By Joanna
Chapter V
Encounters
Note: The stories used in this chapter are not my creation. They are popular ghost stories that I have heard all my life and adjusted slightly.
"It's no use!" Cody growled in irritation as he tossed on his bedroll, "I can't sleep! Is anyone else sleeping?"
"Well, not anymore," Buck muttered.
"Good. Let's tell ghost stories!" Cody persisted, sitting up quickly and rubbing his hands excitedly over the fire.
"Oh, that's a good way to get us to sleep, Cody," Kid commented, pushing his hat, which had been resting over his face, back.
"Well, we ain't sleeping no way," Cody pointed out, "Besides, it'll be fun."
"Why do you want to go telling a bunch of dumb stories about ghosts? Everybody knows there's no such thing!" Lou muttered sourly, glancing around the campfire nervously.
"Ain't scared are you Lou?" Noah asked with a grin as he sat up.
"Course not," Lou snapped defensively, "I just think ghost stories are stupid."
Jimmy laughed, "Uh oh! I think this same girl that was calling us cowards last night is scared of a little old ghost story!"
"You boys leave her alone. Not everyone likes ghost stories," Kid said quietly, coming to her defense.
"Damn it! I told you I ain't scared! It's just not--" Lou began.
"Boo!" Cody suddenly shrieked from beside Lou.
Lou screamed in surprise and jumped to her feet. Her cheeks turned a fiery red when she realized she'd given herself away.
"I'm going to check on the horses!" She spat at them and stomped from under the rock, their laughter ringing in her ears.
"Make sure a ghost don't get you!" Noah called, chuckling.
Lou could only stay away from the fire so long before she felt her lips turning blue, and when she returned they were all sitting up and leaning close around the fire. They grinned at her when she appeared, and she felt her cheeks heating up again.
Noah chuckled and patted the ground beside him. "Come on, Lou. You can sit between me and Jimmy. We'll protect you from the ghosts."
"I told you I wasn't--" the lonesome cry of the wolf interrupted her this time, and swallowing her pride, Lou pressed her lips in a tight line and sat down close beside Noah and Jimmy, glaring at Cody and daring him to say a word.
"All right, now that Lou is safe from the ghosts...who has a story?" Cody wondered.
"I got one I remembered since I was a boy," Kid said, then glanced at Lou, "That is if you don't mind me telling it, Lou." "Why would I mind? I ain't scared," Lou mumbled, glaring into the flames.
"Do tell," Jimmy smiled, and glanced at Lou who heaved a sign of frustration.
Kid winked at Lou then leaned forward and took the position of storyteller.
"Well, back in Virginia, there was a farmer who had a beautiful black filly."
Noah snorted, "Don't tell me...her name was Lucifer and she was the devil in disguise?"
Kid glared as the others snickered, "Do you want to tell this story?"
"Go on," Noah waved a hand, "I was just making sure I hadn't heard it before."
Kid shot him a long look before drawing a deep breath and continuing. "Well, he couldn't keep this young filly from getting loose at night. He tried everything, stalling her up, bolting his barn, building a fence ten feet high...nothing worked. The mare would get out every night, despite everything...but she'd always come back the next day."
"So what was the problem?" Lou muttered, pleased that the ghost story wasn't scary so far, but still not seeing the point of Kid's tale.
"Well, the problem was, strange things started happening around the community. Seems animals kept disappearing from the area, and small children too, and hex marks were showing up on barns and other weird going ons were happening too. Children were saying there was a witch that liked to prowl around the woods at night. Well, soon enough, other people started making a connection between this filly that was roaming around at night and all the odd things happening."
Kid looked around to discover he had everyone's attention, "Well, so the townsfolk, being superstitious country people, decided they better go ahead and burn this horse at the stake, figuring she must turn into a witch at night and fly away from the farm. But, see, she was a valuable horse, and witch or no, the farmer wasn't too keen on losing his investment. So he made a promise to the townspeople that his horse was definitely not a witch, and said he'd prove it by keeping her inside, and they'd see the horse wasn't causing the trouble."
