Sleep Stalker (Ghosts Beyond the Grove Book 1) (22 page)

     “Your mom had trouble sleeping—nightmares.  Not every night—but when she had one, everyone in the whole building knew about it.  All of us dance girls lived in a communal dorm—but me, Josette, and Camille shared a suite.  I always noticed that when Cam—that’s the nickname she went by most of the time—had a bad night, so to speak, Josette would always have a closed door conversation with her.  That night at the Grand Canyon, the three of us shared a small hotel room.  I heard things that night.  Some strange things that I couldn’t make heads nor tails out of.  The next day, I tried to ask Josette about it but she shut me down immediately.  Whatever happened that night, though, changed Cam.  Whatever it was, it’s what led us to Sedona.”   

     And that’s exactly where it was about to lead me then, too.  “What did you hear?” I asked, bracing myself for…for…I had no idea what for but it was going to be something big.  And more than likely, something weird.

     “I heard Josette ask Cam what she saw.  Your mom was crying pretty hard so some of her words were undecipherable.  She said something about seeing “his” face—that he was getting closer.  Josette got her to calm down and then their voices turned to whispers and I heard nothing more.  But I was scared, I’ll tell you.  Scared.  So the next morning, I figured they would be too.  Instead, your mom excitedly announced that she wanted to stop in Sedona.  Josette supported that idea so I didn’t argue.”

     Information overload.  There was something frightening in my mom’s past that Roxanne didn’t have the answer to.  And of course, I had that sinking feeling that this missing piece was the most important one of them all.  I stared at those photos, concentrating hard on the look in Mom’s eyes.  Until that moment, I’d never noticed it but there was a haunted look in them.  Haunted definitely in the metaphorical sense but possibly even in the literal sense.  I’d seen that look far too many times to not be able to recognize it.  Where had I seen it before?  In my very own reflection.  Perhaps I hadn’t gained my supernatural insight from my near death experience alone—perhaps it was inherited.

     “So did anything weird happen after that?  In Sedona?”

     Roxanne laughed at my question so I knew that something must have occurred there beyond what she had described in her email. 

     “Depends on your idea of weird.  I wasn’t sure if I should discuss this in detail with you or not.  I didn’t want you to go back home thinking bad things about Cam.  But once I was face to face with you, I realized that you were a lot like her.  Mystical is the word I would use to describe you both.  And mysterious.”

     Mystical and mysterious.  I could accept those adjectives.  They were far more positive than the ones I usually used to describe myself—weird and strange.  I was different—there was no denying that.  But finally after all these years, I was about to find out why.  Or at least I hoped I would.

     Roxanne turned to a page that I assumed were photos taken at the Grand Canyon.  There stood the three friends, smiling against a backdrop of the sun setting amidst majestic red rock formations.  There wasn’t anything about their expressions to suggest that anything terrible had happened the night before.

     “This was the last photo we took before leaving Sedona.  What I expected to be a few hours’ worth of sightseeing turned into a daylong—how can I best describe this—metamorphosis, I suppose, for your mom.  She was never the same after that day.  Not in a bad way, mind you, but different nevertheless.”

     “Do you know what happened there?  How did it change her?”  And how was it going to help
me
?

     “When we got there, the first thing we did was browse through some of the shops.  I wasn’t looking for anything in particular nor was Josette.  But your mom was searching for something specific—some
one
specific—or so it seemed.  We would barely enter the door before she would impatiently suggest that we try the next one down.  Until we got to Stardust Crystals.  That’s where the metamorphosis began.”

     Entranced by anticipation, the shrill whistle of the tea kettle nearly sent me into cardiac arrest.  I was so eagerly clinging to Roxanne’s every word that I’d forgotten all about the tea.  But now that I was thinking about it, I had a strong urge to read my leaves again.  It wasn’t something I normally would have done in front of someone I barely knew but Roxanne was no stranger to these kinds of things—courtesy of Mom, of course.  A few minutes later, I had a hot cup of chamomile in my hand and her story commenced. 

     “Cam walked into that store the same way she did the others.  She looked around until she spotted the cash register and who was behind it.  I was starting to wonder if she was hiding a criminal past and planned to rob the easiest target.  But I was wrong, of course.  The girl at Stardust Crystals was barely older than we were at the time but there was something ageless about her.  And the second she made eye contact with Cam, there was an instant recognition of sorts between the two of them.  It was like they didn’t know each other, yet somehow they did.”

     “The girl’s name was Salma and she owned Stardust Crystals.  She’s in the background of one of these photos, I think.”  Roxanne flicked back a page and pointed to the picture at the top right.  “There she is—the one with the long dark hair.”

     I honed in on the spot she was referring to to get a closer look.  Salma felt mystical to me even despite the low resolution depiction.  She was exotic—dark skin and hair with expressive eyes that appeared twice as large as they should have been.  With eyes like hers, I got the feeling it was possible to “see” things that most people couldn’t. 

     “Anyway, Cam approached her and Salma reacted as though she were expecting her even though that couldn’t have been physically possible.  These shops were more like a small outdoor bazaar.  There wasn’t a single phone in sight and this was well before cell phones were readily available.  Salma summoned another girl to take her post at the register then she and your mom disappeared behind this ornate curtain.”

     “After about five minutes, I started to worry.  Josette kept telling me that everything was fine but I wasn’t so sure.  I poked my head around that tapestry and found them both seated on these huge, velvet pillows with a pile of crystals on the floor between them.  It looked like they were meditating.  Cam told me that she was going on a journey and that she needed to do it alone.  I wasn’t sure what else to do so when Josette pulled me back and suggested that we go on a hike, that’s what we did.

