Preternatural (Worlds & Secrets)

by Lloyd Harry-Davis

  “At least that way you’d be saved from death,” Jordan spoke to us.

  “What if they just send a Grinner to open it from the outside?” Aemilia asked.

  “Well, the doors of their reincarnation chamber would be closed, so therefore they wouldn’t even be able to get out in the first place,” Mychaela answered.

  I gulped. My brain was strained, trying to interpret a string of patterns that I didn’t recognise. Everything was falling into despair. There was no hope.

  “But where in the shadow realm is the chamber?” Aemilia asked.

  “I’m not sure, but –”

  At that moment, everything went black and Tarmo was cut off immediately. The fire quickly died with a hiss but none of us had inflicted any means of diminishing it. The orchestra downstairs had stopped playing all together. We looked around and our breaths became silent. However, our chests tightened with panic. The only lights apart from our eyes were sourced from the window, showing us the dark area we were in and the luminous universe-sky. We looked at each other curiously and through the dark, Mychaela whispered “oh my goodness. Guys, I think we ought to go downstairs.”

  “Why, what’s going on? What’s wrong?” Aemilia breathed.

  “It’s the ghosts,” Mychaela answered. A series of loud monotonous gasps sounded downstairs, accompanied with low, but very audible awkward murmuring.

  “There’s no time to walk.” Jojo sprang to her feet and forced us all to lock hands together. In an instance we were teleported downstairs to the ballroom. We noticed that the majority of the hall was empty. We looked towards the main entrance and we realised that everybody was still, just as silent and petrified at the ominous darkness and dark light that fell from the universe above. The guests were blocking the enormous towering doors and the large ceiling-to-floor Vernaescian windows. It seemed that the ghosts were only on one side. I wasn’t as stunned as everybody else, who had never in their hundreds of years of living witnessed these mythical beings. We knew it would probably have been impossible to bustle our way through the crowd and see the Samhain ghosts upfront.

  “You really need to get to the front; you and your siblings. You have no idea how much,” my doppelganger suddenly spoke. I didn’t understand. It was Samhain; the time when everybody could see the ghosts – so why didn’t anybody see him? But I came to realise what he had just said. After all, every single time he’s spoken about something yet to happen, he was always right. But this time if a Grinner was to attempt to destroy me, I would at least be in the midst of many Vernaescians who would help in a very appetising battle.

  “I’m going in. Jaden, Jade, you need to come too.” With that I had already sprang off through the crowd.

  “Aden, wait!” Jade cried, but it was too late. I was suddenly swallowed into the swarm of people who exclaimed as I treaded on their trains, robes and overalls. But I didn’t care – no matter what, I knew I would have to get through. I was almost there; I could see the clearing through a gap of people.

  “What is he doing?” Aemilia asked worriedly.

  The snow had become slow-falling ashes from the sky and up ahead stood more than an army – a nation if you will – of Samhain ghosts; all wallowing in auras of black, smoke-like ashes. Everybody could see their auras around them and up above. They all stared piercingly at us. The thin black smoke swirled in the still air. As more ashes fell, more ghosts slowly appeared from their auras. Jaden stood in between Jade and me and gripped our hands. The majority of the Samhain ghosts in front grew faint smiles. Tantrus stood a few feet away from us.

  “Why are they smiling?” Mychaela asked. Tantrus seemed stunned – his mouth had lightly dropped open.

  “All those ghosts that are smiling…they’re the warriors I fought with. I can see Hugh,” he mumbled to himself. Anne clung to her husband and comforted him.

  “It must be hard,” she soothed.

  “No, you don’t understand. This is not supposed to happen. They can’t appear like this, something is dreadfully wrong,” he mumbled again. Suddenly, the warriors parted themselves in two; they moved aside and left a long aisle in the middle to a man at the back. We couldn’t see him clearly until the cloudy air dissolved into the atmosphere and left mum paralysed in fear as she stared at the stranger at the end of the smoky road – dad.

