Better Off Dead in Deadwood

by Ann Charles

  Like dust off the Ouija board? Round up some Rune stones? Buy more double-D batteries?

  “Nope.”

  “Are you ready?” I sure as hell wasn’t. Knowing that he trusted me to keep him out of trouble in the netherworld had me sweating in unlady-like places. I couldn’t even keep myself out of trouble in this world.

  “I’ll be ready after I take care of one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  He pulled me toward him and kissed me, hard and hungry, almost bruising. My internal furnace flared, lighting me on fire Phoenix-style again. I sank my fingers in his hair, pulling him even closer, hitting him with my own need.

  “Smolder, Boots,” Doc whispered against my lips. “Smolder.” Then he retreated as quickly as he’d attacked, leaving me stranded, breathing hard and sparking.

  “Okay, now I’m ready,” he said, chuckling at my huffs and snarls. “This is the part where you put the pickup in drive and hit the gas.”

  I certainly felt like hitting something. Shifting into gear, I steered the Picklemobile toward Lead.

  Just when I thought I had a grip on the reins of this thing between Doc and me, he cracked the whip and my libido shot off yet again at a full three-beat gait.

  “How much time do we have alone in the house?” Doc asked.

  I’d let him know last night that I was able to get us into the Carhart house without Wanda there, convincing her to go shopping while I showed the place.

  “I told her that I needed at least an hour.”

  “She doesn’t know it’s me?”

  “No, she didn’t ask and I didn’t give names. I think she just wants to be free of the place.” Which made me feel bad since I was giving her false hope today. I’d have to make it up to her by selling the damned haunted house.

  “Can’t say I blame her.” He let his head rest against the seatback, closing his eyes, going silent.

  I glanced at him several times on the three miles up to Lead, giving him space to prepare for whatever was about to happen. I just wished there were a guide book for whatever I’d need to do to get him back safely.

  I rolled into the Carhart’s drive and then cut the engine.

  Doc opened his eyes and looked over at me. “Your forehead is one big wrinkle.” He grabbed my hand, lacing our fingers. “Tell me why.”

  To start with, “What’s going to happen once we get inside the house?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Wow,” I said, my sarcasm back for another round. “Surprisingly, that’s not comforting at all.”

  “Sorry, Violet, but this is what I deal with every time I enter someplace that might be haunted. Prudence may rush us as soon as we step inside, or she may not even show up for the party.”

  “What happens if she rushes us—rushes you?”

  “I let her lead me down her memory lane without any of my road blocks in place this time.”

  Even with his blocks in place last time, she’d knocked him flat. What would it be like with his defenses down?

  “So, I sit there and wait for you to wake up?” I should have brought something to knit.

  “No, you watch me, make sure I don’t stop breathing, count to thirty, then pull me back out. You’ll be my lifeline.”

  That “don’t stop breathing” part made my hands tremble. I looked out the front window at the Carhart house, not wanting Doc to see my panic. Lifelines are supposed to be calm, not scrambling for paper bags to breathe into so they didn’t pass out.

  As much as I wanted to call this whole thing off, I tucked away my fears of losing him and focused on the task at hand. “Is thirty seconds long enough?” He’d been under three times as long last time with her.

  “Time moves differently when I’m in their world. I need long enough for Prudence to relive the memory so I can see what she was up to before her killers arrive. Then you can work your magic and pull me out before I get slammed with the surge of energy that will come with her death.”

  Right, the surge that could fry his brain. “What if I don’t know what magic to do?”

  “You do. You’ve done it before.”

  He sounded so sure of me. I wished I felt the same.

  His hand touched my leg, comforting. “Violet, I know you can do this. If I weren’t sure of it, I wouldn’t go in that house.”

  “What happens if I can’t?” I whispered, grimacing.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Again, not comforting.”

  “Welcome to my world,” he said and squeezed my thigh. “Let’s go get this over with.”

  The porch steps didn’t creak, but the front door did as it swung open. My feet didn’t need many more reasons to turn around and run the other way, especially after my last visit to this spook-joint with Harvey in tow.

