ISSUE #10 | Full Story, "Ghosts of Lone Pine"
AS SEEN IN PLANET SCUMM ISSUE #10
WRITTEN BY Joshuah Stolaroff
Illustrations by Camille Villanueva
Randy Leeworth’s knee hurt. But he hadn’t missed his walk to the top of Owl Ridge in fifteen years, and he didn’t intend to turn around now, halfway up. He paused and removed his cowboy hat, smoothing his long, gray hair while he surveyed the direction from which he’d come. Behind him was a slope of gravel and sagebrush, contoured by the early morning sun, then his little ranch house, with its corral and garden. He turned and looked up to the ridge.
“Hang in there,” he said, thumping his knee. “You ain’t that old.”
Randy continued along the sandy trail, a trail carved by his own steps. The knee only hurt when he put pressure on it, especially when he climbed uphill. He tried to shrug it off. Eyes up. Nothing to whine about. Not like Lester’s hip keeping him house-bound. That was a trouble.
Randy stepped faster and climbed, his lungs beginning to pull hard on the cool spring air. He knew it was a little worse than yesterday, and had been getting worse for weeks. In a darker moment, he had looked up the next date that agents from the Rural Outreach Administration were coming through town, and made an appointment. It was scheduled for later this morning, his first in three years.
Randy reached the ridge, leaned against a rock, and shook out his leg. He looked up at the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, with their shining, granite peaks and tree-dotted foothills. Below that spread the desert floor of Owens Valley with a few ranches, the neglected town of Lone Pine, and the old highway that ran through it. It was the view that reminded him why he lived here.
Randy inspected the highway. As usual, it was empty at first, and then the ghost drivers came into view. They glinted like gravel in the sun, bright and clear at certain angles, blending in with the ruined asphalt at others. They went mostly in fossil-burning vehicles from the last century, but also capsule bikes and hydrogen trucks. They moved smooth and straight, without heed of potholes, fissures, or sand washes. They drove on the highway as it must have been in their time, a speedy thoroughfare to somewhere else.
Randy shook his head. He still didn’t know where the ghosts were going. They passed in both directions, mostly single drivers, sometimes families, sometimes cargo trucks.
He looked back to mountain peaks, took a deep breath, and drank in the view. Then Randy turned and walked back home. After breakfast, he saddled up Blackeye, put a pair of empty saddlebags on her, and headed out for his errands.
On the way to town, Randy stopped to see his friend Lester Ghosh. He hitched Blackeye, his sweet-tempered palomino, in the shade of a cottonwood tree. Randy gave her mane a few affectionate strokes and went to Lester’s front porch. Avoiding the two fallen steps, he knocked on the door and waited patiently while Lester tapped his way over, cane traversing threadbare rugs and dusty wood floor.
“Randy, my good man, my loyal ally. Please.” Lester motioned Randy inside. “Enter my castle and avail yourself of its many luxuries.”
“Hi Lester.” Randy stepped inside.
“Would you care for an exotic delicacy from a faraway land? I have just prepared a stimulating brew of the arabica bean.”
“I see you’re on the classics again. No, thanks. I’ve got an appointment in town.”
“An appointment? What important business have you, pray-tell?”
“Going to go see the doc about my knee.”
“ROA, eh?” He pronounced the acronym for the Rural Outreach Administration 'row-uh,' as was customary. “I try to have as little business as possible with the carpetbaggers.”
“So I’ve heard."
“But do tell them, if the topic arises, that I am in excellent health, and that my new rose garden has outdone all my previous efforts.”
“If it comes up.”
“Oh, and you may mention that I single-handedly repaired cracks in the foundation and leaks in the roof.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t overdo it.”
“Quite right, good sir. Stick to the rose garden.”
Randy smiled, then paused. “How is the revolution coming?”
Lester was now at the counter that separated the kitchen and living room, and he poured coffee for himself. He was short and round, wearing brown trousers and a gray, robe-like sweater. Wisps of white hair remained on his otherwise brown, bald head. Leaning his cane against a stool, he took a sip and gestured grandly with his free hand.
“It is slow work, but every day is progress.” Lester spent a lot of time on the Bluenet with groups of anarcho-socialists and armchair political theorists. Mostly old grouches like him who had read too many books. “Once people understand that authoritarian control is no longer needed for fair allocation of resources, they naturally come around to our side. It’s just a matter of getting them to question the status quo.”
“Naturally. Have you got the empties?”
“Indeed, my good sir. Just here.” Lester motioned to the other side of the counter and began moving toward it.
“I’ll get it,” Randy said, crossing the aging but tidy living room to save Lester from fetching it. He knew that every step pained Lester, though Lester hid it well.
