Sleep Stalker (Ghosts Beyond the Grove Book 1) (20 page)

     Every second I waited on hold was an entire year from my perspective.  What a rotten time for her to get an incoming call that she needed to take!  I was about to hang up and call her back later when she suddenly clicked back over to my line.

     “Well, Ruby, I solved your problem about needing a ride.  But only if ya can get a flight out tomorrow night.  Or I guess ya could find a hotel near the airport that has shuttle service if a Saturday mornin’ flight is your best option.  Either way, if ya don’t mind ridin’ with Derek, he’s willin’ to do it for a huge favor in return.”

     “Anything!” I blurted out instantly.  “Anything at all!”

     “I’ll warn ya ahead of time—it’s kind of a pricey favor he’s asking.  He’s more than willin’ to drive ya there if you’ll buy him a ticket to the fantasy gamer’s convention in Pittsburgh tomorrow night.  He’s wanted to go every year since I’ve known him but some unexpected expense always comes up that keeps him from getting’ there.  Tickets are a hundred dollars—now
you
can feel free to say no.” 

     “Sold!” I shouted with the enthusiasm of a professional auctioneer.  “I consider that a small toll to pay on the road to destiny.”

     “Wow.  Either you have some secret money makin’ business on the side that I don’t know about, or you’re getting paid way more than I am at Poe’s Corner.  So which is it?”

     Someday, I would sit down and tell her the whole story behind my financial windfall and what I had to endure to get it.  But today definitely wasn’t that day.  Today, I needed to find a flight and possibly a hotel room on very short notice.  Plus, I needed to pack.  Considering my destination, I was going to have to dig into my summer wardrobe which was stored away in plastic totes in the hall closet.  So much to do, so little time to do it in.

     “Neither but I don’t have time to go into details about it now.  Give me the web address of that convention he wants to go to and I’ll buy his ticket after I get my flight worked out.  I’ll get back to you later.”

     Twenty minutes and fifteen hundred dollars later, my trip to Tucson was finalized.  The earliest flight I could get left Pittsburgh at 8:45 Saturday morning so I also had to make a hotel reservation for Friday night.  Once Derek’s ticket was purchased, I took a look at my bank account.  It wasn’t pretty.

     First, I bought us the SUV.  A necessary yet expensive purchase.  Then, I spent way too much money on retail therapy while waiting for Zach to wake up after the shooting last spring.  Nowhere near as expensive but absolutely unnecessary—in hindsight anyway.  Then, there were all of the things I bought for the apartment—most of which I wasn’t even enjoying.  Who could truly appreciate “His” and “Hers” towels when the “His” half of the equation was falling apart faster than a cheap pair of sandals?  Add in monthly rent, the security deposit, and utility bills and my money was disappearing at an alarming rate.  But it would all be worth it in the end as long as Zach was back to normal.  I would happily be poor with him as long as he was no longer crazy.

     When I proceeded to the next step on my list, I encountered still more financial depletions.  My family didn’t travel so I didn’t own anything close to resembling luggage.  I resisted the urge to stop at the mall and instead drove to the nearest discount department store.  And straight to their clearance travel section.  The pieces on sale weren’t anything I normally would have chosen and there was a set of hot pink luggage from my favorite designer calling my name from the full price display. 

     I weighed the options but for once, I chose to be a responsible adult.  With definite disappointment, I walked away with two plain black suitcases that didn’t even match.  It saved me over a hundred dollars—something I wouldn’t have worried about a few months ago.  Growing up was a real bitch.  Growing up meant paying electric bills and owning ugly luggage.  But I kept reminding myself that my sacrifice had great purpose.  I would be willing to wear nothing but rubber flip flops and eat ramen noodles at every meal for the rest of my life if it meant Zach would be okay.  Now
that
was the definition of true love.

     Before heading home, I stopped at Addie’s to give her Derek’s ticket and a spare key to my apartment.  And she reminded me of one minor detail that had slipped past my ultra-thorough to-do list.  A key meant absolutely nothing when she didn’t know which apartment I lived in. 

     So without really asking her to come with me, I sort of dragged her along with me.  She noticed the new luggage in the backseat and asked me again.

     “So, are you like some sort of spoiled rich girl or what?  Ya don’t act like one but ya sure do spend like one.”

     “It’s kind of a long story.  If you don’t mind hanging out with me while I pack, I’ll tell you everything.” 

