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    Shades of Blue and Gray: Ghosts of the Civil War
    Shades of Blue and Gray: Ghosts of the Civil War
    Shades of Blue and Gray: Ghosts of the Civil War
    Ebook482 pages7 hours

    Shades of Blue and Gray: Ghosts of the Civil War

    By Steve Berman

    2.5/5

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    About this ebook

    More Americans were killed during the years 1861-1865 than any other date in history. Men shattered, women lost, families broken. In Shades of Blue and Gray, editor Steve Berman offers readers tales of the supernatural—ghost stories that range from the haunts of the battlefield to revenants on the long march home. Yank. Rebel. Both finding themselves at odds in flesh and spirit.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrime Books
    Release dateSep 10, 2013
    ISBN9781607014195
    Shades of Blue and Gray: Ghosts of the Civil War
    Author

    Steve Berman

    Author of over a hundred short stories, editor of numerous queer and weird anthologies, and small press publisher living in western Massachusetts.

    Read more from Steve Berman

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    • 2/5
      This anthology was a mixed bag of good and bad short stories, but the majority were largely poorly written or just boring to read. There were a few stories that were pretty good and I did like that some were inspired by ancestral stories of the authors. Most didn't have a Civil War feel except using the words Yanks and Reds and many were pretty light on the ghost aspect.

    Book preview

    Shades of Blue and Gray - Steve Berman

    Grant

    Introduction

    Homer tells that spilt blood allowed the shades of the Underworld to speak. Is this why no other event in American history haunts the nation so deeply as the Civil War? So many books have been written—by academic, by folklorist, by amateur historian—on the events spanning April 12th, 1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter in South Carolina, to, almost four years later, Robert E. Lee’s surrender to a modern Odysseus, Ulysses S. Grant, at Appomattox Court House in Virginia on April 9, 1865. It is estimated that the brutal war consumed nearly a million men, mostly soldiers, but the toll on civilians will never be truly known. Miles of the American landscape, be they farmland, town, or city streets, turned barren from the cruel caress of artillery shell, of bloodshed, of being set ablaze by the victors. The wounds scarred over, became resentment and monument. And became ghosts that lurked at the fringes of memory and memorial.

    "Every historical park that had seen a battle during the War, in small towns across America, has legends of spectral soldiers, their kith and kin that waited for the men to return even if it meant staying on the face of the earth long after their remains were interred, of musket and cannon and screams that echoed long after decades had rusted metal and rendered the work of Minié and Gorgas into harmless footnotes.

    Curious tourists, visiting sites of unimaginable carnage where green grass now grows over fields once turned muddy with spilt blood and bronze statues stand silent witness, regularly purchase paperback books of these legends, these ghost stories. All purported to be true, of course.

    What of the stories that follow the pages of this introduction? Despite fiction’s promise to tell only the most captivating of lies, is there no kernel of truth in the work of these twenty-one authors? Yes, there was a C.S.S. Huntley, a doomed submersible, and its tale is a terrible one. Yes, a brazen band of Confederates did cross the United Provinces of Canada’s border to raid a small town in Vermont. Yes, among the casualties were kind mistresses and cruel masters. So perhaps these ghost stories are more akin to the truth than you, the reader, can imagine.

    To return one last time to Homer, and his Iliad, consider his themes of fate, glory, and homecoming (nostos to the Greeks). All wartime stories must consider these elements: a soldier confronts the prospect of his own death, the name he makes for himself in battle as well as the consequences of taking lives and land, whether he can return home—and what will he find of home and himself if he does? The authors offer some clue, some answer to all of these. The spirits that they have summoned from the blood shed more than a hundred fifty years ago are ready to speak to you now.

    Steve Berman

    Spring 2013

    Raw Recruits

    Will Ludwigsen

    March 9, 1863

    Dear General Ashwell,

    I have been pleased to serve my country and its noble cause against the Southern agitators, and (like any gentleman officer) I am accustomed to using the advanced skills of my education and breeding to further our struggle. My battles, then, have been more of the mind than the muscle, though my heart provides for both.

