Ghost Boy
Chapter 11
Kyle’s eyes shot open.
A wave of tiny sensations washed over him. The cool air, a quiet electrical humming outside his bedroom. There was a tightness around his waist, the feel of cloth pressing down uncomfortably on his cock and balls.
He was back. Home. In his own body.
For a long moment, he did nothing. Didn’t move, didn’t think. He simply relaxed, enjoyed the fact that he was himself again.
Then, slowly, he climbed out of his bed.
There was a chill in the air, a cold that made his skin prickle and his hairs stand on edge. He glanced down at his almost-naked body, felt a flare of rage at what he saw.
Panties. He was wearing panties.
It was Lucy. A final, petty humiliation.
Ghost Girl.
He was going to crush her. Make her regret everything she’d done, everything she was doing. Somehow, he’d make her pay.
Ana or his mother.
He had to pick. Choose who would be used.
Either his mother gave Kyle a blowjob, or Ana would be forced to give one to her father. No other options. No way out.
Kyle had to choose.
He shook his head, wishing he felt tired enough to sleep. He wouldn’t have to worry about Lucy, about anything, if he were asleep. No stress, no choices, just blissful, dreamless sleep. But his body was wide awake.
So, instead of sleeping, he took off the panties Lucy’d put on his body and put on some normal, comfortable clothes instead. He sat down on his bed, close his eyes, and concentrated.
Lucy knew Kyle’s real identity, and he didn’t know hers. That gave her power over him. As long as he was unable to retaliate, Lucy could do whatever she wanted to the people in Kyle’s life without concern. So long as she had that advantage, Kyle would never be able to beat her.
In order to win, and to protect Ana and his mother, he needed to find who ‘Lucy’ really was. He name, where she lived, all of it.
Easier said than done.
Seven days.
That’s how long he had to stop the bitch. Either he put an end to her games by then, or either his mother or Ana would be forced to...
No. Kyle could not allow that to happen.
Kyle didn’t go to school the next day. Not in his body, at least.
He’d feigned being ill, mixed milk and water and orange juice and mushed carrots into a bowl and told his mother he’d thrown up during the night. She’d sent him back to bed, told him to rest and called his school to let them know he wouldn’t be attending.
And, as soon as she left their apartment to go to work, Kyle closed his eyes and slipped outside of his body.
He flew to school, went in search of Ana.
Finding her wasn’t difficult.
She was, as always, surrounded by her gaggle of friends. Her adoring, loving posse. Several of which looked concerned, doting on Ana in much the same way they’d doted on Kyle the day before.
And Ana? She looked terrible.
Or, at least, as terrible as the most beautiful girl around could look. Her hair was frazzled, and she wasn’t wearing make-up. Baggy eyes hinted at sleeping troubles. More than any of that, though, was the look in Ana’s eyes. The hollow uncertainty, like all the brightness and hope that was usually there had drained away.
She kept glancing around, searching the ever-constant flow of people around her.
“Are you alright, Ana?” One of her friends asked. Kyle hovered above them, eyes never leaving Ana’s strained face. “Still feeling ill?”
“I...” Ana breathed, shook her head. “Yeah. I’m okay...”
“Who’re you looking for?” Another girl asked the question Kyle was unable to.
“N- Nobody,” Ana stuttered. She turned her attention away from the stream of faces making their way through the school’s corridors and flashed an obviously forced smile at her friends. “I’m fine, really.”
The other girls didn’t argue. Soon enough, the gang were gossiping about music—all of them but Ana talking eagerly and excitedly. Something about a music festival happening soon. Kyle wasn’t really paying attention, his thoughts were solely focused on his crush and her wandering gaze.
Who was she looking for?
Deep down, he was certain he knew the answer.
What had she thought when she’d woken up, her crotch and body sore? Her cherry popped? What’d gone through her mind when she’d discovered there were twenty-four hours worth of memories missing? She’d lost an entire day. What if she knew he had something to do with it?
As far as Ana was aware, she and Kyle had a special, unexplainable bond. The two of them ‘shared dreams’.
What if she put two and two together, realised that the supernatural connection they shared might also be related to her missing day?
It wouldn’t be a huge leap if she did make the connection.
She was looking for Kyle. He knew it. Ana was searching the faces of everyone around her, trying to find him.
This. This was why he hadn’t wanted to come to school today.
He didn’t want to see the betrayal in Ana’s eyes, the realisation that he couldn’t be trusted. Even if she didn’t suspect him, she’d still want to talk to him. To ask him if he knew anything. And how was he supposed to answer that?
When the school bell rang, the group of girls split up—each of them going to their different classes.
Kyle followed Ana, watched her as she took her seat in Religious Studies and pretend like nothing was wrong. She sat alone, eyes on the desk in front of her. Thoughts raced behind her pretty irises, though she didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the lecture going on in front of her.
Kyle drifted down, stood in front of Ana’s desk and stared at her too-beautiful face.
“What are you thinking?” He asked.
No answer came.
