Dennis Yates - Red Mountain

Horn didn’t like being a ghost much at first, for it took some time getting used to. While the vigilantes were being slain by the thing thawed from the ice in the cellar, he’d caught an easterly breeze with the tumbleweeds and drifted in the direction his family was traveling.

After a few weeks he found them, but once he did he clung to the edge of their camp and watched over them at night. They were terribly nervous of what dangers might be lurking and yet Horn sensed a renewed energy in his wife and eldest son. It seemed as if their wills were once again their own. It also helped that they were armed with the rifles Horn had made certain they could shoot. Any highwaymen or Indians looking for trouble would get much more than they’d bargained for.

When his youngest son Tommy went to gather firewood one evening, Horn made himself seen for the first time. To do so cost him much energy and pain, and he knew he’d be nothing but a drifting, formless fog for the next couple days.

The boy immediately took him for real. He dropped the bundle of firewood he’d gathered and ran to embrace his father’s arms. When Horn held him close, the boy began to shiver. To Horn, the boy’s circulatory system moved beneath his palms like a thousand rivers and trickling creeks of vibrating heat, a sensation of pure life that he himself would never embody again.

“You’re so cold, papa. Have you been at the glacier again?”

Horn bent down to his knees so he could look up into the child’s eyes. The boy’s hair had already grown out a lot, a deep auburn like his mother’s. Whiskers of frost appeared on his son’s jacket as Horn leaned closer.

“I am not your father. Not anymore.”

“You are so!” Tommy said, grabbing his father’s arms tighter, although Horn could tell the cold made his hands hurt. The boy was so brave. Brave enough to return on his own so he could help his father while a posse of drunken vigilantes called Horn’s name.

“I’m dead, son. I’m nothing but a ghost now.”

“No. You’re real. I can feel you and people say you’re not supposed to be able to feel a ghost.”

“People are wrong sometimes. I’m telling you the truth. Those bad men back in Wrath Butte burned me up to nothing but a crisp. What you see is what I saw the last time I looked at myself in the mirror. I’m only a memory of what I think I used to look like.”

He didn’t know if his son understood what he was saying but the child backed a few steps away from him and silently watched while tears streaked over his pink face. Horn worried he’d said too much. He didn’t want to frighten the boy. But he had such little time, for he could already feel himself losing permanence once again.

“I still don’t believe you pa. You’re going to have to show me.”

Horn grinned. He’d taught his son all too well. That if a man couldn’t back up his claims with evidence, you had no reason to believe what he said.

He held out his hands so the two of them could watch. Soon, the fingers began to melt down to nothing and before he could control it all that was left were two bloodless stumps where his wrists used to be.

When Tommy fainted to the ground, Horn scooped him up in his arms and carried him back to the campfire and laid him next to his mother and brother who were sound asleep. So much for somebody keeping watch. They would, however, be able to join others making the same trek to San Francisco. Horn had spied on them too, and was confident his family would be in safe company.

Before leaving, he touched his wife’s smooth neck with his forearm, and the cold of it made her readjust her woolen scarf in her sleep.

“You’ll get along okay,” he whispered into her ear. “There’s a party just up the trail who is heading in the same direction you’re going. They’re decent folk and not from Wrath Butte. If you and the boys get up early enough you will meet them.”

He stared at his family one last time before returning to the place where he’d been killed. It was too painful to be around them for very long. He decided that was why ghosts chose to haunt certain houses. They just had nowhere else they felt comfortable at. Or maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe they couldn’t ever completely leave because someone else held the key to their prison…

CHAPTER 49

The heat felt like an oven bearing down from above. Robert and Will crouched next to a rock and watched the Horn farm through binoculars. Nugget was panting hard. She dug herself a temporary place beneath the shade of a thick juniper bush.

“There’s no one there,” Robert said.

The old farmhouse reminded Robert of hunting with his father. Of finding the skeletal remains of elk killed years earlier and seeing how far their bones had sunk into the forest floor. Once he’d had a dream of a whole world beneath the ground, populated by roaming skeletal beings.

He handed the binoculars back to Will. “Looks like there must have been a fire last night. Something is smoldering behind the house.”

Will nodded. “Not only was there a fire Bobby, but something got blown to shit. I can see bits of metal shrapnel all over the place.”

Robert took the binocs back from Will and glassed it for himself. He felt his heart begin to drum against his chest.

Peggy… Peggy has something to do with this. He couldn’t shake the idea from his mind.

Weapons drawn, they circled once around the entire house before moving in. They entered through an opened window on the shaded side and searched all the rooms, ready for someone to pop out any moment with a gun.

“If I were Marsh, I think I would have picked a better shack for my headquarters,” Will said.

Robert glanced up at the ceiling. There were large holes in the roof where he could see the sky. He thought a strong gust of wind would be all it would take to flatten the place. The fact that Marsh was living here said something about his mental state.

“But where did they go?” Robert asked. His mind was racing now, picking over the contents of the rooms at a blurred rate. There was nothing at all indicating where Marsh might have taken his family. He and Will were now split up and searching in different places. He heard Will come up behind him.

“You need to see this.”

Robert turned and saw in Will’s hand a man’s shirt. Will held it up so Robert could see the burn holes.

“Whoever was wearing this has got to be in a lot of pain.” Will brought the shirt to his nose. “These burns smell fresh.”

Suddenly there was a sound of the back door swinging open followed by someone coughing. Will dropped the shirt to the floor and the two of them moved to see who it was.

They found Stick lying halfway inside the house. His face was badly burned and blackened. He’d tied his belt around the bloody stump where his elbow used to be. It had taken him all morning to crawl back to the house.

Stick’s eyes shot up at them in surprise. It took a tremendous effort for him to suck in enough air to speak.

“Help me…”

“Holy fuck,” Will shouted. He rushed forward and carefully lifted the man up. He propped him up against a fire damaged wall.

Robert shoved past Will and sank his hands into Stick’s scrawny neck. “Who are you? What have you done to them?”

“Let him go Bobby,” Will said. “Can’t you see he’s dying?”

“That’s the least of his worries right now.” But after a few moments he did as Will asked and let go of Stick’s throat. His friend was right, there wasn’t much life left in the man. He didn’t want to end it too early if it meant there was information to be had, anything that might lead them to Peggy and Connor.

Stick coughed and his watery eyes drifted over to Will. “You must be here for the women and children,” his voice rasped.