Little Red Gem

by D L Richardson

  I closed my eyes and tried to remain calm, but images of last night kept flashing across my mind, dark and disturbing visions that seemed more real than I’d have liked.

  Leo cradling my head in his arms.

  Leo shouting for help.

  Leo crying a river of tears.

  When I couldn’t take any more of the gloomy visions, I handed the cards back to Teri. Expertly, she spread them on the table into the shape of a cross. Although the cards lay face up, I viewed them from upside down. Upside down, right side up, who was I kidding? These cards meant nothing to me and I wished I’d stayed curled up in bed.

  “A pattern has emerged. These cards—” Teri’s finger tapped the three centre cards one after another, “—are Tower cards. They mean a sudden and unexpected disruptive change. Life will never be the same again.” She waved her hand over the remaining cards. “And these are Moon cards. They signify dreams and illusions. Everything may not be as it appears to be at face value. Does this mean anything to you?”

  I squirmed beneath her expectant gaze. “I had a fight with my boyfriend. We’ve broken up. I guess that’s pretty disruptive and unexpected.”

  She tilted her head. “What makes you think you’ve broken up?”

  Oleander the cat grabbed this opportunity to launch his fat body onto the table, scattering the cards and crystal ball onto the floor. The cards just slipped off, however the crystal ball exploded and shattered glass flew in every direction. Then, adding salt into my already wounded pride, Oleander arched his back and hissed at me. His reptilian eyes drilled into mine with such hatred that I pushed the chair out from under me.

  Teri grabbed the cat unceremoniously by the collar and used her foot to hold the back door open. Then she flung it through the air.

  “Bad cat. Ungrateful as the day I saved you from the dumpster.”

  When she returned to the room I had almost made it to the exit via the velvet curtain.

  “Please stay,” Teri begged. “I’d say that Oleander doesn’t mean to be horrible, except sometimes I think he does it on purpose. It’s like he’s possessed or something. Please, don’t go. I’ll do an astrology reading instead?”

  Tears nipped at my eyelids. Mom had often said Dad loved his art more than his family. It made perfect sense that I would fall for a guy like my father.

  “What’s the point?”I moaned. “I already know the future. It’s bleak and lonely because Leo loves his music more than me.”

  Teri smiled and crossed her hands over her heart. “Oh, Leo loves you, all right. And he always will.”

  Now this was what I’d come to hear. I threw myself back onto the chair. “Are you for real?”

  Teri had been a step-mother to me for about eight years. We were like family. Maybe she’d have told her customers what they wanted to hear, but surely she wouldn’t lead a susceptible teenager who had once been family down a desolate path.

  Audrey chose this moment to make another appearance, this time sticking her head around the hallway. She put her finger to her lips. I understood the universal sign for ‘keep your mouth shut’. I just didn’t see why she would make a fuss about sneaking out of the house when she could easily have taken the stairs leading down from their home which was located above the store.

  Teri stiffened. “Is anyone here?”

  Audrey quickly disappeared behind the door. Teri snuck a wary look over her shoulder, as if sensing someone was hiding from her. By now my patience had worn thin.

  “Maybe I should go,” I said, pushing the chair out from under me.

  Teri looked up at me with tears in her eyes. “I wish I could have been more help to you.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  I refrained from asking how she had survived in this business as long as she had: she hadn’t told me anything I didn’t know or couldn’t have figured out for myself; the cat had insulted me; and Audrey was playing a childish game of hide and seek. People came here for answers, not theatrics.

  ***

  I stomped out of Mysteries, livid over being cheated out of a free reading by a clairvoyant who was obviously having a nervous breakdown. By the time I reached Main Street I could only muster up pity for Audrey’s mom. My mom was right; never mind that Teri hadn’t predicted my future, she hadn’t been able to predict her own.

  At least she’d freed up my morning.

