“Not to mention with our heads on a platter, so to speak.” Bernard turned, folded his arms, and leaned against the other man’s desk. “Alright, I see your logic. Still, what are we to do with him, and what of the rest of the men he was with? Whatever happened frightened this fellow enough for him to return here at lightning speed.” He licked his teeth, as he stared at the growing problem on the floor.
“You worry too much.” Whitehall’s countenance broke into an unpleasant smile. “I’ll send someone to check on the rest of the men and see to the state of things – the best man for the job actually.”
“Oh, and who is that?”
“That would be you, Welly.”
Bernard straightened, feeling his cheeks flush both in anger and fear. “Me? What in God’s name am I supposed to do? Those ruffians will expect someone to compensate them, or Heaven forbid, there won’t be anything left of them. What if the creature that attacked them is still there? What then?”
Whitehall smirked. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
And with that said, he rubbed the cold revolver against Bernard’s shaking hand.
Chapter VII
Jim Shaw wasn’t afraid of anything. He’d never backed down from a challenge, nor had he ever met a foe he couldn’t handle or a situation for which he couldn’t find a solution. It was this very trait that had helped him survive an abusive father, an absent mother, and the occasional Chicago riot.
Truth be told, it was those early years that had driven him to believe there was no such thing as a God or, for that matter, spirits. But, as he sat hunched against the gnarled roots of a twisted pine, nursing a bullet wound in his shoulder, he came to the difficult realization that he’d been dead wrong about everything.
Looking around at what remained of the campground, he couldn’t bring himself to believe what had happened, and yet, all the evidence lay before him.
The entity, whatever it was, had opened its black maw to produce a shriek the likes of which Shaw had never heard before and prayed he would never hear again.
In blind panic, the men had failed to notice that the spirit had dissipated nearly as quickly as it had appeared. Consequently, they had run and shot in all directions with Shaw and Pendleton standing in their way.
Being the only man in the group who had ever actually trained for combat, Shaw had reacted quickly, pulling Pendleton to the ground and calling for a cease-fire, but the only thing the others had heard were the deafening sounds of their own panic and the roar of firearms.
When all was said and done, half of the men had gone missing, three were dead from friendly fire, Cook had stumbled into the campfire and set his pants aflame, and Shaw sat with a bullet wound in his shoulder from one of his own men’s pistols.
Pendleton and the only two men, who had not lost their minds and still remained, were now tending to the dead and injured. Shocked, Shaw remained where he had fallen.
Bullets he could handle, dead men he could handle, but ghosts? This was both new and uncomfortable territory for him.
“I expect you’ll live.” Pendleton tossed a clean rag in the wounded man’s lap, brushed his gnarled hands together, and sat down on the log where he’d been seated before this holocaust began. The bowl of stew he’d been offered now lay in a puddle on the ground.
“What the hell is going on?” Shaw hissed, as he pressed the linen to where the bullet had gone through, missing the bone, thankful for any bit of luck he could find at the moment. “That thing… What was that thing?”
“I told you,” the older man reminded him. “Ghosts. Well, ghost, I should say. There may only be one, but there could be more.”
Pendleton gazed at the forest expanse where the spirit had appeared and later vanished, relieved that the chill he now felt was only the predawn air.
“You knew about this the whole time, and yet, you never said anything until now.” Shaw gritted his teeth.
Anger filled him, but not at Pendleton. He knew this was as much his fault as anyone’s, for taking a job that paid more than it was worth. He’d known something was up, but he would never have thought it was ghosts.
“Would you have believed me?” Pendleton snorted. “I can see it now. ‘Hello, sir, I’d like to join your crew. Oh, by the way, the forest is haunted.’ That would’ve gone over well.”
As much as Shaw hated to admit it, the old man had a point. If their supposed guide had said anything about ghosts at the outset, he would’ve thrown him off the grounds for being a liability.
“Not that it did us any good having you around,” Jim pointed out. “You could’ve at least warned me there was something dangerous out here.”
