Texas Gothic

  I needed to go, too, for completely practical reasons, and I interrupted Phin’s conversation with Mark to tell her so. “We should get the dogs home. And I have to feed the goats.”

  She fished the truck key from her pocket and handed it over. “Take the Trooper. We’re going to the roadhouse out on Highway 287 later. I’ll text you when we head over there.”

  “Will you really?” I asked, because her anti-phone tendencies went both ways: incoming and outgoing.

  “I’ll remind her,” Mark said. While he seemed an agreeable guy in general, I got the feeling his quick offer might have had more to do with Phin herself. She, of course, seemed oblivious, and I couldn’t decide how I felt about that. Her cluelessness made me feel older and protective, but I liked Mark, and … well, what grounds did I have to say anything?

  The sleepless night, the emotional excesses and tossing and turning, heaped on top of finding a body, or at least part of one, all settled on my shoulders as soon as I loaded the dogs into the Trooper. They were happy to be headed home, and I drove back to Goodnight Farm in a fog of thought and with a vague hope that I would get back to a goat- and ghost-free yard.

  I arrived to find an old man sitting on the porch, boots up on the railing like he owned the place.

  10

  “old man” implies someone frail and elderly, but the guy sitting on one of the rockers under the lazily turning fan was not. Oh, his tanned skin was lined with age, and I could tell he was lean and rangy, but his back was unbent and his white hair was thick, though it had been creased by the Stetson resting on his knee.

  It didn’t occur to me to worry. For one thing, he looked utterly at ease within the boundaries of the Goodnight Security System. For another, the second chair rocked along in a companionable rhythm, like Uncle Burt was keeping him company. Just two old guys hanging out on the porch.

  The man stood as I climbed out of the SUV. He moved like he had logged long hours in the saddle over his seventy or so years. Old-school cowboy.

  “Hyacinth?” he called.

  Maybe he didn’t see very well. “I’m Amy,” I yelled back as I let the dogs out of the Trooper. They ran to the gate; I had to wade through their wagging tails to get to the latch and let us all into the yard, where they rushed to greet the visitor with wags and wet noses.

  “Aunt Hyacinth is in China,” I said, walking up the path.

  “Well, the China Sea.”

  The stranger scratched the dogs’ ears for a moment more, then said, “That’s too bad. I came to talk to her about this damned ghost business and find out what the hell she’s going to do about it.”

  Well, that was unexpected, when everyone I’d met seemed to vilify my aunt for “this damned ghost business.” I wasn’t sure it was a good change, since I was so determined to stay out of it.

  I’d have to choose my words carefully. He could be the town kook (after Aunt Hy, of course) or he could be a respected founding father of Barnett. Either way, it wouldn’t do to make him mad.

  “Would you like a glass of water or something, Mr.… ”

  He just looked at me and didn’t supply his name. “You must have walked quite a ways.”

  “Oh, I rode my horse.” He nodded toward the donkey pen. “I put him in there. Usually do when I come to visit Burt and his little lady.”

  “Uh …” I didn’t know how to answer that. Goodnights would talk to anyone about the paranormal, but I wasn’t used to people talking about it back. Maybe in Mom’s store, but aside from the regulars, most of her business was in pretty stationery and fairy figurines. So I just said, “Great. How about that drink. Water? Lemonade? Iced tea?”

  “Some tea would be mighty fine.” He eased back into the chair, and the dogs settled around him, careful to keep their tails away from the rocker. “Family won’t let me have it at home. Caffeine.” He tapped his chest. “Bad for the ticker. Like I care. When I go, I go.”

  “Uh-huh.” Not on my porch if I could help it. I went inside and brewed a pot of herbal tea, caffeine free, and poured it over ice.

  When I came back out and set the glass on the table beside him, I reintroduced myself. “I’m Amy. Hyacinth’s niece.”

  “I heard you the first time,” he snapped. “I’m not deaf.”

  “Yes,” I said calmly, “but you didn’t tell me who you are.”

  He looked at me as if I should know exactly who he was. And between the grumpy and the Stetson, I was beginning to get an idea. So I wasn’t completely surprised when he said, “I’m Mac McCulloch. Now, what are you going to do about this Mad Monk character, missy?”

