Little Red Gem (7 page)

I shook my head. “No. I’d
know if I was dead.”

While I watched my two
best friends walk with arms around each other for emotional
support, I wrestled with accepting Audrey’s version of the story.
To do so meant I was dead. And dead meant I would never again speak
with Leo. And there were so many words left unsaid, so much
business left unfinished.

The final nail in my
coffin came when a customer walked out and Audrey pushed me
directly in front of the customer’s path. Instead of bumping into
him, I fell through him, landing on my hands and knees. My skin
tingled with pins and needles from where the body had passed
through me. A loud noise filled my ears, similar to water flowing
from a dam. For a split second my vision blurred. Then I watched in
absolute horror as my hands and legs split into millions of tiny
fragments.

Audrey might have been
capable of delving into her mother’s magic bag to produce this neat
trick, but I wasn’t.

I crawled into the gutter
because it seemed the most suitable place for a reluctant spirit to
bawl her eyes out. Audrey was kind enough to sit beside me with her
hand resting on my shoulder; although we were both apparitions the
contact still registered. I forgot about being angry with her and
welcomed her company.

“
Okay, I’ll admit this has
been a rather extraordinary morning so you may be right.” I sniffed
back the tears and turned to face her. “How did I die?”

“
Your car slid down an
embankment. You weren’t wearing a seatbelt. Leo dragged you out of
the car but it was too late.”

I jumped up.
“Leo!”

Panic slammed into me
faster than a tsunami slammed through homes. I bolted down the
street in the direction of Rock-A-Lilly’s. Blindly, I ran out into
the oncoming traffic, a small truck. A few tons of metal came
barreling toward me. I did what anybody living or dead would do – I
screamed. But instead of the truck breaking every bone in my body,
my vision fragmented like a kaleidoscope. I turned around to see
the truck stop for a red light. The driver didn’t bother getting
out and inspecting the damage, because there was none. Not to the
car. Not to me.

Intact and unhurt, I took
off once more for Rock-A-Lilly’s. Audrey called out from behind,
“Wait. Ruby, come back”, but I ignored her and kept
running.

I guess ghosts were better
at travelling at fast speeds than astral projections because I left
Audrey in my imaginary dust. My purpose spurred me on – find Leo.
That and that alone was my only reason to exist now. He must have
been an emotional wreck, believing me dead and gone. Dead, yes, but
I hadn’t gone anywhere and I needed him to know this. How often had
he told me that he didn’t believe in the afterlife? How often had I
eagerly agreed with his philosophy simply to see his
smile?

The fatal flaw in my plan
never once entered my mind; if I was invisible to Natalie and
Shanessa, I was invisible to Leo.

***

Rock-A-Lilly’s sat
shrouded in dark shadows by the time I arrived, the storm-grey dome
that had hovered at the edge of the town earlier seemed determined
to lock everyone beneath its gloomy hull. Walking up the path
leading to the front door, a loud buzzing sound attacked me.
Similar to the sound an electric fence makes, the noise grew louder
the closer I got to the glass doors.

Not this again.
My hand still tingled from my earlier attempt to
touch glass.

I pushed beyond the weird
sensation, yet trying to open the door was like trying to grab hold
of a laser beam. The more I forced my hand forward, the worse the
buzzing sensation got.

I looked around for Audrey
but the parking lot was uncharacteristically empty. She must have
decided against following me and I wished now that I’d waited for
her. At least she might have been able to go inside and invite me
in.

Leo usually sat behind the
counter tuning guitars or replacing broken drum sticks for other
musicians. Peering through a glass panel in the door and suffering
the blinding buzzing attack, I spied Lilly, one half of the
studio’s name, sitting behind the counter. She was tall and
straight like the stem of a flower, and she wore her
bleached-blonde hair in a spike which reminded me often of her
namesake. Her partner, Rock, called so because he was dark like
granite, hovered in the background pinning posters of bands to the
walls. I liked Rock but I’d never had the stomach for Lilly’s
crassness. Still, I’d have tolerated stories of her and Rock’s sex
life in exchange for one of them noticing me and letting me in. To
my great dismay, neither one possessed supernatural powers that
enabled them to see me jumping up and down outside to get their
attention.

Stupidly, I realized that
Leo would have been too distressed to work and he’d be at home with
his family. I blinked and pictured his house, and when I next
opened my eyes my face was pressed up against a window. Taking a
step back, I saw I was standing at the dining room window of Leo’s
house.

The tingles and buzzing in
my ears had eased a little, as if I were becoming accustomed to my
death. I pressed close to the glass to eavesdrop on the
conversation happening around the dinner table.

“
It’s not fair,” Leo
cried.

“
You can’t blame
yourself,” answered his mom.

Leo blamed himself for my
death? The idea was preposterous. But his slumped shoulders and
haunted expression seemed to indicate he carried that particular
burden.

Even though his family was
seated around the table, the atmosphere was nothing like their
usual cheerfulness. This view was more like a window display in a
post apocalyptic world. Leo’s mother and father sat oddly propped
up on opposite ends, Leo slumped against the chair closest to the
door, and his two sisters had their sagging backs to me. The table,
usually laden with plates of baked chicken, baked potatoes, honeyed
carrots, and buttered corn was instead covered with takeaway boxes,
some of them unopened. I didn’t need to stare too hard at their
faces to know they hung slack.

The tragic silence
stretched out forever, but at last Leo pushed himself out of his
chair. He managed to take two steps before he staggered into his
mom’s outstretched arms. His shoulders shook and his mom stroked
his head. In unspoken agreement, his father and sisters rose up
from their places and they clung to one another. No amount of
buzzing in my ears could drown out the woeful wails bleaching
through the walls.

