Texas Gothic

34



delphinium Goodnight, when she got her game on, was a force to be reckoned with.

Mark and Lila met us at the door. All the other dogs were confined to the mudroom. Daisy was upstairs in one of the bedrooms, her migraine so bad, she threw up whenever she moved.

“That would be the opposite of helpful,” I said after Mark explained. “Where’s Phin?”

“In the workroom.” Mark glanced at Ben, who had been silent the whole drive, his tension like an electrical field around him. “How are you holding up?”

“Let’s just get this done.”

I’d pushed Ben way out of his comfort zone, and I wasn’t sure we would ever be comfortable together again. I met Mark’s sympathetic gaze and led the way to the back room.

Phin had covered the center counter with printed-out maps, tiled together into one big plot of the McCulloch Ranch. I was stunned she’d had time to run off all those pages, let alone match them together.

She was crushing something up with a mortar and pestle. When I came in, she handed both to me and said, like I was her lab assistant, “Keep crushing that until it’s a smooth paste. Then put it in that copper bowl with about an inch of water.”

I did as she said. A curious sniff identified marjoram, ginger, lavender, and pennyroyal, but I couldn’t begin to say what they were for.

Phin turned to Ben with the same brusque efficiency. “I don’t suppose you have anything on you that belongs to your grandfather? Something he wears or uses every day would be best.”

Ben shook his head slowly. “No. I wasn’t expecting to need a toe of bat or eye of newt, either.”

“Toe of dog,” she corrected him automatically. “What about something that he gave you? Or an item that symbolizes something you do together? I need a link between you.”

He pulled a guitar pick from his pocket. “How about this? Mac taught my dad to play, and he taught me.”

“Hmm. Yeah, okay.” She took it from him. “I can make this work. Strong emotional resonance, and three generations. Three is a good number.”

“What can I do to help?” asked Mark.

“Light that Bunsen burner for Amy. She’s got to heat that potion.”

We obeyed like trained minions, while Ben stood back and watched. It didn’t take long, and then Phin handed him a silken cord, from which dangled the wrapped guitar pick. It seemed to be weighted, so that it swung like a pendulum.

“Put this in the potion Amy is heating. And don’t think such negative thoughts. Think about your grandfather. Hold him in your mind. That’s why you need to do this, because you’re close to him.”

I grabbed the bowl with a pot holder and moved it off the flame. I hadn’t made a potion in seven or eight years, but it comes back to you, like riding a bike.

“Hold on to the string,” I cautioned. “The water is hot, and you don’t want to have to dig it out with your fingers. Trust me.”

He did as I said, watching me as I held the bowl between us while the potion steeped. “I thought you were the normal one.”

I smiled up at him slightly, despite the urgency of the situation. “No, you didn’t.”

“Well, relatively.” He watched me as if he were seeing a stranger, and I wanted to plead that I was still the same girl I was an hour ago in his pickup. But this was more important.

“I’m a Goodnight,” I said. “Some things I just can’t get away from. But we’re going to find your grandfather, Ben.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“No. But I believe this is our best chance.” I raised my gaze from the bubbling leaves, a strange purple sort of tea. “Thank you for trusting me.”

He looked away first. “How long do we have to hold this in here?” he asked Phin.

“Until you have your granddad pictured in your head,” she chided from over by the map. “So stop talking to him, Amy, and let him concentrate.”

He closed his eyes, but it had all the sincerity of a kid pretending to take a nap. “This is never going to work.”

“Ben, listen to me,” I said, tapping into the part I never reached for, because it was too scary, too painful a stretch. “You know your grandfather better than anyone. When you think of him, what does he smell like?”

He shifted awkwardly. “Leather. Sweat. Horse. Tobacco.”

I caught Phin nodding at me in approval, and went on. “Tell me something he taught you. Did he teach you any songs on the guitar?”

“Of course.”

The purple of the potion was seeping up the white silk cord more quickly the more he immersed himself in memory. Phin checked it and said, “A little more.”

