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All About Eve - Part 2

a paranormal short story

By Caitlin McCollPublished 3 years ago Updated 2 years ago 20 min read
1
All About Eve - Part 2
Photo by Alexandru Zdrobău on Unsplash

Age 18

Eve was thankful that the counselling sessions were short lived. She had tried to pretend as if she were a normal child, and gave answers she thought other, more normal kids would give. After a few sessions, Dr. Hannigan said to Eve’s parents, ‘she seems like a healthy, normal girl,’ and they came to an agreement to stop them. Eve smiled, trying to convey a look of normality, at the same time attempting to shut out Arra’s voice in her head that was laughing.

Her first day of Grade 12 was a bit of a shock. Not because there were lots of people and students, there wasn’t. It was a relatively small high school, despite being a combined school for both the townships of Golden Falls and False Creek. She entered the old large double doors and walked down the main hallway, where all students had their lockers. It was crowded with the entire student body, All 600 of them. She squeezed past and around people and eventually made it to her locker. Eve looked down at the little slip of paper in her hand that had her combination, and opened her locker.

Inside the locker on the door was a small mirror, left by a previous student. She looked at herself in the mirror, to make sure that her thin flyaway hair had stayed down during the half hour walk to school from her parents house on the edge of town. Instead of seeing her own face, though, she saw superimposed over it the face of a sad looking girl, with short blonde hair, about her age. The girl’s face was swollen and black and blue. Eve shouted in surprise and jumped. Then she caught herself, and looked around at the students all around her, who were looking at her strangely. ‘Just thought I saw a mouse, sorry,’ she mumbled. The students that had stopped and stared continued on their way. Eve looked back into the little mirror and once again only saw her own face. She turned around to see if she could see the spirit girl behind her. No one was there, except for all the students. ‘The ones that are living,’ thought Eve. She sighed and closed her locker after putting her book bag inside and taking what she needed for class.

She thought to herself, and therefore also to Arra, ‘why do they always disappear so quickly!’ Arra piped up ready to jump in with answers as usual. ‘Because they aren’t ready to actually seek you out. They aren’t ready to ask for help. They just want to let you know they are there,’ the spirit lady said, matter of fact.

Since seeing the young boy in the Dr’s office all those years ago, and who Eve soon realized was the ghost of a little boy, she had started to see dead people everywhere she looked. Sometimes they still spooked her. Not scaring her because they were dead, but just that they snuck up on her all of a sudden, making her jump and sometimes scream just out of surprise.

As Eve walked down the hall towards her history class, her first of the day, she passed by several of these ghosts. She tried not to look at them too long, in case one of the actual students of the school caught her staring and asked her what she was doing. It was getting harder and harder to keep up the lies. To her fellow students and teachers, and to her friends and parents.

As she walked past the Biology lab, a woman brushed past her. ‘Hey!‘ Eve exclaimed, before she realized her reaction was unnecessary. There were no other students nearby that could have been at fault. The ones that heard her stopped and gave her strange looks, shaking their heads. The woman older than any of the students, and wearing an old fashioned dress, and a bonnet on her head. The woman stopped and looked at Eve longingly, obviously wanting to communicate. Eve glanced at her, and then quickly away. Half of the woman’s face was scarred by long gashes from her temple to her chest. The woman opened her mouth as if to speak, but only a sound like a sigh came out. Eve dared a look back at the woman and saw her rapidly disappear in front of her, the woman’s eyes, full of sadness, the last things to fade. Eve sighed again, adjusted her books and continued on.

She had just put her hand on the classroom doorknob when she felt a tug at her pant leg. She looked down and saw a group of 3 small children, two boys and one girl. They shyly smiled at her and waved, and started to run away, like the playful children they were, then, like the woman by the Biology lab, prompted faded away.

Eve entered the room and went to her seat. It was the same seat she had in every class, the one in the furthest back corner. It wasn’t that she was a bad student. She enjoyed school and excelled in most subjects, especially art, where she could let her mind wander as she drew, or painted, or sculpted. It was just that she didn’t like the feeling of the other students looking at her. She knew they did. She could feel it. Could feel them looking at her even if she was looking in another direction, or out the window that she sat by. They all thought she was strange and a bit weird, but they couldn’t really place it. Eve wondered why. ‘I’ve tried to be as normal as I can!’ she complained to Arra one day when she was sitting on the bleachers of the football field doing her Social Studies homework. ‘Yes,’ assured Arra. ‘But people who are psychic are different. They can’t help it. And their difference just seeps out, no matter how hard you try to pretend to be normal like the other students. You get a faraway and dreamy look when you’re talking to me for instance,’ said Arra. ‘Like you are somewhere else.’

