Paranormal After Dark: 20 Paranormal Tales of Demons, Shifters, Werewolves, Vampires, Fae, Witches, Magics, Ghosts and More

by Rebecca Hamilton

  Even General Sheridan seemed to harbor an intense loathing for the Ferry, mostly due in part to the raids run by John Mobley. Somehow, Sheridan had the understanding that Mobley was one of them, that he was just another displaced citizen. Truth be told, Adelaide had never seen the partisan bastard before, although, someone said he had been in town during John Brown’s Raid to shoot at the old man. She didn’t remember him. But then, her memory of those early years of the war were only of her and her relationship with Thomas Cooper.

  With all the reports of guerilla attacks, General Stevenson, the new commander of the Ferry, established a stricter code of conduct and routinely searched homes for Mobley and his raiders.

  There were bounties placed on the heads of both Mobley, Mosby, and their respective marauders. Secretly, even Adelaide would have turned them in for the one thousand dollar reward. Apparently she was the only one, for the only man arrested was a murderer named “French Bill.” They hung him up on Bolivar Heights, but from what Joseph Barry confided to her, it was the most brutal hanging he had ever seen. He felt the Union Army had had been barbaric and tortured the poor man to death.

  And when she sent his soul to the other side, his spirit’s head was so brutally torn to one side, he could barely fumble his way to her. She almost pitied the creature.

  By late March, Levi had found his repairs of the lower floor satisfactory and set about fixing odds and ends on the upper floors. He refused his sisters’ offers to help, insisting he could handle it himself since he was now a man, and spent most of the daylight hours puttering around upstairs. He had grown into such a quiet and serious young man, content to spend his days alone. Adelaide knew part of it was shame: shame at being too young to fight and not old enough to take care of his sisters.

  He thumped down the stairs and set his hammer on the windowsill. “I’m going to need more nails.”

  Adelaide held a mug of lemonade in front of him. “You’ll get a fair price at Mr. Parmenter’s store. Do you want some pork first?”

  He nodded and took a seat at the table. “Sure, thanks.”

  Sometimes the deepness of his voice startled her; reminding her too much of Robert and, in a way, of their father. “Did you get much work done on the room?”

  “Yes.” He gulped down some lemonade and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I replaced that whole windowsill in the bedroom finally. It looks a lot better now, I think, but what I really want to do is fix that far wall.”

  “Maybe Mr. MacGrogan could help you.” Adelaide suggested, cutting a slice of bread from a warm loaf. She placed it on the plate with the pork and a generous helping of fried potatoes.

  “Maybe.”

  “Addy, can you get this knot out for me?” Lizzie tiptoed her way into the backroom. Adelaide didn’t know why her sister insisted on only walking on the tips of her toes, but it was a trend that was starting to irritate both her and Sarah.

  They had taught her to sew early on and now Lizzie was old enough to help with the mending. She just hadn’t quite gotten the hang of keeping an eye on her thread, so it had a nasty habit of tangling up on her. Adelaide pulled a straight pin from her apron and carefully worked at the knot. “Are you helping Sarah out there if she needs it?”

  “She doesn’t need it.”

  From the table, Levi snickered. Adelaide eyed her youngest sister closely. “But if she asked for help, you’d do so?”

  “Well, yes.” Lizzie sighed haughtily. “I’m not a child.”

  Adelaide resisted the urge to smile. Five-years-old and Lizzie was already set to take on Sheridan himself.

  “Addy!” Sarah rushed into the backroom and motioned wildly towards the front of the store. “Mr. Barry says they’ve got Mobley!”

  Adelaide dropped Lizzie’s sewing down on the table. She grabbed her cloak from the chair and threw it over her shoulders, clasping it at her throat as she ran behind Levi through the store. They pushed through the doors into the crisp, cold air just in time, as a group of soldiers were parading a corpse on horseback down Shenandoah Street. From where she stood, she could see the blood caked in his brown locks; the rivers of red having flowed down from gaping bullet holes in his skull.

  They followed the macabre spectacle down Shenandoah Street, pushing through the growing crowd of people to get a better look at Mobley. A few soldiers pulled the corpse off the horse, dragging it to the corner of High Street and Shenandoah Street. Someone brought out a chair and placed it out Stevenson’s office, propping Mobley’s corpse up as if he were sitting and waiting for his turn with the commander. The gathered crowd of citizens and soldiers cheered.

  The great John Mobley, the devil of Jefferson County, was a plain, ordinary looking man. He looked to be around Adelaide’s age. His eyes were still open, white orbs against his bloodstained face. It was hard to believe the man, helpless in death, was the murderous scoundrel who had tormented and taunted them for so long.

