Ghosts in the Woods By PL Nunn 2 The whole of the truck jarred. The front end slammed down, bumper scraping against earth. He put it in reverse and tried to back out of whatever rut he'd gotten into and tires spun uselessly. Four wheel drive wouldn't do more than rock the Explorer back and forth. The sound of metal grating against metal wailed through the silence of the woods like a vengeful banshee. Scott grabbed his coat and went out to survey the damage. Sure enough, the bumper was touching the road and the front wheels were sunk into a deep rut hidden by the eighteen inches of snow covering the narrow dirt road he had been following. Damn. Fifteen miles into the forests north of Ptarmian Creek and he had managed to strand himself. He leaned against the fender and surveyed the endless mosaic of aspen and fur protruding out of white. Light flakes of snow drifted down now, almost hidden in the gray light of evening. She was out there somewhere. He felt it. If the psychic link were still there he might have known for certain. All he had to go on now was intuition. Jean. Jean. What are you thinking? He got a back pack, already loaded with supplies out of the passenger seat, retrieved the laminated forest service map from the dash, pulled on a fur lined cap and set out from the truck. He walked, trudging through snow up to his knees at places, feeling the exertion of it after a while in the scars over his gut. In the healed, but not quite whole muscles under the skin where not so long ago an atrocity had been done to him. He'd been sedate for far too long. Jean had pushed him into too long a recuperation. It would take much longer now to get back into the physical shape he had once enjoyed. He scanned the forest for signs of anything. Listened for a scrap of sound that did not belong to the wilderness. Vainly attempted to feel something of his wife - - some iota of the link they had shared when she had her telepathy. Nothing. Darkness fell too soon. He was rational enough to realize if he didn't stop, he would loose all track of his bearings and be in no better shape than the campers already lost in this white maze. He sat up camp under the shelter of a cluster of large evergreens. Dug out a place in the snow for his tent and a small pit for a fire. He foraged about for kindling, and fuel and too tired to wrestle with igniting damp wood, merely lanced the jumble of sticks with an optic beam. In short order the wood was crackling with warmth. He didn't have much of an appetite but forced himself to eat a few bites anyway. Then he curled up in the tent and tried not to think about all the things that might have befallen Jean. It was hours before he could sleep. Hours of cold dread, where his imagination ran rampart. He shut his eyes - - and opened them to daylight streaming through sheer curtains.. The room was familiar. The room that used to be his in the mansion, before he and Jean had married and moved down to the boathouse. Disoriented, he threw the covers off. He was unclad, save for boxers. The floor was cold under his feet. He walked out into the hall, not caring about getting dressed. It was strangely quiet for the mansion. Where was everyone? Ah, there was a sound from down the hall. He padded that way. A door was open and he could see the shape of great, sweeping wings. Warren. With his arms about someone, his head lowered. Slim arms encircled his back beneath the soft feathers. Embarrassed, Scott started to turn away, but Warren turned, swinging his partner about. Red hair. A great fall of red hair was the first thing he saw before she lifted her head and looked at him. Jean. He opened his mouth in shock, but no words issued forth. She looked at him oddly, almost accusingly. Her brows beetled, then the door slammed shut in his face of its own accord. He shut his eyes - - - - and opened them again, staring up at the ceiling of his tent, daylight making the nylon almost transparent. The breath caught in his throat, his heart hammered in his chest. He adjusted his glasses, while the images of the dream - -nightmare - - faded. He lay there, sweating under his clothes despite the frigid temperature. His head hurt. He hated waking up with a headache. He forced himself up. Pulled on boots and coat. Took care of essential business and went about packing up his tent. He broke open a granola bar for breakfast and trudged onward. North. He called out her name once and a while, only to hear it echo soulfully through the trees. No answer. Hardly even the chittering noise of Alaskan wildlife. Hours passed. Then an inconsistency caught his eye. A shape in the snow that shouldn't have been there. He plowed through the snow and found the scattered remnants of a campsite. The tent was half collapsed under the weight of snow. Various objects - a back pack, a kettle, a cooler with its top wide open lay buried under a layer of whiteness. "Hello!?" he called. "Is anyone here?" A clump of snow fell to the ground beyond the sagging tent. No one answered. He brushed snow from atop the tent and knelt to peer inside. The flap wasn't zipped. Snow had blown inside and powdered the floor. There