"So, he had the blacksmith put some of the heaviest lead shoes on this filly you ever seen so as she couldn't go nowhere. Couldn't even walk. Put them on her right in her stall, then boarded up the door and windows and posted guards all around the outside of the barn."
Kid paused for effect and the others leaned forward, "Well, what happened?" Cody finally wondered.
"Well, so they watched real close, and sure enough, the filly didn't get out of the barn that night. But these terrible, hair raising shrieks kept coming from the stable. The townspeople, three miles away heard it, and they all came out to the farmer's place. But the farmer, he wanted to wait till the next morning to open up the barn because he was too scared to do it just then. So, the townspeople were too afraid and too curious to walk back through the woods, and they all sat outside and listened to these screams all night. Well, the sounds finally stopped at sunup so the farmer opened up the doors real slow and the townspeople crept in the barn, and down the aisle and peered into the stall."
"And was she still there?" Jimmy wondered, caught up in the story.
Kid half smiled and lowered his voice, "Well, someone was there. You see, laying in the straw was a beautiful young woman with jet black hair and a fair face, and nearly clear eyes. She looked up at them all and started chanting a witch's spell. But she couldn't move, because nailed to her hands and feet were the lead shoes the farmer put on her the day before."
Lou felt chills run up and down her arms and she unconsciously scooted closer to Noah.
"Ike wants to know, what did they do with this witch horse-woman?"
Kid shrugged, "I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?" Cody asked.
"Just what I said, I don't know. The story ends there."
"So, there's this whole town standing there watching this witch with horseshoes on, and that's it?" Buck asked.
"That's it." Kid repeated, "They probably burned her at the stake. How's that? You happy now?"
"What do you mean? Of course we ain't happy. Why'd you go and tell a story like that if you don't know the end to it?" Cody demanded.
"It did have an end! The filly was a witch, and she had horseshoes nailed on her to prove it!"
Lou shrugged, "That ain't an ending Kid! It's a beginning! How did they get the shoes off of her? Did they leave her there to die? Did she put curses on the townspeople?"
"Well, I don't know."
"Can you see now that that's the problem?" Jimmy wondered with a smile.
Kid sighed, "Well I didn't see any of you jumping in to tell a story!"
"Anybody else got a story?" Cody wondered, tired of the subject, "One with an ending?"
"I got one," Jimmy said, "It's a true story too."
"And mine wasn't?" Kid asked defensively.
"Well, mine is more first hand." Jimmy responded, and when the others nodded, he began his story, "When my sister, not Cylinda, but Eleanor, was younger she took ill one winter. It was real bad. We didn't know if she'd make it or not. The doctor said more than likely not. Well, so we fixed her a bed in our drawing room, near the fire place cause she was terrible cold all the time and let her sleep there at night. We all took turns sitting with her. Well, see, it was my turn to sit with her one night and I got thirsty so I went to the kitchen to fetch me some milk. I was standing there drinking when sure as I'm sitting here my sister comes walking through the door, in her white nightgown. She had fair hair too, and was real pale from her sickness. She just kinda drifted right by me without looking at me. Went straight through the closed back door and kept walking, never turning to the left or the right. When I went to follow her, I could see her in the darkness…there was a white, kind of milky light all around her. So I went running back to get my ma, and had to pass through the drawing room...and my sister was still laying right there asleep, although I'd just seen her heading outside not five seconds before."
"Did she pass away?" Lou asked in a gasp, her eyes round as saucers.
Jimmy shook his head, "No, thank God, although I thought she must have at first. I bawled over her bed, and then she just woke up, her fever was gone. It's like the sickness just walked out of her."
There was a moment of silence as Jimmy's story sank in.
"You call that a ghost story?" Cody wondered.
