Old Bones: A Collection of Short Stories

by Steve Campbell

  #

  Ghost Lights

  CHARLES DONOHUE FELL. He was on his back and for a moment he thought he was floating. Raindrops hung in the silver air all around him, which seemed weird because rocky cliff sides were rushing past him and upwards. He closed his eyes.

  His sudden plummet into wet and bristly boughs of pine and spruce trees jarred his senses and caused him to open his eyes to his green attackers.

  He tumbled from limb to limb, snapping small branches with his grabbing hands as he searched dizzyingly for one that would stop his fall. But the rain on every branch was like oil. He slipped through them quickly, too heavy to be cradled like the goldfinches that had been there seconds ago, roosting from the rain. As the birds flew noisily off, his left hip made contact with solid ground before his forehead did.

  His landing was bristly, yet softer than he expected. Still, he saw stars and the air had been knocked from his lungs. He rolled over on his back, lying on an almost dry mattress of pine needles, and gasped for air until his lungs and stomach hurt. When his breathing became normal, he closed his eyes and rested. When he opened them, his head, lungs and stomach ached less, and the storm had lessened, though cold rain dripped on him through the towering canopy of pine and spruce branches stretched over him.

  It was the rain that had caused him to slip on the smooth marble stone atop Myers Ridge and fall off the edge. If Melissa had been there he probably wouldn’t have ventured so close to the edge.

  A whooshing sound caught his attention. It was far off, but definitely the sound of an automobile’s rubber tires passing over State Highway 497’s blacktop, or what the locals had named Russell Road.

  How strange, he thought, that a vehicle was able to operate this close to Myers Ridge despite the high level of electronic disturbance he had found. He slowly took out his cell phone from his buttoned-down shirt pocket and prayed that the slim black phone would work. It did not. Of course it didn’t. That was one of the reasons why he, professor of sciences at the nearby Penn State campus, was here: to find whatever was jamming electronic devices on and around Myers Ridge.

  He put away his phone, then turned his head to get his bearings when pain knifed through his lower back and left hip. His left leg was numb and upon slow inspection, looked twisted at the knee and ankle. He took his time and used pine branches to pull himself into a seated position so he could examine his leg. It didn’t feel broken, but the kneecap was out of place. He held his breath and yanked the patella back where it belonged. Pain shot up his leg and a sick heat filled his stomach; he almost vomited. He hiccupped instead and sent pain stabbing through his lower back and down his leg. He fell back, cried out like some wounded animal, and felt ashamed.

  When he could tolerate the pain again, he sat up again. The valley felt colder. Another bout of rain began to fall. It was June and the day had been sunny and warm, but now he wished he would have worn a jacket—or a long-sleeved shirt, at least. Melissa would have reminded him to bring a jacket.

  A spring-like chill latched onto him and attacked his leg with mind-reeling pain. He closed his eyes and waited for the red behind his lids to leave. When the pain subsided and he opened his eyes, lightning blinked in the distance; thunder laughed at him from above.

  It was late in the evening, perhaps eight o’clock. His watch had stopped at the same time his car had stalled upon his arrival that morning. He pulled his legs up until his knees were below his chin, and then he gently worked on his twisted ankle, hoping it wasn’t dislocated. It wasn’t. He straightened his legs and felt the left kneecap lurch out of place again. He undid his pants, lowered them past his knees, and saw that the patella had shifted left again. Once more, he held his breath, forced the kneecap into place again, and screamed from the pain. What else could he do?

  Upon examination, he saw that the skin at his hip had darkened to the brownish-purple color of eggplant. He babied his hip along with his swelling knee and ankle while he hitched up his pants and tried to stand, but the pain roared unbearable in his knee again and brought him down. He searched the ground for a branch long enough to use as a crutch. He found none, so he rolled onto his buttocks, and, using his good leg, he crawled backward toward the highway. Every slide across the ground felt like his lower leg was being torn from the damaged knee.

