I Guess It Doesn't Matter Any More

Chapters

Chapter 1: I Believe Some Things Can't Be Explained
Chapter 2: They Are Hidden in the Mist ...
Chapter 3: .... And in the Silver Rain
Chapter 4: The Cold and Angry Rain
Chapter 5: It Really Doesn't Matter Any More

Chapter 1: I Believe Some Things Can't Be Explained

Long Haul was bobtailing through the evening as the Sun set behind the western hills and day faded away into night. He was glad of the lack of a semi-trailer, as the road was narrow and poorly-lit, and though paved was prone to partial washouts when it rained -- which it was doing right now.

He had driven it by daylight two days after it had rained hauling a semi-trailer and had not enjoyed the experience, in fact he had been forced to swerve while turning because part of the hill above on his right had blocked his lane; if he hadn't been very careful turning back he probably would have jack-knifed, and it was a two hundred foot slope down to the river on his left side then. He'd come out of that with no damage but to one tire, which hadn't been blown or deflated, but he'd also come out of that clutching the wheel white-knuckled, having just seen the whole forty-five years of his life flash before his mind's eye; and he'd had nightmares about that moment for weeks afterward.

He hadn't talked about it to anyone, save Rose Brew at the diner on I-20 at the Rimegold Truck Stop, Rose Brew who was his on-again off-again lover, and whom he was much sweeter on than he let her know, because he didn't like to talk too much about his feelings. He might have married her if things had been different, but neither of them were the marrying kind: he was just happy to have an understanding friend. She held him and soothed him afterward, and he was more grateful to her than he would ever tell her.

He'd also done it once by night, also pulling a trailer, that time it was high summer and the asphalt was bone-dry. The main problem then was that the road was narrow and most of it unlit; but hey, that's what All-Father (or, more likely, Spark Bulb and Black Tee) had made headlights for, right? He'd cruised steadily though carefully; there were old truckers and bold truckers but no old, bold truckers, and Long Haul was in it for what his name said, thank you; he'd had no real problems.

Now he was driving in actual rain, and an increasingly serious one, the silver droplets merging into vertical lines and spattering against his windshields. He had the wipers going, but visibility was still way down and he noticed that a fog was rising up from the Motherwater on his left. Just great, he thought. Abso-tively great.

He did not want any sort of accident here, because there was nobody to help him. He had his cellphone, but no service, out here driving with the huge uninhabited mass of the Everfree National Forest on his right, like some great shaggy green beast rearing over the hills. There were stories about that forest, each story more unsettling than the last; it was not a place Long Haul wanted to hike through in the dead of night in a driving rainstorm.

Then there was his CB radio, but he couldn't count on that still working, if he had a real crash. And the weather interfered with transmission. Heck, his reception wasn't even all that good right now -- there were spots by the Everfree where radios just didn't work all that well, and he was passing one. He switched his FM radio off as the nearest local station, which hadn't been all that good to begin with, faded out into a snarl of static.

He was also coming up on a landmark in a few more minutes. An old Esshell gas joint; no service or point in stopping there, it had been abandoned for decades. It remained standing mostly because somewhere, some owner must be thinking of selling it, but there really wasn't much traffic on this road anyway. It may have served some town that was now also defunct; a lot of the towns out here had died when the interstate took the northern route; which was a pattern in the Everfree.

One of the unsettling stories, he remembered, was of an old town about thirty miles on, located miles into the forest between the Freestream and the Avalon. Something about it all being cursed and the inhabitants turned into ghosts or vampires or something of the sort. There was even an old song about one of the vampires: a strange golden-eyed girl who met a wandering musician.

He'd heard it once. "Wraith-Kissed," something like that. All he could remember was the chorus ...

Wraith-Kissed -- you were born to die,
Wraith-kissed -- in the ground you'll lie,
Wraith-kissed -- now your doom draws nigh,
Death waits -- in her glowing golden eyes!

He shivered. Not something of which he cared to think, when he was coming up on that very same legend-haunted stretch of woods, in just an hour or so, depending on the visibility and road conditions. All just myths, of course, but still cold comfort to a trucker on a long and lonely stretch of highway.

Then he rounded the curve and saw the Esshell station, and all this was driven out of his mind, because the station was lit up, glowing brightly through the cold rain, and right under the main light was standing a woman in a long white dress. At the sight of his semi-tractor, she looked directly at him, and her thumb went up.

A hitch-hiker? Long Haul thought, astounded. Here? There was nothing else along this road for many miles in either direction, and behind the Esshell station was nothing but an old dirt road leading into what was now the National Forest.

It was cold and wet, though, and she was a woman alone. Common decency told him that he should stop and give her a lift, to at least the next town, which would be North Riverbridge, on the other side of the Avalon. He certainly couldn't just leave her to shiver in the driving rain.

Long Haul was no fool, though, and he could see the obvious danger. There were sometimes hijackers on the road, and this would be a perfect lure with which to trap a trucker. So, as he slowed to a stop, he took out of his glove compartment the .45-caliber automatic pistol he had brought back from the Blackstoner Wars almost two decades past, slipped the magazine into place, and shoved it into the inner pocket of his brown, travel-stained leather jacket. If there were thieves out there, he'd be a tougher customer than they were counting on.

The tractor bumped over the pavement of the gas station, which had not been properly maintained for decades. There were potholes and cracks aplenty, worn both during the time the station had been opened but failing, and by weather in the years since then. The big tires splashed water as the weight came down again, but Long Haul was careful not to splash his potential passenger. Surely she would be wet enough already.

As he stopped he could now see the girl quite clearly. She was gray-skinned, which was a fairly normal coloration for North Amareicans, and had long blonde two-toned orange-and-yellow hair. The light illuminated her quite brightly, despite the mist and rain, and he was struck by the curious fancy that it was not the electric roadlamp overhead, but rather the girl, who was glowing, a diffuse and beautiful golden glow which lit the whole station and the cab of his semi.

Keeping the motor running and the driver's side door locked, Long Haul leaned over to the other side and opened the passenger door.

She looked up at him, and he was struck by her golden eyes. For a moment, he thought that they were glowing, like those of the vampire ghost from the old song, but then the moment passed and he realized that they were merely reflecting the radiance of the street light.

"Need a ride?" he asked her.

She smiled at him and nodded, and he revised her estimate of her age downward a decade. She looked healthy and well-built, fairly tall and muscular, and he might have thought her a woman in her twenties, were it not for a certain softness about her features and innocence about her expression that spoke to him of a girl in her teens, probably no older than fifteen or sixteen. He could see her Dream-Mark, embroidered over her hips -- a magnifying glass.

He glanced around for a moment, and saw no hijackers. Of course, there were lots of places for them to hide, not the least of which was around his own semi, but if he didn't wait too long they wouldn't have that option.

"I'm going to Canterlot," he said. "Through North Riverbridge. If that suits you, hop aboard. No strings -- just a ride."

She smiled at him again, and started climbing up to the cab.

Or did she? As Long Haul slid back over into the driver's seat, he thought that she almost seemed to be floating, rather than climbing, up to and through the passenger door. The impression was so pronounced that for a moment he groped inside his jacket for the butt of his pistol -- after an exceptionally-strange incident in the Babylonian desert, he'd had a local mystic bless the very same ammunition he was still carrying, and the old Shemite had claimed that with it he could drive off even evil spirits -- but then he realized he was just imagining things, for her weight pressed down on the seat cushion as she got into the seat beside him in a very normal and non-phantasmal manner, and he relaxed.

She was just a teenaged girl, nothing more. No threat to him. He needed to calm down. He'd seen some scary things in Babylonia, that was all, and he had to be careful not to bring those ghosts back home.

As she came in, the cold mist entered with her, so much so that Long Haul shivered even through his leather jacket and sweater. The poor girl was chilly and drenched -- when Long Haul took her hand to help her to her seat, he noticed that her skin felt both almost freezing cold, and the water almost streamed from her dress onto the seat cover. Indeed, even after Long Haul closed the door, the cab was icy cold, and he immediately turned up the heater, even before fully resuming his own seat, which helped a little.

"Brrr," he said conversationally. "That's one mean night out there. Wonder if the rain'll turn to snow?"

She smiled and shrugged.

"Well," Long Haul continued, releasing the parking brake and shifting into drive, "the sooner we get you out of this cold night the better." He let the semi slide out of the Esshell station and onto the road; he didn't expect any other traffic but he was still careful to watch for it.

As he pulled out onto the road, he saw something strange in his rear view mirror.

The lights at the Esshell station were off again, leaving it dark and silent as the grave.

Long Haul continued along down the lonely road with his strange passenger.

He tried talking to her a few times, but she would not speak in return, simply giving him more or less friendly smiles in reply, to show him that she was not actually offended by his attempts at conversation. He wondered if she were actually mute, or simply very shy. She might be intimidated by his size and sex, and the loneliness of the situation; he certainly did not want to frighten her further.

The obvious thought, that she might have been traumatized by an assault, occurred to him. She had some sort of mark, like a scuff or bruise, on her left temple. But her clothing did not appear disarranged or torn, and when he asked her directly "Did someone hurt you?" she shook her head vociferously, then softly giggled.

Another obvious possibility was that some S.O.B. had taken her out for a night-time drive, he'd gotten a bit too fresh, and she'd either been expelled from or stormed angrily away from the car when she wouldn't give him what he wanted. She seemed a nice girl -- though very strange -- and the scenario quite plausible, but given her unwillingness to speak, he could not confirm it.

