Darkscope

by J. Carson Black

  “Didn’t they say anything about Kathleen?”

  “Just that Frank had a couple of children. The only reason anyone remembers anything about the Barrie family at all is that there was an article in the forties about Lucas buying houses on the hill. One person remembered the article, which mentioned that Frank Barrie, who built the house, was deported. Another person said that he’d heard the house was called the Barrie house. That’s it.”

  Not much. But something. “Thank you,” she said to Ben as they walked through the museum.

  “No need to thank me. Although if I were you, I wouldn’t want to be digging up any more dirt about the McCords—they haven’t exactly been Bisbee’s best-loved family.”

  “Don’t rub it in.”

  The temporary librarian who opened the barred gate to the Lemuel Shattuck Memorial Library smelled of lilacs. “You can stay until four,” she said. “You might want to look at the minutes from the Bisbee Women’s Club. And right here is the Cuprite, the school yearbook.” Her freckled fingers rippled along the row of books. “Just give me a call when you’re ready to go.”

  The chain rattled as she padlocked the gate behind her.

  “We’re trapped,” Ben said.

  “I think we should start with the Cuprite, don’t you?”

  Ben shrugged, his gaze suddenly lazy and shuttered. At that moment, he reminded her of Jason. She experienced a not-altogether unpleasant sensation in her stomach. “If Kathy was born in 1917, she must have graduated in 1934,” she said, trying to cover her discomfort.

  “Assuming she’s the same girl as the baby in your picture.”

  “Let’s assume it,” Chelsea said.

  “Okay.” Ben removed a dusty volume and handed it to Chelsea. There was no book from 1934, only the volumes from 1933 and 1935.

  “It only shows seniors,” Chelsea said, flipping through the yearbook from 1933,

  No Kathleen Barrie was listed.

  Try 1935,” Ben said.

  “There’s no point. Kathy would have graduated by then.”

  Ben picked up the gray book and looked through it.

  “She won’t be in there,” Chelsea insisted. “She’d be eighteen years old.”

  “I like to find things out for myself.” Ben thumbed to the B’s. “What did I tell you?”

  Chelsea stared. Kathleen Barrie was by far the prettiest girl on the page, her face planed by an added year of maturity. Chelsea thought it was remarkable how only a year’s difference made Kathy look like a woman among adolescents.

  Chelsea sat down at the long table in the center of the room and studied the picture for a long time. Kathy. Her grandfather’s lover. A raven-haired beauty. But why the extra year? “It doesn’t make sense,” she said.

  “Maybe something interrupted her schooling.”

  “Like what?” Chelsea couldn’t think of anything. “Maybe she had to stay home, take care of her family.”

  Suddenly Chelsea remembered the photograph of the maids in front of the Copper Queen. The frightened expression on the girl’s face, the ill-fitting dress . . .

  There was talk of a scandal.

  A baby.

  “Unless she had to leave school to have a child,” Ben said at the same instant.

  “There must be a record of the birth.”

  A helpful clerk at the Recorder’s office directed Ben and Chelsea to the miscellaneous records for 1933. The heavy books contained random, handwritten accounts of litigations, sales—horses, mules, wagons, all the way down to rugs and cutlery—and a few birth and death records. A long shot, but it paid off. There was a child, born to Kathleen Barrie of Bisbee, Arizona, father unknown.

  Kathleen’s parents were listed as Frank and Ellen Barrie. Kathleen’s child, named Anne, was born dead.

  From the Recorder’s office, Ben and Chelsea drove to the cemetery. In the late-afternoon light, the headstones’ dark shadows nested into the golden grass like open graves.

  Dry grass tickled Chelsea’s legs. Although the sun hung low in the sky, the July heat was intense. To the south, the thunderheads had built up over Naco, Mexico, and now hung suspended over blue peaks. The air bristled with electricity.

  After a long search, they found the granite marker for Ellen Barrie, the name listed in the records as Kathleen’s mother.

  Perspiration stood out on Chelsea’s forehead and trickled down her neck. It might have been like this that August day they laid Ellen Barrie to rest, only a month after the birth of her daughter. Feeling hot and flushed, Chelsea wiped her face with the palm of her hand and read the words inscribed on the monument.

