"Dancing with the deads" - Prologue

Leslie showed up at Pen State 512 on a fateful, rainy day. She had fiery hair that burned like her smile. Her black eyes shone through the blur of the rain, and her white nightgown stuck to her pale skin. She opened her mouth with full lips, and the first thing I thought was how beautiful her voice was. Then I realized that she was asking if I knew that a dead person was by my side. Of course, I knew. Everyone in the greenhouse on Pen State Street 512 knew. Because everyone had one foot firmly planted in the supernatural. And Leslie had it, too. That's precisely why I invited her to come in. And once she set foot inside, not only in the house but in my life, she could never leave.

Of course, I later discovered that saying Leslie had "one foot" in the supernatural world was the biggest mistake of the century. She didn't have a foot; she was up to her head in the business. Everything around her screamed mystery as if she were a living Stephen King book. And I was a voracious reader of the guy.

I like to think I read Leslie down to the acknowledgments and the measly footnotes. But it was a lie, of course; I never even got past the synopsis. Because it was written in an ancient and unknown language, with no dictionary. And I could not attempt a free translation. It was like those books that made the first chapters available on the website; I read it, and I was extremely curious, needing more, but I didn't have the money to buy the book - and I couldn't even find it for illegal download on the internet. The only difference between Leslie and these books was that I eventually outgrew and forgot the books, but I could never forget Leslie.

I fell in love with her because I tend to fall in love with dead people. My first crush was my cousin Sarah when we were six years old - well, at least I was six, and she was supposed to be fifteen, but she never reached that age because she died of cancer before. My first true love was Anne, the colonial-era girl I was talking to when Leslie showed up.

I eventually stopped loving Anne and started loving Leslie throughout the craziest summer I spent with her. Leslie wasn't dead when I met her, nor during the months we spent together - quite the contrary, she exuded vitality with her warm skin and soft lips. But I had this morbid tendency, and that was precisely why I wasn't surprised when, on that fateful Wednesday, her body was found in a river.

Synopsis: Even though he is the only boy among the seven women who live in the house at 512 Pen State Street, Jess has an average life - or as average as a boy from a family of clairvoyants can have. Like everyone in the Duncan family, he has learned to view disturbances in his sixth sense as something ordinary and insignificant, as he plans to go to college and leave the quiet town of Gray Valley behind, where nothing ever happens. Or that's what he thought until Leslie showed up...

Leslie is on the run. Of the dead people she started seeing all of a sudden, of the strange things she felt, of her disturbing past, of herself. All she knows is that she has to get away as quickly as possible, even if this means walking for miles at a stretch. Until she is drawn to Gray Valley, a small town that should have been just another one along the way, and meets not just one boy but an entire family of people who say they are just like her - who see, feel, and hear things that no one else can.

But tragic events begin to occur upon her arrival. Stores are robbed, property destroyed, and people are attacked and even killed in what the sheriff believes to be a gang carrying out satanic rituals. Angry, the citizens of Gray Valley blame the strange Duncan family and their new guest, who manages to be even more disturbing.

Jess is convinced of her family's and Leslie's innocence, even though the girl appears to be something much bigger and scarier than a mere clairvoyant.

But is it just a coincidence that the attacks started on the same night as Leslie's arrival?

"Dancing with the Deads" is a book I started writing as a teen, and, unfortunally, was never published.