Ghost Walk Read Free Page A

entirely factual account.  “Take
pity on these poor people, woman!  Spin a ghost yarn.  Do ya think they want to
be hearing of Ned’s dull life?  The man was a wanker.  I’ve always suspected he
was a Tory, at heart.”
    Grace
shot him another glare.  “Edward Hunnicutt led a fascinating life.”  She
repeated firmly.
    For
a second, the guy actually shut up, a strange expression flickering over his
face.  He looked over his shoulder, like he suspected she might be talking to
someone else.
    Meanwhile,
her group didn’t look fascinated, at all.  A frat kid fiddled with his phone,
while his girlfriend examined her vampire-y nails.  A man in Bermuda shorts
checked his watch for the sixth time in as many minutes.  Several of the older
customers looked like they were listening, but they weren’t listening, at
all.  They were tuning her out the way they would ignore a droning commercial,
waiting for some better show to start.
    A
young teen tugged on her mother’s arm.  “When are we going to hear about the
ghosts, Mom?”  She asked in a loud whisper.  They group might be politely
disregarding the troublemaker, but his comments were infecting all of them.
    Drat,
what spooky story could she tell?
    The
tour guide training had given Grace some background on the standard Harrisonburg
tales, but panic wiped them from her brain.  Everyone was looking at her.  What
the hell was she supposed to say?
    Desperate,
she tried to make up some nightmarish tale of horror, but it was less Stephen
King and more Mad Libs.  Unlike the other Riveras, Grace wasn’t the most
imaginative person, the occasional hallucination notwithstanding.  “Uhhh… Some
people say a --um-- skeleton with a… hook?  For a hand --um-- sometimes eats
here… sometimes.”
    Eyes
rolled all over the tour.
    The
gadfly sadly shook his head at that halfhearted campfire story, rallying from
his momentary confusion.  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I hope you’re not depending
on this job to keep you fed.  If ya are, you’ll surely be starving ta death, by
the end of the week.”
    Grace
hesitated.  He was right.  Again.  Skeletons were just not going to cut
it.  Somehow she had to do better, before more customers wandered away.  She’d
already lost three.  Crap.  She needed this job.  What part of local history
might interest this group?
    She
wracked her brain for a minute and then --for no reason at all-- seized on a
story that most people in this town wanted to forget.  “And it was very near
this spot that Harrisonburg’s most notorious criminal was hanged for his
horrible crimes.”  She announced.  “Captain James Riordan.  America’s first
serial killer.”
    “Oh bloody hell .”  The guy snapped in disgust, but everyone else perked up
at the promise of a grisly tale.
    Grace
smiled, sensing the story would be a hit.  This was going to work!  She
should’ve thought of adding good old Jamie to the tour in the first place.  “Captain
Riordan was the Jack the Ripper of Harrisonburg.  A dashing and devious
criminal mastermind.  He came from a good family, but he was disowned at a
young age for his disreputable behavior.  He left Scotland in disgrace and fled
to America, where he gambled his way into a ship.”
    Her
detractor scoffed at that.  “Horse shit.  No one ‘gambles their way’ into a
ship.  You have to cheat and not get caught.  T’is all skill .”
    “During
the war, James Riordan smuggled luxury goods into the Colonies, using Mr.
Hunicutt’s maps to evade capture by either side.”  She tacked that part on just
to piss off the heckler.  Edward Hunicutt was fascinating, darn it. 
“After the war, he became an out and out pirate.”
    “Have
you ever seen Ned’s maps?”  The guy demanded, because of course he arrogantly assumed he knew more about local history than Grace did.  “They
mostly led to swamps and dead ends.  No one with an ounce of sense used them
for anything more than wiping their