It also occurred to him that she might be a runaway. Some men would have taken her in to a police station, but Long Haul didn't think that was a good idea unless he knew just from what -- if anything -- she was running away. He knew that some runaways were fleeing real abuse, and it would be doing her no favor to turn her back over to the ones who might want to hurt her.

Really, he didn't understand enough of the situation to know the right course of action. That left simply taking her down the road and letting her off where she wanted to go, which had the virtue of being what he'd told her he would do, and hence probably the best way to treat her straight. Maybe he could check in later, find out if she were all right, what happened to her.

The Esshell station was now miles behind them, the big semi-tractor splashing along in a slow and steady cruise down the road. It was just two lanes -- one in each direction -- but that didn't matter much given the complete absence of any other traffic on the road. His headlights cast cones of raidiance through the night and into the mist; he could clearly see the shape of his lights on the fog droplets. His tires plashed through puddles and hissed on the wet blacktop between them.

The girl began to relax -- Long Haul supposed it was because he hadn't proven a bad person. Really, hitch-hiking alone was dangerous, especially for a young woman. He wondered what her family was like, and if they had any idea where she was, and if they were worried about her. Long Haul did not to his knowledge have any children, of either sex, but he couldn't imagine parents not worrying about a teenaged daughter in this kind of situation, especially on a night like this.

As she relaxed, so did Long Haul. Though the girl still did not speak, and he gave up attempting to induce her to conversation, a certain friendly feeling grew between them. They were two beings cruising together through the angry night rain, sharing shelter and basic human trust. As always in such situations, either friendliness or hostility will build; and neither of them was feeling hostile to the other.

Though, physically that cabin air remained unwontedly cold, no matter how high he turned up the heater. It was as if a cold wind blew from the passenger side -- though a brief stop and quick check showed him that both door and window on that side were tight shut -- and the trucker wondered if something were wrong with his cab's HVAC system.

He was heavily clad, but she just had that white dress, wet and somewhat sheer from its drenching, something he realized when he bent over her to check the door; he could directly see her underwear, and noticed in passing that it was quite conservative; the sort of heavy brassiere and concealing underpants common a half-century or more ago. Kids these days and their retro styles, he thought wryly. When he was her age, teenage girls wouldn't be caught dead in anything that old-fashioned.

He also noticed that she was still very cold.

Both for the sake of her dignity and to avoid her suffering from exposure, he offered her a blanket from the sleeper behind the seats, and finally prevailed on her to wrap it around herself. That must have both warmed and somewhat dried her, and the glitch in the heating system may have also cured itself, because it started to get warmer in the cab. She obviously appreciated the loan of the blanket, anyway, because she smiled warmly at him when he did that, a look of gratitude in her golden eyes.

They drove on a while longer.

He had the music off, so he could hear distinctly when she started humming to herself.

It was a haunting tune, and one which seemed strangely familiar to him, though he couldn't quite place it. He was sure that he had heard it before.

He was coming up on the Freestream now. Despite its name, it was actually a small river, spanned by a steel box girder bridge on concrete pilings. There was no real clearance problem; he'd crossed the Freestream Bridge hauling a trailer before, and he had none now. But it was raining hard, and as he approached the bridge he could see that the river was running high, foaming about the concrete supports on which the bridge stood.

He slowed as he did this, peering into the area illuminated by his headlights to make sure that there was nothing wrong with the bridge. This would be a bad night for a swim in the river. He could see no apparent problems; just a sturdy bridge over a river that was high but not actually flooding. As he looked up from this, he glanced over to the girl, and saw that she was clutching at her seatbelt and part of the door fitting, white-knuckled and grimacing in obvious fear.

Oddly enough, at that moment the malfunctioning heater filled the cab with what smelled very much like burned meat. Long Haul wondered briefly if a mouse had crawled into his engine and died somewhere near the radiator and air intakes. He'd found the corpses of less likely things in his cab before.

"Don't worry, kid," he told the girl. "It's safe. I'll have us across before you can say jack ... um, jiminy cricket," he quickly concluded, not wanting to use bad language in the presence of such a tender young thing. He smiled at her reassuringly.

She smiled back, uncertainty obvious in her eyes, and nodded.

Long Haul gunned his semi forward. Now that he'd seen no damage to the bridge, he'd rather take this fast than slow, as lingering too long might put too much pressure on the stressed structure, and he wanted the advantage of momentum to carry him past any dubious spots.

Just as the front tires slapped onto the bridge, he suddenly recognized the tune she'd been humming.

It was 'Wraith-Kissed.'

Author's Note

The tale of the Ghost Girl Hitch-hiker is very old, long predating motor vehicles. In the earlier versions, the helpful traveller may be driving a carriage or wagon, riding a horse, or simply walking when the Ghost Girl asks for his escort. In many of the variants, the Ghost Girl travels with the helpful man until she disappears when either (1) he crosses running water or (2) reaches her destination (generally either her former home or the graveyard in which she lies buried).

My version combines the running-water obstacle and trying-to-get-home themes, and gives Ruby a good reason to hitch a ride -- Long Haul can help her cross the running water. It owes a lot to this song:

Among other things, it gave me the outfit for Ruby Gift, which you will notice is dressed as described in the song, not the cover picture.

The Ghost Girl Hitch-Hiker is almost always a Friendly Ghost, and generally a sympathetic character. It makes perfect sense to put Ruby Gift in the role.

A "jack-knife" is when a tractor-trailer truck skids in such a way that the trailer skids around toward the tractor, which can very rapidly render the whole mass uncontrollable and in a very hard position to recover from. A crash is quite possible. Assuming that you haven't wrecked either element, or the fifth wheel connecting the two elements, in doing so. Having this happen on a narrow road with a cliff dropping away from one shoulder would be ... bad. It's understandable why the incident shook up our hero.

Long Haul doesn't really believe in vampires, or ghosts, or wraiths, at the start of this story. Though he saw some strange things, and heard of still-stranger ones, in the Blackstoner Wars. He doesn't expect to run into them back in the North Amareican Federation, anyway.

Anyone familiar with the location of ancient Babylonia will be aware of what the Blackstoner Wars are a Fantasy Counterpart. It's my go-to source for young to middle-aged combat veterans, who may be a bit tougher than they look. The Humaniod Piercing Gaze is another one of them. If this story were set thirty years earlier, as it well might have been given that Ruby and her family are Undead, I would have used the Annam War instead, with similar characterization.

Ruby is dressed very appropriately ... for the 1920's or 1930's. From her POV, she's keeping up with the styles pretty well. She thinks in terms of centuries, anyway. Back in her breathing days, "appropriately" would have mean petticoats -- and no underpants at all.

She has a huge number of styles to apply to her Aspects, back in the Teenage Girl Bedroom of the Damned. Yes, there's one in this Universe. I think there's one for every worldline in which there's a Ruby Gift who had that final fatal quarrel with her father.

This of course suggests that Hasbro really needs to make a Ruby Gift fashion doll. :rainbowlaugh:

I want to see the playset for Ruby's Sanctum!

Yeah, Long Haul, you've got a malfunctioning heater. The corpse of something unlikely in your cab. Better call in some professionals to fix your problem for you.

Chapter 2: They Are Hidden in the Mist ...

Things happened very fast.

The truck shot forward completely onto the bridge and over the waters foaming by beneath.

And, right at the edge of Long Haul's peripheral vision, he saw the girl's form flicker.

That was the only way to describe it -- she flickered like a video screen rapidly changing channels. Different clothes, different hairstyles, a quick succession so dizzyingly fast that he could see none of them clearly, though for a moment he saw her lovely young form nude -- the blanket had fallen through her. Then, in the next moment, she was not quite so lovely.

It was just a brief glimpse, but it was a shape out of nightmare, though horribly in her exact proportions, making it obvious that it was still the girl. It was a fleshless horror of naked, black-charred bones, from which rose greasy smoke, filling the cab with a nauseous stench of burned flesh. The skull turned to regard him, orbs of golden flame flaring in its empty sockets, jaws gaping open and the back of one hand covering the mouth in a parody of a frightened woman's gesture, the exposed carpals failing to completely cover the mouth.

He shouted in startled shock, and then in an instant the horror was gone, to be replaced by a tracery of lights in the abstract shape of a humanoid female, from within which shone a golden glow so beautiful that he was seized by a wave of wonder as extreme as the horror he had felt before. He felt in the presence of some great good, something as comforting as the previous form had been terrifying.

Then the semi-tractor was past the bridge, and there was only the girl there, looking at him in utter dismay. She winced back and buried her head in her hands ...

... and Long Haul's road-awareness, the map that he made in his head of any road he was running, warned him urgently, and he turned his eyes front just in time to turn with the road instead of running up on the hilly right shoulder, and probably wrecking. Still, he could not forget that quick impossible series of visions. His skin crawled, as he wondered what she was doing, what she was looking like right now, though his peripheral vision was good enough that he would have known if she was surging toward him in any sort of atatck

As soon as he was onto a long straightaway, he turned back to regard her. "What the --" he still felt an aversion to swearing at her, for she still seemed a teenaged girl for all of her previous transformations.

She looked up, and her expression was so apologetic and woeful, that, despite all he had just seen, he could not remain at all hostile.

