Wraiths of Winter (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 3)

by Joy Elbel

  “You told me not to tell you that I thought you summoned me, so I won’t but I don’t have any other answers for you either. One second I was hanging out at the lake and the next I was here. And that’s the whole truth.”

  As Lucas began to ask what Clay was saying, I stopped him mid-sentence. “Hold on, Lucas! I’ll tell you everything he says later, okay? Just go stand in the corner or something for a minute. I need to talk to him without any interruptions.” After realizing how harsh my words came out, I added an apologetic “Please?” at the end. I could only handle one frustrating boy at a time.

  Lucas nodded his head, took a few steps back and left me alone with Clay. “What was the last thing that happened at the lake before you found yourself here?”

  “Well,” he replied with hesitation, “I was thinking about how weird it was that day I popped into the funeral home. I’ve never been able to travel anywhere other than between the cemetery and Silver Lake. I tried to go other places before hundreds of times but I got nowhere—literally. That is until I met you. The second I realized that you were the key to my new ability, I ended up here. I had no idea where I was but I figured you must be close by.”

  Grr! Just what I didn’t need— another boy following me around and demanding my attention. I already felt like a chew toy in a cage full of pit bulls thanks to Zach and Lucas. Clay had to stop thinking about me. Now.

  “Clay, please don’t think about me! I know you’re probably kind of lonely and all and I promise I will come and talk to you on a regular basis. You can’t just pop in and out of my life when you feel like it, okay? This has to be the last time.”

  More sad, scolded puppy dog eyes. “I’m sorry, Ruby. I’ll try really hard not to. Scouts honor,” Clay said solemnly as he held three fingers up in the air.

  Clay Roseman was a Boy Scout? I was shocked. He practically oozed with a bad boy persona. He was the kind of boy I pictured beating up Boy Scouts, not selling popcorn with them outside of the mall. He was another enigma I wouldn’t mind solving. Just not now, definitely not now. As I was about to tell him goodbye, he simply vanished.

  Once Clay was gone, I called for Lucas to come back. Even though he was a ghost, I didn’t feel afraid when I was with him. Now, however, I was painfully aware that I was in the tunnel with Lucas well out of my grasp. When Lucas didn’t magically appear by my side I called again with more urgency this time.

  “Lucas!” I shouted as I turned around quickly and almost knocked the flashlight out of his hand again. “I’m right here—don’t panic!” he replied as he regained control of the flashlight. “I take it your friend’s gone?”

  “Yes, he’s gone,” I said with a sigh of relief. “We need to hurry up and find your escape route and head back upstairs. This place creeps me out.”

  “Okay, let’s get going then—while you were talking to your invisible buddy back there, I checked out the next few passageways. I think we might be getting close. We can talk about something good to keep your mind off of where you are.”

  “Excellent idea—what do you want to talk about?”

  “Are you excited for the Cupid’s Cotillion?” he asked as he led me around the next darkened corner. “What stupid cotillion? And why would I be excited for it if it’s so stupid?” Geez, boys ask the dumbest questions sometimes.

  “I didn’t say stupid, I said cupid. Cupid as in the chubby little guy who comes at you with a weapon on Valentine’s Day. I assume you’re going with Zach—are you excited to go?”

  “Yes, I know who Cupid is,” I responded impatiently. “But I still have no idea what you’re talking about.” Lucas stopped in his tracks. “Boyfriend isn’t taking you to the school’s Valentine’s Day dance?” he said with astonishment. “I wanted to ask you myself but well…I guess I assumed you already had a date. Now I wish I would have. I would have gladly blown off rehearsal for you.”

  Once Lucas said the word “dance,” I vaguely recalled seeing posters hanging in the hallways at school but frankly, I was too preoccupied with every other problem in my life that I never really paid attention to them. Now I wished I would have. Zach knew about my bad luck on Valentine’s Day and swore that he would break that curse for me this year. But come to think of it, he hadn’t even mentioned the stupid holiday in quite some time. I was in for another gift-less, kissless, romance-less day. I knew it wasn’t like him to forget about something so important. It figures—the one day when I needed it the most, Mr. Romance was going to be anything but.

