Then Bobby told her the story of the soldier on the tracks whose feet didn’t touch the ground—”And he had an authentic Confederate canteen,” Vernon Ray threw in—and then Bobby said someone in the cave, or maybe the Hole itself, had whispered “Early.”
They then took turns telling about their stake-out of the Hole and how Donnie Eggers had wandered up crazy-eyed and spastic, with the ghosts solidifying around him. Through it all, Cindy sat soberly, occasionally glancing at the digital image.
“And then they shot the bulldozer guy,” Bobby said, staring past Cindy at an Audubon calendar featuring the saw-whet owl.
“Do what?” Vernon Ray said, unconsciously picking up one of Bobby’s pet phrases.
“They popped out of thin air and shot him,” Bobby said. “I thought they were shooting at me, and he got in the way or something.”
“Dang it, Bobby,” Vernon Ray said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Bobby’s eyes looked sunken and glassy, as if he’d aged two decades in a heartbeat. “I was scared Col. Creep would come after me.”
“You’re saying the ghosts shot Carter Harrison?” Cindy said.
“I saw it with my own eyes, but don’t ask me for no proof,” Bobby said. “Because the proof vanished into thin air.”
“Why didn’t you report it to the cops?” Cindy said.
“I couldn’t even tell my best friend, much less sit in front of Littlefield and his goon squad,” Bobby said, defensive.
Cindy nodded. “Can’t say I blame you.”
Vernon Ray, however, could blame him. After all, the shooting proved that ghost bullets could become solid, and Vernon Ray could have been killed, too. Except—
Except I sort of think they LIKE me.
He stomped that thought down and offered up his and Bobby’s theory of transubstantiation. “Maybe they got something in the Hole charging them up,” he said. “Underground volcano, uranium, something weird like that.”
“Some say ghosts get solid by drawing on energy around them,” Cindy said. “That’s why you get cold spots—they take heat from the air.”
“But that still doesn’t explain why the bullets got real, or why they shot the bulldozer dude,” Bobby said, sagging with relief.
“Or what they want in the first place,” Vernon Ray added. Vernon Ray wanted to punch him on the arm for holding out, but it would only hurt his fingers and Bobby wouldn’t even get a bruise.
“This ghost you saw on the tracks,” Cindy said. “Was it near town?”
“In between town and the Hole,” Vernon Ray said.
“Okay, try this,” Cindy said. “Your railroad ghost escaped from the Hole somehow, and he has more energy than the others. This Col. Creep, as you call him, wants him back. Military desertion carries a death sentence, and I don’t see why that would change just because they all happen to be ghosts.”
Cindy was interrupted as a warehouse door rose in a screech of tortured metal, and a forklift motored in and took away a pallet of circulars. Vernon Ray and Bobby leaned forward as she continued.
“Now, the problem with that theory is we’d have to figure out why the deserter is able to get away from the mountain while the others can’t,” she said. “Otherwise, we’d have a rash of sightings in town.”
“The other problem is that these ghosts can kill you,” Bobby said, his face blanching a little as he recalled Carter’s death by supernatural firing squad.
Cindy gave a grim nod. “We’ll get to that later.”
“We might not have much ‘later’ if these things start spilling out all over the place with guns,” Vernon Ray said. “If people thought Kirk’s Raiders were a pain in the rump back in 1864, just wait until they get a load of this bunch.”
Cindy bent over and slid open a bottom drawer of her desk. Vernon Ray glanced at Bobby and saw that his eyes had widened and focused on the neckline of her blouse. Vernon Ray followed his gaze and observed the soft, pale swell of Cindy’s breast straining against the hem of a peach pastel bra. Bobby’s tongue unconsciously protruded a little, settling on his lower lip like Cleopatra’s asp on a warm Nile rock.
Vernon Ray swallowed a sting of bitterness and watched Cindy pull out a sheaf of yellowed papers and curled magazines. She spread them on the desk and thumbed through them.
