Texas Gothic

6



there was never a good reason for the police to be at the door at one in the morning. My imagination was supplying all sorts of horrible scenarios, making me wonder if something had happened to Mom. But surely one of the aunts would have called if that were the case. So it had to be some other sort of bad, and there was no lack of possibilities there, either.

“Maybe it’s another body,” said Phin as we hurried downstairs to the accompaniment of the dogs’ continued barking.

I knew she was not as macabre as her enthusiasm would imply. I was sure she meant “another long-dead skull for the anthropologists to dig up” and not “somebody’s husband or kid.”

What I couldn’t explain was why the memory of the two dead bats weighted my feet as I quieted the dogs and answered the front door.

The officer on the porch reminded me of a wolverine. Not as in X-Men, but as in Animal Planet—very compact, kind of squat and solid, with a mean look about the face.

I opened the door a crack, with Phin right behind me, and he held out his badge just long enough for me to see that his last name was Kelly, which matched the name tag on his khaki shirt. “Miss Goodnight?”

His tone told me two things: no one in my family had died, and he meant to be intimidating.

“Yes, Deputy?” I said, in my politest voice. He narrowed his gaze, as if wondering if I was being a smart-ass.

I wasn’t. When your family is twice as weird as normal, you have to be twice as polite to authority, because authority hates weird. Unfortunately, it’s hard to sound naturally polite when someone’s tone sets your back up. So maybe I was being a little bit of a smart-ass.

“What’s going on?” I asked, more genuinely. Behind me, I heard Uncle Burt’s rocking chair creak, as if he were getting up to join Phin and me. I shivered slightly, because it was eerie, but eerily reassuring, even after the night’s adventures. “Is everything okay?”

Deputy Kelly didn’t answer but peered over my shoulder and said, “Is that your sister in there with you?”

“Yes.” I opened the door a smidge, obliging his implied request to see her, as if checking our alibis.

Phin waved. The deputy eyed her purple cow pj bottoms and yellow spaceship pj top dubiously, and I doubt he missed the corona camera still in one hand. “It took you a while to get to the door,” he said, with an undertone of accusation.

“We were asleep,” I answered, preferring not to explain about the ghost. And we had been asleep before the apparition invasion.

He made a deliberate show of looking at all the lights on outside. “All your lights are on.”

“Motion sensors,” I lied, before Phin could say anything about Uncle Burt turning them on. I knew that his refusing to say what was going on was a power play, but I was out of patience. “What’s this about, sir?”

Despite the “sir,” the question came out more sharply than I intended, because my insides were twisting into an anxious knot. The night was too full of omens.

“There was an accident out on the McCulloch place,” Deputy Kelly said bluntly, as if watching for our reaction.

I heard Phin’s quick inhale of concern, and my hand clenched on the doorframe as in my mind’s eye I saw the two bats hitting the ground.

“Was anyone injured?” I asked. Ben? His family? Even if they were feuding with Aunt Hyacinth, I didn’t want anyone hurt.

“Ranch hand was working late to clear the cattle out of the pasture ’fore those university folks start digging, and he fell down a ravine.” The deputy hooked his thumbs on his belt, broadening his already antagonistic stance. “When I went to the hospital to interview him for the incident report, well, he was saying some mighty odd things.”

“Like what?” Phin asked. She’d been content to let me do the talking until now. I had a sinking feeling I knew what the deputy would say. I think Phin did, too, but just wanted to hear how the ghost had manifested itself, according to the ranch hand.

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that,” said Deputy Aw-Shucks, laying the good-ol’-boy country cop thing on a little too thick. “I was just stopping by, though, to make sure you two kids were okay, especially as you’re house-sitting for your aunt and all. I promised her I’d keep an eye out for you.”

He was checking up on us, all right. Checking to see that Phin and I, kooky nieces of kooky ol’ Ms. Goodnight, had been home all night, and not out hunting for ghosts or pretending to be one.

Did he think I was an idiot? Yes, he obviously did. His feelings about Phin and me, because we were city girls, or just girls, or just Goodnight girls, were written all over him. Maybe he’d switched tactics to put us off guard, but the hard edge of suspicion was still there.

“We’re fine,” I said, swallowing my anger. Anger at the condescending deputy, and because I suspected someone had told him we needed checking up on. “We’ve been here all night.”

Deputy Kelly could have felt the car hoods and made sure the engines were cold, I guess. Or maybe he thought he’d be able to tell if we were lying, with his super-cop skills.

“All night?” he challenged, glancing from me to Phin, whose bed head was impressive, but nothing compared to mine. I looked like I’d been in a wind tunnel, and I could feel the sting of a furious flush in my cheeks. I was sure that didn’t look guilty at all.

“Since Phin got back from the store.” I forced myself to relax before my anger and my nerves got me in trouble for something I hadn’t even done. “I was reading and she was working on her independent study for school.”

“Which is?” the deputy asked, still with his thumbs in his gun belt.

Phin pointed at the thing in her hands and said, “Coronal aura visual medium transfer device,” and then stopped, thank God.

