Ruby Rising

by Leah Cook

  I grabbed Scott by the arm, dragging him to his feet. He was woozy but conscious. “Run, Ruby, you’re not strong enough yet. You need to run!” He turned to Mikayla. “You’re terms sucked, little sister. I won’t hurt her anymore.”

  I stood still, unable to run, and felt the crystal in my pocket heating up. I didn’t dare pull it out but I could feel it manifesting in my own powers. I felt stronger, more aware of my abilities. I stretched out my senses towards the lake, feeling it whirl, feeling its liquidity fuelling my own energy.

  “I don’t want to hurt her Scott. It was never my intention, although I certainly would enjoy it. He’s not ready for her yet, we need a little more time. But, He will be ready for her soon. Quite soon in fact.”

  She flicked her arms towards me, fire ripping from her fingers. I watched it in slow motion and moved my own hands slightly. The water I was controlling from the lake meet the fire head on, dowsing it in a cloud of steam before it could reach us. “I see you’ve been practicing, you’ll need to do better than that though, if you want to remain alive, but as much fun as it would be, I’m not here to kill you. But thanks for showing me some of your talents.”

  “So why the welcoming committee? Do I actually scare you, Mikayla?” The venom in my voice was no longer masked, she knew how I felt about her.

  “These are called friends, you should find one someday.” She knew that had hurt me but she pushed the knife in deeper. “Heard from Claire since you moved? Oh, that’s right, she’s far too busy with Jake now isn’t she?”

  Her laughter set off every single cell in my body, I was so full of pent up energy and the anger was quickly reaching explosive proportions.

  “Even your boyfriend has an ulterior motive, nobody really cares about you, Ruby. Our little group are the only friends you’ll ever have.” I felt the tears burn down my face, ashamed and angry that I allowed myself to succumb to them.

  “Ruby, ask your mother why you are so different, ask her about your eyes.” Scott whispered into my ear. “Mikayla, stop. We’re out in the open and this needs to end now!”

  “You think you’re in a position to give orders Scott? You failed the one test you had. Failed! He will not be pleased.” Mikayla walked towards us but the group stayed behind. “It’s time to go home big brother, we have things to talk about.”

  “Scott?” I held my hand out to him, he reached for it and kissed me on the cheek.

  “I’m sorry, Ruby,” he whispered, the next words threw me completely off guard. “Goodbye. Just remember that I really did love you, even if it was for such a short time.”

  “Goodbye?” My voice was small and full of pain. He walked past Mikayla, pushing into her shoulder as he went, but he never looked back.

  “We’ll see you soon, Ruby. Give that mutt of yours a kiss for me, will you.” She walked up to me and put her hand on my face, running her fingers down to my chin, I shivered at her touch, yet at the same time it felt familiar. More than an intimate kiss, it reminded me of how Scott had touched me in the tent when I had given myself to him. My body responded to the familiar touch and I brushed scarlet as Mikayla let out a small laugh. She knew the effect her touch just had on me.

  I watched them leave, none of them turned back to me, not even Mikayla. I still hadn’t moved fifteen minutes later when a woman walked past and asked me if I was okay. I looked at her, and felt the tears still streaming down my face, I was sobbing. I took off at a run without answering towards my house. I needed my mother.

  CHAPTER 21

  I flew into the house, the door slamming into the wall with such force the handle fractured the plaster behind it. I opened my mother’s door without knocking and looked at her, she was reading.

  “Ruby?” She dropped her book and sat up, but she didn’t reach for me. “Are you okay? What happened? Did somebody hurt you?”

  “Why am I so different from you and Dad? Why don’t I have his eyes or yours even?” My tears continued down my face.

  I watched as the colour drained from her face and as she got up from the bed her body gave up and she collapsed helplessly on the floor, her hands shaking.

  “Ruby…” her voice was barely a whisper. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  I fell to my knees in front of her, not understanding her pain, but knowing my world was about to be as shattered as my heart now was.

