The Black Stallion's Ghost (15 page)

Suddenly he stopped. He did not belong with them. There was no fear within him, only an awareness that the grayness within the void was not for him. He backed away quietly. There was no need to see any more. He was free to go. There were no restrictions. He had only to believe in the bridge. There was his world and the other. He had nothing to fear from either of them. If he believed that, the bridge would always remain.

He backed away until he could go no farther. The dark wind began to blow again but it was not the same as before. It did not bring with it peace and contentment. It did not flow and probe deep into his very being and soul. It was a purely physical sensation, bringing coolness to a warm night.

He lifted his head and smelled the rotting stench of the swamp. His vision cleared and he saw that he lay in the middle of a slough, his clothes and flesh matted with muck and slime.

He got to his feet and looked at his torn clothes and the mud caked on his hands. He had no doubt that what he had experienced was as real as this. He didn't try to understand what had happened but accepted the reality of it.

There was nothing he wanted now but to find his horse. How long had he been there? Had what seemed an eternity been only moments? Was the Black nearby? Could this be the slough in which he had seen him from his perch in the oak tree? He listened but heard nothing. Then he whistled repeatedly until the night was filled with his calls to the Black.

An answer came from the far right, a muted whinny followed by a whistle as high-pitched as his own. He left the slough and plunged into the saw grass in the direction of the call. He ran unmindful of any danger that might lurk in the grass. He felt none of the sharp barbs that opened new wounds. Nothing mattered but to reach his horse, and he ran like a wild thing.

When Alec reached the next slough and found the Black waiting for him, he ran forward and rubbed his face against the warm dark coat. He said not a word but closed his eyes, knowing by the touch and smell of his horse that he was home.

Moments later, Alec stepped back to look at his horse. The long lead shank had become entangled in a swamp bush; he tore it loose, believing it had been caught often and had slowed down the Black's movements. He saw the long running wounds made by the razor-sharp saw grass. The Black's mouth was red-raw and there were swamp burrs in his mane and tail. None of this mattered. He was alive, and together they would find their way back.

“Come on,” he said. “We're getting out of here.” He found himself shaking, trembling, so he did not mount immediately. It was a natural reaction to what he had gone through, he told himself. In a moment it would pass.

He glanced up at the Black's head. It was held high, the great eyes alert and peering into the night. Alec touched him and the Black responded with a twitching of his skin; it was as if they were two ghosts talking to each other.

Alec told him that there was nothing they could not overcome together. They belonged in a secure world, regardless of what dangers might lie in their homeward path.

The early-morning breeze grew stronger, stirring the Black's mane and forelock. He remained still, his ears pricked up, listening to no sound that Alec could hear, scenting everything in the air. The Black was ready and alert for whatever might come.

Alec waited, knowing his own senses could not match those of his horse.

Finally the soft skin beneath his hand ceased twitching and Alec knew it was time to go. Whatever danger the Black had sensed in the night had gone. He took hold of the stallion's mane and backed up a step before moving forward to spring up with all the strength he had left. His body rolled and twisted as he reached his horse's back and gained his seat. Whatever happened from now on, he didn't intend to leave his horse.

His legs closed about the Black. “Let's go,” he said softly.

Alec decided to ride to the clearing and try to convince the captain that there was nothing to fear from
Koví
except the terror which his own mind created. If he could get him on his feet, he might be able to get him up on the Black. Then they could ride double.

Before them were the natural dangers of the swamp but no more than that. He was no longer in a state of utter helplessness. He had the Black; he did not feel remote and lonely any more.

He rode the Black at a slow and cautious walk
down the dry slough until he reached the high ground of the hammock. Beyond was the clearing in which he had left the captain, but he saw no sign of him.

He dismounted when he reached it but held on to the Black's lead shank for fear of losing him. He walked around the edges of the clearing, his eyes searching the heavy growth while he shouted at the top of his voice, “Captain! Where are you? Can you hear me?”

There was no answer and he stood quietly, wondering what he should do. The captain had been too ill to have traveled far. Where had he gone?

Alec covered every foot of the ground, searching for a sign. He found the small gold figurine and picked it up, turning it over in his hands. The green jade eyes winked back at him, as they had when he'd first looked at it. He studied the large evil-looking head and the twisted body. His anger mounted as he held it in his hands. To think that this ridiculous object could create terror in a man's soul!

He drew back his arm to hurl it into the depths of the dark water. Then he checked himself, recalling what he had learned a short while before and was forgetting so soon.

The figurine was only a symbol to the eyes of the beholder. One could make of it what he wanted, see what he chose to see. It held no unique charms or powers other than what existed in one's own mind. It was a nothing, like every other talisman. The secret lay in looking into one's own mind, not at the figurine.

Alec shoved it in his pocket, determined to find the captain.

Alec retraced his steps over ground he had covered before. Nothing stirred in the night but the clicking of the Black's hoofs at his side. He descended into a palmetto hollow and there found footprints, large and deep and fresh, made by running feet.

Alec had no doubt they were the captain's tracks. But what had given him the strength to run? Alec had left him in a state of complete emotional shock, unable to speak let alone get to his feet and flee—
from what
?

Alec followed the prints across the hollow and into the brush. He walked cautiously, ever on the alert for any sound. A fine mist drifted from the swamp with the coming of dawn. It was clammy and for a moment Alec felt uneasy. He stopped abruptly and patted the Black, finding reassurance in his company.

The captain might be running from the horror of his own creation, the monstrous
Koví
. That would account for his panic and the superhuman effort that had
enabled him to rise to his feet and run for his life. Alec could think of no other explanation.

