Dream Dancer (Ghosts Beyond the Grove Book 2) (3 page)

     Her laughter.  I could hear that seductive giggle bouncing through my brain like a ricocheted bullet.  It had to stop.  Clasping my hands to my ears, I tried desperately to stay in control.

     “Make it stop,” I repeatedly whispered to myself.  “Make it stop.  Make it go away.  Make
her
go away.”

     When my hands did nothing to block out the sound, I wrapped a pillow around my head instead.  With my torment muffled temporarily, I found the strength to get out of the bed and do what I needed to do.

     Once I was done, the music stopped.  The cinnamon melted away.  Her giggle was the last thing to die out but eventually it, too, was only a memory.  But they were all replaced with something even more horrific.

     When the smoke screen lifted and I could clearly see what I had done, I realized that I wasn’t going to be leaving this place for a long time.  Perhaps…never. 

3.  Sea of Doubt

     I held that scrap of paper tightly inside my fist until it felt like it was going to burn a hole straight through my hand.  We were halfway back to Tucson when I finally couldn’t take the suspense any longer.  When Roxanne pulled into a gas station to fill up the tank, I knew it was time.  It was time to take a peek at the Schrodinger’s cat I’d been clutching for miles.

     It was a paradox.  Part of me wanted to believe that when I opened my hand, I would find nothing of value to me.  The other part—the insane part, apparently—clung to the hope that the longer I took to look at it, the more relevant it would be.  There were warring factions at work in my brain.  Did I want to put my trust in all of these weird signs or didn’t I?  Would I be disappointed if all I found was a scrap of trash?  Or would I rejoice in the normalcy of not being bombarded by things that lay just on the other side of life’s veil?

     Sooner or later, I would have to accept the fact that normal didn’t exist anymore.  Okay, so I was never really “normal” in the first place but I’d hit a level of weirdness that I needed to deal with as rationally as I possibly could.  So I bit the bullet and unfurled my fingers.

     The crinkled piece of paper in my hand was barely two inches long and half an inch wide but from the strange characters imprinted upon it, I instantly knew what I was looking at.  Despite the raging heat of the sun, a cold chill moved up my spine and filtered out toward all of my extremities.

     I was holding the discarded contents of a fortune cookie.  I was staring down at the Chinese translation of the word “feather”.  There was no mistaking it—whatever fortune I found on the reverse side was going to lead me the direction I needed to go next.  My fingers trembled as I turned it over and read the next message from my mother.

     “To find your future, you must search the past.”

     And, I have to admit, that was the moment true panic set in for the first time during all of my recent adventures.  I was afraid of what that actually meant.  A mere few days ago, I would have looked at that message in an innocuous way but after the newspaper incident and Salma’s parting words; now, my brain was jumping to some very strange conclusions. 

     Time travel.  Was it actually possible?  Was there a way for me to go back in time and prevent Zach from going to California?  I’d seen enough time travel movies to know that messing with the past could have dire consequences on both the present and future.  Was this the only way for me to save Zach?   Or was
I
going completely crazy now too?

     When Roxanne got back inside the car, she immediately asked me if I was okay.  No, I was far from it but not ready to talk about the latest turn of events.  So I sloughed it off as nothing more than concern for what was going on back home and left it at that.  The concept of time travel wasn’t appropriate fodder for a casual conversation.

     I spoke not another word until we arrived at my hotel room in Tucson.  And even then, I said only what needed to be said.  Roxanne packed my things while I searched furiously for an open seat on the earliest flight out.  Without hesitation, I paid an enormous fee for the first seat I found.  I only had two hours left in Tucson and much to accomplish in that span of time.  And that’s exactly how I preferred it to be.  The more I had to do, the less time I would have to sit idly by thinking about the metaphysical journey that was unfolding before me. 

