Dr. Cooper settled it. "Both of you go. And you"d better hurry or you might miss something."
They jumped up and headed down the hill, quickly but carefully stepping around stones and p.r.i.c.kly cacti. Their flashlights remained unused, clipped to their belts. The moonlight helped them. It bathed everything in cold, gray and blue tones, but at least seeing the way was no problem.
The shadows gave them a jolt every now and then. A limb on a bush could twitch in the wind and look like a lizard darting along. A lizard could look like a still shadow until they got close, then dart away, making them jump.
They made it quickly through the town and finally saw the jeep sitting in the road like a boxy, squatting toad.
"Now what was it he wanted?" Jay began to review.
"The night camera," said Lila. "You know, high speed lens, high speed film. But let"s hurry."
They ran the last several yards to the jeep. Jay found Dr. Cooper"s other camera bag in the backseat and grabbed it. "Okay, let"s go."
They turned to start back.
The jeep made a squeak. Then they heard the tires crunching on the gravel.
"Jay!" Lila shouted, looking back. The jeep was moving, rolling lazily backward. "What did you do, let off the parking brake?"
"I didn"t touch the brake! All I did was grab Dad"s camera bag!"
Jay took off after the jeep but began to stagger as he ran, feeling dizzy. "Whoa ..."
He wasn"t alone. Lila was stumbling as well. It was weird. Their eyes saw no motion anywhere, but their feet told them the ground was tilting.
The jeep rolled a little more, then stopped, then started rolling forward.
Jay stopped in his tracks and shot a look back at Lila. "Hey, didn"t Professor MacPherson say something about this?"
Lila stood in one spot, just trying to stay standing. There was nowhere to sit but on a cactus. "It"s gravity! It"s going weird, just like the professor said."
The jeep stopped, then started rolling backward again.
Jay ran, zigzagging and staggering, and finally caught up with the vehicle. He jumped in and yanked on the parking brake then gave a sigh of relief. "Whew! Is this weird or what?"
Lila managed to return to the road and steadied herself against the jeep. "I still feel dizzy."
"Must be the gravity playing games with our inner ears," Jay theorized. "It"s hard to know which way is up. I"m just glad the jeep moved, otherwise we"d think there was something wrong with us-"
Lila put her finger to her lips. Jay could read the fear in her eyes and froze, silent. They listened.
From somewhere amid the ruins of the ghost town, they heard an eerie sound. A coyote? No. It was human. A woman"s voice. For a moment they could hear it, and then it faded.
They waited, stone still and silent. Their eyes scanned the barren, moonlit landscape. They could see the old chimney some distance away and, nearby, some jagged boards sticking up through the sagebrush. But nothing was moving out there.
The breeze shifted slightly. They could feel it in their hair.
The voice came to them again, carried on the breeze. A woman crying ... no, more like wailing, her voice full of fear. The voice was faint as if far away, and yet they could tell it was coming from somewhere close, somewhere in the ruins.
Jay had to make up his mind not to be afraid. Right now, panicking would be very easy. "You okay?" he whispered.
Lila"s eyes were wide, continually scanning in the direction of the sound. Her throat was so dry she couldn"t speak, so she nodded to her brother.
Jay reached into the camera bag and pulled out his father"s night camera, flipping off the lens cap.
Now they could hear the woman"s voice clearly. She seemed to be crying out in fear, pleading with someone, but they couldn"t make out the words.
"Don"t move," Jay cautioned Lila. "We don"t want to scare it."
Lila"s head snapped around and she gave him a look that carried a clear message: We don"t want to scare it?
Then she saw Jay"s eyes and knew he"d spotted something. She turned to look in the same direction, not wanting to, but wanting to.
It looked like a blue puff of smoke coming up the road toward them, floating, wavering, the edges unclear. A moment later they could tell it was someone running. As it came closer, they could see a face.
It was a woman in a long blue dress, with long hair waving in the wind behind her as she ran. Her face was contorted with fear. Her faint, faraway voice came in agonized gasps. She was transparent; they could see right through her.
