Putting the bracelet back, I moved on to the pendant that looked a lot like my mother’s—well, mine now, I guess. Examining the solid back, I could feel something stamped into the gold but it was very faint. I noticed the edges of the frame holding the stone were etched, too. I flipped it over. The stone cabochon on the front was beautiful. I didn’t know if it was a real opal or not— if it was, I had never seen one this large. Turning it this way and that made the fiery colors inside the stone dance. I ran my thumb across the front. Maybe it was my imagination, but it felt warm.
There were two more pendants, each with a different type of stone, just as impressive as the first one. I didn’t have enough knowledge about jewelry or stones to even guess at what they might be. Both also had stamps on the backs and etched frames. One was gold like the first pendant, the other was a tarnished silver. The gold looked real, so the silver probably was, too.
Moving on to the rings, I plucked out the largest one in the lot. The stone was a soft pink in a chunky silver setting. Like the other pieces, it was engraved around the band. Curious, I slipped it on the ring finger of my right hand. Surprisingly, it fit. Deciding to leave it on for now, I sifted through the remaining rings. Two had delicate gold bands very similar to each other, just with different stone settings. They looked like they matched two of the pendants. There was also a tiny, delicate ring done in gold and silver woven together in an intricate pattern to form the band. The weave continued, circling around the top to form a small dome where a stone would normally sit. The overall effect was unbelievably elegant. It was more art than jewelry. By contrast the last ring in the box was a simple, crudely made circle of silver.
Returning the box along with the matching little journal to the drawer, I grabbed my notebook and started trying to make sense of the other journals again. Maybe if I took notes I could make better sense of them. I browsed through one that looked newer than the rest, looking for a date or a name of whomever had written it. I couldn’t find either. I moved on to the next one. Again, nothing. That seemed odd to me. If these were journals or diaries, there should be something about whomever was writing it, shouldn’t there? There were a lot of other names mentioned, along with who—or what—they had Seen or encountered.
Frustrated, I set the journal down. What was it that Elmer thought I would learn from these? They were just—a mess! And the timelines were so different, how could they possibly help?
Stifling a yawn, I realized I was exhausted. The rest of the journals went into a sturdy book bag I’d found tucked away in the closet, and I slid them under the bed. I had time to lay down for about an hour or so before Sam would get home. Tonight was just going to be a salad night, so dinner prep wasn’t really an issue. With that thought, I was out.
***
I sighed and rolled over, not wanting to get up yet.
“Takes a lot out of you, doesn’t it?”
My eyes flew open at the unfamiliar voice. “Wha- How did you get in here? Who are you?” I scrambled out of the bed.
“You called me here. The name’s Rosemary.”
Gaping at the portly woman, dressed in a seriously outdated outfit, standing in my bedroom, studying me—I was at a loss for how to respond.
Did she say I called her?
“You just going to sit there with your mouth hanging open, letting flies in?”
Snapping my mouth shut, I slowly stood. “Um, hello? I-I’m Roxanne.”
Rosemary snorted, “I don’t care who you are. I just need to know why you called me here.”
“I’m sorry. I’m confused,” I looked around for my phone. Had I somehow called some stranger while I slept? Was that even possible? I had heard of people doing weird things while they were on sleep medication but I didn’t take anything like that. I hadn’t taken so much as a painkiller since leaving the hospital.
“That makes two of us, then, doesn’t it? If you don’t need me for anything, send me back.”
“B-back?”
“Speaking isn’t one of your strong points, I take it?”
Now wait just a minute. Who is this person to show up and just start insulting me? Chin high, I drew myself up to my full five foot five and one-half inches. “Speaking actually is one of my strong points. Give a girl a minute to wake up, will you? Now, would you please explain yourself?”
Rosemary gave me an amused look, “Like I said, you called me. Here I am. If you don’t need me, send me back. Doesn’t get more clear than that.”
