by Joy Elbel
Good question. But I had an answer. “I promised to be with him forever. What if he was mad that I caused his death and then moved on with Zach? The haunting only started after I met him, remember?”
She let out a big sigh. “I guess that makes sense. But it still needs to end. This whole thing has gone on for way too long. I won’t let a ghost stand in the way of my brother’s happiness. Or yours. We’re going to put a stop to it.”
“When? How? If you have suggestions—feel free to suggest away.” I was out of ideas but if there was some way she could help….
Just then there was a light knock on the door. Shelly poked her head in slowly. “Can I come in?”
“Sure, we’re just talking.”
“Have you girls straightened things out?”
Rachel spoke up. “We have. And boy am I glad! I hate being mad at someone when I have no idea why I’m supposed to be mad at them.”
I laughed and Shelly did, too. “Does this mean I’ll be seeing you around here more often?” Shelly paused and then asked the question that was on my mind. “And your brother, too?”
“Totally. As soon as I straighten out this little misunderstanding, Zach and Ruby will live happily ever after.” Rachel sounded so confident about the situation. Why couldn’t I say the same?
“Good. Jason and I think your brother is just what Ruby needs.”
It was really weird hearing her say that she and my dad approved of my relationship with Zach. I wasn’t used to their approval in the dating department. There was just something so special about him. It wasn’t often that girls my age liked the boys their parents approved of.
“And I agree, too. So it’s settled then. Ruby and Zach will be a couple again in no time.” Rachel nodded her head and seemed proud of her mad matchmaking skills—skills I hadn’t even seen put to the test yet.
“Do I get any say in the matter?” I asked jokingly.
“NO!” They shouted in unison and we all broke into waves of laughter. I hadn’t laughed like that in days and it felt better than you could imagine.
Once the laughing died down, Shelly spoke first. “Ruby, I want to ask you a question. And feel free to say no.”
I was curious and, truth be told, a little scared. Had she overheard our conversation? Was she going to ask me for the truth too?
But I answered her fearlessly, “Shoot.”
“Today is our one year wedding anniversary and your dad and I would like to go out tonight. We wanted to hit the new casino in Graysburg, maybe even spend the night. If you’re okay with that, Rachel could spend the night here with you. What do you say?”
Their anniversary! In the midst of my misery, I never even paid attention to what day it was. Shelly helped me so much since the breakup that I knew I owed her this. But spending the night alone at the mansion was a frightening thought. Even with Rachel here, the possibilities for disaster were endless. Maybe it would be better if we stayed at the Mason’s instead.
Before I had a chance to make that suggestion, Rachel spoke up. “That’s an awesome plan, isn’t it Ruby?”
Did she even hear a single word I said about the horrendous things that were happening here? If she thought this was a good plan, I was starting to doubt her ability to reunite me with Zach. But I was desperate so I said yes anyway.
“Thanks Ruby. I’ll call Diane and clear it with her and if she agrees, we’ll head for the casino.” After Shelly left to call Rachel’s mom, I turned to Rachel.
“Are you crazy?! You want to spend the night in a haunted house?”
“Relax, Ruby. I have a plan. You do want to end Lee’s reign of terror so you can be with Zach, don’t you?” She crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently.
“More than anything in the world.”
“Alright then, we stay at Rosewood tonight, exorcise the demon and in the morning, you and Romeo can pick up where you left off.”
Her optimism was infectious. I ignored the bad feeling that nudged at me and relinquished my reservations. If I could be back in Zach’s arms by morning, I would agree to anything.
No more than thirty seconds after Shelly informed us that Diane was okay with Rachel spending the night, Rachel’s phone rang. She checked to see who it was. She whispered “It’s Zach,” as she put the phone to her ear. I crammed up next to her on the futon in hopes of at least hearing his voice. But all I heard was her end of the conversation.
“Yeah.”
“She’s right here.”
“Yes.”
“Good. No thanks to you.”
“I’m fixing your mess.”
“She’ll explain everything to you tomorrow.”
“And you owe her a huge apology, by the way.”
“She doesn’t hate you.”
“Yes, she still likes you—she told me so.”
“No! Stay where you are. If we need you, I’ll let you know.”
“Seriously Zach, I mean it. Stay. Where. You. Are.”
“I’ll see you in the morning. Bye.”
The suspense was killing me! “What did he say? Did he say he wants to get back together? Why didn’t you let him come over? Why didn’t you let me talk to him?” The questions shot out of me at the speed of, well, let’s just say she got a dose of her own verbal medicine.
“Wow. You guys are an emotional roller coaster! Get me off this ride!”
I took a deep breath and forced out an element of inner calmness that I didn’t know I had. Calmly, I asked, “What did Zach say?”
“Now that’s much better. He wanted to know how you were and why I was staying here tonight. When I said he owed you an apology, he said an apology wouldn’t work because you hated him. When I told him you still liked him, he insisted on coming over here but I told him to stay at home.”
What? “Why would you tell him not to come? I want to see him and the sooner we can get this whole mess straightened out the better. Call him back and tell him to get over here! Now!” I grabbed her phone from her lap and shook it in her face impatiently.
