"Only At Night, Part 1" by Angela Perry

I bend over the still child and place my hand gently against his throat, but already I know it is too late. He has passed on from this world, and there is nothing I can do.

“I am sorry, Monsieur Jenkins. He is gone.”

“No!” The boy’s father covers his face and begins to rock back and forth. “How can this be? Lord, will you take all my family from me? First my beautiful Mary, now poor little Abe…”

He trails off into sobs, and my heart goes out to him. I wish to comfort him, but I cannot. This illness is unlike any I have seen before, stealing the afflicted’s very breath from their bodies, striking in the night with no warning. It may decimate the entire family. Already, the townspeople are refusing contact with Ned Jenkins or his sons for fear of contagion.

Many used to consider Monsieur Jenkins a lucky man. When he came, he brought with him his wife and five sons. His claim provided a good return of silver, and his wife provided him with two more sons over the past two years. But now, none in town would wish to trade places with him.

I lay my hand on his shoulder, hoping to offer some consolation, then whisper to the eldest that he should come fetch me should anything untoward happen. I approach the doorway, the bright morning sunlight cresting the mountains and filtering through the pines.

Suddenly, something seems to steal the light from my eyes. I stumble as blackness presses in on me. Something here is evil! I can feel it, its eyes are upon me…

With a gasp, Cheryl Beaumont sat straight up in bed, her heart pounding wildly. Her hands were tightly clenched in her blanket, and her throat was dry and tight.

“Wha’? Whazza matter?”

Cheryl glanced over to see her roommate, Donna, propping herself up in her own bed, her worried eyes glassy from sleep. Cheryl felt her panic begin to ebb as she registered her small dorm room, sunlight peeking faintly through the wooden blinds. The glowing red numbers on her clock read 6:07.

“Sorry,” Cheryl muttered, rubbing her eyes. “Just a bad dream, I guess. A really bad one.”

Donna grunted and flopped back onto her bed, pulling a pillow over her head. Her muffled voice filtered through: “Sorry, sweetie. Those stink. Glad you’re alright, though. I’m going back sleep now, ‘kay?”

Cheryl nodded numbly. Nightmares, ugh! She could still feel the creeping sensation between her shoulder blades from the invisible presence in her dream. She shuddered and pulled herself out of bed. A warm shower would help. It was Saturday, and most people in the dorm would be sleeping in; she could stay in the shower as long as she wanted.

Cheryl wrapped her shower supplies in a towel and trudged down the hallway to the dorm bathroom. Bright light flooded from the bathroom as she opened the door, and she felt the last vestiges of apprehension slipping away. The brownish tile was cool under her bare feet as she walked past the toilet stalls to the shower area. She dumped her towel outside her favorite shower stall—the handicapped-accessible one, because it was big and roomy—and turned the hot water on as high as it would go.

It was nearly an hour before Cheryl, her towel wrapped around her and her fingers wrinkled like prunes, dashed through the cold hallway and into her room. She dropped her towel and stretched luxuriously, feeling completely refreshed and excited for the day.

Donna rolled over and growled at Cheryl’s noisy entrance. “You really have no respect for Saturdays, you know that?” she grumbled.

“Oh come on, Donna,” Cheryl said, rummaging through her closet. “It’s already after seven. Besides, today’s the day I’m going to the ghost town, remember?”

“Oh, right.” Donna sat up in bed and pulled the terrycloth band from her blond hair. Cheryl couldn’t help watching enviously from the corner of her eye as Donna’s hair fell smoothly around her shoulders. Her own hair was a dark brown, and just curly enough to look unkempt or frizzy unless she spent forever fixing it. To avoid looking like a poodle, she kept it in a ponytail except on special occasions.

Cheryl pulled on jeans and a tee-shirt, stuffed her feet into her canvas tennis shoes, tucked her hair under a Grizzlies cap, and grabbed her car keys.

“Honey, are you sure you don’t want to take my truck?” Donna asked, holding out her own keys. “Your little Honda is great for in town, but some of those back-country roads can be rough.”

