Paranormal researcher gets more than she bargained for during a routine ghost hunt. Technology and a twist of science bring her face to face with a dead Civil War soldier too stubborn to accept his fate and too angry about events that transpired 150 years ago to quietly move on.

TALKING TO LUKE

________1865

I stand in the kitchen of the house I grew up in, watching my mother’s back as she tends a pot on the stove. It’s an old wood-burner, a fat, black cast iron thing that has boiled water for the birth of four children and provided fire for more meals than I can remember. It sits on a slab of kiln-dried brick, with a crooked stovepipe that juts through a hole in the roof. Rainwater leaks in around it from time to time, and judging by the rust forming on its sides, I figure I have my work cut out for me as soon as the weather breaks.

I know this house as thoroughly as I know my own mind. Every chink in the walls, every dip in the floorboards. I know my initials are carved into one of its oak ceiling beams—Mama is blissfully unaware of this, because even though I was only twelve when I put them there, she’d skin me today if she knew how I got up there to do such a thing.

“Mama,” I say, my gaze pinned to a strand of her dark hair that has strayed from its clip. “I have something to tell you. Lee surrendered—I’m coming home.”

She does not react to this, just keeps stirring the pot. The scent of garlic and onion teases my stomach, which hasn’t seen a decent meal in months. I inhale deeply, guessing that the stew she’s prepared is nearly done. I wonder where she got the meat. Like me, Papa was quite a marksman, and could drop a hare from a hundred yards. But we lost him to a Yankee cannon two years ago, and I know full well Mama wouldn’t know which end of a gun to aim.

I glance at the muzzleloader propped in the corner and rethink my position on that.

“Did you hear me?” I ask, taking a step closer. “It’s over. The war’s not going to take anything else from us, Mama.”

She gives no indication that I have spoken. I feel my brow crease in puzzlement. Mama wouldn’t ignore me. Something else is going on, something I haven’t figured out yet.

I look at my two younger sisters as they play beside the hearth. They are fairer than me with fawn-colored hair and russet eyes. Sara will turn eight next month and Emma is ten. There is another sister who has married and lives in Vicksburg—she’s seventeen, and I wonder if perhaps it would have been wise for her to age a bit more before she took on so much responsibility.

Then again—am I really one to pass such a judgment on another?

“Mama,” I say with more emphasis. “Look at me.”

But she does not. Coldness grips my heart. I have known fear—I am a blooded soldier. But this is deeper. More sinister. The chill reaches my bones.

I try a different tack, turning to the girls by the hearth. “Sara, I’ll be home in time for your birthday. Good news, right?”

Sara doesn’t respond. She continues marching her doll of husks across the brick, absorbed in a world that is void of mortar and shell.

Dread seizes me. I’m dry-mouthed and find it difficult to breathe. There’s pressure in my chest, almost painful, and my heart begins to pound.

“Mama!” I shout, balling my hands into fists. I watch as she swipes a forearm across her cheek. It’s wet when she lowers it. Sweat—or tears? I notice her shoulders have rounded and her spine has lost its straightness to time. This war has been hard on all of us, and in no one is it more evident than her.

I sway a bit—my legs have become unsteady. “Emma! Sara! This is not a fun game. Don’t pretend you can’t hear me.”

Even as I speak, I understand they are not pretending. There truly is a dimension between my presence and their five senses. I am merely a spectator of this scene, a voyeur—a traveler out of synch with the cogs of time.

“Look at me!” I roar, bounding toward the stove where Mama still stands. I make a grab for her arm, but my fingers don’t take hold. She moves away before I can try again. “Look at me!”

I’m standing on the floor, but I discover I can’t touch the walls. I put my hand through the top of the stove and I am not burned.

“No!” I insist, shaking my head. “This can’t be!”

This cannot be happening—cannot be real. I am a witness to life, but cannot interact with it. Yet I have no memory of death. I am me, the same as I’ve always been. I reach for a ladder-backed chair that is pushed neatly underneath the table, and I miss.