  This time, while waiting to cross Main Street I kept my gaze off the sign on the museum and I eyeballed the sign to the café across the road instead. Two stores down from the corner and a haven for bored teenagers, I headed there in search of a friendly face.

  I found two. Natalie and Shanessa sat inside at our usual table, closest to the counter where we could drool over chocolate muffins and cheesecake. White ceramic cups and empty plates sat on the table in front of them. I couldn’t blame them for eating without me. Having lost my phone they’d probably been texting me for hours. But that wasn’t why I’d come here. Natalie had a car, a peacock-blue Mazda which she’d gotten for an early eighteenth present, and I aimed to borrow it to drive out to the cabin.

  I lifted my hand to push through the glass door when a voice from behind startled me.

  “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.”

  Audrey stood on the sidewalk.

  “I’ve had enough theatrics for one day,” I told her.

  “I’ve come to help you.”

  “Unless you have a chocolate muffin to go with the coffee I’m about to inhale, I doubt it.”

  Flicking a nervous look inside the café, she stepped in closer and lowered her voice. “You can’t go inside.”

  The quiver in Audrey’s lips captured my attention more than the warning in her words. Maybe she was better at predicting the future than her mom. “Is something bad going to happen to me if I go through this door?”

  “What if I were to tell you something bad already happened?”

  “It already has,” I answered, thinking back to the argument with Leo.

  “You can’t go inside.” She glanced down at her feet. “It’s, well, it’s because nobody can see you.”

  Maybe I still wore the same underwear, dress, leggings, and boots I’d worn last night, didn’t mean people would publicly ridicule me. I scowled at Audrey, but my aggravation shifted into uncertainty when I noticed the fear in her eyes.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  Her eyes shimmered from fighting back tears. “They won’t see you. I really hate to be the one to break this to you, but you’re dead.”

  I was about to tell her to get lost, but she carried on. “Ruby, I’m not making this up. You have.” Her hands floated through the air. “Passed on. Crossed over. Are no more of this world.”

  “That’s the most insulting thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  A couple – a man and a woman about my parent’s age – came walking down the sidewalk. Audrey stepped in their path, catching me by surprise. We had not been raised to force strangers to sidestep around us. At the last moment she moved aside to let them pass, and she was lucky not to have copped an earful from them.

  “You’ve known me for years,” she said. “Have I ever been one for practical jokes?”

  Out of loyalty to my mother I had always kept a cool distance from Teri and Audrey. I wasn’t about to cross into the realm where we pretended we’d been close growing up. “I haven’t known you for years. I knew you years ago, there’s a huge difference.”

  “I’m not crazy and I’m not making this up. Don’t you remember? You died. A week ago. Mom’s freaking out because you showed up at the shop—”

  “Okay, stop right there.” I lifted my hands in exasperation only to find they’d curled into fists. Why was Audrey provoking me? Aside from a few childhood pillow fights and wet willies, what had I ever done to incite such wrath? “You expect me to believe you? Your mom had a conversation with me. You’re having a conversation with me right now.”

  “My mom can see ghosts. And you and I can
see each other because I’m an astral projection and spirits can set eyes upon those of us who walk the astral plane.”

  One game Audrey and I had enjoyed playing together as children involved pretending to have special powers. Being two years older, I’d had better access to movies and comics, so I’d usually come up with the most inventive powers, thus I’d often declare myself the winner. We were too old now to pretend to have special powers, yet what Audrey mentioned was something new, and curious by nature, it piqued my interest.

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s an astral projection?”

  “It’s a state taken during deep meditation. Many people travel on the astral plane when they’re asleep, only they wake up convinced they’ve had the most amazing dream. Sometimes they’ve had a dream, but sometimes their spirit has left their body. Some people go on wild adventures, others on quests that they can’t recall when they wake up. Others become almost superhuman, and they get into fights. They wake up with aches and pains and don’t know how they got them. Thankfully, I’m invisible to my mom’s ghost detecting radar, but not Oleander’s. He went nuts this morning because both you and I were in the room.” Audrey stopped abruptly. She shook her head and her frosted purple tips danced across her face. “You really don’t know you’re dead? My god, Ruby, I don’t know what to say, except…where have you been?”