    As you have often said in your celebrated lectures, wars are won and lost with information. Whispered rumors of troop movement, higher battlefield perspectives, and broken codes change the fortunes of war as surely as rifles and cannon, and whatever moral differences exist between combatants in a conflict, success or failure relies upon the advancement of brilliance of one over the other.

    You may recall some of my previous successful schemes to gather information about our enemy. I proposed the use of aerial balloons to provide advanced battlefield perspectives. I encouraged the questioning of escaped Negroes for their knowledge of Rebel movements and conditions. I developed a network of spies in several port cities to locate British ships evading our blockade. My newest plan is sure to bring swift success and great benefit to our forces, if you are willing to excuse its eccentricities.

    Perhaps I should explain the events that led me to my plan before I detail it for you. An understanding of the background might lend greater context to my scheme.

    Several weeks ago on a chill winter afternoon, my adjunct Lieutenant Lewis and I happened to be inspecting the recently occupied Sharpsburg when we chanced upon a curious shop in the neglected section of town.

    Look, Colonel, said Lewis, pointing at its filthy facade. A fortune teller.

    Emblazoned on the glass in wavering painted letters were the words, Madame Still, prognosticator, fortune teller, love advisor.

    Indeed, Lewis. What of it?

    I was wondering, sir, if it might be a pleasant afternoon’s amusement to engage Madame Still’s services. I would like very much to see such a person perform her charlatanry.

    I checked my watch. Our rendezvous with the 23rd Company wasn’t for another two hours, so we had plenty of time for such an excursion. We entered the shop.

    Hanging from every surface in the tiny shop were accoutrements of the occult: jars, vials, dusty books written in long forgotten languages. In the center of the room was a small table surrounded by three chairs, and the withered woman hunched behind the table was a frightening sight. Her face, creased and leathery, contorted into a perpetual sneer, and her eyes were dull and cloudy. She reeked of rotting food, stale whiskey, and a profound stench of desiccation.

    Good afternoon, gentlemen, she cooed as we gazed at the shop in stunned silence. Looking for something?

    Not particularly, madam, I replied, hefting a shrunken head in my hand. We were merely interested in some of your curiosities.

    Ah, she said, leaning over her table. Higher spirits led you here.

    I smiled. Of course they did. Rum and scotch, mostly.

    She didn’t seem to be listening to me but gazed instead at Lewis as he walked past a box of tiny animal bones, arms folded behind him. I see your pain from here, gentle sir. Someone close to you has died, yes?

    Lewis stopped. He turned and said, What makes you say that, madam?

    The woman stared him intently in the eye. I can see things beneath the skin, things you do not know yourself. My senses are tuned to the subtle vibrations of the universe, and I feel emanations from you of great anguish.

    Lewis stepped closer to her. I chuckled at his naïveté.

    What do you know of it?

    She rubbed her knobby fingers across a dusty glass sphere. I see a lost one. A father, a brother . . . 

    Father? Brother? My father’s brother? My uncle! cried Lewis. Can you hear him?

    She nodded. He’s calling to you from beyond. He wants to talk to you.

    Still smiling, I reached for Lewis’s elbow, Come on, lieutenant. Don’t let the woman agitate you. She is clearly a talented actress.

    Lewis pulled away from me and sat down in the chair in front of Madame Still. What does he have to say?

    Lewis, it is time to go, I said, walking toward the doorway, but he didn’t seem to be listening to me.

    The woman took both of Lewis’s hands into her own. Then, in a voice quite unlike her own, she said, Eddie, boy, be a good lad and check the planks in the northeast corner of the barn. I’ve hidden some money there to take care of your aunt and mother if anything ever happens to me.

    Lewis shook in his chair. I’ll send word at once to Mother and instruct her as you say. Tell me, uncle: what awaits us beyond the veil?

    The woman’s voice suddenly became soft and flowing in a fashion entirely opposed to her grizzled physique. Glory, my boy. Glory. Her voice faded into silence. I became aware that moment that every sound and sight in the room had been obscured as though frozen in time. I could scarcely breathe.

    All three of us sat quietly for almost a full minute before I felt compelled to break the stalemate. Lieutenant, we have duties.

