Ghost Trackers (28 page)

“This is the night, isn’t it?” Amber asked. Her voice sounded different to her, younger and lighter somehow, more filled with energy.

She didn’t have to say which night she meant. Drew and Trevor knew.

“I believe so,” Drew said. His voice, while also more youthful, still retained the mature confidence of adulthood. “But we’re not really here. It’s another hallucination.”

“I don’t know,” Trevor said. His teen voice was higher-pitched than Drew’s, and she remembered that it had taken a while for his voice to deepen, something some of the other kids in school had teased him about. “This feels different somehow.”

“That’s because we
are
here,” she said. “Kind of, anyway. This isn’t just a hallucination. We’re inside our memories of that night.” Amber wasn’t sure how she knew this, but she sensed it was true.

Neither Drew nor Trevor questioned her knowledge, perhaps because they sensed the same thing.

Or maybe, she realized, because they trusted her feelings.

“But we’re also still adults, still standing in the gym,” Trevor said. “It’s like we’re two places at once, isn’t it?”

“Does that mean you’re still holding the tire iron?” she asked.

Trevor frowned. In his left hand, he held a camera, but his right, the hand in which he’d been holding the tire iron, was empty. He held up his right hand, looked at it, and wiggled his fingers.

“Doesn’t feel like it,” he said. He lowered his hand to his side. “I suppose there’s no way to know for sure. Greg could’ve made me drop it without my knowing.”

“We need to proceed carefully, as if what we’re experiencing is real, even if it’s not,” Drew said. “Reality, unreality, they’re just different sides of the same coin for us right now.”

“Thanks for the cryptic advice,” Trevor said in that too-high voice of his that made her want to giggle. “Maybe you should think about giving up psychology and get a job writing sayings for fortune cookies.”

Drew gave Trevor a look that said he wasn’t as funny as he thought he was.

Trevor went on. “So, what are we supposed to do? Reenact what we did back then?”

“That would seem to be the logical course,”
Drew said. “Do either of you remember what we did first?”

“No,” Amber said. “But if I had to guess, I bet we decided to walk around the outside of the property before going in to get a feel for the place.”

“Right,” Trevor said, sounding excited. “And I would’ve wanted to watch the windows to see if we’d witness any figures moving inside and maybe get some pictures.”

Drew nodded. “And I’d have kept the flashlight turned off so no one would see us snooping around and call the police.” As he said this, he turned off the flashlight, and the three friends began making their way across the property. They circled around the west side of the house, staying about fifty feet or so from it, the dilapidated barn off to their left.

It was so strange seeing the Lowry House reborn like this, although Amber couldn’t make out many details of the structure, as dark as it was. What was even stranger was that with every step they took, she experienced an eerie sense of déjà vu. Not memories, precisely, but a strong sense that she’d been there before, done these things before, and she suspected it was the same for Drew and Trevor.

The dark, the stars above, the cool breeze, the soft whisper of grass beneath their feet as they walked all seemed so familiar. While she knew that they inhabited a mental landscape created by their former friend, who was in the grip of dark
forces they didn’t understand, a friend who’d killed two people and had attempted to kill dozens more, in a strange way, she couldn’t help feeling excited to be there.

As they walked, they kept an eye on the house, but it remained dark and still. Despite his earlier words, Trevor didn’t take any pictures. She supposed there was no real reason for him to do so. After all, they weren’t investigating the actual Lowry House; there were no ghosts hiding inside the building. She supposed that the house itself and its grounds were ghosts of a sort but not the kind you took pictures of, not the kind that provided evidence of life after death. Besides, the camera itself wasn’t real, so what would be the point in using it?

Trying to make logical sense of their situation was making her head hurt, and she understood the wisdom of Drew’s advice to take everything as both real and not real. Best not to think about it too much and get on with what they had to do.

She reached for Drew’s hand and clasped it, and he turned and gave her a smile that, considering how dark it was, she sensed more than saw. If they were going to die tonight, at least she’d admitted her feelings for him, and he’d returned them. And while that gave her even more reason to live, she wouldn’t die not knowing if he cared for her as more than a friend, and that was something.

