Harrowing Halloween

I made it through and sat up on the other side of the wall. The grass inside of here had grown in wild patches and chilled me as I sat in it. I had thought I would be maybe going under some type of hunters lodge wall or something but I was wrong. I was in a cemetery. The moon was in a gap in the clouds and shone brightly overhead. I stood up and took in my surroundings. The trees draped branches over the wall. The air was so thick with fog that made it hard to tell just how large the cemetery was. I could see several mausoleums scattered throughout the cemetery. Some were mostly obscured by the mists. A chill went through my spin as I looked at the rows of tombstones. Some where weather worn and knocked over. As much as I didn't want to be in the middle of the cemetery on Halloween, I knew had to go deeper inside of it. There must be a road or a path connected to the cemetery I reasoned, otherwise how could people come to pay respects to their loved ones?

I thought about walking along the wall until I found the cemetery gate, but then thought against it. That way would lead me to the gate eventually, but what if I walked along the wrong wall and had to walk all the way around the wall until I found it? The thought of actually walking into the middle of the cemetary was the scariest one, but it would let me explore the cemetery the fastest and all I wanted to do was make it home. I walked cautiously as I left the old wall and went deeper into the graveyard. The last thing I wanted was to step on someone's grave. The fog seemed to get thicker the deeper into the cemetery I went. I tried to ignore all of the horror movies I had seen that had a scene in a graveyard and to keep a straight path, but there wasn't much of a defined path between the graves. Like how the town was laid out, the cemetery also conformed to the contours of the varied elevations it was built on.

I walked past the first monsolium and paused for a moment in front of it. The fog wound its way in and out of the bars to the locked gate, almost as if it was being generated from within. I shuddered again for what I figured wouldn't be the last time tonight and I moved on. The fog seemed to get thicker and the light from the moon had been growing weaker. I looked up and saw through the fog a thick amount of clouds approaching the moon. The clouds covered up the moon, causing a blanket of darkness to cover up the graveyard. The fog had been clinging to me, making my clothes stick to my body and left me damp so when I felt the first drop from above I thought for a moment that it was just more moisture from the fog. Then I felt another fat drop hit me. I looked up just in time to notice just how thick the clouds were and how they blotted out the sky. The rain clouds seemed to give up all pretenses of stealth now and the rain started to pour.

I ran down the faint path I had found, praying that it lead to the exit or to some kind of shelter. I passed another mausoleum and tried to open its gate, but it was held firm by a rusted old padlock. I shook the gate one last time in desperation but it wouldn't budge so I moved on. The rain was really starting to come down now, obscuring my vision even further. I held my arms my head as I ran and jumped between the graves. On the crest of the hill in front of me loomed a large dark shape. It was much bigger than all of the mausoleums I had seen before so I thought it might be a caretakers house. I sped up at the thought of shelter. I kept on slipping in the mud as the rain continued to pour down. I started to climb the hill and realized that the shape of the shadow was all wrong. It spread out into the sky from a base. It was a huge tree with branches sticking out in every direction. I summited the last third of the hill, already the ground was drier and less rain reached me through the outer edges of the large tree's canopy.

I made it to the tree and slumped against it. I couldn't handle anymore running or terror tonight. I closed my eyes for a moment and caught my breath. I listened to the sound of the rain thumping against the soft earth around me and rustling through the leafs above me. When I opened my eyes I was faced with yet another terror that night. There was a girl, standing a little ways to the side at the edge of the tree's canopy. She reached outside of its protection and rain started to land into her outstretched hand. She had a light glow around her, as if she had stepped in to replace the missing light from the void left by the moon being covered up by the clouds. She turned back and looked at me for a moment, before resuming her stare out into the rain. Her gaze had only held onto me for a moment before she turned her head away, almost as if I was of no consequence to her or just another element of the scenery. I tried to call out to her a couple of times but the words caught in my throat. There was no reason why she should be in the graveyard in the middle of the night. Well, I shouldn't be there either, but I wasn't luminescent. I told myself she couldn't be, but she had to be a ghost. I had thought tonight couldn't get any worse but I was wrong. I was scared by her presence, but also oddly comforted by her. She was so beautiful and while she seemed upset I felt like she wouldn't mean me any harm. She had long black hair, was wearing cut off denim shorts and a matching jacket. When she had glanced at me she had piercing ice blue eyes that seemed tired. She had to be in her late teens.

