to me that it’s ready.
Before I went into the living room, I poured the hot water in a coffee mug, took a tea pack, and walked to the couch.
I turned on the T.V. and changed it to the weather channel. It was going to rain tomorrow, of course. I looked down at my mug and saw my tea was ready. I took a sip and swallowed the tasteless liquid. I looked at the time, turned off the T.V., and walked to the bathroom.
I lived in an old cabin I found in Sehome Arboretum while running away from the orphanage I was a prisoner in outside from. I took claim of the house and didn’t bother to fix its condition because the way it looks, smells, and feels felt more like home to me. There was already furniture inside when I entered the house, so I didn’t change much of its appearance.
There were three steps in front of the porch; the squealing door right smack in the middle with the swinging bench to the left of the house, the kitchen was to the right once you enter the house, the living room to the left, stairs connected to the shared wall of the living room and kitchen on the right. There was a fence to the left of the stairs and the curved to the left for support in case people tripped and fell to the first floor. The entire house made of wood.
There was only one bathroom and it was on the first floor just next to the closet under the stairs. There was also one bedroom upstairs to the right and the office to the left.
I turned the faucet to wash my face, brush my teeth, and take my contacts out. I had enough room for myself, but very little room for two. There was a shower with a shower curtain, a mirror over the sink, and cabinets that clung to the wall that I painted in black. The counters were white like the floor, and the toilet just next to the sink. There was a window just next to the shower for the steam to escape.
Once I was finished, I went up the creaking stairs and into my room to the right of the second floor. My room kept a queen sized bed, a dresser with a large mirror in front of the bed, the window staring towards the black forest, and an extra small closet to fit my jackets, shoes, and backpack inside.
I jumped into my unmade bed and fell asleep immediately. That would also be the worst time of day that I never look forward to.
The reason for the unwanted time of night was that I experience and see things that aren’t meant to exist in this world.
I tried to get some sleep, but a gust of cold wind would always make me shiver and force me awake. Sometimes a chill would crawl under my skin whenever something was brushing against me. I’d feel a strange presence all around me in my bedroom. I could feel the presence around me when I was awake, but I was more in tuned with them whenever nightfall falls upon the earth.
The presence was different compared to human presence. It was like a creeping essence, a ghostly feeling. The gust of wind felt like ice and the brushing feeling against my skin often felt like a fingertips or a hand, chilled to the bone.
The worst thing about being me and living alone in a house where it would take five minutes by car towards civilization, is that no one would listen to your “idiotic” stories you made up before talking to a normal human being.
I fortunately managed to get the sleep I wanted and woke up in time to get ready for another boring day. I took my hot shower to burn the chill that crawled under my skin and to exterminate the musty smell of mold and rain from me. I embraced the heat of the hot water, hugging the warmth I had left with the towel I clung around me before that same gust of wind would steal my human heat.
I grabbed whatever was in the closet downstairs, ran up the creaking stairs towards my freezing bedroom, and shoved feet into my favorite black converse. I pulled my hair up in a ponytail, allowing the last drops of now cold-water escape from my hair’s grasp. I took my school jacket off the rack next to the door before emerging myself in the rain.
I walked quickly to my car before slamming the door and turned the heater on to desert temperature. I let the hot air blow against my cold body, but came to no use.
Even if my car was baking, I still felt cold. There has never been a day when human heat clung to me as if its life depended on it. Heat seems to desert me once a small amount of time ticked away.
I started up my car and drove through the trees that haunt me throughout the night. The clouds were a grey and black color, usually a bad sign on my case. I stared straight ahead, paying attention to the dirt trail I made using my car, staring past the black and white trees.
I turned on my radio and listened to the music, but not the lyrics. I paid attention to the tempo that tapped against my head to the rhythm of the song that was playing.
I lived in the restricted area of the Sehome Arboretum, so no one knows that I live in the national park except for a friend of the family that’s allowing me to live in the small cabin I found. The tires touched the granite and followed the trail that led towards the highway. Miraculously, no one ever noticed my car would appear from the trees, so the rangers never went searching for me or my whereabouts.
Once my tires touched the hard pavement, I ignored every sight of dead bodies that hung on the tree branches just by the street. The sight of the ghostly dead nauseated me. It depended on the type of death I have seen that wouldn’t sicken me, but actually imagining choking to death or any sort of death that had nothing to do with breathing churned my stomach.
