by Eva Pohler
Chapter Eleven: Christy Ranch
Daphne jogged behind Stan down a hill covered in grass and yellow asters in the sprinkling rain. Down below were two white buildings separated by a hundred yards. Near the smaller and closer of the two buildings was a deep ravine with a bridge stretched across it. Another fifty yards of flat land lay between the two buildings and the sea. The orange glow of the setting sun cast pinks and purples and oranges on the clouds above it and the waves below it.
“Aren’t we going the wrong way?” Daphne asked. “We should be running away from the sun, not toward it. We should be going east.”
“It’s faster than climbing Sierra Blanca. We have to go around the mountain. There’s a road up ahead by that bunkhouse.” He pointed to the smaller of the two buildings, the one by the bridge.
As they neared the bunkhouse, Stan tumbled to the ground and hollered out.
Daphne bent over him. “You okay?”
He grabbed her hand and climbed to his feet, but then winced. “My ankle.”
“Can you walk?”
He took a couple of steps forward, limping off the right ankle. “It’s twisted.”
She came up beside him and took his arm. “What’ll we do?” She glanced around nervously for signs of the crazy rider. “Can you make it back to the resort?”
“I don’t think I can hike that far tonight. We’ll have to camp here, unless we get lucky and find someone from the Nature Conservancy with a jeep.”
“But won’t the crazy rider recognize our tent?”
“We’ll have to hide in the bunkhouse. Can you carry my pack?”
His pack was huge and heavy, as heavy as the old television she once carried back into her bedroom when her parents upgraded the family tube. She helped Stan lift his arms free of it and had to rest it on the ground before slinging it onto her own shoulders.
“Shoot, Stan. What’s in this thing?”
“Everything we need to survive, so be grateful,” he said, half-teasing. “Take the pack down to the house. Then come back for me.”
“What about the rider?”
“What are you waiting for? Go. I’ll lie down and hide.” He fell down into a pushup in the grass and flowers as Daphne took off down the hill.
So this is Haunted Bridge, she thought as she stashed the backpack near the house. The narrow bridge stretched forty feet across the ravine with wooden braces crisscrossing from its base. Pedestrians and horses only, she thought. A ladder in the middle of the bridge leading up from the deep crevice below seemed curious. She supposed there must have been spring water down there at one time. The wooden railings along the side were reinforced with a steel beam.
Running uphill, even without the pack, took more of Daphne’s strength. She was breathing heavily by the time she reached Stan and helped him to his feet. Together, they made their way through the grass and yellow asters to the bunkhouse of Christy Ranch as the sun hovered, ready to set, in the distance.
The white paint was peeling off the old wooden door. Three two-by-fours were nailed across the front of it, but had come loose and hung useless, inches from the frame. The door stood ajar. Daphne was suspicious as they entered the old kitchen, feeling more and more certain she and Stan were being toyed with. Even if the rider weren’t a deranged mad man, not knowing what would happen next filled her with anxiety.
The bunkhouse had a square table in the middle with two wooden chairs. A wood-burning stove against one wall was flanked by a sink and cabinets and an old white conventional stove. Further back were the frames for six bunks, three stacked on each side. Beyond the bunks, another doorway led to a screened porch facing the sea. On the opposite side was a bathroom. She opened the faucet, but no water came out. The commode was also empty. There was no sign of anyone else inside the house.
Stan sat on one of the two chairs as she retrieved the pack and brought it in.
“This door won’t shut right,” Daphne said.
“Put the pack on the floor in front of it. If anyone comes in the middle of the night, he’ll trip over it and give us time to react.”
“You’re scaring me.” She dropped the pack.
“I’m scaring myself. Can you get me that first aid kit?”
She found it and helped him clean up the gash and blood on his head as best she could with shaky hands, first with the alcohol pad, and then with the ointment. Now that she got a good look at it she found it was really more of a prick than a gash. “It’s still bleeding. A Bandaid should do the trick.” She found one in the kit, stealing glances through the two front dusty windows. “There. That should do it. It’s not nearly as bad as I thought it was.”
“Thanks. How’s your leg.”
