Texas Gothic

by Rosemary Clement-Moore

  He shifted awkwardly. “Leather. Sweat. Horse. Tobacco.”

  I caught Phin nodding at me in approval, and went on. “Tell me something he taught you. Did he teach you any songs on the guitar?”

  “Of course.”

  The purple of the potion was seeping up the white silk cord more quickly the more he immersed himself in memory. Phin checked it and said, “A little more.”

  “Can you sing a song he taught you?” I asked Ben.

  He opened his eyes, and the purple stopped rising. “Seriously?”

  “Yes, seriously.”

  He sighed, but started a hoarse baritone croon, so like his grandfather’s my skin prickled.

  “As I walked out on the streets of Laredo …”

  His voice, knit with memories, drew the potion up the silk, until the length was soaked through. “Keep going,” said Phin as she took the weighted cord from Ben’s fingers. She lifted the weight from the bowl and it dangled, twisting on its string, dripping sodden leaves into the water.

  Ben kept singing, eyelids lowered as Phin moved to the map on the table. “I spied a young cowboy, all wrapped in white linen …”

  Linen like a shroud. What a macabre song to teach a little boy.

  I could sense something, like a rising breeze, curling around me, around Ben, and Phin, stirring the curtains, and the papers on the table. The door was still closed, but the silk-wrapped weight began to swing in the invisible wind.

  Phin extended her hand over the map, and the pick swung like a mad pendulum, though her hand remained steady.

  “All wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay.”

  “Got it,” said Phin.

  Ben’s eyes snapped open. “You know where he is?”

  “I know the area.” She circled it in red marker and handed the map to him. “Now Lila does her thing.”

  Lila barked at her name. She was already wearing her harness and search-dog vest. As we gathered the first-aid kit and supplies, I stole a moment to ask Phin about our next obstacle. “Do you know how to work Lila on a search?”

  “I’m not going to do it. You are. She likes you best.”

  Last fall Aunt Hyacinth showed me how to work with Lila so I could write a paper for school. We practiced together one afternoon—but that was her normal search-dog training.

  “I’m talking about her special training, Phin. I don’t do magic, remember?”

  “You need to quit saying that. Besides, most of the doing is done, you just have to use it.” She handed me a familiar tabbed notebook as the guys waited impatiently to leave. “Aunt Hyacinth really did leave instructions for everything.”

  Ben was wound tighter than a watch. His anxiety seemed almost a physical force, pushing me away. Even Lila felt it, laying her chin on the seat between us and whining very softly. I stroked a reassuring hand over her back. He could push, but we weren’t going anywhere until we’d found his grandfather.

  Mark wasn’t far behind us, following in the Jeep with Phin. A stretch of highway, two gates, and a lot of dirt road later, we reached the coordinates Ben had entered into his GPS from Phin’s map. It was a rugged stretch, where years of water runoff had carved ravines and arroyos into the limestone hills. And it was deserted, as far as we could see.

  “No search party, and no Grandpa Mac,” said Ben. “This is a wild-goose chase.”

  “This is where he is. Trust me.”

  “How can you be so sure?” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I can’t believe I got so caught up in this crazy idea.”

  I let all the pitfalls in that statement lie and concentrated on the important part. “Phin may seem like a nut, but there’s no one smarter about this stuff.”

  He dropped his hands and looked at me, reading the certainty in my face. After a long study, I read the recommitment in his. To the plan, anyway.

  “Okay,” he said. “What’s next?”

  I scratched Lila’s ears as she panted eagerly on the seat between Ben and me. On the drive over, I’d read Aunt Hyacinth’s instructions, and they weren’t complicated, especially since I’d done some casual training with the dog already. “Next, Lila narrows the search.”

  We climbed out and I held the door open for her. She jumped down, circling without taking her eyes off me. As if she knew how important this was.

  Ben gazed over the daunting stretch of terrain. “But it’s a big spot.”

  I crouched in front of the collie. “That’s why we need the dog.”

  Mark’s headlights swept the truck as he reached us. Phin rode with him, and as Ben and I conducted this part of the search on foot, they would follow.

