Nancy Roberts

“So, as time went on and the war was finally won and the last British soldiers departed for their homeland, the king’s messengers became couriers without an army. On rainy nights the eerie pair still roamed, galloping along forever with a message never to be delivered, the writer of the message long since dead and buried in the red earth of King’s Mountain.
Settlements grew into towns, then cities, and the two riders became wary of the main roads, taking to the country lanes in their endless search for the way to Charlottesburg.
Some say you can still see them. A cold, rainy night in early October is the best time to look for the King’s Messengers. For then they were most apt to suddenly appear galloping over the hill on some lonely dirt road between King’s Mountain and Salisbury, two specters hurtling through the night on their phantom steeds, pausing sporadically to inquire the way to Charlottesburg. And, if by chance they should ask you, it doesn’t really matter in which direction you point for even with the best of directions an invisible power thwarts and diverts the restless apparitions at every turn.
—The King’s Messengers”
― Nancy Roberts, This Haunted Land