Sam's Story
This is the story of the Sam Huchinson, the back story of a character from Demongate High.

Chapter 1
The long reach of history never fails to envelop the prepared and the ignorant alike.

Posted: 8/17/11
"Sam, hey Sam!"
I heard my name being called from outside the fenced in area as I threw the rope towards the post in the middle, distracting me. Looking over toward the source of the yelling, I saw my father was calling me and waving something in the air. He smiled and hopped the fence, coming towards me.
"Hey, nicely done, Sam!"
I looked back at the post and was surprised to find the rope neatly around it, the knot snug and tight. I brought Spitfire, the bay roan mare I was riding to a halt several paces from the post as my father loosened the knot and threw the loop back to me.
"See, nothing to it. I knew you'd get the hang of it."
"I'm not even sure how it happened, I looked away right as I threw."
"There you are then! You've just been thinking about it too much, what did I tell you? Feel it out, don't I always say?"
"I guess you were right." I said grudgingly.
"How long have you been out here practicing that, anyway?"
"I don't know. Why?"
My father shook his head. "I just wish I knew where you got your energy from, son. Nothing seems to slow you down."
I just grimaced, thinking about all the times "static" had busted my stuff, and again wished I didn't have quite so much energy as I did.
"Anyway, this came for you," he said, handing me a small packet, or rather a large padded envelope. I looked, and the label did show my name:

Sam Huchinson
201 Fuentes Ln
Bangs, TX 76823

"No return address, that's weird. And it feels like something hard inside too, not just papers. What the heck could it be?" I asked him.
"Why not put old Spitfire away and come up to the house and open it?" he suggested. "Your sister's been buzzing about it, that's why I came to get you. It's almost lunch time anyway. She thinks you're in trouble and has been prancing around saying "Sam's in trouble, Sam's in trouble" which confidentially between you and me is getting on my nerves."
"Yeah, she has that effect on people." I said with a grin. Don't get me wrong, I loved my sister Laura, who had just turned 11 last month, but she was still my "little sister" and took her duties of annoying me very seriously. At least that's how it seemed from my perspective. I was only 3 years older then her, and about to start high school, which I was not exactly looking forward to.
I slid off Spitfire and grabbed his bridle, leading him toward the building where he was stabled with the other horses on my dad's ranch. I handed the envelope back and told him I would be up in a minute. He nodded and said, "Be sure you wash up now, your mom will get after us both something fierce if you don't."
"I will." I said, heading towards the barn. I put Spitfire back into her pen and removed the tack, saddle and bridle, then gave her a quick rub down and a sugar cube.
"Thanks Spitfire." I said, "We did pretty good today, huh?" Spitfire just looked at me like I could do with some more practice, but then it was hard to tell, with a horse.
I headed inside, making sure to wash up before coming to the table and sitting down. Laura was already there, rocking back and forth in her seat and giggling. "What did you do this time?"
"Nothing!" I said indignantly. "Maybe it came to me by accident, I don't know."
"It is passing strange." said my mother, setting a sandwich down in front of me. "It almost feels like a button in there. Wonder what it could be?"
"Let's find out!" said my father, joining us and toweling off his hands. He took the envelope from under his arm and passed me his knife. I unfolded it and slid the knife under the flap of the envelope, slicing it open. I handed the knife back to my father and shocked us both, causing him to jerk away. "Sorry." I mumbled. My weird "static" was worse when I was excited or nervous, and I was a little of both right now, so it was no surprise I was shocking people at the moment.
"Electric Boy strikes again!" said my sister, biting into her sandwich.
"Shut up!"
"Now be nice." said my mother. "And Laura, no name calling."
I tipped the envelope over and a red button fell out, a very strange red button. I picked it up and looked at it, as the rest of my family craned their necks to see the design. I showed it to them, and it was the weirdest thing, a black sword across the bottom with a kind of angry ghost looking thing rising up out of it.
"Now what in the sam hill?" my father said, taking it. "You join some kinda cult, boy?"
"No way!" I said, alarmed.
"Now dear," said my mother, "let's not jump to any conclusions. Anyway, would a cult send a button through the mail? Is there anything else in there?"
