by Brynn Stein
ELLIOT WALKED into the little coffee shop and saw Sheri waiting for him at a corner table.
She had to start cooking later that day for her event the next, so morning was the only time she had to meet with Elliot.
The place wasn’t packed, but it was doing a steady business. A couple of businessmen, judging by their suits, sat at the table just inside the door, and an elderly lady sat by herself a couple of tables down. Three men, maybe truck drivers, were at the counter. The waitress, whose nametag proclaimed her to be Beverly, bustled over almost before they were seated.
“What can I get for y’all to drink this mornin’?” she asked as she handed them menus.
“We won’t need the menus,” Elliot told her. “We just want muffins and coffee.”
“What kind of muffin can I get ya, darlin’?”
Elliot had forgotten how thick the Southern accent could get in SC. Sheri was a transplant from the north and had never picked up the colorful phrases the South was known for.
They told Beverly what they wanted and she sashayed away behind the counter.
As they ate their breakfast, they talked about a little bit of nothing until conversation eventually made its way back to Elliot’s possible ghost, or at least the weird Civil War dreams.
“So, I didn’t have the dream last night.” Elliot wiped crumbs from his mouth. “Darrell kept going on and on about the ghost again. Saying the lamp moved.”
“His name is Daniel,” Sheri retorted as she sipped her coffee.
Elliot smirked. “I actually do know that.”
“So why call him Darrell?” She took another sip of coffee.
Elliot chuckled. “Not really sure, but it’s kind of a thing now. I don’t want to give it up.” He debated leaving it there but decided to tell her the rest. “In fact, I asked him if he minded. He seemed to like that I have a nickname for him.”
Sheri looked concerned and set down her cup. “You sound like you’re getting serious about him.”
“I’ve slept with him four times and he’s stayed over once.” Elliot dabbed crumbs from his plate with his index finger. “How is that getting serious?”
“For you? That’s practically engaged.” Sheri wiped a dribble of coffee from the lip of her cup. “You don’t do relationships.”
“And he knows that. The kid’s half my age.” Elliot abandoned the crumbs and met Sheri’s eyes. “He knows I’m only in it for sex. But the sex is phenomenal, and he’s good company. What’s wrong with that?”
“Ellie. Nothing’s wrong with it.” She brushed her fingers across his. “Just be careful. He’s young. He might get the wrong idea.”
“I’ve talked to him about it. He seems okay with it.” Elliot turned his hand over and took hers. “And for all that I call him a kid, he’s twenty-six. That’s not that young. He can make his own decisions.”
“Yeah, and you’re forty-one.” She squeezed his fingers.
“I’m not asking for his hand in marriage. We’re playing around.” Elliot looked stern but then patted her hand and moved his away so he could pick up his coffee cup. “And how much older than you is Malcolm?”
Sheri smiled and went back to her own coffee. “Okay, I see your point. We’re not serious either.”
“Seems serious. For you.” Elliot turned the tables. “You’ve been seeing him what? Three months?”
Sheri looked sheepish. “Four.”
“Four! That’s practically halfway down the aisle.” He grinned over the top of his mug.
“All right, all right. I’ll leave you alone about your boy toy, if you stop hounding me about my sugar daddy.” Sheri upended her cup and returned it to the table.
“Deal.” Elliot pretended to spit into his hand and held it out for Sheri to shake.
She gave him the evil eye. “I’m not touching that now.”
He chuckled as Beverly brought the check over to the table and engaged them in conversation about the weather.
Chapter 4
THAT NIGHT, Elliot got ready for bed in the bathroom and stopped when he caught who stared back at him from the mirror.
God, I need to stop eating out with Cher so often. I’m gaining weight.
The puffiness to his face came with a gray sheen. Ankles and knees seemed swollen and his shirt looked a little tighter around his shoulders. The weight had come on in the past week or so. Dark shadows under his eyes reflected how tired he felt. No matter how much sleep he got or how easy his day was, by the end of it, he could barely support his weight. The exhaustion had had been going on periodically for the last several months. He couldn’t quite figure it out.
