Paranormal After Dark: 20 Paranormal Tales of Demons, Shifters, Werewolves, Vampires, Fae, Witches, Magics, Ghosts and More

by Rebecca Hamilton

  “It’s something that has pressed my mind for some time.” David straightened. “I felt it my duty to protect the fine state of Virginia. Will you be enlisting, Robert?”

  Robert kicked a stone into a puddle. “I have given it thought. I need to speak with Father about it, obviously, since I am his partner in the store.”

  “Certainly, certainly.” David nodded. “The war will be over before long, anyway. You’d best enlist before them Yanks surrender!”

  Robert cracked a smile. “I would hate to miss all the fun.”

  “I hate to rush away, dear friends, but my sister has promised me a fine supper, fit for a general.” He swept his hat off and shot Adelaide a lopsided grin. “It is always a pleasure to see you, Miss Randolph.”

  “Indeed.” She returned his smile. David had been persistently pursuing her affections since Thomas’s departure. “You will give my best to Susan?”

  “Of course.”

  She watched him saunter down the street for a moment and then turned to her brother. “I thought you asked Poppa about enlistment.”

  “I did.”

  “He said no.”

  “I know that.”

  She scrambled to keep up with his long strides. “Why lie to David, then?”

  “Because Poppa insists on treating me like a child.” Robert switched the basket to his other hand. “Which is bad enough—I don’t need my friends thinking I’m a coward.”

  “He’s not treating you like a child, he’s being reasonable. He’s old, Robert. He needs help in the store.”

  Robert sighed. “Oh well, everyone says it will be over in a few months, anyway. The Armory’s losing a lot of workers, though. I wonder what they’ll do about the lack of manpower.”

  A guard stepped out in front of them. “Excuse me, sir, but can I see your pass?”

  Robert made a face. “But we just came through here.”

  “I don’t recall you coming through here, sir.”

  “Only ten minutes ago!” Robert held up the market basket. “We were headed to Market Street. Now we’re on our way back.”

  “That may be, sir,” he sounded bored, like their presence was intrusive to him, “but I still need to see your pass. You too, Miss.”

  She ground her teeth together, trying to restrain herself from audibly groaning. As she looked up at the soldier to hand him her pass, she saw a shadow hovering in the middle of the street. No one else on the street seemed to see him, but he was clear to her: the breeched trousers and smartly buttoned jacket. His face was still too shadowed for her to see his features, but she could see the cocked hat and the direction he was staring.

  He was watching her.

  * * *

  “CAN YOU ROLL up my sleeves again?”

  Adelaide glared at her sister. “Honestly, Sarah, you act like today is the first day you’ve done laundry.”

  She shrugged. “I rolled yours up.”

  Groaning, Adelaide wiped her hands on her apron and crawled around the wash basin to Sarah. “You only make excuses like this when it’s your turn to scrub clothes.”

  She rested her hands on the wash board. “No, I complain about laundry as a general rule.”

  Once her sister’s sleeves were rolled up, Adelaide crawled back over to her basin of clear water. “If our family depended on you, Sarah, we’d never have clean clothes.”

  “Maybe.”

  Adelaide laughed and pushed the clothes back and forth in the water, doing her best to rinse out the lye soap. “I saw David Hamilton today. He’s enlisted in the Confederate Army.”

  “Really?” Sarah leaned back and stretched her arms over her head. “I figured he would. A lot of gentlemen around town are enlisting. Though, I am surprised he hasn’t asked to court you yet.”

  “I would have said no. My heart belongs to Thomas Cooper and no one—ever—will replace him.”

  Sarah suddenly straightened, looking past Adelaide to the front gate bordering the yard. “Luke? What are you doing home so early?”

  Her younger brother shrugged his shoulders and sat on the bottom step. “I got sent home. They closed the Armory.”

  “What are you talking about?” Adelaide pulled her hands out of the water and dried them off again. “They can’t close the Armory. That’s all this damned town has left.”