    Yes, sir, said Lewis dazedly as he rose from the chair. He pulled a wad of uncounted bills from his pocket and set them before the supposed sorceress.

    Thank you. His manner seemed too earnest for my taste.

    The woman peeled her lips back from gnarled teeth in an approximation of a smile. You’re quite welcome, young man.

    With great relief, Lewis and I emerged from the shop a few seconds later safely among the company of the living. I considered comforting the shaken lad with the sharp reason of skepticism, but I opted to remain silent for the rest of our walk to camp.

    Lewis returned to his duties with no apparent negative effect, though several days after I considered the matter settled, he came to my quarters with chilling news. He did not speak the news as much as hand it to me, a note from his family.

    Following the directions of Madame Still, Lewis’s mother uncovered two thousand dollars in gold coins beneath the barn, a considerable treasure to that family in their current circumstances. It took me a second and then a third reading to understand the implications of that letter—and their implications for us.

    I am no quivering schoolchild or superstitious Negro, sir, as you well know. Yet it seems nigh unquestionable that Madame Still possesses some insight into the peculiar workings of the world beyond ours, and it was after three nights of troubled sleep that I realized what that insight could mean for us.

    You see, General, the deciding factor in war is the advent of novelty—devices and ideas unexpected by the enemy. I believe that the ultimate in unexpected novelty would be a legion of ghostly spirits recruited from heaven to use their skills on the behalf of our just cause.

    The advantages of employing the dead are manifold. Among the ignorant and superstitious Southerners, a ghostly apparition on the battlefield could be a powerful tool in breaking their will. The morale of our own men will be vastly improved by the knowledge that even death itself cannot stop the Union army. Having already lost their lives in battle, these ephemeral forms are invulnerable to any worldly weapon. They are capable of traveling at great speeds and through solid matter, and their general ability to hide themselves from living eyes makes them the perfect spies. In short, these soldiers can be invaluable to our army by returning to its service from beyond the grave.

    I propose to use the formidable skills of Madame Still to contact these soldiers and recruit them to again raise arms against the enemy. They will gladly fight again for that which they spent their lives so willingly. The coddling comforts of distant Aidenn are of no importance to a soldier with a thirst for glory in his veins, and I daresay that any man truly in the service of his nation never considers his duty entirely completed.

    More specifically, Lieutenant Lewis and I intend to approach Madame Still on Thursday of next week to begin our first attempt to contact our men. I intend to take command of as many spirit volunteers as possible and test their abilities in a simple intelligence gathering operation. Once we have determined their willingness and suitability for our tasks, a coordinated effort with their help can be carefully orchestrated by you, my superior in both station and wisdom.

    Of all of our commanders, I know that you possess the singular foresight and courage to take full advantage of this opportunity, and I am honored to bring it to your worthy attention. Please inform me when you would like to proceed.

    Sincerely,

    Colonel Werrick

    April 18, 1863

    Dear General Ashwell,

    Thank you, sir, for the prompt remittance of both your permission and your financial backing to my intelligence enterprise. I am respectfully returning your money, though, for my life and wealth are at the disposal of our Union and I prefer not to risk yours.

    In your letter, you requested a full report of my activities, and I provide here an account of our initial explorations into the realm of the dead.

    Lewis and I visited Madame Still in the early morning almost exactly one week ago. The shop was as we left it: old, filthy, and on the verge of collapse. With Union money tucked safely into the pocket of my coat, we entered.

    Madame Still was finishing with one of her customers. The portly and nervous gentleman stood spinning his hat by the brim in his hands, and when he saw us enter, he leaned in close and said, Contact me if you hear anything from them.

    I certainly will, sir, said she, as her claw-like hand scraped his coins from the table into a waiting box.

    He stammered a greeting to Lewis and me, and the door clattered behind him.

    Madame Still shook her head after he was gone. You must pardon him, gentlemen; he’s about to receive grave news.

    Indeed, I said, straightening my coat. I daresay we all have heard grave news in these times.

    His more than most, she said. Have you returned for a reading?

