Dancing with a Ghost

by Angela Pepper

  Dancing With a Ghost

  Restless Spirits of the Southwest

  Angela Pepper

  | FIRST EDITION |

  Chapter 1

  Katie Mills kept looking over her shoulder as she stepped off the plane in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

  She'd heard a superstitious tale that ghosts could only move at walking speed. Traveling by plane or even by vehicle could shake one for a few days.

  Katie unzipped her jacket in anticipation of the warm southwestern sunshine. She touched the cross at her neck and prayed the flight had bought her a few days' relief. A few days without her ghostly companion.

  Outside, the late November air was warmer than the plane but still cooler than she'd expected. Whenever she thought of New Mexico, Katie imagined scorching sands, long dirt roads, and carrion birds perched on weathered bones. She pictured the desert, as painted by Tilda Onassis, the artist whose retreat she was heading toward. The great woman's paintings seemed to pulse with heat. But in reality, it was cool here. Katie silently admonished herself for being so naive. It was nearly December, and the town was in the mountains. The ranch was at an even higher elevation.

  Katie passed through the charming airport, pausing to admire the twinkling white Christmas lights dotting the many shades of blue. The wooden window frames were turquoise. The ceiling was cerulean, or maybe Haint Blue, a soft blue-green painted on porch ceilings in the South to ward off evil spirits the locals called “haints.” She took one last look over her shoulder. No ghost. Just other travelers, coming and going through the small airport. She stepped out through the front door. The air was even cooler than it was on the tarmac. A fly buzzed around her face. She'd reached the point where she was no longer enjoying the journey as a thing in and of itself. Now she felt impatient to reach her destination.

  “Excuse me,” came a male voice. “Are you heading to the Ranch?”

  Katie turned to find a young man about her age—twenty—standing at the taxi stand. He had mousy brown hair and small, dot-like features that looked to Katie like paint splatters. He was small and slight, smooth and somewhat rubbery, as though his bones were plastic, like those of a poseable artist's mannequin.

  An older man passing by slowed down to take a long look at the boy and then Katie, and back and forth again. The curious man might have been wondering if they were siblings—twins, even. The two twenty-year-olds were cut from the same cloth. Katie regarded the young man with a combination of fascination and disgust, the same way she looked at herself in the mirror.

  He repeated himself. “The Ranch?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That's exactly where I'm headed. Should we wait for the others and share one of those?” She pointed to a shuttle van.

  “Sure.” He set down his suitcase. It was a vintage case—the kind with no wheels. Total art student choice. The old suitcase was not the most efficient for travel but it did make a sturdy seat. He used it instead of the nearby bench.

  Twenty minutes passed before the two spoke again.

  “I'm Lee,” said the boy, his paint splatter of a mouth twitching with self-importance. “Lee Elliot. I'm nobody yet. I might change my name. Too many E's in a row.” He spelled it out fully to demonstrate. “My name would never be a good website.”

  “Katie Mills,” she said. They shook hands, their fingers too reluctant to clutch for more than a second. “Also a nobody.”

  “You should go by Kate. Or Katherine. Nobody collects art by someone named Katie.”

  “Right,” she said. It wasn't the first time she'd heard that from a well-meaning fellow student. Her more political girlfriends would jump in and point out that any female name held less implied value than a male name, so perhaps she'd do well to change her name to Kurt or Kevin. The conversation would devolve from there. Katie preferred not to spar with people over her name. Or much else.

  She'd read a quote once, about how life was a battle, not a dance. She didn't agree. Life could be a battle, if you made it one. But why not dance, if you have the choice?

  Lee Elliot was still looking at her.

  She raised her eyebrows and gave him a polite smile. If conversation was also a dance, she preferred to let someone else lead.

  “Wait until you meet Clive and Tilda,” Lee said. His cheeks flushed with a life force that had not been present until now. “They're brilliant in every way. Not just separately, but together. He's the businessman, sure, but she'd be nothing without him. You should get Clive to give you a new name. He and I had some long talks about my career, last year when I was up here. We had the most amazing walks together. Just the two of us, out under the stars. He's going to introduce me to all the right people, as soon as he thinks I'm ready.”

