Rebel Spirits (6 page)

I SIT BY
the creek at nighttime, feeling more alone than I could ever imagine, listening to the screeching of a whippoorwill in a tree. Gertie is off with her new Chihuahua boyfriend, and Nathaniel seems to appear when it suits him. I sigh. Maybe I should just go back to the inn and Google Nathaniel, now that I know his regiment.

A light goes on in the lawn-mower shed up the hill, north of the house. Who’d be in there this late? Probably Dad scrounging around for some tools to fix the latest money-pit disaster.
Something about the garbage disposal backing up; he must be looking for the heavy-duty plunger.

I scoot up the bank, slip on my sandals, and start walking. The closer I get to the shed, the more uneasy I feel. Wish I’d brought Gertie with me, because someone’s still in there.

“Dad?” As soon as the word’s out of my mouth, the light flicks off. There’s scurrying around inside; something crashes to the floor, followed by a gasp.

Is Dad hurt? I should go in and help, but my pulse is racing and thumping at the side of my head. Something tells me not to go in. It’s like that scene in every scary movie when you want to scream at the girl,
Don’t go in there! Don’t open that door!

Forget it. I unlatch the door. Inside it’s totally dark. As my eyes adjust, I make out the lawn mower and hoes and shovels standing like silent skeletons. I have a vision of a rake coming to life, chasing me with its vicious claws. Things like this
never
used to creep into my head. But now that I’m certain ghosts are real, I’m wondering if there’s something sinister about Coolspring Inn, maybe even a person, or an entity of some sort that doesn’t want me here.

Something that seemed frozen in place moves! Just enough for me to register that it’s alive. I’m pumped with adrenaline. I take baby steps back toward the door. Whoever or whatever is hiding in the corner can’t see me any better than I can see
it. Suddenly the figure sinks to the floor, crouching behind something — maybe a gas drum or a gunnysack of fertilizer. Nothing’s clear except shape and shadow. The figure’s crab-walking across the floor. I stare in fascination, too paralyzed to run. But then, running would make me too obvious a target. Flowerpots go flying and shattering in its wake as the figure darts toward the back of the shed. The top half of the split door opens. Moonlight floods the shed as the intruder catapults over the bottom half of the door. From the back, it could be anybody, but at least I know it’s not an any
thing
.

Who might have been snooping around in the shed? Could it have been Nathaniel? But why would he run away from me? I hope it’s not some other ghost. One’s all I can handle.

I can’t remember if the shed is usually locked, but even if it wasn’t locked, somebody crept in who shouldn’t have; somebody who didn’t want to get caught.
Think, Lori!
The figure could have been male or female. Too thin to be Bertha. Too upright to be Old Dryden. Had to be somebody pretty limber to leap over the half door. Maybe it was Evan Maxwell? But why would he have to sneak in and out under cover of darkness, when he’s got access to the shed all the time? Or was it Dad? Why would he hide and crawl across the floor? Maybe he thought he was the one who belonged in the shed, but
I
was some dangerous intruder that he needed to escape from. But
no, it’s not Dad’s style to slink away in fear. He’s more likely to be the guy awakened by a suspicious sound in the middle of the night who goes downstairs to confront the intruder with a Pennsylvania-ash baseball bat. And he must have heard me yell, “Dad!”

Nothing makes sense.

Outside the shed, I listen in the steamy night for movement, footsteps, crunched gravel. It’s quiet as a cavern; even the whippoorwill had the good sense to shut up. The moon slides in and out of sight, obscured by tall pines. I turn and hurry toward the house, try the front door.

No!
Mom locks it at ten o’clock, and I forgot my key. I lean on the bell until Mom opens the little peephole in the red door.

“Oh, Lori, it’s you, in one piece. My goodness, I thought it was a dire emergency.” She opens the door and drags me inside, sighing in relief.

In the quiet of my tower room, my body stops ticking like a demented clock. I manage to change into my pj’s and crawl under the covers. The reassuring drone of Amelia Wilhoit’s printer in the room under me lulls me to sleep.