"Yes, I sure do," Jimmy nodded, "You think you can do better?"
"What're you talking about?" Lou muttered, still chilled by the first two stories, "It's Cody. Of course he thinks he can do better!"
"Have at it," Kid encouraged him, waving at the fire, "Haunt us."
"I think I will," Cody grinned and took off his hat, kneeling so that he could see everyone clearly over the flames. He cleared his throat dramatically and widened his eyes before beginning his tale.
"One night a rancher was out on the prairie, checking on his cattle on a beautiful winter night under a full moon, when he spotted a woman walking alone through the grass. So, being a gentleman, he rides down to see if she needs any help. And what he comes across is the most beautiful woman he's ever seen in his life, with fire red hair and eyes the color of the summer sky. She was dressed in a beautiful wedding gown, too, and had tears just streaming down her face. Well, so of course the rider givers her his coat, and asks her if she's lost, and she replies, 'I'm just trying to get home.' So the man picks her up real gentle like and puts her on the back of his horse before climbing up in front of her and asks her where she lives. Well, she points him in the direction of an old homestead and off he goes to take her to her people. All the way there, the woman won't say anything to answer his questions except, 'i'm just trying to get home.' So the rancher just figures she's daft and stops asking her any questions."
"And then she tries to kill him don't she?" Jimmy broke in eagerly, "I heard this one."
"Shhh!" the others hissed at him, lulled into the story by Cody's quiet, mysterious tone.
Cody glared at Jimmy, then continued, "Well, he finally pulls his horse up outside the old homestead and helps the girl down from the horse. He tries to help her walk toward the door, but she just stands there with tears rolling down her face and whispers, 'I'm just trying to get home.' The rancher is about ready to have her off his hands by now, so he goes up and knocks on the door."
Cody looked around the group, knocking on the hollow pommel of his saddle in demonstration, "Well, in awhile the lights come up and an old woman comes to the door, with gray hair and faded blue eyes. And the rancher tells her, 'i've brought your daughter home.' And the woman looks him right back in the eyes and tells him, 'that's impossible son...my daughter died twenty years ago today."
Lou could restrain herself no longer as she looped her arm through Noah's and held on tight. She could feel Noah's muscles were tense, and his eyes were wide.
"And sure enough, the rancher turned around and the woman he'd brought home was nowhere to be found, and his coat was laying there across his saddle. The old woman told him that her husband had tried to force their daughter to marry a man she didn't love and that the night before the wedding the young woman dressed in her finery, rode out onto the prairie to elope with the man she did love, but that he was killed by her would be husband in town. When he didn't show up, she shot herself." Cody's voice had a lilting, almost ghostly quality to it, "And ever since, once a year she can be seen walking through the grass of the prairie, trying to get back home. And every night, if you listen close enough to the breeze through the grass, you can hear it's actually her whispering, 'I'm just trying to get home.'"
Lou felt the hair at the back of her neck prickle as a cold breeze howled through the cracks in the rock and touched her cheek. She closed her eyes and refused to hear a whisper in that breeze.
"Now that was a ghost story!" Jimmy exclaimed, applauding heartily, and joined by the others.
"I say we go to bed! Nothing will top that one!" Lou suggested.
Noah patted the hand she had digging into his arm, "Not so fast. I've got a good one too."
Lou groaned, released his arm and scooted the opposite direction, towards Jimmy.
"You want me to protect you? I hid behind you last night, remember?" Jimmy asked.
"I don't need protection. I ain't scared. I'm just cold, and don't want to be in Noah's way is all, so I figured I'd let you block the wind for a little while."
"Uh huh," Jimmy grinned, not convinced.
"Okay, Noah, let's hear this story," Buck suggested.
"Don't you have any good stories or Indian legends, Buck?" Kid wondered, "I figured you would for sure."
Buck shook his head, "We would not tell them for sport. It would make the spirits of their ghosts angry with us. Noah?"
