Rest in Peace Roz: The R.I.P. Series Book 1

by Kris Johnston

  Jimmy, although he’d made himself disappear for the day, was seated at my desk. I knew it, because there was a coolness in the air surrounding that spot, and I could see a shimmer where he sat. I wasn’t sure how everything worked with his energy, but I could tell it was getting stronger. I just didn’t know how, or why.

  Suddenly, a new song began and his appearance shifted into shape.

  “Earth angel, earth angel,” he sang along, “Will you be mine?”

  He stood up from the desk chair and looked at me. I watched him from the bed, smiling softly as he serenaded me.

  “My darling dear, love you all the time,” he sang.

  I glanced nervously at Odie and stifled a giggle.

  Then, he dropped to one knee and raised his hands, reaching for me, before placing them over his heart.

  “I’m just a fool, a fool in love with you.”

  I couldn’t hold it in. I laughed out loud.

  “You’re such a dork,” I laughed.

  I felt Odie stiffen beside me.

  “Likewise,” she said, obviously tiffed. “You don’t have to listen to my music if it makes you say stuff like that.”

  “No, no,” I insisted, “I wasn’t talking to…” I trailed off, unsure of how much to say. I glanced at Jimmy where he knelt, and he stared solemnly at me.

  “She’s your best friend, Roz,” he said. “Don’t let there be secrets between you.”

  “She’ll think I’m crazy!” I exclaimed.

  “Who will think you’re crazy?” Odie demanded.

  I sighed. Jimmy was right. He was a secret I should have told Odie about long ago. There was the slight chance she’d think I was nuts, but Jimmy was too big and too important in my life for me not to talk about to someone, and it couldn’t be my therapist. Besides, who else could I talk to, if not my bestie?

  I sat up slowly and turned toward Odie.

  “Don’t think I’m insane, okay?” I asked cautiously.

  She narrowed her eyes at me and sat up, crossing her legs beneath her. “You know I wouldn’t think that. What’s going on with you?”

  I’d never really said the words out loud before. How foreign would they sound in my ears? How awkward would she feel around me now? How would this change things for us and our friendship?

  I swallowed my nerves and ripped off the proverbial band-aid.

  “I have a boyfriend but no one else can see him, only me.”

  Odie’s eyes opened wide, to the size of silver dollars. “Wait, what? A boyfriend? And you’re just now telling me? I didn’t think you were interested in the guys at school! Oh wait, does he go somewhere else? Where is he from? What’s he look like? Do you have pictures?”

  I widened my own eyes back to her, silently urging her to rewind and re-listen to my words.

  She stared back at me and I saw the flicker in her eyes the moment it registered.

  “What do you mean, no one else can see him but you?”

  There it was.

  “He’s sort of… a, umm… a ghost.” I winced.

  Her mouth fell open.

  “He’s a what?” She asked timidly.

  I pointed to the spot where Jimmy now stood, waving frantically at Odie and shouting, “Hi bestie!”

  “He’s right there.”

  She tilted her head to the side, her following my finger to what she saw as an empty space on the floor.

  “He’s right… there?”

  I nodded. “He’s waving at you and yelling hi, like an idiot,” I chuckled.

  “But, no one’s there,” she said skeptically.

  “Yeah, he is,” I said, “But you can’t see him.”

  “Okay,” she nodded, and looked me in the eye. “Explain.”

  For the next two hours, we talked about Jimmy. I told her everything. I told her about the night my mother and Derek died, about how Jimmy suddenly appeared and saved me from certain rape. I told her about how he slept with me (platonically of course), every single night and helped shelter me during the nightmares. I told her about the warning I’d received from one of the latest dreams about a necromancer, and how Parker was creeping me the heck out constantly. I told her about The Pastels’ seemingly innocent, little saves each and every time he cornered me, and that I felt in my gut there was more to the high school divas then I’d first realized.

  Everything that I’d experienced or been through these past two months vomited out of me, and Odie was there listening to every word. She passed no judgment. She didn’t disbelieve me. She simply listened.