“Can you sing a song he taught you?” I asked Ben.

He opened his eyes, and the purple stopped rising. “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.”

He sighed, but started a hoarse baritone croon, so like his grandfather’s my skin prickled.

“As I walked out on the streets of Laredo …”

His voice, knit with memories, drew the potion up the silk, until the length was soaked through. “Keep going,” said Phin as she took the weighted cord from Ben’s fingers. She lifted the weight from the bowl and it dangled, twisting on its string, dripping sodden leaves into the water.

Ben kept singing, eyelids lowered as Phin moved to the map on the table. “I spied a young cowboy, all wrapped in white linen …”

Linen like a shroud. What a macabre song to teach a little boy.

I could sense something, like a rising breeze, curling around me, around Ben, and Phin, stirring the curtains, and the papers on the table. The door was still closed, but the silk-wrapped weight began to swing in the invisible wind.

Phin extended her hand over the map, and the pick swung like a mad pendulum, though her hand remained steady.

“All wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay.”

“Got it,” said Phin.

Ben’s eyes snapped open. “You know where he is?”

“I know the area.” She circled it in red marker and handed the map to him. “Now Lila does her thing.”

Lila barked at her name. She was already wearing her harness and search-dog vest. As we gathered the first-aid kit and supplies, I stole a moment to ask Phin about our next obstacle. “Do you know how to work Lila on a search?”

“I’m not going to do it. You are. She likes you best.”

Last fall Aunt Hyacinth showed me how to work with Lila so I could write a paper for school. We practiced together one afternoon—but that was her normal search-dog training.

“I’m talking about her special training, Phin. I don’t do magic, remember?”

“You need to quit saying that. Besides, most of the doing is done, you just have to use it.” She handed me a familiar tabbed notebook as the guys waited impatiently to leave. “Aunt Hyacinth really did leave instructions for everything.”


Ben was wound tighter than a watch. His anxiety seemed almost a physical force, pushing me away. Even Lila felt it, laying her chin on the seat between us and whining very softly. I stroked a reassuring hand over her back. He could push, but we weren’t going anywhere until we’d found his grandfather.

Mark wasn’t far behind us, following in the Jeep with Phin. A stretch of highway, two gates, and a lot of dirt road later, we reached the coordinates Ben had entered into his GPS from Phin’s map. It was a rugged stretch, where years of water runoff had carved ravines and arroyos into the limestone hills. And it was deserted, as far as we could see.

“No search party, and no Grandpa Mac,” said Ben. “This is a wild-goose chase.”

“This is where he is. Trust me.”

“How can you be so sure?” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I can’t believe I got so caught up in this crazy idea.”

I let all the pitfalls in that statement lie and concentrated on the important part. “Phin may seem like a nut, but there’s no one smarter about this stuff.”

He dropped his hands and looked at me, reading the certainty in my face. After a long study, I read the recommitment in his. To the plan, anyway.

“Okay,” he said. “What’s next?”

I scratched Lila’s ears as she panted eagerly on the seat between Ben and me. On the drive over, I’d read Aunt Hyacinth’s instructions, and they weren’t complicated, especially since I’d done some casual training with the dog already. “Next, Lila narrows the search.”

We climbed out and I held the door open for her. She jumped down, circling without taking her eyes off me. As if she knew how important this was.

Ben gazed over the daunting stretch of terrain. “But it’s a big spot.”

I crouched in front of the collie. “That’s why we need the dog.”

Mark’s headlights swept the truck as he reached us. Phin rode with him, and as Ben and I conducted this part of the search on foot, they would follow.

Clenched tight in my hand, I had the soaked and wrapped guitar pick. It was staining my palm purple as I held it out to Lila to sniff. She snuffled it, inhaling the essence, then licked my face. With a scent item, I’d take it away so it wouldn’t distract her from what she was supposed to sniff out. But this wasn’t about a physical scent—it was about a supernatural bond.

Lila turned in a circle and looked expectantly from me to Ben.

