Specter

By

Jason Gabriel Kondrath

Copyright © 2020 by Jason Gabriel Kondrath

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

ISBN: 9798201790257

Table of Contents

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Chapter One: Specter

Chapter Two: School Daze

Chapter Three: Dreamland

Chapter Four: Rachel

Chapter Five: Secrets

Chapter Six: Jenna, I Presume

Chapter Seven: Meet the Parents

Chapter Eight: Off to the Races

Chapter Nine: Stone Age 

Chapter Ten: Who Goes There 

Chapter One: Specter

My name is Joel, and when I was young, I was a passenger involved in a car accident while my mom was driving, and another car crossed the center line and hit us head-on. I didn't have my seat belt on and was thrown through the car's windshield.

The next thing I remember was floating above my body, looking down at the doctors who were operating on me. I had an oxygen mask over my face. There was a machine that was monitoring my heart and a tube sticking out of my arm.

I thought to myself, Oh my God, I'm dead!!!

And then I started screaming for my mother. When I woke up the next morning, I found her staring down at me. She was smiling, but she started crying when I asked if I was still alive.

Yes, baby, she said, you're safe now and here with me.

She looked exhausted, like she hadn’t slept or eaten in days, and had huge bags under her eyes.

What happened? I asked.

Apparently, she said, the man who hit us was a senior, who shouldn’t have been driving anymore. I guess he became confused and forgot where he was. He ran into us when he panicked and crossed the center line.

Are you okay? I asked.

Yes, she said, I'm fine, just a few bruises and cuts, but the car is totaled.

Can we sue? I asked.

I haven't bothered with any of that yet, she laughed. I was too worried about you.

How long have I been here? I asked.

Two days, she said.

Was I in a coma? I asked.

I don’t know exactly, she said. I’m going to have the doctor explain it to us.

What do you know? I asked.

You had a severe conclusion, she started crying again, and some internal bleeding, apparently, you broke some of your ribs, and they punctured your internal organs. They had to operate to stop the hemorrhaging.

The what?

Bleeding, she explained.

Oh.

I'm afraid you’re going to be stuck here for a couple of days, she smiled.

Go home, Mom, I said, go get some sleep.

I'm not going anywhere, she said, shaking her head. Then she looked towards the door. That's when the doctors and nurses came in.

I mention this incident because the hospital was the first time that I consciously remember being out of my body. But not long afterward, it happened again.

About a year later, I was a freshman in high school, and I skipped school to get high with one of my friends. I didn’t know it at the time, but that drug had been mixed with something else, and I felt the after-effects all day.

That night right before I fell asleep, my soul started violently rocking -it felt like it was coming loose from my body, and then it was still.

At first, I thought that it had stopped, but then I began to realize -to my horror- what really happened. When I looked down, I saw myself floating above my body again, and that's when I screamed.

I sprang up immediately, overcome with fear and anxiety. Oh God, what was happening to me? Why was this happening? Why was I leaving my body and floating like a ghost?

How was it even possible?

Did this have something to do with the accident? The drug that I had tried? (I never did it again). Or was there something else going on, like deeper injuries that I might have sustained from the accident?

I know it sounds crazy, but when I slept, I started to roll myself up in my blankets like a burrito and slept on the floor and under the bed as if that would help. But nothing did.

The third time it happened, I slept but woke up startled because of a nightmare. I found myself half-awake, half asleep, but floating above my body.

I was in an in-between state. I realized what was going on but did not experience the complete terror that came with it. I was emotionally numb.

And that was the only reason I didn’t immediately wake up and start screaming. It was then that I began to realize that maybe -just maybe, I could try and get a handle on this thing.

Each time I slipped out, it was for a longer period, and when I woke up, I was less afraid than before. I don’t know if this was Astral Traveling or Astral Projecting. I have no idea what it was. I just knew that I could not do it prior to my accident. And now I couldn’t stop.

When I glanced down and saw myself, I looked very different than I thought I did, even from my reflection in the mirror. It really helped me form a more accurate self-image in that respect. At first, I never wandered or floated very far from my body, to which I was always connected.

They say everybody travels when they sleep. Some define that as dreaming. If that’s true, the only real difference for me was that I remembered my dreams.

Each time I left my body, it became easier for me to do so than the last. It wasn’t often, but sometimes I continued to wake up and find myself floating above my physical body. 

It’s like I had a Teflon Soul. It was hard to keep my soul in my body. It even happened when I was awake!!! I spent the first year, little by little, just trying to explore, and by explore, I mean venture out of my room and within the apartment.

I was trying to control my soul, my thoughts, and how the two interacted. Thoughts were very important because if you thought about a place long enough, you would materialize there, for lack of a better word.

So, I had to learn how to both concentrate and focus. Otherwise, I would teleport to someplace I thought of, even when I didn’t mean to.

Concentrating on me was very difficult. I didn’t like school, hated studying, and memorizing gave me a headache.

If my soul was Teflon, so was my mind. It would not absorb anything. And trying to remember facts, dates, and numbers was a nightmare.

Trying to memorize things, I became frustrated and angry. But now I didn’t have a choice. I tried anything that I thought would help me, meditation, memory exercises, and even yoga.

When my mom caught me practicing in the lotus position, she asked me what I was doing, and I said that I needed help concentrating in school. And I read this might be helpful. I was struggling and desperate to graduate -willing to try anything.

Due to the accident, I had already been held back from school that year, so I was older than most of the other kids in my class. Yet mentally, I struggled behind.

My mom thought I might catch up, but I never did. If anything, I fell farther behind. Now she was worried that I suffered permanent brain damage.

My mom was looking forward to seeing me graduate, find a job, or join the military. It’s not that she didn’t love me, but it was time for me to be on my own at eighteen.

I was an adult. If she thought I couldn’t function in the real world, she would be stuck with me forever, which wasn’t fair.

I never told her about my Astral-Travels. One time when I was sleeping, she came in to wake me. I actually had an out of my body experience, she thought I was just asleep, so when she shook me, I woke up immediately, the same as if she had woken me from a nightmare.

She was leaning over me with her hand on my shoulder. I blinked up at her and groaned softly. Vertigo and nausea hit me immediately. An after-effect of my astral-powers. It’d pass in a few moments.

Today when the alarm clock went off, and my mother came in yelling at me, I told her that I was up and turned the clock off.

Come on, she said, sounding bitchy. your breakfast’s getting cold. 

I’m awake, I grumbled, forcing myself into a sitting position.

She yelled at me from downstairs, You wouldn’t need to sleep all the time if you didn’t stay up all night.

Joel nodded his head, the queasiness beginning to wear off. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t sleep at night. He didn’t choose to slip in and out of his body.

Joel pushed himself out of bed—stumbling slightly. And, even if he did, he could never explain it to his mother. At best, she would try