They were local Civil War records, many of them duplicates of material tucked away in The Room. Vernon Ray had read them during his incursions into Dad’s hallowed bivouac, and though he was no expert on Kirk’s Raiders and Stoneman’s Raid, he recognized some of the faces in the old portraits.
“You said the Hole whispered ‘Early,’” Cindy said, turning her intense gaze to Bobby, who visibly flinched.
“Yeah.”
“It wasn’t ‘Early’ like ‘late,’” she said. “It’s a name. E-a-r-l-e-y.’”
She slid a document to the edge of the desk. The face with the severe eyes glared up at Vernon Ray.
“It’s him,” Bobby said.
“Corporal Earley Eggers,” Vernon Ray said. “Now I remember the name from dad’s muster rolls.”
“Member of the Pickett Home Guard,” Cindy said, reading from the records. “Reported missing in action during Stoneman’s Raid.”
They turned as a throat cleared and the editor stood at the cubicle opening, idly rubbing his hand over his protruding belly. His eyes were pooched out and bloodshot, face pinched as if he’d been deciphering hieroglyphics by candlelight. He nodded at the boys, and Vernon Ray smelled a mix of fried chicken and sweat beneath musky cologne.
“I’ve got to send this to plates in fifteen minutes,” he said to Cindy. “Anything breaking on the Harrison shooting?”
Vernon Ray glanced at Cindy, sensing Bobby’s held breath. Cindy’s face lost some of its animation and grew almost placid. “Nothing. Sheriff still has no comment.”
The editor stared past her as if imagining a bland banner headline. “‘The investigation is continuing,’” he said in a monotone.
“You got it.”
“I got nothing, you mean.”
“I’ll stay on it.”
“What’s that on your screen? Looks out of focus.”
“More nothing. A whole bunch of nothing.”
The editor settled his bleary, diffuse gaze on Vernon Ray. “So, you fellows win a Boy Scout badge or did I get lucky and you’re outing a perverted principal?”
“Boy Scouts,” Vernon Ray said.
“Safe as milk,” Bobby said.
The editor nodded, already drifting toward tomorrow’s front page and consigning them to community news on page 12. After he wobbled away, Cindy held up the portrait of Earley Eggers.
“The Eggers family was among the original European settlers here,” she said. “Migrated down from Pennsylvania in the late 1700’s. They used to own a thousand acres, reaching from the valley to the top of Mulatto Mountain. They named the mountain after a mulatto—that’s a half-white and half-black, in case you didn’t know—runaway slave who hid out on the mountain.”
“So maybe Earley’s spirit has a stronger connection to the land,” Vernon Ray said. “You always haunt the places you love or hate the most.”
“That’s dorky,” Bobby said.
“I think he’s tired of the war,” Cindy said. “He’s ready to go home.”
“Laying down his weapons,” Vernon Ray said.
Bobby shook his head, his mouth twisted to one side. “And run up the white flag? I don’t think Kirk and the boys will go for that. The question is ‘What are we going to do about it?’”
“Prove it, for one thing,” Cindy said. “I admit, I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff, but most people would dose you with some serious medications if you sold them this kind of supernatural fairy tale.”
“We’ve got the photos,” Vernon Ray said.
“I could fake that in Photoshop in 30 seconds,” she said.
“Then how do you know we aren’t spinning a whopper?” Bobby said.
Cindy gave
a grim smile. “Your eyes. They’re war-torn, like you’ve both seen some stuff you wish you hadn’t.”
“Okay, we’re on the same page, even if it’s a page from Freakly Weekly,” Vernon Ray said. “What next?”
“I’m sure you guys heard in science class that matter and energy can’t be created or destroyed, it only changes form,” she said.
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Einstein and that crap.”
“So how do we prove that this energy has become matter? Spirit made flesh?”
“Well, I don’t know what counts as solid evidence,” Vernon Ray said, fishing in his pocket. After a moment’s struggle, he tossed the filthy scrap of gray wool on Cindy’s desk.
She poked it with a pencil as if it were a rattlesnake skin, then picked it up.
“Found it in the Hole,” Vernon Ray said.