  Katie said, “That sounds nice. Good for you.”

  Lee's paint-splatter features rearranged into an angry cloud of hornets. “You'll see,” he spat.

  Katie opened her mouth to apologize or explain but stopped herself. It was her lisp again. She was weary from travel and had been careless with her enunciation. The S sounds had come out exaggerated and sloppy. The toddler-like speech combined with Katie's natural resting expression sometimes had an unfortunate social side effect. When she spoke up, people thought she was making fun of them—especially sensitive artist types with chips on their shoulders. Lee was evidently the type of guy who expected mockery.

  They stood in silence as the sky turned lavender.

  Both turned to watch the sky in uneasy silence.

  Some people claimed it was the high elevation that made the skies over Santa Fe so luminous, so saturated with color. A lack of pollution. A special kind of light, closer to heaven. Katie could get lost in that sky.

  Lee Elliot shifted noisily next to her. She could sense the young man's desire for attention, his desire to talk to her. Talk at her. To be heard. To ruin the quiet enjoyment of the purple sky.

  She deliberately kept her chin lifted and avoided the eye contact that would give him another conversational opening.

  A taxi driver broke the silent stand-off. “You two want a lift to the Ranch or not?”

  Katie and Lee both agreed quickly, without looking at each other, and then raced to be the first loaded into the vehicle.

  The driver was an older black man, perhaps seventy, with a sprinkling of white hair over his head and a close, tight gray beard. He was quick to smile and powerful with his movements.

  “Nice to see you again,” he said to Katie with an eyebrow waggle.

  “Thanks,” she said, though she'd never been to New Mexico before, let alone met this driver.

  “It's a long drive,” the man said. “Get comfortable, but not too comfortable.” He looked over his shoulder and gave Lee a mischievous wink.

  The taxi started moving.

  Katie regretted getting into the back seat with Lee, but it was too late to move up front now. She leaned her head back on the upholstered seat and tried to relax. This trip was going to be good. She was putting more miles between herself and the last place she'd seen the ghost. She could be herself here, and not the girl people on campus stared at and whispered about.

  She could feel Lee's eyes on her. She ignored him and zipped open her travel bag. She kept the prescription bottle hidden from his prying eyes as she shook out a single pill. Rapid travel might keep away the ghost who haunted her, but just in case it didn't work, she had her medicine.

  Unfortunately, a side effect of the pills was that they took away the colors in the world. And the sky right now, edging toward indigo, was breathtaking.

  She paused, the pill pressed to her lower lip. She felt the gelatin soften from her saliva.

  Katie didn't want the colors to go away, but she needed to keep the ghost at bay. At least for the f
irst day or two.

  “What have they got you on?” Lee asked.

  “This and that.” She dry-swallowed the pill before he could get a better look at the markings.

  “I've tried everything myself,” he said.

  Katie doubted that very much but didn't say so.

  “Painting is the only thing that works,” he said dreamily. “The only thing that matters. You know, I feel sorry for people who don't have a driving passion in life. If someone took away my ability to create beauty from nothing, I don't know what I'd do. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones.”

  “Good for you,” Katie said. This time she was mocking him, but he didn't seem to notice.

  They didn't speak again on the hour-long drive.

  After a technicolor display in the sky, complete with red-ink-dipped clouds, the sun finished setting.

  The passengers lurched forward suddenly, held back by their seat belts. The vehicle slid to a scratchy stop on the dirt road.

  Up ahead, an iron gate blocked the entrance to the ranch.

  The friendly driver turned around and gave the two a suspicious look. “Are you sure they're expecting you?”

  Lee said, “I've had my spot reserved for almost a year. Of course they're expecting me.” He glanced over at Katie but didn't wait for her to speak. “You can let us out here, and we'll walk the rest of the way. It's fine. I could use the exercise anyway.”