  Townspeople and soldiers alike immediately set about cutting pieces of Mobley’s uniform for souvenirs. Levi was through the crowd and back in a matter of moments, proudly displaying a tarnished, blood spattered button. He had ably snatched as it was knocked to the ground and bounced towards him, nearly having his hand crushed under another relic hunter’s boot. Adelaide shook her head and turned back to the store. The spectacle of death, regardless of the corpse’s identity, did little to impress her.

  Long after night fell, Adelaide huddled against the ruins of Roeder’s Confectionary, a bundle of sage smoking in her left hand and her watch clasped in her right. It could be tonight. It could be days from now—no matter how long she had to wait, she would. She and Sarah were the only two left.

  Sure enough, though, in the last hours before dawn something crawled out from the corpse. She watched it lurch forward, gaining its bearings. Testing out its strength.

  She stood, holding the sage in front of her. It hadn’t seen her yet. “You’re not John Mobley anymore. You’re dead. You need to cross over into the next life—be it Heaven or Hell, your soul must pass on from this world.”

  The head turned.

  And then it was in front of her, speed and agility like nothing she’d ever seen. It tore at her. The mouth snapped and it staggered, clawing at her face.

  She stumbled backwards, slamming against the glass window of the jeweler’s shop. Her balance was off—she could feel herself falling. “I’ll be the one to send you straight to Hell.”

  She pressed the clasp.

  High Street was suddenly as bright as if the sun had risen. She squeezed her eyes closed and waited, gritting her teeth against the searing pain as the creature shrieked. It had almost been on top of her when it pounced the same time she opened the watch. The dissipating spirit howled and screamed; she could feel the force of it being jerked away and into the light.

  And then, it was silent.

  The body stayed propped up in that chair, late into the next day.

  It had been eleven hours since a Shadow was seen in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

  The scourge was over.

  * * *

  ON APRIL 9, only days before Adelaide’s birthday, General Lee surrendered. The war was over. There were no parades in Harpers Ferry; no fireworks or picnics along the river. There was no great gathering in Arsenal Square as when the war began, no balls, no celebrations. Everything seemed the same to her. The Union Army stayed put; the new military commander, General Hancock, set upon keeping order in town and catching Mosby and his Rangers.

  The war was over. It didn’t even seem real. No major battle had been fought in Harpers Ferry, yet nearly all of the buildings had been torched, shelled, or destroyed by the army. The railroad bridge had been burned nine times; they had changed hands between Confederate and Union rule fourteen times.

  The Armory was nothing more than rubble: scorched bricks and splintered wood. Adelaide had a feeling that they would never go back to the glories of the past, not unless the army rebuilt the Armory—and that
didn’t seem like it was going to happen.

  If there was any celebrating happening in Washington, it ended five days later. President Lincoln was murdered; a final casualty in the war that had put the Ferry through four years of hell.

  It had been thirty-eight days since a Shadow was seen in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

  Yet misery was there to stay.

  Chapter 36

  Mid-May 1865

  “I THINK THIS is the last of the silver.” Levi shook dirt out a pitcher and then handed it to Adelaide. “I don’t remember digging so far down. It was just these two bags, right?”

  “Right.” She wiped it with a damp rag, and then studied the pitcher closely. “It doesn’t look much worse for the wear.”

  “It should just polish up fine, really.” Levi picked up the dirt crusted bag and carried it into the store. “I’ll get to it after lunch.”

  Adelaide rolled her eyes and followed him indoors. The Ferry seemed different now, as if the air around them was cleansed not only from war, but from the stench of lost spirits. As the Shadow Man had said: once the rebellion ended, the scourge would be complete. “You and food, Levi, I swear. You must schedule your whole day around eating.”

  “So what if I do?” He shot back, his lanky frame silhouetted against the open doorframe. “You really should take it as a compliment, Addy. If you cooked like Sarah, I’d never eat.”

  “I heard that.” Sarah shrieked, storming out from the back room and threateningly motioning at him with a wooden spoon. “Come closer and say that to me.”

  The front door swung open behind them. Adelaide turned, smiling as she spoke, “Can I help….”

  Her voice trailed off. A soldier, clad in a blood and dirt stained gray uniform, leaned heavily against the door and a crutch. One foot was bare and covered in dirt and muck; the other was gone, the pant leg hanging limply from an amputation roughly above his knee. He clutched his cap in his hand, his dark hair sticking out in all directions. Even though his dirty face was covered in a thick, brown beard, Adelaide would have known him anywhere. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

  It took her a moment to compose herself. She ran across the room and into her big brother’s arms. “Robert! You’ve come home!”

  He kissed her cheeks, squeezing her chin in his hand. “A few fingers and a leg short…but home.”

