Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance (17 page)

Jimmy realized he
really did not know what to add to that that would, in any way, make him sound
more sane.  So, he added a nervous laugh to the end of it and shrugged.

“I see,” the male
on the porch said.

A moment later the
light turned off.  Jimmy saw lots of colored blobs in his vision and was
momentarily blind. 

“Well,” said the
voice from the porch, “when you can see again come on up, Jimmy.  I think
Tabitha and I would be very interested in hearing your story.”

Jimmy
shifted nervously in his chair with a cup of hot tea in his hands.  He was
never a big tea drinker, but when Warren offered him some, he felt it was
polite.  After he went upstairs to talk to Tabitha, Warren sat down on a big
leather sofa opposite Jimmy, who sat in a big leather chair.  Between them was
a large and ornately carved wooden coffee table.  The entire house was decorated
in a variety of styles.  Some Native American art hung from one wall, while
antiques mixed with newer furniture around the room.

 Warren was quiet,
studying Jimmy in a way that made Jimmy uncomfortable.  Jimmy guessed that
Warren had a mental camera inside his head that he turned into his books.  Of
course, Jimmy reminded himself that he wrote non-fiction.  Well, then, he
thought, maybe he was studying Jimmy to see if there was a story there he could
turn into a non-fiction book.  He had to admit that he did not really know how
a writer’s brain worked.

“Hello...” A
female voice said from behind Jimmy.

Jimmy turned to
look and saw a blond woman descending the stairs.  She wore green-rimmed
glasses and she peered over them at Warren and Jimmy.  She also wore a green
top and black pants and had long blond hair streaked with hints of gray that
cascaded down her shoulders.  She was beautiful, Jimmy had to admit, and he
reminded himself to close his mouth as he watched her.

“Hello, Mrs.
Hollis,” Jimmy said.

“Call me Tabitha,
Jimmy,” she replied.  “I heard through the grapevine that Knorr High might not
have a starting lineup for the football team next season.  And, I heard it
might be because of you.  Is that true?”

Jimmy felt that
blush start at the tips of his toes and work its way up again. He shrugged.

“Don’t be
embarrassed,” Tabitha replied.  “Warren came up to tell me that you were here
to tell me a story.  I am anxious to hear that.  Warren and I have kind of
become collectors of strange stories about Knorr.  This is a very unique
place.”

Jimmy paused and
took a long sip of his tea.  The tea was cinnamon and Jimmy had to admit it was
very good.  He made a note to ask what brand it was and maybe get some later
on.  Then his thoughts turned to the situation at hand.  What was he going to
tell them?  Could he find some way to dance around the issue?  He had no idea
if he could, since he was not a writer or a creative type like Warren probably
was.   It was just then that Jimmy realized how ridiculous the whole story
sounded in his own head.  If he told these two what he thought he knew and what
he thought was going on, would the first thing that they did be to call his
mother and maybe recommend she have him committed?

In the end Jimmy
just opened his mouth and let the words fall out.  He had no plan.  He had no
idea what he would say.  He was as surprised as anyone when all of the details
of
everything that had happened since Friday came
tumbling out of his mouth in a rush.  He watched as Warren and Tabitha’s eyes
grew wide as the story weaved its way around the room and into their heads. 
Jimmy just kept talking.  A few times he stumbled, and more than once he had to
backtrack to tell them something he had forgotten. But once he started, it was
as if he was afraid to even pause to take another sip of tea.  If he did so, he
figured, he might lose his courage.

When he finished,
he was out of breath.  He sat there, staring at Tabitha and Warren for what
seemed like an eternity.  His heart was pounding and he realized he was
breathing hard.  He took a long gulp of his tea.  The silence seemed to stretch
out forever and Jimmy shifted nervously.

“Wow,” Tabitha
said.

“That about sums
up what I was thinking,” Warren replied.

“Do you think I’m
crazy?”  Jimmy said.

Jimmy expected
them to either say yes or do what adults often did when kids told them
something they found hard to believe: make up some kind of nonsense and try to
stroke his ego.  All the while they would be secretly plotting to call the
police and have him dragged away in a straightjacket.  Instead, both of them
laughed.

“Did I say
something funny?” Jimmy asked.

Tabitha held up a
hand and rocked back in laughter.  She had a loud, booming laugh, and tears
sprang from the corners of her eyes.

“Jimmy,” Warren
said, clearing his throat and getting his laughter under control.  “If you had
any idea what we went through just a couple of years ago, you’d understand why
we’re laughing.  No, we absolutely do not think you are crazy.”

Tabitha got
herself under control and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.  “Have you ever
heard of vanishing hitchhiker stories, Jimmy?”

Jimmy shook his
head.  “No.”

Tabitha cleared
her throat and took a sip from her own cup of tea.  “Nearly every culture
around the world has a story that falls under the vanishing hitchhiker
moniker.  Basically, it’s a story about a stretch of road where a girl is often
seen.  The color of her hair, the color of her dress, and the manner of her
death changes from place to place.  But in each case, she is seen beside the
road hitchhiking.  Sometimes she vanishes after just a few minutes, but other
times she dances with a young man or travels with them for a long time.  Then,
on the way back, or at a certain point, she asks the driver to stop and then
either walks off into a place where no one lives, such as a cemetery, or she
just vanishes.”

She paused and
gazed at Jimmy for a moment over the top of her glasses.  Tabitha had the hint
of a smile on her face and her eyes twinkled impishly. 

“Sound familiar?”
she asked.

 “Yeah.  So I’m
guessing that there’s one here, too?’

Tabitha and Warren
both nodded.

