Texas Gothic

31



ben and I started bickering again as soon as he told me he was going on the stakeout with us.

“You don’t have to do this.” I was still arguing in his truck as he pulled up to the gate at Goodnight Farm, where we were picking up Daisy. “Mark will be there. It’s not like Phin, Daisy, and I will be sitting out in the middle of the field waiting for the boogeyman to come and get us.”

He turned to face me, bracing a hand on the back of the seat. “I’m not worried about the boogeyman, I’m worried about your damned diesel truck. I’ll deal with whatever weird thing anyone says or does. I won’t comment or call them crazy or anything. So you just deal with the fact that I’m going to be there.”

I clamped my jaw on another useless protest. Daisy was waiting inside, ready to go, having exchanged the miniskirt for a pair of camo cargo pants. I ran upstairs and put on my last clean pair of jeans, herded the reluctant dogs out of the house, threw some feed down for the goats and the donkey, then dashed to the truck, where Daisy was sitting in the middle of the bench seat, telling Ben God knows what while they waited on me.

Mark and Phin were already at the dig when we pulled up. They climbed out of the Jeep as Ben parked the truck farther up on the hill overlooking the V-shaped slope of the excavation field. Phin wrestled with the heavy satchel on her shoulder until Mark took it from her. And she let him.

“Well, I’ll be dipped,” murmured Daisy, leaning against the truck fender to wait for them. “Is the mad scientist human after all?”

I raised a warning finger. “Do not tease her, Daisy Temperance Goodnight, or I will make you sorry.”

Mark set the satchel on the tailgate of Ben’s truck. Phin had changed clothes, too, and if she’d done so in the car, that could account for her ponytail coming loose. Maybe even the color in her cheeks, visible in the light of the battery-powered lantern Ben had set in the bed of the pickup.

I slanted a look of narrow-eyed speculation at Mark, but his attention was on Daisy. “How about you?” he asked. “Do you need any equipment or anything?”

“I leave that to Phin,” she said, and Phin shot her a death glare, then started handing out gadgets.

She handed me the EMF meter and plopped the infrared thermometer into Ben’s hands. It looked a little like a sci-fi laser pistol and he asked, “What do I do with this? Shoot aliens?”

“Just be ready to take temperature readings if there’s a paranormal event,” she said.

“Um. Sure. And I’ll know when that happens?” Phin gave me a look, like I’d purposely inflicted him on her. I took over, explaining how to work the thermometer. It wasn’t brain surgery, and he nodded to show he understood. “So, what do we do now?”

“We go watch Daisy’s dog and pony show.”

While we’d been talking, Mark and Daisy had gone down the hill. I could see him gesturing to the various holes and explaining the stakes in the ground as Phin went to join them.

I risked a glance at Ben. “How are you holding up?”

He looked lost and a little grumpy. “I feel like I’ve gone into the Twilight Zone.”

“It helps if you don’t think about it too hard.” Catching his hand, I tugged him away from the truck. “Let’s go.”


Daisy stood at the farthest point of the partitioned field. She shook out her arms, shrugged her shoulders, closed her eyes with her hands down by her sides, looking a lot like a gymnast preparing for a routine.

She frowned and flexed her hands, as if reaching toward the ground. “I get very old death—violent death—but it’s …” She shook her head like she was considering and rejecting descriptions. “Old. Finished.”

“Is it because the bones have been removed?” asked Mark. Ben, Phin, and I stood beside him, out of Daisy’s way.

She shook her head again. “No. I’ve read empty burial sites before.”

Ben glanced at me with a question, and I answered quietly so I wouldn’t distract her. “Daisy sometimes consults for the police. They keep it on the down low. ‘Police turn to sixteen-year-old psychic’ isn’t a headline city hall wants to see.”

Daisy ignored us. Hands extended to the ground, she walked up the hill, stepping carefully over the stakes and twine. “Okay, there’s still something here.” She pointed, and Mark made a note of the spot. I hadn’t noticed until then that he was carrying his clipboard and grid diagram. He penciled in two more places she indicated as she went.

When she came to the pit the grave robbers had made, she bent and gathered a handful of dirt. “Wow. They managed to tear through this site. I’m just getting greed and self-interest, not malevolence.”

“Anything older?” Phin asked. “That’s where we found the rosary and the satchel with the gold ore in it. It might help to know what the grave robbers were looking for.”

“Let me see.” She dropped to her knees and dug both her hands into the ground. “Earth doesn’t conduct very well. It’s more of an insula— Whoa.”

“What?” I took a step closer, hopeful for some clue. I noticed Ben did, too.

