School Spirit

This story has some language that may be not be aproprate for 13 and younger.

Will you recognize me?
Call my name or walk on by

Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling
Down, down, down, down

Hey, hey, hey, hey
Ohhhh.....

Don't you try to pretend
It's my feeling we'll win in the end
I won't harm you or touch your defenses
Vanity and security

Don't you forget about me
I'll be alone, dancing you know it baby
Going to take you apart
I'll put us back together at heart, baby
~Don’t You Forget About Me
Simple Minds

1.
The distant clock tower bell rang out twelve times.

Jason carefully traced a circle in the dirt in the middle of the practice football field. From there he made a picture of a man on the top, a child on the right, the rune for death on the left, a woman on the bottom then the sacred symbol of the Spirit that turns the eternal wheel of life and death. White energy infused each symbol as he dug them into the hard earth with his finger. A visible glow expanded and faded in the space of a passing second, but a more subtle energy remained, a slight tingle to those who haven’t developed their sense, an ignorable feeling like a limb falling asleep or the tickling of an invisible feather.

From the deep pockets of his green/black camouflage cargo pants, he produced two vials of liquid. “Sacred water of the mother spirit.” He poured enchanted river water over the circle. “Sacred water of the father spirit.” From this vial, he poured holy water from a local cathedral. “There is a darkness here.” Jason vocalized the spell to focus on his building energy. “A malicious spirit. A presence of bottled anger and repressed emotion. Please show yourself to me so that I may help you pass on.” Jason placed the palms of his hands together and focused on the boundaries between the living and the dead. Jason then pulled a chipped bone from his pocket and with a hunting knife, he began to carve a name.

HANA MADISON.

“I know what you’ve been through, and I’m here to help you.”

You don’t know me. The thought was carried on an ice cold breeze.

Jason closed his eyes and concentrated on the rift between worlds. He saw the green grass of the field turn brown with decay, watched as the new metal bleachers fell into rusted disrepair. This was where he would find her spirit lurking now. Jason, the sixteen year old shaman clenched his shaking fists tightly, and choked back a massive lump in his throat.


Short first chapter.... lots more written... more to come....

Wonderful.
I wasn't as crazy about the poem at the beginning as I was about the rest. I must admit, your sentence structure was sensational. I loved every single word in this chapter and I can't wait to read the rest.

That poem is a song. Its kind of an alllusion to The Breakfast Club. And it comes up later.

2.

The main football field was lit by the half faded moon in the blue night sky. The four wanderers made a noisy clank, clank as they walked across the home team bleachers looking out at the ocean of shadow grass and the distant shapes of the visitor bleachers. To Marie it seemed like every step sent that shiver up her spine. The darkness seemed to almost have a tangibility, like the soft touch of a strange creature’s fingertips. She wondered how she had gotten into this mess in the first place. At first, the idea had seemed cool enough. Hang out on Friday night with her new friends in this new school. Then the idea of a late night walk came up, which seemed a little weird to her, but not bad. Now she was walking across the field bleachers in the dead of night without a single electronic light for a quarter of a mile in every direction, and she’d forgotten her coat.

“Hey, Jason,” Thomas muttered, and pulled his coat tightly around his body. “I’m not sure I want to be here after dark. You know… Hana… and all…” Thomas was the first person out of this new circle of friends she had met. His hair was short and always seemed to have a slightly greasy sheen, no matter how often he washed it. The roundest pair of glasses that she had ever seen topped his thin nose. He was wearing about four layers of clothing. She wished that she had been at least half as prepared as Thomas. It was starting to get slightly chilly. Just as the thin kid spoke the clock tower struck ten.

Rocky slapped the runt kid upside the head. “That’s just a ghost story. Every school has a ghost. She’s just our urban legend.” Rocky was taller than the other three kids by at least a foot. He wore a blue and white high school letter jacket and a faded red baseball cap that remained a permanent fixture over his short cropped hair.

Thomas didn’t reply, but looked back at the taller kid with a sneer as he rubbed his throbbing head.

Marie shuffled her feet across the metal floor, creating a strange, reverberating noise, like a synthesized alien sound effect. “Who?”

Rocky, Thomas, and Jason all stopped and turned to the scrawny, dark haired girl all at once. Each with a look of utter surprise and shock on their faces.

Marie realized that she had suddenly become the center of attention. She felt her cheeks become warm with a blush. “What?”

“No one’s told you about Bloody Hana?” Thomas exclaimed. “I mean I’m a freshman and I’ve heard about Hana.” He looked over to Jason, whose expression had once again become calm and stoic.

“I’m a freshman too, you dork.” Marie crossed her arms. “Besides, I’m new to this ‘moonlight stroll group.’ I’m not into ghost stories.”

