Darkscope

by J. Carson Black

  DARKSCOPE

  A Ghost Story

  J. CARSON BLACK

  WRITING AS MARGARET FALK

  DARKSCOPE

  Copyright (c) 1990 Margaret Falk. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Published by Breakaway Media

  Tucson Arizona (USA)

  www.breakawaymedia.com

  PRINTING HISTORY

  First published by Pinnacle, an imprint of Windsor Publishing Corp., mass market edition / 1990

  111010

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Author’s Note:

  I have taken a few artistic liberties in order to move the story along, but for the most part the history of Bisbee—excluding the McCords and the Barries—is accurate, according to the people I have talked to and the numerous accounts I have read.

  As far as I know, the little ranch house on the San Pedro River between Sierra Vista and Bisbee has never been the scene of a murder. Its history of tenants is largely unknown, but the facts of ownership as I have set them here are true. Now operated by the Friends of the San Pedro River, the San Pedro House is headquarters for the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.

  My thanks to those people who helped me with historical and technical mining details. I tried to be thorough with my questions, but if I missed something, it was due entirely to my own shortsightedness. Thanks to Tom Vaughan, Neto Chavez, Ida Power, Christine Rhodes, Jim Burnett, and Harrison Mattson; to my editor Ann LaFarge, my agent Adele Leone, Ralph Leone, Barbara K. Schiller, the folks at The Bisbee Inn, Jacki and Jay Fleishman; and to my writer’s group: Don Valdez, Dolores Afainer, Wanda Wright, David Eff, and Jim Lewis. Special thanks to my husband Glenn McCreedy, whose creative input and emotional support helped make this book a reality.

  Dedication

  To my father Lloyd Falk, to my husband Glenn McCreedy, my aunt Evelyn Ridgway, and my mother Mary Veronica Falk, who taught me how to write.

  PROLOGUE

  Bisbee, Arizona

  1978

  Lucas McCord knew his death was imminent. It didn’t matter how he knew. Like an animal searching for a quiet place to die, he had already retreated into that part of his soul reserved for waiting.

  With a calmness he had rarely felt before, Lucas surveyed his library. His eyes registered the plaques from the Lions Club and other charitable organizations, the photographs of the Manzanita Mine hung at intervals on the walls, the Joe Beeler bronze—a cowboy and horse—on the desk. There weren’t many things he would miss from this world. The bronze was one of them.

  Air stirred the curtains at the open window, and car tires hissed along Bisbee Road. Light rain pattered on the roof. His gaze swung across the room, past the bookshelves with their volumes on mining engineering, business, and art, past the fireplace and the crossed branding irons above it—his brand. The McCord Land and Cattle Company was gone now, parceled into Spanish-style subdivisions.

  At last he looked at the glass case by the window; the tributes to his elder son’s prowess in polo, rowing, and football. The inscription on the largest trophy read: To John McCord for Outstanding Leadership, 1937—the year Johnny was captain of the Fairview Valley Polo Team. Lucas’s throat closed, as it always did when he thought of Johnny. Young, handsome, brave Johnny. His greatest accomplishment.

  Atop the trophy, a statuette of a riderless polo pony gleamed in the dull light.

  Lucas poured himself some more Scotch, neat. To hell with what Dr. Gold would say. He was dead, tonight. The gods had exacted their price, and it had been high. The library, with all its tributes to wealth and power, carefully orchestrated to impress, now seemed devoid of meaning. He had worked hard to amass a fortune, and for what? Even the powerful Lucas McCord could not defeat death.

  The Scotch burned his throat.

  Two sons. The result of all his labors. One son dead, the other . . . Lucas’s lips narrowed into a thin line. Had it really come to this? Had he worked so hard, forsaking all the simple joys along the way, to hand his company over to a weakling? His inner voice told him: He’s your son. He’s your son and only heir.

  That wasn’t entirely true. There was Chelsea, his great-granddaughter. She carried Johnny’s spark, as if it had skipped a generation.

