Chapter 3

Alan pulled a worn notepad from his pocket and flipped it to a page where Samantha noticed her name had been highlighted in yellow. Was this Lucas Hart’s little notebook from back in August? “So, I understand you encountered the Phantom Horse and Rider when you were...” He squinted at the handwritten note. “Five years old?”

Sam nodded. “I—”

He flipped a few pages over. “Let’s see—when you were separated from your parents on a camping trip?”

Sam glared at Tyler. His camera aimed directly at her. He pushed a button on top of the camcorder and the lens turned slightly. Was he zooming in? She hated that camera, or was she displacing her anxiety about Tyler Adcock because of her best friend Violet Snow?

Her mouth suddenly went dry. She sipped her water before answering. “Yes.”

Alan turned to Kayla. She took his cue. Compassionate eyes met Sam’s. “Miss Gladstone, I’m sure that was a scary experience. Especially for a five-year-old.”

Sam swallowed. “Yes, it was.”

Kayla nodded. “Can you tell me about it?”

Sam liked Kayla. Her voice was soothing and the butterflies seemed to settle in Sam’s gut when Kayla spoke. No wonder Alan deferred the interview to her. A glance confirmed Alan enjoyed sampling the microbrews. She rolled her eyes back to Kayla, took a deep breath, and told her tale.

Their mother had gotten sick and Daddy took her into the tent to lie down. She and her older sister, Nancy, now known as Mysti, were left by the fire pit. Sam noticed some fireflies in the trees. There were thousands of them, swirling and curling together as if they were a flock of birds. Even though Daddy had told her to stay with her sister, Sammy followed them out into the woods. When she turned back to tell her sister to come look at the pretty light bugs, she realized she was nowhere near the camp spot, or the fire pit. She called to Nancy, Mom, Dad. But they didn’t hear her.

She panicked and started to cry. That was when she heard a crackle like lightning and a horse stamping his feet in the dry leaves. She looked in the direction she heard the prancing and froze. A black horse’s mane glowed white like the fireflies and flowed as if he were underwater. The rider pulled back on the reins and the horse reared up, slashing his front hooves through the air.

Sam tripped over something and fell, then scrambled to get up, but her canvas loafer slipped off. It was caught in a root. She didn’t care, the horse terrified her, and she ran as hard as she could. She screamed for her Dad, Nancy, anybody. But no one heard her. She had no other choice but to keep running. Grandpa Harold’s horse reared up above her head every time she fell or stopped to catch her breath. She had to keep moving away from them.”

Kayla interrupted. “How did you know this was Grandpa Harold’s ghost?”

Sam stared at her. No one had questioned Grandpa Harold’s involvement in her tale before. How did she know? She was five years old. The legend had been told all her life of Harold Gladstone, Senior, and his black steed with the white mane and tail, Thor. After they drowned in the river saving Minuette Vaughner, his spirit still roamed the woods saving little children or grownups when they were in trouble. It had always bothered Sam that Grandpa Harold had tried to trample her. Why didn’t he help her like he did so many others in her town? Instead, he toyed with her. Running Thor around to her right, she’d run left to get away from the slicing hooves. Then he run around to her left and she’d veer off to her right.

“I just ran for my life. It was horrible and terrifying.” Sam hated the emotion building in her voice. She refused to cry, but her throat had other ideas. She cleared it twice before she could continue.

She glanced at that camera in Tyler’s face and wished she could shove it into his eye. Instead, she told the rest of her story.

Sam ran until her legs were numb and her lungs burned. A stitch caught in her side, but she kept running. If she stopped the horse would trample her to death. She just kept running away from him until she saw lights in the distance. She sprinted toward those lights. It was the bridge. A lot of people were on the other side. She screamed for help and ran, now barefoot and bleeding, through the bridge. Her clothes were torn and her hair was full of debris. She slammed into a woman who held her close and spoke kindly to her. She found out later, her name was Chris Campbell Brown. Her daughter, Lucy Christine Brown had been one of the children with Sam’s cousins and Nancy.

“Lucy is now Chief Trent Gibson’s late wife.” Sam paused. Lucy’s death had been so sad for everyone. They had all grown up together. When the new Chief of Police came in from Texas, everybody was so happy for Lucy Christine when they fell in love instantly and married before a season passed. Then less than three years later, a drunk driver drove into Lucy Christine on the highway. It was a head-on collision.

She was going to see her mother, Christine, who had moved to Fort Collins and had been sick with a strep infection, which severely weakened her. They didn’t want to expose the babies to it so she left them home with Trent. Thank God, because their one-and-a-half-year-old twin boys might have perished if they’d been with their mother.

Anyway, Sam shook her thoughts back to her story. Sam screamed for help and told the woman Grandpa Harold had chased her. Chris held her tight and told her over and over she was safe. Nancy, Lucy Christine, Harry, and Leanne came to her and held her. Nancy was as upset as Sam was. It was a terrible experience for both of them. They cried together until Mom and Dad arrived and took them home.

Mom, it turned out, had the flu and soon recovered. Sam, however, suffered from nightmares about the glowing-maned horse running up beside her. Her sister suffered right along with her. Well into her teens, Nancy always came to her when Sam woke up screaming, and held her in the night, reminding her she was home, she was safe.

“It was a terrible experience, Mr. Rivers. And not one I wish to relive or exhort, regardless of what Uncle Hal may have told you. If you go out there and try to ‘catch’ Grandpa Harold’s ghost, I mean, the Phantom Horse and Rider on film, count me out. I will not be present for any reason.”

Kayla smiled. “That’s all right, Sam.” She put down her pen and reached across the table to pat Sam’s hand. “We would never ask you to do anything you weren’t comfortable doing.” She glared at Alan.

What did that look mean? Sam glared at him, too. What would Alan expect of her?

Alan drank his beers and ordered the October Moon. The foamy head clung to his upper lip. For a split second, Sam fantasizes licking it off and tasting it on his tongue. She blinked. Heat filled her face.

Alan leaned back in his chair and examined his nicely manicured nails. “Well, I can’t make any promises—”

“Here we are.” Sheri broke the spell and placed the three sandwiches on the table, and then put a huge platter of spare ribs in front of Alan. He eyed the meat and smiled. Three bowls of sides were placed around his platter, taking up half the table.

Tyler lowered his camera and sat down next to Kayla. Everyone ate in silence. But Sam’s mind tumbled with memories of that night, Alan’s froth-covered lip, Vi’s concern for Tyler being in town, and the homework she still needed to grade tonight.

Did he just say he couldn’t make any promises? Terror shot through her like an electric current. She sat up straighter.

“Let me make myself perfectly clear, Mr. Rivers. I. Will. Not. Go. Near. That. Bridge.”

The next morning, Sam and Ty climbed out of her little Mitsubishi, when an odd-sounding horn blew. She looked across the hood of her car. Paul Hourton sat in the API golf cart leaning on the steering wheel. “Morning.”