by Kim Cormack
Bring Out Your Dead
Kim Cormack
Contents
Acknowledgments
A Letter to my Readers
1. Owen Steinbeck against the world
2. Awake
3. For Reasons Unknown
Author’s Note
Behind the Series
About the Author
A Teaser for Sweet Sleep
Thank You
Acknowledgments
I would like to say a special thank you to my children and family for your endless love and support. I love you, always and forever.
To my friends for putting up with endless conversations about what I’m writing and to my wicked awesome editors and beta readers, Haley McGee and Leanne Ruissen, You guys rock!
A Letter to my Readers
This one is for my younger teen readers. This is a novella side series that will allow you to experience the lives of the teens with abilities before their correction. I’ve made a large print version for the series readers that prefer paperback. Keep up with the new series releases on the series website.
Copyright © 2017 Kim Cormack
All rights reserved
Mythomedia Press 2754 10th Ave
V9Y2N9 Port Alberni BC
978-0-9959652-0-1
Owen Steinbeck against the world
Owen awoke to the sound of Darth Vader's rhythmic heavy breathing. A very cool birthday gift or so she’d thought at the time. It had easily taken her half of the night to fall asleep and it felt like only five minutes had elapsed since she’d managed to tune out the droning voices in her head and closed her eyes. No, no, no…I don’t want to get up. Owen misjudged her swing for the snooze button and yanked on the cord. Darth landed right on her face. It hurt like hell. She covered her eye as she wandered over to look at the damage in the mirror. That was going to leave a mark. When your morning starts with a black eye from Darth Vader, you just know the Sith is going to hit the fan. This day was going to suck.
Owen scooted down to the hall to the kitchen, snagging a bag of peas from the freezer as she passed by. She sat down at the kitchen table, holding the bag of frozen peas on her eye. Her mother breezed past her. She was obviously running late again. Here she was, mortally wounded by the Dark Lord Vader and her mother had missed it completely. It was a little bit funny. Owen began to eat the luke warm, blueberry pancakes that were already sitting in front of her and did acknowledge the fact that her mother had attempted to do something sweet. Blueberry pancakes were her favorite.
She smelled sulphur and scrunched up her nose. Come on, just give me five bloody minutes to eat my breakfast in peace. A hollow-eyed stranger, covered in what appeared to be blood and by the scent, probably fecal matter was sitting across the table. She fought the comical urge to offer her dead guest a pancake.
Her mom hollered, “See you after school!” She slammed the front door behind her.
Owen contemplated the idea of staying home. Who'd even know? To get away with it, all she’d have to do was be there to intercept the automated call that would come at six o'clock that night. She’d already done it ten times this year. Her mother was usually too exhausted to notice. She worked more than one job. That’s how she’d managed to keep a roof over their heads after her father left. Owen appreciated her mother’s hard work but at the same time she resented it. A part of her wanted her mother to catch her doing these things. Owen stood up without acknowledging her undead stalker and wandered into the bathroom. She stood in front of the mirror and removed the bag of frozen peas from her swollen eye. Wonderful… this is frigging fabulous. It looked like someone had given her a serious beating. In her reflection, there were now two of them standing right behind her. She’d been seeing the deceased her whole life. It really wasn’t a big deal. It was more annoying than anything else. They did their best to been seen while she did her best to be invisible. Owen’s preference was to blend into the background. Maybe, nobody would notice? She put her hoodie on over her messy hair; she rarely took the time to brush it. Why bother? She didn't brush her hair because five seconds after she strolled through the front door of the school each day, the same mouth breathing Neanderthal of a douche gave her a frigging birdie. She slid her glasses up over her nose and grimaced at her reflection. Her mom was super-hot. They say the apple does not fall far from the tree but she got no apples… none...Not a one of them had fallen within a fifty-mile radius of her. Owen Steinbeck was a thirteen-year-old girl. She had a nasty black eye, messy brown hair and a boy's name. She was a girl with absolutely no apples to speak of. She scowled as she looked at her own chest. It was pathetic; she practically indented. She wandered to the front door moderately prepared to face the prepubescent firing squad, otherwise known as her peers. She heard muffled voices, coming from the living room. It was only the T.V. Owen was far too busy feeling sorry for herself to pay attention to the bulletin flashing across the screen. She listened to the monotone voice for only a second before turning it off. Those poor kids stuck on the couch having a sick day. They’d have the sanctity of their Scooby Doo defiled by that tedious monotone voice. She’d never understood why they always seemed to have the one person that could put someone to sleep giving the speeches. They should have someone flamboyant and entertaining if they want people to pay attention.
Owen stopped to lock the front door and then she wandered across the street to her school, with a comical train of the dead following her. Nobody could see them but her. She understood this and she also knew that she needed to pretend she couldn’t see them. Owen climbed the stairs to the main entrance. She bowed her head, hoping her glasses would disguise her black eye a touch. Why was she bothering? Nobody ever looked her in the eyes. While lost in thought, the biggest douche bag on the planet wrestled with her and gave Owen her daily birdie before she even managed to make it five feet down eyeball alley.