“Fine. What about your ankle?”
“I don’t think anything’s broken. Wish I had some ice.”
“You think we’re safe here?”
“I think so, as long as he didn’t see where we were headed.”
She checked the corners of the screened back porch for signs of the rider and found instead a dusty old rocker. Lowering some of her weight into the chair, she tested it, and, when it held, relaxed into the old wood. She studied the screened door off the porch and found it solidly boarded shut with a barn door latch. “You can see the sunset from here. It’s beautiful. Come on. It’s a good distraction.” She carried a chair from the table to the porch so Stan could join her. When she got him settled again, she asked, “Want some water?”
“Yeah. I’ve got several canteens in the pack.”
She rummaged through his clothes and things and found them each a full canteen and returned to the rocker. “What’ll we do if the rider returns?”
“Hide.”
She looked at his anxious face. “It’s probably just a game, an exercise. Don’t worry. I don’t think that rider really wants to kill us.”
“I hope you’re right.”
They sat silently for a while sipping the water and watching the sun sink below the horizon. Gulls flew in front of the pastel-colored clouds. The rain dropped lightly, creating the illusion of invisible fairies dancing across the water.
Daphne had begun to like the resort and its experimental exercises until now. Allowing her to be thrown from a horse where she could have been seriously injured or killed was crossing the line. It was an accident, wasn’t it? They couldn’t have intended for her to be thrown. If they had, Daphne was ready to call it quits.
After twenty or so minutes had passed, Stan dug his pipe from his pocket and lit it. “This will make us feel better.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?”
“Best one I’ve had today.”
Behind the bunkhouse, toward the bridge, rose a sharp scream.
Daphne stood. “What is that? Don’t say a ghost. There has to be an explanation. The crazy rider?”
The sharp scream came again.
Stan puffed on his pipe. “Probably some kind of bird.”
“That makes sense.” Daphne got out the sleeping bag and laid it out on the floor between the bunk beds and noticed she was shaking. “Too bad these beds don’t have box springs and mattresses.”
“Too bad we don’t have air conditioning and room service.”
“Too bad we don’t have cell coverage.”
“Or beer.”
“Or enchiladas. I’m hungry. Whatcha got in here?” She dug through the bag and found canned peanuts, beef jerky, and a tin of cookies. “I guess this will do.” She grabbed his flashlight and returned with the food to the porch. She and Stan ate as they watched the colorful clouds turn to pewter and the horizon a pale strip of pink.
The scream came again.
“You sure that’s a bird?”
“No. But what else could it be?”
“You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”
“Absolutely not. There’s always an explanation for everything.”
“Cam disagrees.”
“Good thing he’s not the one here with you.” He gave her a flirtatious wink.
He was cute, even with the bandaged forehead and unshaven face.
“Will you get me my lantern?” Stan asked.
Daphne found it in the pack and brought it to him. In a few minutes, he had it lit.
The smoke from his pipe permeated the air in the screened porch. Daphne thought about eating in the kitchen to avoid getting high from his secondhand smoke, but she liked sitting there staring out at the sea and sky as the sun sank and the moon and stars became visible. She also felt safer next to him. The breeze coming in through the screen wasn’t heavy, but it did help circulate the hot air. Maybe she would move the sleeping bag in there for the night.
The scream came again, this time followed by a loud clatter.
Daphne jumped to her feet and crept to the front of the house to peer through one of the two grimy windows. A few feet away a small animal stood beside a fallen bucket. “It’s the fox,” she called to Stan. “He’s been following me.”
“I told you they’re more like terriers than foxes. Cute, isn’t he?”
Checking to make sure the rider wasn’t around, she pushed the door open to get a closer view. The rain was barely falling now, more like a mist than a sprinkle. “Hey, boy. Whatcha doin’ out here?” She took a few steps toward him.
The fox didn’t move, but to her left, toward the bridge, she caught a blur of white. She turned to see a woman in a long white dress running away from her across the bridge. Daphne dashed through the house to the back screened porch to Stan. “I saw someone. A woman in white crossing the bridge.”