Blood never seemed to bother me. Suicide didn’t bother me. Any sort of death with blood involved didn’t phase me, I embraced that part of life, how people die either a bloody death or with no blood in sight.
The smell of blood . . . somehow sooths me. Whenever I was angry, depressed, or in pain, blood calms my nerves. I don’t know how it started, but the metallic smell of salt and rust just calmed me down.
Whenever there was a fight and I was angry or any kind of negative energy consumed me, I’d walk towards the fight and hope for blood to spill all over the ground.
It took me a minimum of eight minutes to get to Bellingham, not as far as I thought it would be when I managed to find myself a place to live. I parked my car in the library parking lot and began walking around. School started by now and of course the adults don’t care whether I’m out or not.
I haven’t been in school for two years for my obvious rules. My rules: if the education they’re throwing at you blows, don’t bother going anyways.
The shit they shoved into my brain didn’t go with my beliefs. I dropped out of school when I was fifteen, so I ran away from the orphanage about four years ago.
I didn’t need math to solve my problems in releasing me from my curse that runs through my veins. Science can’t find the reason why I see what others can’t. History could find a bloodline of descendants that could see what I see, but historians will need spiritualists to help them on the road to discovery. Nothing in school can help me.
No one can help me.
I walked into Starbucks and waited in the long line about a foot away from the door. I took a deep breath to taste the bitter essence of black coffee mixed with the sugar. The coffee aroma that floats throughout the entire room.
“Hey, April. Shouldn’t you be in school?” a teasing voice called to me.
I turned my head automatically towards the voice after calling my name. And there stood my friend, Taylor, smiling at me like he always did.
“You already know that I don’t go to school anymore. Why even bother asking me?” I asked him grimly, my lips still relaxed in its bored and emotionless curve.
“Yeah, haha. I know,” he chuckle. “I just felt like asking you since you always have the same expression on your face every time. It’s completely priceless,” he laughed.
Taylor has long brown hair that desperately needs a cut that’s pulled back in a ponytail; milky brown eyes; tall; and medium sized. He had the normal average face. A pointed nose; lips that was in between thin and full; round eyes; and trying to grow a goatee. He wore baggy jeans; a Led Zeppelin t-shirt; black tennis shoes with dry mud sticking to it; and a jean vest with Metallica and Suicidal Tendencies patches.
He’s about a year and a half older than me, so he has no worry in the world. He could leave whenever he wanted to and yet he stays in the Whatcom County to watch over me. I looked away and suddenly smelled the scent of blood that was intoxicating the room.
I was, of course, the only person who could smell it.
I didn’t have to look towards the pinpoint of where the blood was coming from because I knew for a year that Taylor is dead. Physically dead that is. He died just outside of Starbucks, crossing the street like every other normal day and then a drunk that was driving ninety miles per hour didn’t see him and ran over him.
Taylor had blood running down the right side of his head, trickling blood oozing to the floor, and only I could see it.
Taylor would follow me home every now and again. It wasn’t often, but he knows as well as I do that I need to feel more than just relaxed all the time. So he’d keep his bloodstained head away from me until I was ready to come back to smell more blood.
I managed to get my frappuccino waved to Taylor my goodbye before walking out the door. Taylor waved back at me before he disappeared. I took a sip and allowed the mocha taste erase the smell of blood that clung to my nostrils.
The smell of blood finally went away after five large sips of my mocha frappuccino, but in exchange for erasing the easing smell of blood, I got a brain freeze during the process.
I walked into the rundown bookstore and searched through the bestselling horror books in the adult teen section. “Hello, April. Looking for more books of the unknown?” the bookstore owner, Ramona, asked me.
“Nope, not today Ramona. I need another decent book to read during my free time,” I answered her honestly before my eyes searched through the bookshelf.
“Okay, darling. If you have any questions, be sure to come and ask me,” she reminded me for the umpteenth time.
“Thank you, Ramona. I’ll be sure to do that,” I said to her with a smile.
I pulled a book out of the shelf without even thinking. Attracted to the design of the cover, I read through the plot line of the book. Ramona was a friend of mine since I began living in Sehome Arboretum. She cared for me like a mother, hence why I liked her immediately when I met her.
Ramona is one of those women that looks young but a little old under the beauty of her skin. She has had two daughters and a son in her young years and is happily married with her husband that she’s been with for twenty years I believe. Her oldest daughter should be my age, her second daughter a year younger than me, and her son is about sixteen years younger.
