Beaudry's Ghost Read online

  The boy checked the cartridge box on his belt and turned away. “And if Jared Beaudry was real? It’s not a good idea to speak ill of the dead, Leon. Especially on the same battleground he died on.”

  Now Leon did look up. “Taylor.”

  The boy paused, but didn’t turn around.

  “It’s been a year. There’s no need for you to…” Gulley sighed when he saw Taylor’s back straighten. “Stubborn,” he muttered as he resettled himself.

  Without another word, the boy walked out of the circle of light and into the dark, stiff wind of the Outer Banks night.

  “Her,” said Troy quietly, nodding after the retreating figure. “My sister.”

  Jared didn’t want to know what a woman was doing in battle uniform. His voice dropped needlessly to a whisper. “Can she see us?”

  Troy shook his head. “She could, but we’re shielded. For a short time, anyway. And don’t,” Troy pointed a warning finger at Jared, “even think about it. You leave her alone. One look at you and she’d never sleep, ever again.”

  Jared frowned mentally at the woman who headed toward the dunes. “I’m not shielding myself from anyone,” he said, confused.

  Troy smiled sadly. “It’s my doing. And it helps that she isn’t focusing on you.”

  Jared thought about how the woman had turned toward him in the firelight, and disagreed. She might not be looking for him, but she damn well had sensed him, somehow.

  As if on cue the woman, in shadow now, stopped in her tracks, and her gaze swung in their direction. Troy paled.

  The woman’s grief was a tangible thing hanging in the air. Jared shifted uncomfortably on his good leg. “You should show yourself.”

  For the first time, Troy showed hesitation, glancing down at the gaping hole in his chest. “I was going to, then you showed up. God knows it would scare the shit out of her to see you, must less me, so right now my energies are otherwise occupied.

  “In fact,” he continued, “this shielding business is hard work.” Troy retreated to the horse and leaned wearily on the saddle. His shape wavered like a reflection disturbed by ripples in a pool.

  “Wait…wait!” Jared stumbled toward Troy’s fading figure. He sensed that Troy, though dead for a far shorter time than Jared, knew things that Jared had never bothered to learn about being a ghost. “Can you tell me…is there some way, any way I can get through to these men? Speak with them? Maybe even…walk among them?”

  “Why? These men are re-enacting a battle that, for you, marked the last days of your life.”

  Why, indeed? The pain of his wounds flared and he stiffened his spine against it as he remembered the Confederate who had inflicted his suffering.

  “To live through it this time, with my body parts intact so I don’t have to spend an eternity like this.”

  Troy tipped his head to one side, as if amused. “That’s all? Not hoping for a little taste of revenge? That’s what’s kept you here on these shores, hasn’t it?”

  Jared would have snorted. “It’s all I can hope for. As you say, these men aren’t real soldiers—they’re playing at it. They aren’t likely to carve me up like a chicken, now are they?”

  “First of all, I’d be very careful about calling these fellows ‘fake soldiers’. Re-enactors they may be, but they’d find a way to make life miserable for you if you let that little opinion slip.” Then Troy’s expression turned thoughtful as he took Jared’s measure. “What you’re considering is dangerous. And it probably won’t even work, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking. And besides…does it really matter any more?”

  Jared bristled. “Look at me. Look at you. You of all people should understand. I don’t know if it will work, if getting through this battle a second time with my parts intact means I’ll get my own back in the next world. But I have to try. Besides, how bad could it be? I’m already dead.”

  Troy lifted a hand to stop Jared’s runaway train of thought. “Dangerous not only to you, but also to whoever…” Troy’s voice trailed off as he stared out into the darkness, away from the circle of soldiers. “…takes you in.”

  Jared turned to follow Troy’s gaze. Though he was a bit slower, Jared sensed another presence out among the dunes. Someone else who watched the circle of Confederate soldiers. A man’s dark head showed briefly above a sand dune overlooking the camp.

  The firelight caught a corner of the man’s uniform. A Union-blue uniform.

  The man ducked back into hiding.

