Texas Gothic

Despite the hour, Jennie and Dwayne wanted to go over every millisecond of the recording, until Mark pointed out that Emery would put out an APB on them, just for spite, if they didn’t get to the hotel soon.

  That got the excited pair headed for the door, but Mark hung back and helped Phin gather her laptop and equipment. “We’ll see you two tomorrow, right?”

  “Definitely,” she said. Her enthusiasm made Mark smile, even when she explained, “I have another experiment I want to try.”

  “Dr. Douglas is okay with that?” I asked. “I mean, our coming back to the dig, not Phin’s experiments.”

  “I told her you two are good luck.” He grinned at me. “And she liked the way you took direction with that skull today. Er, yesterday,” he amended, glancing at his watch.

  He turned to say goodbye to Phin, but she’d already disappeared into her workroom. With a rueful smile, he told me instead, “See you tomorrow, chica. Don’t forget to lock up.”

  I followed him, said goodbye to Jennie and Dwayne, too, then closed the door and leaned against it. We never locked up Goodnight Farm. I wasn’t going to start for a ghost. Not that it would do any good if the shored-up security system failed.

  As I headed for the workroom to look for Phin, I ran my hand over the back of Uncle Burt’s rocker. I didn’t pretend to understand how much of the real Uncle Burt remained, whether it was a shadow of his soul or just a wisp of residual personality, but I’d always tried to stay on good terms with whatever it was. I believed souls had someplace better to be, but who knows? If I loved someone like Burt loved Aunt Hyacinth, maybe I’d hang around, too.

  But Uncle Burt fit here like a puzzle piece. The other did not. There was nothing peaceful or contented about whatever shred of a man had stood gasping and grasping in front of me. What remained of him was wretched desperation.

  Look for me.

  The cold in my chest expanded. I took a deep breath—a whiff of denim and violets pushed it back.

  The ghost could have been talking to anyone. His image might play like a recording when someone stumbled over that spot at any particular time. So why did it feel like he had been talking to, waiting for, me?

  “You’re going to have to do it, you know.”

  I jumped, shaking myself back to the present. “Jeez, Phin! That was freaky even for you.” She stood in the door of her workroom, and I glared at her for scaring me, and speaking directly to my thoughts. “You haven’t suddenly added mind reading to your talents, have you?”

  “Pfft. My talents are actually useful and reliable. Are you going to get with the program?”

  Casting a longing look toward the stairs and my bedroom at the top of them, I asked, “Does the program involve going to bed and thinking about it in the morning?”

  She ignored the question. “This is the second time the ghost has singled you out.”

  I sighed. “Thanks for that, Phin. It will really help me get to sleep.”

  “Why are you being so obtuse?” She folded her arms when I didn’t answer. “I know the implication has occurred to you. You’re not normally an idiot.”

  “No,” I said, “but I’m very tired, so why don’t you explain it to me?”

  “We already talked about this,” she said with a huff. “Hauntings are usually very localized. Cold spots, apparitions, orbs, knocks and noises … they all tend to happen in the same place, often around the same time under the same conditions.”

  “I remember all that,” I said, because I wanted her to get to the point. A point I dreaded, because she was right. Since the ghost had appeared in my room, I hadn’t faced the full meaning. I’d sat on the knowledge, beaten it down, drowned it out by arguing with cranky cowboys and tinkering with Phin’s gadgets. I’d smiled right at Mark and told him not to worry. But I knew what she was about to say. “So just say it.”

  “The ranch may be haunted, Amy. But it’s obvious that you are, too.”

  17

  at way-too-early o’clock, I stumbled down the stairs, trying to figure out why the dogs weren’t barking at the racket from the front of the house. I finally realized the thumping came from the door and threw it open to find my cousin Daisy on the porch, nearly hidden by the big cardboard box in her arms.

  “You look awful,” she said, hardly glancing at me as she breezed in. With my rumpled pajamas and bleary eyes, I didn’t exactly make her a liar. “Clearly I’ve arrived just in time.”

