Sleep Stalker (Ghosts Beyond the Grove Book 1) (5 page)

     I needed to take my mind off of Zach before I went completely crazy trying to figure him out.  Writing.  Writing was a great escape from reality.  I propped myself up with every pillow I could find and opened my laptop.  I clicked through my Word files until I found the one I wanted. 

     SOS.  Those three letters stood for Shades of Summer.  That was the title of the book I’d been working on for quite some time.  It was the story of how I came to Charlotte’s Grove and my first encounter with a ghost.  Originally, I only meant for it to be something I wrote for personal enjoyment.  But now that I was comfortable with my own weirdness, I was eager to share it with the world.  Yes.  Writing was how I was going to keep my mind occupied tonight and every night until Zach started acting like a proper human being again.

     Not even twenty minutes later, I realized how dreadfully bad my plan was.  Shades of Summer was about one other thing—Zach, how I met him and how quickly I fell in love with him.  I couldn’t write about the first days of our romance when I was so utterly irritated with him.  Frustrated, I dug into the potato chips and tried to think of another way to pass the time.  Halfway through the bag, I had my answer—online research.  It was time for me to find out everything I could about my mom.

     Sometimes talking to Dad about her was weird.  He didn’t visit the grave she shared with my sister Miranda because he said graves only contained bodies not the actual souls of the dead.  But I think that was only part of it.  I had a theory that he hadn’t totally absolved himself of his guilt over their deaths. 

     I was no stranger to guilt but the lack of information I was getting from him was infinitely maddening.  I was full of questions that he couldn’t answer and he didn’t seem bothered by the fact that he knew so little about her.  Eventually, I stopped broaching the subject with him but my curiosity was far from satisfied.  So shortly before leaving Charlotte’s Grove, I rooted through his filing cabinet until I found their marriage certificate.  Armed with her full name and birthdate, I would find those answers for myself.

     Camille Ayita Rogers, birthday May 23, 1967.  Her middle name intrigued me—I’d never even heard of it before.  So the first thing I did was look for a website that gave the meanings and origins of names.  Ayita was a Native American name of Cherokee origin meaning “first dancer”.  Interesting.  Was it merely a coincidence considering the fact that my mom was a dancer?  Or did I come from a long line of dancers?  If so, this apple definitely fell closer to her father’s side of the family tree.  And so I also began to wonder, was I part Cherokee?  I got my curls and pale complexion from my dad but mom and I both had black hair and when I saw her at the prom; I noticed that her skin was a beautiful shade of tan.

     According to what little I already knew, Mom’s parents disowned her after she got pregnant with me.  Dad said it was because they didn’t want her to give up her career.  If I found them now, would they want to talk to me?  Had enough time passed for them to forget their anger toward her and her decisions?   Why do people have to be so complicated?  Of course that thought made me chuckle out loud at the irony.  I myself ranked near the top of the complicatedness scale.  There was only one person who I felt currently outranked me.  Zach.  But I wasn’t going to think about him now.

     I found very little information regarding my mother online.  She died before the internet was widely available so all I found were a few mentions of her name in old articles about the Philadelphia Ballet Company.  Searching through the images available, I flushed out a few grainy newspaper photos of her and her fellow dancers.  The resolution was terrible so I couldn’t really see much detail but I saved the photos to my hard drive anyway. 

     When I tried to pull up birth certificate information, there was no exact match for her full name—just a handful of women named Camille Rogers who were born on the same day.  They were scattered all across the country. Since I had no clue where she was originally from, it wasn’t very much help.  Finally, I gave up and closed my laptop.  My search for answers was going to be harder than I thought.

     So of course the second I lost focus on Mom, my mind wandered back to where it always seemed to go.  Zach.  Something was wrong with him.  I needed to vent to someone about what was going on.  If I called Shelly, she would start worrying about me.  If I called Rachel, she would start worrying about Zach
and
me.  I liked Addie but I didn’t know her well enough yet to talk to her about this.  That left only one other option.  Clay.

     Clay was the one ghost whose presence I actually enjoyed.  He and I were once inseparable—he literally couldn’t move beyond a five foot radius from me.  Our bond broke once I reunited him with his girlfriend in the afterlife.  Now that he had her and their young son, Clayton, he didn’t need to be tied to me for the rest of eternity.  But the connection we had wasn’t completely gone.  When I needed him, I was still able to call him to me like a supernatural sidekick. 