  Sarah and Levi were upon them at once. They clutched at Robert, sobbing, pushing each other to get in closer; nearly knocking him to the ground. He was so thin, practically starved, and his uniform hung on him like a death shroud on a skeleton. Adelaide had seen the dead in shrouds. Her brother looked worse. She was momentarily afraid their tight hugs would crack him in half.

  “Look at you all.” He began to sob, his tears leaving wet trails down his dirty face. “Why, Levi, you must have grown a foot since I last saw you! And my sisters, oh, my beautiful sisters. You all look so well, so healthy!”

  Adelaide was at a loss for words. She was just thrilled that Robert was okay. Levi babbled on and on, telling Robert about his renovations, the body of John Mobley, and his reconnaissance of the silver. He promptly switched to Robert’s bodily wounds, inspecting the remaining two fingers on his left hand and beginning a deluge of questions on where the wounds happened, when, and how many Yankees he killed in retaliation. Sarah reached over and tugged at his shirtsleeve. “Hush, Levi, you’re going to make him wish he’d stayed outside.”

  Robert laughed and squeezed them all again. “You three haven’t changed a bit.”

  But they had. Something in each of them, Adelaide thought, had died since that day nearly six years ago when Old John Brown crossed the railroad bridge. As she stood there, watching Lizzie shyly observe Robert, realizing the girl didn’t remember who he was, she knew they would never be the same again.

  It had been one hundred and eight days since a Shadow was seen in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

  * * *

  TOWARDS THE END of July, as Adelaide squabbled with Sarah over whose turn it was to cook supper, she heard the familiar sound of a sword and scabbard hitting the door frame, followed by the clunk of boots on the wooden planks of the floor.

  He was finally home.

  She ran into the store room, throwing herself into his arms. “Promise me that you’ll never leave me again.”

  Thomas lifted her up, spinning her around, and peppered her lips with kisses, both passionate and soft. He pulled away, but kept his forehead pressed to hers. “I refuse to live another day without you, my sweet sweet love. I can’t live without you. I love you, Adelaide, that’s all that got me through the war.”

  She pulled him back into a deep kiss. “I love you, Thomas.”

  “Marry me.”

  “The answer has always been yes.”

  Their reunion that night was passionate: he made love to her with his eyes locked on hers. But there was something different about him. She would later describe it to Sarah as a stark reality, the visions of battlefield death and dismemberment never quite fading from his mind. It haunted him: their faces, their voices; it was always with him, no matter how far he got from the fields of death. He would never speak to her of what he had done during the war, nor of the 1864 battles he fought in the Shenandoah Valley.

  * * *

  LESS THAN A week after he came home, he married her next to the ruins of St. John’s church. Thomas wore his uniform, with the rank insignia of major. Almost everyone they’d known had long left the Ferry. Reverend Bates had been killed in Spotsylvania years before. The chaplain of the provost performed the ceremony; their guests were her family, the MacGrogans and Mr. Barry, and his Union brothers in arms.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks as she repeated the vows of marriage to him. She’d waited for this day for six years: through death, through the scourge, through the destruction of the Ferry and for four, long years of war. This made them husband and wife, but her heart had belonged to him since she was eighteen-years-old.

  The chaplain held his Bible over his head and lowered it in the sign of the Cross. “Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. You may kiss your bride, Major Cooper.”

  He stepped to her, cradling her face in his hands. Tears brimmed his blue eyes but he’d never looked happier. Pulling her to him, he pressed his lips to hers. There were times in life, when a kiss literally could take a person’s breath away. The first time he kissed her, for example, or when he kissed her the first time he came back to the Ferry with his Massachusetts men. Thomas’s kisses were always passionate, but kisses like this—kisses so intense; so soft and tender yet at the same time full of something so deep—made her feel like time stopped. It wasn’t a kiss of lust or even a kiss of plain old love. This was a kiss from his soul, from that brief pause in between heartbeats. This was the definition of how he felt: a wordless act; a connection between them.

  It had been one hundred and ninety days since a Shadow was seen in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

  And although they waited, Luke never came home.

  * * *

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  About the Author

  Heather Hambel Curley writes sassy paranormal fiction and historical fiction. She lives in Western Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons and, when not writing, she works as a disability claims analyst. She is represented by Rossano Trentin of TZLA.

  Although she’s never seen a ghost in Harpers Ferry, she was a volunteer with the National Park Service’s living history department and archeology departments at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The Armory and Arsenals were destroyed during the American Civil War, but guests can still visit many buildings described in Haunt.

  Heather also enjoys visiting the Caribbean, running, One Direction, and getting tattoos. You can foll
ow her on Twitter at @Heather_Curley or visit her blog at heatherhambelcurley.com.

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