Stumptown Spirits

by E. J. Russell

Trent scrunched up his face and tossed his discarded shoe at Logan. “A native Oregonian, afraid of a little sprinkle? You said it yourself: he died this very day. What better time to catch sight of his ghost?”

  “Daylight, blue skies, and about twenty additional degrees in temperature,” Logan grumbled, unease creeping up his spine like a palm-sized spider. His grandfather’s debacle had occurred on this date too. Not that he was superstitious—much—but maybe it wasn’t the best night to mention this story.

  “You’re missing the point of a good legend trip. It’s not supposed to be cushy. It’s supposed to be authentic.”

  “Then why does your group end up at the Heathman Hotel or Old Town Pizza half the time?”

  “Hey, those places are haunted. It’s documented.”

  Logan snorted. “You read it on Wikipedia, so it’s gotta be true.”

  “Don’t mock—”

  “The sacred traditions of legend tripping. Got it.”

  Trent stood and pulled Logan to his feet with a come-hither smile, hooking his fingers in Logan’s belt loops and snugging their groins together. “Wouldn’t it be hot to blow each other out there?”

  “Is that what you do in your cemeteries? Blow each other?”

  Trent grinned, grinding against him. “Jealous?”

  “No.” Yes. Maybe?

  “Come on. Nobody will see us but the ghosts.” Trent leaned forward and licked Logan’s earlobe. “If we’re lucky.”

  “The park’s not open this late.”

  “So we’ll sneak in. Even better.” He slanted a look from under his lashes. “Please?”

  Logan ignored the dread creeping up on him. His grandfather’s ghosts were probably as real as that ridiculous fortune-telling door. For Trent, surely he could man up for a couple of uncomfortable hours in a dark soggy park. That is, as long as nobody caught them—his dad would freak if his son got caught violating a city ordinance.

  “Okay. But we’ll have to be careful.”

  They left Trent’s car on Upshur, down the street from the Lower Macleay trailhead. The parking lot was deserted, thank God, but there was enough light from cars passing on the Thurman Street overpass that they didn’t have to risk turning on their flashlights until they got into the trees. Logan’s belly fluttered like a captive bird. Nerves? Excitement? Fear? He wasn’t sure, but he began to see the attraction legend tripping had for a thrill-seeker like Trent.

  They reached the Witch’s Castle sooner than Logan expected. It sat back from the bank of Balch Creek, at the Y intersection with the Wildwood trail.

  “Hunh.” Trent played the beam of his flashlight over the building. “I thought it would be bigger.”

  It wasn’t a particularly impressive sight, for sure. Roofless, with empty windows staring out at the woods, its rough stone walls defaced with graffiti. A flight of shallow stone steps on either end led to the upper story. On the ground floor, a couple of empty doorways gaped at the creek.

  Trent poked his flashlight through the smaller door, illuminating a small windowless room, its walls tagged with a pentagram and one or two Fuck Yous. “This must be where the ghosts come to take a piss.” Next to the narrow room was a wider alcove with a concrete slab floor. “And this must be where they park their bikes.”

  Logan ducked under the overhang and beckoned for Trent to join him. “It’s got a roof and a floor. It works for me.”

  After they sat with their backs to the wall, Trent opened his backpack and pulled out two artisan microbrews. Although Logan’s nerves still skittered at every noise in the woods—afraid more of discovery by very real cops than of ghostly pioneers—he chuckled.

  Trent paused while opening his beer. “What?”

  “You. Trust-fund Trent and your old-money silver-spoon sensibilities. Even when you want to get wasted, it’s an upscale wasted.”

  “Fuck off, politico spawn. We all have our issues.” He clinked the necks of their bottles together. “Cheers.”

  The edge of excitement that had fueled their arrival dissipated from the cold and damp, despite the slight alcohol buzz from the beer. No wonder Trent’s legend trippers stuck to hotels and bars when they could tear themselves away from cemeteries. Had to be more interesting—not to mention warmer—than this.

  Logan slung an arm across Trent’s shoulders and pulled him close—to stave off hypothermia rather than as a prelude to anything else, but Trent immediately snuggled close and nuzzled his neck. Logan’s dick made a valiant effort to respond, but the concrete slab under his ass was fucking cold. Not exactly a mood-enhancer.

