Ghostwalkers

by Jonathan Maberry

  Saying that she was uninjured and knowing it to be true, though, were different things. When Grey looked into the girl’s eyes he saw that shadows had taken up residence and they would be hard to exorcise.

  He carried his own shadows around, so it was something Grey knew all too well.

  Thinking that made him glance toward the unlighted far end of town. It was a reflex; something he did when he felt like ghostly eyes were watching him.

  There was no one there, though. No one—nothing—that he could see.

  “What is it?” asked Jenny.

  “Huh?” he said, jolted back to the moment.

  “You look like you saw a ghost?”

  He turned to her. She was trying to force a smile, but it was a ghastly attempt. It broke apart and fell away, and then she, too, was staring toward the darkness.

  “Is it them? Are they back…?”

  “No,” he said gently, making himself turn his back on the night. “It’s nothing. They’re gone. They won’t be coming back.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That damn contraption of Doctor Saint. The gas gun thing. Whatever it is. I think they’ve had enough,” he said, and nearly added “I hope.”

  Jenny nodded.

  “What I don’t understand,” she said after a few steps, “is who they were. That was Jed Perkins and his men. I mean, that’s who some of them were. What happened to them?”

  “I’ll be damned if I know.”

  They walked together to the well at the other end of town. There were four teenagers busy drawing bucket after bucket of water up from the shadows. The town’s school marm—a hatchet-faced old buzzard named Mrs. O’Malley—stood guard with a woodsman’s axe clenched in her hands. She had a fierce glare in her eyes and her dress was splashed with black blood.

  While they were still out of earshot, Grey murmured, “There’ll be a story behind that.”

  “Sure,” agreed Jenny, “but I know her. She was my teacher, too. She keeps things to herself. Farthest thing on God’s earth from a gossip. If there’s a story there, and I have no doubt there is, she won’t be the one to tell it.”

  Grey nodded. “That’s how it often plays out.”

  Jenny leaned her hip against a hitching post outside of the feed store. “What do you mean?”

  He took a moment before answering, but he could see that she wanted to talk. Probably to distract herself from what she needed to talk about but wasn’t yet ready to face. So he lowered himself onto the edge of the feed store porch.

  “History books and newspapers talk about battles as if they’re one big event. This side and that side. They talk about the land that’s being fought over, the generals or officers, maybe a hero, and they count the dead, but that’s not what makes a battle. Not really.” He leaned his forearms on his knees and watched the teens bring up the water. “Battles are people. Battles are small things. They’re big, sure, but up close it’s man against man. When it starts, okay, it’s lines of men firing rifles, but then you get into it, then it’s one guy shooting at another. Specifically at another, you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “It becomes very personal. You fix on someone and you try to kill him, and it hurts you because up close you see that it’s just some fellow wearing a uniform. If your folks had moved a hundred miles away and settled on the far side of some invisible line, that might be you over there. It’s kids a lot of the time. Especially if the war goes on for a while. Boys who can’t shave who are being fed into a meat grinder.” Grey paused, shook his head. “There are these moments in a battle. No one sees them because everyone else is having their own series of moments. But it’s all about you in that moment. You. A guy comes at you and you fire your gun—and you miss, or maybe your powder’s wet, or maybe it hits his buckle and wings off. Then it’s you and him, up close. Hitting each other with your guns ’cause you don’t have time to reload. Maybe bayonets or swords or knives. Sometimes it’s just hands. And teeth. Dirty fighting. Gutter fighting. And you’ll do anything to live through it. To not die.”

  She nodded again.

  “I remember once, back was I was sixteen—no, seventeen. It was my third battle. We were down in Culpepper County in Virginia. I was with the 46th Pennsylvania Infantry. Papers called it the Battle of Cedar Mountain, though afterward most of the fellows I know called it Slaughter Mountain. Stonewall Jackson plumb beat us to death and nearly ran us all down. The battle was important, because it was the beginning of the South’s Northern Virginia Campaign. But on my level, it was me and this other guy fighting in a streambed. He was twice my age and he looked like my Uncle Farley. A lot like him, which still bothers me. Anyway, we were on the fringes of our two lines and we emptied our guns at each other. I could feel his bullets whipping by my head but nothing hit me. Then for a while we were swinging our rifles back and forth like gladiators with swords. Whanging them off each other, trying to bash in each other’s heads. It was right about then that the slope we were on crumbled and the two of us slid down into a stream. There we were, half drowned, no guns left, beating the pure hell out of each other. He tried to bash my head in with a hickory branch. I hit him with some stones I picked up. I’m telling you, this fight went on and on. We chased each other up and down the muddy slopes. We kicked each other in the privates. We beat on each other’s faces until our hands were busted up.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Grey shook his head. “He slipped on a mossy stone and fell. Hit his head on another stone and was just lying there in the water. So I … well, I…”

  “What?”

  He cleared his throat. “I sat on him and pushed his head down into the water and held him there for maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Long, long after he stopped moving.”