She couldn’t hear him.
“What do you know?”
Again, no answer came.
If she were asleep, Jake could slip inside her dreams—find the answers that way. But she was at school, in class. That wasn’t an option.
Other Wanderers could manipulate minds without using the sleep trick, though. Lanky and Tubby and Lucy. They didn’t need to tamper with dreams. They were able to infiltrate a person’s mind while they were awake, manipulate them without needing to wait.
Kyle was a Wanderer, just like them.
If they could do it, he should be able to do it too.
Dream tampering is easy but ineffectual. No wonder your progress with Miss Melons had been so slow.
Lucy’s words.
At the time, Kyle had been focused on other things—namely the fact that Ana’s ghost was missing. He hadn’t had the opportunity to think about what Lucy had said then, and hadn’t considered the words since. Not until now.
Easy but ineffectual.
Slowly, Kyle moved his hand—stretched it out towards Ana.
The moment his ghostly appendage passed into her body, a wave of thoughts and feelings and sensations battered him. A cacophony of images and sounds and scents—every memory Ana had ever experienced. Moments from her childhood, lessons she’d learned growing up; joyful memories and painful ones. All crashing into Kyle like a tidal wave. A tsunami of information that his own mind couldn’t hope to hold or comprehend.
Concentrating, focusing hard, he pushed as much of that din aside as he could manage. He didn’t need to know about the candy Ana had stolen as a child, then cried about afterwards as she prayed for forgiveness. He didn’t care about her childhood pet or the time she’d played Juliet in a school play or her faint resentment of her parents and how they restricted her so much.
Kyle pushed it all aside, forced his mind to follow nothing but Ana’s current thoughts. The ideas and feelings she was experiencing in that exact moment.
Even that was almost too confusing for him to grasp.
He felt a weight on uncertainty, a quietly bubbling panic, a desperate need for answers. Something had happened to her, she knew. But she had no idea what. She was scared, frightened. But also self-certain, but also anxious.
She wanted to know what’d happened. She was terrified of what the answer may be, but wanted to know all the same.
And, mixed in with Ana’s jumbled mess of thoughts, was an image.
Kyle’s face.
Doubts and questions and suspicion and uncertainty were tied to the image. Ana’s sharp mind had indeed linked what’d happened to her—even though she didn’t know exactly what that was—to Kyle’s appearances in her dreams. It was everything Kyle had feared. She didn’t trust him, would demand answers from him the first chance she got.
Unless...
Unless Kyle tweaked her mind to make her trust him.
It wasn’t his fault, after all. What’d happened. That was Lucy, not him. He’d never hurt Ana like that. Never use her.
Kyle was trying to protect Ana.
She should trust him. Everything he’d done was for her, to keep her safe. If Kyle nudged her mind a little, made it so that she trusted him again, believed in him, he’d be able to help her more. Protect her better.
Carefully, he dug deeper than Ana’s immediate thoughts. Pushed further into her conscious and subconscious. Not so deep that he stumbled into her horde of memories, but deeper than he’d ever gone into a person’s mind before.
It was difficult, keeping all of Ana’s thoughts and feelings and memories at bay. Took more concentration that Kyle had ever imagined himself capable of.
And there, in the deep recesses of Ana’s mind, he spoke.
You can trust Kyle, he told Ana’s subconscious. God put you with him for a reason. Trust him.
Her mind reacted to the words, resisted them with uncertainty.
You can trust him, Kyle repeated. You have to trust him. It is God’s will. He can help you, but only if you let him. Trust him. Believe in him. God would not have paired you with him unless it was for your own good.
He felt her mind bend, felt her blind faith warp her doubts into steady certainty.
There were still questions Ana wanted answered, so many questions. And so much confusion and dread. Kyle could feel it all, deep as he was in Ana’s soul. She’d seek out answers, that much hadn’t changed.
Only now, any and all accusation and suspicion she’d harboured towards Kyle was muted.
She’d ask him questions, and he’d give her answers. Maybe not the truth, but that didn’t matter. She’d trust him. She’d believe in him. He knew that without a shadow of doubt. Whatever answers he gave, she’d accept. For now, at least.
Kyle pulled away, ghostly hand trembling.
He felt suddenly dizzy, disoriented. The world wobbled in his vision, blurred and fuzzy.
By the time he regained his balance, several minutes had gone by. Ana was still seated in front of him, eyes forward now. She was listening to her professor; if not entirely focused on the class, then at least more so than she’d been before.
Kyle rose up into the air, lifted his legs up as if he were lounging in bed—which, in a way, he was.
And, though his eyes never left Ana, his thoughts were focused on a different girl. Lucy, and the threat she posed.
How was he going to deal with that short, flat-chested cunt?
His mother. If it came down to it, Kyle would choose his mother.
He had a job, a mission. Protect Ana. Defend his future bride at all costs, and ensure Lucy did not do anything to Ana that he could prevent.
If he had to, Kyle could accept a blowjob from his mother.