‘Really?’ asked Eve, out loud, since there was no one else around. Arra didn’t reply but Eve could picture her nodding.

‘Arra, Why can’t I see you?’ Eve asked suddenly. ‘Why don’t you make yourself visible like all these other spirits that I see all the time? Why can I only see you in my dreams, but I can hear your voice all the time?’

‘It’s just easier for me,’ explained Arra. ‘For some spirits, it’s easier to materialize, for others….’ she trailed off.

‘For others what?’

Arra hesitated then continued, ‘For others they have trouble materializing, and so outside of the dream realm, they are just voices. To those that can hear them, of course. Or maybe less than that.’

‘Oh.’ said Eve. She saw someone heading towards her from across the football field so turned her eyes to her notebook and pretended to be doing her homework, an essay on Jesuit Priests in 1800’s East Coast North America, trying hard not to look up and make eye contact with the person making a bee-line for her.

‘Hey Eve!’ said a cheery voice.

Eve looked up through a curtain of hair which she pushed out of her face. ‘Oh, hi Amber,’ she said gloomily.

‘Hey, what’s wrong with you?’ said Amber, jumping up onto the bleachers beside her.

‘Nothing,’ Eve mumbled. She had been trying to avoid Amber over the summer. They had grown apart when Amber had got a boyfriend and was hanging out all the time with Adam. Eve wasn’t upset by the situation. Rather, she was glad. It meant she didn’t have to hide who she was from Amber, or anyone else, for that matter. She was content just with Arra for companionship. ’I guess that’s the way it’ll have to be,’ she thought to herself often, and she had come to terms with that. She had learned early on that mentioning spirit guides, or other realms, or guardian spirits just got her weird looks, and people moving to the other side of the room or hallway, or pretending they had something to do that they had just remembered.

‘How are classes going? How was your summer? I didn’t see you very much, sorry,’ Amber apologized. ’I was hanging out with Adam a lot, you see.’

Eve just nodded. ’Why does she always have to be so cheery?’ she thought. Amber rambled on about the classes she was taking and some party that was happening that weekend, but Eve wasn’t paying attention. She had noticed someone standing in the middle of the field staring at them. Staring at her.

Amber stopped talking, noticing Eve was looking out over the field. ‘Eve, what are you looking at? I don’t see anything.’

‘Nothing,’ Eve said again. It was her standard response to questions like that. Then she grabbed her books and started to climb down the bleachers. ‘I’ve got to go. Sorry,‘ she apologized, giving Amber a little wave she hoped seemed friendly.

Eve tried not to start sprinting across the field toward the person standing in the middle. She noticed as she got closer, that the person was a man, tall and thin with a long pale face. Eve came within feet of the man, who wore a long smoking jacket and a old fashioned top-hat. She looked back over her shoulder and saw Amber still sitting on the bleachers looking at her. ‘I can’t stop and talk to this guy,’ Eve thought, ‘because Amber doesn’t see anyone. I don’t want to look like I’m talking to myself.’ Eve bent down and pretended to tie her shoe, while the strange slightly transparent man stood silently nearby. She glanced back towards the bleachers again and disappointingly Amber was still there. She stood up again and walked past the ghostly man and mouthed an apology that she couldn’t stop and talk to him now. She headed off in the direction of the school. She looked back a few minutes later and the man was gone. Amber had moved to another section of the bleachers where some other students had just arrived.

Eve was at her locker, gathering her things to head home when she looked in the little mirror on the door. She saw the strange man standing behind her. Suppressing a scream of surprise she turned around slowly and this time the apparition was still there. The man put a finger to his lips in a gesture of silence and then turned and slowly moved, haltingly down the main hallway towards the school’s front entrance. Eve watched fascinated as the man moved through the students milling around the hallway, with his feet seeming to go through the tiled floor. She slammed her locker door shut and ran down the hall after the man. She followed him outside, having to open the closed doors that the man simply passed through.

She followed the man to a large tree on the edge of campus. There was no one else nearby. The man stopped suddenly, causing Eve to jump back out of habit. He opened his mouth and spoke. Eve was surprised. None of the spirits she had ever seen had actually said anything to her before.

‘She wants to talk to you,’ he said in a deep gravelly voice.

Eve was confused. ‘Who? Amber?’

The man shook his head slowly and pointed over Eve’s shoulder. She turned in the direction he was pointing and saw a shimmering of the air.

‘What’s that?’ Eve asked.

‘Don’t listen to this man,’ Arra suddenly interjected.

‘Why not?’

‘Because he is evil,’ Arra said simply.

Eve turned to look at the man who simply sighed and shook his head, as if to contradict what Arra had said.

‘You should leave now,’ warned Arra.