     As much as I hated reliving those terrible moments while Jonas held me prisoner, I had the urge to talk.  I was about to travel over a thousand miles to talk to a relative stranger about some very weird things and I needed a little reassurance.  Sometimes knowing that you were doing the right thing simply wasn’t enough.  Sometimes you needed to hear someone else agree with your decisions.  This was one of those times.

     So as I dug a week’s worth of summer clothes out of the hallway and hauled them into the bedroom to pack, I shared more of the mysteries that made me who I was.  My story was odd—that’s for sure—but I didn’t think it made me special.  Addie, however, disagreed.

     “Let me get this straight.  You’re the stepdaughter of a famous author who lives in a haunted mansion. 
And
you were kidnapped by a deranged serial killer?  Forget about Cinnamon Jones—your stepmom needs to write the screenplay to
your
life.  I already knew you were weird but there’s more weird to you than meets the eye.”

     “Thanks,” I said sarcastically as I stuffed one more outfit into my already bulging suitcase. 

     “You were
supposed
to take that as a compliment, you know.  I’m the only livin’ descendent of the finest voodoo queen New Orleans has ever seen—I revel in all things weird.”

     I lugged my fully packed bag out into the living room then returned to start loading up my carry-on.  Was I grossly over packing?  Yes, a resounding yes.  But I knew my luck.  If the airport was going to misplace one bag that day, it would be mine.  I had to at least have enough clothes in my possession at all times so that I wouldn’t have to waste time shopping when I got to Arizona.  Wait a second.  Did I just call shopping a waste of time?  Yes, I did.  Yet again, I realized how much I truly loved Zach.  Only true love could make shopping seem trivial to me.  This trip had to provide me with the answer to his full recovery.

     “I know you do.  And so do I—to a degree.  But I’ve been running on fumes for over a year now.  Some peace and quiet would be nice for a change.  Even without the link to my mother being involved, I think some time in Sedona will do me good.”

     With my carry-on packed and ready, I sat down to rest for the first time in hours.  But I soon found out that when my body wasn’t moving, my mind picked up the slack.  And there were so many things that I didn’t want to think about—like the fact that I pretty much shoved Zach’s things at his mom and abandoned him at the hospital.  Actually, there was no pretty much about it—I ran away from him today as fast as I could.  But it wasn’t really how it must look from the surface.  In all actuality, I was running
toward
Zach as fast as I could.

     “I’m sure it will.  I hear it’s beautiful there—the scenery, the atmosphere.  And the labradorite.  Don’t forget my labradorite!” she said, waggling her finger in my face.

     Against all of my mounting stresses, that statement made me laugh.  “You’re going to have to tell me what it looks like first!  I’m not very well versed in geology.”  Now it was her turn to laugh at me but I didn’t know why exactly.

     “Crystallography is the correct term for it.  Once I feel comfortable with the whole teomancy thing, crystal healin’ is next on my list.  Then tarot.  Granny is the best tarot card reader I’ve ever seen.  She takes one look at those cards and she knows things.  Things she couldn’t possibly know.  It’s impossible to lie to that woman and get away with it.  She creeps me out sometimes.”

     “I creep myself out
all
the time!”  I was still nervous about the flight and worried about Zach but our conversation helped ease my fears to a degree.  It wasn’t easy keeping such a huge secret from people who deserved to know what I was doing and why I was doing it.  I would have shared it with Rachel except for the fact that I knew she would panic and add to my stress.  But once I returned with the answers, I would tell everyone everything that happened.  Scout’s honor.     Before I knew it, it was almost midnight and I had a
huge
day ahead of me tomorrow.  There wasn’t going to be much time for goodbyes with as busy as Poe’s Corner had been lately, so Addie wished me luck when I dropped her off. 

     It took me forever to fall asleep but once I did, I had the dream about Tucson again.  This time, I made it further down the street than I ever had before.  The air was ripe with static electricity as I turned the corner onto Fourth Street.  Off in the distance there was something oddly out of place at the far side of that dead end street.  Rosewood.  Rosewood was what I was meant to find.  Or more accurately put, home.  I was on a journey that was leading me home.

33.  Icarus Reflected

     Sleep.  Sleep was the only thing that would take away the pain.  I’d slept more in the last few months than a normal person would in an entire year.  But it wasn’t enough.  And now, I couldn’t sleep at all.

     A wave of insomnia struck me once I was back in Charlotte’s Grove.  I knew why it was happening.  It was because I was sad and alone.  I should have known that my relationship with Ruby was too good to be true.  But her sun shined so brightly that I forgot to protect myself.  My wings were melting like I always knew they would someday.  Dreams were the only place I could still be with her and now that was gone too. 

