Swish. Swish.
The boys heard it too, though it was awfully soft. I raised the camera again and pointed it at the white wall between us and the cabin. I couldn’t see anything, but the film might tell us something later.
Swish. Swish.
Legs, I thought. Parting tall grass with shins. One-two. One-two.
Swish. Swish.
“All right. Whatever. The picnic tables. Which direction is that? Christ, I can’t see a thing.”
“Turn around, dear. Look. We’re still on the road. The picnic tables are behind us.”
“I have never seen fog like this before in my life. No wonder this place scares the locals so bad. It’s not enough that it’s haunted silly—it’s also got homicidal maniacs and pea-soup fog.”
“Cannon smoke,” said the third member of the party. “It looks like cannon smoke.”
The other two were quiet, and might have been staring at him.
“Well, that is what it looks like. Isn’t it?”
After another pointed pause, Dana said, “Charlie, you’re entirely too sentimental for this job. Stop letting your imagination get the better of you.”
“I still think it looks like cannon smoke.”
“Think it all you like; just don’t write it down and publish it.”
Swish. Swish.
My friends and I exchanged nervous glances. Someone was coming, from over behind the cabin. Maybe nobody was holed up inside it, but someone was hanging around it; that much was certain. And whoever he was, he was on his way over.
He wasn’t carrying a light so far as we could tell, but he didn’t need much of one. The beacon dome of the Marshall party glowed beside the road. So long as no trees or small monuments got in the way, it would be easy enough to make a bee-line for the group.
Jamie dropped one hand to the ground and propped himself on it to move closer to me. “What do you want to do?” he asked, so quietly that even Benny didn’t hear it two feet away.
“It might be nothing,” I replied, knowing as I said it that it wasn’t likely true. If the swisher was an ordinary trespasser like ourselves, he’d probably avoid the Marshalls for fear of getting caught. We couldn’t see them well at all, but for all we knew they’d brought a police escort of the strong-and-silent type. God knows I would have looked into a cop companion if I’d been them, after getting shot at once before. And just because we hadn’t heard a fourth member of the group didn’t mean they hadn’t hired a uniformed representative.
But there’s something about the supernatural that skews peoples’ priorities. Ghosts have a way of making the real world and all its dangers seem small and unimportant.
Unthreatening.
Swish. Swish.
But the real world wasn’t safe to ignore for too long, either.
Whoever he was, he was getting closer, and he was no ghost. He was no Green Eyes, either—of that much I was confident. And it was only a matter of moments until he reached the road.
The Marshalls were retreating to the picnic area, but the swisher was following them, pushing his feet through the grass. He moved slowly, as if to make as little noise as possible.
He was definitely creeping up on them.
Benny echoed Jamie’s question, just as quietly, into my other ear. “What do we do?”
I shook my head, almost hitting Jamie with my cheek. “Don’t know.”
Let me think, I wanted to add, but the swishing stopped and a soft pat announced a foot setting down upon the road. The time for thinking was almost up. We needed to decide whether we were going to watch or interfere, and we needed to do so quickly.
“We’ve gotta warn them!” Benny whispered fiercely, almost too loud.
I agreed, though. I let go of his arm and dragged my fingers along the ground, searching for something to throw. A piece of asphalt the size of a peach pit caught itself under my thumb.
“Move,” I told Jamie, who shifted his chest to give me room.
As hard as I could, I chucked the rock towards the Marshall party. My aim was bad in the low light and heavy fog, but the dome of electric light made them an easy goal.
I’m not sure who I hit or how hard I hit him, but one of the males cried out, “Hey!” A scuttling scratching noise followed when the rock clattered to the ground, and the Marshalls stopped. I think they were holding their breaths.
“What was that?” Dana demanded, not bothering to whisper.
“Who’s there?”
“Show yourself!”
If the swisher was still moving towards them, I couldn’t hear him. He must have stopped, but he had to be within a few yards of them. He’d made it to the road, and they’d not yet made it to the cement picnic tables.
A long moment of loaded silence followed, while all those within listening distance weighed their options.
Behind my neck I felt a soft rushing noise, like someone was blowing cold air there. When I looked back, I was startled by a familiar face, even as I was happy to see it.