  In Loving Memory

  ELLEN BARRIE

  Born May 20, 1890. Died August 3, 1917.

  Fortified by the Rites of the Holy Church

  On whose soul, Sweet Jesus, have mercy!

  “She was twenty-seven when she died,” Ben said.

  Only one year older than Chelsea. A chill spread through her. There was so much more to do in her own life, so much more to experience—she had only just begun. But for Ellen Barrie, there had been only a hard life, a husband torn from her a month before she died, and an infant who depended on her. Not for the first time, Chelsea thought about the many loose ends which remained when a person died—so many things planned and left undone. Ellen Barrie had been deprived of the chance to raise her newborn daughter. How she must have hated to leave! How she would have worried . . . what would become of her child? Chelsea was certain that the infant had been well-cared for—whoever had commissioned such a loving monument would most likely be the one to have raised Kathy. But could anyone really replace a mother?

  Chelsea remembered her own mother drifting out onto the terrace, the folds of her pale blue morning robe fluttering in the breeze. She’d asked the gardener what he thought of covering their arbor with bougainvillea. Then she’d hugged Chelsea and said, “Next year this whole wall will be covered with bright pink flowers. I can’t wait.” The following year, when the flowers bloomed, Leslie McCord had been dead three months.

  What plans had Ellen Barrie made for her newborn child?

  Ben seemed to read Chelsea’s thoughts. “Unfinished business,” he muttered.

  Chelsea bent down and twisted the high grass away from the marker. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? You’re living in the Barrie house. Kathy and John McCord were probably lovers. Who else would be a prime candidate for haunting, if not the descendant of John McCord? Providing you aren’t just imagining things.”

  Chelsea ignored Ben’s last words. “That’s what I think.” What did the occult books say? Ghosts were spirits who could not rest because they’d left something undone. What had Kathy left unfinished?

  “First we have to find out whether this Kathy is dead or alive,” Ben said. “If she died in Bisbee, there’s a good chance she’ll be here.”

  They wound among the headstones, scanning them for Kathleen’s name. There was an Anne Marie Barrie, 1865 to 1932 (Kathy’s grandmother?) and a smaller, white marble marker: Anne Barrie. Born April 14, 1933. Died April 14, 1933.

  The child. Kathy’s child.

  But no Kathy.

  “She’s not here.” Chelsea spoke her thoughts aloud.

  ‘I’d like to take a look at your illustrious ancestors, if it’s all right with you. Then we’d better get out of here,” Ben said. “That storm’ll be right on top of us in a minute.”

  The McCord plot was in a well-tended area, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. In the center, a low shelf of salmon-pink stone stretched along the length of the plot. On it was the name McCord, printed in large gilt letters. The headstones were ranged in front of the shelf. Chelsea scanned them, thinking of two other graves in La Jolla—the graves of her parents. Ben pointed at the headstone belonging to Mary McCord, who died in 1942. The legend said simply, “She was a good Wife and Mother.”

  If little time and trouble had been expended on Mary McCord, John McCord’s heads
tone more than made up for it. Balanced on the second headstone was a statue of a horse, saddled and bridled, its tail wrapped. A polo pony. Underneath it said:

  JOHN McCORD

  January 8, 1915 to November 3, 1941

  Below were two verses from A.E. Housman’s poem “To an Athlete Dying Young”.

  Chelsea shivered, feeling that she was being watched. She didn’t like to ponder what might be out there.

  “We’d better take a quick look and run for cover,” Ben said as the wind stirred up.

  Chelsea agreed. At any rate, there was only one more marker in the plot. The last stone was recent—Lucas McCord’s grave, 1978.

  She remembered the last time she saw him. He was visiting her parents’ ranch in Pine Valley. Chelsea, only seven or eight at the time, had come across him suddenly. He was sitting on the couch, staring out the window, and even at that age, Chelsea knew his heart was breaking. It was in his eyes, in the slump of his shoulders, in the feeling transmitted across the space that separated them. A feeling of such desolation that Chelsea had run outside to be in the sunshine again, wondering why there were tears at the edges of her eyes.

