Candy and Other Nightmares

By Rod Senter

Seven cryptic journeys to the unknown, unexpected and unfathomable. And while our expedition may not call for shiny crosses or vials of special water, packing a few probably wouldn't hurt. And a keen eye to the nearest marked exit might also be wise. Just in case...

• Language: English
• Publisher: MX Publishing
• Release date: Apr 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781780929439

Book preview

dreams.

Chickamauga’s Dead

My heart was pounding at a rate far in excess of anything that could be considered healthy. Although I was not yet thirty-five at the time, I began to understand how under certain kinds of adversity, a man’s heart could just quit - or even rupture - flooding the lungs with coagulating blood that exploded through the mouth like crimson napalm...

Chickamauga National Military Park, Tennessee

Thirty thousand men fell here in seven hours, said Judd Macon with a hint of a smirk on his face. "That’s how thick the fighting got at times. You know, that’s over half as many boys as we lost in Vietnam in ten years. A couple of pipe-chompin’ eggheads from the college say it was even bloodier here than at Gettysburg or Antietam.

"When the smoke finally did clear, you could lay out the dead, arms-length apart, for eighty-five miles. And a lot of them lay where they fell for two months before they were buried.

"’Course by then there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot left to bury, if you know what I mean. Hell, you wouldn’t even want to see a dead body after two months, let alone try to move one. Soon as you pick up an arm or a leg, the sonovabitch comes off right in your hand..."

My stomach nudged me and asked if we might be spared certain organic realities of war. It was more than the average history buff needed to know. You certainly paint a colorful picture, Ranger Macon. But tell me, what else do you know about the Chickamauga battlefield?

"What else?"

Yes... I began, not knowing exactly how to approach this. "I’ve heard a great deal about Civil War battlefields to the effect that much of the trauma suffered there never fully...well, ended...if you know what I mean."

He didn’t at first. Then it sank in. "You mean ghosts."

Or less obvious things. I’m interested in any strange phenomena that’s occurred here. Something you’ve experienced yourself, maybe.

His perpetual shit-eating smirk vanished with a suddenness that was almost startling. He leaned back in his office chair and simultaneously popped a filterless Camel into the corner of his mouth.

A little embellishment here, I confess. The truth is I had no idea what brand he smoked; but he didn’t look like the Virginia Slims type.

He seemed casual enough, but somehow the cigarette routine came off less as a matter of habit and more a nervous response - something he might have done while getting a tax audit or betting a respectable sum on a not-so-sure thing. Trying to quit, so I don’t light ‘em anymore, he said.

Anything wrong? I asked.

"Look, you seem like a bright enough young man. The kind of kid who learns in his first decade that trouble ain’t likely to find you if you don’t go lookin’ for it. So, why are you lookin’, son?"

It was a good question. And somewhere inside me was a good answer. Just because it eluded rational expression didn’t mean it wasn’t there, or so I repeatedly told myself. Did a man, after all, need to articulate his attraction to Renaissance art or commemorative postage stamps? Or to spell out the elementary truth that different people liked different things? It just so happened that some people relished Thanksgiving while others preferred Halloween. Some watched the Brady Bunch, others the Night Gallery. Some read Danielle Steele, others Ann Rice. Be it a total eclipse, a spewing volcano or Haley’s Comet, there were things in the heavens and on Earth that some people just had to see.

I had to see the paranormal.

Maybe an acclaimed orator could have stuffed all this into a concise, neatly packaged answer to Macon’s question. I couldn’t. It’s just...something I’ve always wanted to do, was all I managed to say at the time. Brilliant, huh?

After an uncomfortable moment of dead-air, Macon brought from his desk drawer something resembling a receipt book, and began writing. All right, Mr. Garrett, have it your way. Here’s the two-day pass you wanted. It’ll give you free access to all eight thousand acres of Chickamauga Military Park...or battlefield...however you want to think of it. He tore out the permit and laid it on the desk in front of me. "Even at night."

Silence.

I supposed that some reply was in order, but something about the way he punched the word night left me fresh out of conversation.

Well, that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? To come here after dark with your high class cameras and infrared spookware?