  Doc shut the door behind us and deadbolted it, sealing us inside.

  When I nailed him with a wide-eyed glance, he caught my hand. “She’s just a ghost. She can’t hurt you.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about at the moment.”

  “I like it that you’re worried about me.” He pulled me toward him, his gaze narrowing to an exaggerated squint. “Damn my eyes,” he said, sounding a little like Clint Eastwood, “I find that kind of touchin’.”

  His impression of Hogan from Two Mules for Sister Sara didn’t quite hit the mark, but he made me smile anyway. “I think I like your impressions of Bogart better than Clint.”

  “I collect blondes and bottles, too,” he mimicked Bogart in The Big Sleep, and then led me into the sitting room where Harvey and I had scarfed down brownies.

  I breathed in the now familiar scents of the Carhart house—vanilla and a hint of floor wax.

  Doc stood in the center of the room, sniffing for a whole other reason.

  “Is she close?” I asked, checking the pallor of his skin—still normal.

  “No, but she’s here.” He pointed at the chair next to him. “Is that where Prudence spoke through Wanda?”

  I nodded, skirting the chair to peek out the front window at the Picklemobile, my touchstone of normalcy.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” he said.

  Without a word, I followed him up to the bedroom where Prudence had accosted him the last time we’d toured the place.

  I watched him walk to the dresser, noticing how he used the furniture to steady himself. “Are we getting hot?”

  His skin had paled enough to be noticeable, but not as drastically as I’d witnessed before when Prudence had hovered in the doorway.

  “Yeah,” he looked behind me into the hall. “She’s close.”

  Goosebumps prickled my arms. “She’s not standing right behind me again, is she?”

  “No. I think we need to go up into the attic.”

  “That sounds like what someone would say in a slasher movie right before getting chopped into pieces.”

  “She’s just a ghost, Violet,” he reiterated.

  “Yeah, but a chatty one.”

  “Better than one with a grudge, like Wilda.”

  I shuddered at his mention of Wilda Hessler, the long-dead sister of my first client. Wolfgang Hessler had tried to burn me alive in his upstairs bedroom. I’d never forget the acrid odor of lighter fluid as Wolfgang poured it around me while claiming his dead sister sat in the corner watching with glee.

  The ghost of Wilda Hessler still had me double-checking shadow-filled corners, especially after Cornelius told me a few weeks back about a blonde girl ghost who’d approached him in a dream and wanted him to relay the message that I was invited to her tea party.

  I peeked down the hall, wondering if Prudence were standing there waiting for us. “Doc, do you realize how absurd I would have found this conversation back when I first met you?”

  When I looked back, Doc’s smile was tight. “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

  “Yeah.” Considering what I’d witnessed at the Mudder Brothers with the albino, I’d have preferred being in the dark about it still. “You f
eel up to climbing a ladder? It’s the only way into the attic.”

  “Onward ho,” he said without gusto.

  I lifted an eyebrow. Maybe if I kept things light and playful my panic wouldn’t run rampant. “I may be easy, big boy, but I’m no ‘ho.’”

  He followed me into the hall. “Oh, you’re not easy.”

  I stopped below the attic trap door. “Really? What am I then?”

  “Complicated.”

  “Hey!”

  He tweaked my nose. “As in not boring. Complex works, too.”

  “If we’re going to stick with C-words, I have a better one. How about ‘charming.’ As in irresistibly charming. Or charismatic.”

  His face had taken on a grayish hue, but he played along. “How about ‘confusing’? As in spinning me every which way, keeping me guessing.”

  He was one to talk, but I resisted punching him in the shoulder since he looked about ready to keel over.

  “I prefer more positive adjectives,” I said, grabbing the long-handled hook I’d learned about a month ago when Millie had sent me up into the attic to get what turned out to be Prudence’s box of goodies. “Like ‘captivating’ and ‘compelling.’”

