Mama made me carry garlic and holy amulets whenever I went outside that autumn and winter. But by the time spring rolled around, even she was convinced that the vampire was gone. She and Pa strictly forbade me to go near the burned-out cabin in the woods. Not that they needed to. I still had nightmares about that moment I’d found the dismembered body of the traveling salesman in the bushes and heard Rupp’s voice behind me. I probably always would.
Some folks in town say the men overreacted that night. They say Rupp was a sadistic killer, but no vampire. But Josh and I know better. He bought me a silver cross for my last birthday and had it specially blessed by a priest. When he gave it to me, he made me promise that I would wear it around my neck all the days of my life and never take it off. That’s a vow I intend to keep!
38
The Floating Coffin
Summersville, West Virginia
The soldier shifted uneasily in the saddle as he waved good-bye to his sweetheart. She was standing on the front porch. The lantern lit her lovely face with a soft glow that made her luminous dark eyes shine. His heart swelled at the sight. He sent her a sizzling smile that made the lovely color rise in her cheeks. Then he turned his horse jauntily and trotted down the darkened twist of road that led through the forest to his home in the next town.
As soon as he rounded the first corner, out of sight of his love, the soldier slowed his horse to a walk and took an apprehensive breath. Just a mile from his sweetheart’s farm was the local cemetery, and he must ride past it to get to his home. Normally not a fearful man—or an imaginative one—the soldier nonetheless dreaded riding past the cemetery during the day and it absolutely terrified him at night.
This makes no sense, he scolded himself for the thousandth time as he picked up a slow trot through the dim starlight. He’d passed hundreds of graveyards all over the South during the Civil War, and none had bothered him before.
Of course, none of those cemeteries were in West Virginia, his conscience murmured. None were near the scene of the incident.
The soldier shied away from the thought. There was only one blot on his spotless career. One terrible, insane moment. It had been swept under the carpet as just one more of the many insane, terrible moments that occurred during that terrible war.
The crime happened as a consequence of the Jones-Imboden raid, where the soldier fought side by side with his baby brother, whom he’d sworn to protect on the deathbed of their beloved mother. One moment the brothers were fighting together and the next moment the younger brother was twenty yards away. As the soldier fought his way toward his brother, he saw a Confederate shoot his baby brother through the head. The Confederate grinned viciously as his brother fell to the ground at his feet. The soldier’s whole world went red. He screamed with rage and charged the man, only to be swept aside by a column of fighting boys in blue. By the time the rush dissipated, the Confederate was gone. But the man’s visage was forever burned into the soldier’s mind. He swore, as he tenderly picked up the body, that he would hunt down the man and kill him for the sake of his dead brother.
The soldier was as good as his word. Each night he’d slip out of his tent and seek out nearby Confederate camps, searching for his enemy. But nary a scrap or hair did he see. By the final day of the campaign, the soldier resigned himself to failure.
He was among the officers charged to guard the wounded and prisoners as the Union army marched away. Diligently, the soldier rode down the line, checking the status of the injured and watching over the enemy prisoners. As he approached the last wagon, the soldier saw a familiar figure sitting in the back with the other prisoners. The world turned red before his eyes and his vision narrowed until all he saw was the face of his enemy. The soldier didn’t hesitate. He rode up to the wagon, pointed his pistol at the bound man’s head and pulled the trigger. Then he turned his horse and rode to the front of the line without a backward glance. None of the Union soldiers on duty that day reported the murder. What was one more Confederate death to them?
The next day the soldier asked for a transfer, and he fought the rest of the Civil War on the Western front. When the war ended, the soldier returned to his home in West Virginia and bought a farm in the county where he grew up. He’d prospered there and had found himself a lovely sweetheart. Which was how he came to be riding down this blasted road at night, right past a haunted cemetery.
A sudden rustle of wind in the trees shook the soldier out of his grim memories. It sounded like the dry warning of a rattlesnake. The soldier shuddered, suddenly cold, and his fingers tightened on the reins until his horse tossed its head uncomfortably.
