by Ann Gimpel
“Feigning confidence I didn’t feel, I walked to where Joe stood and draped an arm around him. I told him all we had to do was get through the night. That the ghosts would be gone by morning. When he asked how I knew, I told him I just did. Then I hauled another piece of wood out of the bin and threw it into the stove. Deciding not to say anything more about Ned’s imminent demise, I pulled a chair close to the stove and got one for Joe too.
“I-I’ve always had a lot of self-discipline, but those next few hours, well they felt like days. Mary and Beth and the thing they’d dragged in wandered up and down the ladder. They stopped shy of the stove, though, as if the heat bothered them. Or maybe it was the flickering light from the fire. All three of them had this unnatural glow, a brackish nimbus, around them, that I’d missed when I’d been upstairs. It didn’t take long for me to figure out they wanted Ned.
“Another soul for Satan’s army, ye-hah.”
Turning in his seat, Billy spat onto the floor, tasting bile. He twisted his bandana aimlessly between his gnarled fingers, weaving the frayed cloth in and out as he hunted for the strength to finish what he had to say.
“Joe and I, we dragged Ned between us, draping him across both our laps. You’re not supposed to move someone with a spinal cord injury, but he was already on his way out. And I thought he’d be better off truly dead than like those things upstairs.
“The sounds from the second floor finally quieted, so I figured it must be daylight. When the bottom floor of the hut is buried by snow, all the windows are too, so it’s always black as pitch down there. Ned died sometime during that endless night. It was a quiet enough passing, which was merciful. They can be a whole lot worse than that.
“I got Joe to help me lay Ned down. Marshalling what few resources I had left, I started up the ladder. I had to push a pile of mattresses off from over the hole in the floor. Guess it was the ghosts’ last-ditch attempt to trap us. Anyhow, it took a while, but sure enough, no one was upstairs. Sunlight streamed through the splintered shutter. I tell you, daylight never looked so good to me, not before or since.”
Staring out at the others through haggard eyes, Billy grimaced, sputtered, “Oh, what the hell,” and reached for his beer. “There’s not really much more to tell,” he mumbled around a mouthful of foam. “I don’t remember much of the trip back to Sugar Bowl with Joe, but we managed the traverse without getting buried in an avalanche, so I must’ve been paying some kind of attention. We cooked up a plausible lie about how the girls died. Neither one of us thought it would be a good idea to try to convince anyone about the ghosts. Told the authorities the truth about Ned’s fall and that the girls must’ve wandered off after Joe and I fell asleep. Far as I know, no one ever found either of their bodies. Even after the snow melted that spring, which always seemed strange to me. The law questioned me...a lot. But I had a sterling reputation as a guide and I was a vet. After a while, they stopped barking up my tree.
“I, uh, took a break for the rest of that season. Even though I’d been in ’Nam and had seen worse than what had been in the hut that night, I couldn’t face any more clients for a few months. The dreams, well, they took over. Every time I closed my eyes, that bastard was there, shaking his fist at me, or crying that I should have saved him. Not sure which was worse. Got to where I stayed awake on purpose because I was afraid of what’d happen when I went to sleep. Sometimes, he...he’d wrap his icy fingers around my neck. Might have been my imagination, but I thought I could see bruises after some of the worst of the nights. I, uh, got some help for myself from the Veterans Administration after I didn’t have much choice. I had to go back to work and, if I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t do much of anything else, either.
“Eventually I picked up the shards of my life and went back to guiding, except I never took anyone out on that ridge again. Never set foot anywhere near the Benson Hut, not winter nor summer. I couldn’t. Not after what happened in there.”
Cocking his head to the side, Billy raised an eyebrow. Now that the worst was over and the tale was told, he felt energized rather than drained. The twisted knives that had been jabbing his guts melted away.
“You’re probably wondering,” he murmured, casting an appraising eye over the crowd. “Yes, he still comes to me. Not often, but I’m linked to him in some way I don’t understand. It doesn’t bother me much anymore. If he was going to murder me in my sleep, I’d have been dead long since.”
