Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance

by Bryan W. Alaspa

  Jimmy? Sapphire said inside his mind. What are you doing?

  Not now, Sapphire, Jimmy said. Please, just trust me when I say that you don't want to know.

  The buzzing diminished a bit, but Jimmy sensed that he had hurt her feelings. They had always been very forthcoming, and the last time someone had lied and tried to cheat her, well, she had ended up dead.

  "Got something!" Ned yelled.

  Jimmy snapped his head up and looked over. Across the small river on the muddy bank, Champ was turning in circles; he had found something. Ned was smiling.

  "Good job, Ned and Champ," Tabitha said. "How sure are you that they are human remains?"

  Ned shrugged. "Human remains are what he's been trained to find, and when he's on the job, he doesn't go looking for the bones of squirrels. We found something or, should I say, someone. Whether or not it's the girl you're looking for and how much we found, I have no clue."

  Tabitha grabbed the shovel she had brought with her and cast an eye at Jimmy. Jimmy grabbed the second shovel that Tabitha had handed to him when they had gotten into the car earlier. The fact that the woman seemed to carry around shovels was a fact that he was trying to ignore and not let bother him. At the same time, just how much actual digging did the editor of the small town newspaper actually need to do?

  They trudged across the river. The water was low and the current was mild. Jimmy's feet sank in the muddy bottom, but the two of them crossed fast and easy. Jimmy tried to think of the river filled with rushing water, the way it had been the night Sapphire died. He shook his head, trying to clear the thought; he did not want Sapphire to pick up on that.

  They reached the spot where Champ was still circling and whining. Ned gave Champ a treat and they backed away. Tabitha immediately stuck her shovel into the muddy bank and tossed a shovelful over her shoulder. Jimmy stuck his shovel in and did the same.

  The hours flew by. Once he started, Jimmy felt a kind of determination overcome him and the dirt flew over his shoulder at a rapid rate. The hole got bigger, deeper, and then wider. Dirt and mud was all that they found for what seemed like an eternity. Then, suddenly, as Tabitha pushed her shovel into the mud again, there was a strange clanking sound. Tabitha's eyes went wide and she looked up at Jimmy.

  "Found something," Tabitha whispered.

  Jimmy acknowledged that he had heard her with a bob of his head, but his stomach was flip-flopping. It was one thing to see a reconstituted spirit, but another to have potentially found the bones of the girl he was in love with. It was as if finding them would be the final proof that she was really dead. That would ruin the illusion he had managed to create for himself that they were, somehow, normal in some way, despite being able to bend reality and speak telepathically. It was amazing what the human mind could do and then convince you of at the same time.

  Tabitha got down on her knees and began removing clumps of mud from the hole with her hands. Jimmy helped clear the mud as she dug. His breath was labored and his heart was pounding in a mixture of anxiety and excitement.

  Tabitha reached in and her eyes went wide again. She gasped. She dug her fingers deep into the mud and then pulled. She grunted with the effort, and then there was a weird sucking sound as the mud attempted to retain its hold on the object she had found. Then Tabitha leaned back on her heels, nearly falling over into the mud, and in her hands was an object covered in mud and rot, but with sections and segments of white peeking through.

  She held up the object and smearing the mud caked to it, bits of it dropping off onto the ground beneath them. More and more white began to show. Jimmy felt his stomach do more loop-de-loops as what the object was became clearer. The dark, empty circles near the top of it became visible. More and more white showed, and then rows of neat white rectangular objects began to appear towards the bottom.

  It was a skull.

  They had found Sapphire's skull.

  Jimmy felt his breath catch in his chest. The world seemed to tip on its axis. They had no proof other than they had found a skull. There was nothing on it that indicated it belonged to Sapphire. However, Jimmy knew that it was hers. He knew it as certainly as he knew that he was actually sitting there on the banks of that river and that the wind was cold and that his pants were wet from kneeling in the mud.

  Jimmy felt his heart sink. Somehow seeing her skull and knowing, in his heart of hearts, that it was hers made it all more real than anything else. He was so used to seeing her in the flesh and feeling her warmth whenever they touched, and now here she was, in the way she had been when she was murdered and her skull was cold and empty and lifeless.

