Texas Gothic

12



i could not catch a break from Ben McCulloch. Even when he wasn’t personally giving me grief, the timing of his arrival made my awkward word-vomit even worse than it was.

Ben had spotted our table from across the bar and headed our way. He’d cleaned up, and it looked great on him. Not too neat, though. His dark blond—or light brown, I hadn’t decided—hair was mussed, his collared shirt un-tucked from his unpretentious jeans. Somewhere behind me, sounding far away, I heard Caitlin explaining that she’d invited him to join us, though she probably meant join her, and I didn’t think she’d be wrong, because when Ben McCulloch saw me his steps stuttered just a little before he continued through the jostling crowd.

Or maybe someone had stepped on his foot, I didn’t know.

I only knew that it was one thing too many. The roadhouse had filled up, and the buzz of voices joined the blare of music from the speakers pounding in my ears and splitting my head. The roller coaster hadn’t stopped, it had just taken a bone-jarring turn.

“I’m going to the restroom,” I said, and zipped out of the booth without meeting anyone’s eye, not caring—much—that Phin, crazy gadget and all, was looking like the picture of sanity compared to me.

The restrooms were on the other side of the bar. I should have skirted the edges of the room instead of going straight through the crowd in the middle, where the drinking and flirting was a little rowdy and the music was loud enough to drum out conscious thought. I ducked between two big guys who were both intent on a single girl, right as another guy turned, his hands full with two brimming plastic cups of beer.

I ran right into him. Or he ran into me. I was a little unclear on the details, except that we both tried to occupy the same space at the same time and I was suddenly drenched in beer.

A lot of beer. And the sign over the bar did not lie. That was some ice-cold draft.

The shock of it stilled the ping-ponging of my thoughts, at least. I think Beer Guy cursed, but nothing registered past the chill and the smell of hops and the drip of foam from my hair. A spot cleared in the crowd as people edged away from the swearing and the mess, staring at him, at me, and—oh hell—my soaked white T-shirt. Was I going to get through one day without showing the whole county my bra? “Are you okay?”

The question did not come from Beer Guy. It was a familiar voice, deep and close to my ear so he didn’t have to yell. All things considered, Ben McCulloch’s appearance, as if out of thin air, didn’t surprise me at all.

“Your friend needs to watch where she’s going,” said Beer Guy.

Ben had taken a protective hold of my upper arm. I drew a breath, ready to fight my own battle, but by his cutting stare, it was pretty clear he had his own beef with the guy.

“Accidents happen, Joe,” Ben said coldly. “And I don’t see you covered in Budweiser.”

Joe certainly seemed dry, as far as I could tell in the neon light. The two cups in his hands were mostly empty, and what beer I wasn’t wearing had already soaked into the rough wood floor.

“I’m out two beers,” he said.

Ben reached into his pocket, pulled out a bill without looking at it, and dropped it into one of the plastic cups. “Have a pitcher on me.”

I didn’t think it was possible for the guy to look any angrier, but at the sight of the twenty soaking in that inch of beer, his eyes narrowed to slits of cold loathing. “Good luck with your bridge, McCulloch. Must be tough with the Mad Monk sending people to the hospital. Hope you have some ranch hands left by the time you’re done.”

The only sign of Ben’s anger was the tension in the hand on my arm. His expression was coolly composed, which I realized, because I’d seen it a lot, meant he was really angry. “Thanks for the concern, Joe. If I’m still hiring before you’ve found a job, I’ll let you know.”

Joe looked like he was going to explode, so I didn’t resist as Ben steered me away. The crowd murmured their disappointment that there wasn’t going to be a fight. So did Joe’s friends, who’d shouldered up beside him. But if Ben was half as accurate with his fists as with his words, someone might end up in the hospital. And not from the Mad Monk.

“Friend of yours?” I asked when I’d recovered my powers of speech.

Ben kept me close as we wove through the crowd. I didn’t really like to be steered, but didn’t think I had much of an argument where driving myself was concerned. Not while my bangs still dripped beer onto my nose, anyway.

He gave a rueful sigh, as if to make light of the ugly incident, but his underlying tension remained. “Somebody’s great-grandfather hangs someone else’s for cattle rustling, and they never get over it.”

“Cattle rustling!” I started to look back, but Ben’s grip tightened, keeping me from a very obvious goggle.

“Don’t stare,” he said. Then, once we’d gained a little breathing room, he asked, “Are you okay?”

“Well, I’m wearing enough beer to get arrested, but I’m not such a delicate flower that I’m going to crumple when a big meanie yells at me. I mean, you should know that.”

