Darkscope

by J. Carson Black

  Gary smiled. “I understand. You’ve got a lot on your plate right now.”

  “Maybe later—”

  He touched her lips with his index finger, “I take rainchecks.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and started down the walk, his shoes crunching on the dried needles from the cypress. Wind whipped at his shirt and Chelsea saw a flicker of lightning to the east. The smell of ozone tingled in her nostrils.

  They were in for a storm.

  Toward midnight, clouds wheeled across the black sky like a rumbling oxcart. The canyon walls caught and magnified booming volleys of thunder. Lightning shattered the sky—a giant white spider crouching over Bisbee’s tall hills. Rain sluiced down. Torrents of water rushed down the canyons. By morning, the water would be gone.

  Near Tombstone, runnels of water cut down the sides of a small brush-choked hill. The rivulets leached away the richer earth, and tomorrow, when the sun baked the hill dry, there would be long white seams along the hillside, like cracks in freshly baked bread. An abandoned mine opened onto the surface of the slope. Water rushed into the mine, slowing to a trickle at its deepest point.

  The rain pelted down harder, blurring the hill’s outline. Ocotillo quivered like fencing foils in the wind. The steady trickle of rainwater deep in the mine sounded like hollow laughter. High, bell-like laughter.

  And in the dark, something stirred.

  Eleven

  Only ten o’clock in the morning, the temperature was eighty-nine degrees, and things didn’t look like they’d get a whole lot better. Mr. Chips had been sick on the Chinese carpet, and the washing machine refused to drain after the first cycle and was filled to the brim with soapy water. To top it off, she was out of coffee.

  The washing machine repairman couldn’t make it until later in the day. Chelsea had to rinse her clothes in the sink. As she bent to the task, Mr. Chips, apparently over his queasy stomach, came in and clamored for breakfast.

  By the time Chelsea had finished her laundry, she realized her temper wouldn’t improve until she had her daily ration of coffee. She walked down to the Copper Pick Soda Fountain.

  “Nice morning,” the lady behind the counter said.

  Chelsea mumbled a greeting, wondering why people had to be so damned cheerful in this town. “Do you sell coffee?”

  The shopkeeper nodded toward the coffee maker on the counter. “Help yourself.”

  “Thanks.” Chelsea poured herself a cup and paid for it. She wandered through the store, looking for canned coffee, but found none. Naturally.

  Chelsea stopped to look at the minerals along the wall, remembering Uncle Bob’s collection in Tucson. White calcite, blue azurite, green malachite. Like crusted jewels, the rocks hewn from the earth glittered in the dark store: copper like dying embers, ruby-red cuprite, brilliant turquoise.

  “You new in Bisbee?” the lady behind the counter called. “I haven’t seen you before this summer.”

  “My family used to live here.”

  “Oh? Who were they? I might know them.”

  “Lucas McCord was my great-grandfather.”

  “Oh . . . well.” The shopkeeper’s face closed up. McCord wasn’t a popular name in Bisbee. Lucas McCord had a reputation for strike-breaking. Even so, Chelsea was surprised that the attitude still existed. All McCord-owned mines in the area had closed or merged with other companies several decades ago.

  Chelsea ignored the cool reception. “A friend of mine dropped some film by for me. Could you take a look and see if it’s in yet?”

  “You said McCord, right?” The shopkeeper glowered. “Brought in that old 116 film?” She ducked under the counter. “Got it in yesterday. Ah. Here we are.” She slapped it on the counter. “That’ll be six fifty.”

  “Thanks.” Chelsea headed for the door, peeling back the sticky flap of the envelope holding the photographs.

  “Have a nice day,” the shopkeeper said automatically, but her tone of voice implied she didn’t mean it.

  It’s not my fault my great-grandfather was a fascist, Chelsea thought. Her attention turned to the snapshots. God only knew how long the film had been in the camera. Suddenly burning with curiosity, she reached in for the photographs, pushing her shoulder into the glass door at the same time. The overhead bell chimed as she collided with someone coming in. She clutched vainly for the pictures as they sailed out of her hands and scattered on the sidewalk.

