Young Writers Society

The weight of regret carried with it the weight of exhaustion. James felt his head start to nod forward, and he fought to lean backward, into Oliver, instead of into the horse’s neck. He tried to keep his eyes open, squinting ahead for what could’ve been a minute, or could’ve been anfew seconds before his eyes glued shut.

He rocked backward as Oliver spoke. Somehow, it felt nice to know that he wasn’t the only one who felt like they were letting their family down. Not that he’d say that out loud.

James heard Oliver fall silent as James’s head leaned back into the man’s shoulder. He smelled terrible and sickly sweet all at once, but the scent didn’t register as anything besides disgusting as James felt his mind drift from consciousness.

He heard Oliver’s final words in his sleepy haze, and he latched onto them.

Pay for what? Promise what? His mind had questions, and he chose to remember before sleep overtook him.

We spent the rest of the day traveling through the woods - with Tiberius asleep for all of it. By the time the sun was finally beginning to set, I had found a nice little clearing beside a cave. I doubted it would start to rain, but, if it did, the cave was a nice alternative to getting soaked outside.

I set up camp the best I could. I found some food in Reed's pack, tried to make a more comfortable place for Tiberius to sleep, and even made a little area for me to fake falling asleep. Considering that I was still wide awake, I was starting to suspect dead people didn't need the rest. I even got rid of some more maggots and changed the cloth around my eye.

All in all, I had accomplished a lot during the time Tiberius was asleep.

He was on the ground, lying down, with blankets under him supporting his neck and cushioning his body against the hard ground. James’s eyes shot open, and his heart rate jumped.

He hadn’t fallen asleep on the ground. He’d fallen asleep on the horse.

The sky above him was turning dark, and the air was getting cooler. Nightfall.

How long had he been asleep this time? What day was it? Has he really been out that long?

James turned his head back and forth, looking for Oliver. His eyes finally settled on the doctor, a little distance away.

When I turned to check on Tiberius again, I found that he was finally awake again - apparently, I had been right when I thought he needed the rest.

"Feeling refreshed now?" I asked.

Refreshed wasn’t the word he’d use, but James did feel better. With exhaustion crossed off from his list of current ailments, things felt more bearable.

“Better,” he said. That was the best answer he could come up with. His mind was still foggy. He looked over at the horses. Elliot was there, resting.

“I... hadn’t intended to sleep that long.”

A pause.

“Thank you... for letting me rest.”

"It's nothing," I said with a dismissive wave. "You needed it."

It was probably to soon to eat, but I had a loaf of bread Reed had wrapped up in his pack. I sat down on top of my makeshift bed and put the loaf on the ground next to me. If Tiberius wanted some, he could take it.

James let silence fall between the two of them as he watched Oliver pull out the bread. His eyes caught on the loaf, but he found himself watching the nature of Oliver's movements more closely. He wasn't sure if his head had been too cloudy to notice before, but Oliver seemed to be moving... very stiffly. Not even just in the way that a man who was, perhaps, unaccustomed to riding a horse for long hours with someone leaning against them might be stiff.

His brows pinched together, and he took in a deep breath. A horrid smell filled his nostrils.

Dragons above, he smelled like death.

His breath hitched in his throat and nausea came like a flood. His shoulders and neck tensed as he fought against his body from convulsing.

No. No. He was going to keep his food in his stomach.

He closed his eyes and let out a tense breath through his nose as he let his shoulders relax again. Oh, what he would give for a bath.

He opened his eyes again to look back at Oliver, the man whose stench had rubbed off on him. It didn't make sense that a Doctor would willingly put up with such a pungent odor. Was the doctor diseased? What exactly had Butch done to him?

He looked back at the horses. Elliot was still resting, relaxed by the tree he was tied to. The other horse looked a little wearier. James wasn't sure the doctor knew how to properly care for horses - and the horse wasn't even Oliver's.

"What happened to Reed?" he finally asked. "I noticed you have his horse."

He glanced down at the shirt he was wearing. The one Oliver put him in.

"...And his things."

I should have known that Tiberius would notice I didn't have the doctor's belongings, but I had been hoping that he'd be a little too preoccupied with recovering to notice.

I hesitated. I hoped Tiberius would think it was because I was showing a little empathy, and not because I was scrambling to come up with an answer in my head. If I told him the truth - that I left him tied up to a tree - it would bring up the question of how I left him tied to a tree. I had been trying to sell the whole story of being too scared to act against Butch; acting against Reed would go against that.

