Free The Tidings - [Ghost Huntress 0.5 - A Christmas Novella] by Marley Gibson Page A

out.
    To my right, his mother, Chandra, weeps into a knotted up wad of tissues while Miss Suzanne sits dazed and confused.
    “The meningitis just destroyed him,” Chandra says between tears and sips of air.
    “No, no, no,” I continue.
    “You knew, Kendall,” ghostly Patrick says.
    I spin on my heels and am in his face. “Don’t put this on me! I’m just a teenage psychic. What do I know? I’m not a doctor or a miracle worker!”
    “You saw it, though,” he stresses. “The cards warned you.”
    “The cards aren’t always right!” My head’s going to explode. This isn’t fair. This isn’t how it should be.
    Patrick grips my shoulders and shakes me slightly. “The fact is, Kendall, you have a gift. One you still haven’t completely embraced. Some days you’re good with it, others, you run from it. You can’t escape who you are… what you are. You have to help people.”
    “I do,” I say to him through my tears. “I do the best I can. I’m just a kid.” My head drops and my hair shields me from the reality of Max’s funeral going on around me.
    “That’s just it, Kendall.” Patrick lifts my chin up with his index finger and laser-beams his gaze into mine. “You’re no longer a kid. You just turned eighteen and this isn’t the present. It’s the future. You’re an adult now. This is who you are. It’s not something you can tamp down and walk away from. It’s what you are.”
    With a sniff, I say, “I should have told Suzanne. I could have warned her or given her the information as a possibility. It’s all in the way I couch the premonitions, visions, and intuitions.”
    Patrick smiles at me. “Now you’ve got it.”
    “So, I can rectify this?” I practically beg.
    “It’s just one potential future, Kendall.”
    I let out a sigh of relief. It’s short-lived, though. Patrick crooks his head to the door and out we go.
    “There’s more.”
    I gulp down hard. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
    Without flight or fancy, we’re suddenly… I don’t know where. Phantom Patrick stretches out his hand and pulls me along with him. I sense eyes on me from every direction, hidden behind corners, peering from windows. A chill creeps up my back and my skin itches.
    “What is this place?” I ask.
    “A bad neighborhood,” is the ghost’s response.
    It’s not a somewhere I’ve ever been to before in my life. The storefronts are run-down, with broken windows and graffiti covering the outer walls. Drunks stumble out of clubs, barely able to walk a straight line or, God forbid, try to drive. The air is wrought with the stench of rotten beer, stale cigarettes, and… eww… is that urine?
    I stifle a gag by putting my hand to my mouth. “Seriously? This is my future?”
    “Not yours,” Patrick warns. “Someone you love, but deserted.”
    Who? Who in the world—that I love and care about—could possibly be any bit attached to a cesspool area such as this?
    We duck into an alley, stepping over bags of garbage that have been pillaged through. My stomach lurches from the sour odor of the trash and something akin to rotting rat corpses. I’ve been in Halloween horror houses before, yet nothing could ever prepare me for how discombobulated I am walking through this neighborhood.
    Nails and broken glass scatter in front of us. I pick my way carefully through it knowing I’m only in socked feet. It would be my luck to come out of this dream with a shard of something in my big toe.
    “You’ll be fine,” Phantom Patrick tells me. “This way. We’re almost there.”
    This is a place of ill-repute. An area where you wouldn’t want to send your worst enemy. Here, secrets are spilled, reputations lost, and lives ruined. There are no good guys. No strong characters. No redeemable values. No fairy godmothers. Only criminals, miscreants, and troublemakers.
    “Over there.” Patrick points across the street to a corner building. It’s made of painted cinderblock and has a flashing