  Clenched tight in my hand, I had the soaked and wrapped guitar pick. It was staining my palm purple as I held it out to Lila to sniff. She snuffled it, inhaling the essence, then licked my face. With a scent item, I’d take it away so it wouldn’t distract her from what she was supposed to sniff out. But this wasn’t about a physical scent—it was about a supernatural bond.

  Lila turned in a circle and looked expectantly from me to Ben.

  “Tell her to find your granddad,” I said. “Picture him really clearly in your head, and then tell her to go.”

  As far as he’d come with me—with us—he still hesitated. “This is crazy.”

  “Ben.” I stepped in front of him, took his arms, and willed him to look at me. It was hard to meet his eye. I felt like I was standing there naked, letting him see a part of me, my life, that I kept hidden away from everyone. Even myself.

  I was the gatekeeper. And tonight I’d thrown the doors open to the enemy forces. I was full of anxiety: that breaking my rules would let something bad happen, that I wouldn’t be able to protect myself or my family from a world full of contempt. I had to push worry aside and show Ben that I believed in magic completely and this would work.

  “You don’t have to trust in magic,” I told him. “You don’t have to trust Phin or my aunt. But trust me. This is the best chance of finding Mac in a hurry. Please. You don’t even have to trust me for long. Just long enough.”

  He gazed back at me, doubt behind his eyes. “You and your magic dog.”

  “Me, my sister, and my magic dog.” I smiled, reassuring.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. I wondered what he was picturing behind them. “I’m ready.”

  “You have to have Grandpa Mac firm in your mind. Clear. Vivid. His smell, his voice. His essence.”

  “Got it.” Then he looked down at Lila and said, “Find Granddad Mac.”

  Lila barked and spun on her back legs. She set off in one direction, then the other, then back again, tracking. I heard the change in the tenor of the Jeep’s engine as Mark put it in gear, ready to trail us as we followed Lila on foot.

  We were able to keep up because, while she ran side to side, narrowing each time as she homed in on the target, we could take a straighter path. But at the top of a hill, the dog raised her head, gave a loud bark, and took off like she’d been shot from a cannon.

  “Come on.” I broke into a run, with Ben behind me. We skidded down a valley, then climbed up the steep slope on the other side, the dry, loose soil making it hard to get traction. At the top I paused, searching for the glint of Lila’s reflective vest in the dark. I spotted her arrowing across a flat space, then up another hill.

  This time she stopped, panting, waiting expectantly for me and Ben to catch up. When we reached her, I said, “Where’s Mac, Lila?” and she turned in a circle, then lay down.

  “What does that mean?” asked Ben.

  “She’s supposed to lie down when she finds something.” I tried to remember exactly. “Maybe she can’t follow his trail any farther.”

  Ben turned in a slow circle. “But he’s not here.”

  I turned, too, scanning the terrain. I could see Mark and Phin headed our way in the Jeep, driving carefully over the rocky hills. The night carried the purr of the engine and the sound of Lila’s panting breath
s.

  Then Ben grabbed my arm, his hand hot on my skin.

  “Do you hear that?”

  When I froze, Lila did, too, and her panting quieted for a second. Just long enough for me to hear what Ben did. A soft voice singing.

  The breeze carried it through the hills like a phantom, but as we listened, Ben still holding my arm, the song strengthened, until I could hear words as well as a tune, even over Lila’s panting.

  “When I walked out on the streets of Laredo …”

  “Which way?” I asked Ben, who knew the terrain.

  “Here.” He started along the ridge, and I realized why Lila had stopped where she did. The drop-off was terrifyingly steep.

  Ben doubled back on a cutback that took him lower, and as he made the turn, he stopped to get his bearings and sang out, “As I walked out in Laredo one day.”

  The answer came right away. “I spied a young cowboy all dressed in white linen …”

  They finished the stanza together, with Ben picking his way down the steep drop, holding on to the branches of trees as he went.

  “All wrapped in white linen and cold as the clay.”

  Mac lay halfway down the slope, his fall stopped by a dwarf cedar. I could see his outline in the moonlight. He tried to get up as his grandson approached, but Ben ordered him to stay where he was.

