Wish I May, Wish I Might

Chapter 17

That night, I wandered alone through the ghost town for the first time. I had told Annie to stay in the second bedroom in the rose-covered house with Annabelle while I wandered around. While I loved the stupid dog, I wanted to be by myself for a while.

Maybe walking through a ghost town at night should have been creepy, but I found myself totally at ease. It was almost peaceful, actually. The only sounds were my sandals on the sand and gravel and the quiet hum of my flashlight. Then I realized that by itself was creepy, so I took out the phone I had wished up in Colorado and played some music. (Where did the Wi-Fi come from, you might ask? Well, my dear reader, it seems the power of wishes knows no bounds!)

I walked to the old saloon and pushed open the door, which broke with a sharp crack. "Oops," I muttered, then shone my flashlight around the room. Neither I nor Annabelle had been in there yet, so it was still dirty and a mess. Thick wood tables were strewn about with matching chairs. The bar was painted a dark, almost black color, and I wondered if there was any lead in it. Over a large hearth, there was a huge set of antlers, which cast spidery shadows on the walls. I wondered where the antlers had come from. This wasn't an area with deer or elk hunting, definitely.

I carefully made my way back to the bar, being careful not to step on anything littering the ground. Most of the bottles behind the counter were at least half-empty of whatever strangely-colored liquid was in them, and all of them were unmarked. There was nothing fascinating there, other than a dead rat floating in one of the fuller bottles, which made me wrinkle my nose and turn away from the bottles. My flashlight landed on the antique cash register, and I went over to it. The music emanating from my pocket was getting to be a bit much, so I pulled it out and hit pause. Just as I was sliding the device back into my pocket, I heard a definite crash from the front of the store. I gasped and raised the flashlight to the doorway and the area around it, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. I stayed with my flashlight like that for a few long minutes, waiting for more movement.

But nothing happened.

I shook my head. "Carter Theo, you are losing your mind," I said to myself as I brought the flashlight back to the old register and started fiddling with the controls. But just as I had managed to get a drawer open, I heard a BANG! right outside. This time, I startled and my back hit one of the bottles behind me, making me jump more.

I could see myself imagining something once. It was an old ghost town in the middle of the night, anyway. But twice? Twice was more than coincidence.

"Hello?" I called out. No response. I thought about what Annabelle had told me the landlord had said, about people coming in even though it's private property. Annabelle had put up a fence, but it didn't seem out of the realm of possibility that someone would have cut the wires to look around.

And now the nicest building in the area, the big house, had a gigantic target on it thanks to being covered in flowers, and my new friend was sleeping inside it. And that was something I was not going to allow. I brought the flashlight back to the hearth and saw a rack of fireplace tools next to it. I ran over, keeping my eyes on the doorway, only looking at where my feet were going once. Now, stepping on some broken glass seemed less important than making sure there wasn't someone with an axe ready to kill me. I yanked a fire poker off of the rack and back to the door. I swung my flashlight around, jumping at a few shadows as the light moved, but saw nobody. When I was sure the shadows weren't shadows of people, I started running in the direction of the rose-covered house. But as soon as I passed one of the other buildings, I heard another BANG! coming from the saloon, even louder than the first one. I brought the flashlight back and this time, saw a figure move out of the light. I had a strange flashback to the shower curtain moving in the hotel bathroom the other night. The movement, the trying to avoid being seen, was the same. I tightened my grip on the fireplace poker and ran after the figure.