In the Dead of Night

by Aiden James

  Not so on this Saturday. It had been spitting snow since the morning, and normally these are the worst conditions to even consider doing an investigation in. Moisture—even the frozen kind—can discredit any orb formations that might show up in our photographs and video frames.

  Worse yet, the temperature wasn’t much warmer than it was last night in McMinnville. And the wind gusts were just as frigid.

  This sucked. Let alone, Justin was right about the lack of love shown to me by my NVP brethren and sisters. Everyone except for him and my dear wife had treated me like a frigging leper. I’ve been thoroughly ignored since our arrival at Nashville’s Fort Negley about an hour ago. Hell, I might as well be a ghost. No doubt, the folks who thought of me as their friend before last night’s unpleasant incident would treat the Union soldier specters rumored to haunt Fort Negley with far more compassion and respect.

  Most of the station’s camera crew avoided me, too. Brandon Jones wore the beleaguered look of a guy who lost the rock, paper, and scissors contest to decide who got relegated to film life in my colony. If not for the producers’ hopes for playful banter between Justin and me, I might’ve been banished to my own personal Elba.

  Surprisingly, the Thomas brothers sought me out to apologize again before rejoining the others. It felt genuine, which made me wonder if that strange negativity that engulfed their sister’s place had been responsible for all of my earlier misgivings. Fiona is dealing with similar confusion.

  But the hard feelings from almost everyone else seemed pretty sincere, too. I can deal with it all…well, sort of. I followed my heart and gut last night, and would do so again if someone I cared about was threatened.

  “Hey, Jimmy, I know this really sucks,” said Justin, patting me on the back. It snapped me out of the daydream picturing the backlash still to come, along with the possible ruin of our Civil War ghost tour’s culmination. “You promised to have my back, and last night you came through big time. I’ll never forget it, man.” He offered a pained smile that was surely in response to my wounded grimace.

  “Well…I guess it’s your turn to have mine again, huh?”

  I said this with more impishness than sorrow. And, wouldn’t you know that Brandon’s camera was a-rollin’ as I said it. He probably caught my faraway look and Justin’s comments, as well. I suddenly pictured the commercial advertisement for January’s presumed re-airing of our shows.

  So, it was just the three of us outcasts in our little exploratory group, while everyone else split into four groups that included the munchkins from Murfreesboro and McMinnville—who all gave me the stink eye when they arrived, and some normal-sized ghost hunters from Nashville. These latter investigators numbered an even dozen, and came from two groups: Madison Wraith Hunter Society, or MWHS, and Eighth Street Ghosts, who prefer no acronyms. I heard this last tidbit right before they showed up, and immediately liked the Eighth Street foursome. When I’m paroled from my exile, I look forward to getting to know these upstarts in the ghost hunting biz.

  As for the Madison ghost hunters, this is basically a biker gang that has a thing for paranormal research. One would think that a longhaired rocker like myself would fit in nicely with this sort of folk—especially given my longstanding affection for Harley Davidson motorcycles. But, after hanging out with these seven guys and lone gal back at a Memorial Day bash last May, none of us thought we could deal with the group’s leader, Stanley ‘Ace’ James, ever again. Yet, here we are…and the guy that was opposed to having this reunion the most—Tom—has been hobnobbing quite cordially with Mr. James since our one o’clock arrival.

  “Fiona told me to tell you that she and your favorite cop will rejoin us once she finishes her tour of the northern section of the fort with Jackie and their group,” Justin advised, nudging me toward our designated area.

  “So, who’s accompanying Tony and Ricky on the southern edge?”

  “Tom, and your good buddy, Ace.”

  I shot him a look advising him to tread with care, despite my smirk.

  “Look at it this way, man,” he said, wearing his own knowing grin. “There won’t be much to see here anyway. Not in the daytime. And we have no disinterested police puppy dogs to further distract us.”