“Well,” Rocky said, looking over to Jason. “Do you wanna tell her or should I?”

Jason smiled a bit. “I haven’t made up my mind whether I believe it or not. So you go ahead.” Jason had such a cute smile too. The strange thing was that he never seemed to wear a jacket. He was always dressed in some sort of camo cargo pants and a simple one colored t-shirt. He had dark almond eyes and glossy black hair that fell around his narrow face, glamorously unglamorous uneven teenage facial hair, and tanned skin that came as much from staying out in the sun as his ethnicity, although she hadn’t quite figured out what that was.

The group of friends stopped in a circle under the moon lit fifty yard line. “You see, twenty years ago there was this girl named Hana who went to our school…” Rocky paused and looked around for dramatic effect.

“Yeah, what about her?”

“She was a real prep type—”

“I heard she was even elected homecoming queen before she….” Thomas interrupted.

“Who’s telling this story here?”

“Sorry.”

“—Anyway, there was this girl named Hana, right? And she was a real prep chick. Cheerleader, ‘A’ student, student government rep, and all that crap. Anyway, she falls for this guy, and falls for him hard, and they start going out. At first, it seems like they are this nice happy couple; that is until this guy goes out with some friends on a camping trip. They all get a little happy, if you know what I mean. Then they come back, drunk, and the driver wraps their car around a tree going about eighty miles per hour. Everyone in the car is dead instantly. News reaches home and Hana is devastated. She starts getting all of these weird mood swings. She drops out of cheerleading, and then quits coming to school altogether. Four days later, she’s found dead in the middle of the old practice field from seven stab wounds. Apparently all self-inflicted.”

Thomas put his head on the black-haired girl’s shoulder. “—And they say that she still haunts the school to this day. She especially hates happy couples.”

“Plus, ever since that day the groundskeeper has refused to plant new grass where the body was found. That’s why there’s that plain dirt patch.”

Marie’s eyes were about the size of dinner plates. “No way! You’re just telling me this to scare me. Anyway, that’s impossible. You can’t just stab yourself over and over, can you?”

“The only finger prints found on the blade were her’s.” Rocky said. “Weird thing is that no one saw or heard anything that night.”

“Maybe she was murdered.”

“It’s a possibility,” Thomas said.

It seemed to Marie all of a sudden that Rocky and Thomas knew way too much about this. That and the whole idea of visiting the resting place of a twenty year dead student honestly scared the hell out of her, and that fear was becoming more and more difficult to hide. “So, why did we come to this place anyway?”

“I’m not sure,” Thomas answered plainly. “Why are we here again Jason?”
Jason smiled. “I want to know if its true or not.”

Marie groaned and narrowed her bright green eyes. “That is so like you.” Marie looked around at the silver grass reflecting the light of a pale full moon. “This is like some sort of horror movie, and the cute girl always goes first.”

“Then you don’t have anything to worry about.” Rocky laughed out loud at his own joke, even though he was the only one. He quickly stopped when her elbow impacted his ribs.
Jason raised his hand and Rocky fell silent. “Did you hear something?”

“No.” Thomas answered first. Then Rocky concurred.

“I dunno.” Marie listened to the silent wind. “Hey, why do you guys know so much about this girl?”

“I researched it., Jason said. “I even have a copy of the police report in my room. She’s been alone for so long, the least I can do is talk to her. That is if she really haunts the school.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” Marie asked, looking frantically now in every direction, hoping not to see the bloodied girl with a butcher knife in hand. “Then the girl really died here?”

“Yes,” Jason answered, pulling his long black hair behind his ears. “But the thing I’m not so sure about is her haunting ground. I’ve never felt her presence before.”

Marie looked between the two of them, utterly confused. “Ok, now you guys are really creeping me out.”

“That’s right,” Thomas said, slapping his open palm with his fist. “We’ve never told you about Jason. It may seem seriously weird and all, but Jason can talk to ghosts.”

“My father was a shaman, and my mother’s a Shinto priestess back in Japan.” Jason kicked a pop can, sending it skittering noisily across the stands. “I guess you can say that the spirit world is kinda in my blood.”
Thomas pushed his round glasses back over his dark eyes. “He’s being rather modest. Rocky and I have seen Jason do some amazing things. He’s like some sort of ghost super hero.”
Marie punched Thomas in the shoulder. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”

“Ow.” Thomas stared back at the skinny girl though a puppy dog pouty face.

Jason held his hand up, and to Marie’s surprise, everyone became deathly silent. She looked around. She noticed that it had become very difficult to make out anything on the field, moonlight basked everything in a deep blue, but it was a dull light. The visitor’s bleachers were nearly invisible. “Do you feel that?” he asked.

