by S D Hegyes
Sorsha learned more about the private’s life before he became a soldier. In return, he learned more about life in the current century.
When she couldn’t move any of the cards before her to the stacks she’d created and the cards left in her draw pile were also of no use, Sorsha sighed and looked up at the ghost.
“Well, it looks like that’s game.” She looked around. “And I think I need to get home before it gets too dark anyway.”
Thaddeus nodded and scrambled to his feet, holding out his hand to her. Then he drew it back, as if embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I forgot myself for a moment. You can’t touch—” His words cut off as she reached up and grabbed his hand with her own. He stared at their clasped hands, eyes wide, before he met her eyes.
“I can touch ghosts,” was all she said. She frowned as a shiver ran through her, and she used her free hand to rub her other arm. “I don’t advertise it. It can get. . . messy.”
He nodded and pulled her to her feet. She dusted herself off before she looked back at him, suddenly feeling the tension in the air between them.
“Did I do something wrong?”
The ghost shook his head, clasping at his hat and tugging it off his head. “No. It’s just…” He fiddled with the hat some more. “It’s been so long since I spoke to anyone. Longer since I’ve touched someone. It was—” His eyes met hers. “It’s nice.”
She’d never been one to flush easily, but his words combined with the way he looked into her eyes like he hoped for some deeper connection made her skin hot. Her face burned.
“Ummm.” She wasn’t sure what to say. Instead, she gathered the cards before her and shuffled them back into the deck. “Thanks? I guess?”
He laughed. “The times have changed. In my time, a woman would know if I paid her a compliment.”
“I was trying to figure out if you meant it as more than a compliment, as most people these days put innuendos into their words.” She brushed her hair back, out of her face, tugging it over her shoulder out of habit.
“Oh.” He was quiet for a moment, thinking about her response. “Oh!”
She laughed. He understood her meaning. “Yes, that. Sorry. I didn’t mean to make this awkward.” It was awkward, but it was nice as well. No one had shown genuine interest in her in a long time.
Her peers in Shaded Glade were products of their parents. Most avoided Sorsha when they could. How she’d managed to lose her virginity was still a source of pride for her. It was another act of defiance against Shaded Glade, since they preached abstinence until marriage while advocating marriage at young ages.
The hypocrisy of it all annoyed Sorsha to no end.
He held up his hand, gesturing toward the path that led out of the Indian Monument. She nodded her head and took the path that wound up towards the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.
“Have you ever…” He let his words trail off and avoided her gaze.
“Yes. Haven’t you?”
“It’s not proper to tell a lady.”
She laughed. “Man, welcome to the modern woman. I’ll give you details if you’d like to hear them. I did it here, you know.”
“Here?” He looked at her with interest.
She nodded. “It was the first time I came here, actually. It’s a cemetery, and because my dad tries to pretend my abilities are nothing more than his punishment from the devil, I’ve been forbidden to come here.”
“Naturally, this is the exact place you’d come to for companionship.”
“Naturally.” She gave him a wry grin. “I convinced a tourist I saw near a camper to ditch his family and…”
The private stared at her in a mixture of horror and appreciation. “And he accepted?”
She shrugged. “He was a teenage boy, and I was a willing girl. Of course he did.”
“Strange.”
“What about you? Ever do the horizontal tango with anyone?”
“What is that?” His brows came together in his confusion.
She laughed again. “Ever had sex, Private Thaddeus?” Her hands tingled and her fingers twitched in response. She looked down and saw the smoke around her hands had thickened and brightened even further. What was going on?
“Yes.” He grew quiet then as they stopped before the monument and looked at one another.
She knew he wouldn’t go into detail. That he’d answered at all surprised her. Still, as she watched him, she thought he might say something more. When he looked up at her, he seemed surprised she was still standing there.
“My apologies. I got lost in my own thoughts. It’s been a pleasure meeting you…” He trailed off. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”
“Sorsha Johnston.”
“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Miss Johnston. Good luck on your journey.”
She nodded as she took the hand he offered, switching the deck of cards to her opposite hand. “And you as well, Private John Thaddeus.”
Her power flared and the warmth that had been spreading throughout her burned like molten lava. She screamed in pain, but it was nothing compared to the ghost’s scream.
She stared in horror as the orange smoke that enveloped her hand coiled around the private, traveling up his arm from her hand. It went down and around the whole of his body, encompassing him in a tornado of orange smoke. The tornado spun faster and faster before returning to Sorsha’s hand, taking him along with it.
The cards in her left hand burned, and she dropped them with a cry. Her heart hammered in her chest and her breath came out in labored gasps.
Sorsha spun around, looking for the ghost. “Private Thaddeus?” The wind picked up, and one of the fallen cards caught her eye, drawing her gaze to the fallen deck scattered on the ground.
Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open in horror as she stared down. Bending over, she gathered them up, counting them and reorganizing them. They were all exactly as they had been before.
All except the ace of spades, which was completely black on both sides aside from the figure of a soldier dressed in a cavalry uniform.