  Troy took a long, silent look at Jared. “I’ve heard that it helps if you have full cooperation,” he said. “Failing that, it can be done. But I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  Once again, Jared’s mind raced with possibilities, with plans. Eagerly, hope surging through him for the first time in a century, Jared turned back to Troy. To his horror, the man in black had almost completely faded from sight.

  “Wait! You have to tell me what to do!”

  “Don’t worry, my friend. I’ll be back,” said Troy’s disembodied voice. “God knows how you’ve stood the pain this long, Beaudry. Hate must be a powerful thing…”

  Shaken, Jared stared at the spot where Troy had disappeared.

  Fine. He would figure this out on his own. The horse snorted, pawed the ground and pushed its nose against Jared’s shoulder. Jared ran his good hand over the creature’s satiny neck, the moon and tide pulling on his soul. Within an hour the tide would be slack, the signal for them make their tortuous ride south to Cape Hatteras. The same ride they had endured every full moon for more a hundred years.

  Time was short. Very short. He had to act fast. If only I knew how!

  He could no more ignore the tide’s call than he could ignore the ever-present pain of his wounds, the ever-present lust for revenge in his heart.

  Swinging into the saddle, Jared cast one more glance at the players in his rapidly forming plan. The Confederate soldiers. The man in Union blue who spied on an enemy position. And the woman in grey, who now assumed a picket post atop a sand dune several tens of yards to the south.

  “Don’t even think about it, Beaudry. You leave her alone.” Troy’s words echoed back to him. He set his jaw and ignored them. If this woman was a key to getting what he wanted, God help him, she was was one key he was going to turn.

  Jared turned his horse into the wind and lifted the reins. The horse sprang away at a full gallop.

  *

  Hunkered down against the relentless offshore wind, Taylor watched from the dubious cover of beach grass, hands tight around her Enfield musket.

  The electricity had gone out again, a frequent occurrence on these sparsely populated barrier islands of North Carolina. Without the reassuring lights of the development a quarter mile to the south, Taylor had no problem staying awake at her post. Darkness was for bats. Taylor preferred light. The only reason she had fled the comforting light of the campfire was Leon Gulley’s ghost stories.

  She hated them.

  She hated them even more now that Troy was dead. Taylor tucked in her chin and fought to keep it from quivering. Had it been a year since she had collapsed to the floor of her office, a crushing pain in her chest, knowing the worst even before she’d received official word two days later? A year of days since her last words to him came back to slash her heart? “Go ahead, big man. Go on and get yourself killed. Have a great time!”

  She had told her brother over and over again a man like him had no business joining the Navy SEALs. SEAL teams were for those with no ties, no one who waited for them at home. He hadn’t listened. Craving adventure outside their little hometown, he had set his sights on SEAL training even before graduating from Annapolis. And damn them, the SEALs had been quick to take advantage of his unusual gift for camouflage.

  Taylor rested her Enfield across her lap and pressed her fingertips to her eyelids. She fought two days’ worth of exhaustion, having decided at the last minute to join the event wearing Troy’s Confederate uniform. Disagreements they’d certainly had,
but she and Troy had shared a love of history and Civil War re-enacting. Taylor rested her chin on her arm, breathing in the damp-wool smell of the uniform. The others thought she wore it merely as a tribute to Troy, and had said nothing when she had shown up early that morning. She chose to let them believe that, rather than try to explain the truth.

  She knew better than to fall asleep while on guard duty, but the emotional day she had endured gradually took its final toll. Her rear end settled onto the sand. The butt of her musket joined it, but she was too tired to care.

  Moments later, hoof beats drummed her awake. Taylor found herself standing on the dune, watching a horse and rider streak down the beach at full gallop.

  Wherever that horse had come from, it had been running a long time. Steam trailed off the animal’s body, the light of the moon setting it to silver fire. That horse was flying. Its rider leaned low and listed slightly to one side, as if favoring an injured limb.

  The messenger? He was early. And if he didn’t turn aside very soon, he would run his horse right into the giant oak ribs of a shipwreck beached on the shore.

  Taylor absently fingered the back of her newly shorn hair and frowned. He wasn’t supposed to be here for another day, this messenger “warning” her unit of an approaching enemy of Union troops from the south. And something else was wrong. This rider rode down the beach from the north.

