Brian Keene - Ghost Walk

They stopped talking while the waitress refilled their mugs.

“Did your father do it?” Maria asked after they were alone again.

Ken chuckled. “No. He bought some pesticide. And that did the trick. When I asked him why he didn’t use the powwow doctor’s method, Dad said, ‘I’d be a damn fool to go drawing that nonsense on my beehives. The boys down at the American Legion would have never let me live it down. Old LeHorn is nuttier than your grandma’s fruitcake.’ And he was right. Another one of my dad’s friends was cutting down a Christmas tree near the hollow. Back on the pulpwood company’s land. He damn near cut his finger off. LeHorn came across him as he was walking out. The old guy told him not to go to the hospital—said he could stop the bleeding by ‘laying on of the hands’ or something like that.”

“Faith healing,” Maria said. “Did your father’s friend take him up on the offer?”

“Shit, no. He ran to his car and got the hell out of there.”

Maria snickered, then laughed. Smiling, Ken dumped a container of cream into his fresh cup of coffee. Maria composed herself and asked the next question.

“So, will your attraction feature anything based off the LeHorn legend?”

“Not directly, no. At least, nothing about the murders or anything like that. LeHorn’s kids are still alive. That just wouldn’t be right, capitalizing off their mother’s death or their father’s mental illness. There are enough weird stories connected to the hollow without getting into the LeHorn stuff. Bigfoot. Demons. The Goat Man. Native American spirits. We can do stuff featuring them.”

“What about the more recent murders; the witch cult and the mystery writer?”

“Adam Senft?” Ken shook his head. “No. Again, it wouldn’t be right to capitalize off something like that. Like I told you earlier, this whole thing is to honor Deena’s memory. What she stood for. Her strength. She wouldn’t want me using other people’s misfortunes like that.”

Maria reached out and turned off the recorder.

“You really miss your wife, don’t you?”

Ken nodded, glancing down at the table. When he spoke again, his voice was barely a whisper.

“Yeah, I do. I thought it would get easier with time, but it doesn’t. It just gets worse. I feel haunted.”

Maria arched an eyebrow. “Her…ghost?”

“No, nothing like that. I told you, I don’t believe in ghosts. I just mean her memory, you know? I’m haunted by her memory.”

“Perhaps that’s what ghosts are,” Maria said. “Maybe they’re just memories.”

“Could be,” Ken agreed.

“I’m sorry. Hope I didn’t offend you?”

“No, not at all. It’s something to think about, I guess. I’ll tell you, though. Sometimes, I wish there were ghosts. I wish I could believe in them.”

“Why?”

“Because then maybe I could see Deena again.”

Ken reached out and picked up the check. Then, before they could continue the conversation, he excused himself and slid out of the booth. Maria watched him walk to the register. She collected her recorder and purse and smiled politely at the waitress. On her way to the ladies’ room, Maria mulled over the last part of the conversation, wondering what ghosts haunted her.

The girl didn’t stop until well after midnight. Levi followed her, his dread increasing with every mile. Even before she’d reached her final destination, Levi had guessed where she was heading.

LeHorn’s Hollow.

He knew it well. Nelson LeHorn and Amos Stoltzfus had been peers and associates, if not friends. Occasionally, their individual endeavors had given them cause to consult with each other. LeHorn had called upon the Stoltzfus farm several times when Levi was growing up, and his father had traveled to York County once or twice to visit LeHorn. His father had passed away five years before the events at LeHorn’s farm.

Levi knew what most of society thought—that Nelson LeHorn had gone insane, believed his wife was consorting with the devil, and then pushed her out of the attic window, killing her. Then the old man had disappeared, and no one had heard from him since. Twenty years passed. And then, in a bizarre twist of fate, a local author named Adam Senft became obsessed with the story and committed a copycat murder, slaying his own wife. Now he was a guest at the White Rose Mental Health Facility—a fancy, politically correct title for what amounted to an insane asylum.

Those were the facts, as far as the public was concerned. But the public was wrong. Levi knew the truth. It had taken him several years of painstaking investigation, and had taxed him both physically and psychically. He’d used everything at his disposal—divination, fortune-telling, his grandfather’s seer stone, the bending of wills, and exploring the woods themselves, walking around, poking his nose into things and finding out what was what—and eventually discovered several doorways and standing stones. He was certain that not all of them had been crafted by LeHorn, but he wasn’t sure who had built them. Some looked Native American in origin. Others were even older. But all of them were closed and barred, guarded by circles of protection and other means. There was nothing of concern. Nothing that posed a danger. The hollow was a dead zone, and in the end, his diligence had paid off. He’d finally learned what really transpired.

In a misguided attempt to bring good fortune to his failing farmstead during a statewide drought, Nelson LeHorn had attempted to summon a minion of Nodens. Nodens belonged to a pantheon called the Thirteen, a race of entities that had existed before this universe came into existence. LeHorn was misled by a black magician from Hanover named Saul O’Connor—a foul, degenerate little man who’d foolishly worshipped the Thirteen and eventually paid the price. O’Connor told LeHorn that Nodens’ minions could bless his crops and ensure a bountiful harvest. But he was wrong.

LeHorn conducted a summoning ritual, opening a door between this world and another. He called forth a satyr named Hylinus, who was indeed a minion of Nodens. However, instead of blessing the farmer’s crop, Hylinus managed to break through LeHorn’s carefully crafted circle of protection and impregnate Patricia LeHorn. A distraught LeHorn bound the creature and imprisoned it, transmuting the satyr into stone. He’d murdered his pregnant wife, so that she wouldn’t give birth to the satyr’s spawn. Then, in his final act on this world, he’d opened a doorway into the Labyrinth and disappeared to somewhere else. Levi wasn’t sure where. Another plane or another world. Nelson LeHorn was never seen again. He closed the door behind him. Somewhere, in the State Police barracks in Harrisburg, or maybe hanging in the corner of a rural post office somewhere, was a wanted poster with Nelson LeHorn’s picture on it, a picture from twenty years ago. But he would never be captured. Never be found.

Years after LeHorn’s departure, Adam Senft somehow came into possession of the farmer’s books. Nelson LeHorn had an impressive collection of esoteric tomes—things like The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses , Jean Bodin’s De la Demonomanie des Sorciers , Johann Weyer’s De Praestigiis , and a partial transcript of the dangerous and deadly Daemonolateria . Most of these had been destroyed in the forest fire, but from what Levi had determined, Senft had made off with LeHorn’s journal, pages from the Daemonolateria , and a complete English translation of The Long Lost Friend . Around this same time, Hylinus had been freed from bondage. Levi was never able to determine how, exactly, but his educated guess was that Senft was somehow responsible. Whatever the cause, Adam Senft became involved in a struggle against the satyr—a confrontation that ultimately resulted in the deaths of several of Senft’s friends and finally, months later, Senft’s wife, Tara, who ultimately suffered the exact same fate as Patricia LeHorn. The courts deemed Senft insane and he was now in a mental health facility.