  Even Millie had known about Prudence. She’d first described the ghost in her attic as: The old lady who lives up there. The dead one. Back then I’d had to bite my lip not to smile, thinking she’d been optically deluded. That was long before Prudence had made a point of changing my mind.

  I hooked the metal ring in the trap door and pulled it open. Dust floated down, circling us, carrying the scent of old cardboard and musty dropcloths.

  “You’re forgetting one of my favorite words for you,” Doc said, wiping at the sweat beading on his upper lip, a telltale sign that we were close to the source, aka Prudence. He pulled down the rickety ladder attached to the door.

  “You mean ‘cute’?” That word always made me feel like a puppy with floppy ears. I pointed at the ladder. “I’ll go first,” I offered, in case I needed to lend him a hand up.

  At his nod, I climbed. I’d forgotten how dust-blanketed the attic was. Wiping my hands off, I glanced around and groaned. What kind of an idiot wore black pants in a dusty attic?

  Doc came up after me, his complexion almost waxen. I caught him by the arm and tugged him up the last few rungs. The thought of getting him back down if something went wrong with this experiment made my chest tight.

  I looked around the room, trying to ignore my anxieties. If Millie was right and Prudence had been up here for most of her after-life—what a dreary place to spend eternity.

  “Well, you are often quite cute,” Doc said, picking up where we’d left off. He swiped at the spider webs trying to ensnare him. “But I was thinking of ‘caring.’”

  “Caring?” I rasped around the dust coating my vocal cords. “You like that I’m caring?”

  “Oh, shit,” Doc gasped. He leaned down, bracing his hands on his thighs, his eyes closed, his breathing labored.

  I touched his back, bending next to him. “Let’s go back down.”

  He shook his head.

  I rubbed his tense muscles. “What can I do?” My gaze darted around the attic, trying to see what I couldn’t. Where was she? How close? I tried to shield him with my body even though I knew it was useless.

  “Show me where you got the box of teeth,” he said.

  I’d forgotten that he knew I’d found them up here. I’d hidden that tidbit from Harvey and from Cooper, who now had possession of the teeth.

  I zigzagged through the half-rotted cardboard boxes, the dropcloth covered furniture, past the dust-coated baby crib frame and old chests, making my way over to the shadowy corner of the attic where the cupboard leaned against the wall. My mouth now tasted like attic. I should have brought a water bottle along. I could have used it to splash Doc back to the present.

  Doc followed, stumbling several times but catching himself, his skin now ashen.

  “Here,” I said, opening the cupboard door. “This is where I found it. Millie said it had been hidden here since she was a child.”

  Millie was no spring chicken, so I guessed the box with the teeth and other goodies had been stowed away for at least a half century. Unfortunately, Millie would be spending the other half-century of her life behind bars. I wouldn’t be writing any country ballads about Millie’s life since she’d been more than willing to sacrifice me in order to appease her girlfriend, the bitch from hell.

  Something thumped heavily behind me. I whirled around and found Doc on his hands and knees.

  “Doc,” I raced to his side, squatting next to him, holding him steady. “Doc, talk to me.”

  “I need to lie down.”

  “No!” He might never get back up.

  “Just for a minute.”

  Panic rose from my gut and started climbing my esophagus. “Let’s go back downstairs, Doc. We can do this another time.”

  “No better time,” he whispered, and collapsed into me, knocking me back on my butt with his weight.

  “Doc?”

  His body went limp in my arms, half draped over my lap. I pulled my legs free and rolled him onto his back. Kneeling over him, I lowered my ear to his heart.

  Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

  Whew!

  Gulping a mouthful of dust, I used my sleeve to wipe away the sweat on his face and began to count under my breath. “One-one thousand. Two-one thousand. Three-one thousand.”

  I grabbed his hand, his skin felt so cold! “Five-one thousand. Six-one thousand.”

  Using both hands, I tried to use friction to warm him up. “Nine-one thousand. Ten-one thousand.”

  Behind his closed lids, I could see his eyes moving rapidly back and forth. I checked his pulse; it raced, matching mine. “Thirteen-one thousand. Fourteen-one thousand.”

