I See You...

By Michaela Pirie

"Sixteen year old Kat Whittaker led a normal, boring life up until the day she had a near death experience and came back being able to communicate with ghosts. She gets outcast from her social circle and befriends the new kid, Kevin, who surprisingly now shares the same ability as Kat. They discover that their local high school used to be an old lunatic asylum that was home to a cult of devil-worshippers, and the arrival of the suddenly gifted teenagers stirs up these things that should have remained buried forever. The dark spirits and the demons are awake, and now nobody and nowhere is safe as they begin to leave a trail of destruction behind them, hell-bent on finishing what they started. The clock begins to tick and unless Kat and Kevin can adapt to their new lives and fast, the barrier between the living and the dead will be broken forever."

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Dec 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491886328

Michaela Pirie

Michaela is 18 years old and lives in a small town in the north east of Scotland. She has been writing since she could hold a pencil and is a keen paranormal enthusiast, which gave her the inspiration to pen her first book.

Book preview

Prologue

T o everybody else, my life came across as relatively perfect. I was popular, so I had a lot of friends. I was apparently pretty, so I got attention from the guys. My family was reasonably rich, so I had a few designer pieces in my wardrobe. Everything a 16-year-old girl could possibly want, right?

Wrong. My popularity came only from my money, and I had accepted that. And the attention I got came from all the guys who were only in it for one thing and one thing only, because if I was to be friends with Carrie and Selena, then I had to put out like they do. I knew it had nothing to do with my looks because I really was just… average. There was not a single special thing about me. At all. I was just an average teenager, going to an average school, and living an average life.

But I wanted so much more. I wanted to have friends who wouldn’t care if we suddenly went broke and became homeless. I wanted to have at least one person who would just try to see me for me. I wanted to be myself.

I longed for something in this boring old town to change—for the better, preferably. I wished on the first star I saw every night and every time the clock hit 11:11, but nothing happened, ever. It was a horrible desperate feeling, the kind of thing that gnaws slowly on your insides when you finally realise that you’re running the same loop over and over with no change whatsoever.

However, fate did have something in store for me; it just wasn’t as lovely and sugar-coated as I had hoped. I had wished for something to change, and by God, it did. My entire life got flipped on its head after a stupid argument I had with Carrie on our school lunch break; all of my prayers had been answered by a truck that hadn’t hit the brakes hard enough or fast enough.

My name is Kat Whittaker. And this is my story.

Chapter 1

I should’ve known that today was the day I had been waiting for. There was a weird feeling in the crisp autumn air, almost like static, and it had me on edge from the very second I slammed my alarm off that morning. What stopped me from questioning it was the same old routine: shower, dress, hair, makeup, school. It was almost as if the tediousness of life was muffling it, distracting me from the bigger picture that had been so painfully clear.

I got my brother Charlie to drop me off at school and trudged over to the gaggle of teenagers that were clogging the main entrance to Oakwood Academy, as went every morning. I spotted Carrie’s bleach blonde hair before anything else and heard Selena’s obnoxiously loud laugh from halfway across the grounds. I stifled a sigh and forced a smile as I squeezed my way into the crowd, breaking the ice by asking if anybody had done the English homework. Of course, none of them had done it. They were the Populars. They ruled this school, and they knew it, so they used it to the best of their ability, falling back on that as an excuse to get out of doing stuff they didn’t want to. As annoying as it was, I must say it was quite impressive.

The bell pierced through the new conversation that had struck up about a party they were planning for Saturday, and I managed to slip away before any of them had the chance to ask me about it. It wasn’t out of fashion for them to ask me if they could use my place for their get-togethers. My house wasn’t the ideal place to hold twenty-plus drunk teenagers, but they figured that they could get off with trashing it because it wouldn’t be a big deal for us to buy new things. But just as they had their ‘I’m too cool for this’ excuse, I always hid behind Charlie, even if I didn’t have a good reason for them not to do it. Nobody would argue because they had all heard the stories of the times that Charlie had lost his temper, so I just slid his name in there somewhere and the subject was dropped.