  “So.” Logan shifted on his tailbone, trying to get comfortable. “Your haunted ouija door warned you about you parents’ reaction to you being gay. What else was it right about?”

  Trent took a swig of his beer and rested the bottle on his knee. “I asked if I’d meet the love of my life if I stayed in Rhode Island.” He cuddled closer, placing a hand on Logan’s thigh. “It said no.”

  Logan’s heart lurched. Did Trent just say—? Did he mean he thought Logan was—? Sweat broke out on his forehead. Not ready to go that far. Not yet. He slid his arm from around Trent’s neck. “Look, man. I—”

  Trent scooted away, hurt clearly visible even in the funky shadows cast by the flashlight. “Yeah, sorry. Guess it was too much to hope you’d feel—”

  “It’s not that.” Hadn’t Logan been toying with the idea of more himself? “But we’ve known each other a month and a half. You’re my best friend. Maybe if we give it some time—”

  “Fuck time. Time sucks. You never know what’ll happen in the next year, the next month—hell, the next minute. Everything could change, and shit you counted on, shit you believed in—” He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “One fucking conversation, one wrong word, and poof. Gone.”

  “If you mean your parents—”

  “Fuck my parents.” He dropped his hands and stood, looming over Logan. “I thought I could count on you.”

  “You can.” Logan scrambled up. Tonight, in the uncertain light, Trent’s eyes shone almost green, with the manic gleam that always heralded the worst of his reckless behavior. “I’m here for you, I swear. But this isn’t the best place to have this convo. Maybe—”

  Trent’s empty beer bottle slipped from his fingers and shattered against the alcove’s concrete floor. “Oh my fucking God. Logan. Look at that!”

  Logan whirled, and all the hair lifted on his arms and the back of his neck under his damp hoodie. A line of mist snaked across the clearing. Not the usual Portland gray fog—this mist was tinged a bilious green and it sparked like a downed power line.

  “I’ve got a b-b-bad feeling about this. Let’s get out of here.” He shoved his empty in the backpack and searched for the pieces of Trent’s broken bottle in the shimmer of arcane light.

  “Are you kidding? This is bigger than anything I’ve ever heard of. Bigger than that French werewolf sighting. Bigger than the ouija board door. And it trumps Blithe Spirit all to fucking hell. Peterson will shit his pants when he hears about this.” Trent smacked Logan’s biceps. “Dude, you are the king of legend trippers.”

  From the three paths that converged at Witch’s Castle, amorphous balls of light pushed out of the mist, and Logan’s heart tried to bound out of his chest. “Seriously. We need to leave. Now.” He reached for the last piece of glass near Trent’s foot.

  “I don’t fucking believe it,” Trent whispered. “Orbs. Actual orbs. Dozens of them.” He punched Logan’s shoulder, and Logan stumbled, slicing his left palm on the jagged shard.

  Pain shot up Logan’s arm as blood dripped onto the muddy ground. “Shit.” He pulled the hem of his T-shirt from under his hoodie and bunched it in his fist to stem the flow.

  Trent gasped and let it out on a slow, “Ooooooohhhh.”

  “It’s not that bad.” Logan peeked under the shirt, wincing at the length of the gash. “I can—”

  “Look, man. Just look at that.”

  Logan looke
d, and his breath stalled in his chest. The formerly featureless blobs had resolved into distinct figures, and more were joining them by the second, stepping out of the mist as if it was a curtain over a doorway to hell. Men and women in old-fashioned clothes. Wagons. Horses. Mules. All the trappings of the legend, exactly as his grandfather had described.

  Trent clutched Logan’s arm, his eyes as wide as a kid’s on Christmas morning who’d just opened the gift he’d been begging for his whole life. “We did it. We raised a legend.”

  The ghosts advanced; some were brighter than others, like the stars of the show. Logan had no idea what the Balches or Stumps looked like, but the young couple spotlighted by the wagon had to be Anna Balch and Mortimer Stump. Danford appeared on cue to confront them and the story unfolded, playing out in the muddy clearing next to the rushing creek like a time-lapse tragedy.

  Trent watched it with an incredulous smile, edging forward despite Logan’s attempts to pull him back into the dubious shelter of the alcove. When the ghost of Danford stormed off and vanished, Trent turned to Logan, disappointment clouding his face.