  The driver said to Katie, “How about you, pretty lady whose name I can't remember? I'm heading back into Santa Fe right now. If you don't want to stay here with this smooth character, you can hitch a ride with me. I won't charge you for the way back.”

  “I'll be fine,” she said, smiling. “Lee Elliot will take good care of me.”

  “If you say so. You know what they say. You don't have to outrun el chupacabra. You just have to outrun whoever you're with.” He grinned broadly at his joke.

  “Good to know,” she said.

  Lee snorted.

  The driver got out and helped them pull their luggage from the trunk, though there wasn't much. Lee had only his vintage suitcase, and Katie had her black canvas suitcase plus a few bags with painting supplies.

  The road beyond the iron gate was dark, lit brightly by a waning gibbous moon—about three-quarters lit—and a veil of stars.

  Lee said, “I can see lights on inside the main ranch house.”

  Katie couldn't see what he did, but her vision without contact lenses wasn't perfect. The medication she'd been taking dried out her eyes, making her unable to wear her contacts, but she preferred the world this way, slightly soft. All the better to see the true shapes of things minus the distraction of details.

  “Take some complimentary water,” the taxi driver said after they'd paid him for the ride. “Just in case.” He put two bottles of water in their hands, and then he drove away.

  They began the trek along the dark road. As the taxi's engine faded to nothing, there was only the scratch of the pair's footsteps and the sound of an owl, singing four notes in the same tone, in rapid succession.

  Katie's neck itched. She fought the urge to look over her shoulder, to check for what had possibly followed her out here, across three states, to the desert mountains. The wind picked up, and it seemed to be howling in the ghost girl's voice, demanding, “How could you?”

  Katie strapped her bag around her shoulders so she could use both hands to clap over her ears.

  Still, she heard the voice. “Katie, how could you take my place?”

  Chapter 2

  Katie heard a rustling that must have been the wind in the dry leaves, but the sound seemed to come from the vast sky itself, as though crinkled tissue paper of midnight blue were being pulled away from a wrapped gift, a treasure.

  She kept walking toward the century-old adobe buildings, crowned with chimneys and lit only by the recently full moon. Long-limbed ancient cottonwood trees arched overhead protectively.

  The place was known internationally as Spirit Ranch. It was more than a retreat for artists; it was a dark and secret place. Years ago, it had been the perfect spot for the Velasco brothers, who used it for hiding stolen cattle. The animals' rightful owners were spooked away by mannequins the elder Velasco brother set hanging in the trees. If the prospect of being hanged wasn't enough to discourage unwanted visitors, there were the evil spirits the locals spoke of, ghosts of witches who haunted the dwellings and took to the nearby flat-topped mountain under the full moon to dance with the devil. There were also legends of supernatural beings, mutant potato bugs over six feet long, and cattle who flew through the canyon on ghostly wings.

  Something small scurried toward the pair of moonlit travelers. The creature stopped to watch them just long enough to reveal the glint of its eyes before it scurried away.

  After twenty minutes of walking, they reached the main house.

  Despite the chill in the late November mountain air, Katie was sweating from the effort of lugging her bags. She could taste the red dust that had blown into her nose and mouth. The earth stuck to her damp skin. She paused to look up, to remember the shape and feeling of this moment. The main ranch house was jagged and rectangular, like a castle or a fortress. She knocked on the wooden door.

  Lee stood back a good ten feet, like a spectator, noisily glugging the remainder of his bottle of water. Katie hadn't even opened hers.

  A smaller door set within the thick wooden door slid open to reveal a pair of hooded eyes under sharp-peaked, triangular eyebrows. It was a woman, and she greeted Katie with one word. “Yes?”

  “I'm here for the retreat. It's under...” Her throat tightened. It was hard to say the name, like inviting the darkness to swallow the rest of her. “Darlene Silva.”

  “No.” The bright-green eyes framed by dark iron widened. “No, no, no.” It became a moan. “Noooooo.” The metal hatch in the door slammed shut.

