Texas Gothic

  That was the moment the pieces clicked: What Jessica said about the ranch getting to be too much for Mac McCulloch, and his confusing me and Aunt Hyacinth and talking about Uncle Burt like he was still living. And most of all, why any talk of talking to dead people sent Ben straight up and sideways.

  “Oh.” I breathed all that revelation into the sound. All my feelings about Ben churned together inside of me—the hard, bitter feelings and the squishy, tentative feelings—and I don’t know what showed on my face, but I could see that Ben knew that I knew, and he was not happy about it.

  “Don’t say it,” he said, at the same time I said, “I’m sorry.”

  I don’t know what he’d expected me to say, but that wasn’t it. “For what?” he asked, bluffing it out, I guess.

  “About your grandfather,” I said, refusing to play the let’s-not-talk-about-it game. “And about your dad.”

  His exhale was more complaint than sigh. “You’ve been busy.”

  “Jessica told me.”

  “Uh-huh.” His hands clenched briefly in his pockets, and I wondered if he was picturing them around my neck. “And my family just happened to come up in conversation?”

  “Actually,” I shot back, because this is where my sympathy got me—arguing in a bar parking lot like trashy reality-TV stars—“I came right out and asked her if you were always such a jackass, or if it was only for my benefit.”

  “What is wrong with you?” he demanded, sort of making my point. “Can you not let anything lie? All I want is to get this damned bridge built. And you’re digging up ghosts and skeletons …”

  “Look. It’s not like your dad passing away isn’t public record. And you just let me stick my foot in it this afternoon and didn’t correct me.”

  He clamped his teeth on a retort, then grudgingly admitted, “All right, that’s true.” Then he was back on the warhorse. “But my granddad is not a subject open for discussion. And I sure as hell don’t want people gossiping about him in bars.”

  “It was the bathroom. And it wasn’t gossip. It was a sensitive relay of information.” I poked him in the chest, though not, I admit, quite hard enough to make him back up a step. “And for the record, it was making me feel very kindly toward you until—”

  “Was it?” He folded his arms. “Because it’s a little hard to tell with you.”

  I glared and refused to be sidetracked. “I was going to say, that for a nanosecond, I could actually understand why you’ve been such a jerk.”

  “Maybe you should just quit apologizing. It doesn’t seem to be doing any good.”

  “Obviously not.”

  I hadn’t noticed the bikers coming out of the bar until one of them, leaning on his handlebars like he was watching a movie, shouted, “Aw, just kiss her already, dude.”

  Oh. My. God. Incendiary mortification seemed a real possibility, especially when Ben, just to infuriate me, I was sure, waved back and said, “Thanks for the advice, man. I’ve got this.”

  “If you do,” I warned him, my finger raised between us. But then I stopped, because he lifted a challenging brow, like he wanted to know what I planned to do if he did. And I didn’t have a clue.

  But here’s what I did know: he was standing very close, so we wouldn’t have to shout across the parking lot. Which had seemed practical until that moment, when I realized how much I didn’t mind him looming over me, when I should have minded a lot. Instead, I was picturing him putting a hand on either side of me on the roof of the Mini Cooper and leaning in and locking his lips on mine.

  Dammit! I had much more important things to worry about than how it would feel if Ben McCulloch kissed me.

  Ben stepped back so quickly, I knew I wore that question all over my face. He certainly wasn’t wondering the same thing I was. Because I smelled like I’d taken a bath in a brewery. And also, he pretty much hated my guts. And vice versa. Sometimes.

  “Should you call your sister or something?” he asked.

  “I’m right here.”

  We both jumped. Phin stood by Stella’s front bumper, giving Ben one of her dissecting stares, and I could tell it unnerved him. Good.

  Mark had walked out with her, and he gave me a sympathetic wave. “Heard about your adventure from the waitress. If it makes you feel better, my mom always said beer makes your hair shiny.”

  Ben looked, for a moment, as if he would ask how Phin knew to come outside, then thought better of it and answered Mark instead. “Some guys I knew in college would disprove that.”