  “Is that it? There’s no more?”

  Christ, wasn’t that enough? Logan shook with more than the damp and chill of the air. “N-n-no. He’ll be back. With his gun. Let’s go, Trent. Please.” He knew what happened next. His grandfather had repeated it to anyone who would listen whenever he had the chance. “You’ve seen enough to score off Peterson.”

  “No fucking way. Nobody I know has ever gotten this close. Come on.” Trent let go of Logan’s arm and dashed out of the alcove. When he reached the outermost figures, he posed next to one of them with a cheeky grin. “Check it out. Trent Pielmeyer, ghost pioneer.”

  Logan groaned. “Christ, Trent, don’t push it.”

  Trent flipped him off and turned to watch the tableau again.

  At the far side of the clearing near Anna and Mortimer, Logan spotted a man in a flat-brimmed hat and jawline beard loading a bag of flour into the back of a phantom wagon. The terror on his face as he gaped at the other ghosts probably matched Logan’s own.

  Logan’s stomach jolted in shock. That must be the guy. Joseph Geddes, the man who disappeared into the war. His grandfather hadn’t been crazy. He’d been telling the truth. About all of it.

  He needed to warn Trent, but when he tried to force himself to get closer to the ghosts, panic cramped his belly.

  “Hssst. Logan.” Trent pointed to the left, where the phantom Danford Balch had returned with his shotgun.

  “Trent, wait. There’s some stuff I didn’t tell you. Stuff you should know.”

  “Later.”

  Logan expected Balch to storm down to the spot where his daughter stood with her bridegroom, but instead he slowed, head turning to focus on Trent. Surprise registered on his semitransparent face, and he glanced down at the gun.

  Trent stared at Logan, goggle-eyed, and mouthed, What the fuck?

  This isn’t what happened, and the last time something deviated from the story—

  Balch beckoned to Trent, offering him the gun.

  And Trent reached for it.

  “No! Trent, you idiot. Don’t.” Logan lurched forward and grabbed the sleeve of Trent’s jacket.

  Trent frowned and jerked his arm away. “Are you crazy? It’s the role of a lifetime, and I’ll be the star, not the fucking understudy.” He bowed with a flourish of one hand. “You may applaud my many curtain calls.”

  “You don’t understand. This isn’t a fucking play. You—”

  Trent seized the gun.

  As soon as it was in his grasp, Balch fell to the ground next to Logan, as solid as he was himself, as if Trent had pushed him aside. And Trent—Trent was suddenly as transparent as the rest of the spirits, the jagged stump at the edge of the creek clearly visible through his chest.

  Then . . . God. Mortimer stepped out from behind the wagon, and he looked . . . so scared. How many times had he played this scene? He had to know what was coming next.

  But Trent, who always buried himself in every part, either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He raised the gun to his shoulder, a crazy grin visible in his ghostly face, and pulled the trigger.

  The shotgun blast echoed in the clearing, bouncing impossibly among the trees, the sound all the more shocking because the rest of the action had been silent.

  Mortimer toppled onto his back, his face and neck an open wound. His blood, obscenely red, steamed in the cold.

  Horror banished Trent’s grin. He thrust out his arms, the cords on his neck distended as if he were fighting to throw the gun down. “I want it to stop now. Why can’t I—” He tried to back away, but the crowd swallowed him up.

  Clutching his bleeding hand to his chest, Logan staggered toward Trent, but someone grabbed his shoulder and pushed him to his knees. He stared up into the haunted eyes of Danford Balch.

  “Let me go, you bastard.” Logan struggled, but Balch’s hand tightened with bruising strength.

  “You can do nothing now.”

  “I didn’t mean— God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Trent’s voice was faint, echoing as if he were at the bottom of a well. “Help me, Logan, please.” Beyond the shifting backs of the townspeople, Logan glimpsed a sliver of Trent’s face, his eyes wide and terrified. “I—I want to go home.”

  “Too late,” Balch said.

  Logan writhed in Balch’s steely grip. “It’s not. It can’t be.”

  The hangman stepped up with the noose, flinging it into the air where it dangled as if from an invisible tree, and the crowd raised Trent on their shoulders in lieu of gallows steps.