“How did I call you?” This was getting ridiculous. How would I send her back? Back where?
She just stared at me as if trying to tell if I was serious. Then gesturing, “The ring.”
I looked down at my right hand. The ring from Elmer’s box. I had put it on when I was going through the jewelry. I must have forgotten to take it off.
“I called you with . . . a ring?” There was a joke there somewhere, but my mind was still stuck on this woman standing in my bedroom. Talking to me like I was an idiot. Maybe I was going about this all wrong.
I sighed and tried again. “Listen. I’m kind of, um . . . new to all of this. I’m sorry to have bothered you. I really didn’t mean to . . . call you. And, if you’ll tell me how, I will gladly send you back to, um . . . Where are you from?” Oh my God, I sounded like a blathering fool. Good thing speaking was one of my strong points, right?
That stare again. Rosemary walked toward me, eyes narrowed. Her shrewd gaze took in my sleep mussed hair, seeming to pause at my gray streak before returning to my face. “How exactly did you come by that ring?”
“I-It was given to me,” I backed up a step but the bed blocked any further retreat. Not knowing what else to do, I yelled for help. “Elmer! Jake! Get up here!”
“Elmer? Elmer who?” she demanded.
“Jenkins,” Elmer answered, appearing in the middle of the room, Jake at his side. “Who did you think, cousin?”
“Well, I’ll be. You want to explain yourself, cousin? You have a woman on the other side missing you something fierce. What are you still doing here, Elmer?” Then Rosemary gestured at me. “And why is she wearing that? Without a clue in the world?”
Elmer looked lost for a moment at the mention of his wife. “I was kind of hoping you might be able to help her out. I wasn’t positive the jewelry would even work for her.”
I sat down heavily on the bed, watching them banter back and forth. Looking at the clock next to the bed, I realized I had been asleep for less than twenty minutes. Maybe if I lay back down, this would all just go away.
“What if the ring hadn’t worked? Or worse, what if Grandmam would have been the one to answer her call?”
“If the ring hadn’t worked, there wouldn’t be a problem, now would there? And if Grandmam had been the one to answer, I would have been here, same as I am with you.” Elmer's chin jutted out stubbornly.
I sensed a bit of rivalry between these two. If this kept up much longer, I was going to break for popcorn.
“That ring is for family Elmer, and she doesn’t look like blood,” Rosemary spat back, glaring at me.
“Family—left everything behind Rosemary,” his voice breaking a little at that. “It was her, or no one at all.”
I stood up again. “Excuse me. I really hate to break up this, er, reunion or whatever, but can we get back to the matter at hand here please?”
They both turned to me. Elmer looked sheepish and Rosemary looked, well, cranky enough to make me want to sit back down and wish I had remained quiet.
“What’s done is done, I guess,” she conceded finally. To me she said, “Let’s get you sorted out,” she paused, then addressed Elmer, “You don’t go anywhere. We need to talk.”
“Rosemary,” Elmer said softly, “there really was nobody else. I was pretty sure Roxanne, here, would be able to do this. She’s strong. Just look at her. And—she has the Sight.”
I made an effort not to fidget during their combined attention. Rosemary’s expression eased a bit. “Y
es. I can see that.”
“Will you help, then?” Elmer looked hopeful. “There’s just too much I can’t teach her about. Especially everything to do with the jewelry. That’s always been passed down by the womenfolk, and right now there are none left to do that.”
Another moment of silence passed. “Fine. Tell me how—this girl—came to be wearing that ring, and we’ll work from there.”
Elmer caught her up to speed fairly quickly. By the time he finished, Rosemary was looking at me much more thoughtfully. I saw her eye my hair again and it was all I could do not to reach up and tuck the gray streak behind my ear.
“Well, that’s quite a story there, Roxanne. I . . . may have been a bit abrupt with you in the beginning. How about we start over?”
I nodded, fairly sure this was as close as I would come to getting an apology from this cranky old woman.
