What Eye See
By
Matt A Byron
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
About Matt A Byron
Other books by Matt A Byron
Connect with Matt A Byron
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, government agencies, events, or locales are purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 Matt Byron
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be stored in a database or retrieval system, or transmitted in any form without the prior, written consent of the author. For more information on obtaining permission for use of this material, please visit mattbyron.net.
ISBN – 10: 1491262834
ISBN – 13: 978-1491262832
To my sons Nick and Evan for all your love and support. I love you with all my heart.
Chapter One
The sun peeked through the drapes, and she pulled the blanket over her head. She heard the drapes being pulled back.
Feeling the brightness of the sun beating on the other side of her blanket, she held the edge of it just over her eyes to shield the direct beam but enough to see that the room had gotten brighter.
“I hope the world has been taken over by aliens, and that’s why you are waking me up,” she shouted from under the blanket.
“Sis, come on you gotta get up. Remember, we have that appointment today.”
She moaned. She was hoping the appointment was only a dream. She had no desire of talking to anyone or giving any interviews, but that is what this appointment was an interview. She knew she had a gift or a curse or something that other people just weren’t aware of. She hated talking about it because most people looked at her as if she was crazy or delusional while others didn’t understand anything except that she could see the dead and they all wanted to know if their Uncle Walter or Aunt Janice were still hanging around.
Of course, her gift as it were, was nothing like that. She could see the dead, but they didn’t talk nor could they interact with her. She believed that the dead didn’t have the ability to use cognitive reasoning since that was a trait associated with the brain. Spirits had no brain, therefore, had no ability to think. Least this was her logic and to this point, she hasn’t had any experiences to prove differently.
She pulled the blankets lower and saw her Sister Melissa standing at the foot of the bed, looking perky, awake and dressed for the day.
Melissa was 27 years old, three years her senior. Their parents have killed in a traffic accident over nine years ago and since then it had only been the two of them. They had inherited their parent’s estate which wasn’t much but enough to get by. Melissa’s economics teacher at the time had helped her invest some money, and now the two of them were comfortable financially but not what one would consider wealthy.
Melissa worked as a freelance photographer. She loved the independence it gave her and felt the camera was an extension of herself. Melissa was the outgoing type, loved to eat in crowded restaurants, was always interested in casual conversation and felt comfortable in any situation.
Emery Hallindale, by contrast, was the polar opposite. Emery worked from home on website optimization which she was really good at it. She had written a program that did the work for her; accepted payments for new customers and analyzed websites to better optimize them for search engine ranking. All she would have to do was approve orders, finalize statements, and ensure her program was running smooth which gave her the flexibility to explore other endeavors.
Emery could have worked for any company as a programmer or not at all since she had the means to fall back on but she liked the challenge computers presented. She worked from home because she felt uncomfortable around people. She didn’t socialize much and had very few friends because she didn’t like to deal with people's’ emotional hang-ups as she called it.
Where her sister would embrace the occasional random conversation with a complete stranger while they were out, Emery stared at the floor, felt her palms getting sweaty and always looked for the first exit and planned her escape.
The differences didn’t stop with social behavior. Melissa had wavy blond hair which she wore to her shoulders; Emery had straight black hair that hung down to the middle of her back, but she always preferred it back in a ponytail. Melissa wore dresses and skirts loved yellow and white and green; Emery wore jeans in basic colors of black, gray, blue and occasionally shorts and tee shirts or sweatshirts. On hot days, she wore tank tops with imprinted designs. She rarely wore dresses and hated skirts.
Emery also spent a lot of her time watching the spirits around her, wondering why they didn’t talk to her and tried to figure why she would see them when no one else could.
Despite their differences, they were inseparable, always going to different places together, finishing each other’s sentences and both had an appreciation for Mathew McConaughey. Emery felt at peace and comfortable with Melissa, whatever discomfort she had in restaurants and or in large crowds was quickly dissolved if Melissa was with her.
Emery slid out of bed and stepped past Melissa on her way to the shower.
“I hate you, sis.”
“Hey, somebody better washes the grumpiness off of them. We should leave in about an hour,” Melissa called back to her.
Emery turned on the shower, adjusting the water, so the mirror began to steam up. She loved the water hot enough to sting her skin.
As she lathered up, she thought about the interview. She owed the world nothing and she was tired of seeing the same shocked reaction that people always gave her when they first learned of her ability. Why should she do this interview anyways? Melissa told her it would help to show the world that there are things after death, that there is hope. No matter how much the naysayers’ call her a fraud or a nut cake, there were far more people that believed in her. The countless emails were proof enough. Emery never took people's request for readings or séances. She was neither psychic nor pretended to be, she just saw what other people couldn’t.
