Devin Greigh: Testimony

The drive to the rivals’ high school was longer than I had expected, but we got there at a decent time. We managed to find good seats on the visitors’ side. Literally ten minutes later, the cars, buses, and people started pouring in all at once. “We got lucky with the time,” Ben said, adjusting the lens of his SLR camera. I brought Scarlett with me for the day as well; we were practically inseparable regardless.

We sat at the top row; they were the safest seats when it came to going to Barry’s sporting events. “I brought rain ponchos for when it starts to rain,” Beatrice said.

I looked up at the sky. “Expecting angels to pee on us?” I teased.

“I’m expecting it to rain heavily in an hour, smart-alec!” Beatrice stuck her tongue out at me. As soon as the seats got packed, and the announcers had us rise for the national anthem, I had readied Scarlett for plenty of flash photography. As everyone sat down, I heard a familiar voice.

“EVVY!!” Casrial shouted from five seats away from me. She sat next to Jayden and his mom and dad; apparently they spent little time introducing each other to their parents.

“Hey you guys!!” I hollered back, waving wildly at them.

“Those are your new friends?” Beatrice said with a smile.

“Yeah,” I answered proudly.

“Well go sit with them!” She demanded. “I’ll bring over your poncho once the clouds start rolling in.

I snickered, and then shook my head. “Yeah, okay mom,” I laughed as I got up, shuffling through the small crowds until I sat in the last seat next to Casrial.

“Hey little sis!” She cheered, squeezing my tiny body tight as she hugged me.

“I treasure breathing!” I strained breathlessly. She eased her constriction on me, and smiled.

I was introduced to both Jayden and Casrial’s parents. Jayden’s parents were nearly a spitting image of him. He had his mother’s looks; thin nose and lips, cat-like green-colored eyes, and thick hair. His father was tall and lanky, and although he looked thin, his arms were well-defined like that of a basketball player’s. His dad had blue eyes, and I’d wondered how he managed to get his mother’s eyes and not his father’s.

Casrial had some of her father’s features; mainly his lips and facial bone structure. However, his eyes were small and nearly black, his nose was slightly wider, and not as pointed upward as Cas’s, and his hair was cut short, like a crew cut. And unlike how Jayden’s parents were all easy going, Casrial’s father looked very serious, though not an angry-serious, more towards just being slightly uptight. Jayden even had a little sister, Candice, who loved Casrial until she saw me. “We could be sisters!” Candice immediately said.

Candice looked exactly like I did when I was about her age. Candice was eight, but she wore no freckles like I did. She also had the same personality as I did, which was scary. She also wore glasses, which immediately upped her coolness points by a trillion.

The football game was brutal, especially when Barry was up on defense. Almost every play ended with blackness as I shut my eyes tight just before Barry would go for the tackle. The moment I shut my eyes, all I would hear was a bone-crunching sound of pads crushing together. There was either a sound so identical to a shotgun blast that I had jumped from it every time I heard it, or made a sound so identical to ribs shattering, that I shuddered from the sickening sound. At one point, Barry had sacked the quarterback, and he had hit him so hard, that the quarterback was out cold for ten minutes. They had to stop the game at that time until the ambulance came to check on him. I didn’t see any wraiths or gheists, so I knew the kid definitely was not dead—he sure looked like it though.

The second quarter was worse. Our high school was up 27-0, and Barry began taking out the entire starting offensive line, one helmet-wrecking hit after the next. Both Candice and I couldn’t stand the violence being displayed on the field, so we just decided to keep our eyes shut for the remaining two minutes once the two-minute warning whistle was blown. Casrial and Jayden both made fun of us for it. So did Jayden’s parents. Casrial’s father just smirked and mumbled, “It could be worse…Someone could lose a limb from the way number thirty’s killin’ em.” Number thirty was Barry’s jersey number.

The clouds started rolling in as soon as the second quarter ended. I had to use the restroom, so I headed towards the handmade signs pointing to rival school’s restrooms.

“I’ll give you your poncho when you get back!” Beatrice yelled—she already had her rain poncho on her and Ben.