  “It’s the protein and B vitamins,” said Phin, like this was an actual conversation about grooming and not two guys trying to dispel some serious awkward. “But you have to rinse with it, not drink it.”

  “Right.” I opened my car door. “If I get arrested for drunk driving based on the fumes coming from my hair, at least I’ll look great when they arraign me tomorrow.”

  “Drive carefully,” said Ben, as if he couldn’t help himself, “and you’ll be fine.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I snapped, then cursed. Jeez Louise, what was wrong with my mouth? “I’m—”

  Ben put his hand on the top of my door, essentially trapping me in the space between him and Stella, almost like I’d imagined, but with a completely different expression.

  “Just stop apologizing,” he said. “It’s better that way.”

  “How about this?” I said, because now it was the principle of the thing. “I’m sorry, jackass.”

  I got in, slammed the door—not very hard, because Stella was delicate—and started the engine. It didn’t cover his laugh.

  “Hell’s bells,” I growled as Phin got in beside me. I gripped the steering wheel, watching Ben and Mark walk back to the bar. “Why does he make me so mad?”

  “Is that a rhetorical question?” asked Phin. “Because I’m pretty sure you don’t want to hear what I think.”

  Finally. Something with which I could unequivocally agree.

  14

  midnight found me sitting on a rock in the McCullochs’ pasture, watching my sister pace between one excavation and the other, talking to herself. Or possibly to her equipment. I couldn’t be sure.

  My feelings on ghost hunting had not changed. My feelings on trespassing had not changed. I’d laid out all the pitfalls of this plan in the car on the way back to the site.

  “What about not prostituting your scientific integrity?” I’d asked Phin.

  “I just said that because I don’t want a bunch of well-intentioned amateurs getting in the way.”

  I’d taken my eyes from the road just long enough to make sure she wasn’t being ironic. “You know, when it comes to the dig, we are well-intentioned amateurs.”

  “It’s not the same thing at all. Paranormal events are difficult enough to document in a meaningful, repeatable way without adding more variables. I don’t want anything to interfere with my test of the Kirlianometer.”

  “You’re really going to call it that?”

  “You’re the one who said I need a better name for it. And you are very good at thinking like normal people.”

  This lavish praise wasn’t what convinced me to go with her. Neither was it the worry that she would justify going without me, or worse, invite Mark along, even if he was an amateur. It wasn’t even to spite Ben McCulloch.

  It was that I was more afraid of what would happen if I said no than what would happen if I said yes. The awful mental paralysis was still too fresh in my memory to even try—especially while I was driving.

  I rationalized my participation by the fact that Phin was measuring metaphysical stimuli in order to look for remains and not for ghosts. And someone had to make sure she didn’t trip in a gopher hole or get carried off by coyotes. Or bitten by a rabid bat, or fall in the river. Or even, you know, get hit on the head or pushed down a ravine by a Mad Monk.

  How I would prevent any of those things was a mystery.

  I rubbed at a fire ant bite on my hand, concentrating on the burning sting to keep alert
. When we’d first reached the excavation site, you could have bounced a quarter off my tautly strung nerves. I flinched at the cool, damp breeze that ruffled my hair. The moon made eerie patterns on the rough ground, and the places where the topsoil had worn down to the limestone clay glowed with reflected light.

  But after an hour and a half of jumping at shadows, I was more worried about mosquito bites than spectral manifestations.

  “Holy smokes,” said Phin. “What a bust.”

  I shook myself out of my thoughts, and my boredom, and looked at her. There was a good bit of moonlight to see by. “Isn’t it working?”

  “Too well.” She thumbed through the images she’d taken, the glow of the screen on her frustrated face.

  Curiosity nudged me off my rocky seat. I leaned around Phin’s shoulder and peered at the image of a faint neon footprint. It was eerie to see something on the camera that I couldn’t with my eyes, but since Phin wasn’t excited about it, I figured it was normal. Relatively speaking.

  “Is this your footstep on the grass?” I asked.