The pitifully young Confederate soldier circled around the boys to stand in front of us, looking for all the world like a projection of dusty light upon the fog. He moved his lips, but I couldn’t read them; he pointed at the orb near the picnic tables, and then at another spot between the field and the nervous people within that orb.
I know, I mouthed, drawing the attention of Jamie and Benny. What do we do?
The soldier crouched down. He crooked his neck and looked intently at the army-green flashlight Benny was holding, although it was switched off. He seemed to give the object some consideration, then took one translucent hand and placed it over the unlit bulb, covering it completely. With the other hand, he indicated the Marshalls.
Two dull scrapes, one after the other, suggested the swisher was moving again—and this time, the Marshalls heard him.
“Oh, God. Who’s there?” Dana asked, and for the first time I heard a real touch of fear in her words. The undead she could handle without any trouble, but the living were another story.
Click.
“Oh, God.” Someone else said it this time, one of the men.
Benny gasped.
I clutched his arm, and the ghost clutched at his light—covering the lens with both hands and regarding me frantically. The time for thinking was past. Someone had cocked a weapon, and all bets were off.
“Stay down!” I commanded my comrades as I leaped to my feet. I suddenly understood the dead man’s message, and whispering wasn’t going to do anyone any good anymore.
“Marshalls!” I yelled as loud as I could. “Turn your lights off! Now!”
The cocked weapon fired, as loud as any musket and a dozen times as deadly. The blast came from in front of me and to my right. A few trees away, bark splintered and cracked.
I ducked back down to the ground just as the screaming started.
One lamp went out immediately, the light blob that marked the investigators shrinking by half, but the other stayed lit, and held aloft. The carrier started to run with the lamp, and what had previously been difficult to make out became a wild shadow-puppet theater of confusion.
Another shot rang out, then two more in quick succession.
The remaining light fell to the ground and shattered, eliminating the only clear target on the field. I hoped it had only been intentionally dropped, but I feared otherwise. I wished to God the fog would clear so that we would only be fighting the night for navigation. The fog and the darkness together were impenetrable and terrifying.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” Benny was scrambling on the ground, trying to gain his footing.
“Quiet!” I ordered, turning around to see what was happening. A fifth shot aimed itself in our direction. Behind me I heard the ping of a ricochet and felt something savage and hot streak across my collarbone. I grasped at the line of fire just south and right of my throat, and it was wet there. In contrast to the cold mist, the blood felt like lava on my shirt. I was bleeding on Dave’s camera.
Shot number six went back towards the place where the Marshalls had been sitting ducks half a minute before.
There was running, and scuffling, and frightened wheezing—and these sounds were beginning to scatter. The group was breaking up, which, though unplanned, was surely wise.
“Tripp?”
“Tripp?”
“Dana?”
“Charlie, where’s Tripp?”
Clatter, clatter, spin, plunk. Plunk. Plunk.
He was reloading. It was only a six-shooter.
“We have to move. We have to run,” I said, pushing the boys apart, accidentally shoving Jamie into a tree trunk. “Split up. Now. Meet back at Ted’s place. Whoever gets there first calls the cops.”
I didn’t have to tell them twice, which made me think that neither of them had seen that I was bleeding. I didn’t believe for a moment that they would’ve left so easily if they’d known I was hurt.
I held still and leaned against the backside of the handiest tree, placing it between me and the shooter. The boys ran in opposite directions, crashing into every low-hanging limb, stump, rock, and root that was in their way. It’s not easy running through the woods in the dark, and it’s even tougher running through the woods, in the dark, in the fog, across uneven ground.
Harder still was running in the woods, in the dark, in the fog, across uneven ground, while wounded and holding my breath. Counting. Trying to calm myself down, even as I heard “plunk” number six and the steel wheel snapping back into place.
I closed my eyes and slid down, pressing my hands against the soaked spot on my chest. The ghost came up again and knelt beside me, looking at the injury and giving me a concerned expression that was kind, if not helpful. He stood again and parted his jacket so I could see the great red wound it concealed. I stared at the ancient injury with a special kind of horror, knowing that a gut shot would not have killed him quickly.
But mine’s only a grazing, I told myself, and prayed I wasn’t lying. Just a skim. Not too bad.
I pushed my fingers around and felt a short channel of torn skin, but there was no entry hole that I could find. That much was reassuring, even if the sounds of screaming coming from behind me and two more revolver rounds were not.