  Trent strained against invisible bonds, shaking his head wildly, in a futile attempt to evade the rope. “I’m not the guy. I swear. I’m just the—the understudy.”

  “Trent!” Logan wrenched himself out of Balch’s clutches and stumbled forward. “Hold on, man. I’ll get you out. I’ll save you, I promise.”

  Trent shared one last agonized glance with Logan before the crowd dropped him and the rope took his weight, breaking his neck with a sickening crunch.

  “No!” Logan fell to his knees, the pain in his hand nothing compared to the agony in his chest. He doubled over, arms wrapped across his belly. My fault, my fault, all my fucking fault.

  “It worked.” Balch’s voice was rough, disbelieving. “Before, I thought it chance only.”

  Logan caught his breath, fighting off sobs that threatened to choke him. “What did you do?”

  “I did nothing. He . . . he did it of his own free will. Now my fate is his, and I . . .” He ran trembling hands over his clothing, his face, his neck. “I am granted another chance.”

  “You can’t. It’s his life, not yours.”

  “It was his. But he gave it to me.”

  Logan glared at him. “You won’t get away with this. The police—”

  Balch laughed, a hollow sound. “You think your lawmen will pursue a man so long dead?”

  “They will if I prove you’re alive.” With his uninjured hand, Logan wrestled his cell phone out of his hoodie pocket and snapped a picture of Balch, who flinched from it, flinging up his hands to shield his eyes.

  The light partially blinded Logan too, and by the time his vision cleared, Balch was gone. Along with the ghosts. Along with Trent.

  All these years, he’d tried to find Balch. Get some answers. Why had he been able to do what he did? How had he trapped Trent? How had he himself escaped? But Balch had vanished. In the years Logan had spent on the road, wandering aimlessly between Octobers, he’d circulated that grainy cell phone picture in the trucker network, and to every biker he knew.

  He’d heard a few rumors. Someone who might have been Balch in Montana once. South Dakota. Passing through Anchorage. But no confirmed sighting until now. Damn it. This was as close as Logan had ever been to the bastard since that night, and he had no time left to track him down. No chance to confront him before the end. No chance to try to force him to undo what he’d done.

/>   Logan sat on the edge of the sagging bed, his head in his hands. It was his turn. Time to finally keep his promise to Trent, and nothing—not Riley’s job, not Riley’s feelings for him, not even his love for Riley—could stand in his way.

  Riley fidgeted his way through the production meeting, barely listening to anything anyone said, depending on Julie to bring him up to speed later.

  His fingers twitched with the need to get back to his laptop, to start finding the truth about Logan’s grandfather.

  The instant Scott stopped nattering on about the budget, Riley launched himself out of his chair. As the crew filed out, he caught Julie’s arm.

  “Jules. Something’s come up.”

  “To do with the show?”

  “Yeeess.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Not really. Logan’s reaction told Riley he’d missed something in his preparation for this episode. Something big. Sure, it might end up having more to do with Riley’s battered heart than Danford Balch, but his scholar’s instincts pinged like crazy, telling him to dig deeper, find the clue, make the connection. The answer’s out there, and you can find it.

  After all, wesearch was his middle name.

  Julie pulled her top lip between her teeth, like a hellhound with an underbite. “I don’t like it. You need to remind Scott of your value. If you’re not in his face at least once every three hours or so, he’ll forget who you are and why he should listen to you.”

  “I know. But this is critical. Anyway . . .” He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “Are you telling me you can’t handle Scott?”

  As he’d hoped, she rose to the bait. Nose to nose with him, she growled, “In my sleep, with no hands and a hangover.”

  “Excellent.” He fumbled in his messenger bag and pulled out the map of the site with the boundaries of the ghost war clearly marked in signature HttM neon-green marker. He hesitated for an instant, smoothing a crease in the paper. The expression on Logan’s face had been so bleak earlier. What would it hurt if Riley fudged a little, redrew the lines so the crew set up in the wrong spot, or let Scott film a day or two early? He would give Logan what he’d asked, yet give the show’s audience exactly what they expected: Max Stone strutting around some creepy scenery in his fedora and bomber jacket while precisely nothing supernatural occurred.