Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 52nd cycle. Now cycle 53!

THIRD ANNIVERSARY CYCLE: It's late October again, and within this cycle I will be completing my third year of daily gleekathon stories and commencing a fourth! As in previous years, this means special things happening. I've selected my favorite stories from throughout the year, and I'll be treating them to something special. In previous years this included Prequel, Sequel, and POV Swap, and then Additional Scenes and Alternate Endings. This year I'm adding two new treatments: Genre Swap (I think that's pretty straightforward) and Element Change (I change one thing in the story, see how it affects the rest). Note that in both these cases and some of the others, there may excerpts directly transferred from the story it references. Also, since this year saw the addition of 'shift days', and since I suck at picking, I have selected 42 stories, to be treated two per day! So here we go!

This story is a Genre Swap to Shattered, a Beiste & Ewan series story, originally posted on December 4 2011.

This is a double shift day. There will be one more upload today: Say the Words.

"Possession"
Beiste & Ewan (OC; Damian McGinty)
Beiste & Ewan series extra
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

Genre: Horror (ish)

They'd been close once, her sister and her. Kathleen was two years her junior, and as different as they were to anyone who'd see them, they were sisters and the rest didn't matter. That was until twenty years ago, when her then-eighteen-year-old sister met a guy and ran off to marry him back in his native Ireland. The love story of Kathleen Beiste and Glenn Healy may have been sweeping and romantic but it had also made it harder for them to keep in touch. She knew about four years later they'd had a son, Ewan, but already by that time Shannon was lucky if she got the cursory birthday and Christmas calls. At least when they did talk, it could go on for a couple of hours. But they hadn't seen each other in… ten? Eleven years?

Every year she kept telling herself she'd get around to taking that trip to Ireland to see her, if they weren't going to come over, but every year it wouldn't happen, blame lack of money, or the weather… Deep down she wasn't sure if it wasn't just that she was scared of what she'd find, if too much time had passed for them to be sisters again.

She'd never get the chance to find out.

Returning home that day, already distracted with thoughts of tryouts and other elements of the new school year which would begin within weeks, she had found she couldn't turn her lights on. She frowned, certain that she had seen the lights worked just fine in the hall, and she could hear her neighbor's stereo just fine. But then it wasn't just the lights that weren't working, it was everything in her apartment. It wasn't like she hadn't paid her bills and they'd cut her off, so why…

When the phone had rung, it took her by surprise. Everything else still wasn't working, but maybe this was good. She had gone to pick it up. "Hello?" She couldn't hear anything, or… she could, just barely. It was very faint, and she tried to turn the sound up on her receiver, until she could barely make it out, and then when she did hear it, she frowned. It made no sense. The voice almost sounded like her sister only it said 'Shannon, I'm here,' and that was impossible…

There was a light, flickering, off in her bedroom. It drew her attention, just as much as it ramped up her alertness. The phone had gone dead again, but now she could swear she was hearing the same vague noises coming from her room. She put the phone down, weighing her options… Curiosity was one thing, but so was apprehension. Something didn't feel right. The longer it took for her to decide, the more sporadic the flickering of the lights got, and then it got faster again, so fast Shannon was afraid the bulb would burst, something… So she had run to the room, pushing the door in.

As soon as she did, the light went out altogether. She blinked, approaching carefully. She reached out a hand to touch the light, low hanging as it was… and then it turned back on, everything turned back on. Shannon turned around… and she backed up in shock, as standing before her was her little sister Kathleen… Only even as she was seeing her, she felt… wrong. She was not looking at her, as though her eyes were fixed into nothingness.

"Shannon, I'm here," her voice sounded broken, like on the phone. "Shannon, I'm here," she repeated after a few more seconds. She was so confused at what she saw, and as her silence was drawn out, the words continued, again and again.

"Kathleen…" she had finally spoken, and the moment she did, her sister's eyes fixed on her.

"Take care of my boy. Please, take care of him," the broken voice said, before Kathleen moved into the hall. Shannon blinked, moving to follow her.

"Wait!" she had exited into the hall… but Kathleen was gone. Then the phone rang. Thinking it would be her again, she had hurried to answer. "Hello?"

