Little Red Gem (11 page)

“
I’d never forget about
you,” I told her.

The hollow words hung in
the air. Maybe they would have had the desired effect if I’d looked
her in the eye.

“
Miss Parker,” William
chimed. “Will you join me for a stroll in the woods?”

He was from an era where
chivalry and gallantry were commonplace. I was not. I couldn’t tell
if he was being genuine or condescending. He was definitely being
secretive.

“
Fresh air does sound
good. Do you mind, Anne?”

She dipped into a little
curtsey and slipped quietly into the other room.

Strange how our footsteps
left no imprint or sound on the carpet of dried leaves and twigs.
Stranger still was when I stepped over a fallen log and William
walked right through it. I hoped I wasn’t sticking around long
enough to become too accustomed to being a ghost.

After we’d walked twenty
feet, William stopped and reached inside his coat pocket. In his
palm sat a gold pocket watch. It had an intricately carved face,
but that was as much as I saw before he snapped shut the lid and
encased the watch with his fist.

“
This watch was to be a
family heirloom. Do you know what this watch represents? Time,
Ruby. Or in my case the agony of having too much of it. I observed
my mother and father grow old and die. Then I watched my sister and
her children grow old and die, and then their children, and so on
until there was nobody left who remembered me.”

Was it coincidence that
he’d stopped at the top of the embankment which I’d inadvertently
driven mom’s car into and totaled both it and me? I’d avoided this
place. It was my true gravesite, even though the cabin was where I
felt the strongest magnetic pull. I didn’t question why I felt
nothing for this spot, I was just grateful I didn’t have to spend
eternity trapped in the hollow.

I removed the watch from
William’s hand to take a good look at it. The facing was
elaborately decorated. On the back was an inscription:

ONE WISH AT A
TIME.

I sighed. “If you really
believe I should give up clinging to the love I have for Leo, then
you should do likewise and get rid of this watch.”

He snatched it from me and
slipped it back into his pocket. His voice was hard when he said,
“My curse compels me to hold on to this object.”

“
And my curse compels me
to hold on to the love I have for Leo. My heart and soul belong to
him. If there is a way to go back, I’ll take it, no matter
what.”

“
It is easy to ignore
consequence, yet once it seeks us out it is impossible to run from
it.” He turned his back to me and stared down the embankment. “What
if I knew a way for you to be with Leo?”

“
Really? You know a way?
Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

He continued to stare down
into the hollow. Was he reminiscing or doing this to avoid the
confrontation he must have seen in my eyes?

“
It can be
dangerous”—”

“
I don’t care. If I can be
with Leo, the risk is worth it. Tell me what to do.”

At last he turned to face
me. “You did not let me finish. It is not dangerous
for you
.”

Conveniently, I was able
to set aside any concern over hurting someone else in order to
achieve this small miracle, because I couldn’t end up trapped in
limbo watching Leo’s misery deepen until he, not I, became the
walking dead.

“
Tell me what I have to
do.”

William did. I hardly saw
what was so dangerous. Morally wrong, perhaps, but not
dangerous.

Chapter Six

Providence wasn’t a
metropolis; this ‘chocolate box’ town backed onto a thousand or so
hectare of woodlands. Once famous for its gold mines, it still bore
the marks of ancient diggings yet was mostly now an ideal place for
horny teenagers to explore, if you could get past the ghost
stories. We were bordered on two sides by farmland that belonged to
surrounding counties, and a ravine that was habitable only to
mountain goats and deer. So, the three major choices for a person
to hang out were the woods, at home, or in town.

I needed to find my
half-sister, Audrey. The problem was that I didn’t know her well
enough to know if she was the adventurous type that liked to hike
through haunted woods, the café/cinema/art gallery type, or the
type to sit at home and study. Somehow I suspected she did neither
of these things with her spare time. Could I blame her? If I had
the ability to travel the astral plane I would choose China or
Paris over the Providence shopping mall.

It didn’t matter where
Audrey was travelling, her physical body would be in her
bedroom.

Things operated
differently in this deathly dimension. I set off through the woods.
My first step was over a log. My second was up onto the sidewalk of
Main Street.

People passed me by and it
took a few ignored greetings to ram it home that dead people could
see but were only
seen
by certain people, of which none of these passersby
were.

The clock above the
library told me school had finished for the day. Audrey and her mom
lived above Mysteries, the local spook shop, only a few blocks away
from where I now stood. I headed there but I had to wait for a
customer to open the door and for Teri to sing out brightly to the
customer, “Nice to see you, come on in,” before I could slip
inside.

Entering the shop, I stuck
close to the woman and I did a quick dash into a bookcase when
Teri’s back stiffened. I counted five customers, busy by
Providence’s standards. I wasn’t concerned about alerting the
customers to my presence, but Teri possessed spirit detecting
powers so I was forced to bide my time inside the bookcase until
she was occupied at the counter with a particularly fussy customer.
Then, I walked freely around the store. No amount of death could
stop the internal chronometer that went off inside me every time I
got within ten feet of a shop.

Hanging from the ceiling
were wind chimes, dream catchers, crystals, feathers. Over in a
corner on a green velvet cloth were hundreds of fairy and dragon
figurines. One corner was dedicated to books and tarot cards.
Another corner was dedicated to brightly colored clothes. I found
myself drawn to a vintage handheld mirror. It fit into the palm of
my hand.

Making sure that nobody
was looking – who was I kidding? I was a ghost, but old habits were
hard to ditch – I stashed the tiny mirror inside my dress pocket.
William had assured me ghosts were some of the most proficient
thieves because any item stashed in our clothing became invisible
also.

