Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance

by Bryan W. Alaspa

  Jimmy and Sapphire watched as the two drove. Neither of them spoke again. Jesse kept reaching up to his head and rubbing his eye. He also tugged at his hair, pulling out handfuls of it without seeming to notice. Stan just sat there, staring out the passenger window, seemingly oblivious to the world. Jimmy wondered if Stan might also have gone over the edge, perhaps on the brink of total catatonia.

  Ahead of them the road unfurled as they wound around the corners and curves that made up the twisted roads in and around Knorr. Jesse was driving sensibly, trying to drive fast, but not so fast that he would attract attention. They soon reached the bridge. The road was empty like always. Jesse pulled over as far as he could, attempting to hide the car behind shrubbery. It was a half-hearted effort.

  Jesse put the car in park and he and Stan got out.

  Jimmy waved his hand and the image changed.

  Now Sapphire and Jimmy were outside the car, watching as Stan and Jesse got out and went to the trunk. Jesse opened the trunk, and then he and Stan reached inside and pulled out a bundle that appeared to be wrapped in some kind of tarp.

  After a moment Jimmy realized that the tarp was tablecloths from the banquet hall above the library. Jimmy also realized that he was looking at his own body. Needless to say, he felt very surreal and felt vertigo overtake him.

  The two men grabbed the bundle and Stan led the way, walking backwards as they headed down the embankment. Jesse gave the road a cursory glance, almost appearing to dare the world to send a car down the road to try and stop him. Jimmy could see that the pistol was still in his belt. Jimmy figured that anyone who came within Jesse's range was going to end up with a bullet in him. Or her.

  Jimmy and Sapphire watched as Jesse and Stan dragged the bundle down the embankment. They stopped near the water, but farther down from where Sapphire had been found. Jesse and Stan dropped the body and then Jesse returned to the car, rooting around in the trunk, and then emerged with a couple of shovels and other digging tools. Apparently he had learned from his experience with Sapphire and had decided not to dig the hole with his hands.

  They watched as Jesse made his way back down the wet and muddy embankment and then handed one of the shovels to Stan. Stan stood there for a moment, staring at the tool in his hand as if he had never seen the thing before.

  "Dig!" Jesse yelled.

  Stan shrugged dismissively and stuck the blade of he shovel into the mud. The two of them began working in rhythm. The clods of dirt and mud flew over their shoulders, piling up behind them. The river was moving slowly behind them and the sun was now down behind the trees. Above them the sky was turning into a bruised color and the first stars were already out, twinkling. Before too long, the moon, full and bright, began to ascend above the trees, casting an eerie glow upon everything. The blades of their shovels glinted in the light reflecting off the surface of the water.

  Sapphire and Jimmy watched until both of them eventually stepped down into the hole. Jesse seemed to be digging with a kind of frantic, manic energy. His eyes were wide and he was breathing hard, making strange moaning and grunting sounds, as if he were trying to stab the Earth itself with each stab of the metal blade into the mud. He was sweating, beads of moisture cascading down his face.

  Stan, meanwhile, was still digging, but he still seemed lost in his own world. He dug with no enthusiasm, tossing the shovelfuls of dirt onto the pile, but with increasing gaps between thrusts of the shovel. His eyes seemed glazed over. Jimmy began to wonder if he was in shock.

  Sapphire and Jimmy controlled what they saw from their otherworldly vantage point like directors controlling a movie camera. They watched from above them and then beside them and then close up and then farther away. They held hands, the power between them vibrating louder and more brightly than a live electrical wire. They watched, waiting for their moment. It was almost there.

  Jesse suddenly stood up straight and tossed the shovel out of the hole. He was up to his chest in the hole; Stan was behind him. The shovel clattered onto the ground and Jesse hauled himself up with both hands.

  "All right!" Jesse shouted. "That's deep enough. Even the animals won't find him."

  Stan kept shoveling dirt for several seconds. Jesse reached down and smacked him on the back of the head. Stan stopped, but seemed stunned and confused. He looked up at Jesse dumbly.

