Optical Delusions in Deadwood

by Ann Charles

  “What are you talking about?” I touched my bottom lip, which still throbbed from his fierce kiss. I checked for the taste of blood, but my tongue found no trace. “You just found me at the police station, remember?”

  “I mean yesterday, after your tires were knifed.”

  “What good would it have done?” I had no more answers about who and why then, than I did now.

  “It might have saved your car from being burned up.”

  “Detective Cooper says it might not be arson. It could have been old wiring.”

  “Right. It also could have been a meteor that just happened to crash into your Bronco.” His forehead furrowed. “You know better, though, don’t you?”

  “Well, I’d sure like to believe him, but ...”

  “Exactly. What are you going to do now?” He watched me with an intensity that matched the level Cooper had shown just a short time ago.

  Sighing, I leaned my head back against the wall, a dull throbbing building at the base of my neck. “Buy a lotto ticket or hope to hell Layne digs up an old Wells Fargo strongbox in Aunt Zoe’s backyard soon.”

  “I can loan you some money.”

  “No!” That came out stronger than I meant it to. “I mean, no thanks. I don’t like owing my friends money.” Besides, I was already in debt to Harvey.

  “Friends?” His jaw tightened. “We’re not just friends, Violet.”

  What were we, then? Never mind. Now was not the time to get into that. “I don’t want to owe you money, Doc.”

  “Fine. Do you have insurance?”

  “Liability only.”

  “Of course.” He sounded annoyed. “You can use my car until you find something else.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  His eyes flashed. “Damn it, Violet. This is not the time to worry about keeping up appearances.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” I glared back. “It’s more important now than ever. Whoever did this is still out there, and who says they’re done? I’m not going to risk your car ending up incinerated, too.”

  Thunder clouds built over his brows. “How are you going to protect Addy and Layne?”

  I hadn’t had much chance to ponder that yet. Squeezing the back of my neck, I stretched my head to the side, trying to alleviate the throbs that were growing stronger every second, along with the rest of my problems. “I don’t know. I could send them to my parents’ for a week. Let them think it’s a little vacation before school starts, only one without me.”

  “Come here,” Doc said, hopping up to sit on the table and holding out his hand. I pushed off the wall. He turned me around when I drew near and pulled me back between his legs, then pushed my hair aside and massaged my shoulders and neck. “Sorry about your lip. Is it okay?”

  I licked it to double check. “Yes, but you’ll have to kiss it better later.”

  “I’ll do more than that.”

  I quivered inside at the thought of what that might mean. Under his touch, the tension was beginning to ebb. I let my head loll forward. “I could get used to this.”

  “Me, too.” His fingers kneaded a painful knot in the crook of my neck, making me wince and pull away from him slightly. “Get back here.” He pulled me even closer, the heat from his hands and body removing some of the chill from my situation. “What are you going to do about your aunt?”

  “She’s not going to budge. I’d have better luck wooing a prairie dog from its burrow with a rattlesnake’s tail.” I groaned and then tensed again as he found another knot. “I’ll talk to her,” I said between gasps, “explain what’s going on, and see what she wants to do.” She did have that shotgun in her bedroom closet.

  “I could sleep on her couch for a few nights, keep an eye on you.”

  “You and I both know how that would end up.” With Doc in my bed.

  His fingers stilled. “I can keep my hands to myself if you’re worried about that.”

  “It’s not your hands I’m worried about.” I looked up at him. “It’s mine. They have minds of their own when it comes to you.”

  His lazy grin appeared for just a second, before the dark clouds returned to his expression. “Have you considered that this may be a retaliation for you burning down Hessler’s house?”

  “Retaliation from whom? Wolfgang’s mom and sister are already dead.” Ghosts couldn’t start fires, could they? The reality of what I was pondering hit me, and I swallowed a bout of hysterical laughter. I couldn’t afford to lose it now.