“Fabric from the war would be long rotted by now,” Cindy said.
“Along with the meat that wore it,” Bobby added.
“So something’s making them real again,” Vernon Ray said.
“If we agree that these ghosts are somehow powered by emotional energy, whether it’s love or hate or pain or fear, then we need to restore balance.”
“Balance?” Vernon Ray said. He was picturing some kind of Star Wars machine, a monster-sized electronic zapper that could scramble the ghosts’ electromagnetic field and blast Col. Creep and his Raiders back to ether, where they could be sucked into a cosmic vacuum cleaner and stored until the end of time.
“If one escapes, they need to draw another soul back to the Jangling Hole,” Cindy said.
Shivers crawled up Vernon Ray’s neck as he recalled the cold hand gripping his wrist and tugging him toward the black bowels of the Hole.
“No escape,” Bobby said. “Even when you’re dead, you got to belong somewhere.”
Belong. Vernon Ray wondered if he’d ever belong anywhere, on either side of the cemetery fence.
“So we’ve somehow got to lure Earley Eggers back to the Hole,” Vernon Ray said.
“Or they’ll take a replacement,” Cindy said.
The ensuing silence was broken by a mechanical whirring and clatter as the presses kicked in behind the cubicle wall, rolling out the afternoon’s edition.
Great, Vernon Ray thought. The good news just keeps getting better.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Titusville Times had downplayed the shooting death, just as Cindy had promised. The article had suggested a hunting accident, with Littlefield quoted as believing the shooter could have been miles away and not even been aware of the accidental target. He’d issued the usual call for anyone with more information to step forward, and besides the victim’s family ringing his phone off the hook, the public seemed content with the explanation.
As for the family, Littlefield had alluded to the possibility of suicide, and despite the shame he’d felt over the tactic, it worked: The survivors gathered among themselves and whispered about the possible shortcomings, debts, affairs, or mental defects Carter Harrison had hidden for all those years.
“The incident is still under investigation,” the sheriff said, quoting himself before tossing the paper on his desk.
Because Cindy had scooped the regional dailies, they took her story for the Associated Press wire and the mystery was safely blanketed. Littlefield was getting good at cover-ups, and he wondered what other lies he’d have to spin before he retired and how many more corpses he’d leave behind. He sipped his coffee and it was as cold and bitter as the hole in his chest.
Sherry waded through the door, making a rare sojourn from her dispatch desk. Movement was unnatural for her, as if her gelatinous flesh had never quite connected to her skeleton. Littlefield wondered how her husband handled her in bed, and turned his thoughts away before he got to the point of a Sherry-in-the-buff visual.
“Jeff Davis is here,” Sherry said. “The Living History group needs a permit for this weekend.”
Littlefield wondered why Sherry hadn’t simply pressed the intercom button as she usually did. As she made her way past his desk to the little refrigerator, he understood. Morton had left some Girl Scout cookies in the freezer and Sherry liked to raid the stash, taking two or three in the belief that nobody would notice.
She trusted Littlefield not to rat her out, and the sheriff liked to tease Morton about his inability to solve the crime. At least he had back in the days when cookie crumbs were the most important business of the day.
“I thought they got that through the town,” the sheriff said.
“That’s for use of public property,” Sherry said, stuffing a coconut cookie in her mouth.
The re-enactment events were usually held at Aldridge Park, a piece of donated land at the base of Mulatto Mountain. Littlefield wasn’t sure he wanted a few hundred people piled up within spitting distance of the Jangling Hole, and wondered if he could concoct some sort of problem that would allow him to change the location.
Maybe an anonymous threat of violence, somebody protesting the Confederate flag, or a Homeland Security alert. Feed people the image of a brown man with a bomb and you could pretty much get them to do anything you wanted.
“You got all the paperwork?” he said.
“Yeah, but he needs a permit for the guns. They use real guns in the event.”
“All right, send him in,” he said. “And thanks for keeping Morton’s weight down. He’s got his physical coming up.”
