Phantoms of Fall (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 2)

by Joy Elbel

  “Yeah, lots of times. Why?” What difference could that possibly make?

  “Did anyone else see anything?” Rita leaned further over her desk toward me. I had a seriously bad feeling about this. “No. Why?” I recounted to her my shock when Rachel claimed not to see the entity the night of the séance. It went straight through her—how could she have missed it?

  Rita sighed and slumped back in her chair. “And you had a near death experience last year and again in the fountain, right?” “Yeah.” Whatever point she was trying to make, she needed to hurry up and make it. Or I had an even better solution—drop it altogether.

  “I hate to have to say this to you, but I don’t think that was the last brush with the paranormal you’ll ever have. I think your near death experience opened you up to the other side—opened up Pandora’s ghost box, in a sense.”

  No, that couldn’t be. She had to be wrong. But even as I tried to deny it, my world started to collapse in on me. I spoke to her with misdirected anger. “What makes you think that? How could you possibly know anything about me?”

  She looked at me with sorrow in her eyes. “I know more than you want to think I do because I can see them, too.”

  6. The Worst Christmas Present Ever…

  I sat numbly in my chair as she told me her story. “I was eight years old when it happened. It was Christmas Eve and I was playing with some friends down by Drucker’s Pond. We were having a lot of fun when some older kids showed up. They started running out on to the ice and daring us to do it, too. They challenged us to a game to see who could go out the furthest. I was scared, but I watched each of them run out and run back and I convinced myself that I would be fine. But when my turn came….”

  She paused long enough to sweep the emotion back under the rug. I knew that metaphorical rug all too well. “When my turn came, I went out just a little further than the girl before me. I felt the surface start to crack, but there wasn’t time to react. I plunged into the icy water and started to sink. I kicked my way back up, but I’d drifted too much and I couldn’t see where the break in the ice was. I beat on it with my fists but it wouldn’t give way. I couldn’t breathe. The next thing I knew, everything went....”

  “White.” I finished the sentence for her and she nodded her head in agreement. “Suddenly, I was standing outside of my body, outside of the water. I watched as they ran for help, certain that it wouldn’t arrive in time. A sense of pure truth came over me and I was at peace with what was happening. A policeman got to me first and he dove in after me. I watched as he tried to resuscitate me and then with a snap I was back in my body. Everyone said I was so lucky to be alive. I thought so too until the next day.”

  My anger was gone. She really did understand me and what I went through. “What happened the next day?” “Well, Christmas morning I went downstairs to open my presents and I saw my grandmother standing behind the tree. The only problem was that my grandmother died earlier that year.” Even though it happened years ago the horror of it still showed in her expression. Would I look the same way as I retold my story twenty years from now? I hoped it was possible to put such heinous memories so far behind me that they were no longer painful but it didn’t look like it happened that way for Rita.

  I never knew any of my grandparents. Dad’s parents died before I was born and my mother’s parents hated my dad. My mother was a ballet dancer with the Philadelphia Ballet Company but she gave up her career to have me. Her parents thought she was throwing away years of hard work and blamed it all on my dad. She chose him and me and they never forgave her for it. After she died giving birth to my sister, my dad tried to contact them in the hopes that they could make peace, if not for his sake then at least for mine. They never responded. But most grandparents I knew were loving and kind. At least her first encounter with the paranormal wasn’t as frightening as mine was.

  “That must have made things easier for you—for the first ghost you see to be someone you knew and loved.” Her lips wrinkled into a wry smile. “Oh, but it wasn’t. My grandmother was a horrible, wretched old woman. When I misbehaved, my mother would tell me stories about how she was abused as a child to make me appreciate the fact that she was a better mother than hers was. My grandmother wasn’t all chocolate chip cookies and knitting yarn. She was mean and frightening. She would take the belt to me if I even looked at her the wrong way. And there she stood, with her wild and wiry gray hair and dark evil eyes glaring at me from between the branches. I screamed bloody murder and ran back upstairs.”