     It was because they all thought I was crazy.  My body was shutting down physically but no one believed me.  They thought it was all in my head.  Doctor after doctor examined me but found no cause for the onset of what was sometimes near paralysis.  It came and went but for the most part, I felt like death on a daily basis.

     They prescribed anti-depressants for me which my mom made sure I took faithfully.  The first few days I was home, the number of visits I made to the hospital was greater than the number of hours I slept in total.  I was afraid.  I was afraid that one day, my body would shut down for good, leaving my tortured mind to suffer in its empty shell.  Sleep was the only thing that made me feel better but at this point, Hypnos himself couldn’t knock me out.

     One day after a particularly disheartening doctor’s appointment, I came home weak and defeated.  I could hear them whispering when they thought I wasn’t listening.  I could hear them discussing the fact that they couldn’t fix me physically because the only thing that was broken was my mind.  Mom and Dad both tried to deny it but I knew the truth.  Everyone was giving up on me, including me.

     That afternoon, I hobbled into the bathroom for a few minutes of peace and quiet.  I was full of rage that I was too weak to express.  Hot and sweaty from the bottled up emotions I was toting around with me, I leaned over the sink and splashed my face with ice cold water.

     When I came face to face with the mirror again, there was a flicker of motion in my reflection.  I could make out the faint outline of someone else besides me in there.  Someone wearing an orange dress.  But she wasn’t in the room with me nor just in the mirror alone.  It was like she was inside of me—had
been
inside of me all along—yet chose this moment to make her presence known.  Ruby.  She spoke one word then disappeared back inside.

     “Sleep.”

     Without hesitation, I snagged my bottle of sleeping pills from the medicine cabinet and shook one out into my trembling hand.  Then, I tapped it once more until two of the tiny yellow tablets rested in my palm.  I stared into the mirror for a moment waiting for her to return before swallowing them both together.  It wasn’t really her but it was the closest I would ever come and I wanted to be with her so much that it hurt. 

     “Sleep,” I whispered back to her.  “Sleep.”

34.  Touchdown, Arizona

     Longest.  Day.  Of.  Work.  Ever.  Excitement ensured that I barely slept the night before—Fate took care of the rest.  Normally, time flew when Poe’s Corner was busy but not today.  Not when this was one of the biggest days of my life.  Not when I was super pumped to get the show on the road—literally.  I should have been nervous.  I should have been on the verge of an anxiety attack.  But I wasn’t.  I was ready to take on the world—or at least the part of it that lay between Ohio and Arizona.

     Five seconds after Addie walked in the door, I was untying my apron and making my way to the time clock.  This was it.  The moment had arrived.  Nothing could take the wind out of my sails now.  Well, almost nothing. 

     When I emerged from the office, Derek was the first person I saw.  And I use the word “person” very lightly.  I knew hardcore gamers could be an odd bunch but I never expected to see
this
.

     “Art thou ready to depart on thy quest?” he asked.  “I shall escort thee as I hear there are ruffians about.”

     Hearing a Shakespearean accent coming from a man dressed as some sort of dragon-like creature was quite surreal.  The only part of him that was visible was his face which protruded from between the jaws of whatever he was supposed to be.  And he had a tail.  A long one.  I was going to be stuck inside a car for over an hour, on the interstate, with the Creature from the Black Lagoon. And to think that I once thought that riding around in Rachel’s car with eyelashes was the most embarrassing vehicular moment imaginable.  It was time to update the scoreboard—gods of humiliation, two points; Ruby, zero.

     I released one sigh of exasperation for this most recent loss of my dignity then walked out the door with Godzilla leading the way.  We retrieved my bags from my car and placed them in the trunk of Derek’s.  I tried hard not to laugh when he closed the door on his tail.  Okay, not
that
hard.  When I thought for sure that I was going to burst if I didn’t, I giggled like someone had pumped nitrous oxide in through the vents.

     “Okay, you can stop laughing at any point now!  I’m dressed as Pachua from the game Alchemy Lord.  Trust me—if you’d seen Pachua decimate the town of Mordecai Crossing with just one swipe of his massive tail, you wouldn’t be laughing.”

     Massive tail?  I looked at the flimsy appendage stitched to his backside and began to chuckle internally.  “Sorry, Derek.  I had no idea that you would be in costume.  You caught me off guard!” 

     And
that
was putting it politely.  But I didn’t want to piss him off and make for an awkward ride to the airport.  I was thoroughly uneducated when it came to video games so I asked him a few questions to get the conversation rolling.  And it ended up being an out of control freight train.

