Ghost Story

I don't own these characters. I just like to spend time with them. No other profit to be had.

AN: This story is totally AU. But hopefully I have stayed true to the characters of the people we all love and have done them no disservice.

I also have to give high praise and many many thank yous to my friends LeighAnn and LadyKRedzz for thier advice and encouragement on this. God blessed me with some wonderful friends.

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Jack Bowers walked carefully through the graveyard trying hard not to step on the graves and silently apologizing to the occupants of them when he did. As a child his grandmother had told him it was bad luck to step on a grave and silly as it may have been, he believed it. Of course, he believed a number of things that seemed silly to most.

Tall, with deep blue eyes, brown hair and a studious look on his square jawed features, Jack looked every bit the college student and aspiring writer that he was. But he was a great deal more than that. Jack was a fifth generation Kansan, a ranch hand on his family's ranch, a loving son and grandson and also an amateur ghost hunter.

His girlfriend, Robin, sometimes grumbled that he spent more time with the dead than he did her, and though it was a slight exaggeration, it wasn't too far off the mark. Though he couldn't explain it rationally, he felt compelled to search out and look for spirits of the dearly departed. For 19 of his 22 years, it was almost as though they called him.

Born and raised outside the city proper of Dodge City, Kansas to an English teacher mom and a rancher father his upbringing was more about hard work and study than it was about ethereal beings floating around the confines of the over 100 year old house he grew up in. But he felt them there anyway.

His father's mother lived with them in the old two story clapboard structure and often told him stories of dead Indian warriors who were purportedly buried on the property as well as a few cowboys who'd been unlucky enough to come upon said Indians. She avowed more than once that their spirits still roamed freely on the land the Bowers now called home.

Jack remembered fondly, all the times he'd sit quietly at her feet by the fireplace while she'd push away a strand of pearl white hair, take another stitch in her needlepoint and regale him with stories of times past. Tales of when the land was wild and the people wilder and laws were at times, mere suggestions and not something to strictly abide by.

"I was born in this town, boy." Esther said often. "I'll most likely die here and be buried here and one day it'll be my spirit you'll see roaming across the prairie. Yes, sir, I'll be walking right alongside the likes of them that settled this area and still are here. You just wait and see."

His mother, ever practical Polly, as his dad occasionally referred to her, in private of course, scoffed at the stories. She would often shake her blonde head, casting brown eyes askance at her mother in law and say that Esther Belle Bowers was just a nice old woman who liked to make things up. Polly Bowers didn't believe in anything she couldn't see touch or taste and she took a dim view on anyone who did. A product of her Boston raising; Jack secretly thought.

Timothy Bowers, Jack's dad, never really said one way or the other, at least not to anyone but Jack. But there were a couple of times when the tall, man with the graying brown hair confided quietly to his son that he'd seen and heard things around the place that weren't quite normal.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." He'd said that the first time Jack swore he'd seen something unearthly in the barn. From that moment on, Jack and his father had an understanding between them and Jack had a nickname.

"Horatio?" It was that nickname that Tim Bowers used now when he found his son in the old Dodge City Cemetery in the middle of the day just as he thought he would. When he found he wasn't at home and wasn't scheduled for a class, he had an idea of where to find him. "What are you doing up here boy? I thought you had a test to study for."

"Hey, Dad." Jack glanced at his father before returning his gaze to the old tombstones in front of him. "I do have a test and I've already studied for it. It's nothing major."

"Oh." Tim shook his head. "But this is?"

Jack looked up, prepared to be defensive of his being there but saw the understanding in his father's eyes. "Maybe." He looked back down at the headstones in front of him. "Was there something you needed, Dad?" He continued to stare at the headstone so intently that Tim moved up to stand beside him and looked himself.

"US Marshal Matt Dillon." The headstone read.

"I was going to get your help with that new colt." Tim answered as he glanced at the marker next to Dillon's. "But it looks like you're really involved here. What's so impressive about these headstones? You've seen them before."

"Yeah, I have." Jack agreed. "But I noticed something today, I guess, I never saw before." He bent down and pointed to the dates on the two stones. "Look, they both have the same date of death."

"So?" Tim couldn't see what significance that would have on anything. "Lots of people die on the same day, son. It's sad but true."

"I know," Jack answered. "But from everything I've read about them and heard about them, these two were awfully close and somehow, it just seems doubly tragic to me that they would've died on the same day."

Tim plowed his hands into his pockets. "World's full of tragedy, Horatio. I can't much see the use in dredging it from the past when the present already has so much. Besides, they might've had a different view on things."

Jack pursed his lips in thought for a moment, not sure whether to tell his dad his thoughts or not. Tim Bowers wouldn't scoff at him, he was certain, but still… "Guess you're right." He said. "Come on, Dad. Let's go take care of that new colt and I'm sure there's other things we can get done."

As the two men walked away, a sudden wind moved through the cemetery, stirring the leaves on the ancient oak at the back and ruffling the too tall grass at the fringes. Tim either didn't notice or didn't think it noteworthy, but Jack did. As they reached the gates of the old burial ground, he looked once more up to the graves and gave an almost imperceptible nod to a sight only he could see. "I promise." He said silently, as he and his father climbed into Tim's old truck and they left.

Up on the hill, the specter watched them with something akin to a smile. Maybe now, finally, the truth would be known.

TBC