I had just slumped heavily into my hard plastic seat in history class when the lead boy of the Populars, Josh Knight, came sauntering in. I growled quietly and turned my head to look out the window, really not in the mood for what he had to say. In all my time of knowing Josh, I had never heard him say one nice thing to anybody. He gave compliments to scantily dressed females when he was drunk, but that was about his stretch. He was always ripping on someone, or boasting about something he had done, to fish for attention, which only added to his already overinflated ego. I’ll give him his due—he was good-looking, but he knew it way too well.

‘Hey, Kat.’ He leaned his hands on my desk and smirked down at me. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and plastered on another fake smile as I turned my head round fully to look at him, not wanting to be rude.

‘Sure.’

‘Do you wanna go to the winter dance with me?’ I froze for a second, not sure how to respond. That was not what I was expecting him to come out with at all. Quickly, I pulled up all the reasons he would ask me when he could have Carrie and settled on the simple fact that I was one of the only girls in the group that hadn’t hooked up with him yet.

‘Um, sorry, Josh, but I don’t think I’m actually going to the dance this year,’ I lied smoothly, clasping my hands in front of me. ‘You should ask Carrie though; I think she’s still looking for a date.’

He rolled his luminous green eyes and made a disgruntled noise in the back of his throat. ‘Come on, Kat, it’ll be fun! There’s always the after-party to go to as well!’

‘Josh. I’m not going, okay? And I’m pretty sure I’ve made it clear before that I’m not going to get with you in any way, shape, or form, so stop trying.’ The words had rolled off my tongue before I had even registered that I was thinking them. I held my breath while I waited for a response, feeling my stomach twist as his face hardened into a stony expression. Being at the top of the school’s social ladder meant that you could tear any person off of it if you wanted, and I had seen first-hand what he was capable of.

It seemed like an eternity had passed before his face melted back into the charming smile that he used to get people to do what he wanted. ‘I love it when you play hard to get. I’ll ask you again next week.’ He winked and ran a hand through his scruffy black hair as he strolled towards his right-hand man, Paul, at the back of the classroom.

The dull static that had been present this morning made its way into the air again as our teacher walked in, but I pushed it aside, thinking I was just coming down with the flu or something.

When Mrs McKenzie started talking, I zoned out slightly, content with doodling on my notebook, then asking the person next to me what we had to do. I was a good pupil when I wanted to be. I did my homework on time, studied for tests, and got all the work done by the end of the lesson, but Mrs McKenzie was a bit dozy sometimes, so it wasn’t compulsory to give your full attention in her class.

My head snapped up when I heard my name being read out, though. ‘Huh?’ I looked around and saw a few of my friends snickering and pointing. I frowned and laid my pen down gently.

Mrs McKenzie sighed and adjusted her glasses. ‘Kat, you’re paired with Jeff.’ Oh. Okay, maybe I should have actually listened there. I scooped up my notebook and pen with one hand and hoisted my bag up over my shoulder as I stood and made my way to my new table for whatever reason. Now I understood why Josh, Paul, Selena, and Lara were laughing.

In the food chain here, Jeff Benson was at the very, very bottom along with his group of fellow outcasts. I personally never had a problem with any of them, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t exactly see what was so wrong with them that they had to constantly be bullied by the Populars and their following. They were different, but different in the way that they were interesting; and they expressed themselves and were confident enough not to bow before the in crowd with the rest of our year.

I plopped down in the chair next to Jeff, and he smiled, the piercings on his bottom lip glinting in the light. ‘You didn’t listen to a word she said, did you?’

‘Nope.’ I admitted sheepishly. ‘Did you?’

