Texas Gothic

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.

“Oh, I’ll bet you’ll be interested in this, Amy,” said Mark, reeling back my attention to the discussion at the table. “Dr. Douglas made a preliminary estimate and thinks your skull may be as old as the first one. So tomorrow we’ll excavate around that spot, looking for more remains, and probably dig some test holes between the two finds.”

“So this could really be a big deal,” I said, a little tentatively. “Like you were talking about this afternoon.”

Everyone else was too excited to hear the conflict in my voice. They chattered about historical significance and writing papers and getting to name the site. But for a moment, the din of the bar retreated, and I was back in the field, back to hot sun and cool earth, and I was thinking about bones and ghosts and wondering how I would be able to sleep tonight without seeing the hollow gaze of the skull in my dreams.

Caitlin had shaken off her pique and joined the speculation. “My money is on a lost settlement.”

“It could date back to the Spanish colonization,” said Lucas. “There were a number of failed colonies in the area.”

“Missions, you mean.” Phin’s train of thought wasn’t hard to follow. It might as well have been as neon as the beer signs over the bar.

“You’re thinking about the Mad Monk?” asked Jennie.

Emery gave a dismissive snort. “Even for a ghost, that sounds ridiculous, like something out of a gothic novel. The Mysteries of Adolpho or something.”

“Udolpho.” I took some pleasure in correcting him. His scorn made me reckless. Even without ghosts in my room and an eleven-year-old ghost hunter in the back of my head, it was hard to resist piecing the story together. Like I’d told Caitlin, there had to be some logic to it. “And it’s not so ridiculous. Texas had plenty of monks in its Spanish colonial days.”

Lucas nodded, in the spirit of the mystery. “Explorers looking for gold for the Mother Church. Missionaries here to civilize the natives.”

“Like Coronado,” said Phin. “Still searching for his lost city of gold.”

“Except that Coronado died in Mexico,” Lucas pointed out. “Though I suppose he could have come back in the afterlife. Do ghosts have to worry about transportation?”

“But Coronado wasn’t a monk,” said Jennie, mirroring Phin’s posture and enthusiasm. Mark, Lucas, and Dwayne leaned in, too. Caitlin looked reluctantly interested, though Emery was trying to appear above it all.

“Were there missions this far north?” Mark asked.

Lucas made a “so-so” gesture. “The largest and most successful ones were farther south, along the Guadalupe, and east, up near the Neches. The soil here wasn’t really good for sustaining agriculture, so most of the missions in this area failed. Or met a more violent end. You mentioned San Sabá. That’s not far from here.”

“Wasn’t there a mine or something associated with San Sabá?” asked Phin. “Ghosts are often guarding a treasure.”

The word struck a chord of excitement around the table, everyone caught up in the possibility for the space of a held breath.

Then Emery broke the spell. “Oh my God,” he said, equal parts exasperated and disgusted. “You all watch too many movies.”

The gang laughed, breaking the runaway-train tension.

Phin’s suggestion had startled me, too, but for different reasons. Mac McCulloch had mentioned treasure but I hadn’t had a chance to tell Phin about that. Although, like she said, folklore was full of ghosts unwilling to leave their riches unprotected.

“This elective turned out to be way more interesting than I thought,” said Dwayne. “It’s like an episode of that Bones show or something.”

“Good grief,” said Emery, in the same disgusted voice. “Thanks to television, our classes are full of dilettantes who think the field is all sexy anthropologists solving crimes and flirting with FBI agents.”

“I take exception to your point,” said my sister, in a debate-club sort of tone that, intentional or not, amused the hell out of me. “Mark is clearly sexy, and clearly an anthropologist.”

When he recovered from choking on his beer, Mark said, “Thanks, chica, but I don’t know any FBI agents.”

“I’m applying to the FBI,” Jennie assured him, “and I’d flirt with you.”

“And Caitlin’s no dog, either,” said Dwayne, and Lucas raised his bottle in agreement. Caitlin rolled her eyes, but I caught her laughing as she sipped her beer.

“Very funny,” said Emery, with no jealousy, I’m sure. “But you’ve completely missed my point.”