Not sure if I am more terrified or enraged, I try again. I bump it this time, and it rocks. This is all the motivation I need. With a growl so vicious it hurts my throat, I lunge at the chair and manage to snag it with one hand.

I toss it backward, hard as I can. I am gratified when I see it tip over. It lands with a crash that rings in my ears, one rung broken from impact. I am so pleased with this proof of my existence that for a moment I fail to monitor the reaction of my family.

Then I look at them, and instantly I’m sorry for what I’ve done. Mama is shielding the girls behind her body, her arms spread, staring at the broken chair as all color drains from her face. My sisters peep around the folds of her skirt with round eyes. None of them are looking at me, and Sara begins to cry.

I sit straight up in bed, chest heaving and skin slick with sweat. Blinking in the darkness, I gasp for air and struggle with the knowledge that it was only a dream. I am, in fact, still in Georgia—hundreds of miles from my family. I don’t recall ever having such a vivid dream, and I fervently hope I never have another one.

A kerosene lamp burns on the other side of a canvas partition. It provides enough light through the cloth for me to locate my threadbare shirt and slip it over my head. I am otherwise dressed—a good soldier learns to sleep with his boots on. My belly is tight and bladder is aching. As scared as I was in that dream, it’s a wonder I didn’t piss right there in the bed.

I creep out of the building into the night. The cold is bracing, and for a moment it steals my breath. It’s April—yesterday was Easter—and while the daytime temperature has been climbing steadily for a couple weeks, it still gets nippy after sunset. I shiver, and make my way to a stand of trees about fifty paces from the ordnance bunkers.

My legs are shaking. Knees weak, and pulse elevated. I can feel it thrumming in my neck. As unlikely as it seems, my ears are still ringing from the sound of Mama’s chair hitting the floor.

As I relieve my bladder, I stare across the river at several torchlights that bob along the shore. A week ago, this would have been cause for alarm. But what I said in my dream is true—Lee has surrendered. The war is over, and those of us still standing will go home. My fate has been fortuitous—I survived this mockery of war, this blight on a nation where I saw the ground saturated with Rebel blood. Unlike my father, I am one of the lucky ones who shed little.

I rub my jaw. Though I shaved before sundown, I feel stubble underneath my fingertips. For months my beard had grown, long and unkempt. It itched badly and collected lice. Shearing it was an act of great pleasure for me, a celebration of survival. I only hope I can find myself under the tragedy of the last four years as easily as I found my face under all that hair.

The sound that nearly deafens me is familiar, yet so unexpected that at first I can’t identify it. An explosion echoes off the hillsides and thunders across the valley, followed by another that shakes the ground. After that comes a whistling noise, like steam being released from a kettle. Behind it is a heartbeat of silence, then the abatis falls, collapsing with a crash of timber and stone.

I am running now, yelling, fumbling with the clasp of my britches as I tear across the yard. It is a futile warning that I cry—pointless because by now there isn’t a soul on post who doesn’t realize we are being shelled. I make it as far as the corner of the building. A cannonball sails past my head and punches a hole in the wall, landing in the approximate location of my bed. I freeze in my tracks, watching in horror as flames fueled by kerosene make short work of the place where, only minutes before, I had been sleeping.

I hear them scream from where I stand. My comrades, my friends. Men I’ve fought beside, whose jokes made me laugh and whose courage has awed me. Men who offered themselves as sacrifices for a cause so few of us believed in. One by one they stagger out of the doorways and tumble from the windows, walking flames that have taken a human shape.

I am baffled. Numb. My mind can’t comprehend what my eyes see. I don’t want to comprehend it. I don’t want to know how these men die. This is not the memory of them I wish to carry home with me.

Suddenly there is a blade at my throat, jagged and relentless as its wielder attempts to saw the jugular from my neck. But he has underestimated me, or perhaps he is disadvantaged by the smoke and falling ash. I grab his hair with both hands and duck forward, tossing him over my shoulders to the ground. My triceps ache and I have pulled a muscle in my side, yet I am otherwise unscathed. I bury a knee in his gut and pry the Bowie knife from his fingers. He looks up at me with eyes the color of new growth in the pines—I can see them clearly in the light of the fire. He is my age, if that. The only difference between this boy and me is that he wears blue, and I gray.