Ramona is a small Filipino woman; about 5’1. She had natural black hair, dark brown eyes, full lips, a button nose, thin eyebrows, and a good medium sized woman. She’s beautiful of course; it was no wonder why her husband proposed to her during her college years while he was in high school. She usually wore her hair down, brushing against her shoulders, and wore light make-up. She always wore a regular t-shirt and a long skirt with high heels.
She’d bring her son in here every now and again and her daughters would come to visit to see their young mother and to buy more books. Their family was so close it makes me want to cry with jealousy and rage.
“Hey, April. Finding another horror book to occupy your mind?” an eerie voice asked me.
The voice came from above me, so I looked up and saw a floating body hovering over my head. “Hey, Krysta. Yeah, just another normal day for me in the book store,” I answered her.
Krysta is another one of my ghostly friends I met when I came to live by Bellingham. She died falling down the stairs and snapping her neck in the bookstore. She’s an adorable girl, natural beauty on her side too.
She had light green eyes, purple bags under her eyes, pale, red hair, freckles like no other, about 5’3 or 5’2, and had a muscular gymnast’s body. Back when she was alive, there was never a day have I ever seen her bare any skin around her shoulders or chest, she always wore a t-shirt with sleeves to cover it up. She wore a nice blouse, a black skirt that hung past her knees, nice black heels, her hair tied up in a messy bun and her bangs dangling loosely next to her eyes. Her hair made her look more like a young and pretty schoolteacher.
Poor Krysta’s bone was visibly poking the back of her neck; it kind of bothered me to see a bit of bone that wasn’t place.
“Do you know what book you’re going to get?” Krysta asked me as she slowly floated downward next to me and gracefully touched her feet to the ground.
“Nope, not yet. Just seeing if there are any books that catch my interest today.”
“Can I help you miss?” a new voice asked me.
This voice was unfamiliar to me. I felt its presence first before determining whether to talk or not. Yep, this one is living, and human.
I looked towards the voice and met a new face. He had dark blond hair, blue and green eyes, full lips, a pointed nose, and handsome to boot. He’s about eight inches taller than me, so he must be 6’2. He had a clean shave and had a kind smile that made my heart leap for a moment.
“Um . . .” I seemed to have lost my will of speech. I couldn’t remember how to speak real English, let alone breath.
He waited for me to speak, just staring at me gawk at him like a mentally insane freak. He raised his eyebrows and seemed to grow impatient with my idiotic silence. “Ma’am?”
I shook my head and slapped myself subconsciously. “No, sorry. I’m good,” I told him.
His lips curled into a slight smile. “That’s good. If you ever need me, be sure to call,” he said before walking away.
Once his back was turned towards me, I slapped myself across the face. What the hell was that?
“April?” Krysta’s voice rang.
I didn’t hear her until she poked my head roughly, which finally made me look towards my dead, red-headed friend. “Yes?”
“Are you already crushing on the new guy too?”
“Crushing on the new guy too? No! I’m not crushing on him! And are there already a bunch of girls stalking him?” I asked her.
“Well, there’s kind of a bit of a cult that’s obsessed with his good looks. And by the looks on your face, I think you’re crushing on him too,” she giggled.
“I am not crushing on him! That is just lame to feel love struck just by looks!” I said with disgust. I forgot where I was for a moment and looked around for any eyes that were glued onto me. There were none from my point of view, that, or eyes were just searching for the source of the loud voice.
I moved into a different section of the bookstore towards more people to hide myself from getting in trouble.
People in this city know me as the insane girl that “sees” the dead. They’ve heard me rant about how there are dead people everywhere for a year. After I kept telling them honestly that there were evil spirits that were out to kill me, I eventually gave up. Normal people wouldn’t believe me unless I had actual proof.
I couldn’t prove ghosts existed. I tried to, but nothing came into their sight. I asked an old friend of mine to try and touch my human experiment, but their skin didn’t crawl from the cold feel of their ghostly touch.
No one can help me. No one will believe my mentally unstable talk. No one will stop to think that my “imagination” is really real, like the sun shining overhead. You can’t see it through the clouds here, but you know it’s there.
I chose some books off the rack with Krysta gushing about a couple that was making out in the historical section of the bookstore, about a guy that threw up from drinking way too much alcohol, and about an elderly woman that sprayed half a bottle of perfume in the bookstore.
