Darkscope

by J. Carson Black

  It was Kathy.

  Kathy floated in the night sky, her feet about six inches above the spire. The diaphanous angel robe suddenly transformed itself into a wedding dress, its bodice heavily embroidered with old lace and pearls. Chelsea could see through the bridal veil's mesh to the face underneath. Kathy was grinning. A trail of something like black lacquer dribbled from the edge of her mouth. Blood.

  The whites of Kathy's eyes glittered, silvery blue, shining with unnatural strength. Her unearthly glow did nothing to warm the gelid air. The creature opened her mouth to say something, but Chelsea couldn't hear. The wind snatched the words away. Slick, shiny darkness obscured the edge of Kathy's forehead.

  Chelsea stood directly below the steeple tower now. She had to crane her neck back to see. One moment, the figure looked like Kathy; the next, merely a lifelike plaster angel strapped to the very top of the spire like a ship's figurehead. The vision changed back and forth until Chelsea's neck began to ache. Finally she dropped her gaze to the entrance of the building.

  The door to the Pythian Castle stood open, Chelsea had been on OK Street many times, and she seemed to remember that the building had a few ground-floor entrances, including a flight of stairs on the right. But now she saw only one door. It opened on a dimly lit shop.

  This is a dream. That's all, just a dream.

  The room seemed much larger than it appeared to be from the outside. At the back of the shop, Chelsea could see a heavy shirred drape of burgundy velvet. Straight pipes hung from the ceiling, ending in gas lamps.

  Chelsea was drawn to the curtain at the back of the store. She stepped through it, unafraid, as dreamers often are.

  Dark shapes filled the room—carousel horses under an inch of dust, mannequins, crates, and boxes stacked to the ceiling. In the light of one naked bulb, Chelsea spotted a rocking chair on top of one of the boxes, almost brushing the ceiling. As Chelsea watched, it began to rock, squeaking loudly. Its shadow loomed on the wall. Lucas McCord, looking the way he had in his last years, materialized in the chair.

  "Hello, Chelsea!" he called. "How's the camera working out?"

  "You know about the camera?" Chelsea asked, trying to ignore the clods of dirt that stained his teeth.

  Lucas rocked back and forth, back and forth. "Know about the camera? Chelsea, it's my camera!" Lucas slapped his knee, as if the joke was too much to be borne.

  "I found it," Chelsea insisted, puzzled.

  Lucas waved a crooked finger at Chelsea. She noticed that his hair was falling out in little tufts from a scalp the color of parchment. "It fixed my wagon, and it's going to fix yours, too! Fix your wagon, that's what I'd do. You'll learn, Chelsea! You'll learn!" His voice rose to a screech. His dark suit flapped on his bony frame. "Fix your wagon!" Then he was gone.

  Kathy took his place. Her skin gleamed in various shades of gray like an actress on a black-and-white television. Chelsea wanted to ask her how she got down here so quickly and why she had been floating over the spire. Kathy sat in the rocking chair, feet crossed at the ankles, her dark hair glowing in the sparse light. Finally she stood and, with the surety of a cat, slipped to the floor in front of Chelsea. She crossed her arms over her chest. "Help me, Chelsea." Her eyes pleaded, soft and large as a doe's and fringed with a dark thicket of lashes. Her melancholy expression heightened her beauty; dark brows drawn gently together, the slight widow's peak accentuating the whiteness of her face and the graceful line of her neck.

  "I will if I can," Chelsea heard herself say. The image became translucent, elongating into a shimmering pillar, but still a woman's shape. The dark eyes remained defined, glowing pits in the hazy column. Cold came off the creature like the sharp, snowy wind off a mountain, chilling the room. And with it came a deep sadness. Chelsea felt as if the sadness were her own, coming from her core. Despair.

  Suddenly the manifestation started to spin, a frigid dust devil, shattering into a whirl of broken leaves. They danced for a while in the yellow fall of the light bulb, then fell abruptly to the floor.

  Ben entered through the curtain, his face furrowed with concern. Without thinking, Chelsea ran to him. He kissed her and the sweetness permeated her entire body.

