Manifesting Shadow, #1 Read online

  Manifesting Shadow

  Church K. Calvert

  Manifesting Shadow

  © Church Calvert 2017

  Manifesting Shadow is a work of fiction.

  It may not be copied and redistributed by any means,

  electronic or otherwise.

  Acknowledgments

  This book was written over several years, and through many life changes, challenges, and evolutions of my mind. It was because of certain people that inspired me, challenged me, and encouraged me to finish the book, that I am finally able to share it with the world. I’d like to thank my friend and original confidant, Angel, and daughter ,Miracle, for being my first fans, and being so excited after reading my first copy, although it was atrocious and incomplete. I’d like to thank my best friend, Jake Luria, he was able to encourage my vulnerability and I was able to share the book with him. He lit the fire in me to move forward. I couldn’t be more grateful to have met Jake, and he has taught me so much that will make not only this book but the entire series complete and important.

  I want to thank all my test readers, particularly the first ones who had to endure the story before spell check. So thank you to Anne Vires, Isaiah Rubio, Susan Cadena, Edith, and Lauren Thomas. I want to thank my editor ,Anne Pottinger, for her meticulous work on making my story a work of art. Lastly, a special thank you to Lauren Thomas, my partner. You have inspired me to push this story to the finish line. I have done more in this year to prepare for the release of this book than I could have ever imagined. You gave me that final push, and now I get to see my dream come true. Thank you for your patience and inspiration, and I promise I will try to finish the second book in less than two years. Thank you to everyone named and unnamed for your contributions.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One: The Favorite

  Chapter Two: Hard Times and White Lies

  Chapter Three: Fragile

  Chapter Four: Walking in the Dark

  Chapter Five: Peyton

  Chapter Six: Magnets

  Chapter Seven: Everything About You

  Chapter Eight—A Bad Day for Everyone

  Chapter Nine: Toxic

  Chapter Ten: The Parasite

  Chapter Eleven: Turning a Blind Eye

  Chapter Twelve: Provocations

  Chapter Thirteen: The Funeral

  Chapter Fourteen: Empty Except for Anger

  Chapter Fifteen: The Things She Hid

  Chapter Sixteen: The One that Won’t Let Go

  Chapter Seventeen: Whole Again

  Prologue

  I had been there for three years. Every day was the same. When I first arrived, I knew that I was not insane, but as the days went on, I became less sure of myself. Everything that I knew to be a reality began to fade, almost as if it never happened. “It never happened.” This is what they kept telling me, that I have some disorder and I imagined these things. It was beginning to feel just like that. There has always been this darkness invading my life and consuming me. The world outside no longer seemed real, just a collection of memories playing like a movie in my mind. I could watch them and relive the things I had done, but in so many instances I felt as if I were in the audience instead of the one performing. At some point, I just watched the terrible things unfold, and I knew there was nothing I could do about it, and I accepted this darkness inside me. As the movies faded, so did my connection to this world.

  “Danielle?” the doctor interrupted my thoughts. I turned in her direction. “Are you going to involve yourself in this session or is it going to be like the rest?”

  The expression in her eyes was of exhaustion, not only from life but from her work as well. She was my thirteenth doctor, and this was our first visit. My doctors were always so hopeful when first meeting me. Doctors; they love a challenge but like any human, hate failure. Doctors think their solutions can fix everything. They are drawn to me because I appear to be a puzzle, easy to solve. If, however, you don’t believe my story, then you will never solve this enigma. This is why they give up. They never take the chance to see if the story is true. This new doctor . . . Dr. Joy . . . was pleasant, attractive, early forties, dark hair, relatively thin. She had an aura of compassion and exhaustion at the same time. It was almost pathetic as if she were desperate for something. I’ve seen this characteristic before in many variations.

  I sat on the opposite side of her big wooden desk, in a wooden chair with no cushion, as she sat in a seemingly comfortable office chair, swiveling back and forth slightly. I glanced down at my wrist wraps. They were slightly tighter than usual, binding my two hands together in my lap. I fidgeted with them in an attempt to achieve a more comfortable position, to no avail. She had a couple of framed photos on her desk facing away from me, patient files, a cup of coffee, a phone, and stationery. The room had one big window behind the doctor. It was covered with sheer curtains; the light penetrated through them and dispersed throughout the room providing light, but no image of what lay beyond. Part of me desired to get up from my seat and move the curtains aside to glimpse the outside world, another part of me wished there was no window at all in this room.

  “Well, I’ve spent a lot of time reviewing your file. Twelve doctors in three years. That’s quite an accomplishment,”

  I contrive a sarcastic smile and raise my eyebrows.

  “I see you have hallucinations, a history of violence, aggression, memory problems, you had an almost deadly encounter with another patient, and the list goes on and on. Oh and let’s not exclude the . . . ‘murder.’”

  I twist my neck at the way she nonchalantly threw the word out there.

  “Does that phrase make you uncomfortable?”

  I smiled and gave a slight shake of the head implying it made no difference. I really wanted to kill time as fast as possible. I began to make myself space out so that I couldn’t hear any more of the words coming out of this woman’s mouth when something caught my attention mid-sentence.