  It was all a little much to take in standing up, so I sat down, hoping Uncle Burt had vacated the other rocker. “I’m sorry. Did you say ‘Mad Monk’?”

  I did not want to invite this conversation. I did not want to get involved in a ghost hunt. But I had to ask. Mad Monk, for crying out loud.

  “Don’t look at me,” crabbed Mac McCulloch. “I didn’t make up that fool name. That was that woman. Came around asking questions, writing a book or some nonsense.” He shook the ice in his glass at me. “Don’t ever trust anyone who’s writing a book. They make up lies for a living.”

  “Yes, sir.” I agreed just so I could stay on the subject. “So the lady who came here, asking about ghost stories … she invented the Mad Monk?”

  “Oh no. She only named it. ‘The Mad Monk of McCulloch Ranch.’ Pah! I should sue her.”

  “So should the ghost,” I said. “Saddled with a name like that, no wonder he haunts.”

  “Ha!” He slapped a hand on his knee. “I like you, Hyacinth, even if you do talk like a city girl.”

  “It’s Amy,” I corrected, but still felt flattered to be liked by this odd, cranky man.

  Ben’s grandfather. Holy smokes. It had to be. Just when I’d thought my day couldn’t get any weirder.

  “That’s what I said. Amy.” Mr. McCulloch took a sip of the tea, let out an appreciative smack and a sigh, and set down the glass. “No, the ghost is real. Bastard pops up every now and again, makes everyone crazy for a while, bashes a few people on the head, settles back down.”

  “Bashes people on the head? Like your ranch hand last night?”

  “Damned straight.”

  “That seems rather violent for a man of the cloth.” But as I said it, I remembered how hard it was to breathe while I stared at the ghostly column, how the cold had seemed to constrict my chest.

  “Some people say he’s a soldier. Maybe one of those priest-soldier types who came up from Mexico back when it belonged to Spain.”

  I thought about the conversation with Mark at the excavation site. “You mean a conquistador? Or a missionary?”

  He flapped a hand, batting away these inconsequentials. “It doesn’t matter. He bashes people because he’s protecting a treasure. Everyone around here knows this story. Hyacinth should have told you.”

  I sat back in my chair and breathed the hot afternoon air, letting it fill my lungs and chase away the remembered cold. “Yes, she really should have. She was more worried about her livestock, I think.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound like Hyacinth at all.” He was right about that. “She’d agree that something has to be done before any more people get hurt.”

  “Who else has gotten hurt, other than your ranch hand?”

  “Well, there were those idiot Kelly boys.”

  “As in Deputy Kelly?” That guy did keep popping up. I wouldn’t have described him as a boy, but I wasn’t seventy-odd years old, either.

  “Him and his idiot brother,” said Mr. McCulloch. “Or maybe it was his idiot brother and their idiot friend. Out horsing around like fools on their fool ATVs.” He shook a finger at me. “Never trust a Kelly.”

  I definitely couldn’t picture Deputy Kelly horsing around on an ATV, though it had a lot more to do with his demeanor than his position as an officer of the law. “When was this, Mr. McCulloch?” He squinted up at the planks in the porch’s ceiling, like he mig
ht be trying to count the years backward, so I helped him out. “Who was president?”

  “The father of the governor.” I translated that to mean when Bush Senior was in the White House. An odd way of putting it, but for some Texans, politics outside the borders were just a nuisance.

  So, this ATV business was a while ago. Phin did say this seemed to be a recurrent ghost, just going by the stories. I knew that some specters only turned up under certain conditions, or on a certain timetable. Or even just arbitrarily—

  Eleven-year-old Amy needed to sit down and shut up. I firmly closed the door on her mental cupboard and turned to Mr. McCulloch. “I’m a little surprised you’re here. I got the feeling your family didn’t believe in ghosts. And, um, in fact, aren’t too fond of the Goodnights right now.”

  “Well, that’s just claptrap. I’m here, aren’t I?” He drained his iced tea and set the glass down with a punctuating thump. “And not just for the iced tea. Don’t tell Emily, but hers doesn’t hold a candle to this.”

