Read It’s Not For Everyone Pt I here.
Two figures wind their way through the underbrush of the dark forest, ducking under branches and stepping over the turned mud. The oddly glowing hoofprints they were following faded a half mile behind them.
“It’s simply a trade, my supernatural expertise for your haunting finesse,” Hollis says to the vague shape trudging before him. If he squints into the shadows cast by the moonlight, he can see where the stained collar ends and the thick coat begins, but not much else. The leaves before him are disturbed by unseen footfalls.
“Temporary allies,” Hollis starts again, a little hoarse in this second hour of monologuing. The early morning wind bites through his camera vest. He thinks he sees a warm light flicker in the corner of his eye. It disappears one second, and reappears the next as they walk. The woods in front of them open up into a deer path.
Not moving his gaze from the light, he asks “Is that the horse?” Hollis remembers annoyedly that he probably wouldn’t get an answer. He turns ahead to interrogate directly.
“Ghost?” There is no one else in the clearing. I tracked a ghost out to the middle of nowhere, he thinks, sighing a great sigh. Great ghostly ally.
Hollis’s weekend outdoor survival class instantly kicks into gear. He realizes he left his satellite phone and space-blanket in his car. He looks up and all the stars look the same. In one of the four directions was the coast, he knows. The warm light still shines in the distance—it isn’t a very far one either. Still surveying the area for any headless shoulders, Hollis makes his own way through some ferns. The light grows into a rectangle when his left foot is snagged back. He yelps and jumps away, stumbling, his camera bag hitting his back. The faint ambient light reveals he had caught his boot in a snake burrow. Breathing again, he continues on a bit slower.
To his vast relief and deep embarrassment, the light is a bigger clearing with an orange tent illuminated from the inside by a small lantern. Two pairs of boots sit outside the zippered door.
How do you knock on a tent? Hollis asks himself. They might have a satellite phone. Two diffuse shadows lay prone, one is still and snoring, the other turning and rustling around. He steps forward to enter the clearing and opens his mouth with his name when a twig snaps under his foot. The restless figure shoots upward and turns to the source of the noise. Hollis pauses but his mind continues. It reaches a conclusion that makes him smile. A perfect opportunity for an example of professionalism. The ghost still isn’t around as far as he could see, but it would sure hear two terrified hikers.
Hollis whispers, “After all, grandfather always said that a leader should fight his own battles.” He stops himself from reaching for the Velcro of his pants pockets for something to throw. Instead, as silently as possible, he picks up a fallen branch. He crouches down and creeps forward within reach of the tent. Raising the branch, he mildly hits its roof.
“Get up! Wake up, there’s a bear!” the voice cries, reaching and opening a shadowy lump in front of them that sounds like a bag.
“There are no bears in New Jersey,” the other body turns over and sighs.
The voice whispers, rushing in anger, “Then it’s a serial killer. Get up, I am not dying on a Wednesday.”
Hollis silently pivots around the rear of the tent, picks up a small stone on the ground, and throws it at the back wall.
The figures spring up and twist away, issuing a medley of curses. The front zipper opens, letting the two scramble out into the dark. Hollis quickly steps back into a shrub, wincing when branches stab his arms and neck, half-obscuring his vision of the camper’s backs.
“Racoons, it was racoons,” the half-asleep camper looks at the other, who faces away following their friend’s gaze into the treeline. In the distance, the moon is setting, an orb framed by bark and leaves. Outlined by that cold light is the headless horseman, the reins to its horse looped over one arm and its tiny candle cupped in the other. The burning eyes of its steed shine behind it. It steps into the diffuse light of the clearing and lunges at the campers.
Hollis can’t tell if their hair stands on end, but the camper’s shouts carry near and far. The two pitch themselves across the clearing, two blurs pushing each other back, forward, and forth down a narrow path Hollis had not noticed before.
Hollis turns back to the spirit and walks to the tent. “I got them out of here. If it weren’t for me they’d never have noticed you.” He points at them and at the abandoned camp. “You need me, ghost, and I need my career back.” The unearthly horse snorts, and Hollis imagines it sounds like the first clod of dirt thrown on a new coffin. He represses a shudder.
“Deal?”
The ghost angles its torso like it’s glancing at the ruined tent. The candle in the ghost’s palm gleams more steadily. It clenches a fist, and gives a slow thumbs up. A car engine howls somewhere beyond the forest.
***
Jane stares at the treetops flickering past her side of the backseat of the family station wagon.
