Texas Gothic

26



“get in the truck.”

Ben’s voice left little room for argument, but I tried to squeeze one in anyway. “I don’t think—”

“Amy, I am not messing around.” His face was grim, and he held out his hand. “Give me your key so I can get your purse and whatever else you want. I’ll drive you home.”

“I am not leaving her here on the side of the road.”

“You did before, to hare off across the pasture.”

“That was different. I didn’t think I’d be gone long. I wasn’t expecting your land to be booby-trapped.”

He took my arm, turned me toward the truck. “I’ll call Triple A from your house.”

“I can call them from right here,” I said, pulling out of his grip and turning toward Stella.

He turned me right back. “At least call from in the pickup. In case whoever did this is still around.”

I could have pulled away again—he was persistent, but not rough—only his words distracted me. “What? You think someone is waiting in a tree to snipe me?”

We reached the truck and he backed me up against its side before I could react, taking my shoulders in his hands—my bare shoulders in his hands, and oh my God, the places that made me shiver. He seemed blessedly ignorant of that, unobservant of the blush spreading up from the blanket or the hitch in my breath as he gazed intently into my wide eyes and said, “What kind of idiot are you?”

That snapped me, mostly, out of my haze. Before I could form words, however, he went on. “Someone slashed your tire. With a knife. Not a ghost, a person.”

“I know that.” I met his stare, willing him to see the reasonable Amy beneath the flake I knew I must seem.

He studied me for another moment, his thoughts visibly shifting in patterns I couldn’t read. His hands, though—I didn’t think he realized his hold on my shoulders had softened, and that as he was thinking his thoughts, his right thumb was sliding back and forth over my skin in an unconscious motion that, if we had been any other people in any other situation, would have been a caress. The traitorous flutters in my pulse didn’t know the difference.

Or maybe he did realize it, an instant before he dropped me like I was hot, and not in a good way. His gaze zipped away from mine as he stepped back and cleared his throat. “So. Your key?”

“I’m not leaving Stella here,” I said, putting iron in my voice. “I bought it with my own money when my dad didn’t want me to and my mother said she’d pay for it for my graduation present. It was almost new, and it’s not a Goodnight car, it’s mine.”

I broke off—hell, I nearly slapped a hand over my own mouth—because some insight clicked behind Ben McCulloch’s eyes and I realized I’d given too much away somehow.

He confirmed it when he said, after a long, digestive pause, “Okay. I’ll change the tire and you can drive home on the spare.”

An automatic objection jumped to my lips—I could and had changed a tire before. My family called me to do it for them. But it might be hard to do naked, wrapped in a horse blanket, and I couldn’t bring myself to put my guanofied clothes back on when there was another option.

Sadly, I was more fastidious than feminist, and I dropped the key into Ben’s waiting hand.


I didn’t even consider protesting when Ben said he’d follow me to Goodnight Farm. It was only sensible, given that I was driving on one of those donut spare tires on a very lonely road.

I’d been joking, but alone in the car on the way to the farm, the possibility of someone hiding and watching us—me, if I’d been alone—loomed large and unpleasant. Someone had taken a knife to something I owned. The note on the windshield only underscored the maliciousness of the act.

So I was darn glad to have Ben McCulloch following me home, opening the gates for me, and parking his truck beside Stella in front of the house.

I was not happy to see the goats cavorting through the yard.

The security lights were on, but the house was dark. I heard a muffled bark and saw the dogs hiding under the porch. With a sigh, I climbed out of my car. Phin must not be home yet.

Ben met me at the front gate, opened it for me, and handed me the clothes I’d left in the back of his truck. “Go inside and get in the shower. I’ll feed the escape artists.”

“You have to bang the lid of the feed—”

“I remember,” he said. Of course, he’d seen me do it the day we’d met. Which seemed like an awfully long time ago.

I let him handle it, which felt like a major breakthrough somehow. The dogs emerged from hiding and waited impatiently for me to let them into the safety of the house. I kicked off my filthy shoes and left them, and my clothes, outside. As I opened the door, the lights came on, and I allowed myself a little sigh of relief at being inside the security system, and inside the house.

“Thanks, Uncle Burt.” I started for the stairs, then paused with my hand on the rail and addressed his immobile rocking chair. “Don’t mess with Ben, okay? He helped me out of a jam tonight.”

The chair gave no sign of agreement, but I was too tired and stinky to argue.

Upstairs in the shower, I scrubbed under water as hot as I could bear it, even though the soap stung the scrapes on my back and my palms—especially my palms—as I lathered my hair about five times. I avoided Clear Your Head shampoo and went for Mellow Mood (“Breathe deep and let your tension go down the drain”). Mom was so right. Saying I had nothing to do with the supernatural was like saying I was a vegetarian just because I only ate chicken and fish once in a while.

