SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW
Chapter One Hundred Two December 18th Making another entry in my journal while we’re resting in our hotel. It’s a week till Christmas and we are currently in Omaha, Nebraska. We are in a warm room which is good because it’s colder than hell outside. At the moment it’s only 3 degrees Celsius and I am so missing the warm Texas weather we had a few weeks back. We’re staying very briefly in this state because the weather report is predicting an enormous snowstorm in a few days and one thing I don’t want to do is drive through a bloody blizzard. Despite that we managed to see a few attractions. We went to the Kool-Aid museum. It had tons of Kool-Aid memorabilia and the first suit that the Kool-Aid wore but they didn’t have any free samples which upset Alan since he had his heart set on having some when he got to the end of the museum and he complained to both of us for twenty minutes straight afterwards. We also saw this gravestone in Nebraska City that was in the shape of a desk with open books on top that listed the names and dates of the dead people. It was odd looking but kinda ingenious too (Alan’s words). We also saw the World’s Largest Time Capsule that some nutter made in 1975 because he was scared that no one would remember he was here after he died. So he buried 5000 different items from the ‘70’s including a couple of cheap rusted cars. Anyway, the pyramid shaped capsule is supposed to be opened in 50 years in 2025. Alan told me that once we get the TARDIS we would be going to the opening ceremony. I told him no thanks. We also asked the hotel staff if they knew anything else of interest and found out that there is a haunted site a couple of miles from our hotel room. Apparently there’s a section of railway track that is haunted by some guy who was murdered and decapitated in the 1800’s while he worked as an engineer. Supposedly he searches for his head every night and you can see the light of his lantern while he looks for it. They assured us that if you go to the tracks and wait long enough you’ll be sure to see it. Poor Awinita is still waiting to see a ghost sighting so we decided to go and check it out. Alan is curious anyway. He wants to see for himself what this light is and if it’s a real ghost or not. My Alan, always the skeptic. Anyway the light show supposedly starts right after the sun goes down so at the moment we are just relaxing and trying to stay warm until it’s time to go. “Ah, man!” Rose looked over at Alan. He and Awinita were lying in their beds watching a football game on TV. Rose closed her journal and put it back in her rucksack. “What’s wrong?” “Bastard fumbled the ball, that’s what’s wrong!” Alan said. “Only fifteen yards from scoring a touchdown too.” Rose smiled. Awinita had been teaching Alan the rules of American football and the two of them tried to watch games whenever they could. They were currently watching a game on ESPN. Once Alan was able to follow what was going on, he had tried to teach Rose the rules but Rose wasn’t interested in it like he was and after two attempts to explain it without success, he gave up. “Who’s playin’?” Rose asked, lying down beside him. “Nebraska Cornhuskers and Iowa Hawkeyes,” Alan said. “Cornhuskers? That’s the name of the team here?” “Yeah, not very intimidating, eh? Their mascot is this big, burly cowboy guy. Don’t ask me what a cowboy has to do with cornhusking though. I guess that’s more menacing than a big ear of sweet corn walking around the pitch.” “What’s the other team’s mascot look like?” “A Hawk.” “Makes sense. So, who are you for?” “Whoever wins,” he said, shrugging. “I just watch these games for the sheer fun of it. I’m not a team supporter like Awinita is.” “Go Panthers!” she said, raising her fist in the air. “North Carolina rules!” “So are we still going tonight on this little ghost hunt?” Rose said. “If you want to,” Alan said. “Well, if we go, it better be tonight because that blizzard is gonna hit here in a day or two.” “Don’t worry about it. I drove us through a hurricane, I can drive us through a snowstorm and…YES! TOUCHDOWN!” he said when a Cornhusker player crossed the goal line. “Anyway as I was saying, don’t worry about the blizzard. We’ll get through it alright.” He smiled at her. “So, what time are we leaving to go see this spectral light?” “Probably about six o’clock. We’ll take one of our sleeping bags and sit out there and pray a train doesn’t come along and kill us all.” They reached the train tracks around 6:30 p.m. The sun had set and the moon was slowly rising in the sky. Rose carried her sleeping bag while Alan used a torch to light the way. To their surprise, they found several other groups were already sitting on the track and around it on an incline that sloped away on either side of the tracks. “I guess this is normally something bored people do in Omaha,” Alan noted. They walked a few feet up the track and spread the blanket down between the rails directly over the wooden ties and gravel. They sat down making sure they were sitting on the ties and not on the gravel. A few feet ahead of them two teenage men and a woman sat on an old, faded blanket, eating some potato chips and drinking Mountain Dew while they talked quietly amongst themselves. “Blast, we forgot to bring a picnic lunch while we sat here and ogled the headless dead guy,” Alan said. “There’s nothing like sipping wine and eating cheese while you watch some poor bugger locate his missing head,” Alan said. Rose huddled closer to her fiancé when she