  An odd shift took place inside my head, like someone had slammed an internal door shut and caused trinkets to crash into my stomach. One of the other reasons I’d often bested Audrey at our imagination game was her innate inability to lie. Even now, Audrey’s eyes reflected nothing except the honesty that used to signal I was once more about to crown myself the winner.

  But she had to be lying. Or else she was playing a cruel hoax. What other reason was there for this elaborate story?

  “I haven’t been anywhere,” I snapped. “I was at the log cabin—” I stopped. Bits and pieces of information floated up through the murky waters of my brain, but I had trouble dragging it to the surface. Nothing. “I woke up and raced to an appointment with your mom.”

  Audrey sighed. “You had an appointment with my mom a week ago.”

  “So the date got muddled up. Probably explains why your mom was surprised to see me.”

  “Oh, she was surprised all right.”

  I couldn’t believe I was buying into her malicious theatrics. But the thing was, I had always liked Audrey. I thought she’d like me, too.

  “I was on my way to my body when I heard your voice,” she said. “I wanted to see if it was really you.”

  “Who else would I be?”

  She ignored my remark. “I can walk the astral plane any time I want. Here, I’ll show you how it works.”

  Two boys from school appeared from around the corner. Audrey stood right in their path.

  “Hey, you might wanna move,” I said. “Those two are real pricks.”

  She winked at me. “I know.”

  She continued to stand in their way while I stared at her courageous stupidity, praying the two bullies would decide against knocking her to the ground in front of witnesses. Audrey stayed braced for impact and the two boys continued to barge toward her.

  “Audrey,” I cried. “That’s enough. Get out of their way.”

  She shook her head and laughed. “Relax. I’ll be fine. Watch this.”

  The boys were inches away, almost on top of her…

  I pushed her out of their way, prepared to take the brunt of their anger in order to save my half-sister. I felt an odd sensation when they barreled into me, almost as if I’d been electrified instead of pummeled.

  Audrey scowled. “You always have to be the star, don’t you?”

  Shivers ran all over me and I stared dumbfounded as the bullies kept on walking. “The star? Audrey, those two would have made minced meat out of you.”

  “They would have walked right through me, just like they walked through you. Don’t you get it? They walked through you.” Audrey’s voice croaked and her hands swiped at the tears in her eyes. “We cried so hard when you died. Everyone in town cried so hard.”

  “That’s not funny, Audrey,” I snarled. I’d never experienced this type of cruelty before. Hurtful didn’t begin to describe how she was making me feel.

  “Please, Ruby. You’ve gotta believe me. You’re wandering around in the afterlife with no idea you’re dead. You need to move on. There are demons and poltergeists in the otherworld.”

  She’d gone beyond too far, and I could now see the wisdom behind steering clear of Audrey and her mom for all these years.

  My lips pulled back into a snarl. “Get out of my way or I’m screaming for the cops. You and your mom, you both need to be locked up.”

  “Go on, scream. It won’t work.”

  This nasty streak of my half-sister was something I would never have expected. I turned my back on her, and I had to quickly step aside for a customer to come out. I waited for the familiar scent of coffee beans to hit me. Instead, I copped a whiff of the pungent perfume given off by decayed flowers. The water in the vase on the counter needs changing, I told myself, except the water and orange lilies looked fresh and a customer even had her head stuck inside the open blooms. She beamed a huge smile when she pulled her head out.

  The front door had closed while I’d stood transfixed by the customer soaking up the flower’s perfume. When I reached for the door, my hand tingled. The sensation increased the nearer my hand got to the door, and the more I pushed the more intense the pain became.

  I wrenched my hand back. “Ouch.”

  “You have to be invited inside,” Audrey explained.