  One photograph landed face up—the snapshot of the abandoned cottage in Tombstone Canyon.

  Chelsea stared.

  There must have been a mix-up. The snapshot wasn’t hers. It couldn’t be.

  The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. At that moment, she was unaware of everything but the photograph on the sidewalk. The image rushed up at her, filling her vision, every detail indelibly imprinted on her mind.

  She remembered the day she had taken the picture. Remembered the apprehension that had settled in her heart like an unwelcome guest. Remembered the camera, smelling like death, drawing upon every unpleasant vibration imprisoned within those sagging walls, as a magnet draws metal.

  The cottage . . .

  It had been a ruin. But in the photograph before her now, the cottage was new. Brand-spanking new—a neat, white, clapboard bungalow topped by a shiny tin roof. Two-tone Victorian columns. Well-tended flowerbeds. A sway backed horse frozen in an attitude of perpetual grazing. Aboard the horse, two little girls in sack shifts and buttoned boots stared out at the camera. The shot was blurry, old, the colors faded.

  The angle was the same. Everything was the same except the time.

  Although Chelsea had snapped the picture this summer, she was looking at a photograph taken over fifty years ago.

  Twelve

  “Hey!” Ben Fletcher protested as the young woman plowed into him. He glimpsed honey-colored hair, a striped shirt, white shorts, and great legs.

  The woman didn’t acknowledge his presence as she dropped to her knees to scoop up her snapshots.

  “Where were you going so fast? To a fire?”

  She didn’t answer, but stared at the photographs, completely absorbed.

  “Are you all right?” He reached down to help her pick up the pictures, noticing her dazed expression, her wide and staring eyes. “I said, are you all—”

  The woman stood abruptly, accepting his sheaf of photographs and thrusting them into her purse. “Of course I’m all right,” she snapped.

  “I don’t generally give advice,” Ben said, “but if I were you I’d start looking where I was going.” He noticed one of the photographs still lying on the sidewalk and reached down to pick it up.

  “Me! What about you? Oh no!” She reached down to her sandal, which had skewed sideways. The strap, torn in two, flopped uselessly. “You broke my sandal.”

  This girl was beginning to try his patience. Without thinking, Ben tucked the snapshot into his pocket, studying her flushed face and angry eyes. “I didn’t break your sandal,” he said.

  “You stepped on it.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Then why are you standing on the buckle?” She pointed triumphantly at his shoe.

  He looked down. Part of the strap was under his right foot, as was the buckle. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe I can fix it.”

  She didn’t answer, but stood there biting her lower lip.

  “I can see you’re preoccupied,” he said. “So if it’s all the same to you, I’ll see you around.” He opened the door of the drugstore.

  “Wait a minute!” she cried, suddenly aware that he was going. “You can’t leave me like this. You’re responsible!”

  “So?” But he let the door swing shut.

  “The least you can do is run across the street and get me some flip-flops. Ow!” She was standing on one foot, occasionally putting weight on the offending sandal, burning her heel on the hot sidewalk. Ben couldn’t control his laughter as she hopped from one foot to the other like a demented stork.

  “What are you l
aughing at?”

  “You.” He liked her looks. Her eyes were an unusual color, sparkling like teal-blue water in the sun. “Okay,” he said, “I'll get some flip-flops. What size?”

  “Medium. Woman’s.” Her mind seemed to wander off again, her gaze restless. “Thanks,” she added as an afterthought.

  “Don’t mention it.” He remembered the photograph and began to reach in his pocket. Just then a pregnant woman in a T-shirt proclaiming BABY ON BOARD approached. He stepped off the curb to make way for her. His new acquaintance leaned back against the building, holding her foot up like a horse with a broken leg.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “You go inside before we gather a crowd. You can sit at the counter, get some coffee or something.”

  She nodded, still preoccupied, and limped into the store.

