Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance (16 page)

Sapphire?
Jimmy thought loudly into his own brain. 
Are you there?

He heard only
silence in return.  The air conditioner kicked on and created a soft hum in the
background, but there were no other sounds.  He heard creaking in the
kitchen—probably his mother making some early preparations for dinner.

Sapphire?
he thought again. 
Can you hear me?

Jimmy was
definitely starting to feel foolish.  Did he really think that the girl he had
met on Friday was a ghost?  Had he already decided to accept the supernatural
as the only explanation for things?  Had a blow to the head really made him
lose all of his senses?

Jimmy?

Jimmy opened his
eyes.  He looked around the room.  His mother was not at the door, and he could
hear her clanging around in the kitchen again.  He heard something clattering
in the sink.

Jimmy?

As he looked
around, he broke out in a cold sweat.  The voice was inside his head. 

“No, no, no,” he
whispered aloud.  “This can’t be happening.”

Jimmy, are you
OK?

Jimmy closed his
eyes and tried to sort out his thoughts. 
Sapphire, is that you?

There was a long
pause.  Jimmy swore that he could hear static, like a poorly tuned radio,
inside his brain.

Yes.

Were you with
me at school today?

Another long
pause.

Yes.

How is that
possible?

There was another
long pause, and a feeling that someone or something was crawling through his
head dominated him.  The fingers inside his brain were urgent, but not hurtful.

I don’t know,
Jimmy.  I’ve never been able to do this with anyone before.

Sapphire, are
you dead?

This time the
static in his head increased to a level that made his already sore head begin
to pound.  Jimmy started to feel light-headed.

I think so. 
I’m not sure.  It’s so confusing.

Jimmy’s mouth felt
very dry.  He licked his lips and shifted on his bed.  His entire world and his
entire belief in what was real and what wasn’t was shifting.  He was amazed how
well he was taking it, all things considered.

You don’t know
what happened?

The static reached
a kind of shriek.  The feeling of fingers in his brain increased and this time
they dug deep.  Jimmy winced.

I don’t know,
Jimmy.  I don’t know.

OK, relax,
Jimmy thought. 
I can feel you when you get upset.  It hurts.

I’m sorry. 
Jimmy, I need your help.

Jimmy felt worry
wash over him. 
Why?  What’s wrong?

Again, I can’t
explain it.  I just think you can help me.  You can help me figure this out and
why it’s happening.  I think there’s something I need to do and I think you can
help me.

Jimmy felt fear
push in amidst the guilt and then worry.

I’m in love
with you Sapphire,
he thought. 
I don’t know how
that’s possible anymore than us being able to communicate like this, but I know
it’s certain.

Jimmy felt the
static in his head change again.  This time he felt something like joy wash
over him.

I love you,
too, Jimmy.  Can you come see me tonight?

Jimmy frowned. 
I’ve
been grounded.  I got in big trouble with my mom because of the fight in
school.  Plus, Stan’s father looked ready to kill me.  I may have made things
worse.

No, you were
brave.  I told you that you would be.  Please, Jimmy, there has to be a way for
you to get out of the house tonight.

Jimmy sighed. 
I
was going to go see our newspaper editor today.  She’ll have more information
about this town than I can find in a library.  Plus, someone has been tampering
with the town’s newspaper archives.

The static changed
again.  Fear came back in spades.

I have a
feeling that this could be dangerous, Jimmy.  It’s so frustrating.  Something
about this area, this town, means that things like this can happen.  It’s like
the fabric of reality itself is thin around Knorr.  But that also seems to
attract dangerous people.  I only get information about what happened to me in
bits and pieces.  Each time we connect, another piece falls into place.

They sat in
silence for a while.  Finally, Jimmy decided he could meet her.

I’m going to
sneak out after dinner,
he thought. 
I’m going
to try and see Tabitha, and then I’ll head to the bridge.  I think it may be late,
though.  Eleven or so?

Fine.  I’ll see
you then.  You know what I’ll be wearing.

Just like that the
static in his head was gone.  The air conditioner noise filled his ears.  His
head was throbbing, but Jimmy decided he could live with it.  He felt excited. 
He felt good.  However, beneath the good feelings and the lovey-dovey stuff,
there was also a hefty dose of fear.

“I’m in love with
a ghost,” he whispered to his room.

Jimmy
went out into the kitchen and ate heartily with his mother an hour or so later. 
He and his mother had a nice conversation, and Jimmy showed no signs of having
just spoken telepathically with a dead girl.  He laughed in all of the right
places, made insightful comments, and kept up with the conversation.  By the
time they were finishing their meal, both he and his mother were smiling and
laughing. 

When they were
done, Jimmy said that he was going to go lay down.  His mother expressed some
concern over that, but decided that Jimmy would know best.  Jimmy even gave his
mother a kiss on the cheek and thanked her for coming to get him.  His mother
blushed and then went about finishing up the dishes.

Jimmy entered his
room and immediately set about getting his escape ready.  He stuffed the
blankets with pillows and clothing from his closet.  He turned out the lights
and studied the results in the glow of the digital alarm clock near his bed. 
It looked enough like he was in the bed sleeping to fool his mom. 

After that, he
just had to wait.  That, as it turned out, was the hardest part.  Jimmy took a
seat on the edge of the bed and strained his ears to hear what his mother was
doing.  He heard the drone of the dishwasher and then heard the television turn
on.  After what seemed like days, he finally heard the telltale sound of his mother
snoring away on the couch.  If his mother was true to her form, she would be
out on the couch until well after midnight.  After that, she would head to bed,
but peek into Jimmy’s room on the way to her own bed.  She would not speak to
him, however, just assume that he was asleep.

