22. The Children's Parade

Complete story — includes the ending

Melinda and Jim told Aiden ghosts aren't real, and neither are the shadows and shinies, but he didn't stop seeing them. Melinda can no longer tell the dead from the living. Eli has trouble talking because of a toothache, but when Carl asks him why Melinda is ignoring him, Eli manages to communicate that he told her Aiden shouldn't see ghosts, and he reveals that he must have been possessed by the shadows when he said that, because he would never normally say such a thing, since it is the worst time for Aiden not to use his gift. At the hospital, the ghost of a thirteen-year-old boy is leading the child ghosts of polio victims on marches to show that they're not afraid of the shadows. Melinda gets completely taken over by the shadows, and when Carl sees Aiden talking to someone he can't see, Aiden reveals that it's a shiny- or the crossed over ghost of a child. After the Book of Changes tells Carl and Eli how to stop the shadows, Aiden must convince the shinies to help. Mel and Aiden cross over the Polio Victims and the boy, and Mel and Jim tell Aiden they were wrong to try to get him to deny his gift.