Days Gone Bad by Eric Asher Page A

the park. Closing time had passed and I had no desire to explain our presence to any park rangers. We crossed the well-kept grass at a fast clip, slowed our pace by a group of ancient cannons, and came up to the remnants of the fort.
    There wasn’t much left, and I’m being generous. A low border of earthworks a few feet in height was all that greeted us. It was surrounded by a fairly well maintained field of grass and sparse trees standing in stark contrast to the raging red sunset.
    A shiver tore down my spine as something smashed into my aura. I flicked my gaze across the field, and the fort, but could see no one.
    “Something’s here, Zola.”
    “Come boy, it was below the thirteenth cannon.” She glanced at me before she crossed the earthworks in a few easy strides, belying her age. I turned to check behind us but my eyes still found nothing. By the time I turned back to Zola, she was on the ground digging through the grass with a small spade she must have had tucked into the folds of her gray cloak.
    “That’s where it is?”
    She nodded.
    My mind wandered, leaving my immediate concerns behind as I tried to imagine what she saw there so long ago. The walls of the fort, the gunfire, the terror. “What was it like? During the battle?”
    She paused and wiped a large clump of mud off on the grass beside her hole. “It was horrible Damian. Like any battle, it was horrible.” She rubbed the back of her neck and started digging again. “Ah want to leave this place. The ghosts … they are too much.”
    I started to help her dig. “That’s what I’m feeling, isn’t it?”
    Zola nodded. “Look, if you want.”
    There was no delay, almost no effort needed to focus my vision so I could truly see. Death was strong around us, and the hidden scene tearing into our reality was a distressing panorama of gray and black. I saw the soldiers. They stood laden with arms and uniforms soiled by dirt and grime. I stumbled backwards as the shock of the vision buckled my leg and dropped me to a knee. The walls of the fort rose around us but stayed translucent enough to see the soldiers outside.
    “Zola, what the hell’s going on, I can see the fort and the cannons and the people … the people.” My voice fell to a whisper. “There’s so many.”
    Zola laughed without humor and continued digging, her body invading the barrel of a ghost cannon. “Ah’ll have to take you to Gettysburg, boy.”
    The mere thought forced the air out of my lungs in a sharp exhale. I sank my hand into a small clump of grass and dirt as I pushed myself back up to my feet and raised my eyes to find a ghost staring at me. He was young. He was so young. A Springfield rifle was slung over his shoulder and his eyes didn’t leave mine. I took a step to the right and his eyes followed me. There was an intelligence to his ghost I’d never seen before. As my focus moved over his shoulder I noticed the soldiers on the wall were staring at me and the soldiers on the ground and even those beyond the wall. They were all inhumanly still.
    I shivered and knelt beside Zola, admiring the massive hole she’d dug in such a short period of time. I could easily fit my entire forearm down it. Zola’s fingers clenched in the dirt. Between her hands lay a small rusty box, its lid teetering on the edge of the hole. “It’s gone, Damian.”
    “Gone?” A few clumps of dirt and deeply yellowed paper were all I could see inside the box. “No guardian here?”
    She shook her head. “No, unused talismans and lesser demons were not placed with guardians. Only a soulstone would warrant such protection.” She sighed and sat back on her heels. “Or so we thought.”
    I tried to picture her there, hundreds of years past. What would she and Philip have looked like? I crouched beside her and put my hand on her shoulder. What would Philip have said to her, what had they hoped to accomplish? I voiced one of the other questions I’d been pondering, “How have you lived so