Ghost Maker

by Robin D. Owens

  He laughed. “Clare, you will never be able to get that cop tone, trust me.”

  “Trust you, baby?”

  “Fer shure,” he said.

  The light conversation lifted her spirits. She smiled and continued, “The founders of Manitou Springs built it as a resort town and advertised it as the Saratoga of the west, but Manitou Valley was known by, ah, non–Native Americans since the eighteen thirties.” They’d left Castle Rock and Larkspur behind and reached the outer fringes of Colorado Springs. Clare watched how sunlight illuminated the unique glass chapel of the Air Force Academy as they passed it. Then they turned from the northern part of Colorado Springs—where she should be safe from ghosts—to drive through a subdivision toward Manitou Springs. Pikes Peak loomed directly before them, darker crevasses cut in the gray rock.

  She continued reading her notes. “Dr. William A. Bell—”

  “Another Bill?”

  She chuckled. “Yes. He, along with a partner, General William J. Palmer—”

  “We really can’t get away from Bills, can we?” Zach asked.

  “Not at the moment. Anyway, those two were the moving force behind the town itself.”

  “So you think that William A. Bell might be the healer ghost? Sounds like plenty of doctors would have been here to cater to all the TB patients.”

  “It’s a theory,” Clare said. “I, ah, don’t feel whether the idea’s good or not.”

  “Okay. Speaking of feeling, let’s get a feel for the town. Why don’t you put your phone away for now.”

  “My security blanket?” she asked lightly, but did as he said. In her years of living in Denver as a college student, then as an accountant, she didn’t recall spending any appreciable amount of time in Manitou Springs, though she thought she’d driven through the place to or from a different destination or two. Zach hadn’t been back in Colorado long enough to have any new memories of it.

  “Yes, enough data for now,” Zach said comfortably. “No doubt we’ll be exploring even more history, as usual, as we go along.”

  Enzo barked in agreement.

  “Besides, we’re your security.”

  “Uh-huh. You make me feel warm and fuzzy.” A flat-out lie. Enzo chilled her to the bone, and Zach could ignite her with a touch.

  They took an exit off the highway and toward the town. At the first red stoplight, Zach turned his head to stare at her with a hint of an incipient smile. “So, is there any public event deadline we’re running up against?”

  Just her own fading away, she thought morbidly, but didn’t say it aloud. “You mean like Cruisin’ the Canyon in Creede two weeks ago, or Buffalo Bill’s Western Roundup last Sunday?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Ah.” She thought back to information on a local site. “The, ah, coffin races aren’t for four weeks and one day, the Saturday before Halloween.”

  Zach’s face tightened with shock. “The coffin races.”

  Chapter 12

  “That’s the not-so-serious part of Manitou Springs history. The coffin race is part of the Emma Crawford Festival,” Clare said, mock-helpfully. “Manitou Springs’ most famous ghost.”

  “Of course she is,” Zach said resignedly. He’d slowed even more because the busy-with-pedestrians main street had several zebra crossings that people just stepped out onto. The local truck ahead of them had stopped. “When else would a ghost festival be except in late October?” He paused, reached over, and squeezed Clare’s thigh just above her knee. “Back to history already. Could this Emma Crawford be your next main case assigned to you by the Powers That Be?”

  “I don’t think so. She wasn’t a healer, and, like you said, I think we’re probably looking for a doctor.” Clare frowned. “Emma Crawford did believe in ghosts and the afterlife. Her mother was a spiritualist, and apparently Emma did return to communicate with her mother and sister after she died.”

  Zach snorted, then said, “Why her and coffin races?”

  “She spent a lot of time hiking around Red Mountain.” Clare gestured at a rounded peak with red sandstone outcroppings. “And when she died she wanted to be buried at the summit.”

  “What did she die of?”

  “Tuberculosis. At one time a third of the population of Colorado had moved here to mitigate their tuberculosis.”

  “That’s a little scary. Back to Emma. So she was buried at the top of the mountain.” Zach’s eyes narrowed. “Quite a feat at that time, I suppose.”