Living in a small town in northern California, people were aware of her. She wasn’t a celebrity by any standard, and most people were a little afraid of her when they met her. She had a couple of friends she could turn to, but the only one she truly confided in was Melissa.
Freshly showered and dressed, Emery made her way downstairs where Melissa stood at the counter pouring a cup of coffee. She turned around when she heard Emery’s arrival and a look of disappointment crept over her face.
“M,” that was a nickname Melissa had given her when they were kids, “we are doing an interview today to possibly open people’s views on the whole spirit thing and you are dressed like the Goth chick from hell. The Black Sabbath shirt and Doc Martin’s can stay home. Please M, just one day.”
“Fine, just wanted to be comfortable. I’ll change, but I am not wearing anything yellow.”
“You don’t own anything yellow. Grab the blue sweater in my closet, and I have a pair of white jeans you can wear too.”
Emery went upstairs and changed. She was not a fan of white, but when she looked at herself in the mirror, she had to admit that white didn’t look that bad on her. She towel dried her hair, brushed it out before tying it back into a ponytail. After brushing her teeth, a morning pee, and tossing the damp towel in the hamper, she was ready.
They left the house but decided to walk. The appointment was only eight blocks away, a
nd they still had some time left before the interview. The sun was out, the air was cool, and it was a beautiful spring day.
They walked down the street with Melissa’s left arm looped into Emery’s right. Emery’s lack of trust in people was overshadowed by the immense love and devotion she had for her sister.
When their parents were killed, it was Melissa that kept her sane and protected her. She never took the time to grieve but tried her best to help Emery after the accident. As Melissa told her, it was the fact that they were together that got them through that dark period.
As they walked, Emery saw a woman standing by a tree. The woman’s skin was gray, the clothes seemed tattered, and her eyes were empty. She wasn’t looking for anything in particular, and people walking past her were oblivious to her presence because she was dead.
A spirit left behind perhaps mulling about as if she were part of the living world. The spirit seemed oblivious of her or anyone else for that matter, and she just stood there looking around with no particular point of interest in mind.
Melissa noticed Emery was focused on something as they both stopped. She didn’t see what her sister saw.
“I wonder why you see them, and I don’t. And what’s the point if you can’t communicate with them or help them. It seems creepy.”
Emery looked away from the lost spirit and turned to her sister.
“I don’t know. I have had this for as long as I can remember. Why do I see certain spirits and not others? I never saw mom or dad. I don’t get what this is.”
“Maybe it’s like a radio to where you need to angle the antenna a certain way to get better reception.”
They laughed.
“Like I only see part of it, and the audio is not in tune. I don’t know. There definitely seems like there should be more to it.”
They walked a couple more blocks. The appointment was with a television news producer. She had never done a television interview before. The only interviews she had done, which were only two, were for magazines where the articles that were published had a rather negative pointed narrative.
This at least, as Melissa told her, would give her a chance to share the experience from her perspective without worry that someone else would be shaping her words as they saw fit.
Emery saw a small convenience store and tugged Melissa’s arm to direct her towards the door.
“Mel, I need some gum and maybe an antacid,” Emery chuckled.
“You don’t need an antacid you nut ball, but some gum probably wouldn’t be a bad idea,” she poked her sister’s arm.
They walked into the small store as a bell rang announcing their arrival to the clerk behind the counter. The store was small with four aisles to their left and the front counter to their right. A young curly haired kid with larger than face glasses sat behind the counter and briefly looked up at them before returning his attention to a comic book he clutched in his hands.
The antacid was in the first aisle. Scooping up the small box Emery moved to the third aisle as the second one was filled with cleaning aides, batteries, and things, not of the chewing variety. Melissa stood by the glass cases along the back wall where all the beverages were contained.
Emery knelt down looking at the gum on the bottom shelves. She rarely chewed gum, but it sometimes helped her in uncomfortable situations. She heard the bell ring announcing another customer as she was deciding between spearmint and peppermint. She heard someone’s voice begin to shout at the front of the store when something grabbed her from behind.
She felt a scream starting to rise in her throat as something quickly covered her mouth. Melissa leaned over her left shoulder and held one finger over her lips. Melissa moved her hand away from Emery’s mouth and whispered the word “GUN” while pointing to the front of the store.
She followed Melissa’s lead and scooted towards the end of the aisle furthest away from the front of the store. Safely out of the aisle and sight of the front, knees on the linoleum floor, she watched her sister pull out her cell phone.
