Ghost Box: Six Supernatural Thrillers

by Scott Nicholson

  “Cease fire,” came a deep command from below, and in the sudden silence Hardy heard his own throat working as he fought to expel the thick, acrid gun-smoke from his lungs.

  The soldiers stood poised in firing position, teeth gritted and hollow eyes cold, as boots strode across the kitchen floor and climbed the stairs.

  Hardy couldn’t help hearing the boots as a drumbeat—tatta tatta.

  The soldiers parted, allowing the colonel to squeeze through. The man gave one slow tug of his beard as he gazed down at the latest casualty in a war that never ended.

  Then Kirk stooped and rolled the limp boy into his arms, standing with a creak of wood and hugging the boy to his chest.

  “Retreat,” he whispered, or maybe the wind hit the tin eaves, or maybe the word was only a hallucination that flitted across Hardy’s ringing eardrums.

  The soldiers followed their leader, but not before the possum-bearded soldier gave Earley a look that promised revenge.

  After the soft parade back across the kitchen was over, Hardy dropped to his knees and sought out the corporal.

  Earley Eggers was gone, the musket lying on the floor.

  Pearl called out, but Hardy ignored her. He crawled to the musket and checked the magazine. The powder charge was intact. The gun had not been fired.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Goddamned mosquitoes. Can’t wait until the frost wipes your pointy asses out.

  Elmer swatted at one of the bloodsuckers, but he missed, and a moment later it was whining against his ear again.

  “Atten-chun,” Jeff Davis barked.

  Yassuh, Cap’n, suh.

  Elmer would have said it aloud in search of a laugh, but his fellow soldiers standing erect on both sides had let their faces go to granite. They swallowed up this make-believe shit, and Elmer played along. Truth was, he’d just as soon stand around sweating yesterday’s beer as crawl around laying pipe on the Collins job. The wool get-up was scratchy and trapped the morning heat against his skin, but all in all it wasn’t a bad way to spend a Thursday.

  If only he didn’t have to lick his neighbor’s boots to earn his day off.

  Wally Hampton, to Elmer’s left, didn’t seem to mind being a buck private, especially since he’d poured a little Jack Daniels in his thermos to spice up his coffee. Hampton, a carpenter who was riding a disability claim for all it was worth, was used to idle weekdays. Flanking Elmer’s other side was Darren Anderson, a teenager who had joined the Living History Society because he was dating a college girl and was trying to impress her with the uniform.

  The trouble a guy went to for pussy. Well, it won’t be long until he’s hanging out with guys to get away from pussy, because all you got to do is marry it to turn it into a cunt.

  The park was quiet in the morning, a few grosbeaks and cardinals working the branches of the big hardwoods. A Confederate battle flag dangled from a skinned locust post, as limp as a used handkerchief. The mountains sloped up from the creek that bordered the park, Mulatto the steepest and tallest, its autumn trees a little deeper in color than the rest. Pick-up trucks in the gravel lot were still packed with equipment, though Jeff and a couple of others had been up before dawn, erecting their tents and setting the stage for the re-enactment.

  Jeff strutted like a peacock in front of the line of soldiers, his uniform so clean and starched that it looked like steel wool. He’d brought out his insignia for the occasion, pinned enough brass to his chest to stop a cannonball. Jeff was so spit-and-polish that he’d even held a mock enlistment, checking the recruits’ teeth to see if they had enough enamel to bite the paper off a powder charge. Elmer had nipped the officer’s finger.

  Elmer grinned at the dregs of the memory, causing Jeff to stop his inspection and get in Elmer’s face.

  “And what’s so funny, soldier?” Jeff said.

  “Nothing,” Elmer answered.

  “Nothing what?”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re speaking to a superior officer.”

  Elmer wanted to grin bigger and slap Darren on the shoulder, let him in on the big joke, but Darren gulped and stood a little straighter. Wally Hampton also stood erect, though he swayed slightly from the booze.

  Damn, these boys are taking it serious. And Jefferson Davis certainly got the role down pat, sausage breath and all.