  Shit! How was I going to wake him? I should have talked to him more about that. “Fifteen-one—”

  Doc’s hand squeezed mine. His eyelids fluttered open, his dark eyes locking onto mine.

  I could have cried in relief. “Oh, Doc. Thank God you woke up.”

  “Violet,” he said, only his voice sounded off, higher, strained. “You have taken too long.”

  “What do you mean? It’s only been fifteen seconds.”

  “It may be too late.” His mouth was moving oddly, like a ventriloquist’s doll. “Too many have been freed.” His voice had taken on that mid-Atlantic Eastern accent I’d heard come out of Wanda’s mouth days ago. Fear scuttled up my spine on spider legs.

  I froze, my breath wheezing from my throat. “Who am I talking to?”

  “You know who I am, Violet Parker.” Doc’s hand squeezed mine harder. “Time is fleeting. We must not play such games.”

  Holy fuck!

  “Prudence?” I squeaked.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I once had a blind date with a good-looking guy who met me at my parents’ front door with his ventriloquist’s dummy in hand—or rather on hand. Trying to be an optimist, I looked forward to an evening full of puppeteer jokes and followed him to his car. I smiled through our three-way conversation over mini-corn dogs and put up with the dummy’s suggestive whispers in my ear through the barbecued ribs. But when the apple pie à la mode was served and that plastic hand started moving up my thigh under the table, I knocked my chair over in my haste to escape to the bathroom, where I scrambled out the window and called Natalie to come rescue me.

  Kneeling there in the Carhart’s attic next to Doc while Prudence used him like her own wooden dummy, I fought that same impulse to scramble out the nearest window and call someone to come to the rescue.

  But that someone would be Doc.

  I was on my own here with a ticking clock and a dead woman.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked, wondering if this were just another nightmare I’d wake from any minute.

  Doc’s mouth moved before the voice came out. “You need to find the timekeeper.”

  Time ke
eper? Did she mean a watch? We had found a locket in that box from the cupboard, along with some cufflinks, wooden toys, and the teeth. But no watch of any kind.

  Doc’s body jerked, then began to shudder so hard that his heels bounced on the floor.

  Damn! How long had it been since he went under? Fifty seconds? A minute? I had to get him back here with me.

  “Doc, wake up.” I tugged on his hand that still clutched mine.

  He twisted away from me hard enough to pull me down on top of him, my nose bumping into his jaw. I pushed up, trying to tug free of his hand so I could catch my balance and start pinching and elbowing or whatever it took to drag him out of there.

  His eyes were closed, his face scrunched in pain.

  “Doc!” I yelled. “Open your eyes.”

  The shudders grew more violent. I tried to force his mouth open, afraid he’d bite his tongue or swallow it, but his jaw was locked tight.

  “Come on, baby,” I said, yanking my hand from his and straddling him.

  Shit! Shit! Shit! What should I do?

  An idea hit me. I straddled him and planted my knees on his wrists to restrain his hands. Leaning down, I held his face as still as I could and kissed him. His mouth shook and trembled under mine but gave nothing back. For a second, as I tried to coax his lips to life, I thought I smelled something slightly floral and sweet-scented coming off his shirt, like irises. After a couple of seconds of no response I sat up, searching his face for some clue that he was coming back to me.

  His eyes flashed open wide.

  “Doc?” I bent closer, trying to see clarity and recognition in his gaze. “Are you okay?”

  “Bring me the librarian!” Prudence’s higher voice commanded.

  I screamed and slapped Doc across the cheek hard enough to knock his head sideways.

  His shudders stopped. Between my thighs, I felt his muscles relax, his body sink into the floorboards.

  My palm stung. I closed my fist around the pain, ready to swing again if Prudence sat up to bite me.

  “Doc?” I whispered, afraid to lean down near his face.

  He groaned and mumbled something.

  “What did you say?” I asked, cringing at the sight of the red mark spreading across his cheek.