  The noise startled Katie. She took a step backward and turned to Lee.

  Lee rolled his eyes toward the starry sky and shook his head. With a weary sigh, he marched up the stone steps on his rubbery legs and thrust his boneless hand toward the wooden door, where it landed with a splayed-hand splat rather than a real knock. He splatted twice more, as though giving the door a high five it didn't deserve.

  “Ms. Onassis?” A fourth splat. “It's me, Lee Elliot. I was here last year. Sorry we're late, but I wanted to wait at the airport for a while to make sure we didn't miss anyone for our retreat.”

  Katie cracked open the plastic cap of her water bottle. The breaking plastic made a satisfying snap. If Lee wanted to take credit for being thoughtful and waiting for other students, more power to him. The guy could use whatever glossy sheen he could get onto himself before his true, muddy colors came through.

  Through the door, the woman could be heard yelling. “Darlene Silva! That's who's out here on the doorstep! Do you want to tell me what the hell this is all about?”

  The person who answered back wasn't yelling, and so there were no words for Katie to overhear.

  Lee sighed wearily again.

  There was a baleful creaking, and the door opened, spilling out warm golden light.

  It was her. Tilda Onassis. The Red Desert Flower. The Mistress of Spirit Ranch. She could have stepped right out of one of her many magazine photos. With her arms outstretched, her trademark oversized men's dress shirt billowing around her thin, angular frame, and a smile like an ironed dart, she seemed to be posing for another iconic image, a memory to be quickly painted in the mind.

  Tilda looked up and down Katie's body while Katie did the same, albeit without moving her head so obviously.

  The artist standing before her had sleek red hair, cut in a crisp bob—the same haircut she'd worn for thirty years. A single pearl adorned one earlobe. The other earlobe, her right one, wasn't pierced. In interviews, she explained she'd only wanted one, plus the first piercing had hurt too much. Like childbirth. It hurt, and she couldn't bear to do it a second time.

 
Katie noticed the older woman wore no underwear beneath the oversized men's shirt, which was flecked with a hundred shades of paint. Her feet were bare. On her legs, she wore black tights ending just below the knee. She was old enough to be Katie's mother, yet she lifted one foot and stretched languidly with the same playful energy as a juvenile cat.

  Tilda's green eyes flicked over to Lee briefly then back to Katie.

  “You're not Darlene Silva,” Tilda said, her voice purring with amusement as she finished her leg stretch. “Darlene had thicker hair, and fuller lips, and a chest like a big ol' feather bed.”

  “Darlene sends her regards,” Katie said, lying with surprising ease. “She couldn't make it, but since the booking was already paid for, she insisted I go in her place. She didn't want to be wasteful.”

  “She didn't want to be wasteful?” Tilda didn't move from the doorway to invite them in. “That doesn't sound like the Darlene I knew.”

  Katie shrugged and forced a sweet smile. “Well, here I am.”

  Behind her, Lee cleared his throat.

  “Here we both are,” Katie said.

  “Brother and sister?”

  They answered in unison, “No.”

  Tilda flashed her eyes, looking seductive. She was fifty, and had only gotten more brazen with age. “Are you sure you're not twins? I've always had a weakness for twins, as you might have heard.”

  Katie felt her cheeks redden as she looked down at Tilda's bare feet, her crimson-lacquered toenails like arrowheads. She'd read that Tilda Onassis had a penchant for seducing siblings, but she'd believed it to be hyperbole, dreamed up by desperate magazine writers hoping to secure more readers by promising lurid details. But now here she was, in the flesh, bolder and more flirtatious than all written accounts. What if everything whispered about the redheaded artist dynamo were true?

  Lee pushed past her toward the doorway, bumping Katie with first his shoulder and then his suitcase. He seized Tilda in a hug. Tilda rested her chin on the young man's shoulder and made a gagging face at Katie. Then she succumbed to the hug and ran her hands, fingers thin and pointed like fork tines, down his hunched back.