An Empath in the Woods (part two) – Halloween Month 2025

Well, I am wrapping up Halloween Month here at evelynklebert.com with part two of my short story, “An Empath in the Woods.” This tale was taken from a new collection of short stories, A Murder in the Village and Other Mystical Tales of the Ouachita Mountain, which will be released next month. So, stay tuned. I do hope you’ve enjoyed my pre-Halloween celebration. I will leave the stories posted for a while in case you’ve missed any. I hope you can take a little time to enjoy the holiday, and as always I sincerely wish everyone peace.

Take Care,

Evelyn

An Empath in the Woods (part two)

“Don’t get too close.”

“I don’t want to lose her or It,” she grimaced. “Half the population around here owns a red sports car.” She was meandering down Desoto Road, pretty much the artery of the Village. It was the only road that really connected anything around here, at least one side to the other, the East and West gates.

“Just don’t go so fast, lay back a bit. I don’t want IT to mark your car.”

Her heart clutched painfully at his words. “Why would it mark my car?”

“Bright yellow, Allie, not too inconspicuous,” he nearly growled.

“Sorry, I didn’t know I would be doing surveillance when I purchased it. Why didn’t we take your car?”

“My car is back home,” he answered. She didn’t question, just vaguely wondering if that was snowed in as well.

“I can’t go too slow. Traffic backs up, and the retirees around here aren’t, well, very retiring.”

“A lot of impatience,” he grumbled.

“A lot of dissatisfaction,” she murmured. The truth was, she had nothing to back that up, just a feeling. And then two cars ahead, she noted the red car taking a turn. “That’s one of the apartment complexes here.”

“Yep, makes sense,” he murmured. “Lots of people around, go ahead and turn in, but don’t get too close.”

“I—” She opened her mouth to protest but then didn’t. What could she say? She had no idea what they were doing or why. Allie made a quick turn and then a curvy, well-forested bend right before the rows of condos appeared. She almost said she had no idea where the It had gone when she noticed the red car had indeed parked on a row that faced the descent down to the lake. And then, rather quickly, the door opened, and the blond stepped outside. Just the sight of her ran a quick chill of fear down her spine.

He put his hand on her. “Park somewhere as though you live here.” Frowning, she pulled her car directly in front of one of the side rows of condos, then turned off the engine.

Her chest hurt, and her breathing felt strangely labored. “What now?”

“Just wait.” His hand was still on hers, but she didn’t push it away. The contact of this, yes, total stranger, felt strangely calming amid this bizarreness. Her eyes lifted again as she saw the woman standing beside her car, seeming as though she was looking for something. “It feels us,” he murmured.

“I don’t understand.”

“Just be still and calm,” he whispered. She bent her head down and tried to center herself, mentally erecting barriers as Dr. Crispin had taught her. “That’s good,” he said softly. And then she glanced up to see the tall blond unlocking the door on the unit on the end and going inside. As the door closed behind her, he said softly. “It’s all right. I’ve marked her.”

“You’ve marked her? What does that mean?” It was closing in, too much, too much external stimuli.

“It means when it’s time. It will be easy to find her again.”

Breathing deeply while trying to get hold, she looked over at him as though he’d lost his mind. “Time for what exactly?”

“Time to send It on its way,” he said grimly.

*

She’d thought to tell him to get the hell out of her car, but she didn’t. He suggested they go back to her house to talk. “It’s my experience that when you say you want to talk, you don’t do much of it.”

“You’re very hostile, you know,” he said placidly.

“You think? I wonder why that could be?”

But that wasn’t all that was going on. She tried hard to focus on driving, driving, and not driving off the road.

“What do they feel like, these attacks?”

“I don’t know. I guess like someone else would think of a panic attack.”

Dr. Crispin had looked down at her, tilting her head with her dark glasses in such a way that reminded her of her second-grade teacher, Miss Spell. And she was a pistol. “You’re not like anyone else, Allison. And you shouldn’t keep trying to be so.”

“I thought that was why I was here.”

“Now describe them to me.”

It seemed to start with the breathing, quick, panicked breaths, and then that vice-like pressure in her chest. She was thoroughly checked out by a cardiologist, and, of course, the prognosis was nothing physical. It must be emotional, and her favorite, probably stress. Yes, yes, there was stress in being the way she was.

He’d put his hand on her again, pulling her out of the cage of her mind. “All right?”

“Not feeling well,” she muttered.

“Pull over, I’ll drive.”

That probably wasn’t a good idea. She didn’t know if he had a license. She didn’t know who or what he was. But her hands gripping the wheel were starting to tremble. So, crashing was indeed becoming a relevant possibility. “Maybe,” she said.