  “Oh my God! What did your mother say when you told her?” “She didn’t believe me. She made me go back downstairs and open up my presents. My grandmother glared at me from behind that tree the entire day. I still get chills just thinking about it.” She held out her arm for me to see the goose bumps clearly formed along its length. For the first time ever, I was actually glad I never knew any of my grandparents.

  “Was she the only ghost you ever saw?” I hoped against hope that she would say “yes”. But of course, she shook her head no.

  “She was the only one I saw for a while so I thought that—as scary as she was—she was the only one I would ever have to deal with. But I was wrong and it got especially bad when I was about your age and I fell in love for the first time.”

  Zach! I was so wrapped up in her story that I didn’t take into account the full ramifications of what she was telling me. Did this mean that I was doomed to die a virgin? Theory confirmed—Misty did have a voodoo doll of me hidden somewhere in her nest.

  I swallowed hard. Thoroughly unconvinced that I actually wanted to hear the bad news, I asked for it anyway. “What happened then?”

  “His name was Kevin,” she said and smiled wistfully as she spoke his name. “He was gorgeous—tall with light brown hair and blue-green eyes. He was on the basketball team and I thought he was the cutest boy I’d ever seen. It was our senior year of high school and I went to every game so I could cheer him on. There was a dance one night after a game and I almost died when he asked me to dance. I fell in love with him so fast that I didn’t even think about what would happen if he found out about my dirty little secret. But just like what happened with you and Zach, our relationship caused the activity to go off the charts. One night while I was kissing him on my mother’s blue plaid couch, my grandmother showed up. And this time she had the energy to do something she’d never done before—she slapped me hard across the face and called me a whore.”

  “What did you do?” I struggled to think how I would have handled that situation if it had been me but came up blank. How exactly do you explain something like that?

  “I broke down in tears and told Kevin the truth and he was simply wonderful. He believed every word I told him— just like Zach believed you.”

  There was something in the way she spoke of him that suggested she still loved him. “So did you stay together? Did he help you with your problem?”

  “For a while. But the more I loved him, the worse it got. It broke my heart every time I saw the worry on his face. I just couldn’t go on hurting him that way. So the night of graduation, I broke up with him. I couldn’t tell him the truth because he would have insisted that he could handle it so instead, I told him I didn’t love him anymore. I broke that boy’s heart but it was for his own good. I haven’t seen him since. But I have seen plenty of ghosts and I’m afraid you will too.”

  No. This couldn’t be happening. She was wrong—she had to be wrong. I couldn’t face the possibility that the events I endured over the summer would repeat themselves. What about Zach? He was great about what happened over the summer, but how would he react if I told him that it could possibly happen again—and again? He would stand by me, but for how long? And at what cost? My anger returned. How dare she lay this load of crap on me!

  I stood up abruptly, sending my chair to the floor with a loud bang. “Thanks for the story, but it has nothing to do with my situation. Rosewood was haunted—not me.”

  I turn
ed to walk away as she called after me, “I’m sorry! I was only trying to help, Ruby!” Help? How could this be of any help to me? “If this is your idea of help, I don’t need it. I’m fine—everything’s just fine.” I flung that last comment over my shoulder as I ran out the door.

  Rita followed me out onto the sidewalk but I gave her a nasty look rivaling any her dead grandmother could have given her and she retreated. I sat there in my car until I was calm enough to drive. As I was about to pull out, my phone buzzed. Zach.

  “Done—can I c u in 30?” I wanted to see him, but I needed time to cool off and a half hour wasn’t going to cut it. “Make it an hour—meet u at The Hideout.”

  “K—luv u.” Staring at the words almost made me cry. What if Rita was right? What if it happened again? What if I put him in danger one time too many and I lost him? I threw my phone on the passenger seat without replying. I needed to think things through and I had one hour to do it.