His brows lowered, and he seemed to contemplate a number of answers, but before he could pick one a cute Hispanic girl in a Hitchin’ Post T-shirt intercepted us.

“Oh my gosh,” she said, handing me a clean bar towel, which I took gratefully, blotting my dripping bangs. “I saw what happened. Are you okay? Joe Kelly has been a jerk since grade school.”

“Joe Kelly?” I echoed. “As in Deputy Kelly?”

“His son,” said Ben, eloquent in his brevity. But I heard his grandfather in his tone. Never trust a Kelly.

I mopped at my T-shirt, but quickly realized the towel wasn’t going to cut it. “I can’t go back to the table like this,” I said. “I’m not decent.”

Ben glanced down, then quickly back up, clearing his throat. “Does your family know about this exhibitionist tendency of yours?”

My face flamed, but before I could work up a retort, the waitress hit his arm. “Be nice. I’ve known you since grade school, too.” Then she turned me toward the restrooms with a little shove. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up. I’m Jessica, by the way.”

“Amy,” I said automatically, looking over my shoulder at Ben, who seemed amused to see me herded like a nanny goat. “I think I’m a lost cause. I should just go home.”

Jessica kept propelling me to the hallway in the back of the bar, and a door that said Cowgirls. “Then let’s get you dry enough to not set off a Breathalyzer if you get pulled over.”

Deputy Kelly would love that, I bet, so I stopped fighting. In the bathroom, where I tried to touch as few things as possible, Jessica had me strip off my T-shirt so she could rinse it in the sink—it couldn’t get any wetter—and dry it under the hand dryer. I stood in my bra and toweled off my hair and debated whether it was “nosy” to seize the opportunity that fate had given me.

Jessica looked barely old enough to work in a bar, and she was obviously a local, since she knew Ben and Joe both. Maybe it wasn’t playing fair, but I figured, what the heck. The roar of the hand dryer would cover our voices.

“So,” I began, in what I hoped was a subtle sort of way, “it sounds like you know all the families around here.”

She grinned. “You mean like the McCullochs?” At my expression—clearly I hadn’t been subtle at all—she laughed. “It’s kind of a logical guess, you being neighbors and all.”

I sighed and leaned against the counter, then thought better of it and stood up. “Okay. So, what’s his deal? Was he always such a crankypants?”

“Not really.” She thought about it while she waved my shirt under the hot air of the dryer. “He and Joe were a year behind me in high school, but it’s a small campus. Ben made good grades, went to parties, had lots of girlfriends. Lots of girlfriends.”

Her gaze slid sort of speculatively my way, and I sucked in my stomach a little bit. I mean, I wasn’t vain, but I was human, and also standing in my underwear under fluorescent lights.

Jessica went on. “But he wasn’t popular popular, if you know what I mean. Even with his being a McCulloch, which you can imagine is a pretty big deal here. He was too laid-back to be really A-list.”

“Laid-back?” I couldn’t picture it.

Jessica nodded. “I don’t think he got so serious until he came home from college.”

She could have meant when he graduated, but something in her tone, in the knit of her brow, said not. “When was that?” I asked.

“Sometime last year.” She glanced at me in the mirror. “You know about his dad, right?”

“Uh, no.” Just that I’d made an idiotic statement about him having parents, and that he’d stuttered over his answer in a way that now gave me a sinking dread in the pit of my stomach.

“His dad died not long ago.” She said it solemnly, but without the hush of a very recent death. “And Ben’s granddad isn’t doing so well. The ranch is kind of a lot for his mom to handle on her own, even with the help of Mr. Sparks, so Ben came home to help out for a while.”

“How long is a while?” I asked.

She thought about it. “Well, it’s been since last year sometime. So …”

Someone came into the restroom and went into a stall without looking at me twice. Jessica hit the blower again, and I retreated to my thoughts.

The idea of Ben putting school on hold for his family gave my heart an odd and painful twist. As much as I complained about my own family, I’d do anything for them. I mean, I was here, dealing with Phin and her inventions for a month. But my whole world was wrapped up in going to college—I’d picked all my high school classes and extracurricular activities based on what would look good on an application. If I had to stay home and run the shop for Mom for an indefinite amount of time … ? I’d be twice as cranky as he was.

The girl from the stall came out, washed her hands (thank God), and left, drying them on her jeans. When the door had swung closed behind her, Jessica turned to me in a decisive sort of way. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Uh, sure.” I hoped it wasn’t “Why do you give a fig about Ben McCulloch?” because I didn’t have an answer to that.

“Are you going to catch the Mad Monk?”

