Dream Dancer (Ghosts Beyond the Grove Book 2) (26 page)

     And that was all I really needed.  Gone were the days when I longed for every detail, every tiny nugget of information.  Enough truly was enough for me now.

     “Tell me what I need to do.”

     I expected to hear detailed instructions of some sort—dance naked in the light of the full moon while chanting some curse backwards to reverse it.  Or something weird like that.  But weird wasn’t what I got.  What I got was something that I had a hard time hearing.  And knowing Zach the way I did, he would have found it even more disturbing than I did.

     “The arrowhead must be passed to an innocent man.  Once it changes hands, Zach will be free from its power.  The curse cannot be stopped it can only be exchanged.”

     My heart sank.  How could I inflict this kind of torture on an innocent man knowing how bad he was going to suffer?  And how would Zach feel about it? 

     “Are you sure?” I asked, hoping that there was some other way of ending Zach’s suffering and mine too.

     “Yeah, this Micah kid’s sister tried everything else imaginable but that was the only thing that worked.  Sorry kiddo.”

     Sorry kiddo indeed.  Zach obviously wasn’t able to make this decision himself so I was going to have to make it for him.  And for that, I needed time to think.

42.  Burning Questions

     My moments of clarity grew shorter and further apart as time went on.  In those rare seconds when I felt like myself, I lay in bed praying for something—anything—to make it all go away.  I would stare into that stone unblinking yet definitely thinking.  Was Ruby still out there somewhere trying to help me?  Or had she already moved on by now?  I didn’t know how long I’d been in that hospital. 

     My last memory of her was vague but I did remember hearing her scream, seeing her cry.  My recollections told me that I was the cause of her pain that day but I couldn’t recall why.  That was last time I saw her—at least that I knew of.  But
her
—I saw
her
every day.  She wouldn’t go away.  I would have done anything—
anything
—to make
her
go away.    

     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

43.  Pooling My Resources

     A decision this big required time and advice.  Lots and lots of advice.  I started by discussing it with Dad and Shelly.  I walked away from that conversation more confused than I was to begin with.  They disagreed with each other vehemently which wasn’t something I expected. 

     Dad looked at it from a medical perspective, comparing it to stealing a healthy man’s heart to give it to someone needing a transplant.

     “It’s simply not ethical, Ruby.  You can’t sacrifice an innocent man to save Zach.  You just can’t.  It would basically be murder.  And I don’t think he would want you to do it either.”

     He had me completely convinced that he was right until Shelly loudly threw out her opinion which was the complete opposite of his.

     Shelly looked at it from the perspective of the romance author part of her.  “No, Jason, you’re wrong.  Zach will thank her later for going to the ends of the earth to save him.  It
isn’t
murder and whoever ends up with the curse has every opportunity to pass it on to the next guy.  You need to do it, Ruby—soon.”  

     I walked away and let them bicker it out between themselves which they did for the rest of the evening.  Meanwhile, I sat in quiet contemplation of the terrible decision I needed to make.  As I slept that night, the dream of Zach and me in the theater crept back into my unconscious mind.  I awoke from it sobbing and wondering if it was an omen that our time together was about to end the same way the movie did—with us going our separate ways.

     The clock was ticking and I needed to make a decision.  So what I decided to do was drag myself out of bed and get as many opinions on the matter that I could possibly get.  I started with paying Rita a visit, then went directly to the shelter to get Andy’s opinion.  Like Dad and Shelly, they each gave me a completely opposite take on why I should or shouldn’t save Zach the only way I knew how. 

     I started a tally sheet in a small notebook so that I could track how many pros and cons I came up with.  Two for, two against.  Once I had more opinions, I would go with the majority.  Needing more views on the subject, I ran around town all day asking everyone I ran onto “the burning question”, as I now called it.  Should I or shouldn’t I? 

     By late afternoon, I’d grilled everyone from that cranky old librarian, Mrs. Tuttle, to the geeky young kid manning the drive-thru at the Chicken Shack.  I didn’t have to count the votes to know that it was a dead heat between yes and no.  I’d questioned nearly fifty people and I still had a tie.  Looks like Charlotte’s Grove was every bit as torn as I was on the subject.

