Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance (31 page)

He was sitting in
the driver's seat in a car.  He was confused at first, unable to figure out how
he had gotten into the car in the first place.  There was a steady wailing
sound to his right, and when Jimmy turned to look, he saw Sapphire sitting
there beside him.  She was wearing the blue dress she had been wearing to the
dance, but she was screaming and shouting. 

Jimmy looked out
the windshield and realized that the car he was driving was huge.  The steering
wheel was not padded, and there were no headrests behind either his head or
Sapphire’s.  He was in a car from the ‘60s.  The car was rocketing along the
dark roads, and the blackness outside the windows seemed to press up against
the car.

"Where am
I?" he screamed.

"What do you
mean?" Sapphire screamed in return.  The sheer volume of her voice pierced
Jimmy's eardrums.  "Drive!  Drive!"

Jimmy ventured to
turn around.  Behind them was a truck.  It resembled Devlin Little's pickup
truck, but had somehow grown to gargantuan proportions.  The lights looked as
big as Jimmy's head, and they bored into his eye sockets.  The grill looked
like the mouth of a giant shark, its sharp teeth grinning and ready to tear
them to pieces. 

Jimmy stepped on
the gas.  The car lurched forward.  Sapphire continued to shout and scream, and
her hand gripped Jimmy's left forearm.  The car whirled and turned and danced
around the curves, hills, and corners that seemed to leap out of the darkness
ahead of them.  Although the car's headlights were on, they barely cut through
the darkness.  The road itself seemed to just come into existence the moment
they drove across it.  Jimmy couldn’t see trees or grass on either side of the
road.  It was as if they were driving in a tunnel and the road existed only as
they needed it.  At any moment, Jimmy was certain, the road would just cease to
be and they would plummet.

Jimmy roared
around another curve that took them to the right.  Behind them he heard the
asphalt and gravel crunching beneath the giant tires of the truck that pursued
them.  The truck's engine was getting louder, and it sounded like something
alive, growling, trying to get to them and chew them up and spit them out,
leaving them a pile of metal and flesh debris in its wake.

Jimmy yelled his
voice blending with Sapphire's to create a cacophony of noise that echoed around
the car.  He spun the wheel to the left and the car went up on two wheels,
spinning around that curve before falling back on four tires and rocketing down
the straightaway.

"You're going
to crash," a voice said suddenly from the backseat.

Jimmy turned and
saw Jesse sitting there.  He was wearing the tuxedo he had been wearing at the
dance with Sapphire, but he had gray hair and glasses like Jimmy knew him now. 
He looked grave.

"It's
inevitable," Jesse concluded.

Sapphire's scream
ramped up a notch to a level that was well beyond human.  Jimmy turned back to
face the road and saw that they were headed off the road.  He opened his mouth
to scream, but the roar of the engine cut him off.  They were off the road now,
hurtling through the absolute darkness around them as if flying, and ahead of
them a wall of trees appeared.

Jimmy threw an arm
over his head, but his entire body felt the impact.  There was a sickening
sound of rending metal that managed to match the intensity, timbre, and volume
of Sapphire's screams.  The car sheared in two.  Suddenly the car was no longer
around Jimmy, and he was flying through the blackness.  He looked up and caught
a fleeting glimpse of Sapphire's blue dress, and then she was swallowed by the
blackness.  The car was in pieces all around them.

Jimmy landed hard,
his body rolling, bouncing along the ground, slamming into trees.  It hurt, but
it not nearly as much as hitting a tree at a breakneck speed should have.  In
fact, he felt no bones break.  Other than his breath leaving his lungs for a
moment, he felt hardly any pain at all.  He came to rest beneath several huge
trees, on top of a bed of pine needles and leaves.  He lay on his back staring
up at the dead black sky, empty of stars and clouds, and the bare, reaching arms
of the trees.

Carefully, Jimmy
got to his feet.  His ears were ringing , and then he realized the ringing was
actually screaming.  It was Sapphire.  Beyond that was another sound, similar
to her screams, but deeper, scarier.  The creature that was wearing Devlin
Little's face and driving his truck from Hell was out of the vehicle and coming
towards Sapphire.  Jimmy knew that this was happening without being able to see
it with his eyes.  He could feel the ground shake as the creature moved.