Thomas closed his eyes tight and began to concentrate; Rocky simply stuck his finger in his mouth and placed it into the air. “I can feel it get colder.” Rocky admitted. Soon afterwards, Thomas opened his eyes and nodded.

“Wait…. What’s going on here?” Marie asked. She crossed her hands tightly across her chest to show her annoyance and to keep her heart from beating out of her chest.

“Stay here for a while you guys, please.”

The distant clock struck eleven.

Jason continued to walk across the bleachers, making that same synthesized alien sound with each passing step. Marie looked at Thomas, then to Rocky, who had stopped suddenly. “Wait.” Marie said. “Where are you going, Jason?”

Jason turned, smiling again, but this time he was hiding something. “I’m going to talk to Hana for a few minutes.”

“No, wait. I’ll come with you.” Marie said through chattering teeth.

“I can sense her now.” Jason said. “She’s afraid, afraid and angry. When I confront her, I have no idea what she will do.”

Thomas placed a hand on Marie’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. Jason’ll be fine. I’m sure he’s done stuff like this many times before, or at least I think he has.”

From the look in Jason’s eyes before he left, Marie doubted Jason’s perfect confidence. As the shaman faded into the shadows, Marie plunked down on a cold metal bleacher and sighed heavily. “I wonder how long this will take.”

Rocky sat down with a heavy plop next to her. “Got no clue.”

As concern and distress melted away, the cold began to set in. Marie tried to shiver the icy needles of night from her skin, but her arms provided only little comfort. She looked at Thomas, who was pacing back and forth. He looked so warm with his coat, hooded sweat shirt, over shirt, and shirt. She suddenly felt like punching him.

Marie felt a smooth material touch her bare arm. “Here.” She turned and saw Rocky offer her his coat. “You look cold.” He was looking out to the black blue field, and Marie thought that she saw a tinge of redness in his cheeks.

She took the coat and smiled. “Umm… thanks.” As Thomas passed by her again, she kicked him in the shin and stuck out her tongue.

“What did I do?”

She put on the coat and ended up swimming in it. “That’s for being comfortably warm.” She rolled up the sleeves of the jacket, allowing her lightly tanned arms to poke out the cuffs.

Thomas, not getting any clue, just shrugged and sat down. “I wonder how Jason’s doing.” The stars in the night sky attracted the attention of the three students. They sat wordlessly for a long time, letting the moon pass above their view. It wasn’t until the town clock tower struck midnight that someone spoke again.

“What was that?” Marie asked. There was a sound that had triggered in the back of her mind, like the tearing of paper. More than a sound, she experienced a feeling, a slight tingling in her forehead, throat, and chest.

“What?” Thomas asked.

Rocky simply looked around. She noticed that he clutched his shoulders tightly, but would not admit to being cold.

Then she felt something else. It felt like the emotional prick of a thousand needles through the heart. Betrayal, hatred, malice, jealousy, and above all unrequited love hit her all at the same time.

I have an idea of where you're going with the song, and i like it. have you considered making the year of it's release be the year of Hana's death?
And is it "Han-ah" or "Hon-ah"? Just curious.

It's a little choppy in places, and i'm not quite sure why the chapters are in this order... it would make more sense to me if they were flipped. Overall an intrigueing piece that i'd like to read more of.

3

You know nothing about me. The words came again on a cold breeze.

It was five minutes after midnight when Jason formed the rift between the mortal world and the penumbra, the spirit world. He took three steps and passed under the shadow of the moon. Everything looked different here. The grass had long ago decayed into a field of weeds and hard dirt, and the fences had rusted over. “I would know if you would tell me,” He said. His knuckles still clenched white.

Jason turned in the direction of the regular football field. They’re standing in a patch of dirt stood Hana Madison. Her white t-shirt was stained crimson brown from old blood, long since dried. Bright red hair cascaded around her narrow face, below her waist. Just above her bare feet, Jason saw she was held down by chains. “Well,” she said through closed scarlet teeth. “You found me.”

“I’ll admit it wasn’t easy,” Jason said, and relaxed a bit, but not much. He remembered that he always had a talisman or two for keeping unruly spirits at bay, Just in case Hana decided to become violent. “You know how to hide yourself well.”

She chuckled, a gesture that creeped Jason out to no end. “That’s no surprise. I’ve always been good at hiding my true self. That’s what I did all through high school.”

“Why are you still here?” Jason asked.

Hana’s green eyes narrowed. “If I knew that you don’t think I’d be here do you?”

“You keep yourself here. Those chains are your own burden.”
She collapsed to the ground, clutching her legs in her arms. “What you know of my burden? Leave me alone, I don’t want to talk to anyone.”

“You can let them go at anytime. Then you’ll be able to be with your boyfriend.”

