Searching Souls

By S. A. Cahill

In the shadows of her bedroom, late at night, Sophia, a high school student, witnesses an inexplicable phenomenon—the ghostly appearance of Ethan, a fellow student who is very much alive. The lines between the corporeal and the supernatural blur as Sophia encounters Ethan both in flesh and in spectral form within the confines of their school.

Haunted by uncertainty, Sophia grapples with questions that torment her. Does Ethan remember their ethereal encounters, or is he oblivious to their shared otherworldly connection? Is Ethan a mere figment of her imagination, a manifestation of an underlying brain disorder, a symptom of schizophrenia, or perhaps the result of overwhelming stress?

As Sophia endeavors to keep her unsettling secret, her parents grow increasingly concerned, and the prying eyes of local self-proclaimed paranormal experts converge upon her. Worst of all, her desperate search inadvertently captures the attention of an enigmatic entity—one that led the misguided paranormal investigators astray.

Caught in a whirlwind of uncertainty and fear, Sophia must navigate the treacherous terrain of her own mind and the uncharted waters of the supernatural. Her quest is twofold: to unravel the cryptic enigma surrounding Ethan's spectral presence and to maintain the appearance of normalcy in the eyes of her parents, friends, and the very real Ethan she encounters daily at school.

The web of mystery tightens as Sophia grapples with a crucial decision: can she trust the assurances from Ethan that the apparition and the living boy are one and the same?

"Searching Souls" is a riveting exploration of the human psyche and the boundary between reality and the unexplained, where the quest for truth could lead to unimaginable consequences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350925371

Book preview

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© 2023 S. A. Cahill

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Print ISBN: 979-8-35092-536-4

eBook ISBN: 979-8-35092-537-1

With love and thanks to God, my husband, my daughters and their families, my sister and her family, and even the ones who don’t want to be on this list because we love you and never forget about you. In memory of Gloria, Tommy, Sr., Jimmy, Jody, and Jack. Especially Jimmy, I miss you.

Contents

Part One: We Sort of Meet

Chapter One: Who is This?

Chapter Two: Is He Really Here?

Part Two: The Anniversary

Chapter Three: Did Our Dog Hear the Visitor?

Chapter Four: Realizing It’s the Anniversary We Don’t Celebrate

Chapter Five: Staying Hidden in the Hall

Chapter Six: Ruining Tamales

Part Three: Ethan Doesn’t Believe He’s a Brain Tumor

Chapter Seven: Bumping Past Ethan at Breakfast

Chapter Eight: Ethan Eats My Lunch

Chapter Nine: The Surprise in the Books

Chapter Ten: My Mom Thinks Something’s Wrong with Me Too

Chapter Eleven: Talking and Tears

Chapter Twelve: Hiding a Boy in My Room, Sort Of

Part Four: Invitation to Wizard School

Chapter Thirteen: Joining the Search and Rescue Club Instead

Chapter Fourteen: The Fun Part of the Shopping Trip

Chapter Fifteen: A Chance at a Different Case of Books

Chapter Sixteen: Classes and Vibrations

Chapter Seventeen: They Watch Us

Part Five: No Storm Warning

Chapter Eighteen: First Meeting

Chapter Nineteen: Trees that Grow Together and More Vibes

Chapter Twenty: Keeping Eyes on the Path

Chapter Twenty-One: Lightning Strikes

Chapter Twenty-Two: Ethan’s Locked Out

Chapter Twenty-Three: Trying to Figure Out What Ethan Feels

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Search and Rescue Club Gets Rescued

Part Six: Bad Publicity

Chapter Twenty-Five: Being in Shock Because of Being Shocked

Chapter Twenty-Six: How Do You Tell a Story No One Will Believe?

Chapter Twenty-Seven: How Do You Help When You Can Only Wait?

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Lost in Sleepiness, Pain, and Worry

Chapter Twenty-Nine: My Mom and Ethan’s Grandmother

Chapter Thirty: Another New Plan Then Another Complication

Chapter Thirty-One: The Ambrose Plan for Us

Part Seven: Getting Away

Chapter Thirty-Two: Pooka Leaves

Chapter Thirty-Three: Yoohoo, A Call to Ignore

Part Eight: What is Ethan?

Chapter Thirty-Four: Who is Investigating Who?

