Off the Beaten Path: Eight Tales of the Paranormal Read Online Free

argue has spent the last several thousands of years living out the most painful deaths imaginable.
    “ Nature didn’t do its job correctly, and now you have to fix it. Isa, sweetie, you have to call a soul out of its living vessel.”
    What a pretty phrase for ‘murder.’
    Phyllis ’s words rushed out in a soothing stream, claiming that I was simply correcting an error of the world and it was less moral to allow the error to remain. Phyllis stroked my hair, telling me the particulars. A teenage boy, Mark, had come home that night, and something had popped in his head. He was dead before he hit the ground, but his soul didn’t depart his body the way it should have. Bodies don’t lose their pulse until they lose their soul, and so Mark still breathed.
    My job would be to find him and convince his soul to pass on, letting his body die. If I did not, his spirit would slowly die inside of him, and he’d be in anguish for decades. Even now, his spirit was dying without the peace of passing on, but this wasn’t a job I wanted.  I argued with her, trying not to cry. “I’ve done every job they’ve ever asked, but this isn’t leading someone to peace. If this guy is walking and talking, he’s alive, and I’ll be killing him. I can’t kill anything, I can’t even eat meat! How could they expect this of me?”
    “ You know I would never ask you to do this, but they say it has to be you. Isabelle, look.” Phyllis held out her arms to me. The moonlight threw into relief deep gouges that swirled in a pattern, from her shoulder to her wrist. My stomach rolled. This was the sacrifice she had made just in trying to protect me.  How much harm would come to her if I refused? I nodded and clenched my eyes tight.
    “ I’ll do it.” My eyes popped open. “Wait, what if I’m caught?”
    She shook her head and I guessed, “I can’t be, can I?”
    “ Only this boy, Mark, will be able to see you once you set out to do the task. Make it fast, sweetie. Our bosses aren’t patient.” Her words followed me as my spirit fled back to my sleeping body.
    When I opened my eyes in the morning, I couldn ’t move. I curled into a fetal position and claimed sickness. I guess I looked it, because Mom didn’t try to make me go to school. My brain was numb, but a sharp pain from my left leg eventually caught my attention. I slid off my pajama bottoms and saw that my hip and thigh looked just like Phyllis’s shoulder. The shallow slices swirled and grew every hour I didn’t go to Mark, creeping down towards my knee. I wrapped gauze around my leg and grabbed keys, limping to my car.
    The fifteen minute drive to Mark ’s town was torture.
    Every second, I was hoping as hard as I could that he was ju st a shadow of a living person – comatose, even – with his soul roaming like a balloon cut from its ribbon.
    I followed a gray, fraying yarn that my intuition told me would lead to Mark. Leaning against a tree, I watched as he read a book. He looked strong and healthy and so very alive. He was there because of a mistake, and I had to rewrite his miracle.
    My thoughts kept spinning in dizzying dark clouds, but there wasn ’t clarity at the heart of my storm. I couldn’t go to him at first. My feet would not move, and even feeling my thigh burn from the growing gouge could not make me walk towards Mark’s bench by the river.
    Finally though, I walked up to the bench and sat beside him. I swallowed and tried to smile, turning to Mark as he flipped the page. “Hey, what’s up?”
    His finger kept his page as the book snapped shut.  “Not much, you?”
    “ Nothing.” My foot bounced with nervous energy. “What are you reading?”
    He raised his eyebrows, smiling a little. “Why so interested?”
    “Um… g ood question. Because you’re cute?” I cringed and covered my blushing cheeks. I was flirting with him and I’m supposed to be killing him. He laughed and flipped the cover to me so I could read the title.  I smiled and