  It was far better than the six weeks of therapy sessions I’d been going to.

  When, at long last, my verbal diarrhea had ended, her eyes filled with tears.

  “You’ve been through so much,” she cried and leaned forward, hugging me.

  I hugged her back, and the two of us stayed like that for long moments. Occasionally she’d sniff in my hair, or I’d furiously blink back my own tears.

  Eventually, she pulled away and wiped her eyes. Then she said, with a firm nod, “I can’t give Jimmy my blessing until I know what he looks like. So you, my struggling, tortured artist, are going to sit right there and sketch him until I say okay!”

  She pointed to my desk.

  “You know I can’t sketch,” I said.

  “I know nothing of the sort,” came her quick retort.

  I sighed and glanced at Jimmy. He grinned at me and posed.

  Good grief.

  “Fine,” I gave in, exasperated. “The two of you seem to think I am much more capable than I really am, so let’s just get this over with, shall we?”

  I went to my desk and opened the drawer, searching for some paper. To my surprise, at the very bottom was a brand new, unused sketch pad and a few sticks of charcoal in a plastic case.

  “Woah,” I said, “Bonnie must have left this in here when I moved in,” I surmised.

  “Great, it’s yours now,” Odie declared. “Use it!”

  “I don’t know how to use charcoal,” I said.

  She stood up behind me and placed her hands on my shoulders. “You don’t have to know. You said it earlier, it’s a feeling you get when you put a paintbrush to canvas, right?” I nodded. “This is the same thing. Just try it.” She squeezed me reassuringly and then went back to the bed. “Don’t mind me, I’m just going to lay here and read a book on my phone.”

  Then she flashed me one of her trademark winks.

  CHAPTER 21

  Charcoal was one of the most coolest mediums ever. At first I held the small, chunky stick with trepidation, unused to the feeling and weight of it. I put it to the sketch pad and it glided across the paper. I placed my finger upon the thick, black line and smudged.

  The feel of it was wonderful.

  “Ok, Jimmy,” I said softly, “Get situated. Let’s see what happens.”

  I turned around in the chair, holding the sketch pad before me. Jimmy sat on the floor with legs crossed and gave me a devastating smile. The beauty of it left me weak.

  “There’s no way I can replicate how pretty you are.”

  “Ha!” He laughed, and fluttered his eyelashes at me. “She thinks I’m pretty!”

  I blew him a kiss, then ordered him to be still and look natural.

  He did as he was told.

  “Such a good boy,” I whispered wickedly.

  The next hour was spent in complete silence. Odie read her book. Jimmy sat quietly for me. Once I got the hang of the charcoal, I sketched like a madwoman, oblivious to everything else. Jimmy was an excellent subject, he never complained or uttered a word, even when I would start all over again on a fresh page. Watching his face take shape before me, I realized it was like an out-of-body experience. I never once consciously thought of how I would draw him. I just did. My fingers moved on their own, following the lines of his perfect features until suddenly, I was done.

  I stared at the sketch before me with burning eyes. I had done it. I had captured his likeness perfectly. He was so handsom
e, even on the charcoal, it was almost blinding.

  “I’m done,” I whispered.

  Jimmy stood slowly, and raised his eyebrows. “So?” He asked. “How’d it go? You don’t look so happy.”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s…” I looked up at him. “I’m happy.” My eyes got watery and I had to blink rapidly. “I didn’t think I could do it. But look,” I turned the pad around so he could see what I’d drawn.

  His eyes grew big and his jaw dropped. “Roz,” he breathed.

  “Do you like it?” I whispered.

  “I love it,” he whispered back reverently. “You’re brilliant.”

  My cheeks grew hot with his praise and I smiled.

  “Looking at that blush on your face, I take it he approves?” Odie asked with a knowing look.

  Odie! I was so wrapped up in the sketch, I’d forgotten she was there.

  “He approves,” I grinned.