There was an obvious, impossible explanation for everything he'd seen that night, of course. One that he'd heard before in folktales, the ones where strange girls picked up on the road after dark vanished when the driver took them to their destinations -- or when he took them across running water. But he wasn't about to say it. He wasn't about to flat out ask the girl "Are you a ghost?"

Not so much because he feared that he'd offend her. Nor even that he feared she'd lie.

It was more that he feared she'd tell the truth.

He didn't know if she was dangerous. She was certainly uncanny, but in the hitch-hiking ghost stories, the spectral travelers were usually friendly ghosts. All they wanted was to get to their destinations. Very well, he'd take her to her destination.

In "Wraith-Kissed," the ghost girl had maimed the narrator by sucking out some of his life when he kissed her on the lips. Stole the kiss, actually, in the song -- its details were rapidly coming back to him.

Very well. He wouldn't kiss her. He hadn't been planning to do so, in any case.

Briefly, it occured to him that he was lucky he wasn't the sort of guy who would try to molest a young woman hitch-hiking, and he quirked a small smile at that thought.

He glanced over at the (ghost?) girl, and noticed that she was relaxing, starting to smile again. He wasn't sure if that were a good or a bad thing, but at least she wasn't draining out his life at the moment. And life was basically a series of moments, and if you were living through this moment, you were still in the game.

He'd learned that with the Army in Babylonia, and it was just as true back home in the Federation. Just maybe not normally so dangerous. Except at times. And this seemed to be one of those times.

Perhaps a time when the living and the dead might be at truce.

So Long Haul's semi-tractor ghosted on through the night, driven by a living man and bearing a woman who might have been undead.

There was something surreal in that long lonely drive. Long Haul had driven this way before; remembered the road and its landmarks. But the other two times he'd driven this road, he had been a man who knew that the dead didn't get up and walk -- he still wasn't sure what those ghoul-things at that ancient city lost in the Babylonian desert had been, but they hadn't been dead; the way they bled and fell to small-arms fire proved it.

This time he was a man who knew that sometimes the dead did get up and walk ... and hitch-hike ... and that made all the difference.in the world. Long Haul was alive and real, he could hear his own breath and feel his own heartbeat. The semi was real; he could feel the steering wheel in his hands, the irregularities in the road jouncing him in his seat. He could hear the motor driving them forwarad, the tires rolling over the slick asphalt, the wipers laboring against that damnable rain, made silver by his headlights, spattering angrily against his windshield.

But was the girl real? And alive? He feared that the answer to at least one of those questions was 'no.'

He looked at her again, and she gave him a little smile, and he felt a strange sympathy for her. She seemed a perfectly nice and sweet girl, nothing much wrong with her --- if you discounted the fact that she was probably dead. She should be going to school, being asked out by boys, planning for college and a career, maybe marriage and children.

He greatly doubted that any of those things lay in her future, if 'future' in that sense was applicable to the undead. She seemed young enough -- around fifteen or so -- to be his daughter, if he'd had a daughter, and he imagined that was the age she'd been when she died. She would have had a lot of life still ahead of her, which she would now never know.

The air became friendlier once again in that little moving space. Though still cold. And now that Long Haul suspected that he was giving a ride to a ghost, he somehow knew that there was nothing wrong with his heater.

Her silence didn't bother him any more. He knew that it was because he knew he would probably not like the secrets she was keeping, the thoughts she might be thinking behind those lovely, strange golden eyes. The living should not learn the mysteries of the dead.

So it came as a surprise to him when she finally spoke.

"Here," she said. Her voice was soft and sweet, and as lovely as her face. "Prithee please, good drayman, pull off the road here. We are upon mine own home."

He nodded. "Sure thing, darlin'," he replied, trying to keep his tone calm and cheerful. He eyed the road's right shoulder, saw a place where it widened, turning into a dirt road that snaked up and into the depths of the Everfree.

He took the turnoff, driving slowly and carefully, his wheels splashing through deep mud-puddles. The dark branches of the trees closed over the roof of his cab, sometimes slapping against it. He slowed further. The last thing he wanted to do was drive headlong into a bog. This did not seem like a good place to get stuck.

"How far do you want me to go in?" he asked.

There was no reply.

He turned to the passenger side ...

... and she was gone.

It would be false to say that Long Haul was entirely surprised by this developent. Mysteriously disappearing was what the ghost girl usually did at the end of a story such as this. Nevertheless, uncanny a companion though she had been, Long Haul felt obscurely cheated by the outcome. He had hoped to have the chance to ask her who she was, where she was from. Now he would never know the rest of her tale.

Moved by his frustrated curiosity, he stopped the semi, shifting into park and pushing home the parking brake, but leaving the motor running. He double-checked gear and parking brake, donned a leather cap, and stepped down from the cab into the cold night outside. Despite his cap and jacket, the cold rain sleeted down heavily upon on him, and he was swiftly drenched. He knew that he wasn't even taking the full force of the rainstorm: he was partly protected by the dark and gnarled branches of the trees that met overhead, covering the dirt road like the roof of a tunnel.

His headlights made a cone of light, which was swiftly swallowed up by the thick and drifting mists. He had a sudden, strange fear: what if only he and his semi were real, and the road and woods all some strange illusion, intruding from some monstrous half-world to engulf them? He laughed at his own thought -- clearly he'd read one too many weird tales -- but the laugh seemed hollow even to himself, and despite scoffing at the idea, still he kept close to the big comforting metal bulk of his vehicle. He still had that irrational fear that, if he stepped beyond sight of the semi, he would be lost -- in more than one sense of the word.

He walked around the front to the passenger side, his boots splashing through puddles, and in places squelching into inches-deep mud. It was very obvious to him that this road was neither used very often, nor maintained very well. It was a poor road for heavy traffic; though of course his semi had big wheels and a lot of extra power when not actually pulling a trailer, and hence was a better all-terrain vehicle than one might have expected given its designed environment of well-paved roads.

He would not have liked to try to pull even a single semi-trailer down this road, though, and tacking a full trailer on behind that would have been asking for serious trouble. It made the two-lane blacktop from which it sprang look like a superhighway by comparison. Where ever the ghost girl lived -- or, more properly, had lived -- was probably some little farm on the edge of the Everfree.

He knew from the stories that if he found that farm, he would probably meet some old couple who would tell him how their daughter died on the main road decades ago, struck by a truck when hitch-hiking at night, and yet still kept trying to get home. They probably were just a little ways down the road ...

... But it was a dark, cold and foggy night. In the rain, the narrow dirt road might wash out or flood or bog, trapping him here until at least the end of the storm. And visibility was so bad that he could easily miss a nearby farmhouse, especially if its lights were off. Wandering around these back roads under these conditions to find a place he had never been before and with whose appearance he was unfamiliar would be a seriously stupid plan.

He was now standing before the cab's passenger door. Here the only real illumination came from backscatter from the headights and tail lights off the mist. He needed better than that for even a cursory examination, so he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small flashlight. It was but a wan radiance compared to the mighty power of his headlights, but he could direct it closely at anything he wished.

He looked down at the dirt beside his right running-board. There were no footprints, not even the small ones that a young woman might make in the mud.

He hadn't really expected to find any. For at no point could he remember the girl opening the passenger side door to exit. She had left the cab by some method far stranger than simply opening the door and stepping down the running board.

He shone the light up at the passenger side door. Something shimmered back at him, more brightly than could be explained by rain on metal. Curious, Long Haul climbed up to have a look.

There was a viscuous silvery fluid glistening on the door, around the level that one would expect if someone had ... well, floated out through the door, without opening or damaging it in any manner. He remembered that a power often attributed to ghosts was the ability to pass through solid walls. Sometimes, when they did this, they supposedly left behind a ... residue.

Ectoplasm, he thought. Is this ... ectoplasm? He ran his finger experimentally along the substance. It stuck slightly to his fingertip, feeling cold and nasty and ... slimy.

She slimed me! he thought, and chuckled at the concept. No, he corrected himself. She slimed my truck. Which would annoy me more, I guess, if this whole situation weren't so damned strange. Is 'damned' the right word? I don't know -- she seemed too nice to be really evil. Probably just some poor girl who died out on the road, on a dark and stormy night very much like this one.

He spoke to the night. "Who were you? How did you die?"

And the night answered him, in a voice that whispered on the wind. It really does not matter any more. There was a pause, then: Now go, good drayman! This is not a safe place for mortals to linger, and I would not see thee suffer for thy kindness to me!

The voice was so strange -- was it really a sound, or a presence in his mind? -- that for a moment Long Haul was uncertain whether or not it had been only in his imagination. Then, he fully registered what he had heard.

It was a warning.

That warning, on top of what he had recently seen, galvanized him into action. He bolted around the front of his semi and clambered up the driver's side. The seat of his jeans squelched as he sat on the seat covers, and he knew from the way that water was streaming off him that both sides of the cab were now thoroughly wetted.

As he closed the door he took a look over at the passenger's seat side. There was a lot of that silvery ectoplasm, or whatever it was, on the inside of the passenger side door. There seemed to be a lot more of it there, and covering a much wider area, then he had seen outside. Probably because the rain's been washing it off outside, he reasoned.

The dirt road was really too small to turn around on, and given the ghost girl's warning, he was not inclined to run forward along an unknown road in the fog to find a wider patch, nor risk running onto possibly boggy shoulders and getting stuck. No, there was but one thing for it. Gazing into his rear-views, he shifted the semi into reverse, then backed away slowly down the side road toward the main one.

