Rebel Spirits (4 page)

IN THE DAYS
after the ghost tour, I don’t see Nathaniel again, and I don’t know why. Did I do something to offend him? Has he turned to someone else? That would hurt.

I try Googling his name, but I come up with a million different hits, none of which seems to have anything to do with a Civil War–era ghost.

I have to put him out of my mind while we’re hurrying to get the house ready for our first guests. The town’s gone into hyperdrive for the upcoming Battle Days. People are renting out rooms in their homes. Restaurants push tables so close you
can practically eat off your neighbor’s plate. Excitement zings in the air. The Battle reenactors have started showing up on the streets.

“Those loonies, they take vacation days,” Bertha tells me, repotting a massive red geranium in the downstairs parlor. “Every boss man in Adams County gives ’em off. But look at ’em. There’s thousands. Horses, too. We don’t have enough in all of Pennsylvania to fill the ranks on both sides, Rebs and Yanks both.”

“Where do they come from, then?” I ask, polishing the wooden table, per Mom’s instructions. Charlotte’s busy cleaning the bathrooms, so I pitched in. “Like, imported imposters?”

“Those diehards, they take their uniforms out of mothballs and pour in from all over the US of A. They’d bawl like babies if they had to miss these first few days in July. The crazies want it the way it was back
when
, so folks gussy up in Civil War blues and grays and red britches, shooting at each other. Use to be a battleground, you know, blood running like a river. Musta been a sight to see, all right. Now it just pays good.”

That Bertha — she’s all heart.

You wouldn’t think so many able-bodied men would be available to replay the Civil War like it’s a video-game simulation. It flits through my mind again that Nathaniel might just be one of those reenactors playing a trick on me.

No. Randy saw him. Charlotte saw him, too, and recognized him, and then saw him vanish into thin air. I’m not crazy, I’m not dreaming, but I don’t know how to label what it is I am. Mesmerized? Possessed? Whatever it is, it frightens me and at the same time thrills me.

Bertha’s carrying on, but I’m not paying attention. She’s using a paring knife to clean potting soil out from under her jagged nails. Vaguely I hear her say, “You know about that red flag hanging over the front door?”

“Evan told me about it,” I reply. “The red flag signifies this once was a field hospital.”

“Mr. Know-it-All. Bet he didn’t tell you the rest.”

My ears perk up.

“The original building, it turned to ashy rubble around 1872, and it wasn’t rebuilt until the Carmodys came along six years later. The Carmodys had it until the turn of the century — twentieth, that is — and then the next folks changed the name to Coolspring Inn, Coolspring being the original name, back when.”

“Fascinating.” I zone out, wondering how to conjure up Nathaniel when I want to see him.

“Doesn’t matter what you call it,” Bertha says, “’cause on quiet nights, you can still hear the screams of the soldiers hav
ing their arms and legs cut off. Without an anesthetic. Another reason I won’t stay in this house after midnight.”

I mentally inventory Nathaniel’s arms and legs, wondering if he suffered any losses. He has only one boot. The other foot’s covered in heavy rags. I hope there’s truly a foot in there.

“Looks like I spilled potting soil on this throw rug. Mind taking it out and giving it a good pounding?”

I’m glad to, to get away from Bertha.

Outside, Evan’s mowing the lawn to within an inch of its life. He rides that mower like he’s mounted on a mighty steed.

“Come on up,” he offers, patting the seat beside him.

“Sorry, I’m swamped,” I say, blushing. “The first guests arrive this afternoon.”

“I can promise you a trip you’ll never forget, cruising the grounds at a record-breaking three miles per. No?” He shrugs, grinning. “Your loss. Hey, tell your parents that I checked out the house computers. Everything’s purring, but they should call if there are any problems. Or you can call.”

Is he flirting with me, or is it my imagination? I can’t trust myself these days. I wave to him and walk away just as Bertha comes out with the geranium pot.

“Never trusted that boy,” she mutters, watching Evan as he rides off on the mower.

“Your husband doesn’t think much of him, either,” I reply. Then I realize I haven’t seen Old Dryden’s cheery face today. “Where
is
your husband?” I ask out of curiosity.