He hadn’t moved his hand from hers. Strange, but stranger yet that she hadn’t asked him to.

“It feels like fear.”

“Fear?” She’d repeated. And she wondered if a good chunk of your training at psychiatry school was just learning to echo your patients in order to eat up time.

“Yes, fear like a blanket of it covering you, a living blanket covering, then suffocating you.”

She’d turned off onto a road, then pulled to the side, turning off the jeep. She didn’t speak, didn’t move, just concentrated on getting air because now that fear had exploded out of control exponentially. Her vision was blotching with great black spots swirling around. “That thing drained your energy a great deal.”

His hand tightened over hers. “I just need, just a minute,” she managed to get out. Speaking was definitely a challenge when you were having trouble breathing.

“Close your eyes,” he said calmly.

“Look—”

“Do it,” he said firmly.

Without many options, she did, leaning back on the headrest. Colors, so many colors everywhere, and that fear, ugly fear, swallowing her up.

“How long have you had these attacks?” Dr. Crispin had asked.

“Always, always, and never predictable.”

“You know, you feel so much, Allison, from other people. It’s not surprising your system just rebels against it all sometimes.”

“Try to relax,” he said. “Don’t force the breathing. It will straighten out.”

How did he know? She stopped herself. How did he know so many things? She remembered him saying something about things being more permeable there, but that was somewhere else. Not here. “Try to let your mind quiet, not so much thinking.”

“I can’t help that,” she whispered. So strange, she felt so sleepy all of a sudden, overwhelming, like she could barely keep her eyes open. And then he moved his hand away and got out of the jeep, coming around to her side and opening her door.

“Come on, you need to rest,” he said. She opened her eyes, thinking about refusing, thinking about resisting, but the truth was she didn’t have it in her. Not at all.

*

He was making a pot of coffee, Ryland Gray that was, in her house. And she noted distractedly that she was drinking a lot of coffee around him.

“What’s a shell?” She called out in the direction of the galley kitchen.

“You should be resting,” he called back. It was kind of gruff, like he was used to people following his orders.

“I want to understand what’s going on.” She snapped back a little too hotly. What was it about this man’s demeanor that seemed to aggravate her so? Besides all the strangeness surrounding him, and there was plenty of that to go around — plenty, plenty.

He rounded the wall separating the den from the kitchen and strode up to where she was reclining on the sofa. “You really don’t like to listen, do you?”

“Not to strangers, generally.”

“I thought we’d spent enough time lately not to quite be strangers.”

She straightened up a bit, feeling generally vulnerable just lying here like this. “I know next to nothing about you. Except your name is Ryland Gray and you’re some sort of hunter.”

“Tracker,” he said flatly.

“Oh well, that clears it up. Let’s be besties.”

That frown, that strange, curious frown he had, like he was looking at a disobedient child. “You’re too tired to soak anything in right now, Allie Beckett.”

“Tired?”

“Drained.”

Her turn to frown. “Drained, yeah, you mentioned something about that.”

He nodded slowly, looking at her oddly like he was surveying a chunk of farmland. “It drained your energy, pretty thoroughly.”

She crossed her arms in front of her. “And you know that, how exactly?”

“Your aura, energy aura, is diminished. And there’s quite a bit of yellow mixed in with everything.”

“Yellow?” she repeated under her breath. “And that’s about as clear as mud. So, what, you can see all this looking at me?”

“Yeah, you could too if you had a bit more discipline.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve spent too much time treating the symptoms of your gift instead of working to understand it. You must let it run free enough so you can direct it to work for you.”

Let it run free, indeed. He must be out of his mind. All that would do would let everything swallow her whole. Ridiculous. And then suddenly there was drowsiness, so maybe she would rest. One piece of advice that was actually useful.

*

“What does it feel like?”

“Being suffocated by fear.”

“It’s not your fear, you know.”

“I know it in my mind but knowing it and feeling it are two different things.”

Her eyes opened slowly, adjusting and noting the ceiling fan casually spinning over the queen-sized bed. And then it slowly sank in. She didn’t have a queen-sized bed. Hers was a double. She closed them again. She must be dreaming now.

“Not exactly.” The voice came from the direction of the doorway that she’d noted just a few seconds before, on her last attempt at surfacing.

“This is your room,” she murmured without even opening her eyes.

“Yes, from yesterday when you were at my house.”

Without really wanting to, she allowed her eyes to flicker open again. There was a lot of light in here, streaming in from a sliding glass door on one wall of the room, leading out, well, somewhere.

“There’s a porch out there and then a walkway down to a lake.”