“I did warn you, and I told you guns would do you no good. Besides, all this chaos was panic’s doing, not the spirit’s. She was here to warn us, that’s all.”
“She was here to warn us?” Shaw straightened, despite the pain in his shoulder. “About what? The hazards of forest fires?” He motioned to the three bodies that lay in a row at the edge of camp. “That’s one hell of a warning!”
“Wasn’t her doing! Take a closer look at the bullet holes in those corpses, Jim, and I’d wager the one you’re plugging up now wasn’t put there by the spirit either.”
“Are you defending that thing?” Shaw fought to keep his voice lowered. “What’s your angle old man? You said you owned something in the mansion. Do you know who these spirit things are?”
“Were,” Pendleton reminded him. “No, not really. Probably, they’re the disappeared ones that used to live in Bower Manor. I’ve only ever seen the girl, but I’ve heard others. She always appears when I approach a new area of the forest, just the once. If you ask me, I’d say she was warning us about something deeper in.”
“Like her family?” Shaw couldn’t believe he was having this conversation, sitting in a forest that was colder than a witches broom handle with a rag in his shoulder, three dead men, six others missing, and one crazy, old sailor who talked to ghosts.
“Seems like you’ve gone mad, don’t it? Either that, or you’re having the worst Christmas week in history.” Pendleton chuckled.
For a moment, Jim was furious that anyone could find the situation funny. Stress and blood loss lend themselves to bad judgment, though, and he soon found himself giving a half-laugh as well. It was short lived.
“Somebody’s coming!” Cook pointed uphill from where he lay, his legs wrapped in makeshift bandages.
And, as Jim looked to where he was pointing, snow began falling heavily through the trees.
Chapter VIII
“Who comes there?” Jim called, pistol at the ready.
Human nature wanted him to believe it was another spirit. Training won out, though, and he realized that anyone who made footprints in the snow was most likely a man. Still, of all God’s creatures, men could be the most dangerous.
“It’s me, sir, Thomas!”
Pendleton and Shaw shared a surprised glance, but Jim put his gun away anyhow. He knew Thomas as the old balding butler from Whitehall’s estate, but what could he possibly be doing out here?”
“Thomas, it isn’t safe.” Jim hurried forward to greet the man, but saw from Thomas’s pale face and winded breathing that he was not here for simple reasons.
“Perhaps you should sit down.” Shaw gestured towards a log. “Did you walk here?”
“Not entirely, sir. I had a steed, but he got stuck in a thicket about a quarter mile back. I decided to walk as quickly as possible the rest of the way. Frankly, I’m a little surprised to find you this close to the house. You must’ve gone in a circle.”
Jim was impressed with the older man, who was certainly in better shape than he appeared to be at first glance.
“Alright, I assume whatever’s brought you is important then.” Jim motioned to the chaos behind him. “As you can see, we’ve had a bit of a setback.”
“Indeed, we’ve heard. One of your men came to the estate in a rather brash manner. He burst into the master
’s study before I could stop him, but I never thought he would kill him for it!” Thomas wheezed and leaned against a tree for support.
“Kill who? What are you saying?”
“Whitehall, sir, he’s gone mad!” The butler’s eyes widened. “I always knew he was a little mad, but he shot your man! I listened at the door, as I sometimes do, and he said there was a treasure hidden in the Manor that he didn’t want anyone else to know about. That was after he’d shot the poor man in the head.”
“That double-crossing snake!” Jim’s hand formed into a fist. “I knew there was something wrong with this job the whole time. I thought it was the ghost thing, but it’s nothing more than getting his greedy paws on more money.”
Jim ground his teeth together. This job was getting worse all the time. “Listen, I appreciate your coming out here and telling me all this, but it’s nothing I wouldn’t have found out.”