The dry weeds at Hana’s feet began to ignite in flame. “Leave me alone!”
Jason stepped back from the licking orange flames. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to cause you pain.” Behind his back he unrolled a prayer note, a spirit ward spell his mother had taught him.

“He could never take responsibility for anything.” Heat waves began to emanate from her body. “I can’t believe he died after all we went through together.” Her red teeth gnashed together so hard that Jason thought they might crack under the pressure. She looked into Jason’s eyes for the first time, a gesture that made him step back. “I don’t want to be disturbed.”

Jason stepped back again. “Tell me, and I will try to understand.”

“Why should you care?”

“It is my fate.”

A.O. Avalon wrote:I have an idea of where you're going with the song, and i like it. have you considered making the year of it's release be the year of Hana's death?
And is it "Han-ah" or "Hon-ah"? Just curious.

Both pronounciations are fine with me. Oh, and as for the further relevence of the song that will come up too.

Sorry to triple post, but I want to put up another chapter.


4.

Marie’s eyes widened and her body erupted in a cold sweat as if she had just awakened from a nightmare.
Rocky noticed first. “You okay, Marie?”

She shook her head solemnly. “I don’t think things’re going well over there.” Slowly, she got up and walked away from Thomas and Rocky. Like a cat, she slipped between the bars and went out on to the football field, only illuminated by the yard lines’ reflected moonlight.
Thomas and Rocky looked to each other for an answer and found the other equally puzzled. “Hey, Marie, where’re you going?” Rocky asked.
“Don’t know,” she answered truthfully.

Marie felt drawn by a string pulled from her chest; she ran her almond colored hand along the cold smoothness of the home team bleachers. There was a connection here, an old energy that had been reawakened, perhaps as Hana had been forced awake by Jason. She felt the years of cheering, excitement, the glory of victory, and the disappointment of defeat. She felt new and mysterious things. The sense was overwhelming her now. She caught glimpses of cheering fans, band members in cumbersome cotton uniforms, cheerleaders pretending to be enthusiastic, even when the home team was getting slaughtered. In the midst of them was a red headed girl, very pretty and smiling a fake cheese smile, waving around pom poms, pretending to be very interested.

This must have been how she was in life.

Marie watched as Hana walked around the halls, playing the social game, the dating games. In moments, she even enjoyed it. But even when the joy came, it was often replaced by a deeper loneliness that she could never justify. How can someone who is so popular be all alone? Is what everyone would think of her? Even when she was the center of attention, she couldn’t shake the feeling of being alone. Hana’s thought flashed to Marie, almost as if they were her own.

A warmth of feeling washed over Marie as she saw a boy, a year, or two older than she. He was dressed in an old leather jacket, a white t-shirt, and jeans, just like the cool kid from an 80’s teen comedy. They were the quintessential princess and badboy couple. Hana and Derrick. The names formed in her mind and a heart formed around it, written over and over again on a notebook page. Contentment.

“Hey, Marie.” A voice snapped her out of her vision and she looked back at the towering Rocky, who was absent mindedly rubbing his arms for warmth. “You ok?”

Marie’s heart still glowed with the feeling of shared love between Hana and Derrick. “Yeah. Never better. Are you sure you don’t want your coat back?”

“Naw, naw.” He shivered quickly, but suppressed it. “It’s not even that cold out anyway.”

Marie looked out on that shadowy football field. “She was only able to show her true self in front of him.”

Rocky looked down at her, scratching his head beneath that worn old baseball cap. “What are you talking about?”

A few seconds later there was a clank, clank of Thomas running across the bleachers. He slid to a stop and sat down on the lowest seat. “What’d I miss?”

“I don’t know,” Rocky replied. “She’s gone all weird. She’s talking like Jason does sometimes.”

Thomas seemed to get excited by this prospect. “Maybe she’s sensitive to psychic impressions like me.” The runt boy looked at Marie very gravely. “What did you feel?”

Marie was surprised that neither Thomas or Rocky were weirded out by her wandering off. The truth was that she was scaring herself far more than anyone was scared of her. “I saw Hana.”

“You saw the ghost?” Thomas slid down to the field underneath the bars.

Marie shook her head. “I didn’t see her as a ghost. I saw how she was in life, and I saw her boyfriend … I think.”

“Post cognitiant visions.” Thomas held a knowing finger in the air to emphasize his declaration. His epiphany was met with empty stares. “You touched the bleacher.” Thomas placed his hand where she had to aid his explanation. “Then you witnessed the a vision of past events based on existing emotional auras.”

Marie looked at Thomas with one inquisitive eyebrow raised. “Okay, I’m fluent in English, and Spanish, and I didn’t understand a word of what you just said. So, could you please repeat that in one of those two languages?”