  True on both accounts. It was completely asinine to move back our visit from the original 5:00 p.m. start time, but after the latest murder had been confirmed as linked to the previous crimes, our station’s sponsorship and camera crew wanted no part of the original nighttime event. It meant a mad scramble on Friday to get everyone involved updated about the new start time. But the event’s luster had been seriously dimmed, and as I scanned the four separate teams moving above us, I saw plenty of unhappy faces.

  It seemed that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to be here. After the incredible imagery we had collected during the previous two weekends, this surely would be a dismal finale.

  “Well, at least we’ll get some nice pictures of the old ramparts and stone walls from down here,” I said, pausing to snap a few photographs as we moved through a grove of barren trees. “That’s where the best ghost images have shown up before, but we probably won’t catch squat.”

  In summer, the fort and the surrounding grounds are hardly creepy at all, unless you’re here in the dead of night. But, on a drearily cold day in December? Seeing the fort ruins on a day like this made me think of the men who fought bravely here almost one hundred and fifty years ago. Both sides were down to tattered clothing and torn shoes—if any at all. Some didn’t have coats. Temperatures back then, during the Battle of Nashville, which lasted for two days, December 15 and 16, 1864, wouldn’t have been much better than the weather this past week.

  It was a devastating blow to the Confederate effort, especially following the Battle of Franklin just two weeks earlier. This time, the southern forces suffered six thousand casualties, and General John Bell Hood was unable to unseat General George H. Thomas and his Union Army.

  “I wonder why it’s mainly Union soldiers that show up in photographs from around here?” Justin turned to Brandon as he posed this question, and I sensed a smart-ass response for an answer was forthcoming. “You got any idea as to why that is, man?”

  “Blue photographs better than gray?”

  I must say the serious look on my face held true longer than I expected.

  “Are you frigging serious, Jimmy?” Justin shot me a scowl before turning back to Brandon and his camera that was trained on Justin’s face. “That’s the best answer you’ve got?”

  “Don’t I look serious enough?”

  “Shit, Jimmy, you look like somebody slipped a bag of prunes into your Cheerios this morning.”

  “Oh, yeah? And how in the hell would you know what I had for breakfast, unless you had a camera at our breakfast table. That’s a jacked up fetish—even by your standards, bro.”

  He chuckled.

  “Okay…I can roll with this,” he said, while snapping a few quick photographs into an overgrown ravine to our left. He then smiled into Brandon’s camera again. “But…since when does wearing blue photograph better than gray?”

  “You don’t remember getting a note telling your parents how to dress you the day before ‘picture day’ in grade school?” I said, feigning indignation. “White or gray shirts would wash out from the flash, so you had to wear a dark color—preferably navy blue.”

  “Are you hearing this?” Justin asked, incredulously, stepping closer to Brandon’s camera, to where I’m sure Brandon was about to get an enlarged view of Justin’s pearly whites. “You better be getting’ all of this, Mr. Brandon. Do you know why? Because there’s some serious bigotry goin’ down in front of you, man! Serious as shit!!”

  “What?!”

  Good thing I know this guy well, as I had a pretty good idea where this was going. Still, I made sure my indignation sounded genuine with just the right amount of exasperation.

  As for our cameraman, Brandon’s already pale complexion turned even lighter. He obviou
sly thought this charade was real, and didn’t know if he should continue filming or prepare for a potential knockdown, drag-out fight between Justin and me.

  “Have you ever seen a black kid wearing something dark blue for a school picture? Hmmm??” Justin drew even closer to our cameraman, adding a street gang pose. “We gotta have some white in there some place, man, or otherwise we’d disappear from the picture!”

  Brandon almost lost his footing—his eyes and mouth open wide as if in shock—but he managed to hang in there in his efforts to catch every bit of this fiery dialogue.

  “Not always,” I countered. “Even for me—part Latino—when I came back to school with my usual sun tan from mowing lawns all summer. I was almost as dark as you are right now quite a few times, bro.”

  “Yes…always,” Justin insisted, casting a disdainful glance at me. I could tell he was about to crack up. “And about the other? You don’t have a frigging clue what picture day was like for me.”

