Free Paranormals (Book 1) by Christopher Andrews

if it fell on its side. Not a back-breaking effort, but a lot more than moving a paperweight, and that’s about the equivalent to what his foot had consented to register.
     
    Gingerly, Lincoln reached out with a single hand. A slight upward pull revealed the poundage he had expected. He lifted a little harder, about as much as he could with one arm from this poor angle...
     
    A heavy feeling began to form like a rock in his gut — he didn’t consciously recognize this rock as fear just yet, but nevertheless, there it was. With an intuition experienced by one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population, Lincoln suddenly felt that he wasn’t actually lifting the jackhammer as hard as he could. Sure, he was exerting about as much strength as he was normally capable of, but now he felt like he could give more, a lot more. He didn’t feel a rippling of power course through his body, or rolling thunder pour through his muscles. He did not grow in size and rip out of his clothes like The Incredible Hulk ... he simply knew that he wasn’t giving it his all.
     
    This entire realization/discovery took less than a second. A heartbeat later, Lincoln’s mouth hung on a loose jaw as he held the jackhammer, one-handed and with terrible leverage, straight out in front of him, parallel to the ground and with no undue difficulty. He lowered the machine swiftly, and — his conscious mind a numb slave to some other part of him — he turned to the cement bags. The rock in his stomach grew, and it was slowly occurring to him that it was, in fact, not just fear, but horror. Stooping at the waist, totally disregarding the technique prescribed by all foreman to lift with your legs and not your back, Lincoln bent and wedged his hands underneath the fourth or fifth bag down. He applied his normal strength, then tapped the reservoir beyond that, and all four or five bags rose from the stack. His back did not so much as make a peep from the effort.
     
    Dropping the bags, Lincoln just stood there, mystified and trembling. Confusion — total, encompassing bewilderment — maintained dominance over his mind for a full minute before the only possible explanation crawled like a hideous worm out of the rock in his stomach, up through his chest where his heart went pitter-patter, and out of his mouth as, not a scream, but a hushed whisper.
     
    "The Paranormal Effect ..."
     
    Then Lincoln did something he had not done in years.
     
    He began to cry ...
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

VORTEX
     
    He was floating through warm water, yet he found that he could breathe normally. Darkness surrounded him, but he wasn’t afraid. He looped and swam and drifted freely, content to relax and enjoy himself...
     
    As he flowed along the directionless currents, he grew aware of a coolness on his face, in his face, in his eyes . It wasn’t exactly unpleasant, but he grew steadily more conscious of it. A sort of numb sensation, spanning from the surface of his pupils back into his head. And every once in a while, the darkness was penetrated by a quick flash — he wasn’t quite sure whether it came from outside, in the pitch fluid, or from behind his own unfeeling eyes ...
     
    Not much to go on, really, just a sharp flash of illumination, not unlike a bolt of lightning ...
     
    A bolt of lightning ...
     
    Lightning!
     
    PCA
     
    Steve awoke and sat sluggishly upright. He felt a flimsy gown covering his body and heard distant speaker voices and pings that he immediately associated with a hospital — the sterile, disinfectant odor and the pinch of an IV in the back of his left hand affirmed the feeling.
     
    But he couldn’t see any of this.
     
    Anxiety seizing his heart in an icy grip, Steve raised his hand to the bandage wrapped around his head. He felt no pain there, but he experienced uncomfortable deja vu at the cool sensation encompassing his eyes, and he did have a top-of-the-line headache. His fingers drifted to the still prominent lump over