  Lucas sat down at the enormous mahogany desk, his thoughts wandering across three generations. Johnny and Bob, his sons. Johnny’s son, Edward. And Edward’s daughter, Chelsea.

  Nothing had turned out as Lucas had planned. His children and his grandchildren had all betrayed him in one way or another. Even Chelsea. She had everything: drive, intelligence, enthusiasm. By all rights the last of the line should be taking over the reins to the company soon—if she hadn’t been born a girl.

  But it was Johnny’s betrayal which stung Lucas the most. Johnny—so full of promise, his one perfect creation. Johnny, dead at twenty-six.

  How different things would have been if he had lived.

  Lucas’s eyes fixed on the box camera in front of him. What had possessed him to resurrect this relic of a tortured past? Possibly he had been thinking of donating it to the Historical Society along with the branding irons and crystal chandelier from the parlor. Yes, that must have been his intention.

  The camera was old, its black juteboard scarred and dusty.

  A breeze sent the curtains billowing, and rain spattered the carpet.

  Look at me. The sibilant whisper might have come from the drizzle outside, but Lucas was certain it came from the camera. The camera’s lens riveted on him like a single accusing eye. Lucas stared back, hypnotized. The eye seemed to stretch, getting larger, and it seemed to Lucas that something stirred behind the glass, shifting in the smoky depths.

  Part of his mind rejected what was happening. It had to be an optical illusion. Something to do with the angle of the camera in relation to where he was sitting—a reflection. He leaned closer and squinted.

  Darkness swirled, inviting. Lucas had the funny feeling that he could climb right in if he wanted to; he was that small. But that was ridiculous, wasn’t it?

  He tried to look away. And couldn’t.

  Look at me.

  The oily smoke writhed inside the circle of glass, constantly changing. Gradually the smoke formed into a face—a face Lucas loved more dearly than his own life. He forgot that it was impossible. For almost forty years, he had been denied the sight of his son, and now . . .

  His heart almost burst with love. The animation! The expression! Like a painted miniature, John’s features were perfect in every detail. At that moment Lucas was unaware of everything except the eye of the camera and Johnny, imprisoned within.

  The hologram shifted slightly. Threads of mist crept out toward Lucas. They brushed his face and wrapped around him, cold and wet, like the embrace of a lover in the rain. The mist pulled him closer, gently tugging him within an inch of the little face inside the lens.

  Suddenly Johnny’s features twisted in the smoky darkness. Pleading eyes stared out over a mouth opened to scream—a scream of deep, soundless agony.

  Lucas knew what he was seeing. Logically he had understood what had happened in the mine, but had never allowed himself to picture it. But now he saw it all—his son, dying.

  The tiny mouth gaped wide. Fingers—tenuous threads of mist—fluttered up to a straining throat. Eyeballs bulging from the strain, Johnny’s face pulled down into a hideous grimace. The mute struggle for life seemed to go on forever.

  Then,
with a look of absolute surprise, Johnny’s pupils rolled up toward his eyelids, the whites of his eyes glimmering like a fish’s belly.

  Lucas shouted out loud.

  Several things happened at once. The ground heaved under his feet and listed to the side, throwing him off balance. He hurtled to the floor, the air knocked out of him. Thunder shattered his eardrums. A flash of lightning burst behind his eyeballs, blinding him momentarily, and with a groaning roar, the polished hardwood floor seemed to separate and swallow him. He felt as if he were trapped in the wood, unable to move. With a stab of horror, Lucas realized that there had been no lightning, no buckling floor—it had all been inside him. A stroke, he thought. I’ve had a stroke!

  The camera toppled to the floor, landing upright. The tiny hologram in the lens shaped and reshaped, playing out Johnny’s death over and over again.

  And Lucas—helpless, paralyzed—could only watch.

