Part of it was that the stranger didn’t act the least bit afraid of him. Anybody who wasn’t afraid of Jonathan Bain had to be crazy. Then his suggestion of such a ridiculous challenge was another sign. What sort of a fool thinks something like that would prove anything? Killing Wright would be his first order of business once he got out of here and got his gun back.
A wicked smirk spread across his face. Why wait that long? He didn’t have his gun, but he did have a knife. That fat fool was right over at the other end of the graveyard, after all. Yeah, Wright would probably have a gun, but if Bain played it cool, maybe he could get close enough to stab him. As for Farr, Bain knew he would hand him the gun back. He had too much to lose not to, and then everything would be back to...
“Jonathan Bain! Is that you?” a voice behind him called.
Of all the places where he might have gone and expected to hear his name called, a graveyard was not one of them. Bain whirled around, eyes wide with alarm, pulling his knife in the same motion. “Who said that?” he demanded, not realizing until he heard his own voice that he was yelling.
“Over here, Jonathan,” the voice came again, ahead and to his right.
The owner of the voice stood directly on top of a grave, yet he was not blocking Bain’s view of the tombstone as Bain could see through him. He was sharply dressed, like a man in his best Sunday meeting clothes...
...Or like a man dressed for his own funeral.
In the darkness Bain was unable to distinguish the other man’s facial features, but a quick glance at his hands revealed unnaturally pale skin. Somehow Bain knew that if he were to touch that skin, to shake his hand or punch his face, it would be terribly, deathly cold.
“Who are you?” Jonathan demanded, clutching his knife so tightly his knuckles whitened.
“Why, Jonathan, I’m hurt,” the man chuckled. “You don’t recognize your old pal Zeke Kinsler?”
Stunned, Bain mouthed the name silently, trying vainly to keep himself from shaking. Years seemed to pass before he found his voice again. “Zeke Kinsler’s dead!” he protested. His disbelief was turning into anger, which was giving him strength. “I killed him myself!”
“I know,” the man sneered. “I was there, remember?” He stepped forward, and the moonlight fell upon his face. Although gruesomely pale, he was unmistakably Kinsler.
Warmth streamed down Bain’s leg, but his loss of bladder control was the farthest thing from his mind. “It’s not possible!” he spat. “You’re dead! How can you be standing here? Answer me!”
“You can’t be expected to grasp such things,” Kinsler answered, “but one thing even your puny mind can comprehend: I’m not alone.”
Quickly Bain spun around and saw to his horror that several other graves now had shadowy figures standing on top of them. All of them were clad in fancy garb like Kinsler’s, the clothes worn by the guest of honor at a funeral. Each one in his turn stepped forward into the moonlight.
Unspeakable terror seized Bain as he looked at their translucent faces and recognized them all. Bart Black, Eli Clancy, Stu Hiller, and Zeb Wesson, among others. None of his victims were absent, and none of the men facing him now had come to the graveyard by means other than Bain’s own doing.
Many times before Bain had heard tell of the feeling of having someone walk on your grave, a chilling sensation that starts out going down the spine and ends up in the core of the soul by way of the pit of the stomach. Up until now he had thought all of that was little more than old wives’ tales, but no longer. Feeling that sensation himself right now, he had no choice but to believe in it. “Why are you here?” he roared, making a desperate attempt to salvage his bravado. “What do you want from me?”
In unison the apparitions surrounding Bain chortled as if it were the single dumbest question they had ever heard. “Isn’t it obvious?” Kinsler retorted. “We’re here to get you. It’s time you joined us, Bain.”
Instinct drove Bain to jerk his hand to his hip, reaching for a gun and holster that weren’t there. Curse Wright and his rules for this fool challenge! All he had on him was a knife, and he didn’t want to get close enough to any of these things--he was at a loss for what to call them--to use it. The notion of throwing the knife crossed his mind, but he didn’t trust his aim with a knife nearly as much as he did with bullets. Besides that, hit or miss, he could only do it once, and he couldn’t be sure that even a direct hit would work. After all, how could you kill a man who was already supposed to be dead?
The men he had killed were moving toward him now, arms outstretched, malicious scowls on their faces. With a loud curse, he lowered himself to a crouch and lunged to his right, the direction with the fewest undead attackers. Bain wound up doing a sort of clumsy somersault down a slope, an unintentional but effective evasive maneuver that temporarily put him in the clear.
Bain sprang to his feet and ran at full speed, having no clear plan in mind other than a general desire to get out. He had no idea how fast ghosts or whatever they were could run, but he wasn’t about to look behind him to find out. If they were gaining on him, he didn’t want to see. Hearing their inhuman cries and growls was harrowing enough.