Chapter Thirty-Five: Sometimes You Just Know

Part Nine: Trying to Follow Pooka

Chapter Thirty-Six: Trying to Reach a Comatose Friend

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Static Increase

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Ethan is Called

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Two People in Comas Pray Together

Part Ten: Forgot About Sunday

Chapter Forty: Finding Sanctuary

Chapter Forty-One: The People in the Chapel

Chapter Forty-Two Everyone in the Chapel

Chapter Forty-Three: Everyone in the Cafeteria

Chapter Forty-Four: Something Odd in Ethan’s Room

Chapter Forty-Five: Squaring Off in Ethan’s Room

Chapter Forty-Six: Telling Mom

Part Eleven: Spiritual Battle

Chapter Forty-Seven The Invisible Fight

Chapter Forty-Eight: Not a Time Out

Part Twelve: Lost but Found

Chapter Forty-Nine: Going Home and Counting Days

Chapter Fifty: Gracia is Lost

Chapter Fifty-One: The Demons Use Divining Rods

Chapter Fifty-Two: Needing to Tell Someone

Chapter Fifty-Three: I Get Lost

Chapter Fifty-Four: I Am Found

Chapter Fifty-Five: And Ethan Finds Ethan

Chapter Fifty-Six: Distance

Chapter Fifty-Seven: Writing to Help

Part One:

We Sort of Meet

Chapter One:

Who is This?

I want you to know that we are never alone. I went through a lot to keep everything I saw during the last few months a secret. After my life settled down, I needed to write it all down to sort it out for myself. I am still worried any one I tell will think I am nuts, but knowing that we don’t have to face the bad parts of life alone has helped me. So, this is the story of how I learned to have faith in the visible and invisible. I hope my story helps you.

Ethan never actually spoke to me until the first time he appeared in my room. He seemed to be glowing with a gentle glimmer from some internal source, just like the stars he was looking at through my window. I was trying to sleep, but something in my room felt different so I opened my eyes, and there he was. After getting over the initial shock of seeing a boy in my room, just a few feet from my bed, looking out of my window, I noticed that he didn’t see me so I was free to stare at him, something I could never do under ordinary circumstances. I felt as if I’d never seen anyone so clearly in my life. I wish I had started writing our story that night, but I didn’t understand that I had to tell our story until now. Only three months later, I’m already having a hard time remembering what it felt like to be so unsure that he was really there that night.

When he appeared, he looked a little more startled than I felt, but just for a second. At first, I could only see his profile then he shifted his head slightly to his left to look at something outside of the window, up in the sky. He still didn’t notice me, but when he tilted his head, it was just enough for me to see his face.

I recognized his rusty hair and his bright blue eyes. It took a lot of effort to stop myself from gasping in surprise. I didn’t want him to hear me and realize I was awake. I remembered that I saw him in church once looking bored and annoyed, with his arms folded, sitting with someone who must have been his grandmother. I thought he was probably a jerk who gets dragged to church. I also remembered seeing him around campus from time to time ever since the first morning of my first day of school.

All of the hallways in the school on that first day were clogged with students. So many of them stopped to catch up with friends, to compare their schedules, or get into their lockers that the flow in the halls were almost at a standstill in some places and it made it feel as if there were too many of them to actually fit in the halls, like a river overflowing its banks. To me, the students in the hallways were a stream of strange faces. I felt as if all of them had grown up in this fairly small community together and I was the only one who was drifting and lost. That first time I saw him at school, was in one of those crowded hallways.

In June, just two months before that first day at my new school, my parents and I had packed up our stuff and our dog to move to Sedona from Phoenix. The three of us had just watched my brother, Wynn, try to live the last year of his life with as much dignity and grace as anyone could with a brain tumor blossoming inside of his head. My brother passed away at the start of my freshman year of high school and his senior year. When my brother died, I felt as if I was almost as separated from the world as he was. My parents seemed to feel the same way as me. A few months after my brother died, a high school principal in Sedona offered my father a teaching job. My dad, my mom, and I agreed a move to a new place might help us to move on. The three of us muddled through the last few months of the school year. The fact that we had to plan the move helped those few months pass more quickly. We moved as soon as we could, at the start of the summer when school let out, so the move to Sedona didn’t really help me move on. I didn’t really meet anyone my age until school started. I meant to get involved in something during the summer to meet people because I guessed it would be hard to meet people as a sophomore transfer, but instead I ended up finding ways to keep myself busy at home almost every day. Each morning, when I was just about to wake up, I still pictured my old room in Phoenix. When I opened my eyes, I was still a little confused when I saw that I was in my new room in Sedona. I half expected to drive up to my old school on the first day of classes even though I had been to the school every day for the two weeks before school started to help my father set up his classroom.