Noah smiled as everyone's eyes turned on him, "This story here takes place about fifty years ago in Missouri. Seems there was a beautiful young girl…"
Lou rolled her eyes, "Why is it always a beautiful young girl? Doesn't anything scary ever happen to ordinary looking girls?"
"No, ghosts leave ugly girls alone" Cody snapped, "But that don't help you none does it? So you'd better shut up before we send a ghost after you!"
Lou wasn't sure if she should be flattered or irritated at Cody's threat, but she shut up none the less.
Noah shot a sideways look at Lou to see if she was finished, and deciding she was continued, "Anyway, this beautiful girl found herself married off to a man who was much older. Not very kind to her either. People used to hear them screaming and fighting every single night. In no time at all that beautiful girl had turned into an ugly, mean old woman, and her husband was even uglier and meaner. Well, no one would go near them for a long time, but the screaming and fighting continued. Then one day, some hunters were out in the woods and came across the old man's dead body. Both his hands had been cut off."
Noah cleared his throat and continued, "Well, of course they knew it was his wife that had done it, but search though they might they could never prove it, and all charges against her were dropped and she went back to live in her house. Well, no one liked the old lady, but they got used to seeing her in town and around her yard, so when she didn't appear for a few weeks they went into her house to check on her, and they found her laying dead at the foot of the stairs."
"At first, everyone thought she'd fallen down the stairs and broken her neck, but then they saw bloody handprints at the top of the stairs and rolled the old lady over, and sure enough, they saw something had clawed open her side and taken all her insides out."
Lou gagged at the thought, and she heard Jimmy's chuckle from over her shoulder.
"So, they climbed up to the top of the steps, and laying there were the old man's hands, with the flesh falling off of them and the bones sticking out. They looked a little further and found an old chest and when they looked at the lid, they saw the claw marks the hands had made all those years, trying to get out!"
"That's pretty disgusting," Buck noted, and Ike nodded in agreement.
"That ain't all. You see, they never found the insides of the old woman, and they took the hands and just buried them in the yard. Then, they cleaned the house up and sold it. Well, no one from around there would buy it, and it took a long time, but finally a young family moved in from out of state and settled down. At first, everything was just fine, although every night they heard an odd clawing sound," Noah drug his fingers across the rocky ground, "every night, they'd hear it, this frantic clawing, and the husband would go up in the attic looking for a squirrel or trapped raccoon, but he never found one. Still, they didn't think too much of it. Well, about that time the husband got a job on a river boat, and would be gone for long stretches at a time. The wife didn't complain any though, because it was good money and they needed it badly. Well, one night she heard the door open to her room, and figured it was her husband coming in late, and so she just scooted over a little on their bed. Well, the covers turned back and a second later, she felt his fingers wrap around hers, and she held onto his hand tightly, all night."
Every eyebrow around the fire was raised, every mouth hung slack, waiting for what they already suspected.
"Well, the next morning, the woman rolls over to kiss her husband and he ain't there…but she looks down and she'd holding a bloody, decaying hand. The other is laying on the bed too, with a human heart in its hands, the heart is still beating. Then the lady looks down and sees the blood covering her night dress and knows that it's her own heart! And then, ever so slowly, the hand holding her hand lets go and starts creeping up her arm getting ever closer, and the lady is paralyzed with fear, but she can't move, and the hands get higher and higher…" Noah's voice was barely a whisper. " THEN HE GRABS HER THROAT!" The last words exploded out of Noah in a roar the same time he lunged for Lou with both hands outstretched.
Caught completely off guard, Lou leapt backwards into Jimmy's lap and screamed as if someone had tried to rip her own heart out.
The boys, all of whom jumped back when Noah yelled, quickly recovered and laughed at Lou's pale face.
"Damn it, Noah!" Lou hissed, picking herself off Jimmy's folded legs with as much dignity as she could muster. The others were still laughing and applauding Noah's story.