Thomas blinked. “It’s like you can pick up on where an object has been and what events happened around it. Have you ever had visions like this before?”

“Not that I remember.”

“So, Thomas,” Rocky said, tapping on the runt’s shoulder. “How do you know all this cognishan stuff?”

“I saw it on the Sci-Fi channel.”

Marie groaned over the answer and tried to focus on the past memories of Hana and Derrick. “I want to know what happened between the two of them. Why did he leave? Why did she kill herself? There’s something to this puzzle that we’re not seeing.”

Then she felt a faint premonition. A sound. Almost inaudible. It was a baby crying. The sensation accompanied by a feeling of regret and helplessness.

5.

“Did I touch a nerve, Hana?” Jason changed his approach.

The specter stood up, dusted off her jeans as a habit, and looked squarely into the shaman’s eyes. “Leave this place.” Her green eyes ignited like coals; heat trails and sparks flickered from her skin and dispersed into the cold air.

“You must understand that I’m here to help you. I wish to help you. But I can’t if you don’t trust me.”

“Trust?” Hana chuckled a bit, then began to laugh out loud. Streams of fresh crimson ran down the corners of her pink lips. Absently she wiped her mouth. “The last person I trusted betrayed me.”

“Is that your boyfriend?” Jason took the gamble to ask, hoping that it wouldn’t incite her fiery wrath any further. “I know more about your situation than you think. I’m sorry that it had to happen.”

Hana turned away from Jason for a moment. Her red orange hair swung side to side; she turned back, eyes as angry and sad as ever. “True. You know what everyone knows. You think I died over a lost love. There’s more to that than you’ll ever begin to understand.”

“Through listening comes enlightenment.” Jason sat down, putting his prayer note away. “Let’s play a game.”

Hana looked at the shaman, puzzled, but dropped her fiery aura out of a lack of attention. “What are you talking about?”

“Ask me anything.” Jason extended his hands. “I have no weapons to harm you now, and I am willing to share with you my life, if you will in turn answer one question of mine for each of yours.”

Bloody Hana thought for along time, perhaps considering the options of talking to another being for the first time in years or lashing out at her questioner and to continue to hide from the truth of her unlife. Jason tried his best to look calm and steady his ever racing heart. He pulled his raven hair behind his ears and awaited her answer.

When the clock struck one, she finally replied. “How are you able to see me?”

Jason figured a question like this may have come first. “I was born a shaman. My mother was a priestess of Shinto of the Shinsei Shrine in Kyoto; my father was a Hawaiian shaman. I’ve studied under my mother, my grandfathers, and many other spiritual leaders my whole life. I’ve been training for meeting and helping people like you.”

“—And you expect me to believe all that.” Hana crossed her arms.

“It’s the truth, believe it or not.” Jason’s chest slowed its heavy beating a little. It seemed that he had quelled her anger, at least temporarily. “But, now it’s my turn to ask a question.”

Hana said nothing in protest or agreement.

Jason thought for a few moments to come up with a good question that wouldn’t intrude too deeply on the emotional boundaries that she had been building for the last twenty years. “Why this field?” He asked, it was open ended, but perhaps it would give him some psychological foundation to build on.

The girl walked across the ragged weeds, not bending or disturbing a single one as she passed. For a few seconds it seemed as though she would avoid the question, but then she turned to face the shaman. She opened her mouth to speak …




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If anyone can point out a specific thing I can do to improve this story I will donte 100+ points to. Depending on how good the suggestion is and if I agree or not.

6.

“The practice field was were Hana and Derrick first made love.” Marie shocked herself at the suddenness of her epiphany. She blushed a little after saying it in front of her two new friends. There was a line of fate connecting the consummation of a teenage relationship to the lover’s Romeo-and-Juliet-like fate.

She realized that Thomas was standing over her left shoulder. “Maybe he got her pregnant.”

“I have no doubt of that.”

“—But if she was pregnant when she killed herself, then wouldn’t we be dealing with two ghosts?” Rocky leaned against the bleachers and watched the moon pass under a purple cloud that turned the deep blue of the field to gray and black.

Thomas turned to Marie, then to Rocky. “Its possible, but I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” Rocky asked.

“Emotion is what drives a spirit to live on,” Thomas said, trying to sound very scholarly. “As nearly every ghost movie I’ve seen has put it, ‘unfinished business.’ Hana is still here because she can’t let go of some pain that caused her to kill herself. The baby probably had little more thoughts than comfort … when she …” Thomas slowly considered what he was saying and stopped speaking.

Marie sank down to the ground; hot tears burned her cheeks. “They would have been a family….” She sobbed softly to the ground. “—And all we can do is tell ghost stories about how spooky her death was and how she haunts here. She ended her family here. Don’t you see that?”