  “Her ‘special friend.’” Clare gave him a nudge with her elbow. “Like you’re my special friend,”

  “Oh, I am.”

  “Anyway, he was an engineer for the cog railroad—”

  Zach smiled. “There’s a cog railroad, even now?”

  “Yes, we can try it, if you like.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Anyway, the pallbearers worked in shifts, and one account says they used pulleys to haul her casket up. The incline to the top of Red Mountain is steep. It’s seven thousand two hundred feet.”

  “When?”

  “December 1891.”

  “Probably snowy.”

  “That particular article I read didn’t say.”

  Zach shook his head. “Quite a job. The casket would be heavy, but TB is a wasting disease; she probably wasn’t.”

  “I prefer not to think of that.”

  “Coffin races? Why?”

  “Tourism, of course.”

  “Okay, and why Emma Crawford?”

  Clare grimaced. “Her body didn’t stay up on Red Mountain.”

  “Uh-oh. Uh, grave robbers? Morbid tourists? Had to move it?”

  “Your imagination is worse than my own.” She stated the absolute truth.

  “Ex-cop,” Zach said as he turned off the main street according to the truck nav toward the first spring.

  “You were right with your last guess. In 1912 her body had to be moved because of a railroad line, and that led to disaster.”

  “What kind of disaster?”

  “Weather. A bad rain to be exact,” Clare said. “Her casket handles, plate, and some of her bones washed down the mountain and were found in 1929.”

  “Huh.”

  “She was reinterred in a grave in the local cemetery in an unmarked grave.”

  “To stymie morbid tourist grave robbers,” Zach ended.

  “But they erected a plaque later in the area they think she might be. The whole thing sounds sad and icky to me.” Clare no longer flinched when handling human bones, but she’d only had to deal with one skull, and it had been all clean and tidy. She couldn’t imagine—well, yes, she could, which was the problem—a skull with a lot of long woman’s hair and mud and . . . no.

  I could find her! Enzo said. He’d been listening with his head cocked.

  “I’m sure you could.” Eventually she might have to visit the cemetery, but she was sure enough ghosts would find her if she just walked around.

  Zach parked. “Our first spring, Seven Minute Spring—because the geyser is every seven minutes?”

  “So they say.”

  “Nice pavilion”

  “It’s based on the architecture of the most important spring, Ute Iron Spring, back in the eighteen eighties. That will be the last one we visit today . . . if we don’t find the healing ghost.”

  “Right,” Zach said as he opened the door for her. He leaned over and kissed her. “Think positive.”

  She grimaced. “Sorry. I do need to do that.” She sucked in a deep breath. “They drilled this spring in 1909, but before that a hotel stood on the site.”

  “How much before?”

  “In 1872, I think. The town really came into being in 1871, so very close after founding. Ulysses S. Grant stayed at the hotel. It had fifty-eight rooms.” All right, her voice squeaked little high.
<
br />   “What happened to it?” he asked.

  “The same thing that happened to most historic old wooden buildings in Colorado.” She sounded better.

  “Burned down,” Zach said.

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll probably be running into a lot of that in your cases.” He was matter-of-fact.

  “Yes.” She hopped down from the truck, reached behind her seat, and took out a small sack with empty plastic soda bottles and two new plastic cups. “Let’s do this.”

  Clasping her hand in the one not carrying his cane, which meant he wasn’t in super-protective mode, Zach squeezed her fingers. “I’m with you.”

  “Thanks.” Gingerly, she tested the ground under her feet. She certainly felt echoes of the past. Keeping her breathing steady, she scanned the area, blinked as some shadows moved. Yes, several ghosts lingered here.

  “You’re always welcome,” Zach said. He didn’t let go of her hand. They moseyed toward the fancy peaked pavilion set in a grassy park. Not many people were around, though Clare thought she saw more locals filling up water jugs than the tourists with tiny cups. When she angled to read the information set on stands around the park, Zach seemed to be more interested in the colorful drawings portraying the aquifer than old photographs with historical notes. Of course he’d hear of the history from her if it was important.

