Page 4 of Ghost Walk
“Watered down his ale, the cheap bastard. Treated the serving girls quite badly, as well.”
“He also had a fascinating history as a cartographer of the region…”
“Maps? Sweet bleeding Christ, you’ll really be talking ofmaps, now?”
“…Edward charted portions of the James River,” she pointed towards the harbor, “helping to make it navigable to larger ships. He imported goods like tea and cloth from England, opening a shop. It did so well that he doubled his money by selling the store to his sister-in-law, Aggie Northhander, making enough gold to invest it in this tavern.”
The tour critic gave an exaggerated groan at that entirely factual account. “Take pity on these poor people, woman! Spin a ghost yarn. Do ya think they want to be hearing of Ned’s dull life? The man was a wanker. I’ve always suspected he was a Tory, at heart.”
Grace shot him another glare. “Edward Hunnicutt led afascinatinglife.” She repeated firmly.
For a second, the guy actually shut up, a strange expression flickering over his face. He looked over his shoulder, like he suspected she might be talking to someone else.
Meanwhile, her group didn’t look fascinated. A frat kid fiddled with his phone, while his girlfriend examined her vampire-y nails. A man in Bermuda shorts checked his watch for the sixth time in as many minutes. Several of the older customerslookedlike they were listening, but they weren’t listening, at all. They were tuning her out the way they would ignore a droning commercial, waiting for some better show to start.
A young teen tugged on her mother’s arm. “When are we going to hear about the ghosts, Mom?” She asked in a loud whisper. The group might be politely disregarding the troublemaker, but his comments were infecting all of them.
Drat, what spooky story could she tell?
The tour guide training had given Grace some background on the standard Harrisonburg tales, but panic wiped them from her brain. Everyone was looking at her. What the hell was she supposed to say?
Desperate, she tried to make up some nightmarish tale of horror, but it was less Stephen King and more Mad Libs. Unlike the other Riveras, Grace wasn’t the most imaginative person, the occasional hallucination notwithstanding. “Uhhh… Some people say a --um-- skeleton with a… hook? For a hand --um-- sometimes eats here… sometimes.”
Eyes rolled all over the tour.
The gadfly sadly shook his head at that halfhearted campfire story, rallying from his momentary confusion. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I hope you’re not depending on this job to keep you fed. If ya are, you’ll surely be starving ta death, by the end of the week.”
Grace hesitated. He was right.Again.Skeletons were just not going to cut it. Somehow she had to do better, before more customers wandered away. She’d already lost three. Crap. She needed this job. What part of local history might interest this group?
She wracked her brain for a minute and then --for no reason at all-- seized on a story that most people in this town wanted to forget. “And it was very near this spot that Harrisonburg’s most notorious criminal was hanged for his horrible crimes.” She announced. “Captain James Riordan. America’s first serial killer.”
“Ohbloody hell.” The guy snapped in disgust, but everyone else perked up at the promise of a grisly tale.
Grace smiled, sensing the story would be a hit. This was going to work! She should’ve thought of adding good old Jamie to the tour in the first place. “Captain Riordan was theJack the Ripper of Harrisonburg. A dashing and devious criminal mastermind. He came from a good family, but he was disowned at a young age for his disreputable behavior. He left Scotland in disgrace and fled to America, where he gambled his way into a ship.”
Her detractor scoffed at that. “Horse shit. No one ‘gambles their way’ into a ship. You have to cheat and not get caught. T’is allskill.”
“During the war, James Riordan smuggled luxury goods into the Colonies, using Mr. Hunnicutt’s maps to evade capture by either side.” She tacked that part on just to piss off the heckler. Edward Hunnicuttwasfascinating, darn it. “After the war, he became an out and out pirate.”
“Have you everseenNed’s maps?” The guy demanded, because ofcoursehe arrogantly assumed he knew more about local history than Grace did. “They mostly led to swamps and dead ends. No one with an ounce of sense used them for anything more than wiping their ass.”
Grace tuned out the snarking. “Quite the ladies’ man, Captain Riordan wooed all the pretty girls of the colony. He made a good living and he was incredibly handsome. There were few who could resist his charm.”
“Incredibly handsome.” The jackass repeated with a nod. “Finally,you begin to make some sense. …Although you do make it sound like a disease. Are you a Sunday school teacher, by chance? You sound like a Sunday school teacher to me.” It wasn’t a compliment.
Gracehadtaught Sunday school back in Richmond, as a matter of fact. “Despite his reputation, Captain Riordan was welcomed into many of Harrisonburg’s nicest homes.” She continued and then paused dramatically. “But not all of them. Some of the finest young women in Harrisonburg refused his ill-gotten gifts and dishonorable propositions. Furious, he vowed to make them pay for the insult.”
“That’snotwhat happened.”
“Lucinda Wentworth was the first to die.” Grace went on, trying to stick to the facts of the case. Now that she was at this part of the tale, she was suddenly rememberingwhyshe’dnever added James Riordan to her tour before. Even discussing a crime that was two and a half centuries old, had her stress level spiking. She pictured peaceful green cornfields and kept going. “Lucinda sneaked out of her bedroom, just a few blocks away,” she gestured down the street, “and was never seen again.”
Everybody turned to eagerly look in the direction she was pointing.
Well, noteverybody.
“Why are you telling this story?” The guy hopped off the top rail of the fence, no longer smirking. His eyes stayed fixed on her, glowering in annoyance. “I know you’re new here, but I take this tour every night. No oneevertells this story on the Ghost Walk.”
Grace knew that she was off-script. Harrisonburg’s Official Ghost Walk was supposed to be G-rated. The whole village made its profits by appealing to vacationing families wanting to experience a weekend of Revolutionary life. A place where parents could tell themselves their kids were learning something about history and the kids could buy rubber muskets. The residents of Harrisonburg didn’t like anything controversial sullying the carefully cultivated, plastic perfection of their town.
