Harrowing Halloween

I showed at my door covered in mud looking like I was a swamp monster. My parents had been worried sick about me. It was the first time I had ever been out late, let alone been gone for an entire night. My parents were a mix of relieved and angry at me, so it was hard to handle their moods as they swung back and forth between those two extremes. I had a suspicion that if I would have stayed out a few hours more they probably would have been so relieved to see me that I wouldn't have gotten into any trouble at all. When they asked me where I was I told them a partial truth, I mentioned how I had ended up lost in the woods, but not about who had caused me to run to them in the first place. I was grounded for a month which wasn't much of a punishment because I spend most of my time in my room anyways. Henry actually ended up worse off than I thought he would have. When I had hit him in the face a large sucker had smacked against his face, causing one of his teeth to cut right through his cheek. He had needed a few stitches. I thought it was great that I had gotten the best of him but it was probably best I was grounded for a month because he was even more after me now.

Start of part 2 still age 13

I spent a lot of that time thinking about my encounter with the ghost girl Evelyn. I tried to tell myself that what I had seen had just been a hallucination caused by the stress of that night, but it had all felt so real so unless I was full on crazy I didn't think that it had been my imagination. I had tried to look up online what had happened to Evelyn, but with just her name I wasn't able to narrow down what had happened to her. I knew it had to be something tragic, but I guessed that it hadn't received much attention.

Once my month of being grounded was up I went back to the graveyard. I started to search around for a tombstone with her name on it so that I could see the date she was born and died on and also any other info that might be on her tombstone. I had gone with high hopes that I could get it accomplished in just a few hours. I had severely underestimated the size of the graveyard and just how worn out most of the graves had become. The walk to the cemetery and back had eaten up so much time that I wasn't able to find her tombstone on the first day. The next day I returned with a printed out map of the cemetery I had been able to find on the town's website. With the aid of the map I began a more thorough search so as not to accidentally miss her grave. I was able to search through nearly half of the graveyard before I had to return home. If I was late then I would be grounded again and my search would have to be postponed yet again. It felt weird being in the cemetery during the day. It almost seemed like I was there during its after hours. I still had a weird feeling being there, but it was also in a way peaceful knowing that I was the only living person around.

I had to wait for an entire week of school before I could resume my search again on the weekend. It was one of the slowest weeks of my life. I had never been one to believe in anything of the occult. I still struggled to come to terms with what happened that night, so I wanted to try and find proof that Evelyn was real and that I had really seen her. I still had a fear that maybe I was crazy, but the research and searching helped put me more at ease. At least if I could prove that Evelyn was real I could know that I wasn't crazy. That friday after school I had been planning on heading for the graveyard right from school, but Thursday night my parents told me they had a date planned for friday night and had gotten me a babysitter for after school on Friday so I was forced to go straight home. I paced around my house, pent up with so much energy that I couldn't relax in my room. All of that pacing was a good thing because I must have walked up and down our stairs over 50 times; I tired myself out and fell asleep early.

I woke up early on saturday. Today was the day. As I walked down towards the cemetery I resolved again to ask my Dad for a new bike, I had outgrown my last one and it had broken before the move so we threw it away. There was a strong wind that day that was blowing on my back, almost nudging me forward. When I made it to the gate of the cemetery I peered through it to see if anyone else was there, but like the last couple of times I had been there it was empty. I pulled against the rusted black iron gate, opening it with a loud creaking sound. The wind whistled through the trees around me as I walked back towards the section of graveyard I had left off at last time. I wanted to rush my searching but didn't want to risk overlooking her grave.

Two hours later and I still hadn't found it. I searched through the whole graveyard and hadn't been able to find her name. With each incorrect tombstone I grew more and more anxious. The fear that I had maybe imagined it all after all first started to gnaw at me and then devour as I checked off the last section as being cleared. It wasn't there. I started to walk back towards the entrance, ready to return home and face what I was. I was crestfallen at first, it had been scary to see a ghost but had also made me feel like maybe I was special, especially after Evelyn told me that no one else had been able to see her. Henry had finally caught up to me last week and he hadn't gone easy on me. If it wasn't for the fact that it was during school and he had a limited time to exact his revenge I would have probably needed stitches too. I started to get angry at thinking about him. Why did he have to pick on me so much? What was his problem? A part of me wondered if he was mistreated at home, and another part of me hoped for it. My anger built up. I walked down the path and saw a small outcropping of stone sticking up out of the dirt to the side of the path and it was partially covered up by weeds and dandelions. As I passed it I wound up and kicked it as hard as I could. My foot burst out in pain as I came into contact with something much more solid than just a loose stone.

After recovering from the pain I bent down to see what I had kicked. I had to brush aside some dirt and weeds that had overgrown a stone plaque that was set into the ground. I saw the name. It was hers. Evelyn Brown, born 1975, departed 1994. There was a rose engraved into the top of the stone. There was a few old preserved rose petals that must have been there for years. I stared down at the stone, not knowing to do now that I had found it. There was that small sense of relieve at knowing that I hadn't snapped last month and imagined her, but then that meant that she was real, and she really had died before her life could begin. The original plan had been just to find her name, birth date, and death date, and now that I had that info I should head back home or to the library to start trying to track down more info about her, but I couldn't just leave her. Her grave was in such a state of disrepair that I just couldn't leave it like that.

