The Unsacred Gift (A Young Adult Paranormal Novel)

by C. S. Dorsey

  This girl was going to die tonight, and I didn’t have to have a vision to know that it was going to happen…I was going to kill her myself!

  I debated whether I should throw my cake in her face, or throw my arms across the table to wrap my hands around her slender neck. She was full of darkness—maybe if I choked it out of her, she would change another color, like a light purple or blue. Purple and blue were the colors of heaven. Maybe she could finally live up to her name.

  My heart felt like it was beating a thousand beats per minute. I tried to calm down, but I was about to explode. I looked down at my piece of cake, place my fork on the side of my plate, and grabbed the slice of white cake with cream cheese filling—which was my favorite—with my hand. I stood up from my chair and shoved the cake right in Heaven’s face. Everyone stopped and gasped. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

  I wiped the rest of cake residue from my hand into her fresh new hairdo that she’d just had done today.

  By this time everyone was looking at me like I had lost my mind…and I had. I had completely lost it. Tonight, I was going to be admitted into the hospital, and I was going to be the one checking myself in.

  I stood there, looking down at the empty cake plate and Heaven. She wiped her face so she could see, and slammed the napkin that she was using onto the table.

  It felt like everything was in slow motion. Not the kind of special effect slow motion that the action films stole from The Matrix, but slow motion like time had slowed down, and one minute felt like it was one hour.

  “You bi—” Heaven was just getting ready to say, until my mom cut her off.

  “Heaven…clean yourself and go!” my mother said under her breath. I could hear the hiss in my mother’s tone. It was weird because she never hissed at me like that.

  “Aunt Tina, she was the one that…” Heaven started to object.

  “GO!” my mother said.

  I sat down, looking at my empty cake plate. Tears began to well up in my eyes again, but why? I was surprised I still had water left in my tear ducks. If I cried any more, the news was going to issue a flash flood warning for the San Francisco Bay Area.

  I began to shake. My mom came to my side.

  “Honey, are you OK?” she asked, shaking my arm to see if I would snap out of my trance. I took my hands and covered my face and ran toward the front door.

  My mom started to run after me, but my Granny stopped her.

  “Tina, let me talk to her,” I heard my Granny say.

  I ran outside in the cool night air. I plopped down on the curb next to Mr. Mark’s car. I couldn’t stop crying, tears of confusion, rage, and disappointment. I was confused because I didn’t understand what was happing to me, yet I had lived with this gift for so long. I was in rage, because it wouldn’t go away, I was stuck with it for the rest of my life. I was disappointed in myself, because I had let it consume me and take over my life. The evidence was under my eyes, and in my clothes that did not fit.

  I had my head between my knees and my hands covering my face. I stopped sobbing when I heard light footsteps behind me. A soft, cold hand touched my right shoulder. I took my face out of my hands and turned around slowly.

  Granny stood over me with her arms out to invite me in for a hug. I stood up and threw myself in her open arms, saying with a shaky voice, “She’s going to put me away. I’m going crazy, and everyone saw it.”

  She rocked me back and forth, and patted me on the back.

  “There, there, now, sweetie. No one is going to put you away. I will make sure of that. Come, let’s talk.”

  She grabbed my hand and led me to her car. I used my free hand to wipe the tears from my eyes. I hoped this would be the last waterfall…but I knew the great flood would come soon, when my grandmother’s life came to an end.

  As we walked toward her car, she never let go of me. She was supporting me, with her arm around my waist—my little Granny holding on to me like I was a baby. I was much taller than her, so I marveled that she was able to support me without stumbling herself.

  She opened the passenger side door of a two-door money-green Honda Civic. I sat in the car and looked around as she closed the door. I could tell the car was new, because it had that new-car smell. It was fresh off the car lot. The interior was ash gray and black. Granny was riding in style. I wonder if uncle Tyler had bought it for her birthday.

  I snapped out of my thoughts when she opened the door and got in. My nose was still running, though.

  Granny looked far off into the clear night sky. You could see the stars, it was so clear. Then she looked at me, and began to speak. “My great, great grandmother, Norma Monroe, had her first vision of a neighbor in her village. She was cooking one day, and while standing in front of the cast iron stove, her face went blank. It was like she was dead.” Granny too had this look, like she was remembering that day herself.

  “When she came to herself, she started to choke, as if she could feel the sickness of the individual in the vision…like it was killing her. Her husband, my great great grandfather Thomas Monroe, came home that night, and she ran to the door and told him what she saw. He didn’t believe her and told her that she was crazy. ‘I have to tell her, she needs to know.’ He told her not to say anything; that if she did, they were going to put her away. She cried that night, because she could not stop the images in her head from replaying over and over again.

  “The next morning, she went to her neighbor, the one in her vision. Defying her husband’s wishes, she felt the need to warn her neighbor of the things to come. They were really good friends, so she was able to speak from a place of concern, hoping the woman would understand when she told her. Instead, the woman threw the hot tea she was drinking in my great great grandmother’s face, leaving burn marks across her face. ‘You witch!’ the woman yelled out, and my great great grandmother ran home. Feeling upset and hurt, she lay in bed all day.