  An hour later, or as best he estimated—he had crawled and rested six times and daylight was almost gone now—he reached the stream that feeds into Myers Creek north of Ridgewood. He rolled onto his good side and drank. Much of his strength returned as soon as the cold water filled his stomach. A noise in the brush reminded him it was time to move on. He crawled into the stream’s icy water and urinated for what seemed like several minutes. Then he crawled onward. The stream’s stone bottom sliced his elbows, and its chill clawed into his hip and knee and caused his whole leg to scream out in pain. When he climbed the embankment on the other side of the stream, enormous lightning flashed. For a moment, night became day. He saw that he had reached the wooded edge. A sloping field ran uphill. He was certain that the highway was on the other side.

  When he reached the hilltop, he saw that the highway did indeed run along the valley, perhaps two hundred yards away. He looked for houses, a farm, anywhere there might be people. But this part of Ridgewood was desolate. His car, he estimated, was two miles south—a long way to crawl.

  His cell phone still would not work. In his shirt’s other pocket was his digital recorder that he had brought along to take notes. The recorder worked now, which puzzled him. What was so different between the two electronic devices that one worked and the other didn’t?

  “The batteries,” he said “I’ll have to experiment that.”

  As he began to put away the recorder, he saw a column of silver fog settle upon the field between him and the highway. It stood, almost opaque, part of it swirling, sometimes pulsating with dim red light inside and yellow light along its narrow top that at times looked almost like a human head surrounded by a halo. Donohue pressed the record button. He said, “I speak this alone somewhere within the outer bowels of Myers Ridge. Hopefully I will survive the night to get this to publication.

  “Myers Ridge is a large succession of hills outside of the town of Ridgewood. Recently, I became aware of electrical problems here, mainly car engines stalling and cell phones and digital cameras not working. At the same time, I heard reports about mysterious fog formations and red and yellow lights seen at night. My colleagues are, without evidence, claiming that these formations are hallucinations, downright lies, or at best: luminous protean clouds rising from deep within the hill.”

  The fog shifted. Donohue held his breath. When nothing more happened, he said, “Long before Ridgewood was founded, the indigenous people here told tales of a cloud person with three red hearts and a head of gold that visited them after an earthquake.

  “Another quake was recorded in 1702. A European settler, when upon viewing a strange fog in his potato field, killed his wife and two children and stuffed them in the belly of a slaughtered cow.”

  The fog shifted again and stopped. It made no advancement.

  “It’s been centuries since that earthquake and the one we had earlier this year. I believe the fog and the quakes are related somehow. Perhaps the fog was released from underground by the quakes.”

  The fog shifted. Its red lights inside became brighter until Donohue saw that the lights were three distinct pulsating objects.

  “Like living organs,” he said. Then to his recorder: “Daylight is almost gone. I am viewing now, as best as I can, what I believe is one of these cloud creatures.” He stopped. Why had he called it a creature? Why hadn’t he called it a subject?

  “Are those hearts?” His hand holding the recorder trembled. So did his shoulders, sending small wattages of pain through his lower back and leg.

  “A chill is gripping me,” he said. “I need warmth.” He once more tried his cell phone. This time he cursed, his anger directed at the fog.

 
; “You’re the reason no advanced electrical gadget will work. What are you? Speak to me, damn it. WHAT ARE YOU?”

  The fog remained pulsating but otherwise still.

  Donohue shivered and cried out from the pain. He closed his eyes until the excruciation abated. When he looked down the hill, the fog was still there, its red lights pulsating faster, brighter. Around it, for several feet, the grass and ground looked dry. More than that, it looked warm and inviting.

  Donohue shivered and cried out again. The he crawled backward, inching his way to the warmth.

  The fog stood motionless, waiting.

  Donohue crawled to within a few feet from the fog. Its heat felt like summer sunlight on a wintry day. It entered his wet clothes, steamed his back and felt good.

  He inched closer. His hip stopped throbbing. He felt his knee mending. He crawled closer still; he needed more of what the creature was giving him. He crawled to within inches from the fog, did a crabwalk as he turned to face the fog, and looked inside, past the pulsating organs. There, he saw a heavenly place he wanted to be at. And despite what his scientific mind said as he stood and entered, he saw that it was real.