“Tell her to find your granddad,” I said. “Picture him really clearly in your head, and then tell her to go.”

As far as he’d come with me—with us—he still hesitated. “This is crazy.”

“Ben.” I stepped in front of him, took his arms, and willed him to look at me. It was hard to meet his eye. I felt like I was standing there naked, letting him see a part of me, my life, that I kept hidden away from everyone. Even myself.

I was the gatekeeper. And tonight I’d thrown the doors open to the enemy forces. I was full of anxiety: that breaking my rules would let something bad happen, that I wouldn’t be able to protect myself or my family from a world full of contempt. I had to push worry aside and show Ben that I believed in magic completely and this would work.

“You don’t have to trust in magic,” I told him. “You don’t have to trust Phin or my aunt. But trust me. This is the best chance of finding Mac in a hurry. Please. You don’t even have to trust me for long. Just long enough.”

He gazed back at me, doubt behind his eyes. “You and your magic dog.”

“Me, my sister, and my magic dog.” I smiled, reassuring.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. I wondered what he was picturing behind them. “I’m ready.”

“You have to have Grandpa Mac firm in your mind. Clear. Vivid. His smell, his voice. His essence.”

“Got it.” Then he looked down at Lila and said, “Find Granddad Mac.”

Lila barked and spun on her back legs. She set off in one direction, then the other, then back again, tracking. I heard the change in the tenor of the Jeep’s engine as Mark put it in gear, ready to trail us as we followed Lila on foot.

We were able to keep up because, while she ran side to side, narrowing each time as she homed in on the target, we could take a straighter path. But at the top of a hill, the dog raised her head, gave a loud bark, and took off like she’d been shot from a cannon.

“Come on.” I broke into a run, with Ben behind me. We skidded down a valley, then climbed up the steep slope on the other side, the dry, loose soil making it hard to get traction. At the top I paused, searching for the glint of Lila’s reflective vest in the dark. I spotted her arrowing across a flat space, then up another hill.

This time she stopped, panting, waiting expectantly for me and Ben to catch up. When we reached her, I said, “Where’s Mac, Lila?” and she turned in a circle, then lay down.

“What does that mean?” asked Ben.

“She’s supposed to lie down when she finds something.” I tried to remember exactly. “Maybe she can’t follow his trail any farther.”

Ben turned in a slow circle. “But he’s not here.”

I turned, too, scanning the terrain. I could see Mark and Phin headed our way in the Jeep, driving carefully over the rocky hills. The night carried the purr of the engine and the sound of Lila’s panting breaths.

Then Ben grabbed my arm, his hand hot on my skin.

“Do you hear that?”

When I froze, Lila did, too, and her panting quieted for a second. Just long enough for me to hear what Ben did. A soft voice singing.

The breeze carried it through the hills like a phantom, but as we listened, Ben still holding my arm, the song strengthened, until I could hear words as well as a tune, even over Lila’s panting.

“When I walked out on the streets of Laredo …”

“Which way?” I asked Ben, who knew the terrain.

“Here.” He started along the ridge, and I realized why Lila had stopped where she did. The drop-off was terrifyingly steep.

Ben doubled back on a cutback that took him lower, and as he made the turn, he stopped to get his bearings and sang out, “As I walked out in Laredo one day.”

The answer came right away. “I spied a young cowboy all dressed in white linen …”

They finished the stanza together, with Ben picking his way down the steep drop, holding on to the branches of trees as he went.

“All wrapped in white linen and cold as the clay.”

Mac lay halfway down the slope, his fall stopped by a dwarf cedar. I could see his outline in the moonlight. He tried to get up as his grandson approached, but Ben ordered him to stay where he was.

“Amy!” he shouted up at me. “Get on the phone and call nine-one-one. Have them connect you with the sheriff. I think Mark and I can get Grandpa up and into the Jeep. Have the ambulance come to gate thirty-two.”

I barely had any bars of service, and my fingers shook as I dialed. We’d found Mac, but in what kind of shape? I was surprised how much relief could hurt when it cycled right back into worry.





