“Just open it,” I said.
Zack flung the door open and I detected the faint scent of blood and gunpowder in the barn.
“Jesus,” Zack said, scrunching his face. “It smells like there was a gun fired in here.”
He stepped forward and put his hands on his hips. “But I don’t see anything. Just hay and the stupid tractor.”
“I know,” I said as I stepped up next to him. “That’s what it was like yesterday but it definitely didn’t smell like this.”
Zack scratched his shaggy brown hair and walked around the tractor. The scent got stronger as he looked around the hay bales. “Nothing. Clean as a whistle. But that smell has got to be coming from something.” Zack came back towards me—he was acting surprisingly mature—and walked past me out of the barn.
“You said you heard moaning in here last night?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, late in the afternoon too.”
“And Becca heard it too?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Zack folded his arms and looked out at the pumpkin field. “OK. If the barn didn’t smell like the showdown at the OK Corral I would have whacked you in the head by now, but it does, so here’s what we’re going to do.”
Zack looked me in the eye which was something he rarely did—to me or anyone. “Mom and Dad are going to the movies tonight and they’re leaving me in charge. After they go, I’m going to take the loft key—”
“The loft key,” I interrupted. “How do you know where dad hid it?”
Zack huffed. “Because I went snooping around their room the day after we moved into this place and found it in one of his old work boots in his closet.”
I bit my lip and nodded. Typical.
Zack gave me a little shove in the chest. “Come on. Let’s get back inside before mom and dad ask what we’re doing.”
I spent the rest of the day in my room writing a book report for school. A few minutes before five, a wide-eyed Becca came into my room. “There’s an army man in my bedroom,” she said.
“Oh yeah, what does he want?” I asked as I went back to typing. Becca already had a big imagination and no doubt the weird barn was helping it run wild.
“He said you shouldn’t go back into the barn and that he wants our family to move away.”
My hands froze and I looked over at her. Her eyes had started to water.
“Does Zack know about this?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“OK. Show me,” I said as I got up from the chair.
I followed Becca down the hall into her room and looked it over. Her pink bed was made tight and her stuffed animals were lined up against the wall like little furry soldiers.
“He’s over there by the closet,” Becca said.
I looked to my left but all I saw was the open closet door and her clothes hanging on the two metal racks.
“There’s nothing over there, Becca,” I said.
“He’s inside. You have to go inside to see him,” she said.
“Becca—”
“I swear! He’s in there!” she cried.
“OK, OK,” I said and walked to the closet. I shivered the instant I stepped inside. It was like walking into a mid-January night. “Becca, you know how cold it is in here?”
“Uh huh,” she said.
I looked over the clothes and behind the racks. No one was in there. I walked out of the closet and took her hand. “Come on. It’s time for dinner,” I said, leading her out of the room.
Dinner went by without any of the usual Zack antics and an hour after we finished my parents left for the movie.
We watched through the living room window as my dad’s truck drove down the fifty-foot dirt driveway and onto the side road that would take my parents into town. When the truck vanished in the distance, Zack punched my shoulder. I looked at him and he dangled the loft key in my face.
“Let’s go,” he said.
The three of us went outside. The stars in the purple-black sky seemed extra bright tonight and we walked up to the barn.
“OK, you two ready?” Zack asked as he took the door handle.
“Yeah,” me and Becca said at the same time.
Zack pulled the door open and I prepared for the weird smell from before but there wasn’t any. Zack shined his flashlight over the barn and it looked just like it always did. He set the light on the door to the loft. “Come on,” he said.
Becca and I followed him to the ladder and we stared up at the door.
“OK, Braylan, go on up there and open it,” Zack said.
“Why do I have to open it?” I asked.
“Because I’m the one who got the key out of Mom and Dad’s room,” he said.
So much for brave big brother.
“OK, give it to me,” I said.
Zack handed me the key. I climbed up the ladder, put the key into the fist-sized silver padlock, and turned it. The lock snapped open and I pushed the door upwards. The loft was pitch black and I held my flashlight up. What looked like an old bronze foot locker sat about five feet away from me on the wooden floor. I climbed through the opening, walked up to the locker, and knelt down.
“What do you see up there?” Becca called out.
I ignored her and studied the locker. There were three metal latches holding the lid down and I flipped them open. Taking a deep breath I lifted the lid. A tightly wrapped scroll sat by itself in the locker. I took the scroll out, unwrapped it, and began to read.
I, Jeremiah Colton, and what remains of my band of fighting Rebels claimed this land when we took our revenge on the six Union soldiers who fled to this barn after setting the Mason farm on fire in southern territory. We followed these northern ravagers to this place and ambushed them in the dead of night, killing them all with our Enfeld Rifles and