  “I don’t know,” Doc answered. “An angry relative, an old girlfriend, some vengeful lover the cops don’t know about—who knows?”

  I let my head loll again and covered his hands with mine, squeezing, nudging him to continue. “I don’t want to think about Wolfgang right now.” It brought the nightmares too close to the surface.

  “Okay.” He squeezed the muscles at the back of my skull.

  My lids drooped, my eyes rolling up into my head.

  “Violet, let me help you.”

  “You already are.” His hands were working wonders; my headache was almost gone. “Plus, you’re buying a house from me.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “Fine. Buy a vacation home in the country, too. I have the perfect listing. It’s owned by a crazy, shotgun-happy old buzzard.”

  He chuckled, but said, “I’m serious.”

  “Me, too. It has a graveyard behind the barn. You’d love that, I bet. Just ignore the creepy whangdoodle living out there.”

  His hands stopped. He turned me around, his gaze full of concern. “Are you okay?”

  The underlying care in his tone hit me like a punch to the chest. I swallowed a sudden lump and blinked back some stupid tears. “Fine and dandy, as usual.”

  His eyes narrowed at my fake grin. “I don’t believe you. You’re blowing a little too much smoke. Tell me. Honestly.”

  I took a deep breath. “Doc, if I don’t keep laughing, I’m going to start screaming. If that happens, I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop until I’ve torn out all of my hair. Then I’ll lose my children to state custody and wind up wrapped tight in a straightjacket, tucked away in a padded cell.”

  His smile was grim as he tucked a tendril of hair behind my ear. “I’ll come by each day to feed you Jell-O.”

  I stopped his hand, holding it, squeezing his fingers. “I’m going to hold you to that. Now will you please take me up to the Carharts so I can give Wanda this offer? I need to make some more money, because taking clients around via the handlebars of Addy’s bike isn’t going to cut it.”

  “Wait. Let me show you something first.” He pulled his hand free and walked over to the bookshelf on the far wall, the one that contained books about the Black Hills.

  I drifted behind him. “With the way my day is going, I hope it’s a map to Flint’s treasure with an X marking the spot.” Layne and I had read Treasure Island together last year. It was one of my favorites—and now one of Layne’s, too.

  “You think I’d share that with you, Long John Silver?” His tone teased. He pulled a handful of books out and reached to the back of the shelf, extracting a smaller book he must have hidden back there. A piece of paper marked a page. He flipped the book open and held it out to me. “Is this the tattoo you saw on Lila?”

  I grabbed the book, frowning at the drawing on the page—a pair of curled horns and the head of a pig melting into a goat.

  “I think so. It looks a little more detailed here than what I remember, but I’m pretty sure that’s it. What’s it say about it?” I scanned the page, but my mind wouldn’t focus on the words.

  “In the late nineteenth century, there was a cult in Deadwood made up of some of the Chinese immigrants brought in to work in the mines and build the railroads. This is a replica of an emblem associated with the cult.”

  “Cult?” That was never a good word unless it concerned a 1980s rock band. “As in the crazed religious type?”

  “Yes. They had a particular set of demons
to which they liked to make sacrifices.”

  He extracted a second book that was tucked away in the back of the shelf and opened to another marked page. “Have you seen a picture of this woman before?” he asked, showing me the book’s page.

  It was a grainy black-and-white picture of a blonde sitting stiffly in a formal-looking chair. Her hair was pinned up, leaving just a couple of delicate ringlets hanging; her lips were straight; her eyes looked off to the side; her dress was fancy and in a style popular a century ago. She sat alone. “No. Should I have?”

  “Possibly.” Doc looked almost sad as he gazed down at the woman on the page.

  “Where? On the wall of one of the casinos in Deadwood?”

  “No, in the Carhart house. There was more than just a picture.” Doc’s dark eyes locked onto mine. “She was in the upstairs bedroom with us yesterday.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I held Doc’s stare, searching his eyes for a hint of jest. There was none. “Are you serious?”

