Five

"What do you mean, I'm dead? I don't feel dead. You can see me, anyway," here we go again. It's always along these lines. What did God do, create every soul the same when they died?

I opted for letting the ghost see the news report. About the crash, and about how I can see ghosts, and all that. After a while she was silent. Then she burst into tears.

"I'm…dead? No! I was going to come to Carmel for Christmas! Visit my boyfriend who's in college here! I was so excited! We were planning to…to… And now I'm dead! I can't ever do it again! I'm only sixteen!" she wept furiously. What do I do, wrap my arms around her? A teenage delinquent? Uh, no.

"So you've got to move on. To, uh, heaven or the afterlife." I didn't mention that she wasn't likely angelic, based on the tattoos, earholes, and Gothic clothing.

"But I DON'T WANT TO MOVE ON! I WANT TO STAY HERE!" she shouted.

"It's natural for you to be angry for a while, but eventually you have to move on. You've got your chance to live your life to the fullest, and do what you want. Now you just have to accept things as they are," I said. I was trying to keep my frustration in control. Like how Father Dominic do when he's talking to ghosts. Patient and understanding. Right, Suze. Breathe in. And out.

"But it's NOT FAIR! I'm only sixteen!" she hollered.

"Life's never fair. It's your," I quoted, "destiny or fate or karma or whatever." Or retribution.

"Things don't have to be like this. He said I can stay here!" the ghost argued back.

"Who said you could stay here?" I asked.

"I was sleeping in the plane. I dreamt that I saw a guy wearing a mask telling us that when we died we could stay here, just as long as we do what he said," the girl said. "I don't know his name. We just know him as 'the dark-shifter'."

The dark-shifter. I immediately thought back a decade ago…

Paul's hand pinning my fingers to a page… a paragraph that he asked me to read… "If the 1924 translation is to be believed, the shifter's abilities didn't merely include communication with the dead and teleportation between their world and our own, but the ability to travel at will throughout the fourth dimension as well."

"Susannah, hello? Earth to Susie," Jesse snapped his fingers in my face. I jerked back.

"What the heck's going on?" the girl asked.

Is Paul going to go back in time to stop their death? I don't think so. So no fourth dimension travelling. How about teleportation between their world and our own? Is Paul going to create a legion of ghosts bent on destructing the world as we know it, based on their hatred towards the living, laying waste to our region? An undead army that have the power of materialisation and telekinesis, killing people. What's worse is you can't even see them. And only a few of us can destroy them.

"It's Paul. He plans on recruiting ghosts to help him rule the world. We need to stop him," I whispered to Jesse.

"Paul…as in, the shifter Slater?" Jesse asked.

I nodded. "What's your name?" I asked the girl.

"I thought you'd never ask. Lily O'Farrell. From San Francisco," the girl plucked her bangs away from her lipglossy mouth.

"OK, Lily. Can you do me a favour? Give me a description of the people who sat near you on the plane. I need to summon them here." I said.

It's me. Paul is doing this because of me. Because once Jesse is gone, I'll be alone. But he doesn't know Jesse's a mediator too. Well, not yet. So it's "Light-bringer VS Dark-shifter".