Exile: Ghost Academy (YA paranormal adventure, book 4)

by K. E. O'Connor

  “For now, we are going to take our chances just the two of us,” said Lauren.

  “You’re making a mistake,” said Theo. “There’s a lot happening with the Deviants right now, and we have new recruits joining all the time. We may not have room for you both if you wait too long.”

  Lauren shrugged. “I’ll take my chances. I’m sticking with Charlie.”

  “Good luck with that.” Theo turned and merged back into the tree line.

  Lauren waited for a few seconds to see if he would return, but it looked like Theo had snuck away as quietly as he’d arrived. Most likely returning to the Deviants to report on what he’d discovered. She began pacing back and forth along the edge of the water, waiting for Charlie to reappear.

  “Lauren, I found it.” Charlie emerged from the water a few moments later.

  “What took you so long?”

  Charlie shook water from his hair as he approached. “It was tricky to find, but you were right, it’s not under the water. There is a small island right in the centre, just a resting place for ducks really. But, in the middle of the mound, there’s definitely something. Come and see.” He grabbed hold of Lauren’s hands and transported them both on to the island before she’d had time to answer.

  They appeared on a tiny island no more than ten feet round. A few tiny stunted trees lined the edge of the island and the ground was littered with bird droppings.

  “I almost walked straight over it.” Charlie pulled Lauren forward, clutching both of her hands.

  “And it’s definitely a portal?” asked Lauren. She saw nothing.

  “Yes, there’s definitely something here.” Charlie had only taken a few paces when he stopped again. “Hold your hand out and see what you think.”

  Lauren raised her hand. She didn’t sense anything. “There could be something. I’ll just have to trust you that it’s here.” She dropped her hand.

  “Shall I open it?” Charlie’s eyes were bright with excitement.

  “Don’t you need to actually find it first?”

  “I reckon it’s been buried, or maybe just tipped over and this mud has sucked it underground.”

  Lauren looked at the rough mud beneath their feet.

  Charlie scratched his foot along the ground. “I’d like to find it.”

  “Only if you promise not to go inside,” said Lauren. “Please don’t make me have to drag you out of another portal.”

  “I won’t, this one feels different. I do recognise the energy of a portal, but it’s not making me want to go inside.”

  Lauren had her doubts about Charlie’s reliability to remain outside of the portal once opened, but she wasn’t his mother, she couldn’t stop him from opening the portal if he wanted to.

  Charlie grinned. “Are you ready?”

  Lauren shrugged. “Just do it. I’m sure I won’t feel anything when you open it so there’s nothing for me to get excited about.”

  Charlie hunted around for several minutes before bringing back two sturdy looking sticks. He handed one to Lauren. “We can use these to dig with.”

  She watched Charlie set to work on the ground, scraping aside the hard packed soil. She cleared her throat several times and scuffed her boots through the mud. “Whilst you were looking for the portal Theo stopped by.”

  Charlie paused from his digging, not looking up from the ground. “I sort of figured he would turn up eventually. Now you are out of the Academy, I bet he can’t wait for you to join with him.”

  “He did invite me to join the Deviants. In fact, he invited both of us.”

  Charlie gave a low laugh. “I wasn’t good enough for the Academy. I doubt the Deviants would be interested in my love of studying and spending time with damaged ghosts.” His gaze met Lauren’s. “It was you he came for. I’m just the sidekick they will have to take if you decide to join them.”

  “That’s not true, the offer was for us both,” said Lauren. “Their leader often offers sanctuary for people who don’t really fit in anywhere else.”

  Charlie focused on his digging, pounding the ground hard with the stick. “And you want to go?”

  “They aren’t right for us,” said Lauren after a few seconds of hesitation.

  “But what? You seem interested.”

  “It could be a way for us to stay safe, particularly if the Academy decide they are going to cross us over.” Lauren’s hands clenched into fists. “You know what will happen to me if they force me into a portal. You may decide that’s what you want to do but I would go crazy if I had to spend my existence inside the Greyness with nothing and no one to keep me company.”