He put it out of his mind for now though and finished getting ready for bed. His mattress was calling his name and he didn’t want to keep it waiting. He had been half-afraid that Daniel would come over again tonight. He was glad he hadn’t. The only thing he wanted to do was sleep.
Falling into bed, the pillow welcomed him as he pulled the ugly bedspread over his shoulders, musing absently that he might not replace it after all if it continued to provide this much warmth and comfort. He felt the pull of Morpheus and surrendered to his arms.
I OPEN my eyes to spy a large rock with grass at the base. It takes a good bit to keep my eyes open. I know I’m losing a lot of blood, but I’m more worried about Patrick. He has been shot too.
“Hey,” Patrick says from where he sits facing me, when he notices I’m awake. “Stay awake this time. You worry me when you go to sleep.”
We’re in a different place than we were when I closed my eyes. We’re alongside a dirt road now instead of in the thicket. “How did we get here?”
“I carried you.” Patrick runs his fingers through my hair.
“But you have a hurt arm.” I lean into his touch with what little strength I have.
“Didn’t say it was easy.” He smiles and continues massaging my head.
“Patrick—”
“Ben,” he interrupts and gently pulls my head onto his lap. “What was I supposed to do, just leave you to bleed to death in a thicket by the battlefield?” When I don’t answer, he goes on. “There’s a house up there. I’m taking you there. Maybe the people there will help.”
“We’re Union soldiers. We’re in the South. For aught I know, we could have killed their brother, or husband or something. They’re not going to help.” I turn my head to face him as best I can.
“We won’t know till we try.” He leans over and places a kiss on the top of my head. He gently lays my head back on the ground and stands up, then bends over and does some complicated maneuver until I’m draped across the back of his neck, hanging over each shoulder. It hurts like tarnation and I cry out. “God, I’m sorry, Ben. I truly am.” He shifts me on his shoulders, trying to find a more comfortable position. “I reckon that hurts. I tried to carry you in my arms, but my right arm is too weak and I almost dropped you. That won’t help anything.”
“I’m not… sure… this is… either.” It takes forever to get the words out because I can barely breathe, both because of the position and because it simply hurts so wretched much.
“I’ll be as swift as I can,” he promises and walks faster.
I never thought I’d be pleased by fainting like a girl, but I’m relieved when I feel myself start to pass out.
I don’t know how long I was in limbo, but now the pain is back in full force. We’re in a stable, and horses are venting their gall over our presence in their diggings. I feel the hay prickling my arms and the back of my neck. Patrick has gotten water and cloths from somewhere and is trying to clean my wound, but every time he touches my stomach, it’s like he’s thrusting a knife through my gut. It takes everything in me not to cry out.
The horses must finally have gotten used to us because they have settled down, and I relax a little. That probably means the owner won’t come in to see who is here. But Patrick perks up even more now that they are quiet.
“Shhh,” he tells me, even though I’m not making any so
und. “Do you hear that?”
I don’t at first, but then I finally hear what he’s talking about. It sounds like children crying.
“Kids?” I must be more out of it than I thought.
“That’s what it sounds like.” He goes to stand up, but then looks at me and picks a piece of straw out of my hair. “Ben, will you be well on your own if I go investigate?”
I nod and he leaves. My eyes slip closed against my will, but I hear the scuffs of straw getting quieter and farther away.
I think I fell asleep because he’s jostling me awake now. He has a big smile on his face as he strokes my cheek.
“I think the lady of the house will be sympathetic to our cause.”
“Why do you say that?” I turn my face into his touch.
“The kids crying? There’s a false wall back there and several families of contraband. This is a stop on the Underground Railroad.”
ELLIOT MET Sheri and Malcolm in the park for lunch the next day. The sunlight danced off the metal picnic table as though celebrating the weather and life in general. It was a beautiful Saturday, and throngs of people were taking advantage of the warmth and sunshine, but Sheri had found a table on the top of a small rise away from everyone else.