Randy picked up the canvas bag, which held several jars and tins. It was about a year ago that Lester decided he could no longer walk the one kilometer to the general store. Randy had been bringing him groceries twice a week since then.
“And the refuse, if you please.”
He pointed to a smaller burlap bag. Randy picked up the collection meant for the reclaimer.
“Anything else you need?” Randy asked. “I’ll be back in the afternoon.”
“As king of this fine castle, I want for little.”
“That’s good.” Randy went back to the door and replaced his hat.
“But if you might... reprint those books.” Lester pointed to a stack of three leather-bound volumes by the door. Randy reached down for them. “The new titles are written on the note.”
Randy’s appetite for paper-style books alone probably paid the lease on the general store’s reprinter.
“Sure thing, old friend,” Randy said.
“Farewell.”
Randy mounted up and headed for town, avoiding the crumbling road and following a familiar trail along a small arroyo canyon. Lester was the reason Randy found himself in Owens Valley at all. They had met decades ago, when Randy was working kitchens in San Francisco, but then had gone their wandering ways. After chasing girls and working restaurants all up the West Coast, then riding restless and working farms all over the Northwest plains, Randy had been thinking about taking a lease out somewhere and finally settling down. That’s when Lester called again. He told Randy about the place he’d found here. Lester said the land had the same clear, quiet presence that he’d always seen behind Randy’s eyes.
So Randy had no problem bringing Lester his groceries and helping out with the house. But he worried what would happen when Lester’s condition got worse. Lester was afraid to get treatment, because if the government knew he couldn’t take care of himself and the property, he’d lose his lease. They’d ship him to Los Angeles or Reno, give him a box in one of those mouse-smelling apartment buildings with a view of weeds and broken concrete. Would it be so bad for him? Maybe not. He would still have his books and his Bluenet. He’d get health care, basic income, public transport.
That was the bargain. The government just couldn’t afford to maintain a country built for ten times as many people. So they set up Service Areas, mostly in cities, and said, “Hey, you want roads, water, education, free housing? Live in a Service Area. You want to live outside the Service Area? Okay. We’ll lease you land and a building for free, but you’ve got to maintain it, and you get nothing else. Except a once-a-month visit from ROA.”
Randy had tried both sides, and he settled on option two. He couldn’t blame Lester for wanting to stay out of the cities. Beside that, Lester’s parents were both refugees from the Bengali floods, back in the early Contraction. People forget the terrible things that happened to migrants in those days, back before countries started falling over themselves to welcome every live person they could get. But Lester’s parents lived it, and Lester grew up hearing those stories. A basic distrust of authority was something that he and Randy shared—Lester, because of his parents, and Randy, because he grew up Out-Service. So of course Randy would help Lester stay put.
***
Blackeye ambled around a bend in the canyon, and then Randy saw them: a whole group of ghosts, only fifteen meters away. They were native ghosts, Panamint tribe, if Randy had read his history right. Three of them were standing and three were crouching near the edge of the dry creek. Two more were bent over the creek bed, as if splashing their faces. In their era, this creek would have been flowing with snowmelt. It would have been a nice place to stop on their spring migration across the valley.
Randy took tighter hold of the reins. He wasn’t worried about the ghosts for his sake; they never noticed him, but occasionally they took an interest in Blackeye, and she could get spooked. He hurried Blackeye along the trail, which took them closer to the ghosts but stayed on the opposite side of the creek. Then one of the standing ghosts, a teenage boy, turned and looked Randy right in the eyes.
The boy turned his head to watch Randy pass. He looked curious.
Randy startled and kicked Blackeye into a trot until they were well past. That was strange. Randy had seen native ghosts, cowboy ghosts, and plenty of modern ones around here. Usually not as close. Still, he never thought the ghosts could see him. Maybe the boy just saw Blackeye and looked to where the rider would be?
“I guess I was the one who got spooked,” he said to Blackeye.
It hadn’t always been like this. Randy had only begun seeing ghosts a few years ago. Ghosts, or echoes, or whatever they were. He hadn’t always been burdened with visions of the past. Had he? Something about the way the boy looked at him reminded Randy about the feeling he used to get sometimes, an unsettled sadness when turning a corner on the street or walking into a room. Maybe that’s why he drank so much when he lived in cities. Maybe that’s why he took the toughest jobs and worked all the shifts.
Soon, Randy came to the center of town, though town was a generous term for Lone Pine, with its two running businesses and an ROA office open once a month. But then, people called a lot of places towns that really weren’t anymore. At least it wasn’t a ghost town. Or, not only.
