Wraiths of Winter (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 3) (50 page)

I would definitely have to be more careful this time—I
wouldn’t be able to swing it around wildly like some panicked
maniac like I did in the school.
Crimson could be just on the
other side and I definitely didn’t want to hurt her any more
than she was already hurt. I also didn’t want to be slapped
with abuse of a corpse charges. Standing to the side, I lightly
tapped at the mirror as close to the bottom of it as I could.
Nothing. Again, I swung with just slightly more force. Still
nothing. So I closed my eyes, hoped for the best, and swung
again.
The sound of breaking glass met my
ears almost
instantly. I was almost too scared to open my eyes.

Number One, I was
afraid to open them and find
nothing but exposed wall behind the break. Number Two, I
was fearful to look down and find Crimson’s lifeless head
lolling through the opening in the glass. But I didn’t make it
this far to turn into a coward now. Cautiously, I opened my
right eye just a crack. And breathed a sigh of relief.

Neither of my two fears were realized—I didn’t find
bare wall and I didn’t find a dead body. What I found was that
I was right. The mirror cracked from the point of impact all
the way to the top. While most of the glass still hung in large,
jagged pieces, there was
an opening
in
the bottom
that
allowed me to see directly into the small space on the other
side of the wall.
I used the legs of the chair to knock out
enough of what remained of the panel so that I could enter the
small recess.

Inside, I found a padded chair upholstered in the same
dingy velvet that covered the seats in the theater. Tied to the
arms of the chair were long strips of material dotted with
dark stains. The whole room was steeped in the acrid odor of
human waste.
Someone was definitely restrained and held
captive in here but where were they now?
At the base of the
chair, lay a pile of jewelry—piercings to be exact—and they
were smeared with dried blood.
The realization that those
piercings were ripped out of Crimson’s face combined with
the horrid stench made me sick to my stomach. I tried not to
throw up but I simply couldn’t fight it so I heaved my guts out
onto the floor just on the other side of the mirror. How do
coroners and homicide detectives ever keep anything in their
stomachs?

The mints I always kept in my pocket served a dual
purpose tonight.
Not only did they take away the taste of
vomit on my tongue, but their fresh scent helped to mask the
foul odor in the air.
Once again the flashlight app on my
phone was my only source of light and it was just enough for
me to fully survey my surroundings.
There was only one
other thing in that room that I hadn’t already seen—a narrow
hallway leading to God knows where. It was just barely wide
enough for one person to slide through. I couldn’t even fully
extend my elbows without touching the walls on either side.
How in the world did Jackson squeeze himself in and out of a
space so small? I guess there was no end to the determination
of a serial killer.

As I made my way forward, I could see two other sets
of footprints in the dust covering the unfinished floor—one
fairly large, the other much smaller. It was a good sign. While
I still didn’t know if Crimson was alive, at least I knew that she
didn’t die in that horrible little room. I followed the footprints
until the hallway
came
to a stop at the
foot of a spiral
staircase.
Just as I placed my foot on the bottom step, I had a
sense of foreboding. I had to be completely insane to come in
here all by myself. Lately, I’d had no urge to spend any time
with Zach or Lucas but I could have at least asked Rachel to
come with me. For once, I did the smart thing and I turned
around to head back to the theater to get her. Then, I heard a
noise—what sounded like muffled cries for help. They were
coming from above. Crimson was still alive—I couldn’t turn
back now!

With a renewed sense of bravery, I made my way
around the twists and turns as quickly as I possibly could.
The air grew hotter and heavier as I climbed and I was in a
full sweat by the time I got to the top. As I peered into the
room before me, I saw her. Or more accurately, I saw
them
.

Crimson sat there bound to a velvet chair exactly like
the one downstairs, dressed in a wedding gown and shivering
like she’d just been pulled from an Arctic pool.
Streaks of
dried blood marked every spot on her face that used to be
pierced.
Her eyes grew wide and tears of relief began to
stream down her face when she saw me. The other person in
the room was Allison.

She too was all in white and standing motionless in
the far corner to my right.
As I stood between the two of
them, I could sense an insane difference in temperature.
The
room was freezing cold where Crimson sat, a strong breeze
blowing
in
through the cracks around the boarded up
window. But on the side closest to Allison, it was as hot as a
raging blast furnace.
She was staring straight ahead and
didn’t seem to notice or care that I was there. So I
was
right—
Jackson’s incarceration dampened her anger and made her
less dangerous than before.
All I really needed was enough
time to untie Crimson so that we could both make a run for it.

I loosened the gag from her mouth and she inhaled
deeply like it was the first full breath she’d taken since her
capture. Once her lungs were satisfied, she began speaking at
such a quick pace that even Rachel’s speech pattern was more
like a drawl in
comparison.
I struggled just as
hard to
understand her as I did to untie the impossibly knotted fabric
binding her wrists to the chair.

“It’s okay, Crimson, I’ll get you out of here! Just calm
down and help me get your ankles free. She doesn’t seem to
notice me—yet.
But we have to get out of here before she
wakes up!” Help me untie your ankles! Hurry!”

“Who is
she
? Did he bring another bride here?
Oh,
Ruby, we have to help
her
, too! I watched him snap that other
poor girl’s neck! I watched while he killed her and I couldn’t
do anything to stop it!”

Panic
stricken
and
crying
profusely,
Crimson was
unable to undo the knot on her left ankle, so I brushed her
hand aside and began to unravel it myself. “We can’t help her
now. It’s way too late for that. Remember that secret Rachel
wanted to tell you about what she and I did this summer?
Well that secret is standing in the corner over there. I can see
ghosts—Rachel helped me put one to rest.
Two actually.
Right now, we’re not alone. The ghost of his first bride is here
with us.”