    I glanced at Lewis. After a manner of speaking, ma’am, yes. As you can probably tell without the benefit of arcane powers, we are representatives of the Union army.

    I had gathered that.

    We are charged here with a mission of great importance involving your singular skills and abilities.

    Really? And what would that mission be?

    We intend to contact our fallen comrades with your assistance and enlist their aid as spies for our cause.

    She looked down at her table for a moment. We who study the arts of the world beyond are not interested in the fleeting squabbles of the Earth. I am not certain that I can help you.

    Fleeting squabbles? I tried not to show my anger but I all but sputtered the words. Our present conflict is one of clear sides of dark and light. We offer you the chance to choose something other than personal gain.

    Dark and light, you say? she asked with a strange grin.

    Yes.

    With no personal gain?

    Aside from a nominal fee for your own maintenance and security, yes.

    I double my normal rate.

    Double it? Whatever for? Lewis demanded.

    She turned to him. I’ve never contacted so many spirits before. I cannot say what the effect will be upon me.

    Lewis and I looked at each other. Oh, very well, I said, tossing the cash on her table. You may retain any surplus as a payment for your discretion, if you follow my meaning.

    I always do, Colonel. She scooped the money off the table and tucked it somewhere in her billowing black dress. Are you ready to begin?

    I am indeed, said Lewis, taking the seat before her. I motioned him aside and he moved to the other.

    Madame Still began her work. She crushed some herbs, shook some sort of rattle, and swayed her head from side to side as Lewis and I looked on for ten, perhaps fifteen minutes. Maybe longer—the shadows in that shop run long and don’t always swing from one side to the other like most do under the sun.

    She muttered vague, slurred words to the collection of trinkets. She stroked the crystal ball with great care and fondness. Although I saw nothing at first, she apparently received some indication from the netherworld, for she looked up and said, They’re ready to hear you now, Colonel.

    I cleared my throat. Gentlemen? Is anyone there? Fall in!

    Nothing seemed to happen.

    They seem reluctant to come forth, Colonel. Perhaps you might say some words to inspire them.

    I expected as much. I nodded, rose from my seat at the table, and lifted my hands to the heavens. Men, I’m sorry to disturb your peaceful repose in the fields of the Lord, but we poor wretches upon the Earth require one last service from you all. As you well know, our fragile human bodies aren’t always up to the tasks required of us in battle, and sometimes we are required to call upon higher forces. We’ve prayed consistently to our Lord in heaven for decisive victory as quickly as possible, and our answer has yet to arrive. We therefore call on you, our emissaries in the domain of God, to help us in this time.

    The old woman nodded and grinned.

    I continued. "We need you now to be our ears and our eyes, to listen to the stirrings of the human mind and help us predict the motions of the enemy. Stalk their camps, listen to their whispers, and peer at their maps. Tell us all that you see and hear. Any intelligence you can provide may be what makes the difference between victory and defeat.

    Those are your orders. You are dismissed.

    I settled in my chair heavily. The swirling colors of the crystal ball seemed to darken, and Madame Still laughed aloud. You’ve stirred them, Colonel. They are donning their uniforms for their final battle. They march!

    Madame Still seemed to be veritably writhing with strange enthusiasm, shaking and shrieking and swinging her arms in the air. The table tottered violently and a smell of sickly rot filled the air.

    They are on the march for you, Colonel. I will give you their word when they send it.

    Lewis and I traded a look. Could that have been it?

    We’ll be waiting, Madame Still. I rose and Lewis followed suit. Remember that you have been well paid for your services.

    And you will get every penny’s worth, I assure you, sir.

    Being perhaps a bit abrupt, I nodded curtly and Lewis and I departed the shop. We all but dove into the warm and welcome street. Never before has sunshine been such a soothing sight. We both felt the oppressive aura of our experience slowly dissipate in the presence of crowds and busy streets, and we walked solemnly back to our quarters.

    It didn’t take long for our response. Six days later, Lewis received a note from Madame Still with our first message. To continue the experiment, I propose that we act upon it this information during our current campaign for Chancellorsville. Given the sensitive nature of the information, I have chosen to remit it under separate cover.