He shivered as he did so ... it had gotten really cold in the cab, just as it had when the ghost girl had been in the passenger seat. He figured this was the combination of the cold spot she had left behind her with the effect of his wetting by the rain. The heater didn't seem to be doing a very good job fighting it.

There ... he could see the end of the muddy dirt road behind him ... in less than a minute he would be back on the main road, heading for the Riverbridge and leaving this whole weird night behind him. His encounter with the strange ghost girl would be yet another story to tell, late at night, to a disbelieving audience. Another thread woven into the tapestry of the Phantom Hitch-Hiker legends.

Murky red light flared from his right, and for a moment all he could think was RPG! For a horrible moment his mind flashed back to urban fighting in Babylonia, rebel Basers and an APC getting hit. Then the wash of displaced air hit him, and it was not the heat of a rocket-propelled high-explosive anti-tank warhead penetrating his vehicle, but rather cold and clammy and charnel, reeking of death, something he had first smelled in Babylon and which he would never forget. His head whipped round to the passenger seat, half-expecting to see the ghost girl returned, but what he saw was no ghost girl.

At least, it was no girl.

He beheld a big burly middle-aged man, a bit taller than himself, perhaps a bit fatter as well, though he seemed plainly well-muscled under the fat, a classic biker build. His skin was a darker gray than was the girl's, while his hair had probably once been jet black, but now had salt shaken into the pepper. His eyes were coal-black.

The expression on his face was incredibly friendly and jovial.

"Well met, stranger!" the big gray man said to him, laughing cheerfully. "Or should I name thee friend, as thou hast safely returned mine own daughter Ruby unto me." He smiled broadly. "Come into our humble little town, that we may feast thee properly in return for thine own kindness to Ruby!"

Oh, crap, Long Haul thought, there's a whole nest of them, but he smiled back at the stranger. "Gee, I'd love to, but I have to get my semi into Canterlot by 4 am, you know what it's like, life of a trucker." He unobtrusively increased his pressure on the accelerator, rolling faster in reverse to the main road. "And there's no need to throw some sort of party just for me. Any decent guy woulda helped out the kid."

"Oh, we were going to have our revels in any case," the man assured him. "And I do insist that thou attend. We will feast thee, and thou mayest remain with us for a time. A long time." His grin grew wider. "But, my manners. I am Grey Hoof, celebration planner extraordinaire. And you ... you are well come to Sunney Towne." His grin grew wider still. His lips seemed to draw back way too far from his teeth, which were suspiciously many and long and sharp.

And Long Haul knew he was in real trouble.

Author's Note

Long Haul is Genre Savvy. Unfortunately, he's not considering the question of just what sort of ghost story he's in.

Or that, while the Ghost Girl Hitch-Hiker, is generally herself a friendly ghost, she might hang out with some other ghosts who most definitely aren't.

Hey look! It's Worst Party Person! :pinkiegasp:

And Long Haul is, indeed, in serious trouble.

Chapter 3: .... And in the Silver Rain

"Grey Hoof," Long Haul said in a deliberately calm tone -- though in truth, his heart was racing and his pulse pounding in his ears -- "this just ain't no good idea. We're from two different worlds, and they just shouldn't mix."

"Nonsense!' replied Grey Hoof, his voice redolent with jovial good cheer. "The farmers and the teamsters should be friends! Why, we grow the crops you haul to market -- though, admittedly, our yields have been piss-poor this last millennium -- but still, we need each other!"

Long Haul caught Grey Hoof's temporal reference, and had a brief, hilariously-nightmarish mental image of his semi sitting in a shed somewhere, gathering cobwebs and dust and rust, while his skeleton sat behind the steering wheel, while the ghosts of Sunney Towne, the worst farmers in the ten-millennia or so long history of agriculture, struggled to actually grow a crop for him to haul. Despite his own grim situation, Long Haul could not quite suppress a short barking laugh, followed by a snickering chuckle.

"I was thinking more about the world of the living -- and that of the dead," Long Haul said.

Grey Hoof grinned amiably. "Oh, thou needst not fret on that," he said. "Thou wilst soon enow belong wholly to mine own world!" He chuckled heartily at this, as if this were a particularly funny joke.

Long Haul laughed too. He knew he should have been terrified -- Grey Hoof had as good as promised to kill him -- and, while Long Haul wasn't exactly certain how a ghost could kill the living, but 'Wraith-Kissed' gave Long Haul an inkling as to how such a murder might be accomplished. On another level -- though he did not know exactly why -- he found himself liking the big cheerful ghost. This was not like the sympathy he had felt for Ruby -- he did not really understand the source of his new emotion.

Grey Hoof's merriment was mesmerizing -- and that term for it was more accurate than Long Haul realized, for in fact he was falling under Grey Hoof's supernatural sway. His fears were being damped down; his suspicions lulled and his loyalties subverted against his own survival and towards the ends of the Master-Wraith of Sunney Towne. Long Haul had never encountered anything like this before; and his military training provided him no defense, in a mostly-mundane world, against the geas of the ghost.

And yet the trucker had a strong streak of stubborness, and a native common sense that beat a slow, steady tocsin of warning in the depths of his mind, and so his will did not totally yield to the power of the phantom. Long Haul's soul was assailed, but it still remained his own, and while his power of active resistance was temporarily paralyzed, he did not wholly give in, and he did not cease what he had been doing before Grey Hoof had manifested in his cab.

So it was that, even while Long Haul laughed at Grey Hoof's merry jests, which all amounted to how Grey Hoof would take him back to Sunney Towne, end his mortal life, and in the darkness bind him to unstintingly serve Grey Hoof's will as one of the celebration planner's helpless undead thralls, still the trucker continued to reverse his semi along the muddy dirt road, toward the widening circle of light which offered hope of resuming the main road and gaining his freedom from these accursed woods.

Long Haul did not wholly know why he wanted to do this; a large part of him wanted to go with Grey Hoof to Sunney Towne and enjoy the promised delights of the proffered party. And yet Long Haul continued to do this, his eyes automatically watching his rear-view mirrors, his hands making the necessary motions on his steering wheel. And the motor of Long Haul's semi-tractor, which recked nothing of wraiths or of mind control, obeyed Long Haul in its simple mechanical fashion, and through its transmission conveyed its power to the wheels, driving him backwards to salvation.

And, as he pulled farther and farther away from the epicenter of Shadow upon Earth that was Sunney Towne, the power of Grey Hoof weakened with the growing distance, and Long Haul's struggling mind began to remember another consideration. An overriding consideration, that acted to combat the fiend's fell might.

Long Haul liked parties. He was a trucker, and one thing truckers know how to do is to whoop it up with the best of them at the end of a run.

But he was a good trucker, and he knew better than to whoop it up in the middle of a run -- worse, in the middle of a leg of that run, with many weary miles to drive before he made it to his first destination. He knew his duty, in detail.

He had been told -- and he had entered this information into the distance-and-speed-and-time calculating engine of his brain -- that he had to be in Canterlot by 4 in the morning at the latest, so that he could pick up a semi-trailer full of paper goods that had to make it to the Crystal City by 4 in the afternoon the next day; and from there he had to take on a load of electronics for Dodge City. Distribution schedules hung on this, with penalty clauses in contracts which would be invoked if he was late in these tasks.

There was some leeway -- though the faster he made these runs, the longer the meals and naps he could take between the legs of this itinerary. But there was by no means enough leeway for him to just turn off his route and drive into the Everfree for an unplanned party. This would have been true, even if the party had been merely song and dance and food and drink, instead of what Grey Hoof really had intended for him.

And ... Grey Hoof did not know this! His mind-magicks were all pitched to overcome Long Haul's dread of death and revulsion at the thought of becoming one of the damned undead in his own person. And they overcame those fears -- but they did not overcome the pride of the elite trucker, the knowledge that the loads must go through, the routes run on time, the desire to be the best and fastest and most reliable driver of all.

So the semi rolled on backward through the cold and wet and mud, rolled on backward toward the freedom of the highway.

Grey Hoof, focused as he must have been on clamping down on Long Haul's mind, did not at first seem to be aware of what the trucker was actually doing. Perhaps it was because the Head-Wraith was concentrating upon Long Haul's consciousness, while the actions Long Haul were executing were at the level of routine and muscle-memory. In any case, it was not until the semi actually broke out from under the trees, Long Haul turning the wheel hard left to execute a tight reverse-right turn, that Grey Hoof seemed to awake to the fact that they were actually pulling away from Sunney Towne.

When he noticed, Grey Hoof did not seem to be very happy.

"What are you doing?" the specter shouted. "You're going the wrong way!"

Long Haul completed his turn, shifted into drive.

"Sorry, Mr. Hoof," he said. "I've gotta be in Canterlot by four this morning, and that hasn't changed. It's a shame I can't make your shindig, but I've got to make my run on time. Maybe I'll stop by your town some other time. Do you want me to let you off here now?"

"Let me off? Grey Hoof asked incredulously, and his face twisted into a snarl. For a moment, his eyes flared a murky crimson; and a cold, charnel-reeking wind blew from the passenger side of the cab. There was a flash of light, and Long Haul thought for a moment that he saw Grey Hoof's face not as that of a fleshy, jolly good fellow, but as a skull, horribly still draped in some tatters of flesh and hair, litten from within by a hellish reddish-black radiance.