“He’s out back soaking his flower beds good so he can take off the next four days,” Bertha replies. “He always sleeps ’round the clock through the Battle Days. Loves the lullaby sound of gunfire, even if they’re just blanks. I tell you, it takes all kinds.”

It’s two thirty in the afternoon, and the first guests will be arriving at three. Dad is running around troubleshooting the leaks and squeaks that keep popping up all over the house.

“We are hemorrhaging money, Miriam. M-o-n-e-y,” he cries.

Mom reassures him, “We have a full house for the Battle commemoration, and lots of nice reservations through the rest of the summer. We’ll come out okay, Vernon, you’ll see.”

“Hope so,” Dad mutters. “And I promise you, Miriam, as soon as we see some headway, more coming in than bleeding out, Bertha will be ancient history.”

Which I think is funny, because this whole place is about history; history of the living and history of the dead.

I shower quickly before the guests arrive. Summers in
Philly always meant softball games, with me as catcher and our team, the Liberty Bells, trouncing toward the league championship. I sure miss those games. Softball, that was righteous sweat; this is just grime and humidity grit.

I change into a light sundress, but then decide to find a newer pair of sandals up in the attic. I lift the ceiling door into the attic — and Nathaniel’s there, waiting for me. Not a shimmery vision like lake water, but three-dimensional, solid, and … alive.

“I thought you’d never come,” he says.

It takes me a minute to get my bearings, and then I respond.

“Me? You’re the one who’s a no-show, the one who does the vanishing act. I’m just a mere mortal.”

Nathaniel’s dark eyes crinkle with a smile. “I like your zest,” he says. “You’re feisty.”

“I can’t tell, is that a compliment?”

“Most certainly.” His eyes lock on mine. “Lorelei.” There’s a pause, and then he adds, “Forgive me. I should have asked you, do you want me to call you Lorelei or something else? I couldn’t tell from your diary.”

“Lori,” I reply.

“Lori. Lori.” He rolls my name over his tongue. It’s never sounded so sweet. “I prefer Lorelei. Would you mind? It’s a timeless name.”

I surprise myself by nodding. I never like it too much when my dad uses that old-fashioned name, but it sounds so much better on Nathaniel’s lips. “That’s fine,” I tell him.

Nathaniel gives a fleeting smile, but then his eyes fill with sorrow. “I need your help, Lorelei.”

“What can I do?” I ask.

He sits on a trunk stuffed with winter bedding and hangs his head. His felt cap falls to the floor. I’m struck by how dark and wavy his hair is, trailing down his elegant neck. I want to tuck that beautiful hair behind his ears, trace my fingers along the conch folds of his ears. He picks up the cap and begins to twist it. Then he gazes at me, sending chills and warmth through me at once.

“Time is slipping away,” he responds. “I have only until midnight on the third of July.”

“What’s the rush?” I’m just starting to feel comfortable with him, especially now that he’s solid enough for me to touch. Not that I’m ready to reach out and do that yet.

“It’s hard to explain,” he says softly. “I come here every year during the Battle Days, and when they end, I return to — you would think of it as oblivion, but it’s more like hibernation. Bears hibernate; spirits also.”

I bite my lip, considering. “Is it sort of suspended animation?”

“Yes, that describes it well. When I’m animated, as I am now, with you, solid and sinewy, I don’t want to return to that other fleshless world. But I have no choice. It’s my fate.”

“I don’t believe that. People can change if they want to.”
Look how much I’ve changed in just a few days
, I’m thinking.
Here I am, talking with a ghost.

He shakes his head slowly and rubs his hand down his neck, his arm. “How do you stand it, how quickly time passes in bodily form?”

I pinch the flesh of my arms. “This is the only form I’ve ever had. It’s impossible to answer your question.”

“Never mind then; just listen.” Now his words come in hurried bursts. “You are my only chance. I’ve waited months, years, decades, a century and a half.”

I sit down on a pillow across from him. “Waited for what, Nathaniel? Tell me.”

“Answers to what happened to me, back then, during the Battle.” He takes a breath. “I already told you I was murdered.”

“Yes, but …” I’m not sure how to phrase this next part. “How’s dying in battle the same as murder?”

