Mr. Anderson picked up a clipboard. "Faun Ashburn, Timothy Bertrand, Zoe Clark."

  The entire class looked back at her. 

  “Good to see you’re here,” he said and continued attendance. 

  “I bet she likes the attention,” Zoe swore she heard one girl whisper to another. “Maybe I should start dying my way out.” 

  Shawn Bertrand, good old officer John Bertrand's son, turned back from a desk ahead of hers. “Hey, Zoe,” he said, just quiet enough so that the teacher couldn’t hear. “Maybe you should go back to that village in Ukraine and get some air.”

  Zoe slouched into her oversized hoodie like a turtle in its shell. 

  Mr. Anderson took a marker to the board. “The four basic jobs of the cell,” he said, writing a list. “Store DNA, help the cell move, protect and keep the cell’s shape, and direct and monitor the cell’s activities. And yes, that will be on the test.” 

  Zoe opened up a notebook and bit the end of her pencil, more focused on keeping cool than on what would be on a damn test she might not even be alive for. 

  Suddenly the pages began to flip on their own.

  She glanced around to see if there was a fan blowing or an open window, but there was no fan and all the rain-sprinkled windows were shut. 

  Faint letters began to appear on the blue lines. 

  Meet me at the Oracle factory. 

  She slammed the notebook shut. 

  Shawn Bertrand looked back and noticed her staring bug-eyed at her notebook. “Hey, Zoe,” he said. “What do you think? How scientifically possible is surviving two overdoses?”  

  Zoe remained silent, wondering where her voice went. It was gone. Out the door, where he was standing, a boy, maybe even a young man, with dark gold hair, a mischievous grin, and intense green eyes. He could’ve been a senior. Maybe even a teacher. But there was something about him she couldn’t explain. His clothes, a navy sweater, dark ironed slacks, and his fe...where were his feet?!

  Whoever he was, he vanished with a blink. 

  She wished she could say he didn’t look at all familiar, but that would be a lie.  

  “Pss, Zoe,” a girl in a desk beside her said. “There’s a hole in your sweater.”

  Zoe looked down at the measly hole Pumpkin accidentally poked with his claw. What the hell did she care? All she could think about his mysterious eyes, shining like two bright stars. 

  Her notebook flipped again. This time there were only two words.

  Remember me? 

  She quietly gasped.  

  Yes, she thought. But I don’t want to. 

  The class couldn’t end fast enough. 

  Gwen Black shuffled down the hall, clinging her books to her bulging torso. Her hair was slicked back with too much ultra sheen, and she smelled strongly of sweet body spray she doused herself with every hour. “Don’t let anyone get to you,” she told Zoe as they stopped at her locker. 

  A group of tall, rambunctious guys in football jerseys swaggered down the hall. “Hey Zoe, what are you on these days, and where can I buy it?” One of them asked. 

  “Dude, she probably gets them from her mom,” one of the guys said. “Doesn’t she work street corners these days?”

  Zoe buried her head in her hand and turned away while Gwen threw her books and waved her jiggly arms. “Get the fuck out!” 

  Zoe pulled her back. “Gwen, stop,” she said as the guys snickered away.  “Didn’t you just say don’t let anyone get to me?” 

  “Girl, that doesn’t mean don’t stand up for yourself!”

  “They don’t deserve our energy. Any of it.” Just then, his green eyes appeared in her mind - That mischievous smile. “I have a feeling I won’t be here much longer anyway. In this school, I mean.”

  Gwen slammed her locker shut and turned her head. “Whatchu sayin?” 

  “I think I know what’s going on now. I mean, not really, bu-”

  “Girl, tell me all about it at lunch. These halls ain’t good for tellin’ nothing.” 

  Zoe agreed, but it was better they never talked about things like that in school at all. They'd been targeted before after talking about things like witchcraft, and how they swore the woods on Oracle road were haunted. Without a peep from their mouths, they walked down the halls to the cafeteria for their usual chips and candy bars from the vending machine, and the pb&j assisted lunch program got them for free. "Last day for candy," Gwen said, but she was always saying that. Their pact to lose weight since middle school was always heading South. . 

  They sat at the most isolated table they could find, all the way in the corner by the window. By then the skies had turned so dark it almost felt like night. 

  Zoe ripped off a small piece of crust and slowly chewed. 

  “Don’t go losing your appetite over this,”  Gwen said, already halfway done with her candy bar. “Not when children are starving in Africa.”

  Zoe took out her notebook from her bag and flipped it to ‘the page.’ “Tell me you wouldn’t lose yours too.”

  Gwen wiped chocolate from her mouth and narrowed her eyes at the faint lines. “Meet me at the Oracle factory?” She looked back at Zoe, wide-eyed. “Who?”

  “It’s him,” Zoe said, iced over with panic. “He must’ve written it somehow.” 

  Gwen shook her head, not as if she didn’t understand, but as if she didn’t want to. 

  “My birthday,” Zoe said. “The ouija board. The boy who said he died young.” 

  “God Zo, do you have to remind me?”