    I await further orders, General.

    Your obedient servant,

    Colonel Werrick

    April 18, 1863

    General Ashwell:

    Our message from Madame Still reads: Weak and tired men wait for Union death on the ridges of Salem Church. They intend to rest for another fortnight, but will then be reinforced and prepared for battle.

    The message seems entirely clear. I suggest that we attack these forces immediately, preventing them from re-strengthening. Please send complete orders as soon as you decide how to proceed. I look forward to another victory for our cause.

    Sincerely,

    Colonel Werrick

    May 1, 1863

    Dear General Ashwell,

    Your message has been received. I am forwarding your orders to Sedgewick and the VI Corps. May the glory of our forces be the glory of the Lord. I will inform you of further developments when our task is complete.

    Sincerely,

    Colonel Werrick

    May 10, 1863

    Dear General Ashwell,

    Permit me to extend my sincerest apologies and sorrow for the loss of your sons in the disastrous battle of May 4. You will be proud to know how valiantly they fought against incredible odds. It is said among the men that Edward continued to fight despite his many wounds and was only finally felled by a cowardly cannon shot. They were the only hope we had in a hopeless battle.

    As for the gross miscalculation of forces and odds by our intelligence network, I have no rational explanation. I reread the message for any misunderstanding and found none. I have investigated the possibility that rebel spies exchanged one message for another, but I have found no evidence of this.

    The only answer I could find for this horrific incident comes from the hag herself, and it is an answer that is insufficient for my tastes. I offer it here only to complete my report and dissuade you from future research in the area of spiritual espionage.

    Soon after exhausting every other venue of research after the battle, I chose to confront the woman herself and demand an explanation. Lewis and I stormed into her shop yesterday morning and caught her by surprise. Her crystal ball was covered on a shelf and her table was clear of the tools of her trade. She was clinging to a ladder and reaching for something upon a high shelf. Out of costume, she was oddly clean and well-kept.

    You! I cried. We demand an explanation for your miserable failure.

    Failure? said she, climbing down from the ladder with a book in her hand. Failure? I’m sorry, Colonel, but I was entirely successful.

    The volume of my voice grew with my anger. Your information was wrong. That army wasn’t tired or weak. It had already been reinforced, and we merely marched to our destruction. The VI Corps was lured by your words into a trap. Thousands died! Thousands were slaughtered on your lies. Thousands of fathers, brothers, and sons are now lost forever to the world.

    The crone tilted her head toward me. Lost forever to this world, perhaps, Colonel. But not to the others. The North and South aren’t the only forces gathering for battle and recruiting armies.

    Lewis and I stood speechless.

    Madame Still continued. The petty skirmishes of the material world are only training grounds for the true war in which your men will make excellent servants.

    I resisted a shiver—of anger or revulsion, I cannot say. You deliberately lured our men into certain death to serve you?

    She shook her head. Death is never certain, and it is certainly never what you think it is. Your men merely marched onto another battlefield under the command of more powerful officers. Smarter ones, too.

    There was nothing left to say. I had my answers, and my anguished soul enabled me to see only a single recourse. I raised my cavalry pistol and aimed it squarely at her head. With every intention of relieving that vile hag of whatever she deigned to call brains, I cocked the hammer and curled my finger around the trigger.

    Sir, said Lewis. You might be ill-advised to do that.

    I paused for a moment.

    What happens when she dies? Are we truly destroying her, or are we merely promoting her to the command of a great army?

    My gun wavered. Damn, I said under my breath. I lowered the weapon to my side.

    Your lieutenant is wise indeed, Colonel.

    I pondered what to do. Obviously killing the woman was not an option because we had no notion of what her powers could become. On the other hand, leaving her with the full capacity to cause further problems for our cause was also not advisable.

    I turned to the woman. You say you are the avatar of another great army in the beyond? You say that you are recruiting others for the purpose of fighting some grand war? Fine. Then I hereby place you under arrest for treason. Lewis! Place her in custody.