By the time I’d dried off and combed out my hair, I’d stopped feeling like I was going to hit the ceiling at the faintest noise. I put on flannel pj pants because I wasn’t sure I’d ever be too warm again, and searched for a baggy old T-shirt because the scrapes on my back were bleeding.

I winced at them in the mirror. Aunt Hyacinth would have something useful in her workroom, so I headed downstairs.

And stopped when I saw Ben sitting on the couch, thumbing through a copy of Texas Gardener without really looking at it.

I’d expected him to leave after feeding the goats. Or maybe I hadn’t, because I didn’t say goodbye. So maybe I’d unconsciously invited him in. He’d certainly made himself at home, his legs up on the couch, but not his feet. I’ll bet that was his mother’s doing. His hair, under the lamplight, was the burnished gold-brown of the rock we’d unearthed that afternoon.

He looked up, and I pretended I hadn’t been staring.

“Better?” he asked.

“Almost. You didn’t have to stay.”

“Where’s your sister?”

I came down the rest of the stairs, oddly a lot more self-conscious in my pj’s than I’d been in the horse blanket. “Still out with the gang, I guess.”

“Did you call her?”

I gave an exaggerated roll of my eyes. “Wow. What a great idea. I’ll have to try that next time I’m stuck in a cave.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “Fine.”

Since he didn’t look like he was about to leave, I went into the workroom and opened the cabinet closest to the door. First-aid supplies for every need, including mine. I grabbed a jar of ointment and, after a moment of indecision, headed back to the den.

I handed Ben the jar. “Since you’re here, and you’ve seen most of this already, you might as well be useful.” Turning around, I reached over my shoulder to gather the back of my shirt, while I held the front down securely. Because modesty is my middle name.

“Jeez, Amy.”

That didn’t sound like admiration of my alabaster skin, so I figured it must look as bad as it felt. “I’m sorry,” I said, embarrassed, and let go of the fabric, wincing as it slithered down. “I’ll wait for Phin.”

“You’d better not.” He hooked the ottoman with his foot and pulled it over, then sat in Uncle Burt’s chair before I could stop him. “Sit down,” he said, indicating the ottoman in front of him.

I did, gingerly, then reached over my shoulder again to hold my shirt out of the way. Lavender and tea tree oil and bergamot wafted pleasantly as Ben unscrewed the lid, adding to my mellow mood. At least until the cool ointment touched my abraded skin.

I flinched with a hiss and a whimper.

“Don’t be such a baby,” he said.

“Distract me,” I ordered. He was a bit of a distraction just being there, and his touch was gentle as he smoothed on Aunt Hyacinth’s potion. The lavender scent was clean and crisp, and the bergamot smelled like Earl Grey tea. “Tell me about the Mad Monk of McCulloch Ranch.”

“No. I am not enabling you. Especially not if you use that ridiculous name.”

“So … what do you call it?”

“I call it bullshit.”

I twisted to glare at him then regretted it—vocally—because the places he hadn’t reached yet still hurt when I moved.

“That’s what you get,” he said, and dabbed another raw spot.

I wanted to tell him I was asking about the story so I could sort it out from the reality of the specter that haunted me. I had ample, painful evidence of my ghost, but there was only hearsay and questionable accounts for the head basher they called the Mad Monk. The theory that they were separate things had solidified in my mind, but I still didn’t know what the Mad Monk was. Rumor or real?

Did the fact that Ben didn’t believe in the Mad Monk count for its existence, or against it?

He got to another deep scratch, and I hissed at the sting. He made an apologetic sound, but coated the spot thoroughly. “I ought to make you go to the doctor. God knows what got into these scratches.”

“Unfortunately, I know exactly what got into them.” A horrible thought made me stiffen. “Oh my God. I wonder if I need a rabies shot.”

“You can’t get rabies from guano.”

I twisted, despite the twinges, to look him in the eye. “Are you sure?”

He smiled sheepishly. “I looked it up on my phone while you were in the shower.”

Ben McCulloch had a devastating smile. It was sad that he didn’t use it very much. But probably safer. I seemed to always end up in my underwear around him. I didn’t want to think what would happen if he was actually nice.

The dogs had been sleeping on the floor in front of the fireplace, and their sudden explosion of barking made me jump. Ben did, too, since one minute they were zonked and the next on their feet and running to the door.

A sweep of headlights lit the front windows, and I heard an engine rumble, then cut off. “It’s probably Phin,” I said.

Ben pulled his phone from his pocket with his un-greasy hand and looked at the time. “I should hope so.”

I pulled down my shirt carefully. The scrapes barely stung at all anymore. Good old Aunt Hyacinth.

There were two sets of footsteps on the porch, and then Phin and Mark came in. Before I had time to remember I’d been angry with her for not answering her phone, she rushed over to me and said, “I swear, I didn’t hear my cell. I got a five-alarm heebie and called you as soon as I could.”

