Spirits of Spring (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 4) (44 page)

“Zach! Put your window back up! That thing’s rabid—
it’s going to eat our eyes out! It isn’t leading us to Ruby, it’s
trying to peck us to death! Haven’t you seen the movie
The
Birds
?”

“Not now, Rachel! It wants something alright but it has
nothing to do with our eyes!” I stuck my head out the window
and shouted, “Where’s Ruby?”

With that one simple question, the bird rose straight up
in the air and reappeared in the back window of the vehicle.
“We were going the wrong way, Rachel! She isn’t in town!” I
put my head back out the window and spat out a command.
“Lead us to her!”

I whipped around in the middle of the road without
even checking for oncoming traffic.
Once I was facing the
opposite direction, the bird took off. I followed it closely, trying
to match its speed while flying down the wet, semi-flooded
road. The bird flew low and at the exact height of the hood of
the car. It even began to gauge my speed—slacking off when
road conditions forced me to slow down, speeding up once I
was back at full throttle.
It was taking me in the direction of
Silver Lake—the last place I would have considered looking for
her. Ruby hated water. What in the world would she be doing
there by herself on a day like today? Oh, that’s right—I forgot.
She was never by herself now that Clay was bonded to her
every move. He was a ghost who couldn’t physically help her if
she got into trouble but she obviously seemed to have ignored
that fact.

While I was still hoping that I was wrong, when we got
to the sign for the lake, I knew for a fact that I was right. The
crow flew out ahead of me, perched on top of the sign, and then
pointed its beak in the direction of the lake itself.
My heart
sank even further when Rachel uttered the words that were
already bouncing through my mind.

“Not if I can help it!” I shouted as we plunged down the
watery path, bobbing up and down as I drove faster than was
advisable even under perfectly dry conditions.

It took forever to get to the end of the road and all the
while, I cringed at how similar this was to what happened last
summer. I was peering into a slightly skewed mirror image of
one of the scariest nights of my life. All I could do was pray that
it ended just as well as that terrifying night at Rosewood did. If
I lost faith now, the situation would truly be hopeless. I had to
stay positive. Somehow.

When I got to the bottom, I saw two things. The first
was a large expanse of water that had pooled at the bottom of
the path—a pool possibly much deeper than it looked. My first
instinct was to drive through it anyway so that I could get to
her faster. But when the crow hovered above it and began to
beat its wings furiously against the surface, I changed my mind.
I threw the car in park and turned to speak to Rachel. That’s
when I saw the second thing. And I panicked like I’d never
panicked before.

The crow shot off to where she stood—her back toward
me and unaware of the danger she was facing.
It let out a
mournful cry and so did I.

“Ruby, look out!” I shouted as I ran toward her as fast as
I could go.
The ground was saturated and my feet slid with
every step. It made what I was seeing seem even more surreal,
more like a terrible nightmare instead of the concrete reality
that it was. Everything unfolded in slow motion except for my
thoughts. After all of those times I’d joked about this moment, I
never truly thought it would come to pass.
But here it was.
Right in front of me.

As I skidded into place between Ruby and certain death,
I knew that I was exactly where I was meant to be. Where I
wanted
to be. There wasn’t time to save both of us—if one of us
had to die, it was going to be me. I watched that bullet glide
toward me without any sense of fear. Its aim was impeccable. I
felt her turn
around and clutch me from
behind, her face
hopefully shielded to the scene playing out before me.

But of all the strange things I’d witnessed since I’d met
her, I hadn’t seen anything yet. For a split second, the bullet
froze in mid-air, wriggled slightly to the left, then plunged into
my chest. I closed my eyes as everything went white.

It all happened so fast—I didn’t know which way to
turn. Clay’s voice came from my left, Zach’s from my right. The
deafening crack of the gunshot came from directly behind me. I
turned around and clutched at Zach’s waist, shielded but still
able to see what was happening. I watched as that bullet sliced
into Clay from behind then squirmed its way out through his
chest. There wasn’t any blood but once it passed completely
through him, he disappeared. A split second later, Zach lurched
under the impact and fell at my feet.

After that, it was
all a
blur.
I could hear Rachel
screaming. I could hear someone else screaming, too.
I would
have given anything to hear Zach shouting, even to see him
writhing in pain—at least I would have known that he was
alive. As it were, he lay face up on the ground unresponsive.

I dropped to my knees, lightheaded and in a daze. The
rain that had been pouring endlessly all day suddenly stopped.
Life and the world itself should have stopped, too.
And yet,
they continued to go on.
I
continued to go on.
I heard the
flapping of wings and watched as a giant bird flew off into the
distance, visible only against the backdrop of the moon over the
water. Its wings barely skimmed the surface of the lake as it
disappeared out of sight. This couldn’t be how our story
ended—could it?

I rocked back and forth unsure of what to do next.
There was so much blood pouring from the left side of his
chest, soaking through his shirt, then running down into the
mud beneath him. I was afraid to touch him, afraid that I might
make things worse.

“I’m afraid I’ll hurt him, Rachel!” I continued rocking in
place,
my
stomach churning
at the thought of making
the
wrong decision. I had felt passively responsible for Lee’s death.
This—was a whole different ball game.
If I made the wrong
move, I feared that I would physically kill him.

I lifted my gaze from him long enough to see that Rachel
had somehow disarmed the shooter and was wrestling him into
the mud. I couldn’t wait for her to help me—she already had
her hands full. I took a deep breath and pressed both of my
hands over the hole in Zach’s chest.