  Then, suddenly, his head exploded with static. He could feel the outright panic in Sapphire's mind. She had seen what was in front of Jimmy's eyes and she was now screaming inside his mind. It wasn’t words or anything that Jimmy could decipher, but a kind of inhuman scream of pure despair and terror. Jimmy felt his heart break all over again.

  "I think we need to talk to Devlin," Jimmy whispered through gritted teeth.

  "What?" Tabitha asked.

  "You heard me," Jimmy said.

  "I don't know if that's such a good idea," she said. "And I don't think the sheriff will like it much, either."

  Jimmy glared at Tabitha and she froze.

  "I don't care what anyone thinks," he said. "Sapphire is screaming inside my head right now. And I want to confront the man who did this to her. I want her to see it and I want her to remember what happened."

  Jimmy turned and trudged through the mud and the water. He could feel Tabitha's eyes burning into his back, but he didn't care. She would follow. It was too good of a story for her to back out now. She was in this until the end.

  12

  There was something about the sheriff in Knorr. Although it was rumored that he was from Pennsylvania, not born and raised in the area, there was something about him that seemed southern. Maybe it was the hat that resembled a cowboy hat, or the fact that he usually wore cowboy boots. Maybe it was the fact that he was tall and carried himself the way you would imagine a southern sheriff would in a movie. Or maybe it was the fact that he spoke in a deep, slow voice that almost had a kind of drawl to it. Whatever the reason, something about him just came across as if you were no longer standing in western Pennsylvania, but staring at a sheriff in Birmingham, Alabama.

  When Tabitha and Jimmy entered the sheriff's office, Tabitha held the skull in a plastic bag. She wore a determined look on her face, but it was nothing compared to the intensity on Jimmy's face. Jimmy had never been less scared of the rather intimidating sheriff and more determined to get what he wanted.

  As soon as they walked in, the sheriff removed his feet from on top of his desk and stood up. Tabitha and Jimmy walked past the receptionist and dispatcher—a woman with blonde curls and a high voice that always gave Jimmy the shivers when she spoke. She immediately tried to call them back; it was against the rules for them to go back there and talk to the sheriff. A wave of the hand from the sheriff, however, put her back in her chair in a huff.

  "We need to talk to Devlin Little," Tabitha said.

  "What?" the sheriff replied in his deep voice.

  "You heard me."

  "Tabitha, what the hell are you doing bringing a child here? And a child that is in the middle of all of the ruckus. You know I like my town to be quiet. And every time I see you, you are doing everything in your power to make sure that this town is not quiet. Why is that?"

  He turned his head slightly and seemed to spot the object in the plastic bag for the first time. He sighed, hitched his pants up, and then adjusted the big gray cowboy hat on top of his head.

  "Damn," he whispered. "Please tell me that is not what I think it is."

  "We need to get it tested, but we found this beside the river by the bridge," Tabitha said. "We’re pretty sure that this is all that remains of Sapphire Lumire."

  The sheriff shook his head, his jaw working back and forth strangely.

  "I really was hoping th
at you weren’t going to say that," he said. "What will you talking to Devlin Little do, despite potentially screwing up the case against him? He can’t lawyer up when he talks to you, and anything he says could not be used against him in a court of law or anywhere else."

  "I need to talk to him," Jimmy said.

  The sheriff turned his head toward Jimmy. Normally the man's piercing blue eyes would have sent Jimmy cringing. However, the sheriff didn’t have Sapphire's screams echoing in his brain. The sheriff hadn’t had his best friend gunned down in front of him. The sheriff hadn’t found himself in the middle of a reality-twisting ghost story.

  "I can’t let you back there," the sheriff said. "Sorry."

  Jimmy snarled. He could feel the buzzing in his head growing again. He stomped his foot on the ground. The lamp near the desk to his right suddenly exploded into a shower of glass shards. The receptionist and dispatcher let out screams. Even the sheriff jumped.

  "Let me see him," Jimmy said. "One way or another, I am going back there to talk to him."