That would explain why the scent in this store smelled off. When I walked in through the door, the insanely strong scent of flowers and poisonous chemicals with a combination of digested food and body fluid intoxicated the entire place. Probably to the human nose, the scent would have been gone, but the two different scents were stuck to the wood floor.
Usually the scent in the small bookstore was consumed by the smell of old blood from Krysta’s death, pot, and heroin. Drug addicts usually came into the store and Ramona would allow them to since this store does allow any drug substance in use.
I took my armful of books and took them to the cashier. Just in front of the cashier desk, there were racks of CDs with weak scented candles.
Ramona wasn’t at the cashier stand; instead, taking her place, the new guy was standing behind it. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth and a Playboy magazine in hands. I quietly placed the books on the desk and saw his eyes travel up to mine. I looked down immediately.
“Did you find everything you wanted?” he asked as he took the first book on the top of the pile and scanned it.
“Not exactly. I came in here out of habit and chose whatever looked good,” I answered him.
“That’s cool. Randomly choosing books is cool,” he chuckled, scanning a second book.
It was quiet between us for a moment. My eyes looked up towards him, under my eyelashes, without moving my head to study him a little more.
His scent was something new. He didn’t smell of cologne, not even smoke. The heroin and pot aroma of the bookstore didn’t seem to cling to his skin or clothes yet, but it would eventually. He smelled sweet; I could smell it from two feet away. I couldn’t identify what he smelled like, just that he smelled nice.
I noticed he had a mole at his collarbone and a small, unnoticeable scar at his jaw line. He wore a loose fitting cream colored shirt, sleeves pushed up to his elbows to show some forearm muscle, the head cut looked like he ripped it to become wider; pale blue jeans; and sandals.
I saw his blue and green eyes bore into mine for a long two seconds before I dropped my eyes onto my hands on the counter. What was wrong with me? I normally didn’t act like this around a guy. I bit my lip in embarrassment and for some odd “miracle,” my cheeks burned a crimson red color.
I heard him release a breath with a chuckle. I probably even saw a smile form on his flawless lips. “Do you have a gift card?” he asked me.
I looked up at him automatically without even thinking or any control. I shook my head, my voice lost once more. I dropped my eyes again after our eyes met for too long.
He laughed under his breath for a second. “That’s okay. They usually don’t anyways. That’ll be $80.89,” he told me.
I took out my wallet out of my pocket and placed a one hundred dollar bill on the desk and took my bought books. “You can keep the change,” I said quietly before swiftly walking out the door before tripping myself outside of the store.
I ran across the street and didn’t look back at the handsome face I refused to look at. My heart was beating against my rib cage as I accelerated my running speed and got to my car quicker than I could imagine.
After I threw my books in the back of my car, the dead began swarming in.
The scent of blood reminded me of my curse. Usually when I spoke to someone, there’d always be a spirit floating around us. I’d ignore them most of the time, but not all the time. I looked towards all the bloodstained ghosts that gathered towards my car, hands rose towards me, approaching me like they were dramatically going to eat me like in those zombie movies.
I opened my car and started it quickly before driving off as fast as the rain poured upon the earth. Why must my life be so different? Why must I live to see these things that chase me every time?
I hate it! I hate it! I hate it!
I just wish that a freak accident would happen and I’d already be dead. I want to die . . . I want to be bloodstained like all the other ghosts I’ve seen. I want to die a bloody death. To be away from a curse that haunts me everyday since I was born was more than I could ask for. All I ask is for my life to end right there and now.
Every time I went outside at night, something was off. I looked out towards the trees, the rain falling quickly and splashing everywhere on the moist soil. At night, even if the sky was black from the clouds and rain, the forest seemed to have a purple glow inside it. Like there was a weird aura shining in the forest, waiting for some secret mystery that has yet to reveal itself. Why does the forest seem to have a purple glow around the trees and its trunk?
I sat outside on the porch, the lamp shining outside, and listened to the rain’s thumping sound over the roof of the porch and cabin. I had my book laid open in my lap, my hands numbly holding it from underneath the book, and my black bookmark saved my spot in a paragraph that I stopped at.
I had an expression of a combination of calm and boredom. My lips relaxed and full over my straight teeth. My perfectly pointed nose twitched whenever the smell of rotting tree trunks and mold mixed with the damp air and crossed through my nose’s path. My almond shaped eyes of black bore into the forest straight ahead, waiting for something to emerge from the black abyss that lay in front of my house. The moist air was dampening my midnight black hair, frizzing it up a little bit in my annoyance.