When I saw Ethan, on that first day of school, I was trying to find my way from my locker to my first class. He was at the other end of the hall heading in my general direction. Even at a distance, he stood out among all the strangers in the school. There are only a few students as tall as him, and that rust colored hair stood out in the crowd, but there is something else different about him that just struck me. The hallway was noisy with clanking lockers and excited student chatter. Most of them seemed excited to see their friends. Some were shouting hello to each other from yards away, and others were giving each other hugs. Ethan didn’t tell anyone hello or seem to want to talk to anyone. As he got a little closer to me, I could see his eyes. He looked as if his mind was somewhere else. Yet, he didn’t drift through the crowd like me, or sort of bounce around like most of the other students. He almost glided. It would have been impossible not to notice him. I thought his hair was exactly the same red as Sedona’s mountains, and his eyes were the same clear blue as the Arizona sky. I remember thinking that it was corny to compare his hair and his eyes to the land and the sky. That’s something guys in movies do to flatter women, but he was very striking and there really wasn’t any other way to describe him. I didn’t think I would end up on his radar. I was too new in town. Despite that, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, I felt drawn to the redhead I believed would never notice me, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.

As we walked down the hall and got closer together, I was about to pass by him when the remote look in his eye vanished in a flash. I followed his gaze just in time to see what drew his attention. One guy was pulling the books out of another guy’s locker one at a time and dropping them on the floor. The victim tried to catch the books with one hand and used his other hand to try and stop the bully from pulling the other books out of his locker. Just as the third book was about to hit the floor, Ethan caught it and picked up the other two, then handed them to the bully. They stared at one another until the bully put the books back in the locker and both of them walked away. The victim stood alone, looking grateful and confused. As he walked away, the redhead’s eyes glanced at me for such a short time that I couldn’t even be sure he saw me before those eyes returned to that remote look. The guy I thought was a jerk the first time I saw him was actually kind of heroic. I was impressed and intimidated. Some of the other students rushing down the hall bumped into me, and I realized that I had stopped walking to watch the redhead. I realized that if I didn’t get moving, everyone would think I was a freshman.

Despite his distant attitude, I noticed the redhead every time he passed anywhere near me, but I never asked anyone about him or spoke of him to anyone. I could not forget how he quietly rescued that student by the lockers, but I knew how high school works. A single question about Ethan could have startd a rumor that I had a crush on him. Too many questions could have made everyone say I was his stalker. I was not going to become the subject of teasing just to find out more about him.

I even had someone I could have asked about him, but I was afraid. I was lucky. Just a few minutes after I saw Ethan, Felicidad, a girl in my first class, noticed I was new and looking lost. Felicidad flashed her quick friendly smile and walked over to me. She had brown curly hair that almost seemed to move around like subtle antennae even when she was standing still in front of me. She introduced herself and invited me to have lunch with her and her two friends. I was happy to have somewhere to sit at lunch and I accepted without a second thought. When I had lunch with them, I learned quickly that Felicidad is the kind of person who notices what is going on with everyone around her quickly and acts on what she sees just as quickly. I liked Felicidad and her friends, and they were nice to me, but I didn’t know them well enough to ask about Ethan, so I didn’t.

As the first week of school passed, I quickly fell into a routine of going to classes then hanging out with Felicidad and her friends at lunch. I saw Ethan each morning in the hall, and I saw him in the cafeteria at lunch. He was usually sitting by himself until another guy I didn’t know would show up and start talking to Ethan. I never spoke to him or asked about him. Then, that morning, the morning before Ethan appeared in my room, my new high school friend, Felicidad, noticed me looking at Ethan during lunch in the cafeteria. His friend, who seemed to talk a lot, was talking while Ethan sat still with the far-away look in his eyes. That far-away look generally means people aren’t using their eyes because they are playing out something they see in their minds. I wondered what Ethan was seeing. Felicidad nudged me and said, That one would take a lot of work.

Felicidad whispered Ethan’s story to me. She said that Ethan lost his parents in a car crash when some kids on pot broadsided his father’s truck while he and his parents were in it. Ethan survived the accident without a scratch, but his parents didn’t. She said it was around the same time I lost my brother. She said that Ethan was only still in Sedona because his grandmother had volunteered to come all the way from Ireland to live with him until he finished high school. Felicidad whispered his name, Ethan Baron, as if she were afraid he might hear her. She told me that he was friendlier before the accident. She leaned closer and added in such a soft whisper that I almost couldn’t hear her, Most of the girls like him, a lot. He was hard to get before. Now he is impossible to get. A lot of work my friend, a lot of work.

