Chapter 24

And now we were planning on taking the chance to go see the Pickerpepper cabin and try to see if there’s actually secret chamber in the basement.” The explanation of every ghost related even of the summer had taken the entire car ride across the bridge. While there was an occasional question, Zach’s grandpa mostly just sat there and nodded from time to time. Although not that Zach thought about it, his grandpa hadn’t said a word since he talked about how Blue died.

“Zach… you’re dealing with some dark things no boy your age should have to deal with, you know that don’t you?” Zach sat back in the chair and let his grandpa’s words wash over him. He should have figured this was the route this was going to go. Better brace himself and start digging his heels now.

“I know, but I promised Blue I would help her find out about her past. And I can’t give up on a promise like that when we’ve come this far and we’re this close to figuring it out.”

Blue felt her ghostly heart skip a beat as she let herself almost sink into the backseat. When everything was said and done, he was doing it all for her, wasn’t he?

It also helped her not look at the terrifying dome over the island. That hadn’t been there the last time they’d done through it! Where had it come from?

“And I’ll commend you for it.” He smirked as Zach coughed in surprise. “Oh don’t you worry, I’m not going to try and stop you. I saw your eyes when you said that last part. You have the same look in your eyes anyone in our family has when they make a dumb decision and decide to follow it through.”

“Okay then. That was easier than I thought.” Zach let himself relax as his grandpa laughed.

“Easy for you maybe. I have half a mind to call at least six different people and apologize for the times I’ve worn those eyes over the years.”

“Huh, nice to know it runs in the family,” Zach’s eyes widened as a horrifying possibility crossed his mind, “Hey speaking of running in the family. Is Mom psychic?”

“Oh caught onto that did you? Well the answer is yes,” Zach’s grandpa allowed the teenage boy a second of panic over the idea of the idea of his mom being able to read his mind. “Now calm down. She’s not that strong a psychic. A combination of low potential and minimal training. She has some mild empathetic abilities, and that’s about it.”

“Empathetic… she can tell what people are feeling?” Zach’s grandfather started to laugh at the question.

“Apparently she uses it to read the emotions of people she’s showing houses to. Easy to make a sale when you can sense how a client feels about your each and every word.”

His laughter died as they finally exited the bridge and drove onto the island. Zach jumped in his seat as he felt Blue rush up through the back of the seat and hug him from behind. A second later he coughed out as he felt a great pressure on his shoulders. Something knew he was here, and that thing wanted him gone now!

“Oh wow, it’s worse than I expected,” Zach’s grandfather grit his teeth as took a hand of the wheel to snap his fingers. Zach rubbed at his shoulders as Blue collected herself. “There we go. You’re… the two of you are fine as long as you stay in the car.”

“What did you do…” Blue muttered as she looked outside the car. Once she was sure the car wasn’t about to collapse in on itself, she jumped forward and put her arms on Zach’s shoulders. “Zach, asked him what he did. Ask him why I can’t see anything out past the window.”

“Okay I will,” She settled her down and turned towards his grandpa. The older man was giving him an odd look. “She wants to know what you did and why she can’t see out past the windows anymore.”

“Well isn’t that interesting,” he muttered before turning down a small road. “It’s my specialty as a psychic. We all have one, and mine’s protection. Right now I’m projecting a field keeping the other psychic from sensing our presence. As for why Blue can’t see… well I think I may have a theory. I’ll have to tell you about it later though. For now, look out the window and tell me what you see.”

Zach nodded and looked out into the streets and could feel something wrong right away. It took a second for him to realize what the problem was. It was the middle of the day in a beach town in South Florida during summer. The streets should have been packed with people.

There wasn’t a single soul in sight. The streets were empty, and it didn’t even look like the houses were occupied.

“Where is everyone?” Zach asked as the car pulled up on a small park hidden within the backstreets of the island. For the first time since crossing the bridge, he saw people.

At the very center of the park were two people, standing across from each other. The first was a teenage girl angrily stomping her foot like a spoiled brat. She was yelling at the other person, who was…

Was that Trevor? His cousin who’d dressed up as Thomas Pickerpepper all those weeks ago. Zach’s grandpa had mentioned something about family earlier.

“According to your cousin here, they’ve spent the last few months trapped on this island. Now wait in the car while I deal with…” Zach’s grandpa was about to open the door when the air around the two people outside started to swirl around. It took less for a second for the wind to kick in until a twister of dust and leaves blocked the two from sight.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Trevor!” Zach’s grandpa called out as he ran out of the car. Zach looked over at Blue who flew into him without a word.

He pushed the door open, made a finger gun and jumped out. Gestalt landed on the ground and took off running after [his/ Zach’s] grandpa. As soon as they were out of the car, they felt the pressure again. They clenched their fist and pressed on, they had family to help.

“Need to find a way to get through this.” The older man grunted as the three of them came to a stop in front of the twister. Gestalt saw him trying to snap his fingers, only for nothing to happen. “It’s too strong for me, any shield I make gets broken before it can fully form.”

“Try again on my signal,” Gestalt called out before aiming their finger up at the twister. With any luck, it would break through without hurting anyone inside. “Time to put all of our practice to use.”

Gestalt took a second to gather their ghostly energy, forming a ball at the tip of their finger. They made it as big as possible, feeing as much energy as they could until they could feel it about to break apart and exploded.