Long Haul gasped sharply. This was not, like Ruby's similar transformation crossing the bridge occasioned by the running water. Here, the loss of control appeared more emotional than physical. And unlike Ruby, who had seemed apologetic about revealing her more frightening form, Grey Hoof was very obviously angry at him.
This awareness -- of the ease with which Grey Hoof could flash over from apparent cameraderie to to sudden rage -- percolated its way into Long Hoof's mind, gradually penetrating the fog of the geas which Grey Hoof had laid upon Long Haul's consciousness, like an invisible net entangling the trucker's free will. Slowly -- too slowly? -- Long Haul began re-awakening to his true peril.

So when Grey Hoof, recovering his composure in more than one sense of the word, smiled and said more politely

"'Tis of little concern, kind drayman. Canst thou drive me to Sunney Towne, so that I need not walk through this driving rain?"

Long Haul did not do as Grey Hoof had suggested, and turn around to drive right back onto that narrow, dark and muddy road, taking direction from his spectral passenger, under conditions which would negate most of the advantages of his vehicle, all the way to Grey Hoof's village, where he would be at the mercy of Grey Hoof and a whatever number of similar undead horrors awaited him" there. He would have done so, without questioning the command, a moment earlier.

Instead, Long Haul replied:

"I'm sorry -- I really can't. My semi's too big for that road -- I'm lucky I was able to take it down as far as I could without bogging down. I could let you off here, it's --- Aaah!"

That sudden scream was occaioned by the fact that Grey Hoof had very suddenly -- moving with frightening speed for someone so big -- surged toward Long Haul and grabbed him by his right hand and the nape of his neck. Grey Hoof was terribly strong; even stronger than Long Haul would have suspected from his sheer size.

But the strength of the ghostly grip ws far from the worst of it. For Grey Hoof's grip was supernally cold -- colder by far than the physical contact Long Haul had already experienced from his daughter Ruby. Pain flared where that chill touched him, pain and then a deathly numbness, as if the nerves in the flesh so affected had overloaded to the point of shutting down.

In that instant, Long Haul dimly comprehended just how, centuries ago, Ruby must have maimed Chiller Tale during that single disastrous kiss the minstrel had so unwisely stolen from the ghost girl. And Long Haul knew he was utterly at Grey Hoof's mercy. The pain was so agonizing, the numbness so total, that it was all Long Haul could do to retain his left hand's grip on the steering wheel.

Continuing to drive the semi along the road was impossible. The best Long Haul could do was gently pump the brake, drift to the right, and run the right side wheels of the truck up on the right-hand shoulder -- the one on the opposite side of the road from the river-cliff -- in what he hoped would be a controlled crash.

The semi shimmied, shuddered and shook as the right-side tires rode up on the shoulder and branches from roadside trees slapped the cab. The truck tilted alarmingly, but Long Haul's driving instincts and skills had been sound. His semi did not overturn. Instead it stopped, with a rattling of small objects inside storage compartments. Little actually came loose into the cab -- Long Haul was careful putting things away before he started driving. This was not the first crash in which he had been, controlled or otherwise.

At some point during this process, Grey Hoof had let go of him.

Long Haul looked at Grey Hoof, trying to rub some feeling into his own right wrist, where Grey Hoof had grasped hin. The skin there was blackened as if by a sudden severe frost-bite, in a pattern matching the wraith's fingers. His neck did not seem hurt nearly as much;, though Grey Hoof had gripped him equally as firmly there; Long Haul was not sure why.

Grey Hoof made no further move to harm him, merely glaring at him ominously from his ebon eyes, but obviously ready to at a moment's noticed administer more chilling pain. His expression was entirely unsympathetic.

"Why -- ?" Long Haul managed to recover his breath. "Why did you do that?"

"Thou mayest have noted," Grey Hoof said in a tone even more chilling for its controlled calm, "that I have been dead for many centuries. I am well aware of mine own antique ways, and the olden cast of mine own speech. I am also well aware of the great strides made in recent centuries by the artisans of the North Amareican Federation, including this very truck in whose cabin we do sit. Perhaps, thou dost imagine that this means I am as a babe in swaddling clothes, gaping in ignorant awe of thine own superior craftsmanship?

"I am not stupid, Messer Motor-Drayman. Nor I am I a child, nor some naked savage who doth imagine thy truck to be some magical miracle and trembleth before its mysteries. I have watched thy world. I have read thy books and news journals. Aye, Messer Drayman, I can read -- I learned my letters as a lad from my mother, who was likewise mistress of that art, for she came of a good family of Pie-Towne, which is long vanished into legend but which I knew well in my youth.

"We Hoofs were no ignorant peasants, but a family of sturdy yeomen and goodwives, who bowed before our lords but did not lick the boots of any of them. We were educated -- mine own youngest daughter, Ruby, whom you did carry here, is quite the scholar, and doth keep an extensive library. She is a brilliant and well-loved girl; before the Doom that came to Sunney-Towne, she stood high in the favor of the Moon-Queen herself, and was assured of a position at her Court. We are no gaping, slack-jawed yokels!

"The gist of what I say being, Messer Drayman, that I am not a fool. And I did behold, with mine own manifested eyes, thee as thou didst drive onto our road in thy truck. Not only that, I then did behold, from this very same seat in which I now do sit, as thou didst drive thy truck out again, backward. So I am well aware that thy motor-wagon is capable of taking our humble dirt road, if not at the speed that it doth fly on a better-surfaced one.

"Slow passge does not fret me. I was born in an age when the fastest any man moved was on a fleet horse, and your truck is at least as fast, even splashing through mud puddles. 'Twill stain thy truck, to be true, but I can always have some of my thralls clean it after. They do little enough, just rotting away in the ground and needing my power to keep bone sinewed to bone. They might as well serve as a crew to keep the truck looking fine and pretty as any noble's carriage.

He grinned, and his smile was that of some great beast beholding its prey.

"I have all the time in the world, Messer Drayman. More time than it shall take thee to drive thy dray to Sunney Towne. So let us begin!"

Long Haul made as if to consider this point, continuing to rub his right wrist. The worst damage was only skin deep, and sensation -- along with some pain -- was starting to return to the member. He could handle the pain, but the remaining numbness was a real problem. For he would soon need that hand for strong and precise work.

The trucker knew that Grey Hoof meant to kill him, perhaps turn him into another of those 'thralls' whose existence Grey Hoof had just mentioned in such a disturbingly vague manner. Long Haul had but one ace in the hole, one chance at survival, whose very existence he hoped the wraith did not even suspect.

A .45-caliber automatic pistol, with seven blessed bullets in its magazine, still-concealed under his leather jacket. He did not know for sure if the bullets would even affect Grey Hoof -- both Grey Hoof and his daughter Ruby had demonstrated that they could become insubstantial at will. But it was his only hope of survival, so he might as well try it.

The thing is, Long Haul's right hand was only gradually returning to full functionality. And Long Haul was right-handed.

He knew that in time his hand would come back. But he might not have enough time.

He had to stall the spectre just a little bit longer. Without angering him to the point of launching another attack.

"What ... what about my schedule?" Long Haul asked, deliberately putting bit of a frightened quaver into his voice. At this point, it didn't taake much acting.

"Worthless mortal!" Grey Hoof snarled, his face once again becoming the skin and hair-dangling half-decomposed skull Long Haul had seen before. The fires in his empty sockets were now only slightly red-tinged; they were mostly black fire, impossible though that might seem by normal logic. "Thou dost belong to me, now! Thou knowest full well that thou shalt not see Canterlog ag ..." Grey Hoof paused for a moment. He calmed slightly, and the fleshy face of the jolly fat man returned to clothe the naked bone. "... Any time soon," the wraith continued. "Thou shalt serve me for a space, thee and and thy truck. Then, if thou hast pleased me, I shall permit thee to ... pass on."

And Long Haul knew that Grey Hoof was not talking about letting him drive away again.

Author's Note

Grey Hoof's signature special ability is to lull listeners into liking him by his voice. This is somewhat similar to the classic RPG charm person spell. In life he was silver-tongued; empowered by the Curse of the Moon Queen, this is terribly enhanced. The spell is however broken if he physically attacks someone.

The chlling touch/life drain is a power shared by all the Wraiths. The reason Grey Hoof's touch hurts Long Haul much more than did Ruby Gift's is that at no point did Ruby Gift attempt to harm Long Haul.

The reason why Long Haul is only slightly harmed is that Grey Hoof wanted to pain rather than cripple him (he didn't know about the pistol with the blessed bullets and he needed Grey Hoof able to keep using his hands). His intent was to intimidate and subdue with a slight application of power.

The reason why Ruby Gift severely hamed Chiller Tale centuries ago is that he gave her a mouth-to-mouth open-lipped kiss. This both sexually excited her, causing her to lose her normal self-control over her powers, and provided her access to his life force right through his mucuous membranes.

Chapter 4: The Cold and Angry Rain

"All right, Mister Hoof," said Long Haul. "I'll take us to Sunney Towne." He reached for the controls.

What he did next was carefully-crafted. He had to assume that Grey Hoof knew something of motor vehicles: after all, the turn-off to Sunney Towne was from an actual, paved two-way road, and automotive technology was over a century old. But if Grey Hoof watched traffic along that road, he had probably also seen breakdowns and crashes. And yet Grey Hoof was probably himself not an experienced driver -- if he was, why would he so badly want Long Haul himself, in addition to his truck?

And one of the things Grey Hoof might well not know is how easy it is for an experienced driver to make sure that his vehicle does not go.