“Well, Suzie, I don’t know what to say.” Mom is on the phone, “The production must go on. Child Number Four will have to be replaced. You can’t airbrush away the chickenpox. We still have time for the understudy.” Behind her is Little Julia in a tall car seat.
In the seat in front of Jane, Dad has one airpod in. His eyes occasionally flick down from the road to his phone mounted on the dashboard. It reads “13 Rules from Ancient Rome for Side-Gig Hustlers: Chapter One: From Zero to Nero.”
The car window is half-open on her sister’s side, just down to where the child-lock stops it—enough to let in a chill.
This morning, Jane has insisted on wearing only her one-layered coat with kittens on it. When Jane’s little sister Julia opens the window on her side of the car, she is not cold. Jane is sure her sister has dutifully submitted to wear her huge parka earlier to spite Jane. Between Jane’s seatbelt and her carseat is one of her favorite babydolls. Jane considers an old, favorite game, “I’m not touching your dolly,” and she hovers her hand above the toy. Julia sees this and opens her mouth to return the favor, loudly. The first pinecone hits the car window on Julia’s side with a meager dink. Jane and Julia scan the passing forest, and Mom spares a glance also. Nothing interesting appears on the outside. The kids return to their game of chicken.
The second pinecone doesn’t even come close to any part of Julia’s Sofia the First brand puffy coat, pants, or flashing sneakers. It lands directly onto the car floor. Seizing an opportunity, Princess Julia locks eyes with Jane and bursts into tears.
“Janeway-Peony Allen, what have I said about hitting your sister?” Jane’s mother swivels in her seat. “I thought we weren’t going to do this today. We agreed.”
Jane starts to protest by kicking the driver’s seat when another pinecone, covered in mud, flies through the window and hits the headrest of the driver’s seat. It splatters bits on the seats and Mom’s hair. Dad makes a sound of alarm.
Mother had already been turning back, and did not see the trajectory. She flips back around; her hand in her hair. “How could you? What will your Grandmother say, after the pie incident of last year? George, pull over.” Julia stops crying, sensing trouble.
“Look Flora, I’m doing sixty on a slippery country road with no curb. We’ll stop after the bend.” Dad says.
“You know my mother can see the road from the house, she’ll send someone out to see what’s wrong. It’ll be my cousin, or—” Mom grimaces and fails to hide it— “second cousin.”
“Oliver’s not that bad— ” Dad counters.
Jane looks out the window again at the shadowy equestrian form still riding to the right of the car, just behind the first line of trees. She gives the rider the most hideous, ulcerous stare she's ever mustered, before or since, worse than the face she pulled when her ex-best friend accused her of stealing the best piece of cake at a birthday party. Jane’s sister looks out the window, and starts blowing raspberries in the figure’s general direction. Mom’s voice does not interrupt the children. “Julia, stop that. Face me, Jane.” Her mother follows Jane’s stare out the window as well.
“What, are they trying to ride on the road now? That’s illegal.” Mom turns around and tries to observe the rider in the side-mirror. Dad makes a questioning noise.
***
The Horseman falters in throwing another pinecone, and doesn't look ahead until too late. Its steed, about to gallop into a tree, panics and overcorrects to the right, almost hitting another, smaller tree and forcing the Horseman to shift wildly to the left with nothing to hold onto the horse’s bare back. In the scramble for purchase, the ghost pulls too high on the reins to re-exert control. The angry beast turns and kicks like a wild horse. The rider flies, careening into the wagon’s windshield. It sloughs off the car hood and tears off a windshield wiper before its prone form is run over. The car doesn’t lift up and down over the spiritual body, but it does burn rubber through the dead leaves.
Relieved of its burden, the horse trots daintily a few yards away from where Hollis is hiding behind a wintering tree. The station wagon is gone, out of sight and sound.
Hollis walks out and stops by the ditch beside the road. He calls out, “You gotta get your head in the game, champ!” The ghost lays there on its side and doesn’t move. Pinecones have spilled out of its pockets and all over the road. Looking both ways, Hollis steps out on the roadway, stooping over the ghost. “So we’re in beta testing. You really gotta give it 120% of your grit.” The ghost turns to face Hollis (or at least, turns its torso). “If we’re going to do this, we gotta agree to take ownership of this society—I mean—haunting. We gotta agree to excellence—” The ghost shoots out its arm, hooks Hollis’s ankle, and pulls.
