Evan had ran away. He had followed his instinct and bolted, he had ignored the stranger’s voice that still resonate in his mind. It’s a long lost memory about a time, ages before, when someone offered him a sweet that tasted like strawberries. He’s not sure the person in the memory he can’t hold on to is the same person he met in the park earlier on. After all, it would be impossible. Whoever that person was, it should be dead by now. That’s how it feels. Old, ancient, consumed.
The boy sighs, puts his earphones on and lets his hands slide in his pocket whilst he walks. He’s not wearing a jacket and he should’ve brought one with him. Now that the adrenaline is wearing off Evan’s body is starting to feel the cold air again and instead of embracing it like a blessing – Evan loves the cold weather more than the warmer one – it’s starting to react in a funny way, but it doesn’t matter. Evan still choses the longest way to get home. He might be missing dinner but it’s not important; he didn’t promise anything and besides, they haven’t been sitting at the same table as a family for years now – almost three – so one day extra in the calendar of the family meals Evan has missed so far that Yvonne is keeping won’t do any difference.
He walks slowly, measuring the steps and adapting them to the rhythm of the song he’s listening to and he lets his eyes wander around the surroundings without really paying any attention. He feels lost, far away, as if whilst thinking his body had been trapped in another dimension. He tries to remember the last time he walked in the real world without the fear of being attacked by his ghosts, or without hands that try to get a hold of him but get past his chest making him shiver. The bloody faces that appear in front of him all of a sudden, screaming in agony, bodies that twitch and twist, dying again and again, stuck in a long forgotten past unable to find peace.
«It’s your fault!» Someone screams on top of the music. Evan stops for a second, just to press his fingers on the eyelids and heavily sigh. He tries to ignore the voice, to send the noise away, to keep their torment at bay but this time nothing seems to work, no matter how hard he tries. Evan never thought it could happen, he never thought that Joël’s tricks might fail nor that they could get to him that quickly whilst in the middle of the street, surrounded by real people. Living people. He wasn’t ready for this, no one prepared him for this. He didn’t take in to account the fact that he’s now exposed and an easy target.
For a single second, when he set food on the street and started to jog, he forgot about the spirits, he forgot about the hallucinations. Or better, the memories. He never called them the same way Joël did; whatever he was seeing it wasn’t an hallucination. Evan knew. Had always known. He should’ve known that feeling normal would’ve been amazing, and that’s the reason why it couldn’t last that long. He shouldn’t have fooled himself. He’s been lucky.
He forces himself to get to the crossroad and then stop because the traffic light is still red. Whilst Evan waits for it to turn green, he looks at the other side of the road, now full of cracked stones and litter. There’s a kid that’s running after a wheel, pushing it forward with a stick. He’s laughing and his laugh echoes all around, silencing the rest of the noises. Then it’s quiet again. It’s so quiet Evan is convinced that everyone can hear it, everyone can see it—The silence, the child, the noise of the hooves getting closer and closer, but no one stirs. The traffic light becomes green all of a sudden and Evan crosses the road without really thinking. Once on the other side, safe, he lifts his stare up just in time to see a carriage hitting the boy and its wheels crushing the little body underneath them.
The sound of a horn covers the people shouting for help and screaming in horror, in pain. Evan jumps out of his skin and hits a man by mistake. He apologies quickly, bends his head in a humble gesture and waits a few seconds before turning away and looking at the car parked on the side of the road. He has to blink a few times to understand he’s in the present again, the memory is gone and the real world is back, the ghosts are still trying to contaminate it and Eean is there, in his car. He’s sticking his torso out of the window and he’s talking to Evan. Again.
Evan is not listening.
Again.
He can’t hear him. He can just see his brother’s lips moving too fast for Evan’s liking. He’s not a lips reader and he can’t understand what Eean is trying to tell him. Perhaps he’s not even speaking a language Evan knows, so he frowns and tries to match the expression on his brother’s face so that he can understand that whatever he’s trying to do to get his attention, is not working at all. Evan is not listening, so it’s useless for Eean to try and use a language none of them knows nor understands.