“It’s okay,” I assured her. “You called when it mattered.” Appearance of the specter put simply falling down a hole in perspective. Or maybe that was my mellow mood.

Ben stood, his returning tension making me realize how much I hadn’t missed it since I’d come downstairs. Mark gave him a bit of a look, surprised and curious, maybe a little doubtful, then asked, “Everything okay?”

“No,” said Ben. “Someone slashed Amy’s tire. And left a note on her windshield.”

I was wondering if he’d forgotten about that. Obviously not. Mark looked at me again, with more alarm. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” I realized I was holding the jar of first-aid ointment. “It’s been an interesting night.”

“Do you still have it?” Phin asked. When I looked at her blankly, she clarified, “The note.”

Ben pulled it from his pocket. I hadn’t seen him put it there. Phin turned it over, front and back. “Looks like it was torn off of something else. And it’s not in red ink like the other one. He or she must have written it with whatever was on hand.” Holding it up to her nose, she sniffed delicately. “Smells like cannabis.”

I hadn’t noticed, but Phin handed it to Mark, who smelled it, then looked at Ben, who raised his hands, protesting innocence.

“It’s not because of my truck. Right now it mostly smells like bat crap.”

Phin took the paper back and headed for the workroom. “I’m going to do some CSI magic. Don’t tell Emery.”

Ben watched her go, then glanced at me. “She’s just joking about the magic part, right?”

“It’s a fifty-fifty chance with Phin,” I said. Not a lie.

He put on his let’s-get-serious face and turned to Mark and me. “Here’s what bothers me about this. There’s an implied threat in that note, especially with the tire. What if she’d been alone out on the road?”

Mark got to business, too. “You think someone specifically meant to threaten Amy?”

“I think everyone in town knows that the Goodnight sisters are turning over rocks and literally digging up skeletons.”

The woman in the bar bathroom came to mind, but I didn’t think she could have gotten out to put the note on my car since she was working, so I didn’t mention her. “It’s not just me, though. The dig crew got a note on their van. And there are plenty of people of the sentiment that we should let sleeping monks lie.”

I also didn’t mention that Ben was one of them. But he seemed to take my point.

“Ever since we started this bridge, it’s been chaos. Weird noises in the pasture, men not wanting to come to work, fences down, cows going where they’re not supposed to be.” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, then looked at me, grim and determined. “Amy, you asked me about the Mad Monk, and I’ll tell you, I don’t believe in him for a minute. But something is going on. And someone doesn’t want you poking around. Who knows what they’d do to stop you.”

I sat down in Uncle Burt’s chair. The note, the tire, the woman at the bar—they were fairly dwarfed by everything that happened in the cave. But hearing Ben put it that way was a fresh, new slice of disturbing.

Mark leaned against the wall to the kitchen, arms folded, thinking over what Ben had said. “Maybe I should stay here tonight. I mean, not to be sexist or anything—” he added, in response to my indignant noise.

“The dogs—” I began, but Ben cut me off with “Are the world’s biggest chickens.”

Which was true, though I didn’t like him saying it. “But they bark loud enough to scare off the devil.” There was also Uncle Burt, and Aunt Hyacinth’s less-traditional security system. The one place I did feel safe was at the farmhouse.

Mark said rationally, “It’s already one o’clock. I have to be at the dig early if we’re going to get done before the Fourth of July party. I might as well catch five hours of sleep on your couch.”

“Fine,” I said, because I was tired of discussing it.

Ben nodded, as if he had any say in the matter, then went to the door. “I have to go. The party preparations start at oh-dark-thirty, and I also have actual work to do.”

I walked with him, as if this were a normal social call and I were a normal hostess. Ben had been plenty chatty with Mark, but when we stood at the door, he seemed suddenly at a loss for words. He finally settled on “Be careful, Amy,” and let himself out.

When the door closed, I cut my eyes to Mark, daring him to comment. He raised his hands, protesting his innocence. “I didn’t say anything. But … why are you in your pajamas?”

“It’s a long story. Where were you that Phin couldn’t answer her phone?”

“Trying out the other bar in town.” He flashed a devilish grin, but I didn’t quite buy misbehavior from him.

“Whatever.” I went to the couch and started taking off the extra cushions. “You’d better not have volunteered to stay here in order to make time with my sister.”

“I would never take advantage of the situation.” Then he glanced again at the door where she’d disappeared. “Do you think it would work?”

I couldn’t give him an answer. “Phin is predictable in some ways and completely random in others. She’s got great powers of observation, but she’s a little obtuse about the things—the non-science things—closest to her.” I smiled brightly. “And if you break her heart, I will put a hex on you myself.”

He laughed as if I were joking. I was getting to be more of a Goodnight by the minute.

I couldn’t give an answer on what I thought about that, either.