  I closed the door and followed her into the living room, where she set the box on the coffee table. Daisy was a lot to take, even on a good day. She was a high school senior, but she’d skipped a grade, so she wasn’t quite seventeen yet. With her very red hair, black tee, short plaid skirt, and platform Mary Jane shoes with knee socks, not to mention all the spikes, she looked like the Goth love child of a Catholic schoolgirl and Lucille Ball.

  “I didn’t sleep at all last night,” I said. “Also, Phin’s furious with me.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t have a sleepless night because Phin is furious with you?”

  I considered the question. Was Phin capable of doing some hoodoo to make me toss and turn like the princess and the pea all night, my brain spinning like a corrupted hard drive?

  Absolutely. Would she?

  When I did doze, the luminous specter waited, then turned into La Llorona, dragging me underwater, where I froze and couldn’t breathe, until I jolted awake, huddled in the middle of my bed, bones aching, teeth chattering.

  If not for the physical misery, I might not put it past her. But Phin was never petty.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, following Daisy again, this time into the kitchen.

  “Delivery service,” she said, rooting around in the refrigerator. “Your mom said you needed those books. Also, you should call her, because she’s getting some intermittent heebs and jeebs, and it’s rocking the vibe in the store. That’s my message, because I’m working there this summer and I need the commission.”

  She emerged with a Dr Pepper and a handful of baby carrots. “Why’s Phin mad at you?”

  “Because I wouldn’t let her do experiments on me last night.”

  “Hmm.” Daisy contemplated my face as she cracked the top on the bottle of DP. “That’s either rather wise or extremely foolish.”

  “Why?” I asked, because I knew perfectly well that she hadn’t driven an hour and a half out here, leaving before the sun was up, just to bring me books and tell me to call my mother.

  Phin picked that moment to appear from the workroom. She already looked thunderous, but at the sight of Daisy, she clouded even darker. “Great. That’s all we need. A psychic.”

  “Hey, Phin. How are things in the laboratory?” She said it like Boris Karloff, with an emphasis on the bore.

  “Have you been up all night?” I asked my sister.

  “Of course not.” She went to the cabinet and got down a pottery mug with a black cat on it, then put the kettle on to boil. “I got my usual four hours.”

  Daisy munched on a carrot. “Don’t people who don’t get enough sleep eventually snap? I’d lock up the axes and knives if I were you, Amy.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’ll snap first,” I said dryly. In fact, I was pretty sure what would make it happen, too.

  “So, why does Phinster want to do experiments on you?” Daisy asked.

  Phin folded her arms and raised her brows. “You mean you don’t know already? What kind of clairvoyant are you?”

  “One who works best with dead people,” said Daisy, popping another carrot into her mouth.

  Another sardonic look from Phin. “Which is, I assume, why you’re here. Because of Amy’s ghost.”

  I didn’t need a road map to see where this was going, so I took a shortcut. “How can I be haunted?” This was the argument we’d had the night before. “The ghost was around before I got here. Hell, the ghost was here before I was even born.”

  “If you don’t believe me,” Phin said, “ask Daisy. You don’t really think she drov
e all the way out here on whatever flimsy excuse she gave, do you?”

  I looked up at Daisy. She wrinkled her nose in apology. “Sorry, Am. It wasn’t just your mom with the heebie-jeebies. And now that I’m here, I’m definitely getting a vibe. The dead are sort of my thing, so as much as I hate to say it, Phin is right.”

  Phin snorted but didn’t gloat. I looked from one implacable face to the other and felt the sand shift under my arguments. Which, to be honest, weren’t built on certainty so much as hope.

  “I think it’s extremely unfair of the two of you to gang up on me this way.”

  Daisy took my shoulders and bent to look me in the eye. “We’re doing it because we love you, Amaryllis. The first step to solving your problem is admitting you have a problem.”

  “Very funny.”

  She grinned and dropped her hands. But I noticed she shook them at her side, like shaking the feeling back into cold fingers. A small movement, tactfully hidden, but in its way, the most convincing argument of all.

  “What about the people who say they’ve seen the Mad Monk?” I said. “That would mean it’s not just me who’s haunted.”