"Yes," I answered. "There's a letter and some stapled together pages. Let's see..."
I slid them out and scanned the letter that was on top. In the upper left corner was a blue logo which read "Demongate High School" across the top and "Cum humanitatis vis, protegete malite" across the bottom. There were various symbols inside a shield: an eye, a wing, a flame and a weird letter, and behind the shield was a star. To the right of the shield was a moon and I guess the ball on the left side was the sun. I glanced at it and started to read. My mouth fell open as I did so, and my mother and father crowded around me and a stunned silence fell over us as we took in the words on the page.
I came to the end and it was signed Lucien DeLefeu, Principle and Dean of Admissions, Demongate High. My father was the first to speak, I was reading the letter a second time, unbelieving what I was reading.
"It's gotta be some kind of a joke. You know anything about this?" he asked me.
I could just shake my head. I reread the line "Given your unique situation, a representative of the school will arrive shortly to further explain things to you and test you to make sure what our seers have found in you is accurate. Expect him ten minutes after you read this letter." I glanced at the clock, that would make it just a few minutes past twelve. I began to shake a little.
"Now honey, look at him, he's scared to death." said my mother, gently putting a hand on my shoulder. "Now don't you worry about a thing Sam, I'm sure we can all get to the bottom of this."
"What is it?" asked Laura, concerned. "What's got ya'll so riled?"
"It says here he's some kinda wizard or something. A 'spirit hunter' whatever that is."
"What? Like Harry Potter? You mean that's for real?!"
"Of course not, this must all be some kind of joke." Said my mom, though she didn't sound too convinced.
My father took the rest of the papers and started to look through them. "Pretty elaborate for just a joke. Look at this, maps of the campus, class schedule, rules and regulations, it's all here."
I shook my head, trying to clear it, and set the letter down so I could take a look at what my father was talking about. He was right, there was my class schedule, Paranormal Studies, Ability Focused Studies, Earth Science, Health, Language Arts, Math, Spirit Manipulation and World History. Also a list of clubs, what room I was in, the whole nine yards. We were all so engrossed in looking it over we all physically jumped when the doorbell rang. We all glanced at the clock and then back at each other, eyes wide. I guess we had all looked before, and it was now exactly ten minutes since I had pulled out the letter and started to read. I swallowed hard. "I, uh, guess we should get the door?"
My father straightened up. "Let's see if we can get some answers now!" and strode off towards the door. "Stay here." He said roughly as I went to get up.
I heard the door thrown open and a "Who are you?" from my Dad. My mother rushed off that way and said, "Now dear, let's not be hasty. Please come in."
"Hasty?" he almost yelled. "What the hell is all this about?"
"I know it comes as a bit of a shock to you, that's why I'm here," said a male voice I had never heard before. "Usually these sorts of things run in families so the letter is not unexpected. In your case, however, well, I would need to start at the beginning."
"Of course, of course," said my mother. "We were just sitting down to eat lunch, would you like to join us?"
"That would be most kind of you," said the voice. "Though I did not mean to impose, but ten minutes is ten minutes, after all."
"Now wait a minute-" my father started.
"We can't be rude to our guest now can we?"
"IÉ that is... oh all right." my father stomped back into the room. "Sam, set another place for our 'guest'."
I got up as a man in his late thirties came into the room, followed by my mother, who started making another sandwich and glancing at him out of the corner of her eyes. The man had dark hair and a goatee, and was a little shorter then my father, and was looking around with interest.
"Ah, and you must be Sam." said the man, extending a hand. "I'm Gabriel Nesbitt, a teacher at Demongate High, nice to meet you!" I couldn't place his accent, but I could tell he wasn't from around here.
He seemed rather nice and was smiling, so I shook his hand after setting down the plate I had gotten out. "You must be ready to jump out of your skin about now, yes?" He laughed. "Not to worry, I've seen it before, it isn't fatal."
"Maybe you can start by telling us what this is all about?" said my father.
"Gladly," said Gabriel. "Oh, thank you very much." He took his place as my mother set a sandwich down on his plate. He grabbed it and took a big bite.
