PRL Serials

“What was that?” Paul asks, almost stammering and obviously scared.

“That was a spaceship,” Falon says. They had just watched it blast off and the force of it was enough to shake the ground in the area. 

“I think we’re too late,” Wendy says. She had arrived shortly before the ship left and they were all standing outside of Paul’s car when it happened.

“They were on that spaceship?” Paul asks. It sounds like he is calming his rage and his face is red, even in the darkness. 

“I think so,” Wendy says. She turns to look at Paul, Falon, Adam and Manuel who look at her expectantly. Falon had told them about her abilities that allowed her to fly and commune with the dead and they look at her with quiet respect. 

“How do you all know Ivan and Clay?” she asks them.

“Ivan worked with me when I was still a detective in Tennessee,” Paul says. “Eventually we ran into some monsters that we could trace back to this place, but we didn’t then. They took these two, Manuel and Adam, as prisoners and they only recently escaped. This is Falon, we all just met her, but her daddy is probably a monster in there as we speak.”

Wendy nods. “Do any of you do what they do? Super strong or flying?”

They all shake their heads.

“We hoping you can help us with that,” Falon says.

Wendy nods and has them stand in a straight row in front of her.

“If you all trust me, then I can help you, give you something to help. But just to be clear, I want to end this place and I want to take out that man called Tin.”

“We’re all on the same page,” Manuel says. “I just wish Worthington was in there so we could burn it all down with him inside.”

“I came here to save Ivan and Clay,” Paul says. “If they were on that ship, I want to know why and where the hell they’re going.”

“I just want to see that place burn,” Adam says. “But there’s real security around this place. Can we deal with that?”

Wendy nods confidently.

“I’ve never had to do it before, but I can handle whatever security can throw at us. And I can make you all very capable as well. But this will be strange for you. My ancestors, and the ancestors of my friend Aile are here. If you let them, they can possess you, but this won’t be a possession like you probably understand it. Technically you will be possessing them, they will give you access to incantations that they know and it will allow you to fight and protect yourself against bullets, even bombs. But this only works if you give in to them. They take control of your body, and then you take control of their mind so you are yourself, plus their knowledge.”

Paul has never encountered ghosts before and if not for the extraordinary things that he has already experienced, he would definitely doubt that any of this was even possible. He wonders if his parents are ghosts somewhere, if Wendy could summon them. He has so many questions for her, but he knows that they have one mission now. 

“I think we should do it,” Paul says looking at his young friends. He is the oldest of them and they looked to him, not necessarily for approval, but mostly to make sure he was comfortable and didn’t need anything, like a nap or a break. 

They all nod at him and he looks to Wendy.

“Do it,” he says.

Wendy concentrates and she is silent. Suddenly Paul feels a strange sensation run down his spine and it shakes his body. He doesn’t close his eyes, but it is like he is pulled away from the scene through his eyes and into a darkness. He doesn’t fall down, maybe he is shrinking, and that is a better description considering that he finds himself inside of what seems to be a room and there is a large monitor on the dark grey wall that shows the scene that his body inhabits near the CZS. 

“Hello!”

Paul jumps and turns, reaching for a gun at his hip that isn’t there. When he turns, he sees a man who is like a faint figure of a person. 

“What is this?” Paul asks.

“This is the control room of your mind. I am Isheanesu, ancestor of Anesu, The Brave Chimutengwende. I believe you know her as Wendy.”

Paul looks around at the room that doesn’t really have walls, he realizes. There is a dark gray surface that he and Isheanesu stand on, and the large screen view through the eyes of his physical body hangs from something, but he gets the sense that he could walk forever in any direction before he ran into anything. 

“Wendy usually imagines this space as a command room, chairs to monitor the view through her eyes. It can look however you imagine it, this is your mind.”

Paul thinks of the precinct where he reported to work and the space around him becomes the wood interior with a large desk in front of the monitor with chairs behind it. 

“What can you do?” Paul asks.

“I taught Wendy all about incantations. We can fly, use various elements to throw projectiles, and we can create explosions. My relative Anesuishe is with your friend Falon. Anesuishe can do many incantations, but she is a master of spirit energy manipulation. She can control the energies to control other spirits, and she can also gather latent energies to produce projectiles. Both Anesuishe and I are skilled at long stick fighting. Fang, a relative of Wendy’s close friend Aile, is very good with elemental incantations and she will help your friend Adam. Aile also had a relative, Xiaoming, who will assist Manuel. He claims to know incantations better than me and has a lot of experience with spirit energy manipulation. They are both skilled at martial arts, though I don’t know which ones.”

“So I can just do everything you do?” Paul asks.

“If you accept me.”

“I do,” Paul says nodding. 

“Then it will be. Close your eyes and open them again as Paul-Ishe.”

When he opens his eyes, he realizes that he is the last one to regain himself. Falon seems to be glowing with an indigo border around her physical body as she levitates a foot off the ground.

“This is amazing,” she says. 

Manuel and Adam are sparing, flipping high above the ground and shooting blasts of what seems to be energy at one another; Adam has a red glow and Manuel is a golden orange.

Paul looks at himself and he has a royal blue outline around his body that is almost the same color as Falon.

“The glow is a spirit shield,” Wendy says to him and she stands next to him, watching the others flex their abilities. “It will help deflect damage, but it isn’t permanent and will wear off with time.”

“This is incredible,” Paul says. “I’m me, but I can feel Ishe in there. How is any of this possible? Can all ghosts do this?”

“It’s a skill like anything else,” Wendy explains. “These spirits have trained for centuries to master these abilities.”

“This is such an honor, I can barely comprehend what’s happening though.” He looks to Wendy. “Thank you for this.”

“Thank me when we’re done. What’s our plan?”

Paul eyes the CZS looming in the distance. 

“I think if we split into two teams, one with Manuel, one with Adam, we should be good. They were mind controlled here and know the security. We got four missions the way I see it. You want to take out Tin, we all want to know what happened to Ivan and Clay, Falon wants to save her daddy or put him out of his misery, and we burning this place down. I say you take Adam to stop Tin, question him, then do whatever you got to do. I’ll take Falon and Manuel to find her daddy, then we’ll do some snooping for information. If there are innocent people still alive in there, we free them. Then we end the CZS. Can we communicate with each other?”

Wendy nods, As quick as a thought, she thinks, and Paul hears it in his mind.

“Then I’m ready when you all are.”