  “But…he’s coming from the wrong direction…”

  She realized she’d spoken aloud when the rider’s body jerked. With a low moan, he pulled the horse to a rearing stop directly opposite her on the beach. The horse, clearly not happy about being made to stand, pranced in an ankle-deep tidal pool.

  Taylor strained to see if the rider wore a uniform. She observed his the slumped posture and thought maybe he and the horse weren’t part of this re-enactment of the Civil War Battle of Roanoke.

  “Hey! Are you hurt? Do you need help?”

  With a Herculean effort, the he straightened, turned the trembling, sweaty horse in her direction and approached at a walk. As they closed in on her, she heard the horse’s labored snorts and something else…

  With each breath, the rider emitted a gurgling, inarticulate grunt. The sound carried with it the weight of a weariness she could sense but not fathom.

  The offshore wind grew louder in her ears, and Taylor reached up to grab her hat before it flew off. At that moment she realized the physical wind remained steady.

  But a roaring force pushed at her carefully walled-off soul.

  Taylor’s fingers alternately tightened and loosened on the musket she held, a faintly caressing gesture as if she rubbed a magic lamp. Conjuring up someone. Or something. Like courage.

  The horse caught her scent. It reared and spun, and in the rising moonlight Taylor finally caught a clear glimpse of the rider.

  He wore a blue uniform. And he was…

  “Oh my God.”

  Her chest muscles spasmed, leaving no space for her to draw air. Sheer reflex brought her musket to her shoulder and she aimed…at what? A figure whose bound stump of a left arm oozed blood. He held it tightly to his side while he controlled the horse with his right. Soaked rags acted as a tourniquet to what was left of his right leg, but his every effort to stay in the saddle forced out more and more blood.

  And the man—she guessed it was a man—had an enormous, gaping slash through his throat.

  She was aiming at a dead man, her musket loaded with a useless blank. Fired, it would make a grand noise, and that was about all.

  “And they say Beaudry’s ghost rides the Outer Banks to this day, looking for his lost body parts…and for revenge…”

  That gurgling noise she’d heard was the sound of a man whose throat had been cut. Clear through.

  Taylor grit her teeth. Those ghost stories were coming back to haunt her in a big way. Her rational mind objected and rejected as fast as her eyes fed it the irrational sight. The carefully tended wall round her soul cracked, and her demons screamed through. An answering scream clawed for space in her throat along with the hardtack and beans she’d eaten hours ago.

  Trembling, she braced herself as if leaning against that wall. A dream. Of course. She was dreaming this whole thing. She’d expected to have a few nightmares—even visions—before this event was over, but nothing like this. She’d only fallen asleep at her post and—

  Oh, God, it’s moving toward me!

  Clouds of steam streaked from the horse’s nostrils, and as it moved closer she saw the white rings around its black eyes. Taylor closed hers.

  “You aren’t real. You…aren’t…real!” she muttered through clenched teeth. A breath of air whisked right through her body in a distinctive front-to-back direction, leaving her with the odd feeling that she’d just exposed her deepest vulnerability to a lover. Taylor went perfectly still. Somebody tell me this thing just didn’t pass right through me!

  “Aw, the hell with this!” Facing cannon and musket fire was one thing. Facing this ghastly evidence that a dark otherworld indeed existed on another plane, and that the two planes sometimes crossed, was quite another.

  Taylor dropped her Tennessee pride in the sand behind her and fled down the steep slope of the dune. Gasping, sliding, stumbling, she hit bottom and headed for camp and for help.

  Stupid! Stupid! I should have fired… Troy would have at least fired…

  Risking a quick glance to the rear, she abruptly tripped over a heaving lump on the sand.

  A face full of the gritty stuff knocked her vintage spectacles off and muffled the scream she finally released. Flipping instantly to her back, she scrambled backwards, spitting, flinging sand in every direction as she went. She came to rest on her knees with her musket upraised yet again.

  Still spitting, she looked up at the top of the dune she’d just vacated, blinked and did a double take.

  The apparition was gone.