  “Gwen, Listen. When I, you know, died, something, someone, maybe even God, told me, you will not die unless you give away your soul, and to do that, let him find you.”

  “You think he’s trying to kill you?” 

  “All I know is he’s probably waiting for me at the factory. Then I saw him in class this morning. You know, the ghost.”

  “What did he look like?”

  Her heart jumped. “He looks good.”

  “Good?”

  “He looks, I don’t know, old fashioned. Sophisticated. He had these eyes. They were so green.”

  “What else?”

  “I only saw him for a second this time.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “You mean there was a second time?” 

  “Yes, well no.” Zoe shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve always kind of felt him around but never really seen him.”

  “This can’t be good. We never should’ve played around with that thing.” 

  “I know. Maybe I should just burn it.”

  “You’ve gotta do something,” Gwen said. “It’s been nothing but trouble. God knows why I haven’t been dyin’ too.”

  Zoe laughed as if it were all suddenly funny - A twisted joke. But she couldn't be any more afraid. “Now here’s the part that really gets strange,” she said, lowering her voice. “When I died, this strange voice told me I’m a lost soul of magic blood.”

  “Magic blood? How do you know that’s even the truth? What if it’s a demon just tryin’ to scare you?"

  Zoe looked back at the notebook. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  “Oh hell no. You are not going to that abandoned factory.”  

  “I have to.”

  “I'm going with you then.” 

  “Not this time, G. I think it’s better I go on my own.” 

  “No way! You have no idea what you’re dealing with. None of us do. The pope himself probably couldn’t even tell you.” 

  “I’m just going to die again if I don’t.” 

  Gwen perked up as if a lightbulb had gone on over her head. "Luca."

  Zoe smiled. Luca, her old neighbor and friend who loved magic and the paranormal. He was the one who gifted her the ouija board for her birthday and helped her calm down when the game turned for the worst. 

  “Let him go with you.” 

  “Good idea. I just might. 

  “No, you will,” Gwen said. “Damn, I wish he never got you that thing. We never should’ve played.”

  "I know. It was so stupid." 

  "Your mom would go ape if she found out." 

  "I just wish she would believe me. There's no way I could tell her I saw a ghost in class."

  Gwen cleared her throat. "Or a demon." 

  “Don’t say that.” 

  Gwen looked back at the notebook and shrank back with dread. "You’re scared, aren’t you?"

  Zoe nodded. “Terrified.”

----------------------------------------

The smell of smoke lingered below the dark grey clouds, reminding Zoe of the time she spent in Amsterdam. Golden orange leaves crunched beneath her feet, heading home from where the bus dropped her off.

Eight houses lined Oracle road, four on each side with wide, open spaces of field between them. Most of the residents were old, and she rarely saw any of them out of their houses, except Tilda, an amicable elderly woman who sat on her rocking chair on her front porch most afternoons.

“Our road is totally haunted,” Luca always said. He used to live in the biggest house on the street. She could see it from where she walked, a two-story, dark blue house with a wrap-around porch and large windows.

She wished he never left.

In a lot of ways, his family was like her own. His younger sister, Mia, also loved ghosts almost as much as he did, as well as their parents. Every Halloween, they would string up their house with more lights than they did for Christmas. They never trick-or-treated. Instead, they hosted haunted house parties and invited just about the whole town. Zoe used to wait all year for October so she could help them decorate and bake all kinds of pies, cakes, and other spooky treats. Kristy was always hesitant about it, both about helping and going, but eventually, she gave in and had a blast each time. It was a bummer the day they found out the Mantini’s were moving far across town. Luca and Mia were older by then, and the Halloween parties soon came to an end.

Zoe turned into the dirt driveway to her house, small and quaint. Kristy had been renting it since the divorce four years ago. She could barely keep up with rent, and the drive into town was a hassle in the winters with her old white Mercury Tracer hatchback that could hardly make it through unplowed roads, which was almost always since the road was so quiet and forgotten. There was a creepy, mysterious history here that many people outside of it were happy to forget, but it was a road closest to Malus or Oracle Hallow, the long destroyed and abandoned village in the woods were Kristy used to live as a little girl. Her heart’s greatest hope had been to restore it and make it the magical place it once was all those years ago. Forty-two and broke, she had yet to give up the dream.

Remnants of Kristy’s other dreams lingered all over the house; Tables and desks piled with drawings, rough drafts, quotes. Every day she worked on her greeting card company, cloud 9. Sometimes she worked through the early hours of the morning well into the night. Other days, she didn’t work on it at all. Zoe could tell this was one of those days as Kristy was snuggled up in a blanket and sweats on the sofa. She took a spoonful of ice cream from the container in her lap and asked her if she wanted any.

“No thanks.”

“School getting back to normal?”

“When was it ever?” Zoe said on her way up the creaky wooden stairs to her room.

When was anything normal about me?

She threw her bag on the floor by her desk, offset the feeling of death still lingering in the room. It was a stiff, cold mustiness she could smell.

A break of sunlight caught her eye from the window above her bed. She cracked it open and looked again at where Luca once lived, barely any sign of residence but a small leaf pile. Further down the road were rows of skeletal trees, farmhouses, a veterinary hospital, a car repair shop, and the abandoned Oracle factory.