  It was too early to get into character. A few civilians were gathered in the gravel parking lot on the edge of the park, and the woman from the newspaper was there with her camera, getting ready to make a big fuss. A couple of the wives, wearing their bonnets and hoop skirts, were setting up iron kettles, spinning wheels, and other homestead displays.

  But the unwritten rule of re-enactments, at least during Elmer’s service, was you goofed off during the warm-ups and didn’t get serious until the first fake shot was fired. But Jeff seemed to have a bug up his ass this year, as if he had something to prove and Pickett County’s future hinged on the outcome of a make-believe battle.

  “Nothing what?” Jeff repeated.

  “Nothing, sir,” Elmer said.

  “Good,” Jeff said, slapping his pair of riding gloves against his sleeve as if to shake off the dust of a long furlough. “When Kirk and his bunch of blue-bellied demons ride through, you better not be doing much laughing, or else you’ll be picking grapeshot from between your teeth. If you’re head’s still attached, that is.”

  “Sir?” Darren said, looking straight ahead.

  Jeff stepped away from Elmer and stopped in front of Darren, adjusting the teenager’s kepi so that it tilted down over his forehead. “Yes, Private?”

  “I thought it was General Stoneman that would be riding through here. Like in the history books.”

  “Stoneman was the man in charge, but it was Kirk who did the hard riding and the hard killing. But I admire your research. Adds to the appreciation of the event.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Jeff stepped away so that he could face the entire troop, or at least those who’d been able to skip work. A bead of sweat ran down Elmer’s forehead, riding the slope between his eyes until a drop dangled at the end of his nose, tickling him. He didn’t dare reach up to wipe it away, though, because Jeff’s eyes had gone as hard and gray as a saber’s steel.

  “Gentlemen, history is about to come alive, but it’s not just the past we’re about to honor,” Jeff said, his voice somehow becoming half an octave deeper. “It’s also the future. Because the Civil War truly pitted neighbor against neighbor, and the battle never ended in these parts.”

  What the hell is he droning on about? Elmer figured Jeff had been reading some of the newer, revisionist books on the war, which skewed toward bizarre social and psychological theory because the nuts-and-bolts history had been examined from every possible angle. Because there were plenty of collectors like Jeff who’d snatch up anything even remotely linked to the war, writers had plenty of incentive to slap books together and roll them out in expensive leather-bound editions, even if the grammar was so crappy that Elmer, a D student in English, found mistakes. At least on those occasions when he was able to get past the third page.

  “Tonight you’ll be defending your homes, your families, and your country,” Jeff said, delivering the lines with a flourish as if he were channeling Honest Abe Lincoln minus the stovepipe hat and goofy sideburns. “I can’t rightly declare that God is on our side, because it’s God’s duty to be on all sides at the same time. But it’s our duty to fight for the blessings He’s bestowed upon us, lest we bring dishonor on ourselves and our forefathers.”

  Elmer heard a snuffle and a choked intake of breath. He shifted his eyes to the right. It looked for all the world like Wally was weeping.

  The woman from the newspaper, who had a badge that read “Press” over her left tit as if nobody could tell by her foot-long camera lens and pocket notepad, was zeroing in on Jeff, who sensed his moment in the spotlight and let his chest swell even bigger.

  The drop of sweat danced on the end of
Elmer’s nose, taunting him, trying to get him to sneeze and break ranks.

  Not on your fucking life. This is honor we’re talking about here, not a turn on “American Idol.”

  “Some of us will not make it through the campaign,” Jeff said. “As your officer, I would not ask you to take on any risk that I wouldn’t face myself. I’ve got a family—”

  As Jeff paused, Elmer wondered if his own boys would make it out to the bivouac tonight. Jerrell would probably be out boning one of his blondes in the back seat of his Mustang, but Bobby had been hanging around his bedroom since last night, barely even coming out long enough to take a piss. The boy was probably rubbing himself raw the way any normal 13-year-old boy would. And, praise the Sweet Lord in Heaven Above, Bobby had turned out normal, unlike Jeff’s little offspring.

  “I’ve got a family and I’m willing to make sacrifices for it,” Jeff continued. “And they have to make sacrifices as well.”

