Phantoms of Fall (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 2)

by Joy Elbel

  History dragged as usual but it was more torturous than ever. Instead of creating intense feelings of boredom, it gave rise to anxiety of epic proportions. I was all alone in this. No one had the slightest clue of the danger I was in. At least over the summer, I had Zach and Rachel to turn to when things got rough. I could tell Rita, of course, but she couldn’t save me if things turned dangerous here at school. I decided to take Mr. Raspatello’s advice—just drop it. Garnet could haunt me all she wanted to but I was done. Uncovering the details of her death wasn’t worth risking my life for.

  Still, I kept a low profile in English figuring it couldn’t hurt. Mr. Raspatello acted completely normal which put my mind at ease. Maybe the dark ominous stare in home room was nothing but a figment of my overactive imagination. Maybe…. I was wrong. As I filtered out of the classroom along with everyone else, he called my name.

  “Ruby, can I talk to you for a minute.” He leaned down and reached into his bag. I flinched instinctively. Common sense told me he wouldn’t hurt me right here in front of countless witnesses but I still envisioned his hand retreating from the bag with a 9 mm pistol in his hand. No, he had a flair for the dramatic. He would use an antique pearl-handled revolver instead. If my death weren’t involved in this scenario, I would have complimented him on his choice of weapon.

  Instead of a gun, he was holding a file in his hand. “I want to talk to you about the creative writing assignment you handed in two weeks ago.”

  Oh crap. I forgot all about that paper. I wrote it long before I suspected that he was involved in Garnet’s death but he probably thought I was taunting him with it. It was called “Hallowed Halls” and it was the story of a lonely girl who was murdered at school but was given a chance to live again if she could find the one person there who knew why she was killed—her murderer.

  The story had a happy ending for the girl but apparently it wouldn’t end so well for me. The killer in my story was none other than the girl’s English teacher. It was pure coincidence; however, I knew he wouldn’t see it that way. I braced myself for the storm that was surely brewing beneath his cool exterior.

  “Do you know what I think about this?” He shook the paper nonchalantly in the air. What could I say? If I told him it was all a big misunderstanding he would know for sure that it wasn’t. My pulse quickened and sweat began to bead on my forehead. “Stay silent and admit to nothing!” the voice inside of my head screamed at me. And for once, I listened to it.

  “This,” he pointed to the paper with emphasis, “is pure gold!” Where did you come up with such a great idea?” I was flabbergasted. Was he toying with me? Was he waiting for me to reveal my hand before he went in for the kill? He was evil, pure evil, this man!

  “Never mind where you get your ideas, Ruby. This is amazing and I want your permission to enter it into this year’s Edgar Allen Poe short story contest.” He flashed me the most charming smile I’d ever seen. “Please say yes.”

  Whatever his game was, I had to play along with it. “Sure, go ahead.” I did my best to sound excited and it seemed to work.

  “Great! You’re really talented but I have one question for you?” His smile faded and I knew the grenade was about to fly out of his hands and land at my feet.

  “Okay.” The word escaped as barely more than a whisper. “You weren’t thinking of me when you made her killer an English teacher, were you?” He leaned forward in anticipation of my response.

  Frightened, I shook my head no and ran out the door to safety. Fear traveled with me for the rest of the day even after I was in the safety of my own home. I had a definite answer—he knew. But that led to another definite—he now knew that I was afraid of him. He could use that fear against me. Now what? If they kept track of such things, I know that mine would be on the top ten list of worst senior years ever. In less than two months, I’d made more enemies than a snitch in a prison yard.

  I spent the rest of the week dodging multiple people— there was a nemesis around every corner it seemed. But each day passed without incident. By the time Friday rolled around, I should have known my luck was about to run out.