‘But,’ said Eve. ‘I don’t think he’s evil. He doesn’t look evil to me.‘ The man turned and slowly walked away. Eve went to follow. ‘Wait!’ she said, but the man was already fading away.

‘Good,’ said Arra, sounding relieved.

‘I want to find out what he’s talking about,’ said Eve. ‘Next time I see him I will.’ She hoped she would see the man again soon. He had a message for her, that much was clear.

A stabbing pain suddenly shot through Eve’s head. ‘Ow!’ she said, putting a hand up to her head. ‘My head hurts.’

‘You should head home now,’ ordered Arrra. And so Eve did.

Weeks passed and Eve saw many spirits, and once even a ghostly dog, but saw nothing of the man in the top hat, though she kept an eye out for him. One day she was walking down by the river when she saw a little boy. It looked like the same boy from Dr. Hannigan’s office. He was standing at the foot of the little stone bridge, hands in his pockets, his long tweed shorts and shirt and waistcoat were soaking wet. His short hair was plastered to his forehead with water. Eve didn’t remember the boy being wet when she saw him in the Dr’s office.

Slowly she walked towards the boy, as if he were an animal that might bolt if she moved too quickly.

‘Hello,’ she said gently to the ghost boy.

‘Hello,’ the boy said back.

‘Why are you all wet?’ asked Eve, though she already knew the answer.

‘I drowned here,’ answered the boy. ‘I slipped on the flat rocks up river.’

‘When did you drown?’ Eve asked.

The boy shrugged. ‘Can’t ‘member,’ he said.

‘You don’t remember?’

‘It was a long time ago,’ he said simply. His clothes looked like something from one of Eve’s History books. She thought possibly the 1800’s.

‘Why are you talking to me now?’ Eve asked, crouching down so she was eye-to-eye with the boy, her jeans getting dirty from the soft, muddy ground.

‘Because she wants me to,’ said the boy.

‘Who wants you to?’

‘The girl with blonde hair,’ the boy said.

‘Why doesn’t she come and talk to me herself?’ Eve asked plainly.

The boy shrugged again and started to move away. ‘Because she can’t’.

‘Wait!’ said Eve jumping up. ‘Where are you going?’

All of a sudden, the air next to the boy started to move, and then a woman in a long blue dress materialized beside him. It was Arra. ‘Stay away from her, boy’ she said harshly. ‘She doesn’t need to be bothered by you’. The boy looked at Arra in fear and promptly disappeared.

Eve ran towards Arra in anger. Arra stuck a hand out in front of her and Eve stopped dead in her tracks. ‘Why did you do that?’ Eve shouted. ‘Why did you make him go away?’

Arra who had appeared solid when she first materialized, started to fade quickly.

‘Why are you showing yourself?’ shouted Eve again. ‘I thought you said you couldn’t!’

Arra’s featured hardened, her smooth alabaster skin wrinkling, turning her beautiful face ugly. ‘I never said I couldn’t. I just said it wasn’t easy for me.’

‘Why did you scare the little boy away? He was in the middle of talking to me!’

‘Enough!’ shouted Arra angrily.

Eve took a step back involuntarily. She had never seen Arra angry. The only time she talked harshly to Eve was when she was saving her from harm. Eve remembered the time when Arra had shouted at her when she was on the bridge and Eve had jumped backwards because Arra had shouted out a warning, which had saved Eve from leaning on the weak wall of the bridge.

Tears pricked at Eve’s eyes and she blinked them away. She was shocked and hurt by Arra’s outburst. By the time she could see clearly again, Arra had vanished.

‘Why did you do that!’ Eve yelled out loud. She was angry and didn’t feel like just thinking it, she wanted to show Arra that she was upset. An old man walking a dog on the other side of the river looked over at her. Arra made no reply.

Eve stormed angrily across the bridge, towards the man with the dog, in the direction of home. The man pulled his dog away from sniffing at something on the ground and hurried on his way. When Eve reached her home she stormed up the stairs to her bedroom and slammed the door, throwing herself on her bed and pulling the covers over her. There was a gentle knock on the door. It was her mother. ‘Evie, are you okay, sweetie?’

‘I’m fine, Mom. I just don’t want to talk, so please go away.’

There was a pause, then, ‘Did you have a fight with someone?’ Eve didn’t answer. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ said her mother, opening her bedroom door a crack.

‘No!’ Eve shouted, still facing her bedroom wall.

~*~

The following week, Eve was down by the river picking the wildflowers that bloomed there. Her cousin was getting married and Eve was picking flowers for the table arrangements. The flowers along the bank were especially colourful and beautiful, nurtured by the rich clay soil and river water. She was bent down looking at a cluster of snowdrops when she sensed movement.

