by JL Bryan
“I understand,” I said, as though I did. “If you could provide us with copies of anything you might find, we'd truly appreciate it.”
“We'll see what we can do, Detective Jordan,” he said. “Now, if you'll just follow me to my truck, we'll begin the second phase of our tour.”
Stacey cast me a worried, questioning look as we followed him up the dirt road to a pick-up truck parked in the shade of an oak. It looked as if he'd deliberately parked out of sight so he could spy on us or sneak up on us, since that was what he'd done. I suppose it was possible he just wanted the shade of the old tree to keep his truck cab cooled off. Virgil drove a shiny brand new Ford F-450, which is not a cheap truck. I supposed he did well in the heating and air conditioning game.
“You'll have to help me unload the canoe,” Virgil said, gesturing toward a dingy plastic watercraft roped into the back of the truck. “I've got a herniated disc.”
“Why would we need a canoe?” I asked, although I was afraid I already knew the answer. I was about ready to wrap up our interview with Virgil, since he didn't seem to have any more specific information about our case. He seemed to have other plans, unfortunately.
“The British crossed at Paris' Mill, upcreek from here, to sneak back down the far side of the creek and surprise the American forces,” Virgil said. “No tour of the Brier Creek battle site would be complete without a visit to the old mill site where that critical crossing occurred. A modern bridge spans the site now, but the ruins of the dam can be found just upcreek from there.”
“How far away is that?” Stacey said.
“Just fourteen miles northwest of here,” he said. “We'll be paddling against the current, but it's not a strong one.”
Stacey cast me a panicked look. “Fourteen miles? That would take all day, and into the night...”
“Thanks anyway, Virgil, but we don't want to put you to that much trouble,” I said.
“No trouble for me. You two will paddle while I narrate the battle. I can't paddle, between my herniated disc and my bad knees.” He was unhooking the bungees that held the canoe in place.
“We don't have time, unfortunately,” I said. “Can't we just drive to the other spot?”
“The entire length of the creek between Millhaven and Brannen's Bridge is of historical significance,” he said. “One cannot truly grasp the scope of the battle by taking shortcuts.”
“We'll have to miss some of that scope, then,” I said. “The Cliff's Notes version is fine for us.”
Virgil stared at me, possibly—I couldn't see much through those wraparound shades.
“I mean to impress upon you the importance of all that occurred so you can pass it on to your clients,” he said. “That family ought to have more respect for the history they're using to scare up tourism dollars.”
“We will be sure to relay all of that,” I said, though I didn't really intend to harass my clients with this man's cantankerous opinions.
Virgil pointed northward along the creek. There wasn't too much to see, since the old forest enclosed the little waterway on both sides, reaching in from either bank to swallow most of our view of the dark water below.
“Thataway lies the old dam, about fourteen miles north of here,” he said. “Had we taken the canoe, I could show you the remnants of the old mill. While a smaller decoy force downstream kept the American patrols distracted, British Lieutenant Colonel Mark Prevost led the bulk of the redcoats and Loyalist militia up this way. The bridge had been previously destroyed, so the British had to rebuild it quickly before crossing. One can imagine the Americans in their camp, feeling secure, unaware of the force secretly making its way southward...”
Virgil went on and on, using his hands to demonstrate battle lines and troop movements while occasional cars and trucks whipped by on the small bridge above us. Stacey recorded him with her microphone. After twenty or thirty minutes, she looked beaten down by the detailed minutiae of Virgil's recount. I was starting to feel that way, too—Virgil didn't stop long to breathe, and certainly not long enough for anyone else to speak or ask a question. Still, I listened closely, never knowing when some scrap or crumb of data might turn out to be important later on.
I heard every detail and repercussion of the battle, too, right down to the court martial of the American general in charge.
My head swam with Virgil's relentless lists of names, dates, facts, and figures. This guy was one extreme history buff. He seemed to have the entire war memorized, but we only needed to know about a tiny sliver of it, if that. I remembered the librarian's comment about how talking to Virgil was like drinking from a fire hose.