"You boys can stay up and tell these dumb stories all night if you want to, I'm going to bed," Lou muttered when she gained her wits and stomped over to drag her bedroll at the back of the shelter and lay down. She closed her eyes and did her best not to think of witches that were horses, ghosts in Jimmy's house, girls trying to get home and skeleton hands. The boys' voices droned on a bit longer, and without listening to the stories they were telling, Lou found the continuous baritones comforting. Soon, her eyes closed and she was fast asleep.
Lou wasn't sure how long she'd been sleeping before her eyes opened. The boys had long since gone to bed, and she unconsciously did a check around the dying fire, making sure the boys were all accounted for, like she always did when she woke up at night without knowing why.
A cold breeze drifted into the shelter and Lou assumed it was the cold that woke her up. With a sigh she stood up and looked for the best path around the prone figures of the boys. She picked her way outside, shivering anew in the open wind. The snow had stopped, but now coated the ground like white velvet. The moon was out and nearly full, glistening on the fresh, unmarked snow.
Lou exhaled and watched her frozen breath drift up towards the sky. It was a beautiful night. With a sigh, she went to gather some kindling to bring up the fire. Hearing one of the horses nicker when he heard her approaching she smiled and walked to them, making sure they were tied up tightly and checking Katy's hind leg.
"Good girl," Lou murmured, seeing that the leg was not badly swollen or holding heat.
Content that the horses were secure and happy, Lou gathered the kindling in her arms and started back the distance to the rock where the low fire cast strange patterns onto the snow.
On the other side of the clearing, a sudden movement caught her eyes and Lou stopped cold, feeling her heart skip a beat and her knees grow weak. Standing out in the open, just in front of the trees was Satan.
There was never any doubt that it was him. She'd never seen such a massive, more perfectly made horse in all her life. He stood perfectly still, black as ink, staring back at her with cool, confident eyes.
"Easy boy," Lou crooned softly as the stallion tossed his head once and flared his nostrils in her direction and pawed at the ground. As he raised his head, the moonlight caught his eye and Lou realized that Jimmy was right, his eyes were a light, transparent blue.
Lou tried to look away from those eyes, but found she couldn't. She couldn't even move as the horse continued staring calmly at her. Although her body was unresponsive, her mind was surprisingly alert as she continued staring at the horse. She'd never seen eyes that seemed so crafty, intelligent, and knowing in her life. With one look, she felt as if the stallion, as if an animal, had been able to read every secret in her soul.
She tried to gauge the eyes of the stallion as well, to see what she could read in those eyes beyond intelligence. She had the oddest sense of looking into the mirror when she did.
She took a step toward the animal, without having any real control over her actions and Satan tossed his head and snorted slightly, taking a step forward as well.
"Lou?" A sleepy voice called from under the rock, "Where'd you go?"
Lou tried to answer but found she was still frozen to the stallion's eyes, held in morbid fascination.
A minute later she heard footsteps crunch on the snow and Jimmy's voice called out to her, "Lou? What're you look--" the voice ended in a gasp.
"Lou! Lou! What're you doing?" Jimmy screamed and seeing how pale Lou looked and how completely lost in the stallion's gaze she was, he broke into a run towards her, firing his gun into the air to scare the horse and to get Lou's attention.
Satan spooked and reared high into the air, forelegs slicing the sky and teeth bared before he flattened his ears, spun, and disappeared in the trees without making a sound.
Lou, feeling as if she'd just been released from some sort of death hold, fell on her knees in the snow, gasping the cold air as if she'd forgotten to breathe in the last few seconds.
Jimmy crashed down in front of her as the other boys started running from under the rock with their guns drawn. Looking at Lou's dazed eyes scared him more than the close encounter with the horse, and putting a hand on each of her shoulders, he shook her hard.
"Look at me, Lou! Look at me!" Jimmy yelled into her face as she stared blankly over his shoulder, still shaking her back and forth.
