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Jan 13,2025

The Tall Tale 

Of

Willy McGee

The wind rolled through the wheat fields as heavy dark clouds blotted out the last bit of moon light. Willy McGee could feel the heads of the tall grasses striking his body like hundreds of little slaps saying, "OH come on! don't be a big scaredy cat Willy!" Scot Marshall and a few other guys all bet Willy that he was to chicken to to go out to the Kelly field at night when there was a full moon.  The local legends all said that farmer Kelly's field was haunted by the ghost of a French soldier, a Major, that had supposedly been killed shortly after hiding some gold  he had confiscated from a trapper. 

Now Willy had never really paid much attention to the legend. He didn't know if ghost were real or not, and if they were real he had no interest in asking one about hidden ill-gotten treasure. But, when the others were goading him into it, a certain Rose Duncan happened to over hear the whole thing. As Willy caught a glimpse of here blue eyes and her fiery red hair, something in him started up in a way it wouldn't have had she not been there to witness his mocking. Willy wasn't a scared little boy, he was a man, He was even considering the army. He wasn't about to let some other farm hands call him a coward in front of, at least as far as Willy was concerned, the prettiest young woman in the county.

It made so much sense to him at the time to take up the challenge. Now that he was by himself though, in the dark with the wind picking up, he was starting to think it may not have been worth it. "Surely all I'd have to do was enlist and come back home in that blue army uniform and no one would dare to call me a coward then. Who knows, maybe I could even end up in the calvary and go out to help tame the west..."  It wasn't unusual for Willy to daydream of heroics. Such an activity is common for all young men. What's not common is to be in the middle of a dark field in Illinois and to have your heroic fantasies interrupted by a glowing translucent man slowly approaching you, but such were the circumstances Willy now found himself in.

Jan 18, 2025

Willy didn't want to believe what he was seeing, cuz if he did then that would mean that being scared would be the right thing to do. Standing in front of him was the ghost of a long-dead French soldier, with a long coat and a tricorn hat and everything. Now even though the gears got to turning in Willys head and he started to realize that if the ghost was real, then maybe the treasure was too. Willy swallowed the apple sized lump he felt in his throat and found the cage to ask, “Can you show me were you may have buried a treasure before you died? I don't mean to sound rude, but I figure you don't really have a need for it… all things considered.”

Now Willy didn't know what the ghost said back to him seeing as how he didn't speak French, but based on the tone and the fact that a spectral Sabre was pulled from its scabbard, He was pretty sure he was upset. Willy took off running the way he had come. But to his horror, the ghost slowly appeared in front of him swinging the ghost blade. Willy changed direction and headed for the woods as fast as he could. He could hear the angry French voice right behind him as he ran through the field and into the trees. The ghost stayed on his heels till Willy closed up a hill and came to a clearing where he tripped over a bunch of sticks and fell flat on his back. 

Willy looked up in horror as the ghostly Frenchman overcame him, then squeezed his eyes shut and braced for the end. He screamed and howled as the Sabre plunged into his chest and froze him to his core. 

He screamed and thrashed about for a good minute or so before he realized that he didn't seem to be dying. Slowly he opened his eyes and saw that the ghost was gone. Willy clutched his chest looking for blood and was presently surprised to find he wasn't stabbed at all. 

As the black billowing clouds drifted through the night sky and gentle thunder rolled in the distance, the light of the moon peeked through. It was then that Willy saw that what he had tripped over was not a bunch of sticks. A pile of bleached white bones lay scattered on the ground. As Willy looked at the bones he realized that this may very well have been what remained of that French soldier. He noticed something that looked a little different and he picked it up. It was a small muddy thing and looked to have bits of old leather hanging on it.

Willy cleaned it up as best he could, peeling away the mud and wiping the thing on his pants leg. The moonlight glinted off it and Willy realized he had found an old belt buckle. “Well it may not be the treasure everyone thinks is out here, but it's still mighty interesting.” Willy turned the belt buckle over a couple more times in the moonlight and admired how it shined, but he was not the only one whose eye was caught by the glinting shining metal.

The moonlight was blocked once more, and Willy turned and looked up just in time to see the gigantic talons of a massive black bird snatch him up.

Jan 12, 2025

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