  Not wanting Lucas to know that Zach forgot all about celebrating with me, I instead told him about my hatred of the holiday. If he thought it was my choice not to go, he would back down. And I would change the subject.

  “My brother and I may have been a lot alike, but I never would have let you down on a day like that. Never.” I had the perfect opportunity to throw his favorite saying back in his face so I took it. “Never say never, Lucas,” I stated without emotion. Tough to do considering the fact that I was crying on the inside. How could Zach forget?

  Thinking that he would have a comeback, I struggled to come up with an even better one for myself. Instead, he shined the flashlight over my shoulder and simply said, “Look!”

  I turned around to find that we were standing on the threshold to the room we’d been searching for, what remained of the rope ladder still hung from the ceiling. There it was—the trap door Lucas needed to exit the house unnoticed.

  Excitedly, we ran over to the spot of escape and plotted exactly how we would pull it off. I would find an excuse for not wanting to drive myself to school—which I didn’t want to do anyway just in case Jackson came looking for me. Once Shelly’s car was out of the garage, Lucas would be able to climb up and open the hatch with ease. Since the ladder was thoroughly unusable though, we searched and found an old stool that was sturdy enough for him to stand on. He tested the plan and found that it was workable so we headed back up toward my room completely satisfied with our ingenious scheme for escape. That is until I set one foot inside my bedroom. Once again, we were no longer alone. And the figure I found hovering near my closet door was the most frightening one I’d encountered yet. I was about to die an agonizing death.

  35. Snowballed

  “Ruby Rose Matthews! Where have you been?” my dad shouted as I walked out of the closet and into my bedroom. “And what have you been doing?” he added in an accusatory tone. “Lucas, if you want to live to see graduation, you’ll leave this house right now!”

  Without hesitation, Lucas mumbled, “Yes, sir,” and flew out of the room like his pants were on fire. I was so alone. And I was so screwed. Suddenly, I was praying for Jackson to show up armed with a samurai sword—anything to divert the attention away from me.

  “Dad, you have to let me explain!” I pleaded desperately. “Lucas was only here to protect me! Someone’s trying to kill me!”

  His face was so red it was almost turning purple. “Stop it with the lies, Ruby! I’ve heard enough. Give me your phone, your car keys, and your laptop. You’re grounded until you turn eighteen.” He stood there with his slightly trembling hand extended as he waited for me to surrender. “NOW!”

  There was no way I was going down without a fight. I knew exactly what he thought Lucas and I were doing here tonight but he was wrong. So very, very wrong. I folded my arms across my chest in a display of defiance and stated as calmly as I could, “No, not until you listen to what I have to say.” Once those words were out of my mouth, my dad redefined the definition of the word “furious”.

  He didn’t scream, he didn’t shout. Instead, his face turned an even more unnatural shade and he spoke firmly. “I don’t have to listen to anything you say. As a matter of fact, I would prefer that you not speak another word. I let Shelly talk me into reducing your punishment after I caught you in bed with Zach but not this time. She swore to me that she can tell when you’re telling the truth and when you’re lying so I decided to believe her. You sure do have her snowballed, don’t you? We
ll, I’m not falling for any more of this crap you keep dishing out. And I’m not backing down when she comes begging me to be lenient with you either.”

  Shelly! I was so caught up in the argument that I didn’t even realize that she wasn’t present for the battle we were waging. She was my biggest supporter and she always found a way to calm my dad when he went all demonic on me. How could she just abandon me at a time like this?

  “Where is she anyway? Did Drill Sergeant Matthews order her to be silent, too?” I barked back at him. “Nope,” he said with a sarcastic sneer, “She silenced herself—something you should start doing right this very second. Shelly took a sleeping pill and didn’t hear my ringtone when I got the text. I was about to wake her when I realized she was more your ally than she was mine so I let her sleep.”’