  She sighed. Loudly. “Yes. That’s all I’m getting. I don’t know if the stronger stimulus is masking weaker, older ones, or if there’s nothing else to read.”

  “Are you ready to call it quits?” I didn’t bother to keep the hopeful note from my voice.

  “For tonight.” She sounded distracted, like she was already working out the problem in her head. “This is so frustrating. I should have tested it in a controlled environment first, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity. Who knows when I’ll get another chance to image an unconsecrated grave pre- and post-disinterment?”

  I’d been doing fine until she said “unconsecrated grave.” The words conjured images of restless spirits with unfinished business, and disquiet skittered up my spine, making me shiver despite the warm night.

  Phin took her sweet time putting away her stuff and zipping her backpack. We’d walked from the river gate, the way I’d come that morning, which seemed eons ago. “And you saw no fluctuations on the EMF meter?”

  I glanced down at the electromagnetic field meter in my hand. Paranormal events often made the EM fields spike or dip. But so did a lot of other things—microwaves, uninsulated appliances, and electrical cords, for example. The interaction of natural and supernatural fields could make a mess of one’s spells, which was why a lot of kitchen witches like Aunt Hyacinth wouldn’t do spells in the actual kitchen. Or they’d unplug everything first, which was a bit of a nuisance.

  The thing was, naturally occurring EMFs could make you feel unsettled and uneasy, mess with your sleep, or even make your pacemaker do wonky things. All of which could make your house feel haunted, when it was really just too close to a high-voltage power line.

  I’d run the EMF meter over both dig sites and gotten no fluctuations. Whatever Lila had sensed that made her dig up the second skull, EMFs weren’t it.

  “What about the voice recorder?” Phin said. “Did you keep it running for EVPs?”

  She was asking me about the MP3 recorder I had going to catch electronic voice phenomena. That was when a voice you didn’t hear during an investigation turned up when you were listening later. There were a lot of gadgets to juggle when Phin was involved.

  “It’s been running the whole time,” I told her.

  “Did you ask questions while I was taking Kirlianographs?” Phin’s impatient voice said she knew the answer. The area wasn’t so big she wouldn’t have heard me talking to myself. But I answered her anyway.

  “No.”

  “Amy! Why didn’t you ask questions?”

  “Because I hate EVPs. They creep me out.”

  They always had. EMFs and EVPs might seem mystifying if you were new to investigating, but this was like getting back on a bike I hadn’t ridden in years. Other kids go through dinosaur phases. When I was eight, I could name every kind of spirit from revenants to poltergeists. That was how I knew that apparitions were so rare.

  I was thinking that maybe I should have Mom send me the books and videos I’d boxed up after the La Llorona incident. That was how far I’d slipped out of my entrenched position. Except calling might get her hopes up that I was changing my mind, which was another reason I didn’t want to be in the pasture doing what I swore I would never do again.

  Phin exhaled in exasperation. “If we’re going to do this, we have to do it right.”

  “I said I would come and test your Kirlianometer to see if it could visualize any anomalies with the ground. And I went along with measuring EMFs. But I’m not here to look for—”

  I bit my tongue. Literally. After cursing in pain for a while, as Phin waited impatiently for me to make my point, I rephrased.

  “I don’t want to invite the ghost to talk to me. I just want it to go away. From me and everyone else.”

  My sister looked at me like I was an idiot, which was not uncommon, and then said something that made me feel like an idiot, which was much more rare:

  “How can you know how to make it go away if you won’t even ask it?”

  This was remarkably sensible. Maybe if I didn’t have so many hot buttons about ghosts, I would have thought of it myself. I started to tell her as much, but she was looking at the display screen of the camera with an expression of … well, it could have been either concentration or consternation.

  “What?” I said, because that look often preceded blown fuses and blown tempers. “Nothing.”

  And then she turned off the gadget. Sure, we were wrapping up, but the way she did it set my alarms to pinging. Phin had no subtlety, and if there was something she didn’t want me to see, it could not be good.

  “Delphinium, what is in that picture—”

  I broke off as another noise caught my attention. Phin went still, and nodded to show she heard it, too. I didn’t want to stir the air with even a whisper.

