I am posting the first chapter of the YA paranormal I am currently writing. It will be my 5th novel, and will be out later this year. It is titled "Shadow House", and I would give you the description but I have not yet written it. Feedback is always appreciated.
(disclaimer: since the book isn't finished, names, places, relationships and plot points could all change)
1
The cold chill which crept across her skin told Margaret
she was not alone. For some reason, this particular visitor did not want to be
seen. It happened from time to time. She knew from asking some of them that it
took some effort to be seen, and sometimes her visitors just didn’t have the
energy for it. More often than not, though, there was some reason they didn’t
want to be seen.
“You can come out,” she stated to the empty space around
her, “no one here wants to harm you.”
She received no reply, so she leaned back into the high
backed office chair behind her dad’s desk. A deputy leaned into the doorway.
“Did you say something, Meg?” he asked her.
“Just talking to myself,” she answered, and he stepped
back out of sight.
She immediately knew what he was thinking. It was what
they all thought. She was strange. She talked to herself. She thought she saw
things that weren’t there. But Margaret Cooper knew they were incorrect. She
was a medium.
Medium is such an odd word for what she was. She had
always liked the term spiritist, but no one seemed to know what that meant. The
term medium seemed designed to remind her of how ordinary she was. The first
person who had ever asked her if she was a medium, she had replied that she was
“extra-medium” but they hadn’t understood the pun. Margaret was an average
pre-teen girl from a small Colorado mountain town. She had always seen spirits,
but she firmly believed that all kids see them until the adults slowly convince
you to conform and stop seeing the world around you. You aren’t really growing
up in this world until you stop believing in Santa Claus, and you stop seeing
ghosts. So, most kids just stop. She couldn’t say how they were able to do it.
Ever since the accident, the spirits seemed to seek her out.
Two
years before, in the summer, she and her grandfather had been in a car
accident. It was bad. They had been taking a trip up to the reservoir to fish,
and an elk had run in front of them. Margaret never remembered anything about
the crash, but she woke up two weeks later at the hospital to hear that the car
had gone off the road and that her grandfather had died. From that point on,
she couldn’t have avoided the spirits even if she had wanted to. They sought
her out.
“Yeah
I will talk to her about it,” she heard her dad’s voice outside the office. The
response was from the desk sergeant, it was low and she couldn’t hear it. But
she could easily hear the frustration in her dad’s voice when he shot back, “I
said I would talk to her about it, Mike. What more do you want?”
Dan
Cooper walked into his office. Margaret always loved the way her dad looked in
his uniform, all pressed and clean. He was the Sherriff of their small county,
and all of the people here worked for him. He had been elected three times now,
but had been the youngest Sherriff in Colorado when he had first taken office.
Two years ago, just before her accident, they had taken over the city police
here in Cripple Creek also. The people of the town, and the people of the
county, thought they were better served by having only one law enforcement
agency in town. Her dad led them all.
“Have
you been in the men’s bathroom, sweet pea?” he asked her as he walked toward
the desk, some reports in his hands taking most of his attention.
She
got up from his chair and walked around the desk to lean against some shelves.
“Why would I go into the men’s bathroom?” she queried.
Her
dad looked up at her over his reports, and she knew what he was going to say,
“Answering a question with a question is an indicator one is trying to hide
something.”
His
stare burrowing into her, she knew she had to answer in a manner he wanted it
framed. “No,” she answered, “I have not been in the men’s bathroom. In fact, I
have never been in the men’s bathroom.”
His
curt nod told her that he not only believed her, but that it was what he had
expected. “Why did you think I had been in the men’s bathroom?” she wondered.
“I
didn’t,” he said without looking up, “Deputy Mike thought you might have been.
The soap dispenser is on the fritz again. He says it only happens when you are
here.”
She
was always getting blamed for the soap dispenser running, the paper towel
dispenser shooting out too much paper, or the automatic doors opening
constantly without anyone standing in front of them.
“Maybe
it was ghosts,” she replied sheepishly.