  “ . . . see I’ve done my research and unlike the other doctors, I contacted your family and came across this while rummaging through your stuff.” She tossed down a book onto the table. My head began to spin with this one sentence. She saw my family? Are they alive, are they okay? Do they hate me? Did they actually keep my stuff? And how could she, of all people, have my most personal possession sitting on her desk? If my arms weren’t bound, I’d leap for the book and attempt to destroy as much as possible before being quickly sedated. Instead, I sat there. My journal, from the beginning, every secret of mine, had been read by this woman. She sat across from me with a hidden smile and a sense of such accomplishment. Although so much frustration was pulsing through my body right then, one other thing was coursing through me: hope. If I could read it, just one more time, I would know once again whether what I believed actually happened, or if these quickly fading memories were just a figment of my imagination.

  “Let me see it,” I said. The first words I had spoken to a doctor in a very long time.

  “Why?” she scrutinized my obvious desperation.

  I sat quietly without response. I had spoken so little over the years; the sound of my voice was almost foreign to me.

  “Danielle if I let you see it, will I get the truth?” She observed me questioningly.

  “If you let me see it?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “If you allow me access to something that belongs to me?” I replied, attempting to use my tone to emphasize how absurd this agreement sounded.

  “One entry, a day; you talk to me for at least ten minutes a day, and I will let you read one entry. Sound fair?” she asked, raising an eyebrow, waiting for a response. I hated this woman already. How dare she tre
at my secrets like her personal property. I swear my doctors became more and more twisted every year. What did they teach in modern medicine, because I think their ethics were lacking?

  “Fair?” I faked a sarcastic laugh to myself,” No, but I’ll give you what you want.” I saw an expression of relief and excitement, as she began flipping through pages and pages of notes, she seemed to have been compiling for months.

  “Okay, so let’s talk about this particular incident. It seems like a pivotal point to everything, like everything begins to become . . . unhinged . . . you’re at the hospital visiting your aunt . . .”

  “Wait . . . What?”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Yes, I’m not talking about that.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t understand the deal we just made, you talk for ten minutes, and you get to read an entry. What part of that did you not understand?”

  “Wow . . . you are one funny lady,” I replied scanning her with my eyes questioningly, “How did you get this job?”

  “Miss Blake, I received this job because no one else wanted it, so you’re stuck with me,” she said with a hard blink and a forced smile.

  “Oh, so it’s a quite prestigious position,” I replied sarcastically, “I’m just saying if you want me to talk, you should start at the beginning of the story, not the middle. I want answers as much as you, but that memory is not something I have visited for a very long time. It will take a while, and some refreshing before I can divulge things like that. I think if I read an entry at the beginning of each session, it would refresh my memory enough to try to explain what exactly happened.”

  Check. The doctor folded her fingers, and moved her chair slightly back and forth, obviously wondering if I was bluffing, and if so, was it still worth a try at getting to the truth. She exhaled.

  “Fine, one entry, and no touching the journal, I will hold it open, and you read it.”

  I smiled, knowing the more information she wanted, the more she would have to let me read. She sensed my victory in this part of the game and returned a quick fake smile. She walked around to my side of the desk and pulled the journal toward me.

  As I looked at the cover, memories immediately began to flood back. I became nauseous with anxiety and excitement. There were so many phenomena between the covers of that journal that I wanted to remember and so many episodes I wished to forget. She flipped open to the first page. I looked at the opening line which read: “Something is wrong with me.”

  “So how did this story start?” the doctor asked, excited and impatient.

  Chapter One: The Favorite

  I remembered sitting in the back seat of our old SUV looking out the window, watching the trees, sky, and miles of the road pass us by. My brother was sitting next to me, asleep; my parents together in the front chatting, already drained from hours of driving. I looked down at my brother sleeping so peacefully, all curled up with his light brown hair covering half his face. I found it impossible to sleep in the car, I don’t know how he managed to make it appear so easy.

  That day was an extraordinary day, and not in a positive way. My parents had received a call that morning from my grandmother, saying that my great-grandmother was dying and she requested our family come immediately. It was also unusual because it happened to be my thirteenth birthday, and that was definitely not the way I’d envisioned spending it. Why of all days would she feel the need to die today? I didn’t mean to appear selfish, I just thought that day should have some significance for me. I had become a teenager, yet she was all anyone was talking about.

  You see, my great-grandmother was not your average person. She was ninety-five and looked more like sixty. No one in our family particularly liked her. She distanced herself from everyone. Another reason I didn’t understand why she would want us there. I knew she was present at the birth of every child, grandchild, and great-grandchild ever born into the family. I knew that because apparently out of all of them, I was the only one who made her smile when I was born, thirteen years ago to the day. My parents said she refused to hold me the day I was born; something she did with every child in our family. Then the next day she never left my side. I knew I was what people would call the ‘favorite,’ but out of an abundance of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, I couldn’t give you a reason why. I was nothing exceptional, especially then. I looked at the lackluster reflection of myself in the window. I saw dark eyes, long dark hair, light skin, and an overall impression of insignificance that no one should endure. I felt guilty, the way she only inquired about me and my life and ignored everyone else’s. I just wished she would treat me like everyone else.

