I had gotten off the bus when I thought I was far enough away, when walls of trees became more frequent than bus stops. I wasn't quite sure where I was, which was a good thing and bad thing in itself. I thought the distance would help. I was as disconnected as I possibly could get.

My mother had taught me to meditate in the woods, so that's where I was headed. I could get far enough from people to free my mind and really focus on what mattered. I only stopped at a gas station to get some necessities in case I got terribly more lost than I already was. This wasn't the time to think about Danny. I kept my mind from being tainted worrying about him. My sister. My sister was the person that mattered.

The thing that bothered me most about the whole situation was that woman in the photograph. Something had been tugging at my mind. She was hauntingly familiar. From something way in the past. Unfortunately, this just left me with far too many undesirable options.

I kept my past closed off for a reason. There were too much pain and emotion tied back there. But I knew the only way to move forward was to finally sort through and acknowledge what happened all those years ago.

I stopped my wandering when I found a tree that suited my tastes. I sat with my back to the trunk of a giant oak and set my sack of supplies off to the side.

As I sat down, I scanned the scene one last time. There was nothing close that could bother me while I meditated. I closed my eyes, and slowly released my connections to the world one by one. My location. The people I encountered. Even the present. All gone. I searched within the void of myself to latch on to the past.

With my eyes closed, I could smell my mother's cooking. It was warm and buttery and nearly irresistible.

"Focus, Nora," I heard my mother's voice. A sad nostalgia echoed through my mind. "Try to let go of as many connections as possible."

"But you keep talking to me." I wished I could control my words. I wished I could tell my mother not to go. How I wished these weren't my last words to her. "Can't I meditate outside in the woods?" I complained. "I can focus out there."

"More often than not, you won't meditate at home. You'll be called to all sorts of strange places that you won't be familiar with," she said. "Try again."

I closed my eyes. I knew this day well.

I heard the sound of the front door opening and tiny feet running through the hallway. My sister was home from school. "Mommy!" she practically sang as she raced to the kitchen. "Do you know what I did today?"

The question was rhetorical of course. Even I at that age could observe the most recent connections Emily had made.

My mother made a show of leaning her forehead against her youngest child's. She paused for a moment and stood back up with a giant smile. "You and Daddy went to the hardware store!"

Emily giggled.

Dad entered the room and kissed my mother on the cheek. His ulterior motive became apparent as his eyes scanned the kitchen to figure out what we were having for dinner. She gently pushed against his chest.

"No. If you snack on peanuts again, you're going to be in trouble. I'm going up to the asylum tonight, so you'll need to feed the girls on time," she argued whatever thought had popped into my father's mind.

My ears perked up at that. Liang Chu had hired my mother as a last ditch effort to try to clear the old asylum of spirits. The asylum had been closed for a while, but the urban legend was that it was haunted. Teenagers would go up there and mysteriously get into accidents. The Chu syndicate had been trying for years to demolish the place, but the equipment would malfunction at extremely hazardous times. Construction was halted, but Liang Chu was ready to get things back on track.

My father frowned. "I get a bad feeling about that place. I don't think you should go up there tonight," he said.

"Emily, I know you have homework. Do it at the table so your sister can help you," my mother instructed Emily.

Emily cheerfully sat next to me and pulled out addition worksheets from her backpack. I listened closely to my parents conversation in the other room.

"Kyle, we've been over this. I'll be fine. Liang was surprisingly thorough. He gave me a list of all the patients and employees that ever worked at the asylum. Most of them aren't a threat. Regardless, you know I can handle hostile spirits."

"But the one with the eyes..."

"They all have eyes, Kyle. It was an insane asylum. Some of them are bound to be a little crazy. They deserve to move on as well," my mother argued.

I focussed again thinking on my mother's words. For a split moment, I could see the connections in her mind. A grainy black and white photograph of a woman with wild black hair and menacing eyes.

I gasped before I could think to control myself. To try to cover up my mistake I reached for the homework my sister was struggling through and finished the problem for her. There was no fooling my mother.

"Elenora Callaway!" It wasn't really a shout. My mother never shouted. Our connection shook with the reverberence of her dissatisfaction.

She made her way over to the kitchen table, but she was calm. She kissed the top of my head. "Remember, it's rude to intrude on people's minds without their permission."

Emily giggled as our mother kissed her cheek.

"I'll be out late tonight. I'll see you both in the morning if I don't come back to tuck you in. I love you both very much," she told us.

"Bye, mommy!" Emily called out as Mom left through the front door. I simply closed my eyes to try to slip into meditation.

I opened my eyes in a panic. My breathing was quick and labored. This was still a memory, and this was the worst of it. It felt like everything that connected my heart to my body was getting violently ripped apart.

"Daddy!" I screamed. The pain was excruciating. I pushed myself back from the kitchen table so hard, my chair tipped over backwards. I had stayed at the dinner table to continue my meditation, but there was somewhere else I needed to be. Somewhere I was sure I would never make in time.

My dad ran into the kitchen like a boulder upon hearing my scream and the subsequent crash of my chair. "Nora! What..."

"Mommy!" I screamed. "Mommy's in trouble. She's getting ripped apart. I've got to save her!" I struggled to get up off the floor.

I could recognized the dreaded fear return to my father's mind. He had his suspicions that this job would be too much.

"Nora, I need you to stay here and watch your sister. Whatever you do, don't leave this house," he started calmly.

"But..."

"Go upstairs right now!" he shouted. "I'm going to get Mommy. Look after your sister. Emily needs you."

"Wah!" Emily had come down the stairs and started to cry at our loud voices without really understanding the cause.

"Stay!" Dad shouted again. He ran out the back door and into the night.

"Nora..." Emily cried. "Wh-what's going on? Where's Mommy?"