  One of his hands cupped her head as his mouth caressed hers. She could feel the warmth of him pressing against her, felt the urge to make love to him there on the floor with the dust and the ghosts and the silent rank of mannequins. He melted into the ice on her flesh, banishing the goosebumps, banishing the horror. His hands molded to her breasts, his tongue lit a trail of fire down her neck. Desire flooding every extremity, Chelsea pulled him down to the floor—

  And woke up.

  It was August again, and the sunlight streaming through the window felt uncomfortably warm.

  The dream's sweetness tugged at her. She trembled all over, longing for Ben's body. The thought of his arms around her acted as a tonic.

  Wouldn't you know it? I always wake up before the good part. Her dreaming mind must be one heck of a prude. Maybe I can get back there again. Chelsea leaned back, willing herself to sleep, wanting only to be claimed by erotic feelings. As she settled into the cool summer sheet, something sharp and brittle dug into her back.

  Rising to one elbow, Chelsea reached underneath and discovered that the bed was strewn with crumbled dry leaves.

  Twenty-seven

  Lucas McCord slapped the paper down on his desk. Lying on the daybed, Mary McCord turned frightened eyes to him. “Lucas?” Her voice was tentative. “Is something wrong?”

  “Wrong?” Lucas’s expression was ironic. He picked up the paper and held it up to her face, then dropped it on the bed. “You tell me what’s wrong!” He spun on his heel and crossed to the window. The line of his back was rigid; even the diffused light of the window had trouble cutting into his ramrod-straight body. “Go ahead and read it,” he said.

  Mary picked the paper up from where it had slid down beside the bed. She saw Lucas’s picture, his face frozen into stern lines. The article, she saw, was by Harry Bright. His name was somehow familiar. “Harry Bright,” she said. “Do we know him?”

  “Do we know him?” Lucas mimicked. His gaze remained on Vista Park. “He knows you. He knows all about you.”

  Mary scanned the article with growing dread. The venerable Lucas McCord said—the highly respected, holier-than-thou Lucas McCord, the same Lucas McCord who had led the crusade to clean up Bisbee, the Lucas McCord who even accompanied the sheriff on several occasions to roust out the nest of prostitutes on the Gulch, who had brought the full weight of the law to bear on the dance halls and bars—

  Was married to a former showgirl, six years his senior, who once performed under the name Mary Lamb at a “theatre” in Philadelphia. Mary Lamb had also worked as an assistant to a magician, and apparently the new, improved Mary McCord was still interested in the occult, because she had predicted the deaths of three people in Bisbee at a social gathering only last month. Her powers extended beyond the ridiculous—three people had died, that very night, in a hotel fire . . .

  Mary let the paper fall. There was no point in reading more. She was aware that Lucas was standing over her, his face suffused with anger.

  “Do you know what you’ve done? Do you?”

  “I—”

  “I’m finished!” Lucas couldn’t contain his anguish. “We’re the laughingstock of the whole state!”

  He towered over her, his body quivering like a bow that has just let an arrow fly. Mary cringed. The self-contained violence in his voice and body were worse than any blow.

  “I’m sorry.” Tears formed in her eyes. He had every right to be angry. “I’m so sorry, Lucas.”

  “Sorry!” Lucas closed his eyes and composed himself. When he spoke again his voice was like ice. “You have ruined me politically. No doubt—” he waved his arm at the window, “they’re having a field day. Lucas McCord is married to a showgirl. Not only that, but she’s clairvoyant as well! She tells people when they’ll die! How can you hold
your head up after this? What about your sons? Do you think this . . . stunt of yours will help them? Do you think they’ll get into the right schools now?”

  Mary’s voice quivered. “I had to warn them. Can’t you see? I—”

  “I don’t want to hear another word.” Lucas paced the room “We will deny this story. Did anyone overhear you?”

  “No, but—”

  Then we will deny it. And those other times . . .”

  Mary shook her head. There had been two other occasions, two other people in the last several years. She had been sure they would die violently, and she had warned them.