  “The doctors say there is physically nothing wrong with her, that maybe she just needs some attention from her family,” I overheard my mom whisper to my father. “Yeah, right, I said, she doesn’t want anything to do with us.” My mother scoffed at the doctor’s suggestion.

  “Well, come on honey, you never know, this could be it. Not to mention she’s held on to that fortune long enough, haha.” They both laughed together. They must have believed I was sleeping. By now you would think they know me well enough to remember that I never sleep in cars, or hardly at all for that matter. It wasn’t a secret that my great-grandmother had plenty of money at her disposal, all of which the family wanted a piece of.

  “Is Christian going to be there?” my father asked.

  “Yes, you know he wouldn’t miss a chance to cash in on something, I told him he should have just ridden with us. He said he was getting there early to see if it was a false alarm.”

  “Yeah right, more like trying to grab as much as he can and get out of there before anyone else gets there.”

  “Alex! That’s my brother you’re talking about,” she said with laughter in her voice, “You know he’s going to push her down the stairs and make it look like an accident, then get the stuff and leave.”

  They both laughed together. Everyone knew my mother’s brother was a dirt bag, but that’s a different story. I just wished they didn’t make jokes at my great-grandmother’s expense. I couldn’t imagine dying and wondering if everyone’s just waiting for you to draw your last breath so they can divvy up everything you’ve worked for. Was she also wondering if one of us is just concerned about their birthday when she won’t celebrate anymore herself? This thought made me feel guilty and sick to my stomach. I decided to pretend that it wasn’t my birthday, not that anyone else seemed to notice.

  “Shhh. Don’t get so loud, you’ll wake up Grandma Elizabeth’s favorite.”

  “Ha ha. Well, at least we hit the jackpot there. I wouldn’t be surprised if she left everything to Danielle. I swear it’s so creepy the way she asks questions about her. Like ‘Does she sleep well at night? Does she have many friends? How old is she now’?”

  It became quiet. I recognized from the tension in the air they had both just realized my birthday was today; they had forgotten. I quickly pretended to be fast asleep and felt them look back to make sure.

  “Shit. We totally forgot,” I heard my dad say.

  “We? I told you to buy her that damn computer weeks ago.”

  “She doesn’t like that stuff. She’s into weird things like . . . I don’t know. Stuff.” I nearly laughed, listening to their whispered argument.

  “We’ll figure something out and make it seem like we didn’t want to celebrate on such a tragic day. I mean, who wants to hear, “Your great-grandmother is dying . . . happy birthday?”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s good. It’s true too. No one wants that,” They both seemed convinced that their idea was good. We hit a sizable bump in the road, and I used this as an excuse to wake up.

  “Oh man, where are we?” I asked pretending to sound groggy.

  “Oh sweetie, we’re just about twenty minutes away,” mom said in the most loving tone possible. “How did you sleep?”

  “ Uhhhh . . . great.”

  “Hey, what’s going on?” My brother must have been awoken too by the
jolt. I jokingly pushed him back down.

  “Go back to sleep. We’re not there yet.” He fell back then shot back up again.

  “Yes, we are. Mom said twenty minutes,” he laughed, trying to disengage my hand from his face, as I kept trying to propel him back down.

  “You’re five, do you even know how long twenty minutes is?”

  “Uhhh, yeah. One, two, three, four ─” I knew where this was heading and quickly dragged his pillow over his head to drown out his annoying counting. When eventually I remove it, he said, “Twenty!”

  “Oh, wow, look, we’re still not there . . . geez guess you were wrong,” I teased.

  “Maybe you guys should just go back to sleep for a while longer,” my dad suggested hopefully.

  “Nah,” we both responded.

  Not long afterward we pulled up to my great-grandmother’s house, or as my mother called her, Grandma Elizabeth. I guess it made her feel less old. I saw only three cars parked out front of her substantial house. Actually, the house wasn’t that big, considering the amount of money she had, but compared to our little house it was a mansion. Two stories high, quite old, but still elegant, and clean. She had most of it remodeled years ago, so it has less of a lived-in smell to it. She even had a few butlers and a cook. But to a great extent, my grandma took care of her. This was unusual because my grandma seemed much older than my great-grandma. All her siblings had already passed away. She was the only child remaining. My great-grandfather died decades ago; he was actually still young when my great-grandma became a widow. Even with her young appearance and money, she never wanted to share her life with anyone again. My great-grandfather was a lot like my Uncle Christian, so nobody really missed him when he was gone, except Grandma Elizabeth, I guess.

  As we walked toward the door, it opened, revealing my grandma. The first impression was how old and exhausted she appeared. These days she stood a little over five feet with a slight hunch. She had a full head of gray hair, and wrinkles covered her face. We called her Grandma Ivy. She hugged all of us, with an expression of despair on her face, as though the entire family had been killed.