were two sleeping bags - another backpack, contents strewn about the tent. Plastic baggies of seeds and dried fruit and something hidden under the mess that glinted. Sealed in another zip lock bag were several raw chunks of what looked to be gold. He turned the bag over in his gloved fingers curiously. What were casual campers - tourists - doing carrying around gold ore? He looked around a little more, and reached out to pick up a gray mitten. It was soaked with some dark liquid. He brought it to his nose, but it was too cold for his sense of smell to help him. He wiped the mitten on a patch of pure snow and the snow smeared red. He backed out of the tent, suddenly wary of being trapped within its confines. An odd feeling that he was being observed came over him. He climbed to his feet and peered into the surrounding forest, looking for anything - that might reveal another human being. He called out again. Then he took a breath and tried to use his head. The snow covering the supplies and tent was at least a day old, if not more. There were no tracks but his leading to or from the campsite. He didn't know which way the campers had gone. Logan might have been able to track them, but Scott didn't know how. Without thinking, he pocketed the packet of gold, and took a few steps northward. His eyes lighted on a thicket and a patch of color caught in the grayness of its barren branches. A scrape of cloth, flannel - perhaps torn from a jacket sleeve. And there a hundred yard further on, a recently broken, dangling limb from a young tree. He almost ran, a sense of impatience goading him to haste. There was something ahead that needed to be seen. He felt it deep down. Was it Jean? Was it some ghost reflection of their shared psi link? His foot dropped down into a shallow pit. He almost lost balance and saved himself at the last moment, catching his balance on a thigh high piece of stone jutting out of the ground. He was standing in a pit. An oblong, uneven gully that was lightly covered with snow. Something yellowish protruded from the snow beside him at an odd angle. Familiar, rounded knobs at the end boasted a thin layer of snow. A bone. A large, weather worn bone. "God." he whispered and took a step back, looking down into what he was standing in. There was a shape, suspiciously like a skull beside his left toe, hidden under snow. The snow beside the pit was rough and uneven, and when he brushed the top layer off, there was dirt on top of an older layer. A grave. He stood in a grave that had been very recently dug up. The bones were scattered around carelessly. He found them when he looked. Rib cage, skeletal hands and feet. Arms, legs. Metal buttons and a rusted belt buckle. The scrape of rotten leather that might once have been the soles of boots. He moved to the stone, and wiped away snow and dirt. There was carving under the grime, eaten away by weather and time. A few rough, etched words. Jack - - Kenny? McKenny? 1878. Brother. Husband. That was the most he could make out. He was unsure even of the correctness of that. An old grave. A very old grave that had remained undisturbed for over a hundred years only to be desecrated now. No animal had done this. There was nothing left of poor Jack McKenny to lure a predator to dig up his grave. Scott gathered the bones and placed them back in the shallow pit, then scooped dirt and snow over top them. It was the most he could do. He stood back, knees damp and muddy from kneeling in the snow, hands cold through even with gloves. The shadows grew long again. He heard the distant howl of wolves and shivered, wondering if he was so far out now, that he too would be listed as lost in the northern forest. He wondered if anyone would ever come across his bones out here and if so, would they have the ignominy to scatter them. Fool . What was he doing, allowing himself to sink to this level of despondency? Where was his training? His fortitude? Had that flown with Jean? Or had it dissipated over the long weeks of his weakness? She was gone for two days and he was wallowing in self-pity. God knew they had both been through worse trauma than this and held up under it. He stumbled over a snow buried root and went to one knee in the snow. He knelt there, breathing hard and thought it was time to make camp. He struggled to put the tent up, feeling the pull in his muscles more than he had the night before. When they got back from this, he declared firmly to himself, he would start a physical regiment, no matter what Jean said. He was more than ready for it. He needed it. He got the tent up and collapsed inside it. This time sleep claimed him easily. He was in the woods. But it was summer and the trees were of a more oak and maple than pine and aspen. There was green grass underfoot and a spattering of daffodils here and there where the sunlight breached the leafy canopy. He half recognized the wood. It looked like the well maintained stretch of forest on the other side of the lake from the mansion. If he found the shore he might be able to see the boathouse in the distance. He wondered through the trees for a while, trailing his fingers across