As Billy locked eyes with the strangers from the bus, an odd thing happened. Where they’d felt hostile and bloodthirsty when he’d begun his tale, now they felt warm and accepting.
How could I have ever called them a bunch of losers? They’re my people. Hell, they feel like family.
Billy shifted his attention to where the crowd was looking, and an anticipatory hunger rose within him as the next person began to talk. The wind had stopped howling, or maybe he couldn’t hear it anymore. Something wasn’t right. The longer he sat, the surer he was he needed to act. What that entailed wasn’t clear, but Billy had always trusted his instincts. In the midst of the next person’s story, he slipped down the long aisle and out the door. No one paid the slightest attention to him.
The bus door canted crazily off its hinges. Billy hung onto the handgrips next to the stairs, surprised he had to jump a few feet to get to the ground. When he turned to examine the bus, he gasped, his mouth hanging open. Far above him, cars buzzed along a busy highway. An open section of guardrail directly above told the tale. So did the crumpled bus, lying on its side like a beached whale.
He sank to a crouch, wailing. It didn’t matter. No one would hear. They were all dead. Just like the climber in the Benson Hut. Sirens split the night, mingled with red, spinning lights. Brakes squealed as a phalanx of emergency vehicles skidded to a halt. Men piled out and swarmed down the steep slope.
Billy rose and started toward them, wanting to tell them not to risk themselves. Not to hurry. But then, he thought better of it. Even if any of the rescue squad could see him, they’d recognized him for what he was.
Dead.
No one talked with dead people.
Seductive music from a lute or a lyre surrounded him, and he scanned the stormy night to locate its source. When he thought he had it, he began walking. By now, men had reached the bus. He heard their terse commentary as they dragged bodies through the permanently open door.
The music grew louder, more insistent, and a bright light flashed, half-blinding him. When his vision cleared, he stood in the midst of a crowd. “Who are all of you?” he asked. “Where am I?”
The music stopped.
A woman with long, blonde hair and green eyes slithered toward him, her feet skimming the ground. “It’s all right,” she purred. “We all felt just like you probably do when we first arrived. Confused. Disoriented. It will pass.” Rags clung to her body, and a gaping wound carved deeply into one side of her neck.
“Where am I?” he asked again. He’d never been much of a believer, but if this were heaven—or Hell—it looked a whole lot different than he’d imagined.
“In the same ravine where your bus crashed,” the woman replied, her mouth spreading into a soft smile. “It’s how all of us ended up here. Deadman’s curve is aptly named. Maybe someday, they’ll build a better guardrail, but I hope not.”
Panic streamed into him. If he’d still required air, breathing would have been a challenge. “It’s just like the Benson Hut.” He groaned. “Aw shit. I’ll be trapped here. Forever. I’ll be—”
“Hush. Never heard of that name. No huts anywhere near here, but there’s a cabin.” The woman wrapped a hand around his arm and tugged. “Come with me. It’s not all that bad. When things grow dull, we lure another vehicle off the edge. It’s fun. You’ll see.”
Billy followed her, his mind screaming in protest. There had to be a way out. If there were, he’d find it. Spending eternity luring unsuspecting drivers to their deaths wasn’t his idea of sport. Before he could escape, though, he had
to understand how things worked.
“There now,” the blonde woman murmured, leading him to a falling down cabin not far from a river cutting through the ravine’s bottom. “Come on in and sit a spell.”
Billy followed her inside. “How long have you been here?” he asked and settled into a crouch with his back leaning against a wall.
She shrugged. “Who knows? Time doesn’t work the same after you’re dead. And your memory fades until now is everything.” She sat next to him.
He closed his mouth into a tight line. He’d have to make his move soon. Or he’d never get away at all, not if his memories vanished.
Where the hell will I go?
It doesn’t matter so long as I get far, far away from here. Somewhere there’s no temptation to grab more innocent lives from that highway.
“Tell me.” He turned to the blonde.
“What do you want to know, sweetie?”
“Everything. Tell me everything.”