I listened carefully, now ignoring the rain and tried to listen what was roaming around the forest late in the night. I sat on a long bench that was chained to the ceiling, swinging soundlessly. My sock covered feet swung over the wooden floors and brushed against it if I pointed my toes.
I was bundled into three thin jackets to keep myself warm from the cold rain. Tight jeans that stuck to my legs like glue. My feet covered in heavy wool socks and Japanese slippers. I wore a sock hat to keep my baby hairs from sticking up on the top of my head, and my hair braided into one and hung loosely over my left shoulder.
When I was sure I heard a squishing sound that was coming towards my cabin, I heard a loud whistle break the sound of footsteps walking towards the house. Even if I couldn’t hear the sound anymore, I knew that it wasn’t coming back for a while, maybe not until I fall asleep.
I closed my book with the bookmark in place, jumped off the swinging bench, opened my squealing door, and walked inside the house with the door slamming behind me. The whistling sound came from my teapot, screaming to me that it’s ready.
Before I went into the living room, I poured the hot water in a coffee mug, took a tea pack, and walked to the couch.
I turned on the T.V. and changed it to the weather channel. It was going to rain tomorrow, of course. I looked down at my mug and saw my tea was ready. I took a sip and swallowed the tasteless liquid. I looked at the time, turned off the T.V., and walked to the bathroom.
I lived in an old cabin I found in Sehome Arboretum while running away from the orphanage I was a prisoner in outside from. I took claim of the house and didn’t bother to fix its condition because the way it looks, smells, and feels felt more like home to me. There was already furniture inside when I entered the house, so I didn’t change much of its appearance.
There were three steps in front of the porch; the squealing door right smack in the middle with the swinging bench to the left of the house, the kitchen was to the right once you enter the house, the living room to the left, stairs connected to the shared wall of the living room and kitchen on the right. There was a fence to the left of the stairs and the curved to the left for support in case people tripped and fell to the first floor. The entire house made of wood.
There was only one bathroom and it was on the first floor just next to the closet under the stairs. There was also one bedroom upstairs to the right and the office to the left.
I turned the faucet to wash my face, brush my teeth, and take my contacts out. I had enough room for myself, but very little room for two. There was a shower with a shower curtain, a mirror over the sink, and cabinets that clung to the wall that I painted in black. The counters were white like the floor, and the toilet just next to the sink. There was a window just next to the shower for the steam to escape.
Once I was finished, I went up the creaking stairs and into my room to the right of the second floor. My room kept a queen sized bed, a dresser with a large mirror in front of the bed, the window staring towards the black forest, and an extra small closet to fit my jackets, shoes, and backpack inside.
I jumped into my unmade bed and fell asleep immediately. That would also be the worst time of day that I never look forward to.
The reason for the unwanted time of night was that I experience and see things that aren’t meant to exist in this world.
I tried to get some sleep, but a gust of cold wind would always make me shiver and force me awake. Sometimes a chill would crawl under my skin whenever something was brushing against me. I’d feel a strange presence all around me in my bedroom. I could feel the presence around me when I was awake, but I was more in tuned with them whenever nightfall falls upon the earth.
The presence was different compared to human presence. It was like a creeping essence, a ghostly feeling. The gust of wind felt like ice and the brushing feeling against my skin often felt like a fingertips or a hand, chilled to the bone.
The worst thing about being me and living alone in a house where it would take five minutes by car towards civilization, is that no one would listen to your “idiotic” stories you made up before talking to a normal human being.
I fortunately managed to get the sleep I wanted and woke up in time to get ready for another boring day. I took my hot shower to burn the chill that crawled under my skin and to exterminate the musty smell of mold and rain from me. I embraced the heat of the hot water, hugging the warmth I had left with the towel I clung around me before that same gust of wind would steal my human heat.
I grabbed whatever was in the closet downstairs, ran up the creaking stairs towards my freezing bedroom, and shoved feet into my favorite black converse. I pulled my hair up in a ponytail, allowing the last drops of now cold-water escape from my hair’s grasp. I took my school jacket off the rack next to the door before emerging myself in the rain.
I walked quickly to my car before slamming the door and turned the heater on to desert temperature. I let the hot air blow against my cold body, but came to no use.
Even if my car was baking, I still felt cold. There has never been a day when human heat clung to me as if its life depended on it. Heat seems to desert me once a small amount of time ticked away.
