The girl who ignored gho.., p.1
The Girl Who Ignored Ghosts, page 1
THE GIRL WHO IGNORED
Ghosts
The Unbelievables
Book 1
K.C. Tansley
V
BECKETT PUBLISHING GROUP, LLC
The Girl Who Ignored Ghosts
The Unbelievables – Book 1
**UNCORRECTED PROOF**ADVANCE READER COPY**
Important Note: This is not the final edition and may contain errors.
Trade Paperback Edition / August 2015
Beckett Publishing Group, LLC
www.beckettpublishinggroupllc.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, companies, events, or locales is entirely incidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission from the publisher, Beckett Publishing Group, LLC, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Copyright © 2015 K.C. Tansley and Anthony Dvarskas
Written by K.C. Tansley
Created by Anthony Dvarskas and K.C. Tansley
Edited by Jessica Jernigan
Cover Art by Creative Paramita
Internal Design by Rik Hall
Author Photograph by Brett D. Helgren
ISBN Paperback: 978-1-943024-00-1
ISBN Ebook: 978-1-943024-01-8
Printed in the United States of America
To Anthony Charles Dvarskas, for dreaming up this world with me when we were children and letting me run wild in it as an adult.
“Some mysteries were built so intricately, it took centuries to unravel them. Others remained forgotten, left to gather
dust in the memories of the dead. Castle Creighton waited
over a century for its chance.”
—Professor Astor, The Price of Power: The Curse of America’s Uncrowned Aristocracy
A Chapter 1 B
The two weeks leading up to finals were the perfect time to do research at Gilman Library–if you needed to be
surrounded by people. Bustle and noise didn’t distract me
anymore. I was much more likely to be disturbed by quiet.
Or, at least, what the quiet conjured up. Old buildings like Gilman were the worst.
I made my way to the library’s elevator. My progress
was slowed by the twenty-pounds of research material that
I carried. I slid my thumbs under the straps of my backpack, trying to relieve my aching shoulders, while I waited.
Professor Astor’s classes were unusual—even by
McTernan standards—and his paper topics were insane. But
he was a prestigious university professor willing to teach
prep-school kids, so the school let him teach pretty much
whatever he wanted. This semester was “The Lore and Lure
of Historical Places,” which might sound innocent enough,
but Astor had me investigating a notorious double murder
that had happened in 1886.
The professor expected McTernan students to do as
much as his students at Georgetown, but he helped anyone
willing to do the work. For my latest assignment, he’d
loaned me some incredible resources from his personal
collection. I couldn’t wait to explore the books in my
backpack, but investigating a grisly mystery and a family
curse meant that I had to take some special precautions.
Working alone in my dorm room was out of the question. I
needed the frantic energy of my classmates preparing for
finals.
Once the elevator arrived, it was a short ride to the
fourth floor. The place was packed, just the way I liked it. I found a free chair at a table with three sophomores. They
THE GIRL WHO IGNORED GHOSTS
didn’t look happy about my intrusion, but I was a junior, so they had to deal.
I had a lot of work to do. If I was going to discover
anything new about what happened at Castle Creighton, I
had to start by reviewing what was already known. While I
read, I needed to look for blank spots and anything that had been overlooked. Professor Astor’s willingness to believe
that I might be capable of unraveling a 129-year-old mystery was one of the reasons he was my favorite teacher.
I slipped on my headphones, cranking up some Taylor
Swift. I needed happy music to explore something this dark
and scary. Then I pulled out my binder and reread my notes
on Castle Creighton.
The castle sat in the middle of an island just a few miles
from the village of Wright in Connecticut. It felt a world
away from the hustle of Washington, D.C. I’d only seen a
few photos of the place, but my first thought was desolate
and creepy. Maybe it was the isolation of the island or the
Medieval Gothic architecture of the castle, but the place
seemed designed to provoke bad dreams. I couldn’t help
envisioning what I could face there—an endless line of
restless ghosts, waiting for someone like me.
I shuddered. Ghosts were something I’d actively
avoided for the past eight years.
Ghosts didn’t just appear to anyone. They could only break through to our reality if we believed in them. The
unbelievers were the lucky ones. They would never see
what they refuse to believe in. They would never feel what a ghost could do. They would never know what a ghost did
to me.
There were ghosts in my earliest memories. They
rocked me in the cradle, and they sang me to sleep. They
were a constant presence throughout most of my childhood.