  “If I could stay in the Greyness with you I would.” Charlie stopped digging and looked at Lauren, mud already smeared across his cheeks where it had splattered up at him.

  Lauren had to smile. “You really wouldn’t say that if you knew what it was like. I know you’ve seen a glimpse of it when you were inside the malfunctioning Academy’s portal, but the total absence of noise, the lack of colour, the nothingness. It would destroy me.”

  “And you think going to the Deviants will really help you?”

  “They’ve never tried to seriously harm me before,” said Lauren. “And although their intentions are skewed, I do think they would protect us if it came down to it.”

  Charlie kicked the ground several times and then paused. “I think there’s something here. It looks curved and is made of wood.”

  Lauren sighed at Charlie’s noncommittal, and then knelt down next to him as he scraped away some of the sticky mud. She wasn’t going to get a straight answer from him whilst he was focused on this portal.

  “This could be it,” said Charlie. “I can feel a weak energy coming from it.” He pulled one edge of the wood free and slowly eased it out. “Take hold of the other side.”

  Lauren grabbed the edge of the wood and pulled it, fighting against the resistance of the mud.

  “Be careful, it looks fragile,” said Charlie.

  “It’s small whatever it is,” said Lauren as the edge of the wood she held finally released from the mud with a squelching gasp. “It can’t be more than five feet high.”

  “Maybe made for mediaeval ghosts.” Charlie grinned at her. “Weren’t they supposed to be shorter than us?”

  Lauren shook her head. “Ghosts can be any shape they like, you know that.”

  “Yeah, but maybe back then they didn’t have the Academy to help them. Or didn’t know how to change shape like we can thanks to Jeremy’s amazing bits of equipment.”

  “The Academy has been around a lot longer than that.” Lauren recalled the tutorials she’d sat through with Professor Rose, who’d told them all about the beginnings of the Ghost Academy and how it had been formed to protect humans from fallen angels.

  Charlie yanked the final piece of the portal wood free from the ground and stood it upright. He studied it carefully, running his hands over the dirty wood several times.

  “I can just make out some carvings on the wood, similar to the other portals we’ve seen,” said Charlie.

  “How do you plan to get it to work?” Lauren wound her fingers into the back of Charlie’s jacket just in case he felt the urge to step inside without warning. “They don’t exactly have an on and off switch or helpful instruction manuals.”

  Charlie continued to inspect the wood. “Maybe I just need to leave it standing upright and see if it starts working.”

  “And you definitely don’t feel any urge to go inside?” asked Lauren.

  “Not exactly. I do feel a slight pull from the portal, but it’s definitely malfunctioning. If I was standing in front of any other portal, I wouldn’t be able to prevent myself from stepping inside, especially now most of Jeremy’s serum has left my system.”

  Lauren pushed her free hand slowly through the gap in the piece of wood. Her fingers disappeared. “It looks like it’s got enough juice to accept new ghosts, even if it’s not attracting them.”

  “Should we go inside?” aske
d Charlie.

  “I don’t think you should,” replied Lauren.

  “You want to go in on your own?” Charlie’s smile faded.

  Lauren shook her head, she really didn’t. She’d had enough of portals for now. “Maybe we should just leave it and come back tomorrow? Like you said, it might just need some time to reboot itself.”

  “You never know, we might just have fixed an old portal that the Academy had forgotten about. That might give us a few brownie points when it comes to them making their final assessment of us,” said Charlie.

  Lauren snorted. “I doubt it.”

  Charlie rested his hands on the top of the portal. “I don’t like to leave it unattended. What if your Deviant friend comes back and decides to have some fun with it? That guy just loves to cause problems.”

  “He didn’t even know it was here.” Lauren felt bad as she saw the glum expression filter over Charlie’s face. “You know, I’m not really friends with Theo. He’s caused more hassle than he has helped.”