I wasn’t ready to let him off the hook, because for one thing, it was steering the conversation away from ghosts. For another, what kind of snob uses “dilettante” in a sentence without irony?

“I get your point,” I said, “but I read somewhere that the number of female students in the hard sciences has gone up across the board, and a lot of people credit the geek chic on TV.”

“Let me guess,” said Emery, looking down the table—and his nose—at me. “You’re a science major?”

“Pre-med,” I confirmed, with a bit of a challenge in my voice. “And Phin is majoring in chemistry and physics.”

I realized, as their heads turned to my sister, that I might have opened a can of worms, talking about Phin’s studies. But I was proud of her, even if she chose to express her genius in an unconventional way, and Emery’s attitude pissed me off.

“Chemistry and physics?” echoed Mark, clearly impressed.

“Well,” Phin said modestly, “they’re not entirely unrelated.”

“Were you inspired by CSI?” Emery’s sneer earned him a glare from Jennie and Caitlin.

Phin answered him literally, of course. “It was Ghost Hunters, actually.”

They laughed, as if she were joking, which she wasn’t. I groaned—silently. This is why I can’t take her anywhere.

“Then why not parapsychology or something?” asked Emery, who probably would have mocked her no matter what she said.

Phin looked at him as if she couldn’t believe he would ask such a stupid question. “Because I’m not interested in the psychospiritual nature of the paranormal. I’m interested in the physical and measurable aspects.”

Jennie seemed delighted to have Emery put in his place. “I get it. Like how on those shows, they use gadgets to measure things like cold spots, electromagnetic energy, that kind of thing.”

“Exactly.” Phin nodded. “Though my concern is not only hauntings but all paranormal phenomena: ESP, mediums, spellcraft of various traditions. Only, no accredited university offers a degree in preternatural science. So—” She shrugged. “Chemistry and physics.”

“All the double majors I know,” said Emery, again with that tone, “are taking summer school.”

She answered a lot more calmly than I would have. “I’m doing two online classes and an independent study project. It’s based on the work of Semyon Kirlian in the 1930s, capturing the image of the corona electrical discharges of an object when laid on a photostatic plate subjected to a certain voltage.”

When Emery’s only response was a baffled blink, Jennie laughed. Dwayne, searching for the joke, asked, “Care to translate that for the business major?”

Mark gave him a wry look. “I didn’t get half of that, either, dude.”

Phin waved off their confusion. “It’s not important. I’m merely basing my work on that principle. The coronal aura visualizer measures the energy aura of objects in response to metaphysical energy rather than electricity.”

“This is the thing you mentioned this afternoon?” asked Mark.

“Yes. I’m curious whether anomalies underground might appear as coronas in the surface vegetation.”

That actually didn’t sound too crazy, especially for something from Phin. Smoking chemistry labs and blown fuses aside, her gadgets did usually work, once she got the bugs out. And considering she was doing things that no one—that I knew of, anyway—had ever done before, some bugs were to be expected.

I began to hope we’d get through the Gadget Girl Show without mentioning anything too out-of-bounds. But then Caitlin asked, “What do you mean, metaphysical energy?”

Don’t do it, Phin. I tried to send her psychic messages—as if I had suddenly developed a previously nonexistent skill in that area. Don’t say it.

But of course she did. “Oh,” she said, in a no-big-deal voice, “everything from ordinary high emotion to psychic events—ghosts, spells, things like that. I’m particularly interested in the herbomancy potential.” At their blank looks, and before I could do anything to stop her, she clarified, “Plant magic.”

Oh hell. My insides in knots, I gripped the table and contemplated whether I could fake a medical emergency to save us from laughter and ridicule. They’d probably ignore what she’d just said if I could manage a convincing heart attack.

But this was Phin. In the months she’d been away at school, I’d forgotten how she could make the most out-there statements seem no worse than eccentric.

Mark scratched his chin. “You think this might be able to image disturbances underground?”

She nodded. “It’s possible, if there’s some kind of stimulus.”

“Oh for crying out loud,” said Emery, and flopped into the booth corner to sulk.

Dwayne gave me a bit of a wink, unaware of my incipient mostly fake heart attack. “Is that how you found the skull, Amy?”