Some even became my friends. As I grew up, they told me
more about their world, the world of the unbelievables. I
discovered a little bit about how curses and spells worked.
Like how they could only be cast by the living. Ghosts
needed the living for a lot of things, especially for making amends and resolving unsettled conflicts. This was usually
what the ghosts wanted from me. A reckoning.
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K.C. TANSLEY
Most of them were harmless, but not all of them.
Forget everything you’ve learned from movies and TV.
Ghosts weren’t troubled souls waiting to “cross over.” If
only it were that simple.
Death shattered souls. This is the first thing you need to
know. The largest chunk of the soul moved on. I’m pretty
sure it reincarnated, but the ghosts were kind of cagey about that part. The ghosts themselves were the biggest pieces of
what was left behind.
Then there were the shards from the ghost chunk that
were called “spirits”. They were attached to a specific
location and a particular event. They were mostly just a
nuisance. They didn’t have any real thought processes or
intentions. They just repeated a moment. Maybe it was the
last thing they thought about before they died. Maybe it was the moment of death. Either way, I did my best to avoid
spirits.
Some ghosts just needed something simple–something
an elementary school kid could actually handle. But most of
the time, their reckonings could get really complicated. And scary. I still did my best to help them. And, they were
patient with me. Being that they were dead already, time
didn’t mean much to them.
But soon after I turned nine, everything changed.
The ghost with the dark hair and silver eyes refused to
tell me her name. That meant that I had no power over her. I couldn’t just send her away—and I would have, because
this ghost frightened me. When she had first appeared to
me, I was in bed with a fever, so my first impressions of her had a delirious quality that I couldn’t separate from the
sickness.
Even when my head cleared, this ghost scared me. She
wouldn’t tell me what she needed from me. Instead, it was
like she was trying to figure out how to take what she needed. I had no idea what she was going to do, but I
sensed it would be bad. Then I started losing time.
In the beginning, it was just a few seconds here and
there, like getting lost in your thoughts and forgetting what you were doing. I was still recuperating, so it was easy to
think I was just absent-minded. But it didn’t stop there.
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THE GIRL WHO IGNORED GHOSTS
Soon it was ten minutes gone from my day.
One second, I’d be reading a book, and the next thing I
knew, the book was on my bedside table and I was sipping
a cup of soup. I had no memory of setting aside the book or
of my mother coming into my room with a tray. I felt like this ghost was taking over my life. Like she was taking over me. And I didn’t know how to stop her. It was terrifying.
One night, I woke up to find a new gh
me on the bed. She had a halo of red curls and warm green
eyes and she smelled like lilacs. I had never met a ghost
who seemed so alive.
“I’m Toria,” she said. “And I’m here to help you.”
I believed her instantly. “What’s happening to me?”
“There are ghosts who try to steal life from the living—
twisted creatures who can’t accept death. They seek out
people who are both receptive and weak. You’ve always
been receptive to ghosts, but the fever made you weak. She
was able to slip inside you.”
“No, that can’t happen.” If a ghost were inside me, I’d
feel it.
“Have you been losing time?” she asked gently. ”Are
there moments that you can’t remember?”
I bit my lip. “Just a few minutes.”
“So, you’ve been fighting her.” Toria smiled at me. “But
the longer she stays in your body, the stronger she will
become. If we don’t expel her, she’ll start stealing hours,
and then days, and then….” Lines of worry crept across her
forehead.
“You can’t let her do that!” I clutched my covers. I
didn’t want a ghost taking over my life.
“I won’t.” She smiled like we shared a secret. “Will you
trust me?”
I nodded.
“You have to let me slip into your body. I’m sorry, but
it’s the only way I can drive her out.”
“You’ll take over my body?” I hesitated.
Toria nodded. “Only for a few moments. As soon as
she’s out, I’m out. I promise.”
“Isn’t there another way?” I asked.
“No.”
4
K.C. TANSLEY
I had no reason to believe her, but I did. I took a deep
breath. “Okay.”
“It’s going to hurt.” She reached for my hand.
I braced for the cold uncomfortable feeling I always got
when a ghost touched me, but it didn’t come. When Toria
touched me, it was warm. Her fingers were almost solid.
She murmured words I couldn’t understand. I stared at
the ring she wore. It had a dark blue stone with a white star in the center. As she spoke, the star grew brighter and the
whole ring began to glow. A bright light wrapped around
us. The light stung, burning through my bones. Toria turned
to white smoke and slipped through my skin.
