Spooky South by S. E. Schlosser

Author:S. E. Schlosser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: GPP, Spooky series, travel, travel guide, ghosts, haunting, haunted house, haunted hotel, supernatural, touring, tours, spooky stories, explore
Publisher: Globe Pequot Press
Published: 2016-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

22

Goggle-Eyed Jim

The Great Dismal Swamp, Virginia

He was a notorious scoundrel and a horse thief. And he was the bane of my existence. Goggle-Eyed Jim they called him. The things they called me when I failed to catch him . . . Well, that’s beside the point.

Being the only lawman in a backcountry area close to the Great Dismal Swamp ain’t easy. Too many of my suspects lost themselves in the trees and undergrowth of the swamp, leaving me behind in mud up to my armpits and with—more often than not—a lump on my head where I hit it on a low-hanging branch. It was infuriating.

But Goggle-Eyed Jim was the worst. Week after week, angry citizens would storm into my office demanding justice. Their reports were always the same. They’d been awakened by the clanging of a cowbell and a huge hullabaloo out in the barn. By the time they’d grabbed a rifle and run outside, a dark-cloaked figure with huge goggles that reflected oddly in the moonlight would flash by on the back of the citizen’s best horse, laughing as he went. Goggle-Eyed Jim had a hee-haw of a laugh, like a braying donkey. But he was no laughing matter.

When the mayor brought home a real beaut of a stallion that October, I set up a trap for Goggle-Eyed Jim. I arranged with the mayor to sleep in his barn in the hayloft overlooking the horse stalls every night for a week. We were both sure that Goggle-Eyed Jim would come for the horse as soon as he heard about it. And the mayor made sure to parade his new purchase up and down the streets of our little town, boasting all the while of his prowess as a race horse, his beauty, his price.

Sure enough, three days later I was awakened from a strangely deep sleep by the clanging of a cowbell. I cursed and rolled over in my prickly bed of hay, throwing off my old horse blanket and reaching for my rifle. The blanket sent up a huge cloud of dust, and I sneezed as I snatched up the gun and scrambled on hands and knees to the edge of the loft. How had Goggle-Eyed Jim gotten into the barn without my hearing him? I am the lightest of sleepers, but not even the soft whicker of a horse had disturbed my slumber, though I’d been awakened by much smaller sounds on previous evenings.

As I reached the edge of the loft, I saw a horse’s tail swishing through the open barn door. By now the other horses were neighing and whinnying to beat the band. Many of them reared when I made a foolish leap directly down to the floor from my perch, still clutching my rifle. I could have busted a leg but somehow made it with only a painful twist to my ankle. I rushed outside, stopping right beside the barn door to take aim at the fleeing rider with his flapping black cloak and reflecting goggle eyes.

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