The next morning I wake refreshed; no spooky dreams or shimmery night visitors. Last night’s incident in the shed seems innocent in the sunlight.

But then, as I’m getting dressed, I notice a small, folded-up note has been slipped under my door. Feeling a prickle of fear, I pick up the note and unfold it cautiously. Printed in big block letters on Coolspring Inn stationery are the words,
FRET NOT — OTHERS SEE THEM, TOO.
No signature.

Who’s
them
? Shadowy figures running out of the shed in the middle of the night? Or ghosts? Could it be that somebody else in the house sees spirits? I know Charlotte does, but she wouldn’t have sent me a note — we’d talked about it already. What’s the point of the note? To reassure me that I’m not nuts? Or is it some sort of warning?

I’m mulling all these questions over in my mind as I finish dressing and hurry downstairs to help Hannah with breakfast. Is
she
the one who wrote the note? I check her out for a conspiratorial glance —
ha-ha, we’re in this weird space together, kid, both of us hanging on the
kalunga
line.

But Hannah is as no-nonsense as always as she bustles around the kitchen. On the counter there’s a mountain of gaping orange halves. Hannah says, “Toss those rinds in the compost heap, dearie. The worms adore oranges. I wouldn’t
dare put all that stuff down the disposal, the way it’s been acting up. Your poor father had to get down into the throat of the pipe again.”

I nod, feeling relieved as I spot the industrial-strength yellow stick plunger in the corner. So
it
was probably Dad in the shed last night, getting the plunger, and he thought I was an intruder. But something still doesn’t sit right with me.

After breakfast, I e-mail Randy.

Deflated, I try Jocelyn. Wish I could text her. She’s not great about responding to my e-mails. I guess the horsey girls don’t
give her much free time, or there aren’t good hot spots at the camp. Too bad, because everything around here is getting hotter by the minute.

I realize it sounds hysterical and melodramatic, so I delete the whole message and slip into my running shorts, T-shirt, and sneakers. I sprint downstairs with one of my softballs. It feels good to toss it hand to hand while I pass by Gertie. She’s been sniffing around for Brownie, who’s out doing the Gettysburg tourist thing with her owners.

“Let’s go outside, Gertie Girl.” That pacifies her, and she’s down the stairs in a flash, nosing at the back door. Outside, a rabbit crosses her path, and she barks madly and chases the terrorized creature.

Evan Maxwell comes running around the house, clutching garden shears. “What’s happening here?” he asks breathlessly. “I heard Gertie going nuts.”

“She’s so brave, chasing a rabbit one-tenth her size. Hey, I’m glad you’re here.”

“You are?” He stands up taller and sweeps a sweaty lock of hair off his forehead. “Happy to see me — that’s the best news of the day, compared to the other news, from Princeton. A thick envelope from a university is great. This was a thin envelope.”

“I’m sorry, Evan. Was Princeton your first choice?”

“Third. I’m holding out for Stanford. I was wait-listed there, too.”

A tiny glimmer of disappointment surprises me: He’ll be off to college in the fall. But then I think,
Why should I care? We’re not really friends.
“Can we talk about something that’s bugging me?” I ask him.

Evan drops the clippers, grabs the softball out of my hand, and backs away. “Here, catch.” He hurls the ball in a wobbly arc toward me. I get under it easily and pitch it back.

“Hey, good arm,” he says, fumbling the ball. Gertie’s running from me to him, but is smart enough to realize it’s our game, not hers. “So, what’s on your mind, Lori?”

“It’s about the lawn-mower shed.”

He moves in closer and flings the ball in my general direction, which is to say, at a puddle by a rosebush. He’d
never
have made the mixed league in Philly.

“Yeah, I know. Some animal got in there and burrowed into a corner when the door was open yesterday. Poor critter must have panicked when he couldn’t get out.
Ooof!
” The ball thuds into his belly, and he staggers back. “Game over. So, I figure when dinnertime came, the animal pecked open the bag of bedding soil looking for munchies. Dirt and broken pots are all over the floor, and some clippers and trowels were knocked off the hooks. It’s a mess. I better clean it up before Old Dryden resurfaces.”

