The Dyeus King called his old lover to his side, but dismissed her an instant later. He could not bear to see her face, which held the same beauty, and the same disapproval.

The Zacare Operation

The Sky Witch appeared in her preferred form, that of a black and billowing stormcloud chuckling with thunder. The olprt radiance didn’t make her look a bit different from her regular appearance. A black silhouette of a stormcloud was just as black as a stormcloud.

“Ah, Dr. Ernst! It’s been a while since you’ve called me.” the Sky Witch said. “What is that over there? A camel? Oh, may I have it? I want to take it back to my island!”

“No, sorry Mattie.” Matthew said. “That’s the manes we’re trying to help today.”

“Another animal ghost? Interesting! You don’t see many of those! Oh, are you sure I can’t have it, Dr. Ernst? It looks so fluffy, and its big head is so cute! It would look so keen running on my beaches! What’s that thing on its back, by the way?”

“I’m sure you can’t have the camel, Mattie.” Matthew said. “Mattie, we need you to pay attention. We called you here to fill a hole with water. We’re doing an experiment that will hopefully teach us something about the manes. The manes wants to drink water, but won’t drink from the creek. We’re going to find out why.”

“Uh? Another watering hole? It seems you always want rain from me. Rain, rain, rain. This is the American southwest, isn’t it? Can’t you find some natives to do a rain dance for you?”

“Just fill the hole, Mattie, and then you can go back to your island.”

“Good! It’s so dry out here, and quiet. Not like my island at all.” The Sky Witch looked at Mr. Reeves. “Oh! Look at you! A black man! I’ve never seen a black man before!”

“And I’ve never seen a Sky Witch before.” Mr. Reeves said.

“Focus, Mattie.” Matthew said. “We need you to fill a hole with water.”

“Well, where’s the hole?” the Sky Witch asked. “I can’t fill what I can’t see!”

“Martin?” Matthew asked.

“One moment.” Martin replied.

Suddenly, there was a puff of dust, far off to the side of the Red Ghost. When it cleared, the group could see the small fissure in the earth Martins’ dogs had made.

The camel rolled its massive neck over to the crack in the earth. Its feet soon followed.

“...Find it...Find water…” the Red Ghost muttered to the wind. “Water…bring me to water…”

“Fill it, Mattie.” Matthew said.

Far above, the clouds began to swirl. White whirled into gray and then into black.

“Good lord, she’s stirring the entire sky1” Mr. Reeves exclaimed. “From horizon to horizon, like a big bowl of milk!”

“You don’t need to be so fancy.” Matthew said to the Sky Witch.

“No, I don’t, but it’s so much fun to be fancy! Especially when I have an audience! Are you impressed, black man?”

“I can’t rightfully say I’ve seen the sky do that before.” Mr. Reeves said. “So yes, I’m impressed.”

“Fill the hole, Mattie.” Matthew said. “We don’t have all day.”

The Sky Witch sighed, and her sigh was like the sound of a brief summer shower tickling the Earth.

“Fine, fine…”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The Sky Witch reached out with her power and tore a small fraction of a cloud off, like a child pulling apart a bit of cotton.

“First, you pinch off a piece of cloud.”

The cloud fell like a feather to the Earth and filled the crack in the ground like mist.

The camel looked at the mist, very confused, and snorted.

“Then all you have to do is make it cold, see? It’s very easy--for a Sky Witch!”

The mist congealed into water and filled the crack.”

The voice of the Red Ghost roared. “Water! Water! I can smell it! Bring me to water! Go!”

The camel darted over to the crack, and then, a black body arose from the white bones and flung itself towards the water.

The body was raw and burnt. It was hard to tell how old the man was. The damage to his flesh gave him the appearance of wrinkles, but he could have been a young man.

The body landed just shy of the water and crawled toward the liquid, fingers arched like claws, mouth agape.

He buried his blistered arms in the water and sank his face into it. Then, with a pained growl, he pulled himself away.

The water wasn’t disturbed. Not as much as a ripple crossed its surface.

“Bad water! Dirty water! Poison water!” the man screamed.

Not a drop fell from his face or arms. Nothing clung to his ectoplasm.

He drank nothing.

The man sobbed tears without moisture. “It’s never good water…never good…always thirsty…gonna die…gonna die soon…”

The man vanished. The camel turned away from the water and began to trod off in search of water.

The camel had been searching for a long, long time.

“I think I understand now.” Matthew said. “The poor man can’t slake his thirst. His thirst is a deep, deep memory. Touching water does nothing to remedy it, so he thinks whatever he touches is bad water, and goes off in search of more.”