The ghost girl stepped out into the rain and it started to drench her. Who ever heard of a ghost getting wet? Maybe she was real. I stifled my fear and called out to her, "Hey! What are you doing standing out in the rain?" I asked.

The girl whirled around, causing her hair to whip around and shake out some of the rain water it had collected. "You can see me?" She asked.

"Yeah I can see you. You must be freezing in the rain," I said.

"Yes, I am," she said with a smile on her face. I questioned how wise it was for me to talk to her, this was the moment in ghost stories where the ghost would do some sort of ghoulish thing. She took a step towards me, back underneath the canopy of the tree, causing me to tense up. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a scrunchy and pulled her hair back into it. She walked the rest of the way up the hill to me. She still had a slightly transparent look to her, but her action confused me. It looked like something so natural and human. Who had ever heard of a ghost putting their wet hair up in a scrunchy?

When she was a few feet away from she she stopped. She was even more beautiful up close. I did my best to try not to stare, but it was hard to look away from the only source of light on a night that had been filled with so much darkness. "So, you really can see me?" she asked hesitantly.

"Yeah I can," I replied.

"You're the first person who has ever seen me," she said, seeming to still be working on exactly what to make of that fact.

I was still a little scared of her, but I decided to just ask and get it over with. I was too tired to dance around the question I had so badly wanted to ask. "Are you a ghost?" I asked.

Her frown made me wish that I hadn't asked her. "Yes, I am. I guess." She said. I didn't know what to say next. We both just stood for a moment, the barrier between life and death and the sound of the rain pattering were our only companions. "Are you scared of me?" she asked. There was so much vulnerability to her, it made it hard to be scared of her. What could a ghost possibly be afraid of?

"A little, I mean, you are a ghost," I said.

"And what's so scary about ghosts anyways?" she asked.

"While, ghosts are undead, haunt places, and can possess people." I said trying to remember all that I could from horror movies.

"First off, you are wrong on all counts, ghosts are not undead, undead are something that was living, died, and then came back to a sort of fake life. Like a zombie or vampire, so unless you want me to bite you you should probably not go around lightly calling someone the undead." I wished a beautiful girl like her would want to bite me. I had been having increasing thoughts like that as I started to enter puberty, sometimes I wished I could turn it off. Like when I would randomly get an erection in the middle of math class for example, or when I am lost in the middle of the woods and talking to a ghost. "Next, ghosts don't possess people, at least not that I know of, and If I could haunt somewhere else why would I be haunting a graveyard? Why would there ever be ghost sightings at graveyards? It's not like a lot of people die in graveyards," she said.

"You're trapped here?" I asked.

"Yep. I have been for years," she sighed.

"For how long?" I asked.

She gasped almost as if I just asked her how much she weighed. I guessed that it's a taboo to ask a ghost how long they have been dead for. "To be honest, I kinda don't know. Sense of time is kinda hard to keep track of when you are a ghost. I watched the water dripping down her body, causing her light blue shirt underneath her denim jacket to stick to her. "What are you staring at?" she asked.

"The water. If you are a ghost, then how are you wet?"

"Don't you know what Halloween is all about?" she asked me excitedly. I shook my head that I didn't. "During Halloween Spirits and ghosts are allowed to walk the Earth for a single night. I feel more myself than ever on these nights since I died. I manifest so completely that it is almost like I never died and I have my body back."

"That kinda sounds a lot like being undead to me," I said. She laughed the most beautiful laugh I had ever heard. She sounded so full of life, that I couldn't believe that she was dead.

"My name is Evelyn, What's your name?" she asked me.

"I'm Chris," I said.

"So Chris, what exactly are you doing out here in the middle of the night? You're a little too young to be out here on your own," she said. It was my turn to become withdrawn at a question. "Hey, I didn't mean anything by it. You will be all grown up in now time."