  “Just listen, if you say anything before I’m finished it won’t come out right…it won’t make any sense.” Her eyes pleaded with me as her hands enveloped mine. I nodded and let her take the time she needed to tell her story.

  “He’s not your father Ruby.” She paused to gauge my reaction before continuing, “He loves you like his own, but you’re not biologically his. When I was twenty three I was raped, I don’t remember a lot of it just the worst of it. I had met some new friends, they seemed to be quite sedate compared to my other friends who spent a lot of their time drinking and doing drugs. Allison befriended me at my job. I was working as a waitress at a local bar. One night she invited me out. She said she was having a party with a few close friends, only about six of us, she said it would be a good chance to get to know them.”

  She sat quietly for a minute and I watched as her tortured soul relived the past. “We got along at work and she made me laugh. I was so introverted and shy and I thought a small group would make it less daunting and I would be able to relax. When I got there, the house was full of candles, no furniture, it was completely empty. The lounge room floor had a white circle painted on it, it took up the entire area. Inside the circle was large white star and inside that was even more little stars. I thought it was a little odd…but I didn’t listen to my instincts.”

  I remembered the curtains at Scott’s when I had gone there to watch a movie, all the candles, and now I believed that I had seen the true pattern on the curtains. The circle with the stars inside it.

  “Initially we sat around on the floor talking and laughing and I started to relax. I was offered a drink, I thought it was water, but after ten minutes or so I realised that it had been laced with something. My head was spinning and I thought I was going to vomit but I was still conscious. I remember seeing Allison and another guy strip off and start having sex in the circle on the floor, she was muttering something, but I wasn’t awake enough to hear it. I…I remember crawling my way to the door. I wanted to leave, I knew something bad was about to happen, but I was picked up and thrown into the circle. I was tied up. I had cuffs around my wrists and ankles and I remember the sound of chains dragging on the floor. I was held down while they tightened the chains until I was spread out my arms above my head and my legs spread. Part of me is grateful for the drug they gave me. I was in and out of consciousness after the third one…I know that there were three men and two women including Allison. They all...took turns, muttering the whole time. I don’t know how many times they did it.”

  I cried for my mother, for what she was telling me, for what she endured. She cried with me and we waited for our sobs to subside before she continued.

  “Someone found me the next day in a park. I was naked and covered in blood. I was cut in various places, nothing that had been deep enough to kill me, though deep enough to need a lot of stitches.”

  “So there was no car accident?” I had grown up believing that the small scars on my mother’s body had been the result of a nasty car accident when she was a teenager.

  “No, honey. I’m sorry I lied…about everything.” She took in another shaky breath before continuing. “I had symbols painted all over me in my own blood. When I went to the police they said that no Allison had ever worked with me, that she simply didn’t exist and they convinced me I had taken drugs and just wasn’t willing to admit it. In the end I believed them, I didn’t have the energy to keep going over and over what I remembered. I didn’t know the address of where she had taken me. I didn’t even know her last name. I had no one to call. I had nobody to trust both my parents were dead. They didn’t even do a pelvic exa
m. Simply told me it was a waste of time and would be more invasive than it was necessary. I didn’t know it then but they were part of it, I’m not sure how, but they protected those animals. The morning sickness started a month later. I ignored it for another few weeks before I finally went to the doctors and they confirmed what I already knew. I was pregnant. I went for an ultrasound and when I saw you, in all your black and white glory, a tiny speck of a human growing within me…I knew you were meant for me. You had come out of all that violence…for me.”

  I desperately wanted to say something but I held it inside so she could finish her story before her emotions over took and she couldn’t keep going.

  “Your father was the man doing the ultrasound that day. Before he started consulting, he was a sonographer, but he changed jobs before you were born. He rang me and asked me out a week after the ultrasound.” Her lips curled up slightly as she remembered the phone call. “I played hard to get for a while, but he won me over in the end. He’s a good man Ruby, he loved me when nobody else did. I never wanted to have to share all this with you, it’s my pain to bare…mine alone.”