  Ben walked up and down the street. He couldn’t find any thongs.

  Back at the soda fountain, the young woman was sipping coffee. He ordered the same.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Couldn’t find any.”

  “Great!”

  “It’s not the end of the world. My car’s just down the street, I’ll drive you home,” he suggested.

  “Thanks. I’ll walk.”

  He leaned back, eyeing her speculatively. She made a great show of having a tough hide, but he wondered if it extended to her feet. “The pavement’s probably over one hundred degrees right now. How far do you have to go?”

  The woman looked uncomfortable. “A mile or so.”

  “Could be rough. But I suppose walking on burning coals appeals to you, too.”

  “Okay,” she relented. “You can drive me home.” She looked ashamed. “I’m sorry. Those sandals are as old as the hills anyway.”

  “Then let’s start over. I’m Ben Fletcher.” He held out his hand.

  “Chelsea McCord.” Her gaze fell on his half-empty cup of coffee, then wandered aimlessly around the room. It was almost as if she were willing him to hurry up and finish drinking. Her own cup was empty. She drummed her fingers on the Formica counter.

  Ben got up and paid for their coffee. They drove to her house in silence.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll see you again sometime.” She limped up the steps to her house.

  It wasn’t until late afternoon that Ben realized he still had the photograph.

  Chelsea held her purse close to her body, feeling the thickness of the packet underneath. Impossible. What she had seen was impossible. “Just a trick of the light,” she muttered. But what were those things she had seen at the cribs on Brewery Gulch? The house that materialized out of nowhere? The woman from the turn of the century? Were those just tricks of the light?

  The house was dark after the bright sunlight. All the shades were drawn. She took the pictures to the kitchen, opened the flap, and put them on the table.

  Thirteen

  The mind, by its very nature, imposes powers of logic on any information it receives. This ability of man to collect and label data, to draw theories from the results, sets him apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. It is his conceit—and often, his downfall.

  Leaping into the unknown can be frightening. Especially when you don’t expect to go.

  Chelsea’s mind made the leap, but shakily, clinging to the alien cliff only because the other ground had receded into the mist. She stared at the photographs, her mind sending two distinct messages.

  It couldn’t be.

  It was.

  When Ben Fletcher had gone to look for her sandals, Chelsea had taken out the pictures and spread them before her on the drugstore counter, much as she was doing now. Her first theory, that the shopkeeper had given her the wrong pictures, had been blown apart by what she had seen.

  It all came back to her. She remembered the heat, the way the sun reflected every surface, unbearably bright in her eyes . . . remembered talking to Sunshine, joking with her . . . remembered the writhing blur in the viewfinder . . .

  She saw again the tall building superimposed over the P.D. Mercantile, the flames shooting into the sky.

  The building that burned in 1938.

  No, these were her pictures. They had come from the camera, that unspeakable monstrosity which had somehow assimilated images from ages past into its twisted, carrion-tainted works.

  Chelsea’s stomach constricted with growing horror. She pushed the snapshots around on the table, straining to remember. Yes. The Sacred Cow Cafe. The angle was right. She’d taken a picture of Sunshine. Sunshine had been wearing a turquoise squaw dress and a silver concho belt. But where was she now? Where were the wooden tables? The Perrier and Cinzano umbrellas?

  Chelsea’s fingers stopped at each picture in turn—the Copper Queen Hotel, the back of the Lyric Theatre. The cottage. The Dixie Garage. The Phelps Dodge Mercantile building. The plaza. Seven pictures. She could remember shooting every one. Except that all of them were different now. . . every single one of them looked as if they had been taken fifty, sixty years ago!

  Goosebumps crawled up her arms and across her shoulder blades like a trail of fire ants. She stared at the photograph of the Sacred Cow.

  A group of children stood and sat on curved cement steps beside the red brick building where Sunshine had posed current day. On the side of the building closest to the camera, the words CENTRAL PHARMACY gleamed white on a field of red. Below the giant block letters Chelsea recognized the trademark cursive which hadn’t changed in eighty years: Coca-Cola. The mural was shaded by a large tree that Chelsea was certain didn’t exist now. Cars—circa 1920—lined the dusty street.