Suddenly scratching came at the door.

She tensed, her heart speeding a million miles a second.

The door swung open.

“Meow.”

Zoe gasped with relief. “Oh, Pumpkin,” she said. ‘It’s just you.”

The orange tabby rubbed against her leg and purred.

She had to admit it was hard to be in that room anymore, so hauntingly still, a place where rumors were born and bred. If it wasn't for the blood tests, her mother would be as convinced as the rest of the town that she'd been overdosing, or even worse, trying to take her own life. But what hurt most of all was realizing how easy it was for everyone to believe such rumors.

“They can think whatever they want,” she said, scratching Pumpkin’s pudgy cheeks. “I’m not crazy.”

Just then, the globe on her desk started to spin on its own. She could hear the old thing rolling before she saw it.

“Be there soon,” said a whispery voice like the wind. It came from the direction Pumpin was looking at, though no one was there.

She ran out of her room and fled down the stairs.

“What is it this time?” Kristy asked.

Zoe sat on the sofa and shrugged. Thankfully the T.V had a way of sounding out some of the tense energy in the house. She didn’t want to talk about it anymore - she just wanted to feel safe, and it would be easier if her mother would be more accepting of the unknown.

“I don’t know what’s going on, Zoe, but all I know is that whatever it is, it’s bad.”

“Mom, you don’t even know the half of it.”

“I know,” Kristy said, her blue eyes darkening. “And it’s my fault for not listening.”

“Thanks,” Zoe said.

“For what?”

“For not dropping me off at the looney bin this time.”

“Stop calling it a looney bin. And what are you so against medical care for?

“I’m not,” Zoe said. “I’m just trying to tell you that’s not what this is, and I don’t have any real way to prove it to you.”

“Do you know what kind of mother I would be if I started taking you to a pastor? This is serious. You legally died for Christ’s sake. Twice.”

Zoe got up from the sofa and walked into the kitchen. A fly buzzed around the sink piled high with dishes. “Hey. Mom,” she said. “What if I have some crazy cancer from this house being so filthy?”

Kristy laughed. “Oh, shut up.”

Zoe smirked, though cancer sure wasn’t crossed off her list of possibilities. Particularly brain cancer.

She opened a cupboard. “I’m sleeping downstairs tonight.”

“I can’t blame you,” Kristy said. “I hate that room too.”

Zoe poured a glass of orange juice, grabbed a bag of chips and a box of cookies, and walked back to the living room. On her way, she glanced back up the stairs. Pumpkin sat at the top, looking down with a flickering tail.

“Pump’s been acting off all day,” Kristy mentioned. “Rolling around, meowing loudly, staring at nothing.”

Zoe sat back on the sofa. “Strange,” she mumbled with a mouthful of chips. “Don’t you think?”

“Zoe, listen. The way the cops looked at me the first time I called. I don’t want them accusing us of anything because deep down I know it’s not drugs. They proved it. If it isn’t drugs, that leaves this gap for it to be anything. I know that, and I know…” Kristy slumped, defeated. She had nothing left to say.

A small knock came at the door.

Zoe got up to answer it, shocked at who it was. It was Luca, holding a bouquet of fall-colored flowers and a box of Italian cookies. He looked a litter tanner, but had the same scrawny shoulders. His eyes were warm brown, the same color of his wispy hair that brushed over the top of his long nose.

He handed over the box and flowers. “Don’t look so freaked out,” he said with a quirky grin. “Take it. It’s from me and my family. We’re very sorry for what happened.”

Zoe felt her breath return. She smelled the flowers and smiled. “Thanks, Luca,” she said. “Haven’t seen you in forever.”

“I just spent a year in Italy,” he said. “See my tan?”

She nodded. “Looks great,” she said. “What do you want?”

Luca winked. “What? I don’t want anything. Why?”

“I see that look,” she said.

“You died two times. I’m sorry I didn’t bring you anything the first time.”

“Yeah you did,” Zoe said. “Well, your mom did.”

“I was in Italy, so, yeah. No one told me until I got home a few weeks ago. They didn’t want to ruin my trip, I guess.”

“How nice of them.”

“Anyway,” Luca said. “I hear you’re having some...otherworldly problems.”

She stepped back. “What do you mean.”

“You can’t hide it, Zo. Gwen told me all about it. She’s worried sick.”

Zoe ran a hand through her hair. “Luca, I...I can’t even begin to tell you the half of it.”

“You don’t have to,” he said. “I brought my ghost hunting kit. You know, the one with the spirit box, the K2 EMF reader. I even brought my-”

Zoe cut him off and opened the door, “Just come in.”

“Luca, is that you?” said Kristy, grinning from ear to ear. "Long time no see!" 

Luca waved. "Nice to see you too." 

Zoe pushed off a pile of papers from a nearby table and set down the flowers. 

"How sweet," Kristy said. "They're beautiful." 

“We'll be upstairs,” Zoe said. “He’s going to help me figure out what why I keep dying.”