He hated the cemetery passionately. Whenever he rode beside the iron fence, the soldier’s eye was drawn to an unadorned burial mound in the far corner. Such mounds, he knew, contained the bodies of Confederate soldiers, buried near the place they fell in battle. Every time the soldier saw this particular grave, chills ran down his spine and he relived the moment when he put a pistol to a helpless man’s head and pulled the trigger. The look of terror in the man’s eyes still froze his blood.
Starlight gleamed on the ironwork of the cemetery fence as the soldier’s horse trotted along the road; but the graves beyond were dark and full of menacing shadows. A chill wind, whispering of murder and death, tried to blow the soldier from his horse as he rode down the empty road. Dread filled his gut and cold sweat dripped down his neck, but he refused to look toward the shadowed mound at the back of the cemetery. Enough was enough. He was not a coward. He’d lived through a terrible war and won a new life for himself. Let the past go.
Suddenly, there came a sharp explosion like a cannon going off and a brilliant light blazed from the back of the cemetery. The soldier’s horse screamed and reared in terror, and the soldier fought desperately for his balance. The horse gave a mad twist that toppled the soldier to the road and it galloped away at top speed. The soldier lay panting, stunned by his fall. His heart was pounding with terror, and he fought for each breath. What was that explosion? And how could there possibly be so much light in the middle of the night?
The unnatural light drew closer. The soldier’s skin crawled. He wanted to run away. But where could he go without his horse? Better to face whatever it was like a man. He groped for his pistol with trembling hands, cursed when he realized he wasn’t carrying it, and leapt to his feet with a shout, hoping to scare away whatever it was with the sudden noise.
Then he froze in shock, unable to move or think. An open coffin floated a few feet from the place where the soldier lay. Standing on top of it was a rotting corpse. Just enough of the face was left for the soldier to identify the reddish beard and rotting blue eyes of the Confederate prisoner he’d murdered during the war. The Confederate’s legs were still bound with a filthy white cloth, and there was a gaping wound in the center of the forehead where the bullet had struck.
“Nooooo!” The soldier screamed, flinching away from the rotting phantom. The coffin floated closer and the Confederate reached out toward the soldier with bony, skin-shredded fingers.
The smell of death and decay overwhelmed the soldier, breaking through his paralysis. He screamed and fled down the dark road, the coffin floating just behind him. It gained speed and suddenly he felt it bump the back of his legs, tripping him. The soldier stumbled and fell to the ground. Decaying hands lifted the soldier and turned him to face his enemy. The Confederate grinned at him through broken black teeth. The soldier could see maggots eating the flesh of its cheek. He vomited at the sight, the acrid smell mixing horribly with the smells of dust and rot pouring from his enemy. As the soldier hung helplessly in the phantom’s grip, the Confederate reached through the bullet hole in its rotting skull and plucked out the bullet lodged in its dead brain. With a vicious smile, the Confederate placed the bullet against the soldier’s forehead. The bullet became red-hot, burning the soldier’s flesh. He screamed in anguish as the Confederate pushed the bullet thr
ough the bone and into the soldier’s brain.
When the soldier did not return to his farm, the neighbors set out to look for him. As they passed the cemetery on the way to inquire at his sweetheart’s home, the neighbors saw that a grave mound at the back had been disturbed. Dirt was scattered everywhere, as if the coffin had been violently thrust from the earth by some supernatural force. The splintered box lay askew a few yards from the mound, its lid broken in half. Inside the coffin lay the body of the soldier, his dead face twisted in horror and a bullet hole drilled through his skull. The corpse of the coffin’s former occupant had vanished.
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About the Author
Author S. E. Schlosser has been telling stories since she was a child, when games of “let’s pretend” quickly built themselves into full-length stories. A graduate of Houghton College, the Institute of Children’s Literature, and Rutgers University, she also created and maintains www.AmericanFolklore.net, where she shares a wealth of stories from all fifty states, some dating from the origins of America.
About the Illustrator
Artist Paul Hoffman trained in painting and printmaking. His first extensive illustration work on assignment was in Egypt, drawing ancient wall reliefs for the University of Chicago. His work graces books of many genres—including children’s titles, textbooks, short story collections, natural history volumes, and numerous cookbooks. For Spooky South, he employed a scratchboard technique and an active imagination.
Spooky South Page 18