  More likely, she’d simply tumbled down the dune in her sleep and woke up. Still trembling, her breathing shallow and uneven, she focused on the object she’d tripped on. In the shadows, it was hard to make out at first. But as it slowly uncurled from its fetal position she saw that it was human.

  She sighted down the barrel of the weapon and watched as he rolled soundlessly to his knees, placed his palms flat on the ground and slowly pushed himself up.

  With a soft groan, he shoved backward and rolled to a sitting position. That simple act mystified him, until he held up his hands and stared at them. His blank expression gave way to a slow-spreading grin that shone so sweet and bright in the dim light it made Taylor’s throat catch.

  For several seconds he simply gazed his hands, then plunged them into the soft sand between his knees. Scooping great handfuls, he laughed softly as he watched it trickle between his fingers. Taylor’s musket sagged. The man reminded her of a toddler on his first foray into his new sandbox.

  And, like that infant, the man’s attention was suddenly drawn to his feet. Dropping the sand, he clenched a fist and pounded once on his right calf. Twice. The smile, impossibly, widened even more into a painful emotional grimace as he lifted his trembling hands to his throat. Touched. Again.

  The act broke something loose inside him, and Taylor thought he sobbed once before throwing himself backward to writhe like some child in the throes of making snow angels.

  Unwilling to lower her weapon completely, yet somehow unwilling to intrude, Taylor stilled her shaking jaw and cleared her throat. The man froze.

  “Um… are you okay, mister?”

  He propped himself onto his elbows and stared at her.

  Calm, Taylor. Stay calm. Now think…

  Impulsively, she swung the muzzle of the Enfield aside to rest in the crook of her arm and retrieved her spectacles, blowing sand off before perching them on her nose. Then she reached into her pocket for the matches she knew Troy always kept there. Lacking a flashlight, she needed to see her prisoner better.

  Because judging from his Union-blue uniform, this guy w
as part of the re-enactment. And he was foolishly sneaking around, apparently alone and unarmed. So, as a good soldier, she was going to capture him.

  The match flared, and for an instant Taylor was treated to absolutely the bluest set of eyes she’d ever seen. She held the match far out in front to get a better look.

  Blue and changing as the sea. Entirely capable of changing color to suit his mood. Entirely capable of changing a woman’s mind. His eyes held her mesmerized far longer than she’d intended.

  Taylor cursed and dropped the match as it burned her fingers The man made a quick, floundering move for his boot, and she grabbed the Enfield and rose to her feet, stumbling only once on the toes of Troy’s oversize shoes.

  “Well, well. Lookee here,” she grinned as he apparently didn’t find what he was looking for. “Lose something, Billy Yank?”

  Frowning, the man checked his other boot. Then he let go a breath of frustration and pushed a hand through his thick hair, lifting the dark locks off his collar.

  Thanks to several days’ growth of facial hair, he looked like he had just awakened from a long night of barhopping on the mainland. The man twisted this way and that as if looking for something, and in the process made himself dizzy. Opening his eyelids as wide as they would go, then squinching them shut, he leaned his weight on one elbow and, using his free hand, carefully checked his skull for dents.

  Taylor decided the guy had definitely been sampling a bit too much of the local muscadine wine. Taking a quick swipe at her eyes—damn, she must have been crying in her sleep again—Taylor gestured pointedly with the Enfield.

  The Yankee finally levered himself to his feet. Cavalry, she thought, eyeing his uniform. It fit his lean, broad-shouldered body much better than her brother’s fit her own. Her trousers were saved from sagging at the ankles by several rolls at the waist and a tight cinch of baling twine.

  “Where’s your horse, Billy?” she asked cheerfully, mostly because she was relieved the nightmare was over, and now she could relax and allow herself to have a little fun. She pitched her voice as low as she could, even though similar efforts to sound more masculine had fooled no one in her company when she’d shown up earlier that day. She’d known no one would greet her like the old friend she was, showing up in her brother’s place wearing his Confederate uniform. But she hadn’t expected the uncomfortable silence. The hurt still stung, but she hadn’t backed down. They wouldn’t understand, and she couldn’t explain.