He was dead-right. Three weeks earlier, I had emailed Supervisory Ranger Judd Macon for the purpose of securing a round-the-clock pass to Chickamauga, knowing of its reputation for paranormal activity dating back at least a hundred years. And while there was no denying that my interest in Civil War history was a factor in this effort, my primary reason for visiting - to come face-to-face with some verifiable aspect of the paranormal - would more likely be served here than almost anywhere else in the world. The sheer numbers of reported events at Chickamauga were staggering - far more than at Manassas, Antietam, or even Gettysburg. Not to overkill this point, but we’re talking almost as many as the three combined.

Mr. Garrett, you all right? Macon said.

Uh, yes, I replied, snapping out of deep thought. Or whatever the hell I was doing. And please, call me Joe.

"All right then, Joe. Leigh Jackson is the night supervisor. She and the other rangers make their rounds more or less hourly, but if you want to be alone - really alone out there - you’ll have no trouble arranging it. Just put a mile or two behind you that-a-way, toward the Georgia state line. Macon pointed through his office window. And before you know it, you’ll be flanked by rolling hills and empty fields where even cell phones don’t work. Believe me, there’ll be no one in sight. No one alive, that is."

I cleared my throat, nervously. How’s that?

His trademark smirk had returned. You see, the dead from the battle...they’re buried here, there, damn near everywhere. Hell, our own maintenance boys accidentally dig up a body now and again. So wherever you happen to be at Chickamauga...why, chances are there’s a genuine Civil War corpse as near as six inches under the soles of your feet. And Joe-

Y-yes?

They’ve been known to get up.

Six-fifteen that evening.

The waning daylight found me head-first into the trunk of my 1968 GTO, rummaging through the equipment I had brought. Some of it was my own, but the really sophisticated hardware was borrowed from the University of Cincinnati, where a couple of aging graduate students who still remembered me occasionally granted under-the-table loans on my honor.

As I recall, it was right about then when a voice in my head began asking, "Precisely whom do you think you’re fooling?" This portion of my being contended, in no uncertain terms, that the slightest hint of a ghostly apparition would send me burning pavement all the way to, say, Woodstock, New York - which was eight hundred miles farther away than I lived. In the unwelcome light of my self-evaluation, I had to admit that in the raw courage department, I wasn’t exactly John Wayne. John Candy was more like it.

Macon’s reference to shallowly-buried corpses didn’t help much, either. Would they really have buried their dead only six inches from the surface? I supposed that with tens of thousands of rotting cadavers in need of disposal, those assigned to the ordeal could not have afforded to spend a hell of a lot of time on any one burial. Much to my chagrin, it actually made sense.

But was any of this actually relevant? I was seeking paranormal phenomena, not organic remains; I had no interest in archeology. And yet, I was reminded of the first Poltergeist movie, wherein buried corpses in varying stages of decay erupted through the ground, coffins and all, and hurled themselves upon passing cars and screaming bystanders. Although no theological explanation was offered, I had supposed we were to understand that the bodies had been re-animated by their own psychic entities, which were somehow revived after their deaths - many years after, in some cases. None of this, however, had anything to do with my present undertaking.

Or did it?

Many of the reported phenomena at Chickamauga involved the mysterious motion, and even levitation, of otherwise common objects. It occurred to me with chilling poignancy that if a man’s spiritual essence could move, say, a shovel or a wheelbarrow, why not his own crumbling flesh and bones?

they’ve been known to get up

It was then when the bloated, dead hand fell on my right shoulder.

Given my present - and I might add, deteriorating - state of mind, I had jumped three feet in the air before realizing that the hand on my shoulder wasn’t really bloated or dead.

Sorry...didn’t mean to startle you, she said. The thirty-ish aged African American woman wore a ranger’s uniform, although I barely noticed it. Her bright, piercing eyes had pretty much stolen the show. I’m Leigh Jackson, the night shift supervisor. I understand you’re staying the night.

That was my original idea, I replied as my fibrillating pulse began a slow decent toward something approaching rational limits. But the longer I’m here, the more it seems the idea wasn’t a very good one.

