He Followed Me Home

Chapter Two

15 Years Later

Summer 2010

"Look at this!" Janice said holding out her smart phone so Francine could see. "It says that Vicksburg was one of the biggest sieges and battles of the civil war. When the union defeated the confederates it gave them a vital piece of control over the Mississippi River." Francine nodded as she took a bite of her sandwich.

"I know." she said with her mouth full. "Nearly twenty thousand casualties in all."

"Imagine all those lost souls." Janice exclaimed in her usual overdramatic fashion as she ran her hand through her pink streaked blond hair and munched on a french fry. Francine smiled though her mind was not on all the lost souls of Vicksburg but on one in particular. The soldier she had seen when she had been ten years old. The soldier no one else could see. The soldier who had juggled the apples.

She and Janice were on the last stop of their month long tour of civil war sights. Francine worked for a publishing company and it was her job to come up with supernatural stories and proof for the articles of their newspaper. Janice and Francine had been friends since their freshman year of high school when some of the popular girls had been giving Francine a hard time over her love of all things paranormal and Janice had stepped in and knocked the head cheerleader for a loop with a mean right hook. Even back then Janice had worn bright fluorescent clothes and colorful hair… she hadn't changed much at all.

"I've been to Vicksburg once before." Francine admitted as the two twenty-five year olds paid for their greasy lunches and headed back out to Janice's beat up Ford Bronco.

"You have?" Janice asked as she waved at a man who was staring at her in her tight, mid thigh length orange denim skirt and hot pink tube top. Janice had the tan toned body and stunning face to pull of a look like that. Francine, was no ugly duckling herself but preferred a more subdued wardrobe. Today she was wearing flared light blue denim pants and a peasant blouse with loose draping sleeves. It had an elastic band along the bottom that hugged tight to her slender hips and the blue flip flops on her feet were her favorite.

Francine climbed into the passenger side of the bronco and took her scrunchie off of her wrist. She quickly pulled back her curly black hair as Janice climbed in and cranked the loud eyesore of a car to life.

"I went there once as a kid. I was ten."

"And…." Janice encouraged. She knew her best friend enough to know there was more to this story. Francine looked up at the storm clouds that were quickly gathering and sighed.

"I saw one."

"One what?" Janice asked as she pulled onto the two lane interstate.

"A ghost."

"No shit?" Janice exclaimed, turning her head to stare at her. Francine laughed at her excitement and pointed at the road.

"You better pay attention to where you're going or else we'll both be ghosts." she warned. Both women shared a love for all things paranormal so Francine knew her friend would believe her though no one else ever had.

"So you saw a ghost at Vicksburg? Why are you just now telling me about this?"

"I hadn't really thought about it in a while… It wasn't until I saw the stories about Vicksburg when we began doing civil war research that I remembered the man." Janice checked her mirrors and then quickly passed an eighteen wheeler. Francine wondered what kept the old Bronco's engine from blowing up.

"So it was a man?" Janice asked with avid interest and curiosity.

"Yes. A union soldier dressed in full uniform. He even had the bayonet and musket and a revolver on his hip."