  The burning, tingling sensation subsided but I blew cool breath onto my fingers out of habit. “Isn’t that a vampire myth?”

  “It’s the same rule for ghosts. My mom says ghosts can’t touch objects, and passing through walls is possible only if they’re invited in. She also says she talks to spirits, like every couple of days. She says they’re pulled to the scene of their death, something to do with a magnetic force playing havoc with the real world if the ghosts drift too far out of their dead zone. Apparently that’s the reason why ghosts haunt houses and not cemeteries. People end up in cemeteries but they don’t die there, you know.”

  I pressed my hand up to the glass. The burning buzz attacked me instantly, tripling in intensity this time. “Is there a fire inside? Is this why you’ve come to stop me?”

  “No fire.”

  “So why can’t I open the door?”

  She looked up toward the sky. “I don’t get paid to be a spirit guide.” Her eyes drilled into mine. “Listen carefully. The spirits clever enough to move objects, open doors, rattle chains, pass through walls, all that stuff. Well, they’re not the kind of spirits you wanna meet. Mom says by the time they’ve learned to connect to the real world it’s too late. Something about them staying on the other realm for so long makes them turn nasty.”

  “You’ve been on the other realm for too long.”

  She wasn’t deterred by my insult in the slightest. She even grinned. She’d often blasted me with that stupid grin whenever she’d wanted me to play with her. I realized that this could take all day unless I cooperated. “You’re talking about poltergeists.”

  She clapped her hands together like she was five. “Correct. Poltergeists. Malevolent spirits. Demons. Whatever you want to call them. The reason you got inside my mom’s store was because she invited you in. And the reason you need to cross over is to avoid being found by these malevolent spirits. I’d hate for you to end up with the wrong crowd. Mom has books on demons and they aren’t exactly fairy tales.”

  What she said brought a twisted smile to my face. “Aren’t you concerned about poltergeists attacking you?”

  She shrugged. “I stay out of their way. I’d suggest you do the same.”

  I gave up listening when I spied Natalie and Shanessa pushing their chairs out from under the table. Shanessa wedged some bills under the salt shaker, and w
ith their arms around each other’s waists they headed for the exit. Natalie pushed open the door, the chime tinkled, and they walked toward me with their heads rested against each other’s.

  “Hey, superstars,” I sang out to get their attention.

  My two best friends ignored our customary greeting and kept walking down the street in the opposite direction to where I stood.

  “I still can’t believe she’s never coming back,” said Natalie.

  “It’s too surreal. Her funeral is tomorrow,” said Shanessa.

  “Whose funeral is tomorrow?” I asked, running ahead of them to block their path. “Who died? Tell me.”

  They turned toward the curb and I guessed they were pissed at me for ignoring their advice about not going to see Leo at the cabin. I’d gotten the vibe a few weeks back that their resentment toward the time I spent with Leo was increasing exponentially. Neither of them had boyfriends, so they didn’t realize how being in a relationship meant that I felt as if I were trapped in the middle of two equally strong pulling forces.

  “They’re not being rude,” Audrey said, standing so close to me I could tell what flavor toothpaste she’d used this morning, except I couldn’t sniff anything. Not the coffee beans roasting, not the sugary cakes in the cabinet, not the exhaust fumes caused by traffic.

  “You’re nonexistent to them,” she continued. “Stay here. I’ll prove it.”

  Audrey ran ahead and landed with a jump in front of Natalie and Shanessa. Then she walked backwards, waving her hands in front of their faces. She even shouted out, “You sing like two tortured cats”, and they didn’t give her the slightest bit of acknowledgement.

  Natalie and Shanessa were very sensitive toward criticism of their singing, and for them not to react meant they really couldn’t see Audrey. The proof was sobering. This was not a prank.

  When Audrey returned to my side, she wore a sad expression on her face. “I’m a projection and you’re a ghost. My body is lying on my bed. Yours is lying in the funeral parlor. You’ve got to believe me.”