    Lewis slid the chair out of the way and advanced. The crone retreated back a few steps while looking left and right for a means of escape. Before Lewis could grab her, she scrambled over her table and darted past both of us, knocking her crystal ball off of the table to shatter against the floor. By the time Lewis and I managed to react, she had crashed through the flimsy front door and scampered out into the street. Apparently disoriented by the bright sunshine, she veered in a wide circle in the village square.

    She’s about to get away, sir, said Lewis, as we both made our way outside.

    No, she isn’t. I raised my pistol and made full use of my skills as a marksman to fire directly into her leg. In a spray of blood and shattered bone fragments, her right leg collapsed beneath her and she settled to the ground in a bloody heap. As she began to writhe helplessly in agony, I was almost moved to pity.

    Lieutenant, said I, holstering my weapon. Ensure that she gets the best possible medical care, and that she is treated well. Have her hands cut off and instruct one of the units to burn her shop to the ground.

    And so it was that we returned to camp with a prisoner.

    I am sorry to say, General, that mine was an imperfect solution. Fortunately for us, Madame Still will be immobilized for the rest of her life. How long that will be, I cannot say. We must vigilantly retain her as long as possible in a state between life and death to ensure that she cannot use her powers in either.

    All I know is that I’m not as comforted when the chaplains tell me of a better place after this one. I’m not as enthusiastically courageous about going to that distant shore in the service of my country as I once was. More importantly, I’m afraid of who might be waiting there for me when I do.

    Sincerely,

    Colonel Werrick

    The Swell of the Cicadas

    Tenea D. Johnson

    Cat flickered in the sun shower. Usually she was invisible, but in the great span of eternity something was changing. Even this, for the moment, couldn’t draw her attention away from the battlefield. She stared anxiously through the buildings and across the empty field at the tourists. Unlike the other spirits, she had pushed herself as far from them as she could. While they in their ripped coats of gray and blue, their gingham dresses, their head wraps, and their nudity, surged toward the living, Cat perched in the furthest corner of the furthest structure—though she pined to be closer. She watched them all from the leaning spire of clapboard, clothing, and charred chunks of rafter that made up the eastern corner of Civil City. A chorus of quiet moans emanated from the other ghosts; only shame kept her from joining Sergeant Travers, Miz Emma, and all the rest. She had expected that with death she would no longer have to endure such emotions, but that became one more deferred dream.

    If the tourists at the battlefield knew how she and the others looked at them, Cat doubted they would come. But they didn’t know. The tourists could not see them: they were alive and she and hers were dead. They lived in the two worlds overlapping each other, but rarely did they touch. The tourists couldn’t even see the city. They had no idea how close they actually came to death when they visited its site—not when they walked past Travers’ ever-rotting leg near the informational plaque or under the spot where the Dillons held each other in their dusty uniforms, still so relieved to be once more brothers and no longer combatants.

    Cat didn’t understand why anyone would want to tour a place where people had died. It was a ghoulish waste of time. She appreciated time’s value in a way that was not possible when she was alive—even as she looked through the main house window at her mother in the fields, who had bent over for so long her spine grew that way. Cat had been certain that a slave knew time more intimately than anyone else could.

    She had been young then, when she knew so much, but had control over so little. Since, she had learned the diminishing value of knowledge and that even the impossible could come to pass. Civil City was proof of that.

    Confederate and Union; Black and White; women, men, and children who could not live together now did not—instead they existed in the magnetic city that had trapped their souls. Cat had been one of the first to perish, out in the woods near the battlefield. A stray bullet had caught her in the heart as she hurried with the last of the items Missus had sent her back for. When she opened her eyes and found herself in the field, pinned down by a whirlwind of debris and jagged spirits she knew it was a nightmare; and as the pieces of that place were drawn to each other until they created precarious structures cut from a fever dream, she found she could not wake up. She had taken to calling it Civil City because it was the closest she would ever come to her own dreams of escaping to one.

    In the beginning Cat thought the Christians had been right and surely this must be the hell the preacher had spoken of. But it wasn’t what she had been promised. She was not supposed to be here. She had worked and slaved and obeyed, and still the Promised Land had not fulfilled its promise.

