The Haunted Traveler May 2017 Edition

aspy panic, causing spittle to dangled from my mouth
as I drew a plethora of deep breaths. What if he wasn’t
there, wherever there was?
No, I couldn’t do it. Not here. Not in front of him. I
thought I could, but I couldn’t, it was too ugly even for
this damned place. When I made the realization that
I would not be seeing him tonight, is when I cried. At
the time, I didn’t know it, but I had a better plan than
killing myself.
I don’t know for how long I sat there, whimpering
with a revolver pointed at my face, and drenched
clothes wrapped icily around my body. At some point,
the intruding sound of heavy footsteps quickly making
their way down the path to where I sat, roused me
from my frozen position. Instinctively, I raised my arm
up until I felt the revolver was pointed at the space
of nighttime darkness, that would soon be where the
person clobbering towards me would be standing. The
footsteps disappeared. I tightened my grip on the gun.
“You go’n shoot boy?” a grizzly voice sounded from
behind a tree about thirty feet in front of me. Native
southerner, by the sound of him, and large.
“Who are you?” I said. My voice is quiet but harsh,
like a strained whisper.
“Groundskeeper,” he said, “who’dya think?”
I lower my gun and stand up, “It’s away,” I said, feeling
guilty at my hostility. I could feel him peeking from
around the tree, though it was too dark to see him.
Slowly, he stepped into view.
Before me stood a tall and lanky old man. He smelled
like death, and looked as though life had chiseled the
wrinkles of his face into a permanent scowl. He wore
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