  “Amy!” he shouted up at me. “Get on the phone and call nine-one-one. Have them connect you with the sheriff. I think Mark and I can get Grandpa up and into the Jeep. Have the ambulance come to gate thirty-two.”

  I barely had any bars of service, and my fingers shook as I dialed. We’d found Mac, but in what kind of shape? I was surprised how much relief could hurt when it cycled right back into worry.

  35

  once I made it down the hill, I handed Ben my flashlight and knelt by Mac’s head. “Stay still, Mr. McCulloch. Let me check you over.”

  He ignored me, of course. “I saw him, Ben,” Mac said, trying again to rise. Ben, after a moment of still surprise, gently but firmly pushed his grandfather back down.

  “Hold still, Grandpa. We called for an ambulance.”

  There was a soft hitch in his voice that made my heart hurt. Ben left his hands resting on Mac’s shoulders, reassuring both of them, I think.

  A wet darkness soaked Mac’s gray hair, and I ran my hands lightly over his skull, feeling for lumps. My fingers came away smeared with blood, but it seemed to be tacky and clotted, and there was a good-sized goose egg on the back of his head. He was certainly showing no lethargy as he batted my hands away.

  “I don’t need a damn ambulance. I just fell down the gol-durned hill and couldn’t get up. So I sat here to wait for someone to come the hell and find me.”

  “You did the right thing,” said Ben.

  “Were you singing so Ben could find you?” I asked, meaning to distract him as I checked for other injuries. No problem moving his arms, for sure. But his legs …

  “I was singing,” snapped Granddad Mac, “because my leg hurts like a sonovabitch and it was sing or cry like a gol-durned girl.”

  He was not saying “gol-durned.” And when I ran my hands over his lower extremities and he hollered “mother effer,” that wasn’t what he really said, either. Ben looked mortified at his grandfather’s language. Not to mention the name he called me as I confirmed his hip was broken.

  It didn’t help that Mark and Phin arrived just then, half sliding down the hill. “Did you find him?” Phin asked. “Is he okay?”

  I ignored them all. I ignored the language, and my own tender sympathy for Ben and Mac both. I focused only on the problem I could do something about.

  “It’s not your leg, Mr. McCulloch,” I said, all business, and using his full name since he didn’t seem to recognize me. “It’s your hip.”

  “Baloney,” he said through his teeth, lying back—finally—with a horrible grimace. “Only old women break their hips.”

  “And old men who fall down cliffs.” It wasn’t much of a cliff, but it was enough. “Phin,” I said, “hand me the ice pack from the first-aid kit.”

  She dropped the bag by Mac and found the instant cold pack, crushing and kneading it before handing it to me.

  Ben made another call while we worked. “We found him,” he said. One of the knots of anxiety in my chest came a little loose at that “we.” I heard the tiny sound of distant cheers over the phone. But Ben’s expression didn’t change as he held my gaze with his unreadable one. And a new knot drew tight around my heart.

  “We already called for an ambulance. Come in at the gate at mile marker thirty-two. Mark will meet you out there in his Jeep.” He looked at Mark, who nodded his cooperation. The brusqueness of Ben’s tone made me think he was talking to the sheriff or deputy, but he softened a fraction when he said, “Tell my mom …” He paused uncertainly, then drew up his resolve and finished, “Tell her it’s going to be fine.”

  He said it like he was going to make it fine, by his own force of will if necessary, and I shivered, for no reason I could name.

  Granddad Mac was as restless as he could be with a broken hip. He kept moving, cursing at the pain. Whenever I came near his head with the ice pack, he shoved it away.

  “Come on, Mr. McCulloch. This is going to make you feel better.”

  “Nothing but a horse tranquilizer is going to make me feel better, missy!”

  Phin took the cold pack from me and shifted to where he could see her in the spill of the flashlight. He stopped his restless thrashing. “I remember you. You’re the Goodnight witch.”

  “That’s right,” she said, and held the cold pack up where he could see it. “And this is a magic ice pack. I put a potion inside that will ease your pain and make you feel calm and relaxed.”

