Psionic Academy

Chapter Twenty-two: Ghosts

Ava didn't know where she was.

All around her, trees grew tall and thick, obscuring view of any escape routes. It was an old growth forest. The canopy bloomed like a green cloud far above her head.

Ava stepped carelessly over the gnarled roots that knotted the ground before her path. The boughs of the trees creaked and groaned under the wind and their own weight. Like the inhalations and exhalations of some massive entity, some great creature.

Like the breathing of God.

Not that she really believed in the PsiMind, the Divindade, the Creator of Consciousness. Her parents had been avid followers of His Church. They had grovelled before His temples, emptied their pockets for His tithe. Their minds had been consumed with the words in His book.

She had been like them once. How could she not be?

They had raised her with it, made her a part of it. Friday evening, the end of the school week when some kids were relaxing: she would be at Church, bowing to the PsiMind. Upon her father's instruction, she would let His words fill her mouth.

Of course, the Mind wasn't a Him. It was a genderless construct, a cosmic apparition that controlled everything. It was the father of all substance, the mother of consciousness, the birther of space, the guardian of time.

The Mind was in the brain of every human, in the simplest pseudo-neurological structure in any microscopic organism, in the nerves masses in a cockroach leg. He manifested Himself in the nerve cell in every creature, in the dendrites and axon and terminal bundle.

He was consciousness. He was life.

He was the connection between two people, the invisible electrical charges behind every thought, every word, every relationship.

He was life, and love.

Well, that's what Ava's parents had said.

She could see it now - how wrong they were. 

The Mind, the Great Connector - he was not love. He was not the World Creator. He was an invention of the human ego, and as such, humans wielded the idea of him however they liked.

So, he was not love.

He could be love. He could be war, or control. He could also be hate.

That's how her father had wielded Him.

He made Him into hate.

He turned Him on Adrian.

She couldn't afford to think about that, think about how her father had gone insane with hate, how her mother had abandoned Adrian, how she had banished him from their household. It wasn't the time to recall that horrible time, or the horrible people that her parents had become.

She had to focus on the task at hand - finding her brother.

She was lost in the forest.

And now, the ghosts of her family were haunting her.

Was that her mother? Creeping through the bushes? Coming towards her?

No, it was just a passing shadow.

Ava shuddered.

Through the limbs of the short branching tree ahead of her, she saw two blue slits. Like shards of cold, cold glass. Like pieces of pale blue-green ice. 

Was that her father? 

The eyes were unmistakably his. They were uniquely cold. Blue, that infinite blue, but containing none of the warmth of her brother's eyes. Wintry blue, like a frozen ocean.

The figure moved out from behind the branching tree. Tall. A hard face, all sharp lines and acute angles, with high cheekbones and a pointed chin. Small, sharp teeth, and ears like a lynx. 

Definitely her father.

Ava shivered involuntarily. She blinked. Once, twice. She blinked harder.

And her father was gone - just another passing shadow, like the specter that had been her mother. He was gone now, too.

Like he had been a phantom.

A ghost. Had it been a ghost? But Ava knew that her father was still alive.

No matter how much she wished he was dead.

***

Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Please check out my other story, Survival Zone, which I'm now updating constantly. What do you think will happen next?