I reached down and started to clear away the brush, snow, and dirt. The weeds bit into my hands as I pulled them free of the cold Earth. After 20 minutes my hands were simultaneously numb from the cold and also sore from pulling up the resistant weeds. It was a cold December day, I hadn't brought a thick enough jacket with me because I wasn't accustomed to actual cold winters her and had underestimated the weather. I was sweating from exertion and freezing even more. Once the grave was clear I stood back up and reflected on my work. It looked a lot better than what it had before, if only I had some flowers to decorate it for her. I felt a chill that didn't feel like it was caused by the cold air. A tingle went across my skin, causing it to break out in goosebumps. I had heard of this feeling before, the cold feeling when a ghost was nearby. I felt a familiar presence I had felt on Halloween night.

"Evelyn?" I asked and looked around me. The cold spot enveloped me and the air dropped even more degrees. I looked around to see if I could see her. I thought for a moment that maybe I could see a figure at the edge of my vision, but when I would turn to look at it the figure would disappear. "Thank you for looking after me on Halloween. I don't think I would have been able to make it through that night if it wasn't for you." I felt a cold caress up my cheek and stop just below the black eye that Henry had given me just a few days ago. "Yeah Henry finally caught up to me for me fighting back on Halloween." I felt that coldness press against my cheekbone, easing the pain slightly. "I have to be heading back home soon, before it gets too late. I promise I will be back to visit you." I walked towards the cemetery gate, and the cold spot followed me, like Evelyn was walking me out to the gate. "Good bye," I said and walked back out into the woods. I had grown used to the coldness of her presence and missed that chill.

I made it home just as the sun was going down. During dinner my mother fussed again over my black eye but said that it should be healing up soon. Once dinner was over I rushed upstairs to my room so that I could look up Evelyn again now that I knew a little more about her. With her full name and the year of her death I was able to look up what happened to her almost instantly, and instantly I regretted doing it. Evelyn had gone missing on her way home from school. People searched for her for 3 months until her body was finally found. She had been raped and murdered. There had been a few suspects, but all of them had proven to be innocent so who did this to her was still a mystery. I read through the newspaper articles as they unfolded, following the case as others would during the time it had happened. While searching through the articles I saw a picture of Evelyn and her family standing in front of their house. It had undergone a few renovations since then, but there was no mistaking it, this was the same house I was living in now.

After several hours of reading from off my computer screen my eyes became too strained to continue. I put my computer into rest mode and closed the notebook that I had been taking notes in. I hid the notebook under a stack of school books. I felt like it would be too hard to explain why I was taking notes about a girl who had died years ago. That night I lay in bed with all of the information I had just acquired swirling through my head. I had thought over the past month that maybe Evelyn had died in an accident like a car crash, but knowing what really happened took away the thrill of meeting a beautiful ghost girl now that I knew how her life ended. I had been doing research on ghost sightings and most things I read pointed to ghosts being people who can't move on because they had unfinished business, like what Evelyn had said. Evelyn's murderer had never been found. Maybe that was her unfinished business, and if I were to just find who did it then I could help her move on. My imagination ran wild with the idea of being the one to solve this dead end case. I would have an advantage over other investigators, I could talk with Evelyn to piece together what had happened to her. I started to fall asleep, even then thinking that the idea was just a child's fancy, but when I woke up the next day I felt more resolved then ever to solve the case and help Evelyn move on to whatever came next.

Part 3- The Investigation age 13

I spent the next three months obsessed with Evelyn and solving her murder. I gathered as much info as I could from off the internet and the old microfilm on file at the library. The librarian had been curious as to why I would want to learn about such a morbid thing. The first lie that sprung to my mind had ended up being one of the best ones; I lied and said that I was working on a school project. I would visit Evelyn's grave at least once a week, sometimes more. Sometimes I felt her presence, but most times I didn't so it was just me there talking to her grave stone. I told her about my family and school. I would ask her questions about herself, even though I knew that she couldn't answer me, I just didn't want the conversation to be so one sided. Henry was still giving me problems, but I had gotten better at evading him. I knew that I was going to have to face him eventually, but I was scared, I had already been beaten by him so many times before, it made it hard to have hope that I could win against him. Talking to Evelyn really helped me, especially when I felt her coldness around me. I fell into a routine of going to talk to Evelyn when ever I needed someone to listen to me or just to get away. I knew how crazy it was, but it helped me out when I felt like I had no one to turn to.

Next Halloween rolled around faster than I expected. I had been preparing for it for weeks but it still caught me off guard. I was looking forward to getting to actually see Evelyn again and talk to her in person. I figured that this halloween should be like last year's where she would have a tangible body again, but at the same time I doubted that this stuff was an exact science.