  “When her husband came home, he saw her laying there stiff as a board with red whip marks from the hot tea. ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘I told Mrs. Linda Rose about what I saw,’ she told him. ‘I told you not to say anything!’ By that time, it was too late. Mrs. Rose’s husband banged on the door and said, ‘Come out, you witch!’ He had a crowd of people with him ready to stone her. Witchcraft was prohibited in those days. But what they thought was witchcraft was a gift.

  “It was unheard of to have visions. To be able to see things to come in the future was rare. This gift is what people need in this day and time—and that day and time, too. Being able to help people, and warn them, is a gift in itself. Yes, some people will think that you’re crazy, but there are a few that won’t. They will thank you. There are people out there that need to know not to take Route 66 or Highway 80, in order to save their lives.”

  I tried to digest the things that my Granny was saying to me. “So what happened to her…your great great Granny?”

  “They had to flee first thing in the morning, because Mrs. Rose and her husband decided to go to the council so that they could put her on trial. My great great grandfather loved her more than life itself, and her safety was all he cared about.

  “The weird thing about this gift is that it is passed on to only one Monroe female in each generation. I guess we are the lucky ones.” She winked and smiled at me, like she was happy we were the chosen ones.

  I wasn’t happy. I did not like anything about this gift, or what it was doing to me. “Granny, how did you overcome this…this thing, this gift?”

  “It was very hard for me to accept it, but I learned to live with it. Whenever I have a vision of someone, I tell them. I inform them of what I see. Some people listen, surprising as it may seem, but they look at me as a woman of wisdom. I can handle that, just as long as they don’t want to burn or stone me to death.” She laughed like this was a joke to her, like we were playing the game of LIFE.

  “This is not funny, Granny,” I said, on the verge of tears again.

  “Oh, honey
you have to have a sense of humor about this. If you don’t, then you will lose sleep over it, like you’re doing now.”

  “Yeah, but these are people’s lives we are talking about…I don’t think it is funny.”

  “But what can you do about it…stop it? Honey, it is in our genetic makeup. There is nothing we can do but warn people. If they listen, then they do…if not, at least we did our part.”

  None of this was making sense to me. We were having visions of death, and she was making light of it. I was beginning to agree with my mom about Granny losing it, but even though she was talking crazy she had a point. What was I going to do about this? Nothing. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t control anything, like I’d thought I could.

  “How often do you have visions of people’s deaths?”

  Granny jumped up from her seat and said “People’s deaths? I don’t have visions about people’s deaths. Honey, are you having visions of people dying?”

  A nerve struck as the blood rushed to my head. I was having a mental breakdown.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I was jealous that her prayers were answered, but not mine.”

  I was so nauseous, and my head felt like it was floating in a pool of blood. My Granny looked scared and terrified at the horrifying expression on my face. I thought for sure she was having the same visions. I guess I was the only freak after all.

  “I’m a freak,” I kept saying, over and over, trying to catch hold of my breath.

  “Honey, you are not a freak. I didn’t realize what you were going through. Breathe, honey, breathe,” my Granny said, as she tried to calm me down. But there was no calming me down now. This was it, the end of my life. There was no getting around this sick plague of a gift.

  “Granny, I thought you had…the same thing.” I stumbled over my words.

  “Honey, I do…I just don’t have visions of people dying, or how they die. The visions I have show people taking the wrong path in life. It is a path that they don’t need to be on. I just let them know that they are going the wrong way. I have never had a vision of some continuing on the wrong path, resulting in death. But you actually see their end?”

  As I nodded, her eyebrows came together and her facial expression changed quickly. I didn’t know if she was disgusted by my abilities, or concerned. She looked at my eyes, her own eyes moving back and forth, like she was trying to read me or get inside of my head. Her nose turned up, like she smelled the stench of blood from one of the visions buried in my memory.

  “When you say…” I choked on my words. “When you say that you have visions of your death…is it true?” I asked, waiting for the answer as I sniffled.

  “Let me guess, your mother told you I said that,” she said, looking at me with curiosity. I just nodded my head, not saying a word.

  “I just said that so they could prepare themselves for when that time comes. I have not had any visions of my death…but I know you have. I knew the whole time that you had the gift, I was just waiting for it to come out of you. But never did I think it would be so strong within you. I can see it’s tearing you up, honey, and I am so sorry.” She grabbed me and gave me a big bear hug.

  I just wanted to stay there in her arms. I felt safe. Finally.

  I closed my eyes for one moment, and I imagined that I was free. I was flying through thick clouds. Not like what we see when we look up at the sky, but clouds that could only come from heaven. Big clumps of pure white pillows bunched together. I was having a racing contest with one of the angels from heaven. We were flying through the blue and pink sky. It was fun, but only for a brief second, and then I opened my eyes.

  She pulled away from me, grabbing my face and wiping the tears from my eyes. “You have to pull yourself together. Don’t let this control you. You have the power to control it; you just have to find a way.”

  “Does anyone else know about us, and what we’re capable of seeing?”

  “No…no one in the family knows. Not even your mother, or the rest of my children. It’s best if they don’t know.”