  “Unless they haven’t really,” said Phin. “You said it yourself, the McCulloch Ranch ghost might be legend based on another ghost, shored up by accidents and imagination.” She paused. “Actually, you didn’t say that last bit, but you know it’s true.”

  “Or,” said Daisy, “it’s appeared to other people before. Or it’s a separate entity to worry about. The important thing is, you have to deal with the one attached to you, whether it’s the Mad Monk of legend or something else.”

  I went to the kitchen table and sat down before my knees could give out. “You’re saying that this thing is tied to me and … what? It’s not going to go away? Ever?”

  They exchanged looks of rare agreement. It figured they would finally see eye to eye when it meant that I was screwed.

  “So, what do I do?”

  “Well,” said Phin, “you told me last night that all these people—Mac McCulloch and the girl at the bar—want you to find out about the Mad Monk. So … maybe you should listen.”

  Commit to the ghost hunt. My heart started pounding and a cold sweat prickled my skin. Defy Deputy Kelly and Steve Sparks and Ben. Go look for the freezing specter in the middle of the night—

  Daisy interrupted my spiraling panic as if she could read it on my face. “Start small. What were you going to do today?”

  “Go to the dig. Excavate some bones that might be related to the ghost.” The skull was found near where it had appeared, after all.

  “That’s a start.” She downed the last of her Dr Pepper. “I can’t tell you how much I wish I could stay. I’ll come back as soon as I can. But right now I’ve got to get to San Antonio or the police are going to come after me.”

  Daisy consulted for various police departments, something everyone kept on the QT. For some reason the local and federal law enforcement didn’t like it getting around that they occasionally called in a sixteen-year-old psychic for help solving crimes.

  “Wait,” I said, following her to the living room. “You’re coming back?”

  “Don’t bother on our account,” Phin called from the kitchen.

  Daisy paused in the doorway. “Oh, from the look of things out on the highway, it’s about to get really interesting. I wouldn’t want to miss it.”

  Then she was gone, scratching the dogs’ heads on the way to her Prius, parked just outside the gate.

  I turned to Phin, who had come into the room when Daisy left. “What did she mean, the look of things on the highway?”

  “How should I know? I’m not the clairvoyant.”

  Phin liked things measurable and predictable—or as predictable as anything supernatural ever was. Spells and potions were chemistry and physics to her. And even though it wasn’t as simple as she liked to think, her way of doing things was less influenced by factors like emotions, bias, expectations … things that make us human.

  I went to the box on the coffee table and pulled open the flaps. Inside were all the books and videos that I’d boxed up after the incident in Goliad. On the top was a trade paperback I didn’t recognize. Haunts of the Hill Country, by Dorothea Daggerspoint.

  Fourth in the table of contents was “The Mad Monk of McCulloch Ranch.” This must be the book Mac had mentioned, the source of the nickname. The author did love alliteration. And purple prose—the chapter wouldn’t be quick to scan.

  “You see?” said Phin, reading over my shoulder. I hadn’t heard her come over. “Even Mom thinks you ought to be investigating this ghost.”

  I fanned the pages and dropped the book into the box to look at later. “Do you think Daisy could be right about its being two different events?”

  She snorted. “Psychics.” Then, more helpfully, she told me, “The monk story and the bones in the pasture are what you have to go on. So that’s the best place to—”

  The dogs interrupted her from out in the yard, barking to scare off the devil.

  “Now what?” I groaned. With leaden feet I went to see who was at the gate. I really hoped it wasn’t Deputy Kelly. Or any Kelly at all, really.

  But it was worse. It was the press.

  I stood on the porch in my boxer short pajamas and bare feet, staring into a television camera. Long-distance, fortunately, since the crew didn’t want to come into the yard with the dogs going crazy and all. A woman with a big fat microphone yelled at me over their noise, “Miss Goodnight! Care to comment on your exciting find yesterday?”

  “No!” Oh my God, Ben was going to kill me. And so was Dr. Douglas.

  “Would you call off your dogs so we can talk to you?”

  “No!”

