Cartouche — Short Story
The night seemed to be strangely quiet. Even the sound of the crickets had died down, and the frogs had grown silent in the nearby pond. The scurrying of small night creatures was absent. Only the light sound of the breeze through the trees filled the air.
“Will it happen?” Blaine said in what was more like a stage whisper than a true whisper.
Britany shushed him loudly. “We have to be quiet,” she admonished as quietly as she could.
Blaine rolled his eyes. He turned to look behind him for their friends who were late as usual. They were probably lost. Leave it to them to take a chance like this and toss it aside.
He turned back to Britany to make a comment about Tarah and Lane, but the intense look on her face silenced him. He didn’t have the heart to interrupt her concentration on the spot.
Three hundred years earlier the spot before them had been the scene of an ugly encounter. A gallant thief had tried to waylay a carriage of a nobleman. Upon fatally getting shot, his ghost had taken up residence in the area and was rumored to appear every full moon to reenact his death.
The full moon shone down through the trees where the two college students waited. Why they were hiding from a ghost that just reenacted his death each month was beyond Blaine’s understanding. He would…