  They hadn’t listened.

  No, she thought bitterly, there are no witnesses. But how had the paper found out?

  She cast her mind back to the party. A black-tie affair. Carl Hayden had been there, and Isabella Greenway, Lew Douglas. The crème de la crème of the Arizona political scene. The Brophys, the Cunninghams, the Shattucks. The socially prominent people of Bisbee.

  She thought she had spoken quietly. Mr. Goodman, a journalist from Phoenix staying at the Plaza, had thanked her for her concern, but she knew he didn’t believe her. He must have told other people. She could picture him, the last night of his life, enjoying the attention. You won’t believe what I have to tell you, the most extraordinary thing. Lucas McCord’s wife told me . . .”

  Yes. The story would be too good to pass up.

  “You’ve embarrassed me,” Lucas said. “But you will not embarrass my sons.” He thought for a moment. “I know people. They forget things easily, if you just give them a chance.” He paced the room again. “Yes. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say. You can go back East, for health reasons. To be with your mother, choose an excuse.” He turned to look at her, his face harsh. “But you will not remain under this roof. You have turned my political ambitions into a circus, but you will not do it to my sons. Your very association is enough to tarnish their good name. I’ll send Eleanor up to help you pack.”

  He left, the door slamming behind him. He left Mary in the lovely room where color pooled on the carpet from the elaborate, stained-glass windows, where the grandfather clock ticked solemnly on. He left her alone in the big white elephant that was Maurice Selby's dream, and later her own dream, and which was now little more than an exceptionally pretty prison. She cried quietly. As usual, Mary McCord did her crying alone.

  Mary had to warn Goodman. How could she stand by and let him die? Not for the first time did Mary ponder the unfairness of it all.

  Why had she been chosen? She remembered the day at the pond, that first day. When she saw the girl in the strange clothes.

  Years later, the girl had reappeared at a party at the country club. Mary had come out on the veranda for air when she recognized the dark-haired beauty standing at the rail, gazing out at the town.

  The girl turned to look at Mary. “You’re the one,” she said solemnly. “Perhaps you will be able to stop it.”

  ‘Stop what?”

  “You have the ability. You’ll know. You’ll see it. Maybe you can save your son’s life.”

  “My son ?” Mary thought of Johnny, safe at home with his nanny. What was this woman talking about? “Who are you?”

  The young woman stared right through Mary, her eyes fixed on some point far away. At last she said: “I am not from here.” Her lips looked like carved ice.

  “What has that to do with—”

  The girl shrugged. “Perhaps it’s already too late.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I can’t change the future. Perhaps you can.” Her eyes took on that glazed quality again. “It will be years. Remember what I said. For all our sakes.” Then she walked back into the party. Mary looked for her all night, but she was gone.

  Soon after, Mary started seeing people who would die violently, seeing what they looked like at the point of death.

  She remembered the first time. Vividly.

  They had been shopping, she and little three-year-old Johnny. It was that terrible year after the Deportation. The weather was unusually warm for March.

  They were crossing the plaza when Mary saw a miner emerge from the Bisbee Daily Review office and start in her direction.

  It was then she saw that he had no head.

  He passed by her, walking jauntily, whistling (from where? Oh God, from where?), his hands in his pockets. Blood, dark and blotchy, covered his shirtfront. His neck stopped abruptly at a horribly mangled ear, a dreadful gout of bright blood still pumping from the neck artery. He was caked from head to toe with dust. The dust had mixed with the dried blood to coat his clothing with brown smears. Worst of all was the sight of his shoes. They were new—she’d seen them advertised at the company store—and untouched by disaster. As the miner picked his feet up and set them down, Mary could hear the footfalls.

  It took every bit of will to overcome the panic that swept through her. She ran toward the streetcar, pulling Johnny on his stubby, little legs. Once aboard, she put her head down and covered her eyes, feigning illness from the heat.

  Somehow, she had gotten home. Somehow, she hadn't told anyone about it.

  You have the ability. Could this be what that girl had been talking about? What terrible kind of ability was that?