There is no choice to make, only a fate to deal. I sink the boy’s own weapon into the soft tissue beneath his jaw and jerk upward with both hands. There is a tearing sound and the giving of flesh, and I twist the blade. His green eyes roll back in his head and he convulses. Blood sprays me from the wound in his neck. I straddle his body until it quiets, heaving against the sickness that roils in my stomach.

I try to walk away, but I am reeling. The Yankee’s blood has covered my face and my clothing, and I attempt to mop it from my eyes. All I manage to do is smear it and stain my vision with red.

In the corral, the horses are terrified. They rear and squeal, surrounded on all sides by flames that are reflected in their eyes. Their tails are singed, and the smell of burning hair gives way to that of burning flesh. The gate is a slide pole, a single pine log. I pause to lower it, wondering what kind of man I am. I’ll slice a human throat without hesitation, yet risk a bullet to save a horse. This logic leaves my thoughts scrambled and my conscience torn. I collapse against a Napoleon’s carriage and slide downward to the ground. It’s been said that a true warrior can kill with one hand and love with the other. I study my hands and see no difference between them.

I glance at the buildings looming beside me in the darkness. Ordnance is not in short supply. These attackers are rabid but not witless—they have avoided hitting the bunkers, which are stocked with black powder. Shell and canister, with all their fuses and shrapnel. Yet heavy artillery is useless in a single pair of hands. I wager my life on the rack of guns I know is waiting for me at the back of the nearest bunker. Mostly Enfields and a few breech loading rifles with an action I know well.

Gunfire rips the night. Lead shot sings through the air and clatters off the Napoleon’s iron barrel. Smoke blankets the outpost. Ashes fall like snow. How many of them are wood—and how many are human? I catch one on my palm and stare at it. Though they are forever silenced, I can still hear the animal sounds of my friends screaming.

I shake off the horror and scramble on all fours until I gain my balance. My dash through a hail of canister fire is the longest few seconds of my life, and the doorway never seems to get any closer.

A mule-kick to the stomach and the ground rushes upward. I roll to a stop against the foundation of the bunker—there is a roar in my ears that drowns out an ensuing volley of rifle reports. I lie there, breath hissing in my throat, blinded by pain that seems to sever my body in half.

My fingers seek the wound and become instantly saturated with blood. I find the hole just above my right hipbone, trajectory from back to front, with an exit wound the size of my fist. I am shaking now—no, jerking—it is uncontrollable. I recognize this phenomenon from the battlefield. It manifests in the casualties.

I find enough strength to drag myself through the bunker door and into the darkness. Wedging myself into the corner behind a limber chest, I prop my torso against the wall and try to assess my condition. Death stalks me but does not seem imminent. Cold seeps from the ground into my skin, and the jerking of my limbs intensifies. I cannot straighten my fingers. They are curled like claws, the muscles in my hands contracted and tight. My body is dying, one inch at a time.

By degrees, the gunfire ceases. Cries of the wounded fade. A cursory sweep of the bunker does not betray this hiding place. Hours pass. Rats scuttle through the shadows, drawing nearer each time they approach. The sun rises and light slants through a smoke-stained window. It reveals ordnance stacked to the ceiling. A dirt floor pocked by the weight of it. I look at my hands. My fingers are gray, and nails are blue—the irony of these colors is not lost on me.

The ground beneath me is muddy, soaked with my blood. I am cold, and I can no longer feel anything from the waist down. I don’t remember when the pain stopped. I only know that the absence of it does not bode well for me.

Eventually the shivering stops as well. The cold, however, does not go away. I burrow beneath a pile of horse blankets and a tear slides across my face. God be thanked that no mothers will know how their sons died tonight. There is some consolation to be found in that.

The shudder of failing lungs comes as a shock. It’s too soon. I’m not ready for this. I gasp, prolonging the inevitable. Where is God? He is not here. I am alone in this bunker with a corpse—and it is my own.