“Impossible,” the older man gapped in shock as Gestalt gave the energy a command. It split itself from one large ball to six smaller ones. They floated in a ring, with the top one right in front of Gestalt’s finger.

And here at this very moment, Gestalt had to come to a decision. Over the course of practicing this move at the Broken Beach, they’d learned many things. One was that calling out a specific word helped them focus on the action. They could either do this silently and make it look cool, or they could say the words Blue had insisted on and look ‘cool’ in a different way.

After a split second, the decision was made and the Zach half braced himself for the rest of his life.

“Phantom Shot: Six Shooter!” The first of the energy balls flew forward as the rest of the ring moved to put another one its place. As soon as it was lined up with his finger, it fired too, the ring still spinning.

Six shots blasted out from Gestalt’s finger, all of them impacting into the twister at almost the same time. It shook, the wind destabilizing and blowing outward before starting to die down. At least for a moment, because the wind started picking up again.

“[Grandpa/ Zach’s grandpa],” they winced but managed to mostly fight through it. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it now!”

“Don’t need to tell me twice,” he called out and snapped his finger. Unlike before, something actually happened this time. A barrier like the one above the town appeared above the three of them. It spread outward, moving into the space taken up by the twister, forcing the wind and debris to go over them.

The three of them stepped into the gap, the sudden object forcing the twister to destabilize even more as screaming filled the air.

“Everything was fine until you showed up!” The girl was at Trevor’s knees, reaching up and grabbing at his shirt. The older teenager just stood there, stone faced as the girl cried, screamed, and uselessly tried to flail her arms at his stomach. The weaker her arms swung, the weaker the winds around them got.

She also appeared to have shrunk. Gestalt was pretty sure they’d seen an older girl, maybe in her last year of high school. That girl was gone now, replaced by a younger, middle school version.

“Well that explains why everyone was acting like they were out of a tween movie,” Trevor waited until the girl had calmed down, reduced to a puddle of tears and cries at his feet, before looking up at the two people who’d come to his aid.

“Grandpa, Zach, what are you two…” he looked down like he only just remembered the girl there. “I can explain. You see what happened was…”

“Don’t bother,” the older man put his hand up, as if to stop the older teenager from saying another word, “I already have a pretty good idea of what’s going on.”

“Well we don’t so we would appreciate an explanation,” Gestalt demanded, Trevor raising an eyebrow at the use of the word ‘we’. Both teenagers turned towards their grandpa. He tapped his foot a few times before shrugging his shoulders in surrender.

“Well from what I can tell, that young lady there is a psychic, a powerful one, one of the strongest I’ve ever seen. Specifically, she has a specialty in creating and maintaining long term mind control in an enclosed area. In other words, she creates little worlds where everyone has to play by her rules, whatever they are.”

“Yeah, that part I managed to figure out by myself. Only way to explain everyone on this island treating some random teenage girl like a queen.” Trevor admitted as the girl stopped crying and looked around, bitterly accepting that everyone was ignoring her. “What I don’t get is why I wasn’t affected.”

“That’s because you’re as powerful as she is.” Trevor’s jaw dropped as his grandfather kept going. “Must be some sort of passive defense or stealth specialty. You can’t do anything fancy, but you’re immune to anyone trying anything fancy too. Not too useful for fieldwork, but worth your weight in gold to just keep around for any… I’m getting ahead of myself.”

“So wait those this mean the two of you are also…?” Trevor stared at the two family members he could see.

“Psychics? Yes,” he was quickly cut off by his grandpa’s explanation, “psychics like you? No. I’m more about active defense, while… Zach here…”

“Gestalt,” they quickly cut him off, “something better than the sum of its parts. It’s the name we use when we’re like this.”

Both Trevor and the younger girl on the floor next to him flinched at the double voice. The two of them muttered something under their breaths as they looked into the hybrid’s glowing blue eyes.

“Right, well Gestalt here,” he made sure to add an emphasis on the new name as he pointed to something which was half his grandson, “is another long story by… himself?”

“Themselves,” Gestalt quickly corrected. The Zach half quickly wondered how they were able to talk over their grandpa so easily, but the Blue half was still busy processing how cool what they just did was to answer.

“Well the point, the only reason the… three of us managed to get here in the first place, was because that girl there was using the lion’s share of her power on you. Without you, we would have been forced out of town by now.”

Gestalt blinked and thought about the massive weight both halves had felt. That was only a bit of the girl’s power? And Trevor had taken the whole thing? How?

“Okay, this feels like it’s going to be a long conversation, can we please have it anywhere else but here?” Trevor begged as he quickly helped the girl up. “I’m pretty sure everyone in town just broke out of month’s long mind control.”

“You’re right, we should get somewhere safe. Trevor, that son of mine opened up a coffee shop here or something right? Lead the way, everyone into the car.”

The two grandson’s and even shadowing ghost were quick to get in the car, but the young girl looked somewhat hesitant before the older man gave her a direct glare.

“Unless you were careful enough to erase their memoires, it won’t take them long to figure out that you were behind everything. And since you were dumb enough to pull a stunt like this in the first place, I don’t think you were. You can either wait here for the angry mob to find you, or you can come with us to relative safety.”

The girl quickly gulped and threw herself into the car.