Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance Page 21

  Jesse was getting animated now.

  "Do you think I like living with this?" he asked. "Do you think that over the years I haven’t thought a thousand times that this was the chance to go to the police? When tough economic times hit, I figured that Devlin would take a hit, too, and that would be the time to pounce. I don't know how, but somehow the bastard managed to not only ride out that period, but get richer and own more. He's been buying up homes like they're going out of style."

  Jesse shook his head. His face was now flushed red and his eyes blazed.

  "No way," he said. "You come in here with your clever questions and your way of getting people to talk and get me to spill my guts on the one thing that has haunted me my entire life and then expect me, once unburdened, to just waltz right into the sheriff's office? Do you know who else was there that night? One of them is a state representative and another is a U.S. senator—some say he has a real shot at the White House in a few years. This is not a game, Tabitha. You run a small town newspaper, not the New York Times. You almost died and lost everything once. Now you're poking around in dangerous places again, and this time the people you are messing with won't stop until you are really gone, one way or another."

  He turned and faced Jimmy.

  "And you," he said, pointing a finger at Jimmy. "You should butt out as well. You should be ashamed of yourself, Tabitha, dragging a young man like Jimmy into all of this. What right do you have to endanger his life?"

  "None," Tabitha said. "Jimmy came to me. Devlin Little has already tried to kill him."

  Jesse's eyes went wide. "What?"

  Jimmy relayed the story of his bicycle ride the other day, conveniently leaving out the fact that he had overheard Jesse and Devlin talking that morning. Jesse's eyes threatened to fall out of his skull.

  "See what I mean?" he yelled. "This is what happens! You two need to drop this now. Just drop it! Jimmy, you need to just keep your head down and your nose clean. Stop mixing it up with the football players."

  "You know what happened this past Friday," Jimmy said calmly. "You know that I showed up at the dance with a girl who has more than a passing resemblance to Sapphire."

  Jesse shook his head. "That's nonsense. You're trying to play some kind of joke on me and I do not find it funny."

  "You know it because you heard it from other people," Tabitha interjected. "It wasn't Jimmy that told you. He just told you right now, and I can tell by your reaction that you've heard the stories of the phantom hitchhiker and the ghost-girl. You know that what happened this past Friday is almost exactly what happened between you and Sapphire and the football team all of those years ago."

  "Was it your plan to come in here and get me to spill my heart out and then scare me with ghost stories?" Jesse said with a laugh. Jimmy could tell that there was fear there.

  "You know what Knorr is like," Jimmy said, pointing at the shelves of books. "You keep the history of this place. You know that Knorr is a place where weird things happen. You know that things get a bit…thin here. Plus, you know that someone has been in the microfilm archives and has removed every mention of Sapphire and what happened to her."

  Jesse opened and closed his mouth, as if he were a fish gasping for air. He was struggling to find an excuse, a reason, something to convince them that he was right and the best course of action was for them to turn around and stop this entire line of questioning.

  "I need to get back to work," he said. With that, he went around to the other side of the desk and sat down. He turned on the computer and started typing.

  "You can't hide this forever," Tabitha said. "We can go to the sheriff on our own. He's a friend of mine and he knows that I'm honest. What we have is mostly hearsay and rumors, but it's enough for him to open an investigation. One of the first places he'll come is here."

  Jesse stopped typing. He swiveled in his chair slowly, turning to face Tabitha.

  "And what do you think will happen?" he said. "I will deny that I know anything about any of this. And then Devlin Little will make a few phone calls, call in a few favors, and our beloved sheriff will somehow find himself out of a job, and a new, more favorable, sheriff will be put in his place. Then things will get really interesting around here. Jimmy will spend the rest of his high school years in and out of jail, arrested for every infraction the new sheriff—and Devlin Little—can come up with. And your newspaper will suddenly find itself under investigation from the IRS, and who knows what else? Leave. This. Alone."

  Jesse stood there breathing hard, staring at Tabitha, unwavering. Tabitha stared right back, showing no emotion. It was like watching a telepathic battle of wills.

  "If you think I am going to do that, you have no idea who you're dealing with," Tabitha said evenly.

  "Then you live with the consequences," Jesse said. Then he turned and faced Jimmy. "You should know better, Jimmy. If she wants to tilt at windmills and dig up fifty-year-old mysteries, then let her. She's done it before and it nearly got her killed. So let her. You just focus on school, instead of football players and old mysteries."

  Jimmy stood up. "I wish I could, Jesse, but I can't. You see, I've met Sapphire. Whether you believe it or not, the fact is that she's been coming back since that night, and now she's able to retain her form, in the flesh, and intact. I can hear her thoughts."

  "You're just as delusional as she is," Jesse said.

  He continued to talk, but Jimmy couldn't hear a word he said. The buzzing in his head suddenly reached brain-splitting levels. It was as if a radio station caught between stations had been implanted directly into the center of his brain and then turned the volume up to maximum level. Jimmy cried out and clutched at his head. Tabitha stopped staring at Jesse and turned to Jimmy in concern. Jesse was still talking, his words an imperceptible hum in the background.

  "He's lying!"

  Jimmy sat down. Only then did Jesse stop talking.

  What? Jimmy projected into the static filling his mind. What was that, Sapphire?