Jimmy began making
his way toward the sound of Sapphire's screams.  His feet sank into the wet Earth
beneath them.  He fell forward and the ground seemed to reach up and grab his
hands and his arms.  As he tried to stand, the ground seemed to hold him fast,
like a thousand tiny arms, holding him fast to the ground.  Jimmy pushed back
with all of his might and managed to get to his feet, his arms covered with
dirt and dried leaves.  As he tried to walk, the ground sucked down his shoes,
pulling him deeper and deeper.  He heaved with all of his might and got back to
his feet.  As he started to walk, he collided with a tree that had not been
there a moment before.

"Hard to get
up there, isn't it?" Jesse's voice said from Jimmy's left.

Jesse stood there,
wearing his tuxedo, smiling.  His hair was disheveled, but he looked none the
worse for wear, despite having been thrown from a speeding car.  He smiled at
Jimmy, seemingly amused by his struggles.

"I told you I
couldn't get to her," he said.  His smile grew wider.  His teeth grew
longer and wider.

Jimmy moved his
legs, dodging around the tree.  He started to run, made it a few feet, and then
something wrapped around his ankles and he fell.  When he looked back, tree
roots that had not been there just a second before were now wrapped securely
around his ankles.

"The ground
holds you back," Jesse said.  He now stood just two feet away from Jimmy,
near Jimmy's head.  He was still smiling, but the smile was now much too big
for his face.  The edges of Jesse's mouth seemed to be cracking and splitting,
and blood ran down his chin.

"Help
me!" Jimmy cried.

Jesse laughed. 
Then, to Jimmy's horror, Jesse's head began turning.  The head just kept
turning, past the point where it should have been able.  There was a sickening
cracking sound as Jesse's vertebrae cracked and broke.  Then Jimmy saw the back
of Jesse's head, only now there was another face there instead of just hair. 
The face was huge, with a large, pointed chin, glowing red eyes, needle-sharp
teeth in an elongated mouth, a pointed tongue that darted out between the
teeth, and horns.  The horns were still growing out of Jesse's forehead as the
second face appeared, and Jimmy watched them sprout like flowers in a
time-lapse video until they curled up over his forehead.

"Just leave the
bitch alone!" the thing that had been Jesse screamed.  "The little
know-it-all deserves what she gets."

The thing that had
been Jesse laughed, and it was like spikes in Jimmy's ears. 

"She's cold,
Jimmy," it said.  "She's cold and she deserves it.  She needs to
float."

Then it threw its
head back and howled into the sky.  The volume of that shrieking howl grew
louder and louder, and Jimmy clamped his hands over his ears.  He moved his
legs, kicking away the roots and getting to his feet.  The Jesse-thing was now
twenty feet away, still staring at him with its pointed tongue dangling from
its mouth.

"Every place
needs a legend," it said.  "And she's the one for us!  So beautiful. 
So strong-willed."

It titled its head
at Jimmy as if considering him for the first time.

"She guards
the doorway," it said.

Then there was a
blast of smoke and wind, and the thing that had worn Jesse's face was gone. 
This was followed almost immediately by another scream from Sapphire.

Jimmy began
running.  This time the ground did not try to stop him, and he found himself
better able to find purchase, but the trees seemed to go on forever.  Every
time he rounded a bend, another dozen trees seemed to spring up in front of
him.  Again and again the piercing screams from Sapphire assaulted him, but no
matter which way he turned, he was unable to find the road.  As he rounded
around another tree that had sprung up out of the ground in front of him, there
was the road.

Sapphire stood
there; around her were giant beasts, unlike anything Jimmy had ever seen
before.  They were like ogres from storybooks, but each of them wore a human
face.  The one holding Sapphire by her neck wore Devlin Little's face.  He was
grinning, and he held Sapphire's bleeding body by her neck from one hand.  Her
feet dangled several feet off the pavement, and her head lolled to one side. 
Despite this, her eyes were wide and pleading.

"What do you
think, Jimmy?" the thing bearing Devlin's face asked.  "Should I
drown her?  Or hand her to my son?"