The truck was of course still in drive, with the parking brake off, as Long Haul had never actually parked it in any normal manner, but had stopped it by taking his foot off the gas pedal while running it up on the shoulder and along and into a stand of small trees, until he bled off enough momentum that way that the truck came to a stop. This was less 'parking' than 'controlled crashing.' Short of Long Haul either reversing out from his position, or, less easily, gunning his truck forward through the remaining obstacles back onto the road, the semi wasn't going anywhere.

Long Haul made sure of this by throwing the parking brake on, then pumping the gas pedal until he flooded the engine enough for it to start coughing, and working the stick wildly, grinding his gears. His look of dismay at that last action was not feigned -- he might well have actually damaged the transmission with that stunt, though probably not enough to be a short-term problem (he hoped). It made a wonderfully nasty sound, though, one which might convince Grey Hoof that something had been damaged in the crash.

It also spoke of expensive maintenance down the line. I'm sorry, he mentally-apologized to his truck. I'm making sure we don't both wind up somewhere we'd rather not go.

Though, of course, Long Haul wasn't really sure of the semi's preferences in the matter. He just assumed that a town full of nasty ghosts wouldn't know how to treat a truck right, that was all.

Long Haul looked at his spectral hijacker. "We musta took a little damage when we ran off the road. I think I can get her running in 'bout fifteen minutes. I gotta go outside to do the work, though. You can wait in the cab if you like, where it's warm and dry ..."

"I think not," replied Grey Hoof coldly. "Thou wouldst flee, and I would catch thee, and sorely hurt thee, and then thou wouldst be less capable of serving me well. I would not harm thee, yet. We shall both go outside, together."

"No problem," said Long Haul. "Lemme just get my tools together here." He pulled a small toolbox out from under his seat, opened the dashboard compartment, and took out an even smaller toolset and put it in an inner jacket pocket, quite near to his pistol. He cast a very brief glance at the box of spare ammunition in the dashboard compartment -- he could use it, but there was no way that Grey Hoof could possibly miss what he was doing if he started stuffing ammunition into his pocket.

He closed the compartment. The seven shots in the magazine of his pistol would have to suffice.

Tools ready, he opened the driver's side door and climbed down to the wet road surface. The rain showed no signs of relenting; indeed, both rain and wind seemed to be picking up; whipping in from the south. There were occasional flashes of blue light from that direction, or maybe more to the southeast, where was the fable-shadowed Heart of the Everfree. These were followed at long intervals by the low grumble of far-off thunder.

At least the wind is blowing that damned fog away, thought Long Haul. Better visibility conditions for when I get the hell outta here.

As Long Haul looked to make sure that there was no traffic approaching -- and saw that the road was still as completely deserted as it had been before -- he caught motion from the direction of the cab, and looked up just in time to see Grey Hoof float through the closed driver's side door. The wraith hovered in midair for a moment, then drifted down to stand beside the trucker.

"That's a net trick," Long Haul observed.

"That it is," Grey Hoof replied with a smug smile. "And 'tis only among my minor powers."

"Well, you sure got me beat," admitted Long Haul. "I have to open doors before I go through them." He plodded through the puddles to the front of the semi; reached into his jacket and pulled out his flashlight; played it around the grille and the front-left tires. He could see no damage there.

HIs damage inspection was more than merely a ruse. When Long Haul left, he wanted to leave fast, and this meant that the truck needed to be in good drivable condition. So he looked carefully, and with a professional eye, searching for problems.

"I do not have much need for doors," Grey Hoof boasted, "save for my thralls and those material objects I find useful."

So those 'thralls' of his can't go through walls like he can, noted Long Haul. Might be useful to remember that.

"'Thralls,'" Long Haul mused aloud, as he walked back behind the semi, going around it in the other, or counterclockwise, direction. "That's just an old-time way of saying 'slaves,' isn't it?"

"The association be closer than that," Grey Hoof explained, casually and conversationally, as if he were but discussing farming techniques. "When one such as I slays a mortal by draining away the last of his life, the mortal's soul is trapped within the husk that remains. Its unlife, and what remains of its will, is bound to the slayer. Thus do we Wraiths of Sunney Towne recruit our guards and other servants."

"I ... see," said Long Haul non-committally. He maintained his surface calm as best he could, given the cold revulsion squeezing his heart. I see that, if things go wrong, I'd damned well better save the last round for myself, so that Grey Hoof isn't the one who kills me. That is the worst kind of slavery of which I've ever heard tell -- the slave has to keep on serving after death! Not even the Blackstoners, let alone the old Amareican Southrons, were so vile. Even the Successors only enslave or kill you -- the Sunney-Towners kill you, then enslave you -- forever?

Long Haul went round the back of the semi, quickly flicking his light over vulnerable places, spots where he knew there was equipment prone to damage. There was both less of it than one might think, because semi-tractors were rugged; and more than you might think, because semis were complex, and had their weak spots. They were, after all, designed for pulling semi-trailers on the open highway; not for demolition derbies or battlefields.

He could see no damage there either, which was a result he found encouraging, especially as Grey Hoof's recent statement had just given him a whole new reason to want to get the hell out of here. He would now do pretty much anything to avoid falling, alive into the hands of the wraiths. He would have to shoot and drive fast to survive this night.

Crap, he thought to himself. I'm laying serious plans to shoot a ghost and then flee his buddies to avoid being turned into a zombie. When did my life turn into a weird tale?

Oh, right. When I picked up Ruby, cause it just didn't seem right to leave the poor kid out in that cold rain. The very same cold rain that I'm now splashing around in, hoping I can shoot her dad before he can drain my life.

I really should get harder-hearted.

"'Tis not in truth so bad for them," Grey Hoof abruptly proclaimed. "They sink deep within the death-dream, deeper than ever do we wraiths. In that state, they are almost mindless, barely aware of their surroundings. They do awake from it only when we do rouse them to labor. Most have little wit left to discourse on their emotional condition, but I would ween they are as happy as can be possible with their state.

"Do tell," said Long Haul mildly, as he inspected the right side of the semi. Here, the truck had run past and against a stand of small roadside trees, stripping branches and acquiring scratches and other superficial damage. His main worry was that a critical line might have snagged on something, though most of such should have been protected by the bulk of the cab before them.

There seemed to be no serious damage here, either. The worst thing Long Haul could see was that his right-hand rear-view mirror mount had been bent into a geometrically-interesting but wholly non-functional shape; which was something he needed to get fixed at the next garage he made. The loss of the mirror on that side made the truck a bit dangerous to drive in traffic, and driving the vehicle in that condition could get him cited, but would not otherwise impede him.

Long Haul stepped back from the right side of the truck. The narrow, vegetation-choked space between the side of the semi and the stand of woods was making him feel claustrophobic. He looked directly at Grey Hoof. "Do they sing?" he asked.

"Eh?" The wraith was obviously confused by the question.

Blue fire flashed from the south. Again and again and again.

Long Haul clambered over to the idling engine. He had decided to keep his motor running for obvious reasons: he'd seen enough horror movies where the heroes had the starter fail at the worst possible moment, and had no desire to duplicate one of those scenes.

Thunder grumbled in the distance.

He opened the access hatch to the engine.

It looked fine, running about as smoothly as could be expected under the circumstances. Long Haul hadn't expected to find any damage to the motor. The crash had been controlled and gentle, save for the scraping of the right side; and the semi's engine had been built to survive far more extreme stresses than any he had inflicted.

Rainwater hissed as it spattered on hot metal, which Long Haul hoped would look to the wraith as if there was something going wrong in there. Long Haul withdrew some tools and fiddled with some non-essential wires and screws, keeping his fingers well clear of any moving parts as he did so. He did not want to actually damage his engine -- nor his hands -- in the process of making his fake repairs.

"Do they sing songs while they're working?" Long Haul clarified his question. "Or maybe in the times after?"

It was a dangerous question, Long Haul knew that. If Grey Hoof had paid close attention to the evolution of North Amareican culture, he might be offended, and turn on the trucker.

However, there was a limit to how long he could conceal his disgust at what the wraith had told him. Long Haul came from Darkenbloody State.. In Darkenbloody, the Southron War had been a true civil rather than sectional war, in that some families in the state had fought for one side and some the other. Long Haul's family, a hundred fifty years ago, had fought for the Northern Federation. And one thing he had been brought up to despise, perhaps more than anything else, was the cause of that war -- slavery.

Fortunately, Grey Hoof entirely missed his implications.

"No," Grey Hoof said slowly as Long Haul shut the engine hatch and clambered down onto the wet road, "They sometimes moan, or grunt, or howl. They don't really sing, though. They've usually lost too much of their minds -- and voices, really. Soft tissue, you see, the voice box. Falls to pieces, and there's nothing we wraiths can do to wholly prevent it. Even when they rot but slowly -- and mine eldest son, Gladstone, can keep some of his favorite servants looking fresh a good long time, sometimes for years -- the voice box doesn't hold together well enough for singing. And they don't seem to feel like singing, really. They're too lost in the death-dream for that."

Long Haul learned something interesting about Grey Hoof from that response. Namely that -- for all his surface good cheer and fellowship -- Grey Hoof was callous enough to deliver that horrific little speech without even the slightest trace of sympathy for his slaves, slowly rotting away in the ground, rising only to serve him and his fellows.

Poor, suffering things -- and Grey Hoof meant to make him into just such a thrall. This revelation, of the full depths of Grey Hoof's evil, entirely drove off the strange sympathy for the wraith that he had felt ever since meeting him, and firmed his resolve to fight.