Thomas raised a hand to cut him off, “Forgive me, sir, but you don’t understand. I daresay, if you find the old place, Whitehall is likely to do to the rest of you what he did to your other man. I overheard Mr. Wellington discussing it with him, and apparently, none of this has been above board. I doubt he will want witnesses running about, if you catch my meaning.”
“Alright then, that’s it,” Jim decided. “We’ll get out of here before noon. Whitehall and I will have to settle up another day.”
“I’m afraid not, sir.” The butler straightened. “He’s sent Wellington after you, and he should be here any minute.”
“What?” Shaw hadn’t thought things couldn’t get any worse. “You might’ve led with that, Tom. Is he coming to stop us or to help us?”
“I can’t say, sir. All I know is that Wellington is on horseback, and he has a pistol. Whether he’s coming to assess if you’re dead or to finish you off is not something I’d care to know.”
“It’s definitely on my list of priorities.” Jim turned, placing two fingers in his mouth and giving a sharp whistle. His team, some of whom had stumbled back from where they’d run off to initially, gave him their attention. “Alright, men, pack it up. We’re leaving now.”
“Wait just a minute there, lad.” Pendleton piped up, stepping closer. “We can’t just leave.”
“We sure as hell can.” Jim tore a long strip of cloth from his shirt and created a sling. “If you haven’t noticed, we’re in no shape to look for your lost mansion, and as far as I’m concerned, that weasel Whitehall and his pal Wellington can come out here and fight the spirits themselves, if they want to.”
“I know this is difficult for you to understand, but what’s in that mansion is the last thing on earth that I own,” Pendleton replied. “It can’t be proven, not yet, but it will be. I have to find the blasted thing first, and to do that…” The older man paused.
His fortune was lost. All he had left were the clothes on his back. Still, he found it difficult to ask anyone for help “To do that I need this equipment.”
“Pendleton, you can have every shovel, saw, and rope that you can carry as far as I’m concerned, but the welfare of my men comes first,” Shaw said. “This project has been a disaster from the start.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean? Spit it out!”
Despite the fact that he knew his arthritic hands and liquor-stained liver couldn’t handle excavation work, Pendleton still found the words stuck in his throat.
“Pardon me, sirs, but I must be leaving,” Thomas interjected. “If Wellington sees me here, or if Whitehall suspects that I am gone too long, I fear what might happen to me.”
“Sure thing, Tom.” Jim extended his good arm to shake the man’s hand. “Thanks for the warning. It should go without saying, but don’t mention that we know about the murder. If I do get out of this forest alive, Whitehall and I will have a face-to-face talk about it real soon.”
Thomas shook the younger man’s hand curtly, before turning and walking briskly back the way he had come.
Jim looked at Pendleton before brushing past him to hurry the others along, “Leave everything you don’t need. The equipment, the packs, whatever isn’t essential to survival stays.”
“No, wait,” Pendleton pleaded. “There’s a cave carved into the hillside a little south of here. It’s on the way to where the mansion should be, and it’s protected on three sides. There’s a small stream for fresh water as well. If I take you there, will you help me find Bower Manor?”
“Pendleton, I’ve been shot.” Jim was running out of patience. “Three of my men are dead, and all the rest are scared to death. Cook has second-degree burns. If this was just about an illegal project on government property or a greedy lying rat, I could handle that, but this excursion has gone way beyond worst-case scenario. What exactly will that cave do against ghosts?”
“I told you, the ghosts haven’t hurt anybody,” the older man pointed out. “What happened here was a lack of self-control, nothing more. The most dangerous things in these woods are your men.”
Jim huffed. Despite the pain in his shoulder, he knew it was a superficial wound, a lucky graze.
Still, his men would be hard pressed to carry on further into the woods after this fiasco. Whitehall was no longer in charge of the expedition as far as he was concerned, but did that make it right to quit the job, if the scoundrel was attempting to steal from the old sailor?
“Alright, listen to me.” He pulled Pendleton away from the others and lowered his voice. “I understand what you’re asking, and I get it. The trouble is, I can’t work a shovel with this arm, which means I need my men to stay on, and the only way that’s going to happen is if there’s a lot of coin involved. Can you guarantee that? Even then, only one or two may be willing to stay.”