“Well, that sounds lovely,” she mumbled, “but I don’t remember this room from yesterday.”

He’d dragged over a straight-back chair from behind a small pine-colored desk. Sitting beside the bed, he looked at her with concern. “I think there’s much you don’t remember from yesterday.”

“So, you’re saying this is a memory.”

“An elaboration.”

“A what?”

“It’s complicated.”

“No shit,” she couldn’t help it. These sharp comments just sort of flew out of her mouth. “Sorry,” she murmured.

“As I mentioned before, things are more permeable here. Time isn’t what you think it is, Allie.”

She drew in a deep breath. And strangely, she felt better, lighter than she had at her house.

“That’s why I tapped in here.”

“Your words, Ryland, they have no meaning for me, permeable, tapped in. That doesn’t correlate to what I know. It’s nonsense.”

He was looking at her oddly but not frowning. Was this progress? “When I say permeable, it means thoughts, your thoughts, are not as separate as where you live. Thoughts are energy forms, and energy here travels without as many impediments.”

She sighed, “So, in a practical sense—”

“In a practical sense, it’s easier to send energy, not as easy to steal it, and thoughts that you think are in your head are quite accessible.”

“Oh,” it felt like a fluttering in her chest.

“You’re receiving energy, Allie.”

“From you?”

“Some, and others. I put out a call for help. The thing, it hurt you.”

She looked at him dubiously. “How could it do that? It didn’t even touch me.”

“It didn’t need to. It was in proximity, very strong, built to be a parasite.”

She straightened up on the pillows just a smidge. It was so comfortable here on this lovely bed with some kind of woven afghan spread over her. She could just drift off, so peaceful. “You called it a shell.”

And there it was, the frown. “I didn’t want to get into all this now.”

“Might as well, Ry, do you mind if I call you Ry?”

“Yes.” He said rather stoically.

“Okay then, Ryland, tell me about this shell.”

“To tell you about that, I’d have to first tell you how people lose their spirits.”

*

A screen porch, rustic, odd, a screen porch just outside of his bedroom, or at least she thought it was his bedroom.

“Yes,” he murmured from somewhere as of yet unseen.

Allie sipped the warm mug of mint tea that at some point had been placed in her hands. The crocheted white afghan that had not long ago been warming her on his bed was now neatly tucked around her, and she was sitting in a rocking chair watching the snow coming down outside. “These transitions are confounding,” she muttered.

“You’ll get used to it,” he said, sitting down in a similar chair right next to hers.

“Will I?” she asked.

“If you decide to spend any time in this place. Time moves differently, more connected to thought.”

“So, I’m to gather that all of this took place a day ago.”

“You’re thinking too linear, Allie. It’s difficult to understand unless you let go of some of your constructs.”

“Gibberish again,” she murmured. “Fine, you said something about people losing their spirits, or at least that is the last thing I remember.”

“Okay, let’s see. That is a spiritual matter.”

“Clearly.”

He smiled. She had no idea what had made him smile. “You’re mind, your thoughts. They’re muddled but quick, and I like the way they somersault about.”

She took in a deep breath, trying desperately to convert this conversation into something she could work with. “Okay, so the spirit thing.”

“Yes, well, in a nutshell, we all have a spirit.”

She waited. Was she really going to drag everything out of him? “And?”

“And the spirit incarnates wherever it is with a plan, or rather, a path charted to learn from.”

“What sort of path?”

“Things, events, relationships, illnesses, teachers along the way, ups, downs, all of it patterned for its evolution.”

She chewed on this for a moment, a rather huge morsel to take in. “So, what, you’re saying everyone has one of these paths?”

“Mostly, yes, but then there is free will.”

Huge sip of mint tea that nearly scorched her mouth. “Free will?” she asked, because again, no elaboration.

“Yes, essentially choice. We all have a choice, or how could we evolve?”

Outside Ryland Gray’s screen porch, the snow had stopped falling, and she just quietly looked at the blankets of white covering the forest around them. “So, what exactly does that have to do with—”

“With the thing you encountered in the grocery?”

“Yes, I guess,” she murmured, feeling strangely as though threads were coming together.

“Well, let’s say you were a teacher, a math teacher maybe, and your student completely ignored your lessons. And after a while, wouldn’t even open their textbook, wouldn’t even try to do a math problem, then stopped showing up to school.”

Confounded a bit at the real-world analogy. “I’d be pissed.”

“Yeah, you would, but you’d also begin feeling like you were wasting your time.”

“I suppose. But other than report his butt, I’m not sure how I could force them to learn.”

“Yes, well, a person, such as you, is composed of a spirit, a soul, and a body. If the soul and the body go too rogue for too long, the spirit gives up and just leaves.”