  The indistinct ripple of sound continued, a hushed rise and fall. The rocky hills threw voices like a ventriloquist. The noise could have been coming from over the ridge or over the river.

  I scanned the night in a slow circle and nearly strangled myself on a swallowed shriek when I saw a pair of glowing eyes staring at me from the dark. But at my half-audible gurgle, the eyes disappeared, and the deer they belonged to bounded away with a flick of her white tail and a clatter of hooves on the rock.

  The murmuring broke off, and its abrupt absence was somehow easier to locate. Phin pointed east, where a hill obscured any long-range view. I gestured that we should go the other way. She shook her head and turned on her Kirlianometer and jabbed an emphatic finger at the EMF meter and voice recorder that I held.

  She started up the hill, crouching low to keep her silhouette hidden. I went after her, worried she would fall and break her neck, worried about what would come over the rise to meet us. Worried about things that bump in the dark and grab with cold hands …

  Memory and imagination wound me in knots, and just when I thought I would snap, three figures appeared over the hill.

  In between “Holy crap!” and “What the hell?” I recognized Mark’s close-cropped hair and chiseled profile. Ditto Jennie’s Pocahontas braids and Dwayne’s linebacker shoulders.

  Phin straightened like a shot. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, like we had any more right to be at the site than they did.

  “Aw, man!” said Dwayne, lowering his video recorder.

  Jennie laughed, but Mark gave more of a crow. “I knew it! You ditched us to play Ghostbusters all on your own. Unfair!”

  His word choice had Phin vibrating with outrage. “We’re trying to conduct serious paranormal research. If you want to play, go do it somewhere else.”

  “Where?” asked Mark. “This is where the graves are. Our graves, I might add.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” she snapped. I had to cover my mouth to hold back a laugh, because I’d never seen my sister like this. “I’m trying to control the variables in this experiment.”

  Mark raised his ha
nds. “Dial it down, chica. You could have controlled these variables much better if you hadn’t ditched us to come here on your own.”

  “I didn’t think you’d follow us.”

  “We didn’t follow you. You’re not the only one who can look up ghost hunting on Wikipedia.”

  “Wikipedia!” If Phin got any more indignant, she was going to be in orbit. It didn’t help when Mark laughed.

  Dwayne, Jennie, and I watched them like a tennis match. When I was reasonably sure Mark was safe from my sister, I asked Jennie, “Where’s everyone else?”

  Jennie answered, “Lucas was enjoying himself at the bar, and we ditched Emery because he’d tell on us. Caitlin was trying to ditch him, too, so she could talk to Ben.”

  Nice. Now I was doubly embarrassed that I’d been thinking about inappropriate Mini Cooper kissing when Ben really was at the bar to meet Caitlin.

  Focus, Amy. He’s just a guy.

  “Did you try your corona thing on the dig site?” Mark asked, which might have gotten him back into Phin’s good graces if the unsuccessful experiment weren’t a sore point with her.

  “I’m still working the bugs out.”

  Before she could go on, something stopped her. The same thing that made us all freeze, at exactly the same moment. So I knew I wasn’t imagining it, the sound that, just like before, was more of a sensation in my middle, as if the noise were too low for my auditory sense to register.

  Then came a soft grumble, like a cranky complaint from an ancient man.

  The taut air of a collective held breath kept the five of us still until the last rumbling echo. Only then did we turn toward the sound.

  “Look!” said Dwayne. There was the faintest flickering glow against the starless silhouette of the big granite bluff to the south.

  Mark punched Dwayne’s arm in excitement. “Let’s go see.”

  “You are not blowing this test for me,” said Phin, and she and Jennie ran after them.

  I would have, too, but I knocked the voice recorder out of my pocket, and it hit the ground with a clatter.

  “Crap.” I crouched to feel around for it, and then I had to find the batteries that had fallen out. In the dark, I reassembled the recorder, then made sure it still worked. Which it did. Phin might be the death of me, but she wouldn’t be killing me for losing evidence.