  Luke pulled his hat off and ran his fingers through his thick hair. “Told us they needed the machines. They want to move everything down to Fayetteville... said we’re too close to the Yanks here and could lose it all in one swoop. They don’t want to risk it.”

  Adelaide almost overturned the wash basin as she scrambled to her feet. Holding up her skirts so as not to trip, she dashed through the gate and skidded to a stop beside Potomac Street. The Armory gates were wide open. Soldiers swarmed through the buildings, occasionally emerging to drag machinery and supplies to awaiting wagons.

  Sarah anxiously twisted her apron in her hands. “What’s going to happen to us now?”

  Adelaide was not sure how to answer her.

  Chapter 16

  THE LETTER WAS sitting on the work table. Adelaide did not notice it when she first walked in to the kitchen that morning. Only after she turned back to the table to beat eggs for breakfast did she see it.

  She set the ceramic bowl down on the table and placed the unbroken eggs inside to keep them from rolling off and smashing on the floor. The paper had not been on the table when she cleaned up the kitchen last night—she was positive, as the last thing she had done before bed was wipe down the table.

  My dear family,

  This morning I head to Maryland. I plan to join the first Federal unit I come upon. After watching our own Confederate soldiers destroy the Armory, I cannot in clear conscious sit still and let this continue. It is my hope, in time, you will all forgive me.

  Very truly yours, I remain son and brother,

  Luke

  Her body felt like it was swaying from side to side and, for a moment, her vision clouded. Luke always took everything so personally, always took it to heart. He wasn’t that little obnoxious boy anymore; he was... just...

  Gone.

  The letter was fluttering in her hand. It took her several moments to realize it was her hand trembling, not some invisible force trying the wrench the paper from her fingertips.

  As tears began streaming down her cheeks, she rushed from the kitchen and screamed for her father. Maybe there was still time to stop him.

  Chapter 17

  June 14, 1861

  “SO, APPARENTLY, HE was traveling on the pike from Charlestown and saw these farmers.” Annie giggled and capped her finger with a thimble. “They were on their plow horses and were practicing a cavalry drill. Can you imagine?”

  Adelaide laughed. “Big plow horses? I don’t imagine they’d be fast.”

  “That’s not the best part.” Annie shook her head. “The commander was shaped like a boulder. Each time he yelled at them—or laughed at them, as the case may have been—he would wobble his head around and his cheeks would jiggle about like a dollop of jam. Mr. Ebersole said that it was like a train derailment. He couldn’t stop watching. ”

  “I tell you, if that’s the leadership we have, there is no way we can win.” Sarah rocked her needle back and forth through the quilt. “Fat generals? Plow horses? Those Yankees won’t want us back in the Union. They’ll be too ashamed.”

  Annie set her quilt blocks down and brushed her hair back from her face. “Are there any new incidents of spirit activity? Addy?”

  She shook her head. “Not since I saw the Shadow Man—that’s what I’m calling him now—outside of Thomas’s house and in the Armory. It’s still so odd: when I saw it, I couldn’t move. My mind couldn’t function to pull out my watch and try to force it to the other side. I just looked. It looked at me, it stared, and then it was gone.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a spirit.” Annie lifted the mattress from her bed and slid her hand underneath it. She pulled out the book of wi
tchcraft Lucy had left in her possession. “I think it’s more like an archdemon, an upper echelon creature that commands the hordes of dead we face.”

  “But why now?”

  Annie flipped through the book. “It could be a wraith, I suppose. The creatures we fight, the souls of the dead returning here for whatever reason or another, respond to the wraith. It’s the war. They come as harbingers of death. Remember, this all started before John Brown raided the town. These things started coming back when they knew death was marching toward us.”

  “Fair enough.” Adelaide shifted her weight from one hip to the other, and then slid her hand into her pocket. She clenched the watch. “So how do we get rid of it?”

  “I don’t think you can. It looks like you have to wait until—“

  She was silenced by an explosion so strong that Adelaide thought she felt the house shift on its foundation. She stared across the quilt into her sister’s wide eyes—not again. Not again.