  “I know, but he’s always hanging around you.” Charlie shrugged. “It just makes me feel...”

  Lauren felt a surprising rush of tenderness towards Charlie. He was never one to reveal his emotions but this was the closest he’d ever gotten to actually telling Lauren that he liked her.

  She sighed. “I’ll take a look inside the portal so long as you promise to go back to the other side of the lake. If I go in and it somehow activates, I don’t want you jumping into the portal and disappearing on me. I don’t want to be alone.”

  Charlie smiled. “I’d never leave you alone.”

  Lauren knew Charlie meant well by his words, but she was also well aware of how much he struggled with the portals. They’d fought before as he tried to go through a portal and she knew his addiction would always win out over his affection for her, no matter how much he protested.

  “Go back to the bank and I’ll take a look inside. If it looks okay and you don’t get any strange reactions from me activating the portal, you can come back and have another look. Do we have a deal?” Lauren held her hand out.

  Charlie smiled. “We have a deal.” He shook Lauren’s outstretched hand and then vanished, appearing on the other side of the lake.

  Lauren raised her hands in acknowledgement as she saw him waiting by the water’s edge and then turned to the portal entrance.

  She took a couple of deep breaths, feeling her enthusiasm plunge to her toes as she knew what would await her when she walked into the portal. The Greyness always sucked the life out of Lauren, leaching away her happiness and enthusiasm.

  Lauren held her hands out in front of her and walked slowly into the portal.

  Chapter 3

  Lauren stood still for a moment as she adjusted to the environment inside the portal. It was different to any portal she had ever experienced before. There was the usual grey gloom surrounding her but the atmosphere seemed to shift, as if in a state of flux. One second she felt fear, the next sadness. Her emotions shifted along with the unstable feel of the portal.

  She traced her hands along the edge of the entrance, seeking the panel to inspect the energy flow of the portal. Lauren did a complete route around the walls by the entrance but didn’t detect the panel. It wasn’t a surprise, she’d always found it tricky to locate portal energy panels.

  Lauren took a few more steps forward and the greyness enveloped her. The floor undulated beneath her feet before stilling. Lauren thought she heard faint whispers in the air currents around her.

  “Is there someone in here?”

  There was no reply.

  Lauren turned around and poked her head out of the portal to check on Charlie. He saw her and waved. She didn’t stop the sigh of relief from escaping her lips, glad to see that he wasn’t desperately trying to get into the portal himself.

  She returned to the portal and this time began looking for the panel from the bottom up, running her hands along the walls, backwards and forwards trying to locate the panel. Something gave under Lauren's fingers and she gently eased them into the wall. The panel felt stiff as she pulled it away to reveal six bands of energy. Five of them looked dead and one of them pulsed a sickly yellow colour, flickering in and out as Lauren studied the energy bands.

  “That would explain why you aren’t particularly bothering Charlie,” Lauren murmured to herself. She’d never seen energy bands that had no colour to them and didn’t know how she could get them working again.

  A whisper of what felt like breath passed by Lauren’s right ear and she twisted around slowly. “Theo, are you in here?” It would be just the kind of scare tactic he would use.

  She waited a moment but there was still no response. Lauren turned back to study the dead looking energy bands. She ran her hands across them a couple of times and thought she detected a faint pulse of life within them. The portal must be active to some degree, she could feel there was still some life in it.

  Lauren bit on the ends of several of her fingers frustrated that she still had no nails left to chew. The idea of creating some new nails drifted through her mind but she shoved the thought away. She needed to focus all her energies on working out what was wrong with this portal. If Lauren could get it fixed it would be a handy source of energy for her.

  She walked a little deeper into the portal, keeping her arms outstretched, not certain what she would find as she moved into the gloom. There really was nothing. Her heart sank as she recognised this could be facing her if the Academy really were planning to punish them severely.