~~~~~~~~
A much earlier version of The Benson Hut Ghost was originally published in October 2011 in Horrific America, a fictional anthology of real life hauntings in the United States. This tale is based on a true story, and I’ve spend more than one night wide awake in the Benson Hut, listening to odd noises and watching flickering lights that had no right to be there.
Darkroom
“Marni, get yourself down here. Your supper’s nigh onto stone cold.” Mom’s voice drifted upstairs, her West Virginia accent laced with irritation.
Whoops. Busted.
I had been up here quite a while. Hours, maybe, but I wasn’t quite done. My fingers flew over the computer keys as I fought for just the right combination of sharpness and contrast in the photo I was working on. It was of the small pond in the woods behind our house. I’d caught it yesterday, right as the sun was going down. Orange rays practically bounced off its surface, making the prosaic little body of water look almost magical. A starburst of a sun flirted with the horizon, and the forest around the water brimmed with possibilities.
“In a minute, Mom.” I raised my voice to carry all the way to the kitchen and added a smidge of warmth to the photo. Nope, too much. Moving the slider back toward the cooler side, I surveyed the results. Maybe one more tiny tweak...
There! Perfect!
Exhaling sharply, I shut my eyes. Photo editing was an intense process. Some said it was cheating to use the computer-based programs to make your pictures better, but all the professional photographers did it. And that was what I wanted to be more than anything: a class-act photographer. I smiled, eyes still closed, as I corrected that thought. Someday, I’d be a great photographer. I had the knack. Everyone who saw my pictures said so. I’d saved my babysitting money for almost a year to buy my digital SLR camera, along with a rich assortment of lenses and filters, and I never went anywhere without them close by.
“Marni! Now.”
“Be right there. Really.”
I studied my photo through eyes narrowed to critical slits before punching the save button. And then I looked again and froze.
Where had that come from?
In the bottom corner of the picture, curled up by the base of a young sycamore tree, was something that looked an awful lot like a wolf. How the hell had it gotten there? Why hadn’t I seen it before? Had I been so intent on the sunset, and getting the color balance just right on the computer, I hadn’t noticed?
I scrunched my eyes tight, rubbed at them with my fists, and then opened them again. Breath curdled in my throat, and my heart beat faster. The wolf—or whatever it had been—was gone.
With hands that were suddenly less-than-steady I saved my work, then saved it again to an external hard drive. I couldn’t think about what must have been a hallucination. I tried to, but my mind danced away from the subject as if it knew better than to examine it too closely.
“Maybe I do need to eat,” I muttered and pushed wearily up from my chair, gathering my heavy, waist-length blonde hair into a rough ponytail so it wouldn’t fall into my food. I plucked a rubber band off the doorknob, securing the ponytail before tromping down the wooden risers.
“Well, it’s about time.” Mother looked up from her sewing, her blue eyes rheumy from the fine work. A few stray hairs, blonde going gray, escaped from the severe bun she always wore. “Supper’s in the oven. I put foil over it so’s to keep it warm.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
I bent to peck her on the cheek. It had just been the two of us for as long as I could remember. Dad had died in the war in the Middle East. I’d only been five when he left, and he never came home. For whatever reason, Mom never remarried. Hell, she never even dated that I knew of. But she and I didn’t talk about things like that. We talked about me and my future and about the weather and the myriad chores that needed doing—like growing vegetables and canning—for us to get by.
I guess I take after my Dad. It seems that way when I see his old photographs. I have the same hazel eyes and square jaw. And the same tall, lanky build, all bones and broad shoulders. Mom is shorter, her features far more delicate, almost otherworldly. When I was little, I used to pretend she was an exotic fairy hovering over my bed at night.
Now she just looked tired. And sad.
I gathered up a hot pad and pulled my dinner from the still-warm oven. After pouring myself a glass of goat’s milk from the old, cracked blue pitcher in the fridge, I scootched a chair close to her and asked, “Is something wrong?”
I dug into my supper and waited, the wolf mirage in my photo almost, but not quite, forgotten.
Mom chewed her lower lip as if she wanted to say something. Instead, she reached out and patted my cheek. “No, Marni. Nothin’s wrong. Eat your supper. Then you probably need to get on to bed. School time will come early tomorrow.”