“Thanks, but I’ve already got my tent and things packed,” Cheryl smiled from the doorway. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s only twenty miles or so from the freeway, and most of that looks like paved highway. I printed off a map last night.

“I’ll see you Sunday night!” Cheryl called as she pulled the door closed behind her. She bounced down the two flights of stairs to the parking lot and hopped behind the wheel of her blue Honda Civic. Backing out of the parking lot, she left campus and headed toward the freeway.

This was going to be a great assignment, she decided. Cheryl had always loved history. Though most of her classmates found it unutterably boring, she found it fascinating and a bit mysterious. Her declared major was Archaeology, and she had signed up for the required Ancestral Studies class with high expectations. So far she hadn’t been disappointed. Even a mere hundred years ago, people had lived so differently. They had different beliefs, different habits, different priorities. It was almost like studying another world.

Her assignment was to research and write a paper on a member of her family that had been born at least one hundred years ago. After talking with her parents, she had selected Rosemarie Beaumont, her great, great grandmother on her father’s side.

Based on what little information her father could pass on, Cheryl knew that Rosemarie had been the daughter of a French trapper and an Indian woman. She had been raised by her father, a rather unusual occurrence in the 1800s. She had married another Frenchman, Philippe Beaumont, and raised two sons of her own.

It was sketchy information at best, but Cheryl had a good lead. Although no one knew where or when exactly she had been born, Rosemarie had worked as a seamstress and healer/midwife in the small mining town of Opal. Opal was on the register as Montana’s most well-preserved ghost town and, to Cheryl’s delight, was only forty miles or so from the university. Cheryl was looking forward to walking where her great-grandmother had walked, seeing where she had lived. She hoped that she could locate some town records or, even better, pictures relating to Rosemarie.

As she drove, Cheryl watched the sun penetrate into the canyons where the freeway ran, enjoying the way it limned the tops of the pines with gold and made the mist over the creeks glow brightly. Sharp shoulders of rock thrust through the velvet coat of evergreens along the road. The green was interspersed with the occasional red- or yellow-leafed maple or aspen, touched by frost at this high elevation even though it was only late August.

The first part of the drive was short and uneventful; twenty miles down the road, Cheryl located the exit that would lead her into the hills. She paused at a small town for fuel and breakfast, then continued north on a two-lane rural highway. Cheryl hummed along to the radio as she drove, straining to hear the songs over the static as steep canyon walls closed in around her.

The road climbed into a mountain meadow, and Cheryl noticed a rough wooden sign teetering on the edge of the road: “Opal, 12 miles.” She glanced down at the Mapquest printout in the passenger seat and smiled triumphantly. She wasn’t lost yet. How unusual.

She wasn’t smiling when a mile past the sign, the paved rural road gave way to rough dirt and rocks and another sign, this one proclaiming “End of State Maintenance.” She clenched her teeth to keep them from rattling as she drove over the graded surface. A pothole loomed in her path, and she swerved, only to scrape the side of her small sedan against the sagebrush that encroached on the one-lane road.

“Drat,” she muttered under her breath, swerving back onto the dirt trail, “Donna was right. I should have borrowed her truck.”

Dust began to filter through her vents, and the dry smell nearly overpowered her pine-scented air freshener. The road looped and curved almost maliciously. Cheri felt her stomach clench as she teetered along the edge of a mountainside, her wheels digging furrows in the gravel as she struggled up the steep incline.

When she crested the rise, Cheryl breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, her relief was short-lived. The road plunged down, progressing into hairpin curves that wound up the sides of mountains, interspersed with muddy holes in the shady valleys between. The Honda struggled bravely past each obstacle only to face another. Cheryl’s knuckles were white and her back aching when she spotted the second sign: “Opal, 9.5 miles.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Cheryl ranted to the faded bobblehead dog on her dashboard. “I swear I’ve been driving for an hour! I’m never going to get there!”

Eventually, though, after many more curves and mud holes, a large wooden sign proclaimed: “Welcome to Opal, Montana’s Most Well-Preserved Ghost Town!” An arrow indicated parking; another sign beneath forbade smoking, hiking, wading, off-road vehicles, fires, littering, or collecting specimens, and politely requested that Cheryl enjoy her visit.