     Bored at first, I quickly became fascinated when Derek explained that he was working on the software for his very own video game. 

     “I already have a job lined up in the medical lab’s IT department but game design is where I eventually want to end up.  In a few years, I’ll have my student loans paid off then Addie and I plan to move to San Francisco.  There are several different companies out there—I’m sure at least one of them will be impressed with what I’ve designed.”

     As he explained the mythos surrounding the game he was working on, I had to admit that I was impressed.  Not only did he have the advanced computer skills necessary for such an endeavor, but he also had an imagination to match.  By the time we got to Pittsburgh, I lost sight of the fact that I was being chauffeured by a man-lizard.  On the surface, they seemed like an odd couple.  But talking to Derek, I now understood how he and Addie were a perfect match. 

     The hotel I picked was somewhat of a dump—another example of me being financially responsible regarding this adventure.  It was set up more like a motel with all doors facing out onto a common balcony of sorts. Derek unloaded my bags while I checked in then he escorted me to my room referencing the ruffians yet again.  No ruffian in his right mind would mess with Pachua or his maiden companion.

     Once I was settled in, Derek left excitedly for the convention.  And I sat down on the bed and cried.  I wasn’t nervous about the flight or about spending the night alone in a strange city.  What I was feeling inside was way more complicated than that.  More than anything, I was lonely.  Zach hadn’t been gone long but mentally he’d checked out months ago.  If this trip wasn’t successful, I didn’t have any sort of backup plan.  That’s what scared me the most.

     I turned on the TV and tried to get my mind off of things but it didn’t work.  My body was full of nervous energy so I paced the room until I got dizzy.  I was in limbo and would have given anything to be able to turn the hands of time forward to a point where I felt like I was actually accomplishing something.  Frustrated, I walked out onto the terrace for a moment of fresh air.  Best.  Decision.  Ever.

     The first thing I saw was the lights of an airplane rising higher into the sky.  It was too dark to make out many details—it was all a mass of twinkling stars leaving this galaxy for the next.  Soon, I would be among them.  I would be defying gravity.  I would be ungrounded and free.  For thirty awe-inspiring moments, I watched plane after plane take off then disappear into the horizon.  There was no doubt in my mind that I was exactly where the universe needed me to be.  And I didn’t need an errant feather to tell me that this time.

     The calm that swept over me made me ready for sleep—something I was convinced I would go without for the night.  I set double alarms and allowed myself plenty of time to get to the airport in the morning.  Crawling under the too-stiff sheets felt better than it actually should have.  The crinkling noise of the pancake-flat pillow didn’t even bother me.  Once again, I was confident that I was on the right path.

     Morning came before I knew it.  Without hitting the snooze alarm at all—a personal record for me—I jumped out of bed enthusiastically.  I showered with the tiny bar of motel soap while imagining how my meeting with Roxanne was going to go.  My mom was leading me toward a way to help Zach.  But what piece of the puzzle could a dance teacher possess?  And how did my mother’s distant past figure into the equation?

     Driven by pure determination and insatiable curiosity, I was dressed and ready to leave in record time.  There was a small continental breakfast station set up in a room just off of the lobby.  I wasn’t all that hungry but who knew when my next opportunity to eat would present itself.  Double checking the room for stray items I might have forgotten to repack, I closed the door knowing that I was also closing the door on phase one of my mission.  Time to go forth and face phase two.

     I hauled my bags down to the front desk to check out and schedule myself on the next shuttle to the airport before grabbing a bite to eat.  There were only three tables in the kitchenette.  A foreign family had commandeered one of them—boldly chattering away in their native tongue.  At the second table, a trio of businessmen were hunched over their laptops and discussing a financial merger between mouthfuls of bagels with cream cheese.  The third table had only one occupant so I hesitantly grabbed a seat and sat down.

     The man at the other end of the table didn’t acknowledge my presence.  Instead, he sat reading a newspaper while mumbling to himself.  He felt out of place somehow but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.  Nothing about his appearance was strange—as a matter of fact, he looked quite plain and dare I say normal.  But still, I was in a strange city and I needed to keep my wits about me.  As I gathered a plate of toast and blueberry muffins, I kept one eye on my bags the entire time.

     My fascination with the old man grew exponentially until I could no longer hold my tongue.  Against every introverted instinct I possessed, I felt compelled to introduce myself. 

     “Hi, I’m Ruby,” I said smiling.  “I’m on my way to Tucson—where are you headed?” 