  7. Who Does He Think He Is?

  Test the theory. That was what I needed to do. If Rita was right, then something was bound to happen and I would have my answer. If I saw a ghost, I would know she was right and I would have to decide what to do about Zach. If I didn’t, she was wrong and I could meet Zach with open arms. And I knew the perfect spot to test it out.

  A small overgrown cemetery lay just on the edge of town on the other side of Baker Regional Medical Center. “Heaven’s Gate Cemetery” read the sign. I took one look around and decided if this was what heaven looked like, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there. The grass reached halfway to my knees as I walked, tripping over broken headstones as I went. A large white obelisk-shaped monument rose forlornly above the grass in the center of the graveyard. One newly filled grave stood out from the rest of the landscape.

  Who would bury someone they loved here? I could understand how older graves got overrun with weeds and such when the people who took care of your resting place died themselves. But why would anyone choose to inter their loved one in a place that looked like this? I couldn’t comprehend the reason, but it was exactly what I was looking for. A freshly dug grave held a freshly dead corpse—someone who may not realize they were dead yet. If I was looking to find a ghost, it was the best place to start.

  Looking all around to make sure I was alone, I stepped up to the dirt mound. I wanted to call out the deceased’s name, but there wasn’t a headstone yet. So I just talked to the grave like I would have spoken to a stranger sitting beside me on the bus. Supernatural small talk.

  “So, what do you think of the weather?” Nothing.

  “How do you like it here?” Nothing.

  “How did you die?” And a voice from behind me asked, “Are you talking to me?” A cool breeze brushed past me as I turned to confront whoever—or whatever—was behind me.

  All I found was a boy about my age with long blond hair and a confused look on his face. I recognized him immediately. He was the boy I saw at Silver Lake the night Zach broke up with me.

  “Are you talking to me?” he repeated looking at me strangely.

  “Uh…no,” I responded.

  The strange look melted into a smile. “Oh. Who are you talking to then?” Awkward—infinitely awkward. First he hears me get dumped and then he hears me talking to a lump of earth. If any of this got back to Misty, I’d be branded a freak from the first day of school. I had to do some damage control—fast.

  “I’m writing a short story about a girl who can talk to dead people. I was just trying out some dialogue.” Writing before school even started—what was I thinking? Oh well, better a geek than a freak, I suppose. Plus, he didn’t look like the type who would ask questions so I figured he would take it at face value and move on.

  “Do you think it’s possible? Talking to dead people, I mean.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and waited for my answer.

  Crap! Who would have thought he would be interested in something like that? “No, I don’t,” I lied, “Do you?”

  “Nah, me neither.” And he said nothing more—he simply stood there looking at me oddly. He was starting to creep me out, so I decided it was time to leave. “See you in school,” I said as I stepped away from him. Stupid, I know—but what else was I supposed to say to him?

  He shook his head. “I’m not in school anymore. I’ll see you around, though. The name’s Clay, by the way.” “See you around, Clay.” Hurriedly, I got into the car. If Zach found out, he would be adding another name to the list of guys he wanted to push into a swimming pool. Clay waved as I drove off but I didn’t wave back. No need to add fuel to Zach’s fire or make this weirdo think I might be interested in him.

  The clock in the car showed I only had fifteen minutes before I was to meet Zach, just enough time to make the drive. No ghostly activity in the graveyard was a relief. Rita was wrong—I just proved that. What happened to her was unfortunate, but it wasn’t going to happen to me. I remembered that I didn’t return Zach’s text saying he loved me. I felt bad about it, but I would make it up to him tonight. Boy was I going to make it up to him.

  Arriving at The Hideout a few minutes early, I saw that Zach was already there waiting for me. He was leaning against his car with a worried look on his face.

  “Is everything okay?” he called before I even had a chance to turn off the engine. “Everything’s just fine.” I sincerely felt that it was. Rita was wrong—I proved that in the cemetery. I didn’t see a single thing and would never see another ghost. It was over—definitely over. I wouldn’t have to break up with Zach to keep him safe.