  “Alright then, let me see it!” She exclaimed and jumped from the bed.

  She snatched the pad out of my hands and stared at my interpretation of the man I loved. She didn’t say a word, but her right eye gave a slight twitch and the corner of her mouth curved up.

  “Well?” I prodded. “You always have an opinion for everything, don’t hold back from me now!”

  She glanced up at me then back to the sketch. “Breathtaking.”

  I waited.

  “Breathtaking?” I asked. “As in, he’s breathtaking? Or the picture is breathtaking?”

  “Either,” she said. “Both.” She then looked up and peered into the open, empty spaces of my bedroom. “If this is really what you look like, then I can see why she’s so taken with you.”

  Jimmy laughed and I grinned.

  “Does he really look like this?” She asked.

  I nodded. “He really does.”

  “He’s swoon-worthy, you know.”

  “I know.”

  Jimmy chuckled beside me. “Tell her I approve of her too, as long as she continues to be good to my girl.”

  I relayed the message to Odie and she smirked. “Oh please, I’m not the one you need to worry about, Mr. Ghostboy,” she said dramatically.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “If we need to be worried about anyone hurting you, it’s Parker.”

  Jimmy nodded, looking at my best friend who, despite her obvious attempts, could not see him. “She’s right, Roz,” he agreed.

  I set the sketch pad down tenderly on my desk, and turned to them both with my hands raised.

  “Why are you guys so worried about Parker, exactly?” I asked. Parker worried me as well, but I needed to understand where my boyfriend and best friend stood on the subject.

  “He’s worried too?” Odie asked, in reference to Jimmy.

  “Heck yeah I’m nervous!” Jimmy said. “Roz, tell her about the dream! The one we both got sucked into together. And then tell her about your trip to the circus. And tell her how I couldn’t make myself visible to you when you lost those two hours.”

  I sighed. ‘Okay, maybe the guy is a little weird, but do you really think he’s dangerous? Like, evil-dangerous?”

  “Oh my gawd,” Odie said, exasperated, “I can’t tell what’s going on when I can only hear one of you speaking!”

  “Crap, I’m sorry Odie,” I said sheepishly. “He’s right here, right in front of us, it’s hard to remember you can’t hear him when he’s being so loud.” I gave Jimmy the stink eye.

  “Tell her.”

  So I did. We sat, the three of us, well past the setting sun and the subsequent fog, and discussed everything we had experienced with Parker Evans. Or, rather, what I had experienced. Even the dreams.

  “But you’re on meds right?” Odie asked. “For the anxiety? And for sleeping?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I am, but they do nothing.”

  Odie cocked her head. “Do you remember when we first met, I had something written all over my hands? It was in green Sharpie, and you never asked about it but you kept staring.”

  I laughed and nodded. “Yes, I remember. I figured you just doodled on your hands as a habit, or you had notes written on them for a test.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Seriously? That’s what you thought? Out of all the possibilities out there, that’s the best you could come up with?”

  “Hey, I’d just met you! I didn’t really have a whole lot to go by!” I laughed.

  Odie marched around me and sat at the computer. She frantically typed a few words into Google, and then pointed at the screen.

  “This is what I had drawn on my hands,” she said.

  I moved myself to see the screen, and saw what she pointed at. On the monitor were different symbols, some tribal looking, some circular, and others that were squared.

  “These are protection symbols,” she said seriously.

  I looked at her. “Protection symbols?”

  She nodded. “For about a month before you moved here, I was having nightmares. Every single night. They seemed totally real and a few times, I couldn’t wake up.”

  Jimmy gave a quiet, “hmm,” as he looked at the screen from behind my shoulder.

  She continued. “Parker was in all of them.”

  I gasped.

  “I warned you when you first came here to stay away from him, but I couldn’t tell you it was because I had nightmares about him. I mean, come on. Nightmares aren’t real. They mean nothing.” She looked back to the monitor once more. “In one dream, though, he was too real. I dreamt he had these outrageous claws and came after me. When I woke up, I had three scratch marks all the way down my back.”