Cheryl followed the signs along a short winding road to a gravel parking lot. She chose a spot in the shade beneath some enormous pines, then opened the door and stretched tiredly. The smells of dust and late-summer pine forest complimented the songs of the crickets, and Cheri breathed in gratefully. Dust smells weren’t nearly so oppressive outside the confines of her car.

Surprisingly, two other cars shared the isolated gravel patch. Someone else was apparently crazy enough to drive that road. Of course, Cheryl noted wryly, one was a large, four-wheel drive van and the other was a pickup truck. Her poor Honda hunkered tiredly in the shade, coated with yellow dust and looking pathetic.

Children’s high-pitched screams suddenly echoed through the air under the trees. Concerned, Cheri ducked out of the sun and into the dimness beneath the thick pines…and stopped short as a wave of dizziness assailed her.

Two children run past me, giggling and screaming as they kick the rusted can through the dust. The sun has set, and lamplight streams from windows all along the main street. The street seems busier than usual. The saloons and bawdy houses seem particularly loud for some reason, the drunks and wastrels laughing and carousing, flinging their hard-earned silver away.

I cross the street to the Connor’s home, pleased to see that Nathanial and his wife Jennie are home at least. I can see them silhouetted against the gingham curtains, eating dinner together. It smells like stew and fresh bread tonight; I knew little Jennie would make someone a good wife, and so she has. And now a good mother, too.

Wait. Something is wrong. The thing of evil that attacked me months ago in the Jenkins home is nearby, I can feel it. Shadows cross over my vision. I shake my head to clear them and hurry toward the door.

“Nathanial! Jennie! Come quickly!” I call loudly. I must warn them to leave their home for the safety of the crowds and the lights. People only die at night, when they slumber, never in the light.

The door to the Connor’s cabin opens, and I stumble over something. A loud yowl echoes down the street. At my feet is a large black cat that has run through the open doorway. It looks at me once with bright green eyes, then runs off into the night.

“Rosemarie, are you alright? What is the matter?” Nathanial helps me to my feet.

I have a terrible premonition.

“Your baby, little Anna, is she safe?” I ask, pushing into the main room. The Connor’s cabin is large, having a separate room for cooking and one for sleeping.

“She is asleep, Rosemarie,” Jennie says, looking startled.

“Check on her, quickly!” I say. I am afraid.

Jennie rushes into the dark bedroom. “Nathanial!” I hear her panicked cry. “Rosemarie! She’s not breathing!”

It has come again.

I am afraid.

Cheryl blinked rapidly, the dizziness passing and her vision clearing. She found herself leaning against a sturdy pine tree. A child screamed again, and Cheryl looked toward the sound. Ahead of her, two small children faced off, water bottles at the ready, grins wide, already dripping.

Shakily, Cheryl stumbled over to a nearby picnic table and sank onto the bench. What just happened? What had she seen? It was like she became someone else. They had called her Rosemarie.

“Okay, this is too creepy,” Cheryl muttered out loud, running her hands over her face. “Maybe I should go see a doctor.”

Of course, she rationalized, she hadn’t slept well last night. She’d heard of people falling asleep for a moment during periods of exhaustion. And everyone knew that dreams that seemed to take a long time could happen in an instant; it was a well-known trick of the mind. Or perhaps she passed out for a second after going from the heat to the cooler shade under the trees. She dreamed that she was Rosemarie because she was so interested in learning more about her.

That’s not what happened, her mind insisted, but she pushed the thought down. It had to be. She would get checked by a doctor when she got back into town next week. Until then, she would make sure she drank plenty of water so she didn’t dehydrate. That would work. She took a deep drink from the bottle she carried in her hip pouch, just to be safe.

Feeling a little better, she stood and wandered over to a large two-sided marker at the head of the trail leading down to Opal. The marker proclaimed the history of the town in large white letters next to dramatic black-and-white photos of the town itself. Opal, she read, was founded in 1897 by Dr. Everett Wendell. It soon became a large silver-mining town with over 1000 residents. It differed from other mining towns of the era because families settled in the town, making it a more stable community than the “rip-roaring western towns” nearby.