Thomas sighed. “I do. But I don’t know what we can do about it.”

7.

“—There’s nothing you can do about it.” Hana replied.

“You’re wrong. There is always something that can be done.” Jason said, nearly at the same time Marie said much the same thing. “You guys spent a lot of time here, huh? Now I understand why you haunt here. The residual energy of him is very strong.”

The ghost pondered what she said for a few seconds. “I’ve never told anyone, truthfully, about Derrick and me.” She looked over to Jason, whose dark eyes were still transfixed on her.

“So, how do you feel?”

“Now you sound like a psychologist.”

Jason laughed. “Well, things could always be worse, you know. He could have gotten you pregnant.”

Hana said nothing, but the air around her seemed to boil.

The shaman clenched ever yone of his muscles, thinking that he must have said something terribly wrong. “Umm…. Well, it’s your turn.” He pointed out. “Your turn to ask me a question.”

She wiped a trail of blood from her chin. “How can you be so damn honest?”

Jason looked at her, confused.

“There’s not a single lie in you. You are who you are. Damn the consequences.” Her red teeth gnashed together. “You don’t have a single expectation placed on you. You’re not supposed to be straight ‘A’, honor roll, social butterfly, and student body president. You just have to be yourself. Just like him. Then he was given a bit of responsibly and he throws it all away.”

“What was this responsibility?”

“Where would you like me to start? His responsibility to me, to holding a job. To…” She nearly said something, a piece of her secret true self, but she instead said, “our future.”

“I see. Well, it sounds to me like you’re angry at yourself. Derrick let himself be a teenager when you forced yourself to grow up.”

“It was his fault!” She screamed and scalding air flew from her mouth. “Everything was his fault! You can’t even begin to understand…”

“Then help me!” Jason straightened to his full height, and for the first time he seemed taller than Hana. He reached a hand for her and placed it on her shoulder. The material of her shirt was still hot to the touch and burned his hand, but he kept it there.

She looked up to the shaman, vulnerable for the first time in twenty years. Hot tears fell from her vivid green eyes and evaporated on her burning skin. “He killed us. We... I had nowhere else to go. He might as well have held the knife himself.”

Jason grimaced from the burning pain shooting through his hand. “We? Who else are you talking about?”

Hana withdrew her shoulder and stepped back several paces. A trickle of blood broke her lips and fell down her chin; her eyes looked around, wild and erratic. “I can’t believe. I…” Her hand grasped the rotten fence that was the shadow of the fence in living world. “He…” Green eyes stared at Jason; the sadness faded into anger again. “You.” She got back on her feet and passed across the half dead shrubs, setting fire to each one as she walked. “I spent years forgetting what Derrick, my parents, the whole world did to me, and in one night you bring it all back You want to know what happened? I’ll tell you so that it can comfort you wherever you go when you die.” Hana’s hand grasped the air and an area near Jason’s face popped in an orange flower of flame. Absently he jumped to the side to avoid the intense heat.

Jason dropped to his stomach and scrambled for the prayer note that he had left on the ground. As he reached for it, the paper burst into scarlet flames. “That’s not good,” he said to himself, then turned and saw Hana. The dried blood from her shirt had nearly evaporated from the heat of her skin and the light of immolated coal shown through the knife wound in her stomach. She seemed to be smiling, but it was actually death’s grin, wrathful, with no trace of humor.

“That boy. I thought there was love between us. I even let him screw me under the bleachers once. He used to be the only one I could talk to, as myself. My real self. Then as soon as he knocked me up he was gone. That boy went off, drank his mind away, then got in a car, and burned his body away.” Bloody Hana reached out her hand again. This time a piece of Jason’s hair burned away in a foul smelling puff of smoke. “Thank you so much for reminding me of that betrayal.”

Jason was truly stunned. His throat knotted and he lost all words from his mind. “I had no idea. I’m truly sorry.”

“Well thanks, but no thanks.” Fires licked around her body, her skin began to pop and sizzle.

“STOP IT HANA!” Marie, the scrawny fourteen year old girl screamed, as she ran across the field of the spirit world. She crossed the open boundary between the two worlds with no second thought, or apprehension.

At first Hana paid very little attention to the younger girl’s intrusion. Jason reached into his pockets for another prayer note that contained a protection spell. “Marie, don’t come any closer. She’s dangerous.” With little more than a second’s warning Jason rolled into a backwards summersault and to his feet as a triangle of fire leapt where he had been.
As Marie came closer, Hana turned her angry eyes toward her as well. Her hand opened and the air around Marie began to combust. She ran through the fire with her arms wrapped around her face. The contact singed the coat she was wearing and her hair, but left her face and hands unharmed. In next to an instant the battle was over. Marie’s thin fingers wrapped around Hana’s wrist and her other hand touched her shoulder.

