Are You Haunted (part thirty-six)

Are You Haunted

(part thirty-six)

He could see the full path of the streambed, hilltop to roadside. A deep hollow below the dogleg, a well without contour.

He overlaid this with snow, glittering feet of it.

He wished he could see the ghost…if she would show herself, be so radiant, her face pulling into focus…

Cameras could do things. Could they project against a bank of fog?

Fog was necessary. No one said she made noise of any kind.

So, could be the cheapest trick, stuff a guy could learn in the army. But stuff a guy like Alfin’s father, or Alfin Doyle…

Alfin’s godfather, uncle…?

Isobel was a Gilshannon, Alfin Doyle was her grandfather, but Dennis Tovey the elder was Alfin’s father. But Alfin was Dennis the younger’s cousin…

Don’t think about it.

Powell felt untrusting of Alfin’s father, who’d spoken only to Summers about Lettie. Rohdl had cut them off, then Summers never answered, had he seen her? He hadn’t come here from the government to spot balls of light, yak about specters with credulous locals. He had come to push this thing along…

Whatever the Drybrook mill would be when the new concern took over.

Decent men with simple livings, families, churches easily, a corner bar they liked… Doyle’s, didn’t people keep saying? Believed also in Lettie the ghost. Didn’t question her walking, her portent, her vengeance.

Could this town make a stranger simple, too?

Why fear that a kindly man like Alfin’s father was a stooge, helping Summers plant his rumors? That no one was a friend, but all were practitioners, who saw in Powell a missing person unsought for, a disposable body that might anyway have died in the war?

A truck rumbled past, and the friend began to talk, his lips saying something of which Powell caught only the name.

The one he feared.

“Says you need to move that jeep.” A hand jerked out, middle finger pointing.

“Yes, sir. Move the jeep…where, sir?”

“Where it belongs. Which ain’t sittin in the way.”

And if a superior turns his back, flags one of the trucks, gets in…

Consider yourself dismissed.

But… “Sir, repeat the order, sir?”

Too late.

36

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part one)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)