Drummer Boy: A Supernatural Thriller (25 page)

The only escape for the dead is to get on the Golden Road and follow where God intended, and these Jangling Hole hideaways have defied their call to duty long enough.

Die proper this time, Earley. Please God, learn how to die proper.

Earley’s face was twisted not in pain, but in the sadness borne by the lost and the lurking. His flesh faded and the dirty clothes fell, leaving the dented tin canteen lying on top of the pile. The colonel stood over the now-vacant uniform, pale lips pursed amid his beard as if toting up another war casualty.

The revenant soldiers, now at ease, faded into the gloom until at last only Kirk stood, tugging at his matted facial hair. He nodded at Hardy in dismissal. Then he, too, joined the dusk and was gone, and Hardy stood in the dying cracks of leaking sundown until the canteen and uniform vanished, too.

Hardy went back to the house empty handed. Pearl’s biscuits would just have to get by without eggs.

The newspaper office smelled like old comic books and even older coffee grounds.

Vernon Ray sat on a ratty sofa that looked like dogs and bums had shared it for a few decades. He’d never been in the
Times
office, at least not the section behind the classifieds counter where the typing and printing went on. He’d imagined stacks of mail, mountains of computer equipment, and rusty filing cabinets, and while he was not disappointed on those counts, the rest of the place was simply drab and cramped.

Crusading journalism was apparently a long way from Twain, Hemingway, Woodward, and Bernstein these days, with the corporate money shifting to sexier media. Cindy’s cubicle was the only occupied one of the four that were tucked away in a corner of the warehouse. The rest of the space was filled with advertising slicks stacked on pallets, broken-down vending racks, and tall spools of leftover newsprint.

Cindy Baumhower had ushered the boys to her cubicle, which was adorned with pin-ups of press awards, kindergarten art, and Carolina Panthers photographs. “I couldn’t resist an anonymous news tip from a couple of eighth graders,” Cindy said, giving a pleasant smile with slightly crooked teeth that put Vernon Ray at ease.

Bobby appeared to be eyeing her breasts, and Vernon Ray gave them a glance, too. The shapes suggested beneath the taut cotton blouse were artistically pleasing, but they didn’t give him a zing of electricity. They might as well have been decked-out party balloons for all the thrill it gave him. He felt like he was missing out on something, but he wasn’t sure what, or if he should be upset about it.

“I guess it wasn’t anonymous once we gave our names,” Bobby said.

“Well, I’m good at protecting my sources,” Cindy said. She nodded toward the glassed-in office across the room, where a bald man with a janitor-broom mustache fidgeted with a page-layout program. On the window was a sign printed in large block type that said, “Don’t Feed The Editor,” and under that, someone had scribbled with a marker “dirty copy!!!”

“We trust you,” Vernon Ray said, though he wasn’t sure they could. She was a grown-up, after all, and she seemed like the no-nonsense type, despite the collection of fast-food Harry Potter figurines lining the top of her computer monitor and her Halloween articles on local haunted hot spots,.

“Fine, then, let’s get to it,” she said. “I’ve got a deadline in two hours.”

“This might take longer than that,” Bobby said. “This might take forever.”

Vernon Ray figured it was Bobby’s way of flirting, but his best friend was too vacant-eyed and unfocused. Vernon Ray put his camera on the reporter’s desk. The thumbnail setting showed the Jangling Hole and a vague wisp of white fuzz against the dark opening. “We took this up at Mulatto Mountain,” he said.

Her eyebrows arched as she brought the camera view screen for a closer look.

“Bill Willard’s property?”

“The Hole,” Vernon Ray said, noticing Bobby was still zoned out. “You wrote about it a couple of Halloweens ago.”

“Kirk’s Raiders, yeah,” she said, peering at the photo. “Unfortunately, there’s never been any solid evidence to support the legend.”

“We’ve got plenty of unsolid evidence,” Bobby said.

“’Unsolid’ isn’t a word,” Vernon Ray said. “I think in ghost-hunting nomenclature it’s ‘insubstantial.’”

“So you fellows are ghost hunters?” Cindy said, her smile displaying no hint of a smirk.

“I don’t think we hunt so much as get hunted by,” Vernon Ray said. “We saw Col. Kirk and his Raiders yesterday, and the night before that, we encountered a soldier we believe must have escaped from the Hole.”

“Let me download this so I can blow it up.” Cindy poked a cable into the digital camera’s port. After clicking her mouse, she said, “Assuming I believe you guys, why do you think the ghosts exist? What are they after?”

Vernon Ray and Bobby shared a glance. “We were hoping you’d tell us,” Vernon Ray said. “We read comic books and watch
Ghost TV
like everyone else, but we’re basically grasping air on this thing.”

Cindy clicked until the photo filled her screen. Enlarged, the wisp took on the indefinite shape of a man, though no features stood out that would have suggested he was a long-dead soldier.

“Looks like he’s trying to power up,” Cindy said. “Like he doesn’t quite have enough juice to grow meat.”

Jeez Louise, she believes us
.

Vernon Ray had almost hoped she would have laughed them out of the office. Because now they had to explain what was happening, and neither of them was sure what was real and what was the work of comic-book-geek fantasy. Vernon Ray described his experience in the Hole, when he thought he was being dragged into the cold darkness while Bobby waited outside.

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.