  “I sure as hell do have a clue…you just don’t know, bro. But let’s go back to your original point. No…not if you’re a ghost,” I said, no longer able to keep a straight face. “All ghosts—regardless of race—look gray in the night. It’s part of the Constitution for Disembodied Spirits, dude. Unless a ghost is gonna pose for a picture at Fort Negley. If that’s the case, then you damned well know they’ll be wearing Union blue.”

  This time, Justin and I chuckled together, while Brandon wore a weak smile, as if he was still having trouble following us. Or, maybe it was his discomfort on account of our addressing him directly, when our contract clearly states we’re supposed to avoid this sort of dialogue with the station’s staff while filming.

  “Hey…Brandon,” said Justin, lowering his voice while motioning for our freaked-out cameraman to come closer to him. “Did you catch all that, man? I sure as hell hope you did. You just might have something really significant caught on tape from Jimmy and me for once…. So, now you can relax and quit sticking that frigging boom mike in our faces. You dig me, man?”

  Once Brandon’s initial expression of wide-eyed surprise dissolved into one of sheepishness, he laughed along with us. Granted it was nervous laughter, but it was laughter nonetheless.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Fiona and Jackie stepped around a wall, and frankly it surprised me that I was unaware of their presence. If they were psychopathic killers instead of the love of my life and her best friend, I guess us three guys would’ve been dead before we knew what hit us.

  Jackie smiled at me, and I immediately wondered what Fiona had said to her in the last half hour. Obviously, it was something that made our co-leader view me a helluva lot differently than she had since last night. Or, perhaps Fiona was back to glamoring unsuspecting victims again.

  Regardless, I was pleased that I might soon be pardoned, or at least paroled.

  “We’re just having some fun, Miss Fiona,” said Justin, turning up his impish charm. “It’s all good, especially now that you ladies are here!”

  “All right…and what sort of mischief have you both been up to?” she said, shaking her head in mock disgust. “I can tell by the look on our esteemed camera man’s face that you two have been up to some serious shenanigans.”

  “We’re just having some fun with the poor guy, since we were relegated to do the grunt work down here,” I said, shooting a few pictures of the lower earthwork mounds to my right, since it seemed likely we wouldn’t be in this location much longer.

  “Well, it’s been no picnic up inside the fort ruins either,” said Jackie. “The guys from the Madison group have been pestering Sally to where she told Michelle she is just about to quit on us and go home. So, when we visit Overton Hill and Montgomery Hill, she wants to switch up with Brandon.”

  “That sounds good to me,” said Brandon, drawing immediate looks of surprise from us all. As is the case for us, our camera folks are supposed to not converse with the subjects they are filming. And, it had been more than a year since an employee of the station had broken that rule. Then again, since Sally had stepped outside of it that afternoon, he might’ve felt obliged to do the same. Or, more likely, he could hardly wait to rid himself of the ‘Justin and Jimmy show’.

  “Well, we’ll be happy to entertain her since obviously Brandon prefers biker dudes to the more refined likes of us,” teased Justin, offering the same pat on the back to our suddenly embarrassed cameraman that he had given to me earlier. “Good luck to ya, man!”

  “Ed suggested that we wrap up the rest of our tour here, since the Metro officers will need to move on to their other duties by three o’clock,” said Fiona, her smile fading as she addressed the business that brought her to our cozy little neck of the woods. “Is there anything else—”

  “Hey, Jackie! Fiona!!”

  Michelle nearly tumbled down the path as she ran to reach us.

  “What in the hell?” Jackie ran over to her when Michelle landed painfully on one knee, and then caught her before she slipped again. Slight patches of ice would remain a menace until sunlight returned, and according to the local forecast that wouldn’t happen until Monday at the earliest. “Are you all right, baby? What’s with you running down here, anyway?”

  “There’s a fight—a really bad one! Ace James and a guy named Pooch started duking it out over something mean that Ace said!” Michelle announced, and then motioned urgently for us all to follow her back up the hill. “The Metro guys are working to stop it now, and Ed sent me to get y’all. He said ‘the party’s over.’”