  The girls wore sack-like dresses with white sailor collars. Their hair was cut short and parted at the side. The boys wore baggy shirts, caps, pants, and suspenders. Their eyes were bruised ovals, grainy from the poor quality of the photograph. The girl in front held a bottle of Nestlé orange drink, her long legs ending in dust-powdered bare feet. She was pretty. A tomboy.

  The camera. Chelsea closed her eyes. The clock over the kitchen sink ticked on. Outside a car roared by.

  She opened her eyes. The checkered linoleum gleamed from the white reflected light of the walls. The Kelvinator hummed, its heavy door covered with magnets shaped like fruit. A banana held the note: “salad stuff, milk, bread.” Sydney’s plaque caught the sunlight, splintering rainbows across the sink and the cabinets. Soapy water still filled the washing machine.

  The world she had awakened to this morning.

  Chelsea’s head throbbed. The horror settled in to stay, sinking into her heart, her bones, her blood. The helpless feeling engulfed her, smothered her, drowned her.

  She stared at the pictures.

  The Dixie Garage had become PHIL YARD’S STORAGE—TIRES—ACCESSORIES—TEXACO—GASOLINE AND MOTOR OIL. A boy and girl stood in front of a Model T. The red gas pumps were tall with glass cylinders on top. The boy looked sixteen. The little girl, three or four.

  Drowning . . . swallowing the sour-tasting water, knowing it would kill her, but swallowing anyway because she had to.

  Drowning in a fear that surged through her and left her empty, her will dissolved and ready to accept—

  Anything.

  The Pythian Castle, rising up beyond the iron steps at the back of the Lyric Theatre. On the left: a tall, brick building that didn’t exist now. The steps, a blur of rushing water. A flood. A long-ago flood. The little girl—the same one in the other pictures—leaned over the railing, staring at the water. Grave dark eyes, a widow’s peak. Younger than she was in front of the Central Pharmacy. Older than the child in front of the garage.

  Here she sat on the steps of the Copper Queen Hotel, in one of two rows of maids in dark uniforms. Maybe fifteen, sixteen years old. Underneath the maid’s folded hands, the material of her dress swelled slightly. A worried expression, frightened eyes.

  Chelsea’s fingers touched the edges of the photograph next to the picture of the Copper Queen. She could feel the vibrations through her fingertips, the years betw
een then and now.

  The girl had become a woman. Beautiful. Haunting.

  And familiar.

  Where have I seen her before?

  The young woman was standing before a rough board fence. Beyond the fence Chelsea could see an oblong pit of churned-up earth. It took a moment for her to realize that this was the shot she had taken of the Phelps Dodge Mercantile. Because there was no Phelps Dodge Mercantile. The leveled foundation had to be the result of the 1938 fire which had consumed a taller brick building.

  If that were the case, the picture must have been taken in late 1938 or early 1939.

  In the background, Buckey O’Neill Hill was littered with rusty pipes and machinery—mining and smelter hardware. A young man stood beside The dark-haired girl. The girl peered up at him, and the gentle shine in her eyes spoke across the decades. She was in love.

  Chelsea’s heart dropped like an elevator into her stomach. A moan escaped her lips.

  No. Impossible.

  It was the young woman who had twice walked through her backyard! How could she be in the photographs and remain unchanged, almost half a century later?

  Now wait a minute! she told herself. Why jump to conclusions? The woman in my yard could just as easily be this woman’s daughter.

  Could be. But Chelsea knew she wasn’t. She was the same person. The same person who had crossed the studio on Chelsea’s first day in Bisbee.

  Chelsea’s attention turned to the man. She knew the girl, but she knew the man, too.

  She stared at his ruggedly handsome features, the chestnut hair parted to one side. Had she seen a photograph of him before?

  I know him. I know who he is.