She looked up towards the small poplar trees further down the bank and gasped. It was the strange tall man with the ragged top hat, and he was leaning casually against one of the tall thin trees, staring at Eve. Eve sprang up and ran towards the man, not taking the chance that he might disappear if she went slowly.

She was about to speak when a blinding pain burst in her head and she collapsed to the ground. She saw the pale man looking down at her with baleful eyes, and then she blacked out.

Eve came to with a circle of concerned faces surrounding her. Real, live faces. She slowly sat up. ‘It looks like I’m back in Kansas, Toto,’ she said, laughing weakly.

‘Are you okay?’ asked one of the faces, leaning in. It was little Joe, though he wasn’t very little anymore.

‘What happened?’ asked another face, this one a girl. Eve recognized her. It was Sharlene, one of the girls in her History class.

‘I don’t know,’ said Eve, gingerly touching her forehead. ‘I just had a bad headache I think.’

‘Sounds like a migraine to me’ said another girl standing next to Sharlene that Eve didn’t recognize. ‘My uncle gets them all the time.’

Little Joe reached out a hand and helped Eve up. She was covered in mud and sand from where she fell. She looked up at the sky that was quickly clouding over. ‘I must have been out awhile,’ Eve thought. ‘It’s getting dark already.’

‘Did anyone see,’ she started and then stopped. She was about to ask if anyone had seen where the man in the top hat had gone. ‘Don’t be ridiculous’ she scolded herself. ‘No one else can see him!’

‘Did anyone see what?’ Little Joe asked, his little boy’s voice beginning to grow gruff.

‘My flowers,’ said Eve, recovering herself. ‘I was picking flowers’.

‘There they are,’ said Sharlene pointing a little ways away. They were leaning up neatly against the poplar tree that she saw the tall man standing next to, and were tied together with a blue ribbon. She hadn’t done that. She had been holding the flowers when she had run towards the mysterious man. They should have been on the ground and most likely crushed and ruined, not tied up neatly with a ribbon.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Eve grabbing them up quickly, hoping no one asked why they were over there when Eve wasn’t anywhere near them. But of course someone did.

‘Why are they over there, and you are over here? Didn’t you say you were picking them?’ asked the girl that Eve didn’t know next to Sharlene.

‘Oh, well, um…’

Arra spoke up right when Eve needed her. She was always there in a crisis. ‘You were starting a new bunch.’.

‘I was starting a new bunch!’ said Eve. ‘I’d finished that bunch and wanted to start another one. Didn’t want to have too many flowers at once. I…’ she hesitated. ‘I just forgot I put them there’.

This seemed to satisfy everyone. Some of the people started to move away and head up towards the bridge. ‘We’re going fishing,’ said Little Joe. ‘ Want to come? He offered.

‘Um, no thanks. I think I’m going to go home and lie down’ said Eve. ‘Thanks anyway.’

~*~

Eve saw the strange ghostly man only a handful of times over the next few years, and every time she got close to him, to speak to him, she was incapacitated by headaches. Sometimes she would then have to spend the rest of the day in bed, recovering. Her parents took her to doctors, who gave her various medications for headaches and migraines, none of which helped.

During one of these episodes when Eve was lying in bed recovering she brought through Arra to speak to her. It only took a bit of focus and then she could hear Arra loud and clear. ‘Why do I get these…headaches, I guess, whenever I see that strange man?’ she asked pulling up her duvet around her. ‘Is it from you or from him?’

There wasn’t an immediate reply, and then, ‘It is a bit of both. I told you that man, that spirit, is evil,’ Arra said, going into one of her lecturing modes. ‘And the pain that you suffer is me trying to stop him from harming you.’

Eve mulled this over and was about to ask another question when Arra continued. ‘My job is to protect you from harm, as I have told you countless times. THe pain you feel is me and this evil, harmful spirit fighting over you, and I try to put up a barrier around you, to protect you.’

Having read up on psychics and how to enhance her abilities, by borrowing the handful of books on the subject in the town library, Eve spoke up. ‘But any good psychic should know how to protect themselves with their own barriers! I have learned to surround myself with protective light and mental shields. The basics of psychic…ness. I’ve read up on all that, I’ve practiced!’

Arra’s voice hardened. ‘With a spirit like this, that is not enough. This is when your guide, must step in.’

Eve wasn’t sure this was right, but the pain in her head flared up again and she closed her eyes and slept.

And over time her sightings of the tall thin man lessened.

~~~~~~

Check out part 3 below to continue!

Short Story
1

About the Creator

Caitlin McColl

I hope you enjoy my writing! Your support means a lot to me!

Find me various places here.

Read:

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Aeternum Tom Bradbury

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