  "I said stop!" Jesse said. "Let's finish this, you moron. Then we can go see what we can do with that meddling newspaper editor, her annoying husband, and that shrew Jimmy called a mother. I'm thinking a fire might take care of a few of those problems."

  Jimmy felt rage bloom within him. The light emanating from him and Sapphire grew brighter, and something like lightning crawled across his chest with a crackling sound.

  Stan pulled himself out of the hole. He stood up and brushed off his pants. Then he brushed his hands together. The two of them made their way towards the bundle that lay there beside the hole. Jimmy felt that twisting inside him again at the knowledge that he was watching his own burial. He was staring at his own body, being buried by a man who had been his friend, who had been almost a father to him, who had gunned him down without a second thought and now meant to do harm to his friends and his mother.

  How much had Jesse been involved in? He was the one who had probably erased the stories of Sapphire going missing. He had removed what happened to Sapphire's family. He had removed her image from as many things as he could, except for the one photo he kept at his desk. Had he given the order for Devlin and his cronies to try and shoot Tabitha, Jimmy, and Warren? Had Jesse's actions led to George's death? Jimmy could not help but feel that the answer to all of these questions was yes.

  "Let's do this," Jimmy said. "Let's end this."

  Sapphire moved closer to him and their energies merged. The light between them grew brighter. With a single movement, the both stretched out their hands and the view of the scene in front of them grew brighter, more distinct. They simply stepped through the portal, now two beings of pure energy standing there on the muddy banks.

  Jimmy reached his hand up to the sky. From the clear black canvas that stretched above them, a bolt of lightning streaked down and crashed into a tree just twenty yards to their right.

  Jesse and Stan both stopped, jumping what seemed like several feet in surprise. Stan's eyes grew wide. Suddenly the entire area was bathed in white light. The embankment became as bright as noon.

  Jesse turned and his eyes went wide, his mouth flew open. "No. No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't be here. You can't be here!"

  Without a second thought or a moment’s hesitation, he reached into his belt and pulled out the gun. The gunshots seemed impossibly loud in the silence of the evening. He fired all six shots at Jimmy.

  Jimmy held out his hand and the bullets vaporized, turning into dust before they got more than a few inches from the barrel of the gun. Then he waved his hand again and the gun turned to liquid, splashing across Jesse's hand. Jesse screamed something that was not remotely an actual word.

  "It's over, Jesse," Sapphire said. There was no rage or anger in her voice. It was as if she felt sorry for the librarian.

  "No!" Jesse screamed. His mouth opened and closed as if he were a fish out of water. "No! You cannot be here. Neither of you can be here."

  "Stop it, Jesse!" Sapphire yelled. "It's finally over. You have to pay for raping me and killing me. It's time to pay for your scheming and planning and for letting the dark thing inside you that hides behind the mild manners and pleasant demeanor."

  Sapphire drifted closer to Jesse. Jesse stood there with his eyes wide, one eye twitching as if an electric current were running through him. He held the shovel in one hand and his mouth hung open so far that spit dangled from his bottom lip.

  "No," Jesse said. "No, please, Sapphire, I loved you. I loved you. I loved you. Forgive me. Please."

  Sapphire drifted closer, the energy that formed what would have been her feet if she had had a normal, flesh and blood boy, now more th
an a foot off the ground. She glided as if wind and atmosphere had no effect on her. Her skin was almost blinding it was so white. Light shone from her eyes. She had never been more beautiful, and the power came off of her in waves, small bolts of lightning striking the ground around her. Her fury and anger were barely contained within the form she was holding together by sheer force of will. She drifted closer until she was right in front of Jesse.

  "No," Jesse said again and he fell to his knees, his knees sinking in the sloppy mud of the embankment. "No, please. Please, forgive me. Forgive me. Please, please, please."

  Sapphire extended her hand and then one finger. She placed it over his lips.