I started up my car and drove through the trees that haunt me throughout the night. The clouds were a grey and black color, usually a bad sign on my case. I stared straight ahead, paying attention to the dirt trail I made using my car, staring past the black and white trees.
I turned on my radio and listened to the music, but not the lyrics. I paid attention to the tempo that tapped against my head to the rhythm of the song that was playing.
I lived in the restricted area of the Sehome Arboretum, so no one knows that I live in the national park except for a friend of the family that’s allowing me to live in the small cabin I found. The tires touched the granite and followed the trail that led towards the highway. Miraculously, no one ever noticed my car would appear from the trees, so the rangers never went searching for me or my whereabouts.
Once my tires touched the hard pavement, I ignored every sight of dead bodies that hung on the tree branches just by the street. The sight of the ghostly dead nauseated me. It depended on the type of death I have seen that wouldn’t sicken me, but actually imagining choking to death or any sort of death that had nothing to do with breathing churned my stomach.
Blood never seemed to bother me. Suicide didn’t bother me. Any sort of death with blood involved didn’t phase me, I embraced that part of life, how people die either a bloody death or with no blood in sight.
The smell of blood . . . somehow sooths me. Whenever I was angry, depressed, or in pain, blood calms my nerves. I don’t know how it started, but the metallic smell of salt and rust just calmed me down.
Whenever there was a fight and I was angry or any kind of negative energy consumed me, I’d walk towards the fight and hope for blood to spill all over the ground.
It took me a minimum of eight minutes to get to Bellingham, not as far as I thought it would be when I managed to find myself a place to live. I parked my car in the library parking lot and began walking around. School started by now and of course the adults don’t care whether I’m out or not.
I haven’t been in school for two years for my obvious rules. My rules: if the education they’re throwing at you blows, don’t bother going anyways.
The shit they shoved into my brain didn’t go with my beliefs. I dropped out of school when I was fifteen, so I ran away from the orphanage about four years ago.
I didn’t need math to solve my problems in releasing me from my curse that runs through my veins. Science can’t find the reason why I see what others can’t. History could find a bloodline of descendants that could see what I see, but historians will need spiritualists to help them on the road to discovery. Nothing in school can help me.
No one can help me.
I walked into Starbucks and waited in the long line about a foot away from the door. I took a deep breath to taste the bitter essence of black coffee mixed with the sugar. The coffee aroma that floats throughout the entire room.
“Hey, April. Shouldn’t you be in school?” a teasing voice called to me.
I turned my head automatically towards the voice after calling my name. And there stood my friend, Taylor, smiling at me like he always did.
“You already know that I don’t go to school anymore. Why even bother asking me?” I asked him grimly, my lips still relaxed in its bored and emotionless curve.
“Yeah, haha. I know,” he chuckle. “I just felt like asking you since you always have the same expression on your face every time. It’s completely priceless,” he laughed.
Taylor has long brown hair that desperately needs a cut that’s pulled back in a ponytail; milky brown eyes; tall; and medium sized. He had the normal average face. A pointed nose; lips that was in between thin and full; round eyes; and trying to grow a goatee. He wore baggy jeans; a Led Zeppelin t-shirt; black tennis shoes with dry mud sticking to it; and a jean vest with Metallica and Suicidal Tendencies patches.
He’s about a year and a half older than me, so he has no worry in the world. He could leave whenever he wanted to and yet he stays in the Whatcom County to watch over me. I looked away and suddenly smelled the scent of blood that was intoxicating the room.
I was, of course, the only person who could smell it.
I didn’t have to look towards the pinpoint of where the blood was coming from because I knew for a year that Taylor is dead. Physically dead that is. He died just outside of Starbucks, crossing the street like every other normal day and then a drunk that was driving ninety miles per hour didn’t see him and ran over him.
Taylor had blood running down the right side of his head, trickling blood oozing to the floor, and only I could see it.
Taylor would follow me home every now and again. It wasn’t often, but he knows as well as I do that I need to feel more than just relaxed all the time. So he’d keep his bloodstained head away from me until I was ready to come back to smell more blood.
I managed to get my frappuccino waved to Taylor my goodbye before walking out the door. Taylor waved back at me before he disappeared. I took a sip and allowed the mocha taste erase the smell of blood that clung to my nostrils.
The smell of blood finally went away after five large sips of my mocha frappuccino, but in exchange for erasing the easing smell of blood, I got a brain freeze during the process.