Blackeye click-clacked down the broken pavement of Main Street, which, at its peak, had a dozen blocks of shops and businesses. Now the buildings were empty, some collapsing, some razed to sagebrush. In the desert, things decayed more slowly than they did in other places Randy had lived. The abandoned buildings had more charm here.
Randy turned down a street toward the old Post Office, a long, low structure with a solar-shingle roof and cinderblock sides.
The building had been converted to a ROA office. A sign out front (thirty years old—the newest thing in town) announced “Rural Outreach Administration — Lone Pine Field Office” with block letters in relief.
Randy hitched Blackeye to the sign, and went in.
Inside was dim compared to the cloudless midday sun he’d come from. Light spilled from the single front window into a waiting area, which opened into a room with four desks, only one of them occupied. Randy blinked and removed his hat. It smelled stale, a scent he associated with government.
“Mr. Leeworth?” the person behind the desk said, a small man with a black ponytail and a calm smile. Randy recognized him from the last visit, which was soon after he’d started seeing ghosts. He had thought, foolishly, the doctor might help with something like that.
“Yes,” Randy said.
“Please have a seat. Dr. Lam will be out shortly. You can hang your hat on the rack.” The man gestured to a coat rack in the corner.
“Thank you,” Randy said, and did so. Not ten seconds later, a woman came in from a side door. He rose again as she approached.
“You must be Randy,” she said, extending a hand to shake. “I’m doctor Lam.”
“Pleased to meet you, doctor.”
Her hand was warm and felt like easy confidence. She was a head and a half shorter than he, and two or three decades younger, but carried obvious authority. She had wide shoulders beneath her white lab coat, and a wide face with dark skin and attentive eyes.
“I see you’ve filled out the forms in advance.”
“I did, yes.”
“Great, come this way.” Dr. Lam led Randy to an examination room and motioned for him to sit in one of the side chairs while she sat in the other. “So, what brings you in this month?”
“Well, the short of it is, doctor, my knee. It gets swollen and painful. Some days, it’s hard to walk.”
“Okay,” said the doctor, writing a note on his chart with her tablet pen. “What kind of physical activity do you do, Randy? What’s your normal day like?”
“Well, most days I like to hike to the top of the hill by my house. It’s a 200-meter climb or so. There’s a good path. Anyway, it’s my favorite view.”
“That’s great. This is beautiful country, isn’t it? It’s only my second rotation up here.”
Randy decided now that he liked this Dr. Lam. She was unguarded in the way of an honest person, and she cared about things outside herself. Both were more than he could say for the red-faced young doctor who saw him last time. That arrogant boy could not have been trusted with what Randy had to say.
“Welcome, doc. We’re happy to have you.”
She smiled. “What’s the view of? The mountains? Or, I suppose you can see those from anywhere.”
“True. But from Owl Ridge, you see the whole valley also. You look down over the town and the highway.”
“I wouldn’t think the highway was much to look at, from my sample of it.”
“It is for me,” Randy said.
Dr. Lam paused, “How is that?”
Now Randy paused. “I find the traffic interesting.”
“Traffic? We didn’t see another vehicle my entire way up here.”
“Well, I can see cars on it most of the time.”
“Cars?” The doctor looked perplexed.
“Well, ghost cars, if we’re being honest,” Randy was in deep now.
“Ghost cars?”
“Yes. Ghosts still like to use the highway, it seems. Sometimes I see them other places, walking, but mostly they drive on the highway.”
The doctor gave him a hard look. “Do you mind if I run some general tests? It’s been so long since you’ve been in for a checkup.”
“As you like, doc.”
Dr. Lam outfitted him with sensors, asked him to breathe and cough and look at a light. She ran blood and saliva and urine through analyzers. As she went, she explained the results of each test. She didn’t run away with the detail, but she said it straight and didn’t treat him like a fool. Randy was in the habit of judging people well and quickly, and it was his judgment that if Lam had been a chef, it would be a well-run kitchen.
In the end, Dr. Lam told Randy that she saw signs of inflammation, but otherwise he was in good health. Then she said, “So tell me more about these ghosts. How often do you see them?”
“Well, any time I go to the ridge, pretty much. So, every day. Sometimes I see them out on the land. Native ghosts, mainly, out there. And then if I come into town, like today.”
“And do they look... ghostly? Or are they solid, like regular people? Can you tell the difference?”
“The ghosts are like flickers. I know they’re there, but I don’t see them exactly, except in flashes. If I try, I can kind of close my eyes to them altogether.”
“Are you aware not everyone can see the ghosts?”
“Aware? Oh yes, I’ve never met anyone else who can. There was a man who lived in Ridgecrest who saw them, but I only heard about him.”