Her heart was racing, and she couldn’t stop shaking. She looked up at her sister, tears in her eyes when she heard a man shout from the front.
“Open the damn drawer, you shit!”
The shouting lasted a few seconds maybe, but it seemed like an eternity. She heard Melissa on the phone saying something about a robbery. Things seemed to go by slowly; then she saw a boy standing by the cooler where the soda was kept. The boy had brown hair, brown shorts, and a dirty red t-shirt. His eyes were what struck her as they stared right at her; a look of profound sadness consumed his face. Streaks of tears ran down his cheeks. He looked no older than ten. He shook his head and then disappeared behind the first aisle as he headed toward the front.
She lunged forward and felt herself being pulled back as a small yelp escaped her throat. They both stopped. The voice that had been bantering on in the front had stopped. They looked at each other and moved slowly to the end of the fourth aisle, which was the farthest corner of the store.
“Come out here damn you!”
Was he talking to them? He must be. Something crashed against the cooler at the end of the second aisle, a pack of batteries landed on the floor after bouncing off the glass door.
Thoughts of the boy hung in the back of her mind, but something about him seemed different, like a dream. Maybe the man was talking to the boy, perhaps he brought him along.
“Open the drawer now!” then “Come out here damn you!”
She felt a tug on the back of her shirt and saw that Melissa was pointing to the other side of the aisle towards the back door.
“There’s an exit door right there,” she whispered.
She looked back over her shoulder when she heard a loud deafening boom. Shards of glass exploded from the second to last cooler nearest her, sprinkling them with debris.
Staring at the cooler door that housed the milk, glass and white liquid spread all over the floor. Melissa tugged at her harder, and she pushed herself off the floor. They stopped at the front of the aisle with the exit door just ten feet away to their left. Emery peeked around the corner to her right and saw a barrel of the gun two aisles away pointed at the counter.
“Give it to me now!”
A small bag was thrown over the counter and landed on the ground.
“Thank you.”
Fire erupted from the barrel of the gun followed by smoke, the loud blast shook the walls, and she heard a scream that was cut short. The blast was followed by a hard thump which was probably the clerk hitting the floor, she thought.
Melissa grabbed her, and they stumbled to the door. Melissa pushed at the door, turned the handle but it did not budge. She felt a heavy weight in her throat, a sudden gloominess overcame her as she turned around to see the barrel of the shotgun pointed at her not more than five feet away.
The brown eyes that peered over the barrel of the gun lacked life, not in the spirit sense; this man was definitely part of the living world, but his eyes revealed nothing but death. Moments passed, and Melissa took to her side pushing her back gently. It wasn’t until she tried to hold her sister back that she caught sight of the boy at the front of the store. He was crying.
She felt tightness in her throat. Her sister was saying something to the gunman, but nothing seemed real except the boy. He just stood there, tears down his face shaking his head slowly. The man obviously noticed that Emery wasn’t looking at him and barked at her.
“What’re you looking at?”
“The cops will be here any moment now, just leave us alone,” Melissa shouted.
Still transfixed on the boy, he took a step towards them. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move. She tried to speak; only a small grunt like sound escaped her throat. Looking back at the man as he waved his gun at her, she wasn’t aware that Melissa now stood completely in front of her.
Sirens were approaching but still seemed too far away. The man, sweat beading along his forehead, his eyes narrowed as he
pulled the trigger.
Click. Click.
The man stepped away from them, the boy walked toward them only a few feet away. The man lowered the shotgun, tears leaked from her eyes. Melissa was yelling something, and she felt herself being pushed towards the door. The boy stopped, the man stopped, Melissa turned around to face her, her eyes were wide open dancing from her to the door behind her.
Sounds seemed muffled; her legs felt like lead. Melissa pushed her towards the door once more, and she saw the man raise his left hand, a silvery glint caught her eye.
“Run M, run.”
She felt the door at her back, she reached behind her and nearly fell through the door as it pushed open. The boy held his arm up, with one finger pointing towards her. Her sister was a few feet from her moving closer, the man pointing something large at them, another gun she wasn’t sure.
She heard the boom, saw the smoke and then another boom and her sister screamed. A searing pain ripped through her as she felt herself being knocked back. Her head hit something hard, she couldn’t breathe, and there was bright light everywhere. Edges of Darkness crept in like rain clouds moving in front of the sun. Her head rolled left, darkness coming faster still, but her eyes were open. Screams voices coming fast echoed in her head. She couldn’t see anything, darkness everywhere, voices now fading, fading, darkness, silence.
Chapter Two