     As I was about to summon Clay for a serious conversation, Zach’s voice floated in from the living room.  I couldn’t make out any actual words but he sounded happy.  Maybe the old Zach was back!  Maybe whatever had been making him so angry and distant lately was gone.  Maybe it was nothing more than jet lag after all.  I crept to the bedroom door and cracked it open slightly.

     Zach was lying on the futon still obviously not awake.  His eyes were closed and he was happily mumbling to himself with a huge grin on his face.  Softly, I opened the door and moved closer so that I could hear what he was saying.

     “Señorita, you look so beautiful in that dress but when do I get to see what you’re hiding underneath it?”

     Instantly, flames of anger tore up the sides of my face.  He kept going on about some dress that I believed didn’t exist.  But now,
now
I was convinced that the dress
did
exist.  It just belonged to someone else—whoever this señorita chick was.  Without thinking twice about it, I took the half empty can of diet soda in my hand and emptied it completely—into his crotch.  I didn’t move all the way to Ohio with him only to be cheated on the second we got here.

     Zach woke up angry and confused, having no idea what I’d just done to him.  Before he figured it out, I retreated to the bedroom and locked the door behind me.  

     He ranted and raved for about ten minutes, demanding an explanation.  I stayed silent.  He wasn’t the one who deserved an explanation here—
I
was.  Soon after he stopped yelling, I heard the faint sound of snores coming from the other room. How could he have fallen back to sleep so fast?  Thinking it was just a trick to get me to open the door, I summoned Clay to spy on him for me.

     Clay appeared quite quickly.  Without even so much as a greeting, I sent him on his reconnaissance mission.  He returned with the news that Zach was indeed very deeply asleep.  I grabbed what was left of the potato chips and sat down to fill Clay in on what was going on.  I once wondered if there was such a thing as a paranormal psychiatrist.  Now I had my answer—I just never expected my counselor to be paranormal himself.

7.  Left Hanging

          Sleep.  I’d always enjoyed it but it never felt as sweet as it had lately.  I wasn’t much of a dreamer or at least I rarely remembered them.  But the last few nights had produced some unforgettable subconscious scenarios.  I couldn’t wait to see what tonight would bring.  With my waking hours being such huge disappointments, good dreams were all I seemed to have left anymore. 

     I closed my eyes and thought of Ruby—just not the bitchy, naggy side of her that was so evident lately.  Instead, I began to fantasize about what would have happened if she would have let me catch her at the bookstore today.  I would have taken her into the darkest corner I could find.  There, I would have gotten high from the mere scent of her.  But she had to taste as good as she looked.  I would have kissed the side of her neck just to find out—warm vanilla and hot cinnamon melting together on my tongue.

     But even in my dream, she wouldn’t let me touch her.  One minute we were in the bookstore, but the next, we were in a forest of dark evergreens.  She was making me chase her and I was all too willing to oblige.  We ran for miles it seemed but she was always five steps ahead of me and just out of my reach.  The moonlight bathed the path we walked on but even with my eyes closed, I would have known which way to go.  I was like a wild animal chasing its prey, relying on scent alone. 

     She led me to the shores of a small lake, its surface rippling and sparkling like a sea of diamonds.  Tossing her gold braided sandals aside, she lifted her dress to her knees and waded into the water.  I prayed for the sun to replace the moon so that I could get a better look at her golden brown skin.  There was nothing but silence here but she began to dance, moving to the memory of music that wasn’t really there. 

     Mesmerized, I watched her sway back and forth, lifting her dress slightly higher as she went.  When the strap of her dress fell delicately over her shoulder, she let out a high pitched giggle.  She was teasing me on purpose and she enjoyed every last second of it.  I would let her have her way for now as long as I got to have
my
way in the end. 

     As the second strap fell away, I decided that I’d had enough of her games.  It was time for me to stop standing by like a sleazy voyeur.  She was my girlfriend not some stripper who was off limits.  There weren’t any bouncers ready to pounce on me if I touched her.  She was mine.  All mine. 

     “Ruby, I….”

     She cut me off sharply.  “No, I think you should call me Señorita.”

