Weston Kincade's A Life of Death - Sensational YA - Adult Paranormal Novel!

“Every man has a turning point in their life. I would have to say that mine is by far the most interesting story I’ve heard. I don’t know what set the events in motion. It defies all logic, but to this day I attribute it to sixteen days and a research project a lot like yours.”
Jamie let out an exasperated sigh at the reference to school, a sore subject they often argued about.
Alex chuckled with familiarity. “When I was your age, I looked at life a lot like you do. I was a high achiever until I reached high school. But, there was one fateful day that changed my life forever.”
“The day Grandpa died?”
Alex nodded. “I was never the same after that. It started before I even made it to Madessa High School. Life at home fell apart after your grandfather passed. Your grandmother sold the house and moved us into a small trailer park. We stayed there, in Tranquil Heights. She found what work she could, but things were never the same. Before a year had passed, she remarried. For the following three years, I walked to school, passing through town like a stranger. Before your grandfather died, I did everything by the book. I got good grades, did what Dad asked, and things turned bad. With your grandfather gone, I became different, isolated. That went on for years.
By the time I realized something was changing, I had started my last year in high school. “School had become a chore. Each day was the same; hours were spent in classes where I did as little work as possible, and I barely managed to pass. I had a pathetic excuse for a substitute father and didn’t look forward to going home, if you could even call it home. So, I always tried to make that walk from school last forever. It was never long enough. “Each day I stopped by my father’s grave at the old cemetery. At the foot of his grave stood an ancient pine. I often sat under its drooping branches and stared at his gray, unadorned tombstone. Other headstones mentioned time served in the military, like my father’s. At the time, I didn’t understand how something like that deserved to be remembered. It had been his decision, but I hated how much of his time it had stolen from me.”

A Life of Death

By Weston Kinkaid

When his son has a paper to complete for school, Alex tells a strange, mystical tale that captures his attention...just as he now has done for many readers... You'll want to be one of them if you enjoy the paranormal, the spooky, and the unique. Yes, at least for me, I'd not heard of the concept for A Life of Death. It is about a young boy who has begun to "see" the deaths of those from whom he's touched a possession. Why just the death? Read it... 

Alex's father had died and his mother soon remarried...into an abusive environment. Alex was confused, hurt and still grieving, so he wasn't willing to do much to put effort into the family either. He had gained two sisters, both of whom he ignored, at least at the beginning. Still they wanted to walk to school with him, although later he would speed up and leave them... It was while he was walking when the first time happened...

What am I saying?

 I tried to look around, but movement was out of my control. The jumbled words became clear. However, it wasn’t my voice. It was feminine and too proper. There was something else in the tone, too… fear. The same emotion filtered into my thoughts and through my body.

 “Please, Theodore, I didn’t do anything.” Suddenly, I was thrust backward, away from the large house. I slammed into something cold and hard… the iron fence. Pain pierced my thoughts like a lightning bolt. Hands tightened around my throat. My eyes settled on a man less than a foot away. He pulled me back toward him. Something about his chiseled jaw and cheeks looked familiar. Large, rough fingers tightened around my neck, and the middle-aged man slammed me against the gate. Again, pain lanced through my mind.

“The hell you didn’t,” he rasped at arm’s length. His anger engulfed his eyes, lighting them with a fire that could illuminate the night sky. It was an anger I had come to know well over the last three years with the drunk. “I saw you at the Independence party. You were pandering to any man that set eyes on you. You even blew kisses at the Quigley boy, off the veranda.” 

An old family home appeared
with a cast-iron fence. Rounded
 steeples perched atop each post.
 The enclosure guarded the
 majestic house, which had always
 belonged to the Brogand family. 
They were well respected in town,
 and their ancestors were some
 of the original settlers of 
this part of Virginia. 
~~~

“No, I was not,” I whispered, too prim and proper, but my voice quaked with fear. His words brought memories of the night to mind, a party of elite celebrating a country’s newly acquired independence. The styles were archaic, but vivid. It was as though I’d been there that very night. Mr. Quigley was a young man in his early twenties, and he was quite taken with me—no, her. It was difficult to distinguish between the two of us, like when you take some other form in a dream. You almost lose yourself and live within the vision. That has to be what this is––a dream. The memories stitched their way through my thoughts, overwhelming my conclusion and giving her lie away. She’d done everything Theodore claimed––flirted, stolen kisses, and more. “Please don’t do this,” she beseeched him. 

The objection infuriated the man further. His black coat strained against his muscle-bound form, and his arm quivered, tense and strong. I tried to fight back, clutching at his forearm, but it didn’t faze the brute. He was solid as a rock. His rage took hold, and he threw me into the gate, over, and over. My skull rattled at each impact with the unyielding metal 

spires, shattering my thoughts until the world collapsed into the blackest of nights.   * * *  

I stumbled away from the iron-wrought gate. The Brogand manor stood like a silent witness under the sun’s morning rays. The light flew through sparse clouds to illuminate the large home, but something dark lurked in its shadowed corners. The trees still held their multi-colored leaves, each of them preparing to leave on the winds of change. Homeless Bob hadn’t even caught up to me, yet. What the heck was that… a dream? If it was, it was a doozey. I wavered between school and returning to the trailer park. After a few indecisive moments, I picked the least dreadful of the two and proceeded to school. The rest of the way, I stared at the sidewalk, contemplating the vision as I meandered down odd streets that barely registered in my conscious thoughts. Was it a dream, or am I going insane?