  “I knew we shouldn’t have allowed them to join us!” fumed my wife, lamenting to Jackie. “I tried to tell Tom this was a stupid ass idea to include them—a very bad idea!”

  “Yeah, I know,” Jackie agreed, sighing deeply before brushing off Michelle’s right knee that had likely been bruised on the unforgiving frozen ground when she fell. “This really sucks. It royally sucks bad!”

  I’m sure that Justin and I would’ve agreed, had our opinions been sought for consideration. But the female trio before us suddenly acted as if we weren’t there. Fiona and Jackie flanked Michelle to help her walk since her injured knee almost buckled on her. Then they turned around and headed back up the path.

  “I don’t know which is worse,” I said to Justin, as we set out after them, while Brandon followed from a safe distance of nearly twenty feet behind us.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is it better to be a leper or invisible?”

  “Man, you crack me up!” He chuckled again. Suddenly, he stopped and grabbed onto my left arm. “Shit! What in the hell’s going on over there?”

  He pointed to the heavier tree line to our left, less than a hundred feet away.

  “What are you talking about—Oh shit!”

  My first instinct was to call to the gals ahead of us, and I would’ve done so. It might’ve made things worse, however, since the figure clad in a gray hoodie was moving away quickly from us through the sparse foliage along the hillside. Moving away, I should say, with what looked like a rifle bag strapped to his shoulder.

  Since it’s illegal to hunt animals within Nashville’s city limits, I’d say chances were high he was stalking something else…human game? Perhaps unsuspecting humans who thought a daytime visit might protect them. How frigging arrogant and foolish of us all! The only positive thing was the dude was heading farther away…and yet he was also going up the side of a hill that would provide a nice vantage point of the fort. Not to mention the fact ours was a sizable collection of ghost hunters at war with one another for a variety of reasons.

  It brought to mind the sort of herd turmoil that once worked well for the plains warriors of yesteryear when hunting bison. And the irony that our current predicament could well present a sweet delight for this lone gunman hit me full force. A gunman who likely had brought along a high-powered rifle of some sort…maybe even a weapon that was loaded with military grade ammunition.

  “We need to warn the others righ
t away!” I urged, motioning to Brandon to keep up with us as I picked up my pace to catch our vulnerable ladies. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Saturday afternoon’s sighting of the mysterious gray hoodie man might’ve been the hot topic of conversation at Sunday’s Christmas party at Tom’s. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t, because other than us three guys, no one else saw the gunman scurry up the hillside across from the fort.

  By the time we caught up to Fiona, Jackie, and Michelle, we could no longer see him. He must’ve moved into deeper cover, as the only thing that Justin and I could detect was slight movement in the brush where we last saw the top of the maroon rifle bag. Brandon’s powerful zoom lens confirmed this, in addition to providing the image of several branches from a nearby evergreen swaying. But, it all could’ve been caused by one of the strong gusts swirling through the area.

  Yes, we still advised everyone about what we saw, and Fiona and Ed especially seemed to believe us. However, I would’ve thought at least some of the guest attendees would desire to hightail it home to avoid any imminent danger. Instead, the wee ghost busters from the sticks south of Nashville wanted to give chase to our apparent stalker—his high-powered rifle and possible hollow point ammunition be damned.

  Obviously, the folks from Murfreesboro and McMinnville indulge themselves with too many vigilante action flicks. Either that or they carry an insane wish to experience the afterlife firsthand. I’m thankful none of our group embraced such crazy notions. And, I must say the gun-toting Thomas twins showed no inclination to pursue the gray-hoodie dude either.

  What did turn out to be the big buzz for our group was the fact three members of the Madison Wraith Hunter Society were arrested Saturday afternoon in the fort’s parking lot. Two members—Stanley ‘Ace’ Johnson and Michael “Pooch” Picaro—were arrested for disturbing the peace, due to their all-out fistfight. One other member—Michael’s younger brother, Johnny Picaro—was taken in for narcotics possession, after a small vial of heroin fell out of his coat pocket. If he hadn’t tried to rescue Pooch from the pummeling he endured from Ace, his little illegal stash would’ve likely remained undetected.