  “One hundred percent,” he said.

  A wave of dizziness made me reach for the bookshelf. Did the room just tilt?

  Doc’s brow wrinkled. “You okay?”

  “No.” I blinked through a barrage of stars dive-bombing the fringes of my vision. “I think you just broke my brain.”

  “Here.” He grabbed the chair in front of the microfilm machine and pulled it over, taking the book from me. “Sit.”

  I followed his orders, resting my head in my hands as I waited for the stars to stop shooting. “Doc,” I said, blinking at my sandals. “How can you be so certain about this woman—I mean, ghost? When we were at the Carhart’s yesterday, you said you couldn’t really see it, just an outline or blur or something like that.”

  I heard one of his knees pop as he half-squatted, half-knelt before me. “It’s hard to explain ...”

  When he didn’t continue, I nudged him. “Try.” Peeking at him above my fingers, I added, “Please.”

  His gaze held mine, his eyes narrowed, wariness lining his face. “You’re not going to believe what I tell you.”

  That was probably true, but I said, “Give it a shot, anyway.”

  “You know when I lost consciousness at the Carhart house?”

  “You mean when she passed through you?”

  “It was more like a temporary possession.”

  “Possession? Really?” I cringed. The word alone brought about images of Linda Blair strapped to the bed, writhing, cursing in a gravelly voice, her head twisting around like an owl.

  “Yes, possession. Anyway, during that moment of connection with the ghost, I experienced a mental imprint.”

  Mental imprint? “Like a vision?”

  “For lack of a better word.”

  “What did you see during this vision?”

  “The events that occurred at the time of her death.”

  I recoiled, stunned by equal measures of doubt and dismay. “Was it like watching a slasher movie?”

  “No. But, yes.”

  “Gee, that cleared things up for me. Thanks.”

  Doc sighed, then pushed to his feet. He drifted over to the table in the center of the room. “It was like I’d already experienced the events. An instant memory, shoved into my head, put there for me to relive as the victim.”

  An instant memory? Reliving death in first person point of view? Wow. This was Twilight Zone material. Doc’s rigid stance didn’t go unnoticed by me. “Have you ever told anyone else about this stuff?”

  He nodded. “But he’s dead now.” His eyes searched mine. “You think I’m nuts, right?”

  I hesitated, recognizing what it meant, trust-wise, for Doc to share this. Whether I believed him about these visions or not, a gut feeling told me to keep this door between us propped open. But he deserved my honesty. “I don’t know what to think, Doc. You’re an intelligent, logical financial planner who claims to be able to interact with ghosts on some level. It’s a bit baffling.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Reliving death over and over must be horrific.”

  “Now you understand why I try to avoid it.” He sat on the edge of the table. “And why it hits me like a locomotive at full speed.”

  “Is there any way you can stop it?” A good head doctor? Drugs? Electroshock therapy? Exorcism?

  “Not that I’ve figured out yet. I’m trying to find a way to control it, or at least a way to live with it.”

  “Control it how?”

  “Desensitize myself to the smell.”

  How could he un-train his nose? “Then what?”

  “Work on how to handle the mind-fuck part.”

  I rested my elbows on my thighs. “Do you think these ghosts want something from you?”

  He shrugged. “We don’t really communicate. Everything I get is like yesterday’s news. A slice of the past replayed for my private experience.”

  I frowned across at him. This would be easier to swallow with a shot of tequila. Or a whole bottle.

  He jammed his hands in his front pockets, rounding his shoulders. “I’m not crazy, Violet.”

  “Good. One of us has to remain sane, and I think I’m slipping.” I squeezed my temples, my headache threatening again, hovering just behind my eyes. “Has anyone else ever smelled these ghosts?”

  “Not that I’ve witnessed.”

  “What about dogs? Do you think they can smell ghosts, too?” Why not? They had super sniffers. It seemed plausible.