I said, I wasn’t planning to try. That was almost true because I really was just wondering. I remembered the incident in the hallway at the locker when I saw the distant look in his eyes. I decided not to tell her about it, but I was grateful to know the things she told me. I wanted to tell her that I wanted to meet him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wondered whether he had made the choice to stay and finish high school or his grandmother had made the choice for him. I wondered if he wanted to run away after his parents died, which is basically what my parents and I did.

I thought about Ethan and his family a lot for the rest of the day. My heart went out to him, and I thought I understood why he was different and distant from the way he had been before. I wondered if the kids I went to school with in Phoenix thought Wynn’s tumor and his death had changed me. I wondered if Ethan knew about me, about my brother, if he would understand how I felt. I wondered if we could help each other.

Chapter Two:

Is He Really Here?

Now, less than twelve hours since I learned his name from Felicidad, Ethan Baron, or something that looked like him, was in my room. He appeared to be in my room anyway. Even in the moonlight, his eyes looked as bright as they were during the day. Actually, his eyes looked brighter than they had looked during the day.

At first, he looked out the window so intently that I had the feeling he could feel the light from the stars as well as he could see them. He looked out the window for at least a few minutes, and I am not proud to say I watched him in silence the whole time. His eyes glistened as if he was crying but there were no tears. I think I stopped breathing for a lot of the time he stood there gazing at the sky outside of my window. I know I didn’t move, but I don’t know why. During those first minutes, I didn’t really make a decision to hide the fact that I was aware of him. It was instinct to want to stay hidden. It was like my reaction to the unknown. Yet, I didn’t feel scared once I got beyond the initial surprise. There was something about the expression on his face. There was something gentle about him that I had never noticed at school. He was so sad and so attractive about the way he looked that I couldn’t stop looking at him. There was something else, something different from the way he seemed at school. He was less distant, more open.

I don’t know how long it took me to notice that the moonlight was passing right through him. I glanced at the floor and saw the shadow of the curtains and the window where his shadow should have been if he were really standing there.

Yet, I still wasn’t frightened. I think I must have been mesmerized. After a few more minutes passed, I finally started wondering why this boy I didn’t actually know was standing in my room without a shadow. I wondered what he could be searching for. As I started thinking more, I realized I couldn’t hear him breathing. For the tiniest fraction of a second, I wondered if he had died and his ghost had come to my room. That still didn’t explain why this ghost was in my room.

He put his hand up to the window, and it passed through the windowpane. He didn’t seem surprised. I had the idea that he had tried tests like this one before. He looked at his hand for a moment.

I was startled again when he spoke. His voice was deeper and softer than I would have expected. He said, Well, that’s new information. I can’t feel the windowpane. I can still barely feel the cold air outside of it. It’s the right night again, the moon is where it should be, just a little less than full, and Saturn and Jupiter are where they should be. But where am I? I wondered if the voice I heard was really how Ethan sounded. I had never actually heard him talk at school, so I really had no idea what he sounded like.

He started walking around the room and looking casually at my things. There was no sound from his footsteps. He started on the side of the window opposite the side my bed was on. When he moved away from the window and into the darkness on the other side of the room, I could still see him. It was as if he was a source of light. I couldn’t see him quite as clearly as I could when he was standing in the moonlight from the window, but I could see him clearly enough to know exactly where he was in the room and what he was looking at. I started to feel nervous. I remember noticing that he didn’t move around like someone in a dark room who couldn’t see. He moved slowly but smoothly. He glided more than he did at school in the hallway. My room is small, and I had left a lot of my things unpacked after the move. I didn’t think I had many interesting things for him to stop and look at. I knew it wouldn’t take him long to tour the room. I didn’t have much time to decide what I wanted to do. I didn’t want him to find me awake, and I felt uncomfortable about him looking at my stuff. It was the first time I was ever glad my mom had made me clean my room. I tried to remember whether or not I had left anything embarrassing out by accident. I am not sure what I would have done if I had remembered that there was something I didn’t want him to see. I don’t know why, but it didn’t occur to me to talk to him that night in my room any more than it did at school.

When he got to the built-in bookcase on the wall opposite my bed, he stopped to read some of the titles. I heard him say, Pride and Prejudice. The Notebook. The Book Thief. I’m in a girl’s bedroom? Cool. He started to glance over his shoulder toward my bed. Without any conscious decision on my part, my eyes snapped shut as soon as I saw him start to turn his head. Once I did that, I felt committed to pretend to sleep. I could not imagine how I could open my eyes to look back at him.

