Phantoms of Fall (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 2) (24 page)

Even though it was a crisp fall morning outside, the
temperature inside the library was a thousand degrees as
usual.
I removed my jacket and slung it over the back of a
chair and sat down. Time to put Garnet back into her grave
for good.

Funding
for the library
must be practically nonexistent in Charlotte’s Grove because archived newspapers
here were still stored on microfiche instead of discs. It was a
good thing I learned how to use the ancient machine over the
summer because without Zach, I wasn’t sure Mrs. Tuttle
would be very willing to help me.
I found the paper for
November 1
^st
, 1990 and popped it into the viewer.

The article I was looking for was staring out at me
from the front page of that day’s paper.

 

The
locker room!
Of course, it
made sense—the
locker room was where my most intense encounters with her
took place. But how exactly did she die? If she slit her wrists,
it would explain the blood I saw in my visions. But then again,
I saw nothing but blood in my dreams about Scarlet and blood
had nothing do to with what happened to her or Levi.
This
whole thing was so confusing—would I ever get used to it?
And more importantly, did I really want to? My hat was off to
Rita for not only dealing with it for most of her life but to
actually turning it into a hobby of sorts. There was no
way
that would ever be me.

I flipped ahead a few days until I found her obituary.

Garnet
Nicole
Hartley,
15, died
suddenly Wednesday night.
She was the
daughter of Jonathan Hartley of Charlotte’s
Grove.
Garnet
was a sophomore at
Charlotte’s Grove High School and scheduled
to graduate with the class of 1993. She was
a member of the English department’s Black
Raven Society and an avid runner. She was
preceded in death by her mother Charlene
Maxwell Hartley. Funeral services will be
held at the Grimes and Loeffler Funeral Home
Monday, November 5
^th
at noon.
Interment
will follow at the Heaven’s Gate Cemetery.

Not much to go on. I had her father’s name, but what
good would it do me?
Suicide was a touchy subject—even
twenty years later, I could imagine.
Jotting down his name
anyway, I moved on to the next item of interest. The Black
Ravens Society sounded ominous to say the least but it was
probably just an extracurricular group for budding authors.
Why didn’t they still have something like that now? If anyone
belonged in a group like that it was me. I took down the name
of the funeral home and cemetery and closed up shop. I found
everything there was to find for today anyway. Now the big
question—what could I even do with it?

Spying Mrs. Tuttle sneaking into the restroom, I made
a hurried break for the door. The last thing I needed was for
her to remind me about Zach again.
Not that
I needed
anyone’s help with that one. He was never far from my mind.
I imagined him lying in his bed, injured and groggy from the
pain meds. Uggh! Would going to see him just once be too
much? Could I go to him and say that I was sorry but that our
relationship was still over? I wanted to think that I had the
inner strength to accomplish that feat but I knew I didn’t. Far
from it.
Seeing him like that would only make me cave and
tell him that I still loved him, that I would give my soul to take
away his pain. No.
One moment with him would destroy my
resolve and I couldn’t take that chance. If I wanted him to be
safe, I had to stay as far away from him as I could reasonably
get.

Even after all of my tests at the hospital came back
negative, Shelly insisted that there still had to be something
wrong with me.
Unfortunately, she noticed just how much
weight I’d really lost and she gave me the third degree about
my dieting. Dieting? Who needed to diet when life was so
stressful that eating was the last thing on your mind?
She
stopped at my favorite fast food restaurant and picked up
chicken and fries for supper as some sort of bribe to get me to
eat. I wasn’t starving myself on purpose—why couldn’t she
see that?
So I put myself through the motions of eating
knowing that eventually I would throw it all back up anyway.

After supper, I went up to my room to do the only
thing I had the urge to do—write. Well, make that my second
urge because within a half hour of eating, I was on my knees
in front of the toilet yet again. Once I was seated in front of
my computer, I was in the one place where I felt like being. At
least in my little world, I could control how things went, could
ensure a happy ending. If nothing else, I learned one thing out
of this whole messy situation—happy endings were hard to
come by in real life.
I clicked away at the keyboard for hours
as the story unfolded from my mind and onto the screen. It
was more cathartic than any therapy session could possibly
be.
I wrote well into the night until sleep actually seemed
possible.

My dream came with an air of lucidity, feeling more
real to me than what was going on in my waking hours. Once
again, I was
at the school dance.
This
time though, the
cafeteria was decorated for Halloween.
Crepe paper bats
hung festively from the ceiling and candlelit jack-o’-lanterns
grinned in shadowy luminosity from every table.
Everyone
was in costume and I looked down at my clothes to see that I,
too, was dressed for the occasion.

It felt so weird.
It was like I stepped into someone
else’s body, someone else’s life—like I was me and someone
else both at the same time.
I had blond hair and I was
wearing an ice blue dress.
Even though my costume could
have represented any number of historical or literary figures,
I knew instantly that I was Juliet. And somewhere out in the
crowd was where I would find my Romeo.

I spotted him
from
across
the room, encircled
by
friends who seemed to be hanging on his every word. Picking
my way through the costumed throng, I made my way toward
him. Never tearing my eyes away from him, I dodged into the
circle and threw my arms around him from behind.
When
Romeo turned around, though, he wasn’t who I thought he
was going to be.
My eyes deceived me.
Not only was he not
Zach, he didn’t look even the slightest bit like him.

