By Eva Schultz

Tom sat in shadows deeper than a lake and stared up at the murdered man standing over him. Reynolds’ dead form cast a light like the moon, spilling over the tips of the tall prairie grass. 

“I’m sorry.” Choking on a sob, Tom edged backward on one hand, but the ghost moved with him, silent, its cryptic stare unwavering. 

He was as Tom had last seen him, hours earlier, dressed in overalls, boots, and an old shirt, a work apron tied around his waist. The left side of his head and neck were painted in blood, and his fingers were dark with it from where he had clutched at the wound in his final moments.

“It was Clark who fired the shot,” Tom said, a plea for pity in his voice. “I never wanted to hurt anyone. I just needed the money.”

It had seemed like such a good idea when Clark had suggested it. They were out of cash after the latest streak of bad luck at the card table, and Reynolds was a slow-moving old man who spent much of his day out panning in the stream behind his shack. They would be in and out before he ever saw them, and even if he did spy them, he was too old and slow to do anything about it. Get the gold, hop a train, never think about it again.

But the liquor that Tom had used to steel his nerves had altered the speed of the world. Time jumped in fragments, and the interior of the cabin was dizzying, stuffy, and dark. The gold nuggets weren’t sitting conveniently in a little cheesecloth sack on the mantel as he had imagined. He was still staring at the fireplace, trying to conceive of where to look next, when Clark shouted something. The door opened, and there was Reynolds. They all stared at one another, and then Reynolds lurched toward a rifle set just inside the door.

Clark fired before Tom even saw him draw the pistol. 

“What are you doing?” Tom cried. He edged closer to the old man, who was sprawled in the doorway, pawing at his head and breathing his last.

Even now, out in the cold night air, Tom could smell the dank cabin full of blood and gunpowder and death.

“Clark had the gun, not me,” Tom explained to the ghost, rising to his knees. “I told him I didn’t want to hurt anyone. He said we wouldn’t even see you. He said you’d be at the stream.” His words hung weakly in the air between them.

Reynolds raised a heavy hand and beckoned. 

Tom recoiled. “I can’t go back,” he said. “They know by now that you’re…they know what we did.”

In a flash, Tom’s life spilled out ahead of him—riding hogtied in a wagon to the jail. Days and nights in a tiny iron cell waiting for the circuit judge. Then, once the trial was over, a rope.

He groped in his shirt pocket for his share of the gold nuggets and threw them at the figure’s feet. “Here, you can have them back,” he said, stumbling upright. “Let me go; I’ll find a new town, and I’ll earn my way. I won’t ever steal again. I swear it!”

Reynolds drifted closer, the soles of his boots brushing the tips of the prairie grass. Breathing fast and shallow, Tom closed his eyes to shut out the gruesome face. “I’m sorry!” he screamed.

He turned and ran on exhausted legs, his parched mouth cracking, his breath rushing in his ears. He hit a rut in the ground, sprawled and lay with his face pressed into the grass, his hands clamped over his ears. With his remaining strength, he willed it all away—not just this night, but all of the days and weeks before it, when listening to Clark had seemed like a good idea. He would gladly go back to the hungry days, the poor days, when he was unassailed by specters in the dark.

Finally, he risked squinting into the night again. And there was Reynolds, inches from his face, eyes burning and blood glinting in the moonlight.

Tom rose on unsteady legs. Reynolds backed away, turned in the direction of town, and beckoned him onward.

He knew the dead man would lead him to the jailhouse, to confession, to the gallows. To die alone.

No—perhaps not alone. With a start, he realized that the law would want Clark, too. Maybe if he turned his partner in, they would show him mercy. It might mean life in the state prison, but at least he would be alive.

It was his last hope. If he fled, Reynolds would flee with him, his mangled visage blocking out the rest of the world until Tom fell into madness. But if he went back and confessed, maybe he could end this haunting.

He hung his head and followed the deceased back toward justice. His shadow rippled over the tall grass in the unnatural glow of Reynolds’ form. Then it fell across something else. Something bigger.

Tom realized too late where the ghost had led him.

The flare of Clark’s pistol lit up the night. 

~

Clark sat in shadows deeper than a lake and stared up at the two murdered men standing over him.