“So this event tonight is going to be so great,” she gushed as she laid out the picnic lunch she’d brought. “It’s a charity event for children who have cancer, and there will be a number of celebrities there.”
Malcolm groaned as he fished out a chicken leg. “She’s forcing me to go with her. I had to rent a tux and everything.” For a man who seemed to wear suits all the time, he didn’t appear at all happy to have to wear a tux. He was as dressed down today as Elliot had ever seen him: starched white shirt and dress pants—to a picnic—but no tie or suit jacket. For Malcolm that was positively slumming.
“How did she force you? Did she threaten you with loss of sex?” Elliot grabbed a biscuit and grinned at Malcolm’s expression. Elliot would bet a month’s profits that if Malcolm had lighter skin, he’d be blushing like crazy. “’Cause let me tell you. She’s not going to go through with that threat. For Sheri a day without sex is a day without air.”
Sheri smacked him and the biscuit jarred out of his hand and landed on his plate. “Stop picking on Malcolm.”
Elliot deliberately took a bite of the biscuit and grinned evilly.
Sheri went on with her conversation about the upcoming banquet, and Malcolm continued to bemoan having to go. Elliot simply enjoyed the easy camaraderie of the afternoon.
Eventually topics turned toward Elliot’s dreams. He’d already caught Malcolm up on the previous dreams, and he shared the latest one with both of them.
Sheri started gathering the trash from the table. “This is like those old-time Saturday serials at the theaters.”
Elliot rolled his eyes and threw a napkin onto her trash pile. “You’re not old enough to remember those.”
“No,” she agreed, “but Mom used to tell me about them all the time. They’d pick up where they left off last week. Your dreams pick up where they left off in the last dream. So your stories to me are like those serials.”
“Well, that’s how the ghost is giving them to me.”
It was Sheri’s turn to roll her eyes. “Really, Ellie? You believe there’s a ghost?”
“I’m not sure, Cher.” Elliot started to pack up the leftover picnic food. “I do think there’s some kind of intelligence guiding the dreams, yes. How else would I know all this?”
“I told you before, you’re imaginative,” Sheri said as she and Malcolm handed Elliot the food and utensils that needed to go back into the basket. “Daniel planted the idea in your mind. And you always read everything you can get your hands on… including paranormal stuff.”
Malcolm looked like he wanted to say something but was deciding against it. Elliot addressed him directly.
“Say what you’re thinking, Malcolm. I don’t bite.”
Sheri mock whispered, “That’s not what Daniel said.”
Elliot threw her a look, then threw the napkin from the trash pile for good measure. “You have not been talking to Daniel about our sex life.”
Sheri tried to stare him down but had to blink first. “Okay. No, I haven’t been talking to him at all, actually, but I bet if I did—”
“Just let Malcolm talk, Cher.”
Malcolm grinned but still looked a little unsure about saying this. “Actually, if we’re saying that a ghost in your particular house is giving you these dreams, then it might be accurate to assume the latest dream took place in the stables belonging to that house. And there really was an Underground Railroad stop there.”
Elliot hadn’t even made that connection, but he had to admit that it made a certain amount of sense. He tried to think back to the dream and to what he remembered from his stables, but since he’d only been in there once for any length of time, and he’d been rather busy with Daniel at the time, he hadn’t memorized any details. And Elliot wasn’t sure how the ghost got inside the house if he died in the barn, which seemed likely in the last dream. So there were some points that didn’t fit yet and he couldn’t be sure it was the same place, but he listened intently as Malcolm continued.
“It was the Buckner plantation in those days. Mrs. Katherine Buckner was a suspected northern sympathizer at the time, but no one could ever prove it, and the Buckners owned most of South Carolina, or so it seemed, so no one ever did anything about it.” Malcolm paused to finish the last of his soda and add the can to the trash pile before he continued. “The powers that be did keep a close eye on the place when they could, but with all the fighting going on, there wasn’t as much manpower to go around as there had been, so any activity at the time kind of got overlooked.”