Sorsha stared at the card, lifting it away from the rest to inspect it further. Thaddeus stood at attention in the card, as if someone had taken his picture. Orange smoke billowed around him, but as the mist around her hands dissipated, so did the smoke in the card.
What the hell?
2
If either of her parents saw her, where she’d fallen to her knees beside her bed, they’d think Sorsha was praying. It would have pleased them. In reality, she stared at the changed card in her hand.
What had happened?
She still didn’t know, still didn’t understand any of it.
All she knew was that Private Thaddeus was gone and his image on the burned card. At least, it looked burned. The back of the card had been red and white, with the design pattern of a typical deck of playing cards. Now both sides were black except where Private Thaddeus stood.
The image in the card looked eerie as well with diluted colors. It gave the figure the same translucent appearance. Sorsha stared at the soldier, standing at attention, her eyes wide.
Had she trapped the soldier in the card? If so, how did she do it, and how did she let him out again?
She’d scurried home without answers, afraid to stay at the cemetery lest any other ghosts nearby started questioning her. Her mind still reeled from the encounter with the private and the events that had ended it.
When her mother told her to wash for supper, she did so without a word, staring at her hands and wondering what she’d done. They no longer felt warm. The pain that had torn through her, making her and the ghost scream, was gone, as if it had never existed in the first place.
As they ate, her father told her he’d found her a husband. She listened, her mind not following the conversation, and nodded at all the appropriate places. When her father asked her if she understood, all she said was, “Yes, Father.”
Her parents both stared at her.
She always fought with them. She always tried her best to defy them. It was the way it had been since they moved to Shaded Glade.
She blinked and looked at them, pulling her hand away from her chin and focusing on them for the first time.
“You were saying?”
Her father cleared his throat. “I found you a husband. You’ll be married next spring. In March.”
She nodded. “Alright.”
Her parents looked at one another, and then her father turned to her again, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“I feel like you’re up to something,” he said, his word slow and drawn out with caution.
She put her fork down with a sigh. “May I be excused? I’m not feeling well, and I don’t feel like fighting.”
“Go ahead, dear,” her mother told her, with a quick glance at her father.
He grumbled, frowning at his wife for a moment, before he nodded his agreement.
Sorsha stood from the table with a mumbled “Thank you” and carried her plate to the kitchen. She threw away her table scraps and rinsed her plate off before sticking it in the dishwasher. In the other room, she could hear her parents whisper-arguing over what was wrong with her, but she pretended not to hear.
Sorsha trudged to her room and closed the door, leaving a shoe-width of clearance between the door and the frame. Closing it all the way wasn’t allowed.
Her room was almost sparse, and everything in the room was white. The head of a twin bed sat against the far wall with a three-drawer dresser on the wall to the side of it and a small table and lamp on the opposite side. The leather-bound Bible next to the lamp was the only splash of color in the room.
Andrew Barr, Shaded Glade’s community leader and minister, did house inspections once a month. If the Bible wasn’t beside the bed of even one occupant, everyone in the house was punished.
Only one time Sorsha forgot to put the Bible on the side table when they first moved to Shaded Glade. She hadn’t known when the pastor would come then, for his inspections were random, or “when the Lord told him someone was participating in sin” as he liked to say.
She and her family had been publicly punished. Three spankings with a wooden paddle hadn’t been much in the form of punishment. The rest of Shaded Glade’s residents ostracized her often enough that their seeing the event hadn’t bothered her either.
Her father’s punishment afterward had been much more severe. He’d beaten her until she had a motley of bruises and couldn’t sit for a week without whimpering in pain.
After that, her Bible stayed on the side table. She never read it unless forced to, but when she did, it went right back to its designated spot afterward. Better not to chance her father’s wrath again.
Over the years, she’d tested her father’s patience and punishments. As she’d grown older, she’d found what would and wouldn’t get her punished. She hardly ever pushed her luck anymore, even when arguing with him.
Once she changed into a pair of pajamas, Sorsha pulled the cards out and stared at them in confusion. She wondered, for the hundredth time, what had happened.
None of the other cards were marked the way the soldier’s card was. None of them were blackened or had an image outside their standard norms.
A knock at the door made her rush to mix the changed card amongst the others. She spun her head and saw her mother’s outline in the doorway.
“May I come in?”
“Sure,” Sorsha said. She gathered the rest of the cards and shuffled them. “I was just getting ready to play a game of solitaire.”
She couldn’t lie to her mother, she knew. The woman had a knack for knowing when someone spoke the truth or not. They’d started calling her a truthseeker. Sorsha had felt the pull of her mother’s stares more than once and fought the urge to spill every one of her secrets.
Still, her mother supported her as much as she could.
Her mother said nothing about the lie they knew she told, and she shoved her deck of cards inside their box before tossing it on her dresser. It landed near the Bible without touching it, as if it didn’t want to.
Sorsha studied her mother, watching her walk with a hesitant stride, as if she questioned her decision to enter her daughter’s room.