He jogged away, laughing maniacally. Once he got to the end of the long hall with benches full of students on either side, he yelled at the top of his lungs, “Owen’s butts a growen!”
All eyes turned to her. Wonderful… She despised being the center of attention. The bell rang and she was forced to sprint to her first class. She snuck through the door. Lovely… Someone had moved her desk. Those jerks. She heard snickers coming from the back of the room.
The teacher noticed her standing there and asserted, “Owen! Go find a seat and take that hood off! I like to see my student’s faces!”
She heard a catty voice hiss, “I bet she doesn’t even own a brush.”
The teacher began to speak, “I need you to turn in your reports by the end of the day. Put them in the bin on my desk. I’m going to mark them this weekend.” She paused in front of Owen’s desk, where she knelt and whispered, “What happened to your eye dear?”
Owen heard the same ignorant female voice travel from the back of the room, “She fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.”
The choir of snickers perturbed her. That was so lame. There was only one thing Owen despised more than being insulted and that was being insulted by someone that couldn’t articulate a sentence.
The teacher scolded, “Well, Janice you’ll be joining me for a detention after school. Is there anybody else in that group back there that’s feeling the urge to spend their afternoon with me?” The teacher’s question was met with silence.
Miss Conner turned her attention back to Owen, she leaned over and whispered, “Did someone do this to you?”
Owen replied, “No… It was an accident.”
The teacher directed her attention to the one person that needed to be in her good books and said, “Janice, since you obviously have so much to say this morning. Do you by any chance know what h
appened to Owen?”
Janice smiled sweetly as she offered up her human sacrifice, “Derek waits for her every day in eyeball alley and he gives her a birdie.”
The teacher glared at Janice as she questioned, “Every day this week?”
Janice was all too happy to toss someone else under the bus to divvy up Miss. Conner’s wrath. She replied, “Try every single day, this year”
A mortified Miss Conner exclaimed, “Derek, do you have anything to say in your defense. I’m sure you’re aware that bullying is not tolerated in this school.”
Derek didn’t say anything. He just stared at the book in front of him.
Miss Conner glared at him as she added, “Derek will also be joining me afterschool.”
Derek scowled at Owen, giving her the dirtiest look in his repertoire. She hadn’t been the one to turn him in. How was any of this her fault?
As the class continued she had to struggle to pay attention. The constant background noise of voices had this creepy reverb going on today. Some were rather aggressively trying to capture her attention. If she didn’t allow them to, they couldn’t secure their vocal connection. Owen scanned the classroom. It wasn’t always easy to tell the live teens, from the dead. This was one of the reasons why she didn’t talk to anyone. The dead were always trying to trick her. Every seat in the classroom was full. Her dead frenemies stared at her with their hollow, lifeless eyes, beckoning her to acknowledge their presence, but she wouldn’t. She looked back down at her book, wishing ear plugs would work. They already thought she was a weirdo. Why not be a weirdo wearing ear plugs or better yet, ear muffs. Giant elephant head ear muffs. Because if you’re going to be geeky, why not go for gold. She’d already tried just about everything so she knew wearing ear plugs and ear muffs would accomplish absolutely nothing. There was no way to block out the muffled hum of the voices.
The voices became clear as they began whispering, “We can help you. Let us help you. They all hate you. You could be so much more.”
The teacher directed a question at her, “Why haven't you said anything Owen?"
She wasn’t sure what the teacher was even talking about anymore. There was too much information floating around in her mind. Owen gave no response. She shook her head and opened her text book hoping she’d just let it go. She liked this teacher but she needed the questions to stop.
Miss Conner squatted down in front of her desk as she enquired, “Owen...how did you get that black eye?”
Owen peered up at her, grinned and answered honestly, “Darth Vader did it.”
“I’m trying to help you Owen,” Miss Conner asserted as she placed a pink slip on Owen’s desk and said, “Report back here as soon as the last bell rings. We’re going to sort this out, even if it takes all afternoon.”
Why hadn’t she just stayed home? She’d seen this crappy day coming. The Owen’s butts a growen chant had gone viral by lunch. People had been taking pictures of her butt all morning with their cells. One may wonder why she allowed herself to be stomped on this way by anyone and everyone. Why wouldn’t she retaliate when she was quite obviously capable of coming up with witty responses to her classmates increasingly ignorant attempts at verbal warfare? She could tell you, but then her dead frenemies would probably have to kill you.
It had been at least six months since she’d been involved in a murder. To clarify, she’d never purposely killed anyone but if she wished for someone's demise, it just seemed to happen. By seemed to happen, she meant, her merry band of dead followers did it. They were always trying to earn her favor. She couldn’t even go to the washroom without an audience. Owen could only handle so much of their constant visual trickery and demanding echoes of voices before she began to answer back. This was always a mistake, responding to the spirit world always lead to blurred lines between her world and theirs. It would appear to the normal people that she’d snapped again.
