Exorcising Aaron Nguyen
Millroad Academy Exorcists novella series
Book One
Lauren Harris
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal
Publisher: Pendragon Press
Date of Publication: August 24, 2013
Number of pages: 107
Word Count: 23k
Cover Artist: Elyse Revelle
Book Description:
The
murder of Millroad Catholic Academy's resident genius, Aaron Nguyen,
shuts down student life at the boarding school in rural North
Carolina...for about a week. With the resilience of youth, the student
body bounces back, and the memory of murder is nothing but a streamer of
caution tape fluttering in the breeze.
Unfortunately
for them, Aaron's spirit has some resilience as well. Despite the
priest's attempted exorcism, Aaron's ghost is soon breathing chills down
the students' necks and hurling bunsen burners at nuns.
Georgia
Collins doesn't give a shit about ghosts. All she wants is a story to
prove her underground school news blog is more than a gossip column,
closure on her one-sided relationship with her best friend Hiroki, and a
vanilla latte. She wasn't expecting Aaron Nguyen's death to be anything
more than a cold spot in the science hall, but since Hiroki has the
curse of Spectral Sight, he is the only person who can see and speak to
Aaron.
As
the ghost’s demands for attention become increasingly violent, Hiroki
enlists Georgia to help him investigate the crime, claiming that Aaron
isn’t likely to move on until his killers are caught. Still hoping for
spontaneous romantic combustion, she agrees to help bring Aaron's
murderers to justice and set the vengeful spirit free...but it's not
quite the close encounter she's hoping for.
Chapter One
What’s a Little Murder Between Friends?
Exactly
one week after Aaron Nguyen’s body appeared on the soccer field with
his head smashed in, I found my best friend, Hiroki Satou, leafing
through an exorcism manual behind the chapel. The 9 a.m. sun punched the
silhouette of our school’s new steeple into the brick courtyard, as if
to remind students in the shadow of that looming crucifix that Jesus was
always watching, even if the teachers usually weren’t. The acrid scent
of cigarette smoke cut through the air, which was already dense with the
grass and magnolia perfume of a late North Carolina summer.
As
usual, Hiroki was smoking, posed in a languid slump against the brick
wall. The manual, though—he usually didn’t bring that sort of thing out
of his room. I slid into the shade next to him, and he shook the book at
me without looking up.
"Ghosts
are bad enough," he said around his cigarette, careless of ash falling
on the lapel of his school blazer. "Asian ghosts are fucking
terrifying."
I
rolled my eyes. Hiroki had spoken English of some variety since he was a
kid, but he’d only been in the states for six years. There were a few
things he still didn't get right all the time—prepositions, articles,
idioms like "you can't have your cake and eat it too" (which, if I
thought too hard about it, didn't make any goddamn sense to me
either)—but I took personal pride in the fact that, by the end of
sophomore year, he'd perfected the vast and varied usage of the word
"fuck". Sure, he'd done all the memorizing and mistake-making, but I
wiped a lot of spit off our desks teaching him how to pronounce the "f".
He
flipped the page in a book filled with low-res “paranormal” crime scene
photographs, and blew a stream of smoke away from me. The brick
courtyard separating us from the soccer field still trailed the remains
of last week’s flimsy caution tape, like morbid party streamers no one
had bothered to take down. Half the nuns clustered at the edge of the
grass, clutching their rosaries and shaking their heads. Sister Joseph
Ann wept quietly into her wrinkled hands. I glanced past them to the
field, waving away smoke that drifted toward me despite Hiroki’s
efforts.
School
activities had been cancelled for the past week, allowing the students
extra time to deal with the trauma of a murder no one understood.
There’d been lots of loud crying by people who’d never spoken to Aaron,
and I guess I couldn’t blame them. Maybe they were distressed at the
thought of murder so close, or maybe they saw it as an opportunity to
get attention. Personally, I wanted to blog about it, but it seemed
disrespectful to report hearsay and my blog wasn’t a gossip rag, no
matter what people said - I never report anything I can’t back up. To be
honest, I didn’t feel qualified to talk about murder.
Aaron’s
ghost showing up, though, was a twist I might have an inside scoop on.
Hiroki was saddled with the unfortunate talent of spectral sight, which
made him something of an expert on ghosts. Just before morning Mass,
he’d spotted Aaron’s spirit sulking translucently at the top of the
stairwell to the science lab and alerted one of the nuns.
“Did you talk to the police already?” I asked.
He
gave a one-shouldered shrug. “An officer came by, but I haven’t talked
to Aaron’s spirit. I just saw him. I don’t have anything they can use to
look for evidence.” He tapped his heel against the brick, avoiding my
gaze. Though the ghost hadn’t caused any trouble beyond a couple
floating beakers and a spontaneously-lit bunsen burner, Hiroki was
jumpy, and his unease made me nervous. He wasn’t usually afraid of them.
