Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance (34 page)

"Just shoot
him!" said the other, and then he raised his rifle.

Jimmy extended his
hand, and the gun suddenly turned into snowflakes.  The man stood there in a
shooting stance, his hands and arms suddenly covered in snow.  Jimmy extended
his hand again and the man flew through the air, screaming as he went, until he
collided hard with a tree.  Jimmy wiggled his fingers, and the branches of the
tree wrapped around the man, pinning him to the trunk.

Jimmy turned to
face the other man with a shotgun.  He bore a look of absolute terror on his
face.  Jimmy was amused to see that the man had wet himself.

"Jesus,"
the man said.  "Oh, Lord Jesus, save me."

Jimmy shook his
head.  "No."

He extended his
hand and the ground suddenly opened up beneath the man.  He fell, screaming,
and then the hole closed around him, burying him up to the neck in the ground. 
Jimmy waved his hand again and the man's mouth snapped shut.  As his eyes
widened, he soon realized he could not open his mouth again.

"Stay away
from me!" Stan screamed, tears pouring from his eyes.  "Stay away
from me, you freak!"

Jimmy descended
slowly. Stan looked so pathetic there.  Snot ran from the football star's
nose.  His ankle looked shattered.

Jimmy extended his
hand again.  Energy crackled from his fingertips and white light surrounded the
young man's ankle.  The bullet rose from the wound, deformed and smashed from
colliding with the bone, and then the hole closed, the bone re-set.  Stan's
eyes were wide.  He was beginning to talk gibberish, drool now descending from
his mouth.  When the light faded, Stan got to his feet.  As soon as he was on
his feet, he set off running.  Jimmy watched him go and looked up into the dark
sky.

Then, his eyes
still glowing, Jimmy rose into the air over the roof of the house. Once he
reached the top of the roof, he looked down and saw Stan running in a blind,
shrieking panic past three men standing on the front lawn and in the driveway. 
From the air, Jimmy could tell that one of the men standing there was Devlin
Little. 

"What?"
Devlin screamed at Stan.  "What's happening?"

Stan ran right
past, his feet digging into the grass and the gravel on the driveway.  He was
just screaming, letting out a steady noise that rose and fell as he pumped his
legs.  Devlin turned to watch him run, his head cocked at a comical angle.  It
wasn't until one of the other cronies he had brought with him let out a yell
that he turned around and looked up.

"What the
hell?" he said.

Jimmy floated down
from the roof.  He extended his hand again and energy like lightning shot from
his fingertips.  The bright blue beams struck each of the men in the chest,
flinging them across the front lawn and pinning each of them against a tree.

Jimmy landed on
the lawn and the energy grew brighter.  The light grew into the intensity of
the sun, and all three men let out a scream of pure terror.  As they watched,
Jimmy suddenly split in two and Sapphire emerged from within him, becoming
solid, and then standing there beside Jimmy. She had her arms extended, as
well, energy holding all of the men against the tree trunks.

"Leave,"
both Jimmy and Sapphire said at the same time.  "If you return, you will
not leave alive."

"And to
demonstrate," Sapphire said, extending her right hand.

Beneath one of the
squirming men, the air itself seemed to open up.  It was as if the air had
grown a mouth.  The man's eyes looked as if they were about to burst out of his
skull, and his voice cracked from the strain of screaming so loud.  Then,
suddenly, the beam of energy that held the man up vanished and he fell,
dropping through the portal that hovered in mid-air.  As his scream faded, the
mouth beneath him closed.

Jimmy lowered his
arm, and Devlin Little and his final companion fell hard against the grass. 
Both men were making noises that indicated that their very sanity was on the
verge of breaking. They got to their feet and ran, forgetting the shotguns that
lay at their feet. They soon joined Stan in what appeared to be a blind panic
that would take them back to the Little house.

Jimmy and Sapphire
watched them go, the energy around them making their hair stand on end and
lighting the night like a thunderstorm.  When the men rounded the corner, the
energy went off like a light.  Jimmy turned to look at Sapphire.  She turned
and faced him.  They touched hands.

The two of them
turned and walked up the front porch steps.  Jimmy extended his hand and the
door opened on its own.  He hoped that he would see Warren, Tabitha, and George
standing in the doorway in bewilderment.  Instead, when he entered the living
room he found his mother crying and Tabitha yelling into a telephone.  Warren
stood at the back window with his pistols in his hands, his head down.  It took
Jimmy a few minutes to realize that his mother was holding George in her arms.

"George?"
Jimmy said.

Tabitha looked up,
her eyes filled with a mixture of anger, sadness, and fear.  Jimmy's mother
turned to look at him, tears streaming down her face.

Jimmy looked into
George's face.  His head was back at an odd angle, cradled in her arms.  Jimmy
noticed the pool of blood on the floor and then saw that George's shirt was
covered in crimson.  A dark red hole was in the middle of his chest.

"No,"
Jimmy said.

It was then that
Jimmy fainted and collapsed onto the hardwood floor.

Jimmy
was in and out of consciousness for days.  He had flashes of activity around
him.  He had no idea how he ended up in the bed in the room where he had been
staying at Warren and Tabitha's home.  He just knew that he awoke one time and
found Sapphire sitting beside his bed in the darkness.  They smiled at each
other, but then he immediately slipped back into darkness.  When he next awoke
it was daylight, and there was shouting and noise from downstairs.  He was out
again, and when he awoke it was evening and his mother was beside his bed with
a bowl of chicken and rice soup.  He sipped a few spoonfuls and drank some
water, but was too weak to say much.

Finally, he awoke
in his bedroom and it was night time again.  The darkness seemed absolute, and
the house was cold.  He could hear sobbing somewhere in the house and thought
it might have been his mother, but he wasn’t sure.  He looked around the room
and found himself looking at George.