  He lay stomach-down on the floor, hands fastened around the legs of the desk, the camera only inches from his face. How could this happen? He couldn’t bear it, couldn’t stand to see the single most wonderful thing in his life dying. He had to get away from the camera somehow. But how, when his legs wouldn’t obey him? When the instructions from his frenzied brain met only a blank wall?

  All of a sudden, Lucas’s grip on the table legs loosened. I can move, he thought. I’m all right, it wasn’t a stroke, I can move . . .

  He breathed deeply. He was all right. And the face in the lens was growing dimmer, like a pilot light going out. It had all been an illusion, the tricks of an old man’s mind. He was all ri—

  Abruptly, the inner workings of his body froze, refused to work. Eyes gaping wide with comprehension, Lucas clawed at the desk legs, as if by gripping the solid wood, it would somehow save him.

  Like a generator choking on its own bluish smoke, his brain started to shut down. Helplessly, mouth working for breath, Lucas tried to start the machine again, but his mind was already shorting out in a series of bursting explosions. In the last convulsive spiral toward death, Lucas’s mouth opened and let life out on a scream. The scream of a man on intimate terms with hell.

  Part One: The Box Camera

  One

  Bisbee, Arizona

  1986

  The volunteer caretaker at the Bisbee Historical Society whisked a feather duster over the display case near the window. And halted, mid-whisk.

  Something was missing; there, beside the copper calling card Lewis Douglas had used in his congressional campaign half a century ago. An oblong section of cloth appeared darker than the rest, unfaded by the sun. A typed slip of paper said, KODAK CAMERA—1916. DONATED BY LUCAS MCCORD.

  The camera was gone.

  Two

  Bisbee, Arizona

  1986

  In her dream, Chelsea McCord was taking pictures with an old camera. People took no notice of her. They went about their business: men in business suits, women pushing strollers, cars carefully observing the speed limit on the shade-patterned street. Chelsea had the impression they were putting on a show for her benefit; there was something very wrong about the whole picture. At any moment, she expected Rod Serling to come on and say that things were not the way they seemed on Maple Street, USA.

  The scene changed. People became flat and two-dimensional, their stiff, jerky movements reminiscent of a Keystone Cops silent picture, the film jittering in the frame. Their clothing had been transformed into the fashions of another era—the turn of the century maybe. As Chelsea watched, the film sped up around her. The people moved faster and faster. Then all the color—the buildings, the people’s clothing, the sky—faded to sepia. A grainy man doffed and donned a grainy bowler hat, double-time.

  Someone called, “Cut! Print it!” The people crumbled where they were into flakes of brown in the hard white glare. She saw the man who had doffed his hat disintegrate—first his hat, then his head, then his stand-up collar. The rest of him toppled into itself. Nothing remained except fine, brown dust.

  A man wearing a safari jacket and wraparound sunglasses strode past, rubbing his hands together briskly. He shot Chelsea a glance, grinning to reveal dazzling white teeth. “Come on!” he told her. “We’ll lose the light!”

  The town had turned into a western movie set, with facades instead of buildings. Clutching the old box camera, Chelsea followed Safari Jacket through the town and into the desert. The moon had risen. Behind her, a caravan of trucks crested the hill, their headlights blanching the sand.

  “You!” Safari Jacket called to a crew member. “Move that boom! Where’s the script girl? I want the script girl now!”

  Chelsea glanced around, aware that she was holding tightly to the camera. Its surface felt slightly oily, and every once in a while, it slipped a little so she had to grip it tighter.

  The set was confusion. People milled everywhere, turning up the lights, connecting cables, trundling cameras, setting up reflectors.

  “This is the last time I'll ever be an extra for this company,” Chelsea heard someone say. Her fingers, curled around the box camera, started to cramp. She switched it to her left hand.

  “Stu’s been drinking again. Did you smell him?”

  “I don’t like this line. It’s all wrong for the character.”

  “Just a touch-up. Can’t have a shiny face!” The last remark belonged to a little man in a toupee, hovering at each group and then moving on like a pollinating bee.