  It all started in English class. My punishment paper was due to Mr. Raspatello so I tucked it into a folder and placed it in my bag that morning. I was so worried about angering him that I checked that folder a million and one times to be sure it was still there and still safe. I kept my bag glued to me throughout homeroom and history class. So imagine my surprise when I got to English and found that folder missing. In a panic, I dug through every one of my folders and books but found nothing. It was like it disappeared into thin air.

  But that wasn’t possible—my bag never left my sight. There was no way anyone could have stolen that folder out of it. Telling Mr. Raspatello that I didn’t have that paper was going to be a suicide mission. Suicide. Was it possible that Garnet was responsible? God, everyone just needed to leave me alone! I was at my breaking point—I couldn’t handle all of this by myself. If I only had Zach….

  But I didn’t and I never would again. I had to learn how to deal with my problems on my own. Maybe he would forget about giving me the assignment. Yeah, right—it was probably the first thing on his mind. I slunk down in my seat in the hopes that I might be able to make myself as invisible as my paper now was.

  He waited until the end of class to address me about my assignment. But what he said to me was, well, unexpected.

  “I got your assignment, Ruby. Though I don’t know why you slipped it into my library book. You could have just handed it to me the usual way.” He laughed like he thought it was funny that I was so afraid of him that I went to those great lengths to hand in my paper.

  “Okay,” I mumbled and ran out the door in a haze of confusion. How did my paper go from my bag to his book? Was I going crazy? There was barely any time to ponder it though because the breakfast I thought I was actually going to digest properly was suddenly banging on the door to get out.

  Ducking into the nearest rest room, I barely made it inside the stall before everything came heaving out. I flushed and finished wiping my mouth off and was about to open the stall door when I heard a familiar voice. Misty.

  “So little Miss Anorexic thinks she’ll get Zach back by losing weight, huh?” Her comment was quickly followed by Jordyn’s high pitched laughter.

  It wasn’t true! I wasn’t making myself throw up on purpose! The way I saw it, I had two choices. Go right out there and set her straight about this and everything else. Or hide in the stall and cry. I chose to cry. The mental stress was exhausting not to mention how weak I was from constantly being sick. I couldn’t face her—not now, not like this. So I let Misty get the best of me one more time.

  It was quiet for a moment so I thought they were gone. Then a pair of feet planted right in front of the stall door. And a whisper floated in to me.

  “It’s not going to work. After today, he’s mine.” The feet walked away and I heard the door to the rest room close.

  Detention or not, I didn’t care. I spent the entire next period on the floor in the rest room crying my eyes out. What did she mean by that? “After today, he’s mine.” Sinister words from someone I knew was capable of the worst kind of evil. How could a love as beautiful as the one Zach and I shared become so ugly so fast? Me—that’s why. I was a hot mess and he deserved someone better than me. If I could only go back in time, I wouldn’t have snuck out to go to that concert last year. Lee would still be alive and I never would have moved to Charlotte’s Grove. Zach would be so much better off if he’d never even met me.

  I met up with Rachel at our lockers after school. The school board meeting to determine Zach’s fate was scheduled for 4:00 pm so she was understandably on edge.

  “I really hope things work out for him—he’s worked so hard the last few years. To lose it all now, well, it would absolutely kill him.”

  I wanted to break down and cry again. It was my fault that he was in this situation but there wasn’t anything I could do to g
et him out of it. And I couldn’t show any emotion over it, either. I didn’t want anyone else to see how much I still loved him—especially not Rachel. So I slapped a generic smile on my face and acted like nothing was wrong.

  “I hope so, too.” I couldn’t keep up the façade—I had to get out of there fast. “Let me know how it goes.” With a friendly wave, I walked to my car. Walked until I was out of sight and then I started to run. I drove home barely able to see through the tears.

  I waited impatiently for news from Rachel. Pacing the length of my room, I thought of nothing but Zach. They had to let him back into school. He worked too hard to lose it now. I tried to think positive thoughts but positivity wasn’t what I did best. For every good thought, two negative ones slithered into my brain. I was just picturing him wearing a Chicken Shack uniform at the age of forty when I heard the buzz of my phone.