  Jaden, Jade and I advanced as the whispers of everybody behind us grew louder. As we went further down the path of ghosts and as the audience at the back shrunk into the distance, I began to realise that this was really happening. The waters below the bridge were new underneath a sheet of curling mist.

  Finally, we were face-to-face with him. He had Jaden’s face and my eyes. The ghost figure of our father blinked once and knelt, though he hardly smiled. Jaden and I held one arm out to him but we passed through him with a sensation of our hands being buried in dust. We now knew where we got our staggering height from, but our father was much more physically built – like a warrior.

  “Jordan, Mallory, Hayden,” he began, calling us by the names he had given us at birth. “You’re all in grave peril,” he spoke simply. He kept his hand hovering against the cheeks of Jaden, unable to touch him.

  “How did you know?” Jade asked him.

  “It’s hard to explain, but more than you can imagine goes on in our realm. You want to go to their Reincarnation chamber, don’t you?” he spoke again.

  Jade looked astounded at how he knew so fast.

  “Y-yes,” Jade stammered, “but how did you know? Nobody knows yet, we only just spoke about it upstairs.” Dad grunted lightly.

  “I’m can’t tell you much –”

  “But please, dad. Tell us. We don’t want to die; you could save us,” Jade pleaded, her eyes on the brink of opening a dam of tears.

  “No, sweetheart. I really can’t,” he soothed gently. His voice was deep and sounded like rushing waters but was simultaneously raspy like grating rocks with a strong Irish accent I never knew he had. It was a surreal moment to actually be facing him now. I never in a million years imagined this would happen. “The realm and dimension I’m resting in has my tongue bound to time. I cannot reveal anything. Simply witness. But listen to me, when you do go, don’t let your curiosity get the best of you – especially you, Aden. Time will reveal so much to all of you, death will knock at every single door and it will attempt to divide you. Just know, each and every one of you, that when it does come, it is what will strengthen and bond you. Never forget that. The friendships you start this very day and in the upcoming future are of vital importance. Your destinies have just started and intertwined with more others than yourselves alone and ahead, you will all face a road of despair, trouble and challenges. But stand your grounds,” dad spoke numbly. Everything he said was beginning to disturb me. Destiny? Death – looking for us? I breathed heavily. So this was the only moment we would have with our father…and he was speaking to us of our death? The ashes began falling plentifully.

  “The ghost period is getting heavier. More are coming,” he spoke. A thrilling sensation of gladness swallowed us.

  “So, you’re staying?” Jaden began growing a smile. But dad merely sighed and remained emotionless.

  “No. I’m of different existence.” All of our faces dropped.

  “Also, you may never see me again. On Samhain, ghosts roam, yes. But not as they do this year. Never. None of us warriors that fought in the revolution should have been unveiled to Vernaesce again. We were supposed to be gone for good. But a glitch in time has shown us the future and has caused a blind spot for our short arrival,”

  “Dad, you could –”

  “– but I cannot tell you,” he interrupted Jade. “I’m bound, remember. Never doubt yourselves or anything I have told you. Know that if you should ever see me again, the figure before you will be a lie. Our being here, today, this year, of all the centuries…is strictly impossible. Things will occur.”

  Dad stood back up straight again and just when we thought we were glad, sadness had
found us again and mercilessly devoured our hearts and souls. He looked up at mum. She took off her mask and stared with shimmering eyes as he blew her a kiss.

  He looked down at us and uttered “the Sovereign is coming,” before dissolving into the dark grey ashes.

  Jaden, Jade and I huddled, pressed against each other, all of us in silent tears of despair as the ashes of the dead glided to the then dirty snow from the Samhain sky, whilst we stared into the distance to the many chains of hills that stood sentry underneath the silver night of misery.

  I stood with Mychaela and Liam as the others wandered about the ballroom. The ghosts had disappeared after a few minutes of our father’s disappearance.

  But something was bothering me which the others were unaware of. Ever since the arrival of the ghosts, two guests in particular had had their eyes on me, staring away as if I were a portrait hung on the wall. They always stood side-by-side, stealing obvious glances at me when they spoke to other guests.