“Let me explain,” Nathaniel says, leaning forward. “On the third battle day, I had a bayonet stab wound to my shoulder and was ordered to the infirmary. Doctors and nurses, mostly civilian volunteers from Gettysburg, they were all doing what they
could for so many wounded, so fast. Sometimes just washing a soldier’s face with cool water, maybe giving him a shot of something strong to ease the pain, or calling for a chaplain. Some wounded just lay on the grass, on bare wood, on dirt floors. I was one of the lucky ones. I had a stretcher, but I rolled off to make room for a boy from Indiana. Told him, ‘Be strong, soldier. You’ll be back home under a sycamore in no time,’ but it was a lie. I knew he wouldn’t make it through the night. I pressed a rag to my own shoulder. In a minute it was soaked with blood.”

Nathaniel gasps, shudders, reliving the intense pain and shock, as fresh this moment as it was all those years ago. He topples forward. I catch his head in my hands and slowly lift it, slowly raise his shoulders — feel the ripple of the stab wound at his shoulder — until he’s sitting upright again. It’s amazing to be able to touch him — solid and warm and real.

“At times, in this bodily form, the pain overwhelms me,” he says in a feverish whisper.

I sit beside him on the trunk now. I wait for the years and pain to pass until he comes back to me. Like my brother Randy and me, so close and yet four thousand miles apart, Nathaniel and I sit together, separated by a hundred and fifty years.

Finally I sense his body relaxing, the pain ebbing away, and
I know that this is a scene I will replay a thousand times in my memory, in my dreams. I’m choking on the memory of the future.

“Let me open the window. I can hardly breathe,” I say. I crank the window open, relieved to feel a breeze flutter past me and to smell earthy life outside. “Better, don’t you think?”

“I don’t need air, or food, or water, or sleep. What I need is your help, Lorelei.”

His tone makes me uneasy, as if he’s about to say something I’ll regret hearing. My impulse is to silence him, to keep everything just the way it is. But I can’t. Something about him tugs at my heart. I sit back down on the trunk by his side.

“So, the next day you went back into battle?” I ask.

“No, I did not, for you see, that night I was shot in the back. Murdered by someone I never saw.”

Stunned, I lock my hands over my racing heart. “So, you really meant it? That you were murdered?”

“As sure as you’re sitting here with me today. I know now that you are the one I’ve waited for, the one always meant to find out the truth about who murdered me. You see things others do not see. The boy in the tree — I read about it in your diary,” he reminds me. Like I could forget?

“Nobody else knows about that.” After a long pause that he patiently waits through, I say, “Okay, where do we start?”

“You won’t understand my death until you know about my life. But I can’t talk anymore now. This corporeal form won’t hold much longer.”

“Wait! You can’t leave me hanging this way, and I refuse to watch you fade away from me again,” I say, stamping my foot.

He flashes me a thin smile. “Feisty, as I said. All right, then, Lorelei, you be the first to leave this time.” He pulls a watch on a chain out of his pocket. It’s rusted, and the crystal is broken. “The old thing hasn’t ticked in a hundred years, but looking at it’s a habit. Doesn’t matter. I can tell what time it is by the sun. Let us meet here tomorrow, after your noon meal.”

I nod and turn away, frustrated and still a bit in shock from our conversation. I clutch the handle on the cutout door that’s both the attic floor and the ceiling below. Lifting the door, I start down the steps. My mistake is turning around to see him. He is already not there.

I’M SHAKING AS
I return to my room and slip on my old flip-flops. I realize it’s a decent hour in Ghana, and I have just enough time for a quick Skype with my brother.

I log on, and reach him. It’s a relief to see his face pop up, wearing a big smile.

“How you holding up out there in the boonies?” he asks me. “No more mysterious night visitors?”

How do I answer without making him think I’ve gone totally into loonyland?

“Um, Randy? It’s possible that this house is …”

“What, possessed? Dad phoned me last night and said that as soon as he troubleshoots one problem, something else breaks down.”

“Besides that. The house might be — and don’t start yelling — haunted.”

I expect him to give me that head-tilted
Ya gotta be kidding
look, but instead he says, “Ever hear of the
kalunga
line?”

“Sounds like a dance you do at weddings.”

“Not quite. It’s a tradition among the Kikongo people here in West Africa. It means the threshold between worlds.”

A ripple of recognition zips through me. “Worlds as in living and dead?”