‘Thankfully, yes. It’s just an assignment about World War Two or something.’ He twisted his head round to find the source of the unnaturally loud snigger that came from somewhere in the room, and no doubt it was from Josh. I bit my lip and slyly checked Jeff’s reaction, wondering how he would treat me, having knowledge that I was associated with those same people who caused his small group hell. I would have told him that I wasn’t like the rest of them in their taunting and bullying, but I was way too shy to be so upfront about something like that. I would probably just end up stumbling over my words and come across as a complete idiot, and that was not the kind of first impression I wanted to give anybody.

‘Why do you hang out with him?’ was the only thing he said about it, curling his lip slightly with disgust. ‘They’re so pathetic.’ With a small shake of his head, all hints of distaste towards Josh and his immaturity were gone, replaced by a relaxed and easy smile.

I thought about my answer for a moment. I really didn’t know why I still hung out with them. Maybe because I was scared of walking these halls alone? Scared of being their next target? Scared because I had absolutely no way to defend myself against their onslaught? My brow scrunched slightly, and I tore at a small corner in my book. ‘I really have no idea.’

‘You’re always welcome to come and talk to us at break or whatever. There’s no point in putting up with his shit any longer than you have to, right?’ He shrugged one shoulder lightly and started to chew on the lid of his pen.

I glanced up at him warily. Was he being serious? He caught me looking and smiled again, brushing his red and black emo hair out of his eyes. I wanted to ask him what his natural colour was, but I didn’t have the nerve. There was something about him that made me feel comfortable and welcome, but at the same time I felt rather intimidated by his presence. He seemed so open and friendly and easy to talk to, but I was totally clamming up. I scolded myself internally for screwing up a chance like this and to just speak to him like I would speak to Charlie or something.

Eventually, I managed a small, ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure!’ He laughed and slapped down his notepad with a hefty sigh. ‘Okay. Let’s get started then.’

History had never gone by so fast. After the first fifteen minutes or so, Jeff and I had set common ground in music, TV shows, and movies, and he went out of his way to make sure that by the end of the lesson, I wasn’t scared to talk to him. I never realised that he was the kind of person I had been needing to bring some fresh air into my life, and at the time, I didn’t find it weird in the slightest that he seemed to just know that I wasn’t like of the rest of them. Even once the bell rang and I started heading to art class, it never clicked that something was changing.

When I arrived in the art department, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Jeff was in my class here too. He had taken up a seat about three rows behind everyone else with his back to the wall, eyes flicking up every so often to make sure he was being left in peace. That was probably the exact reason why I had never really noticed him before—he had done such a good job of keeping to himself in this class. My heart instantly went out to him, and it took me all of three seconds to make up my mind about keeping him company this time.

‘Kat, where are you going? Please don’t tell me you’re away to sit with him.’ Carrie grabbed my arm when I collected my folder, looking genuinely repulsed as she nodded her head towards Jeff. For the first time in a while, I really saw her for who she was. The way she teetered on her high heels and the shortness of her skirt and the splatter of makeup all over her face: None of that was enough to hide the fact that she was, in fact, a royal bitch.

‘I am, actually.’

‘Why?’

‘Because believe it or not, he’s a pretty nice guy.’ I gave my own dark blonde hair a trained catty flick and left her speechless. I didn’t like acting like Carrie or Selena, but they had taught me how to use my attitude pretty well when I needed to. They just hadn’t expected me to ever use it on any of them.

‘Whoa! Hey!’ Jeff jumped when I yanked out the chair next to him.

‘Hey.’ I grinned and picked up one of the earphones he had just pulled out. I instantly recognised the voice of one of my favourite artists and bobbed my head along to the beat. ‘I love these guys!’

‘Really? They’re amazing live as well,’ he commented casually, going back to sketching something on his piece of paper. ‘I met them when they played here a few months back.’ He smiled at the memory and popped his other earphone back in, allowing me to keep one to listen to the rest of the song.

‘I wanted to go to that, but nobody would go with me.’ I frowned and sighed at my own drawing of a vase. ‘And why did I pick art? I suck at this.’ And that was another lesson that flew by easily. We would talk about