The Creators: Book One by

Chapter One: The Life Giver

BRANDON

My twin sister is dead, but she’s not gone. Death is a tragedy in the remote village of Towerhead, but it’s not a rarity. Farming accidents, disease, famine, natural disasters, you name it, it kills people in Towerhead. So, six years ago, when the oxen-pulled carriage ran my ten-year-old sister into the dirt, it was a tragedy, but it wasn’t an anomaly. I had seen this play before; the townspeople rushing to the accident, the driver sitting in shocked silence, the wails and screams of the bereaved, and then the solemn procession that follows. My mother and father were devastated, my friends were consoling and understanding, but I just stood there like an asshole pointing to the bluish-white translucent figure to my left.

“Uh, guys?” I remember saying, “She’s right here.”

At first, people thought it was just my coping mechanism. Hell, I thought that must be the case, but Angela never went away. She talked to me, and I talked to her, and that’s when people thought I was going crazy. I agreed with them, of course; I must be going insane. I tried to pretend she wasn’t there, and I ignored her as best I could, but that didn’t make her go away. Then Angela started feeding me test answers in school, and telling me where to pan for gold in the river, and showing me where the game was when I was hunting. The apparition’s proclamations were so accurate, that I could no longer deny her existence. Angela was dead, but she wasn’t gone.

After my parents tried an exorcism to relieve me of the ‘demon that plagued my soul,’ I stopped trying to prove to people that Angela was real. Towerhead is a lovely town, but it is a small town, fifty miles removed from civilization. Magic is looked down upon, and any anomaly that can’t be explained in ten words or less is either ‘god’s blessing,’ or ‘the devil’s work,’ depending on the situation. So, I kept Angela to myself, but as I grew older, her constant presence in my life started to present new and interesting problems. You see, Angela never leaves me. I mean never. I’m a sixteen-year-old boy, and sometimes, privacy is a concern of mine.