The Ghost of Oak by Fallon Sousa

Prologue
     
     
     
    The old woman clutched the gold
locket that she wore around her neck. It was in the shape of a
heart, and had an eagle emblem on it, which was her family's crest.
It had been passed down from generation to generation to generation
for nearly three hundred years, and had been given to her by her
dear mother when she was a small child, and she had not taken it
off ever since. Rumor had it that her great-great-grandmother, the
first person to own it (a "crotchety old witch," as the
neighborhood children had called her) had put a hex on it, cursing
those who didn't have a right to touch it to their doom. That would
never happen.
              Ellen McDonald had already made it clear in her
will that she was to be buried with it. In addition to the curse,
the locket held supernatural powers. If a member of the McDonald
family clutched it for one solid minute, in their mind they would
see flashes of the next life-altering event that would take place
that day, and if the mind went blank, it meant that there wasn't
one. This was not one of those days. Today Ellen predicted
something all right, and that something-was her death. So, that was
it. Today would be the day that old Ellen would finally kick the
bucket, and be out of everyone's way. She was a lonely old woman
with no family or friends, and when people would see her taking a
stroll, her shawl wrapped around her, they would snicker, shoot
glances at her, and call her names.
            She let go of the locket. Since her family was extremely
wealthy, thanks to her ancestors' little spells, the pure 24
karat-gold locket was worth millions of dollars. Ellen's dear
mother wished to sell it for extra money many times, but she simply
could not, due to the unbearable wrath of the curse. Even though
the family never took Carla's (Ellen's great-great grandmother's)
ways for granted nor did they ever show disrespect for her, they
all knew for sure that they never wanted the curse to be presented
upon any living creature, not even their worst
enemy.
            Sadly, magic was no more in today's world and without the
supreme power in which Carla, their long deceased ancestor had once
been gifted, the curse could never be lifted. So, the only way to
hold back the curse was to keep the locket out of the reach of
curious unknowing hands. So, since her children were long dead,
(the locket had predicted their deaths as well as those of her
husband, parents, siblings, friends, and numerous others). She had
decided on being buried with the
not-so-good-luck-charm.
          And with that, she began to feel a sharp pain in
her chest. She knew what was going to happen next. She knew that
her life was coming to a bitter end. She lay down upon her bed, as
her life flashed before her very eyes. She saw brief memories of
her infancy, her childhood, her youth, and her maidenhood, her
early marriage, her motherhood, memories as a widow, and finally
the most recent ones. Her head tilted off to the side of her
pillow, and her eyes fluttered shut. That was the moment that she
died. Her final hour-had passed. The last of the McDonald s was
gone. The family chain was broken, A legacy was unfulfilled, the
world's most powerful magic-was gone forever.
          But as Ellen's departed soul, standing above her
bed walked toward the light, one problem remained. If Ellen had no
one, who would come upon her corpse? Would her carcass decompose
long before anyone found it? It-she thought of herself as nothing
but an inanimate object, now that she was a soul. She would not
stay behind in the living world, just to ease her woes. In being a
member of a magical family, she knew all too well that becoming a
poltergeist would not solve anything. She walked into the light
that was calling her, and left her body behind.
           Her paper boy, Johnny Woods, cautiously
approached her house. But today after tossing the sacked newspaper
onto the old woman's lawn, he decided to sneak