Chapter 2

Three hours earlier.

The heat from the campfire felt good on this cool spring evening. The flames danced and flickered atop the burning branches and hot coals. Along side the embers sat two beer cans turning black from the heat and smoke.

Around the fire sat Marty and twin brothers Lester and Randy, kicking back and enjoying the evening. The sky was black and clear, dotted with a panorama of twinkling stars. Only the smoke from the fire drifting upwards occasionally blocked their view of the heavens above.  A full moon low on the horizon provided just enough light to get around.

“Anybody want another?” Marty asked.

“Yeah,” Lester answered, finishing the can in his hand.

Marty stood and walked to the car behind them and popped the trunk. He lifted the lid of the trunk and pulled out two beers from the cardboard box inside. The trunk slammed shut and Lee stepped over to Lester popping his beer open and handing it to him. “You can’t beat the service,” he said with a smile.

Lester reached out his hand to grab the beer but suddenly he doubled over coughing.  “Hope it’s just the flu,” he said.  Popping the top and taking a swig he said, “Warm beer again, what a treat.”

“It’s that or nothing, you know we can’t risk going into town for ice,” Marty answered. 

“It won’t be much longer,” Lester said, taking a drink.

“Yea I heard on the radio today that there hadn’t been a reported case in two weeks,” Marty replied cheerfully.

Marty looked intently at his old friends Lester and Randy.  They had shown up a couple of days ago.  They appeared to be in good health but there was no way to tell if they were infected.  He wondered now whether it was such a good idea to let them join him here.

“This camping crap is getting real old,” Lester said turning to his twin brother Randy.

“How did you ever find this place Martin?” Randy asked.

The twins were almost identical not so much now but when they were kids.  When the boys were growing up, to keep the two straight, Marty asked Randy to always address him as Martin whereas Lester was to always use the more familiar Marty.  It wasn’t necessary now that Randy had the beginnings of a beard and Lester had long hair and an earring but old habits die hard.

Marty turned to Randy and took a sip of his beer. He thought for a moment and said, “My dad is a part owner of this farmland.”

“Cool!” Randy spoke up. “Why doesn’t he farm it?”

“You got to be kidding,” Marty replied. “He rents it out and that’s about it.”

“Does he hunt on it?’

“I don’t think he has been out here for five years. The rent he gets is enough to pay the property taxes.”

“Then why does he keep it?” Lester asked from across the fire.

Marty tossed his empty beer can into the flames and it kicked up sparks that flew into the air. He watched one of the airborne embers until it burned into darkness and laughed to himself. “He has to,” Marty replied.

“Is it part of the will?” Randy asked.

“You could say that.”

“What? He has to keep it for a certain amount of time before he can sell it?

“Oh, he’ll never sell it, I guarantee you that.”     

“Why all the secrecy?”

Marty who’d been leaning back on his palms thought to himself for a moment. Leaning forward again he looked around at his friends, rubbing his hands slowly together both for effect and to remove the sandy soil sticking to them, he said, “You want to hear a real life ghost story?”

“Sure Martin,” Randy replied, getting to his feet. “Hold on a minute though, I’ve had a few too many, I gotta hurl.”

Randy walked around behind the car and spilled his guts on the ground.  “That’s better,” he cheerfully exclaimed.  He continued to spit and wipe his mouth on a handkerchief as he rejoined his friends at the fire.  As he tucked the cloth in his back pocket Marty could see it was stained blood red.

“OK, ready” Marty said looking them in the eyes. “Have you ever heard of Noah Black?”

Randy sat dumbfounded. “Noah Black?  He was in the news just a few months ago. He’s the one that saved this sorry town!  And they said he murdered some people like twenty years ago,” he followed.

“Yea that’s him,” Marty replied. “They say he’s the reason we are alive today.”

“Go ahead, tell it.” Randy said, “So it’s a true story?”

“ Well you can say it’s true if you believe this guy I met at the bar last January.  Professor Salam or Samara or something  - he said was his name and he was half crocked when he told me this story over whiskey shots.”      

“Go on, lets here it, I got plenty of time to kill,” said Lester.

Marty sat thinking reflectively about Lester’s statement.  He had hoped by camping here outside town that the three would be safe from the Ebola virus.  Now he was seeing signs that these two were infected and if they were infected so was he.  Marty had seen pictures and read about the horrific death people with Ebola suffered.  Out here with no one to care for them, the suffering would be compounded.  He decided to go ahead and tell the story, they deserved that much.  If the signs continued he had made plans to end their suffering quickly.   He had hidden his shotgun in some weeds down by the river.  If it came down to it he was prepared to put the two brothers out of their misery and take his own life.

“They say Noah Black lived on a farm.” He paused.  “You know it’s not really that far from here, just over the river past the old bridge, “ Marty said with certainty.

Marty tossed another branch on the fire and more embers shot into the air. “Back in the seventies, Noah Black was accused of killing over forty people in this community.”

“Accused?” Lester chimed in. “They found almost all those bodies on his property.”

“True, but they never proved anything,” Marty said soberly.

“That’s because he disappeared - without a trace - he was never prosecuted,” Randy contributed.

All three of the young men were familiar with this aspect of the story.  It had been in the news how Noah Black was suspected of all these murders in the area.  The police were closing in on him when he suddenly disappeared.  There had been a nation wide manhunt out for Black for decades.

Lester added, “I thought they said he killed over a hundred? They just never found more than forty.”

“I’m sure he did,” Marty said matter-of-factly.

“You sound like you know more then your letting out,” Randy said.

“I do.”

Everyone was silent as they looked at Marty. He just stared into the fire and smiled like he had a secret he was bursting to tell.  Actually Marty was just dreaming up an embellishment to the story that would make it that much more frightening.  After all, this could be their last night together and he loved nothing more than telling a good ghost story around the campfire.

“We’re waiting,” Randy said.

Marty looked up and faced Randy. “Noah Black was my great uncle.”

A look of disbelief crossed Randy’s face as he looked into Marty’s eyes. “No way!  Why didn’t you mention that before?”

“It’s not the sort of thing that makes a family proud. I learned early on from my father never to mention anything about it to anybody.” He continued trying to think on his feet.

“Why? I think its sort of cool,” Randy said.

“Now the scary part.” Marty continued.

“What?” Randy replied.

“Great Uncle Noah Black used to rent this land from my grandfather.”

“So?”

“They only found forty bodies on Noah’s land right? Where do you think he stashed the other sixty or so?’

The group fell silent. They looked around into the darkness surrounding them and realized they very well could be sitting in a makeshift graveyard. They sat quiet and still for a moment soaking this all in.

“This is giving me the creeps.” Randy said softly.

“I thought you wanted to hear a ghost story?” Marty asked with an evil smile.

“This is not what I meant.”

Marty looked around the group watching the firelight flicker on their faces. Suddenly the wind shifted and the smoke from the fire blew into Marty’s face. He felt a tears well up in his eyes from the sting of the smoke.  Using his sleeve to wipe his cheek he noticed the tears were discolored.  After adjusting his chair he cleared his throat and began to tell the story slowly and deliberately knowing it would be their last.  “Doctor.” he paused to think, “Samara tells it like this.....”