“So, let’s see what else you have. I can feel them nearby,” she said, looking around the room.
I raised my brows questioningly at Elmer. He winked back and nodded. Permission granted, I turned to the nightstand and lifted out the little box, opening it as I set it on the bed. Rosemary walked over and looked everything over intently. When she reached down and picked up the opal pendant, I nearly fainted.
“How are you able to do that?”
She grinned over at me, “It’s different when we’re called back than before we cross over.”
Curious now, I asked—mostly because I was afraid to do so without her permission, “Is it okay if I touch you?”
“Sure.”
Tentatively, I reached out to touch her arm. I gasped softly, she was—
“Boo!”
I screamed and fell back onto the bed, nearly knocking the box of jewelry off. Her hearty laugh reverberated through the room. Even Elmer had the nerve to chuckle. Jake joined in with a soft woof, tail wagging furiously.
“Seriously? That could’ve given me a heart attack! Do you even know what a rough month I’ve had!”
That just brought on more laughter from them both, though Elmer at least looked somewhat embarrassed by it. Jake groaned and flopped down onto the floor, head between his massive paws, his tail thumping silently.
“Great. I’m being laughed at by a ghost, his ghost dog, and—” I paused, my anger quickly forgotten. “What the heck are you? And why is it that I can touch you, but not Elmer?”
Rosemary shrugged her shoulders. “Like I said. It’s different when you’re called back through. I don’t know why exactly. It just is.”
“So, are you . . . alive?” She had felt warm to me. She had felt real.
“No. Absolutely not,” she set the pendant back into the box and picked up the gold and silver ring. “I’m just a different kind of energy than what Elmer here is, I guess you would say,” she explained, replacing the ring.
Glancing back at the clock again I announced, “We’ve got roughly twenty-five minutes before Sam will be home. Unless she gets stuck at work.” I grabbed my phone to see if there were any messages. Nothing. “She hasn’t messaged me about anything, so let’s assume twenty five minutes. Is there a crash course we can do here?”
“That is not how it is done, Roxanne,” Rosemary said flatly. “Normally, the knowledge is passed down to daughters, granddaughters, or nieces. It can take years to learn.”
Deadpanning back at her, “You may not have noticed, but I’m not exactly a spring chicken here. I don’t have years to learn . . . whatever all of this is.” I reached down under the bed to pull out the bookbag. Dumping them on the bed, I gestured at them. “Is there one of these that can help me out? Or at least give me a place to start?”
Rosemary trailed her fingers lightly over the covers, her eyes tearing. “These are generations of history, written by the women of my family. Most of them tell of local happenings. We used them to try to determine what areas seemed to draw what kind of Others and whether or not there were cycles we could determine.” She sniffled a bit. I honestly didn’t know if I should hand her a tissue or not. What were the rules of etiquette when dealing with a—not ghost? “And this,” she said, picking up the older book. “This is the family Grimoire.” I had no clue what that meant.
Clearing my throat, “What about the jewelry then? We can start with this,” I held up my hand, ring facing forward.
“That ring is Rose Quartz. It has healing abilities, but it has to draw on some of your own energy. And it doesn’t instantly heal a person—they’ll just heal a lot faster than they would on their own. Also, as you’ve already found out, you can use it to call someone back through from the other side. Only temporarily, of course. As far as I know, it’ll be someone from my family that answers—or at least that’s how it’s always been before. Nobody outside of the family has ever worn that ring before,” she shot a look at Elmer. He studiously ignored her. She shook her head and continued, “This will also use some of your energy, so don’t do it just for company. You are probably going to sleep pretty heavy tonight. I would take the ring off before you go to bed, if I were you. It is supposed to have other abilities, but sometimes it works differently for different people. I can tell you what I know but, like I said, no one besides family has ever worn it before, so it might be different for you.”
I pulled out the opal pendant she had first picked up. “What about this one?”
