Finally, unable to fight back any longer, Munver turned and saw the face of the frozen dead man staring at him.
“No!” Munver screamed, pulling away and lunging past the figure, crashing down off the back of the cart and landing in the snow, then scrambling to his feet and desperately wading toward the distant trees.
Garrett’s laughter seemed to follow him, hanging in the air all around, and Munver stumbled every few steps in his increasingly panicked attempt to escape. After a moment he felt as if the laughter had begun burrowing into his mind, and he had to clamp his hands over his ears in a desperate attempt to silence Garrett’s mocking tones. Even this failed to work, and finally Munver dropped to his knees in the snow. He squeezed his eyes tight shut and bowed his head, but the laughter – though muffled slightly by his hands on his ears – continued unabated.
“It’s not real!” Munver yelled, now trying to use his own voice to push Garrett’s laugh away. “It wasn’t real before, and it’s not real now!”
Yet still the laughter rang out, burrowing into Munver’s heart and soul, forcing him to remain on his knees despite his desperation to get away. He lost track of how long he remained on his knees, but he was starting to feel as if the last of his sanity was dripping away. And then, just as he was certain his mind was about to crack, the terrible laughter suddenly stopped.
Munver stayed completely still for a moment, before opening his eyes. His immediate relief, however, was countered by the sudden realization that an icy hand was resting on his right shoulder.
“No!” he shouted, stumbling to his feet and rushing forward again, racing toward the trees.
Before he could manage more than two paces, however, the laughter returned. Munver puts his hands over his ears again, and then he tripped and fell, landing face-first in the snow. Barely able to get back onto his knees, he screamed as he tried to drown out Garrett’s mocking voice, but the laughter seemed to become louder and louder in response. The more Munver fought back, the more the laughter tightened its grip on his mind.
And then it stopped again.
Munver continued to scream for a moment longer, but then he fell silent again.
The air all around was quiet, but – just as before – a frozen hand was resting on his shoulder, this time on the left side. It was if, every time he tried to run, Munver was being cut down by the laughter, giving the frozen man enough time to catch up. Munver stared straight ahead for a few seconds, seeing the tree-line that remained at once both tantalizingly close and terrifyingly far away, but now he was starting to fear that even reaching the tree-line would not be enough. Even if he made it all the way to the trail, would the laughter still be following him and forcing his mind to the brink of madness?
Determined to at least try, he stumbled to his feet and stepped forward, but of course the laughter immediately returned and Munver slumped back down. This time, since he’d barely moved at all, it took only a few seconds for the laughter to stop and for the hand to return – this time on the left side again – to his shoulder.
The horror was never going to end.
Too exhausted and terrified to try again, Munver remained on his knees for a moment before slowly reaching down and slipping a hand into his pocket. He fumbled for a moment, before taking out the gold coin. As he looked at the coin in the palm of his hand, he realized his dream of revenge was slipping away. Without the coin, he’d never be able to go home and prove himself to all the doubters, and he’d never be able to stand up to all the mocking bullies, and he’d never gain the company of the beautiful Angelica Graft. In an instant, that whole perfect future slipped away and Munver was left kneeling in the snow with the coin in his hand.
Slowly, bitterly, he held the coin over his shoulder.
“Take it,” he said, with tears in his eyes. “If you want it so much, then take it.”
He waited, and a moment later he felt the coin being slipped from between his fingers. Then, slowly, the frozen hand left his shoulder, and he began to hear a creaking sound heading further away, accompanied by the rustle of steps in the snow. The dead woman’s body had remained frozen solid, yet evidently the dead man had – perhaps through force of will-power alone – pushed himself to walk around, albeit very slowly and weakly. And as Munver remained on his knees, no longer hearing Garrett’s hideous laughter, he could not quite bring himself to turn and watch the frozen dead man walk away.
Nothing could be more horrific than the image that was already in his mind.
He remained on his knees for so long, he was actually shivering by the time he realized the creaking sound had stopped. He’d heard a faint bump just a few minutes earlier, as if something had climbed onto the cart. In his mind’s eye, Munver imagined the dead man slowly settling down next to the woman, squeezing his hand around the coin and then putting his arm around his companion, returning to the state in which he’d been when Munver had first pulled the covers away on the previous night. That whole image seemed preposterous, of course, yet it remained in Munver’s mind until he began to realize that he was himself in danger of freezing to death.
Slowly, he got to his feet, telling himself that it was time to walk to the trail. At the same time, however, he couldn’t bring himself to leave without at least looking back one final time at the cabin, so he turned.
Sure enough, the dead man was back on the cart, with his arm once more stretched across the woman.
It’s time to go, Munver realized. You can’t stay here. You’ll have to make your fortune somewhere else.
A moment later, however, he was about to turn away when his gaze fell one final time upon the face of Richard Garrett. The laughter had been over for a while now, but Garrett’s face was still visible through the broken window and Munver fancied that the dead man’s remaining eye was fixed in his direction. He wanted to laugh, to mock Garrett, but all the mischief had drained from his soul. He felt utterly empty, as if there were no point on going on. And the longer he looked at Garrett’s face, the more he realized that he could no longer deny what had happened over the past twelve hours.
He had seen the dead walk.
He had heard the dead speak and laugh.
He had felt the dead touch his shoulder.
All his life, Stuart Munver had lived for glory, for the tangible, for things he could touch and eat and use. There had never been any question, in his mind, of right and wrong, or of any great moral force. Whenever he’d heard people speak of spirits, or of another life beyond this one, he’d smirked at such idiotic ideas. He’d lied and stolen, even killed, with no thought that he might one day face any kind of judgment from his actions. So long as he could get away with things in the here and now, that was all that had ever mattered to him. He had been certain, without ever quite putting the notion into so many words, that the consequences of his actions existed in this world and this world alone, and that beyond death there was nothing but silence and rot.
Now he saw that this was not true.
Richard Garrett had died, yet he had returned to bring torment. The dead man on the back of the cart had been frozen for some time, yet he had risen when wronged and he had sought the return of his gold coin. This he had achieved. Some greater force, beyond anything Munver could understand, seemed to have arranged matters behind the scenes, and had made absolutely certain that a stolen coin had been returned to its owner. Munver didn’t understand all of this, of course. He knew now that he never could. Yet he saw enough to realize that he had lived his whole life in the most heinous manner possible, and he realized that upon his eventual death he would most certainly be judged for every wrong he’d committed.