“He’s been doing this for so long…poor man’s an American Tantalus.” Martin said. “He’s surrounded by water, but he can’t drink a drop!”

“Would it help if I made it rain?” the Sky Witch asked. There was concern in her voice, and the Sky Witch was rarely concerned about anything.

“No.” Matthew answered.

“But Dr. Ernst, the poor man’s dying of thirst! He’s dying of thirst forever! I can wring all the moisture out of the sky just like one would a towel! I can cause such a downpour that he’d never need to drink another drop of water again!”

“No, Mattie, that won’t work.” Matthew said. “You could flood all of Arizona, it wouldn’t help a thing. The problem isn’t the water, it's him.”

The Sky Witch sighed, and her sigh was like a muffled thunderclap. “Then why did you call me here if all I can do is watch that poor man suffer?”

“I have an idea, Mattie.” Matthew turned to his fellow manesologists. “I think we can affix the Red Ghost in such a way so that he’ll be content and comfortable. First, we weaken his ba spiritual component, his memories, not enough so that he forgets who he is, but enough so that he can forget that he’s perpetually thirsty. A fleeting thirst can be slaked.”

“Oh!” the Sky Witch exclaimed. “Then I can make it rain, right?”

“Yes. We’re going to bury him in a body of water. We can’t use the creek though, people use it, so we’ll make a little pond for him. The sensation of water finally slaking his thirst, and being surrounded by that water, should give him a profound and embryonic feeling of calm. And when he realizes that, when he realizes he’s submerged but not drowning, he will realize that he is a manes. His nightmare will be broken. He will know that he is dead, he will feel that he is at peace, and what more could we do for a manes, gentlemen?”

“Good.” Joseph said. “I like this plan, Matthew. If this goes like you say, then this will be one of our good cases, even with the earlier homicide.”

“So we’re going to repeat what we did before, Mattie.” Martin said. “I dig a pit, and you fill that pit with water.”

“I’m not quite sure I understand what’s going on here, but if you say it’s for the best, then I’ll believe it's for the best.” the Sky Witch replied.

“Hold on.” Mr. Reeves said. “I think it's a good plan, Dr. Ernst, but there’s a hitch. I think we might be dealing with two ghosts, not one.”

“Two ghosts? Joseph asked.

“Yes. The camel and the man. I think they’re together.”

“That would make this one hell of an exceptional case.” Joseph said. “Animal ghosts are rare, and so are combined ghosts. If you’re right, the Red Ghost is a rarity of a rarity.”

“Well, this is the country for such things.” Mr. Reeves said.

Joseph shrugged. “Right. I can’t argue with that. The country that made Bass Reeves would be the country to make the first human-animal ghost pair.”

“What makes you think there are two manes, Mr. Reeves?” Matthew asked.

“It’s mostly a hunch, though my hunches tend to be good. The poor man is insane. He wants water, but he can never get water. That’s Tantalus, from Greek mythology, like Dr. Glass said. He’s in such a bad state people would call it divine punishment, and he attacked not only a beare but a woman for their water. I can’t see a man that desperate and crazed relenting from attacking someone that might have fought on his side. I’ve known enough men like that to know they aren’t that considerate.”

“But what about the Confederate with the belt buckle?” Joseph asked.

“I don’t think he was spared because the deceased man had Confederate sensibilities. I think he was spared because the camel had Confederate sensibilities. That camel is clearly dog-loyal to his rider. It took on a grizzly without knowing that it itself was a ghost and invulnerable. That takes loyalty. But such a loyalty would also logically apply to all its previous owners, who were presumably Confederates. I can see the camel stopping short of killing the Confederate once it saw the belt buckle. What I think happened was this: one of the camels the Confederates released from Camp Verde found its way to Eagle Creek and it remembered the nice men with shiny CSA belt buckles and gray shirts that opened its cage. It thrived out here, as camels do in this environment, until it came across a frontiersman, maybe a trapper, or a prospector. This man was probably wounded, maybe even dying. Maybe he ran into bad men, it happens out here, or maybe he just had a bad accident without anyone around to help him, that happens out here too, but regardless, he’s hurt, he’s bleeding, and then he sees this strange animal trot up to him. Maybe he himself was a Confederate, or maybe the camel was just a very helpful and friendly animal, but it gets close enough that our man can get a rope around it. Our man figures that this strange animal before him might not be a horse, but it’s still an animal, and all animals drink.”

“Oh, the poor man.” Martin said.

“You’re getting the idea, Dr. Glass. Our man figures that if he lashes himself to this animal it’ll eventually head to water. It was just his awful luck that a camel can go up to fifteen days without a drink. But how would he know? But that’s how I think he and his animal are both ghosts.”