  The next day she read about the mining accident in the newspaper. Gerald O'Malley had been on the first shift of the day, mucking out after the previous night's blast. Suffering from a hangover, he hadn't noticed the protruding wire of an unexploded stick of dynamite until the moment his pick struck the rock—

  And by then it was too late. Gerald O'Malley had lost his head.

  Mary, shocked by the incident of precognition, acted the next time it happened. She tried to warn the victim, but to no avail.

  She supposed her reputation had suffered—surely something like that had to get out. And all the time she could hear the young woman's warning in her head. Perhaps you can stop it. Perhaps you can save your son.

  Warn him? Was that what she would be asked to do? Warn her own son against his death? Would she see his death before it happened? Could fate be so cruel?

  Those first years were a nightmare. She never let the boy out of her sight. Finally, Lucas interceded. "You're going to turn that boy into a sissy," he told her. "How do you expect him to be able to run a corporation someday if he's tied to his mother all the time?"

  From that time forward, Lucas played an active role in raising Johnny. He took the boy to the office of his new company, Pan Central, and taught him about geology and business. He even took Johnny underground. On those days Mary would take to her bed, a cold fist of terror clenching her heart. She would try to read, try to blot out any visions that might come to her, sometimes pressing her fingers into her forehead with such force that piercing headaches resulted. But nothing ever happened.

  As the years passed and Johnny grew, Mary thought the young woman must have been mistaken. Years and years she had worried, half expecting to see the mark of death on her beloved little boy. But there was nothing. Yes, the girl must have been mistaken.

  When Robert was born, Mary became convinced that he was the doomed child. This time, she refused to relinquish stewardship of her son, and as a result, Robert's childhood was even more sheltered. If she had to sacrifice Johnny on the altar of Lucas's ambition, Robert was hers. Lucas, for his part, despised his younger child, who was dark like his mother, not golden-haired and fair like the McCord side of the family.

  Now Johnny was seventeen and Robert was twelve, and Mary believed that the young woman had been wrong. But she still had the "ability," and now it had caused them all grief

  And what had she accomplished with this wonderful gift? Nothing. She had saved no one. Because no one believed her.

  The only thing she had done was ruin her husband's political chances.

  Yes. She would go away for a while. Perhaps it would be best.

  Lucas lost the primary. He blamed his wife. A week after the election, Mary
McCord left Bisbee for New York. She returned only to be buried.

  The visions left her alone. Perhaps her proximity to Bisbee had influenced her psychically, for never again would she "see" a person's death.

  The children visited her often enough to make her stay in New York worthwhile.

  All in all, fate was kind to Mary McCord. Although she lived to see John's death, her banishment from Bisbee had spared her the grisly vision that surely would have preceded it. And Mary never met (in the flesh anyway) the woman who had appeared to her at the pond all those years ago.

  The woman who was in love with her son.

  Twenty-eight

  Morning shadows stretched down the Mule Mountains, tracking Chelsea’s Thunderbird as it wound up US 80 to Chiricahua College just outside Bisbee, Apparently it had stormed last night, for here and there along the road’s shoulder, she saw standing puddles. Funny, she must have slept right through it.

  But then, she’d had one hell of a dream. Especially the last part.

  The new faculty members toured the small campus and then met for an informal talk. Everyone seemed low-key and friendly—a different atmosphere entirely from her hectic orientation at the university in San Diego. Only once did she feel uncomfortable; Chester Lovett, Uncle Bob’s friend, addressed the new faculty, and his gaze seemed to linger on her longer than the others. Later over punch and cookies, she was able to avoid talking to him. After all, what would she say? Thanks for making sure I got the job? Chelsea left as soon as she could.

  On the way home, she picked up a Bisbee Daily Review.

  The front page was consumed by a photo of a burned house.

  MCCORD HOUSE DESTROYED BY FIRE

  The damage to Lucas McCord’s mansion was extensive. Fortunately, the house’s present owners were out of town at the time. The house had been condemned by the state building inspector and might be bulldozed as early as next week.