“I’ll explain everything to you later when we’re both
safe!
Right now we have to hurry! Jackson’s in jail and he
can’t hurt you now but Allison is every bit as dangerous as he
is.”

I shouldn’t have spoken her name aloud because as
soon as
the
final syllable passed over my lips, a look of
recognition swept across her face and she suddenly came to
life.
As I untied the final knot and Crimson leapt out of the
chair, Allison rolled her eyes so far up into their sockets that
not a trace of her irises
remained.
Blank, hollow, and
transparent yet they seemed to pierce straight through me.
She let out a wailing shriek with such force that the chair
toppled over sideways and slammed into the far wall.

“No, we’re not!” I exclaimed as Allison spread her jaws
wide enough that her mouth seemed to engulf the rest of her
face. “Run!”

Caught in the hot blast of her breath, my body flew
through the air like a toy truck in a tornado and I smashed
straight
through
the
wall.
As
I lay there about to lose
consciousness, there was only one thought in my mind—I
didn’t want to die alone. There was only one person who
could possibly get to me in time, one person who could be
with me as I passed into whatever the afterlife had in store for
me. So with my last breath, I called his name.

When I opened my eyes, all I saw was a wall—a plain
white wall. I had no idea where I was or how I got there.
It
even took me a few seconds to remember the last thing that
happened to me before I passed out.
The unbearable heat
that radiated from Allison was gone and I felt icy cold.
And
pain—I felt excruciating pain! I knew that I was definitely still
alive because it didn’t hurt that much to be dead. Did it? Why
did I never ask Clay that question? I was so insensitive! Or
worse yet, did I ask him that before and forget his response? I
knew he felt sorrow and that could be just as excruciating as
physical pain—perhaps even more so. If only he’d heard me
calling for him….

“Ruby, you’re awake!” a voice spoke from beside me.
“I swear I didn’t think about you! Scout’s honor! Where are
we and what’s happening to you?”

“Clay!” I exclaimed as tears formed in my eyes. “You
did
hear me!” I tried to turn my head in his direction but even
the slightest movement caused a searing pain to shoot down
my side.

The look on his face was grim as he stepped into my
view so that I didn’t have to try to move again. “So it wasn’t
me
this time—it was
you
. Why did you call
me
? I don’t know
what’s going on here but you need help and I have no way of
helping you—you know that,” he said sadly.

“I thought I was going to die and I was afraid to die
alone. I thought if you could find me just by thinking of me
that maybe I could bring you to me if I thought about
you
.”

Only days earlier, I scolded him for popping into my
life out of the blue. Now, I was so grateful to see him. Dead or
not, he was my friend and I shouldn’t have been so hard on
him that night in the tunnel. “Allison—the wraith I’ve been
fighting—she attacked me and tossed me right through the
wall. I hurt so bad everywhere that I’m afraid to even try
moving. She tried to kill me and I’m afraid that she might
come back to finish the job.”

“Okay, I kind of understood that, I think, but you have
bigger problems than that right now,” Clay said in a serious
tone as he nervously pushed his hair back away from his eyes.
“Look, promise me that you won’t panic when I show you this,
okay?”

Telling me
not
to panic was a sure fire way of
making
me panic, but I promised him that I wouldn’t. I had every
intention of keeping that promise until I saw what made him
so worried about how I would react.

Shifting only my eyes because my first attempt at
movement hurt so much, I did what he told to me to do. And
immediately wished that I hadn’t. I was about to break my
“no panicking” promise in a big way. I was tied to a chair and
I was wearing a wedding dress.

“Oh, Clay! How did this
happen
? Jackson’s still in jail,
right? Where’s Crimson? I don’t want to die!”
And then I
began to babble incoherently at best about all of the things I
wanted to do in life but never had a chance to do yet.

Clay knelt down in front of me until we were face to
face. “I don’t know what to say—I don’t have many answers
for you. But I’ll tell you what I know and I promise to stay
with you through all of this, okay?”
“Okay,” I said through quivering lips.

He let out a deep sigh then told me what he knew.
“When I got here, you were on the floor with shattered pieces
of wood lying all around you. I seriously thought you were
dead at first. I called out your name and tried to wake you up
but you were out cold. While I was trying to figure out what
to do next, a man walked into the room.
He knelt down
beside you and checked your pulse so at first I thought maybe
he was a doctor or something. Then he picked you up, carried
you in here, and things started to get freaky.
He started
calling you his bride and saying that he knew that you were
different from all of the rest—that you would never abandon
him. Once he taught you perfect obedience, you would make
the perfect wife.”

I didn’t want to hear any more but I could tell by the
way he was looking at me that the worst was yet to come.
Calling for Clay was the best decision I’d made in a long
time—maybe even ever. While the things he was telling me
seemed like a bad nightmare, even
my
twisted brain couldn’t
make up something so bizarre and make it feel so real.
I was
in serious trouble but at least I wasn’t completely alone. My
sheer stupidity in trying to do everything all by myself was
the reason I was
in
danger—again. I’d just taken my
Valentine’s Day curse to a whole new level.

Clay went on for a minute about how he tried to wake
me up again—about how many times he called my name but
got no response. “So when he started to….”

“Started to what?” He’d already told me such horrible
things—what else could there be that he was so afraid to say
to me?

I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and braced for the
worst. “Go ahead, Clay. Tell me everything that happened. I
would rather know everything he did to me than to pretend
that he did nothing.” I think. After I heard the truth, I may
want to change my mind about that.