“You got it, sis. People here believe that after death the soul travels the path of the sun as it sets in the west. A few hundred years ago, I’m talking pre-Gettysburg, West Africans kidnapped as slaves believed that the
kalunga
line was under the Atlantic Ocean, because the living became the dead when they got to the US as slaves.” He pauses for a long time, studying me. “You still there, Lori? I see you, but the audio’s dead.”

I’ve just been silent, taking everything in. I blink at my brother. “You know the guy you saw the other night on Skype?”

“Yeah, but we were both wiped out that night, seeing things.”

“He’s been around a few more times, Randy.”

My brother’s shoulders rise and sink slowly. “And?”

“He’s a dead soldier, and I’ve been talking to him.” I swallow, watching my brother’s stunned reaction. “So I guess you could say I’m hanging on the
kalunga
line, and to tell you the truth, it doesn’t feel all that weird anymore.” I’m not ready to tell Randy about my feelings toward Nathaniel. Or about his murder.

“Mom and Dad know about this?” he demands.

“You think I’d clue them in? No way! Mom would scuttle me off to a shrink, and Dad would go totally ballistic.”

“Should I be worrying, Lori?”

Good question. “Not yet. Just stay tuned. I may have lots more to tell.”

Randy nods, looking concerned. “I’m standing by. If you need me, just whistle. On second thought, there’s a taboo here in Ghana: Don’t whistle at night, and don’t touch iguanas.”

“Not a problem, since when it’s night here, it’s tomorrow there, and if there were iguanas strutting around at Coolspring Inn, Gertie would have them for lunch. A bunch of guests arrive in a few minutes. Full house for the next five days.”

“Better keep your dead soldier under wraps. He could scare away the customers.”

“I’m not letting him anywhere near them,” I promise, but I know I have no control over Nathaniel Pierce.

Mr. and Mrs. Rodney Durning are the first guests to arrive. Mom’s breathless from the frantic preparations, but when she greets the Durnings she’s oozing cheer.

“Welcome, welcome! It’s so nice to have you at the newly restored Coolspring Inn,” she chirps, guiding them into her reception area in the parlor, where they
ooh
and
aah
over all the genuine fake replicas. Mr. Durning is squinting at a framed wall map from way back in 1860.

His wife says, “I read on the Internet that all these inns are haunted. Are they, truly?”

I cough into my fist.

Mom smiles like the Mona Lisa.

“You won’t say, will you?” Mrs. Durning chuckles. “Well, I would sure like to experience a spirit or two, wouldn’t you, Rodney?”

“Yeah, sure. How many you got staying here tonight?” he asks Mom.

“Spirits?” Mom asks playfully. “Too many to count. People, twelve, including my family.” She turns to an elderly couple who just came in.

“We’re the Crandalls!” the husband booms, as if he’s announcing a circus act.

Mom seems a little frazzled and whispers to me, “Can these old folks make it up the stairs?” To them, she says, “So, we have you in the General Robert E. Lee room, second floor.”

“Isn’t he a Confederate?” asks Mrs. Crandall.

“And a great general and hero,” Mom adds.

Mr. Crandall is not to be pacified. “The man lost the war. We are not staying in a loser’s room.”

It’s not like General Lee actually
slept
in the room.

“Oh, dear,” Mom says under her breath.

“I suppose we can switch you,” Dad pipes up from behind the computer at the check-in desk. “Let’s see. The only Union room that’s not yet assigned is General Buford, but he’s on the third floor.”

Mrs. Crandall’s eyes shift to the long, green staircase, and her husband says, “Come, Mother. Up we go to Buford. Tallyho!”

I tap my foot impatiently. Once all the guests are assigned their generals, I decide, I’ll slip out of the house. Earlier that day, I’d noticed that half the yellow school buses in Pennsylvania have been commandeered, along with the Freedom Transit local trolleys, to carry tourists to the various points around Gettysburg. Every third building has a plaque declaring it official/original something-or-other, like the Tillie Pierce House, which the Lincoln Line goes right past. That’s got to be my
first stop. Maybe Tillie was Nathaniel’s sister or mother, and someone at the house can tell me about him. I know, I’m obsessed.

The next guest to arrive is a woman shouldering a canvas bag stuffed with books. An orange extension cord dangles to the floor.