During her last stint in the hospital, she grew quite close with another girl who saw her deceased entourage as a glorious gift. With perception far beyond her years, she explained that even the darkest of abilities could be used for good, if the heart that controlled the gift was pure. She’d spent quite a bit of time soaking in her wisdom, listening to incredible tales that made her feel less alone in the world. After a few months of stellar behavior, along with an Oscar winning performance or ten, Owen managed to convince the well-meaning medical professionals she couldn’t see dead people anymore. When she was finally allowed to go home, the first thing Owen did was some online research and there was a ton of information on what the girl had spoken to her about.
Necromancy: A method of divination through alleged communication with the dead. Magic in general, practiced by a witch or sorcerer. Basically, she could make the dead do her bidding. Knowing this was unsettling to say the least but she now understood that her vocalized wishes caused accidents that claimed lives. She hadn’t meant to do it though; she’d only ever wanted to be normal. She just wanted to blend into the background.
As Owen maneuvered her way through the crowded hallway, she wasn’t even sure which students were real anymore. By the end of the day as the hordes of dead accumulated around her, it became almost impossible to keep a lid on her frustration. She wanted to scream, leave me alone! There were too many of them…she needed space. They were making her feel claustrophobic. Mentally exhausted, Owen strolled into her detention to find every desk in the room full. There were only four live people in the room, including the teacher. Her uninvited guests were dark, damaged looking beings. Miss Conner was practically glowing, quite obviously still with the land of the living. Then there was Satan, otherwise known as the diabolically evil Janice. Sitting beside her was the scowling Derek, the bane of her existence. Most of the seats were filled with people that were clearly dead, but seated right beside Derek was an extremely questionable looking student. He was almost passable for a live one. Some of the deceased could blend almost seamlessly with the living. Those were the ones that got her in trouble. Most of the dead that chose to stick around versus going into the light were there to seek some form of retribution. Those ones were often not dealing with a full deck of cards because of the brutality of their demise. It made it easier for her visually if they had blood on them or glassy lifeless eyes. It was easier to separate her reality from everyone else's. On a rare occasion, she’d run into a toddler or a child that appeared to be lost, she’d just know they’d somehow missed their chance to move on. The light would return for the children and when it did, it was magic.
When Owen was younger, she didn't understand that everybody didn't see these things. As a toddler, you can get away with speaking to people that aren’t there but once she hit kindergarten, the alarms began to sound. Her mother managed to convince everyone that she just had an overactive imagination and this worked as an excuse for many years. As she grew older the dead grew more aggressive and they became impossible to ignore. That’s where she began to look crazy. She was always talking to someone that nobody else could see. Inevitably the delicate elastic band of her sanity stretched until it snapped back and landed her in a hospital bed, drowning in a sea of sedatives. She was old enough now to understand what society wanted from her, but she hadn’t been back then and after her first relaxing summer vacation in the home for the not so mentally sound, her parents got a divorce. She was apparently so embarrassing that her father had to move clean across the country to get away from the stigma of her. She’d learned of her father’s change of address while otherwise occupied by a straight jacket. She wanted to go home but she was really seeing these things and they wouldn’t stop asking her to do things she knew she wasn’t allowed to do. She knew the difference between right and wrong… It was quite clear in her head. So, she found the strength to ignore the voices and struggled to be who everyone else wanted her to be. She understood that she’d have to pretend to be normal. She had to tell them she could no longer see the things that went bump in the night to regain her freedom. It wa
s her only way out of that place. That’s how she became the weird, insane scraggly haired punk of a girl we all know and openly mock today. She sounded bitter… Well, maybe just a little. She used to have a few friends and a bit of a social life. Now, she spent her time alone, afraid she’d slip up and speak to someone that wasn’t really there. Her teacher was speaking but the sound of her voice had been completely drowned out by the chatter of her followers. One of the dead shot a paper airplane across the room. Those ones were the dangerous ones.
The teacher caught it in mid-air and while clutching it in her hand, she accused, “Which one of you made this?”
Owen smiled because the dead person that had thrown it raised their hand.
“What are you smiling at Owen?” Miss Conner enquired.
Owen turned around and met her teacher’s frustrated glare as she replied, “Nothing.” Her teacher appeared to be concerned. This was why she didn’t speak. This was why she couldn’t react to the dead’s shenanigans. They always got her in trouble.
After giving the trio an excruciatingly long-winded speech about bullying, Miss Conner excused herself to go to the washroom, leaving Owen alone to be browbeaten by dumb and dumber. Owen folded her arms and rested her head on the desk. She needed to pretend she couldn’t hear them ridiculing her. If she didn’t react then none of her dead wingmen would feel the urge to take matters into their own hands. She’d be blamed if these two idiots were savagely beaten by rulers before the teacher returned.
Janice leaned over and whispered, “Why are you so messed-up? It's like you're a mute. Also, there's this thing called bathing. You should try it sometime.”
Owen knew she couldn’t react.
Janice prodded, “Did they do shock therapy to you in the hospital?”