~~~

Alex had been walking through a residential area, happened to touch a gate and had seen a young girl being murdered...or, really, for awhile, he had been that girl and she had spoke through him! By the time he had dragged away from the fence and mindlessly walked on to school, he was late, of course and went right into his Coach who was telling him to run laps...

Soon Jessie, a friend, asked about how he was, but it was only when he met Paige, with whom he could talk about his home life, that he shared a little...

A moment later, the only other person I found worth listening to caught up and matched my stride. “Hey, Paige,” I mumbled.

 “Hey, Alex, how are you?” Her gray gym shirt attempted to make her into a drab clone of the rest of us. But if the school had enacted a uniform dress code, it wouldn’t detract from her beauty. Brown curls bounced over her shoulders like ocean waves. She smiled as she fell in step. For brief moments, she turned her honey-brown eyes on me. They were like amber pools, deep enough to drown in.

“Not bad,” I lied. I wanted to tell her about the dream. I was sure she’d see through my fib, like Jessie had. But I still didn’t feel comfortable telling anyone. What if something was wrong with me? 

“Is the drunk still being a Neanderthal?” she asked in a subdued whisper. She liked the characterization. Having only seen him once, the reference was motivated by my stories of his brute behavior and the aftereffects of his tirades that I couldn’t always hide. Paige was the one person I could talk to about my home life. She hadn’t gone through anything like I had, but her caring soul was visible with just a look. 

“Yeah, pretty much. I just ignore him as best I can. One more year and I’m gone.” Paige sent me a pitying look. “How’s your morning?” I asked, trying to steer clear of me as the topic of discussion. I could tell she was concerned, but she humored me. 

“Fine. You missed Trig this morning. Mrs. Easely gave us a quiz.” I shrugged it off. “You think you did well?” “Yeah,” she answered. “What about you. What’ll you do?”

 “Eh… she’ll have me do a make-up, like usual.” 

~~~

Fear took hold, and a
 feminine voice tumbled across
 my lips, pulling my thoughts
 back to the overflowing
 bathroom.
 “No, I tried… I did…
I’m sorry.”
The child gave no sign
 of hearing.
~~~

And when, later, she suggested they work together on an English paper, he was thrilled because he'd wanted to spend more time with her... But then, that's when it happened again... Alex had gone to her home to work on the project and had gone to the bathroom... He bent over to admire and touch the claw-toed tub and immediately knew...

When he returned, he looked pale and Paige noticed so he mentioned the tub and maybe having stomach troubles. But then Paige shared the back story with him and how she hated the tub...

A visible shudder ran through Paige. “It haunts me every night.”

 “What do you mean?” Her answer made me less certain about the truth of the dreams. 

“Aunt Sarah hit her head and drowned in that tub. Why my parents kept it, I don’t know. They said it belonged to my great grandmother and they couldn’t bear to part with it… but each time I step out of it, I still feel dirty.”

 I nodded, knowing the feeling.

 “What caused it?”

 “The police said she probably slipped on the tiles, but I always wondered if it might have been something else.”

                                                                            ~~~

Alex thought more and more about what was happening and realized that what he was seeing was apparently true accounts of the deaths of different people!

So while he and Paige began to work on the paper which would cover the Civil War, a different type of investigation began--who had murdered the people he was seeing die?!! And when they visited the battlefield, he blacked out, having been involved as men died all around him. It was only when a small group told him, "it's not your time." that he realized he was alive...

By now Paige was used to things and sharing in the investigation...as well as working to complete their paper!

Secrets from the past are never easily discovered...and uncovered...but when somebody was right there at the scene, it helps quite a bit! But when terrible things happened at home, that was first priority...and made a connection with the police that moved things much more quickly. Readers get the chance to participate in searching and putting the researched clues together. Although the ending was hard to accept, it fit well into the story and was not unexpected...

Kinkaid's written a fascinating tale that will both share psychic scenes of murders in progress as well as the personal life of a teen within a terrible home life, as he struggles with the death of his father and a completely new family, including an alcoholic, abusive father, while discovering a gift that's he's received that's scaring him more than even his stepfather! The story flows easily and quickly becomes a page-turner as readers are thrown into horrible murder scenes at any time--i.e., when Alex touches something connected to death...

I'm looking forward to the next book in what appears to be a promising long-running series that can't help but have a very successful run. I recommend you get in right at the beginning with A Life of Death!


GABixlerReviews

Official Author Bio:

Weston Kincade is the author and editor of the science-fiction/dark fantasy series Altered Realities, the paranormal coming-of-age mystery A Life of Death, and co-author and editor of Strange Circumstances, a short story anthology about twists of fate. Some of Mr. Kincade's short stories, including "Prison Torment" and "House Al-Amin," have been featured in separate short story anthologies by Thadd Presley Presents. Weston is currently working on the sequels in his series and a few new books. To find out more about Mr. Kincade and his work, visit http://www.kincadefiction.blogspot.com.

Tagline
I'm an editor, author, and writing instructor and can't keep my thoughts to myself. I hope people enjoy them, but at least now they aren't banging around in my head.
Introduction
Editor at http://www.wakeediting.com, author, and writing instructor. I hope to help people through my experiences and writing. I enjoy books, movies, and much more.
Bragging rights
I have a great wife, have written multiple books, wonderfully supportive friends and family, and even a few wonderful fans.

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