  As I approached him, he met me half way. I grabbed him and buried my head in his chest. He held me for a while and then whispered in my ear.

  “What’s wrong, sweetie?” He knew me well enough to sense that something wasn’t right so he stroked my hair comfortingly. “Talk to me.”

  I could have told him about my conversation with Rita. I should have told him about my conversation with Rita. But I didn’t. There was nothing to worry about so there was no reason to bring it up—he would only obsess over something that would never happen again. So I chose to keep it to myself.

  “I’m just sad because summer is over. I’m nervous about school tomorrow. I don’t want things to change.” Ever. I wanted to stay there with him in our own little world forever, just the two of us.

  “I know. Walk with me. This is our last night before school—I want it to be special.” Special. Was he thinking the same thing I was? He pulled the blanket out of the back seat of his car and my hopes soared. I took his hand and we walked to the top of the hill.

  My curfew on school nights was ten o’clock but that was more than enough time for us to do what I wanted to do. My stomach did flip flops as he spread the blanket on the ground and invited me to sit with him.

  “So did you go talk to Rita?” he asked. I loved talking to him but I didn’t want to talk tonight. Especially about that. I wanted to lose myself in him. I wanted him to lose himself in me. But I answered him anyway.

  “Yeah,” I replied casually. Scooting closer to him, I rested my hand on his leg. Maybe he would get the hint that I wanted to do more than just talk.

  Clueless, he took my hand in his. “So what did she want anyway?” Panic. I didn’t consider the fact that he would ask me point blank about our conversation. “Um, she just wanted some details about what happened last week.”

  “Oh. That was it? She made it sound urgent—like it was a matter of life and death or something.” He stared out over the town as he talked which was just what I needed to get through what I had to do next. I simply couldn’t look into those gorgeous eyes and lie—not again.

  “That was it. I think she documents every case she works on.” I swore months ago that I would never lie to him again. How did I end up back in this place, this world of deception? I convinced myself that it was for his own good and changed the subject. “So what do you want to do tonight?” I said trying to use my best sexy voice. Then I remembered that I didn’t have one. I so
unded about as sexy as Kermit the Frog.

  “Honestly…I just want to be alone with you.” Zach, on the other hand, definitely had a sexy voice and he was using it to its fullest potential. “I want to be alone with you, too.” And those were the last words we spoke for hours. The sun set without us ever noticing. Time moved differently when we were together—like our chemistry threw off even the laws of physics. When we kissed, I was light as air and the only thing that kept me from drifting away was his embrace. But I wanted more. I wanted to float right out of my body and into his. My head was swimming, my heart pounding. And when he slid his hand up the back of my shirt, I thought I was going to explode. The heat of his hand on the small of my back was enough to ignite an inferno.

  I decided to follow his lead. I wanted him to know I was right there with him—both mentally and physically. My right hand moved delicately down his back until I found the bottom of his shirt. Without hesitation, I made my way under the fabric. He was on fire and the increased pace of his kisses proved it. I’d never known a more perfect moment. I was ready and there was no way that he couldn’t be, too. But after only moments of this intensity, he pulled away.

  “Ruby,” he said through panting breaths, “It’s late. I have to get home and so do you.” Ten o’clock so soon? It couldn’t be! And how did he even have an opportunity to check his watch? Forget about opportunity, where did he find the willpower? If it was up to me, I would have stayed there with him until the first rays of morning light.

  “Can’t we stay just a little while longer?” I leaned back on the blanket, grabbed a fistful of his tee shirt and tried to pull him down with me.

  For a second, a smoldering look consumed his eyes. It was a look that said he wanted me just as much as I wanted him. He followed me until he was almost on top of me and then stopped so abruptly that I was startled.

  “No, Ruby. We need to go. Now,” he said with an urgent tone, the passionate look in his eyes completely gone. He stood up, took my hand, and helped me up. I was dazed. Wasn’t the situation supposed to be reversed? Wasn’t I the one who should be pulling the brakes?