  He snagged the sack containing the bottles and cups. “You okay if I get the water?”

  “Yes,” she murmured. “I’m being watched by specters, but no one’s rushing up to me.”

  “Good sign.”

  “I hope so.”

  He went to the striking contemporary iron and ceramic fountains while she concentrated on her reading. Enzo sat close to her feet, canceling out most of the heat of the sunshine.

  The phantoms are curious and a little afraid. It’s been a long time since someone who could help them transition has come. He sniffed. Most are old and locked into old paths of status and clothes and who died of what. That seems to matter to them.

  “Oh-kay.”

  I will go talk to them. He grinned, yapped, and ran toward the shades, who saw him coming and clumped together. That just made him happier as he ran around them as if herding them. There is only maybe one person who could use your help at this time, Clare, Enzo projected.

  No, Zach sent back to the ghost Lab. He tilted back the cup, choked, then dumped the rest of the water on a nearby bush and stuck out his tongue. “Don’t like it. Flat and metallic. Certainly not going to take the place of lemon-lime soda.” He held out her cup, noticed when she bent her knees to ground herself and sink into her balance, more because the amount of ghosts . . . and ghost fragments? She definitely saw ghostly buildings overlaying the present pavilion and the park. Even more spirit dogs now raced around with Enzo.

  “I’m ready for the water.” She braced herself and took a couple of sips. Not great, but not terrible. Inhaling, and closing her eyes, she sought to experience the water, the area, see if she drew any healing energy from the spring, the park, any of the ghosts. No.

  Darn it. She opened her eyes.

  Zach took her arm, turned her from the fountain toward his truck, and began to stroll with her. “Pretty place.”

  “Yes. All the springs or water fountains are set in sculptures, as part of the historic and cultural district.”

  He rolled his shoulders. “Sculpture. I can do sculpture.”

  “The next five springs are right in town, and easy to walk to if we park in a central place, like beyond the Episcopal church.” The way he walked indicated that he wore not only his special shoes, but also his left ankle brace, so he should be good for a few blocks of walking.

  “I think I can handle any apparitions while we walk,” she said. Spirits had begun to drift toward her, men and women dressed in clothing fashionable in the last century. So far no screaming or pleading, but she felt like a magnet. She sucked in a breath. “The next spring, Shoshone, is in a red sandstone springhouse built in 1890.”

  “So it’s in your time period.”

  “Yes. Not sure when they drilled it, but the first bathhouse was built in 1872.”

  “Bathhouse?” Zach wiggled his brows. “Coed?”

  “No, different hours.” A phrase from her research came to mind. “And corsets—for both sexes—were supposed to be worn while bathing.”

  “Well, hell, take all the fun out of it.”

  Enzo became a streak of darker gray hard to see against the shadows. Easy to hear from his continuous barking. He’d found the squirrels, both phantom and alive, and led the pack of dogs in a chase.

  Clare got into the truck. They drove a few blocks, parked, and paid for the lot. And, yes, Zach had less trouble than she.

  With each spring she did feel the energy—energies—of the place, perhaps even linking with the deep, dark liquidity of the aquifer. Certainly drawing shadowy spirits around her. In fact, as she went from spring to spring in the three-block area, the ghosts gathered and traveled with her. Some of them even appeared like they took the waters, too, as they might have done during their life. Her muscles tensed and she walked stiffly as the frigidity of the specters enveloped her. She wished she’d worn her puffy down winter coat instead of a late-summer shirt.

  Zach kept an arm around her, and his attitude had changed to one of “don’t mess with us, keep away from my lady” so that the colorful live people around them gave her and her lover a wide personal space. As usual, some people seemed to sense, see, or hear Enzo and the rest of the traveling ghosts, and hurriedly retreated.

  Each spring had a different taste, some more bubbly than others, with a sweeter aftertaste. Each decanted from a fountain marked by a sculpture. Most of the springs were named after Native American tribes: Cheyenne, Navajo, Shoshone, Ute Chief Spring, and two after founding fathers, Wheeler and Stratton.

