Phantom Horse Read Online Free

every word of it is true.
    “It all started long, long ago. Don’t ask me when, because I don’t know. But it was long before my grandparents were born, or their grandparents before them. It’s the story of the phantom horse. Now, I call it a horse, but it isn’t really a horse—it’s an evil spirit that takes over the body of a horse. It always chooses a horse that belongs to someone who loves it and trusts it. Once it has possessed the horse, the phantom is out for blood. To this day it’s roaming the earth, looking for its next victim.
    “I first heard about the phantom horse years ago when I was a few years younger than most of you are now, when it made an appearance at a barn I know down along the coastof North Carolina—not so far from where we are here in Virginia, come to think of it. It seems there was a young man there by the name of Dixon, Colin Dixon. This fellow was a born rider, had loved horses all his life, and was never happier than when he was with them. But his family was poor, so he had to be content to ride the stable horses when he could, scraping together what money he could to pay for the rides and working off the rest with stable chores. But young Colin swore that one day he’d get together enough money to buy his own horse if it was the last thing he did.
    “Time passed, and Colin managed to save a little here and there from odd jobs and the like. By the time he was thirteen or so he had almost enough in his bank account to buy a horse—if he was content with an old bag of bones past its prime, that is. He decided he wouldn’t settle for that and continued to save every penny he could. Then one autumn a hurricane hit the town where Colin and his family lived and just about swept the whole town out to sea. The Dixons considered themselves fortunate to have survived the storm without the loss of any family members, as many of their friends and neighbors hadn’t been so lucky. But the fact remained that everything else they had was gone—house, car, Papa Dixon’s tourist boat, everything. Most of it was covered by insurance, but not that boat, which was called the
Moonshine.
It was a clear loss, and that meant Colin’s papa had no way to earn a living. Now Colin, being the upstanding boy that he was, knew what he had to do. Hewent right on down to the bank—
that
was still standing, anyway—and withdrew all the money from his account. With all that Colin had saved, along with what his brothers and sisters could contribute, there was enough to buy their papa a new boat, which he named the
Moonshine II.
    “The rest of the Dixons were happy enough with that, but poor Colin was heartbroken. It seemed impossible that his dream of owning a fine horse would ever come true, and he resigned himself to riding borrowed nags for a long time to come. He figured it would take him years to save up enough money again. But one day less than a year later, the owner of the stable, whose name was Janssen, came to Colin and told him of a horse he’d heard of for sale in the next county. The horse’s owner had to get rid of him quick and was willing to sell him to the first fellow to show up with some cash. Mr. Janssen didn’t know why the horse was so cheap, but every vet who saw him swore he was in perfect condition, and he looked awfully fine, too. If Janssen hadn’t been full up with his own horses at the time, he would surely have snatched the creature up himself; but as it was he figured nobody deserved that kind of bargain more than the hardworking Colin.
    “Before Colin knew it, and with Mr. Janssen’s help, the deal was done. The second he laid eyes on his new horse—a tall, good-looking bay with a sickle moon on his brow—Colin knew he’d found his perfect horse at last.
    “For the first time in his life he had everything he wanted.He named the horse Moonshine after his papa’s new boat, and he spent every moment he could with him, training, grooming, and of course riding. And it