  It was a text from Rachel.

  “Good news—he’s back in school. Bad news—he has Misty 2 thank 4 it.”

  Misty? But how? I quickly typed in my question and hit send. When my phone buzzed again, I was afraid to look.

  “Jack Wolfe on school board. Vouched 4 Zach’s upstanding character.” So that’s what Misty meant by her remark. She kept him from getting kicked out so now he owed her. Owed her big. And I knew exactly how she would try to collect. My joy at his good news was devoured by the idea that she would now try to use it to get what she wanted from him. The question was—would he consent because he felt that he owed her that much?

  No. I couldn’t think about it. For one thing it wasn’t any of my business anymore. I couldn’t be with him and I had no say in what—or who—he did. The second reason—it hurt like hell to imagine him with someone else. Once I allowed myself to really feel the pain, I was afraid that I would never be able to see past it. I had other things I needed to concentrate on. I had a ghost to banish and a homicidal English teacher to avoid. If I lost focus now—if I slipped up in any way—I could be Mr. Raspatello’s next victim. Mourning my lost love would have to wait.

  I walked into Something Wick-ed Saturday morning, miserable and without a clue of how I was going to solve my myriad of problems. Rita was busy packing her equipment in the back of her SUV when I got there.

  “Ruby, I heard nothing but good things about your performance last weekend! So glad you decided to take this job.”

  “Thanks. How did your investigation go?” “Excellent! We got some amazing EVPs and we caught a few shadow people on camera. We’re heading to Maryland today—there’s a headless apparition in a small town church. There have been a lot of sightings recently. I’m hoping I get lucky enough to be among them!”

  I shuddered involuntarily. I would give anything to never see another ghost again and here she was driving to other states hoping to catch a glimpse. Would I ever understand her? No, I don’t think so.

  “So I notice you didn’t bring your laptop with you this time. Did you check out the filing cabinet last weekend?” She closed the hatch on the back of her vehicle and grabbed the last of her things.

  “I did. I found some interesting things in there— gonna hit it up again today.” “Good.” Rita settled into her seat but before she drove away she made one last comment. “In case you didn’t notice, the last file in there is empty. I was hoping maybe someday you could help me fill it.”

  She drove off before I had a chance to answer her. What happened to me over the summer was so personal, so private, that I never thought I would want to share the details in such a way. Until recently, that is. My story needed to be told in the hopes that it might help someone else in my situation. I was happy that Rita wanted me to be a part of telling it.

  I spent every spare moment I could find reading file after file of Rita’s ghost hunting adventures. The more I read the more I started to notice a pattern. In a lot of these cases, it seemed that ghostly activity increased around the time of the anniversary of their deaths. Maybe that was the piece I was looking for. Mostly, it seemed that anniversary hauntings were residual so that not only did you get a look at their deaths, but also at their killers. If I could get a look at details only the killer would know, I might have a way to catch Mr. Raspatello red handed.

  I knew exactly where I needed to be and what I needed to do. The only catch was it would involve breaking into the school. It would be risky, for sure, but I couldn’t see any other option. I had three weeks to come up with a plan. Three weeks to plan what had to be the perfect crime.

  25. Planning the Perfect Crime

  These were the facts as I knew them. Garnet died in the girl’s locker room during the Halloween dance. According to the newspaper article I found, she was last seen alive at 6:30 and her body was found at 7:00. Halloween was on a Sunday this year so the school was guaranteed to be empty at that time. Though I still wasn’t happy about Rachel’s and Shelley’s plans for a costume party at Rosewood that day to celebrate, I may be able to use it to my advantage. No one would leave their own party to break into the school, right? No one in their right mind anyway.