"So
what's Aaron Nguyen's vengeful spirit going to do?” I asked. “Strangle
students with computer cables? Program a continuous loop of Justin
Beiber into the PA system?"
Hiroki
smirked, glancing up. I tried not to notice the cutwork pattern of
light stealing through the courtyard trees and lighting his irises to
eerie amber. I'd given up on him in sophomore year, when I realized
personality would never matter as much as the fact that I was three
inches taller and about seventy pounds heavier. But he was too goddamn
pretty for his own good sometimes.
I'd
been in love with him since sixth grade, when he'd transferred from his
school in Arashiyama, Japan to Millroad Catholic Academy—a grades 6-10
boarding school built in bumfuck middle-of-nowhere North Carolina. It
was like one of those schools you read about in old British novels,
except there was no lake for Clandestine Rowboats of Boy-on-Boy
Snuggling (unfortunately) and the field across from our winding front
drive sported twenty seven rusting cars and a deer stand.
He
flipped a few more pages in the book and leaned away from the chapel’s
brick wall, peering around my shoulder at the be-habited faculty.
“They’re going to drench the place in holy water, say some Our Fathers,
and expect Aaron to pack up and go like a good little Catholic ghost.”
I raised my eyebrow. “I don’t think that’s how exorcisms work. Omnis immunde spiritus and all that shit.”
“Yeah, well, I can tell you one thing—a Catholic exorcism isn’t going to work on a Buddhist ghost.”
I
wasn’t surprised to hear Aaron had been Buddhist. A number of kids at
our school weren’t Catholic, including Hiroki and me, but we attended
because it was the only school around with a decent college acceptance
rate. Parents who wanted their kids to go to university bought uniforms,
made checks out to Jesus, and packed their bewildered kids off to Mass.
“I didn’t realize it mattered what religion the ghost was. Is. Whatever.”
“It does if it’s the kind of ghost that can be exorcised.”
Hiroki
avoided my gaze as he took another long drag of his cigarette and
watched the nuns file somberly back into the school for assembly. There
was something in that statement he didn’t want me dwelling on.
He
exhaled smoke through his nose in a long sigh. “We might as well poke
around.” He shoved the book into his messenger bag and slung it around
behind him.
“What
does that mean?” I asked, glancing at the door to the chapel. The cool
stone interior beckoned me, promising a nap-length assembly followed by
an iced vanilla latte, and I really didn’t want to play the Watson to
his Sherlock unless he was willing to reenact some pretty specific
fanfiction. “I am not going to the morgue to touch his body.”
“Ew,” Hiroki said, a little skipping-shudder in his step. “No. I mean his murder. I’m not going near a dead body—gross.”
I guess there was Seeing Dead People, and there was seeing dead people. I wasn’t in a hurry to do either.
“How are you planning to just ‘poke around’ his murder case? The police are all up in here twice a day.”
“No idea yet. I’ll have a plan by lunchtime.”
I
power walked after him. “You know I’m all for investigative
journalism,” I said, “but don’t you think snooping through crime scenes
and threatening possible witnesses is sort of a bad idea?”
He
shrugged, reaching for the door to the chapel and heaving it open. A
gust of cool air reached out, snagging us both. “Probably.” He stepped
into the relative darkness of the hallway and glanced back at me. “When
has that ever stopped you?”
About the Author:
Lauren
is a fantasy writer, voice actress, and the co-creator of 2012 Parsec
Finalist, Pendragon Variety Podcast for aspiring writers of genre
fiction, where she is known as "Scribe."
Her
voice acting can be heard on Audible.com as well as fiction podcasts
such as EscapePod, The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine, and The
Drabblecast B-Sides.
Though
she spent three years living in Tokyo, she currently resides in a
renovated tobacco shed in rural North Carolina, where she is pleased to
have running water, wifi, and all her teeth.
Twitter - @Marksmaster
Blog - “Ink-Stained Scribe” - http://lscribeharris.blogspot.com
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/laurenbranchharris
Podcast - Pendragon Variety - A Genre Writing Podcast - www.pendragonvariety.com
Check out this great giveaway. One grand prize winner will win the rosary pictured on the cover of the book. It was handmade by Sarah Moore, the cover model and inspiration for the character of Georgia. The rosary is made from two different sizes of Tiger's Eye beads. It is valued at about $50.
Two lucky winners will get a silk ribbon skull and bling bookmark that was made by the author. These are valued at about $16 each.
There will be 2 copies of the mp3 "Looking Eyes, Holding Hearts" by the Ethnographers, a local North Carolina band. The song will be featured in the audiobook that is scheduled to be released in late November.
Also, 10 copies of the ebook are being given away. So, there are load of prizes that you could win. Just enter with the rafflecopter below.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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