Wraiths of Winter (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 3)

by Joy Elbel

  I ignored so many clues along the way. Jonas told us that the theater was built in Charlotte Baker’s honor on the very first day we were here. The cast iron mask that fell from the balcony was my next clue. According to Jonas, it was fashioned in the likeness of Charlotte herself. Something about that mask always bothered me but I chalked it up to the fact that it damn near killed me. I should have realized that after how many times I’d almost died, one more close call with the Grim Reaper wouldn’t have stuck with me for so long. I already had so many regrets in my short life, I prayed that I wouldn’t have to add Crimson’s death to that list.

  I was convinced that the mirror was the entrance to another room and that when I felt like someone was watching me, I was most certainly correct. Crimson probably sat just on the other side of that wall—restrained, gagged, and unable to get my attention. How horrible that must have been for her! To know that help was so close yet still so far away would be heart wrenching. I had at least an inkling of how that felt, too. I didn’t remember much from my incident in the locker room because Garnet was in control of my actions for much of that time. But there were definite moments when I was able to see what was going on but was unable to communicate. I wouldn’t even wish that kind of torture on my worst enemy—even though Misty might benefit from feeling helpless and not in control for at least a second or two. What I wanted most was for Misty to see life through the eyes of her victims and I hoped that karma would take care of that for me someday.

  With all thoughts of revenge on Misty aside, I approached the mirror and inspected its edges. There wasn’t a frame of any sort, just the smoothened surface of the glass itself. I couldn’t even see how it was hanging as there were no visible hooks. Prying at the sides didn’t make it budge. I pushed in on each end hoping that it would swing on a hidden swivel but nothing happened. Sudden flashbacks to Halloween night. I broke the glass that night because it was the only way to get out of the school. Breaking the mirror was the only way I was going to get in to the hidden room on the other side of it. I had to be sure that my theory was correct before I destroyed any more property. Even if I did have to break it though, at least I was pretty positive that it wouldn’t cost me three thousand dollars to replace. Three thousand freakin’ dollars! How crazy! At what point did glass become worth its weight in gold, anyway?

  I stood close to the mirror and placed the tip of my pointer finger to its surface. When I was in middle school, I watched a crime drama on TV where the police found a two way mirror in a gas station restroom that the owner placed there so he could spy on his female patrons. One cop explained to his partner that if a mirror was just a mirror, there would be a gap between the object and its reflection. If there wasn’t any space between them, then it was a two way mirror. For several years, the first thing I did when I used a public restroom or fitting room was perform the mirror test. I never found anything suspicious and always wondered if that trick actually worked. When I Googled it once, I found websites claiming that it was an urban legend yet others swearing that the method was reliable. I was about to find out the truth for myself.

  Sure enough, my finger and its mirrored counterpart were flush with each other. I looked around the room for something that I could smash the mirror with. If I happened to somehow be wrong about there being a secret room on the other side of it, I was going to have to explain how the mirror broke and I wanted the story to be believable. My eyes scanned the room for the perfect weapon but the only things in the room were the table, chair, and clothing rack. Just like last time, I would have to use the chair. I was the walking epitome of the phrase, “Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.”

  I would definitely have to be more careful this time—I wouldn’t be able to swing it around wildly like some panicked maniac like I did in the school. Crimson could be just on the other side and I definitely didn’t want to hurt her any more than she was already hurt. I also didn’t want to be slapped with abuse of a corpse charges. Standing to the side, I lightly tapped at the mirror as close to the bottom of it as I could. Nothing. Again, I swung with just slightly more force. Still nothing. So I closed my eyes, hoped for the best, and swung again. The sound of breaking glass met my ears almost instantly. I was almost too scared to open my eyes.

  Number One, I was afraid to open them and find nothing but exposed wall behind the break. Number Two, I was fearful to look down and find Crimson’s lifeless head lolling through the opening in the glass. But I didn’t make it this far to turn into a coward now. Cautiously, I opened my right eye just a crack. And breathed a sigh of relief.

  Neither of my two fears were realized—I didn’t find bare wall and I didn’t find a dead body. What I found was that I was right. The mirror cracked from the point of impact all the way to the top. While most of the glass still hung in large, jagged pieces, there was an opening in the bottom that allowed me to see directly into the small space on the other side of the wall. I used the legs of the chair to knock out enough of what remained of the panel so that I could enter the small recess.

  Inside, I found a padded chair upholstered in the same dingy velvet that covered the seats in the theater. Tied to the arms of the chair were long strips of material dotted with dark stains. The whole room was steeped in the acrid odor of human waste. Someone was definitely restrained and held captive in here but where were they now? At the base of the chair, lay a pile of jewelry—piercings to be exact—and they were smeared with dried blood. The realization that those piercings were ripped out of Crimson’s face combined with the horrid stench made me sick to my stomach. I tried not to throw up but I simply couldn’t fight it so I heaved my guts out onto the floor just on the other side of the mirror. How do coroners and homicide detectives ever keep anything in their stomachs?