  It felt like she was rooted to the chair; terrified if she moved, the building would come crashing down around her. They were all frozen, like a picture likeness of themselves, staring at each other’s stricken faces and clutching at the quilt as if somehow it would hold them to reality. Adelaide wasn’t sure who moved first, if it was her or another beside her, but after a moment’s hesitation they were all crowded around the window overlooking Shenandoah Street. Even from that distance, she could see a column of black smoke rising behind Ferry Lot.

  “They blew up the railroad bridge!” Sarah squealed, pressing her finger against the glass. “My God, again?”

  Annie backed away from the window and ran towards the door. “I think there’s smoke coming from the Armory, too.”

  Adelaide ran after her, picking up her skirts and dashing down the stairs as fast as she could. Annie barely had time to unbolt the door before Adelaide was on top of her, pushing to get outside. She pulled the door open and the two stumbled out onto the front stoop—and right into a crowd of people staring at the Armory complex.

  Even though four shops partially blocked the view, Adelaide could see the long main building of the musket factory on fire. The thick black smoke billowed upwards, partially obstructing the towering smoke stack. Flames were erupting from the other main buildings of the Armory: the very buildings they had all struggled to save only two months ago. Not as much smoke rose from the railroad bridge. From what she could see, it looked like most of the bridge had already collapsed into the river.

  She felt like she was watching the whole scene through somebody else’s eyes. Gentlemen ran down the street, rushing past slow moving soldiers to extinguish the flames rising from the Armory buildings, but Adelaide didn’t hear them. She could feel the wind push loose strands of hair against her forehead; it barely registered in her mind. It was like a dream: dizzying, a horrible memory of the Raid or the burning of the Arsenals.

  As she pressed her hand to her forehead, Adelaide finally realized the columns of soldiers marching past them were not marching towards Armory—they were leaving.

  “What was it, some kind of signal?” Annie scoffed. She raised her voice to the passing men. “Why don’t you help us? You’re going to let our whole town burn?”

  “First they take all the machinery, the weapons, and the tools.” Adelaide leaned against the doorframe to steady herself. She couldn’t wrap her mind around what she was seeing. “Now they burn the buildings. I don’t understand why? What did we do wrong?”

  * * *

  IT WAS QUIET after the Confederate soldiers left. As far back as Adelaide could remember, the only time Harpers Ferry had been that quiet was after John Brown’s Raid. The Armory was silent, people generally stayed indoors—Poppa refused any request to leave home to call on friends or Society meetings.

  She sighed and rested her forehead against the cool glass of the parlor doors. The sky had turned a mottled gray; the summer sunlight blotted out by thick, pewter colored clouds. It looked like a sagging slate roof about to collapse over Harpers Ferry, heavy with the collective sorrows of those left behind.

  “I’m willing to wager the Shenandoah will flood.” Sarah spoke up from the couch. “Or maybe the Potomac... or maybe both.”

  “That’s a rather safe wager to make.” Adelaide momentarily closed her eyes. “Since both flood when there’s a lot of rain. We’ve had a lot of rain.”

  “I don’t think that Poppa’s had many people in the store this week. Levi said he’s kept the door locked most of the time.”

  Adelaide turned from the doors and flopped down next to her sister on the horsehair couch. “He’s kept the doors locked since the soldiers left because of all the theft. Remember when Mr. Simpson had all that tobacco stolen from his dry goods store?”

  “Yes. I figured that was why Mr. Simpson left town.”

  “It’s likely.”

  “Adelaide.” Robert strode into the parlor and tossed his hat at her. “You don’t look busy.”

  “You’re wrong, dear brother.” She tossed the hat back at him. “I am actually quite busy. I’m testing the stability of this couch.”

  Robert made a face. “Poppa and I are going to Martinsburg in the morning. I need you to pack a basket with some meat and cheese so we have something to eat on the way.”

  “Why are you going to Martinsburg?”