Evan stares hard at his brother when he points at his own ears and moves his hands and arms like he’s about to take something off of his head. He bows his head on one side and deepens the frown, confused. Evan must have missed something because he can’t place when the world started to turn again and why if people are talking he can’t hear them at all. All he seems to hear are muffled noises he can’t quite distinguish.
He’s still shaken because of what he just witnessed and he thinks that perhaps he really managed to disengage from reality. Perhaps his body really belongs to that world but his soul comes from further away, a place no one knows, another universe that interlaced with the one Eean is living in and that’s why everything and everyone is so confused. Perhaps it’s not him. Perhaps it’s all about the voices he’s hearing and that feel so far and estranged, voices that belong to different realities now forgotten in time.
It’s only when Eean repeats the same gesture once again, pointing at Evan’s chest that Evan snaps back and understands. His brother’s voice is covered by the music and the muffled noises he thought he was hearing are real, are in his earphones, and they don’t belong to anything scary.
He reluctantly takes the earphones off and curls his lips up in an annoyed expression. Then bows the head on a side and lifts an eyebrow quietly asking him what is he doing there, if he’s sure Evan’s the one he wants to talk to and maybe begging Eean to leave him alone. Their parents should’ve minded their own business instead of sending the older of their sons to go and rescue the younger. Evan perfectly knows his way back home, he can deal with the outside world on his own and doesn’t need a babysitter.
He really wishes his parents understood that Evan just needs space in order to find himself and to get this process started he needs to come to terms with himself alone. No one out there seems to understand how he feels nor seems inclined to consider and treat him like a normal person. Evan feels the need to free himself from the label that the mental facility had sewn on his forehead and his parents, his brother above all, are not helping at all.
«You coming?» Eean mutters, rolling his eyes to show that he’s equally annoyed – to be there, to have to deal with Evan’s attitude, to be left waiting and gesturing like an idiot in the middle of the street. It doesn’t matter. Evan doesn’t reply and instead he pretends he didn’t hear him.
He starts to walk in the direction he was determined to take to go home and hides again in his stubborn silence. The music is now a noise in the background. His hands are back in his pockets, closed in fists in an attempt to keep the body from shaking. He’s looking at the floor that now is back to normal, covered in yellow and orange leaves that crunch, breaking under his consumed trainers. The earphones are forgotten around his neck because Evan knows his brother. He won’t let him get away with it. He will push to punish him, so Evan is stirring him up.
«Evan!» Eean calls him and lets a trace of impatience animate his tone. He waits a few seconds to see what his brother is planning on doing and when it’s clear that Evan won’t stop and won’t listen to him, when it’s clear Evan will keep on walking no matter if it’s cold, if they’re late for dinner, if he should get inside the fucking car for heaven’s sake, Eean sighs. He stops calling, he stops the engine of the car and Evan breathes for a moment.
Getting inside the car with his brother implied holding up a conversation and having to deal with a person he’s grown to despise—Has he really, now?—and Evan is determined to not let a single word leave his mouth ever again, not for Eean at least. He’s determined to ignore him and he needs to find a way to make sure Eean understands it once and for all.
But Eean stopped calling for him, he can’t hear the car anymore, so Evan is safe. He puts the earphones back on and relaxes his steps, his shoulders. It’s late, Eean was right in this at least, and this means Uriel will be upset and there’ll be an argument the minute he will walk inside the house but it’s fine. It’s better than being at home in time and getting there by car, enduring a twenty or so minutes drive with someone he hates.
He’s so focussed on the little victory he just achieved that he doesn’t realise that he didn’t see the car pass him by. He didn’t see it stopping somewhere a little further down the road and Eean leaving the cabin. It doesn’t matter if Evan’s pace is quite fast, because Eean’s legs are way longer and better trained than his so Eean is able to reach him with a couple of strides.
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