began to feel the chill of the night air. Alan wrapped his arms around her and held her close. They sat there as the moonlight shone down on them waiting for the ghost to appear. The only sound was the scattered chitchat of the men and women around them. After five minutes of watching the railway tracks, Alan cast a bored glance at his surroundings. The track was surrounded on both sides by a dense forest but there was no activity that he could detect. Everything was serene and Alan found himself actually enjoying the peaceful atmosphere. He turned his attention back to the tracks. “Is ghosty gonna appear or is this gonna be another Resurrection Mary?” he muttered to Rose. “How long do you guys wanna wait?” Rose asked. “Not too much longer, it’s colder n’ snot out here,” Awinita said. “Yeah, unfortunately I don’t have the Doctor’s ability to withstand temperature extremes. I’m getting cold too and I don’t wanna wait all night.” Rose pushed a button on her watch illuminating the time. “We’ll wait another twenty minutes and after that we’ll go out to eat or something. I…” “Rose,” Awinita hissed. Rose glanced at her. She was pointing straight ahead and Rose looked in the direction she was pointing. Her eyes widened when she saw a bluish white light hovering over the tracks about 30 feet away from them. Everyone fell silent, watching while it bobbed through the air. “No way,” Awinita said. They watched while the light danced over the tracks, going to one side and then the other. Then suddenly it dipped down into a patch of grass by the right side of the rails and disappeared. As soon as it vanished from sight, the excited whispers of the people around them started up. Rose glanced at Alan and saw the perplexed look on his face. He looked at her. “There has to be a logical explanation,” he said. “Really? Let’s hear it then,” she replied. “Working on it, I’ll get back to ya.” She heard some gasps and everybody fell silent. She turned her head back around and noticed the light was back. She glanced at Alan and noticed he was staring intently at it with the same expression the Doctor had whenever he was trying to solve a difficult puzzle. “Couldn’t be swamp gas,” she heard him mutter. “We’re not anywhere near a swamp. Reflections from headlights of passing cars?” Rose watched as the light dipped down towards the wooden ties and then rose back up. “Gee, Alan, I’ve never seen headlights do that before,” she said. “I don’t think that’s the answer.” He shook his head. “Gotta be something besides a headless ghost,” he muttered. She saw his eyes widen and looked back towards the light. She noticed a young teenager with a lean body and close cropped brown hair had stood up and was slowly walking towards the supposed ghost. Everyone watched quietly while he inched towards the dancing ball of light. He was almost beside it when suddenly the light dipped back down in the grass and disappeared. The teen cursed as his friends let out disappointed groans. “I was this close,” he said to them. “Well, what were you gonna do if you caught it?” a teenage girl asked him. “Who said I wanted to catch it? I just wanna get a closer look at it. I…” His friends pointed behind him. He turned and saw the light rising up from the grass. “Hey!” he yelled, waving his arms around. “Hey! Say something!” The light darted past him to the other side of the tracks as his friends snickered at him. He began to follow the light around. “Hey! I’m talking to you! Are you the guy who lost his head?” he said to the light. “How’s the guy gonna answer him with no head?” Awinita muttered to her friends. They giggled. The light continued to dart through the air, seeming to take no notice of him. The teen held his hand out and waved it back and forth under the light when it stopped moving for a moment. “Did you feel his guts?” a man yelled. “No!” he said as everyone laughed. They watched as the light floated down the short incline and into the woods. The teen looked at everyone before he slowly walked down the incline and went into the forest. Everyone stared at the spot he had entered listening for him. “Fiver says the dumb git trips on a fallen log and breaks his leg in two places,” Alan muttered to Rose. “Ten dollars says he’s in there planning to jump out and scare us all,” Awinita said. “I wouldn’t doubt it,” Alan replied. Just then the light reappeared over the tracks. “Well, there’s his friend,” Alan said. “But no sign of him.” “Maybe the ghost ate him,” Rose said, shrugging. “HEY DUMBASS! THE GHOST IS UP HERE NOW!” someone yelled. The man emerged from the trees and walked back up the incline. “Gee, you musta just missed him,” one of his friends said. “He doubled back and came out here.” The teen flipped him off and went to sit back down. Everyone sat and watched the light as it bobbed up and down. Alan leaned down in Rose’s ear. “Had enough?” She looked at him. “Why? You figure out what it was?” “No, I’m sitting here freezing though. I would like to go back to the hotel room now.” “Yeah, me too,” Awinita said. “I’m chilled to the bone and the wood I’m sitting on is hurting my ass.” She nodded. “Okay, we’ll go back to the room then and call it a night. But I want a full report in the morning of what you think you saw,” she said to Alan. “I will get my brilliant brain right on it,” he replied. She smiled and all three of them slowly got up from the ground. They shook the blanket getting all the dust and rocks off of it and then wadding it up; they carried it back to the van.
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