  She pulled out her phone and immediately brought up a picture.

  “See?” She asked.

  It was a pic of Odie in the bathroom, shirtless, with her back facing the camera. Three long claw marks ran the length of her back in a diagonal swipe, they were red, slightly bloody, and looked very painful.

  “Oh… Odie…” I breathed.

  Jimmy was right behind me, staring at the phone.

  “This guy is dangerous in a bad, bad way,” he said, his voice low.

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  “It was then that I’d decided to take matters into my own hands. I Googled ways on how to protect myself in dreams, and this was what I found. All these symbols here,” she circled a group that looked like some kind of ancient hieroglyphics, “Are the ones that will protect you the most. They’re runes. From the day I began drawing them on myself, the nightmares stopped. When you moved here, I sort of forgot about the whole thing and quit marking them on myself, but the nightmares never came back.”

  I exhaled slowly. “That’s because I moved here, and Parker found a new target.”

  ***

  We had just decided on which of the symbols I was going to Sharpie on myself, when Bonnie knocked on the door. She brought in a tray piled high with Chinese takeout cartons, which Odie squealed over.

  “I figured you girls would be hungry by now,” she said sweetly.

  “You figured right!” Odie exclaimed, “I’m frigging starving!”

  Bonnie chuckled and set the tray down on the bed, and laughed as Odie went to town on the food.

  “What time are you expected to be home, Odessa?” Bonnie asked my jubilant best friend, who sat devouring noodles straight from the box.

  “Ith Thaturday,” she replied with a mouthful of food which completely muffled her words, “that meanth I gotta be home by elefen.”

  “Holy cow Odie,” I exclaimed at her, half-joking and half-serious, “Have some manners around my mother, please!”

  Bonnie’s head whipped around and her piercing eyes landed on mine. The look on her face stole my breath, as I realized belatedly what I’d said.

  “Yes, Odie,” Bonnie said softly with a most tenderly bittersweet smile, “Have some manners around Rosalind’s mother. Which is me, by the way.”

  Then she winked at Odie, who winked back with a huge grin,
and Jimmy reached forward to squeeze my hand.

  I’m thankful Bonnie didn’t gush over what I’d said. I’m thankful she didn’t tear up and cry. I’m thankful she didn’t come at me with big hugs and hearts and flowers. No. In the way that was all her, she simply stopped, acknowledged it, accepted it, and returned it. That night, surrounded by the love flowing through my bedroom, the bruise that I was healed completely. It didn’t matter that we were discussing unnatural, unexplainable, and frightening things. It didn’t matter that I sounded like a mental patient as I relayed everything I knew about Parker to Odie. And it didn’t matter that I had been born into a place of total darkness from which I’d never imagined I could escape.

  As I sat soaking up the presence of the man I loved, the girl who’s friendship meant everything, and the knowledge that I officially, at long last, had a true mother, the bruise I had once been shifted and faded entirely, and I rejoiced silently as the waves of healing washed over me.

  The exhaustion and stress of the week was gone. The fear and loathing disappeared. Inside, I was healed. Whole. Brand new.

  And there was nothing on this earth that could ever bruise my soul again.

  CHAPTER 22

  The three of us, together, decided I would immediately start drawing the runes of protection on myself at bedtime, as well as pray for peace and protection from the unknown while I marked myself. According to both Odie and Google, there were tons of different kinds of runes one could use for protection, but after an exhaustive search, I ended up choosing the ones which came from the Vikings.

  After Odie went home, I sat in the bathroom on the edge of the tub with a purple marker and drew the Viking rune for protection across my heart. It was the shape of a Y, with a line running vertically through its center. Next, I drew the symbol for defense across my stomach. It was basically a letter S, but with sharp angles instead of rounded curves. Lastly, I drew the runes for strength and warrior on my upper arms. One resembled a lowercase letter N while the other appeared to be an arrow pointing north.