Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance (42 page)

"Dig!"
Jesse yelled.

Stan shrugged dismissively
and stuck the blade of he shovel into the mud.  The two of them began working
in rhythm.  The clods of dirt and mud flew over their shoulders, piling up
behind them.  The river was moving slowly behind them and the sun was now down
behind the trees.  Above them the sky was turning into a bruised color and the
first stars were already out, twinkling.  Before too long, the moon, full and
bright, began to ascend above the trees, casting an eerie glow upon
everything.  The blades of their shovels glinted in the light reflecting off
the surface of the water.

Sapphire and Jimmy
watched until both of them eventually stepped down into the hole.  Jesse seemed
to be digging with a kind of frantic, manic energy.  His eyes were wide and he
was breathing hard, making strange moaning and grunting sounds, as if he were
trying to stab the Earth itself with each stab of the metal blade into the
mud.  He was sweating, beads of moisture cascading down his face.

Stan, meanwhile,
was still digging, but he still seemed lost in his own world.  He dug with no
enthusiasm, tossing the shovelfuls of dirt onto the pile, but with increasing
gaps between thrusts of the shovel.  His eyes seemed glazed over.  Jimmy began
to wonder if he was in shock.

Sapphire and Jimmy
controlled what they saw from their otherworldly vantage point like directors
controlling a movie camera.  They watched from above them and then beside them
and then close up and then farther away.  They held hands, the power between
them vibrating louder and more brightly than a live electrical wire.  They
watched, waiting for their moment.  It was almost there.

Jesse suddenly
stood up straight and tossed the shovel out of the hole.  He was up to his
chest in the hole; Stan was behind him.  The shovel clattered onto the ground
and Jesse hauled himself up with both hands.

"All
right!" Jesse shouted.  "That's deep enough.  Even the animals won't
find him."

Stan kept
shoveling dirt for several seconds. Jesse reached down and smacked him on the
back of the head. Stan stopped, but seemed stunned and confused.  He looked up
at Jesse dumbly.

"I said
stop!" Jesse said. "Let's finish this, you moron.  Then we can go see
what we can do with that meddling newspaper editor, her annoying husband, and
that shrew Jimmy called a mother.  I'm thinking a fire might take care of a few
of those problems."

Jimmy felt rage
bloom within him.  The light emanating from him and Sapphire grew brighter, and
something like lightning crawled across his chest with a crackling sound.

Stan pulled
himself out of the hole.  He stood up and brushed off his pants.  Then he
brushed his hands together.  The two of them made their way towards the bundle
that lay there beside the hole.  Jimmy felt that twisting inside him again at
the knowledge that he was watching his own burial.  He was staring at his own
body, being buried by a man who had been his friend, who had been almost a
father to him, who had gunned him down without a second thought and now meant
to do harm to his friends and his mother. 

How much had Jesse
been involved in?  He was the one who had probably erased the stories of
Sapphire going missing.  He had removed what happened to Sapphire's family.  He
had removed her image from as many things as he could, except for the one photo
he kept at his desk.  Had he given the order for Devlin and his cronies to try
and shoot Tabitha, Jimmy, and Warren?  Had Jesse's actions led to George's
death?  Jimmy could not help but feel that the answer to all of these questions
was yes.

"Let's do
this," Jimmy said.  "Let's end this."

Sapphire moved
closer to him and their energies merged.  The light between them grew
brighter.  With a single movement, the both stretched out their hands and the
view of the scene in front of them grew brighter, more distinct.  They simply
stepped through the portal, now two beings of pure energy standing there on the
muddy banks.

Jimmy reached his
hand up to the sky. From the clear black canvas that stretched above them, a
bolt of lightning streaked down and crashed into a tree just twenty yards to
their right.

Jesse and Stan
both stopped, jumping what seemed like several feet in surprise.  Stan's eyes
grew wide.  Suddenly the entire area was bathed in white light.  The embankment
became as bright as noon.