They’d still seen nothing as they circled around
to the rear of the Lowry House. No hint of movement from within the building, no glimmer of light shining in any of the windows, as it had been on that night so many years ago.

“I understand there’s an art to the building of suspense,” Trevor said, “but this is really starting to drag on. I wish Greg would do something and get it over with.”

Greg’s voice seemed to echo from the air around them:
Careful what you wish for
.

A fresh wave
of vertigo gripped Amber, this one so strong that she feared she’d fall to the ground for sure. But it passed, and when it did, she saw that their surroundings had changed. The house and barn were gone, and more trees covered the grounds. The three friends stood in a clearing in the midst of a dozen dome structures made of bark, mud, and thatch. The air, which had been so silent a moment ago, was now filled with the sounds of struggle, the harsh crack of gunfire, people shouting, screaming, sobbing, and in some cases laughing. There were no other people visible, but the noises made it sound as if they were surrounded by bloody mayhem. It was awful to hear the clamor of people suffering and dying and not be able to see them, not be able to help them.

Drew turned to her and spoke loudly enough to be heard over the din. “This is the setting of the dream you had, isn’t it? The massacre of Native Americans by British hunters.”

She nodded. “I didn’t see outside, though. I was inside one of the homes.”

A crazy thought passed through her mind then. If she were to go from home to home and peek inside, would she discover herself within one, her mind inhabiting Little Eyes’ body? And would Greg be in there, too, masquerading as one of the hunters? Should they search for him here and try to confront him? She started to ask Drew, but then Trevor spoke.

“This isn’t just the setting of Amber’s dream,” he said. “We saw this the night we came to the Lowry House.” He frowned. “At least, I
think
we did. I don’t have an actual memory, but this feels familiar, you know?”

Amber knew exactly what Trevor meant, for she felt the same way. She looked at Drew, and from the expression on his face, she knew that it was the same for him, too.

The sounds grew louder then, and images began to form, just shadowy figures at first, but they soon took on distinct features. White men garbed in simple fur-lined jackets, trousers, and boots wielded flintlock rifles, knives, and hatchets. Bodies lay scattered on the ground, mostly Native American men, although there were a few women and even children. Most of the bodies had blood on them, sometimes copious amounts, and more than a few had been savaged to the point where it was difficult to tell that they were human, let alone what gender. Only their clothes, blood-soaked and rent by sharp blades, remained to provide any
clue to their identities. And the bloodshed was far from over. Hunters aimed their rifles at anyone who wasn’t white and put a round in them, fought hand-to-hand with the village’s men who sought to protect their wives, mothers, and daughters, while others entered unguarded homes in search of easier prey.

The sights, sounds, and smells of wholesale slaughter sickened Amber to her core, and while she’d only imagined being a member of the tribe, had never been a Native American girl called Little Eyes, she nonetheless felt a deep kinship with these people and their plight, and she felt a mounting white-hot anger at witnessing the unspeakable crimes being committed against them.

“We have to do something!” she said. “We have to stop them somehow!”

“There’s nothing we
can
do,” Drew said. “This isn’t happening now. It’s a . . . a replay of events from the past. These people died a couple hundred years before we were born.”

Intellectually, she knew that Drew’s analysis was true, but emotionally, it was unbearable to stand there watching and do nothing to help.

As if by some unspoken agreement among the combatants, the fighting stopped, and an unsettling silence fell over the clearing. The hunters, most of whom had blood on their clothes, hands, and sometimes their faces, turned to look at
Amber, Drew, and Trevor. The hunters glared at the three friends and gripped their weapons but made no move toward them.

“It’s like they’re waiting for us to do something,” Amber said.

“Whatever we do, we’d better do it fast,” Drew said. “This may not be real, but we know Greg’s hallucinations can kill. It doesn’t matter if the ax that gets buried in your skull is real or illusory—either way, you’re just as dead.”