“Leaves the soul and the body?”

“The body is left, the soul torn asunder, sort of ripped so to speak, not really wholly functional.”

She straightened up, profoundly feeling disturbed by these images. “And if that happens, what happens to the person who’s left?”

“They wander, aimlessly, a shadow of their former selves, until it is their time to die. And then their body dies and they with it.”

“And that’s it? That sounds terrible.”

“It is. It is in extreme cases but does happen. But then, those it happens to, those living without that divine spark within, become a cavern.”

“A shell,” she whispered.

And then he put his hand over hers. “Yes, exactly. Allie, like a shell at the beach that has been abandoned by its living inhabitant, until something else crawls inside it and takes over.”

Something else crawls inside it and takes over. His words sent chills throughout her as the visage of that zombie-like man in the grocery lashed treacherously across her mind. Panicked, she had to get out, away from here. Following a sudden impulse, she closed her eyes and concentrated intently on her own bedroom. Breathing deeply, when she opened them again, she was miraculously lying in her own bed, but this time Ryland Gray was standing in the doorway.

“That’s good, Allie. You’re beginning to get the hang of things. Now it’s time to get down to business.”

*

Like a shell at the beach that has been abandoned by its living inhabitant, until something else crawls inside it and takes over.

Just turning over the words in her mind made a chill run down her spine. So, she didn’t ask the obvious question.

“What has crawled inside?”

“That’s not fair. I didn’t ask you that. We’re on my turf now, and you’re not supposed to be able to read my mind here.”

Ryland Gray didn’t frown, not exactly — just kind of looked at her like he was indeed reading her mind and less interested in what words were coming out of her mouth. “Yep, well, the more time I spend with you, the more accessible I find you.”

She stared back at him, “Great, so are we done with all this house-hopping business?”

“Sure,” he said, making himself comfortable on her dark blue and beige plaid couch.

“Good, it’s disorienting.” She snapped back, now sitting in her grandmother’s rocking chair that she had dragged around from rental to rental for probably too many years.

“You know, you were the one doing the hopping around for the last several.”

“I can’t do that,” she muttered.

“You’d be surprised what you can do, Allie Beckett.”

“You said we needed to get down to business. What does that mean exactly? You’re not going to murder someone, are you?”

“I guess that depends on what you mean by murder.”

“Can I get a straight answer out of you, Ryland?”

He shrugged. “Sure, if that’s what you want.” Silence again, she wanted to kick him right in his plaid shirt, sometimes right out of her house. “You don’t like plaid? But your couch is plaid.”

“Stop it. And I used to like it more than I do now.”

Then he stood up and moved right in front of her. And she had to admit, with him sort of standing over her like that and glowering, or maybe he wasn’t glowering, maybe this was just stoic, unruffled Ryland Gray. In any case, he wasn’t really bad looking, sort of sexy in a lumberjack kind of way. “This thing that has crawled in that girl’s spiritless shell is quite dangerous, quite old, and doesn’t belong on this plane.”

“Plane? What does that mean exactly, dimension? Is that what we’re doing, some kind of dimension hopping? Your house, where time is different, where things are more permeable, where it’s snowing? Are you telling me that’s another dimension?”

“It’s a bit of a simplistic explanation.”

“Well, maybe I’m a simplistic kind of girl.”

“I rather doubt that Allie Beckett.” She thought she detected the slightest sparkle in his dark eyes, but maybe again that was just wishful thinking.

And then she sighed, sighed heavily, sighed audibly in a way that seemed to come from her very soul. “What do you want from me, Ryland Gray. I mean, really, what do you want?”

“I want to finish this job, and I need your help.”

“Job? This is actually some kind of job?”

“I was hired to find this thing and send it on its merry way.”

“Who the hell would hire you to do that?”

“No one from around here,” he said flatly. “But everything’s connected, and its presence is having reverberations everywhere.”

She frowned. “Could I get you some dry ice so you could be a bit more vague?”

There was a hesitation as she realized how poorly that remark had landed. “Dry ice?” A dark, heavy eyebrow shot up.

“Whatever! Look, you know where it is. You marked it. What do you need me for?”

“You have skills, Allie. You may not realize it, but you do. Why don’t we take a ride in your Jeep?”

“A ride? Where?”

“To check out where that thing lives.”

*

They were driving silently down Desota Blvd. again, and Ryland Gray sincerely wished there was more time, more time to prepare the woman next to him for all the changes happening in her life, more time to prepare her for what was to come in the future.

*

“What are you doing?”

His younger sister pulled her long ash-blond hair up into a disheveled ponytail, then unzipped her traveling bag. “I’m leaving.”