“That one was our family’s spirit stone. It was made special for one of our ancestors,” she leveled a stern look at Elmer. He looked back at her impassively. “It kept the wearer safe and invisible from certain kinds of Others. Not all of them, mind you. Witches, mostly. Possibly Vampires, but they don’t seem to bother with us much anyway, for some reason. Grandmam used to say she could spirit walk with it.”
“I think I might have one . . . kind of like it,” I offered tentatively. “It belonged to my grandmother. I inherited it when my mother passed away.”
“Have you ever worn it?”
“No, not really. She didn’t either, so far as I can remember. I think I played with it when I was little. What little girl doesn’t play dress-up with her mom’s jewelry?”
“Hmm. And you don’t remember anything else about it?”
“Um, no, I don’t think so.”
“Did you have any crazy dreams when you had it on? Any nightmares?” she was watching me keenly at this point.
I thought back. I did have really odd dreams sometimes as a child. And a lot of nightmares. But were they different than any other child had? I shrugged, “I don’t recall anything out of the ordinary.”
“Maybe it’s just a regular piece of jewelry, then. Hard to say,” she was still watching me closely enough to make me squirm a little.
Nervously, I looked at the clock again. Sam would be home in about five minutes. “As informative as all of this has been, you should probably go now. Thank you for everything, Rosemary.”
“Oh, we’re not done yet. I’ll tell you how to send me back but you’ll need to know about the rest of what’s in that box before you go wearing any of it. Except maybe this,” she picked up the opal pendant. “Wear it when you have to go outside of this house, but take it off as soon as you return. And this,” picking up the plain, almost crude silver ring and showing it to me. “Wear this when you read the Grimoire and the journals. They’re, well, I guess you could say they’re magicked to prevent just anybody from understanding them. This ring will take care of that.”
She paused for a moment to let all of that sink in. “Everything in here will exact a price from you, mostly in energy, so wear them only when you need to. You’ll have to build up a tolerance, of sorts, to pay that price, understand?”
I nodded.
“Now, to send me back, just think about what you want. You want me to return to where I came from. As soon as that’s done, you take that ring off and put it back in the box, hear? When you want me to come back, put it on and think of me. Sometimes that helps with getting the person you actually want, but not always. Meditating or rel
axing helps, which is probably what happened this time, when you fell asleep. Now let’s go. Are you ready?”
I nodded quickly. Closing my eyes—
“You don’t need to close your eyes to think, do you?”
I opened one eye to glare at her. She laughed. Closing that eye again, I thought about her going back to her side of the . . . whatever. Or maybe wherever? For some reason the words that popped into my head were ‘go back from whence you came’. That made me snicker.
“She’s gone, Roxanne. You can open your eyes now,” Elmer provided helpfully.
Blowing out a breath, I relaxed, only now realizing how tense I had been. What if I hadn’t been able to send her back? How would I explain her to Sam? Would Sam have even been able to see her? As these questions barreled through my head, I pulled the ring off and placed it back into the box, which in turn went back into the nightstand drawer.
I heard the garage door opening for Sam’s car as I carefully put the journals back into the bag, tucking it under the bed again. Straightening back up, I looked over at Elmer, Jake still flopped lazily on the floor beside him. He smiled, waved, and they were both gone in a blink.
I headed down the stairs just as Sam was walking in. All through dinner I struggled with myself as to whether or not to tell my friend about any of this. Not to mention how to tell her. It all sounded crazy, even to me—and I was the one living it. I decided to wait a couple more days and broach it to Elmer, first. How had my life become so freaking weird? Oh yeah. Steven.
Chapter 9
I was just stepping out of the shower the next morning as my phone rang. I saw Sam’s name pop up on the Caller I.D. and answered it.
“Hey, Rox. I wanted you to hear this from me first,” she said right away.
SEEING DEAD THINGS: A Paranormal Women’s Fiction Novel (Roxie’s Midlife Adventures Book 1) Page 6