I trotted to the west wing building where the restrooms were, and opened the double doors there. The hallways were empty and quiet. I heard the echoing of my own heels as they click-clacked against the smooth, marble floors. As I turned the corner to where the girls’ room was located, I ran into a boy. “I’m sorry!” I apologized, but as I began to walk around him, he grabbed my arm, squeezing it so hard I thought he might break it with the slightest movement.

“What’s the rush?” he hissed. And then I felt it—the only bitter coldness that a gheist could have. I looked at the boy, and I sensed he was the cause of it. He was only an inch or so taller than I was, and his jet-black hair was long and oily, covering his face. Through the veil, however, I could see the tint of red radiating from his eyes. He had a twisted, almost forced smile stretched across his face.

“I—I’m g—going to the restroom,” I said through pain-induced clenched teeth.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he hissed, twisting my forearm to the point it only needed one more inch for it to snap.

“You—you’re hurting me.”

“What?” the boy said. “I’m barely touching you!”

I tried pulling my arm away, but he squeezed that one last inch needed to force a sickening crack from my forearm. The sound alone was a signal for me to scream in agony as I dropped to the floor half way—his need to hold my arm kept me somewhat suspended as I hung helplessly.

“That’s hurting!” he began laughing out loud.

“What do you want from me!?” I cried, “Let me go!”

“You know what I want!” he growled, squeezing my arm even tighter. I let out a blood-curdling shriek, unable to pull my arm free; his hand was like a vice grip, tightening every time I had tried to pull away.

“I’ve come to kill you,” he hissed, twisting his head to the side and sadistically staring as my face contorted with pain.

“Why do you want my soul!?” I cried as warm tears began pouring for my eyes like a cracked waterline.

“Answering that would be pointless, and irrelevant,” he replied. “You won’t be alive to relish the importance of the answer.”

He began twisting my forearm more; the pain from the cracking bone began to numb from the lack of circulation of my arm—he squeezed my arm like a boa constrictor. The feeling of the boy/gheist wrenching my arm switched from being numb to excruciating pain, toppling me to my knees to the ground. When I felt the pain, it was so unbearable that blood had rushed through my head, and I’d almost passed out. He finally yanked me from my knees and threw me up against the locker—it had dented as my back was crumpled up against it.

“Don’t be so weak,” he hissed. “This won’t hurt as much as I am hurting you now!”

His eyes began to turn red, and I closed my eyes as I did the day at the old field.

Suddenly, much like that same day, the almost-endless pain had ended, and the feeling of safe and comfort flooded the hallway with harmonic resonance and soothing warmth. I opened my eyes and saw Devin holding the boy up in the air by his throat. “You will not interfere!” the boy hissed painfully.

“I already have,” Devin said calmly.

The boy wrapped his legs around Devin’s arm like a snake, trying to wrench his throat free from his grasp. He flipped Devin over, but Devin instantly turned to smoke, and in a flash, grabbed the boy by the collar and flipped him over his shoulder. The boys head cracked against the solid surface of the hallway floor, but he blurred into smoke like Devin did, and retaliated. The two engaged in a battle far too quick for me to follow with my own eyes, I could only follow it with the sounds the boy made when Devin connected with an attack. Their limbs were a combination of blurs and smoke as the two swung, dodged, threw, kicked, jumped, flipped, and flew into each other. The lockers in the hallway were crumpled by their ferocious fighting, as if a wrecking ball was bouncing from one side of the hallway to the next. Finally, in one flush move, Devin delivered a straight punch—the kind of punch that you would normally see in martial arts action films—and the boy flew several yards away from him, crashing into the wall just at the end of the hall. Devin disappeared in smoke, and then reappeared in front of the wreckage that had posed as a small tomb for the boy. Devin pulled the boy from the wreckage; he flickered from gheist to human, like a cartoon character being electrocuted, as Devin held him up in the air. The boy laughed, whipping his long black hair so that Devin’s eyes finally met his.

“Setzer,” Devin’s voice cracked.

“Surprised…you didn’t…notice me sooner!” the boy replied.

“Yeah well it didn’t help that the long, greasy hair was covering your ugly face,” Devin said dryly.

“Always the witty jokester quick to whip his tongue!” Setzer laughed.

“Are we talking about me or you?” Devin asked, “Because from the look of things, you’re the one with the tongue hanging out of his mouth.”