Jesse turned and
his eyes went wide, his mouth flew open.  "No.  No.  No, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no.  You can't be here.  You can't be here!"

Without a second
thought or a moment’s hesitation, he reached into his belt and pulled out the
gun.  The gunshots seemed impossibly loud in the silence of the evening.  He
fired all six shots at Jimmy.

Jimmy held out his
hand and the bullets vaporized, turning into dust before they got more than a
few inches from the barrel of the gun.  Then he waved his hand again and the
gun turned to liquid, splashing across Jesse's hand.  Jesse screamed something
that was not remotely an actual word.

"It's over,
Jesse," Sapphire said.  There was no rage or anger in her voice.  It was
as if she felt sorry for the librarian.

"No!"
Jesse screamed.  His mouth opened and closed as if he were a fish out of
water.  "No!  You cannot be here.  Neither of you can be here."

"Stop it,
Jesse!" Sapphire yelled.  "It's finally over.   You have to pay for
raping me and killing me.  It's time to pay for your scheming and planning and
for letting the dark thing inside you that hides behind the mild manners and
pleasant demeanor."

Sapphire drifted
closer to Jesse.  Jesse stood there with his eyes wide, one eye twitching as if
an electric current were running through him.  He held the shovel in one hand
and his mouth hung open so far that spit dangled from his bottom lip.

"No,"
Jesse said.  "No, please, Sapphire, I loved you.  I loved you.  I loved
you.  Forgive me.  Please."

Sapphire drifted
closer, the energy that formed what would have been her feet if she had had a
normal, flesh and blood boy, now more than a foot off the ground. She glided as
if wind and atmosphere had no effect on her.  Her skin was almost blinding it
was so white.  Light shone from her eyes.  She had never been more beautiful,
and the power came off of her in waves, small bolts of lightning striking the
ground around her.  Her fury and anger were barely contained within the form
she was holding together by sheer force of will.  She drifted closer until she
was right in front of Jesse.

"No,"
Jesse said again and he fell to his knees, his knees sinking in the sloppy mud
of the embankment.  "No, please.  Please, forgive me.  Forgive me.  Please,
please, please."

Sapphire extended
her hand and then one finger.  She placed it over his lips.

"Shhhhh,"
she said.  "I do forgive you, Jesse.  But you never loved me.  You never
loved anyone.  You pretend and you manipulate and you act like you care so no
one questions you.  You hurt people, Jesse, and maybe it started with me, but
it didn't end with me.  I forgive you, but you still need to pay."

Jesse blubbered,
making soft mewling sounds that were more animalistic than human.  He began
shaking his head back and forth, as if he could wish everything away.  Tears
streamed from his eyes.

"No, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no," he said over and over again.

Sapphire ran her
finger across his lips.  Suddenly, Jesse's mouth no longer existed.  She had
erased it with her finger.  Jesse's eyes managed to get wider, and a look that
went beyond terror crossed his face.

At that point,
Stan decided he had seen enough.  He turned and ran.  However, he ran while
also looking over his shoulder and he ran straight into Jimmy.  He collided
with the energy that made up Jimmy's form and immediately rebounded and landed
in the mud with a squelching sound.  Jimmy looked down at him and floated
closer.

"Stan, Stan,
Stan," Jimmy said. "So much potential inside of you, and yet all you
do is terrorize people at school and in your life.  So much poison put into you
by your father.  Now that he's dead and you have access to so much power and
money, you have the potential to right so many wrongs and make the world a
better place.  And yet, here you are.  You need to learn, Stan."

Jimmy reached out,
his fingers barely there, consisting mainly of light and smoke, and touched
Stan's forehead.  Then he pushed forward, the fingers vanishing into Stan's
skull, reaching into the young man's brain.  Immediately Jimmy's head was
filled with visions of life as Devlin Little's son.  The constant berating,
being told again and again that he was worthless, the constant demands that
Stan look, act, and think just like Devlin did.  There were the beatings when
he was younger that transformed into verbal abuse and constantly being told
that he was never good enough, never matching up to the greatness that only
Devlin perceived he had achieved. 