    But as Missus used to say, Cat had been born patient. In that single instance, Missus had been right—for that hell, the first one, did not last. What the spirits believed varied as much as their skin tones, as much as why they had fought the war and for whom. Yet the way that they existed was excruciatingly real and not a matter of belief—the endlessness of it, the heat, the hate, the remnants of their lives stacked as high as where heaven ought to be. But eventually, they came to a weary truce.

    One hundred and fifty years of fighting with their own bodies and their depleted spirits, the wisps of them that the original war had left behind, accumulated into a resolve more solid than the animosity that they once had for each other. And on some day not unlike every other gray day in the last two centuries, each of them felt it, each in his own time, by her own clock. They’d been given the time to know and so they understood that Civil City was the worst bit of anything, anywhere. So regardless of whatever force had forsaken them, there was no better word for it than hell and, more, they would no longer knowingly condemn themselves to it. They made a sliver of peace, if only in the space between them.

    And then they found it was not endless: Ghosts began to disappear. Dodgkins was first. His given name, Xander, always pleased Cat’s ear when he whispered it over and over to a memory that would not let him rest. One day his soft, insistent lament no longer floated under the others and Cat sought out the spot where he buried himself each day, only to find it empty. She had last seen him with the park ranger who, until the day Xander vanished, frequented the battlefield. So when XD appeared just above another set of initials, carved deep into the old layers of the grandmother sycamore where the day before there had been pristine bark, Cat took notice. When the next two ghosts went missing the same day as police showed up looking for two small boys and then Mulcahy disappeared, each followed with another old carving that had turned up overnight, she took heed.

    As far as Cat could reckon, it turned out hell took proxies. It was terrible, but it was hope.

    Yet, she had also hoped that today the tourists would not come. The relentless drizzle should have convinced them to find another way to expend their curiosity. Surely, there were more wholesome attractions than a battlefield. But they had disappointed her. Like distant ships willed toward the rocks, they came first as dark splotches on the horizon, ever closer until she could see details she didn’t care to consider—whether the frown lines on this one meant she didn’t enjoy her life anyway or that the flicker of anger in that man’s eyes alluded to a dislike of his children he carried out at home. Who amongst them deserved to be here in the corner where Cat had come to spend too many months and years? How they haunted her, standing under their umbrellas touring a mirage.

    Cat would follow the others; she too would pass on. So she would choose one and she would be free. She looked closely at the visitors. Parts of her floated out toward the tourists, unraveling her. Who deserved to be a slave? She hovered higher, caught on the question, but still drawn out by her desire. With an effort, she gathered herself and crept slowly away, as afraid to leave as she was to stay.

    Cat receded into the trees and wandered the wood. In recent days or years, she wasn’t quite sure, she had taken to drifting through the shadows and light in the grove of trees at the edge of the battlefield. The other spirits gave her no solace; too often they were locked in their own reveries, lifetimes in the making and an eternity in the execution. The excursions were Cat’s only respite. The drone of the cicadas in the midday heat and the errant breeze that blew seed pods from the trees broke up the relentlessness. Often she waited until the brink of evening. When she was little, her mother had told her it was a sacred time, a time when slaves should rest, just as they should during the swell of the cicadas in the peak of the heat. Of course they never could. Still it was a message, her mother whispered; they were heralding folks, letting them know it was time to come in out of the harsh. Even critters knew that, she said, even if white folks didn’t. So Cat most often wandered then—in the time between dusk and nightfall when the cicadas gave up their mantle to the crickets and the grove came alive with their noise. She often stayed with them, letting the sound move through her until she vibrated, each piece of her moving minutely, almost independently, until it seemed she might shake herself free.

    But today there was no such release. The woods were quiet; only the soft sound of rain filled the afternoon. As the drizzle quickened, she came around a wide oak trunk and happened upon a woman. The woman swayed slightly at the bank of the stream, watching an errant sunbeam sparkle across tiny currents as the water snaked across the moss-covered rocks just below the surface. Here at the bend past the central path, the water was shallow and clear, nearly invisible but for the reflections the light created. It was a calm spot, one that Cat visited often, but she’d never seen this woman here. She looked at the woman closely and Cat cowered no more. She’d seen many things in the woods—the killer she’d given to Mulcahy, the lovers out in the clearing, the families and friends who spent their autumn mornings shooting down crow, rabbit, and deer, but the woman was new. Even with her yellowing, pallid skin, she favored Missus. She had Missus’ sweet smile as well as the cunning in her eyes. Cat could tell that the woman had seen something unpretty and years ago it had started to strip all her own pretty away, leaving the deep, wide lines around her mouth, the rose blotches on her forehead and jaw.