“Why did you tell me? Weren’t you afraid I wouldn’t believe you?”
“You seemed like someone who appreciates the truth. And might know what to do with it.” The doctor looked at him intensely. She was trying to judge him, he guessed, or decide something.
He wanted to say, 'Am I crazy, doc? Is it just chemistry? Can you give me a pill and make everything normal?' But, also, he didn’t believe those things. He said nothing.
Dr. Lam’s face softened and she inhaled. “We better take a closer look at that knee.”
She brought out the multi-scanner, put a backing film behind the knee, and started up the machine.
“Are there any ghosts in here?” she asked, running a wand over the knee.
Randy shook his head. “Not today, doc.”
“You’ve seen them before?”
“Last time I was here, a postman came through. He had the uniform, a satchel full of letters.”
“You know this used to be a Post Office?”
“I’ve heard that, yes.”
“Do the ghosts ever do anything, uh, scary?”
“I try not to cross paths with them up close. I don’t think they can see me, most of the time, but I get a little chill. Every once in a while, one of them will want to pet my horse. That’s when Blackeye gets spooked. I figure those are ghosts that used to ride. You can usually tell by the way they’re dressed. Maybe they miss their horses.”
“There aren’t ghost horses? But there are ghost cars?”
“That’s right, as far as I know.”
“Have you always had these visions?”
“It’s been a few years now that I can see the cars….” Randy’s thoughts went to every quiet room, every empty alley, every time he flipped the lights off on the kitchen after a shift. That feeling. The native boy looking at him. How many times was it there? A hundred? A thousand? “But I reckon I’ve always noticed things other people don’t.”
Dr. Lam finished the scan. She looked up at Randy for a moment without saying anything. “I’m going to go take a look at the scan results. Would you wait here a few minutes?”
“As you like.”
Dr. Lam left and closed the door. Before, only Lester knew the full story of the ghosts. Now there were two. Randy breathed in and tried to clear his head. Soon, Dr. Lam returned.
“So, I can see what’s happening. It’s basic tendinitis, very common. It’s a minor problem now, but it will keep getting worse unless you fix it. I’m writing you a referral to see a specialist in Lancaster. She’ll have several options for you. You should be able to get almost immediate relief.”
“Lancaster? That’s a lot to ask, doctor.”
“I know it’s far, but it’s the closest equipped clinic.”
“It’s not the distance.” Randy paused and the doctor gave him a questioning look. “I’ve lived in cities before. But that was before I... saw so much.”
Dr. Lam looked at him for a moment, then turned to her tablet and began swiping. “You know, Mr. Leeworth, I grew up in Seattle.”
“I lived there for a while,” Randy said.
“Oh? So you may know, a long time ago, it was a city of tech barons.”
“I’ve heard that, yes.”
“People thought about the future all the time, and they made their fortunes on it.” Randy waited for her to continue, “I wonder what it was like.”
Randy watched her face draw into a melancholy smile as she looked up at him, “We live with so much of the past now. We all do.”
“True enough.”
“Whether you go is up to you. I’ll give you something for the pain in the meantime.”
Randy thanked the doctor, said his goodbyes, and left the itinerant office of the Rural Outreach Administration feeling unsure. He mounted Blackeye from the right side, forgetting that he’d been mounting from the left recently because of his knee. The move hurt.
He walked Blackeye up Main Street a few blocks then hitched her outside the general store. He filled the watering basin there from the tap, and went inside. Annette wasn’t at the counter, but she would come out soon. Randy began filling tins and bags, getting groceries for Lester and himself. He did not want to go to Lancaster. He didn’t want to see the source of that feeling in a motel room in a half-empty city.
Randy surveyed the case of synthetic meats. He did miss some of the foods he used to get in the Service Areas. But he was independent here. And peaceful. But then, there was Lester. No longer independent.
When he finished, Randy loaded up Blackeye and mounted. Before crossing Main Street, he stopped to look for ghost traffic. He saw none. But there was something else: a block up the street, a pair of ghosts walked toward him. He watched for a while, details flashing into view. It was a young couple. They shared an ice cream cone, playfully, and held hands. They were in love, perhaps. Randy smiled.
“So Blackeye, you up for a ride to Lancaster?”
JOSHUAH STOLAROFF is a writer, scientist, and musician living in Oakland, California, where he attempts to fight existential threats to humanity—or at least put them in jazzy pop songs. His story collected in Planet Scumm is his first published work of fiction. This short story intersects with his upcoming novel, Desert Crossing: a science fiction western about a team navigating post-climate change California.
He can be found at rationalcontemporary.com.