  “Who’s Emily?” I asked, hopping out of my rocker as he pushed himself up from his. Just in case. He looked strong, but there was something … I don’t know. Maybe it was another hunch, or maybe I was just worried because of his weak ticker.

  “My wife,” answered Mr. McCulloch. Once up, he moved more easily to the steps, barely leaning on the handrail. “Who will tan my hide if I’m not home for supper.”

  “Well …” I told myself I had enough to fret about without adding Mac McCulloch to the list. On the other hand, Ben might blame me for that, too, if anything happened to him. “Be careful on the ride home. Do you need me to, um …” I was going to say “help you up,” but I sensed how that would go over. “… hold your stirrup or something?”

  “No, dammit,” he barked. “I’m not a debutante riding in a fool parade.” He said it “deb-u-tant,” as in, rhymes with “ant,” and I bit back a smile. “You just tend to your business, missy. When you’ve got this Mad Monk malarkey sorted, then you tell me how to ride a horse. I’ve got saddles older than you are.”

  Which was sort of my point, but I knew better than to say it. I did weed out the pertinent part of that speech, though, as he headed down the stairs.

  “Mr. McCulloch,” I called, and he turned at the bottom. “I didn’t say I was going to find the Mad Monk.”

  “But you will,” he said, placing his worn and stained Stetson on his head. “You’ve got that look about you.”

  “What look is that?” I asked, tired of his family maligning mine. “A Goodnight look?”

  “A responsible one.” He adjusted his hat, in a motion I’d seen Ben make a dozen times that day, right before he drove home his point. “Like you’re the girl who takes care of things. So take care of it, dammit.”

  I watched him head over to the donkey pen, and a few minutes later, Mac McCulloch went trotting by on a horse the color of strong coffee. He didn’t look so old while he was riding, which made me worry a little less.

  Take care of this Mad Monk malarkey. Did that mean I had permission to ghost hunt on McCulloch land? Somehow I doubted Ben or Deputy Kelly would see it that way.

  Not that I was even considering it.

  I’d walked to the fence to see Mr. McCulloch off, and my foot crunched on something as I turned back to the house.

  Fresh wood shavings littered a trail back to the gatepost. I approached it warily, my heart thudding as I saw the newly carved design in the wood. Then I compared it to the older glyph above it—familiar and weathered and barely visible. I traced the smooth one with my finger, and a pleasant, warm tingle spread up my arm. The new one would give me splinters, but I knew what it was.

  “Darn it, Phin,” I whispered fondly.

  At some point that morning, my sister had reinforced the security system around the house and yard. I knew just enough to realize that this took some time and effort, especially by herself. She must have stayed up all night, because I didn’t think it could have been done between when I left for the dig and when she arrived.

  My heart grew two sizes, like the Grinch’s. This was why I put up with her blowing fuses. I had my way of keeping the boundaries between the Goodnights and the world. And Phin had hers.

  The question was, would either of them be enough?

  11

  i could not escape the Mad Monk of McCulloch Ranch.

  “The what?” Mark asked, with an incredulous laugh. I was glad of the ambient volume in the bar, the loud music and raised voices of the crowd.

  “A mad monk!” Phin sat forward in excitement, elbows on the scarred table of the booth where we sat with the student dig crew. “That’s so old-world. Like a rampart guardian or a white lady.”

  I had not told them about the ghost. Certainly not by that melodramatic name, let alone in the middle of the roadhouse on the outskirts of town. The gang had already been discussing it when Mark, Phin, and I arrived.

  The Hitchin’ Post was a neon-lit, sticky-wooden-table, sawdust-and-peanut-shells-on-the-floor place that chain restaurants can only imitate. There were three entrées on the menu—burger, chicken fingers, hot dog—plus fries, nachos, or fries with nacho cheese. There was a bar at one end of the long, narrow building and a stage at the other, and there’d been a herd of motorcycles in the gravel parking lot when I’d parked Stella.

  Mark and Phin had arrived in Mark’s Jeep just ahead of me. The others were already inside, seated at a booth big enough for the eight of us, and discussing the guy at the bar who had waylaid Lucas and Dwayne when they went to get the bucket of ice, beer, and soda that sat in the middle of the table.