     So I had tea leaves, ghosts, and voodoo queens while Mom had crystals and odd connections to strangers.  I was more fascinated by her now than I ever was before.  As much as I loved Shelly, I wished that I could have gotten to know my mom firsthand and not through one of her old friends.  She could have helped me so much with my paranormal problems over the past year and a half.  There were so many questions churning inside of me but I was afraid to interrupt Roxanne for fear of losing an important detail.

     “Sedona was beautiful but I have to admit that I didn’t enjoy it the way I should have because I was worried about Cam.  It was nearly sunset by the time she found us back down near the shops.  And she looked happier than I’d ever seen her before.  When she suggested that we all get henna tattoos before leaving, I was all for it.  We all got different designs but in the same location—on our right feet.  The artist we went to had a book of standard designs that Josette and I picked from.  I got a peace symbol; Josette got a sunburst.  But your mom had bigger ideas of what she wanted.”

     I didn’t find that surprising.  I, too, always seemed to have bigger ideas than most people had.  My mathematical, scientific nerd brain may have come from my father but my soul came from my mom. 

     “You said in your email that it was an eternity symbol with a feather.  Do you have any idea why she chose that particular design?”

     “I had a feeling that it symbolized something in her past.  There was writing on it too but I can’t recall the exact wording.  It was something simple, something about moving forward.  I assumed that she was trying to gather her inner strength to escape from whatever or whoever was holding her back.”

     “Go forth!” I blurted out.  “It said go forth, didn’t it?”

     The recognition on Roxanne’s face was the only confirmation I needed.  But what meaning did that phrase hold for my mom?  If she was running from her past, was that what she wanted me to do too?  In that case, it made perfect sense for me to abandon Zach and move on with my life.  Yet that made no sense either because every time I considered that option, Mom was the one pulling me back to him.  I was more confused now than ever.

     It was time for another amateur tea leaf reading.  I swallowed one more sip of the chamomile before explaining the process to Roxanne.  As I expected, she didn’t look at me like I was a weirdo for swirling my cup around in an effort to foretell my future.  In fact, she was on board for the experiment more readily than I was the first time.

     “Read mine, too!” she exclaimed, watching my movements then carefully replicating them herself. 

     “I can’t,” I replied, shaking my head emphatically.  “I can only read my own.  My friend Addie is the professional at this but my leaves always reveal the same patterns—a foot and a feather.  I’m curious to see if that still holds true.”

     I turned my cup upside down then waited a few seconds before righting it again.  Why?  Because I was slightly afraid of what I was going to find in there.  And I was right in my trepidation.

     Nothing.  There was simply nothing in there.  No foot, no feather.  As a matter of fact, most of the tea leaves had drained out onto my saucer leaving a mere scattering of specks still clinging to the ceramic interior.  I did nothing different than I’d done before.  The cup itself was the same basic type as the ones I’d used previously.  Okay,
now
I was confused.  And disappointed—at least by my reading anyway.  The rest of the day had yielded far more interesting facts than I’d anticipated.  But it was getting late and I was dead tired. 

     “You’ve had a long day, I’m sure,” Roxanne agreed as I got up to leave.  “But would you be up for a trip to Sedona before you head back home?  I haven’t been there in years.  It’s about a four hour drive but incredibly scenic. We can take my old convertible—it’s very similar to the car we road tripped in.  I thought you might like to travel in your mom’s footsteps for a day.”

     In that moment, I realized that was exactly what I was doing.  She went to Sedona to find some kind of answers.  And she apparently found them.  Hopefully, I would too. 

     “Absolutely.  I had every intention to catch a bus there at some point while I’m out here.  Just tell me when and where you want to meet and I’ll be there.”

     “How about Tuesday morning?  My schedule is clear that day.  You could meet me here at eight ‘o clock.  That way we’ll get there around lunchtime.  A friend of mine just drove up there and raved about this new restaurant, El Destino.  I’d like to check it out—if you like Mexican that is.”

     “It’s my favorite, actually.  Eight o’clock it is.  I’ll see you Tuesday.”

     I returned to the hotel room with my very own case of severe jet lag.  With only a perfunctory look at my phone to see that I had no new texts, I turned out the lights and got comfortable.  Not hearing from Zach was par for the course lately so I didn’t think twice about it.  He was home safe with his parents and knowing him, was probably sleeping soundly by now.  His last trip to Charlotte’s Grove did a world of good for him—this time would hopefully be the same.  Missing nothing but the rhythmic purrs of my furry little girls in my ears, I fell peacefully asleep within minutes.

37.  Anguish and Apogee

     Sleep.  Finally.  Dreams.  They were the only place I would find her now.  They were where I wanted to stay.  There, no one would ever come between us.  She promised that she was ready for me—that
I
was ready for
her
.  She was the only thing that mattered to me now. 

     It felt like centuries since the last time we met in that dusky forest clearing.  Millennia since I saw the reflection of her porcelain skin glinting off of the water.  Eons since I was so close to her that I could feel the pulsing of blood through her skin.  But there she was.  My aching heart knew peace at last.

     She was angelic, sitting at the base of a large evergreen casually plucking at the petals of a daisy as big as her hand.  Dressed in only the white silk scarf and a ring of white flowers in her hair, I was determined not to let her get away from me this time.  She was mine.  All mine.  And I was willing to do anything to have her.  Anything.  No sacrifice was too great.  No request would go ungranted.  As I quietly approached her, she turned her head toward me. 

     “He loves me,” she said seductively, removing another petal from the already half-bare flower. 

     She waited until it fluttered softly to the mossy ground before tugging another one from its base.  “He loves me not,” she uttered with an irresistible pout.