  Jeff nodded toward the civilian camp, where a fire was now jumping and water boiling. His wife Martha, a scrawny woman whose complexion and thin-necked, top-heavy head gave her the appearance of a buzzard, stirred the water in the kettle as if preparing to wash laundry or make a stew. Jeff probably wouldn’t be dipping the old noodle in that tonight, considering they’d be bedded in a tent where every little sigh and moan would be heard by the whole camp. Jeff probably wasn’t doing much dipping of any kind lately.

  Not since he’d planted a little blond seed inside Vernell.

  Maybe Martha had wondered the same thing Elmer had: Bobby looked a hell of a lot more like Jeff than he did anything from the Eldreth gene pool. And considering the one reproductive bullet Jeff had fired between her thighs had turned out a dud, she’d probably put the little muff pie off limits for good.

  No big surprise that Vernon Ray was nowhere to be seen. The little sweetboy was a constant reminder of the sissy-girl hiding inside Jeff, the one he covered with macho commando horseshit and a pussy-tickling mustache.

  Family sacrifices, my ass.

  The drop of sweat swelled a little bigger on the end of Elmer’s nose and he crossed his eyes trying to look at it, as if concentration would make it evaporate.

  “Sacrifices,” Jeff said, pacing up and down in front of the assembled soldiers. He was putting on a show for the photographer, who knelt in the grass and took one of those upward-angle shots intended to make the subject look 10 feet tall and full of vinegar.

  Wally belched, and another acid-tinged fog of coffee and whiskey seeped across Elmer’s face. The sound stood out in the hushed morning, and the golden-topped poplars and red maples quit their flapping, as if Jeff’s message was meant for the whole world.

  “The definition of sacrifice is making an offering to something bigger than yourself, whether it’s your God, your tribe, your comrades, your flag,” Jeff said, pausing long enough so the photographer could frame Capt. Davis, with the line of troops in the background, against the colorful trees and the Stars and Bars.

  The worm wants to be the star of his own history book.

  “We’re a living history society,” the captain continued, the photographer clicking away. “But history is about dying. What we commemorate—what we celebrate—in these next few days is the very real blood that spilled on this mountain soil. That’s our heritage, gentlemen. That’s the debt we have to repay.”

  Elmer wondered how much of the goosed-up coffee remained in Wally’s thermos. The drop of sweat seemed to have swelled even bigger, defying gravity and clinging to Elmer’s snot-leaker like a frog to a wet log. He wiggled his head, trying to shake it free before he sneezed.

  Jeff noted the movement and took three powerful strides forward, until Elmer could smell cheese grits on the captain’s breath to accompany the sausage. Jeff moved his hand to the brass hilt of his saber, fondling the tassel.

  “You’re at attention, soldier,” Jeff said.

  “Damn it, Jeff, crank it down a notch,” Elmer said, letting his shoulders slump as he reached to wipe away the sweat. “The crowd’s not even here yet.”

  So smoothly that Elmer was sure the little worm had practiced it over and over in the privacy of his double-wide, Jeff snicked the saber from its scabbard and arced it, bringing the rounded tip forward until it pressed against Elmer’s breastbone.

  “The Confederate States of America can brook no insubordination in the ranks,” the captain said, and his eyes were a color that Elmer had never seen, a smoky gray rimmed with red that looked for all the world like the haze over a wasted battlefield.

  The tip of the saber pressed harder, and Elmer was relieved it was a cavalier’s sword, made for slashing instead of skewering, or the steel would have worked through the fabric to his skin.

  Elmer flicked his eyes to the photographer, hoping she’d get a shot in case Elmer decided to press charges. The dyke’s hands were on her hips, and she glared as if she were disappointed by a coward’s betrayal. The women of the civilian attachment had paused in their chores, awaiting the disciplinary action to come. The other soldiers continued to stare straight ahead, and a glance at Wally’s ruddy face told Elmer that the walrus-assed drunk was glad that it was Elmer instead of him getting the verbal corn-holing.

  Despite the increased pressure of the saber, Elmer was mulling whether to call Jeff’s bluff and tell him at least his kid wasn’t a little Swisher Sweet in a pink velvet wrapper. Then he saw the actors coming through the woods, heading for the creek from the direction of Mulatto Mountain.

