Texas Gothic

32



ben’s curse broke the silence in the wake of Daisy’s voice. “What is wrong with you? What are you playing at?”

Mark spoke low, a warning. “Dude. It’s not a game. Look at her.”

She wasn’t completely still after all. She shivered, her lips blue with the cold, as her breath fogged in the air around her. It was strange seeing it from the outside, but what was happening to Daisy seemed different from what happened to me when the specter appeared.

The ghost wasn’t struggling against the barrier between the plane of the living and the world of the spirit. It had found a door in Daisy.

Phin recovered first. “Ask it what it wants,” she told me.

I made a wordless sound of protest—was this the time for Twenty Questions?—but swallowed it. How would I know if I didn’t ask?

“¿Que quiere usted?” I asked, forcing my cold lips to move and my brain to find the words. Daisy’s voice said, “Búscame.”

“Look for you where?” My breath fogged the summer night air, and when I looked at my hands, they were like Daisy, mottled with cold. “¿Dónde?”

“Puedes encontrarme. Búscame.”

My brain stumbled over that one. Mark, moving closer to me, supplied the translation. “You can find me. Look for me.”

“Where?” I repeated.

“La mina. Búscame. La mina.”

“The San Sabá mine?” Mark ventured, making the same leap I did, but voicing it before I could.

“Puedes encontrarme, niña. Búscame. Búscame.… ”

“Amy,” said Ben. I could feel his growing horror even through the ice that seemed to encase me. “Do something.”

“I don’t know what!” I said through chattering teeth.

“You do,” said Phin. “You’ve got this. Don’t let it be the boss.”

I was so cold, moving felt like cracking ice in my joints. But I pushed forward and threw up a hand, just like the ghost addressed me. “¡Alto!” I said. Stop. “Leave her alone.”

“Déjala,” whispered Mark.

“¡Déjala!” I shouted, putting everything into the command. All my air, all my strength, all my love for my family and for Daisy and her squabbles with Phin. I reached down through the layer of ice and found something Goodnight in me after all.

The glow snuffed out, and I felt the sting of warmth returning to my fingers. Daisy’s arm dropped and she staggered. Ben, of all of us, was the quickest to react, and he jumped forward to catch her. His flashlight dropped to the ground and rolled down the hill.

“Whoa,” said Daisy, in her normal voice, as she hung limp from Ben’s steadying grip. “That must have been a doozy.”

And then she turned away, just in time to avoid throwing up on his shoes.

Mark and Phin took Daisy back to the house after that. She still looked green, and moaned about her head exploding. I personally thought Phin needed to shut up for a while about parapsychology being useless.

Ben and I stayed to watch the dig site, though I suspected both of us considered it a token gesture at that point. We sat on the tailgate, the night so quiet, I could hear the tiny squeals of bats hunting for their dinner, and I shivered.

“Still cold?” Ben asked.

“A little.” I rubbed my hands together, even though it was my insides that didn’t want to warm up.

He went to the cab of the truck and came back with a Thermos and a bunch of cookies in a zipper bag. “Mom packed us a lunch.”

I laughed, and a lot of the chill left me. Turning to sit cross-legged, I took the Thermos cup of coffee he offered and a chocolate chip cookie.

“So, this is your life,” he said.

Mouth full, I shook my head, then swallowed. “This is unusually exciting. Is your life full of skeletons and ghost-hunting trespassers?”

He frowned. “Only since you got here.”

“That’s not fair! Or true.”

“I’m teasing you, Underwear Girl.”

He was. His amusement heated my skin, and I sulked to hide my discomposure. “It’s hard to tell with you, McCrankypants.”

He chuckled, and I smiled, then we munched in silence for a few minutes, sharing the coffee cup, since apparently Mrs. McCulloch hadn’t thought of everything.

“So, tell me the deal with the Los Almagres mine,” he said.

I wiped at a crumb on my lip. “It’s a lost Spanish mine. No one knows exactly where it is, but there are records of it …” Then what he actually said caught up with me. “Which you must know, since you called it by the proper name.”

“What does it have to do with the …” He couldn’t bring himself to say it, and I didn’t make him.

“It’s a theory that came up when we found the ore. What if this expedition”—I gestured to the field—“was returning from the mine, taking samples of the gold they’d found back to Mexico? If they were attacked, and never made it, and the location of the mine died with them?”

He refilled the coffee cup slowly, as if organizing his thoughts. “Los Almagres means ‘the ochre hills.’ The color is supposed to show mineral deposits, like gold and silver. So folks have been speculating about the location being everywhere from Enchanted Rock to Sugar Mountain.”

“So basically, all over the Hill Country from San Antonio to … right around here?”

“Yep. Your Mad Monk”—I started at the name, because he’d never spoken it voluntarily before—“was supposedly on one of the expeditions sent to bring back sample ore to Mexico. That’s all I know. Except some people say he was scalped and that’s why he’s always striking people in the head.”

His reaction to the mention of the tale had always been so vehement that I was expecting some kind of scandalous tale, maybe even about his own family. I was more incredulous than angry—almost—when I snapped, “Why couldn’t you just tell me that?”

“Because I hate that story. Joe Kelly and his a*shole cousins scared the crap out of me with it when I was a kid. They put on monks’ robes and … Okay, it’s stupid now, but when you’re six, and someone in a scary hooded cloak locks you in a feed silo for a couple of hours, it makes a big impression.”

My anger faded. That would make a big impression on me now. “Why do the Kellys hate your family so much? Seems like it’s more about the land thing than the cattle rustling.”

“I don’t know.” He emptied the coffee cup, then screwed it onto the Thermos. “I don’t want to talk about Joe Kelly anymore.”

“Okay. Then what?”

“I don’t want to talk at all.”

“Oh.” What did that mean? We’d actually been having a conversation without yelling or much name-calling. We’d broken cookie together. Or maybe he just needed to think about what a nutty world I’d dragged him into. Or just wanted me to shut up. I wrestled with hurt and disappointment, and told myself not to be silly.

“I can go into the cab of the truck. Give you some space.”

He gave a laughing sort of sigh. “Seriously, Amy? Do I need to draw you a map?” He grabbed the waistband of my jeans and slid me across the tailgate, closing the space between us. I fell against his chest and he wrapped his arms around me. My squeak of surprise was colored with approval, but it still made him pause, holding me against him, his gaze roaming my face, lingering on my mouth before coming back to meet my eye.

“This would be the time to tell me if you still hate me,” he said.

“I don’t hate you, you moron.” He didn’t even waste time laughing. All my kisses so far had started tentative, inquiring, diffident. Ben had gotten the inquiry out of the way, and captured my mouth with his in a kiss that took permission as given. Which it was. Totally. Even if I’d called him a moron.

His hand slid up to the back of my head, and he kissed me more deeply. I cupped his face with my hands and answered some questions of my own. He had a rough chin this late at night. He tasted like chocolate and coffee.

When he pulled back, he was gloriously out of breath, and so was I. “You still want to go inside the truck?” he asked.

“Here is good,” I said, and kissed him again.

“I haul manure in this truck,” he said when I gave him the chance to speak.

That had to be the weirdest way to phrase a proposition ever, but it worked. “Inside is better.”