  "Shhhhh," she said. "I do forgive you, Jesse. But you never loved me. You never loved anyone. You pretend and you manipulate and you act like you care so no one questions you. You hurt people, Jesse, and maybe it started with me, but it didn't end with me. I forgive you, but you still need to pay."

  Jesse blubbered, making soft mewling sounds that were more animalistic than human. He began shaking his head back and forth, as if he could wish everything away. Tears streamed from his eyes.

  "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no," he said over and over again.

  Sapphire ran her finger across his lips. Suddenly, Jesse's mouth no longer existed. She had erased it with her finger. Jesse's eyes managed to get wider, and a look that went beyond terror crossed his face.

  At that point, Stan decided he had seen enough. He turned and ran. However, he ran while also looking over his shoulder and he ran straight into Jimmy. He collided with the energy that made up Jimmy's form and immediately rebounded and landed in the mud with a squelching sound. Jimmy looked down at him and floated closer.

  "Stan, Stan, Stan," Jimmy said. "So much potential inside of you, and yet all you do is terrorize people at school and in your life. So much poison put into you by your father. Now that he's dead and you have access to so much power and money, you have the potential to right so many wrongs and make the world a better place. And yet, here you are. You need to learn, Stan."

  Jimmy reached out, his fingers barely there, consisting mainly of light and smoke, and touched Stan's forehead. Then he pushed forward, the fingers vanishing into Stan's skull, reaching into the young man's brain. Immediately Jimmy's head was filled with visions of life as Devlin Little's son. The constant berating, being told again and again that he was worthless, the constant demands that Stan look, act, and think just like Devlin did. There were the beatings when he was younger that transformed into verbal abuse and constantly being told that he was never good enough, never matching up to the greatness that only Devlin perceived he had achieved.

  And Jimmy saw that he could change that. He could change it all by just thinking about it. So he pushed further, reaching out and grabbing the circuitry of Stan's brain. He began rearranging that circuitry, changing it, filling Stan's head with images of the pain he had caused, and then tempering that with sorrow and guilt. No longer were the people Stan felt the need to abuse just nameless and faceless. Now he knew how much he had hurt each and every one of them. He knew that the fat girl he had tripped had gone home and tried to kill herself, and he felt the pain as she slashed her wrists with a razor. He saw and felt the tears of the freshman he had slammed into a locker on his first day of school. He saw and felt all of their pain and saw that what he did had ramifications and that, in the end, it wasn't how great you were on the field or how much money you had, but how you treated the world that was your legacy. It was how you treated your fellow man that made you a legend.

  Stan wept. He let out a soft moan, and the tears flowed and his eyes grew wide and the emotions overwhelmed him.

  "Feel it, Stan?" Jimmy asked. "Can you feel what you've done and understand how you can make it better? Do you see that you have the power to make a change?"

  Stan nodded, but his vocal cords wouldn’t work. He put his head down in his hands and wept. Jimmy withdrew from Stan's mind and looked up at Sapphire. She was staring at him and a smile was on her face. She nodded and turned her face back toward Jesse.

  "You see?" she said. "You see what we can do. You brought us to this, Jesse. The things you set in motion caused God, or the universe, or fate, to make us what we are right now. Just to right the wrongs you continue to make. To stop the pain."

  She reached out and grabbed Jesse, her fingers sinking into his chest right above his heart. Jesse's vocal cords appeared to be working fine. His throat worked, and a muted scream emanated from his throat behind his vanished lips.

  "This will hurt you much more than it will hurt me," Sapphire said.

  With that, Sapphire pulled back with all of her might. Jesse let out another muffled scream, his head fell back, and suddenly a bright white object ripped from Jesse's chest. After a moment the energy seemed to take the form of Jesse's body. Sapphire had just ripped Jesse's spirit right out of his body.

  Jesse's actual body slumped sideways, falling into the mud with a wet thwap. His spirit grew more and more substantial, held between Sapphire's hands. Jimmy watched as Jesse's eyes—or the energy that had taken the form of his eyes—grew wide. His mouth opened as if he was trying to speak, but instead there was just a horrific shrieking sound that filled Jimmy's mind.