     I couldn’t believe I just did that.  Why did I just do that?  What was I
thinking
?  I
never
initiated conversation with strangers—I wasn’t friendly
or
outgoing.  That was Zach’s job not mine. 
My
job was to cower in the background and hope that no one spoke to me unnecessarily.

     Slowly, the man lowered his newspaper and studied me before speaking.  His reply was odd to say the least.

     “Today, tomorrow—wherever the equation decides to take me.”

     Okaaay then.  How was I supposed to react to that?  Clearly, the tiny man with puffy gray hair, large nose, and a charmingly crooked smile was more off kilter than I would have imagined.  I smiled politely and said the first thing that came to mind.

     “That sounds nice.”  Nice?  Again, I was questioning my own sanity for opening this can of worms in the first place.  Abruptly, I shoved an entire muffin into my mouth to keep from getting myself in any deeper than I already was.  But I soon found out it was too late for that.

     He leaned over the table toward me and whispered, “Are you any good at math?”

     Well, my math skills were something I never hesitated to brag about when given half a chance.  I think it had something to do with the fact that girls weren’t supposed to be good at it.  Or maybe I was the tiniest bit conceited.  Either way, I swallowed that muffin down hard and answered his question.

     “I was on the math team in high school—calculus was my best subject.”

     The man seemed pleased by this.  He rose from his chair and assembled his things.  But he slid his newspapers across to me and said, “Here’s something interesting for you to read during your flight.” 

     Before I could thank him, he was striding briskly toward the front door to the lobby.  I wasn’t one to keep up on current events—unless those events happened to involve fashion—but I gathered the papers together anyway.  I took a bite of my toast and casually picked one of them up.  And nearly needed the Heimlich Maneuver to dislodge the dry toast that I’d sucked harshly back into my throat.

     The paper I was holding in my hand was in pristine condition as though it had come from the presses only hours ago.  But the date on top showed that it had, in fact, been printed nearly eighty years ago.  The headlines for each article clearly supported that fact, too.  Confused, I picked up the other newspaper to see what year it was from.  And almost choked again.

     It wasn’t so much the year that I found shocking, it was the date.  The paper I was holding in my hand was a copy of the New York Times bearing
tomorrow’s
date.  I checked and double checked my phone for the correct date hoping that I had merely mistaken what day today was.  Nope.  I wasn’t mistaken.  I even Googled the New York Times to see if they were aware of a misprint on today’s paper.  Nothing.  Now, I was officially creeped out.  Breakfast was over. 

     I tossed what was left of my food into the trash can and was about to do the same to “tomorrow’s” newspaper but hesitated.  If I was holding a piece of the future in my hand, then everything I thought I knew about the laws of physics was all wrong.  Often people question whether or not they would want to know what happens in the future, but here I potentially held that quandary in my very hands.  And I didn’t have to think about my answer.  My answer was no, I did not.  I did, however, want to get ahold of a copy of the New York Times tomorrow so that I could compare the two.  This had to be a joke but steaming curiosity was going to make me prove it.

     Both newspapers were stuffed into the larger of my two suitcases so that I wouldn’t feel compelled to pull them out on the flight.  Once I got to Tucson, time travel would be the furthest thing from my mind.  I gathered all of my things and went outside to wait for the shuttle a full ten minutes before it was set to arrive.  I needed to get away from the vortex of weirdness that the kitchenette had suddenly become.  I had enough of that kind of crazy of my own—I didn’t need anyone else’s.

     Determination kept my anxiety caged within a tiny little space in my brain as I weaved my way through all of the airport hoops.  I collected my boarding pass, checked my luggage, and then found my gate before the sheer panic of what I was about to do sunk in.  I’d never flown before.  What if I freaked out so bad on this flight that I couldn’t force myself to re-board after my layover in Denver?  Hitching a bus wasn’t really an option—it would take days for me just to make it to Sedona let alone back to Ohio.  Why in the world did I
insist
on doing this all by myself?

     Because I was in love, that’s why.  I wasn’t afraid to face anything alone as long as it was for Zach’s benefit.  Scratch that.  I
was
afraid—scared to death, actually.  But I was willing to take on one obstacle after another to save him.  When the time came for boarding, I was relieved.  I found my seat in the rear of the plane and sent one last text before putting my phone into airplane mode.

     The text I sent was to Addie.  It was a will and testament of sorts.  Just in case flight 802 to Denver “won” the suicide bombing lottery that morning.  Of course, I should have thought of this sooner but I was too focused on planning this trip to think about the possible consequences.  I gave her brief instructions on what to do if my flight ended up on the nightly news.