  “Now wait just a minute,” said Ben. I opened my mouth to shush him, but he ran over me. “If you’re seriously planning to use some kind of sedative on my head-injured grandfather …”

  “It’s not—” I started, because I knew that was a standard cold pack, nothing at work but natural chemistry. But Phin shot me a look that froze my tongue, then leveled a stare at Ben.

  “You’re right,” she said. “This is powerful stuff. But I think we should let Grandpa Mac decide if he wants it.”

  “Hell yes! Bring it on.” Mac practically snatched it from her.

  “Grandpa …,” said Ben. “You’re not exactly—”

  “What?” Mac demanded, holding the ice pack to his head. “I’m not what? Sane?”

  “That’s not what I was going to say.” But from the clench of his jaw, that had been what he meant.

  “Deep breaths, Grandpa Mac.” Phin held his hand, stroking his arm. “The potion won’t work if you get yourself in a lather.”

  Whatever Phin did, the fight seemed to slip from Mac’s body on the sigh of his exhale. He retained enough to glare at Ben. “Why do these Goodnight girls treat me more sane than my family does? They actually ask me about things. No one else ever consults me anymore.”

  “But what were you doing out here, Granddad?” asked Ben. “What were you thinking?”

  I was only thinking about calming the waters until the ambulance got there. “What happened, Mr. McCulloch? Did you hit your head when you fell down the ravine?”

  “I hit my head when that damned ghost rose up from the ground and scared the bejeezus out of me!”

  “You saw him?” I asked, startled. “What did he look like?”

  “Great hulking shadow, came out of the dark. Hit me on the head with his cross. You know, the long-handled ones.” He pantomimed something like a cross that leads the processional line in a church. I’m sure it had a technical name, but I didn’t know it. Mac voiced my own thoughts when he said, “Not very monklike of him, was it?”

  “No.” It didn’t sound much like my ghost, either, which had always had a sort of light associated with him. I would describe the shape as tall and lean, not hulking. And he’d never had any kind of staff, crook, or cross when I�
��d seen him.

  I picked up the flashlight and shooed Phin out of the way. “I’m going to look at your head for a second,” I told him. Phin did a lot of eye rolling toward the ice pack. I took a guess at her meaning and said, in the same hypnotic voice she’d used, “Don’t worry. The magic ice pack is already working. You won’t feel anything.”

  “Oh for crying out loud,” Ben burst out. But Mark, who’d been silently standing by, surprised me by shushing him. “It’s Dumbo and the lucky flying feather, dude. Let them do their thing.”

  Ben glared at him, too. But he didn’t say anything else, and neither did Mac as I lifted the corner of the ice pack to get a look at the knot on his head.

  The lump was good sized, but it went out, which was good, not in, which would be very bad. The blood that caked his white hair came from a cut, and as I examined it more closely, I saw that a bit of what I had thought was dried blood was actually a sliver of something else. “Phin, hand me the tweezers from the kit, will you?”

  “What are you doing now?” asked Ben. Then to his granddad, “Are you okay?”

  “Oh fine,” said Granddad Mac, sounding a little drunk. “This stuff is great. Too bad everyone doesn’t know about magic, or we could put this stuff in a bottle.”

  “Good thing,” said Ben, through not-quite-clenched teeth.

  I ignored that as I concentrated on pulling a sliver of old wood from the cut in Mac’s scalp. I was willing to bet real money that it hadn’t been a ghost that knocked Granddad Mac down the hill.

  The sky was beginning to lighten by the time the EMTs whisked Grandpa Mac off to the hospital. It seemed everyone had been there: Steve Sparks, Mrs. McCulloch, and Deputy Kelly, and the search party, which included his nephew Joe, along with Dumb and Dumber. The last two were on ATVs, which seemed to be asking for trouble, even if the head-bashing Mad Monk was a complete myth.

  Then most of them left again: Mark offered Mrs. McCulloch a ride to the hospital with him and Phin, and Steve Sparks went back to the ranch to keep an eye on things, which left Ben stuck with me and Lila, who couldn’t go to the hospital.