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The bar was in full swing. People shouldered their way through the crowd. It was an ordinary night of laughing, dancing and singing. Buck Cassidy stood center stage in his black sport shirt and blue jeans, singing his heart out to some honky-tonk country tune. He scanned the crowded dance floor and smiled at the people who were singing and swaying to the music.
Buck had become an overnight success in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. The business was doing better than he had ever expected. He had recorded several songs in Nashville, commuting to the country music capital at least twice a month. His determination had paid off. Two of his songs had made it to the country music national charts and he was busy making his first music video. It looked as if his dreams of being a country-recording star would surely come true.
As the singing continued, Al Scott sat in the back of the ballroom at the large, black soundboard. He was busy adjusting slide controls, keeping each instrument at the desired level so everything stayed perfectly balanced.
Al was doing Buck a favor by filling in on the soundboard this evening. He was a Christian and didn't go in for the barroom scene, but he enjoyed controlling the sound equipment for different bands. His wife rarely accompanied him to the bars, especially here. The first time she'd set foot in the Lone Star Honky-Tonk, she felt something strange about the place. She told him that the building felt strange, as if the place harbored some sinister secret, filled with memories of cruelty and death. He had not given her statement much thought at the time.
As he sat at the soundboard, he noticed that the meters on his panel began going crazy. The needles were bounding left and right inside their glass enclosures. He looked down at the knobs and gasped when he saw two of the slide controls on his left moving up and down on their own, as if something unseen was standing beside him moving them. Al had never believed in ghosts, but he knew something was dreadfully wrong.
"No way!" he growled as he reached over and grabbed both controls, moving them back to their original positions. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. This was too strange and he felt something evil in the air. His wife's warning came crashing back into his mind.
"I've flipped out," he muttered. He shrugged off the feelings and continued monitoring the equipment, but was suddenly confronted with a new wave of terror when he looked up at Buck and the band members on stage. He saw a pale, human form congeal out of the air and move across the stage toward Buck. He sat frozen in his seat watching the entity move through the country singer as if he had become transparent. He found himself looking through Buck, at Jim Taylor, the drummer, and just the thought of it made him want to scream.
The sight was terrifying---almost too much to bear. The fear hit him like a hammer, causing him to break out in a cold sweat. He felt his skin crawling and realized he was not imagining this apparition.
"My God," he whispered, "that thing's real!"
He watched the white, cloud-like thing move through Buck and continue to the right, toward Josh Brown, the silver-haired bass guitar player. Al couldn't believe his eyes.
The disembodied spirit penetrated Josh exactly as it had just done to Buck. The five-foot-nine Josh was standing in the arched doorway at the end of the stage, near the jukebox, moving left and right, sliding his fingers up and down his white bass guitar. The apparition pierced through the man's white sport shirt and jeans, and then his flesh, without him even feeling it.
Al blinked his eyes, and then quickly looked in all directions at the crowd to see if anyone else had noticed the entity. It was obvious that he was the only one who had seen the phenomenon that had just taken place.
"I've gotta tell somebody," he thought, "but who?" If no one else had seen what had just happened, and he opened his mouth, he knew everyone would make f un of him, and call him a crackpot. He decided to sit back and watch and wait. If anyone else came forward saying that they, too, saw this strange occurrence, then he'd talk.
As he tried to regain his composure and keep his thoughts on his job, he felt something icy cold go through his body. It hit him in the chest then came out through his back, and before he could move a muscle he felt something breathing on the nape of his neck.
Al wheeled around in the chair only to find nobody there. He surveyed the back of the ballroom and saw a group of people sitting at a table on the far west wall. He looked away for a split second, and then glanced back at the wall, and when he did, he found the table full of people gone, vanished from sight. With that, Al wanted to get up and run away from this madness, but he knew if he did, Buck would never forgive him for abandoning him right in the middle of the show.
He tried to swallow his fear. All he wanted was to hold onto his sanity and make it through the night. He hoped someone else would come forward and tell Buck they, too, saw the ghost on the stage. All he could do now was watch and wait----and pray!
