The wounded Sergeant could hear the familiar voice of the longtime friend who he loved so dearly, but could not find the strength or the desire to roll his fatigued eyes out of his skull to look into the man’s face. To Peyton the words that came from his friend were gibberish and no longer had any power to bind him to reality or call him back from the dark plain where his spirit now wandered.

Sergeant Ambrose Peyton was a scholarly man born to an old Arkham family that was highly respected in academic circles. He was a man of science and progression that publicly opposed the secession of the southern states, but privately believed it was in the best interest of a growing and thriving industrial nation to cut loose its reprehensible and shameless cousins in the South. Never a man who believed in the barbarism of fighting, Peyton nevertheless felt bound by honor and love to enlist in the Northern army when in the summer of 1864 Henry Hollingsworth, a longtime family friend, approached him with speeches of defending the American progress he cherished so dearly. Under the pretense of fulfilling his patriotic duty, Peyton enlisted in the Union army with hopes of rekindling the friendship between the two men.

Peyton’s fourteen months of service under Hollingsworth took him south down the Mississippi. After the surrender of the Confederates, his company found itself in South Texas charged with the task of delivering word of the war’s end and Lincoln’s Proclamation to the San Antonio region. During their trek across the hot Texas valley, the weary soldiers stopped to rest in a small town of Texans not loyal to the chaotic Texas Confederates. The townspeople welcomed the soldiers. A local priest told Peyton and Hollingsworth of a ranch about 5 miles out from the town limits owned by a Louisiana planter and Confederate officer; a Colonel Blackburn Morvain. The preacher shared that the Colonel had passed through the village in the winter of 1863 with his family, a company of Confederate soldiers and several dozen black slaves. The Colonel’s wicked nature was made obvious to the villagers when one Sunday after services, he heartlessly flogged a young slave girl on the open street until she fell dead. When the townspeople attempted to stop him the Confederate office produced a pistol from his jacket and threatened to shoot dead any man, woman or child that interfered.

The pastor took Peyton and Hollingsworth into the darkness of the church out of the blistering south Texas sun and away from the other soldiers. His face tightened and expression became grim. The holy man took hold of Peyton’s grimy wrist and his small, wrinkled hands shook as he told them a ghost story.

“A few weeks after the incident involving the slave girl, one of the older ladies in town came to me in confidence and told me this story. She said that she often had trouble sleeping and would go out for late night walks during the full moon. This particular night she walked to the end of the main street near the churchyard and was returning home when she saw someone standing among the gravestones. At first the old woman thought it was one of the town children trying to scare her, but the brightness of the hunter’s moon revealed that the child was dark skinned. The child turned to face her and reached out her arms and began shambling forward. The old matron said she ran home faster than she’d run in 70 years.” The pastor forced his mouth to curve into a smile. “I tried to assure her that the girl was in Heaven and that it probably was one of the town children she had seen that night. I was not very convincing I’m afraid, because I truly believed she’d seen the girl that night. I knew she’d seen her, in fact.”