  “That’s what he said,” Lucas reiterated. He was a graduate student in Latin American history volunteering on the excavation, but he looked more like a linebacker than an aspiring professor. “The Mad Monk of McCulloch Ranch. And apparently our digging has got him all riled up.”

  Dwayne (junior, business major, also pitching in as unskilled labor) backed up this story with an earnest nod. “Even hinted we were to blame for the guy who went to the hospital last night.”

  “How could we be?” asked Jennie. She was the freckle-faced girl who’d been cataloging artifacts under the awning at the dig, a senior forensic science major and future criminologist. “We only started digging this morning.”

  “You guys are taking this way too seriously,” said Caitlin.

  She came from Alabama, which explained her accent, and was an archaeology grad student picking up extra field hours. “A pottery-and-flint girl hanging with the bone guys,” she had said as we went around the table making introductions. “Gotta go where the digs are.” I wanted to find a reason to not like her—other than being jealous, which I was not—but so far she was personable, if a little snarky. And if snark were grounds to dislike someone, no one would be friends with me at all.

  “So what’s the theory?” asked Mark, grabbing a Shiner Bock and wiping off the ice. “Are we digging up the monk’s grave?”

  The last member of the team to weigh in was Emery Rhodes. He was a graduate student in physical anthropology, like Mark, but the resemblance ended there, given that Mark was Mark and Emery … well, he looked like a guy named Emery. He talked like one, too. “Tell me you’re not seriously composing a theory based on the nutcase at the bar.”

  I watched the discussion silently, keeping Mac McCulloch’s visit to myself for now, since I’d have to explain why he’d come to Goodnight Farm for ghost expertise. I didn’t want to be lumped in with “that nutcase at the bar” any sooner than I had to. Or at all, if possible.

  “Apparently,” said Dwayne, mimicking Emery very slightly, “there have been noises and lights in the pasture since construction on the bridge began, but worse since the bulldozer uncovered the first set of remains.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Phin. “It’s not like he was resting in peace. Your professor said it was a shallow burial, not a proper one.”

  “It’s a ghost story,” said Caitlin with a laugh. ??
?It doesn’t have to make sense.”

  Oh boy. Phin drew herself up and was clearly about to spell out just how many ways Caitlin was completely wrong on that point. I headed her off, because that was my job: keep the crazy contained.

  “Ghost stories are folklore,” I explained, “and like every other kind of story, they have an internal logic.”

  Phin took my interruption in stride and I continued my point. “Even if the tales get twisted by rumor and inflated by superstition, they’re usually based on something. I’m sure you know cases where folklore has led archaeologists to sites they would not have found, or even known to look for, without rumors and stories.”

  Caitlin blinked at her, then picked up her beer with a grimace and took a bracing swig. “Oh my God. I’ve just been schooled by a freshman. How embarrassing.”

  “Well,” said Phin, in a don’t-feel-bad tone that made Mark laugh even harder, “I am a sophomore.”

  I picked up my Dr Pepper and smothered a groan. At least my sister was an amusing know-it-all.

  Mark sobered to tease Caitlin. “It’s not her fault that she’s right.” Elbows on the table, he leaned in and took a teaching sort of tone. “That’s how the San Sabá Mission was found. The one I told you about today, Amy. An archaeologist came across an old pamphlet in an archive. Something printed up for tourists, by a family who was always finding artifacts when they plowed their fields. Academics had dismissed these stories for decades, but it turned out to be the clue that led to discovering the site.”

  “Speaking of finds,” I said, eager for any subject that wasn’t the Mad Monk, “what happened after I left the river? Did you get the skull out in one piece?”

  Mark was happy to describe the excavation, giving Lucas time to get another round, and me time to regroup my strategy for keeping my balance on the tightrope between Goodnight and normal.

  All afternoon, ever since Mac McCulloch had ridden off, I’d been lecturing myself: Treat the story like a story, not like a ghost. I’d expected that the ranch’s haunting would be a major topic of discussion in town, even in the crowded, noisy bar. Especially in the crowded bar. Where else were folks going to gather to gossip about it? I just hadn’t expected to get hit with “Mad Monk” quite so soon out of the gate.