Rachel sighed and snatched her phone away from me. “Seriously? Think about it. Your dad and stepmom are leaving for the night. How’s it going to look if they pass him on the way out? And besides, we have a ghost to get rid of first. Don’t worry—he’ll wait another twelve hours for you.”
Dammit! I didn’t know which was worse—waiting until morning to see Zach or the thought of spending the night…I didn’t even know how we were spending the night. It didn’t help that I had to admit that she was right.
“So what’s the plan?” Whatever it was, we should’ve started working on it, oh, five minutes ago! She needed to stop being Little Miss Smarty Pants and just tell me what we were going to do to get rid of Lee.
“The plan is to go shopping.”
“Shopping? Can’t that wait until tomorrow?” I was highly irritated. I liked to shop as much as the next girl but who could shop at a time like this? “I highly doubt we’ll get rid of Lee with just some killer new outfits.”
“Very funny, smartass. We need to get some supplies. I only have twenty dollars on me, how about you?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got it covered.” I still had the two hundred dollars I was going to use for the fundraiser tickets left in my bank account. I grabbed my bag. “Let’s go.”
An hour later, we were back at Rosewood. The sky was dark and the wind whipped furiously ahead of the approaching storm. We sure picked a great night to converse with the dead. Dad and Shelly were gone and I was anxious to get on with Rachel’s plan. I still wasn’t sure exactly what that plan was so I finally asked her.
“Well, have you ever seen the show Ghost Stalkers?”
“No.” How was a TV show going to solve my current problem?
She tied her hair back into a ponytail and started unloading our bags. “It’s a reality show that follows a group of investigators as they try to clear homes of unruly spirits. Sometimes the only problem is that the ghost doesn’t know he’s dead. So
metimes they have a message for someone. Whatever Lee’s problem is, we’re going to fix it tonight. But we have to wait a few hours—three o’clock is the best time to communicate with the dead.”
There were a few times when I woke up at that very hour to find that I wasn’t alone so it sounded plausible and I didn’t question her. We had some time to kill so we made some popcorn and tossed in a movie. Fifteen minutes before three, Rachel announced that it was time to get ready. Ready for what, exactly, I had no idea.
After all my failed attempts, I was skeptical but I could see that she really believed this would work. If that’s all it would take to have peace again, l was ready to start communicating. She handed me the digital voice recorder and the remote control to my television.
“Do you have something here that once belonged to Lee?” she asked as she laid out the spirit board on the coffee table. “Oh, where is that picture of you guys? We’ll need that too.”
I packed the picture away in the closet in a box that held all of my memories of Lee a few days after I kissed Zach. I grabbed the whole box and took it to the living room. Everything I needed would be in there.
“Did you find something?” she asked, sniffing the first candle as she pulled it from the bag.
I opened the box and removed the picture on top. Rachel placed it beside the board. “Is there something of his in there?”
I dug through the stack of love letters and photos until I came to a black leather bracelet with silver studs. It was his. He was wearing it on the last day of school. The day before he died. He took it off in biology when Mr. Frank made him reach into the fish tank to retrieve the condom someone tossed in there. Lee didn’t do it but he was different so of course he got blamed. He handed the bracelet to me and I put it in my bag. When the final bell rang, we ran and he forgot all about it.
I whipped the bracelet out of the box and onto the table. “This should do.”
“Good. Help me set up the candles and then we’re ready to go.” We bought rose scented ones because Lee liked me in that scent and red was his favorite color. We placed them in a circle around us.
Mimi and Coco started sniffing at them immediately. Remembering what curiosity did to the cat, I picked them both up and deposited them in the bathroom along with their food and water dishes. “You have to stay in here.”
Mimi rubbed against my legs and purred. “No, we’ll play later. Right now I have work to do.” I plopped her into the bathroom and shut the door. As I grabbed the matches from my desk drawer, I could hear her howling as she pawed at the inside of the door. She was incredibly spoiled and not used to me telling her no but just this once, she needed to know who was actually in charge here.
Quickly, I lit the candles and sat down. “Okay, where do we start?”
“Turn on the recorder.” Rachel snagged the TV remote and turned the channel to one that was nothing but static.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“That’s white noise. Ghosts can use it to communicate.”
“Oh.” I was starting to get an uneasy feeling in my stomach. What if something bad happens? What if Lee tries to hurt me again?” Each attack grew worse than the one before it. And the last time, he almost killed me….
“Don’t worry, Ruby. I’ve seen them do this on Ghost Stalkers a thousand times. Nobody ever gets hurt—I promise. If it will make you feel better, I’ll take the full force of anything he wants to throw at us. Do you hear that Lee? If you want to hurt someone, hurt me instead. You’ve already caused Ruby enough pain.”
“Don’t Rachel! You don’t know what you’re asking for!” That uneasy feeling rose up until it filled my chest, too. But I ignored it.
“All we’re going to do is talk to him, find out what he wants. Now place your hands on the planchette like this.” She placed her finger tips lightly on the plastic pointer and I followed suit.
“Lee. We need to talk to you. Can you come forward and speak with us?” The room remained silent. The pointer stayed still.