     I’d always found Latino girls hot—always.  But I
definitely
never told Ruby about it.  I didn’t want her to be jealous or insecure.  How did she figure it out?  And why was I analyzing it?  If she wanted to spice things up with a little role play, who was I to argue?

     “Señorita,” I whispered, “you look so beautiful in that dress but when do I get to see what you’re hiding underneath it?”

     She said nothing.  She merely smiled and motioned for me to come toward her.

     I didn’t waste time taking my shoes off—I walked straight into the water after her.  She looked me in the eye, leaned over, and then sent a huge splash of water in my direction.  Or more specifically, in the direction of my crotch.

     What the…?  Suddenly, I was awake and my pants were soaking wet.  Ruby retreated into the bedroom and I heard the lock on the door clicking into place.

     “
What
is your problem!?” I shouted, “Why do you keep
doing
this to me?!”

     Her silence angered me to no end.  I lay there on the futon too tired to chase her.  I screamed furiously for an explanation until I was too tired to even speak.  Sleep came but the ending to the dream that I so desperately sought did not. 

8.  Mountain vs. Molehill 

     “Now that I’ve done your bidding, Dom, do you mind telling me why you called me all the way here to spy on your boyfriend who’s sleeping in the next room?”

     Despite my seriously shitty mood, I had to admit that Clay always found a way to make me laugh.  He started referring to me as a dominatrix during the time that he and I were attached at the proverbial hip.  Another admission?  I grew to feel that the nickname fit me. 

     I hadn’t seen Clay in months but he was still wearing the same red shirt and ratty old jeans he always wore.  Reason number one for why I hoped my spirit never became earthbound—fashion.  I wouldn’t be caught dead dressed in the same outfit for the rest of eternity—pun not intended.

     “It’s kind of a long story, Clay.  Are you able to hang out for a little while?  I’m in need of a vent session.”

     Clay gave me a huge grin then sat down on my desk chair.  “You can’t tell me that you
still
keep forgetting that I’m dead!”

     “Not this time, silly.  I was actually referring to the fact that you have a girlfriend now.  Sophie doesn’t mind that you’re hanging out with me, does she?”  I plopped down onto my bed armed with the now near-empty bag of chips.  If I ever decided to hide in the bedroom all night again, I’d be smart enough to bring two bags instead of just one.  And maybe a cupcake or two.

     “Sophie isn’t jealous of our friendship one bit, Ruby—scout’s honor.  She’s grateful for the fact that you and I met.  Without you, she and I would have never found each other again.  She
does
wish you could see her though.”

     There was a point in time not so long ago when I pictured Zach and me living happily ever afterlife the same way Clay and Sophie were.  But lately, he and I couldn’t say more than two words to each other without it ending in a fiery argument.  How did things deteriorate so rapidly? 

     “I wish I could see her, too.  But unfortunately, I have no choice when it comes to that.  Some ghosts I see, others I don’t.  The important thing is that you guys can see each other.”  I let out a sigh, picturing Zach and I as ghost lovers again.  Then I remembered “Señorita” and I wanted to cry. 

     “I don’t think Zach is in love with me anymore.  I think he may have met someone else while he was in California.”  I pronounced the words using no hint of emotion but inside I was dying.  Dy-ing.

     “What?  You can’t be serious!  Zach loves you—you know he does!  The boy sleeping on that futon out there took a
bullet
for you.  Do you really think some California bikini girl he knew for a few days could compete with how he feels about you?”

     Ugh.  I knew Clay was trying to make me feel better but hearing the words “bikini girl” made me feel infinitely worse.  While I hadn’t had a picture in my head of the girl that I assumed was the source of our arguments, now I did.  She was a blonder, prettier version of Misty Landrum.  She was wearing a tiny little two piece, bouncing down the beach with
my
boyfriend on her arm.  She was tanned and giggly and perfect.  She was the opposite of me.  Ugh again.

     “But, Clay, I don’t know what else it
could
be!  He’s been acting weird ever since he got off that plane.  It’s like all of a sudden, he wants nothing to do with me.  We argue
all
the time.  He even accused me of cheating on him today!  I’ve always heard people say that the guilty party is the first one to imagine wrongdoing in someone else.”

