All The Pretty Ghosts (The Never Series Book 1) Jamie Campbell (best life changing books .TXT) 📖

waited for me in the living room, giving me the privacy I needed to collect myself. I found some clothes in the closet before returning to him.

“Is your leg okay?” he asked, staring at me carefully.

“It’ll be fine,” I replied, taking a seat on the sofa. Oliver sat on the floor at my side. Still so painfully close that I could reach him but not touch his skin. He could only sit on the floor, it was the only thing he didn’t go through.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything back in the factory. I wanted to, you have to know that.”

“I do.” I didn’t want to remember what had happened back there. If I could erase it from my memory, I would have done. At least all the black soot was no longer covering my skin, and my clothes no longer smelled like smoke. It was a start.

The first step toward forgetting.

The spirits were filling the room, some lingering by the door. “All these spirits I’ve been seeing, you can see them too, can’t you?” I asked.

“I can.”

“So you know how bad they are, what they do to me.”

He nodded. “I’ve tried talking to them but nobody wants to listen. They want their opportunity to speak with you.”

“They’re a bit pushy,” I said. Despite ourselves, our lips both quirked up into a smile. I repositioned my leg so it was up on the sofa. The bandage didn’t pull that way and the pain wasn’t as bad. I would have killed for a pain relieving pill.

Oliver opened his mouth to speak but closed it again. His brow wrinkled in conflict. He wanted to say something but wasn’t sure if he should. I had seen that look many, many times before.

“Just say it,” I insisted. “Whatever it is, I can take it.”

Except, I wasn’t sure if I could.

He pursed his lips together, as if he could physically stop himself from saying the words he wanted to. A knot formed in my stomach over what it could be.

But I had to know.

“Come on, Olly. Just say it, please. You’re scaring me by keeping it from me.”

He took a breath. “The spirits are trapped here. Nobody can leave.”

Now it was my turn to be completely confused. “What do you mean?”

“Nobody can cross over into the afterlife – whatever is meant to be after this world. That’s why all the spirits want to speak with you. We’re all trapped.”

“But… you can’t be. I saw…” What had I seen? I thought I saw David enter the hereafter but he had turned up again at the shelter.

Besides him, I hadn’t seen one spirit disappear never to be seen again. But I also hadn’t been looking very hard either. Mainly, I had done my best to ignore all the spirits. I assumed some unfinished business was keeping them lingering in limbo. I hadn’t considered they might not be here by choice.

“They’re really trapped?” I said.

Oliver’s brows were knitted together as he explained it to me. “When I… died, I woke up as a spirit as I was leaving my body. There were some adults there, telling me it would be alright if I remained calm. After a few days they started telling me how they had been stuck as ghosts since the Event.”

“So they’re all here? Why can’t I see them all?” I was thinking of my parents, of all the reasons why they hadn’t been around me since they died. Why they didn’t think it was important to return to their daughter.

“They’re all stuck in the spirit world, but they can move anywhere they like on earth. If they don’t know about your… ability, they won’t know to come to you.”

It seemed plausible, but my own parents? Surely they would want to visit me even if they thought I couldn’t see them? What about my grandparents? My aunts? My uncles? Why didn’t any of them care enough to check on me occasionally?

I didn’t voice those fears, they were mine alone to lock away and stalk my nightmares while asleep. I wasn’t going to start to air them in public, not when I was surrounded by gossiping ghosts.

“So what does this all mean?” I asked instead.

Oliver didn’t have a chance to speak before all the spirits watching us chose to speculate. The voices swam around me like a school of fish in the ocean.

“It means we’re never going to get any rest.”

“We’re always going to be here, unable to move on.”

“What is the hereafter, anyway? Maybe it’s not better than here.”

“I didn’t want to go anywhere. I like it here.”

“You’re just scared.”

“Am not. Who wants to die anyway?”

“We are dead, you idiot.”

“I want to go to Heaven. I didn’t go to church every Sunday for nothing. I deserve to cross over.”

“Going to church doesn’t guarantee you entry into Heaven, sweetheart.”

“What’s the girl going to do about it? She’s just a girl.”

“She might be a girl, but she’s strong.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant she’s so young.”

“They’re all young, they’re the only ones left.”

“The boy knows what to do, he seems smart.”

“He knows nothing.”

“He knows more than you.”

I couldn’t take it any longer. As fast as my burned leg could let me hobble, I ran into the kitchen. The familiar strangle I felt before was quickly enveloping me, threatening to take all the air out of the atmosphere.

Leaning over the sink, I drunk straight from the faucet. Afterwards, I splashed some of the ice-cold water on my face. It helped – marginally. At least it drowned out the voices for just a moment. I had forgotten how to tune them all out, not that I was particularly good at it in the first place.

One voice broke through them all.