I walked into the rundown bookstore and searched through the bestselling horror books in the adult teen section. “Hello, April. Looking for more books of the unknown?” the bookstore owner, Ramona, asked me.
“Nope, not today Ramona. I need another decent book to read during my free time,” I answered her honestly before my eyes searched through the bookshelf.
“Okay, darling. If you have any questions, be sure to come and ask me,” she reminded me for the umpteenth time.
“Thank you, Ramona. I’ll be sure to do that,” I said to her with a smile.
I pulled a book out of the shelf without even thinking. Attracted to the design of the cover, I read through the plot line of the book. Ramona was a friend of mine since I began living in Sehome Arboretum. She cared for me like a mother, hence why I liked her immediately when I met her.
Ramona is one of those women that looks young but a little old under the beauty of her skin. She has had two daughters and a son in her young years and is happily married with her husband that she’s been with for twenty years I believe. Her oldest daughter should be my age, her second daughter a year younger than me, and her son is about sixteen years younger.
Ramona is a small Filipino woman; about 5’1. She had natural black hair, dark brown eyes, full lips, a button nose, thin eyebrows, and a good medium sized woman. She’s beautiful of course; it was no wonder why her husband proposed to her during her college years while he was in high school. She usually wore her hair down, brushing against her shoulders, and wore light make-up. She always wore a regular t-shirt and a long skirt with high heels.
She’d bring her son in here every now and again and her daughters would come to visit to see their young mother and to buy more books. Their family was so close it makes me want to cry with jealousy and rage.
“Hey, April. Finding another horror book to occupy your mind?” an eerie voice asked me.
The voice came from above me, so I looked up and saw a floating body hovering over my head. “Hey, Krysta. Yeah, just another normal day for me in the book store,” I answered her.
Krysta is another one of my ghostly friends I met when I came to live by Bellingham. She died falling down the stairs and snapping her neck in the bookstore. She’s an adorable girl, natural beauty on her side too.
She had light green eyes, purple bags under her eyes, pale, red hair, freckles like no other, about 5’3 or 5’2, and had a muscular gymnast’s body. Back when she was alive, there was never a day have I ever seen her bare any skin around her shoulders or chest, she always wore a t-shirt with sleeves to cover it up. She wore a nice blouse, a black skirt that hung past her knees, nice black heels, her hair tied up in a messy bun and her bangs dangling loosely next to her eyes. Her hair made her look more like a young and pretty schoolteacher.
Poor Krysta’s bone was visibly poking the back of her neck; it kind of bothered me to see a bit of bone that wasn’t place.
“Do you know what book you’re going to get?” Krysta asked me as she slowly floated downward next to me and gracefully touched her feet to the ground.
“Nope, not yet. Just seeing if there are any books that catch my interest today.”
“Can I help you miss?” a new voice asked me.
This voice was unfamiliar to me. I felt its presence first before determining whether to talk or not. Yep, this one is living, and human.
I looked towards the voice and met a new face. He had dark blond hair, blue and green eyes, full lips, a pointed nose, and handsome to boot. He’s about eight inches taller than me, so he must be 6’2. He had a clean shave and had a kind smile that made my heart leap for a moment.
“Um . . .” I seemed to have lost my will of speech. I couldn’t remember how to speak real English, let alone breath.
He waited for me to speak, just staring at me gawk at him like a mentally insane freak. He raised his eyebrows and seemed to grow impatient with my idiotic silence. “Ma’am?”
I shook my head and slapped myself subconsciously. “No, sorry. I’m good,” I told him.
His lips curled into a slight smile. “That’s good. If you ever need me, be sure to call,” he said before walking away.
Once his back was turned towards me, I slapped myself across the face. What the hell was that?
“April?” Krysta’s voice rang.
I didn’t hear her until she poked my head roughly, which finally made me look towards my dead, red-headed friend. “Yes?”
“Are you already crushing on the new guy too?”
“Crushing on the new guy too? No! I’m not crushing on him! And are there already a bunch of girls stalking him?” I asked her.
“Well, there’s kind of a bit of a cult that’s obsessed with his good looks. And by the looks on your face, I think you’re crushing on him too,” she giggled.
“I am not crushing on him! That is just lame to feel love struck just by looks!” I said with disgust. I forgot where I was for a moment and looked around for any eyes that were glued onto me. There were none from my point of view, that, or eyes were just searching for the source of the loud voice.