“Try calling him, Ruby. He may only want to talk to you.”
“Lee? I need to talk to you.” The pointer started to move slowly in circles around the center of the board. It came to rest in the top right corner at the word ‘no’.
A loud rumble of thunder echoed through the halls of the empty mansion. I looked at Rachel and she looked as scared as I felt.
“Are you sure this is a good idea? You haven’t seen what he’s capable of.”
“Ruby, we have to do this. If you want to be with Zach, we have to take care of this little problem.”
She had me at the word ‘Zach’. “You’re right. Let’s keep going. What should I do next?” I’d been through much worse, right?
“Try again. Just talk to him and see what happens.”
“Lee. Please. I need to talk to you. You loved me once—try to remember that.” Suddenly, the television went silent and black.
The pointer came to life stopping briefly at one letter before it moved on to the next. I struggled to keep up with it. “What is he spelling?”
“I don’t know! But it seems to be repeating the same letters over and over. V-E-L-E-A. Velea? Is that French or something?” Rachel’s eyes darted around the board, frantically following the pointer.
“Velea? I don’t know what that means!” How frustrating! It was the first real communication I’d had with Lee yet I had no idea what he was saying. I tossed the word around in my head until it finally made sense.
“Wait! You got the letters wrong. I know what it says!” And I was even more frightened than before.
“No, it’s definitely spelling velea! I’ve been watching carefully.”
“The letters are right. It’s the order that’s wrong! It’s spelling the word ‘leave’! He wants me to leave this house. But why? Does he want me back in Trinity?”
A flash of lightning streaked across the sky. Rachel pulled her hands away from the board and I did too. The planchette continued its macabre dance across the letters still spelling the same thing—leave. Leave. Leave. Leave. Over and over again.
Terrified, she shouted, “Ruby, I don’t think this is Lee!”
The moment the words escaped her lips, the pointer came to an abrupt halt then started to spell something different. This time I caught every letter. It said ‘not Lee’. Then with a loud crack, the board snapped in half.
I jerked away from the table, nearly burning myself on a candle in the process. We took one look at each other. One thing was clear. We needed to get out of there.
One by one, the candles extinguished themselves around the circle, wispy trails of smoke drifting up in their wake. Another flash of lightning lit the room and I saw that we were not alone in the attic. A dark shadow hovered closely behind Rachel.
“It’s behind you!” I reached out frantically to pull her away but it was too late. The entity rocketed forward and dove straight into her.
Rachel’s eyes flew wide and her face contorted into a vision of agony. I watched helplessly as she doubled over and the shadow figure forced itself out through her stomach and disappeared. She crumpled to the floor lifelessly.
“No! Rachel!” I rushed to her side, afraid of what I was going to find. I grabbed for her wrist and felt a weak pulse. I breathed a sigh of relief—I couldn’t be responsible for another death!
“Rachel! You have to wake up! We have to get out of here!” I took her by the shoulders and shook her hard but she bobbled limply like a rag doll.
I sunk to the floor beside her and cried. A thundering crash resonated behind me. And then another. And another. I opened my eyes to see my books flying off of the shelf one at a time and hurtling across the room. I had to get us both out of there.
I was too weak to carry her so I gripped her by the ankles and dragged her toward the door, book bombs exploding around us as I went. Suddenly, a weak groan rose from her throat.
“Rachel, we have to get out of here! You need to get up—now!” I slapped her
sharply across the face. It always seemed to work in the movies—it was worth a try.
“Ruby?! Why are you slapping me?” Rachel opened her eyes slowly. “Where are we?”
I could tell when the initial confusion wore off because a look of mortal terror replaced it.
Just then, the door flung open and a looming figure appeared in the doorway. A piercing scream escaped my throat as it seized me around the waist and pulled me toward it.
21. Blindsided
I screamed louder and louder as the figure reeled me in. A quick flash of lightning illuminated the room and my captor’s face. Zach! As soon as she saw who it was, Rachel clambered up off of the floor and flung herself at him. With one arm around each of us, he half carried us both down two flights of steps and out of the mansion.
The rain fell in sheets around us as he opened the car door and crammed us both into the passenger seat. It was a tight squeeze but I was just happy to not be alone. Only once he was behind the wheel and driving us to safety, did he speak.
“What the f*** was that?!” I’d never heard him drop the f-bomb before and it only seemed to solidify the gravity of the situation. I didn’t need to worry about how to tell him the truth anymore—he just saw it with his own eyes.
“That was the boyfriend who’s been beating me up. Except it’s not him—at least I don’t think so. Not anymore. I don’t know! Just get me away from here!” I was confused and scared. Tears and rainwater mingled on my face. The only thing I wasn’t confused about was Zach. He just came to my rescue again.
“Pull over! I have to throw up!” Rachel opened the door before he even came to a full stop and heaved onto the side of the road.
“What I saw in that room wasn’t possible! But it was, because I saw it happen. Books flying! You screaming! Now Rachel’s throwing up! What the hell happened back there?”
Rachel wiped her mouth off with the back of her hand and leaned back against the seat. “We’ll explain later—just get us home.”
I could feel her quivering beside me. What did that thing do to her?
