This post was published on the Reddit blogs and is 99% a written story, fiction. However, quite interesting and creepy.
“My aunt was … a fraud. And she learned this "craft" from the best of the best - from her father. Grandpa never hit a big jackpot, he just indulged in the process itself. By the way, I've never been caught in my life. Of course, this was a reason for pride.
Mom was not going to take over this strange family "business". She gravitated towards all sorts of religious things and soon married a tax accountant. Yes, yes, it sounds like an evil irony, but it is. While my dad always helped me with my homework in mathematics, they tried to keep me out of my mother’s religious hobbies so that I would not turn down this path.
But Aunt Cassie was just the person who helped me find the "very" path in life. Aunt worked as a psychologist, even had a license, which made her more representative in the eyes of others. But Cassie didn’t use her knowledge in exactly the way that the university that issued her diploma probably intended.
Aunt Cassie was the most real psychic.
She had her own magic shop with all the paraphernalia. Crystals, herbs, candles. There was even a separate room in which the seances were held. Since both of my parents disappeared day and night at work, I spent a lot of time in her shop, watching her little show.
Yes, yes, it was my aunt who made me a skeptic. She opened the curtain to this "magic" world and revealed all its secrets. We used to watch popular shows with magicians and mediums all day and night, and Cassie commented on their every step, revealing all their secrets.
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One day after one very impressive episode, I asked a very natural question. Maybe, after all, these people are really psychics? My aunt's answer was unequivocal:
“Baby, the dead don't talk. Anyone who claims otherwise is just holding us for idiots."
It was this answer of hers that made me forever believe that psychics are dust in the eyes of a sane person. For all the "otherworldly" practice of my aunt, there was only one client whom she refused. One day an old bald, hunched-over old man entered the store, took off his hat and kept twisting it in his hands while talking. Cassie immediately tensed as soon as she saw him.
The old man claimed to have worked in prison for a long time. His duties included the execution of sentences for especially dangerous criminals sentenced to death. In old age, such a job, of course, tormented him. The old man wanted Cassie to contact the souls of those prisoners whom he killed in order to ask for forgiveness from them before he left this world.
My aunt's reaction was incredible. As if distraught she was shouting to the old man “Get out! Go away! Get out of here!"
Covering my ears, I sat under the counter all this time. Probably, the aunt was frightened by the old man's occupation.
Eventually my parents found out about my frequent visits to Cassie. It happened when I put on a similar magic show for my parents. Actually, it didn't seem like such a bad idea, because my mother missed her grandfather so much. As a result, my mother got up like a fury and strictly forbade to see Aunt Cassie.
After a while, I remembered that I had left my textbooks in the shop. Mom was waiting in the car while I took my things. Cassie didn't even ask what was the matter. Everything was written on my face anyway. I hugged her. And yet she managed to tell me one more secret.
“Kid, there is a curse in our family … or something, which is passed from generation to generation like a baton. I hope you will not be the next of kin when I am gone to another world."
Nine years have passed. Nine years of silence between me and Cassie. Only with the surging wave of social networks, when parental restrictions could no longer keep me from communicating with my aunt, I finally found her on Facebook. The information that befell me seemed strange: a diagnosed schizophrenia, a lost shop as a result of an illness. Probably with this and the lost lust for life.
One day, when I came home, I found a message in my mailbox that hurt unbearably.
"I love you baby. Remember those words that I said to you then."
I dialed her number in tears. Nobody answered. I dialed over and over and over. Thoughts were confused to explain something to the mother. The police did it for me the next day. It was a commonplace accident due to a drunk driving.
The funeral passed in a daze. The church was flooded with relatives whom I had never seen in my life. I sat between my parents in the front row and racked my brains, remembering what my aunt had said to me, what words had been uttered in our last meeting.
We followed the hearse to the cemetery in a hanging dead silence. The priest mumbled his last speech, and I was left alone with my thoughts there, at the tombstone, all remembering important words. Fragments of phrases from the parents' dialogue reached me … Oh, if Cassie weren't such a puzzle.
"How few people came … what a shame …"
Few people? Few people?! Then it dawned on me what was happening. I finally remembered what kind of words I sounded in that last meeting.
Behind my parents there was a crowd of people … dead people.
Cassie stood in front of the crowd, just like the day I last saw her. Her mouth was wide, wide open. Lord, I know what this family curse is. I know why the dead don't speak.
The dead don't speak. They scream heart-rendingly in pain."