35



once I made it down the hill, I handed Ben my flashlight and knelt by Mac’s head. “Stay still, Mr. McCulloch. Let me check you over.”

He ignored me, of course. “I saw him, Ben,” Mac said, trying again to rise. Ben, after a moment of still surprise, gently but firmly pushed his grandfather back down.

“Hold still, Grandpa. We called for an ambulance.”

There was a soft hitch in his voice that made my heart hurt. Ben left his hands resting on Mac’s shoulders, reassuring both of them, I think.

A wet darkness soaked Mac’s gray hair, and I ran my hands lightly over his skull, feeling for lumps. My fingers came away smeared with blood, but it seemed to be tacky and clotted, and there was a good-sized goose egg on the back of his head. He was certainly showing no lethargy as he batted my hands away.

“I don’t need a damn ambulance. I just fell down the gol-durned hill and couldn’t get up. So I sat here to wait for someone to come the hell and find me.”

“You did the right thing,” said Ben.

“Were you singing so Ben could find you?” I asked, meaning to distract him as I checked for other injuries. No problem moving his arms, for sure. But his legs …

“I was singing,” snapped Granddad Mac, “because my leg hurts like a sonovabitch and it was sing or cry like a gol-durned girl.”

He was not saying “gol-durned.” And when I ran my hands over his lower extremities and he hollered “mother effer,” that wasn’t what he really said, either. Ben looked mortified at his grandfather’s language. Not to mention the name he called me as I confirmed his hip was broken.

It didn’t help that Mark and Phin arrived just then, half sliding down the hill. “Did you find him?” Phin asked. “Is he okay?”

I ignored them all. I ignored the language, and my own tender sympathy for Ben and Mac both. I focused only on the problem I could do something about.

“It’s not your leg, Mr. McCulloch,” I said, all business, and using his full name since he didn’t seem to recognize me. “It’s your hip.”

“Baloney,” he said through his teeth, lying back—finally—with a horrible grimace. “Only old women break their hips.”

“And old men who fall down cliffs.” It wasn’t much of a cliff, but it was enough. “Phin,” I said, “hand me the ice pack from the first-aid kit.”

She dropped the bag by Mac and found the instant cold pack, crushing and kneading it before handing it to me.

Ben made another call while we worked. “We found him,” he said. One of the knots of anxiety in my chest came a little loose at that “we.” I heard the tiny sound of distant cheers over the phone. But Ben’s expression didn’t change as he held my gaze with his unreadable one. And a new knot drew tight around my heart.

“We already called for an ambulance. Come in at the gate at mile marker thirty-two. Mark will meet you out there in his Jeep.” He looked at Mark, who nodded his cooperation. The brusqueness of Ben’s tone made me think he was talking to the sheriff or deputy, but he softened a fraction when he said, “Tell my mom …” He paused uncertainly, then drew up his resolve and finished, “Tell her it’s going to be fine.”

He said it like he was going to make it fine, by his own force of will if necessary, and I shivered, for no reason I could name.

Granddad Mac was as restless as he could be with a broken hip. He kept moving, cursing at the pain. Whenever I came near his head with the ice pack, he shoved it away.

“Come on, Mr. McCulloch. This is going to make you feel better.”

“Nothing but a horse tranquilizer is going to make me feel better, missy!”

Phin took the cold pack from me and shifted to where he could see her in the spill of the flashlight. He stopped his restless thrashing. “I remember you. You’re the Goodnight witch.”

“That’s right,” she said, and held the cold pack up where he could see it. “And this is a magic ice pack. I put a potion inside that will ease your pain and make you feel calm and relaxed.”

“Now wait just a minute,” said Ben. I opened my mouth to shush him, but he ran over me. “If you’re seriously planning to use some kind of sedative on my head-injured grandfather …”

“It’s not—” I started, because I knew that was a standard cold pack, nothing at work but natural chemistry. But Phin shot me a look that froze my tongue, then leveled a stare at Ben.