“You do have free Wi-Fi in the rooms, do you not?” she asks Dad. “The brochure said.”

“Of course, Ms. Wilhoit. You requested a room with a large desk and good lighting. That would be General Jeb Stuart, on the third floor.”

“Superb. I will need very little. You’ll often see a Do Not Disturb sign on my door, in which case please just leave clean towels outside my room. I came here to work on my novel about Gettysburg, and I work at odd hours.”

I step behind Dad to see the notes he’s made on the computer. Wow, Amelia Wilhoit’s a famous historical-romance novelist with seventeen books to her name. How cool. Maybe we’ll turn up as characters in her next novel. I do see that she has plenty of books on Gettysburg in her bag. I give her my best profile as I lift her heavy-duty printer box.

So, we’re now officially innkeepers. I hope Nathaniel Pierce doesn’t mind our guests swarming around in his space. Maybe he’ll materialize to welcome some of the travelers. An odd pang
of jealousy darts through me. Nathaniel Pierce is
my
ghost, not theirs.

How bizarre is it that I’m even thinking that way?

After I’ve deposited Ms. Wilhoit’s printer in her room, I bump into Charlotte in the hall. She’s just put carnation sachets in all the guest-room drawers.

Should I mention Nathaniel? She hasn’t said a word about the ghost tour, and she seems distracted now. I know she’s rushing to get to her other job.

“Charlotte? Quick question.” She stops to smile at me. “The guy you saw at the cemetery?” I whisper. “You know who I’m talking about?”

Her smile falters for a second. “Nathaniel, you said his name was? What about him?”

“
Anything
about him. He keeps popping up to talk to me but he’s being mysterious. You said you’ve seen him before.”

“And lots of others.” She thrusts a sachet into my hands. “He needs something from you, Lori, if he’s showing up to talk to you all the time. Find out what it is.” Then she runs down the stairs, leaving me sniffing the sachet. I get the feeling she really doesn’t want to talk about this, and that leaves me wondering if she knows something about Nathaniel that she’s not telling me.

Tillie Pierce’s house was already standing on Baltimore Street in 1863, but now it’s a B&B. No vacancy. Everybody has to make a buck, right? In the front parlor there are about a million copies of her book for sale. It’s called
What a Girl Saw and Heard of the Battle
. Maybe I ought to buy a copy. Sixteen dollars? Forget it.

A jingle of a ceramic bell on the book table brings a small woman out of the back room. She’s wearing a swaying 1860s dress. I’m glad Mom doesn’t make us dress like Civil War throwbacks.

“Oh, hello! You’re the daughter of that new couple running Coolspring Inn,” she says, clapping her hands as if she’s smashing gnats.

Word gets around fast in this outpost. Is my picture up in the post office? “Yes, I’m Lori Chase. I was wondering about the girl who used to live here.”

“Our Tillie — well, really, Matilda.” She scoops up one of the little black books and holds it up to shoulder level like show-and-tell in kindergarten.

“I’ll have to read the book one of these days.”

Disappointed, the woman lays it facedown. No sale.

“I was wondering,” I go on, “if Tillie is related to a Civil War soldier who fought here in the battle, someone named Nathaniel Pierce. Maybe he was her brother?” Please don’t make him her
husband
!

“Our Tillie was a remarkable girl, from a well-to-do family by 1863 standards. Her father was a butcher; meat was dear in those days. Nowadays, well, we’re all vegetarians. Nathaniel. Hmm. No, her brothers were William and James, and to my knowledge, the family had no soldiers in our famous Battle.”

Around town, the Battle is always spoken of with a capital
B
.

“They did shelter five Union soldiers here when the house was surrounded by Confederates, but no kin, no Pierces. Have you been to the soldiers’ cemetery to find your gentleman? Do you know his regiment? The state he comes from? Which day of the Battle he fell?”

“No, no, and no.” I wish I did.

“Do you know
anything
about the man?” She eyes me skeptically. “What brings you to this soldier?”

My lips must look bloodless the way they’re tucked into my teeth, so she draws her own conclusion. “Ah, I understand. He’s reached you from the Other Realm. Godspeed.”

As I turn to go, I realize it’s not just Charlotte. Everyone in this town seems to believe in ghosts.