  They made me unsettled and quavering. They were very tall men – however not the tallest in the room. They were identical twins with heads full of luscious void black hair. In fact, its darkness made it look fake and unreal.

  Their eyes were a vibrant indigo with slight hints of what looked like grey shards. They were of equal height with extremely pale skin. They didn’t look older than twenty-five-years-old (or approximately a century), though they had stubble on their chins. Dressed in grey and black, they were wearing long cape-like robes over their main outfits, looking relatively similar to ours.

  “Mychaela,” I tugged her arm. She turned from a conversation she was engaged in and attended to me. “Who are those two – the guys there?” I pointed.

  Mychaela took a sip of what seemed to be a vibrant green liquid from a crystal glass as she pondered deeply.

  “Ah!” she exclaimed. “That’s Lloks and Tiah Fenregard. Why?” she asked plainly.

  “It’s just, they’ve been staring at me. It’s quite disturbing,” I spoke as I saw them conversing with another pair of guests. Then it happened again – they stole glances and this time I stared back. They didn’t look away. They merely stared harder with more intensity than they did before. My hair streaked to red and they gulped. But something told me it wasn’t because they were afraid. I let them know that I didn’t fear them by the sombre, narrow-eyed face I gazed back with.

  I suddenly felt dazed and I knew by all means it was because of them.

  CHAPTER 11.

  The Day of Contemplation

  I sat underneath a tree with my knees huddled to me. Samhain had blissfully left us and we were all left with a traumatic memory of the news Tarmo, Tammy and Mychaela had broken to us.

  However, the hearts of Jade, Jaden and me felt darkened. Perhaps being related to how we were introduced to our father then quickly torn away from him. The only time we actually saw him, he spoke to us of warnings, destinies, bonds, and again; what I recently cannot seem to get away from: death. It’s a bit disheartening.

  A few stars were punched into the now normal Vernaescian sky – despite the broad daylight. It was comfortably warm and the sky was a plain cloudless blue with the normal blending of violet. Knowing Vernaesce, that meant it was probably around eleven in the morning. I could still see the faint outlines of the orbiting planets. Even though I sat against the trunk of a tree waiting for Mirabelle, the others had begun training and for the first time without mysteriously disappearing, so had Liam. All of us had to restrain ourselves from letting any of the adults know about our certain ‘conversation’. Otherwise our attempts to close the doors to their reincarnation hall – motivated by purely good intentions – would be foiled.

  Tammy had begun research in any books where she would find any information on the location of the reincarnation chamber. She had had to artfully snoop around the minds of mum, Tantrus and Anne to see whether they would know any relatively secret books to help with the occasion. Tammy thought of maybe checking through granddad’s head but we agreed that that would be a phone call to suicide. But yet still, after everything, we found nothing. Nevertheless, we had to make sure we behaved as inconspicuous and unobtrusive as possible – otherwise mum would decide to have a peek through our brains and heaven knows what she would find.

  However, I was convinced that the shadow realm was larger than presumed. How were we to find the doors to a reincarnation hall in all of it? A few days ago, before the Samhain ball, Anne and mum introduced classes of psychological practice. They had taken us to one of the empty halls and helped us through stages which would help influence our kinesis.

  Robbie had climbed up into one of the trees and had made a branch thicker, allowing him to sit on it whilst talking to Jaden and Liam who were below. Tammy was sat down, leaning against the trunk of the same tree on which Robbie was perched atop.

  Anne and mum came out, ready to begin supervising. We had managed to convince Anne to postpone psychological lessons for tomorrow so that we could have a double period of free time for training today.

  “So, how long do you think until the Cressile lab is fully reconstructed?” asked Robbie, swinging his legs childishly on one of the branches. Jaden threw him a look of confusion.

  “I’m specifically speaking about when Aden thrashed part of the school with the Demon Grinner and when Liam obliterated the school compound.”

  “Ah,” Jaden began, “well the school has loads of money. They’ll fix it in no time.”

  “I think so too,” Jade said, levitating a few rocks.

  “But you know what really bugs me,” Jojo spoke, teleporting to various places.

