The smile was short lived. Billy’s face became passive as he said, “Time means little to a spirit, so I do not know how long how long I have been present in this world…your world. I do know that I have met other spirits…Clinton, an Indian boy about my age named Kray, a little girl named Gracie, and others who have helped me learn of the spirit world I now inhabit…what I can do…” Billy paused, hanging his head in a posture of extreme sadness, “and what I cannot do.”
He suddenly looked sullen. “I told them all just as I tell you now…I do not wish to be a spirit!” Hanging his head once more, he concluded, “But I remember the battle…I remember my death.”
There was some kind of noise in the distance, a shout and a sharp crack, but it was muffled as though it came from a television in the next room. I stood and approached the boy, but had no idea what to say. Comforting the distressed was not something with which I had much practice.
Billy was fluctuating wildly now. His image blurred and bent, like his reception, or possibly my own, was coming in badly. As I knelt beside the boy there were more strange noises as well. A great commotion was swelling somewhere, and the ruckus somehow seemed both near and far. On one level of my perception, the noise seemed to be outside at some distance. At the same time, however, it sounded much like Billy’s speech, as if its origin might be completely within my head. The result was a slight wave of nausea similar to that I had experienced when I first met this boy, this ghost.
Billy’s image was settling into something resembling solidity, so I reflexively reached out to place one hand on his shoulder. It was meant as a gesture of kindness, but the result was one of pure shock. For a fraction of a second we actually touched. I felt the boy’s solid frame beneath my hand, then something hit me like a blast of cold water. The world around me flashed bright white—bright daylight—and the noise crescendoed to a peak.
When my eyes adjusted to the glare, I found myself outside on a hill surrounded by thick woods. In every direction, men were yelling. They were coming out of the forest armed with rifles, marching in straight lines, wearing heavy military uniforms.
Billy suddenly cowered at my feet and began fading in and out of vision once more. He cried, “No, not this! Not here again!” and in the blink of an eye he disappeared. I looked up from where the boy had been just in time to see the canon. It was aimed straight at me. A soldier in red uniform touched the glowing end of a long stick to the back of the cannon, causing it to roar and disappear behind a violent rush of smoke as it fired.
I doubled over, covering my face and upper body with my arms and hands, much as a boxer would protect himself from the blows of his opponent. I felt the cannonball pass through me, like a stiff breeze blowing through curtains, and then something behind me exploded. I turned to look and experienced horror at the mayhem. Some soldiers were racing toward me, toward the cannons in an earthen fort, screaming a battle cry and pointing the bayonets of their long rifles. Other men, or parts of men, were scattered on the ground, some bleeding, some screaming in pain, others…many others…obviously dead. The cannons continued to roar, the sharp crack of muskets from both sides came so frequently as to make a continuous sound, with the firing of one gun indistinguishable from the next. Fear and revulsion overwhelmed me, and I dropped to my knees as bile rose in my throat and I vomited on the ground. The charging soldiers did not seem to notice me as they ran past, and even through, my collapsed form.
After several minutes frozen by the shock of battle, I was able to look around. In front of me, barely recognizable in the fog and black powder smoke from the guns was the earthen fort surrounded by a tangle of branches from felled trees. I could see soldiers hacking away at the limbs trying to create an avenue for others to attack the fort directly. I could also see the bodies of many soldiers hanging from the limbs in grotesque positions, obviously killed in their direct attack on the structure.
To my left less than fifty yards away was a long trench and earthen wall that protected even more cannons and soldiers firing into the group that was charging the fort. The weapons the men carried, the way they dressed, their attack formations, everything around me was an indication of an era long gone. As my shock diminished, I realized I was witnessing a horrific battle in the American Revolution.
Dozens of rifles suddenly erupted in fire-cracker succession. The men holding those guns were engulfed in the smoke they produced, the mist of battle. I ducked again, and ran. A part of me knew I couldn’t be harmed here—if a cannonball could pass through me, then nothing could kill me. But there was a greater instinct at hand than the confusing knowledge of my immortality.
I tripped and fell. I expected to have muddied palms and work khakis from the trampled earth, but when I brought my hands up to my face they were clean. Men cheered and charged. The soldiers ran past me—more ran through me. I could hear them yelling, though, hear the rattle of their uniforms, the heaviness of their breath. I could smell them, could smell the gunpowder and sweat that clung to their bodies like a cloak. I thought back to my half eaten candy bar and wondered just how low a person’s blood sugar had to be in order to conjure such vivid hallucinations.
I heard the beating of hooves before I saw the beast they carried, then the smoke parted and a huge horse charged through it. The horse stopped a few yards from where I sat, and I recognized its rider from numerous paintings and portraits in equally numerous history books. The deep wave of his hairline, the small, smart mustache, the sharpness of his jaw and chin. I had obviously never met the man, but I would have known Casimir Pulaski anywhere.
“Charge!” the general commanded his cavalry, “Stop for nothing!” he screamed in English above the roar of battle in a heavy accent I assumed to be Polish. His horse bucked and whinnied and galloped again, straight into the bloody battle. I watched the man go, then stood and ran in the opposite direction.