He walked on, following the footprints through the heavy underbrush and wondering if he would be able to convince the captain that his terror of
Koví
was only in his
mind
. A streak of silver was visible above the tops of the trees. Soon it would be light enough for him to find his way home with or without the captain. He was traveling in the right direction and for all he knew the captain might already have left the hammock. He thought he saw a small bright spark glittering above the trees a short distance away, but it disappeared so quickly he couldn't be sure. He continued watching for it, but it didn't reappear. It could have been anything, he decided—a firefly, perhaps a shooting star.

Alec walked on through the mist with the Black close behind him. Gloom and darkness still held the hammock but he no longer needed to follow the captain's footprints; his trail was clear in the heavy brush where stalks of plants lay bent and broken.

Alec came upon an area where the brush had been flattened to the ground by the full weight of the captain's body. Had he rested or fallen? There were clumps of uprooted sod lying in every direction. Alec picked up one of them and found it wet and smelling of blood. What had happened to cause the captain to tear this sod from the ground and apparently hurl it about? Had his terror become so great that he believed he was defending himself against
Koví
?

This was not too difficult for Alec to imagine. In his own panic he had seen the monstrous form of
Koví
.
Yet he must face the situation as it
was
, not as he
imagined
it, he told himself. Neither
Koví
nor anything else could actually materialize.

Yet had he not touched something within the crimson light that had the texture of flesh? What was the truth
? Alec asked himself.
Was the answer a form of death itself?
He didn't know.

Alec came to a familiar grove of large trees and knew without doubt that the captain was returning the way they had come. He brushed aside the thick veils of Spanish moss. At the base of a large oak tree the captain lay sprawled on the ground, face downward.

At first Alec believed him to be resting, even sleeping. “Captain,” he said. “Wake up.”

Alec drew back in horror when he saw the blood draining from beneath the man's head. He turned him over and his shock was complete.

The captain's eyes were open but they were the eyes of a dead man. His mouth had been struck or kicked, for his lips were severely battered and all his teeth were smashed in. Something had happened to his hands, too, for they were torn and covered with blood; the fingers were curled, as if he was still clutching, reaching for an object of terror!

Alec looked into the ravaged face with the unclosed eyes staring at him. Had the captain been right and he wrong? Was
Koví
more than a mental image created in the mind of the beholder? Could he materialize and inflict these terrible physical blows?

The captain's eyes were filled with unbearable agony, not the agony of pain, but that of fear too great to withstand. They affected Alec as they never had
done when the captain was alive, and yet these were dead eyes.

Alec found he could not take his gaze from them. They held him as if he and the captain had been linked together on the borderline between the living and the dead … as if each had gazed at something which had strayed from another kind of life into their own, something they could not comprehend, something that did not belong.

The lead shank was taut in Alec's hand and he realized suddenly that the Black was trying to break away from him. Alec turned his attention to controlling his horse. The Black's nostrils were flared and his ears were pinned back.

Alec moved him away and then turned back to the captain. What should he do, he wondered, leave and go for help? What kind of help? The captain was beyond anything a doctor could do. Yet others must be informed so the captain's body could be removed from the hammock. The police would have to know what had happened.

But what
had
happened?

Alec looked down at the ravaged figure sprawled before him. Who had struck the physical blows, if
Koví
had not materialized bodily? He saw the trail of dark bloodstains on the trunk of the tree, the bark torn off in great pieces. He looked again at the captain's blood-covered hands. Had he in self-induced frenzy clawed the tree in an attempt to escape his awesome mental image of
Koví
? Had he, a superstitious fool, in his terror pounded his head against the tree, using his great strength to inflict blows upon himself in preference to
the horror which appeared before his eyes? Could that be the answer to what had happened?

Alec looked into the captain's wide-open eyes, which even in death did not know peace. He felt no fear of what he saw in them. The captain's death had not come from the blows inflicted by his own hands but from his mind. It was a fearful thing to know that fear unchecked could kill.

Alec turned away. He would first tell Odin, then he would ride on to the ranch. It would take many hours at best, providing he could find his way.

The sky was lightening with the gray of early morning when Alec swung himself up onto the stallion's back. The night was behind him but he knew the horror would not be ended until the captain's body was removed from the hammock—and perhaps not even then.

Several hours later, the stallion's running hoofbeats shattered the midmorning stillness as Alec tightened his legs around him and sent the Black into a gallop. The worst of the muddy going was behind them and a short distance away the captain's hammock emerged from the waving sea of yellow grass.

The Black snorted and plunged forward, as if he too was glad to leave the swamp behind. He waded through the shallows at the foot of the high bank and climbed to the firm ground of the hammock.

Alec kept the Black at a run, and with the triple racing beat of hoofs in his ears, he found it increasingly difficult to believe that he had actually experienced the horrors of the night. In the misty sunlight filtering through the trees everything had a dreamlike quality to it.

He kept his head close to the Black's neck. Nothing had changed but the passing of night to day. Everything
that had happened to him was as real as the warm skin his face was pressed against.

The house loomed before him and he slowed the Black, finally coming to a complete stop. He was surprised at the feeling of wariness that had swept over him. The house was as he had left it, the shapeless roof rising in the center to the pillared tower, partially hidden by the fronds of the coconut palms. There was nothing to be cautious about any longer, he told himself.

Alec let the Black go on, approaching the house at a slow walk.

“Odin!” he called at the top of his voice. It was only then that he saw the large padlock on the front door, and the shuttered windows.