Sleep Stalker (Ghosts Beyond the Grove Book 1) (15 page)

25.  Up in the Air

    
When I awoke, I was shocked to see that I’d been asleep for over twelve hours yet couldn’t remember a single dream.  The only sensation I had was of peacefulness.  That and the overwhelming scent of the girl I loved.  My entire body felt wrapped in her warmth.  I called her name repeatedly in the hopes that she would stop playing games and just come back to bed with me.  The only reason I unfurled myself from the comforter and the happiness I found in that bed was to go find her.  I needed her now—within my sights, within my grasp.  I needed her and nothing else.

     I searched the apartment three times before finally admitting to myself that she wasn’t hiding from me.  She simply wasn’t in the apartment.  She wasn’t at home with me where she
should
have been.  She was out there in the universe somewhere waiting for me to find her.  Ruby always did like it when I went out of my way to do things for her but lately she seemed to demand so much from me.  I was tired and there hadn’t been a single day in months that my head hadn’t ached.  But if this is what she wanted—
needed
—me to do, I was willing to do it.  Even if it killed me in the process. 

     Fairly certain that I knew where she was, I took the world’s quickest shower and flew out the door with my hair still in a tangled, wet mess.  Usually, I got a haircut on a regular basis but I was well overdue for more than a quick trim.  But who had time to get haircuts lately?  Certainly not me.  My calendar was filled indefinitely with trying to satisfy my obsessive need to be with her.  But even when we
were
together, it just didn’t feel like she was actually there.  There was something wrong with her.  She was the girl I fell in love with—yet she wasn’t. 

     As soon as I got to the car, I realized that I hadn’t grabbed the right set of keys.  What I had in my hand was the extra set to the SUV but Ruby’s black Altima was what was parked in the lot.   But
she
wasn’t in the apartment where those keys were.  Going back would be a waste of precious seconds that I could be using to find her.  So instead, I began to walk.

     Every day when she left that apartment, she
said
that she was going to work.  She was lying to me.  I saw her at the campus bookstore when she claimed that she was at Poe’s Corner.  And she pretended to still be en route to the Pittsburgh Airport when I clearly saw her in Chicago.  She wore clothes she swore she didn’t own, used perfume that smelled nothing like Midnight Kiss.  No, I couldn’t trust a word she said to me.  She was on the other side of the bridge.  That was where I would find her.  That was where I would find the answers I needed.

     The only problem was that I forgot where that bridge was.  I found it by accident yesterday while roaming around town looking for her.  I couldn’t even recall the name of the street it was on.  Blindly, I spent the entire day searching the town for something that might trigger my memory.  After hours of nothing but fruitless frustration, I walked into the first store I found to ask for directions.

     I walked into a small sandwich shop filled with lunchtime patrons.  The line was almost to the door.  I couldn’t wait that long to speak with someone.  Desperately, I tapped on the shoulder of the man in line in front of me. 

     “Can you help me please?  I need answers, I need direction.  Please, sir, can you help me?”

     The man in front of me turned around to face me.  He was in his late sixties, silver hair gracing the sides of his head while the top was cleanly bald.  He was a professional of some sort, wearing a dress shirt and pants.  His thick tie was a blocked print of one hundred dollar bills.  His wire rim glasses were perched near the tip of his nose and he peered contemptuously over them at me.

     “I’m not made of money son, regardless of the tie.  And what I
do
have, I earned by working hard—not by pandering in the streets for an easy buck.  If you’re really that hungry, go to the church soup kitchen down on Buckington Drive.  They’ll feed your stomach but only God should be filling your veins.”

     What?  He thought I was a homeless, drug addled, transient!  But why?  All I wanted was directions!  Why were people so quick to judge these days—especially so quick to judge
me
?  Angered and embarrassed, I backed away from him and back out onto the street.  There
had
to be another way to find that bridge.

     Tired and with the sudden onset of a flash migraine, I stumbled down the sidewalk aimlessly.  As I lurched across the pavement, oncoming pedestrians began to clear a path for me.  I felt like a disease that no one wanted to come into direct contact with.  They began to whisper unpleasant things about me.  They thought they were being discreet but I could hear every word they were saying.

     Then one voice amongst the many began to grow louder.  It was her.  It was
her
voice.  She was leading me to her!  I stepped off the sidewalk, the sound of her voice muffling out every other noise on the street.  The next thing I knew something had lifted me off of my feet with a crushing blow to my side.  First, I saw the dark sky above me—clouds rolling and churning to match the ferocity of the pain in my stomach and in my head. 

     As my sight began to fade, she came into view.  Leaning over me like a dark angel, smiling and giggling as I writhed in agony.  There was no cinnamon or vanilla in the air and her beauty began to fade.  Her once flowing hair became a matted nest of wriggling insects hanging limply in sparse clumps from her skull.  The only thing that remained of what I knew as her was her necklace.  Instead of my beautiful Ruby, the sight and odor of a long rotting corpse “comforted” me into my blackened haze.   Then one by one, my senses shut down on me.  I found relief in this despite the reality of it—she was gone now but thankfully, so was I.  She may have been hideous but I wanted her just the same.  If death was the only way for us to be together then so be it.

26.  Hit the Ground Running

     The doll in my hands sat staring up at me with green crystal eyes, seeing nothing yet causing me to see everything.  Her raven black hair was woven into two tight braids, one of which contained a streak of…ruby red.  She reminded me of what I looked like a year ago.  Once I decided to embrace my naturally curly hair, I’d stopped dying it as well but I recognized that shade as eerily similar to what I used to use. 