"What are you doing Jimmy?" Kid growled, reaching him and hitting him from the side, knocking him flat on his back in the snow.
The chaos finally seemed to snap Lou back to the present, and she shook her head, trying to clear the cloudy haze that assaulted her. The realization of what had happened dawned on her slowly and feeling a trembling begin deep in her bones she shivered all over.
Her eyes shifted from the spot Satan had filled and fell directly in front of her to where Kid was on top of Jimmy, holding him down in the snow. Cody, Noah, Buck, and Ike were all standing around trying to make sense of what had happened.
Lou lunged forward and grabbed Kid by the shoulders, pulling him backwards off of Jimmy, who was twisting and fighting.
"What is going on?" Cody finally asked when Lou had pushed the two men apart.
"Satan...I just saw him!" Lou murmured in a shaky voice, "He was standing right over there," she pointed to where the stallion had stood minutes before.
Buck and Ike exchanged a glance and went to look where Lou was pointing.
"You all right Lou?" Kid asked, standing up and helping her climb to her feet.
"Yeah, I'm fine...I just feel a little light headed or something," Lou muttered, not feeling herself.
"Hey Lou, you sure he was right here?" Buck called across the clearing. Ike had lit a branch as a torch and both were studying the ground intently.
"Yeah, I saw him too. He was over there all right," Jimmy assured them.
Cody, Noah, Kid, Lou, and Jimmy walked over to the perplexed looking pair.
"What's wrong?" Noah wondered.
"There's no tracks in the snow. If he was right here, shouldn't there be tracks?" Buck wondered.
"He was there," Lou insisted, "maybe the snow is too hard packed."
"Lou, we're making tracks in the snow here. Why wouldn't a fifteen hundred pound horse make a mark?"
"Cause this ain't no ordinary horse," Lou whispered, "I saw him. I saw his eyes...they weren't the eyes of an animal." Her voice broke and trembled and tears of fright filled her eyes, "Those eyes...he knew...they weren't animal's eyes..." she repeated, stumbling over the words.
Seeing her quickly losing control of her handle on the situation Kid stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Lou. She stepped willingly into his embrace, trembling badly, "they weren't animal eyes. I looked right into them. I think he got my soul!"
"Lou," Jimmy murmured, placing a hand on her shoulder, "Don't be silly. Those are just old tales meant to scare children. There isn't a grain of truth in it. Don't worry."
"No...they were right. That stallion...he isn't just a horse. He's something else," Lou continued to mumble frantically, pressing herself closer to Kid.
"I knew we shouldn't have told those ghost stories," Kid murmured over Lou's head glaring at Cody.
"It's not the ghost stories, I saw his eyes!" Lou protested trying to push away from Kid, who only held onto her tighter. "Jimmy saw him too! He was here!"
"Lou, we're not saying he wasn't here!" Buck assured her, "But he didn't get your soul...see, you're still here."
Lou nodded and took a deep breath, stepping back and standing on her own. She gathered her wits, "No. He didn't get my soul. Not this time..."
Suddenly, the faint sound of hooves on rocks reached them, echoing through the canyons and the ridges.
All the riders turned and searched the area, looking up to a long, high ridge. There, staring down at them and silhouetted against the silver moon was Satan. He watched the people below him with the same intensity they watched him.
Suddenly, he reared for the sky again, and turned, galloping along the ridge, going ever higher. Sparks flew from his hooves as they struck stone.
"Impossible. No horse can run that fast," Cody mumbled when Satan had disappeared from their line of sight behind a stand of tall pines.
Kid let out a slow whistle of amazement through his teeth, "Looks like he's flying don't it?"
Lou glanced at Jimmy who met her eyes fully. She shivered again and murmured in a quiet voice, "Maybe he is."
To be continued...Chapter Six
Copyright 1998-This work is not to be reproduced without the permission of the author