  The ones that had been drilled after her time period didn’t mitigate the amount of phantoms gathering around her because they were built over other historic places. Manitou Springs itself was a canyon town, perhaps not as narrow as Creede, Colorado, but with only one real street through the canyon, and a few offshoots as people settled between the spurs of the mountains. Most of the town echoed with haunts of the past.

  By the time they’d walked back to the parking lot—which had once had another bathhouse on it—Clare took each step slowly, her fingers clamped around Zach’s biceps. He kept up light conversation that she barely heard, comments on the town, the tourists and locals and how to tell them apart, his reactions to the spring water. But he felt tense, too. Anger radiated from him. It had been a while since they’d been together in an area where she couldn’t escape the ghosts.

  No, she couldn’t see very well through the multilayered shades of gray of the ghosts. Some paced her, and she sensed that though they might be interested in moving on, their time wasn’t ripe. For every ghost, time played a part—sunrise or sunset, the phase of the moon, the month or the season. A detail she always had to learn, along with the reason why the spirit lingered.

  Zach opened the passenger door and lifted her in. She gasped at the warmth from the sun that had heated the interior. Zach stuck the bag with bottles of the water behind his seat. They’d filled a couple from springs they’d both liked.

  For a moment, the metal of the truck, and the fact they sat higher than ground level, stopped the apparitions. Blessed warmth and space and breathing room.

  “So,” Zach rumbled as he hit the ignition. “Any tweaks in your nerves that we’re on the right track? Or that some spook in the mob following us around could help you out?”

  “You saw them?”

  He grunted and pulled out of the lot. “Some of them when we were connected. Thought I saw a fat-cat guy or two. Fat cats in Manitou Springs in the eighteen hundreds would indicate doctors.”

  “Or businessmen who
bottled the water.”

  “Yeah. Did you get any hits on the healer ghost?”

  “No.”

  “Dammit.” His jaw flexed. “Where next?”

  She pulled out her phone, touched the notes screen. “Up Ruxton Avenue to Twin Spring, then to the one that was the most famous in my time period, Iron Spring, or Iron Geyser. The cog railroad to the top of Pikes Peak is just beyond the geyser.”

  “We won’t be taking it today,” he stated.

  She thought she heard his teeth snap on the word and turned to look at him. His expression was impassive tingeing to grim. He continued, “I don’t like this. Any of this. How’s your wound?”

  Sitting up straight, she tried to expand her etheric body tidily tucked inside her. It worked! She sent it out in increments until she felt the stretch begin to bother her injury. “It’s not hurting.”

  “Now. It gave you trouble on the walk.”

  May as well admit that. “Yes, the injury throbs when I’m cold.”

  “Cold from the press of haunts.”

  “That’s right,” she said evenly.

  He made a cutting gesture. “No more helping people on until we damn well fix this.”

  “I said I’m not.”

  “Just making sure we’re at the same bottom line.”

  “Absolutely, Zach.” She reached out and rubbed his shoulder. “I love you.”

  His stiff posture relaxed a little. “I love you, too. We will fix this.”

  At the next stop, Clare agreed with Zach that she liked Twin Spring the best, carbonated and a touch sweet, though from what, she couldn’t tell. They filled up another bottle. As they drove up Ruxton from that spring to the main geyser, she felt a moment of pure peace and blinked, then the touch of serenity evaporated and she wondered if she’d imagined it. The sun had slanted across the road and she finally felt warm again.

  They found paid parking a little up the trail from Iron Spring and walked down to it. Enzo forged ahead and branched off into the hillside on the right and down to the stream on the left.

  Zach seemed to have no trouble, and she thought he enjoyed the peace of the last golden leaves of autumn and the deeper green of the pines and spruce. The ghosts let her walk alone, with space before and behind her. The stream beside the trail burbled happily, and she and Zach passed one of the unique bridges of Manitou, this one arched and made of red sandstone.