The Tidings - [Ghost Huntress 0.5 - A Christmas Novella] Read Online Free PDF Page A

bag. Then there was working the food pantry at the church and giving out the pies. I don’t remember actually enjoying the last three or four Christmases of my life because of the busy-ness of the season. I rarely looked up into the heavens to search out the star of God’s promise to us. I never really thought about how Mary and Joseph were treated like crap by everyone and forced to stay in a barn where their baby was born. I mean, you have problems? Geesh… try being pregnant with a kid no one believes was conceived by God, and homeless, and poor and hungry. We’ve got it made, Kendall.”
    I totally get what she’s saying, but what can I do about something that happened over two thousand years ago when I can’t even get a grip on my own life now?
    Farah shakes a finger at me. “Seriously, KM, you have to listen to me. I have to get going in a minute.”
    I sort of lunge for her; my arms connecting with nothing but air as I swing around. “You can’t leave me. You have to explain everything. You have to tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
    A sigh escapes from Farah. “I’m not here to tell you the answers. I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to carry all of these burdens. That your heart can be light. You don’t have to miss out on the holidays like I did because of how you perceive things to be. Let me help you escape the fate that fell on me.”
    Shocked and out of breath, I manage to ask, “Am I going to die young, too?”
    She shrugs. “All I know is you’ve got to get your act together, Kendall. And you’re going to be visited by other spirits.”
    I snicker unconsciously. “Let me guess, three, right?”
    She flattens her lips. “It’s not a joke. But yes. Three.”
    Maybe she listened too hard in Mr. Rorek’s class about Dickens, as well. “And if I listen to these three visitors, everything will be okay?”
    “Perhaps.” Farah smoothes her hand down the front of her flowing dress. “You can avoid certain fates in life if you just stop to think things through with your heart and not your head.”
    “What does that even mean?”
    “It means your first visitor will see you after midnight tonight. Officially Christmas Eve. Then the second visitor will be right after that, and then the third will follow. Listen to them. Learn from them. You have the chance to alter your present and influence your future.”
    I stand and wipe the dirt and grass off of my clothes. “But every breath we take, every step we make—and I don’t mean that in a Police singing sort of way—can amend the path of our lives.”
    “Exactly,” Farah says. “And it’s all up to you.”
    “Kendall, dear, are you finished over there?” Mayor Shy shouts at me through the mist.
    I turn to seek her out, but see nothing. Then I spin back to where Farah was standing and she, too, is gone.
    “Whattaya know about that?”
    “Kendall?” the mayor calls again from the darkness.
    Any traces of the burnt orange sunset are now gone, replaced by inky blackness. My skin feels clammy and cold around me and I want to go home.
    “Yes, ma’am,” I say back. “I-I-I’m all finished.”
    I join the rest of the ladies and hand over the remainder of the now wilted poppies. Then, without saying much more, I excuse myself and run home. I mean, literally. I run the four blocks, not stopping for any reason as if the devil himself is chasing me.
    Once inside, I bypass the kitchen that is a mess thanks to Kaitlin and her friends, ignore the pizza box with a note attached to it—from my mother telling me she’s taking Kaitlin to practice and this is my dinner… I can read it psychically—and head straight upstairs to the bathroom. There, I strip down to my birthday suit and step into the shower. I jerk on the knobs and adjust the shower head until the water is punishing me with hot streams. I let it rain over me, washing away the encounter with Farah, and scrubbing away at the elves of self-doubt that have been my constant