“You must remember….” Was all she said. Jason watched as Hana and Marie became one body. At first, he thought that Hana had possessed her, but in truth, it was Marie that took the ghost into her.

8.
Marie was surprised that Jason stopped involving himself when she came into contact with Hana. That feeling faded less that a second later when her mind merged with Hana’s. She finally found the final piece to the puzzle.


It was a small, darkened place where Marie finally met the real Hana. She was sitting on a metal folding chair; a white light had fallen upon her from an unknown source. Marie stepped into the only light in Hana’s True Self. Hana looked up from where she sat. Her eyes had no more malice in them, and her skin radiated cold. Marie walked around her, carefully. Neither one of them had truly understood their joining or where they had ended up. Marie guessed that she had taken Hana into her own mind. Not that she could prove that, nor was she sure that was the case. This whole night had been so strange. It seemed possible that anything could happen. The two girls looked at each other for sometime, each one trying to understand the other. Finally, it was Marie who spoke first. “He did love you, you know?”

Hana stared.

“I know you don’t give him much credit now. But he was always there for you.”

“You’re just like that other kid. You think you know exactly what makes me tick. That you can just waltz in here and help me? After thirty six years of people failing to understand me at all, what makes you think that either of you can understand me?”

“At least one person understood you. I saw him. When I was in the football field and you were talking to Jason, I could see. I remember what you don’t. Those happy times that you chose to forget.” Marie began to recall each date that the couple shared, their meeting, passing glances. These memories quickly became shared between the two of one mind.

“But then he left me when I needed him the most.” Like photographs the memories began to bubble and burn in the heat of Hana’s anger.

“I don’t believe that.”

“Of course he left me! What could I do? I couldn’t tell my parents that I got myself pregnant by a kid who died a drunk driver. They would have kicked me out of the house. I didn’t have any other real friends I could talk to about it. My dating Derrick had started a rumor right from the beginning. No one trusted him, but me. And no one knew me except him. Then he went ahead and did what everyone would have expected him to do. He died a statistic.”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to.”

Marie could hear Hana’s teeth gnash together and noticed, for the first time, Hana's blood colored teeth. “Oh, I’m sure he never meant to.”

“Have you ever wanted to talk to him?”

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to. He’s dead.”

“You’re dead too, and we’re talking to you.”

Hana pulled her arms up to show Marie her chains. “Even if I believed that he was still out there, like me, I can’t leave this field. I’ve been cursed to remain here.”

These chains are of your own making. Jason had said. The thought echoed through their shared mind.

Marie looked down to the chains that lead to the empty patch of dirt in the practice field. “I think I have a way to take you to him.”

Hana’s anger was overcome by confusion, but before she could question Marie began to sever the connection between the two of them. She didn’t even realize that she figured out how.


The material world was just as cold as the spirit world. The twisted weeds had returned to grass and the fence lost its rusted skin and had become anew with a silvery sheen. She noticed that Thomas was at her side first, then she saw Rocky, and even Jason was there. It was like waking up at the end of Wizard of Oz believing it was only a dream, but she soon realized that, it was real and remembered what she had to do. “We need a shovel and a trash bag.”

“What?” Thomas asked. “What are you talking about? Why?”

“There isn’t time to question. Just do it before Hana changes her mind.”

Jason looked to Rocky and Thomas. “Go ahead. She knows what she’s doing.”

Rocky nodded and pulled Thomas with him by his collar. “Hey, you gorilla. What are you doing?” Rocky didn’t respond, but walked to the supply shed at the far end of the practice field.

Jason tapped Marie’s shoulder, their eyes met. “What happened? You shouldn’t have been able to step into the pocket spirit world I opened, let alone communicate the way you did without years of training.”

Marie looked back at Jason knowingly. “We’ll talk about it later. Its not important now.”

Jason stared for a few more seconds, then nodded. “Alright. What’s the plan?”

“At first I didn’t know what was keeping her here. Then I noticed that her arms and feet are chained to this patch of dirt. So, I figure if we dig it up then we can take her to where Derrick is and they can both move on to the next world.”

Jason nodded, but his stoic, knowing face had become that of utter confusion. Not that she blamed him. About three hours ago, she didn’t even know that ghosts existed, and now she had journeyed to the spirit world and shared her mind with a ghost that had haunted a school for twenty years. “After all this is done, I think some of my relatives would like to talk to you.”

Marie nodded and laughed to herself. “One date and you already want me to meet your folks.”

Jason then pulled a chipped bone from his pocket and with a hunting knife, he began to carve a name.

What is he carving the name into?