“What kind of animal?” I ask.

“Squirrel? Possum, maybe? This used to be their hangout before we civilized it.”

I accept the muddy ball back from Evan, digging my fingers into its sides. “I think it was a human animal, Evan.”

Evan furrows his brow. “Nah. An actual human wouldn’t have any reason to rip open a sack of soil.”

“Unless he was looking for something.”

“In a pile of dirt? Come on.”

“I saw someone run out the back door of the shed,” I tell him quietly. “Someone who didn’t want to get caught in there.”

“Hmm. I’ll check it out later today,” Evan tells me, and I
feel slightly better. “Got to pick up my uniform at the cleaners now,” he adds, checking his watch. “Score a few canisters of fake blood, a musket, some ammo. I’m dying at one forty-six tomorrow. Come watch.”

Right. The reenactment of the Battle. “I don’t think so,” I tell him. “I don’t have the stomach for it.”

“Hey, it’s human epic to the max. Blood and guts, pain and agony, good guys and bad guys. It’s classic, like
The Godfather
or
The Hunger Games
on a beautiful summer afternoon. People eat it up.”

“Maybe,” I offer dubiously, backing up toward the house.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” he says quietly, all the bravado leaked away. “It’s Gettysburg in July.”

LATER THAT EVENING,
long after dinner, I flop down on my bed and open my laptop to finally Google Nathaniel and his regiment. But then suddenly, something feels off-kilter. My bedroom door slams, although there’s no breeze. The air has that leaden feeling, heavier than mere heat and humidity.

“You’re here, aren’t you?” I whisper, and my heart leaps with joy.

A disembodied voice says, “We haven’t much time, Lorelei, and there’s still so much to tell you.”

“I know, Nathaniel,” I say, glancing around and seeing no one else in my room. Then my pleasure morphs into indignation. “But where are you? You can’t just keep showing up and disappearing without warning. Or talking to me when I can’t see you! Let’s set some ground rules. Because right now you have all the advantages. Relationships in my world are fifty-fifty.”

Are we in a relationship?
I wonder.
Is that even possible?

The warm, familiar voice replies from seemingly nowhere. “I’m at a great
dis
advantage, Lorelei, with words in your world. But I can guess the meaning of fifty-fifty.”

“That’s a start. Okay, Number One: You can’t hover around me and listen in on my conversations without my knowledge.”

“I try not to, I do, but it’s so much harder to resist than to give in to the impulse.”

I nod. “Like trying to give up French fries.” I realize he doesn’t
get
French fries. Oh, well. “Rule Number Two: Please show yourself when you talk. Otherwise I feel silly just spitting words out in your general direction. I look like a crazy person.”

“Aye, General.” He shimmers into visibility, perched on my desk, and I’m struck again by how dashing and melancholy and strong he looks — for a dead person. There’s a scent about him that’s like cinnamon or ginger. I want to hurry over to him, to be close to him, but I try to stand my ground.

“Rule Number Three —”

“You’re quite the bossy girl, aren’t you?”

“Of course. I’m a Scorpio!”

“You don’t look a bit like a scorpion, for which I’m immensely grateful.” I want to laugh, figuring it’s not worth explaining astrology to him. Then he holds out his foot toward me, the one bound in cloth and scraps of leather. “That’s how I lost my boot, when a scorpion took up lodging in it. I saw him down in the dark of the toe and tossed the boot as far as I could. It landed in a campfire. Both the boot and the scorpion, fried crisp. The scorpion was more tasty than the boot.”

“Why, Nathaniel Pierce, you have a sense of humor.”

He smiles shyly. “Have we finished with the rules?”

“One more. I’ll meet you anywhere but here in my room or the bathroom.” Although part of me loves having Nathaniel in my room, another part of me feels like it’s too big of a step, too quickly. I want to be able to move freely about my room without worrying about my privacy or the peering eyes of a handsome ghost.

“The bathroom?” Nathaniel asks. His quizzical look reminds me that he comes from a time before indoor plumbing.