  I nodded my head, agreeing to keep what we knew a secret. “Granny, if one woman from each generation in the Monroe family has the gift, then how come it skipped Mom, and auntie Tiy?”

  “I don’t know, honey. I guess my prayer was answered. I prayed for years that my daughters would not get it. I wanted them to have a normal life. When I didn’t see any signs that they were having visions, I was relieved. But I guess I forgot to pray for my granddaughters,” she said, laughing at that minor detail.

  I was jealous that her prayers were answered, but not mine. I guessed that she had a stronger connection with God than I did.

  “I’m just happy Heaven or Halo didn’t get it. They would have been a bad pick,” Granny said, cringing at the thought of those two having any kind of gift. “We better go. I don’t want anyone getting worried about us.”

  I nodded my head in agreement. As I opened the door I turned back to ask my Granny something.

  “Granny, what was the vision that your great great grandmother had about her neighbor?”

  She turned slowly, locking her eyes on mine. “She saw worms eating their way out of her unborn child’s eyes. In other words, it was going to be stillborn.”

  Chills ran through my body, like a 6.5 earthquake along a fault line.

  When Granny and I walked through the door, my mother was clearing the table. She looked up when she heard us walk through the door. I felt a little better after talking to Granny. I knew I had to come to terms with my gift. I had to figure out a way to deal with the visions and have a normal life at the same time. But the idea seemed almost impossible in my mind.

  My uncle Tyler and Mark were in the living room watching TV and chatting. My auntie Tiy was in the kitchen talking to Halo. Heaven came out of the bathroom. She had cleaned the cake off her face. I thought she would have been gone already—I guessed it must have taken a while for her to get the butter cream out of her hair. It was like the white glue that children play with in preschool and kindergarten, which is a very hard substance to get out of hair, especially when it dries.

  She looked at me with those glowing eyes, like she wanted to rip me apart, and walked closer and closer toward me. I stood my ground, ready for whatever retaliation she had for me. I caught her off guard the first time, but there was no telling what she was capable of.

  She walked up to me slowly, with no emotion; her face was blank, dead almost. My mom watched her every move from the dining room.

  “Hey, um,” Heaven said, as she looked around, as if she was trying to search the room for words. I narrowed my eyes at her, trying to understand her body language.

  “I’m—I’m sorry.” She shook her head at the difficulty of getting those words out. “My sister and I—we know that everyone in the family is not too fond of us. I’m not sure why we do the things we do. It’s like…we hear whispers… Don’t…don’t laugh or think we’re crazy.” I stared at her like she had lost her mind, like her brain escaped. “Please, don’t look at me like that, you’re freaking me out.”

  “No, Heaven, you’re not freaking me out. You’re saying that you and Halo can hear things?” I asked. I wondered if she was just saying this to justify their behavior. We all knew something was wrong with them, we just didn’t know what. Now it was starting to make sense.

  “Never mind. Halo, let’s go!” she yelled, loud enough for everyone in the house to hear.

  Halo walked out of the kitchen, and my auntie followed.

  “Bye, Granny,” Heaven said as she bent down to hug Granny, who was now on the couch.

  She passed by me and looked at me. For a split second, I almost felt sorry for the twins of terror. I wondered if she was telling the truth. Maybe it was a cry for help. It almost seemed like they wanted to be nice and act normal, rather than acting the way they do—like they couldn’t help themselves.

  This weekend was too much for me. So many things had happened in one and a half days.
I was too tired mentally to think about tomorrow. I just wanted to enjoy the rest of Granny’s birthday and spend time with my family.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I was definitely on a sugar high.”

  Everyone was still in the living room. We sat and watched TV. My uncle and Mr. Mark continued with their conversation. My auntie Tiy was in her own world. I think she was a little embarrassed by her daughters’ behavior, which was nothing new. Maybe if she’d given them normal names they may have been somewhat…normal. But like all parents that give their children names they cannot live up to, my auntie just hoped that they would be something great. I mean, they are something great…great thorns in everyone’s side.

  I giggled to myself at the thought, and felt myself relax. My mom was in the kitchen, cleaning like usual. Then the doorbell rang.

  “Sissy, can you get the door?” my mom called from the kitchen.

  “OK,” I called back, and got up from the couch. I wondered who it might be; it was getting late, and all of Granny’s company was already here.

  I opened the door slowly and peeked through the crack. It was so dark I could not see; my mom’s porch light was broken.

  Mr. Mark needs to fix that, I thought. It’s dangerous for my mom to be here alone without a porch light. Although I didn’t think she was alone much these days—Mark was probably coming over pretty frequently. When he said he was going “home” last night, that was probably just a cover-up. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was living here. He propably was staying at a hotel nearby for the weekend.

  I opened the door wide, so that the light from the living room could shine on the unknown figure on the porch.

  “Hey, Sissy,” it said to me.

  “Chris?” I said, as I tried to focus, making sure that my eyes were giving my brain the correct information.

  “Yeah, sorry, I’m a little late, I just got off work not too long ago.” While he was talking, I was somewhere else mentally. What was he doing here? And how did he know about— I just paused. I debated whether I was dreaming or having a hallucination. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother behind me in the living room.