Jimmy stood,
grabbed a jacket and then climbed on top of the desk against the sole window in
his room.  He eased the window open and stepped out.  It was a bit of an
awkward step, but not impossible and he stretched his leg out until the toes of
his shoes touched the ground.  Then he eased down his right leg and stood
beneath his window.  The edge of the open window was at shoulder-level and he
reached up and gently eased the window down.

Jimmy stood
beneath the window for a moment and let his eyes adjust to the darkness.  There
was little in the way of streetlights out this way and the sun was now below
the tree tops.  The horizon still held streaks of pink and fading streaks of
orange, but mostly blue and purple were becoming the dominant colors.  Jimmy
looked at the cornfields across the street and then up and down at the modest
houses on either side of his own.  He breathed the cool air.  It was a very
beautiful part of the world, but things around here were always weird.

Before Jimmy was
born, a man had gone on a killing spree in these parts.  He snuck into the
rooms of children, kidnapped them, tormented the parents, and then murdered the
child.  He would then dismember the child and leave their head as a grisly
torment for the child’s father to find.  He was dubbed “the Boogeyman” for his
ability to appear in children’s rooms in the middle of the night the way he
did.

The Boogeyman had
tormented the Knorr and surrounding areas for a long time, then stopped.  Then,
a few years ago, a writer named Warren Hollis came to town to research the
crimes for a book.  Before long, there were more murders.  Then a bomb had gone
off in downtown Knorr that had destroyed the original offices of the town
newspaper and a restaurant beneath it.

Tabitha, the
newspaper editor, had fallen in love with Warren.  Together they had helped
connect the dots and find the culprit and expose the story.  They were married
now, and Warren had taken up permanent residence in Knorr.  Tabitha had opened
up new offices and continued to publish the local newspaper.  She also won an
award for her coverage of the Boogeyman stories.  Warren’s book was a big hit
and there had been a TV movie.

Much of that had
happened on the periphery of Jimmy’s life.  Now, he wondered if there were more
stories about Knorr left to be discovered.  Like, perhaps, the death of a young
girl.  And perhaps going back to the days when Native Americans wandered
through these parts.  Some places are just thin in spots, he thought, and Knorr
appears to be one of those places.  Jimmy had an overwhelming feeling that
Tabitha, and maybe even Warren, would be able to provide some answers.  He had
this gut feeling that they knew more than they had let on in their newspaper
stories and books.

Jimmy made his way
quietly around to the back of the house.  He found his bike and walked it down
to the road.  Then he climbed on and set off.

Like most in a
town this small, he knew where Tabitha and Warren lived.  He just hoped that
one or both of them were home.  Jimmy still wasn’t sure about Warren.  He was
an outsider and many still felt that the trouble only started when he showed up
and started poking around.  Jimmy was a bit more forgiving, but Tabitha had
been here longer than Warren.  She knew about the town’s history.  She was a
fountain of information about Knorr.

Jimmy rode in the
darkness.  He knew the roads like the back of his hand and had no fear of the
encroaching darkness.  Of course, had he really stopped to think about it, he
might have been afraid.  He had already crossed over in his mind to
acknowledging that ghosts and the dead could reach out and touch the living. 
Perhaps there were other spirits, ghosts, goblins, and creatures in Knorr just
waiting to do harm to someone riding by on a bicycle.

Instead, Jimmy
thought about Sapphire.  He pictured her blue gown and her green eyes and the
feeling of her thoughts in his head.  He blushed, warmth spreading over his
body from the tips of his toes to the top of his head.  It kept him warm during
the entire ride to Tabitha and Warren’s home.

He arrived after
twenty minutes of hard riding up and down hills and around dark curves.  The
house was two stories, made mostly of wood and had a kind of homey log cabin
feel about it.  It was set back from the road, surrounded by trees and had a
long gravel driveway.  The front porch was large and there was a deck out back
that overlooked more trees and woods. 

Jimmy turned into
the driveway and pedalled up to a spot near the front porch.  He leaned his
bike up against a tree and steeled his courage.  He was about to ask a bunch of
very weird questions and sound like a total lunatic to the editor of the town’s
newspaper.  Jimmy suddenly worried that he hadn’t really thought this whole
strategy through.  Then he decided it was go big or go home and took a few
steps forward toward the front door.  After two steps a bright light speared
through the darkness and pinned him to a spot on the cement walkway that led
from the driveway to the front porch.

Jimmy threw up a
hand and shielded his eyes.  There was no alarm, just the bright light.  It
turned the entire front lawn from darkness and dusk into high noon.  Of course,
Jimmy thought, with all of the weirdness they had been through, they probably
had a few security measures.  It was a motion-detecting light to hopefully
scare away anyone attempting to break in.

“Who’s there?”  A
male voice called from somewhere on or near the porch.

“Um,” Jimmy said
hoarsely and then he cleared his throat and tried again.  “Um, it’s Jimmy
Parker, sir.  I’m a student at Knorr High?  And, um, well, this is a little
odd, but I was hoping I could talk to Tabitha.  Or, Mrs. Hollis?”

“What about?”  The
voice said.

Jimmy saw a shape
moving on the porch.  The light was still spearing into his brain and he could
only make out a shadowy figure up there.  Jimmy had only seen Warren Hollis
from a distance, walking downtown, for example, or in the newspaper.

“Well,” Jimmy
said, and then he decided to just go for it.  “I think I’ve been talking to a
ghost and I think a girl may have been killed in these parts back in the 60s. 
And, well, somehow she and I are able to talk.  I know it sounds crazy, but --”