You don’t know me. The thought was carried on an ice cold breeze.

I like that part.

Jason, the sixteen year old shaman clenched his shaking fists tightly, and choked back a massive lump in his throat.

Insert a comma after "shaman." Actually, this seems like an awkward place to mention that he's a shaman. Maybe in the second paragraph, when he is first mentioned, you should say, "A sixteen-year-old shaman carefully traced a circle in the dirt in the middle of the practice football field," instead of calling him by name...but then if you referred to him as Jason later in the first chapter people might not realize that he's the same person. Maybe you should just refer to him as "the shaman" in the first chapter, since during the second chapter the readers will realize he's the same person due to the references of the cargo pants and shaman abilities, etc.

Since it's short and stuff, the first chapter might work better as a prologue. I disagree with Avalon about switching the first and second chapters. I think this works well as the first chapter. It's a good hook.

“I mean I’m a freshman and I’ve heard about Hana.”

I think maybe there should be a comma after "I mean." I'm not too sure on that, though.

I forgot to tell you on the post for the road trip one, your dialogue is really realistic.

“The only finger prints found on the blade were her’s.”

I think there shouldn't be an apostophe here, but I'm not sure.

Why are we here again Jason?

Insert a comma before "Jason" since Thomas is directly addressing him.

“I researched it., Jason said.

Typo. Cut the period and put a quote after the comma.

Stay here for a while you guys, please.

Insert a comma before "you guys," since Marie is directly addressing the boys. Also, shouldn't this be part of the last paragraph?

“Wait.” Marie said.

Change the period after "wait" to a comma.

You know nothing about me. The words came again on a cold breeze.

This time I think you should cut the sentence about the words and the breeze. I think it would work better if it went straight from the words "you know nothing about me" to "It was five minutes after midnight..."

“I would know if you would tell me,” He said.

There's no reason to capitalize "he."

“If I knew that you don’t think I’d be here do you?”

Insert a comma before "do you."

she ran her almond colored hand along the cold smoothness of the home team bleachers.

I think there should be a dash between “almond” and “colored.”

Her red orange hair swung side to side; she turned back, eyes as angry and sad as ever.

We already know from Marie’s vision that Hana has red hair, so you might as well just say “Her hair” instead of “her red orange hair.”

He pulled his raven hair behind his ears and awaited her answer.

Same thing; we already know he has black hair.

“—And you expect me to believe all that.” Hana crossed her arms.

Why wouldn’t she? She knows there are ghosts, and she knows he can see her, so why would it be hard to believe that he’s a shaman?

I spent years forgetting what Derrick, my parents, the whole world did to me, and in one night you bring it all back You want to know what happened?

Typo. You forgot the period between “back” and “you.”

“STOP IT HANA!”

Insert a comma before “Hana,” since Marie’s directly addressing her.

These chains are of your own making. Jason had said.

Shouldn’t the period after “making” be a comma?

Something about Hana's character strikes me as awkward...but I don't know what it is. Maybe I don't understand why she is so angry and bitter. Like, yeah, she'd be pissed, but after twenty-or-so years...

I liked it Kept my attention enough to read all of the chapters AND the continuation.

WinterGrimm wrote:The distant clock tower bell rang out twelve times.

A good beginning, if a little cliche. But it sets the mood well, and caught my attention.

White energy infused each symbol as he dug them into the hard earth with his finger. A visible glow expanded and faded in the space of a passing second, but a more subtle energy remained, a slight tingle to those who haven’t developed their sense, an ignorable feeling like a limb falling asleep or the tickling of an invisible feather.

I liked the description sequence a lot. Especially the first sentence. "White energy infused [...]" Very professional-like.

From the deep pockets of his green/black camouflage cargo pants, he produced two vials of liquid.

The "green/black" is kind of weird; it doesn't really show us how his pants are. I suggest choosing one of the colors, or perhaps just putting "dark". I guess having a slash to describe something's color in literary prose is just awkward for me. ^^;

“There is a darkness here.” Jason vocalized the spell to focus on his building energy. “A malicious spirit. A presence of bottled anger and repressed emotion. Please show yourself to me so that I may help you pass on.”

I liked his little spell/speech.

Jason, the sixteen year old shaman clenched his shaking fists tightly, and choked back a massive lump in his throat.

I disagree with J. Wilder, though, about the "shaman" part. I think telling the readers Jason is a shaman here is good.

I don't think it's awkward at all; I even think it adds to the emotion you're putting there. Like being a shaman is difficult.

(More review to come? Maybe, I'm lazy )

I like the poem at the beginning of chapter one. It was beautiful. It is an excellent idea to start out a story, especially a fantasy one. While the first chapter was short, it is a good idea. Somethimes when a chapter is too long, the reader loses interest.