She smiled sympathetically and peered into my car’s open trunk. Gee, it looks like you have a rolling Radio Shack store in there. I’d really like to see some of it.

Well...sure. I turned to look for something that a person who presumably wasn’t up on electronics might find interesting. Cameras? No, everyone’s seen a camera. Motion detectors? Not very interesting to look at. Then, I found just the thing. Here, take a look at this, I said as I brought it out of the trunk.

She took it into her hands, and from the look of things, did her best to make heads-or-tails of it. Looks like something out of 1950’s sci fi movie.

It’s an infrared viewer, sort of like the night vision binoculars the military uses, only this one has a zoom lens and directional temperature gauge, too.

"Oh yeah, that looks like something we used in the Marines. But Judd tells me you’re here to find ghosts, right?"

Or whatever’s out there.

"So how does this gismo fit in?"

I’ll show you. Go ahead and aim...let’s see...over there, toward those maintenance guys.

Contract landscapers, but close enough, Leigh said. I’m aiming, now what?

You can zoom in on them if you want. Touch that button on the left side. You should be able to reach it with your thumb.

She did. "Wow! The optics are impressive. Now they look like they’re ten feet away instead of a hundred yards. Good, I said. That’s part of what it does. Now with the index finger of your right hand, you should be touching something that feels like a trigger.

Yeah, what is that?

A trigger. Go ahead, pull it.

She looked away from the eyepiece and straight at me. A trigger, huh? If this thing is a gun, we’re gonna have to have a whole ‘nother conversation.

It’s no gun.

She returned her attention to the eyepiece. "If these guys get vaporized or something, I’ll really be pissed."

They won’t.

Okay, she said. Here goes. With the viewer still aimed at the two men about a football field away, she squeezed the trigger. Whoa!

"The yellowish glow they’re giving off is their body heat. Now that it’s evening and a little cooler, it should be pretty easy to see. When it’s pitch-dark out, you can really see it."

"Well sure, it’s infrared imaging, I’ve seen it before - but I can’t believe how clear it is.

See those numbers at the top of the screen? What do they say?

"It looks like, ‘091m / 102 Deg.F.’ I get the distance part - it’s in meters - but if the other number is supposed to be the ambient temperature, I think it’s way too high.

"That’s the subjects’ distance and collective temperature. When zooming in on people, it usually reads around ninety-nine. It could be that one of them is running a fever, or the sensor’s a little off."

Ranger Jackson handed the viewer back to me. Very cool. But I still don’t see how it fits in with ghost-hunting.

"Well...I admit it’s theoretical at this point, but supposing you had aimed this at those guys and their images didn’t glow. And the temperature reading was only sixty or seventy degrees, the same as the general environment. What conclusion would you draw from that?"

Ranger Jackson thought for a long moment. But when it passed, her puzzled expression melted into one of disturbing realization. "No glow and temperature below seventy degrees would mean no body heat. It would mean...they’re dead."

Exactly, I said.

At roughly the same moment, I heard a fluttering sound overhead. I looked to the sky, and quickly found its source. High atop a nearby metal pole, flapping in the wind, was the American flag.

Eight forty-five that night.

I had driven to what looked like the remotest part of the Chickamauga battlefield, then ventured on foot to a spot at least two miles from the road.

I chose a place that was fairly high in elevation to allow the deepest and widest field of view possible. As I set up my equipment - half a dozen tripod-mounted cameras, two line-of-sight sound gatherers, a voice-actuated tape recorder and the infrared viewer - I began wondering if any Civil War soldiers had used this spot to watch for enemy advances over the horizon. Or more to the point: were they still doing so?

For a sorely missed few minutes, I had gotten so involved in setting up my wares that I had actually forgotten how stone, cold petrified I was. But the time eventually came when I had to realize that I was as ready as I would ever be. When this finally sank in, I sat down, picked up my voice recorder, and started talking:

"Testing...one, two. This thing work?

Well folks, here I am, at what may be the most haunted place on Earth...with the better part of an hour between me and my car. And here’s the fun part: I kissed daylight good-bye an hour ago.

