Dream Dancer (Ghosts Beyond the Grove Book 2) (22 page)

     I sat there in awe listening to story after story of tragedies she correctly foresaw in her dreams—brand new tires blowing out unexpectedly, broken bones, the deaths of beloved pets.  None of her dream predictions seemed to be about anything positive.  It seemed that my mother once lived under the same kind of dark cloud I did.

     By the age of eight, she had correctly foretold a total of thirty negative events.  Event number thirty-one, was the last and most potent of them all. 

     “She would usually announce these negative events without emotion.  Perhaps it was the lack of clarity when it came to this dream that rattled her the way it did.  That day she stayed home sick from school with a fever—spent most of it on the couch drifting in and out of sleep.  She woke up screaming and clutching at her stomach as though in sheer agony.  When I scooped her off of the couch and tried to take her to the hospital, she refused.  She said ‘I don’t hurt
now
.  I’m going to hurt later.  After I meet
him
.’  Her words cut through me like a knife and I had to lay her back down because I was shaking so hard.  Someone was going to hurt my little girl and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it.”

     The “him”, of course, was my father.  My mother spent decades being afraid of the man she would later marry.  Either this was more twisted than anything I’d dealt with myself or I was becoming immune to my own weirdness.  It was probably the latter of the two options.  Was this a good thing or a bad one?  Time, unfortunately, was the only way for me to tell and Zach and I were quickly running out of it.

    I listened intently as Elijah—whoops!—Grandpa, described how this dream omen became the last one Mom would ever predict.  Never again did the family have prior warning about random deaths or misfortune—her nightmares became sharply focused on the man who was going to kill her. 

     “As a teenager, she remained withdrawn in hopes of never meeting him.  She took to home schooling to avoid public high school and spent time with no one other than Josette.  Josette’s family lived next door and they had been best friends since before pre-school.  Josette took dance classes every other night and then would come back and teach Camille the new moves she’d learned.  Dance became her only way to express her emotions.  She wanted nothing more than to be like other girls her age but she knew she was different and could never escape that.”

     “Until the day she had a different kind of prophetic dream.  Her dreams had always predicted bad things—not good ones.  But one night when she was about seventeen, she came crashing into our room in the dark of night.  We assumed she’d had a nightmare like so many nights before.  This time we were wrong.  She was screaming like always but when I flicked on the light I could see a smile on her face.  The girl who never wanted to leave the house was now begging us to send her to a dance academy in Philadelphia of all places.”

     “We didn’t argue with her at first.  After all, she had no formal training and we didn’t think she would ever be accepted on what Josette had taught her alone.  So we let her apply and even made the eighteen hour drive there for her audition.  If nothing else, she was finally happy about something.  But when we found out she was accepted, we told her she wasn’t allowed to go.  We tried to explain that we were only trying to protect her.”

     “’Protect me from what?’ was always her reply even though she knew exactly why we were fearful.  The day of her eighteenth birthday she packed her bags and left for Pennsylvania in the dead of night.  She left us a note explaining that she’d stopped having the dreams about the bad man.  Her love of dance had somehow changed the course of her future.  Going to Philadelphia was her destiny and the only way she would be safe.  That, obviously, wasn’t the truth.”

     “For years, she continued to tell us that lie and we almost started to believe it.  She separated herself from the past every way she could.  She legally changed her last name to Rogers; she stopped isolating herself from the world.  She made tons of friends.  Yet she never quite seemed happy but refused to talk about it.  Finally, Josette broke the news to us.  Camille’s dreams had progressed.  She had met the bad man she’d feared her entire life and knew exactly how she was going to die.  And why.”

     I knew the how—obviously, considering that even though I was incredibly young at the time, I was around at the time of her death.  But why?  That’s something Josette didn’t tell me.  And the letter my mother left behind for me didn’t explain that part either.  What could have been so important to her that it was worth dying for?

     “Camille discovered that she wasn’t going to be murdered like we all originally thought.  No, as you must have already guessed, the pain she was feeling was that of childbirth.  She knew that she would die giving birth to you but she insisted on getting pregnant anyway.  We were relieved to find out that her tragic death was preventable.  We begged her to stay away from your father or at the very least to have herself sterilized.  If she wanted children bad enough, all she had to do was adopt.  But she was headstrong, stubborn, and believed that once the signs were given to her, that she had no other option but to follow them wherever they led.  Even if that meant certain death.”

     I sat there dumbfounded and feeling like the apple that fell closest to the tree.  And wondering if there were options right in front of my face that I wasn’t seeing simply because I didn’t want to see them.  Just like Mom, I’d undertaken a grand, romantic adventure without stopping to think that maybe I was getting swept up in the idea of sacrifice and not looking at things logically.

     “Ruby and I were heartbroken that she was willing to throw herself to the wolves merely because that’s what her dreams told her to do.  We said our goodbyes through what we called a living funeral.  At the end, she had one dying request that she begged us to fulfill.  She asked us not to track you or your father down.  She said that if we did, it would ruin the grand design that Fate had laid out for her.  That in order for her death to not be in vain, we needed to move forward with our own lives as though she had never existed until the moment you came for us.  Now here you are.  The circle is coming to a close.”

     Now I was even more confused than I was before.  So much of what Mom predicted had come true but there was one glaring oversight here.  Miranda.  Mom didn’t die giving birth to
me
—she died giving birth to my sister.

     “So you don’t know anything about her life after that?  You know nothing of what she did after I was born?”

     Elijah’s face contorted into an expression of pure shock.  “Are you saying she didn’t die?  Is your mother still alive?”

     “No,” I said sadly, feeling bad for having gotten his hopes up for even the slightest second.  “But she didn’t die when you think she did.  She died the way she predicted she would but four years later—along with my sister, Miranda.”