“Leaving? Permanently?”

“Not sure,” she answered, shoving a pile of t-shirts into the large duffel bag on her bed.

“Allegra, stop for a minute.”

She did, looking at him strangely, but the way she usually did, as though she was peering. “I had a dream last night. It’s time for me to move on.”

It was not news to him that her dreams were not ordinary, but instead usually prophetic in some way. “Why? I need a diviner. I can’t do this alone.”

She nodded, “Well, other things are calling me now, and that girl will be here soon.”

Now he frowned. His sister was indeed a very talented seer. The divining thing was a bit of a sideline for her. “That girl?”

“Yes, dear brother, the one who will help you. She’ll be much better at it than I am. And you two, well, you won’t want me around when things get going.”

“Allegra, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure, you do, Ryland, you just don’t want things to change. But whether you want it or not, change is coming.” And then she laughed softly, “And from what I saw, she’ll be a handful. But she’s definitely the one.”

“The one?”

“The one for you, Ryland.”

*

He was driving this time, and the woman beside him had fallen silent. He wanted to reassure her, but language skills had never been his strong suit. He could send energy, was very, very good at hitting his target with that, but at present, that wasn’t Allie Beckett’s problem. Her problem was inflexibility. As Allegra had said, “Whether you want it or not, change is coming.” That was the only constant in life.

“It’s not so bad.”

“What?” she said a little sharply.

“My life, the way I live. There’s always something new happening.”

“I don’t like new. I like things to be predictable.”

“Hmm,” he considered. “So, do you really like it that way, or do you think you need it that way?”

Her arms were crossed in front of her protectively, and she was a bit slumped in the seat, reminding him very much of a stubborn child. “Is there a difference?”

“Well, are you happy, Allie Beckett?”

There was silence, silence he could feel. Because, well, because she’d become much easier for him to see lately. He could see her aura, how the colors would fluctuate when she was upset. He could see images that flew through her mind at lightning speed, because she did have a quick and active mind. And he could see when his thoughts reached her, and she had no idea what to do with that. Like right now, he left her befuddled and confused. And to be honest, he kind of liked that.

“I don’t know, are you happy, Ryland Gray?”

He smiled, not so very surprised that she’d turned this around on him. So out of respect for who she was, he honestly thought about it. Lately, he’d felt content, content in his work, feeling as though he was contributing, being of service to the greater pool of humanity. But really happy? That was a consideration. Right now, right in this moment, driving down this long road with this particular woman at his side, filled with her inner conflicts, contradictions, the way she lashed out, the way she succumbed in her quieter moments. And he didn’t really understand why someone would want a banana-yellow Jeep, but he appreciated the fact that she did. Yeah, right now, for reasons other than those myriad ones he’d just articulated in his mind, he was kind of happy.

“Yeah, Allie, I’m happy.”

“You don’t look happy,” she smirked.

“Yep,” he said, turning the Jeep into the apartment complex. “That’s my resting face.”

As they pulled into the parking lot and he turned off the car, he reflected.

“She’s the one, you know,” Allegra had said. “But you won’t have an easy time of it.”

“I’ve never expected an easy time.”

Then, she patted his shoulder. “That’s what I like about you, Ryland. You always persevere.”

“So, how do we deal with this thing?” she asked, straightening up in the seat and peering forward toward the thing’s apartment.

“Well, Allie,” he said a bit methodically. “I have a plan, but it will take some trust on your part.”

“Trust, huh?”

“Yep, we’re going to have to travel to another place to get at this thing,” he said slowly.

“Another place?”

“One close, just a few fractions away, I think, but it won’t see us coming.”

She frowned, “Gibberish again, but okay, so then we’ll kill it?”

“I don’t think it can be killed, but if we’re lucky, maybe we can coax it to evolve.”

“Evolve?” she repeated, looking a bit confused.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “That’s not a small thing, and it’s what it’s all about.”

It took a moment, but then, a slight smile flickered across her lips. She liked him. She really did. He could feel it. And that was no small thing. “What do we do?” she asked.

“Take my hand, Allie Beckett. Then I’ll show you.” It did take a second, but then she did.

Copyright © 2025 by Evelyn Klebert

Halloween MonthKODAK Digital Still Camera

Coming Soon!!

A Murder in the Village and Other Mystical Tales of the Ouachita Mountains

At the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains, into their ancient heart, and even perhaps into nearby unexplored dimensions, slip into a series of supernatural short stories. Take a mystical diversion that could very well land you into a realm at the least unexpected and at the most horrifying. But what is clear is that no one, ever, will emerge as they were before.