A Haunting Love
Ruby is a young but well-known psychic who lives with three of her friends. Together the four of them run a business for customers with paranormal issues and offer services including ghost removal, exorcism, house blessing and determining if a building is haunted. Ruby remembers little of her past. About 6 years ago she was in a terrible car wreck and woke up in a hospital with no memory. She knows nothing of her family, her past life, or even her name. The name Ruby was given to her by a friend in reference to her hair color.
In the past couple of years, Ruby and her friends have built a great company. Even though she remembers little of her past, Ruby has an unmistakable talent for sensing things and in a short time has become popular among the psychic community. She has been invited to be on TV shows, have her own phone line and various other offers--but Ruby continues to offer her talents only to customers who are in need.
For the last couple of weeks, Ruby has been having visions of a mysterious man. She can only ever see him from behind and from the waist up. He is always opening a car door. Unsure of what it means, Ruby writes it down in her notebook in case it ever comes up with a client.
Although she lives with her friends in a fast-paced, happy home, Ruby still finds herself often missing something and feeling depressed. On an especially depressing night, Ruby and her friends get a call for their business. A middle-aged couple and their young son have been having issues for the past 2 weeks with strange occurrences at the house that they just moved into. Although she is feeling down, Ruby agrees to go with her friends and investigate the house tonight as they are having especially bad problems with whatever is causing the occurrences.
When Ruby and her friends arrive, it is one of the worst hauntings they have ever seen. The atmosphere is especially dark and painful around the entire house. As Ruby walks in she is struck by pain and loneliness in her heart. She can't help but start to cry as the paranormal team helps her to a chair to sit down.
Ruby sees the vision of the man opening the car door again as she sits at the table. This time when she sees it, her heart aches. She whispers that there is something about this specific night, August 27, and that it is causing her to hurt inside. The team suggests that they should perhaps put off the investigation, but Ruby refuses and tells them that she wishes to press on. The team reluctantly agrees and asks the family to leave for a week so they can clear the house.
Once the family is gone, Ruby and her friends prepare the table for a séance and begin. Within minutes of asking the ghost to appear, Ruby begins to shake uncontrollably and become out of control. The team closes the circle and ends the séance, but Ruby angrily tells them to press on, eager to find out what is going on. As the team tries again, Ruby sees flashes of the man opening a door and hears the sounds of screeching tires and screaming. She faints and her friends quickly close the investigation, rushing Ruby to the hospital where she is in a coma for 2 days.
When she awakes, Ruby is frantic and demands to be released. After another day of testing the hospital declares her stable and lets her go. While she is released to wait outside and her friends are called to pick her up, Ruby leaves and makes her way to the public library instead. Once there, Ruby begins looking at housing records, looking for the past owners of the house which the team tried to investigate. She finally founds a record dating back 5 years ago to a Mr. and Mrs. Hardy. Merely reading the name causes a slight pang of hurt in her soul.
Ruby continues researching and looks at past newspapers and sales records trying to find an article that may explain why they had moved. She finally finds a newspaper that is 6-years old. It mentions a David Hardy who was found dead at the scene of an accident. Ruby inexplicably feels shocked and writes down the information before leaving the library.
Without alerting her friends, Ruby makes her way back to the Hardy home. Once inside, the home feels emptier and she almost feels at ease. The longing and painful feeling soon returns though. Ruby finds some of her materials on the floor from the other night, lays a blanket on the ground and lights a candle. She sits down and bows her head, calling into the darkness for the spirit who is haunting the house to come forward to her. The pain grows stronger inside her still and she calls again, demanding the spirit comes to her.
A warmth envelopes Ruby and she opens her eye, seeing before her a ghostly apparition of the man she has been having visions of. She asks his name and he replies that he is known as David Hardy. Ruby asks him why he has been haunting the house and the ghost replies that he can't pass on without his love. Ruby tells him that his love is probably long gone and she reaches to him in a gesture to comfort him. As her hand passes through his form, memories begin rushing back to Ruby in waves and she is hit by strong feelings of pain and fear and sorrow. Her eyes open in shock as she remembers what happened.
Six years ago, David Hardy was on his way to pick up his lover at her home. They were renting a secluded mountain house for a weekend getaway and unbeknownst to her, he was preparing to propose. As they were traveling through the mountain paths to arrive at the cabin, a deer leaped in front of their car and David swerved. The car ran off the road and down the side of the mountain, and things went black. When she awoke she found David breathless and covered in blood. She frantically called 911 and tried to help him, but he was already gone. As she tried to wake him, she noticed the box that had fallen out of his shirt pocket--a ring box with a small diamond inside. Overcome with pain and exhausted from trying to help him, she lost consciousness again. Her would-be fiancé, David Hardy, was gone.
Ruby begins to cry as she stares at the ghost, the memories running through her mind. The ghost tells her 'don't cry, Sarah' and says he had been waiting for a long time to see her just once more. He tells her that he had come looking for her and that when she wasn't there he was miserable. His parents finally moved a year later, unable to deal with the pain and the sorrow he was causing inside the house. Ruby whispers to him that Sarah missed him terribly and that she had been a lacking a part of her for a long time. Ruby tells him that it is his time to move on, that he has seen her and that he deserves to find peace for himself. David tells her thank you and slowly leaves as the house becomes peaceful.
After meeting David and rediscovering her past, the depression and pain Ruby felt is gone. She is able to communicate with him now and then, but the greatest peace she has found is being able to help him move on.
Chapter Summaries
Chapter 1: Ruby is introduced and thinks about her experiences and new found fame and friends.
Chapter 2: Ruby and her friends get a call about a house and leave to investigate. Ruby finds herself in a dangerous situation. She ends up hospitalized and the investigation is closed.
Chapter 3: Once she gets out of the hospital, Ruby begins to research to find out what happened within the house.
Chapter 4: Ruby finds out the truth about the house and returns to do an investigation by herself where she meets a ghost.
Chapter 5: Ruby finds out the truth about her past, the ghost, and the haunting at the Hardy house.
Chapter 6: Describe present-day life for Ruby and how she is happy that David has moved on and is finally free of his pain.
Characters
Ruby/channeling Sarah's memories
Age: 27, psychic.: bright red hair, green eyes.
David Hardy
Dead, ghost. Previously had dark brown hair and blue eyes.