He’d had wet dreams about her before, stray fantasies every now and then. His mother was an attractive woman. Receiving head from her would be far from the worst thing in the world. And it’d save Ana from being forced into doing the same thing with her father.
Kyle ignored the stiffness between his legs as he made his decision, sitting across the table from his mother as they ate take-away together.
In the tiny apartment, there was never enough space for the both of them. The cheap, round dinner table was so small and cramped that only two people could ever use it at once. Which was fine, Kyle supposed. It wasn’t like he or his mother ever had guests over.
In fact, his mother had never brought anyone home with her.
What was it Lucy had said?
That woman hasn’t had dick in years, poor thing.
Given how attractive his mother was, Kyle was certain she’d had opportunities and proposals from guys. Plenty of chances to hook up. Yet, she never did. Ever.
Why was that?
Resisting the urge to Wander right there and then, Kyle turned his eyes to his mother. The tired, haggered, amazing woman who’d single-handedly raised him from birth.
Kyle’s father—whoever that was—had disappeared the moment he’d found out about the pregnancy. And, with no support from a family that’d practically disowned her, Kyle’s mother had been forced to do everything herself. Earn a living, enough money to get by on, while raising a child all on her own.
Just thinking about it made Kyle’s chest warm and swell.
His mother was an amazing person. She deserved some release. To enjoy herself.
After everything she’d done for him, surely Kyle could to that much for her, couldn’t he?
Once upon a time, Kyle had thought his mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. And that hadn’t been through love-tinted glasses. She had been. Jet-black hair, bright eyes, flawless skin, an hour-glass figure that screamed sex-appeal. If not for the mountain of stress and worries that’d piled up on her over the years, his mother may well have competed with Ana in Kyle’s mind for the spot of ‘most amazingly beautiful’.
Kyle could take away that stress, remove those worries.
He’d never even considered it before, it’d never occurred to him. But he could do it, he was certain. He could make his mother the beautiful, womanly goddess she was supposed to be. Bring life back to her eyes, fill her with joy and excitement, have her start working out again.
With his Wanderer powers, he could make her life better.
A blowjob. Lucy was forcing him to do it. He’d never have even considered it otherwise. But, since the bitch was making Kyle do it, he might as well take things a step further himself.
Yes. If it came down to him making a choice in six days, he’d pick his mother. It was an easy choice to make.
“Something is happening with me,” Ana said, sitting down on a random boulder. The two of them were at the peak of a snowy mountain, Ana’s usual nightmare flight set on the jagged ridges tonight. “I don’t know what, exactly. Not yet.”
Why here? Kyle found himself thinking. Why not in the school corridors, or the streets around her house? Why was every dream set in a different location, with the exact same premise? Ana running from some unseen entity?
Odd thoughts to be having, given it was the first time he’d taken over her dreams since Lucy’s last game.
“I’m scared,” Ana confessed, not looking at Kyle.
“I’ll protect you.” The words escaped Kyle’s lips before he could stop them. True as they were, speaking them aloud felt foolish and silly. “I mean, as much as I can. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m here for you.”
He could feel her emotions, hear her thoughts. Not as intensely as when Ana was awake, but enough that he was certain Ana was grateful for his words.
“I feel trapped,” Ana whispered, the words strained. “I... I think the Devil did something to me.”
That was closer to true than Ana knew. Lucy—‘Lucifer’—had indeed done something to Ana. Or, at least, she’d forced Kyle to do it. Lucy might not be the real Devil, but she was close enough. A whorish little demon who was intent of fucking with Kyle at every turn.
“I feel like...” Ana continued, eyes beginning to water. “I feel like a prisoner in my own body.”
And, at her words, a realisations struck Kyle like a lightning bold.
An idea.
He ignored Ana as she hunched over trembling, closed his eyes and slipped out of her dreams. Quickly, he put her ghost back inside her body, then instantly returned to his own.
Real, physical eyelids shot open—Kyle jerked upright in bed.
He rushed so fast to grab his phone that joints popped and muscled ached. His fingers were shaking so much from the sudden rush of energy he felt that it took him several attempts to type the question into an online search engine.
Minutes ticked by as he looked at result after result, reading news articles and forum posts and the like. Searching for that one critical piece of information.
Which prison was Cindy Orion incarcerated in?
Where would he be able to find the only other Wanderer he knew of?
Where was Teach?
Of all the people in the world, it had to be her. If anyone knew who Lucy really was, what the cunt’s weakness was, it’d be the woman whose life she had ruined.
Finally, he found it. The name of the prison.
Teach’s location.
A quick map-search gave him its exact location.
Kyle grinned down at the small phone screen, a plan forming slowly in the back of his mind. Quickly, he glanced around his empty, dark bedroom. An instinctive response—he wouldn’t be able to see if Lucy was snooping in on him, not while he was in his own body. Just to be safe, he turned off his phone, climbed back into bed.
Teach. If anyone could help Kyle, if anyone had the motivation to destroy Lucy, it’d be her.