The hunters exchanged no words, didn’t even look at one another, but they all started forward. They came slowly, not running, walking at a measured pace, and somehow that was worse. It was as if they felt there was no need to run because there was nothing their prey could do to escape them. They grinned with bloodlust as they approached, eyes glowing with dark hunger, weapons held tight, blade edges dripping with blood, flintlocks reloaded and ready to fire.

And then things got worse.

As they walked, the hunters raised their heads and drew in deep breaths through their noses, as if they were animals scenting the wind. With every step the hunters took, they changed. Their faces, already unshaven, sprouted dark fur, and their mouths and noses joined and lengthened to form snouts. Their teeth became fangs, and long pink tongues lolled out the sides of their mouths. Their hands became fur-covered claws with long black
talons, and their eyes turned feral yellow and fixed on the three friends with a savage hunger. As they continued forward, their bodies hunched over, as if their spines had re-formed and they were no longer capable of standing upright, and their legs bent at strange angles. A chorus of low growling came from the hunters as they approached, and the sound caused a ripple of atavistic fear to run down Amber’s spine.

The hunters—no, the pack, for that’s what they’d become—growled and snarled as they came, white froth flecking their muzzles, eyes dancing with wild delight in anticipation of the slaughter to come.

And then Amber felt a strange calm come over her. “I’m not running,” she said. “One way or another, I’ve been running for the last fifteen years, and I’m sick of it.”

The hunters seemed to grin upon hearing these words, as if pleased that she was going to spare them the effort of having to chase her down. She knew she should have been frightened by the sight of them approaching, knew that Drew was right. Illusions or not, they could still kill. But she’d been afraid for so long, and she supposed she just didn’t have any fear left.

“This isn’t a real place,” she said. “It’s all in our minds. The hunters aren’t real, and neither are the people they killed. The only real things are Greg and us. And if that’s true, then if Greg can make
things happen here, so can we.” She spoke more loudly then as she addressed the hunters. “This was
their
land. You came here to take it from them by force, but you had no right to it. Their blood was always in this land figuratively, but thanks to you, it’s literally there now. And it calls out for justice.”

She crouched down and jammed her fingers into the ground. Grass and soil gave way before her hands as if they were no more substantial than water, and her hands sank up to her wrists.

The hunters hesitated when they saw what she’d done, expressions of confusion on their bestial faces. But when nothing happened right away, they grinned and started forward once more.

They didn’t get very far, though.

Tendrils emerged from the ground around their feet, as thick and sinuous as serpents, but instead of green, they were a deep, dark crimson. The tendrils coiled around the hunters’ legs as they stretched up their bodies, wrapped around their waists, chests, necks . . . The hunters let out animalistic roars of frustration at being bound by the blood tendrils. Those who reacted swiftly enough to keep their arms from being pinned to their sides fought back, slashing at the tendrils’ rubbery surfaces with their claws, while others bent their heads down and tried to bite their way free. The crimson substance turned to gore beneath their hands and in their mouths,
but the tendrils repaired the damage, new blood filling their gaps until they were whole and strong once more.

Amber felt a cold satisfaction as she witnessed the hunters’ futile struggles. “You know the old saying about how blood is thicker than water? Well, it’s stronger than steel, too.”

Tendril tips stabbed toward the hunters’ mouths and slithered inside. The hunters’ eyes bulged in panic and pain as the tendrils forced their way down their throats, plunging deep into their bodies. And once they were deep enough, the tendrils went to work. It didn’t take long.

The hunters thrashed and jerked for several moments but eventually fell still, and the tendrils retracted. As they released their grip on the hunters, their corpses slumped to the ground, and the tendrils returned to the earth from which they’d been born.

She pulled her hands free from the ground and stood, wiping bits of soil from her fingers as she did.

Trevor and Drew looked at her. “
Damn
, girl,” Trevor breathed. “That was hard-core!”

She gave him a weak smile. Now that it was over, she felt shaky and more than a little queasy at the thought of what she’d done. “I didn’t plan that out,” she admitted. “It just kind of happened.”