Chapter one

This was it the day of my parent's funeral; they had died almost a month ago in some freak accident while they were out one night, and now here I am on my way to their funeral. After the funeral, I am being shipped off to go live with my Uncle Carter in Canada because he was the only relative that was willing to let me stay with them. It's impossible for me to feel excited when I am being forced to move halfway across the world to live with some relative that I have never met before and on top of all this I think I'm going crazy. While I was doing my makeup in the mirror this morning, I swear I saw the shadows in my room moving and some getting bigger but I just pushed it to the back of my head and played it off as my mind playing tricks on me because of the stress.

The funeral parlour wasn't the fanciest, but it was the one my mum requested to be cremated in. it had a dark feeling to it, and the name didn't help much either Infernal funeral home. It was going to be an open casket funeral, so people were walking up to the casket to say their goodbyes; I had decided that I wanted to go last so that it would be fewer people around when I said my goodbyes. When it got to my turn to say goodbye, I made my way up the aisle to where their caskets laid, I went to my mother's coffin first and placed my hand on her arm.

'I wish you were still here, mum.' I thought to myself. I was standing there for another minute looking at her lifeless body, just as I was about to move onto my father's casket I felt my mothers arm twitch making me jump back in fright and a small scream escaped my mouth. I am glad everyone else left the room to give me some privacy; otherwise, they would just right off as being distraught over losing both of my parents.

'I am definitely losing my mind!' I don't know how much more of this I would be able to handle. Losing my parents is one thing but seeing things is just going to make people think that I am not dealing with the loss that well and I would end up in therapy with some dodgy doctor trying to make me feel better. I can't just keep it to myself though I need to talk to someone, maybe I should talk to my uncle about it. One thing that I should say about my uncle is that he works at a boarding school for special people so he would probably be the only one that understands what's going on with me. He wasn't able to make the funeral service, but he should be at the wake that is being held back at home before I have to leave tomorrow morning.

The funeral carried on as planned with no more freaky things happening to me. When the police arranged for me to stay with my uncle, they gave me his phone number so that he could let me know when he is coming to take me back to his home; been as the funeral is over and it is time for the wake I turned my phone back on to see a message from my uncle.

I am almost to your home.

The message wasn't very long, but what can you expect from someone that you haven't met in person before. I suppose once we get used to being around each other, everything might start feeling normal. Back at the house, tables of food and drink were lined up against the far wall. They've made her wake look like a party. No one seems like they've just come from a funeral at all; they were all huddled in groups talking and laughing. Throughout the whole day, only one person has said their condolences to me, and I'm not even entirely sure that they meant it.

Unsure of what to do now since everyone was in their own groups talking, I decided to walk around the house one last time before I leave. I was making my way down the hallway leading to the kitchen when I was stopped by a hand on my shoulder; I turned around to see a man that I have never seen before. It dawned on me that this must be the uncle that I am going to live with.

"It's nice to meet you finally, Avalon." He said, sounding a mixture of sad and happy. "It's a shame it couldn't have happened under better circumstances."

Unsure of what to say in response, I nodded my head and turned my head to the side because I could feel the tears threatening to escape. I was expecting him to turn around and walk away, but instead, he pulled me into a hug and said nothing. As we stood there, I started thinking about what happened back at the funeral parlour and how I was meant to bring up something like that in a conversation with him.

"Uncle…" I said trailing off still unsure of how I'm supposed to say this.

"What is it, Avalon?" He asked, pulling away from the hug, holding me at arm's length.

"I think I'm going crazy…" I decided to ease into it in case this doesn't go how I planned it.

He had this look in his eyes that made it seem as if he knew what I was going on about. He motioned for me to carry on with my explanation.

"Earlier while I was getting ready, I was in front of the mirror, and I swear the shadows in my room where moving and even some looked like they were growing in size." I explained, saying it out loud makes me sound crazy "And then when I was saying goodbye to mother in the funeral parlour, I rested my hand on her arm, and she twitched."

After my explanation, he stood there looking deep in thought before he responded "I know what's happening, but I'm probably not the best person to explain it to you, but when we get back to Canada there is someone there that would be able to give you better answers then I could just know that you are special more so than you think."

That gave me more questions than answers, but at least I'm not crazy, and I'll get answers on to what is happening with me. After the little conversation with Uncle Carter, I dealt with a house full of people for a few more hours before they started leaving and me and Uncle Carter went to bed before our flight tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.

~

The next morning was not something I was generally looking forward to, other than having to move my entire life to another country, and there is also the problem with the fact that I am terrified of flying. Uncle Carter woke me up around 8 o'clock so that we could make our plane on time; the drive to the airport wasn't the most interesting their was some small talk here and there, but overall it was pretty much silence the whole time.