I ducked and hid, dashing from cover to cover, occasionally leaping over a fallen body, avoiding the fray and giving the soldiers around me a wide berth. I still didn’t completely trust or understand the situation so I was taking no chances. Through the trees I could see evidence of a camp, well away from the fighting. There was something reassuring about the tents and smoldering fires there. I imagined, quite hopefully, it would be a quiet, peaceful place to wait out the rest of this nightmare, whatever it was. A battalion was passing nearby, headed into the fight with muskets ready.
From within the group running into the fray I recognized another face. A young man—a boy, really—separated from the battalion and ran at an angle away from the file of men. I called out to him, but the boy didn’t stop. Probably he was too far to hear, and he was running into the battle. I called again, “Billy! Stop!” but the distance between us was only getting wider. Without another glance at the camp, I dismissed my fear and turned to run after him, directly into the fight.
Billy was fast, though, and I wasn’t exactly in my prime. I lost sight of the boy twice, always found him again, and always followed. Finally I caught up to him and settled into a jogging pace at his side as we approached the earthen fort. Billy was filthy; the mud made his entire outfit a uniform brown. He was panting, but there was no exhaustion in his face.
I on the other hand, was wheezing and wondering how long my heart would hold out. “Where are we? What is this?” I asked the boy.
Billy did not answer.
“There’s… a war. I think it’s the Revolutionary War. We have to go back, Billy.”
Billy’s eyes were closed. His lips moved a little. It looked like prayer.
“Billy?”
The boy suddenly screamed a blood-curdling battle cry and bolted from my side, holding his musket high. I shouted his name after him but did not follow. Even if I hadn’t been out of breath, even if there had not been the sharp stab of overexertion in my side, there was still something else that stopped me. It was the mud that covered the boy, and the lack of mud covering myself.
This was not the ghost I knew, but the
boy that lived before him. And with that realization, as though the play was complete, Billy and two men on either side of him exploded into misty, bloody pulp. I called out again, fell to my knees, and covered my eyes, but the image of young man’s death was burned into my mind. It was grapeshot that killed him, an insidious munition like ball bearings fired from cannons, but often improvised with whatever damaging metal could be scavenged. Chain, silverware, buckles—it tore its targets into ribbons and left nothing behind but chunks of meat.
I was overwhelmed with rage, an all-encompassing rage that overcame my empathy, fear, and exhaustion. I grabbed a flintlock pistol from the hand of a fallen officer, stood, swiveled, and pointed it toward the cannons firing in my direction. When I pulled the trigger the weapon revved, humming gently, and the spell around me was broken.
Suddenly I was standing in the dorm room again, holding the motorized snake out like a gun as it whirred and spun. The lights were on. There was screaming all around me, but I quickly realized the shrill cries were coming from me, from Billy, who was sitting on the bed once more, and from a third voice I did not recognize. All three voices stopped at roughly the same time.
The third voice was that of a young man who was standing in the doorway. He said, “What are you doing?”
I pointed the drill at him. “Huh?”
The young man put his hands up. He was heavyset and sloppily dressed. There was a smudge of paint on his cheek. “This is my room, man. What are you doing in it?”
I looked back to the bed. Billy was gone. The battle was gone as well, but the smell of gunpowder, sweat, and blood lingered. In the distance, I thought I could still hear gunfire, too. I lowered the drill to my side and pointed with the other hand to a badge clipped to my shirt pocket. “Maintenance,” I said. “Plumbing.”
“What’s wrong with the plumbing?”
I answered firmly, “Nothing,” then after a short pause, “just a routine check.” As I pushed past the kid into the hallway I added, “Good pipes. Keep it up.” The kid said something I didn’t catch because I was already running toward my truck while dragging six feet of motorized snake behind me. I didn’t want to run, didn’t want to appear distressed, but I needed to leave and needed to do it now, so my feet and legs complied. I stopped though, and almost fell again when a whisper in my head said, “I’m sorry.” A glance in all directions told me the hallway was empty. I put the whisper out of my mind and quickened my pace toward the truck.
Outside the dormitory night had fallen. There was the regular bustle in the building’s courtyard, but a small figure in the far corner caught held my attention. When I climbed into my truck the same figure appeared in the rearview mirror. It appeared once more when the engine coughed to a start and I flipped the headlights on. Always in shadow, always just outside of the light, the boy held up one hand as I peered in his direction. The truck’s radio hissed to life, and just beneath the static I heard a single pleading word.
“Please.”
I threw the truck into gear and sped away. Panic had taken over and the adrenalin coursing through my body was making my heart race almost as fast as my truck as I passed a SCAD security guard who was walking toward the dormitory. He stopped and whirled around, shouting something unintelligible to me as I blasted past him. I wasn’t thinking particularly clearly, but the tiny amount of wits I still held about me made me realize I should slow down before gun-toting members of the Chatham County Police shot my tires out. I was speeding on Turner Street, only fifty yards or so before the intersection with Martin Luther King Blvd. when I slammed on the brakes and pulled over next to the SCAD Museum of Art.