“If it will convince them to go with us then, yes, I’ll guarantee that,” Pendleton pledged, “but only so far as what I know. The spirits have never harmed anyone, and the contents of the mansion itself are worth a fortune, not to mention what I’m after. If we find it first, you have my word you’ll be compensated.
“As for safety.” He eyed the frantic movements of the survivors. “If your men let you hold the guns from now on, they’ll probably be as safe as can be.”
“Hmph. I suppose I could agree to that.” Jim wondered how things might’ve turned out, if he had restricted arms from the others before now. “My shooting arm is as good as it ever was.”
“Well, say whatever else you’re going to say.” Pendleton persevered. “Get a move on. If what Thomas said is true, we may have Wellington to deal with at any moment.”
Jim snorted, “That scarecrow of a man? I’m more afraid of the horse he’ll be riding. All the same I suppose we shouldn’t give him a chance to sneak up on us in this state.”
Pendleton breathed a sigh of relief, as Jim whistled for their attention once more and proposed the new plan. Despite the night’s events, they would press on, and he would find his long lost property at last.
As the younger man spoke in reassuring tones, though, Carver couldn’t help but feel a nagging worry tug at his mind. For all his guarantees, there was still the matter of what lay beyond the southern edge of their camp.
The men were preoccupied with the ghost herself, but he was more concerned with why she was here. If he was right and her screams were a warning of sorts, then what exactly was she warning them about?
Silently, he prayed that they wouldn’t find out. At least, not before they had reached Pendleton’s cave.
Chapter IX
“I can’t believe I’m out here.” Bernard muttered to himself, and his mount snorted as they picked their way through the forest.
After being coerced into checking on the ground crew, Bernard knew he’d never make it to their location on foot, especially since the new snow would hinder tracking. Thus, Whitehall had agreed to lend him one of his hunting horses, a bay mare named Alice.
Despite his delicate visage, Bernard had a hidden talent for such things, having grow
n up hunting in the west hills with his father and brothers. Experiences that now seemed like a lifetime ago, but they had left him with skills he’d never thought he would need, such as tracking prey in a forest on horseback.
Except for the soft crunch of horse hooves on frost-touched, fallen leaves, the forest was silent. Even the pleasant chirp of winter cardinals was missing.
It was as if he were riding through a graveyard without the headstones, and as the thought entered his mind, the wind swept through the treetops, spilling a dusting of snow down his collar that caused him to yelp.
Startled, Alice promptly bolted, weaving around the trees in desperation.
Managing to hang on through the first two turns, a third along with a low branch proved to be too much for him, and before he knew it, Bernard had somersaulted backwards off his saddle and come to rest in the muddy snow.
The mare either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and he looked up in time to watch her back end disappear into the closely packed trees.
“Brilliant! Just fantastic! I don’t believe this, I’ll never catch up to them at this rate!” Bernard stood, shaking snow from his jacket and wiping mud off his face as best he could. “This is ridiculous. Whitehall should’ve had a backup plan prepared other than me.”
Now he had a choice to make. Either he could continue tracking the crew on foot, or he could turn back and hope to return to the estate before sundown.
His feet decided for him, quickly turning back the way he’d come, but before he had taken three steps he froze dead in his tracks.
There, on the ground in front of him, were three lumps all in a row. Covered in snow, they were suspiciously similar to the size and shape of a human body.
“Dear, God… What…?” Bernard looked around and realized that, in his absent-minded thoughts of how dreary this place was, he had completely missed what was the crew’s most recent campground.
To be fair, the men had chosen a clearing in the woods, and thus the campground had been covered in a thicker blanket of snow than the rest of the forest ground. Still, now that he knew where he was, he noticed details, such as the fact that no one was here. At least, no one alive.
The Ghost of Christmas Present and Other Stories Page 3