  The night was huge and now there were thousands of stars. The teenagers worked like machines. Lowering, filling, cranking, dumping, lowering again.

  “I never told anyone about it,” said Grey.

  “It must have been awful,” said Jenny.

  “No, that’s just it,” he said, “it’s always awful. It was awful for every man on that field. It’s awful for everyone in every war, on both sides and for everyone who lives in the path of the armies.” He pointed to the town. “This was awful for every one of them. Most of them will eat their pain and their horror. Like I did. I never told anyone because it’s not something you do. Not unless you save the day and you need the applause to help you win a promotion or an election. Like generals. Like heroes. They say history is written by the winners. That’s true to a point. I think what’s really true is that history is written by the ambitious.”

  Jenny glanced over her shoulder at Mrs. O’Malley. “She’s not the ambitious type.”

  “No.”

  “She wouldn’t brag if she won a prize hog at a county fair.”

  “A lot of people are like that.”

  “Is it pride?” asked Jenny. “Or fear?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that on that level, killing is personal. It’s something you own, something you have to deal with.”

  “Is that how you see it, Grey?” she asked.

  When he didn’t answer, Jenny came over and sat next to him. So close that her body touched his, and despite the wet clothes she wore, he could feel her heat.

  They sat together in a silence that was at first awkward but which became gradually comfortable. Even comforting.

  “Those men tonight,” she began slowly.

  He nodded.

  “I knew most of them. Not just Perkins and the deputies, but a lot of the others as well.”

  Grey turned sharply toward her. “What?”

  “Most of them I knew only to see. They worked for the railroad. For Nolan Chesterfield.”

  “Ah.”

  “But the others? They were from here.”

  “Here, meaning—?”

  “Paradise Falls,” she said. “They were all men from right here in town.”

  �
��Jesus.”

  “Aside from the deputies, the rest were men who worked in the mines.”

  “Mining for what?”

  She looked at him. “What do you think? Ghost rock’s the only thing people care about, apart from water.”

  “As I understand it, the mines are owned by two men. Some by Chesterfield and most of them by Aleksander Deray.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Those men … some of them worked for one, and some worked for the other. But they all died. Mine collapses. Tidal surges into the caverns. And other stuff. Men gone missing and people talking about sea serpents and cave monsters. Crazy stuff.”

  “Crazy,” he said, but it didn’t sound one bit crazy to him right then. And probably not to her, from the tone of her voice.

  He steeled himself to ask the next natural question.

  “Jenny…,” he began, but she cut him off.

  “I know that was my pa,” she said.

  He said nothing.

  “He knew me, too.”

  Fresh tears glittered on her cheeks.

  “And I know he was a monster.”

  “I’m so sorry…”

  Her mouth was a hard, uncompromising line. “Somebody did that to him. You saw them. Those things. You saw the stones in their chests. Somebody did that to them. Which means they did it to my pa. They turned my father into a monster and they sent him to kill me.” She shook her head. Two slow, decisive shakes. “I can’t let that go. I never will. I need to find whoever did this—Chesterfield, Deray or someone else. I need to find them and I need to kill them. No … that’s not right. I will kill them. As God is my witness—if there’s even a God left in heaven—I will kill them.”

  Grey reached out and took her hand. He entwined his fingers with hers and pulled the back of her hand to his chest. He wanted her to feel the strong, steady beat of his heart.

  “And I am going to help you put those evil sons of bitches in the ground.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Even the longest of nights must end, and that night passed, too.

  Grey found his horse, Mrs. Pickles, shivering under a palm tree half a mile from town. Queenie was a few hundred yards away along with a dozen other horses, cows, and sheep. Why the animals had come to this spot to stay safe was something Grey never found out. His horse nickered reprovingly at him, but when Grey produced some carrots from a pocket, Picky forgave him and even pushed against his chest with her long, soft nose.

  Grey, feeling a bit like Noah leading the animals to the Ark, guided the mixed herd back to town.

  It was the only pleasant moment of that night. Grimmer work lay ahead.

  Those with the strongest stomachs helped gather up the ruined bodies of the attackers, and they were taken by wagon out past the edge of town to where a small cemetery lay withering. Water-parched trees leaned dolefully over cheap markers and handmade crosses. Only the older graves had proper headstones, and they seemed to mock the current poverty of the town.

  Four strong men took turns digging a pit, and then the dead were laid in it, stacked like cordwood. No one threw roses. No one sang hymns. Those would be saved for the burials of three people the dead had murdered.

  The burial was not without ceremony, though.

  As the sun curled red fingers over the serrated teeth of the broken mountains to the east, Brother Joe came and read a prayer for the bodies of the dead monsters. It was a strange ceremony. Everyone came to it, but except for the gravediggers the townsfolk stayed outside of the low slatted rail fence that bordered the graves. The men took their hats off. The women wept. It was nearly impossible to identify any of the dead except by their clothes, but some of the families laid claim to a few of them. One mother collapsed down into a sobbing pile as the dirt was shoveled into the pit.