     My next tactic was to call the few people I knew outside of this small town.  That didn’t get me very far either.  Addie and Derek were at odds on the dilemma just like every other couple I’d questioned.  By the time I was finished, I was afraid I was going to be responsible for at least one breakup.  Roxanne and Queen Elva both gave me opposite responses as well.  The last person on my call list was the only one who gave me any new insight.  Well, after thoroughly confusing the hell out of me, that is.

     Elijah—I mean Grandpa—silently listened as I explained my quandary.  When I was finished speaking, the other end of the phone continued to be still for so long that I thought I’d lost the connection.  As I was about to ask if he was still there, he spoke one word that made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

     “Linguini,” he whispered then followed it with more silence.

     “What?  Linguini?  Is that what you just said?”

     “Huh?  Oh.  Yes.  Linguini.  I just remembered that I forgot to pick some up when I was at the grocery store.”

     “Oh.  Okay,” I said, somewhat disappointed that he was thinking about his shopping list throughout my entire monologue about ethics.  But I was patient with him.  He
was
pretty old and I had no idea what his health was like.  He was my grandfather but he was still a stranger to me in many ways.  Suddenly, though, he snapped out of his brain fog and gave me a fresh way to look at the situation.    

     “You need to take more time to think things over.  You told me you were good at math, right?  Analyze it with your keen mathematical skills.  Take yourself out of the equation and see what facts you have left.  Once you find the solution, give me a call.  I have to go now.  Bye.”

     His plan was brilliant enough to distract me from the rudeness of his abrupt hang up.  I’d consistently been trying to find the majority of opinions but I was going about it the wrong way.  I needed to analyze the data in other ways.  Eagerly, I sat down and began crunching the numbers in every other possible way.  I went at it for hours yet ended up with nothing new. 

     That was the moment that I already knew the answer.  I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t save Zach by destroying someone else.  He wouldn’t want me to do it either.  It would end our relationship anyway when he found out what I had to do to save him.  Both of us would carry an unimaginable burden of guilt for the rest of our lives.  And I couldn’t simply pass that task onto someone else, either.  It was time to say goodbye to Zach and move on with my life.  It wasn’t going to be easy but it was the right thing to do—not just for me but for him as well. 

     Drained from this realization, I fell back onto my pillows and instantly drifted off into a dreamless sleep.  I slept well into the day. When I woke up the following afternoon, my mind was unchanged.  I showered and got dressed like it was any other day.  I ate lunch like I hadn’t missed breakfast.  I told Shelly where I was going yet not what I was about to do.

     Overwhelmed with sadness yet overcome by relief at having finally made a decision, I drove straight to the hospital with that arrowhead in my hand the whole way.  If it was going to destroy him, it needed to hurry up and finish the job.  I, too, felt cursed—cursed with the fate of having to watch him suffer.  I needed to give him the arrowhead and hope that its close proximity would speed up the process. 

     I walked up to the front desk and asked to speak to Dr. Landon.  I knew that I had a better chance of being eaten by a shark on dry land than I had of getting in to see Zach—especially after the stunt my dad pulled there recently.  But if he would at least let me put it back into the pocket of his duffle bag where I originally found it, I could walk away knowing I’d done my best.

     When the nurse told me that the doctor was gone for the day, I knew I was in luck—for once in my life.  She seemed like the type of woman who would sympathize with the kind of loss I was facing.  And all I really needed was for her to put that arrowhead back into Zach’s bag where it belonged. 

     “Are you here about a patient?”

     “Yes,” I said quietly, huge tears spilling from the corners of my eyes.  The gravity of my mission was hitting me all at once.  I wasn’t there to break up with my boyfriend.  I was there to say goodbye before sending him to the supernatural gallows.  I couldn’t speak his name out loud so I whispered it instead.  “Zach.  Zach Mason.”

     That’s when I lost it.  My knees started to buckle beneath me and the nurse rushed out from behind her desk catching me seconds before I would have hit the floor.  I couldn’t explain the real reason for my devastating breakdown.  She would never believe me anyway.  And anyone who
would
believe me couldn’t know what I was about to do.  I knew what was right and I didn’t want anyone else to try to change my mind.  