“But I only have another week left, and then I’ll be done with school,” I mumbled around a mouthful of vegetable casserole. Swallowing, I added, “Probably wouldn’t be the end of the world if I missed a day at this point. My grades are all turned in, and I passed everything.”
“You still wantin’ to go to that fancy photography school?” she asked, an odd tone in her voice and her mouth half-curved into a smile.
“Well, uh, sure. Of course. But Mom, we don’t have the money for that. I’ll just go to the JC here in town. They have photography classes, and I can get a two-year degree.” I kept shoveling food into my mouth as I talked. Now that I was eating, I realized how hungry was. That must have been what happened upstairs. I’d been light-headed and imagined something extra in that photo...
“I could sell this place.” Mom’s voice broke into my thoughts, and I looked up, shocked. I opened my mouth, but she held up a hand. “No, Marni. Let me finish. It’s a lot of work here. That it is.”
“But I’ll still be here to help you,” I protested.
“Not forever you won’t.” The same bittersweet smile flashed again. “Aw, baby girl. We haven’t done so badly, you and I, but it’s time for you to move out into the world. I can’t handle the work here all by myself.” She was still sewing, glancing down from time to time to ensure a straight seam. “Well, maybe I could for a while more, but surely not ten years from now. I’ll be close to seventy then. I’ve given this a lot of thought. You could use money now, not when you’re closin’ on thirty.” Sitting back, she looked right at me, daring me to contradict her.
I sat glued in place, dumbstruck, fork mid-way between my plate and my mouth. “I couldn’t let you do that, Mom. This place...” I set my fork down and gulped some milk. “Dad left us this place. You can’t sell it. It’s all we have left of him.”
Where had those words come from?
Someone was talking through me, and my recently consumed supper curdled in my stomach. Unfamiliar energy gripped my vocal chords, and more words poured from my mouth. “This house, and the acre of land it sits on, they anchor our family together.”
“Marni?” Mom sent a worried look skittering my way.
I shook my head hard, not wanting even one more word that wasn’t mine to spew out of me. Tears burned behind my lids. What was happening? I hadn’t thought about Dad in months, maybe not in years. He’d been dead for a long time, so why was he in my thoughts now? Had it been him talking through me? The thought was so preposterous, I discarded it out of hand and turned back to Mom since she’d started talking again.
“...maybe that’s why it’s long past time we got out of here...” she muttered and fell silent.
I tried to form questions, ask what she meant, but my brain ran in tight circles, like a rat trapped in a maze.
When she spoke next, it was almost as if she’d forgotten I was there. “Some nights, Danny still walks these halls. Him, or the others. When I’m half asleep—or half awake—I feel his hands tuggin’ at my hair and hear his voice tellin’ me things...”
Breaking off abruptly, she met my eyes; an odd light burned deep within hers, and she didn’t look much like my Mom anymore. “Marni, I can’t have a life of my own less’n we leave here. I know you’ve likely wondered why I never found you a new daddy. It’s because I’m not really a widow.” She laughed hollowly, folded her sewing, and laid it atop her mending box. “I’ve said a piece too much here, I reckon. Think on things. Be sure to finish your supper. You don’t eat enough.”
Mom stood and walked out of the room leaving me confused and scared and feeling about ten years old, wishing someone else could still make all my decisions for me. The big ones, anyway.
I finished what was left on my plate and carried it to the old-fashioned sink. Once it was rinsed, I laid it in the drainer, still thinking about what Mom had said. Geez, she’d practically told me our house was haunted. And that she was trapped by the ghost of what had once been my father. Nervous energy thrummed through me; adrenaline left a sharp, metallic taste in the back of my throat.
I glanced at the grandfather clock on the landing. Barely nine o’clock. I’d go upstairs, but not to bed. Not yet. Giving my teeth and hair short shrift, I headed for the computer. Icy cold flowed from my feet to my gut, so I snugged one of my favorite well-worn sweatshirts over my head, not expecting it to fix much of anything.