Soul Survivor

Caitlin just wanted to get out of the house and away from her father's lazy new wife and her useless half-sister and her string of horrible boyfriends. So when she found out that the pizza place needed a waitress nights and weekends, she figured she knew how to carry food, and she applied for the job--and got it. And she did so well and squirreled away so much tip money that before long she was able--with her Dad's co-signature--to buy an old VW bus that was in prime condition. The payments and insurance were a bit steep, but she was able to make them from her job at the pizza parlor. But she was still being treated like a live-in maid at home during the day, so that she was exhausted by the time she went to work. So when, the day after graduation from high school, she saw the Help Wanted sign in the window of the Drug Store on Main Street, took the sign out of the window and took it to the old pharmacist behind the high counter. "When do I start?" she said and he hired her on the spot. So she then had two sources of income, total security as far as her car payments and insurance were concerned, and she was only going to have to be home in "Hell House" one day and two evenings a week. She was tired all the time, but it was worth it. And then the tiny, bent old lady, so old Caitlin couldn't even guess her age, appeared on the other side of the checkout counter, and said her name was Aunt Ivy. After only the briefest of conversation, Caitlin learned that the frail, needy lady had very recently lost both her housekeeper/cook and her paid companion, and that she was all alone in her huge manor on the lake outside of town, save for her xenophobic driver who lived in an apartment above the garage, who could not speak to people. Or cook. Caitlin's heart went out to the ancient one. She wished that she could help her in some way. Then the woman informed her how much money a paid companion made in a week, and asked her to come to work for her, and Caitlin quit her job, got directions to the house and went home to pack. But she no sooner arrived at the 300 year old manor than Swee'pea went nuts on Aunt Ivy. You would have thought the woman was a writhing pit of snakes, the way the usually sweet cat went off on her, hissing, growling, and making that intimidating warbling sound that cats make deep in their throats when they're about to attack and kill. Then she ran away and hid somewhere in the huge old house. Swee'pea despised Aunt Ivy. This couldn't be good. Caitlin feared for her job. What if the old woman told her to get rid of the cat or hit the bricks? But then, during the cozy dinner Caitlin put together for the two of them, Aunt Ivy shocked her to the core by explaining that she was, in fact, Caitlin's real aunt. Catlin had thought that her despicable half-sister and her father were her only living relatives on the planet, since her mother had drowned in the lake that almost reached Aunt Ivy's door a few years before. Why had Aunt Ivy never disclosed her presence to Caitlin or her parents in all those years? Because of bad blood between two sides of the family long, long ago. Now apparently she had made contact because she was old and dying and wanted someone to leave her estate to, and that someone was obviously Caitlin. That was a far cry from throwing her out. Aunt Ivy even disclosed the fact that she had come to this ancient house as a paid companion just like Caitlin, at roughly the same age, and inherited it all upon the death of her employer. Suddenly reality took a whole new turn. It was more than she could process. And she so badly needed a good night's sleep. Things would make more sense in the morning. But during the night, she woke up being held down and molested in some psychic way by an immense, heavy, powerful presence which she could feel and smell but could not see. Then she realized it was trying to enter her body and force her out, leaving her soul to drift without a mortal coil in the void. Aunt Ivy's house.