The knot in my chest, the one that had sent me fleeing the booth in the first place, the one that had slackened in my distraction, wrenched tight. So tight and so hard that I let out an involuntary wheeze. I grabbed the counter by the sink to steady myself, and deliberately rolled my eyes, hoping the sound came off as exasperation and not Holy-smokes-what-is-wrong-with-me?

I stalled, because I couldn’t come up with an answer to my question or hers. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

She stated the obvious. “Because you’re a Goodnight. Everyone knows about Ms. Hyacinth.” She spoke so matter-of-factly, as if I were the weird one for not realizing this about my family. “How her potions have a little something … extra.”

I stared at her. “You know about that?”

“Oh, honey, everyone knows about that.” Her nose made a rueful little wrinkle, and she amended, “Not everyone believes, but I do. And …”

The dryer had run down again. She cast a look at the door, then hit the button once more with her elbow. “My boyfriend works for the McCullochs. They’re good people, and don’t make the guys stay late if they don’t want. Vincent’s not scared … but I am.”

I could see that. I could also see, from the level way she met my eye, that she trusted me, my family, to make it right. I wanted to tell her she was putting her faith in the wrong person. She should be talking to Phin—not that Phin exactly inspired confidence—or any of my aunts or cousins. Anyone but me.

“What all has happened?” I asked, without quite meaning to. “Besides the guy who was hurt last night.”

“There have been these strange lights and noises in the pasture after dark. Rumbles and moans that echo around the hills. Sounds like chains rattling.” My face must have shown what I thought about that, because she rushed to tell me, “I know it sounds silly. But Vincent and I were, um, well, we were out parking one night, up on the lookout near the bluff? And I heard it myself. It’s eerie. Comes from everywhere and nowhere, and you kind of hear it in your bones as much as your ears.”

What she described was exactly what I’d heard outside the night before, right before the bats had gone on their erratic and fatal flight. I pictured the ominous fall of the twin winged bodies, and could understand why she looked so frightened.

“Could it have been some kind of digging or construction?” I asked, looking for a mundane explanation.

“At midnight?” She hit the dryer again, to cover our voices. “The thing is, stuff only started happening since they began clearing the ground for the new bridge. The sounds and lights. Steve Sparks got thrown when his horse got spooked, and something keeps knocking down the fence in the west pasture. Then Joe Kelly reminded everyone of the time his dad and uncle saw the Mad Monk—it was when they were sinking a new well.”

“Were they out on an ATV?” I asked, remembering my chat with Mac McCulloch. As I weighed truth against legend, it occurred to me that if you were joyriding where you shouldn’t have been and got in an accident, a Mad Monk might deflect the blame and make people forget you were misbehaving.

“Yeah. Joe’s uncle Mike had a broken arm and fifteen stitches in his forehead. And folks have been saying that the last time it was this bad, back when they were working on the highway? A guy was killed.”

“Killed?” She had my full attention. It was still a lurid sort of story, but her face was pale and earnest.

She nodded. “They found him at the bottom of one of the ravines with his head smashed in. No one could figure out how, though the coroner supposed he must have hit a rock when he fell.”

“Was it the same ravine as the guy who fell last night?”

Another serious nod. “That’s what they say.”

“Who says?” I asked, maybe too strongly. Because Aunt Hyacinth had been gone for almost a week, and I knew that gossip couldn’t be laid at her door.

“Everyone,” Jessica answered, then paused, chewing her bottom lip. “So … are you going to look for the Mad Monk?”

My quick denial caught in my throat. I wanted to help her, but I knew I couldn’t, and I needed to tell her that, to say something. But my throat had seized on the words like a miser’s fist on a nickel and wouldn’t let go.

The harder I tried, the worse it got. Much worse than at the table—the knot in my chest seemed to wrap around my lungs, making it painful to breathe, and a clammy sweat broke over my bare skin.

The horrible pregnant pause went on and on, until Jessica dropped her gaze, trying to hide her disappointment, to gloss over how she’d silently pleaded for my help and I had ripped her heart out and stomped on it. “This shirt is a loss,” she said. “Let me go see if we have any Hitchin’ Post ones in the office.”

She dashed out, and I sagged against the counter, the tightness easing. I filled my lungs, pushing away the panic, only to have new fears rush in.

What was wrong with me? This wasn’t my normal struggle to balance my worlds. I didn’t hunt ghosts. So why couldn’t I just say that?

And why did I have such a hard time looking myself in the mirror? When I did, all I could see was Jessica asking for my help, and Mac McCulloch demanding it. Because I was the one who took care of things.

Apparently, I wore it like a sign.