     Clay sat silent for a moment before responding.  “Alright, I admit you sort of have a point there.  But you’re in panicky girlfriend mode right now.  Let’s sort through this logically.  Pretend you aren’t a girl for a little while.  You’re probably blowing this whole thing out of proportion.  Girls
do
tend to do that.  You know, making hormonal mountains out of innocent molehills.”

     Oh
no
he just didn’t!  In one simple breath, he called
me
illogical and insinuated that he thought
all
girls were illogical.  And overly emotional.  And hormonal.  If he weren’t already dead, I would have strangled him right then and there. 
Nothing
got me more heated than being told I wasn’t being logical.  Nothing.  Misguided as he sometimes was, though, he was one of my best friends.  I took a deep breath, bit my incredibly logical tongue, and nodded affirmatively.  All the while I was thinking to myself, someday those comments were going to come back to haunt him.  Again, no pun intended.

     Clay settled back into his chair and began throwing out potential causes for Zach’s recent behavior.  His first suggestion was that Zach was on drugs. 

     “I’ve seen the nicest people turn into monsters because of drugs.  My own best friend killed me while on a wicked high of some kind.  But then again, this is Zach we’re talking about.  He’s like the poster child for the Boy Scouts.”

     I barely entertained that suggestion at all.  After the death of his grandpa, Zach had sworn off alcohol altogether—there was no
way
he would skip right past the Miller Light and head straight to the crystal meth.  We both knew him well enough to dismiss that theory right away.  We bantered back and forth, never quite finding anything that would explain away all of the abnormalities I’d seen in Zach since his return from California.  Once it seemed that we were completely out of ideas, Clay came to a logical conclusion.

     “Then the only explanation is that there is more than one thing wrong with him.  Two things combined to make him one big bitchy mess.”

     “I don’t know.  It could be.”  I was desperate for answers and this was the closest we’d come to figuring any of it out.  “So his extreme fatigue could be due to illness, but what about the fact that he’s dreaming about another girl?  And going on and on about some stupid dress he thinks I own?”

     Clay sat deeply in thought for a moment.  How could I tell that he was thinking deeply?  Because every time he thought harder than he normally would, he would get this look on his face—one of someone bearing excruciating pain.  It was almost painful to witness.  Like I was envisioning the hamster wheel inside his brain.  And that wheel was slowly electrocuting the hamster.  I was about to tell him that I was done discussing it for the night.  I wanted no part of animal torture even if it was only in my vivid imagination.  That was the exact moment that he resuscitated the hamster and became a momentary genius in my opinion.

     His epiphany was so monumental that he couldn’t contain himself.  Clay jumped out of his seat and shouted out his revelation.

     “ZACH. IS. POSSESSED!!”  He then threw his hands proudly into the air like he’d kicked the winning field goal at the Super Bowl. 

     While I knew from past discussions with Rita that possession as most people defined it wasn’t possible, I realized that Clay was quite possibly onto something.  And two words came to mind.  Misty.  Landrum.

     Misty had tried every diabolical trick in the book to steal Zach away from me but never came remotely close to succeeding.  She was in a terrible car accident the night of graduation—an accident that killed her boy toy du jour, Kody Kirk.  Misty survived the crash but with massive injuries and a definite need for plastic surgery if she was ever going to be her Barbie doll self again.  I looked at that wreck as karma.  But knowing her, she would look at it as an opportunity.  Could it be?  Could Misty have died during reconstructive surgery then latched her leechlike spirit to
my
Zach?  Oh
no
she just didn’t….

     Without even telling Clay that he was a super genius and my total hero at the moment, I picked up my phone and dialed home.  If I was correct in my theory, Misty would have had to have died a few days ago and Dad or Shelly would know about it by now.  I was right—I
knew
I was right.  And I was pissed.  Seriously pissed.  If she couldn’t win Zach’s heart in life, stealing it in the afterlife was cheating.  And I was gonna kick her sorry succubus ass back to Hell where it belonged.

     Anxiously, I waited for one of them to pick up the phone.  One ring.  Two rings.  Three rings.  This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have by text.  How dare the two of them go off and have fun together now that I was miles away!  They should be home.  Feeling lost without me.  Standing in my bedroom crying because their little girl grew up.  After the fourth ring, I was about to hang up and resort to a text when Shelly answered the phone.

