Ghost Towns. Martin H. Greenberg

if I can’t catch the thing. Then there’s no way to know what it’s really like…or what it’s really worth.” The old man cocked his head to one side, his eyes flashing so fiery bright it’s a wonder his puffy white eyebrows didn’t burst into flame. “But if I were to have some help…”

      I couldn’t stop myself—I jumped. Not that the old man’s words were so shocking. It was the dainty foot stroking my calf under the table that startled me.

      “Something the matter?” Eileen asked, all dewy-eyed innocence even as her foot snaked its way up toward my thigh.

      I blocked her with clenched knees. Flirting’s all well and good, but even I’m not dumb enough to let a gal toe-tease me when her father’s five feet away and a shotgun’s nine.

      “’Scuse me.” I gave my chest a little thump. “Hic-cups.”

      And then I jumped again—as did everyone else.

      Outside, twigs were snapping, branches creaking, leaves shushing.

      Inside, I was quivering.

      “Set out another plate, Eileen,” Kennedy said, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “We’ve got more company.”

      Eileen didn’t move.

      “All we have to do is wait,” her sister said, voice a-tremor. “It’ll go away eventually.”

      “We’ll be fine as long as we stay inside,” Eileen added, so straight and stiff in her chair she could’ve been carved out of wood herself. “In the light.”

      “That’s right. The nighttime’s his,” Kennedy said. “But we can track him tomorrow, when the sun’s out. With three of us to look, maybe we could finally find his lair. And once we’ve got that, we’ve got him.”

      “Oh, please,” Old Red snapped. “That’s bunk, and you know it.”

      The old man, Fiona, Eileen, me—we all gaped at him.

      “Excuse me?” Kennedy said.

      “You’re really just scared to face that thing, ain’t you?” my brother sneered at him. “Well, I’m not. Now’s our chance, and I’m gonna take it.”

      Old Red pushed his chair back from the table and came to his feet, his expression a scowling jumble of fear and anger and defiance. There was a wildness in his eyes I’d never seen before. In any other man, I would’ve called it bloodlust.

      He stomped to the nearest window and peered out through glass so black it could’ve been a mirror dipped in pitch.

      “‘His lair’? ‘His lair’?” Old Red barked out an incredulous laugh. “His lair’s at the bottom of the damned lake. Ain’t no way we could ever…a-ha!”

      He jabbed a finger at the window. Even from my spot at the table, I could see what he was pointing at: twin pinpricks of light glowing in the darkness high in the trees outside.

      Old Red whirled around to face us.

      “I don’t care what kinda critter that is,” he growled—and he marched over and snatched up Kennedy’s scattergun. “Two barrels in the gut’ll kill it quick enough.”

      “No, no, no,” the old man spluttered. “We need it alive, remember? To sell.”

      “I think we oughta listen to the man, Brother,” I said.

      But Old Red was already striding off again.

      “Can’t sell it if we never catch it,” he said without looking back. “And a body’ll fetch a pretty penny too.”

      He threw open the front door and stepped out onto the porch.

      Kennedy hurled himself from his chair and stumbled after him.

      “Noooooo!” he howled.

      Old Red took aim.

      Fiona and Eileen screamed.

      Out in the darkness, the lights dropped downward, then disappeared.

      Old Red pulled the triggers, and the shotgun spat fire into the night…but not where the lights had been. At the last second, my brother had jerked the shotgun up, spraying buckshot at the stars.

      When my ears stopped ringing, I heard a new sound: whimpering. From the women and from somewhere out in the forest too.

      “Mr. Kennedy,” Old Red said coolly, all trace of his killing frenzy suddenly gone, “why don’t you tell your boy to stop playin’ games and come on inside?”

      “My…boy…?”

      “Your son, sir.” Old Red turned back toward the woods. “And bring them special moccasins of yours with you! And your rig for the candles! Y’all owe us a look at ’em, I’d say!”

      And with that, he handed Kennedy the shotgun, sauntered inside, and retook his seat at the table.

      “That was a cruel thing to do!” Eileen spat at him.

      “Oh, I’m sorry. Did he frighten you?” I shot back, matching her venom with acid. “Not a pleasant sensation, is it?”

      I still didn’t know all the hows and whys, but the what was plain enough. The clan Kennedy had taken my brother and me for fools. And, alas, they’d been half right.

      Fiona and Eileen glowered back at me, sullen and silent.

      “Keeley! Keeley, boy! Are you all right?” the old man called out from the porch.

      A sniffling “I’m fine” drifted from the darkness of the trees, and then the Water Indian himself emerged from the shadows—a slender, slouching teenage boy. As he and his father shuffled inside, I saw that the kid was carrying a length of rope. Tied to it was a wooden rod sporting a snuffed candle on each end.

      “Take those ridiculous things off,” Fiona muttered at the boy. She waved a hand at his feet, which were encased it what looked like Goliath’s furry bed slippers. “You’re not going to track mud all over my clean floor.”

      Keeley nodded glumly, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and shuffled back out to the porch.

      “Make those yourself?” Old Red asked as the kid kicked off “those ridiculous things.”

      “Yes sir,” the boy said, managing a sad little smile. He held up his fuzzy fake feet, both embarrassed and proud. “Bear paws and rawhide.”

      “Neat bit of workmanship—you might have a future as a cobbler,” I told him. “Providin’ your career as a confidence man don’t pan out.”

      The boy slinked over to the table and took the last empty seat—the one to my left, at the head of the table opposite his father. The rope and rod he put on the table next to the ham.

      “Well, isn’t this cozy?” I said. “Y’all got any more kin out scarin’ the bejesus out of strangers? Cuz if you do, may as well bring ’em on in. There’s still plenty of eats to go around.”

      “We’re sorry, all right?” Eileen snapped. She pointed dagger-eyes at her father. “It wasn’t our idea.”

      The old man had slumped into his seat so limp he could’ve been a scarecrow stuffed with pudding. But his daughter’s spiteful tone brought him up ramrod straight, and he met her glare head on.

      Eileen’s backbone slowly lost its starch until at last she was the one hunched in her chair looking wilted. It was as if her father’s gaze had sucked the life right out of her.

      Kennedy turned to my brother.

      “Tell me. How did you know?”

      “Well, sir…usually I make it a point not to have any prejudices and to just let the facts lead me where they will,” Old Red said, paraphrasing a line from You Know Who’s latest adventure in Harper’s Weekly. (“The Reigate Puzzle,” should