“If you’re trying to scare me, it’s working.” He put out the pipe.
“I’m serious.”
The scream came again, but further away.
“It’s the woman,” Daphne said. “It must be their game. They’re trying to scare us.” It had to be a game, hadn’t it? The woman couldn’t really be an actual ghost. Daphne was no longer certain.
“Do you know how crazy that sounds?” he asked.
“Crazier than, ‘There’s a ghost out there’?”
A scratching sound came from the front door. Daphne turned to see a man with a white beard in one of the windows. Oh my crap! She moved closer to Stan. “There’s someone out there. What do we do? I think he saw me.” Her heart raced. She could barely think. They couldn’t be ghosts, could they? Could the therapeutic games of the resort really reach this far, go this far?
“There’s a gun in my pack. Front pocket. The one with the zipper.”
Clearly, Stan didn’t think they were ghosts, unless he thought you could kill them again with a gun. “I’m not going back to the kitchen.”
“Then run for it. Follow the road back to the resort. Leave me here. Leave through this back door.”
“No way.” She peeked toward the kitchen and the front window. Then she sprang across the bunkhouse, over the opened sleeping bag, grabbed the pack, and dragged it back to the porch. She tried to unzip the pocket but couldn’t grasp the zipper with her trembling fingers.
“Bring it here.” Stan reached over and unzipped it, dug around, and pulled out the pistol. “Get behind me.”
Daphne cowered behind Stan. Hairs stood on the back of her neck. Someone was coming. Something was out there. She shivered, waiting for the man in the window or the woman in white from the bridge. Then she worried Stan would shoot the gun. What if he shot an innocent person? If they were actors, they wouldn’t know he had a gun.
The sun had set, but the moon and Stan’s lantern kept the bunkhouse lit.
The scream came again, closer now.
“What exactly did you see?” Stan whispered.
“A woman in white on the bridge. A man at the window.”
“Are you sure the island’s legends aren’t getting to you?”
“I didn’t imagine them.”
“The weed. It’s made you see things.”
“No. I know what I saw.” But even now her eyelids felt heavy again and she wanted to go to sleep.
They stood there quietly listening, eyes on the front room.
When they heard nothing more, Stan said softly, “This reminds me of a time I went hunting with a buddy from undergrad. I wasn’t much of a hunter. I’m still not. He talked me into going along. Anyway, we were out in a sorry excuse for a cabin after spending the early morning freezing our asses off in a blind. I was so tired. Dead dog tired. So we’re getting ready to go to sleep when we hear something really strange. We didn’t know what the hell it was. We were just like this: standing in the back corner, me with a gun. It was a rifle, but still.”
“So what was it?”
“The damn refrigerator. There was this little unit in the back corner that would randomly start rattling. It took us a while to figure it out.”
“But I saw the man with the beard. I know he was real.”
After a few more minutes, Stan said, “Why don’t you try to get some sleep while I keep watch? I’ll wake you when I need to sleep.”
“Don’t shoot and ask questions later. This could be one of their games.” Daphne pulled the sleeping bag onto the sun porch where Stan sat with his gun.
“Some game.” He relit his pipe.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said.
“Just a few puffs to calm my nerves and then I’ll put it out.”
“Maybe I should take the first watch.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like my ex-wife.”
“You were married?” Daphne lay down on the sleeping bag.
“For six months.”
“What happened?”
“She decided she didn’t want to be married anymore.”
“You’re still so young. You could marry again.”
“Nah. I’m through with that gig. I like being on my own.”
“Don’t you get lonely?”
“Sometimes. You?”
Daphne shuddered. “Yeah. I feel lonely all the time.”
“Even now?”
She glanced up at him and nodded, tears welling in her eyes.
He tapped his shoe to hers, a gentle nudge. “You won’t always feel that way. You’ll meet someone. Hell, you’re the one who’s still young.”
“I miss my family.” She meant her old family, when Kara was still alive and Joey wasn’t sick. In her mind she added, “And Brock.”
“I’m sorry, kiddo.”
She lay there watching the smoke swirl up to the cobwebs on the ceiling, clenching her jaw to keep back tears.