I was very glad I had not unpacked my Faerie Princess Quest books yet. He would have thought I was 12. The truth was I was waiting for the next Quest book to be released but it wasn’t really a fact I wanted a high school guy to know about me before he got to know me.

I heard him reading more titles, The City of God by Augustine? The Screwtape Letters? The Gifts of Baptism? The Practice of the Presence of God!? —I guess this isn’t a regular girl’s bedroom. This reminds me of my dad’s bookshelf." Ethan had come across some books my brother had given me. I was a little embarrassed about Ethan seeing them, and I felt a pang of guilt for not reading them. It had been over a year since Wynn had given those books to me. I actually had started to read them before he died. I read the back covers anyway, and I planned to read the pages on the inside of the books too. I never got around to it. I felt as if I were neglecting my brother by neglecting the books he wanted me to read. I had never realized how much your bookshelf says about you or, at least, how much your bookshelf implies if no one asks which books you’ve actually read.

My bed was in a shadowy part of the room, and I assumed Ethan either didn’t see me when he glanced in my direction or he didn’t recognize me. I didn’t think he had ever really noticed me at school since the first day when he sort of almost glanced at me. I didn’t hear him say anything more about the stuff in my room so, after a few more seconds passed, I opened my eyes just enough to peek at him then saw him moving past the door and to my dresser which was on the wall opposite the window. He looked at the pictures on the dresser without speaking. I tried to remember which pictures I had put over there. His comments about the bookshelf made me a little more nervous about what he might see while he toured my room. I thought there wasn’t a picture of someone he might have recognized, like my parents or me, just my brother, Wynn, and some friends and relatives in Phoenix. I guessed that he probably wouldn’t recognize anyone in the pictures. I didn’t even have any pictures of my new friends from school yet.

Ethan was getting closer to the side of the room I was in. He moved on to my desk. I thought about what I might have left on it that might embarrass me even though I was pretty sure it was only books and my laptop. He leaned over my desk. I was glad I always close my laptop. He appeared to be reading the titles of my textbooks. I heard him whisper, sophomore geometry.

When he started walking again, I knew my bed was the next stop. I closed my eyes. My heart started pounding harder and faster. I wondered if he would hear my heart beating because it was the only thing I could hear at the moment. It seemed as if an eternity passed before I heard him whisper, I think I know you.

It was very difficult to keep my eyes closed, and I wondered if he could see me blush in the dark. I could feel something that felt like static in the air as he moved closer. I didn’t know whether or not he leaned over me, but I knew he was very close to me. The little hairs on my arms stood up. It didn’t feel the way it feels when you get goose bumps when you’re afraid. It felt more like it feels when you shuffle across carpet in wool socks.

When he spoke again, it was in an even softer whisper, I do know you, Sleeping Beauty. You’re one of the new girls at school. Your name’s Sophia, isn’t it? I’ll have to find out more about you tomorrow.

He spoke softly but I had the feeling that he wasn’t worried that I would hear him.

More softly he added, I’m not only in a girl’s room, I’m in a teacher’s house. —Cool and chilling at the same time. Being in the girl’s room is cool. Being in the teacher’s house is chilling.

I had to stifle a laugh. I wanted to peek to see what he looked like when he was smiling, but I resisted. I also wanted to ask him how he knew my name, but then I remembered that being a teacher’s kid and a new student made me a very minor celebrity at school. He was silent, but I could still feel him in the room, so I assumed that he was thinking. A long time passed before he spoke again. It was hard to keep my closed eyelids looking relaxed. Finally, he said, I thought these dreams had something to do with my parents. If that’s true, why would I dream about you?

I can’t say that question didn’t sting my ego.

Suddenly, the static build up on my arms was gone and the room felt emptier. I opened my eyes and looked around the room. He was really gone. I got out of my bed and went to the window. I moved carefully, as if he might come back and catch me spying on him. When I looked at the sky, I saw the moon with its little sliver of darkness on one edge and two bright stars trailing behind in a nearly diagonal line. I guessed that the two stars were the planets my apparition had mentioned, Saturn and Jupiter. My brother and I used to watch the stars from our yard in Phoenix. In fact, Saturn and Jupiter were in about the same position in the Eastern sky when Wynn and I watched the stars for the last time the night before he died. That was the last time I talked to him, and the stars were the last thing we saw together.

The details we remember are odd sometimes. I probably wouldn’t remember what planets were traveling across the sky that night or what direction we were looking in if my brother hadn’t died the next day. Because we lost him the next day, I remember everything about the last night of his life. I didn’t pay much attention to the stars anymore after Wynn died. It stopped being fun. I can barely find the North Star now. Still, I could understand why my