  "Time for you to go, Jesse," Sapphire said.

  She turned, Jesse's soul and spirit still in her hands, and flung it behind her, back through the portal that Sapphire and Jimmy had stepped through. Jesse's eyes went wider, his mouth opened wider, and the scream escalated in pitch and intensity as he flew through the wavy image, into the world of the dead. He landed there, on his back, and immediately tried to sit up. All around him, the air, the ground, the very substance of the dead land suddenly seemed to come to life. A low, deep, growling sound suddenly filled Jimmy's ears. A tendril of pure black detached from the vaporous substance that made up the dead space and slashed through Jesse's ghostly form. Jesse screamed again as a huge chunk of his form suddenly vanished.

  "Sapphire!" Jesse's voice filled their heads. "Help me! Don't let them take meeeeeeeee!"

  It was like watching an octopus eat a victim. Suddenly the dead land was filled with nothing but dark shapes that reached out and grabbed pieces of Jesse's soul, tearing chunks and pieces off and running away into the darkness. Jesse continued to plead until there was nothing left but two glowing spheres where his eyes had been. Then even those were sucked into the vapor that made up the land of the dead. His scream lasted for several minutes, reaching pitches that would have been impossible for Jesse to reach in his human form, and then that faded, as well.

  He was gone.

  Jimmy turned to look at Sapphire. Her body was pulsating with energy. She looked purified. Clean. She turned to face Jimmy.

  "Thank you," she said.

  Jimmy nodded. He reached out to her and her hands clasped his. The energy crackled between them as they touched and the light shot into the sky, bathing the darkening sky and the surrounding forest and woods with daylight. Jimmy figured that people from miles around must have been able to see the glow. They merged together in something that compared to a kiss, but went beyond anything a mortal kiss could ever convey. Suddenly everything that was Sapphire was mixed with everything that Jimmy was. He felt the love from her, and she from him. It was beyond making love. It was beyond kissing and holding hands. It was a merging of their very essence, the very thing that made up life, the most primal and primitive thing that makes up each and every human being, but in raw form and now merged together.

  "You need to go," Jimmy said. "You can go into the light now, Sapphire. There's no need for you to stay here anymore."

  "Except for you," Sapphire said. "You can feel it, can't you? You can feel what's between us?"

  "Yes," Jimmy said, "but it's time to start obeying the laws of the universe again. We can't keep this up. Not even God would let us continue the way we are. You have to go where you belong."

  He paused.

  "And I need to be here, wh
ere I belong," Jimmy finished.

  He felt the pain pierce through Sapphire's very soul. He felt the agony within his own soul, which was now intertwined with hers. As much love as they had felt just a few moments before, they felt equally as much pain.

  "You could come with me," Sapphire said. "Jimmy, your body is dead. You belong here with me as much as I belong on the other side. You could come with me. Think of everything we could see. Think of all we could do as beings of pure energy."

  "I know," Jimmy said. "I know, but I should use the power while I can to fix my body and then put my soul back where it belongs."

  At that moment, a noise filtered through the blinding whiteness of their souls and caused them both to look up. Tabitha's car was at the bridge. In seconds, Tabitha, Warren, and Jimmy's mother were at the edge of the bridge. All of them had wide eyes and their mouths hung open. Below them Jimmy and Sapphire stood together, almost formless, beings of pure energy.

  "Jimmy!" his mother screamed, and Jimmy saw tears spilling down her cheeks.

  "I can't leave my mom," Jimmy said. "With Dad dead and Jesse gone, she has no one. I can't."

  He felt something that must have been a sob come from Sapphire.

  "I can't spend eternity without you," she said. "I can't go without you."

  Jimmy reached out to her, letting his love flow back into her. "It won't be for eternity. It will just be the blink of an eye for you. I'll join you when the time is right. When it's my time. I hope you'll be the first one there to welcome me to the other side."

  Jimmy felt Sapphire's love flow back into him. He detected a hint of a smile. He felt her warmth.