rough bark. There was laughter echoing through the trees. A delighted tintinnabulation, as beautiful to him as crystal water gurgling happily down a brook. Jean's laugh. He started to run, desperate to find her. There, in a clearing, he saw her. Only she wasn't alone. She was twined in the arms of a man. Only this man was more a threat - subconsciously - than Warren Worthington had ever been to him. This man turned his dark head and glittering predator's eyes bore into Scott. Jean looked over Logan's shoulder taller, and one auburn brow lifted questioningly. She was naked, but most of her body was hidden by Logan's broad back. "Nooooo." Scott moaned, furious, hurt, not knowing which emotion made him let loose with a powerful optic blast. It hit Logan square in the back, spinning him into Jean. She had barely caught hold of him before the tell tail click of claws popping permeated the sudden deathly silence of the wood. He came at Scott, berserker rage in his face. Another blast and he was knocked back, but not out. Jean stepped forward, floated forward, hair a shimmering aura about her white shoulders, snaking about her perfect breasts. "Go away." Her voice echoed inside his skull, rattling his senses. "You're not wanted here." "Jean." he cried out her name, then Logan took him from the side, quiet as the predator he was named for. - - And he woke up. This time he twisted out of the sleeping back as if it were trying to devour him. Into the snow in nothing but socks and down to his knees, plunging his hands into the cold, bringing clumps of it to his face, desperately trying to wash away the memory. It hurt. Hurt so bad he felt it in his gut - in the painful pounding of his heart. The memory didn't fade so quickly. It hung about maliciously, wounding him. Finally, when he could breath normally, he sat shivering in the snow, head in hands, calling himself a fool for venturing out here on his own. All his life he had followed the rules - thrived by the rules. And the rules said, don't go to battle without backup. Have a backup plan in case the one you're following fails. This was a battle and he had come into it not only without a backup plan, but with damned little in the way of any plan at all. He should have let Storm know what he was about. Should have at least told Sheriff Miller he was coming out here. Where was his head? Where was the practicality that had always served him so well? Gone with Jean. Just like everything else. He went back to the tent, wet socks, wet pants and sat within its frigid confines trying to get himself together. He had spare socks. His practicality had not abandoned him there. Pulled them on, along with his boots and went about packing up his gear. He boiled water the easy way, with a focused optic beam on the side of his metal cup. He broke sweat from the concentration. How long ago had it been since he could have burned a pinprick hole in a sheet of silk from twenty yards away without even thinking about the precariousness of the action? Hot coffee shook that morose thought from his head. A Nutragrain bar served as breakfast. He looked at he compass on his watch and started walking north. There were no shadows at all at the countless feet of trees when he saw the gray figure. He was trudging through calf high snow, his gaze directed groundward, his mind wondering into the past, when the utter silence of the forest registered. He didn't know how long the birds had stopped their song before it had come to his notice. Just between one step and the next his brain registered that something was missing. His foot faltered. He stopped, staring at the stark whiteness of the landscape surrounding him. At the vertical slashes of trees and the splotches of green evergreens. Then, something pale and gray that fluttered between them. Like a shadow on the move at a time of day when there were no shadows. Startled, he called out. Ran clumsily in the direction the figure had gone. Caught a glimpse of ragged clothing. Of gray on gray hair. Still there was no sound but the clomp clomp of his own boots breaking the hard top layer of snow as he ran. "Wait." He cried. "I'm not going to hurt you." The figure disappeared. Scott stopped, panting at a bent tree where he was sure he had seen the man pass. There were no tracks. Nothing in the snow to suggest a man had plowed through it. He straightened, confused, staring wildly about the forest. He had passed this very tree. He knew he had. Where had he gone? Where were the tell tale tracks? He was not - he was absolutely not, having delusions. He took a few steps, past a thick old tree and something stepped out into his face. Pale as ash face. Dark pits without reflection where eyes ought to be. That was all he had time to register before a hand reached out and touched him. No - not touched him. More delved into him with an icy pain that seized up his heart and sent his senses reeling. He didn't panic, even when his senses swam. He let off a optic burst even as his knees were crumpling. The last thing he saw was the beam passing right through the gray chest and splintering a tree beyond it. Then it was back to oblivion.