  The mints I always kept in my pocket served a dual purpose tonight. Not only did they take away the taste of vomit on my tongue, but their fresh scent helped to mask the foul odor in the air. Once again the flashlight app on my phone was my only source of light and it was just enough for me to fully survey my surroundings. There was only one other thing in that room that I hadn’t already seen—a narrow hallway leading to God knows where. It was just barely wide enough for one person to slide through. I couldn’t even fully extend my elbows without touching the walls on either side. How in the world did Jackson squeeze himself in and out of a space so small? I guess there was no end to the determination of a serial killer.

  As I made my way forward, I could see two other sets of footprints in the dust covering the unfinished floor—one fairly large, the other much smaller. It was a good sign. While I still didn’t know if Crimson was alive, at least I knew that she didn’t die in that horrible little room. I followed the footprints until the hallway came to a stop at the foot of a spiral staircase. Just as I placed my foot on the bottom step, I had a sense of foreboding. I had to be completely insane to come in here all by myself. Lately, I’d had no urge to spend any time with Zach or Lucas but I could have at least asked Rachel to come with me. For once, I did the smart thing and I turned around to head back to the theater to get her. Then, I heard a noise—what sounded like muffled cries for help. They were coming from above. Crimson was still alive—I couldn’t turn back now!

  With a renewed sense of bravery, I made my way around the twists and turns as quickly as I possibly could. The air grew hotter and heavier as I climbed and I was in a full sweat by the time I got to the top. As I peered into the room before me, I saw her. Or more accurately, I saw them.

  Crimson sat there bound to a velvet chair exactly like the one downstairs, dressed in a wedding gown and shivering like she’d just been pulled from an Arctic pool. Streaks of dried blood marked every spot on her face that used to be pierced. Her eyes grew wide and tears of relief began to stream down her face when she saw me. The other person in the room was Allison.

  She too was all in white and standing motionless in the far corner to my right. As I stood between the two of them, I
could sense an insane difference in temperature. The room was freezing cold where Crimson sat, a strong breeze blowing in through the cracks around the boarded up window. But on the side closest to Allison, it was as hot as a raging blast furnace. She was staring straight ahead and didn’t seem to notice or care that I was there. So I was right— Jackson’s incarceration dampened her anger and made her less dangerous than before. All I really needed was enough time to untie Crimson so that we could both make a run for it.

  I loosened the gag from her mouth and she inhaled deeply like it was the first full breath she’d taken since her capture. Once her lungs were satisfied, she began speaking at such a quick pace that even Rachel’s speech pattern was more like a drawl in comparison. I struggled just as hard to understand her as I did to untie the impossibly knotted fabric binding her wrists to the chair.

  “It’s okay, Crimson, I’ll get you out of here! Just calm down and help me get your ankles free. She doesn’t seem to notice me—yet. But we have to get out of here before she wakes up!” Help me untie your ankles! Hurry!”

  “Who is she? Did he bring another bride here? Oh, Ruby, we have to help her, too! I watched him snap that other poor girl’s neck! I watched while he killed her and I couldn’t do anything to stop it!”

  Panic stricken and crying profusely, Crimson was unable to undo the knot on her left ankle, so I brushed her hand aside and began to unravel it myself. “We can’t help her now. It’s way too late for that. Remember that secret Rachel wanted to tell you about what she and I did this summer? Well that secret is standing in the corner over there. I can see ghosts—Rachel helped me put one to rest. Two actually. Right now, we’re not alone. The ghost of his first bride is here with us.”

  “Ghosts?” she replied with disbelief. “You can see ghosts?” “I’ll explain everything to you later when we’re both safe! Right now we have to hurry! Jackson’s in jail and he can’t hurt you now but Allison is every bit as dangerous as he is.”

  I shouldn’t have spoken her name aloud because as soon as the final syllable passed over my lips, a look of recognition swept across her face and she suddenly came to life. As I untied the final knot and Crimson leapt out of the chair, Allison rolled her eyes so far up into their sockets that not a trace of her irises remained. Blank, hollow, and transparent yet they seemed to pierce straight through me. She let out a wailing shriek with such force that the chair toppled over sideways and slammed into the far wall.

  “Oh, Dear God!” Crimson shouted. “Was that her? And who the hell is Jackson? Oh, Ruby, we’re both going to die!” “No, we’re not!” I exclaimed as Allison spread her jaws wide enough that her mouth seemed to engulf the rest of her face. “Run!”

  Caught in the hot blast of her breath, my body flew through the air like a toy truck in a tornado and I smashed straight through the wall. As I lay there about to lose consciousness, there was only one thought in my mind—I didn’t want to die alone. There was only one person who could possibly get to me in time, one person who could be with me as I passed into whatever the afterlife had in store for me. So with my last breath, I called his name.

  “Clay,” I whispered then everything faded to black.

  38. White Wedding

  When I opened my eyes, all I saw was a wall—a plain white wall. I had no idea where I was or how I got there. It even took me a few seconds to remember the last thing that happened to me before I passed out. The unbearable heat that radiated from Allison was gone and I felt icy cold. And pain—I felt excruciating pain! I knew that I was definitely still alive because it didn’t hurt that much to be dead. Did it? Why did I never ask Clay that question? I was so insensitive! Or worse yet, did I ask him that before and forget his response? I knew he felt sorrow and that could be just as excruciating as physical pain—perhaps even more so. If only he’d heard me calling for him….