“My pleasure,” Sherry said, and Littlefield got the sense that cookies were one of her few pleasures besides crankiness. “I got some cherry jubilee for you to take to Perriotte.”
“Will do.” The deputy had made no progress, though his physical signs were stable and normal. Perriotte still manifested a strange form of waking coma, and though his eyes were open and he responded to some stimuli, he had not spoken since his admission.
The doctors were calling it a delayed form of post-traumatic stress disorder, probably caused by Perriotte’s tour of duty in Iraq. Littlefield hadn’t bothered to add his own theories to mix, but the discovery of Donnie Eggers at the Jangling Hole had caused him to form his own diagnosis.
Jeff Davis was wearing work clothes but he topped it off with a felt cavalier’s hat, a dandy peacock feather dancing from the headband.
“Don’t tell me they wore that in the Civil War,” Littlefield said. “Seems like the feather would make it easy for sharpshooters to pick off the officers.”
Jeff adjusted the hat. “Those were different times. Officers usually were at the front of the charge, sometimes carrying nothing but a sword. The days of paper-pushing captains didn’t come until later, when the military became a tool of the industrialists.”
Littlefield gave a salute and indicated an empty chair before Jeff could launch into a lecture. “You fellows are using Aldridge Park, I hear.”
“Yeah. We bivouac on Thursday, have open camp on Friday, and conduct the battle on Saturday.”
“And Sunday is for nursing hangovers and cleaning up?”
“This isn’t a party, Sheriff. It’s an educational event, and a chance to remember.”
“Sorry. Whenever I think about men, campfires, and tents, I form assumptions based on my personal experience.”
“I hope your drinking didn’t include firearms.”
“Right. I assume you guys are firing blanks, right?” Even though the guns were mostly replicas, they functioned and their powder charges simulated the noise of actual battle. State law and courtesy required advance notification, both to head off E-911 calls and make sure the horseless cowboys weren’t too reckless.
“Safety is our most important concern, and we’re fully insured. Every participant has a permit to carry, even though technically it’s not required if the weapons aren’t concealed.”
Littlefield had no doubt Jeff Davis knew the gun laws better than Littlefield himself did, and he wasn’t particularly concerned about the fine print. “You heard about the shooting Sunday?”
&
nbsp; “Yeah. That’s a shame. Carter was a real decent guy. We were hoping to enlist him.”
“Well, don’t you think it might seem a little inconsiderate to hold a bang-up battle near the site of his accidental death?”
Jeff’s eyebrows lifted at the word “accidental,” and Littlefield wondered what sorts of rumors were circulating despite Cindy’s snow job. “The Civil War is still the bloodiest conflict in American history,” Jeff said, and Littlefield braced for the inner professor to emerge. “Hardly a square mile of territory was untouched by blood, misery, and sorrow, whether on the battlefield or the home front. When Stoneman and Kirk swept through here, there were plenty of atrocities that never made it into the books. Theft, looting, foolery with the women. Kirk had a stockade at Aldridge, and plenty of Confederate prisoners died there, whether from dysentery or the pistol of that crazy Union colonel.”
“I heard a few escaped, with the help of some guards who deserted and fled with them.”
Jeff smoothed his moustache. “The Jangling Hole, Sheriff. Quit pussyfooting.”
“Yeah. The Hole.”
“I focus on ‘living history,’ not the other kind.”
“Well, you got to admit, we’re all living history one way or another. Even if we make it up as we go along, it’s still getting made.”
“Legends get made, too. But I’ve never found any records to verify the legend. The Union Army kept diligent records most of the time, but the North Carolina mountains were largely rough frontier, and the Union soldiers were mostly bushwhackers and goons who were locally recruited. Kirk was a rogue from the Tennessee line who was only too happy to rile up his neighbors. Making him a colonel was like giving him a license to kill.”
Littlefield wondered how the colonel would view his license if he were dead and beyond punishment. “Well, my job is to keep the county safe and uphold the laws,” he said.
Ghost Box: Six Supernatural Thrillers Page 49