  “Poppa wants me to sell some goods to Jacob Selby.” Robert cocked his hat down low over his eyes. “All that fish is just sitting there, ready to rot. I guess he wired Selby and asked if he wanted to buy it cheap. Mr. Selby is a fine gentleman, but he’s tight with money. Any bargain is a good bargain to him. Anyway, we’re going to Martinsburg with a loaded wagon. He’s only coming to supervise, of course, I will be in charge of the actual transaction.”

  “Oh, of course.” Adelaide sighed. “You can’t manage on your own?”

  “No.”

  Against her better judgment, Adelaide followed him to the kitchen and pulled a large basket from a nail in the wall. “How much do you think you’ll need?”

  Robert sat down at the table and plucked his hat off his head. “We’re probably not coming back until the next evening. You said it yourself: it’s a long trip.”

  “I don’t expect you to sleep in the wagon.”

  He spun the hat around his finger. “No, we’ll either sleep on Selby’s floor or get a room in a boarding house.”

  She cut a large chunk of cheese into several smaller wedges and wrapped them in a cloth. “Do you want any of this chicken? It should still be good in the morning.”

  “It doesn’t look all that good now.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s fine, I just cooked it today.”

  “That’s the chicken I ate for supper?”

  “Yes, Robert, that’s the chicken you ate this afternoon.” Adelaide glared at him. “We all ate it this afternoon. As I recall, you personally ate nearly half a bird.”

  “Oh yes, put some in too. It was really good.”

  She cut the chicken down into more manageable pieces, wrapped them in a section of brown paper, and placed them in the basket next to the cheese. “Was that enough chicken? If you think you need more meat, I’ll put a little of this pork in, too.”

  “No, I think that should be enough.” He peeled a scrap of meat from the chicken bone. “Poppa said he hasn’t been feeling well lately. He’s getting those headaches again. If you want my opinion, I think he’s worrying too much about the store.”

  She lowered her voice. “Is it losing money?”

  “I think so.” Robert picked at his hat. “I think people are afraid to come out and shop. Eh, it’ll pick up soon. The war will be over by Christmas, so what does it matter? We can manage until then.”

  She tucked half a loaf of bread in the basket. “Right, over at Christmas. I’ve heard that before and I still don’t believe it.”

  It had been six days since a Shadow was seen in Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

  And she still hadn’t heard from Thomas.


  * * *

  June 22nd, 1861

  “HAVE YOU SEEN Levi?” Adelaide stirred a large pot of cooking oats and tried to peer down the hallway towards his room. The door was shut.

  Sarah picked through a bowl of berries, occasionally tossing aside rotten fruit. “I think he’s still out on the porch. He’s trying to watch them replace the floor on the railroad bridge.”

  “He can’t see the railroad bridge from the porch.” Adelaide hit the wooden spoon against the pot to shake off oatmeal. “There’s a building in the way.”

  “I don’t think he knows what else to do with himself.”

  Adelaide pushed back the lid of the sugar barrel. “This can’t be the last of the sugar.”

  “Are you asking me?”

  She slid the lid back into place. “No, I’m telling you. We’re almost out of sugar.”

  “Maybe we can get more from downstairs.”

  “I don’t know.” Adelaide stared at the sugar barrel as if the pressure of her gaze could fill the barrel with more white crystals. “I didn’t think there was any sugar left downstairs either.”

  “We can’t be out of sugar.” Sarah retorted. “Our family owns a dry goods store. We should be able to get whatever we need.”

  “You would think.” Adelaide muttered.

  Levi trotted into the kitchen. “Robert and Poppa are home. The wagon just stopped in front of the house.”

  “Fine, we can have Poppa settle this.” Adelaide pulled the oatmeal off the heat. She could hear Robert yelling for her from the base of the stairs. “Are you coming down, Sarah?”

  “In a minute.”

  Robert thundered up the back stairs and burst through the back door. “Didn’t you hear me yelling for you?”

  “I was on my way downstairs now, Mouth.”

  “We had an accident.” He shoved past her and grabbed a chair. “Poppa’s hurt. I’m not sure I can get him out of the wagon on my own.”