"No, it's not that. Its that tonight hasn't exactly been a good night," I said.

"What happened?" Evelyn asked. The concern in her voice was almost too much.

"Nothing happened-" I started to say when she reached out and squeezed my hand. Her hand felt warmer then I was expecting, it was a little cold but that was most likely from her being out in the rain. It didn't feel like an inhuman chill. Evelyn seemed just as shocked that she had touched me. I thought about it for a moment. I had just met Evelyn so it would feel weird to tell her my problems. I had gotten so used to not being able to tell anyone about what I was dealing with at school, but then again, here I was talking to a ghost, who was somehow holding my hand. I thought that maybe I had to start to rethink what I believed to be weird. "Ok," I said, and then I told her everything. I thought that it would be hard opening up to her, but once I decided to confide in her it all came pouring out. She would squeeze my hand at the more difficult parts of retelling what Henry and his friends had been doing to me for the last 3 months. It was hard to think that so much torment could happen in such a small amount of time. I told her about what happened tonight and my mad dash through the woods, which lead me to stumbling upon this old graveyard. I had spent most of the time staring down at the ground while I told her my story, I just couldn't bring myself to look her in the eyes during it. It was hard to recall the ugliness of the world while staring at someone so beautiful.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that tonight. But I have some good news for you," Evelyn said.

"Yeah and what is that?" I asked.

"You're only a couple of miles from the town. If you go east of this tree then you will find the gate and a path that leads to town. It is just a couple miles away from here." Evelyn said.

"Thank you for telling me that, but It doesn't exactly help me out now." I said.

"I was bullied too," Evelyn told me.

"You were?" I asked.

"Yeah I was. A lot of the other girls in school picked on me because I was different. Because I listened to different music and dressed differently. They would spread rumors about me behind my back, would not so accidently bump into me in the halls at school. From middle school on they would make my life a living hell. I thought that all I had to do was make through highschool and then go off to college and everything would work out fine. I even had a full ride scholarship to ASU thanks to having one of the best GPA's in the school. Not having much of a social life did help with that. I was so close to getting out of this crappy little town, and now it seems like I am stuck here forever," Evelyn said. Well talking she had drawn her knees up and had her arms wrapped around them. She looked back out towards the rain and I thought I might have seen a tear tracing down her face.

I thought about how sad it was that she had died right when she had been so close to going out and living her life. Death was still an abstract concept to me at that point. I knew that people died, that everyone eventually died, but I hadn't had someone in my life pass away yet. Talking to someone who had already died so early in her life made me realize just how unexpected life could be.

"Hey you're shivering," she said as the sound of my teeth chattering was the only noise besides the rain falling.

"I'm freezing," I confessed.

"Here," she said and held her arm up. I hesitated to move in closer to her. She sighed and scooted right next to me, pressing her side to mine and wrapping her arm around me. I was surprised by her warmth again, I thought ghosts were supposed to be cold. "Better?" she asked.

"Yes, thank you," I said and leaned my head against her shoulder. The rain started to fall even harder, and then I saw it start to fall in white clumps. It was snowing, the first snowfall I had ever seen.

"You know, there have been others who have shown up here on Halloween." She told me.

"There have been others?" I asked.

"Yeah, several times some dumb teenagers would show up her to drink, make out, or try and practice witchcraft," Evelyn said the last word with an eye roll. Odd that a ghost didn't believe in witchcraft. "I yelled and screamed right in front of their faces to get there attention, but they couldn't see me. When I touched them my hand would pass through them and they would just shudder. After the first few years of this happening I had given up on being seen again by anyone else, let alone touched again by someone." She rested her head on top of mine and drew me in closer. So warm I thought. She sighed, "You are so warm. When I saw you I thought you were just some other dumb kid who showed up here on a dare."

We sat there for a few minutes, listening to the rain and enjoying each other's warmth. Questions raced through my mind, I didn't want to ask her anything too painful and cause her to withdraw into herself again. As I looked out at the cemetery I noticed something. "How come there aren't any other ghosts wandering around?" I asked.