"The ghost!" Lila whispered. "The ghost of Annie Murphy!"
Chapter 3.
At the first sight of the ghost, Jay"s mind had gone numb. But now he remembered the camera in his hands and raised the viewfinder to his eye. He got the woman in focus. CLICK! He zoomed in on her. CLICK! He could see her face and her frightened eyes, her mouth open as she gasped for air. CLICK!
He lowered the camera and saw her only thirty feet away, still running. She looked behind her. Jay and Lila could make out a few words: "No ... please ... please let me go ..."
Abruptly, the woman turned off the road and ran through the ruins on what used to be a side street.
Jay clambered out of the jeep. "Come on. We have to help her!"
Lila"s voice was a frightened gasp. "Help her? Help her do what?"
"Can"t you tell? Somebody"s after her!"
That made Lila look down the road again. Was there another ghost back there even more frightening than this one?
Jay grabbed her by the arm and they ran together, following the vague, wavering form through the ruins, around cacti and piles of boards, over rubble, past frightened lizards and clumps of sagebrush.
"Look," Jay exclaimed in a whisper. "She isn"t casting a shadow!"
"We should get Dad!"
"We can"t lose sight of her! Come on!"
They followed her beyond the ruins, moving rapidly up the gradual slope toward the base of the cliffs. She was looking over her shoulder at... someone, something ... but she wasn"t looking at Jay and Lila.
"Annie!" Jay called, so suddenly and so loudly that it almost stopped Lila"s heart. "Annie Murphy, wait!"
Annie only screamed and ran faster. She reached the cliffs and disappeared.
"Where"d she go?" Lila gasped.
They ran up to the base of the cliff and found an opening in the rock about four feet wide. Jay unclipped his flashlight from his belt and clicked it on. Lila did the same.
They stepped into the gap, light beams searching ahead of them and up the sheer walls. It was like going into a cave with no ceiling, a tight, viselike alley in the rocks. They moved ahead deliberately but slowly, listening, looking. The opening penetrated into the cliff twenty feet, then thirty, then forty.
Jay kept searching the sandy floor. "She didn"t leave footprints."
"Oh right," Lila responded sarcastically.
Jay stopped. "Shh." They stood still, listening. "I thought I heard her."
Lila called out in a gentle voice, "Annie? Annie, it"s just us, Jay and Lila. We won"t hurt you."
They moved ahead slowly and came around a corner into a wider gap in the rocks, a roomlike area about ten feet wide.
The ghost was standing in the center of the room, looking back at them, gasping from her long and desperate run. She appeared two-dimensional, like a flat picture projected on an invisible movie screen. The image wavered in the same way distant objects waver when seen through heat waves. They could hear her breathing, but the sound was very faint, as if coming from another room. Her hair was deep red and fell in waves about her shoulders. Her face was beautiful.
They stood still, full of wonder. Words failed them. But their terror was gone. Strangely enough, expecting and waiting for the ghost had caused them the most fright; it was not seeing it that had chilled them. Now, as they stood face to face with Annie Murphy-or whoever it was-they were not as afraid as they were curious.
"Annie?" Lila coaxed, her hand outstretched as if to a timid deer. "Annie, don"t be afraid."
Jay sensed a danger he couldn"t see. The ghost was looking in their direction, but she wasn"t looking at them. She seemed to be looking beyond them, toward something or someone else. Jay slowly raised the camera to his eye again and started snapping more pictures as he rea.s.sured her. "Annie, don"t be afraid now. This is a little camera. I just want to take your picture-"- Something frightened her, but it wasn"t Jay"s camera. It was something behind them. Jay and Lila shot a glance backward but saw nothing.
The ghost let out a scream that sounded far away. Then she panicked, leaping at them, arms flailing, terror in her face.
Jay dropped the camera and ducked, his arms over his head. Lila screamed, dropping to the ground. All they could see were bright flashes of blue, then white, then blue again as the earth reeled under them. They felt they were spinning in a vicious whirlwind, and from every direction they could hear the ghost of Annie Murphy still crying and pleading with one word echoing over and over again: "No ... no ... no ..."