     “That doesn’t make any sense.  Her visions were never wrong.  What happened?  Where did her second sight get off track?”

     “I don’t know.  And at this point, there’s no way we will ever know.  I’m just glad that I got to know a little more about her and that I found you in the process.  At least she was still right about that part—eventually, I did seek you out.”

     “And I’m glad you did.  Can you stay for a little while longer?  I want to hear more about you.  What’s your father like?  Is he a good man?”

     We spent the next few hours talking, laughing, and occasionally crying.  I told him everything I could think of about me—including the weird link I had to the other side.  When he heard about the feathers, he instantly agreed that they were signs from my mother.  Where exactly they were leading me still remained a mystery.

     I waited until the last possible moment to call a taxi to take me back to the hotel.  We exchanged phone numbers and promised to stay in touch with each other.  I hopscotched back down that soggy path feeling, well, almost as light as a feather.  I didn’t have all the answers yet but I knew I would in time.  I had faith not just in my mom but in myself as well.  If Elijah could wait patiently for eighteen years to meet me, then I could wait a little longer to solve my own mystery.  The real question wasn’t about how much time I was willing to invest though—it was how much time did Zach have left before he was lost forever to the stranglehold evil had on him? 

     As I pondered the usual questions, Fate was already working its strange magic unbeknownst to me.  The plot was thickening like blood congealing around a wound that was too slow to heal.

38.  Burn Out

     Doctors gathered round my bedside as I lay there chanting words that held no meaning for me.  But I couldn’t stop repeating what the voice in my head was saying to me.  Only one word made any sense at all.  Die.  I wished I
could
.  Aside from the muscles it took to speak, I couldn’t even move.  My greatest fear had been realized—I was trapped inside my own body, my own mind.  The only thing that seemed to keep me from shutting down altogether was the blue flame dancing inside that stone. 

     I wanted to snuff it out.  I wanted to make it let go of me.  I wanted to let go of
it
.  But physically, I was unable to get it away from me.  Mentally, I willed it to burn out.  But with every passing day, it only seemed to burn brighter.  I was caught in between as the two opposing forces battled for my sanity, my soul, my life.  When was it ever going to end? 

     “Tsusai.  Dakaledati igohidv asginadisdi. Ulvnotisgi adonvdo.  Oyohusa ulisgita.  Die.  Tsusai.  Dakaledati igohidv asginadisdi. Ulvnotisgi adonvdo.  Oyohusa ulisgita.  Die.  Tsusai.  Dakaledati igohidv asginadisdi. Ulvnotisgi adonvdo.  Oyohusa ulisgita.  Die.  Tsusai.  Dakaledati igohidv asginadisdi. Ulvnotisgi adonvdo.  Oyohusa ulisgita.  Die.”   

39.  Waters of Unrest

     Returning to Ohio with no resolution to the situation was never the outcome I expected.  Yet that’s exactly what I came home to.  Nothing.  No answers, no Zach.  The apartment grew more silent with every moment spent alone there.  I didn’t know what to do with myself.  I picked up every available shift at Poe’s Corner but that still wasn’t enough to occupy my restless mind.  Every moment spent alone was a moment churning and stirring the waters of unrest until my thoughts were nothing short of a dark whirlpool.  I had to get out of my own mind before I went crazy.

     After a few weeks of wallowing in my own despair, I slowly pulled myself out of my funk in every way I could.  But time after time, I would fall back into the same pattern of crying myself to sleep on the futon at night.  Soon, I realized that structure was what I needed in my life.  Structure would give me something to look forward to at the end of the day. 

     Sunday nights became cruising with Clay night.  Week after week, I would summon him up at an agreed upon time and we would make laps around Liberty like high schoolers looking for a date.  I must have looked like an idiot driving and talking to what appeared to be no one but myself but I didn’t care.  It may have looked crazy but it kept me sane and that’s all that mattered.

     Mondays belonged to Rachel.  We would talk or face chat about what was going on in our lives.  We conversed on every subject but one—Zach.  It was an unspoken rule that that conversation was off the table.  We were both trying to keep our minds off of what seemed to be the inevitable.  Neither of us wanted to admit to the other that hope was running out for him.  So instead, we happily la-la-la’d our way through idle girl talk for hours at a time.

     Tuesday went to Addy.  We took turns inviting each other over for dinner even if one of us worked late.  She, too, avoided the subject I dreaded and never once offered me another cup of tea.  Our menus were never elaborate but they were enough to satisfy my need for distraction.

     Wednesday was Dad and Shelly’s night.  We would turn our televisions to the same channel and watch our favorite police procedurals while on speaker phone.  We traded theories on who the killer was and placed stupid bets on our picks.  More often than not, Shelly won.  Every time, they would beg me to come home for a visit.  Every time, I would find some excuse for why I needed to stay in Ohio.  It got harder and harder for me to drive home without Zach in the seat beside me.  I’d made some sort of vow to myself that the next time I visited Charlotte’s Grove, I would be bringing him back with me. 

     Thursdays were Rita’s day.  I’d started calling her for ghost talk because I wanted to stay in the loop in regard to breaking paranormal news.  I wasn’t expecting her to suddenly have any new information that could help me but it was worth staying informed—just in case.

     Friday was Elijah night.  Or Grandpa as I was slowly coming to refer to him as.  We talked about everything imaginable.  The only thing we didn’t talk about was Zach.  I needed at least one person in my life who didn’t know my story and instantly feel sorry for me like everyone else.  I was trying to be as normal as possible here, after all. 
Trying
.

     Saturday was the one day a week that I checked in with Detective Bailey to see how the investigation was going.  With every passing week with no new leads, I started to give up hope.  That’s where my other way to spend time came in.