‘‘The Specter at Balesford Bluff’ (formerly ‘The Hermit at Balesford Bluff’) is generally considered a bad omen, not because it’s a particularly willful wraith but because the hermit delighted in misfortune as a mortal and seems to maintain this delight in the afterlife. If anything, the hermit’s demise appears to have granted him a preternatural ability to sense the unfolding of a dire situation with enough time to manifest and leer.
The silver-lining of the situation as a whole lies in ‘The Specter’s’ nearness to ‘The Balesford Witching Well.’ ‘The Bluff’ overlooks the highway as one exits to the north and an appearance of ‘The Specter’ following a deposit at ‘The Well’ has, on occasion, alerted a perceptive traveler to a monkey’s-paw type situation, allowing them to return and re-word their ill-formed wish, much to the disappointment, one might suspect, of the former hermit. That the ‘The Specter’ has not yet reacted to the pattern is cause for much chatter among those who discuss the oft-crystalline rigidity of hauntings. It is, to many, proof that the terrestrially-inclined deceased are unable to break their immortal routines, though several people who knew the hermit in life claim that this particular man exhibited about as much self-awareness then as he does now.’
I wake in the back of a pick-up truck, the world roaring past on either side of me. The strangers have wrapped in me in rope so tightly that I can feel my pulse throbbing against the cord, as though my entire body has been squeezed into the blood-pressure machine at the back of the grocery store. The motorcycle hovers over me, chained carelessly to the side. The handlebars would land squarely on my face in the event of it slipping when we, say, hit even the mildest of bumps. Someone taps on the glass from the cabin and I strain to look backward. One of the Strangers nods to me. He lifts my bag as if to say ‘Don’t worry, we didn’t forget this.’
I can’t see anything over the walls of the cargo bed, though a cliffside lingers distantly behind us. There, at the top, I think I see the silhouette of a man.
He waves.
-traveler