  “We’ll have to continue at Cressile and do private training along with psychological lessons. It’s gonna be very tiring, don’t you think?”

  “I’m sure enough to say that –” Liam threw his electricity-writhed baton out into the eternal distance and it came flying back like a boomerang.

  “– we’ll get the hang of it soon enough,” he finished off, panting due to his excessive practising. Robbie jumped down from the thick branch up above and landed firmly on his feet.

  “I’m ‘gonna’ get some water. Anybody want some?”

  “Yes!” Jade, Liam, and Jojo screamed out in unison.

  “I’ll just bring a couple of bottles then,” Robbie replied casually. Jojo’s teleporting was making me nauseous. Even though I sat at the foot of a tree trunk, crestfallen, she was making me queasy. I buried my head in my knees. It was as if she was trying to wear herself out – teleporting to the top of trees, then to mid-air, then to the ground before she fell etcetera.

  “I think I’m going to practise my terraforming,” I spoke as I treaded away from everybody.

  “How are you getting along with trying to find an entrance to their chamber?” I asked Tammy. She sighed hopelessly.

  “I’ve tried looking through books your grandfather has gotten for me from the associates ring.” I grew confused.

  “The associates ring?”

  “It’s what we call Lappington. The full name of the school is Lappington Academy of the Associates Ring,” Tammy explained. I turned worried.

  “Look,” Tammy softly spoke to me, “we’re going to find it. None of us want you, Jaden or Jade dead, A.J.” I smiled softly at her as she at least gave me some reassuring feedback.

  The next day, I had my first Hydrokinesis class. I couldn’t help feeling that despite everybody talking about how simple and easy water manipulation was, I would have certain flaws at it. Probably due to my natural charm and flare for Pyrokinesis.

  After breakfast, all of us went outside and generally hung about whilst Jaden, Jade, Jojo and Robbie continued to practise their abilities. I was busy talking with Robbie and Liam during their training when I noticed someone walking up the hill. As the person approached I could start to make out the figure of a young woman with wavy locks of flaming orange, red-tinted hair.

  Mirabelle. Obviously, that meant it was time for me to start my Hydrokinetics
class. But she looked different this time. Instead of wearing a dress like she normally did, she wore a white tank top with a pair of skinny denim jeans and a pair of high-stiletto Manolo Blahnik shoes. I couldn’t help questioning what she was thinking. We were going for training, not for a fashion show. There I was with a plain grey T-shirt, a pair of black, baggy shorts and a worn out (but extremely comfortable) pair of black Converses whilst she was dressed for a runway. Her ablaze orange hair was tied down in a long deliberately messy French plait and her hands were dug into the depths of her back pockets.

  “Hey, Aden!” she spoke in her American-accented voice, as she began dragging on my name whilst swaggering herself towards me. She made it seem so easy to balance herself on those thin sticks women called heels. Her voice wasn’t as soft as her appearance led me to believe. It was raspy and authoritative. Mirabelle seemed to be the only American I had met in Vernaesce – possibly in my life. Mum had always been quite protective of Jaden, Jade and me so we never travelled. Funnily enough I had never met any Americans in England before either.

  “Hi,” I calmly responded, looking up at her. I am really going to fall into depression if I meet any more people taller than me. I was tall and so was my brother, but since I met my trainers, I lost my self-confidence. She walked over to the doors and knocked twice, waiting for a response. Anne and mum opened them and their expressions told me they already knew she was here.

  “Hi, Lina, Anne,” Mirabelle casually greeted. “I’m gonna take him to Gapping Gill and we should be back in the afternoon,” I heard Mirabelle say undertone.

  “Okay, that’s fine. Have him back by three,” mum responded.

  “We’ll be heading off to the Supremacy to deal with a few issues on the void,” mum whispered to Mirabelle, who turned around and walked over to me. She, in some ways, acted as if I had known her for a lengthy period of time. She locked her arm around one of mine and strode me down the long but smooth hill which Tobias had so amazingly reformed

  “So, have you ever heard of Gapping Gill?” she asked as we strode – or in her case – swayed on the grass-covered hill.