As he thought these dark thoughts, Long Haul turned away from Grey Hoof, crouching down for a moment to flash his light over the undercarriage. It was as good a way as any to buy a moment's more time, and keep the wraith from reading his emotions plain on his face.

Manipulating his tools and his flashlight, Long Haul had noticed an encouraging thing. His manual dexterity had almost entirely returned. It wasn't all the way back yet -- at one point he had fumbled and nearly dropped a small screwdriver -- but it was almost there. It was as good as it was likely to get without longer-term recovery.

He was as ready as he would ever be for the fight.

Long Haul took a deep breath, suppressing the outward display of his anger and tension: forced himself to relax as he put down the toolbox on the left running-board of the truck. He composed himself, then looked up and around at Grey Hoof.

"Minor hydraulics glitch," he told the wraith. "Patched her up as good as I can out here; it should easily hold 'til Sunney Towne. I can finish the work later, in town. Got a garage there?"

"There is a big shed," Grey Hoof said, "well big enough for thine truck. Thou mayest keep the truck therein."

"Guess that's good enough," Long Haul agreed. "I carry more tools and some spares on her. I can patch her there."

He partly opened his jacket, started putting his flashlight away within, turned back toward his truck and toolbox on the running-board as he was doing so. The movement was meant to look natural; he hoped it did so to Grey Hoof. With his back to the wraith, and the bulk of his body and the jacket concealing his precise actions, his right hand fumbled for and found the grip of his pistol. Still keeping it within his jacket, he grasped the pistol firmly, slid off the safety, and positioned his fingers, careful to keep his index finger from the trigger.

"Oh --" he said as if it had suddenly occurred to him. "Just one problem ..."

"What?" demanded Grey Hoof, and the wraith's voice came from right behind him, obviously very close, for the trucker could feel the cold boiling off him, through the jacket and sweater.

The sky flashed very brightly to the south, as if responding to the wraith's frustration.

Long Haul's motion began as entirely unfeigned startlement -- the sudden question and wave of cold coming from behind his right ear caused the trucker to figuratively jump out of his own skin, and literally leap to the left. As he did so he turned around, and his right hand came out of his jacket with the gun in his grip. The wraith's eyes widened at the sight of the weapon, and the trucker knew that he was now fully committed to fight.

He brought the pistol up into a firing position, assuming a two-handed firing stance even though it took a little more time. This was because he did not trust his weakened right hand to hold the pistol steady against its recoil. Long Haul had been in a close-quarters firefight before, and he knew just how horribly easy it was to shoot off a whole magazine at point-blank range and miss every single shot -- if one let fear or excitement master one, and failed to keep the muzzle on-target.

That delay might have given Grey Hoof the chance to rush and grapple Long Haul -- it takes more time to aim and shoot, and less time to cross a short distance, than civilians usually realize -- were it not that Grey Hoof had a very strange reaction to seeing Long Haul's pistol.

Grey Hoof neither charged nor fled.

Instead, he laughed.

He put his hands on his hips and laughed: his mirth seemed quite genuine, his black eyes sparkling with merriment. He might have been about to say something ...

A long roll of thunder began grumbling ...

Long Haul started shooting.

The pistol barked once, the bullet hitting the wraith right in the center of his chest, where his heart would have been beating had Grey Hoof been a living man. That first hit jerked Grey Hoof back slightly, and instantly wiped the smile right off his broad gray face, stopping him in mid-guffaw. It left a mark, too -- not the red-rimmed bleeding hole it would have torn in a mortal, but a sort of widening tear in the substance of the wraith, whose edges leaked some sort of reddish-black liquid and about which played little black and crimson lightnings.

Grey Hoof's expression was one of incredible surprise, as if he had expected the handgun to have had no effect at all.

All this information actually had time to register on Long Haul's adrenaline-charged mind before he could force the muzzle back down on target and shoot again.

But, at that exact moment, Grey Hoof finally recovered from his surprise. His face twisted in fury, sloughing skin and hair and becoming a grinning, black and crimson fire filled skull; his body morphed into matching horror. And he moved -- fast.

Though Long Haul had seen Grey Hoof's speed before, still it caught him by surprise, especially coming after he had shot Grey Hoof right in the chest and he had seen the wraith assume his more terrifying aspect. He had shot the wraith right in the heart. Most normal humans would have been instantly stopped by a .45 slug to the heart; but not always -- a bullet could deflect on a rib or sheer willpower might keep a man fighting for a short while, even with a mortal wound. And what "mortal" meant, where the undead were concerned, was anybody's guess.

Grey Hoof moved almost too fast for Long Haul to react. The big wraith ducked down and surged forward; Long Haul's second shot passing harmlessly through the air where Grey Hoof's upper torso had been. Grey Hoof's own arms were splayed, skeletal claws of hands outstretched to grapple, and Long Haul was hard-pressed to avoid a horrid embrace -- one to whose life-draining power the trucker could not but have succumbed had he been caught in the ghastly grip.

It was only by a quick side-step to the right -- almost a stagger -- that Long Haul was able to evade Grey Hoof's rush. And this evasion was far from complete. For, as Long Haul stepped to the side, the groping bony fingers of the wraith's left hand found Long Haul's left jacket sleeve.

Immediately, Long Haul discovered just how terrible was the touch of the wraith. For -- despite the fact that Grey Hoof was clutching his arm through the leather jacket, rather than contacting the trucker's naked flesh as he had before, the deathly chill penetrated right through the leather of the sleeve, projecting an agonizing cold into Long Haul's left forearm. The horrified trucker could actually see little tendrils of impossibly-black electrical arcs, playing between them -- sucking his very life force into the wraith!

Grey Hoof's touch lasted only a second, for with a violent wrench and pivot of his whole body to the left, Long Haul managed to dislodge the deadly grasp of the wraith. But that second was enough for the trucker to realize that Grey Hoof's power was greater than he had realized; that his earlier touch had been by comparison but light and admonitory application of that dreadful draining. It was as the difference between a light cuff to the cheek of a child, and a hard-driven punch, delivered in deadly earnest to the head of a full-grown foe.

Grey Hoof went stumbling away from Long Haul -- and the semi -- to suddenly lift his legs and spin horizontally in mid-air, in a manner utterly impossible for any mortal man. But then, by his own admission, it had been many centuries since Grey Hoof had been mortal. He landed, crouched on his haunches facing Long Haul, his flaming skull of a face snarling in a manner more befitting a beast of prey than it did anything that had even once been human.

Long Haul saw that Grey Hoof meant to launch himself again at him, and knew that if the wraith could get a hold on him again, it would be all over. Not only would Grey Hoof sap his life, but in the process regain his own strength -- Long Haul had seen the wraith seemingly re-invigorated even by that brief contact. Grey Hoof would drag Long Haul down to a fate in sober truth worse than death, and heal his own wound into the bargain.

So, despite the fact that his right hand was still somewhat shaky, and his left rendered almost useless by the chilling of his tendons, despite the pain and the fear, Long Haul aimed his pistol one-handed at the undead horror and shot again and again and again and again. And, by the grace of whatever good forces there may be in what often seems a cold and uncaring Cosmos, three of his four shots went home!

The first of the four shots he fired struck the right shoulder of the fiend. Had Grey Hoof still been mortal, the heavy slug would have shattered the shoulder and ruined the arm; as it was, the blessed bullet did some equally crippling damage to the structures which served similar functions within the wraith. Black and crimson lightning sparked from the wound, and Grey Hoof fell, rolling onto his right side, leaving a trail of glowing ectoplasm.

Grey Hoof's sudden stumble caused Long Haul's second shot to pass harmlessly over the wraith's head. Long Haul felt a stab of fear as he realized he had wasted a precious shot, but he mastered the emotion and calmly brought the muzzle back down onto target. His third shot was still a bit high, but manged to clip the wraith's left forearm, ripping free more ectoplasm and electrical discharge.

Grey Hoof rolled over his own back and completed the rotation onto his belly. But when he tried to raise his torso on his arms, those limbs betrayed him, too badly weakened by the wounds Long Haul had inflicted. Grey Hoof groaned, tried to rise by levitation -- and rose up right into Long Haul's fourth shot. That bullet, which but for that maneuver might have otherwise missed, or struck him somewhere in the pelvis, instead scored right down the middle of the wraith's back, and very visibly -- because of all the flesh missing in his skeletal manifestation -- shattered his spine.

That seemed to do for Grey Hoof. The wraith fell, unevenly and heavily, right side first, rolling onto his back in a slowly-spreading pool of red and black ectoplasm. Electrical arcs played from his several wounds, eating away at his own pseudo-flesh, which began to vanish in a slowly-spreading zone around those wounds. As Long Haul watched in amazed horror, the disintegration effect began to consume even the underlying bones.

"The problem, you sonuvabitch," said Long Haul, "is that you can't enslave a free man with a gun in his hand."

The weapon to which he referred wavered in the weakening hold of the hand to which he had referred, and there was only one last cartridge left in the magazine.

But he had made his point.

Chapter 5: It Really Doesn't Matter Any More

"Damn," gasped Grey Hoof. "Damn your eyes, damn your gun, and damn us both to hell." He bent his head back and regarded Long Haul from an upside-down attitude. He abruptly morphed into his more life-like form, only now it was the life-like form of a man mortally wounded. "Thou hast vanquished me, Messer Drayman. That hast not happened to me in decades. Thou shouldst be proud of thyself. Though in all common courtesy ..."