     “Ruby!  How are you?  Is everything okay?  You better come home this weekend!”

     I didn’t have time to chat.  There were two pressing matters on my mind—setting up a doctor appointment with Zach to see what was wrong with him physically and confirming my thoughts on Misty.  Misty first, bodily ailments second.  Selfish of me?  Perhaps.  Honest of me?  Absolutely.  My dad could handle the lab tests but
I
would have to be the one to deal with Zach’s supernatural woes.  And I could only imagine how hard it would be to get rid of Misty in ghost form.  Knowing her, she would have found a way to raise the bar on hauntings, making wraiths seem as harmless as Casper in comparison.

     “Hey, Shelly!  Things are okay, I guess.  Zach and I will be home this weekend to get my car but I have a weird question for you.  Did Misty Landrum die recently?”

     “What?  No!  As a matter of fact, I just saw her at the hospital earlier today.  She looks terrible Ruby but I get this weird feeling that maybe in the end, this accident was a good thing.  She even smiled and said hi to me.  But why do you ask?”

     “Are you absolutely certain that she was actually alive?  Don’t tell me you already forgot about those rumors over the summer—the ones about Kody Kirk being a zombie!  Jordyn told Chloe who told Zach who told me that her cousin Sasha
swore
that she saw Kody rooting around in the dumpster down at the Chicken Shack a month after he died!”

     A full sixty seconds’ worth of hearty laughter filled the line before Shelly was able to give me an intelligible response.  During that time, I rapped my nails against the nightstand and rolled my eyes as far back into my head as they could possibly go. 

     “Now Ruby, listen to what you just said to me and tell me that it doesn’t sound completely, well, idiotic—for lack of a better term.   Zombies don’t really exist—you know that.  And yes, I am certain that Misty wasn’t a member of the walking dead.  She was quite pleasant, as a matter of fact.”

     She was right, of course but I wasn’t as gullible as Shelly was.  Well, maybe when it came to the zombie thing I was.  But one smile wasn’t going to convince me that Satan had changed her ways.  But Misty was still alive—that was the only piece of information here that truly interested me.  If Zach was being haunted, his Harpy ex-crush wasn’t the one doing it.  I wasn’t ready to discuss the Zach situation with Shelly just yet but I didn’t really want to lie about it either.  Lying was a thing of my past.  So I handed her a truth that was watered down enough to satisfy both of us. 

     “I thought maybe she was haunting us but I guess I was wrong.  Or maybe paranoid is a better word to describe it.  Anyway, that brings me to my second question.  Zach hasn’t been feeling well since he got back.  He’s constantly tired and downright cranky.  Is there any way that Dad could give him an exam over the weekend?  I’m sure that it isn’t anything serious but I don’t think we should put it off much longer.”

     “This is your Dad’s weekend off.  He’s definitely looking forward to time away from the hospital but I’m certain he will make an exception for both you
and
Zach.  I know there was a point where he didn’t approve of your relationship but he’s well over that now.  After Zach took that bullet for you, Jason’s opinion of him changed dramatically.  He didn’t even so much as cringe when I told him how cute your one bedroom apartment is!”

     Instant lull in the conversation.  I knew this was the point where Shelly expected me to fill in at least one or two details about how
that
part of our relationship was going.  But the truth was that our relationship had come to a screeching halt.  Either way, the details were private and not something I wanted to share.  It had nothing to do with the fact that she wasn’t my biological mother and everything to do with the fact that, in that respect, I was and always would be, a private person.  Even if I had juicy details, they would never get past my lips.  Some things in this world were—and needed to remain—sacred.

     So instead I thanked her for always being there for me and asked that she extend that same gratitude to my dad.  I could tell that she was slightly disappointed at the lack of “girl talk” but there wasn’t anything I was willing to do to rectify that.  I made a mental note to at least explain away my silence to her this weekend. 

     But before I could think about the weekend, I really needed to concentrate on surviving the week itself.  I was already beat and it was only Monday.  When he saw that I was barely able to stay awake, Clay left and I got ready for bed.  In the few minutes before sleep devoured me, I thought about ghosts and wondered what kind of entity we were up against.  Rita would have that answer for me.  There wasn’t a ghost she couldn’t decipher.  Rita would know what to do.