“The water closet, the loo?” I offer, thinking, for some reason, of British slang. “The … facilities?”

“Ah, the privy.”

“Yes! As in
private
.”

“I understand,” he says, all proper and gentlemanly.

“Okay. Then I’d say we’re done with rules for now.” I stand and walk over to him. We are close enough that our elbows collide. I’m glad that I showered after tossing around the softball outside, and that I changed into a sleeveless yellow sundress to feel cooler. Nathaniel puts his firm hands on my shoulders and draws me closer. He’s solid now, as real as I am, but no body heat radiates from him, and even up against his chest I feel no heartbeat.

I have so much to learn about ghosts.

“A question for you,” I whisper to him, grateful that most of the guests and my parents are sleeping and can’t hear me conversing in the night. “You weren’t in the shed last night, were you? I saw — something.”

Concern flashes across Nathaniel’s face but he shakes his head. “No. I was in the cemetery, by my grave, but thinking of you. Why?”

I don’t want to get into the mystery with him now. I notice him glance from me to the laptop on my bed.

“You opened your talking machine,” he says. “May I see how it operates?”

Why not? I grab my laptop and drop to the floor while he
sits behind me on my bed. I click a few keys and feel him watching me with avid curiosity.

I enter
Nathaniel Pierce 93rd regiment Gettysburg
into the Search bar.

“You can put my name into this machine?” Nathaniel asks with incredulity.

“You can’t imagine what this machine can do,” I tell him.

The search results pop up, and I click on the first article. I begin reading, instinctively hunching over so that Nathaniel can’t see what I see. I’m not sure why I want this privacy — maybe it’s the same reason I felt indignant when he just showed up in my room.

My heart stops.
What?
I keep reading.

I snap around to face him, my cheeks burning.

“You’re a
traitor
?” I demand. “After all your high-minded ideas about the evils of slavery, you betrayed the Union?”

Nathaniel’s eyes widen. “Is that what you think?”

“It’s not about what I think. It’s about what I’m reading right now.” I slam the laptop shut, feeling ready to crumble into a heap. “And you weren’t murdered — it says right here you were executed.”

This isn’t possible. This can’t be the Nathaniel I’ve come to know. He couldn’t have sabotaged the northern war effort, or spied on the Union and passed strategic information to the Confederate army. I can’t believe this.

But it’s true he didn’t have an honorable burial in the soldier’s cemetery. My stomach tightens. What do I actually know about this young man from the past, except for his story about his friend Edison, and Nathaniel’s father’s fortune in oil?

“What do you want me to tell you?” he asks wearily.

“The truth. Simple enough.”

“The truth is slippery.”

I shiver. What if it
is
true, that he is guilty of treason? How could he pass himself off as a respectable soldier and the victim of a murderer? Setting me up. Making me care for him deep in my soul. Blood’s pumping through my head. I jump to my feet and stomp around my room, hands on hips. He must be able to see the pulse throbbing at my temples. How could he deceive me this way?

“Come sit down, please.” He reaches for my hand. I resist for a moment. There’s a ropy scar like a solid worm on his palm, something I haven’t noticed before. It couldn’t be a new wound, could it? My eyebrows rise in question. But still, I take his hand and we slide down to the floor together. We sit with our backs against the bed.

Nathaniel releases my hand and shows me his scar again. “Burned by a musket. Those guns got very hot as the battle raged one hour after the next and those minié balls were flying. Once that first burn blistered, I kept a rag in my haversack so I didn’t fry any more flesh.”

So much to absorb — musket, haversack, minié. I realize he’s watching me, still holding out his hand. For one crazy moment it feels like a marriage proposal, with him gazing longingly into my eyes. It’s not. I blink first.

“Time will take me away from you in three days,” he says, “and the pain’ll be as sharp as my bayonet wound. If I leave you and there are no answers, I’ll continue in torment, Lorelei.”

“Oh, really? What about my torment, not knowing if you were a traitor?”

“There’s so much more to tell,” he begins, his resonant voice low and distant.

“Just explain this,” I say, my anger somewhat tempered but my suspicion still raging. “If it says here you were shot for treason, then you weren’t murdered.”