  Now looking at his headstone, Chelsea realized how important John McCord must have been to Lucas. Uncle Bob had told her (without rancor) that John had been Lucas’s “fair-haired boy.” The favorite.

  The scene in the Copper Queen Mine came back to her. Father and son arguing, the last day of John McCord’s life. It was obvious Lucas had deeply regretted his quick words of anger. He had carried that guilt with him over the years. That was what the seven-year-old child had seen and felt so many years later.

  She was positive their last argument had been over Kathy.

  “He was a stubborn bastard,” Ben said, breaking her reverie. “My father once had dealings with him over a Charlois bull we owned and Lucas wanted. I remember Dad saying that Lucas was obsessed. Lucas wanted that bull in the worst way. Finally Dad relented and sold it, saying that if it was that important to Lucas, he might as well have it and leave him in peace. The bull died the next year. Didn’t even get a chance to breed it.”

  This view of Lucas McCord dovetailed with other accounts Chelsea had heard. Stubborn and controlling, self-defeating to the end. Obviously, Lucas wanted to control his son John in the same way he tried to control his business dealings. Had Uncle Bob, the second son, benefited from a sort of benign neglect?

  Uncle Bob didn’t try to control anyone. Perhaps he had learned by watching his father’s constant struggles and by the deep grief that resulted when things turned out wrong.

  The wind ripped across the cemetery. The heavy scent of rain mingled with cut grass—a heavenly smell. A jagged, white vein of lightning split the sky. But Chelsea was back in the cold, dark mine, listening to a conversation that had taken place over forty-five years ago.

  Lucas talking about duty. Was it John’s duty to marry the right kind of person?

  One thing was certain: Lucas would never have chosen Kathy Barrie, daughter of a deported miner, to be his son’s wife.

  Twenty-two

  Quarter-sized drops of warm rain spattered the dust and mingled with the desert shrubs, a metallic scent that Chelsea could almost taste. Then came the deluge. The rain blackened the iron-red slopes and rivulets of water poured down their sides and into the narrow canyons. Soaking wet, Ben and Chelsea reached the Silverado and drove out past the Chevron station, under the old railroad overpass, past the rusted concentrator to follow the winding road along the Lavendar Pit. The quality of light had changed. The sunset, reflected in the dark clouds, had varnished everything in glowing yellows and pinks. By the time they reached Old Bisbee the rain drummed heavily on the truck roof and glanced off curbs already staving off red, muddy sheets of water.

  The intersection of Brewery Gulch and Naco Road was already flooded. Only five minutes had elapsed since the rain had started.

  “Why don’t we wait the storm out?” Ben asked as he hauled the truck around in the wheel-high water and headed up Howell. “We could have a drink at the Queen.”

  Chelsea, already chilled in a soaking T-shirt and shorts, was easily convinced. “A hot drink,” she said.

  They parked by the church and ran through the deluge to the hotel.

  The Copper Queen was crowded with tourists seeking respite from the rain. The enormous mahogany bar stretched the length of the room. Old-fashioned lamps with green shades glimmered off beige walls and dark-wood molding. Outside, the rain pounded the streets and lightning flickered behind the dark hills. Chelsea nodded to a couple of locals as they found a place at the bar.

  They ordered Irish coffee.

  “Still cold?” Ben asked.

  “I’m all right.”

  Ben appraised her. “Your hair looks better without all that mousse in it.”

  “You know what, Ben? I just make up my mind that you’re okay, that I like you, and then you come up with an insult and spoil things.”

  “Then I shouldn’t be completely honest with you, is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying. I just wish you’d . . .” Chelsea stopped, frustrated. “I don’t know where I am with you.”

  Ben smiled. “Where do you want to be?”

  “I don’t know,” Chelsea said. That was true enough. Ben disturbed her, but she had to admit he had more attractive qualities than unsavory ones. He had gone out of his way to help her, and she didn’t know why. For all his faults, she was beginning to like him.