“You’re right,” she said. “This is powerful stuff. But I think we should let Grandpa Mac decide if he wants it.”

“Hell yes! Bring it on.” Mac practically snatched it from her.

“Grandpa …,” said Ben. “You’re not exactly—”

“What?” Mac demanded, holding the ice pack to his head. “I’m not what? Sane?”

“That’s not what I was going to say.” But from the clench of his jaw, that had been what he meant.

“Deep breaths, Grandpa Mac.” Phin held his hand, stroking his arm. “The potion won’t work if you get yourself in a lather.”

Whatever Phin did, the fight seemed to slip from Mac’s body on the sigh of his exhale. He retained enough to glare at Ben. “Why do these Goodnight girls treat me more sane than my family does? They actually ask me about things. No one else ever consults me anymore.”

“But what were you doing out here, Granddad?” asked Ben. “What were you thinking?”

I was only thinking about calming the waters until the ambulance got there. “What happened, Mr. McCulloch? Did you hit your head when you fell down the ravine?”

“I hit my head when that damned ghost rose up from the ground and scared the bejeezus out of me!”

“You saw him?” I asked, startled. “What did he look like?”

“Great hulking shadow, came out of the dark. Hit me on the head with his cross. You know, the long-handled ones.” He pantomimed something like a cross that leads the processional line in a church. I’m sure it had a technical name, but I didn’t know it. Mac voiced my own thoughts when he said, “Not very monklike of him, was it?”

“No.” It didn’t sound much like my ghost, either, which had always had a sort of light associated with him. I would describe the shape as tall and lean, not hulking. And he’d never had any kind of staff, crook, or cross when I’d seen him.

I picked up the flashlight and shooed Phin out of the way. “I’m going to look at your head for a second,” I told him. Phin did a lot of eye rolling toward the ice pack. I took a guess at her meaning and said, in the same hypnotic voice she’d used, “Don’t worry. The magic ice pack is already working. You won’t feel anything.”

“Oh for crying out loud,” Ben burst out. But Mark, who’d been silently standing by, surprised me by shushing him. “It’s Dumbo and the lucky flying feather, dude. Let them do their thing.”

Ben glared at him, too. But he didn’t say anything else, and neither did Mac as I lifted the corner of the ice pack to get a look at the knot on his head.

The lump was good sized, but it went out, which was good, not in, which would be very bad. The blood that caked his white hair came from a cut, and as I examined it more closely, I saw that a bit of what I had thought was dried blood was actually a sliver of something else. “Phin, hand me the tweezers from the kit, will you?”

“What are you doing now?” asked Ben. Then to his granddad, “Are you okay?”

“Oh fine,” said Granddad Mac, sounding a little drunk. “This stuff is great. Too bad everyone doesn’t know about magic, or we could put this stuff in a bottle.”

“Good thing,” said Ben, through not-quite-clenched teeth.

I ignored that as I concentrated on pulling a sliver of old wood from the cut in Mac’s scalp. I was willing to bet real money that it hadn’t been a ghost that knocked Granddad Mac down the hill.


The sky was beginning to lighten by the time the EMTs whisked Grandpa Mac off to the hospital. It seemed everyone had been there: Steve Sparks, Mrs. McCulloch, and Deputy Kelly, and the search party, which included his nephew Joe, along with Dumb and Dumber. The last two were on ATVs, which seemed to be asking for trouble, even if the head-bashing Mad Monk was a complete myth.

Then most of them left again: Mark offered Mrs. McCulloch a ride to the hospital with him and Phin, and Steve Sparks went back to the ranch to keep an eye on things, which left Ben stuck with me and Lila, who couldn’t go to the hospital.

We stood a little ways from where the remaining searchers were debriefing. “I’ll get someone to take us back to Goodnight Farm,” I offered, but hoped he would say no, that he wanted me to come with him.

Which goes to show that you shouldn’t ask questions, even unspoken ones, that you don’t want the answer to.