“But I was,” Nathaniel protests. “I believe to this day that my death was explained away as my being shot for treason, when in truth that wasn’t what happened at all.”

“So tell me what happened.” I’ve got my legs hunched up. Pressing my chin into my knees keeps my mouth shut, so this has always been my best listening posture.

“When I joined up with the 93rd Regiment early in 1863, I wondered if my friend Edison was still alive and fighting this war. He would have gone for cavalry, felt more at home on horseback than on his own feet. I searched for him here in Gettysburg, but there were thousands of soldiers on both sides — infantry, cavalry, artillery, fife-and-drummers, wheel-wrights, blacksmiths, medics. I couldn’t find him.

“After the first hot night of battle, I was so stirred up that I couldn’t sleep. What kept haunting me was that I might’ve killed a man. Maybe more. I’d just kept reloading my musket as fast as possible and firing it across the stretch between us and them. Men toppled in the field; horses, too. Do you know how awful the stench of horse flesh is decaying in the July sun?”

I can’t begin to imagine — it’s as alien to me as my laptop is to Nathaniel. Now Nathaniel’s breath comes in shallow gasps. He’s far away from me, steeped in the visions and smells, and then he wrenches himself back, squeezing my hand. Pleasure flutters up my arm despite all the horror he’s lugged from his past into the present.

“So, I sat on a boulder that had served as a barricade earlier in the day. Along came a man lighting up a Bull Durham. Said, ‘Evening, soldier,’ and we exchanged pleasantries. He was a surgeon; I don’t recall his name. Told me he’d met someone who was looking for a Nathaniel Pierce, or might have been Nathan Price, and he couldn’t recall the other soldier’s name, either.”

“Not too good with details, was he?” I mutter. “Great for a doctor. I hope he didn’t mix up lungs and kidneys. You think he was talking about Edison?”

“Don’t know. He told me he’d heard how desperate the Union was for surgeons, so he’d come up from Baltimore to
volunteer. The year before he’d been attending President Lincoln’s family. I suspected he wasn’t telling the truth. We all embellished memories, promoting plain girlfriends to beauties and simple meals to feasts, to get us through the horrors of the war.

“So, the doctor talked about his White House days, how Mr. Lincoln was depressed by the war and the tragedy in his family. He’d already lost one son, Edward, and now another son, William, lay on his deathbed, but eleven years old. I can tell you, I was in no mood for a heartbreaking story after all I’d seen in a day of battle, but the doctor’s wheels were greased, and there was no stopping him. While William raged with fever, Doc told me, a ring on his bloated thumb cut into his flesh. Doc soaped the finger and massaged the ring off. Minutes later, William Lincoln stopped breathing.”

My legs shoot out from under my chin as my heart swells with grief. “Oh, poor President Lincoln. How could they bear losing two sons?”

“You’re a tender thing, you are.” Nathaniel pulls me close. Our shoulders are pressed together. “The surgeon said there was no consoling them. Mrs. Lincoln wept and keened for hours, and the president himself shed tears. After they said their final farewells, Doc found the ring in the folds of the sheets. He handed it to Mrs. Lincoln, but she was wild and exhausted with
grief, and reared back as though he were offering her a live serpent.”

“So, what finally happened to the ring?” I ask, locked securely in Nathaniel’s wingspan, though the rough wool of his uniform scratches my bare arm.

“The doctor kept it, later put it on the thumb of his own grandson. But then, that night when we spoke, he pulled a green pouch out of his pocket and removed the ring from it. He held it up, gold and glinting in the moonlight. Said, ‘I took back Mr. Lincoln’s ring when it grew too tight for my boy’s finger, and it’s been my lucky charm ever since. Pray to God it’ll see me through this bloody war.’”

It all feels mysterious and thrilling, this strange, spooky connection to Abraham Lincoln himself. But …

“What does this have to do with your murder?” I ask Nathaniel. “And the treason charge?”

His dark eyes are wide and solemn. “If you are willing to stay awake and hear it, I will explain everything.”

“I’m willing,” I say.