Just then, another
of the ogre-like monsters turned to face Jimmy.  This one bore Stan's face. 
His mouth was ripped apart in a hideous smile, and he vibrated with excitement.

"Tell him to
give her to me," the Stan-thing said.  "I'll really show her a good
time."

Please, Jimmy
, Sapphire whispered.  Her lips did not move, but Jimmy clearly
heard her in his mind. 
Help me.

"Don't listen
to her, Jimmy," said a voice to Jimmy's left.  He turned, and there was
the thing wearing Jesse's body again.  "She knows that nothing can stop
this.  A sacrifice is always required.  She should be honored."

The Jesse-thing
shrugged. 

"Normally, we
require a virgin," it said. "But we'll take what we can get."

"Who are
you?" Jimmy asked.

The thing bearing
Jesse's face tilted its head back and laughed.  The ogre-things laughed, as
well.  They laughed for what seemed like an eternity. The laughter lacked joy,
but was filled with evil and hate.

"Don't you
know, son?" the thing with Jesse's face asked. 

Jimmy shook his
head.

"We are this
place," it said, gesturing around with long talons.  "We're what you
people call Knorr.  Where things are thin and the other side is so close you
can almost smell it.  And what's on the other side, Jimmy?  Why, we are.  We're
what's there, and we're what's always been there, and the only thing that keeps
us on the other side instead of punching through and wiping out you disgusting
flesh-bags is sacrifice."

Then it laughed
again.  Its face contorted, stretching, and its body grew, the skin that had
been Jesse's splitting and sloughing away.  The skin beneath was red and
running with blood and twisting with muscle.  It quickly grew taller than the
trees, and Jimmy knew that he was looking into the face of evil itself.

Jimmy screamed.

Jimmy's eyes
snapped open and his body twitched.  He could immediately feel that his entire
body was coated in a layer of sweat.  His hair was damp and pressed against his
skull.  The sheets felt wet beneath him.

"Jesus,"
he whispered.

As he sat up, he
realized his limbs were shaking.  The buzzing in his head had gotten loud
again.

Sapphire?
he thought.

Yes
, came the immediate reply.

Were you with
me in my dream?
he asked.

Yes
, she said.

Did it make any
sense to you?

The buzzing grew. 
For a moment, Jimmy heard the other sounds that sometimes accompanied his
conversations with Sapphire.  He could hear screaming, moaning, and weird,
demented laughter. Jimmy wondered what that meant.  Was Sapphire thinking?  Was
she pacing? 

I'm not sure.

Something about
the way she said that made Jimmy think she was lying.

Are you sure?

Yes
, she said, but her voice was irritated.  It was unlike her. 
I
don't know what any of it means.

It feels like
you're close, Sapphire
, Jimmy thought.
 Are you
in the room with me?

I can't tell,
Jimmy
, she said.  It sounded like she was breathing
heavily. 
Odd
, he thought. Did she still take breaths because it was
automatic?  It was hard to imagine a ghost needing to breathe.  At the same
time, nothing about their relationship made much sense.  Since they had met and
fallen for each other, she had become more and more real.

Can you appear
here, in this room, with me?

Now Jimmy sensed
fear. 
I don't know, Jimmy.  I've never tried this.  I’ve only ever appeared
in person by the bridge.

Then try it.

The room suddenly
got very cold very fast.  All of the sweat on Jimmy's body felt as if it turned
to ice.  At the same time, the hairs on his arms and across the back of his
neck stood up as if he were standing near an electrical current.  The air felt
thick.  Near the foot of the bed, a kind of mist began to form.  Breath plumed
from Jimmy's mouth, and he shivered.  A strange noise began to emanate from the
center of the room, seeming to come from all over, and concentrating at that
spot at the foot of his bed.  Just when Jimmy thought he would freeze to death,
a bright white light suddenly erupted from a spot about five feet off the
floor.  The light grew brighter and brighter, becoming nearly blinding,
spreading, growing wider.  After an eternal moment of brightness, there was a shape
in the middle of the sun that had suddenly formed in the middle of the room.
Slowly, the shape became more and more distinct, converging into a female
form.  Suddenly the light flashed as if lightning had struck, there was a large
crackle of energy, and Jimmy's eyes felt as if he had looked directly into a
blazing sun.