  As much as I hated the idea of helping plan the dreaded soiree, I had to fake interest so that I could get all of the details. I had to have a hand in determining what time it started and ended. My break-in would have to fall somewhere in the middle of the party’s timeline. Something Wick-ed closed at five on Sundays, so I would have enough time to go home, be seen at the party, and then find a quick excuse to leave for that half an hour. If I helped plan the party, I could say that I was leaving to pick up snacks or something that I forgot to do on the way home. Now all I needed to do was figure out how to get into the school unnoticed and preferably without causing any damage.

  I drew out a quick sketch of the school on a piece of scrap paper. There weren’t any security cameras so the only thing that stood in my way was a locked door. Damn me for always being such a good girl! With no criminal activity in my background, I didn’t have the first clue on how to pick a lock. I bet Shelly—master of all things mystery—would know how. But I couldn’t risk asking her. She was a bloodhound and if she heard that someone broke into the school so shortly after my asking her how to do that very same thing she would know instantly. No, there had to be another way.

  Then it hit me. The locker room was in the basement of the school so the windows in there were near the ceiling but still at ground level. No one ever opened those windows so that meant no one would ever check to see if one was open before closing down on Friday night. I let my after school running activities fall by the wayside in the midst of all the drama, but I was sure that Coach Hunter would be happy to have me back on the track. I would wait for my opportunity and then unlock the window. Once it was unlocked, I could pry it open from the outside and bingo—I was in!

  Now that my plan was in place, the first thing I needed to do was tell Rachel that I wanted to help plan the party. It was almost closing time, so I texted Rachel to ask her if there was anything I could do to help when I got home. She sent numerous texts in such rapid succession that I feared my phone might spontaneously burst into flames. Even if it had, I wouldn’t have cared. Phase one of Operation Catch a Killer was successful!

  “So I finally got the invitations printed up today— what do you think of them?” Rachel slid a card across the desk to me. It had frayed edges and looked like an ancient piece of parchment. In fancy gothic script, the words “You’re invited” appeared in gray ink rimmed with purple shading. I opened the card hesitantly. This party was the last thing on earth I wanted but the one thing I needed for my plan to work. The script inside was the same.

  You are cordially invited

  to the

  First annual Halloween Masquerade

  Time: 7 pm, October 31st

  Place: Rosewood Mansion

  Entertainment provided by NeverMore

  Special guest appearance by NFL star Drake Sterling

  Costumes are mandatory and so is having fun!

  Please RSVP to Rachel Mason by October
25th Seven? That was too late! The party had to start no later than six for my plan to work! But Rachel already had the invitations printed—how could we possibly change the time now? Why did I always seem to be a step behind where I needed to be?

  “What do you think? Do they look okay? I got so lucky that Crimson and the rest of the band were going to be back in town by then. She loves Halloween and she jumped at the chance to play here that night! And it just so happens to be Drake’s team’s bye week that weekend, so I got Boone to convince him to come, too. If there’s anything you think I should change, though, just let me know.”

  Change? Maybe it wasn’t too late after all! It was at least worth a shot. “It’s a Sunday night—maybe we should start the party earlier, you know, since we’ll all have school the next morning,” I said casually, meanwhile praying she agreed with me.

  Rachel wrinkled her brow in thought. “You’re right—I didn’t think about that. How does six o’clock sound?”

  “Sounds perfect!” I responded with enthusiasm which Rachel mistook for actual interest in the party. “I can’t believe you’re so into this whole party thing. When I first told you about it, I could have sworn you hated the idea!”

  Sometimes she was more perceptive than I gave her credit for. Other times she would be willing to believe me if I told her grass was blue and the sky was green. Lucky for me, this was one of those times.

  “Okay, then. If you think the invitations look good, I’ll print one up for everyone. I highly doubt everyone will come, but I’m sure we’ll get a good turn out.”

  “Oh, who do you think won’t come?” Please say Misty, please say Misty, please say Misty! If I thought it would help, I would have clicked my heels together three times for good measure.