    Something inside Cat stirred and drank in the sight. A whimper escaped her. The woman’s rheumy gaze shot over in Cat’s direction and she squinted, trying to discern the spot Cat was standing. She jerked her head left and right, then quickly turned, momentarily lost her balance, and walked away. But as she did, Cat felt certain she’d paused in just the wrong place. Her gaze lingered on what should have been leaves and air but also happened to be exactly Cat’s position as she floated above the brush.

    Cat had not been seen in one hundred and fifty years, but she had not forgotten the weight of a stare. The woman looked over her shoulder and they caught each other’s gazes. Cat froze and felt a frost come over her. She was certain of it now; they recognized each other. For that second that they regarded one another Cat settled and felt the ground beneath her feet. She looked down, and saw the impression she’d left in the grass: two oblong depressions that had become as foreign to her as her changing states. When she looked back up the woman had disappeared into the trees. Cat could hear her hurrying through the underbrush. She would be easy to track. Easier even than the first time.

    That day, when the spirits of Civil City had just begun to escape, she had spotted a man at a makeshift camp. He carried a big unwieldy weight in his arms. It was wrapped in torn blankets, so at first she couldn’t tell what he carried. When he stumbled and she saw the looseness with which the thing moved, she knew it was a body. She felt an aftershock of horror, a rare tremor in her otherwise steady existence. Strange that she couldn’t recognize death, only what was undead: the tourists, the people, the ghosts. That’s when she learned what was truly gone was lost to her as well. Cat wondered where the body’s spirit was, why this one had been set free when its death obviously must have been just as cruel as her own; yet no spirit followed behind the man. It did not have to walk the shadows witnessing as she did. It would not be hard to do evil to such a man. Would it really even be evil? He looked like a man retribution had lost track of, but there in the dim of the nestled woods Cat had found him. She crept closer, slowing at a shadow and melded into the darkness.

    Until now he had been her only quarry and though he at least deserved her fate, she had given him away. It was a moment of peace—and she had given it away when she told Mulcahy what she had seen and what she intended to do. By morning they were both gone.

    This time she would have something. That something bade her to follow the woman, out of the trees and onto the entrance to the road. Cat tried to avoid the cars—not because she was frightened. She had not known cars, with their noisy engines and belches of thick black smoke, when she was alive. But they were just machines and she had always been able to figure the workings of a thing. Personal slave to a wealthy landowner, Cat was not bred to tinker as Missus never tired of telling her, but still the pale woman loved to show Cat off to her paler friends—her clever nigger, her prized pet, her Cat.

    Even after all this time, the memory stung more than moving through the cars. This pain was new and though it was nothing like the force of being hit, each one scraped along the inside of her. When newly dead, she had passed through even the most solid of things with the resistance of smoke. Now she stuck to the edge of the trash-strewn path between the road and the woods as she made her way. Up ahead the woman hurried along at an uneven gait, inches from traffic.

    The sky darkened as the raindrops turned fat and multiplied. Cat struggled to keep her composition as parts of her were saturated and fell to the ground, trying desperately to rejoin the whole before she moved on. She slowed and waited for herself to catch up. Ahead, the woman stepped over the rain-swelled ditch, nearly a creek, and onto a rise. On the other side of it, she walked down to a lone, distant cabin with wan yellow light above the broken porch. When the woman reached the front stairs, Cat could see no more. Her vision blurred and prismed as the rain became a downpour and washed her away.

    The night came and, painstakingly, she reconvened. As she materialized a wet wind blew through the grove, lifting the hem of Cat’s dress. She made it across the road and to the swollen ditch. She

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