"Delicious," he said after a moment, "You can't beat southern hospitality, I tell you that."
My father just shrugged and sat down himself, and my mother took her place next to him.
"Now, where to begin," said Gabriel, taking another bite of sandwich. "Ah, of course, the powers. If I don't demonstrate you'll never believe me, now will you? Let me see, yes, may I have a glass of water?"
"Oh, of course, I'm sorry." Said my mother, getting up to fill a glass for him.
"Not at all. It's just easiest to demonstrate with," he said, waving a hand. My mother set the glass down in front of him and he slid it into the center of the table. "Now, if you'll please watch closely?"
He touched the side of the glass, and we watched in amazement as the water inside turned to ice in about four seconds.
"I did it slowly so the glass wouldn't break," he said, leaning back and taking another bite. "Go ahead, pick it up."
My father slowly moved his hand towards it, jerking it back when he touched it. "It's ice all right," he said, picking it up. "How in the world did you do that? It's got to be some kind of trick."
"No trick" replied Gabriel. "Just making the water molecules in the glass move slower, lowing their temperature and freezing them. I'm what's called an ESPer, so making things move is one of my specialties. But I can also do this." He touched the plate he was using with a finger and closed his eyes. "Let's see, last night you had chicken, and the night before that you had hamburgers, and the night before that you had pasta."
My father dropped the glass to the table and jumped up out of his seat. "What, do you have the house bugged or something? Get out this instant!"
"Sit down and listen calmly," said Gabriel quietly, and to my surprise, my father did. "My apologies, I don't like to do that."
"Do what?" my mother asked, looking between Gabriel and her husband.
"We call it compulsion. Making another believe or do something they normally wouldn't. Don't worry, it only lasts a few minutes. The point is, powers are real and we believe three people around this table have them. Four, if you include myself."
"This is crazy," my father said. "Just crazy."
"I know it can seem that way," said Gabriel, "so now that we've gotten that out of the way, I can start at the beginning for you."
He held out his hand, and as we watched, stunned, the glass slid across the table towards him and up into his palm, where he closed his hand around it. The ice started to turn back into water and he took a sip when it had changed enough.
"That hit the spot. Now, let me start by telling you a little family history you might not know. The truth of the matter is," he said, turning to my father, "That your great, great, great, great grandmother had a child with a man named Cain. And yes, if you read your bible you will be familiar with the man for that is the very Cain I speak of."
I didn't think, after the events of the day up to that point, that my parents could look any more shocked, but apparently, I was wrong, because they did. "Stay with me now, that is the very least of things I have to tell you today. This man Cain, this immortal, original creation of The Allfather, still walks the earth and occasionally takes a 'consort' to put it one way, and a child is the result. That would be your great, great, great grandfather, Mr Huchinson. Of course your great, great, great, great grandfather thought the child was his and raised him as such and loved him as his only son. Because as it turns out he was unable to conceive children so that was the only child the couple ever had. Oh, and before you think it was improper, Cain has many powers, so it's possible she thought she was with her husband that night, while he was out or some such. That we don't know. Nor do we know why exactly Cain sometimes finds someone to have a child with, but he can probably see the future so perhaps he knows it's necessary. Maybe, being immortal, he just gets lonely. What we do know is that these children of Cain and mortal man are more like Cain himself then Man, that is, closer to the ideal human The Allfather originally created then the creation he settled upon after the flood. By that I mean Cain, and those created by The Allfather at that time have the ability to use any and all powers now granted to a handful of souls upon the earth. As I said, I am an ESPer. There are also Holy Chosen, Summoners, Seers, Alchemists, and many more that make up the student body at Demongate High. Cain is all of these things. Thus, so are his children, but to a more limited extent. Which finally brings us to you, Sam. As your great, great, great, great, great grandfather was a child of Cain, he could learn to do many things from many different kinds of power. However, our Seers, the ones that can perceive things on a far more subtle level then even myself, typically only look for specific types of power and so his children, and their children and their children were overlooked and didn't learn to tap into those abilities. Everyone still with me so far?"