The voice on the other end, the Irish voice, brought everything into focus much too fast. The woman began by asking if she was in fact Shannon Beiste, and she knew without her going on that this would be bad news. Even then she was just trying to bargain back from complete chaos, clinging to the possibility that it couldn't be as bad as her mind had decided it was… Yes, she was Shannon Beiste. Sister of Kathleen Healy, born Kathleen Evelyn Beiste? Yes, that very one.

She knew she'd heard the rest, but it still felt like it hadn't been her, like she wasn't there. But once she'd confirmed she was the person they were looking for, there was no stopping the woman from laying the news on her, and no matter how gently she tried to put it, from an ocean away, it didn't soften the blow by much. Her sister was dead. Glenn was dead. Her sister… Katie… Katie with the curls, Katie with the smile, Katie with her boy…

It was too much information all at once. The things she'd seen a moment before the call had come in, her sister… It couldn't be possible, there was no such thing as… ghosts, spirits, only what was she supposed to think? She had just been told her sister was dead, and a moment ago she had seen her… Maybe she was in shock. Her mind would come back to her when she would remember the words, remember him… Ewan, her nephew, who was now without parents.

She had been made his guardian, and it had not taken much for her to know what she wanted to do and would do. She was going to bring that boy home. She was all the family he had left. She had spent the next few hours trying to swallow the news she had received, just as she began to make arrangements for Ewan's arrival. She would be flying out to him the next morning.

When she had arrived, the woman who met her, the Healys' neighbor, looked relieved to see her. It was hard to explain, though Shannon imagined losing her neighbors would have affected her, too. She had managed to ask after Ewan, wanting to know how he was doing. The woman only said that he stayed in his room, wouldn't leave. They had come to the house, and the woman wouldn't follow her upstairs, only showing the way. Shannon had followed, finding the door closed. She paused, knocked.

"Ewan, it's your aunt Shannon, from Ohio. Can I come in?" There was no answer, and then a few seconds had passed and the door opened just a crack and she saw one blue eye peering out at her, darkened with insomnia. "Ewan? Do you remember who I am?"

"He won't leave…" the boy had said, and she felt a chill up her spine.

"Who won't leave?" she asked, and he let her in, returning to sit on his bed, holding his legs close as he stared out at the chair in front of his desk, which was facing toward the bed. Shannon closed the door, taking in the scene. "Ewan?"

"You're not real!" the boy cried out at the chair. "You're not him! Leave me alone!"

"Who are you talking to?" Shannon blinked. "Sweetheart, there's no one but the two of us."

"No, I can see him, he's sitting right there!" he pointed to the empty chair. "Just staring at me all night." Now her encounter back home told her maybe she knew who he was seeing.

"Your father?" she asked.

"He's not my father! He can't be, because my… my father…" he was starting to hyperventilate, and she came to sit with him, wrapping her arms around him. He resisted briefly, but then maybe for exhaustion's sake he had relented, letting her hold him, and soon he would drift to sleep. She looked back to the chair. She couldn't tell if the image was still there, as only Ewan had seen him. But whatever it was, she wouldn't leave her nephew alone. She had stayed, settling with the sleeping boy resting in her arms. She tried not to cry, but everything was just sinking in… Her sister was gone, his parents, both of them… She hadn't seen this boy in eleven years almost, and now she was to be the sole person responsible for his care. She'd thought for sure it would take her time to be able to put herself in that position, but now… Now she was here, holding him, and there was nowhere else she'd rather be.

When Ewan had awoken, hours later, he had startled, reminded of what he'd been seeing before, and he looked up. "You're alright, it's okay," Shannon had told him, and he looked back to her, remembering her arrival. He turned to the chair again, and he let out a breath.

"He's gone…" his eyes scanned the room, still uncertain, but he was finding no one. He looked back to his aunt, his tired eyes resisting still, and he rested against her once more.

"I've got you… Go back to sleep, I've got you…" she promised him, and he did. She couldn't know what the apparition of Glenn Healy had sought, but maybe, just maybe, he had needed to make sure, just as his wife had, that his son was going to be looked after. Now she was here, and there was to be no doubt. Ewan would be looked after, kept safe, loved…

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!