  Now I wasn’t just angry, I was confused. Text? What text was he talking about? Once I started to analyze the situation, none of it seemed to make any sense. What made my dad decide to come looking for me in the middle of the night anyway? The only times he and Shelly visited me after bedtime were the nights I woke up screaming from nightmares. Plus, I locked two doors to keep them out just in case. I glanced over at my bedroom door long enough to see that he hadn’t chopped through it with an axe like in the movie The Shining. There were so many questions swimming through my brain. Whether or not he would answer them remained to be seen, but one thing was certain. I still wasn’t going down without a fight.

  “What text are you talking about? I’m not giving you what you want until I get some answers.” I said defiantly. “You want to see the text? I’ll show you the text,” he said as he pulled his phone out of the pocket of his robe. “I don’t know who sent it, but at least I know there’s one person in this town with good moral fiber. That being said, I’m pretty certain that it didn’t come from one of your friends.”

  Ignoring the snide comment, I angrily snatched the phone from his hand. I was anxious to see the anonymous message that led to him finding me with Lucas. I had to read it and reread it multiple times before I could even wrap my brain around the whole situation.

  “If you aren’t ready to be a grandfather, you need to find your daughter immediately, Dr. Matthews.” For several minutes, I just stood there staring at it and shaking my head. The sender’s number was unfamiliar to me. Who could possibly have sent that text? The only person who knew I was with Lucas was Zach. He knew why we were together, though. He knew I was in danger as long as Jackson was on the loose. Could he have been so afraid that something else was going on between us that he sent my dad to look for me just in case? Would he be desperate enough to risk my life out of pure jealousy alone? I didn’t want to think so, but it was the only logical conclusion I could come to. If it was from Zach, whose phone did he send it from? all about my anger—at least for the moment Forgetting anyway—I

  began questioning my dad about the origins of the mysterious text. “You have no idea who sent it? You don’t recognize the number at all?” I queried, unwilling to believe that the answer wasn’t plainly staring one or both of us square in the face. The message was clear and concise—obviously meant for my father to read. It wasn’t vague in any sense of the word. The sender knew my father, knew me, and knew that I was sneaking around behind Dad’s back at the time they sent it. I had to know who it was from.

  “I don’t know who sent it but frankly, I don’t care. My concern right now is for you and the bad reputation you’re giving yourself. Charlotte’s Grove is a small town, Ruby. Everybody knows everybody else’s business here. Do you really think that you sleeping with multiple boys is going to go unnoticed? I didn’t raise you to act like this. Your mother must be turning over in her grave right now knowing that her precious little baby is hell bent on becoming the town slut!”

  The anger I’d pushed to the side when I found out about the text rapidly seethed to the surface. How could he say so many hateful things all at once? We rarely ever talked about Mom—why would he bring her up at a moment like this? And in such gruesome description? I was so mad that I couldn’t think straight. All I wanted to do was throw something just as hateful right back at him. So I did.

  “I envy Lucas, you know. I can only dream about how good it would be to find out that I was adopted. At least then, I would know that out there somewhere I had a father who might listen to me—a father who might not take some stranger’s word over the word of his own daughter. You’re a sorry excuse for a dad. I wish Mom was alive and you were the one turning over in your grave right now.” I delivered my monologue of animosity with a surprisingly calm tone of voice—until my final line. “I hate you!” I spat out at him venomously.

  “Okay, that’s it! Your keys, your phone, and your laptop, NOW! I’m done playing around. I don’t trust you one little bit. When you get home from school tomorrow afternoon, there won’t be a single door in this attic left on its hinges and the wall in your closet will be fixed. Every door in this house will be locked and as you found out tonight, I have the only set of keys that will open every last one of them,” he said as he produced an antique looking key ring from his pocket and jingled them proudly in front of me.

  I didn’t go down without a fight, but I did go down. There wasn’t any more argue left in me. All I wanted was for him to get out of my face, out of my room, and out of my life. I grabbed the things he demanded from me and shoved them into his hands without a word. The sooner he was gone, the sooner I could lie down in my bed and cry. Just when I thought I was alone, he returned with one last biting remark.