My mother and father nodded, numb.
"Good. Now you'll all agree there's something special about Sam, isn't that right?"
"If you'd call blowing circuits and wrecking things special, sure."
Gabriel chucked. "Yes, it can't have escaped any of your notice that Sam seems to have a lot more energy then most people. He has so much, in fact, it sometimes escapes his control and manifests itself as electricity. I've spoken to many similar people who accidentally set things on fire, or freeze them, all kinds of things can happen with the uncontrolled release of spirit energy. That and your latent power are what drew our Seers' attention, which caused us to research where this power had come from, which is when we learned about your past, and caused us to send you that letter," he gestured to the now forgotten envelope, which had gotten knocked to the floor at some point. "Now we don't know why some people are born with extra energy, and even more rare the ability to increase that energy through concentration, which we also believe you will be able to learn to do, Sam. But the fact is you were born that way and now we have to deal with it. Because it'll only cause you problems if you don't soon learn to control it."
"And there you have it," he finished, taking the last bite of his sandwich. "Sam needs to attend Demongate High, at the very least to learn to control his spirit energy and stop zapping people and destroying electronics. Not to worry, we're a fully accredited university and his education will be complete enough to enter the workforce, or collage or work for the foundation or whatever he choses to do in the future. And it's already paid for, so how can you go wrong?"
There was a moment of silence.
"Ahem. Well, I can see I've given you a lot to think about-"
"You said three people here. Oh my God, Laura is the same way, isn't she?" said my father.
"Picked up on that, eh? Yes, Mr. Huchinson, your daughter and yourself are both decedents of Cain. Now that we know of course, Laura will be invited to attend school if you so wish it and realize her full potential when she turns 14 like Sam here. As for yourself, you're a little old to attend high school I'm afraid, but as long as you uphold the rules of the foundation, I'm sure Sam can teach you a thing or two during the summers, if you want."
"I could do things like you did?"
"Some of them, yes. While decedents of Cain can learn to do many things, their power is such that they will never be able to attain the kind of skill we people with only a single power type can attain. For instance, telekinesis. That's what we call the skill I used to make the glass float over to me," he said to Laura. "Being an ESPer, I could use it to flip a car over on someone or fly through the air. The most a Cain decedent could hope for, without a lot of strenuous effort becoming an ESPer themselves that is, is to lift a couple of pounds."
"Still, that's amazing!"
Gabriel laughed out loud. "Yes, I agree with you there. So, the compulsion should have worn off by now, still want me to get out?"
"I don't- it just seems so fantastic!"
"The world is a much more fantastic place then anyone realizes, even those of us with powers. So you'll let Sam attend Demongate?"
"If it can help him stop electrocuting everything when he's excited, sure, I mean, as long as he wants to go. It is a long ways away," my father answered, looking at me.
"I think I do. Meeting people like me would be awesome."
"I guess we have our answer. Do you have any questions for me? Keep in mind a lot of information about the school and things is in the packet, so I'm happy to come back after you've had a chance to read it over."
"What's a spirit hunter?" said Laura, holding up the button. "And am I one too?"
"An excellent question," replied Gabriel, looking over at her. "You're pretty smart, young lady. To answer that question, a Spirit Hunter is a person that can make their soul leave their body temporarily and assume a solid form. There's actually a lot of politics surrounding them, as they have their own "educational system" but we've started inviting them to our school first because they're so powerful. Here, stand up."
I pushed my chair back and stood up, and Gabriel came over to me, looking me over. He closed his eyes and put a hand on my shoulder, concentrating for a moment.
"It's as we thought," he finally said, opening his eyes. "The potential is there, but still out of reach. Tell me, have you ever had a dream about leaving your body? Maybe finding yourself in strange clothes, with a sword or similar weapon?"