  “Ruby, you’re awake!” a voice spoke from beside me. “I swear I didn’t think about you! Scout’s honor! Where are we and what’s happening to you?”

  “Clay!” I exclaimed as tears formed in my eyes. “You did hear me!” I tried to turn my head in his direction but even the slightest movement caused a searing pain to shoot down my side.

  The look on his face was grim as he stepped into my view so that I didn’t have to try to move again. “So it wasn’t me this time—it was you. Why did you call me? I don’t know what’s going on here but you need help and I have no way of helping you—you know that,” he said sadly.

  “I thought I was going to die and I was afraid to die alone. I thought if you could find me just by thinking of me that maybe I could bring you to me if I thought about you.”

  Only days earlier, I scolded him for popping into my life out of the blue. Now, I was so grateful to see him. Dead or not, he was my friend and I shouldn’t have been so hard on him that night in the tunnel. “Allison—the wraith I’ve been fighting—she attacked me and tossed me right through the wall. I hurt so bad everywhere that I’m afraid to even try moving. She tried to kill me and I’m afraid that she might come back to finish the job.”

  “Okay, I kind of understood that, I think, but you have bigger problems than that right now,” Clay said in a serious tone as he nervously pushed his hair back away from his eyes. “Look, promise me that you won’t panic when I show you this, okay?”

  Telling me not to panic was a sure fire way of making me panic, but I promised him that I wouldn’t. I had every intention of keeping that promise until I saw what made him so worried about how I would react.

  “Look down.” Shifting only my eyes because my first attempt at movement hurt so much, I did what he told to me to do. And immediately wished that I hadn’t. I was about to break my “no panicking” promise in a big way. I was tied to a chair and I was wearing a wedding dress.

  “Oh, Clay! How did this happen? Jackson’s still in jail, right? Where’s Crimson? I don’t want to die!” And then I began to babble incoherently at best about all of the things I wanted to do in life but never had a chance to do yet.

  Clay knelt down in front of me until we were face to face. “I don’t know what to say—I don’t have many answers for you. But I’ll tell you what I know and I promise to stay with you through all of this, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said through quivering lips.

  He let out a deep sigh then told me what he knew. “When I got here, you were on the floor with shattered pieces of wood lying all around you. I seriously thought you were dead at first. I called out your name and tried to wake you up but you were out cold. While I was trying to figure out what to do next, a man walked into the room. He knelt down beside you and checked your pulse so at first I thought maybe he was a doctor or something. Then he picked you up, carried you in here, and things started to get freaky. He started calling you his bride and saying that he knew that you were different from all of the rest—that you would never abandon him. Once he taught you perfect obedience, you would make the perfect wife.”

  I didn’t want to hear any more but I could tell by the way he was looking at me that the worst was yet to come. Calling for Clay was the best decision I’d made in a long time—maybe even ever. While the things he was telling me seemed like a bad nightmare, even my twisted brain couldn’t make up something so bizarre and make it feel so real. I was in serious trouble but at least I wasn’t completely alone. My sheer stupidity in trying to do everything all by myself was the reason I was in danger—again. I’d just taken my Valentine’s Day curse to a whole new level.

  Clay went on for a minute about how he tried to wake me up again—about how many times he called my name but got no response. “So when he started to….”

  “Started to what?” He’d already told me such horrible things—what else could there be that he was so afraid to say to me?

  “Um, well, when he started to undress you….” I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and braced for the worst. “Go ahead, Clay. Tell me everything that happened. I would rather know everything he did to me than to p
retend that he did nothing.” I think. After I heard the truth, I may want to change my mind about that.

  Immediately, Clay understood exactly what my fears were. “No, Ruby, no—nothing like that, I swear. Scout’s Honor,” he said with a look of total honesty on his face. “He was a complete nutjob but he was also a complete gentleman. You were never even close to naked—he never saw a thing. And neither did I, dammit!”

  Well, that was a relief—for now anyway. I relaxed a little bit and gave Clay a weak smile in return for at least trying to make me laugh at a time like this.

  “Okay, so what happened while he was undressing me?” I asked impatiently. “I want you to know right now that I hate suspense. Seriously, I absolutely hate it.”

  He nodded his head and went on. “I remembered that Rachel said I was cold that day I touched her in the cemetery. So I just kept touching you in the hopes that the chill would wake you up but it didn’t work.”

  So that explained why I was freezing when I finally did wake up. There was so little that he could do to help me but his efforts were greatly appreciated. And at least I had information about what happened while I was unconscious. “Thanks for trying. Did Crimson make it out alive? And why on earth did the police release that big toothless oaf Jackson from jail?”

  Clay shook his head fervently. “I didn’t see anyone else, Ruby. When I found you, you were all alone. And as for your second question, I don’t think that the man holding you captive is the dude you think he is. I couldn’t see most of his face but he definitely had all of his teeth.”