NoQS Agent Round: OTHERSIDES: MG Paranormal Fantasy

Title: OTHERSIDES
Genre: MG Paranormal Fantasy
Word Count: 48,000

My Main Character's Most Fearsome Obstacle:

I see ghosts when other people can't. Which wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the fact that the ghosts I encounter became spirits because they were murdered. My parents put me in therapy when I was six, and I learned to stop telling others what I saw so they’d think I was normal. Now, I finally have the chance to be with others like me, others who see the things I see. Only, I’m not sure that’s any better. I don’t like seeing ghosts. So why would I want to spend an entire summer surrounded by them?


Query:

Twelve-year-old Sebastian—Seb—Silver has seen ghosts his entire life. But when he arrives at Camp Wanagi, he’s not sure he’s ready to spend an entire summer learning more about the restless dead.

Run by the Bureau of Otherside Occurrences, Camp Wanagi brings together kids from all over the world who possess paranormal abilities. Surrounded by people who can see the ghosts of dogs, tell when houses are haunted, hear the pleas of the broken-hearted dead, and even draw out the anger in spirits, Seb realizes that he’s finally found a place where he belongs. But Camp Wanagi is a training ground for future members of the Otherside. Agents of the Bureau devote their lives to tracking and freeing spirits, and Seb doesn’t know if that’s a future he really wants.

Between learning about the art of ghost tracking, studying the history of former Otherside Agents, and completing paranormal camp activities, Seb has to decide whether he’s prepared to spend his life seeking out the dead. And the sooner he figures it out, the better, because Seb only has until the end of the summer before he and his friends are faced with their final task—contacting a spirit and setting it free.

First 250:

Once, when he was very small, Seb believed that nothing came after death.

If he reached back to the edges of his memory, he could vaguely recall stormy nights where thunder bellowed, tree branches cracked against windowpanes, and a tiny version of himself believed that when things died, they were simply gone. Even back then, he understood the difference between living and dead. He simply understood it wrong.

Long ago, he thought the spirits he saw were living people. Now, as he leaned across the threshold of the old, crooked house, he knew better.

“Hello?” Seb peered inside the shadowed entranceway in a vain attempt to see anything of the gloomy room before him. He took a step forward, his foot pressing down onto a floorboard that groaned under his weight. “Anyone here?”

His voice dissolved into the dust that clung to the walls and danced through the musty air. Seb took the final step inside. His eyes strained against the dark, and his body shuddered with unease when the front door closed slowly behind him, as if it were on some kind of automatic switch. A noise like thudding footsteps from above disturbed the eerie quiet of the space, and he stilled, tilting his head up towards the low-hanging ceiling. He wondered if the sound came from the house, from another person on the second floor, or from something that used to be a person, something now eager for a target to haunt.