And that was how the truth
of my death finally sank in.

***

Darkness pressed in around
me but the chill of night stayed at bay, adding proof to the
testament that I no longer possessed flesh and blood. With nothing
else to guide me – they didn’t hand out tourist guides for ghosts
though they ought to have done – I remained standing outside Leo’s
house until every light went out, and then I stayed long after
every light in every house in the street had been switched off, and
then I stayed a little longer because I was terrified to leave.
Where would I go? What was I supposed to do? Go home?

Images of my mom and dad
sprang to mind, and after witnessing firsthand how Leo and his
family mourned for me, what must my parents’ anguish be
like?

I willed myself to go home
and check on my mom, yet instead of being propelled home, other
images haunted me; a log cabin, a roaring fire, the surrounding
woods, the dirt track winding through darkness to the main
road.

When I opened my eyes, I
stood on the porch of the log cabin with the full moon’s light on
my back. The door stood slightly ajar and I could see inside. A
week ago the room had been aglow from the log fire and I’d barely
hesitated about knocking on the door to demand to know just how
much Leo loved me. I’d have given anything to turn back the clock
and do that evening all over again.

Dew had settled on the
windows so I knew the temperature had dropped. Mom would probably
have fallen asleep on the couch by now. She liked her cashmere
throw tucked around her knees and shoulders. Usually my job, I felt
a sense of grief that I wasn’t there to support her during this
horrible time.

Despite my ghostly body,
the serenity of the cabin demanded I tread softly. An easy feat for
a ghost; my feet made no sound as they skated along the
floorboards. Surely an apparition wouldn’t have concerned herself
with stomping as loudly as rats fighting over ceiling space. I
guessed it would take more than getting used to the buzzing to
getting used to being dead.

I quietly entered the
cabin and made it halfway across the living room when I heard a
trickle of footsteps, followed by a door gently closing and a piece
of furniture scraping along the wooden floorboards, alerting me to
a hidden presence. I was a ghost. I knew I hadn’t made the noise.
This could only mean there was a big animal in the cabin or else
I’d interrupted a poltergeist in the middle of redecorating. Scary
either way.

“
Who’s there?” I called
out.

Silence. Nothing stirred.
Most likely an animal, yet my nostrils tickled with the sense I’d
surprised something
not
animal. Listening carefully, I detected sounds
like chirping cicadas. Taking another listen, I recognized this
sound as whispers.

“
You’re making enough
noise,” I shouted. “Why don’t you come out?”

The cabin wasn’t very big;
it had one main room with a kitchen bench, dining table and chairs,
a leather couch and armchair, and coffee table. Off the main room
were two bedrooms, one with a double bed and one with two bunk
beds. When Leo had first organized the weekend away I’d planned to
sneak in and surprise him, but his dedication to the band had
proved superior when he’d uncovered my plans and had given me the
same advice as my two best friends – stay away.

“
Signs, Ruby. There are
always signs. Look for them. Prepare yourself for them.”
The echoes of my mom’s advice to me when I was
eleven followed me deeper into the cabin. Off the main room was the
bathroom which had a shower and a bathtub. Out on the rear deck was
a hot tub. I’d seductively suggested putting the hot tub to good
use, too, but Leo wasn’t to be swayed. How stupid had I been to
miss the clear signals that other things ranked higher in Leo’s
life than me.

Whispers like scratches
against wood led me toward the bedroom where the bunk beds were
located. The door creaked and opened on its own – probably a design
flaw, nothing to do with poltergeists, nothing to do with
poltergeists, nothing to do with poltergeists.

My heart wouldn’t keep
still.
Could anything even harm the
dead?

“
Show yourself,” I
shouted.

Even ghosts didn’t have
the benefit of super vision. I peered into the darkness, my heart
thumping wildly in my ears, imagining a multitude of night
creatures.

The door opened another
inch.

I waited…

But nothing flew out at
me. There was definitely something in the room, though.

It was staring at
me.

Chapter Four

“
Are you going to hurt
me?”

The voice that spoke from
amidst the darkness was female. She stepped out of the shadows and
into the moonlight. I automatically sized her up: young, perhaps
younger than me, wearing an old-fashioned floor length gown; the
clothes in our stores were outdated but at least they were from
this century. Maybe she’d lived in Providence during the gold
rush.

“
Of course I’m not going
to hurt you,” I said. “Come out of there.”

Instead, she stepped back
into the room and was engulfed by the darkness.

I hurried to the front
window to open the curtains to let in more of the bright moonlight.
Yet my hand swept through the fabric.

Seeing Leo and his family,
accepting my death, somehow I’d managed to hold back the tears, but
not being able to move the curtains was the final straw. I burst
into tears.

The ghost in the bedroom
emerged and walked over to the window, where she pulled the curtain
to the side with ease. That sent me into more of an emotional
flurry. Not only was I dead, I was useless.

I felt the presence of her
arms around me. This gesture stemmed my tears.

“
Thank you,” I sniffed.
“What’s your name?”

“
Anne Louise
Montgomery.”

The inclination to curtsy
was strong but I resisted. “I’m Ruby Parker. Do you—”
live
seemed the wrong
word considering she was obviously dead, “—haunt this
cabin?”

Anne hesitated, and after
an awkward moment she nodded her head.

“
Do you haunt this place
on your own?”

Her eyes dropped to the
floor a split moment ahead of her shoulders and her voice. Her
whole body was suddenly the portrait of regret. “Yes.”