Audrey’s noisy charge
across floorboards announced her arrival and I bolted through the
front door on the heel of a customer. I waited outside on the
sidewalk for her to come out.

“
Won’t be long, Mom,” she
cried.

She pushed through the
door, and in her earthly state she couldn’t perceive me. Needing to
get her attention, and thanks to my newfound talent for moving
objects, I stuck my leg out and tripped her up. She fumbled but
didn’t crash to the ground. Instead, she turned slowly in a
three-hundred-and-sixty degree spin. Anyone else might have checked
the ground for whatever the heck they’d tripped over. But Audrey
believed in the things that couldn’t be seen.

She peered into the air.
“Who’s there?”

Talking to her wouldn’t do
me any good as I hadn’t mastered that act, and there was no
indication I ever would. Instead, I pinched her on the
arm.

“
Ow,” she
squealed.

I tugged at her hair. She
swatted at my invisible hand.

“
Ruby, is that
you?”

Grabbing her attention was
the easy part. I needed to send her a message. I banged on the
glass of the storefront, not enough to break the glass, but enough
for Audrey to get the hint.

“
Knock twice for yes, once
for no,” she said.

I knocked twice on the
glass. My excitement grew as her eyes lit up; soon, and with
Audrey’s help, I would be with Leo.

I continued to bash my
fists against the glass until a few stares were shot in Audrey’s
direction.

“
I’m not thick,” she said
in a quiet voice. “I know you want me to go upstairs and put myself
in an astral state. Just please stop causing a scene. I need a few
minutes to prepare.”

I was too excited to stay
still, so I kicked up puddles and tapped on windows. Passersby
curiously looked up at the sky as if expecting something to
fall.
I am the wind. I am the air, the
fire, the sun. I am everywhere at once.

By the time Audrey’s
apparition glided out of the shop through the wall, I felt as if
I’d grown wings. She stepped directly into the path of a lady who
walked right through her. Audrey didn’t seem to be affected by the
experience like I was whenever somebody walked through me. Being an
astral projection had its advantages, though of course the biggest
was that she could wake up and go right back on living.

“
Gee, Audrey, there’s no
law against smiling,” I said.

Audrey’s scowl only
deepened. “My mom isn’t the only one who can sense things. And I
sense trouble.”

“
Nonsense.”

“
What do you
want?”

“
I’m bored and I want you
to play with me.”

“
We’re not kids anymore.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “We knew each other a long
time ago. Remember?”

The cheek of her flinging
my own words back at me stung, but only just. “My dear half-sister,
I can only wander around a few minutes at a time before I’m pulled
back down into the hollow. It’s dark and not exactly brimming with
visitors since the gold rush ended millions of years ago. Please
come and keep me company. Just for a little while.”

Audrey eyed me dubiously.
“I don’t know. I’ve got a lot of homework.”

“
Please. I don’t like
being a ghost. Besides, I thought maybe you knew a magic spell that
could help me break this curse so I can go to wherever it is people
go to after they die.”

She scoffed loudly. “What
makes you think I know magic?”

“
Don’t try to deny it.
You’ve got magic written all over your face.” To be honest, I
couldn’t have told a witch apart from a garden gnome, but I had to
convince Audrey to help me with my plan, and I hoped she didn’t see
through my bluff.

“
At your funeral
yesterday, I’m positive I saw the ministers out back building
pyres.”

“
Nobody burns witches
anymore, Audrey.” At least they shouldn’t. Not now that I was dead
and needed the help of one in order to fulfill my plan.

“
Gotta come back into
fashion at some point.”

Frustrated, I hit the
window with the palm of my hand. “Audrey I need your help. Are you
coming or not?”

She shrugged. “Suppose I
have to. You’ll haunt me till the day I die if I don’t.”

Audrey could travel faster
than a human in her astral state, but as a ghost I merely needed to
visualize a place and I teleported there, so I made a conscious
effort to slow down to match her pace. Within minutes we arrived at
the top of the hollow. From up here you could hardly make out the
giant hole which had swallowed my mom’s Jeep. The only tell-tale
sign that there had even been an accident was the trail of broken
tree trunks, as if a flood had swept through.

So there I stood, looking
down over my death site. Surely if I didn’t feel a kinship with my
resting place it meant I didn’t belong there.

The cabin was located less
than a hundred feet away, and it worried me that I felt the urgent
pull of its comforting surrounds. I ignored the cabin’s siren song
and nudged Audrey’s astral body down the embankment. The hollow was
only fifteen feet deep yet Audrey and I were at the bottom in less
than a second and without a single scratch or bruise thanks to our
inhuman states. I’d been driving fast the night I’d died. In my
rush to flee the cabin I’d failed to put on my seatbelt so after a
tree trunk had shattered the windshield I’d gotten wedged up
against the steering wheel. I recalled now that Leo had dragged me
out of the car. I recalled seeing my body far below, Leo shouting
at me to stay with him. Even now it gave me chills.

“
What do you make of my
new home?” I asked her with fake cheerfulness.

She gave a cursory glance
around the hollow. “No question why you’re bored. So what did you
really bring me here for?”

I sighed, no longer
certain about my plan. Audrey had been kind enough to track me down
to explain that I had died, and I was about to repay this kindness
with treachery. But it was too late to back out. My plan couldn’t
succeed without Audrey’s help.

I slipped the mirror out
from my pocket and laid it gently on a log. “I need to trade places
with you. Only for a while. You see…I never got to say goodbye to
Leo and this is the only way I can be with him.”