     Roxanne got me to the airport with little time to spare.  I promised to keep her up to date on how things were going back home.  In return, she promised me that she would attempt to track down Mom’s other friend Josette in the meantime.  From what I’d learned about their time in Arizona, Josette held an important key to unlocking the mystery that was my mother.  And I knew that I was in need of all the help I could get.

     The first leg of my flight was from Tucson to Denver. It was relatively short so I pulled out my laptop and wrote until we landed.  My flight from Denver to Pittsburgh was longer and there was no way I would keep my mind occupied enough to stop thinking obsessively about everything.  So before I even boarded the plane, I took the maximum recommended dose of melatonin to knock myself out.

     The plane was barely soaring through the Colorado sky when I fell fast asleep.  I was well acquainted with strange dreams but what my brain conjured up during my nap was completely different from what I was used to.  In my dream, I was sitting in a theater, empty except for Zach and me.  We were feeding each other popcorn and having a normal conversation while the previews flashed by on the screen looming in front of us. 

     As the opening credits began to roll by, Zach and I fell silent.  I couldn’t remember the name of the movie or what it was about, but I knew we’d both been dying to see it since the very first trailer was released.  Zach reached over and took my hand and gave it a squeeze.  The action was about to start.  We were both ready for this.

     That was the moment when a searing pain in my left ear rudely prodded me awake.  I was approximately thirty minutes away from setting foot on Pennsylvania soil again.  That knowledge brought mixed feelings.  I wanted to see Zach.  But was I truly ready to?  I hadn’t been gone long but obviously things had taken a downward spiral in my absence.  Helplessly, I’d watched as the Zach I knew faded away leaving me hurt and confused by it all.  And now, things were probably even worse than I remembered and I was no closer to helping him than I was when I left—possibly even further than I was before.

     Shelly met me at the baggage claim with a warm hug then promptly scolded me for my clandestine mission.

     “Ruby!  Don’t you ever run away from home like that again without letting us know where you are!” she reprimanded as she commandeered the larger of my two bags and made a beeline for the door.

     “Okay.  I won’t.  I promise.  But once I tell you why I did it, I think you’ll understand the motivation behind it.” 

     “Yes, well, you have an entire two hour drive to do that in.  You promised, remember?”

     Sigh.  No, I hadn’t forgotten but I
had
changed my mind.  Sort of.  I was mentally exhausted from the last few hours I’d spent in Arizona and still slightly groggy from the melatonin.  And even though I’d grown to despise the phrase, I was currently a victim of the dreaded monster known as jet lag.  I needed more sleep so that I could try to recapture the dream I lost during landing.

     “I’m extremely tired, Shelly.  Can this wait until we get home?  Please?  I need a nap to clear my head before going in to see Zach.  This is more of a sit down over a cup of tea kind of conversation anyway.”

     I could tell by the look on her face that she wanted to grab me and physically shake the truth right out of me.  Maybe it was the pathetic look on my face that made her give in and agree to wait.  Regardless, she agreed to my request and started the car.  I curled up into a tight little ball and fell quickly back to sleep.

     Almost immediately it seemed, I was in the middle of a dream—but not the one I was hoping for.  Instead, I was walking down a sandy beach with Zach.  We were right at the water’s edge but my usual fear of drowning wasn’t a concern for me.  It was like my two near-death experiences had never happened.  An alternate timeline of sorts where nothing bad had ever touched either of us.  So when Zach asked me if I wanted to go swimming, I instantly said yes.

     Zach dove in first but I followed right behind him.  No sooner was he in the water than he took off without looking back.  I, however, barely made it three feet from the shore.  While it looked like normal water to me, it certainly didn’t feel like it.  It was thicker than it should have been—more like the consistency of honey. 

     I paddled as hard as I could to move forward yet went nowhere.  It brought me no fear, merely frustration.  I fought off wave after viscous wave, always staying afloat yet making no progress.  Exhausted, I finally gave up and bobbed up and down in place while watching Zach swim happily away.  That’s when I woke up to Shelly frantically waving her hand around my forehead. 