For a moment, Sorsha wondered where her father was. Was he already in bed? Or was he in the living room, reading his own Bible and drinking a glass of whiskey? It was one of the only vices he’d kept from his former life before they moved to Shaded Glade.
He claimed it helped with the pain he still felt in his back from his injuries, but Sorsha and her mother knew it was a lie. He drowned his sorrow, anger and depression at not being able to walk anymore. Not being a man anymore—if one listened to his drunken rants.
Sorsha decided she didn’t care what her father was doing and focused on her mother.
Unless he was punishing her, Sorsha hardly saw her father in her room. It was difficult for him to get his wheelchair through the doorway. Not impossible. Just hard.
Her mother reached over and grasped Sorsha’s hand in her own. “I’m worried about you.”
“Me? Why?”
“You weren’t yourself at dinner. Your father and I both expected a fight.” Her eyes, gray like Sorsha’s, softened. “I fear you’ve fallen to them and their ways.”
“Hardly. It’s me we’re talking about.”
Her mother studied her this time. “Your father’s planning on marrying you off.”
She nodded. “That’s never been a secret really. He’s never hidden his disdain for me—not that I can remember.” She frowned and looked down at their entwined hands.
A flash of crimson smoke drifted through her memory. It was gone before she could latch onto it and decipher its meaning.
She shook her head and said, “The sooner he gets rid of me, the better. At least, that’s what he thinks.” She pulled her hand from her mother’s and wagged a finger at the older woman. “Don’t try to tell me any different. We both know it’s true.”
There was no reply. Her mother simply pursed her lips and watched her daughter for a long moment before saying, “Preston Barr.”
At that, Sorsha wrinkled her nose. “Preston?”
Her mother nodded.
It should have surprised her honestly. Preston was Andrew’s oldest son. It was no surprise Andrew was the undisputed leader of Shaded Glade. His grandfather had been the one to build the community from the ground up, and Preston was sure to follow in his father’s footsteps. They both probably saw Sorsha as a challenge. If they could convert her to their ways, they could convert anyone.
She had no plans to convert. She had no plans to stay.
“I’m joining the military,” she informed her mother. She remembered Private Thaddeus for a moment and the question of what happened at the cemetery flit through her mind again. Now was not the time to think about that though and she waved off the thought before it could fully form.
“You are?” The woman’s eyebrows shot up near her dark hair, which wasn’t quite black, like that of her daughter’s.
Sorsha knew she had an equal mix of her parents’ features. Her lips were full and red, her eyes gray, like her mother’s. Black hair and tanned skin came from her father. Like her mother, she was small in her build, but she had her father’s temper. It was one of the many reasons they didn’t get along. They often butted heads.
“Mom, I’m eighteen now. I’m an adult. Father can’t rule me as he once did. Did you really think I was going to stay in Shaded Glade and let that happen?” Sorsha looked at her mother who shook her head.
“No, but. . .” Her mother frowned. “Where will you go? The military destroyed your father.”
“No. Father destroyed himself. He just likes to blame the military because his accident occurred when he was active duty. Don’t make excuses for his abuse. We both know that’s what it is.”
Silence passed between them. There was nothing to say.
Finally, her mother told her, “You know your
father will disown you if you leave, right?”
She nodded. “I know.”
A dry chuckle escaped her mother’s throat. “Are you going to change your name when that happens? I hear it’s the hip thing to do.”
“Mom, don’t say, hip. It’s not you.”
“What?” Her mother chuckled. Sorsha was glad they could joke about such matters, no matter how depressing their situations were. “Are you saying I’m too old for the word hip?”
Sorsha nudged her mother with her whole body. “The only reason I can see you using the word hip is when talking about how much it hurts as you raise a cane at me,” she teased.
Her mother chuckled and then sobered once more. “So, will you change your name? Your father will deny ever having a child, so you might as well.”
Sorsha shrugged. “What would I even change it to?”
“Well, you’re a bit of a phantom. You ghost your way through life here, trying to stay off your father’s radar, but. . .” Her mother shook her head as she cupped Sorsha’s face in her hands, thumb brushing over her cheek.
“That’s a good idea, Mom.” Sorsha smiled. “I can become Sorsha Phantom.”
Her mother frowned. “What?”
“It fits actually. It was your maiden name after all.”
The conversation was meant as a joke, Sorsha knew, but her mother agreed that it might be good for her to start fresh when she left.
They smiled at one another fondly, but Sorsha could see the questions in her mother’s eyes. She sighed. “What is it, Mom?”
Surprise replaced the fond smile. “What do you mean?”
“If there’s something you want to know, just ask?”
A sigh escaped her mother’s lips and her shoulders sagged. For a moment, she looked much older than she actually was. Sorsha felt a pang, wondering if it was the lifestyle they lived that did it, or if it was just her mother aging naturally. Somehow, she doubted it was the latter option.
“Why the military?”
The question came out soft, and Sorsha’s response came out just as soft a few moments later. “It’s what Dad did.”