“Lila found it,” I said automatically.

“I think she did a spell by accident,” said Phin, because she always had to go there.

His grin turned teasing. “Do you do a lot of magic spells?”

“No,” I answered emphatically.

“That’s true,” said Phin. “Amy prefers to operate in a more mundane world than the rest of our family.”

Jennie asked, “So is your family … what do you call it? Wiccan?”

“Good grief, no,” said Phin. “We’re all Lutherans.”

They laughed, and I slumped back on the hard wooden bench, letting the raucous country music wash over me along with my relief. I should have been furious with Phin for saying these things. Whatever immunity she had, whether it was personality or some kind of inherent magic, the safety net around her words didn’t extend forever. Outside her sphere of influence, who knew what this would set off? I only knew I’d be the one dealing with it.

But today I couldn’t throw stones. I was seriously losing my objectivity. My job was to keep the Goodnight eccentricities inside and the scary real-world judgments outside. How could I do that when I kept losing my footing on the fence?

“You know what we should do?” said Dwayne. “Go look for the ghost.”

I sat up so quickly, I kicked someone under the table. “Hang on,” I said.

“That’s a great idea!” said Jennie. Was she naturally that enthusiastic, or was it happy hour talking? Either way, the bad ideas kept on coming. “We can use the corona vision thing. It will be awesome.”

“Coronal aura visualizer,” Phin corrected her.

“You guys aren’t serious,” said Caitlin, then to Mark and Lucas, “Tell me you’re not buying into this idea.”

Lucas took a swig of his beer. “Not until after some food, at any rate.”

Why wasn’t Phin saying anything? I expected her to grab her oar and start paddling us up this creek of crazy.

And even more important, why wasn’t I saying anything? I needed to put the brakes on this, but I couldn’t seem to form the words.

Mark said, “I wouldn’t mind seeing if Phin’s invention does show any disturbances underground. I mean, anything that would make digging easier.”

“Come on,” said Dwayne, flashing a game-for-anything grin. “We can video it and maybe get on a TV show.”

“I don’t think so,” said Phin repressively. “I don’t intend to prostitute my scientific integrity on YouTube.”

Mark laughed, and Emery said, “I’m glad someone is holding on to their scientific integrity.”

“It’s just an experiment,” Mark said, then drained his beer. “But Lucas is right. Not on an empty stomach.”

They kept talking, but I’d stopped listening. My knuckles ached from grasping the table like the safety bar on a roller coaster. My stomach felt like it was on the same ride. Sweat dampened the back of my neck and prickled along my ribs.

This is a terrible idea. I fixed the sentence in my mind but couldn’t make myself say it. It was like someone had turned up the dial on my cognitive dissonance to eleven, until I was paralyzed between one option and another, right brain and left brain.

Only that wasn’t it, either. I knew what I wanted. I wanted my family to stay safe and under the radar. I didn’t want the McCullochs to sue Aunt Hyacinth for delaying the building of their bridge. I didn’t want them to make life so miserable for Aunt Hy that she couldn’t stay in the stone farmhouse with Uncle Burt. So where was this conflict in my brain coming from? Amy the eleven-year-old ghost hunter? Or Amaryllis the unmagical daughter of a magical family, suddenly unable to break Goodnight tradition?

Dammit, I was stronger than both of them. I took a breath, and a figurative leap, and blurted, “I think that’s a terrible idea.”

Everyone at the table looked at me. Hell, it felt like the whole bar looked at me, though a quick peek assured me the music and drinking and flirting continued without interruption.

So had the conversation in our scarred wooden booth. They’d been talking about something else entirely, and now they all stared at me like I’d lost my mind.

Way to stay under the radar, Amy.

Mark cleared his throat and leaned across the table, lowering his voice. “So, it’s not okay with you if Ben joins us? Because if it’s not, you’d better say so fast.”

I glanced around, found various expressions of amusement and disapproval from the gang, and Phin studying me, and Caitlin staring at me like some kind of insect. Freshmanicus tactlessicus.

When my gaze returned to Mark, he bit back a smile—a sympathetic one, but still—and pointed behind me.