  The sheriff looked from the broken shards of glass on the desk and the floor and then into Jimmy's eyes. Jimmy did not waver. The sheriff's eyes went wide at the sight. Jimmy was never entirely sure what the man saw in his eyes—perhaps he saw Sapphire staring right back at him—but the man seemed to shrink just a bit.

  "Things happen in this town," he said, and he turned his attention back to Tabitha. "You and I know that better than most, Tabitha. I have no idea what is happening here, but I’ll keep an ear out and I hear the rumors. I believe you, Jimmy, that you could find a way to get back there one way or another."

  He sighed and put his hands on his hips. The entire room seemed to be crackling with invisible energy. Jimmy knew that, in just a moment, he could make the room light up with real energy. Then things would start flying off desks and walls, and the walls themselves might just fly off into space. Jimmy felt that the sheriff could sense that, as well.

  "Fine," he said. "Just remember what I said to you both. Nothing he says to you can be used against him. You come away from there and he may confess the entire thing, but not a damn bit of it will be admissible. And let me add this: more than likely all the two of you will do is give him and his lawyer the ammunition that they need to get all of the charges dropped and to let him walk right of here."

  He paused and made sure that his cold blue eyes penetrated both of them. He held each of their gazes for a full ten seconds. Then he stepped aside.

  "Get a broom and clean this up," he said to the receptionist, and then returned to his office. He closed the door behind him, and Jimmy could see him through the window as he sat down in the chair behind the desk and put his feet back up. Then he brought the cowboy hat low on his head and covered his eyes.

  Jimmy took the lead. Tabitha seemed to sense that it was not time to interfere and just followed him. Jimmy didn’t hesitate. He walked past the sheriff's office and down a hallway. Then he took a right and through a heavy metal door at the end of it. Once he pushed past there, he paused. Along the hall to their right were the cells, each of them nearly blindingly white inside and blocked by gray bars.

  The first two cells were empty. The next cell held one of the men who had been with Devlin that night. He was snoring away on a cot that, to Jimmy, did not look remotely comfortable. The cell after that was empty, as was the one after that. When they were near the end of the hallway, Jimmy saw someone crouched in the corner of the last cell. Somehow this cell seemed dimmer than the other ones.

  "What do you want?" came a voice from inside the cell. The voice was filled with both anger and a heavy amount of fear.

  Jimmy turned to the right and stared Devlin Little full in the face. He did not look like the handsome, confident businessman that he had been just a few days ago. He looked like a broken, vacant man. His eyes had black circles around them, and his eyes rolled in their sockets. His face was covered with whiskers, as if he had decided to stop shaving. A smell came from him, as well, as if bathing and showering were not something that he was into anymore, either. His face was pale beneath the whiskers, and his cheeks looked sunken.

  "I want to talk to you," Jimmy said.

  Devlin cringed back against the wall. He was curled up on the cot, dressed in an orange jumpsuit. He grabbed his knees.

  "Just bend the bars," Devlin said. "You're some kind of wizard or something, right? Some kind of demon sent from Hell to destroy my sanity and my family, right? What for?"

  Jimmy reached out and Tabitha put the plastic bag in his hand. Jimmy held it up and placed it on one of the cross bars of the cell. Devlin stared at the bag for a moment and then cocked his head to the side.

  "Is that—?" Devlin said.

  Jimmy nodded. "Sapphire's skull. The girl you killed. It's only a matter of time before it all comes out and it all comes together."

  Devlin shook his head and somehow managed to cringe closer to the wall.

  "I didn't kill her," Devlin said. His voice was pleading. "Please, you have to understand. You have to believe me. Please. I didn't do it."

  "Stop lying!" Jimmy screamed.

  Energy suddenly bloomed within the hallway. There was a bright flash of blue light, and the bars let out a hideous groan. For an instant the bars seemed to twist and turn as if they were water, and then they snapped back into shape. Devlin let out a mewling kind of cry and actually got down on the cell floor and crawled into a corner near a stainless steel sink.

  "Please don't hurt me!" he said. "You were sent here to punish me, weren't you?"

  "I want you to tell me what happened that night!" Jimmy screamed. "Why did you kill her?"