  Grey stood with Jenny and Looks Away. They were filthy and exhausted and sick at heart. The Sioux’s posture was unnaturally still because of the burns on his back, although Brother Joe had smeared a noxious mixture of chicken fat and herbs on it. He said it helped with the pain, but the rigid lines around his mouth told a different story.

  Brother Joe read the burial prayer for the dead. “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”

  Normally Grey was indifferent to the words, his own tethers to religion having worn thin after all he’d been through, but today those words hit him hard. They chilled him. Jenny Pearl took his hand and squeezed it hard enough to make his fingers hurt. On the other side of him Looks Away’s face had turned to wood.

  Yeah, Grey thought, maybe that wasn’t the right choice of prayer. Not after last night.

  The monk droned on, apparently oblivious to the possible interpretations of his words. Typical of a lot of preachers, mused Grey. They say the words, but he was pretty sure a lot of them didn’t study on them in the way they were supposed to.

  “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger. For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For if we live, we live unto the Lord; and if we die, we die unto the Lord. Whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; even so saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors.”

  Having stalled on the first part, Grey’s mind became numb to the rest of it. Brother Joe’s words seemed to flow past him. He glanced around and saw a variety of expressions on the faces of the crowd. Some of them held bitter resentment in the hard lines around their mouths, though whether it was directed at the monk, at the undead, or at God Himself, Grey couldn’t tell. Others wore the blank masks of shock. A few looked impatient, clearly wanting to get back to the tasks of the day, even if those tasks involved burying the dead and repairing damage done by monsters. And a handful murmured the prayers, word for word, with Brother Joe.

  “The Lord be with you,” intoned Brother Joe. “O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered: Accept our prayers on behalf of thy servant, and grant him an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of thy saints; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, O God, now and forever. Amen.”

  Grey mouthed the word and it tasted like ashes on his tongue.

  The funeral gathering broke apart. Most of the people drifted listlessly back to town; a few lingered to watch the rest of the dirt being shoveled into the pit. Grey saw Mrs. O’Malley standing with Felicity, the little red-haired girl. The teacher’s eyes were hard as bullets; the girl’s eyes were empty.

  “She’ll be okay,” said Jenny, who had followed his gaze.

  “Will she?” asked Grey.

  Jenny, clearly unwilling to pursue the lie, squeezed his hand and led him away.

  But Grey paused as they passed Brother Joe. He gestured for the monk to join them, and they all stepped aside under the shade of a juniper tree.

  “Nice service,” lied Grey. “I’m sure the families were comforted.”

  The monk wasn’t fooled. “There’s nothing I can say that can comfort these people.”

  He leaned on the word “I,” taking the whole measure of blame and adding it to his stock of personal and spiritual favor. Grey would have liked to take the man off the hook, but he was too tired and this wasn’t the time. Instead he nodded toward the mass grave.

  “Tell me about the ‘Harrowed,’” he asked, thinking of Lucky Bob. “I’ve heard of that, but I don’t know much. I don’t know enough. Tell me what you know about these Harrowed. What are they?”

  “Brother Looks Away might disagree,” began the monk, “since he tends to see everything in terms of science and what can be measured or labeled.”

  Looks Away shrugged. “After last night, dear chap, consider me open to alternative suggestions. Besides, I have some
experience with the phenomenon. So, please, share what you know and I’ll contribute if I can.”

  The monk looked around to make sure their conversation was not being overheard. “Some of this is what I have heard from others in my order. Some is from what I have learned from travelers. Do you know the word ‘manitou’?”

  “Sure,” said Grey. “It’s the Algonquin word for spirit. Like Gitchee Manitou, the great spirit. Kind of their take on God, as I understand it.”

  “To some, yes,” said Brother Joe. “The word—or variations of it—are present in many pagan beliefs.”

  “Pagan? Careful where you tread, old son,” warned Sioux.

  “Forgive me, brother,” said the monk, placing a hand over his heart. “I meant no offense. I know that among your people, the Lakota Sioux, they call the Great Spirit nagi tanka. I respect that, but the manitou of which I speak are not that. They are not of God. Not of anyone’s version of God. They are more like demons.”

  “Demons?” echoed Grey.

  “Yes. Devils of the Pit. More like the kagi of your faith, Brother Looks Away,” said Brother Joe, and the Sioux gave him a guarded nod. “The monks of my order believe that the manitou are the irredeemable souls of sinners who were cast into Hell. These tormented souls are always searching for a way to escape their punishment and return to the land of the living.”

  “My father was not a sinner,” hissed Jenny, and Grey had to step between her and the monk to prevent violence.

  “No, no, let me finish,” said Brother Joe. “I need to tell you some things in order to talk about what happened last night.”

  Jenny wore a hostile scowl, but she nodded.

  “Manitou are always trying to enter our world. Before the Great Quake it was much more difficult, but they have managed it. The Bible speaks of possession, and that is one way. It is very difficult, of course, for a manitou to enter a living body and conquer its rightful host. Exorcists of the church have fought against this for many centuries, and in some of these struggles the manitou were cast back down into the Pit.”