“I suppose you'll want to visit Kettle Creek Battlefield next,” he said with a sigh, while Stacey and I were edging toward our van.
“No!” I said, much too quickly to be polite. “I mean, um, I don't think that's going to be relevant to our research here. But thank you for everything—”
“Good,” he said. “Kettle Creek always gets more attention than Brier Creek. I wouldn't want those twerps at the Kettle Creek Battlefield Association getting big heads.”
“Oh, you guys have a rivalry?” Stacey asked. “The Brier Creek fans versus the Kettle Creek fans? Battle of the Creeks?”
“There aren't enough Brier Creek fans to constitute a fan base, sadly,” Virgil said. “I've considered creating an association myself.”
“You should go for it,” I said.
“Do you think there would be sufficient interest?”
“You won't know until you try.”
“The fallen soldiers of Brier Creek deserve it,” Virgil said. He seemed to be musing to himself rather than speaking to me as he looked up along the creek.
“Yep,” I said, kind of lamely. “We'd better get going, it's pretty late in the day. Thanks again for all your help.”
“Perhaps I will create an association of my own,” he said, still looking along the creek. “In which case, I'll send membership packets for both of you. Membership fees will be substantial, but well worth it.”
“Okay, we'll look over...all of that,” I said. “Please let me know if you find anything more about the Hessian horseman or the Neville family.”
“I bid you good day, m'lady.” Virgil tipped his hat at us, and we hurried back into the van. The sun was getting low in the sky.
“Wow,” Stacey said. “I didn't think he was going to stop talking.”
“At least we learned something.” I started up the van and eased out onto the road.
“We learned way, way too much,” Stacey said. “I'm going to have to watch hours of Real Housewives to scrub my brain empty after that. Nothing else is vapid enough.”
“Maybe we should replay everything he told us,” I said. “Start your recording from the top.”
“You're kidding.”
“We might have missed something. If you look down on this spot from Google satellite, you'll see that you only have to travel a couple miles through the riverside marshes to reach our client's farm. The battlefield might matter to our case.”
Stacey groaned, then plugged her portable voice recorder into the van's sound system. She covered her eyes as Virgil's voice regaled us once again with the story of the long-ago battle and all of the musket calibers involved. Lucky for her, we arrived back at the client's house in just a few minutes. Jacob was on the way for his psychic walk-through, which would hopefully settle our questions about the ghosts and put us on the path to a proper spiritual extermination.
Chapter Ten
Stacey and I sprinted around the farm as the sun sank and the sky grew dark overhead, making a last check of our gear before nightfall. We spent as little time back in the woods as possible, giving the cameras and microphone in the old cemetery only the most cursory examination before leaving.
We did spend a little too much time just outside the cemetery, shovels in hand, digging out the earth around the old iron gate. The dirt looked sandy and soft, but turned out to have its share of rocks and
gravel, and overall it took a lot longer than I'd wanted to spend on it.
Happily, we managed to dig the gate free before the sun went down. The old hinges were reluctant to budge, but I'd brought a can of WD40 to help with that. I soaked them thoroughly. The last thing I wanted was to snap off a critical piece of the gate while attempting to close it.
We managed to ease it shut, and I closed a shiny new stainless steel padlock into place. We both let out a deep breath when the gate was securely locked. I hadn't even been aware I was holding mine. There was a gathering thickness and coldness in the air, and I imagined I could feel the resentment of the spirits in the cemetery, watching me as I sealed them in for the night. At least, I hoped that was what I was doing.
Then we fled the swampy cemetery, sprinting to put that overrun hive of ghosts behind us.
We moved into the corn maze through the broken back row. We'd detected cold spots in the area each night, and broken cobs and stalks still lay strewn all over the path, but we were glad to be out of the woods, at least. Stacey checked the night vision camera plus the remote temperature and EMF sensors, while I changed the batteries in the microphone.