  She fell into me, sobbing with such ferocity her entire body heaved. I held her, soothed her hair and shushed her until she was still.

  “Please don’t hate me Ruby…” her voice was so small I barely heard her.

  “Hate you? Hate you?” I pulled her away so she could see my face, “I don’t hate you Mum, but how could you not hate me? Don’t I remind you every single day when you look at me what you went through that night?”

  She pulled me into her, and held me tight. “Ruby, you are the gem that shone in my darkness, you were the only reason I got up in the morning. You are the only reason I survived.”

  I crawled into bed with my mother and she cradled me all night. I remember we used to do this when I was little, she would crawl into my bed or me into hers and she would hold me.

  Before she fell asleep she told me that both her mother and grandmother had confided in her that they had also been raped but she didn’t know many details, only that my mother had been a product of rape herself. At least I had figured out what they wanted from me.

  As she slept I held her hands and let my energy surround her. I delved into her memories much easier than it had been with Scott. I asked to see the memories from that night and soon enough I had a front row seat, seeing everything through my mother’s eyes.

  There was an empty room, filled with candles. They lined the walls and the floor. People were talking and laughing, someone handed me a drink. His eyes were green. Soon the images became foggy and the glass in my hand fell to the floor and smashed. I saw Allison and man I hadn’t noticed strip and start having sex in the middle of the circle. I fell to the floor and started to crawl towards the hallway, desperate to get out.

  Finally I could see the door. It was white and old and had flaking paint in sections showing the pale wood underneath. As the tip of my fingers touched its safety I was dragged backwards by my hair and thrown into the circle. I felt heavy cuffs on my arms and ankles and was completely vulnerable once the chains had been tightened. People moved over me, in me. Faces changed and seemed to morph together. I felt the desperation in my mother for death to take her.

  As a large serrated knife was thrust into my vision everything went black. I had seen enough. Enough to know that Mikayla bore such a strong resemblance to Allison they could have been twins. Allison’s bleach blonde hair was cropped into a short pixie cut. It had been the single raised eyebrow that had been what convinced me.

  Mikayla hadn’t aged in nearly eighteen years.

  CHAPTER 22

  When I woke in the morning, my mother was already up. I looked at the clock and was surprised to find it was ten in the morning. I went upstairs to my bathroom and had a long, hot shower. I dressed in fresh jeans and a long sleeve deep blue cotton shirt that flowed off me. I remembered the crystal before I left my room and fished through my dirty jeans to pull it out, as I freed it from the pocket I cut my finger and dropped it. It wasn’t a deep cut but the end of the dagger was red with my blood. I watched as the blood slowly disappeared, but quickly realised it hadn’t disappeared at all. The black dagger now had a deep glow inside it. Turning it over in my hands I realised that my blood had been absorbed into the dagger. I held the tip of the dagger to my still bleeding finger and watched as it drew more into it. Once the crystal was glowing a deep red and was pulsing like a strong and regular heartbeat, it stopped drawing blood into itself and the cut on my finger healed.

  I felt the strength and power of the dagger manifest; its powers magnified by the hundreds. Without hesitating I slipped it into my pocket and went downstairs.

  I knew something was wrong when I smelt something burning. I took the last of the stairs two at a time and hit the kitchen at a run. There was a frypan on the stove with what had once been pancakes in it. They were now burnt to a crisp, dark smoke billowed around the kitchen as they caught fire. I turned the gas off, threw the pan in the sink and turned the tap on, filling the kitchen with steam as the smoke alarms started blaring.

  “Mum?” I called out to her as I opened the back door to let some of the smoke out. “Mum?”

  “Ruby, please, get back inside! I don’t want you to see this.” I heard the distress in her voice before I walked out ignoring her pleas for me to stay inside.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God!” I screamed and ran to where my mother was desperately trying to untie Phoenix from off the front of the garage door. As I took in the scene before me, bile filled my mouth and I vomited on the concrete. The garage door was covered in symbols that I had seen twice before, it looked like they were painted in blood. Someone had also put up a crudely made crucifix and Phoenix had been nailed to it, a large stake-like nail embedded into each of his paws. His stomach was exposed to us and his head hung at an odd angle. He wasn’t moving. “Phoenix!”