  “I haven’t tested that, but I don’t think so. I have a theory that it’s not really an actual scent that I’m smelling.”

  Was it just me, or was Doc starting to talk in tongues? “But you said—”

  “I know, I know.” He pushed off the table and paced in front of it, kneading his hands.

  I watched and waited, sensing that he was building up to spill some more. He’d better be, anyway.

  “There are a few things I think I understand about this curse of mine.”

  “Some might call it a gift,” Polly Positive piped up before I could muzzle her.

  He stopped pacing and crossed his arms at me. “Right. Being harassed by the dead. What a gift.”

  I covered my mouth and mumbled, “Continue, please.”

  A hint of a grin sneaked onto his lips. “My theory is that when a ghost is in the vicinity, my brain picks up on its presence and triggers something in my olfactory system that makes me think I smell something. The stronger the presence, the more pungent the odor. This is why I can smell them and nobody else can.”

  In spite of my uncertainty on this whole subject, the fascination that came with the “what-ifs” lured me to want to hear more. “What else have you figured out?”

  “There’s the mental imprint bit that I just told you about.”

  I nodded.

  “And the ghosts are unable to understand me when I speak to them.”

  “You’re sure they don’t hear you?”

  “I didn’t say ‘hear,’ just understand. They respond to the sound of my voice, but they don’t seem to comprehend what I’m saying.”

  The idea of Doc talking to thin air and expecting an answer made me want to stomp about and throw things. His behavior crossed the line between worrisome and mad; I didn’t want him to be that mentally unstable. It would mean no future of any kind with him, not when I had two kids to raise and protect. I let my hair fall forward to shield me from his eyes.

  “You’re hiding from me.” He read me like the walking billboard that I was. “I know this is hard for you to swallow.”

  A horse chestnut would have been easier. “A little bit.”

  I heard the rustle of his clothing and looked up to find him leaning against the window frame. “What I don’t understand yet,” he said, staring out the window, “is whether these ghosts are drawn to me because of something I’m able to give them, and if so, what that something is.”

  “Maybe it’s just the recognition that they exist,” I offered, while my own alarm
over it all made my head spin.

  I wanted to believe him. I really did. If only there was more proof. Something I could see ... or smell, like burning hair. A flashback of the macabre tea party at the Hessler house haunted me for a moment until the sound of Doc’s voice snuffed it out.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But I’d like to be able to communicate with them, to figure out how to see more than their dying moments when our paths cross.”

  “You mean see other memories?”

  “Fewer scenes revolving around their deaths would be a pleasant change.” His focus remained outside the glass, his profile still drawn. “But if not, I need to know if I can turn this shit off without having to kill myself to do it.”

  Sobering words, unsettling thoughts. The quiet room closed in on me, the library’s usual bouquet of varnished wood and aging paper almost overwhelming.

  “Alcohol didn’t work,” he continued. “Neither did drugs—not even the hardcore stuff.”

  The back of my throat tightened. “Were you trying to turn it off or kill yourself?”

  He shrugged, still looking out at Deadwood. “Both, I guess. Drinking numbed my brain, but it didn’t stop the smells. Drugs only enhanced the imprints.”

  His need for control in other areas of his life made complete sense now. “How long has this been going on, Doc?”

  “As long as I can remember.”

  Christ! My chest ached for him and the weight he’d carried for decades, mostly alone. The fact that he’d shared the details of this dark, obviously painful secret with me, exposing his uncertainties and weaknesses, stirred something deep inside—an urge to comfort him, protect him—that propelled me from my chair.

  He watched me approach, his expression guarded. “Violet, don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Touch me. Not when you have that look on your face.”

  I rounded the table. “What look?”

  “Like I’m some injured dog lying in a ditch.” He backed away from me. “Stop.”

  I didn’t.

  “I don’t want your pity,” he said.

  “This isn’t pity.”

  He kept the table between us as I circled. “What is it, then?”