  Jimmy! She was distant, buried in the static. Jimmy could tell that reaching him was very difficult, like trying to get a shortwave radio station in the middle of the day. Jimmy, he's lying.

  "He's lying," Jimmy said out loud. His voice was weak.

  "What did you say?" Jesse asked.

  "Jimmy, is it Sapphire?" Tabitha queried.

  Jimmy nodded.

  How do you know, Sapphire? he thought.

  Whenever a new piece falls into place, my memories come back, Sapphire said in his mind. Even if I'm not listening in through your thoughts, suddenly these memories come flooding back. They're overwhelming. This time I was listening and nothing came back. Nothing about what he said came back as a memory. That can only mean he's lying.

  "She says…she says that her memories come back whenever another piece of the puzzle falls into place," he said to Tabitha. "And she was listening and no memories came back. Nothing Jesse said is filling in the memories."

  "This is insane," Jesse said. "I don't have to stand here and be lied to by two people I used to trust. Get out of my library. Get out before I call the sheriff and tell him that you're trespassing."

  Jesse stood up violently, knocking the desk over. Blackie even jumped up, letting out a bark. Jesse grabbed some papers and made a crude attempt to stack them.

  "I am not kidding," he said. "Get out of here."

  "We're leaving," Tabitha said.

  Tabitha walked over to Jimmy and put her hand on his shoulder. The buzzing in his head was still intense.

  Sapphire, he thought. You're hurting my head. Back off.

  The buzzing died down, but did not vanish entirely. Jimmy got to his feet and things around him swayed; it felt like the world was moving up and down like a roller coaster.

  They headed for the door. Somewhere deep within the library, a door slammed. Jimmy jumped, but kept moving. Tabitha took the lead, opening the front door and holding it for him. The fresh breeze outside cleared Jimmy's head, but it was still to
o warm for his tastes. He was feeling nauseous now. They walked hurriedly to the parking lot.

  "What the hell is happening?" he muttered as he put his hand on the hood of Tabitha's car to steady himself.

  Tabitha hurried along after him, using her key fob to unlock the car. Jimmy got into the passenger seat and collapsed. His head was throbbing. Tabitha opened the driver's door and sat down.

  "Are you OK?" she asked.

  "My head feels like it's going to explode," Jimmy said. "What do you think is going on?"

  "I got the lie vibe off of Jesse the moment he started talking about what happened between Sapphire and Devlin," she said, starting the engine. "Something about it just didn't make any sense. I mean, how come it took him so long to get to where Devlin and his friends were? And how come he wasn't hurt when the car went off the road? Why didn't his car work? And how did Devlin even find him? It must have taken some time to get him stitched up. What the heck was Jesse doing during that entire time?"

  Jimmy shook his head. "I don't know. Sapphire is nearly panicked. It's like she's afraid."

  "I hate to say this," Tabitha said, "but I think we might have to face Devlin Little."

  Jimmy shook his head. "No way. Not in this condition."

  Tabitha nodded and they pulled out of the parking lot, heading down the main drag.

  "Fine," Tabitha said. "Let's head home. I can't believe it's not even lunchtime yet. We'll talk things over with Warren and, later on, we can talk things over with your mother and even George, if he's interested. Then we can plan our next move."

  Did you catch any of that, Sapphire? Jimmy thought.

  Yes, came the reply. It was still so dim, so soft. She still sounded scared. I'm sorry, Jimmy.

  It's OK, Jimmy thought. My head is just throbbing. Do you remember anything else about Jesse?

  No, Sapphire replied. I think I really liked him at the time. I thought there was something between us. I just can't remember what happened when we left the dance.

  Jimmy could sense her frustration; he felt it, too. He was also losing faith in Jesse. Jesse, the man who had always been his one adult friend, someone he had trusted. The library had always been his favorite refuge from the world when it got to be too much. Jimmy felt like his world was collapsing around him.

  Sapphire, Jimmy thought, could I have a little time to myself? I think I need to rest.

  The feeling of sadness increased, but the static faded. I love you, Jimmy.

  I love you, too, Sapphire, he thought.

  The static faded away. His thoughts were his own again. Jimmy laid his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.

  He wished that he could get rid of the sickening feeling in his gut. However, he felt that this was unlikely.

  Things were just going to get worse.

  11

  When Jimmy and Tabitha arrived home, it was just barely noon. Tabitha immediately wanted to sit down with Warren and start going over things, but Jimmy begged off. His head was pounding, his stomach was churning, and he felt as if he were coming down with a bad bout of the stomach flu. Tabitha had mercy on him, given the morning so far, and suggested he go lay down until it was closer to dinnertime, when George would be here.

  Jimmy climbed the stairs slowly, as if his feet had grown weights. He had never felt so completely drained. The buzzing in his head was still there, and he could sense the profound fear and sadness that Sapphire was feeling, but it was distant, like a mosquito buzzing in his ear. He pushed past it, opening the bedroom door and kicking off his shoes before falling full-length on the bed, his clothes still on.

  Normally it took Jimmy twenty minutes to half an hour to fall asleep. This time, he was instantly asleep as soon as his head sank down into the pillow. The world felt as if it were spinning away beneath him. Jimmy was almost instantly in the middle of a dream that felt more like reality than a dream. Only this time, it was not a trip to fifty years in the past. This was definitely in the realm of nightmare.

  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.