The hoof beats began as the sky went dark overhead, the last licks of sunlight having finally sputtered out.
The sound of hooves rumbled past, a few rows away. I swung my flashlight toward it, but all I saw was something dark flicking by before it was out of sight altogether.
Stacey and I looked at each other. Her eyes were wide.
“Do you think it's him?” she whispered. I motioned for her to stay quiet.
The hoof beats faded, as if the entity were galloping away. Stacey gave a relieved smile when they fell silent.
“It's gone,” she said.
Then the sound returned, faster now and growing louder as it approached, the rapid thumping of a galloping horse. It was definitely coming toward us.
We spun and pointed our lights as the horse-mounted figure turned a corner and thundered our way, a dark blur in the night. The rider was solid black, faceless, a dark cloak flaring out behind it as it rode us down. It had the shape of a large man, tall with broad shoulders, one who could probably pick me up and toss me aside with one of his black-gloved hands.
The figure let out a deep, angry roar that sounded more like a wild beast than a human. It raised one hand that gripped something long and narrow—a sword. Virgil had said the Hessian horsemen would have carried one while alive, the better to convince travelers to hand over their coins and jewels.
Stacey and I blasted the entity with the searing white beams of our tactical flashlights.
It kept charging toward us, though. Our lights were not slowing it down at all.
Stacey and I dove to opposite sides of the path as the horse-mounted entity swept past. I heard the whoosh of its sword overhead, and severed cornstalks rained down onto me.
The horseman rode on until he reached the corner at the end of the path. He turned to face us, swiping his sword in midair, and his horse reared up.
In the moonlight, I could see that his cloak was pinned at his neck, but there was nothing above the high, stiffly starched black collar. This horseman was, indeed, headless.
Despite lacking a mouth, it began to laugh—a harsh, deep, grating laugh, not unlike what one might expect from, let's say, a psychotic German soldier returned from the dead.
On the other hand...I'd seen the ghost, heard it, and even smelled the horse as it raced past. That was a lot of senses for an apparition; typically you just get one or two. Also, the little blast of wind from the passing horse had been warm, not icy cold as one would expect from most ghosts.
Now that the horse had finally stopped for a moment, my flashlight showed me that it was spotted brown and white, with a big starburst on its head—not exactly the black shadow-horse I'd been led to expect.
“Corrine?” I asked, pointed my beam at the black-clad figure. Then I shouted the name louder to be heard over the harsh, grating laughter.
The laughing sound ended abruptly, as if a recording had been cut off. The black, headless figure regarded us silently for a moment, then laughed again. This time, it was a clearly female voice, and not particular scary or German or anything.
The giggling rider pointed one gloved finger at Stacey, who'd crashed through a row of corn and tangled in the plastic netting on her way down to the ground. Now Stacey got to her feet and glared up at the headless horseman while dusting sandy red dirt off her jeans.
“Ellie,” Stacey said. “What if the horseback ghost is female? Have we even considered that?”
“That's not a real ghost, Stacey. That's a teenage girl in disguise.”
“I totally tricked you!” Corrine's face emerged from somewhere inside the coat and cape.
“Huh? No, I know that's her, it just made me think—” Stacey began.
“Yeah, right, whatever!” Corrine jeered. The black-clad figure unbuttoned its coat, revealing the rest of Corrine's face inside. “That was so much fun. I miss doing that.”
“Somebody could have gotten hurt,” I said.
“Like me, for example,” Stacey added.
“You're fine. I know what I'm doing. Starburst and I ride through here all the time.”
“Do you trample many people?” Stacey asked.
“Y'all don't think it was even a little bit funny?” Corrine asked. She was approaching us again, slowly, her horse moving at an easy walk.
“We don't,” I said.
“It's just payback for springing that ghost trap thing on me,” Corrine said.
“We didn't spring it on you,” I said. “You walked into it.”
“My mom's still mad at me, and all I did was go for a glass of water. 'Gee, sorry I forgot to use the back stairs because the ghost hunters were here, Mom.' I mean, get over it already.”