  It must have been the boys from the Eighth Tennessee Regiment, because they were decked out in gear that looked so authentic that it might have been dragged through Manassas and back. But the uniforms were filthy and not all of it standard, which added to the realism but didn’t really fit the spirit of modern re-enactors, who were prodded by men like Jeff until they spent all their money on approved replicas. Plus, these uniforms were a mix of Union blue and Homeland gray.

  “What do you have to say for yourself, Private?” Jeff said, chicory now joining the odors that rode his words.

  Elmer decided to let Jeff play his little game, but that didn’t mean the whole world would play along. He nodded toward the camp’s perimeter. “Looks like we got company.”

  Without lowering the saber, Jeff craned his neck around, almost sniffing the air like a groundhog testing for danger. “Company?”

  “The guys from Bristol,” Elmer said, and then he remembered the Tennessee History Brigade wasn’t due to arrive until tomorrow. They must have camped before dawn, maybe parking on the logging roads that wound around Mulatto, getting dressed and planning a surprise attack.

  Not a bad strategy, except for the fact that the audience hadn’t arrived, the battle was supposed to be scripted, and these guys looked like they’d been shitting in the woods for a decade instead of fresh off a sit-down breakfast at Denny’s.

  “Don’t count on reinforcements in this battle,” Jeff said. Smoke roiled in his eyes, and the narrow shape of them resembled the way Bobby’s got when he was pissed off or paranoid. “Out here, we’re on our own, the only thing standing between the devil and the folks back home.”

  “Okay, Jeff, I get it,” Elmer said, quiet enough that even Wally and Darren would have had to strain to hear. “You got a hard-on for brass tacks, maybe you had a hard-on for Vernell, and you got a hard-on for this little make-believe world because your real life is crap. And I couldn’t give two hairy rats fucking in a sock. Play your little game, but leave me out of it.”

  Elmer was reaching for the blade of the saber, telling himself it was only a toy, kept dull so that no one got hurt in the heat of pretend war. The Tennessee regiment was still advancing, but they were fading to smoke themselves, blending with the morning haze that hung over the creek.

  Elmer thought his eyes were going, fuzzing out from a stroke.

  He reached out as if to wipe away the gauze that hovered before him. His hand wrapped around the cold steel of the sword, grateful for its solidit
y, his heart ticking like a sick clock.

  “No insubordination,” Jeff said, stepping back and flicking his wrist, withdrawing the blade so that Elmer’s hand became a sheath. The fleshy pads around Elmer’s palm grew wet, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the stacks of gray mist marching through the trees, and as the soldiers’ bodies melted into the air, those haunted, weary faces hung around a little bit longer, floating like echoes of lost screams.

  “The Tennessee boys,” Elmer said, lifting his throbbing hand to point.

  Red rain leaked from his palm, spattering on the dead leaves and dying grass. The shapes had dissolved, and now the sounds of the forest were back, mockingbirds warbling in the high branches, the creek tinkling like the tools of a thousand mess kits, the sugar-weighted maples flapping a gentle goodbye as they slid toward winter’s sleep.

  Pain flared up Elmer’s arm, electric fire shrieking for attention, consuming all thoughts of invisible soldiers and his insane neighbor and the buddies beside him who must have chugged from the same coo-coo juice as Jeff. He looked at his wound, where yellow wells of fat protruded from the surgical splits in his skin.

  Say what you want about Jeff, but the crazy fucker knows how to handle a whetstone.

  “Nothing there, soldier,” Jeff said.

  The newspaper photographer put the camera to her eye, balancing the long lens and scanning the forest. Elmer pitched forward, falling to his knees. None of his comrades moved a muscle.

  “Company!” Jeff bellowed, and the soldiers tensed and straightened. “Dismissed.”

  The soldiers relaxed and scattered, breaking into conversation. Wally slapped Elmer on the back. “Hey, this is going to be a hoot, ain’t it?”

  Elmer gripped his wound, trying to stanch the flow of blood. “Yeah, a real wing ding. Say, did you see those soldiers in the woods?”

  Wally blinked his bloodshot eyes, his replica musket leaning at parade rest. “The soldiers won’t get here till tomorrow.”