I snuck out of my house after glancing up and down the street for Henry and his goons. This past year I had avoided him at all costs, but when he did catch me something had changed. I could no longer just let them do whatever they wanted to me and I had started to fight back. One common way I had read to deal with a bully is to just stand up to them, show them that you are not afraid and will not be an easy target so that they move on and leave you alone. That wasn't the case with Henry. He seemed to respond to a call to a challenge and seemed even more focused on me. I tried to fight back, but his goons would always jump in to take away any chance I had to defeat a bigger opponent. Over the summer I finally hit my growth spurt, this combined with how much I had been riding my new bike across town and the weight lifting class I signed up for this year helped me to get into fighting shape. When I didn't see any signs of my tormentors I rolled my bike out of our garage and started down the path I had walked down so many times before.

Night fell heavily as I plunged into the woods. A year ago the gloom would have scared me, but I had grown used to the woods and no longer feared them. After getting lost in them the year before I had taken an interest in woodland survival and I was starting to get the basics down. If I found myself in that position again then I wouldn't be caught unaware.

I hid my bike in some bushes next to the gate. Fog poured from out of the cemetery like it was the origin point for all of the fog throughout the world. When I set foot inside of the gate I instantly broke out in goosebumps. Even with all of the times I had visited the cemetery over the year, coming during Halloween just felt more eerie. I did my best to walk through the cemetery with confidence, the last thing I wanted was for Evelyn to see me scared again. I liked to think that I had grown a lot in the past year, and if I could only see her once a year then I wanted to make a good impression. As I walked past the two knolls and mausoleums that blocked my view from the cemeteries lone tree on its hill I couldn't help but have a moment of doubt. What if Evelyn didn't show up this year? If she had moved on then I could handle all the waiting being for nothing? What if she just didn't want to see me? The old fear of the whole thing being in my head began to resurface, but I dismissed it, If I really was crazy enough to have all or part of it be hallucinations then there was nothing for me to do about it now. Talking to and visiting had been the only thing that kept me sane over the past year, if that made me insane then I guess I will take on that label.

I turned the corner and saw the tree looming up above the fog, it looked like it was on an island in a sea of fog, and on that island, waiting for me, was Evelyn. She was leaning against the tree with her arms crossed, looking right at me. I faltered for a moment in my walk towards her, she was breathtaking and looked even more beautiful than I remembered. I did my best to regain my natural stride as I walked to her. As I walked up the hill and up out of the fog Evelyn said, "It's about time, I've been waiting for you."

"You have been?" I asked.

"Yes, I was worried you were not going to show up." she said while looking past me.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," I said as I went up the last couple of steps up the hill and met her by the tree. She looked down at me, but not as much as she had the year before. Maybe after one more year of growing I would finally be her height, or maybe even taller than her.

"You've grown," she said looking me over. I felt embarrassed by how focused her gaze was on me.

"Yeah, hit my summer growth spurt," I said.

Evelyn sat down with her back to the tree and patted the ground next to her for me to join her. I did so. We were sitting with just the barest amount of space in between us. I could feel her body heat radiating off of her. It felt weird to feel her body heat after filling her cold presence frequently for the past year. We sat in silence for ten minutes. There was so much I wanted to ask her and talk about with her, I knew this night would be my only real chance until next year's Halloween, but it also felt nice just to sit and enjoy Evelyn's presence. I didn't want to rush her, so I was willing to wait until she broke the silence. "So... I saw my gravestone," she said.

"Oh?" I asked. Along with keeping it clear of weeds and cleaning it off I had started to bring flowers to her grave about once a month. I had just brought her a new set of flowers just a couple of days ago.

"Thank you for taking care of it for me. It looks a lot better. "I like roses but..." she said with a smile.

"But what?" I asked with a pretend exasperated sigh.

"Hibiscus flowers are my favorite flower," she said.

I laughed, "Ok I will remember that for the next flowers I get you." I grumbled about her not being able to smell them anyways so what was a difference.

"But sometimes I can," she said.

"What?" I asked.

"While I almost can. Being dead most of the time means that all of my senses are dead. I don't get to feel anything, taste anything, or smell anything. Sometimes I can hear the world around me but it sounds muffled and is hard to make out the words. All I can really tell is that someone is talking to me because I get that same feeling that you get when you hear your name whispered across the room when all other words are jumbled up together. Even rarer I get to actually see the world around me, but it looks just like how it does now, full of fog and darkness. Even during the rare day my senses are awakened. And even rarer then sound or sight, then the ability to actually get to move around my surroundings, is the sense of smell. I still remember the first time I came out of the grogginess of death to the smell of flowers for the first time in years. I know it sounds corny, but for that moment I forgot that I was dead."

"What about the sense of taste?" I asked.

"That has never happened before, thankfully. I don't exactly think I would want to taste anything in this graveyard," she joked.

"So right now you have all your senses?" I asked. We hadn't really talked about this last year and I was dying to know more about how she experienced the world.

"Yeah I do. They are probably about the same amount of sensitivity as when I was alive, but since i'm not used to them everything I experience feels so overwhelming," Evelyn said.

"How would chocolate taste to you?" I asked her.

"Probably orgasmic," she said instantly. After a moment she realized what she had said and started to laugh at what she said. I unzipped my backpack and reached into it. I pulled out a huge bag full an assortment of candy that I had picked out. "That is way too much candy," Evelyn said.