Evelyn Klebert

She was pale. That was the first thing he noticed when she answered the door. She smiled, but it was forced. Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed this meeting with her now, but he had a feeling that it was needed. And he wasn’t one to ignore intuition.

The physical dwelling within was pleasant enough, though rather sparsely decorated. “How are you doing?” he asked, following her through the foyer into a den. The house seemed warm, but as he walked toward a small table near the back patio doors, he hesitated. He glanced around the room but simply saw Rebecca standing near the sofa, staring at him oddly.

“What’s wrong?” she asked slowly.

He stepped back into the warmer air. Clearly, she’d had the heater running. “You have a cold spot here,” he said, looking at her and recognizing that she didn’t seem surprised.

“What does that mean?”

“Usually? Either you have a very ineffective heating system, or there is supernatural activity.”

She frowned at him, staring not at him but just to the side of him where he’d felt the cold spot. It dawned on him, not slowly, but quickly like the falling of an ax hammer. “Oh, but then you already knew that, didn’t you, Becca?”

“Yes,” she said with a measure of fatigue, “yes, I did.”

Here they were, standing in her townhouse, she, Gabriel Sutton, and Beth Wallace watching both of them with that wide-eyed glazed look that she so often had. What exactly was she supposed to say about all of this?

He was looking at her intently, then turning, his eyes passing over the spot where Beth was standing. But it was more than clear that he didn’t see the blond girl.

“Is someone here with us, Becca?” he said, entirely too calmly for her.

“Depends on what you mean by someone,” she said slowly.

“Do you see someone else here?” he asked, a touch more sternly.

She sighed deeply, more than a bit concerned. “Will my answer land me in a lunatic asylum?” she replied pointedly because it was a real concern or, should she say, a tangible fear of hers.

“Of course not. Spirits exist and what you would call ghosts as well.”

She clasped her hands in front of her, horribly afraid. These visions that she had, she’d always kept to herself, always more than terrified people would judge her for them. So, to open that door, answer truthfully was not short of jumping off a cliff. She bowed her head. “I can’t be sure it isn’t some sort of hallucination.”

“It’s all right,” he said in that comforting tone.

“It’s Beth,” she murmured.

“The girl that died at your school?”

“Yes,” she said quietly, still gazing at the hardwood floor. She didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to see his eyes judging her.

“How long have you been seeing her?”

“For a while, it started the first autumn after she died. I got up during the night, and she was here, here in the shadows of the den. Then every few days after that, I would see her in the hall, my bedroom upstairs, even outside on the patio.”

She glanced up. But he wasn’t looking at her at all, just at the very spot where Beth was. Clearly, he wasn’t seeing her, but she felt as though he should, the way he was looking at her. “Has she ever spoken?”

“No, I mean, I haven’t encouraged it. I’ve just asked her to leave, but she hasn’t. She just keeps coming back.”

“There must be some reason she needs to be here.”

“I-I didn’t think she was real. I thought I was going crazy.”

“That’s why you never told anyone.”

“Yes, am I being haunted? Have I done something terrible for her to be here?”

He finally looked at her, more than a bit puzzled. “Of course not. What would make you think that? She’s here because she needs something and knows she could reach you.”

It was too much. She started to cry, and she wasn’t sure why it began, only perhaps that it was a release. For so long, she believed something was wrong with her — something terribly wrong. She bent her head weeping, and then she felt his arms go around her. “It’s all right,” he murmured.

She put her head on Gabriel Sutton’s shoulder and began to sob because there was no way for her to stop it.

He paced the den of Rebecca’s townhouse, back and forth, pausing from time to time in front of the patio doors, still somewhat wary of passing through the cold spot identified as the apparition of Beth Wallace. Rebecca was silently eating the soup that he’d brought at her small dinette table near the kitchen. He’d bought enough for the both of them, but the food was the furthest thing from his mind. Gabriel had come to the grim conclusion that he would soon be dragging Becca, kicking and screaming, into the role of a medium. There seemed no help for it. Whatever vision she’d had of the parameters of her life, it was clear some greater power had different plans for her.

He paused again, just in front of that unidentifiable cold spot, staring intently, even squinting his eyes a bit, but there was no perceptible shift in his vision. This was not for him to see.

He moved his gaze across the room. Rebecca had stopped eating and was staring at him intently. “She’s still here?” he asked.

She nodded slowly in a silent affirmation.

“We need to find out why she’s here. Find out what she wants.”

“How are we going to do that?” she asked in a rather quiet voice because he could tell by her tone that she already knew the answer.

“You’re going to have to talk to her,” he said, perhaps a bit too pointedly. He had to remember that this woman was fragile and, as she’d described herself, a bit unstable.

And he knew at once that perhaps he’d gone too far as she abruptly stood up, practically glaring at him. “You want me to what?”

He took a breath. Calm was the only way to handle this. “What I meant to say is that you’re going to have to try to talk to her. You are the one she is drawn to for some reason Becca.” Her eyes glanced over again to that space in front of the patio. “What is it? What is she doing?”

She shook her head, “I can’t do this.”

“Listen, just listen to my voice right now. I can walk you through this.”

She looked at him with what was now unmistakably fear. “She’s staring at me with those eyes — eyes that look like they’ve seen something horrible.”

“Is that what you feel from her, that she’s afraid?”

Becca had crossed her arms in front of her. “I feel like,” she hesitated, “that I’m so cold.”

“Is that what she’s feeling?”

“So tired and so cold,” she whispered, rambling on.

“Ask her what she wants.”

“I can’t feel any light, anything warm. It’s all been dragged out of me.”

He walked to Rebecca, but she wasn’t looking at him, nor that spot where he believed Beth stood. She’d seemed to have been drawn somewhere else. “Becca, listen to me,” he said, grasping her arms. But she still wasn’t looking at him. “You need to remain separate from this.”

“I—” she murmured, but then there was a hesitation before she collapsed into his arms.

Copyright © 2023 by Evelyn Klebert