I moved into a different section of the bookstore towards more people to hide myself from getting in trouble.
People in this city know me as the insane girl that “sees” the dead. They’ve heard me rant about how there are dead people everywhere for a year. After I kept telling them honestly that there were evil spirits that were out to kill me, I eventually gave up. Normal people wouldn’t believe me unless I had actual proof.
I couldn’t prove ghosts existed. I tried to, but nothing came into their sight. I asked an old friend of mine to try and touch my human experiment, but their skin didn’t crawl from the cold feel of their ghostly touch.
No one can help me. No one will believe my mentally unstable talk. No one will stop to think that my “imagination” is really real, like the sun shining overhead. You can’t see it through the clouds here, but you know it’s there.
I chose some books off the rack with Krysta gushing about a couple that was making out in the historical section of the bookstore, about a guy that threw up from drinking way too much alcohol, and about an elderly woman that sprayed half a bottle of perfume in the bookstore.
That would explain why the scent in this store smelled off. When I walked in through the door, the insanely strong scent of flowers and poisonous chemicals with a combination of digested food and body fluid intoxicated the entire place. Probably to the human nose, the scent would have been gone, but the two different scents were stuck to the wood floor.
Usually the scent in the small bookstore was consumed by the smell of old blood from Krysta’s death, pot, and heroin. Drug addicts usually came into the store and Ramona would allow them to since this store does allow any drug substance in use.
I took my armful of books and took them to the cashier. Just in front of the cashier desk, there were racks of CDs with weak scented candles.
Ramona wasn’t at the cashier stand; instead, taking her place, the new guy was standing behind it. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth and a Playboy magazine in hands. I quietly placed the books on the desk and saw his eyes travel up to mine. I looked down immediately.
“Did you find everything you wanted?” he asked as he took the first book on the top of the pile and scanned it.
“Not exactly. I came in here out of habit and chose whatever looked good,” I answered him.
“That’s cool. Randomly choosing books is cool,” he chuckled, scanning a second book.
It was quiet between us for a moment. My eyes looked up towards him, under my eyelashes, without moving my head to study him a little more.
His scent was something new. He didn’t smell of cologne, not even smoke. The heroin and pot aroma of the bookstore didn’t seem to cling to his skin or clothes yet, but it would eventually. He smelled sweet; I could smell it from two feet away. I couldn’t identify what he smelled like, just that he smelled nice.
I noticed he had a mole at his collarbone and a small, unnoticeable scar at his jaw line. He wore a loose fitting cream colored shirt, sleeves pushed up to his elbows to show some forearm muscle, the head cut looked like he ripped it to become wider; pale blue jeans; and sandals.
I saw his blue and green eyes bore into mine for a long two seconds before I dropped my eyes onto my hands on the counter. What was wrong with me? I normally didn’t act like this around a guy. I bit my lip in embarrassment and for some odd “miracle,” my cheeks burned a crimson red color.
I heard him release a breath with a chuckle. I probably even saw a smile form on his flawless lips. “Do you have a gift card?” he asked me.
I looked up at him automatically without even thinking or any control. I shook my head, my voice lost once more. I dropped my eyes again after our eyes met for too long.
He laughed under his breath for a second. “That’s okay. They usually don’t anyways. That’ll be $80.89,” he told me.
I took out my wallet out of my pocket and placed a one hundred dollar bill on the desk and took my bought books. “You can keep the change,” I said quietly before swiftly walking out the door before tripping myself outside of the store.
I ran across the street and didn’t look back at the handsome face I refused to look at. My heart was beating against my rib cage as I accelerated my running speed and got to my car quicker than I could imagine.
After I threw my books in the back of my car, the dead began swarming in.
The scent of blood reminded me of my curse. Usually when I spoke to someone, there’d always be a spirit floating around us. I’d ignore them most of the time, but not all the time. I looked towards all the bloodstained ghosts that gathered towards my car, hands rose towards me, approaching me like they were dramatically going to eat me like in those zombie movies.
I opened my car and started it quickly before driving off as fast as the rain poured upon the earth. Why must my life be so different? Why must I live to see these things that chase me every time?
I hate it! I hate it! I hate it!
I just wish that a freak accident would happen and I’d already be dead. I want to die . . . I want to be bloodstained like all the other ghosts I’ve seen. I want to die a bloody death. To be away from a curse that haunts me everyday since I was born was more than I could ask for. All I ask is for my life to end right there and now.
Keep going.