  “And if you expect me to pay for college, you’re going to Trinity in the fall. And that’s final.” I got zero sleep that night because there were so many things on my mind. If I wanted to go to college—which I definitely did—my choice in schools had just been made for me. Sending me to Trinity meant separating me from Zach and practically pushing me into Lucas’s waiting arms. But Dad would expect me to be a pre-med major and that wasn’t what I felt like I wanted to do with my life. Why couldn’t he just listen to me—to what I wanted—for a change? I hadn’t figured anything out yet and I was running out of time and support.

  There was a crazed, psycho lunatic stalking me and I was losing backup on a daily basis. First Zach and now Lucas. Geez, I wouldn’t even be able to lock myself in my room now if I needed a safe place to hide. At this point, I didn’t even want to see my dad let alone try to explain things to him again. I didn’t even want to talk to Shelly about it. There was only one other person left—Rachel.

  But I wasn’t even sure she would listen to me without judgment. She wasn’t very pleased with me concerning the Zach/Lucas dilemma and I hadn’t spoken to her much since I started thinking that Drake was guilty. And how was she going to react when I told her that Zach was most likely the one who sent my dad the mystery text? It came from someone close to me, someone who knew without a doubt that I was with Lucas at the time. Zach was the only living soul with that knowledge. Didn’t he realize the kind of damage it would cause me? And just a few hours ago, I thought being forgotten for Valentine’s Day was the end of the world.

  I got ready for school early but stayed in my room until Shelly came looking for me. My dad would have already filled her in on my misdeeds and subsequent punishment and she would want to discuss it. For some reason, though, I had a feeling that she wasn’t going to believe me this time. I was right.

  Without a single hint of her normal bubbly personality, she curtly informed me that there was still some bacon and eggs left for me in the kitchen and that she would be driving me to school in exactly 30 minutes. That’s it. That’s all she said. She didn’t even want to hear my side of the story. She believed the things Dad was telling her about me. She believed what an unknown stranger claimed I was doing. If Rachel didn’t take my side on this, I didn’t know what I was going to do.

  I didn’t really feel much like eating but knew that if I didn’t, I would be starving before lunchtime. Cold as ice— both the bacon and the eggs had c
learly sat on the table for quite some time before they were offered to me. As I stood there watching my plate go round and round in the microwave as I reheated them, I couldn’t help but compare myself to it. I, too, seemed to be going in circles—in constant motion yet never getting anywhere. School was the only thing that seemed to be going my way and graduation was looming on the horizon. Something had to give soon—it just had to.

  So of course when I needed school to be the highlight of my day, it wasn’t. Zach was absent. Rachel claimed that he had the flu, but I wondered if maybe he was just too afraid to face me because he knew I would know that he sent my dad that text. I tried to convince her to go to the library with me so we could talk with fewer people around but she said no. She had a paper due sixth period that wasn’t finished so she needed to spend time in the computer lab without any interruptions. Even Mr. Raspatello found a way to make my day worse.

  Once role was called, he sat down at his desk and called for me to come forward. Usually, our little discussions were about how much he liked my latest creative writing assignment. Sometimes he even asked me for suggestions on what I thought the class might enjoy writing about next. I never had any reason to fear our one on ones…until now.

  “Ruby, I want to talk to you about making financial arrangements for those building improvements we talked about,” he said sternly.

  What? It took me a minute to figure out that he was referring to the window I broke on Halloween, the window I swore I would pay for but forgot all about. Months later when my life was in complete shambles, he was suddenly worried about restitution. His timing was horrible, but I did promise to pay for it if he kept knowledge of my crime a secret.

  “Sure, Mr. Raspatello. How much money do you think we will have to raise?” It couldn’t be that expensive to replace a window, right? I had about a hundred dollars left in my bank account and this coming Friday was pay day. I didn’t really want to hand him every last cent I had but the sooner it was paid for, the sooner I could forget about the whole incident once and for all.