I convulsed. So much heat inside my body. I kicked the
covers away, but the air didn’t give me any relief. It felt
unbearably hot against my skin. And then something ice-
cold ripped through me. I collapsed back on the bed. Toria
emerged from me like steam rising from a cup of tea. Then
she resumed her familiar shape.
“Is she gone?” I panted.
“I drove her out.”
Toria stroked my forehead. Her fingers chilled my skin.
The way a ghost’s fingers should.
“But she’ll come back.”
My voice quavered. “How do I keep her away?”
Toria looked sad for a moment, but sounded adamant.
“You have to stop believing in us. You have to deny that
ghosts exist. You have to refuse to let them into your
reality.”
Push them all away? They’d been by my side all my
life. “But they need me for reckonings.”
Toria smiled. “My sweet girl, it’s very kind of you to
think of us. But if she takes your body and gains full control, we’ll lose you forever. You’ll never be able to help us again.
We need you safe and beyond her grasp.”
“But what about you? Can I help you, at least?”
Her smile turned wistful. “I can wait.”
For the next three nights, Toria stayed by my side,
keeping the silver-eyed ghost away and teaching me how to
become an unbeliever.
Her first lesson: Life repelled the lifeless. By
5
THE GIRL WHO IGNORED GHOSTS
surrounding myself with other people, with animals, with
plants—seeds, even—I weakened the ghosts around me and
made it harder for them to approach me. Toria explained
that stones were helpful, too. They weren’t alive, but some
of them contained protective energy from the earth.
Her second and third lessons were just as important.
She told me to never, ever speak of the unbelievables.
Talking about ghosts and spirits gave them power. It made
them more real. I should make sure that the people I
surrounded myself with were unbelievers. The
unbelievables couldn’t enter the reality of people who
didn’t believe in them, so the presence of unbelievers would shield me.
On the third night, Toria tucked my hair behind my ear.
“This will be our final lesson.”
“You have to go?” I’d never wanted a ghost to stay this
much. I’d grown to love her.
“It’s time.”
I blinked back tears. “Will I see you again?”
Her voice was reassuring. “I hope so.”
She squeezed my hand and said, “I’m going to teach
you words of power. They will be your ultimate weapon
against ghosts.”
I nodded and focused, preparing to memorize a
complicated incantation. Probably in Latin.
Instead, Toria said, “Ghosts don’t exist. They can’t
touch me. They can’t hurt me. They aren’t real.”
“But that’s a lie.”
She cradled my face in her hand. “Oh, my sweet girl,
you have to believe that it’s true. You have to say the words with such conviction that no one and nothing can doubt
you. You have to say them until you don’t even doubt them
yourself.”
She released my face and took my hand once more. I
looked at our intertwined fingers, trying to memorize every
detail of the star-sapphire ring she wore. It seemed to wink back at me.
I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want all the ghosts to
disappear. I didn’t want Toria to disappear.
“I don’t want to,” I whispered, rubbing a tear from my
6
K.C. TANSLEY
cheek.
“This is the only way for you to be safe. Please, do it. If
you can’t do it for yourself, do it for me,” she pleaded.
It took hours of repeating those words before anything
happened. One moment Toria was there, and then she
wasn’t. Those words became my reality. Between one
sentence and the next, the ghosts were gone.
Toria was gone.
Sometimes, I wished I could talk to her one more time. I
wished that I could help her. But, if I let Toria in, I let them all in. Including the ghost who possessed me. So I said my
words of power until they sounded true. But deep down, I
knew I was lying. And the ghosts knew it too.
P
Digging into a pile of antique books written about an
unsolved Victorian murder was a potentially hazardous
situation for someone like me. That was why I needed to
surround myself with other students who were brimming
with end-of-the-year energy. Finals-week panic was a
potent protective force. Still, I rubbed the black tourmaline worry stone in my pocket before I got down to work.
I eyed the piles of books in front of me. I decided to
start with the thinnest and work my way to the heftiest. Best way to build up an impressive bibliography. As soon as I
opened the green leather cover, I sneezed. Great. Just what
my allergies needed—dust from the last century. Reaching
for the wad of tissues in my backpack, I read the table of
contents. It was vague. I flipped to the back of the book, but there was no index. Now I knew why this book hadn’t been