I backed a step away, "Yes, like two weeks ago I had a dream exactly like that! How did you-"
"Good," he said, smiling. "That's normal for people that have the potential you do. That was your spirit form, which you'll learn to access consciously at school. In that form you'll be invisible to normal people, and your Spirit Weapon, a weapon relating to your heritage, will allow you to combat demons and other evils that walk the earth. That's our main task, by the way," he said, turning to my parents. "To protect the world from demonic invasion and from those that wish to bring about the end of the world. Which happened, incidentally, not long ago. It was stopped by some students just like yourself, though only a few facility members know the full details. Now to answer your question little lady, we're not sure, as it's a little too early to tell with you. For some reason, Sam here is a little closer to being a Spirit Hunter then any other power type he could learn to be, so that's where we'll focus his training initially. If he wants to take up other power types we can show him what to do and over time he can learn them too. But just one power type can take years of dedicated study to master, so it's important to focus your efforts where they'll be most beneficial. When you're a bit older, we'll see if you are closer to being a certain power type and make sure that potential is realized. Now if you're not close to any one power, you can learn something about each and then choose where to focus your studies on based on your interests. Does that sound okay to you?"
Laura nodded excitedly. "Can I start learning about them now?"
Gabriel laughed again, he seemed to be a really nice guy, and I wasn't scared anymore, quite the opposite. He rubbed his beard thoughtfully.
"Well...." he said, slowly, "If you're that interested, I suppose there is a book..."
"I am, I really am!"
"Okay, just a second."
He closed his eyes and seemed to be concentrating, when there was a loud BANG from outside the door, then another one, and he said, "It's here."
We all looked a little confused as he went over to the door and opened it. Sitting on the step outside was a book that hadn't been there before. He stooped and picked it up, then handed it to me.
"Here you go. This is everything you'll both need to know about the history of the school, and soul power, and ways of harnessing it, and everything. It should keep you out of trouble for a while."
"Oh thank you!" said Laura excitedly, clapping her hands together.
"This is going to take some getting used to," said my mother. "I really live in a family of wizards."
Gabriel looked stern at that and said, "With respect, no. Magic is forbidden in the halls of Demongate High for the very reason it flows directly from demons, and anyone foolish enough to sell their souls to demons for power in this world is not tolerated by the Foundation. You'll read about it here," he said, tapping the book.
"Oh, I'm sorry."
Gabriel's face softened. "No, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been harsh in my reaction, you didn't know. It's just we take a pretty dim view of magic and just knowing what magic users have in store for them when they die turns my stomach. It's a touchy subject, that's all."
"I'll be interested to read about it."
"Naturally I must swear you all to secrecy about this, and you must promise never to show this book to anyone, and it must be returned to the school when Sam starts classes in the fall."
"Of course," said my father, as we all nodded.
Gabriel pulled out a business card and handed it to him. "Here's my card. Once you've had a chance to look over the book, I'd be happy to return and answer any questions you might have. I know the whole idea will take a while to sink in, but take it slow and in a couple of weeks you'll be on your way to your new school."
I nodded.
"So, if there's nothing else immediately-"
"Can you teach us something?" said Laura.
"My, my," said Gabriel, getting down on one knee in front of her, "you are a firebrand, aren't you, little miss?" He looked thoughtful. "I'm not supposed to, strictly speaking, you understand. If it was Glenn or Hanna, they would certainly say no. Martha would probably say yes though. Humm, I suppose one little trick wouldn't hurt. Let's see now- if it's okay with your parents, anyway."
"They'll be learning stuff at this school soon enough anyway, I guess," said my mother. "As long as it isn't too dangerous."
"No, no, one of the first things we ESPers learn is how to perceive things without using our eyes, so I'll give you a little lesson in that. You can probably pick up the basics today, it's not hard. It's a little like learning to not ignore what your other senses tell you, come on, let's sit down again and I can be a little more clear."
Two hours later there was another BANG as Gabriel disappeared in a rush of wind from within the house and my sister and I ran to the living room to start reading the book he had left for us. I was pretty sure I had felt what he was talking about, he blindfolded me and put the book, a DVD and a pair of scissors on the table and told me to tell him which order they were in. I was able to do it almost every time, while Larua did it twice correctly which made her really happy. I noticed my father looking around and closing his eyes too, he was listening, after all. I opened the first page and excitedly began to read, all thoughts of my not looking forward to High School banished. I couldn't wait to attend Demongate High!