  “Ruby, he’s alive! Try and stay calm! We need to get these nails out. I can’t get them out!” Apparently I was the only one who needed to stay calm. I wiped my mouth and tried to focus on helping the defenceless puppy from his brutal confines.

  Looking at his bloody paws I could see that if we pulled on his feet the nails would just pull through his feet causing more damage. I needed to get them out the same way they had gone in. We couldn’t get the cross off the garage; it was bolted on some way I couldn’t see. I started to panic, fear for Phoenix’s life and the utter depth of his pain gripping me tightly. My heart squeezed in my chest as if it was being crushed.

  “Mum!” I shouted, “The nails, they’re made from iron…they’re earth! If we focus on the element we should be able to pull them out together, I don’t think I can do it on my own. I’m not strong enough.” I pointed to one of his feet, “This one first.” The first few attempts wielded nothing but a slight turn. I reached for my mother’s shaky and bloody hand squeezing it to reassure us both. I felt her energy run into me and mine into her, and we focused everything we had on the nail. It finally turned and worked its way out, soon releasing his little paw, blood began to pour out the wound and I quickly wrapped in in a scrap of material my mother ripped from her shirt sleeve. We worked the same way until each of the nails were out, wrapping each wound tightly as we released the nails. Once he was free of the last one we carefully lowered him down into my arms.

  “Get him in the car Ruby,” she said as she guided me to the back seat of her car. I grabbed the jacket that was in the foot well and wrapped him, holding his wounds as best as I could to try and slow the bleeding. I felt a small glimmer of hope when he licked my hand and whimpered before going quiet again. My jeans and shirt were soaked from his blood and my mother’s shirt was the same although now lacked its sleeves and part of the bottom of it.

  “Hang in their Phoenix! Hang in there, please!” I kissed him and held him as my mother sped through town to the vet as I gave her directions, somehow remembering where it was.

  Once we entered the surgery Phoe
nix was hurried out the back by a nurse and the vet and I stood staring at the door, covered in blood.

  Guiding me over to a basin in the corner, my mother washed my hands for me, the water soothed me, flowing over my hands. I felt it on the ends of my fingers as it moved around me.

  “Ruby, stop,” my mother whispered in my ear. “You can’t do that here, Ruby. Please, stop.”

  I finally came out of my haze and looked down at the little fountain of water I was controlling willing. I turned the tap off, shook them dry and started pacing. For the next two hours, I continued to pace, despite my mother’s continual attempts to get me to sit down. As I paced the vision of the garage with Phoenix’s limp body obscenely nailed to the crucifix assaulted my thoughts.

  “Mum, the symbols on the garage…” I stood in front of her gauging her reaction, she confirmed my suspicions when she paled. “Krystal had the same one on her arm, remember when she…when she died? I said she had scars up her arms, but they were more like she’d been branded. Are they the same ones they painted on you?”

  She nodded and swallowed audibly before she replied, lowering her gaze. “Yes, they were the same.”

  “Ruby,” the vet came out from the back of the surgery. “Janet, I’m sorry for keeping you so long. He’s alive…barely. He’s lost a lot of blood and he has nasty cuts all over him. He, um…” he diverted his gaze to the floor, hoping that we wouldn’t ask him for more information.

  “Please we need to know!” I implored him but he looked away. “Please!”

  “Okay, but this is pretty graphic. Phoenix has been branded, but because of the swelling and the blood I can’t be sure what the image is yet. It’s on his stomach between his front legs, over his heart.” The vet was pale and his hands were visibly shaking as he told us the extent of Phoenix’s injuries. Just by looking at his face I knew that he would remember this day forever. The utter horror at what he was witnessing would haunt his nightmares for many years to come. “This is by far the worst case of animal cruelty I have ever seen. I hope you understand that I need to report it to the RSPCA and the police.”