“We'd appreciate it if you would just kind of avoid attacking or threatening us while we're here,” I said. “You should understand there's real danger around. You said the horseman chased you...or was that a lie, too?”
“I'm not scared of him.” Her expression turned hard and angry. “He chased me once, but if I see him again, I won't be scared. He's dead and I'm alive. I'm not going to be afraid of him.”
“So you're sticking by that story, then,” I said.
“He did chase me. But I've come out here since, to show him I'm not afraid. I yelled that at him, even, and he still wouldn't come out and show his face. I think he's scared of me now.” Corrine bared her teeth, but it wasn't quite a smile. “I'll show him who's scary.”
Stacey looked at me and raised one eyebrow. It did sound like Corrine might be cracking up a bit, maybe from the stress of living on haunted land, maybe for other reasons I didn't know about.
“Is that how he looked when you saw him?” I pointed to the costume that surrounded her.
“No, I told you,” Corrine said. She opened a few more buttons around her face. “He was a black shadow. This is my costume. We made it before I ever saw the ghost. My friend Bianca helped, but she doesn't come over anymore. Everybody avoids me now, like it's my fault that I have creepy dead ancestors walking around in my woods. I didn't want them here. I didn't invite them here. Why does everyone have to treat me like a freak now?”
“Your friends encountered something strange and scary out here,” I said. “If they're avoiding you, that's probably their way of avoiding thinking about what they saw. It was pretty bad that night, wasn't it?”
“Sure. But it was kind of fun before all that happened. My friends would come over on Friday and Saturday night, we'd do make-up and costumes, we'd run around the woods and corn maze scaring people.”
“I hope you didn't trample customers with your horse,” Stacey grumbled.
“Mom wouldn't let me ride as the headless horseman in the maze, but I always wanted to. That would really send them screaming.”
“To their lawyers, most likely,” I said. “So you rode around in the woods, acting like the ghostly
horseman?”
“I'd also ride out into the dirt road and chase after the hayride, you know, waving my sword and playing my evil laugh. Dad worked out this gag—he uses the tractor to pull the hayride, right? So when I showed up, he would act all scared. He'd speed up the tractor and pretend he was trying to escape the ghost as fast as he could, like I was a real ghost, you know, and he was really scared. He would wear a straw hat and overalls and totally played the freaked-out farmer role to the hilt. I mean of course he could do that, he's seen a zillion horror movies. He's always watching obscure Japanese zombie movies and stuff. He's the one who decided to start the whole haunted-woods thing. My mom wanted more of a cheerful, crafty fall-festival kind of theme, so they kind of each got part of what they wanted.”
“How did your friends describe the figures they saw?”
“Well, they knew right away these weren't just people in costumes,” Corrine said. “Some of them weren't much more than like gray stick figures, kind of. They were just barely there, maybe you could only see a piece of a face. They weren't like romantic ghosts in sweeping ball gowns and top hats, that's what I'm saying. More like old bodies, like the walking dead. From, you know, The Walking Dead. Freaky, huh?”
“That's freaky,” I agreed. That matched the apparitions I'd seen in the road outside the cemetery the previous night. “Where exactly did your friends see them?”
“Wherever they were performing,” Corrine said. “Bianca was painted all in white, you know, in this cheap white dress and then total zombie-face. She was haunting outside that first overgrown shack on the side of the road. She had some wind chimes she would ring to sound all ghosty. And Sahiri, that's another girl, she did more of a weird vampire-with-cobras thing. A lot of blood on her face. And Kep tried to look all tough like a zombie with spiked chains, but he just kind of looked like a biker reject...”
“These are all people who saw the ghosts?”
“Yeah.” Corrine turned to look through the break in the corn and into the swampy woods beyond. “I wish we could just cut down those woods. And, I don't know, move the graveyard or bury it under concrete or something.” She shivered. “I wish we could move back home. Any chance you could just tell my mom that?” She looked back at me, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.