  Chelsea backed up and bumped into someone. She spun around. Two men were talking. The one facing her was good-looking, wearing a fedora and an oversize suit. He was saying: “I don’t think this scene is necessary at all. If you'll only let me call the sheriff, I can turn myself in . . .”

  The other man said, “No. It’s got to be this way. Important to the story.” He turned around to look at Chelsea. Half his face was gone.

  The little man came at a run, brandishing his powder puff. “How about a touch-up?” he squeaked, patting the bulging cheek below where the eye should have been. The man’s good eye roved toward Chelsea just as the bridge of his nose flaked away.

  “Ah!” the thing said. “The script girl at last.” His long teeth grinned, and he stepped toward her, caving into dust.

  Chelsea awoke in a strange room. Caught in the dreamlike state between sleeping and waking, her mind was slow to make the connection. At last she had it: The room belonged to the Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee, Arizona. Bisbee. It might as well have been a million miles away from San Diego and her old life.

  What had she done? Why did she do it? Logical, well-rehearsed answers filed through her head. You did it because you don’t have a job anymore. You did it because you want to teach—even if the only teaching you'll be doing for a while are two classes as an associate faculty member. You did it because—

  You did it because you’re running away.

  Chelsea tried to keep the picture from blotting out her vision, but it came anyway. For a split second, she saw the figure standing in the gloom beside the bed, felt her mouth go dry, her heartbeat like jungle drums. Sense memory. She’d learned the technique in acting class—how to bring up a memory from the past and relive it. Very useful when you had to cry on stage. The only problem was trying to keep it from happening when you didn’t want to remember.

  Think about something else. Another acting trick. Chelsea scanned the room, noting the Victorian furnishings. She might have been dropped into the turn of the century. She closed her eyes, imagining the sound of horses and wagons on the street below . . .

  The dream. Chelsea sat up in bed, the memory fresh in her mind. She saw the people from the other era in vivid detail, could feel the imprint of the cumbersome old camera in her hand. The dream probably had resulted from the postcards she had seen in the lobby—sepia photographs of the citizens from Bisbee’s heyday.

  Chelsea shivered. The people had imploded before her eyes like dynamited buildings, puffing a fine film of dust and plaster into the sky. Goosebumps sp
read along her arms. The vision lingered, haunting. She couldn’t shake the conviction that the people in the dream—the man with the derby hat and all the others—had once walked this earth. And now they were dust.

  One night in an old-fashioned hotel, and I start imagining things. She glanced at her watch on the bedside table—seven o’clock—and opened the curtains on an electric blue sky. She would go for a run. Uncle Bob (he was really her great-uncle, but he seemed younger than that) wouldn’t be down for breakfast for another hour at least. Running was part of Chelsea’s routine, and routine might be a good thing right now.

  As she dressed, Chelsea thought about how she had gone from point A to point B, skirting a nervous breakdown by inches.

  Last week she had handed her grades in for the semester. Dr. Capin had looked sheepish—an expression Chelsea might have relished if she hadn’t been so unhappy herself.

  Her job was everything—the one constant in a life beset by turmoil. And now her job, like her marriage, had disintegrated before her eyes.

  Chelsea remembered the day she had gone to clean out her desk at the office she shared with Jerry Bowen. “It’s a blow, sure,” Jerry had told her, “but it’s not as if you need the money.”

  Was she really such an outsider? Did the McCord name, the McCord money make that much difference?

  On the street below, an old truck wheezed up the steep grade beside the Copper Queen Hotel. Chelsea placed her hands on the bedpost and leaned forward, stretching each leg in turn.

  At any rate, you might say (if you were an incurable optimist) that everything had turned out for the best. In the last two weeks, the pieces had fallen together with a swiftness and surety that defied reason. Chiricahua College offered her an affiliate position in their art department. Uncle Bob volunteered the use of his house. And Bisbee was far away from Jason . . .