"Just because I am a ghost doesn't mean I know all about them, but if I had to guess, it is because of how we live in a small mostly peaceful town. This graveyard is full and isn't used anymore. I was the last body buried here. Mostly the oldest families have plots here. If I had to guess, its because the other people who were buried here died peacefully or didn't have unfinished business. Why stay around here when they could move on," Evelyn said.

"Like go to heaven?" I said.

"That might be where they go," Evelyn said skeptically.

"You don't believe in heaven?" I asked her.

"Not particularly, just because I'm a ghost doesn't mean I suddenly became a Jesus freak." My mom had been dragging me to church every Sunday my whole life. I liked the idea of heaven, but wasn't sure how much I believed what my Mom had been trying to instil into me. The thought of there not being some from of after life was a nagging fear that I had always had. I hadn't been expecting to get into a theological conversation with a ghost. It sounded like the set up to a joke. I wanted to change the subject and thought about what she had just said. I didn't want to ask how she died even though that was one of the most pressing questions I had. There was no way that question would be received well.

"So, do you have unfinished business?" I asked her.

Evelyn sighed and said, "a whole lifetime of it, and a lifetime that didn't come to be."

"Like what?" I asked.

"I wanted to become a world famous writer and journalist. I wanted to travel the world, writing stories that would make people and places better off after I had left them. I wanted to write a book that would speak to people and help brighten their world. I wanted to do so much, but now I will never get a chance to."

I told her how I wanted to be a writer too. I had seen my parents my whole life come home exhausted from work with nothing to show from it but a paycheck. I wanted to be able to create stories and worlds and be able to share them with other people. The thought of doing any other job sounded horrible to me. I asked her what were some of her favorite books and she asked me what mine were. Luckily I had been reading ahead of my grade level for years and had managed to read some of the same books for school that she had. We talked about which ones we liked and didn't like. The world around us seemed to blur as I became so focused on listening to every word she said. It felt so natural talking to her, that I didn't want to miss a single word of what she said.

We talked for hours. As I warmed up I started to drowse off when Evelyn was in the middle of talking about her favorite book series. I strained to stay awake and listen to her, but the day was catching up to me and I started to drift off. I woke up at some point to someone nuding me awake. I ignored whoever was nudging me. The cold air nipped at me, but I had found somewhere warm and just wanted to burrow back into that warmth. I had been having the strangest dreams and I wanted to return to them. My body was sore all over and I just wanted to escape from the pain back into my sleep. "Wake up," said a voice that was both familiar and unfamiliar I cracked my eyes open and then was shocked awake. The girl from my dreams was standing above me. She looked semi transparent. I must have slept most of the light away because it was now the post storm predawn grey. The sun would be rising soon.

"You're real," I said.

"Yeah I am. It's almost sunrise. Halloween is over," Evelyn said.

"Your leaving?" I asked. I had already grown attached to her in just one night.

"Yes and no. I will still be here, sometimes, only you won't be able to see me. If you go down this path behind me then you can find your way home," Evelyn said and pointed me in the correct direction.

"Thank you Evelyn for last night. I'm really glad I got to meet you," I said.

Evelyn smiled," I'm glad you showed up last night. I don't know how much longer I could go without talking to someone." Evelyn leaned down and planted a kiss on my forehead. Her lips pressed against my skin felt warm, but then as the sun started to rise the pressure and warmth from her lips disappeared and was replaced for a moment by a cool sensation that sent shivers down my spin. "Good bye," Evelyn whispered. I opened my eyes and she was gone. I looked around for her, thinking still that maybe she was alive and was just hiding behind a tombstone somewhere. After I didn't see her I knew that she was really gone.

I followed the path she had pointed out to me and followed it to the gate out of the cemetery. The gate was small and had been located nearly behind a pair of mausoleums and a hill that obscured it from view. I would have been looking for it for forever If I had kept on searching for it during the night. I tried my best to avoid the mud as I followed the path, but most of the snow had melted and turned it into a mini swamp. Whatever mud I hadn't gotten on my outfit last night seemed to be in a hurry to cling to me and give me an even coat of mud. It was slow going and I didn't make it back home for two hours.