The deputy, after a blank look, pretended he was smart enough to know what that was. “I see.” Then he turned to me, since I was obviously the spokesperson. “Well, you know, there’s some pretty wild stories going around these days, thanks to what they found out by the river. I just wanted to make sure you girls were tucked in tight over here.”

My heart hammered, because he was so patronizing and so threatening at the same time. We’d done nothing wrong—yet—but all I could think of was the park ranger in Goliad standing witness to Dad as he ranted about our crazy mother letting us believe in ghosts.

Phin saved me in the most unlikely way. She cocked her head, as if studying some strange species of wildlife, and said, “Waking someone up to see if they’re asleep is counterintuitive. You wanted to see if we were home. We clearly are. If you want us to be tucked up tight, you’ll have to leave.”

The deputy stared at her, jaw slack. I shouldn’t have been happy to see my sister call him on his bullshit. But I was.

“As you can see, sir,” I said, starting to swing the door closed, my polite facade back in place, “we’re fine. Thanks for your concern, and I hope the ranch hand gets better soon.”

He recovered his dignity, with a stern nod of dismissal and an “All right, then. You girls take care.” He turned to go, and the front yard lights went off just in time to make him stumble on the last porch step.

“That’s not funny,” I told Uncle Burt, addressing his rocker after I’d closed the door. “If he had twisted his ankle, we’d be stuck with him until help arrived.” Now that the deputy was gone, outrage could blossom without the intimidation factor. “The nerve of him!”

Phin, caught midyawn, looked at me, puzzled. “Why?”

“He practically accused us of going over to the McCulloch place tonight and … I don’t know what he thought we were doing. Ghost hunting and causing that accident or pretending to be a ghost, like some kind of Scooby-Doo cartoon.”

“Why would we do that?” she asked, applying logic to an illogical situation. And I had to admit, I wasn’t exactly being reasonable just then.

“I don’t know. Because our aunt is the local nutcase, according to Ben McCulloch. I’ll bet he told the deputy to come check on us.”

Phin fiddled with the controls on her camera. “I’m very curious to meet a guy who makes you completely forsake the scientific method in favor of unfounded supposition and speculation.”

“It’s called intuition,” I snapped, at my wits’ end. She just snorted, so I took a deep breath and changed the subject. “Do you at least see why you can’t go around talking about ghosts and ghost hunting?”

She sighed heavily. “I suppose this means you’re still not going to investigate the McCulloch haunting with me. Even though this is an unprecedented opportunity.”

I wanted to answer “Absolutely not,” no, I would not climb fences and trespass and traipse around in the dark with her, and it had nothing to do with the deputy—or Ben McCranky—telling me not to. But when I opened my mouth, nothing came out. My mind went blank, and I couldn’t even form the word “no.”

And who would blame me for going brain-dead? I’d had a very rough night. I didn’t want to start another argument at that hour, so I finally just said, “I still think it’s a terrible idea. But I doubt that will stop you.”

“So you don’t want to go to the dig tomorrow, either?”

“Oh, I’m going.” I hadn’t meant to say that, but once the words were out, I realized how much I did want to know what the crew from the university were uncovering by the river. It was a mystery, and I’d have to be dead not to be curious. And at least that was something normal.

The fact that an uncovered skull was the most mundane thing in my life right now didn’t bear thinking about. I warned Phin, “I want to head out first thing in the morning.” Before my resolve deserted me.

“First thing in the morning?” she echoed. Phin was not a morning person.

I sighed and started up the stairs. “Right after I take care of those blasted goats like I promised Aunt Hyacinth.”

The phone call, in its way, was as surreal as the appearance of the ghost. Why was Aunt Hyacinth so worried about her livestock? Surely she didn’t think I’d go through with my threat to barbecue them. I really should try and call her back.

But later. After I slept.

Which brought me to my most immediate problem. One look at my room and I knew I’d never get to sleep in there. Forget the ghostly afterimage on my eyelids; the place was a disaster area.

Instead, I grabbed my pillow and the quilt and went back down to the couch. The dogs came with me, Pumpkin worming under the covers and Sadie a welcome weight on my feet. Yet I still couldn’t seem to get warm.

Phin was all about the gadgets, but some things just couldn’t be measured. There was no way to quantify the difference between the comforting cool around Uncle Burt’s rocker, like a fresh breeze on a hot day, and the hard, unforgiving cold that had come with the other thing.

I shivered and tried not to think about it. Maybe I should worry about Deputy Kelly’s suspicions instead. Or I could dwell on whether everyone here viewed Aunt Hyacinth like the McCullochs did, and what had sparked the bad blood in the first place. Goodnights were quirky but usually likable. Or maybe I could just worry about the dead body by the river, and how long it had been that way.

No wonder I lay sleepless, even as Uncle Burt’s chair rocked in a reassuring rhythm and the dogs melted into boneless piles of comfort. Fatigue made my eyelids too heavy to hold up. But inside … an icy thread wove through the knot still coiled around my insides, like a snare ready to close tight.

“Why does any ghost haunt?” Phin had said. “Because it wants something.”

What could any ghost want from me?