     “Oh, honey!  Is he your boyfriend?” she said while helping me into the nearest chair.

     Unable to form any sort of verbal reply, I nodded my head instead and sent fat tears rolling down both sides of my face.  She tried her best but I was inconsolable for a solid ten minutes.  Then I saw it.  The framed picture on the wall behind her desk.

     I’d been in this office multiple times, why hadn’t I seen it before?  It was a simple yet stunning lithograph of—you guessed it—feathers.  Two of them were a deep cobalt blue, the third was a metallic gold.  Penned at the bottom was the phrase, “Use your wings and fly.”

     There it was.  The final sign I needed to know that I was doing the right thing.  And that someone was by my side as I did it.  The waterworks stopped as though the faucet had not only been turned off but permanently disabled.  I stood up and pressed the arrowhead into her palm.

     “This belongs to Zach.  Please see that it gets put with the rest of his things.  I know that I’m not allowed to have direct contact with him, but is there any way that I could see him one last time—from afar?”

     Hesitation on her part was brief.  She knew the rules yet she also understood what I was going through.  It was no secret that Zach wasn’t getting better and that he probably never would.  His coherence was slipping away fast.  I’d stood by him this long; I deserved any closure I could get in the matter.

     “Well,” she paused briefly, “I can’t let you into his room but if you would like to see him through the window, I suppose that would be okay.  But only for a minute, okay?”

     Good enough.  “Okay!” I echoed back to her.  “Okay.”

     As she led me through the winding hallway, I thought about another great paradox in life.  I’d fought hard to hold on but I’d also fought every bit as hard to get to the point where I was ready to let go.  Zach was basically on mental life support.  I needed to pull the plug in my own mind and walk away without guilt.  In my heart, I knew that I would never love anyone else the way I loved him.  But maybe it was best that I didn’t.  Our love was intense yet flawed from the very start.  Maybe I would find someone someday who I could love in peace and comfort—not paradox and chaos.

     I stayed calm until we reached the door to his room.  When I spotted his weakened body sprawled across the bed, a lump formed in my throat.  I wanted nothing more than to look into his beautiful eyes one last time and to tell him that I was sorry that it had to end this way.  But he was on the other side of a thick wall that I would never be allowed to penetrate. 

     I pressed my hand to the glass and whispered, “I love you.”

     A voice behind me replied, “I love you, too.  Now give me the arrowhead.”

44.  Lighter than a Feather

     Silence.  Hauntingly beautiful silence.  At least in my head, anyway.  I’d grown so used to the wailing of that voice inside my brain that I assumed I’d finally gone deaf from the internal cacophony.  That in itself would have been a blessing.  But that wasn’t what happened.  I wasn’t only free from that hellish audio but from everything else as well.  My thoughts were no longer a jumbled up mess; my body felt strong and free of pain.  I lay there motionless, fearful that the slightest movement might bring it all back again.

     That’s when I heard the sound that would make me move mountains.  Sobbing.  It came soft at first but grew heartbreakingly louder. I knew her voice even when she wasn’t actually saying a word.  The girl crying somewhere just beyond my grasp was the
real
girl of my dreams—not that demonic imposter.  Ruby was sad and I had to make her dark clouds go away.

     Fearful that my own sanity was still in jeopardy, I cracked open one eye and searched until it found the stone.  Where once lay a battle between the gray smoke and the blue flame, there was no trace of anything but smooth, flawless white marble.  The nightmare was undoubtedly over.

     I leapt from my bed to the door with my feet barely connecting with the tiled floor.  I yanked on the door knob but it stayed firmly locked from the outside.  The narrow hallway was jammed with both friends and strangers.  I called out her name in desperation.

     “Ruby!” I shouted, waiting mere seconds before crying out for her once more.  “Ruby!”

     I touched the glass lightly and tried to peer around the corner for a glimpse of her.  Then, her fingertips appeared on the other side—perfectly in line with my own.  I couldn’t see her face yet but I didn’t need to.  We flattened our palms in one synchronized motion—our bodies weren’t touching but our souls were.  I didn’t know where I’d been for the last few months—years?—but there was no question where I was now.  Home.  I was home.