"What?" asked Long Haul.

"I wish thou wouldst retract tnine calumny regarding mine own dear mother," Grey Hoof said. "She was a kind and decent lady, who is in no wise responsible for mine own sins."

Long Haul considered the point. Slandering an innocent woman to her son's face just because you were the one holding the pistol smacked of bullying, and Long Haul was no bully. "Fair enough," he said. "I apologize for the aspersion on her character."

"Then I need not hate thee," Grey Hoof said. "Which is for the better, for thou art a brave man, and I do not hate courage."

"Glad you don't," said Long Haul, "and I guess I don't hate you right now neither, though given that you were trying to kill me and make me your slave -- in some order -- I can't rightly say we're friends." He stepped back against the other truck. "So what happens to you now? Are you dying?"

Grey Hoof chuckled darkly. "Yes ... and no. Thy gunne -- which I would wager either was enchanted, or firing enchanted bullets, since no mere material projectiles can actually harm me -- it has hurt me. Probably to the point where I will vanish for a while. But I shall reawaken in Sunney Towne. It takes magic deeper than thou couldst command to give me the True Death. Remember that -- and be glad you took back your insult to my mother!" He grinned at this, as if to show that he was not actually angry any more.

"Well," Long Haul said, "I did it cause she ain't to blame for anything bad you've done. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I've overstayed my welcome on this bit of road. You're clear of the truck -- I'll do you the courtesy of not driving over you, if you'll do me the courtesy of not trying to attack me any more this night."

"Agreed," said Grey Hoof. "Though I get the better of that bargain, as right now I am not sure that I can move. He lifted up slightly from the ground, then flopped back down as in an apparent loss of control over his own levitation.

Then, Grey Hoof grinned even more broadly. "But then," he said, I need not be the one to attack you." He looked at something to the rear of the truck. "For mine own friends are now upon us."

Long Haul gasped, and whirled to face the road behind the semi. The fog, which the wind had driven off, was now coming back, advancing far too rapidly and steadily to be driven by any normal atmospheric movement. Within that fog he could see six lights -- a pair of golden ones whose hue seemed very familiar, a pair of deep red ones, and a pair of blue ones. To his horror, he realized that the lights were eyes.

A cold wind blew the fog forward, a wind chill with the coldness of death. Long Haul backed all the way against the truck, his gun raised to point at the new threat, but he knew that it was nothing more than a bluff. There was only one round left in the magazine, and he would need that one for himself.

Peace, good drayman, whispered a familiar voice from the fog. Thou shalt not need thy weapon against us. We would do thee no harm.

It was the ghost girl.

She formed first out of the fog, sucking its substance into herself. First the two golden eyes, then the gray pretty face manifesting around them, framed by the yellow and orange two-toned hair. Then the sturdy but lovely feminine form, clad this time in a dark purple dress, caught about her waist with a gold-colored belt. Her eyes became normal. She seemed all alive and beautiful, nothing ghostly about her at all. Aside from the minor fact that, in the gloom of night, her whole form was faintly glowing.

"You changed your outfit," Long Haul said stupidly, this being the one aspect of the situation that fit within his normal understanding.

"'Tis a virtue of mine own condition," Ruby said, "I may manifest whatever raiment I do know and desire."

"That's convenient," Long Haul commented. "And that's a pretty dress."

"Thankee," Ruby said, smiling at him.

Meanwhile the other two figures materialized out of the mist. The two blue lights became two glowing blue eyes, and then from them grew a light-green face, framed by a long mass of untidy dark-green hair.

It was the face of a woman -- no mere girl like Ruby, but a woman full-grown, with lines of care worn into her face, though that face was still quite pretty, and she seemed younger than Long Haul himself. She was wearing a green dress surmounted by a dark green coat the color of her hair. The woman nodded at Long Haul, and made a placating gesture with her hands.

"I am a healer," she said. "Foe to none. Pray, let me tend to the fallen."

"Sure, ma'am," replied Long Haul, and he raised his pistol so that its muzzle was pointed safely at the sky. His finger was now without the trigger guard, but he kept the safety off. He didn't want to resume the fight, but he did not entirely trust these new arrivals. Not even Ruby -- she was how he'd gotten into this trouble in the first place.

From the dark red eyes formed a light gray face, framed by darker red hair. This last was also a woman, and one about the same age as the healer. She was small-boned and slim-built, but there was something maternal about her, and she stepped up to stand behind and close to Ruby, regarding the trucker with an expression of tentative friendliness.

Long Haul plainly perceived the similarities in appearance between this new woman and Ruby, and saw that in most of the ways they were different, Ruby resembled Grey Hoof -- especially in her sturdy, big-boned build, which had clearly come from her father. Mother? he thought wonderingly. Is this Ruby's mother?

"I wish that I might say well met," the redhead said. "You have done harm to one who was once mine own husband, and whom I still do count a friend. But I doubt the harm be lasting, and I ween he gave you good reason to shoot him. Therefore, let us at least not be foes. I am Ruby's mother. Mitta Gift."

"I'm Long Haul, ma'am," replied the trucker. "And I'm sorry I shot your husband."

"Ex-husband," Mitta corrected him, smiling more broadly. "And Three Leaf is mending his hurts."

He followed her gaze and saw the green woman bent over Grey Hoof. He could not clearly make out what she was doing, but there was a blue glow -- the same color as her eyes -- playing over both of them, and that the disintegration effect appeared to be receding. Grey Hoof was still lying inert, but his posture seemed to now be in some subtle way more comfortable, as if he were merely resting rather than lying mortally wounded.

Ruby spoke up suddenly.

"Messer Long Haul," she said. "I am right sorry that I did bring such trouble to thee. I merely wished a ride home over the stream, which as you saw disrupts such as ourselves, making it difficult to cross, even at a bridge, under our own power. I did not mean thy life to be endangered. I thought that if I spoke not to thee, thou would simply drop me off and drive away unscathed. I did not know that my father was near the road, awaiting mine own return. Nor that he would ambush thee. I am most very sorry."

She looked quite woebegone, and Long Haul felt very sorry for her. She had not meant to be a lure, then, and had merely become the innocent cause of a deadly quarrel.

"Aw, that's alright, kid," he told her, smiling. "Your dad and I had a bit of a misunderstanding, that's all. Sorry again I shot him."

Ruby's smile returned.

"I am glad to have met thee, good drayman," she said, "and hope that when we meet again, the meeting shall be happier."

Mitta smiled at him as well.

"Thankee for being kind to my daughter," she said. "May we meet again -- as friends."

"No problem, ma'am," replied Long Haul, raising his right hand, careful not to point the gun at himself or anyone else, and tipping his cap to her. "Glad to be of service to two lovely ladies such as Ruby and yourself."

Now both mother and daughter were smiling at him, warmly.

Long Haul saw a motion from the direction of Three Leaf and Grey Hoof. Three Leaf now looked a bit tired, her face rather drawn. Grey Hoof looked a lot better, and was actually sitting up, though he made no aggressive motions.

Yet, Long Haul thought. He promised me peace, but I can't really trust him. And there's a whole village of them somewhere out there.

"Well," the trucker said, "I better get going now. I gotta get this truck patched up and back on schedule. Hope you and yours remain well," With that he put on the safety, put his gun away in his jacket, picked up his toolbox from the running-board, and started climbing back up to the cabin, his motions clumsy with his wounded arms.

Despite his deliberate air of aplomb, his heart was pounding, and he almost expected one of the specters to attack him. Perhaps not Ruby or Mitta, but Grey Hoof was clearly recovering from their encounter, and he could not be sure how far to trust Three Leaf's professions of pacifism. Still, showing fear might be fatal, and as long as he didn't start shooting, they might be hesitant to start the fight again.

Nothing untoward happened. He opened the door and put his foot into the cab, slid into his seat, looked down at the four ghosts.

"Yes," said Mitta. "Thou shouldst now depart. There are others coming who would not be so peaceful. And I am right glad that this night may end without more suffering. Fare thee well, Long Haul!"

"I shall be seeing thee, friend," promised Ruby, her golden eyes suddenly glowing.

Long Haul didn't know whether to be warmed or disturbed by that last part.

"Be seeing you too," he said cheerfully. Probably in screaming nightmares, he added mentally, but maintained his smile.

"Oh, 'tis all hugs and smiles now," Long Haul distinctly heard Grey Hoof say. "Why, should we not all form a circle and do group sing-alongs?"

Long Haul chuckled to himself. Monster though he was, the big wraith was certainly funny. Frighteningly so, because he could make you forget what he really was, and what he wanted.

He closed and locked the door, put his foot on the brake pedal, released the parking brake, and shifted into reverse. Depressing the gas pedal, he pulled the semi smoothly from the shoulder, or at least as smoothly as might be expected considering that he was bumping and thumping over broken vegetation. He checked his left rear-view as he did that -- there was more fog coming up behind him, but it was hundreds of yards behind him.

He shifted into drive, and rolled forward. Were there more lights glowing in that fog? If so, any designs they had were frustrated, for the semi, in her element once again on the paved road, was running smooth and normal. He gunned the engine and shot forth rapidly, easily avoiding the little cluster of ghosts ahead of him, who made no move to block his passage.

And then Long Haul and his semi left the wraiths, and whatever curse they bore, far behind him as he drove off into the night, regaining the freedom of the open road ... and of the rest of his life.