And Jimmy saw that
he could change that.  He could change it all by just thinking about it.  So he
pushed further, reaching out and grabbing the circuitry of Stan's brain.  He
began rearranging that circuitry, changing it, filling Stan's head with images
of the pain he had caused, and then tempering that with sorrow and guilt.  No
longer were the people Stan felt the need to abuse just nameless and faceless. 
Now he knew how much he had hurt each and every one of them.  He knew that the
fat girl he had tripped had gone home and tried to kill herself, and he felt
the pain as she slashed her wrists with a razor.  He saw and felt the tears of
the freshman he had slammed into a locker on his first day of school.  He saw
and felt all of their pain and saw that what he did had ramifications and that,
in the end, it wasn't how great you were on the field or how much money you
had, but how you treated the world that was your legacy.  It was how you
treated your fellow man that made you a legend. 

Stan wept.  He let
out a soft moan, and the tears flowed and his eyes grew wide and the emotions
overwhelmed him. 

"Feel it,
Stan?" Jimmy asked.  "Can you feel what you've done and understand
how you can make it better?  Do you see that you have the power to make a
change?"

Stan nodded, but
his vocal cords wouldn’t work.  He put his head down in his hands and wept. 
Jimmy withdrew from Stan's mind and looked up at Sapphire.  She was staring at
him and a smile was on her face.  She nodded and turned her face back toward
Jesse.

"You
see?" she said.  "You see what we can do.  You brought us to this,
Jesse.  The things you set in motion caused God, or the universe, or fate, to
make us what we are right now.  Just to right the wrongs you continue to make. 
To stop the pain."

She reached out
and grabbed Jesse, her fingers sinking into his chest right above his heart. 
Jesse's vocal cords appeared to be working fine.  His throat worked, and a
muted scream emanated from his throat behind his vanished lips.

"This will
hurt you much more than it will hurt me," Sapphire said.

With that, Sapphire
pulled back with all of her might.  Jesse let out another muffled scream, his
head fell back, and suddenly a bright white object ripped from Jesse's chest. 
After a moment the energy seemed to take the form of Jesse's body.  Sapphire
had just ripped Jesse's spirit right out of his body.

Jesse's actual
body slumped sideways, falling into the mud with a wet
thwap
.  His
spirit grew more and more substantial, held between Sapphire's hands.  Jimmy
watched as Jesse's eyes—or the energy that had taken the form of his eyes—grew
wide.  His mouth opened as if he was trying to speak, but instead there was
just a horrific shrieking sound that filled Jimmy's mind.

"Time for you
to go, Jesse," Sapphire said.

She turned,
Jesse's soul and spirit still in her hands, and flung it behind her, back
through the portal that Sapphire and Jimmy had stepped through.  Jesse's eyes
went wider, his mouth opened wider, and the scream escalated in pitch and
intensity as he flew through the wavy image, into the world of the dead.  He landed
there, on his back, and immediately tried to sit up.  All around him, the air,
the ground, the very substance of the dead land suddenly seemed to come to
life.  A low, deep, growling sound suddenly filled Jimmy's ears.  A tendril of
pure black detached from the vaporous substance that made up the dead space and
slashed through Jesse's ghostly form.  Jesse screamed again as a huge chunk of
his form suddenly vanished.

"Sapphire!" 
Jesse's voice filled their heads.  "Help me!  Don't let them take meeeeeeeee!"

It was like
watching an octopus eat a victim.  Suddenly the dead land was filled with
nothing but dark shapes that reached out and grabbed pieces of Jesse's soul,
tearing chunks and pieces off and running away into the darkness.  Jesse
continued to plead until there was nothing left but two glowing spheres where
his eyes had been.  Then even those were sucked into the vapor that made up the
land of the dead.  His scream lasted for several minutes, reaching pitches that
would have been impossible for Jesse to reach in his human form, and then that
faded, as well.

He was gone.