I stopped to catch my breath after realizing my own words, the ones about the spent daylight. I started shivering in a bath of cold sweat when I realized just how dark it had become.

The looming night brought with it an eerie, moonlit mist which rolled in like a slow-motion tide through the trees and over the open fields, gradually collecting into ghost-white pools in low-lying areas around me. In a painting or a post card, the scene might have struck me as darkly beautiful. But here in its midst, it seemed a ghastly and surreal panorama that could not have looked more ominous if a seasoned film maker had skillfully arranged it.

Again, I picked up my recorder. "My God, you wouldn’t believe what it looks like out here. There was no sign of this dry-ice convention when I arrived. It must have crept in while I was setting up shop.

"I officially began this little stake-out only five minutes ago, and already an unforeseen problem has come up. This ocean of mist has cut me off from my vehicle. What that means, friends, is that until this stuff lifts...and I don’t see that happening before morning...I’m committed to this project whether I have the cajoles for it or not. If worse came to worst, I’d banked on having the option of running like a sonovabitch to my car and making a getaway. But thanks to Mother Nature...or whatever...I no longer have the luxury of cowardice.

Well...are we having fun, yet?

With nothing better to do for the moment, I slowly scanned the area with the viewer I had shown to Ranger Jackson a few hours ago. Even without the infrared mode, its light-gathering abilities were spectacular, bringing into view distant trees and hillsides almost as clearly as if it were daylight.

I zoomed in on one distant tree and hit the infrared trigger. The numbers at the top of the screen read: 125m / 65 Deg.F. The temperature reading was merely that of the environment. I also noticed a faint reddish glow emanating from the ground, which was the slow release of heat which the soil had absorbed during the daylight hours. It was normal.

But the comfort of normalcy was about to make itself very, very scarce.

Click!

It was a faint sound - in fact, I knew what it was - and it still made me jump. The shutter on one of the cameras I had set up had fired. I had positioned six Minolta 3XI autofocus cameras onto tripods and aimed them in various directions in the hope of catching something on film that I hadn’t seen when I was there. (Digital photography was still in its infancy at the time; for low-light conditions especially, old school high-speed film was still the best way to go.)

All six cameras had shutters that were fired, or tripped, electronically. Three of them were wired to timers, which were set to go off every thirty minutes. With twenty-four-exposure film rolls in each camera, it meant two shots per hour throughout the night. That was easy enough.

What was of greater concern were the other three. Rather than timers, these units were wired to sensors which detected motion. Commonly used in security systems, once an intruder entered the sensor’s range, his motion was detected and an alarm was activated. I had purchased three such devices at an electronics store, bypassed their internal sirens and connected the external lead screws to the shutters of three of my cameras. But the point was this: these cameras didn’t take pictures unless something moved within their range.

And it was one of those that just went off.

I held my breath for a long moment, trying to tell myself that a moth, a bat or a simple malfunction could have tripped that shutter. And although I knew it to be possible in theory, I couldn’t shake the fear that the sensor’s beam had bounced off of something that I couldn’t see.

Something fairly large, probably moving - and close. The sensor’s range was only a forty-five meters.

Then another camera clicked.

It, too, was one of the motion detection units.

"What the hell?"

Then another one.

"Shit...this ain’t funny, man!"

I hadn’t trembled this much since the 104-degree fever I’d once had as a kid. Wide-eyed and panting, I stared in the direction in which the cameras were aimed, but with the naked eye could see little more than darkness, a few trees, and slow-moving fog.

Then I picked up my viewer.

I lifted it to my eyes and touched the zoom button. At first, all I’d managed to zoom in was more darkness. But then, slowly, something began to move.

A tired-looking bearded man emerged from the mist. His pace was slow and staggered like that of a man trying to walk away from a bad car wreck. He wore a tattered, grey-ish coat and pants that seemed virtually devoid of any real style other than to match each other. His direction was a northerly one, or, from left-to-right of my observation point. He was carrying what looked like a rake or a hoe over his left shoulder.

I hit the infrared button and checked the reading:

043m/65 Deg.F.

He was just within range of my cameras’ motion sensors, and was probably what had triggered them. I supposed he was a maintenance man who had gotten caught