Deadtown and Other Tales of Horror Set in the Old West
Page 13
Emma Sinclair’s ghost stood on a chair in the center of the room, reaching for the rope she would put around her neck. The same rope she’d used one hundred and forty years ago. The same rope she’d used every year since. The same rope she would use until she was reunited with Henry.
“Emma,” Henry said, calm now, as if he finally understood.
Emma turned toward Henry, tears forming in her ghostly eyes. Henry entered the light room, now oblivious to the presence of Beau and Justin. He held out his hand and Emma took it, allowing her husband to help her down from the chair.
“I knew you’d come back,” she said.
“Don’t I always come back?” Henry said.
He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. The rope that hung from the ceiling vanished, then the chair disappeared. Henry and Emma began to fade away too, until only a mist hung in the room.
Beau and Justin stood for a long moment afterward.
“Guess we should go see the old man,” Beau finally said.
“Yeah, I guess we should,” Justin agreed.
* * *
The cabin was dilapidated and unlived in. It appeared to have been that way for many years. Beau and Justin climbed what was left of the stairs. The porch was collapsing. Some of the boards were missing altogether. The front door was hanging at a slant, attached by only a few nails.
“I don’t get it,” Justin said.
Inside, the cabin was barren and dusty, decorated with cobwebs. Mice scampered across the floor and disappeared behind the walls.
Beau’s foot fell through the floor, over near where he remembered seeing a potbelly stove when he’d gone to fetch the beers. He tugged his leg out of the hole in the floor and reached inside. He withdrew a book made of bound in leather, worn with age. The pages inside were fragile and yellow. The writing was big, bold cursive, barely readable.
Beau and Justin skimmed the pages together, each at his own pace. They read the personal account of a man who had been captured by Confederates while trying to lead slaves to freedom. They read how the man had escaped, only to return home to find his wife had hung herself.
The years following those tragic events unfolded on each yellowed page—lonely ramblings of an old man who took a small cabin near the stone house he’d shared with his wife. The old man hadn’t been able to go on living in the stone house, yet he couldn’t bear to be far from it either.
“The old man . . .” Beau mused, his mind just short of grasping the facts.
“Was Henry Sinclair’s ghost,” Justin said.
Beau closed the book and held it in front of him, feeling its weight in his hands. The video recorder was gone. The journal was all that was left to account for what he and Justin had witnessed.
It was the only proof they had to offer.
* * *
“That should do it,” Beau said, driving the last nail into the final two by four covering the entrance to the light room.
Henry’s journal was in there, hidden beneath the floor boards, resting now in the hands of Henry and Emma Sinclair.
No one would ever believe Beau and Justin anyway.
Besides, Henry and Emma had spent too much time apart. They had much catching up to do.
Henry’s journal bridged the gaps; it belonged with them.