"He...died," I finally settled on. I stared into the fire I had made earlier. "Butch killed him for failing to catch you. He probably would have done the same to me, if I didn't pretend my injury was worse than it was. The moment Butch ran off to find you, I took Reed's belongings."

I hesitated.

"...And his horse."

Tony theoretically had no way of knowing that I was the one who had ridden him for the past week, but I had admittedly grown just a little attached to him since ending up here. I really didn't want to leave him just because I had switched bodies.

James started to squint. The doctor had had his own belongings - why did he need to steal from Reed? That, and stealing from a dead man, though a desperate move, didn't seem to fit the character of a man who empathized so heavily with his current condition.

Maybe James was wrong about Oliver. He'd been wrong about a lot of things in life, but something didn't sit well with him about Oliver's story.

That wasn't the only thing that didn't seem to sit well, though.

Very suddenly, and very quickly, James felt the need to go relieve himself. His eyes widened a little and he forced himself upright, pushing himself to his feet. He needed to move, anyway. Stretch his limbs. Get his blood flowing. Right? Right.

He ignored the protests of his muscles to prioritize the needs of his bladder and turned to retreat into the cover of the trees.

"Excuse me a moment," was all he said as he hurried away.

Even if Tiberius hadn't exactly said why he needed to get up so suddenly, I knew exactly what the reason was. I traveled around - it wasn't like there was a conveniently placed bathroom most of the time.

As I waited for him to come back, I started to hear the sound of a horse approaching. A familiar sounding horse. It could have just been any horse with any rider, but who would be wandering around the woods at this hour so loudly?

I glanced in the direction Tiberius had gone.

He wasn't back yet. I could solace in that. I'd just have to figure out how to explain that Oliver was alive and who he was traveling with.

I groaned.

This was not how I wanted this night to go.

...Unless, of course, I told the truth.

Or most of it, anyways.

A smirk started to stretch across my face. I had been a Type 3 ghost, after all. I knew a thing or two about haunting people.

When Butch would enter the clearing, he'd find me there with the bandage just starting to unravel - enough to show the gaping hole he had put in my head. I stood up and went eerily still, waiting for just the right moment to start using some of my ghostly abilities.

As James fled off to relieve himself, a large shadow started to emerge from the opposite side of the wood. Skull was right about the horse sounding familiar.

Butch rode a little faster when he saw the camp up ahead and pulled out his ax before he even saw the figure up ahead. He was itching to have Tiberius back in his grasp, turn him in, and get his reward. If he could call it done and overweight, he would be a hero in his own right to the kingdom and have enough money to go into retirement without a care in the world.

But when he saw who was ahead of him, he stared.

Though his horse still walked forward into the clearing, Butch was frozen in the saddle.

Oliver was alive?

I resisted the urge to smirk. Type 3 ghosts did have personality like the living, but I was going for a Type 1 style haunting - or maybe Type 2, so I'd actually seem terrifying. I kept my lips drawn in a thin line, still standing deathly still.

Step one of any good haunting: changing the temperature and the lights. I couldn't do much about the lighting - the most I could do was creepily extinguish the campfire, seeing that we were in a natural setting - but the sky was getting darker. And making it cold enough for Butch to see his breath was something that I could easily do.

"You came," I softly said. "I knew you would come to find him, eventually."

As the fire went out, a deep chill suddenly filled the air, and Butch could see his breath in front of him like a cloud of smoke. Butch shivered and turned to look at the dead man standing - and speaking - in front of him.

He gripped his ax tightly, lifting it in defense of the man who looked and smelled like death.

Terror gripped his tongue as Oliver turned his head to look at him and the bandage around the doctor's eye started to slide down his face and rest around his neck. Under the cloth there was a gaping hole where his eye should've been, and crawling around inside the man's head were dozens of wriggling maggots.

Butch's face went white as a sheet and whatever was in his stomach came up in an instant, and he spat up on himself.

I was going to add in the miasma to up whatever little fear Butch had, but it looked like I didn't even need to bother - he had already gotten sick from his terror, and the show was only just beginning.

"You killed me," I said, slowly walking up this horse. The bandage shifted around my neck as I bridged the little distance between the us. "How could you kill me? I was just a doctor. I was doing my job."

Butch stared, not sure that what he was seeing was even real, but the sight and the smell combined were undeniable. He ducked his head to the side for a moment, rubbing his eyes and wiping his mouth before turning back to see the same thing. The sight of the man he’d killed, standing like he was alive.

Butch’s knuckles went white around the handle of his ax.

“N-n-no! Look, whatever you are, get back!” he hissed in fear, backing the horse up - not that he had to ask the horse to sky away. The horse seemed repelled by the smell too.