Amy Cross - The Purchase

Startled, Munver turned and fired the rifle again, this time keeping a better hold against the kickback. His aim wasn’t quite so good, however, and he watched in horror as the wooden bolt was blasted apart.

“No!” he screamed, dropping the rifle and rushing forward before the door could swing open. Reaching up, he grabbed the handle and pulled tight, but as he looked up at the bolt he saw that it was completely destroyed.

Why, he wondered, did he always have such bad luck?

The wind was still howling on the other side of the door, causing the wood to shake slightly, and Munver held the door’s handle tighter than he’d ever held anything in his life. His teeth were still chattering and his mind was awash with fear, but he told himself that this was still all just a figment of his imagination. And as the second passed with no further knocking sounds, he began to wonder whether perhaps the worst of the horror was over. Had he been right all along? Had he gone a little mad following Garrett’s death, or perhaps following the savage beating he’d received? Yes, that seemed to make sense.

“Watch yourself,” he remembered the man in the bar saying as he gave him the map all that time ago. “A man can go a little crazy out there all on his own.”

Some of the others had laughed, and Munver had laughed too, but now he began to realize that the man’s advice had been good.

“I’ve just gone a little crazy,” he said breathlessly. “It’s only human. Another man would’ve lost his mind completely. In the circumstances, it’s remarkable that I’m holding together as good as I am.”

He waited, still holding the door shut, and he told himself that there would be no more knocking sounds. And, indeed, there were no more as he stayed in position and listened to the sound of the wind outside. He was braced for the knocks to return, but as the minutes went by he allowed himself ever so slowly to start relaxing just a little. Had the madness passed? His head felt very clear, very sharp, and he wondered whether the storm in his mind had passed.

Finally, daring to hold the door shut with just one hand, he reached over and grabbed a spoon from one of the shelves, and then he forced the spoon into the slot alongside what was left of the wooden bolt. He gave the door a faint push and found that it held now, so he allowed himself to sit back slightly. The wood shook very slightly, but he knew that was just a result of the gale outside. It had been, what, five or six minutes since the last heavy knock?

Please , he thought to himself, be over now .

“You know what he wants,” a familiar voice said suddenly. It was Garrett’s voice, coming from over Munver’s shoulder. “You have to give it to him.”

Munver stayed right where he was, kneeling in front of the door. It had now been maybe ten minutes since the last knocking sound, and maybe four or five minutes since he’d thought he’d heard Garrett’s voice, but he knew that both those things couldn’t really have happened.

Could they?

It’s not easy, keeping from going mad , he told himself. I’ve gotta stay strong .

He stared straight ahead at the door. Every so often the wind caused the wood to rattle and shake slightly, and this actually made Munver feel better in some perverse way. It was something normal, something he understood, and he took it as a sign that maybe the natural order was doing right. Even the wind itself was comforting, and every blessed second of normality felt like a miracle.

And then, eventually, he heard a faint creaking sound over on the far side of the cabin, and he knew full well that this was the sound of something moving in the chair.

Slowly, forcing himself to face the truth, he turned and saw Garrett’s body still in the chair, still silhouetted against – and looking out through – the window. A moment later, Munver saw the glint of the knife’s handle still sticking out from the back of the chair.

Telling himself that he had to stay strong, Munver stared for a moment at the chair before turning and starting to crawl over to where he’d dropped the rifle. He was still trembling with fear, but he figured that was only natural. He’d been through a lot during that night, and he reckoned he wasn’t going to miss the cabin when he set off in the morning.

“What exactly do you think is gonna happen?” Garrett’s voice said suddenly.

Gasping, Munver grabbed the rifle and pulled back against the wall, and he aimed the gun directly at the chair.

“You know what he wants,” Garrett’s voice continued, “and you’re only—”

“Shut up!” Munver yelled, waving the rifle around but not firing. Not yet. “You’re dead, so shut up!”

At this, Garrett’s voice began to chuckle.

The back of Garrett’s head remained completely still, but the sound sure seemed like it was coming from round the front.

“You’re not real,” Munver said through clenched teeth. “I sure ain’t gonna go crazy now, not when I’m so close to going back and showing them all.”

“You won’t be going anywhere unless you make this right,” Garrett’s voice replied. “Did you think those coins were just decoration? Just an oversight on my part? Didn’t it occur to you that maybe I squeezed them into those cold, dead hands before I ever set off along this road? Didn’t it occur to you that maybe I had a good reason for doing that?”

“I’m not listening,” Munver said, shaking his head. “I’m not letting you into my head.”

“There are some dead folks who stick around,” Garrett’s voice continued. “Or rather, who insist on coming back. I first saw it during the war. A priest told me I had a special inclination to noticing this sort of thing, that maybe if I survived the fighting it’d be a sign that I had a job to do for the Lord. Well, that priest’s long since dead, but I got to thinking that he was right.”

Munver shook his head.

“You weren’t in the fighting,” Garrett’s voice added. “You’d have been too young. You can’t imagine what it was like, having men screaming and dying all around you. It got so bad, I couldn’t tell the difference between wood snapping and a man’s body splintering in half. But somewhere in the middle of all that, I found a new clarity that I’ve carried with me ever since. A new role in life.”

“I can’t hear you,” Munver gasped breathlessly. “You’re not talking.”

“The coins are important,” Garrett’s voice said. “Not to all folk. Just some. I don’t know exactly what the coins are for or where they come from. I’m not saying they meet some boatman on the other side and they need to pay him, although that’s surely how it seems sometimes. What I’m saying is that some certain souls need the coins. It must be something to do with how they lived their lives, and for how determined they are to come back. And me, I seemed to have a knack for knowing where to find these folks. A God-given ability, you might say.”

“Shut up, shut up,” Munver sneered, aiming the rifle and almost firing at the back of Garrett’s head. He only held back because he recognized the absurdity of wasting a bullet on a dead man.

“They’re always poor,” the voice continued. “They always died violently, or in sin. Those are a few of the things they always have in common. Beyond that, I’m not sure. But the Lord has been leading me to them for the past few years, across several states. Sometimes I have to steal the bodies, other times I can persuade people to let me take them. And sometimes, like this occasion, I have to make a purchase and buy them. Then I take them home, and my wife and I have worked out what’s the best thing to do with them next. You can’t interrupt that process, Mr. Munver. I need you to give the man his coin back.”