“Yes,” Warren
said.  “And she is described just the way you described her.  She has the blue
dress, the dark hair, and the white skin.  Your story, however, goes an extra
mile in that she hasn’t appeared before.  She has never reappeared to anyone
before a second time and she certainly has not communicated to anyone
afterwards.  Normally, she just vanishes and then someone else, or an entirely
different group of people, sees her.  You are the first person to whom she has
appeared, then re-appeared.”

Jimmy took another
sip of the tea.  It had cooled to room temperature.  The three of them stared
at each other for a while.

“So,” Jimmy said
finally, “what does that mean?”

Tabitha stood and
began to walk around the room, as if looking for something.  “Well, I am
concerned about the newspaper archives being missing from the library, first
off.  What’s missing from this story is the actual story behind the girl.  In
all of the other instances of vanishing hitchhiker tales, there is always a
story about how the girl ended up a ghost and walking beside the road.  In the
story heard around Knorr, it’s always that she was there on the side of the
road, she went for a ride, she came back, and vanished near the bridge.  What
there never is is any attempt to explain why she’s there.  It’s always been
rather weird.”

She finally found
a laptop buried beneath some papers over on a large desk in the corner.  She
came back to the couch and opened the laptop.  Tabitha’s fingers flew across
the keys.  After a moment, she waved Jimmy over to the couch.

“These are my
archives,” she said, pointing to the screen.  On it was a rather unremarkable
looking website with a search bar at the top.  “You say you actually looked for
the word ‘sapphire’ in those old paper books and online?”

Jimmy bobbed his
head up and down in the affirmative.

Tabitha shook her
head.  “You got guts, kid.  Without a last name, it’s virtually impossible to
find someone.  Now, let me try.”

Tabitha’s fingers
flew across the keyboard.  Warren leaned in to watch over her other shoulder. 
The screen went white for a moment, and then a number of links appeared in
blue.

“I see,” Tabitha
said.  “Yes, you’re right.  There does appear to have been a number of stories
done about someone with the name Sapphire in the sixties.”

She clicked on a
link.  Again, the screen went white.  It stayed white for some time.  Then,
suddenly, there were black letters in the upper left-hand corner on an otherwise
all-white screen.

SEARCH ITEM NOT
FOUND.

Tabitha frowned
and hit the back button on her browser.  They were returned to the list of blue
links.  She tried another.

SEARCH ITEM NOT
FOUND.

“How can this be?”
she asked, turning to Warren.  “The only person who should have access to this
is me.”

Warren was puzzled. 
“Well, when is the last time you’ve checked on this story?”

“This is the first
time.”

“It could have
been removed when the archives were uploaded,” Warren said.  “Of course,
someone would have had to make the links we just saw.  Or they were uploaded
when the archives went digital, but someone came through and deleted the files,
but didn’t know how to delete the links.”

“I oversaw the
conversion of those archives myself,” Tabitha protested.  “I would know if
something like that happened.”

“You checked each
link and story?” Warren asked.  “Even if you did, you would not be the first
person to find that they had been hacked.”

Tabitha opened her
mouth to protest again, but then stopped.  She chewed on her lower lip for a
moment.  Then she turned to look at Jimmy.  Jimmy had been following the
conversation with growing alarm, his eyes wide.

“I think you may
have stumbled across something here, my young friend,” Tabitha said.  “I’m
going to have to try and check what remains of the physical archives.  However,
I fear there isn’t much there.  When the offices were firebombed, most of the
physical stuff got burned up.”

“What does all of
this mean?” Jimmy said, almost in a whisper.

There was another
of those long pauses.  It was as if the three of them were now reading each
other’s minds.  They all knew what it meant, but to say it out loud meant that
it was actually real, and none of them wanted to deal with that.

“It means,”
Tabitha said, “that the evidence is pointing to a very, very nasty ending to
your ghostly friend, Jimmy.  And if archives are being destroyed, and maybe
even the newspaper archives hacked, it seems that some potentially prominent
people in and around Knorr were involved in some way.”

Jimmy swallowed,
and his throat made an odd clicking sound.  He suddenly wished he had more tea.

“You may have
stumbled onto something far more dangerous than just a ghostly urban legend,”
Warren said quietly.  “This could stir things up around here.”

Warren took a
drink from his cup and set it down on the coffee table.

“Again,” he said,
and then rolled his eyes.

They
talked for about another hour.  Then Jimmy said he really needed to go. 
Tabitha suggested that he stop by her offices tomorrow.  Jimmy said he would
try and then acknowledged he was in trouble with his mom and grounded.  Tabitha
and Warren found this funny again, and Tabitha suggested he do his best. 

Jimmy said his
goodbyes and then turned down an offer from Warren to drive him back home.  He
did not mention that he was supposed to be meeting what they had now all agreed
was a ghost at the bridge.  Jimmy’s mind and heart felt like they were going in
a million different directions as he mounted his bike and headed off into the
darkness.

Jimmy pedaled his
way quickly through the woods and up and down the hills and around the curves. 
He barely noticed what he was doing, his brain working on instinct and muscle
memory.  His mind was churning over and over the things he had just discussed
with Tabitha and Warren.  What had he gotten himself into?  That was the
question he kept coming to again and again.

As he neared the
bridge, Jimmy slowed his pedaling and his thoughts came back to the task at
hand.  His heart was hammering in his chest.  Part of it was from pedaling so
hard, and part of it was excitement about seeing Sapphire.  However, he now had
to admit that part of it was fear.  Was she a demon?  A zombie?  What the hell
was she, and how the hell was anything they had done so far even remotely possible?

Jimmy came to rest
near the bridge.  He was breathing hard, trying to stop his heart from pounding
like it was about to come out of his chest.  He looked up into the sky,
studying the stars, and noticed tiny dancing lights way up in the air that he
guessed were a passing airplane. He had never wanted to be on an airplane more
in his life.  Jimmy wondered how long he would have to wait, or if Sapphire
would even show.