That’s when I felt it—something I hadn’t felt in a long
time. An electric shock shot through me just like it did the day
we met in the diner, as it had several times since. This time, it
was
powerful
and
nearly
knocked me backwards
into the
ground. As I caught my balance, Zach’s chest rose and fell
slowly and he began to groan.

“He’s alive, Rachel! He’s alive! We need to get him to
the hospital!” I screamed as I ripped off my hoodie and pressed
it firmly against the wound.

Rachel skidded over to us, every square inch of her
covered in mud. “Help me get him into the car! I smashed
Jeremy over the head with his own gun. By the time he wakes
up, he’ll be doing it in his jail cell.”

“Jeremy Carmott? Clay’s friend? That’s who shot
Zach?” I asked, not really caring for an answer. Zach had a
bullet lodged in his chest it didn’t matter who put it there.

“Yes,” she replied as she grabbed Zach by the wrists and
dragged him effortlessly through the mud toward the SUV. It
was one of those super adrenaline moments—the kind where
mothers are capable of lifting cars to keep their children from
being crushed to death.
She was calm—much calmer than I
was. If it weren’t for her taking charge of the situation, I would
still be hovering in shock over his lifeless body.

I followed her every
instruction
to the
letter.
We
heaved his limp body into the backseat and I climbed in beside
him. Rachel leapt into the driver’s seat and whipped the
vehicle around in one swift motion.
When we approached the
main road, she began to honk the horn to warn other vehicles
to get out of our way. I sat in the back seat, cradling his head in
my
lap and
keeping
steady pressure over his
chest.
His
breathing was ragged and shallow but at least he was still
breathing.

Time became warped in my head. It felt like seconds
yet it felt like forever before we pulled up to the emergency
entrance of Baker Regional Medical Center. With our horn still
blaring, EMTs rushed out to see what was going on.
Then
immediately grabbed a stretcher when Rachel shouted, “My
brother’s been shot!”

My arms felt empty as they scooped him up and hustled
him away.
My heart felt empty with the knowledge that he
took that bullet for me—just like he’d said that he would
countless times before. I wanted to cry but I was beyond tears.
Rachel parked the car and we rushed into the hospital together.

The receptionist would give us no information.
She
kept repeating that we needed to have a seat in the waiting
area.
Rachel started to threaten Nurse Ratchett with bodily
harm so I stepped in.

Rachel nodded her head in
satisfaction that I
had
thought to pull such powerful strings.
The nurse responded
quietly, “One moment please.” We waited not so patiently
while she made a phone call.
A few seconds later, she hung up
the phone. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. Your father is
scrubbing up for surgery right now. He has a bullet to remove.”

I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or more anxious. I
knew that my dad was the best doctor on staff. I knew that he
got plenty of experience at this kind of thing when we lived in
Trinity. The hospital there saw at least one shooting victim a
week and he once joked that he could remove a bullet with his
eyes closed. But this all felt too much like the night that Lee
died. My father was the attending physician that night, the one
who signed his death certificate.
It felt like the past was
dancing a macabre circle around me, leading me back to the
same exact spot where I’d began.

Nurse Ratchett must have called Shelly because twenty
minutes later, she came rushing into the waiting room.
She
took one look at Rachel and me sitting there dirty, wet, and
frightened and threw her arms around both of us.
They both
began to cry but I sat there like a stone statue. I was afraid to
cry for fear that once I started, I would never stop.

Shelly used the receptionist’s phone to call over to the
diner. In all of the commotion, we forgot that his parents still
didn’t know what had happened. That’s when Rachel also
remembered that we hadn’t called the police to have them
arrest Jeremy.
While we waited for everyone to get there,
Shelly pulled some strings to get Rachel and me a hot shower
and dry clothes.

We emerged in our poorly fitting scrubs to find the
police waiting
for our statement.
With
them
was
a still
unconscious Jeremy, lying on a stretcher in the hallway waiting
to be wheeled in for treatment. It wasn’t something I ever
thought I would do to another human being. In fact, I thought
that it was the most disrespectful thing you could possibly do to
someone.
But as I passed by him, I was overcome with a
sudden urge to spit in his face. So I did. The anger I felt inside
was worse than any I’d ever felt before. Rachel watched me do
it then checked to see if anyone else was watching before doing
the same thing herself.

Thankfully, neither of the officers who responded to the
call were ones I’d dealt with before. They took our statements
with the utmost of professionalism, offering sincere wishes for
Zach’s recovery. The one question they asked that I couldn’t
honestly answer was this—why did Jeremy shoot Zach.
Clay
was the only one who might be able to provide that answer and
he’d been mysteriously MIA ever since that bullet passed
through him, too. For all those times that I wished I could send
Clay into a proper afterlife, he had to go now when I needed
him the most.
No Clay and possibly no Zach.
My heart was
emptier than it had ever been before.

The five of us sat there alternating between nervous
chatter and awkward silence, waiting to hear news from the
ER. Every time I saw someone out of the corner of my eye, I
instantly assumed that it was my dad coming to tell us that
Zach
was
fine.
disappointment.
each time using
Every
time,
I
met
with
heartbreaking

Rachel recounted the story multiple times,
a phrase that grew on my
nerves
at
an
alarming rate. Finally, after about the sixth time I’d heard it, I
snapped.

“Rachel! Stop being so stupid! There’s no such thing as
sounding
like the Holocaust. The Holocaust wasn’t a tangible
object that made noise. It was an era in history, a period in
time where millions of innocent people were slaughtered.
It
was a time of great sorrow—not a sound.”