His Unquiet Ghost

A cold, moon‑lit night drapes a remote mountain pass in silence, broken only by the distant clatter of a wagon’s wheels. Three figures linger in the shadows, watching a lone carriage stagger down the steep road, its driver pale and uneasy as the horses groan under the weight of a funeral box. The air is thick with the scent of pine and the faint, eerie echo of a distant stream, setting a mood that feels both beautiful and foreboding.

From the darkness, two men step forward, their rough‑hewn accents and practiced manners revealing them as revenue raiders posing as mountaineers. Their sudden appearance startles the driver, who clutches the reins tighter while a silent passenger—an almost spectral figure in the coffin—draws the raiders’ uneasy curiosity. The driver’s cryptic answers about the dead man’s identity hint at hidden motives and unsettled debts.

The encounter becomes a tense standoff, with the mountain’s sheer cliffs on one side and the abyss on the other. Listeners are drawn into a mystery of identity, greed, and the lingering presence of a ghostly cargo that may hold more than just a corpse.