Malcolm handed the last picnic item to him, and Elliot latched the basket, then leaned his elbows on top of it, completely fascinated with what Malcolm was saying.
“No one ever caught her. There was no proof of the stop until much later when the granddaughter found Katherine’s diary hidden under the floorboards. It detailed a number of runs, the names of the slaves, where they were supposed to end up. The whole nine yards.”
It took a moment or two to realize that Malcolm had concluded his recitation of facts without addressing the one thing Elliot now wanted to know. “How about a Union soldier being brought there?”
Malcolm nodded, cocking a hip on the picnic table since they all seemed to be waiting to finish the conversation before walking to the cars. “Seems to me there was talk about several being nursed back to health there. I don’t know if the diary mentioned them or if it was only rumors. I can try to find out for you if you want.” He waited until Elliot nodded. “I’m a bit of a Civil War buff. They know me at the library and the local historical society. I’ll see what I can find out. Do you have a name of either of the soldiers?”
“Ben,” Elliot answered and picked up the basket. “That’s all I know. I don’t have a last name. I see everything through his eyes, and the only other person who is consistently in the dreams is Patrick. Also no last name. They were… close. So they didn’t use last names. I’m only getting information Ben experienced. And I don’t think he was nursed back to health there. I think he died there. Though I haven’t actually experienced that yet. And with as realistic as the dreams are, I’m kind of hoping I don’t.”
Sheri rolled her eyes again, but Malcolm nodded, like that made perfect sense. “I’ll see what I can find out. But with no last name….” By some kind of silent consent, they all started toward the vehicles.
Elliot thought of something and stopped abruptly. “No, wait. I think I got the last names in passing. Ben’s mother said Patrick Campbell or Candler, or maybe Chandler. Something like that. I’m horrible with names.”
Sheri giggled under her breath. “Don’t I know it.”
Elliot continued as if never interrupted. “And Ben said he was from Myers stock, but he was talking to his mom, so I don’t know if that
’s his last name or her maiden name.”
Malcolm nodded, having stopped just a few steps ahead of Elliot. “That’ll help. Records are sporadic. Some things are preserved in great detail. Others we have to kind of guess at. But if there’s a record of either of them being at that house, I’ll find it.”
Sheri had gone several steps ahead of both of them, but she came back to stand in front of Elliot, sternly looking him in the eye. “And if there’s not, Ellie, will you please let go of the idea of a ghost?”
“Um.” Malcolm seemed reluctant to go against Sheri, but he must have thought this was important. Elliot turned to him immediately, ignoring Sheri’s glare as best he could. “If I can’t find a record of him, it doesn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t there. It could simply mean no one recorded the fact that he was. Or if they did, the record wasn’t preserved.”
Sheri threw Malcolm one of the meanest looks Elliot had ever seen her give, grabbed him by the arm, and started toward the cars again. “Don’t encourage him. This already seems to be taking a toll on his health.” Malcolm had allowed her to pull him forward but stopped when he heard this, looking between her and Elliot, confused. Sheri continued, but talked directly to Elliot. “It looks like you’ve gained weight just in the time you’ve been here. You don’t look like you’ve slept well, and you’re always tired. You’re obviously worried about this, binge eating and not sleeping.”
Elliot gave her a serious look, also not moving from the spot. “I noticed the weight gain, and I think it’s from all the lunches and dinners out. I don’t binge eat.” He shifted the basket from one hand to the other. “And I can’t explain the fatigue, but it’s not due to the dreams. I sleep better here than I have in a while. They’re intense, and real to a level I’ve never experienced before, but it’s not like I’m staying awake to avoid them. In fact, even though I’m hurt in them, and anxious about Patrick, I get an overall sense of peace. They’re not keeping me up.”