Daisy pulled her fist from the dirt and opened it up. Her hand shook slightly in the beam of the flashlight, and lying in her palm was a small chunk of metal.

“Is that a musket ball?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” said Daisy, in a strained voice. “Somebody take it, please.”

Mark jumped forward and plucked the bullet from her hand. The whoosh of her relieved breath stirred the cloud of dust around her. “That’s definitely what killed that guy,” she said.

“But we found an arrowhead by the A site,” said Mark. “We’d been thinking perhaps a party from Mexico was ambushed by Apache or Comanche.”

“Native Americans had firearms, too,” said Ben. “They were pretty quick to step up the arms race. I mean, wouldn’t you?”

Daisy sat back on her heels. “Here’s all I can tell you. Definitely violent death, I’m thinking you’re right about the ambush. There’s a surprised quality to it. That guy”—she pointed to the musket ball in Mark’s hand—“was thinking about gold, but not for himself. Spain, the Church maybe. God was on his mind, but … well, God usually is just then. Or so I’ve seen.”

Tentatively, I held out my hand for the rusted metal ball, and Mark dropped it into my palm. Nothing weird happened, and I let out my breath. The bullet wasn’t really round anymore, but misshapen and pitted.

“I saw the apparition around about there,” I said, pointing to a spot not far from her. “And the local ghost rumor concerns a monk and a treasure. It seemed too much of a coincidence to find a rosary and a bag with gold ore in it. Even if the Mad Monk is a smoke screen, is it possible the actual apparition has a similar story?”

She shrugged apologetically. “I don’t know what to tell you, Am. This whole site is … well, it’s dead. What’s here is old and done, like a closed book.”

Mark ventured an interpretation. “So, even though these men died violently, they’ve moved on.”

“Right. So your monk, Amy, either has something unfinished, or maybe fears what happens next. Maybe he died in a state of mortal sin, as my principal, Sister Mikaela, would say, and doesn’t want to face judgment.” She climbed to her feet and dusted off her hands, the spikes on her bracelet and collar gleaming in the glow of Ben’s flashlight.

“But he didn’t die here.”

Disappointment sank heavily onto my heart and I realized I’d pinned a lot of hope on Daisy. I don’t know what I’d expected her to find, but it was more than this.

“So, that’s it?” said Phin, voicing my feelings. “You drove two hours for a little hand waving?”

Daisy glared at her. “I didn’t say I was finished.”

“What about a séance?” Phin asked.

“Are you kidding me?” Daisy had to say it, because I was speechless.

“Whatever it takes to figure out Amy’s ghost problem. No matter how unscientific.” My heart warmed at her sacrifice. Even when she added, “Besides. I want to see what the Kirlianometer shows when you do your thing.”

Daisy rolled her eyes, and Ben, who’d been quiet all this time, said, “Okay, you guys. I’ve gone with the flow so far. But I have to ask. What’s a Kirlianometer?”

I laughed at the surreality of Phin explaining paraphysics, or whatever she was calling it now, to Ben McCulloch. Maybe I was a little hysterical. I was definitely sort of sleep deprived.

So when that sudden, deep whump grabbed at my insides, for a moment I thought I’d imagined it. But the others all jumped, too. Ben looked at me, startled, and asked, “Is that the sound that—”

He didn’t finish the question. Over the hills came a low groan, an unearthly moan that rose to a squeal of protest, sharp enough to arrow to heaven, soft enough to float there. The hills carried the sound and transformed it to an eerie chorus of sighs and whispers, until they trailed into silence.

Mark grabbed Ben’s arm as he turned his head, trying to echolocate. “Which way … ?”

“That direction,” said Ben. He pointed toward the granite outcropping that had loomed over me the night before. “Let’s take the truck.”

And with exactly that much discussion, they ran for transportation—Ben, the same person who’d yelled at me for running through the pasture chasing mysterious noises. But I understood completely that desperation of trying to find something concrete to hold on to in a sea of frustration and mystery.

“Guys!” I yelled, and sprinted after them. Like hell they were leaving me behind.

I was so caught up in the moment, I didn’t notice the cold until I was already through it. I dismissed the gleam that wasn’t moonlight. But I couldn’t ignore the command that barked across the night.

“¡Alto! ¡Cuidado! No vayan ustedes.”

The only thing more shocking than the order was the voice. I spun to stare at Daisy, who stood like a marble statue bathed in moonlight, suffused by the unearthly glow and a chill that reached between us into my bones. Her eyes were hollow and unseeing as she lifted a heavy hand toward me.

“Escuchame, niña. Escuchame o tu puedes morir.”

Listen to me, little girl. Listen to me or you will die.