  “Would you care to tell us about finding the severed head?”

  “For crying out loud,” I snapped. “It was a skull, not a severed head.”

  Aw, hell. I’d gone and confirmed something. The reporter looked amazingly smug, even from far away.

  “What about the rumor going around that you’ve found an Indian burial ground?” she asked.

  “I don’t know anything about a Native American burial ground. But I do know this is private property!”

  I stepped back and slammed the door, breathless with indignation. I wished I had the nerve to sic Uncle Burt on them, but a paranormal event on the evening news was exactly the kind of thing I lived to prevent.

  Phin watched me from beside the door. I told her, “We’d better get to the dig site and warn Mark.”

  “Oh,” she said, with remarkable calm, “chances are, he already knows.”

  18

  outside the gate leading to the excavation was not, thank goodness, the circus I feared. Just a small sideshow: a handful of protesters with signs against digging up a sacred site, one news van from an Austin TV station, plus the one that had been at the farm. And the sheriff himself, keeping the peace and providing a sound bite.

  But when I saw Deputy Kelly, my hands flexed tightly on the wheel. I recognized his stocky khaki form while we were still a ways down the road. “Do you think the deputy knows we were here last night?” I asked Phin.

  She knew exactly who I meant. “Well, the officer at the site told Mark he wasn’t going to write it up. But he might have mentioned it over donuts.”

  I guess it was unrealistic to think we could keep our nocturnal adventures a secret. Not once the gang from the dig got involved. “I hope Dwayne and Jennie don’t say anything about the ghost.”

  “Oh, they won’t,” Phin said, unconcerned. “They promised three times.”

  That rang a distant bell. “I thought that was only in Scotland for getting married. You call someone your spouse three times and you’re hitched.”

  “Where do you think it came from? Three promises equals a vow.” She stared tactlessly at the protesters as I slowed to turn into the gate. They stared right back. When we passed the reporter with the big microphone, Phin waved. “Anyway, it’s not unbre
akable, but close enough that it’ll prevent accidental slips.”

  It occurred to me, as I braked in front of the closed gate, that I might not give Phin enough credit. I’d always thought the Phin Effect was accidental. But if she knew about it and used it on purpose, that made her leaving me to deal with the consequences even more infuriating.

  A rap on the window startled a squeal out of me. I bet that just made Deputy Kelly’s day.

  I rolled down the window. I was driving Aunt Hyacinth’s Trooper, so I had to manually roll it down, which gave me time to compose my we-haven’t-been-running-around-where-we-shouldn’t demeanor.

  “We’re volunteers today,” I told him. “Mark Delgado okayed it.”

  The deputy took his time about looking for our names on the list on his clipboard. Then he gave me, Phin, and the Trooper a long inspection. “Have you girls been staying out of trouble?”

  “Absolutely.” I sounded fake, but he probably wouldn’t believe me regardless. Whatever he suspected, if he knew we’d been trespassing, he wouldn’t bother fishing.

  The deputy set his jaw like he very much wished he could tear into us about something, but finally he opened the gate. “You two are on the professor’s list to go in. But you’re on my list, too, so keep your noses clean.”

  I drove through, hands at two and ten on the wheel and going about zero-point-eight miles an hour. Unfortunately, Phin didn’t quite wait until the window was up before asking, “Why are you so nice to him? He gives me a pain.”

  “I make it a policy not to antagonize the law.” I glanced at her as we headed down the packed dirt road. “What are you complaining about? Ninety percent of his interactions are with me.”

  “You’re our self-appointed envoy. When he talks to you, he means us.”

  I was pretty sure she was right about that. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that the dark-haired reporter from the farm had left off interviewing protesters and gone to talk to Deputy Kelly. The way they both turned to glance at the Trooper … that couldn’t be good.

  It was a long drive from the highway to the excavation site, and we passed it mostly in silence, punctuated by the occasional grunt as I hit a pothole. At the end of the road, I parked next to Mark’s Jeep. The university van was there, too, next to the work canopy, where I saw Jennie busy cataloging and packing. She waved but kept on working.