  Lauren knew she couldn’t run from the Academy forever if that was their final decision, but she would fight them to the very end to avoid spending an eternity inside the Greyness.

  This was pointless. She was getting nowhere. Returning to the exit, Lauren slipped out of the portal and back onto the small island. She beckoned Charlie over and he materialised by her side a second later.

  “What did you find inside?” asked Charlie. “Is it working?”

  “It seems to be on its last legs,” said Lauren. “There’s only a single energy band still working and it doesn’t look too healthy.”

  “Does that mean I can go in and have a look?” asked Charlie. “I don’t think it will affect me too badly.”

  “Do you think you can handle it?” Lauren gave Charlie a sceptical look.

  He grinned at her. “I think so. I’d like to be able to go inside a portal and look around without having the overwhelming urge to disappear.” His gaze lingered on the portal.

  “And you are sure that you will come back out again?”

  Charlie shrugged. “As sure as I can be, but you never know what will happen once you’re inside one.”

  That didn’t give Lauren the reassurance she needed. “We should wait. The portal may be regenerating somehow and I would hate to get stuck inside there with you when it starts to work again. I haven’t got access to any of Jeremy’s gadgets to get us out this time.”

  “How about if you hold onto my hand and I just stick my head through? Then you can pull me out if I start to move away from you.”

  “You really do want to go inside don’t you?” Lauren couldn’t see the appeal.

  “You know me, I’m obsessed with them.” Charlie grinned at Lauren, a hint of colour flashing across his cheeks.

  “Okay, but just for one minute and I’m holding on to you the whole time,” said Lauren.

  “Sounds like a good plan to me, and I promise just a quick peek.” Charlie grabbed hold of Lauren’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “I won’t make an idiot of myself inside this portal, not this time.”

  They both moved back towards the portal entrance, and slowly Charlie inched his way through, starting with his hands and then his whole arm. He turned and gave Lauren an excited grin before his head and upper torso also disappeared.

  Lauren took a few steps forward, allowing Charlie to move deeper into the portal. She kept a vice-like grip on his hand, just waiting for him to try to yank her off her
feet when the portal overwhelmed him.

  It didn’t happen, and after a moment, Charlie emerged. “I can definitely feel an undercurrent of the portal’s energy, but you’re right it really is almost dead.” He dropped Lauren’s hand. “I can’t understand why anyone would just let the portal sink into the ground like that. At the Academy, they were always talking about the need to protect and preserve the portals because so many are being damaged or built over. This one isn’t in anybody’s way, so why isn’t it still active?”

  “Maybe because it’s a bit out of the way and wasn’t used enough.”

  “But the portals act as natural attractants to ghosts so it wouldn’t matter that it isn’t in the middle of a town, they will just be drawn here naturally.” Charlie stroked his hand along the top of the portal.

  “Maybe it was left to die for a reason. It might be better just to leave it alone.”

  “No, we should get it working again. It could definitely be a bonus to us when we report back that we fixed a portal, and with no help from the Academy.”

  “Maybe, but let’s leave it for now and go back to the house. I’m curious to see what that Grant guy has been up to whilst we’ve been away,” said Lauren. “We can always come back tomorrow and have another look. But I really don’t know how to fix it, it might just be simpler to let it fade away.”

  “I’d like to come back and at least give it a try.” Charlie’s gaze lingered on the portal.

  “Do you want to walk back or transport?” Lauren was eager to get Charlie away from the portal.

  “We’d better walk, don’t want to drain too much energy when we don’t have any feeding sources close by.” Charlie finally turned away from the portal and faced Lauren. “You’re okay, you can get your energy from the portal.”

  “I know that.”

  “You just need to find one.” He pointed back at the portal. “Maybe this is what we both need?”

  Lauren sighed. “Okay, point made, I’d had the same thought. If we can get this portal functional I can simply take some of that energy and then transfer it to you.”