Cheryl scanned down through the information. The town dropped to a mere 100 residents by 1905, presumably because the silver depleted… Half the town burned in 1912, reversing the population resurgence that had begun the previous year… A flu epidemic wiped out all but a few of the remaining residents in 1918…

“There,” Cheryl whispered, her finger marking the spot. In a list of the townspeople who died during the epidemic was the name Rosemarie Beaumont. Cheryl smiled. “Great-grandma.”

Pleased to have found some physical evidence of her great-grandmother, Cheryl started down the dirt footpath that wound through the trees to Opal. The town was situated in a ravine, where an earthquake had long ago split the mountain and opened up access to the silver inside. The path took a circuitous route, stopping occasionally at little brass plaques that expounded on the history of the town. Cheryl smiled at this. Wouldn’t want to inundate the general public with too much history at once. Better to feed it to them in little doses.

Cheryl was nearing the bottom of the gently-sloping gorge when the trees opened up on a knoll overlooking the town. Gray buildings clustered below, bisected by a wide, rutted dirt road. Most of the buildings appeared to be built of logs, but at least three that she could see were built of boards.

Cheryl took the path down to the town at a jog, but was forced to slow as the path steepened. She slid the last few feet in a shower of dust. Coughing, she waved the dust away from her face and made a mental note to change into shoes with better treads on her return trip. Looking back, she was a little surprised by the steepness of the path. It made it hard to get in and out of the tourist attraction. Oh well, she shrugged, it was the park service’s problem. They’d fix it after someone fell and sued them.

Walking down the center of the wide dirt road, Cheryl eagerly took in the old buildings on either side of her. The dusty road muffled her footsteps, and the only sound that broke the August heat was the omnipresent chanting of crickets. It was so quiet, so still, so…dead.

Cheryl stopped. That wasn’t the word she had been looking for. But, for some reason, it seemed completely accurate. The blank windows—some blinking with glass, some empty sockets—stared sightlessly down at her as if she were an intruder. A mischievous breeze sent swirls of dust across the empty roadway. She took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. Well, it was a ghost town. It was only natural that her imagination would run away with her.

Simultaneously feeling apprehensive and amused with herself, Cheri tiptoed down the road. Her hands were damp with perspiration and tingled oddly. Stupid heat, she thought, taking off her cap and fanning herself vigorously. Her forehead was sweating, and she gingerly pulled strands of her brown hair that had escaped their ponytail away from her face.

“Well, hi there.”

Cheryl squeaked in surprise and whirled, then immediately felt foolish. A young man, dressed in khaki shorts and a matching shirt with a park services emblem on the sleeve, had come up behind her silently, the dust masking his footsteps as well.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” he grinned widely, holding out his hand. “I’m the park services guide here. The name’s Joseph.”

“Cheryl,” Cheryl smiled sheepishly and accepted his handshake, “Nice to meet you, Joe.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” Joseph said cheerfully, “But please, it’s Joseph. I’m not a big fan of being called ‘Joe’. It reminds me of some inbred country yokel’s name. ‘Hyuk, hyuk, call me Billie Bob Joe.’ You know?”

Joseph grinned again, and Cheryl couldn’t help grinning back. The guide actually reminded her a bit of a country yokel. He was in his early twenties, with shaggy red hair, freckles, and a charmingly wide smile. His features were regular and generally unremarkable, except for his eyebrows. His thick eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead, Cheryl noticed with some amusement, connecting his eyes like two cheerful, green dots. It didn’t spoil his looks, though; it seemed right for him. But he wasn’t really her type, Cheryl thought. She liked tall, dark, and dangerously handsome men.

Still…he was kind of cute.

“Would you like to come into the Visitors’ Center?” Joseph asked, gesturing toward the building behind him. It was uniformly gray, like the rest of the buildings in the town, with a large front porch and shuttered windows. “It used to be the Ford Saloon until the park service converted it,” Joseph explained. “Come on in. Let me show you around a little.”