“You should have been dead long ago,” Setzer hissed, “You’re lucky to have escaped with the skin on your back!”

“Yeah well I’m sorry I can’t say the same for you,” Devin snapped.

“On the contrary!” Setzer shouted, “I now have a few tricks of my own! Observe!”

Setzer snapped his fingers, and in an instant, he dispersed into thick, smoky-black particles. As he started to fade away, Setzer shouted, “I’ll be back, Devin Greigh! You have best be prepared!”

Once Setzer was gone, so was the bitter, eerily cold atmosphere and horrid sorrow-filled hymn that had accompanied him. I looked up at Devin and asked, “Who was that!?”

“Setzer,” Devin answered with his back turned to me, “an old friend of sorts.”

“An old ‘friend!?’” I repeated.

“The kind of friend that you never want to see again,” Devin replied.

Devin finally turned around from the concaved wall and then stared down at my arm.

“Your arm is fractured,” he diagnosed. “It’s bad enough that I have to watch over you, but now I have to mend your wounds as well?”

“I didn’t know you were actually watching over me once I felt my arm snap,” I said coldly.

Devin grabbed my arm; it was throbbing with pain. His hand began to turn translucent, and it sank into my forearm. I felt a cooling essence radiating from within my arm, mixed with a rivaling warming sensation shooting like an electrical current through the fractured bones of my arm. I winced slightly, feeling a slight sting, and then eased up as I experienced the feeling of my fractured bone and torn muscles mend at a rapid rate.

“I retract my previous statement about not watching me,” I said apologetically. “I didn’t know you had the power to heal people; it’s a beautiful thing.” I rested my free hand against his waist—he flinched for a split second, and then relaxed.

“Healing is one of the many perks of being an agent,” Devin said calmly.

Moments later, my arm was completely healed. I moved my arm around, wiggling my fingers to confirm that the blood was circulating properly through my veins. The pain that was tearing my nerves apart had ceased, and my broken arm was now restored. Not only was the fracture repaired, but the cuts on my arm from the other day had been healed as well.

“So is that what you are?” I asked Devin with a soft tone in my voice. “An agent?”

Devin looked at me, and without having to wait for me to ask him what an agent was, he responded.

“Agents are humans, possessing extraordinary spiritual powers, manifesting at a young age. When they grow older, those powers strengthen. They’re trained at a young age to grasp the gist of their powers. The term agent is normally defined as anything that has been registered as possessing paranormal activity. We use the term to identify the fighters of our team.”

He ran his thumb against the skin of my arm, adding pressure against it. Noticing that I had not flinched, he let my arm fall at my waist. “So that’s why your presence feels like that of a ghost…err…wraith,” I said.

“See?” he smiled. “You’re getting smarter every second you spend with me.”

“I guess you’re a miracle worker,” I said, waving my arm around to add to my pun.

“I do what I can,” Devin replied.

“So if the term Agent is used to identify a certain member, then there are others with different powers,” I started, “which means, there’s more than just you. And if that’s true, then you must work with—,”

The football halftime break was starting, and I remembered that I had to be back outside. Then I remembered that I had to use the restroom.

“I need to—,” I embarrassingly pointed my thumb over to the now unhinged, splintered door of the girls’ bathroom, “And then I need to get back out there; my folks tend to worry.”

Devin nodded, shuffled past me, and then stopped. “Figuring it all out yet?” he asked.

“A little,” I murmured. “But I was told that I will know the answers when I am ready.”

Devin remained silent for a moment, and then started shuffling again.

“Meet me at school tomorrow. I’ll take you to see my father.”

I smiled, listening to the click-clacking of his cane tapping the floor as he walked away. And then—like he had always done—he vanished like a ninja in a smooth flow of smoke.

“Is that a date!?!?” I shouted, not realizing that as soon as Devin had vanished, a group of people had walked down the hallway; they were staring in shock at not only my shouting at nothing, but also the current condition of the hallway.

“I—I wonder what happened in here!?” I pretended to look just as shock as the four boys were.

The boys just looked around; two of them pulled out their cell phones and started taking pictures of the wreckage. I took this time to sneak into the bathroom stealthily, successfully for the first time in my life, before they could ask me any questions.