The boy who stood before me looked vaguely familiar,
but I couldn’t quite figure out how I knew him. He had brown
hair and dark, brooding eyes that scanned my face now for
recognition. I had no idea who he was but he seemed to know
me. In a rush of panic, I knew I didn’t belong there in his elite
group. I was way out of my league.

Backing away slowly, I tried to utter an apology but no
words came.
He held out his hand to stop me, but my wrist
slipped through his fingers as I took another step back. The
room became deafeningly loud and claustrophobia crept into
me. I had to get away—I had to slip away before everyone
knew what a fool I was to think that this boy was my Romeo.
My shoes became inexplicably rooted to the spot. I watched
in terror as his face began to morph and shift into something
grotesquely misshapen. What kind of monster was he?
Once
the transformation was complete, I was even more frightened.
Staring back at me were the crystal blue eyes of Zach Mason.

Slipping out of my heels, I ran barefoot down the
hallway as the sound of my feet slapping against the tiles
echoed back to me. There was only one place to go where I
could be alone—one place where no one would ever find me.
The girl’s locker room.

My sheets were drenched with sweat when I finally
woke up. The nightmare was so real that I actually checked to
see if I was wearing the blue dress. Finding nothing but my
usual pj’s, I started to relax. Until I caught sight of something
yellow out of the corner of my eye. Untangling myself quickly
from the covers, I ran to the bathroom and looked in the
mirror.
There it was—the lock of hair that I painstakingly
kept a startling shade of ruby was now dirty blond in color.

21. I’ve Always Hated Pea Soup

I dropped down onto the floor in shock. How was this
possible? Was I truly going insane this time or could it be
something worse?
Was I being possessed? Possession never
seemed real to me. Sure, the movies I’d watched about
exorcisms
were
frightening
to say the
least, but could it
actually be possible?
Could another entity take over my
body—my
soul
—until there was nothing left of me? My mind
raced through all of the physical changes I’d gone through
recently until it seemed more than possible and downright
definite.

First,
there
was
the
weight
loss.
Garnet
was
pathetically thin and I was well on my way to being there, too.
My new hair color was striking similar to hers as well. I’d
been throwing up on a daily
basis since the first day of
school—was she the cause? Maybe she had a terminal illness
and chose to end her own life instead of suffer endlessly. If
that was the case, was I now dying, too? All of the tests I went
through at the hospital showed I was perfectly fine but none
of them would have been testing for possession. I had to talk
to Rita as soon as possible. And make myself an appointment
at the hair salon, too.

Something Wick-ed didn’t open for business until ten,
but I was showered and dressed by nine and left the house
while Shelly was on the phone with Principal Lascher. I only
heard her side of the conversation, of course, but it didn’t
sound good. From what I gathered, all attempts to trace the
video back to its origin had led to a dead end. Translation—
Jack Wolfe was on the school board so he probably pulled
some strings to get Misty off the hook. Was it upsetting to
hear that? Sure. But possible possession took precedence—I
would deal with Misty later. Karma would come back to bite
her in the end. All I wanted to do was be there to sharpen its
incisors before they sank into her.

There was time to spare before meeting Rita so I
drove out to Heaven’s Gate Cemetery to see if I could find
Garnet’s grave. How could that possibly help me now? I
didn’t know but at least I would be doing something other
than sitting around thinking about what horrible illness she
might have had. The weeds were so overgrown that I had to
beat them back with my foot to even get a look at the names.

Morganti.
Burgan.
Cornell.
Roseman.
With each
name I uncovered, I grew increasingly impatient. I picked up
a rock and threw it in frustration. When it hit the ground in
front of me, I anticipated the dull thud of stone on grass.
What I got was the sound of stone on stone. The rock landed
about twenty feet away from me at the base of an odd looking
tree. As I walked toward it, I saw that it was an old oak whose
trunk had split about a foot from the roots leaving a gaping
cavity between the two moss coated sections that were left.
The hole was filled in with cement bricks that led upward in a
stair-case like fashion. Covered by weeds at the base of the
tree, there lay a broken headstone. The top half of the marker
lay face up and I could clearly read the name. Hartley.

Squatting down beside it, I swiped away at the thistle
that concealed the bottom half of it. Garnet Hartley. I’d found
her.
I traced the letters of her name delicately with my
fingers.

“What’s your secret?” I said aloud even though I knew
I wouldn’t get an answer. I was wrong.

 

“I don’t have any secrets,” said a male voice from
behind me. “I think you’re the one with secrets.”

Busted talking to a grave.
Again.
I snapped my head
around to see who was about to get a hasty excuse for what I
just got caught doing. When I came face to face with the blond
boy who saw me doing the very same thing a month ago, I was
speechless.

“So you’re not even going to try to deny it,” he said
with a grin. “I guess that means I was right. You
do
have
secrets.”

I didn’t know who he was but he definitely made me
uncomfortable.
He always seemed to be in the right place at
the wrong time.
Screw pleasantries, I was going to let him
have it. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in school
or something?”

“So should you,” he replied instantly, clearly enjoying
my discomfort. “And besides, I told you before that I don’t go
to school anymore. Remember?”

“Whatever,” I mumbled as I stood up and started
walking toward the front gate. I wasn’t staying as long as he
was there. Now that I found Garnet’s grave, I could come back
anytime I wanted.

“Don’t leave on my account,” he called after me. “I
didn’t scare you, did I?”