***
Hollis leans over with elbows on knees, sitting in concentration. “Okay, brainstorming.” He leans further forward. “Storming the castle of intellect. Marshalling our brilliance for haunting...” Hollis tents his hands in front of his face for effect, but after a few seconds it does not command his grey-matter as expected. He glances at the information-web that spans the wall above the twin bed, the wall with the doors to outside and the bathroom, and the wall behind the TV and bureau. It does not clarify anything. His brainstorming chair in his motel room isn’t as comfortable as he expects, either.
He looks over at the ghost, sitting slumped on the suitcase-stretcher by the TV. “So how do you land exactly? If you can be thrown, can you jump, or...?”
The ghost starts to slowly wring its gloved fists. The transparent leather creaks like aged rope. Hollis shuts up. He takes his laptop and notebook off the bed and opens both of them.
“That’s three eerie venues now off the list.” He sighs. “We could go back and try those woods at twilight?” The rider flourishes an arm, slashing vigorously to say, “Not bothering.”
“Great. I’ll just look for other locations in a two-horse town with high foot traffic and high ambiance.” He turns to the lists in his notebook, until he feels a light kick in the shin. The ghost is standing. It points to its gruesome mess of a neck with one hand and the naked lightbulb in the ceiling with the other.
“You want a flashlight.” The ghost shakes its fist and points to the stack of red solo cups in the bathroom.
“Oh yeah, your candle. I forgot it in the car.” Hollis looks back down to his laptop.
The rider throws itself out of its seat and out the closed door.
Hollis calls after it, “Statistically it’s safer for a lifeforce in the car than in here. 35% of household accidents happen in the living room, and 80% in the bathroom.” He starts typing something. “That makes motel rooms the most dangerous places in America. More dangerous than the wet leaves and pumpkin guts you had when I found you.”
The door slams open, the rider holding a red solo cup half outstretched and half cradled in its arms. It closes the door slowly, and reclines on the suitcase stand like it was an antique, the cup secure in both hands. Hollis continues talking, “Can’t we replace it? It looks a little feeble.” The tiny spark of a tallow candle sits in the bottom. When it trembles from the jostling of crossing the room, the ghost flickers in and out of visibility.
“Did you need to take the stairs, or did you fly down?”
The clear ghost gingerly places his red solo cup on the TV bureau, far out of casual danger from elbows. The rider turns to Hollis and pretends to throw something, aggressively miming a shot put, and points to its neck again.
“Alright,” Hollis grumbles, “a pumpkin.” He starts to look up grocery stores.
***
Sent November 2th, 20XX to: FThorburn@ACS.org
To Supervisor Thorburn of the Physical Hauntings and Manifestations Department,
Investigation #7389 Status Report: The manifestation has been identified, and I can confirm its designation as Danger Level 7. The haunting has caused three incidents of brazen property damage and general mischief since I first sighted it the night of October 31st. Please see my last Status Report (11/1/20XX) for my fierce battle with the spirit, and the attached screenshots from The Busy Piper online edition for corroboration of the lawless events which only I managed to defeat. It is more powerful than previously recorded by our analysts. For example, Twenty-Three can gallop at a rate of sixty miles per hour, and is capable of throwing multiple kinds of possibly injurious projectiles. I will fill in the analysts and library staff on the capabilities it exhibits when I return to Headquarters.
Using my investigative experience and the skills learned in the Inquiry Seminar given at the Society’s 2017 convention, I have collected data that all points to the manifestation’s epicenter. I have already inspected the populous area and coordinated a plan of attack, in accordance with classic Aspen Chalice strategy. The Trapmaking & Decoys seminar from 2015 will be handy, as will our trademark Book of Banishment. Very soon Manifestation Twenty-Three will be banished from this earth, and the Tarrytown area will be safe from evil. I look forward to filing in the paperwork at my new desk.
Signing off,
Junior Agent Hollis Fabron
***
It is the coldest part of the night and dew hangs in the air, in suspense by the languid light of the moon. Hollis had already drawn the thin blinds and gone to bed, declaring the ghost on “scare patrol” hours ago. The road is quiet, and the streetlights damp.
The Headless Horseman walks into the parking lot after “haunting” all the forest within strolling distance. It had not found the specific spot where a potential benefactor lay waiting. Its horse stands in a motel parking spot, grazing nonexistent grass. The ghost takes the reins and vaults up, settling awkwardly without a saddle. It walks the horse into the copse of trees across the road from the motel then spurs it into a gallop.