I grabbed my sister's hand and rushed her up the stairs. Daddy was wrong. Emily didn't need me. Mommy needed me, and Daddy wasn't going to be enough.

I took Emily up to her room and sat her down in the middle of the floor. "Emily, do you want to learn a trick Mommy taught me about meditation?" I could hear my young voice crack at the word.

She sniffles and nodded. I knew I was taking advantage of her. I knew how badly she wanted to be like me and Mom. She'd give anything to do what we did. I pushed aside the guilt from back then to put my objective in the forefront.

"Close your eyes," I demanded. She obeyed. I placed my thumb on her forehead and pinched her neck firmly, just enough to knock her unconscious. I grabbed a pillow from the bed and placed it behind her head before I ran back down the stairs.

I didn't bother closing the door on my way out. The cold night air whipped against my face as I pushed myself to run up the wooded slope that led to the asylum. My lungs felt like they were on fire, but I couldn't stop. If I did, I could lose both of them.

I hesitated for only a moment when I reached the asylum. It felt like I was breathing in frozen knives. I wiped away the tears from my face.

"Mommy!" My voice broke as I screamed.

I ran inside the half wrecked building. My connection to my mother was growing fainter by the second. I let out a yelp as my foot fell through the floorboards on the stairs. In the silence following my outburst, I heard the faint sound of someone else crying and methodical thumping.

I pushed myself and continued up the stairs. "Mom?" I called out tentatively because I wasn't even sure if it was my mother anymore.

The thumping got clearer as I walked down the hallway. I passed by the vacant patient rooms one by one.

"Why don't you love me?" came the raspy shout of my mother.

"Mom!" I called out again and followed the source of the voice.

I found the woman straddling my father. She barely resembled the person I knew to be my mother. Her clothes were splattered with blood. Her hair was frazzled and disarrayed. She had a desperate and haggard look on her face. In the dark, she almost looked like the woman from the photograph I wasn't supposed to see.

Her hands clutched at my father's throat. I arrived in time to see his arms fall to his side, lifeless. Using the vice of her hands on his neck, she banged his head down repeatedly. "I don't...want to...go to...sleep!"

I immediately jumped to the conclusion that she was possessed. My body was shaking as my mind raced through what I supposed to do. I had to use my connections to pull her out.

"L-Lydia Callaway!" I said her name out loud. Names were supposed to be a powerful connection. Her face turned towards me, but not out of recognition. I could tell I was her next target.

"Please, please stop," I whimpered. "Mom, please. You're scaring me. You're hurting Dad. Come back."

For a split second, I thought I saw her. What little was left of my mother's psyche came back. "Ele..." she started to say. Her face turned back to my Dad, and she froze. I felt the final snap of our connection.

"Noooooooooooooooo!" she screeched. My mother was gone. She was completely gone. The spirit who had possessed and destroyed every last bit of her and was rapidly dropping into despair. In the blink of an eye, she got up off of my dad and threw herself out of the window.

"No," I breathed. I hurried to the widow to find her body impaled on the black iron fence below. Red and black lights had the asylum completely surrounded. I hadn't even noticed the sirens. She was dead. My mother was dead.

I blinked as a bright white search light was shined on my face.

"Help!" I called out, my emotion drained from me. "My dad is hurt up here and needs medical attention."

"Stay right where you are!" a voice on a megaphone ordered.

I stayed at the window and turned back to my dad. He hadn't moved an inch. I bit my lip and begged whatever guiding forces were out there not to let me lose two parents that night.

Several policemen rushed into the room carrying guns and body armor. I was surprised by their attire, but didn't let it show. There may have been more spirits around.

The only person that wasn't armored came to me. I recognized her as one of my friend's parents. Susannah's mom rushed over to wrap me up in her arms. "Nora, are you okay? Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," I said gruffly. It was partially the truth. I wasn't hurt.

"We found your sister back at your house. Thank God she was only unconscious," she informed me.

I could feel myself disconnecting then. How easy it was to slip away as protection for myself. Feeling nothing was bette than the alternative. Everything was a numbing blur until I was in a police car.

"You and your sister are welcome to stay with me until your father is released from the hospital, is that okay?" Susannah's mom asked as she drove.

I didn't say anything. It's not like we had any other choice.

Her partner sighed from the front seat. "Don't bother, Hellen. I mean, who wouldn't be in shock if their mother had gone on a killing spree."

The statement confused me. My mother hadn't killed anyone but herself. She killed herself out of despair after believing she had killed her husband. That feeling destroyed her.

"I mean, they must have really had it out for the Chus. I never thought Lydia would have had it in her. I always thought she had a few screws loose... And they say it's genetic," the partner continued.

I didn't like how he referred to my psychicness as a disease or a mental illness. Susannah's mom didn't like it either, but she didn't understand. She couldn't say he was wrong, just being incredibly rude.

"Carl..." she gave him a warning.

"That wasn't my mother," I finally said. "My mother didn't break into the syndicate house and kill all of those people. She was possessed. Don't equate her being psychic with her being crazy. Because that wasn't my mom and that's not me."

They were both shocked to hear me speak. Their surprise turned to pity and contempt. They were scared of my mother. They were scared of me. They had no idea of what I could be capable of. They couldn't understand. No one could. I alone knew the truth.

I hadn't known the truth. Not back then. And the truth hurt bad.

There I was crying alone in the woods. Oh, it was painful. I had made so many mistakes. And I was scared. I thought that I was stronger than my mother now. But that's not true. I was just as capable of failing and getting possessed like she was. The only difference was that now I knew something she didn't. Something that would make me vulnerable.

The spirit who possessed my mother, the one who showed up in Emily's photo with bright purple eyes, was psychic. That was one connection I would never be able to shake. And odds were, if I tried to stop her, my fate would be no different than my mother's.