     She was wearing a traditional brown native dress but it was adorned with red beading around the edges; a tiny red dreamcatcher served as a necklace.  A single brown speckled feather was attached to her headband which contained one ruby red crystal in the center.  As if all of that wasn’t enough, the inscription on the plastic base at her feet nearly swept me off of mine.  “Follow Your Dreams” was inked there in a red glittery script.  Beside it, a trail of bare footprints glinted with the same sparkly paint. 

     “ADDIE!” I shouted, unable to tear my eyes away from the figurine that reminded me so much of myself.  “ADDIE!!!”

     “What’s wrong, Ruby?” she asked, dropping the snacks onto the sofa and joining me in front of the bookshelf.  “Ya look like you’ve just seen a ghost!”

     I ignored her poor choice of words and proceeded to point to the doll.  “What do you see here?”

     Confused at first, Addie merely explained what she saw with her physical eyes.  “What?  That old thing?  That’s a doll my mom bought me on our trip to the Grand Canyon the summer before she died.  Supposedly, that’s a feather from an actual roadrunner in her headband.  I guess they don’t look the way they do in the cartoons.”

     I stood there mesmerized, paralyzed, and a whole lot more in awe of things than I was even a second ago.  “Your mom?”  My brain began to swirl with the possibility that all of the signs I’d been receiving weren’t just coming randomly from the universe but from my very own mother.  Was it possible?  Or was it simply wishful thinking on my part?

     While I tossed those ideas around in my head, Addie began to look at the doll using her third eye.  I could practically see the theories forming, see the same thoughts creeping into her conscious. 

     “Look at that inscription!  The feather!  The footprints!  What made ya come look at this doll in the first place, Ruby?”

     “I was sitting on the couch when it just fell off of the shelf and onto the floor.  I didn’t even consider any paranormal reason for it happening, either.  I walked over here to pick it up and put it back where it belonged.  Then I noticed the feather so I turned her over to look at her.  I used to straighten my hair.  I used to dye one lock of it a bright ruby red.  Those eyes, the red crystals—I felt like I was staring at a miniature version of me.  And that was even
before
I looked at the bottom of it!”

     With the doll still clutched in my hand, I returned to the sofa with tears forming in my eyes.  Overwrought with emotion, I stared at the doll in silence for several moments.  “I think the signs I’ve been getting are from my mom.  She is trying to tell me something, trying to lead me somewhere.”

     “Okay, we need to analyze this thoroughly, Ruby.  What were ya doin’—what were ya thinkin’ ‘bout—when the doll took a dive onto the floor?”

     Shaken up by this latest clear sign from above, it took me a while to recollect my thoughts from only moments earlier.  When it finally hit me, it all made sense.

     “Zach.  I was thinking about Zach.  Thinking that the whole idea of a curse sounded like nonsense to me.  I was thinking that what he needed was a doctor and time away from me.  I was considering making up some sort of excuse to send him back to Charlotte’s Grove—alone.  He seemed to be more himself during that month that he was there and I was here.  That’s when the doll fell.”

     “So I’m right then—about Zach being under a curse.  Or at least your mom seems to agree with me.  Did that lady in Tucson ever get back to you?”

     Tucson.  Another wave of recognition swept over me.  “The Grand Canyon—isn’t that in Arizona?”  History and geography never interested me in the slightest.  I learned what I needed to learn and then wiped that information from my brain to make room for more important things.  Things like solving equations and how to dress to make my nonexistent butt look less flat. 

     “Yes!  Yes it is!”  Addie’s laid back southern demeanor was disappearing rapidly.  With each clue that we unraveled, her excitement grew until she was nearly as hyper as I was.

     My brain was in overdrive as I figured out one last connection I had to that doll.  “And I’m not sure but I
think
that my mother may have been of Cherokee descent.  Her middle name was Ayita, meaning first dancer.  My mother is leading me to Arizona to see Roxanne.”

     “Then you need to book a flight.  Now.”

     “But—” In theory, it
sounded
like a good idea.  But I couldn’t just go jetting across the country because a doll told me I should.  Or at least I thought that’s what the doll was telling me.  Hell, the more I thought about it, it didn’t even sound like a good
theory
anymore.

     “But nothing!  If there’s one thing Granny taught me it’s that signs from the other side should never be ignored.  You of all people should know that, Ruby.”  Addie pulled a small leather date book from her purse and flipped through the pages quickly.  “I can definitely give you enough time off from work for something this important—even
with
Halloween right around the corner.  I have a few ex-employees that I could call to help fill in—I’ve done it before.  As long as you’re only gone for a week, things should be fine at Poe’s Corner and Chad will never be the wiser.”

     I was about to give in and be spontaneous.  I was about to book the first flight to Tucson regardless of the cost.  I was about to throw caution to the wind when I finally came to my senses.

     “No, I can’t.  First of all, how is Roxanne going to react when a stranger shows up on her doorstep, mumbling weird crap about feathers and curses?  She hasn’t even returned my email yet.  Don’t you think flying out there now would be jumping the gun a wee bit?”

     Addie opened her mouth to reply but a familiar pinging sound from my phone beat her to it.  I knew what that sound meant.  It meant that I had a new email.  Email wasn’t my preferred method of communication—I hardly ever had anything in my inbox.  My spine began to tingle as opened the notification.

     I closed my eyes briefly as the message materialized on the screen.  If it wasn’t from Roxanne, I was going to be sorely disappointed.  But on the other hand, if it
was
from her, I wouldn’t be able to chalk anything up to coincidence ever again.  I opened my right eye first and only caught part of the sender’s address but it was enough.  The phrase “studiotutu@” said it all.