“That would probably be best,” said Ben, without meeting my eye.

In the grand scheme of things, getting dumped just hours after hooking up didn’t rate a blip on the world radar. But all the same, it hurt like hell.

Later, I’d give in to it. Now, I reassured him, “Granddad Mac will be okay.”

He raised his brows with a sardonic edge, more cutting than I’d seen in a while. “Did you see that in your crystal ball?”

I flinched at the hit. He hadn’t even given me an en garde. “Seriously?” I asked. “You want to do this now?”

“I don’t know,” he parried. “Is there ever a good time to ask what the hell were you thinking doing magic on my grandfather?”

“I—” I wanted to explain that it hadn’t been magic so much as psychology and the Phin Effect turned up to the maximum. But the door I’d thrown open to Ben had been slammed in my face, and the instinct to now bar it was too strong for me to ignore.

He leaned close, keeping his voice low, but tight with anger. “I specifically told you not to talk to my family about the ghost. About any of that mess. Even for a trespassing, busybody ghostbuster, that takes a lot of balls.”

I could hear the fuse sizzle in my head, but I was helpless to stop the inevitable explosion of verbal shrapnel. “Well, maybe if you weren’t such a secretive, neurotic control freak, you could have told me what I needed to know.”

“Want to know.”

“Need. Ben, you saw what happened tonight at the dig.” It seemed so long ago, so much had happened since Daisy had channeled the ghost’s warning.

He scrubbed his hands over his face, like he was trying to rub off the fatigue and emotion of those intervening hours. “I don’t know what I saw anymore.”

I should have guessed that without Phin there, his acceptance would unravel. I could see the thread, but I couldn’t catch it, and I didn’t have the power to knit it back together, except with my words.

“You saw what you saw, Ben McCulloch. If you can’t believe me, why can’t you at least trust me?”

“Because all I can see is my grandfather lying in a ravine telling me that a flipping ghost knocked him down there.” He swept a hand toward the drop-off, but encompassed the entire breadth of our relationship. “You talked to Granddad Mac about the ghost, and then he went wandering off to find it!”

I didn’t need help feeling guilty for that. “Do you really think he hadn’t heard the rumors from anyone else? His memory is shot, not his ears.”

“So now you’re telling me how to handle my own family?”

“No!” The protest burst out of me, and I wanted to burst, too, the pressure was so strong in my chest. Beside me, Lila whined, and I lowered my voice because I knew people would be straining to hear. “How did you even get that? Could we please stick to my actual offenses? Which, as far as I can tell, are simply, A, existing and, B, treading on your hallowed domain.”

“It’s about you existing in complete chaos and bringing that here. When I’m around you,” he said, sounding as miserable and frustrated as he did angry, “I get caught up in you and your crazy world. I can’t handle that. I just want to go back to a time when I didn’t know that people could see ghosts or find people with magic or make me forget my responsibilities in the cab of my pickup truck.”

I blushed, certain every one of the search party had heard that last part. “That wasn’t magic,” I murmured, low and hurt. “That was just you and me.”

He sighed. “It was, Amy, because you’re you. You’re the most dangerous one of all, because people can’t see you coming. They just think you’re this quirky, nosy, annoying, adorable girl who yells at cows in her underwear. Then before they know it, they’re relying on spells instead of good sense.”

His words cut my heart. They stabbed at the weakest part—the stitched-together edges of my divided life.

“That’s a lousy thing to say, Ben McCulloch.” I hated the catch in my voice and I hated him for putting it there, and I hated myself for letting him. “You’re just as bad for making me think you’re a sweet, stand-up guy who takes care of his family, when you’re just an uptight jerk trying to control every facet of his life. Well, you can’t. Life is too full of crazy things that don’t fit in neat boxes.”

Before I could waver, I grabbed Lila’s harness to go. “But at least you’ll have one less crazy thing in yours. Have a nice one.”

Then I marched past him to find my own ride home. For the first time ever, I’d managed a great parting line and a grand exit. And it still felt like crap.