Everything stopped.
It was quiet. The earth was steady, unmoving.
Jay squinted. The little room formed by the cliff walls was suddenly filled with light. He felt dizzy and rested his hand against the wall to steady himself. Lila found herself flat on the sandy floor, feeling like she"d just awakened from a nightmare. She was squinting too, and wondered where the light was coming from. Looking up, they could see blue sky above the breach in the cliff. It was morning.
"What happened?" she wondered aloud, sitting up and making sure she was still in one piece. "Are you all right?"
Jay stood still, not sure where he was. The change had been so abrupt, so sudden. "I think so. I mean, I"m all here."
"We must have been knocked out or something. It"s morning."
"Yeah." Jay still had his flashlight in his hand, and it was still on. He clicked it off. "Where"s the camera?"
They both looked around the room, but there was no sign of it.
"Oh-oh," said Lila. "Do you suppose the ghost stole it?"
"Come on. We"d better find Dad and let him know we"re okay."
Jay helped her up and they made their way back through the narrow pa.s.sage toward the outside. They could hear faint sounds out there: horses" hooves, some voices, some rattling and squeaking like wheels and wagons.
"I"ll bet people are out there looking for us," Lila offered.
"This is going to be tough to explain."
They stepped out into the fresh air and bright morning sun.
Lila grabbed Jay"s arm. They froze.
They could see the old desert canyon below them, still the same as the day before. They could make out the old ruins: the lone chimney and the piles of weathered boards, the crumbling foundations, and the hints of where the streets had been.
But now they could see something more. Ghostly, transparent buildings stood over the old foundations. Houses with porches, windows, and roofs stood over the piles of boards. There were ghosts of people walking where the streets used to be, as well as men on horseback and horse-drawn wagons. The kids could hear the faint, faraway sounds of the old town starting a new day: people talking, laughing, yelling; the clip-clop of hooves; the shouts of wagon drivers.
The town of Bodine was back just the way it had been, superimposed over the old desert ruins like a double-exposed photograph.
Jay looked at Lila and she looked back. Neither had to tell the other: They both saw it.
"Is it real?" Lila wondered.
No sooner had Lila asked the question than the town began to intensify in color and sound, "filling in" and becoming solid. The old foundations and piles of boards disappeared, hidden by the solid buildings they used to be. The old streets that had been overgrown by sagebrush and cacti became clear streets again, rutted by wagon wheels and roughened by horses" hooves. The people were no longer ghosts, but solid people going about their business. Some rode solid horses and drove solid wagons. The sounds of the town-the voices, the horses and wagons, the clatter and bustle-rose to a natural volume.
"Maybe," Jay replied. "Come on. Let"s have a closer look."
She held back. "I don"t know if I want to go down there."
Jay tugged at her. "I"ve just got to."
She rolled her eyes. "I"m going to regret this."
Feeling like they were in a dream, they started down the slope toward the town.
For Dr. Cooper and Richard MacPherson it was not morning, but twenty minutes before midnight. Only half an hour had pa.s.sed since Jay and Lila had gone down the hill after the other camera, but in Dr. Cooper"s mind that was long enough. "We"d better go down there and make sure they"re all right."
They abandoned their post by Cyrus Murphy"s grave and headed down the hill into the ruins of the town.
"They may have been alarmed by that gravitational tremor we just had," said Mac. "But I doubt it created any danger for them."
"But it isn"t like them to be gone so long." Dr. Cooper kept scanning the town in the dark. He could see the jeep, sitting by itself in the middle of the road, but there was no sign of Jay or Lila. "I still don"t see them."
"Hold on. Who"s that?"
Dr. Cooper followed Mac"s gaze across the ruins toward the cliffs just outside of town.
There was a man standing there. He was big, wearing a long black coat and a black Western hat, and he wasn"t just out for a leisurely stroll. He was walking stealthily, crouching a little, looking warily about as if stalking something. And he was carrying a gun.