I sat completely still, holding my right hand on the center of my chest in an effort to keep my racing heart contained within the rib cage. A quick glance into the rearview mirror provided at least a little relief, as the security guard I had passed was continuing his walk toward the dormitory rather than coming after me. Perhaps five minutes passed before my heart slowed to a normal rhythm. I was about to put the truck back into gear and force myself to drive slowly home when a glance out the passenger side window revealed the boy ghost standing outside the truck and peering intently at me. Once more he said, “Please,” in such a pleading tone that I lowered my head and shook it slowly as I answered, “Okay, get in the truck.”
The ghost didn’t seem to move, and certainly didn’t open the door, but suddenly was there, sitting beside me. With an apparent lack of concern regarding what had transpired only minutes before, he moved his hands about on the dash of my truck and reached out in a motion to touch the steering wheel, even though we both knew he could not grasp the solid wheel. Finally he asked with boyish interest, “What is this contrivance? It moves quicker that a bird in flight. How does that happen?”
I started to become angry at what I interpreted as a flippant question, but calmed after only a moment’s thought. It was becoming obvious that my new acquaintance’s story was a tragic one. A boy soldier in the Revolutionary War, a friend of General Casimir Pulaski, killed at fourteen years of age and forced back into the world over two and a quarter centuries later for some reason I could not divine. Rather than answer his question I asked, “Billy, do you have any idea why you are here…in this time…in this place?”
I don’t know exactly the moment it happened, but in the few minutes I had known him I was beginning to think of this apparition more as a tragic child in need of help than as an escapee from the spirit world. Ghosts were always presented as something to be feared, as malevolent forces intent on harming those of us who resided in the world of actual substance, where one could always count on the touch of another human being, or the feel of gravel crunching beneath truck tires, or stopped up plumbing in a college dorm. This particular spirit didn’t seem to fit the stereotypical bill of an other-worldly monster intent on mayhem and destruction.
Billy pointedly reminded me of his ghostly nature by undergoing an extended and exaggerated session of fading in and out of focus and opacity. I was beginning to think of this action as a presentation of the spirit’s thought process… thinking, remembering, deciding, and so on. After a few minutes Billy settled into his usual appearance. He took in a breath, or whatever translates into that function in the spirit world, and emitted what could only be described as an extended and sad sigh.
Finally he spoke. “Yes, I know why I am here.” He was silent for a full minute before beginning to explain, “The battle happened here…on this very hill.” He motioned all around us. “Spring Hill, we called it. It is a very long and complicated story. Perhaps I shall tell it to you sometime, but for now I should explain only enough to tell you why I am here.” He thought for a moment, projecting only a faint variation in focus. “It is likely I will need your assistance, if you are kind enough to provide it, but first you should understand the ‘why’ of the situation.
“The British were entrenched around the entire city, with more than a dozen redoubts commanding all approaches. I was with the Carolina Militia, but was attached to the Continental Army. Our plan was a siege of the city, but after about a month our troop movements were not gaining any advantage and it was our supplies that were running low, not those of the British. The French general D’Estaing decided we should attack the British line at the Spring Hill redoubt. We attacked across open ground into the face of their muskets and their cannon, which were charged with grape shot.” Billy paused and seemed to shudder as he remembered the charge, but soon continued. “Those around me were falling under the fire, but I and a few others blindly continued the charge through the fog and the smoke from cannons and muskets. A cannon fired directly in front of me, not fifty steps distant, discharging a dark cloud of black powder smoke and grape shot, and I was suddenly dead. Somehow I knew that I had taken a piece of grape directly in the face and my head was shattered into many unrecognizable pieces. The rest of my body was riddled as well, but it is my shattered skull that brings me here now.”
I suddenly realized that it was f
ull dark outside, and that my family would be worried about me. I stood and, reaching into a pocket for my cell phone, said, “Billy, I’m fascinated by your story, but I need to make a quick call.” As I pulled the cell phone from my pocket and pressed the first button, making the screen light up, my ghostly friend recoiled and became very faint. A manifestation of ghostly fear, I wondered?
“A weapon?” he asked in a quiet that reverberating tone that sounded as if he was speaking from the end of a long tunnel.
“No, Billy,” I answered quickly. “It’s not a weapon. I don’t intend to harm you. It’s called a telephone.” Holding the instrument out in his direction made him recoil even further and become practically invisible. I hit the ‘OFF’ button, extinguishing the light, and saw an immediate increase in the focus and opacity of the spirit. “My family is expecting me home, and will worry if I don’t talk with them. This instrument allows me to speak to them across town.”
Billy reached out with a hand to touch the cell phone, even though he could not feel worldly objects with his fingers, or at least that is what I thought. “You speak into this small box and your voice carries to distant places?” he asked in a tone that bespoke skepticism.
Ghosts of the Siege Page 2