  They talked a little about Chelsea’s art; he listened intently as she explained the dynamics of painting, asking intelligent questions. She told him about her book idea, omitting the fact that she hadn’t thought about the project in days. He told her about his horse breeding operation, still in its infancy.

  As a horse lover, he’d found a kindred spirit in Chelsea. They traded anecdotes about horses they had owned, the silly and sometimes dangerous things that could happen. He told her about his years on the show jumping circuit.

  “Why did you stop riding?” Chelsea asked between sips of coffee.

  Ben’s eyes darkened briefly. Then he shrugged. “It’s not a real life. It was time to come back to Bisbee and do something else.” But Chelsea sensed tension under his casual tone. He rested his elbows on the bar and changed the subject. “I wonder who commissioned the headstone for Ellen Barrie?”

  “The first Anne Barrie, I suppose,” Chelsea said. “Kathy’s grandmother. Or maybe Sean Barrie—whoever he was.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Certainly not her husband. Unless he was able to make it back to Bisbee.” She thought this unlikely. “I was sure we’d find Kathy’s grave. You don’t think she’s still alive, do you?”

  “Not if she’s a ghost.”

  “You believe me?” Incredulous, Chelsea could only gape.

  Ben leveled his gaze on her. “I like you. I don’t think you’re trying to con me, and I don’t think you’re hallucinating things. The only thing left is believing.”

  Ben picked up his cocktail napkin and carefully folded it in half, then in quarters, as if he were trying to arrange his thoughts by the neatness of his action. “Maybe the semantics are hanging us up. The idea of a lost soul that haunts houses is a little farfetched. Maybe a ghost is as simple as a memory. Or an electromagnetic field. Or a place that has had a lot of things happen to it and has taken on a feeling. Have you ever heard the theory about genetic memory—the idea that thoughts and feelings are somehow transmitted through our genes to our descendants?”

  Chelsea remembered the feeling that had come over her when she first saw the photo of John McCord. She had known he was important to her, had known that in some sense he was her. She told Ben about that day. “Sometimes I feel as if I’ve been here a long time, as if I’ve lived a whole other life here.”

  He nodded, gesturing to the window, where rain hit the terrace like clear glass marbles. “Bisbee has always attracted unusual people and unusual event
s. Lucas McCord, whatever anyone says about him, was not an average person. He was—”

  “Bigger than life.”

  “That’s accurate, I think.” Ben paused. “So many strange things have happened here—the deportation, for one. Tempers lost, people murdered, a whole neighborhood eaten up by open pit mining. Do you know,” he said, spinning the mug on the bar, “that there are a lot of holes, a lot of mines, right in the town itself? They would build grand houses and then undercut them or bulldoze them down altogether for the little bit of mineral underneath them. The powerful people here were like a bunch of sand crabs, kicking sand in each other’s faces and finding their place to burrow while they could. Mining built these towns—eastern interests who didn’t give a damn about anything but money.

  “Take your great-grandfather’s house over in Warren. And the Douglas mansion nearby. I heard they were beautiful—tennis courts, orchards, stables, tall trees. So what did they do? They put a slag heap right behind those houses.”

  Chelsea nodded. Ben sipped his coffee thoughtfully, then continued,

  “Every possible calamity has hit this place—fire, flood, disease. And the worst thing, the mines closing.” He laughed shortly. “George Warren, Bisbee’s founding father, lost his claim to the Copper Queen Mine—worth millions—in a footrace with a horse.” He saw that Chelsea was about to protest and lifted his hand. “It wasn’t such a crazy idea. He was going to make it up on the turns. A man can turn faster than a horse. But he misjudged the distance, put the stake too far from the finish line. Ended up dead broke. Even sold himself into slavery in Mexico to pay off his gambling debts. Bisbee’s founding father. And you know the funny thing? He’s the miner on the state seal of Arizona.”

  Chelsea grinned. Maybe Arizona was nuttier than California. That would be refreshing. She glanced out the window at the darkening hills. No two ways about it: Bisbee had some quality that walked the streets, that brought the past right into the air she breathed.