The key isn't hard to find. It's tucked inside a jewelry box and inside the trunk. Holding the key in my trembling hand, I eagerly unlock the book. I realize it's not just a diary. It's also a grimoire.

Opening the diary, I sit down on the Louis Vuitton trunk and flip through the parchment pages carefully reading my mother's unusual script. After a half an hour, I learn that  she used her psychic skills to survive in life, but I deduce she rarely used them to heal.

She preferred to think of The Sight as a powerful sixth sense. One most of the population possesses, but prefer not to acknowledge that they have. This way she didn't feel so strange and out of touch with reality. I'm struck by a diary entry, when she was my age, sixteen. Her search to understand herself reminds me of my own current struggle.

I must have been given this gift for a reason.
I wish I could understand what it is.

The despair I sense in her entry saddens my heart. The dates show me the entries continue until she was thirty nine. I do some quick calculations in my head. That was five years after she stopped seeing Harlan. Something about the timeframe seems important, but I can't exactly pinpoint why. A hopeful thought starts forming in my head. What if Harlan wasn't my true father? Who could it have been? I push this thought aside and focus back on my mother's words. Understanding her mindset makes me suddenly feel closer to her. It's as if her essence is in the attic with me. I keep reading and discover more about her early life.

In her early twenties, she preferred to live quietly. She kept a low profile and abandoned paranormal experiences for the rational world of logic. She wrote how difficult it was for her to juggle everything; make life work for her, earn her degree, and find time to date boys.  I laugh briefly at her description of college life, but frown as I continue reading about one person in particular. Her college roommate, Danielle. The woman dabbled in witchcraft.  My mother's entries grow darker, and then later, confused as Danielle's influence and power over her increased in her life.

Fascinated, I finish reading the last entries in my bedroom. Around three am., I throw the book down on my bed in anger and disgust. Walking to the window, I throw open my pale curtains. Moonlight washes into the room and illuminates the floor at my feet. I watch thick pearly clouds billow around the moon. The last entry keeps replaying in my mind.

I feel at home here in the college. I hope nothing intrudes on my new sanctuary.  I've always felt as if I was from some alien dimension. I'm so HSP to the point of constant emotional pain. Danielle gave me something to drink last night. She said it was a sedative, but I think it was poison. I can't shut off The Sight.

Too much pain. I'm experiencing everything 24/7! What humans feel and why, what they're capable of before they even know it themselves. I'm the filament that channels all their energy. Their angst, their dread, their varying levels of personal Dante hells, all spinning my trip out of control. I feel like I'm running on a medieval gauntlet, ahead of a runaway train.

I can't go on living this way. I'll be run out of this college on a rail if the faculty finds out I can tell every hidden, dark and dirty secret they keep deep in the crevices of their minds.

I worry my lower lip. It was obvious to me my mother had been born with the uncanny ability to know when she was about to be screwed over. Why hadn't she seen Danielle's betrayal coming?

Thank you for reading!👻