Her
dad put his reports down and looked up at her again. He had little patience for
the direction this conversation was going. “Meg. We have spoken about this
before. You spoke about it to Dr. Fellows. Ghosts aren’t real. You know that.”
“I
know,” she quickly acquiesced, “I was making a joke.”
Margaret
had no interest in returning to the psychologist in Colorado Springs which her
dad had forced her to meet with after the accident. The man smelled of cheese,
and she couldn’t stand watching the spirits which hovered around him while he
tried to convince her they didn’t exist. Eventually, she had verbally given in,
just to keep from seeing him again. In public, and to her dad, she had to keep
up the façade that there were no such things as ghosts. In her own mind, she
knew the opposite to be true.
“Well,
pumpkin, Dad’s got a lot of work to do before he can head home. Do you want to
wait for me, or walk up to the house?”
Dan
Cooper almost never used a person’s given name. Everyone was “buddy”, or
“brother”, or in her case, “Pumpkin”, “Peanut”, or “Sweet Pea.” The exceptions
were when he wanted people to know he was being serious, as when he had just
called her Meg.
“Speaking
about oneself in the third person is a key indicator that one does not wish to
hurt his daughter’s feelings when one sends her out of his office,” she smiled.
A
large grin spread across her dad’s face. “You know; it takes a special kind of
mind to be that funny right before one gets grounded.”
Margaret
giggled, “Okay, Daddy. I will walk home.”
“You
have your phone on you, right?” he asked.
“Of
course,” she answered, “I am a teen girl.”
“It
wasn’t a knock, kiddo. I just want you to call me when you get home. It should
take about ten minutes.”
Margaret
nodded, “I love you, Daddy.”
His
eyes twinkled when he looked at her, “I love you too, peanut. Ten minutes.”
Margaret
headed out the door of the office, giving Deputy Mike a glare, as she headed to
the front. He just shook his head like he knew what she had done.
“Bye,
Deputy Kinch!” she called out to the woman behind the reception desk.
“Bye,
Meg,” the young woman called back, “see you around.”
Margaret
walked out the automatic doors and turned up the street. A boy her age was
leaning against the wall. He had slicked back hair, a white t-shirt, and rolled
up jeans, just like he did every day.
“Can
you stop with the doors, the soap dispensers and the paper towels? You are
going to get me in even more trouble?” She begged him.
He
laughed a devilish giggle, “Did it get under that buttwad’s skin again? That
guy is such a little weasel.”
“Deputy
Mike is my dad’s senior deputy. I don’t need him constantly giving me the stink
eye, so cut it out,” she ordered. “Why can’t you take my dad’s work seriously?
He deserves some respect.”
“I
do respect your dad’s work, Meg.” Suddenly he was very somber, “I respect your
dad. I just think everyone in this town needs to lighten up a little.”
Slick
had been one of the first spirits she had encountered once she had come out of
the hospital. Unlike all of the others, he aged along with her, always seeming
to be about her age. His fashion sense told her he had maybe lived in the
fifties, but he didn’t like to talk about himself so it was hard to tell. He
had been around eleven when she had first seem him, the same age she was. Now
he was around thirteen. It was so unusual, in her experience, for ghosts to
age. But, she chalked it up to not knowing that much about them, and let it go.
During
this conversation, she had turned toward the wall. It was important that the
people of the town not see her seemingly talking to herself. The kids at school
already thought her crazy. But, she had only ten minutes to get home, so she
turned back toward the west to head there. What she saw next changed her
trajectory.
Two
Sherriff’s cars sped by and screeched into the parking lot she had just left.
Deputies Campbell and Devereaux rushed into the office. Something was amiss.
Margaret was supposed to go home, but something about this drew her in. She
turned back around and began towards the station again.
“Meg,”
Slick called to her, “Your dad wants you to get home.”
She
heard the worry in his voice, before she even saw the apparitions. Small
shadows danced about the two deputy’s cars. They weren’t like other
apparitions. There was malice in their being.
“Please,
Margaret,” Slick pleaded, using her given name, “Let it go. This isn’t for
you.”
Margaret
ignored him and headed back to her father’s work.
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