  Devlin held up his hands as if pleading or praying to Jimmy.

  "I'm sorry," Devlin said, his voice getting higher. His eyes were wide and his mouth was twitching along with a twitch in his right eye. "Please, forgive me. Forgive me for whatever I did. Leave my son alone. Leave my family alone. Punish me if you must, but leave them alone."

  The buzzing started in Jimmy's head and quickly grew to a skull-splitting level. Jimmy grimaced, but did not put his hands to his head like he felt he should. He stared hard at Devlin.

  "Tell me what you did!" Jimmy yelled.

  There was another flash of light. This time, a lightbulb in the ceiling exploded in a flash of rainbow-colored light. It lit up the walls of the cell, reflecting off the bars for a moment, and then stopped. Devlin let out a kind of wail and then put his hands to his mouth.

  Stop, Jimmy, Jimmy heard the voice in his head say. Sapphire was pleading with him now. Stop.

  "But he did this to you," Jimmy said out loud, not caring how insane he looked talking to himself. "I have to get him to tell me what he did."

  "Please," Devlin cried. "Please, leave me alone! Leave me alone! Leave my family alone!"

  It wasn't him, Sapphire said into Jimmy's mind. I don't know who it was, but I do know that it wasn't him. Nothing about him feels right, and the memories haven't come. Jimmy, he may have killed George, but he didn't kill me. He was there, I know it, but it wasn't him.

  How can you be sure? Jimmy thought, closing his eyes and shutting out the pathetic sight of Devlin Little rocking and mewling and crying on the floor, snot running from his nose and drool dripping from his chin. How can you be sure of anything?

  You have to trust me, Sapphire said. And doing this is wrong. Protecting us is one thing, but destroying what remains of a man's sanity is another. No matter what he's done.

  Jimmy opened his eyes and looked at the man. He was terrified beyond words. Whatever remained of Devlin Little's sanity was fading. Jimmy doubted that the man would stand trial for what happened to George. He would start ranting and raving about Jimmy flying and opening up portals and shooting lightning from his fingers; add in the whole idea that Jimmy was a wizard or demon, and any doctor would declare him insane.

  Jimmy sighed and turned away. Tabitha saw the look on his face and put a hand on his arm and stopped him.

  "W
here are you going?" she asked.

  Jimmy shook his head. "Sapphire says he didn't do it. You know how this works. Whenever we hit on something that falls into place, her memories come back. This puzzle piece does not fit right. Devlin was there, but I don't think he killed her."

  Tabitha's mouth dropped open. "What if she's wrong?"

  "She isn't," Jimmy said.

  "Well, can't you find out what he does know?" Tabitha said, looking back at the hysterical man. "If you can bend reality, can't you pretty much do anything? Read his mind or something?"

  Jimmy shrugged. "I don't know, but look at him, Tabitha. This isn't what these abilities were supposed to be for. It's one thing to protect ourselves and to try to find out who killed Sapphire, but it's another thing entirely to destroy the mind of a mean old man who apparently already has some issues and is near the breaking point."

  "You buried a man up to his neck in the ground," Tabitha said. "You told me you opened up a portal between dimensions and dropped a guy into it. Now you suddenly have lines you won't cross?"

  "Sapphire won't cross them," Jimmy said. "And the power only has those abilities when we work together. Besides, that was using the power to try and protect all of us."

  Jimmy looked down.

  "I failed at it," he said.

  Tabitha sighed. She cast another glance back into Devlin Little's cell. The man was weeping and holding his knees to his chest, rocking back and forth. He had never looked less like the confident businessman and community leader than he did right now. Now he looked sad and pathetic.

  "OK," Tabitha said. "Now what?"

  "Let's drop the skull off with the sheriff and get it tested,” Jimmy said. “I don't know how we're going to confirm it's Sapphire's, but maybe we can at least confirm that it's a female and about her age."

  Tabitha nodded, but there was a mixture of confusion and sadness in her eyes. Jimmy could tell, right then and there, that if the power had been within Tabitha, she would have pushed Devlin Little. If necessary, she would have pushed him into catatonia to get whatever he knew.