Peavine, Nevada Territory -- July 4, 1870
"You must undo the disaster that happened." A gravelly voice scraped against the dark cave walls, echoing in the frigid air.
Zeke literally shook in his boots, searching the gloom to locate the body that should have accompanied the voice. He could feel shivers shoot up and down his spine. Glancing at Lucky, he could see him, but he couldn't really see him. His brother shimmered against the dark walls of the mine, his scruffy beard and wrinkled face casting a glow such as it never had in real life.
Real life. That was the stickler, they had recently found out. Zeke and his twin brother, Lucky, had spent sixty years on this earth. Now it 'peared they both run plum out of any kind of luck. Else ways, why would they be shimmering in the dark hole of a mine, speaking to a body they couldn't see and having visions of the devil hisself rising up to take them to hell?
"Are we dead, Zeke?" Lucky always was slow on the uptake.
"Of course, we're dead. You think you glow like that 'cuz you took a bath last Saturday night?" Zeke growled at his brother.
"It doesn't appear to have sunk into your thick skulls just exactly what has happened." The voice came again, a blast of cold air against the old miners. Their worn flannel shirts did little to deflect the chill.
"We're dead, so I guess something pretty bad happened." Zeke figured if he was dead, he couldn't get no deader, so he might as well have his say.
"Your situation can be changed, if you decide to undo the disaster that occurred."
"What's he talking about, Zeke?"
"Jesse Cole's dead." Zeke didn't know how Lucky could forget that.
"We didn't mean for that to happen," Lucky said, tears springing to his eyes, for he had always been the emotional one. "It were an accident, pure and simple."
"I know," replied Zeke, "but we was his friends and we should've been watching his back." Nobody could feel worse about Jesse's death than Zeke, but he didn't see how nobody could change the facts.
"Jesse Cole is dead, and he shouldn't be. It wasn't his time, and plans had been made for him." The voice continued, gloomy as a hanging judge. "When something like this happens, it upsets the entire master plan, as well as the individual scheme of things. Numerous other incidents will occur which shouldn't, and those in turn cause other accidents, which in turn . . . You see what I mean."
Zeke wasn't sure he did, but agreed anyway.
"So you will just have to go back and fix it." The voice, now hard and unrelenting, grated on Zeke's nerves.
"How we going to do that?" Lucky questioned.
"Your current state of being allows you certain, shall we say, knowledge, and you'll know when and where."
"Oh, boy." Zeke didn't think he liked the sound of that.
"There's just one thing you must remember. You can't tell anyone in Peavine what actually happened."
"Now, how we going to manage that? Won't Jesse know he ain't dead no more?" Silence answered Lucky's question.
Zeke looked madly around. While he tried to find the source of the voice, at the same time, he almost hoped he couldn't.
"Hello?" Lucky's voice quaked.
More silence.
Zeke looked at Lucky, who stared back at him. Shrugging their shoulders in unison, they turned and trudged toward daylight at the end of the tunnel.