He ran into something at full speed, and the impact knocked him flat on his back. For a moment he was dazed, and then he realized that he had run into the split-rail fence surrounding the cemetery. Once that dawned on him, he scrambled to his feet so quickly that he nearly lost his footing again in the process. Escape was in his grasp! Clearing the fence was no guarantee of safety, but if he could get out of the graveyard, just maybe...
“Not trying to run away, are you, Mr. Bain?” Wright asked, smiling innocently. “Surely you’re not afraid?”
For a moment Bain could do nothing but gape dumbly at Wright, unable to get his mind around the situation. At last he cried, “They’re after me! You’ve got to help me!”
“Who is after you?” Wright asked, his grin never wavering.
“All of the men I killed! They’re ghosts or something, and they’re out to get me! I’ve got to get out of here!”
“Get out?” Wright asked with a chuckle. “But I thought you were such a brave man! Besides, weren’t you going to be happy to take my money off my hands?”
Frantically Bain looked over his shoulder, unable to resist his morbid curiosity any longer. To his horror, they were less than fifty feet off, with Kinsler leading the way. “I don’t care anymore! You’ve got to help me!”
This time Wright threw his head back and cackled. “Help you? Mr. Bain, whose side do you think I’m on?”
A terror like Bain had never known seized him, and his rational mind shut down. Driven now by a primal instinct to survive, the gunslinger turned and ran in a different direction, trying now to evade both Wright and the phantoms. None of his pursuers seemed to be in a particular hurry, which in its own way was more disconcerting than if they had been running. It bespoke an absolute confidence that they would catch him and that the extra exertion of running was unnecessary.
Bain sprinted blindly ahead, trying to find the fence on the other side of the cemetery. He hadn’t remembered the cemetery being all that big, but now it seemed to go on for miles. At last he could see the split-rail fence again, with Farr standing sentry. Not exactly a physically intimidating figure, Bain realized hopefully. If he could clear the fence, he could make Farr return his gun, and...
Suddenly the world fell away beneath him as he plummeted into blackness. He landed face down, and for a moment the wind was knocked out of him. When he recovered, Bain pulled himself to his feet and found himself in a rectangular hole, about six feet deep...
...Perfect for a grave.
Before his terrorized mind could even begin to process the situation, Kinsler appeared at the top of the hole, flanked by the rest of his pursuers. “Well, well, Bain, looks like we’ve got you right where we want you.” He and his ghostly cohorts laughed, a sound more chilling than any Bain had ever known.
Wright joined the oth
ers, walking at a leisurely pace. “All right, boys, I reckon you can finish the job now. Mr. Bain, I would tell you to enjoy your eternal rewards, but I don’t think there’s too much to enjoy where you’re going.”
The last thing Jonathan Bain saw in this life was the sight of Kinsler and the others jumping down into the grave, his grave...
+
“You do good work,” Farr remarked as he approached Wright a few minutes later, a nervous tremor in his voice.
“I don’t know that you’d call it good work. A man of God certainly wouldn’t say it was very good. But I am quite skilled at what I do.”
Farr reached for something around his belt, only to pat the area searchingly. “What did I do with...?”
“Bain’s gun?” Wright held it up with a smile. “Don’t worry, Sheriff, you had it till just now. A parlor trick, I assure you.”
“Well, I thank you. I’m glad to be rid of him.” Farr tried not to look at the place where Bain and his assailants had fallen into the earth.
“Good, good. Then we can discuss my payment.”
“I thought we already had.”
“All that took a lot more work than I expected. I’m having to raise my payoff.”
“How much?” Farr demanded.
Wright smiled mirthlessly. “The run of the town, including full access to the bank.”
“You’re crazy!” Farr retorted. “Then I’m no better off than I was with Bain!”
“Actually, Sheriff, you’re worse off. You wanted better, you dealt with the wrong side for that.” He laughed, and the sound made Farr quake.
“See, Sheriff, I happen to know all of Bain’s secrets--including the fact that he was bluffing about his so-called songbird. It was just him and his gun. But me, I have a whole gang working for me.” He gestured to the cemetery. Before Farr’s eyes, all of the phantoms that had gotten Bain reappeared--joined by two more. One was Bain himself, now as translucent as the others. The other was a man Farr recognized only too well, and he swallowed hard.
“Do what he asks, Sheriff,” Clint Reed’s ghost called, “or else I’ll get to settle up with you.”
Farr never thought he would miss Jonathan Bain...until now.
Author Bio
Stoney is employed as a middle school special education teacher. He maintains a blog at zerohourbystoneymsetzer.blogspot.com.
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