     “What are you doing?” I asked.  Her behavior was so odd that I questioned whether or not I was still asleep.

     “Don’t freak out and whatever you do, don’t touch your forehead.”

     Okay, this
had
to be a dream.  There’s no way anyone could say that sentence to someone and expect them
not
to freak out.  I lifted my hand to check my forehead and she swiftly batted it away.

     “I told you not to touch it!  There’s a honey bee on you.  It’s the strangest thing.  I had the heat turned up a little too high so I opened the window for a few minutes to cool it down in here.  Next thing I know, something buzzes past my face and lands on you.  It’s been perched there for the last hundred miles and won’t move no matter what I do.  Where did it even come from?  It’s October!”

     Great.  Just freakin’ great.  First feathers and now bees.  Coupled with the dream I’d just had and the one involving the Bee Still whiskey refinery, I had no doubt that this was another sign telling me what I needed to do.  Or in this case, what I
wasn’t
supposed to do.  How could I possibly move forward
and
be still at the same damn time?

    “I’ve given up on trying to find rational explanations for how this kind of stuff happens to me, Shelly.  It just does.  But it happens for reasons that I’m trying to decipher.  A lot happened while I was in Arizona that I need to explain.  For now, just pull over the next chance you get so I can get rid of our stowaway passenger.”

     Shelly pulled into the lot of the next shopping complex she found and helped me remove the tiny bee from my face.  “Since we’re already here, why don’t we grab something to eat?  I’m starving and you must be too.  When was the last time you ate, Ruby?”

     “Around noon Arizona time.  Roxanne and I went to El Destino in Sedona for some killer Mexican food.  I’ll admit that I’m famished but I don’t want to waste any more time.  I have to get back home to Zach.  I brought back something to protect him until I can get to the bottom of what’s haunting him.”

     “Haunting him?  You think this is all ghost related?  Did you talk to Rita about it?”

     “Again, it’s a long story.  We can talk about it after I see Zach.  Let’s get back on the road.  We’ve wasted too much time already.”

     “But we’re both hungry and there’s a Chicken Shack right over there.  I know how much you love their Triple Crunch sandwiches.  It will only take a few minutes to pull through their drive thru.”

     I was about to protest when my stomach let out a rumble of gastrointestinal thunder.  And Shelly made the final decision for me.

     “That settles it.  Chicken Shack it is.  You’ll thank me in about five minutes when you have an order of spicy hot wedgie fries in your hands.  Let’s go.”

     Five minutes.  I suppose I could wait that much longer to see Zach.  And maybe I could convince Shelly to drive a little faster later down the road to make up for the time we were losing.  Wedgie fries and a Triple Crunch
would
take the edge off of my over the top anxiety.

     “Fine.  Five minutes.” 

     The Chicken Shack in Charlotte’s Grove was known for having the fastest drive thru of any place in town.  Many days when Zach was in a hurry to get food on his thirty minute lunch break, it was the only place he trusted to get him in and out with plenty of time to spare.  Both lanes were equal in length so we pulled into the one closest to the building.  Even though it looked packed, I still didn’t panic.

     Three more cars pulled in right behind us and I thought about how lucky we were to have gotten in line ahead of them.  I should have remembered that my luck was the opposite of everyone else’s.  Five minutes later, not only was I not holding any wedgie fries but we had only been able to inch up by half a car length.

     “What’s going on?  Why is it taking them so long?  I’m in a hurry!  What part of fast food don’t they understand?”

     “Calm down, Ruby.  Zach isn’t going anywhere.  And he’s being closely monitored so there isn’t any chance of him hurting himself or anyone else again.”

     By the tone of her voice, I knew that she was hiding something from me.  Something must have happened since I talked to her in Sedona this morning.  Something bad.  Something that made me want to get back home to Charlotte’s Grove immediately.