George was sitting
in a chair.  It was the same chair Sapphire had been sitting in on the first
night they had been together in that room.  He was dressed in the same shirt
and pants he had been wearing the other night, and he had the same smile on his
face that he always had whenever he talked to Jimmy.  The only thing that was
different was the hole he had in his chest, and the fact that Jimmy could see
through him.

"So,"
George said, "is this the outcome you had planned?"

Jimmy shook his
head.  He tried to speak, but his voice was little more than a whisper.  He
felt hot tears leaking from his eyes and burning their way down his cheeks.

"I
know," George said. "It's not so bad, by the way.  I get to talk to
Sapphire.  She's nice, but she's not like me or any of the rest of us here. 
You've changed her.  She's dead, but she's not dead.  She's a ghost, but she's
also real.  She straddles two dimensions now.  It's never happened
before."

"And what are
you?" Jimmy asked.

George gave a sad
smile.  "Oh, I'm definitely a ghost.  I am as dead as they come.  And
don't think that I am doomed to walk the Earth or anything.  No, there are ways
to move on over here,
compadre
.  I just wanted to stop by and say
goodbye."

Jimmy felt the
tears spring to his eyes again.  "Can't you stay a while longer?"

George stood up. 
His legs appeared to vanish a couple of inches below the knee.  Jimmy could see
the dresser that was behind him through his torso.  George shook his head.

"There's so
much more to life and to the universe than what we know," he said. 
"I kind of always suspected that, but now that I see it, well, it's even
more amazing than you can imagine.  I have a lot to explore."

George smiled
again.

"I'd shake
your hand," he said, "but I don't think that's possible."

"How is any
of this possible?" Jimmy said.  "How is Sapphire possible?  How can
we do the things we do when we're together?"

George shook his
head.  "You keep asking questions.  Just accept things.  There are more
questions once this life is over, you know.  I don't have any more answers than
I did a few days ago.  The difference is that once you've left your body, you
can go and explore those questions and find the answers. 

"You and
Sapphire have completely changed things.  No one knows why.  I did ask.  It's
hard to ask people questions here given how many still refuse to accept the
fact that they’re dead.  The few that know Sapphire and know what’s happening
were just as confused as you are.  What they do know is that it hasn't happened
before and that they don't know what it means for any of us."

George shrugged.

"That doesn't
help," Jimmy said.

"Well, very
little does," George said.  "Now, I have an entire afterlife to
explore.  You take care.  And when you get over to this side, which I hope is
not too soon, come look me up."

And with that, in
the blink of an eye, George just vanished.  Jimmy put his hands to his face and
wept.  At some point he realized that he probably should have asked George how
he was supposed to look him up in the afterlife.  Then again, maybe it didn't
matter.

Jimmy wept for a
while and then fell asleep.

Hours
later, there was a knock at his door.  Jimmy sat up and told whomever it was
that they could come in.  Tabitha peeked around the corner of the door and then
stepped into the room.  She closed the door behind her and stood there
awkwardly, shifting in place.

"Hi,"
she said.

"Hello,"
Jimmy replied.

"I don't
really know what to say," she said. 

"It's hard
for me to know what to say, either."

Tabitha walked
across the room, passing by the foot of the bed.  She sat down in the chair.

"You
did...things," she said.

"I know,"
Jimmy whispered.

"Just how
powerful is it?"

Jimmy shrugged. 
"Well, think about it.  You met Sapphire.  You know that when she’s here
with me, she's not some ethereal ghost made out of ectoplasm.  She's real.  She
gives off body heat.  She's really here.  Well, that has only happened since
she met me.  And each time we connect, it gets stronger.  At first, we could
only meet up at the bridge.  Then we could connect through telepathy.  Then, a
few days ago, she appeared right here in this room.  And that afternoon we
realized that when we’re together, we can somehow alter reality."

Tabitha
shuddered.  "Alter reality?"

"I don't know
how else to explain it,” Jimmy said. “It's like we can see the world the way it
is behind everything that you see.  It's like being able to see the energy that
everything, every molecule, gives off.  And you can just suddenly reach out and
touch that energy, shape it, change it, and bend it."

"And when you
moved my laptop?"

"I don't
know.  Apparently the power is growing.  Something happened when Sapphire and I
met, and it awakened something in each of us.  And now the power grows all the
time."

"Just how far
do you think it will go?  I mean, being able to change reality is pretty
amazing, Jimmy.  That's power on par with a god.  That's a lot of power to be
housed inside a young man."

"Is this
where you tell me that with great power comes great responsibility?"

Tabitha smiled. 
"Something like that.  Can you imagine what is happening in Knorr right
now?  The word is already getting around about you.  Most people will dismiss
it as nonsense, but everyone will look at you differently."

"I don't know
how far it will go," Jimmy said, deciding to ignore what Tabitha had just
said.  "Maybe once we bring this whole thing to a conclusion with
Sapphire, and she moves on, the connection will be broken and the power will
disappear.  I don't know."

"Have you
thought about what the effects of this might be?"

"What do you
mean?"

"You and
Sapphire are going against the very laws of nature, Jimmy.  When you’re dead,
you're supposed to stay that way.  She comes back to life to be with you and
you alter the fabric of the laws of the universe.  Everything we do is
connected, you know.  What we touch ripples through lives and reality on a
daily basis, like water when you toss in a stone.  What are the ramifications
of you bending reality like this?  Maybe reality doesn't want to be bent, and
when it snaps back, people could end up hurt."

Jimmy nodded and
put his head down.  He studied the patterns of the threads in the blanket on
the bed.