Ghost Talker

by Robin D. Owens

She had to initiate contact, and with slow and steady breathing, she took his frost-cold hands and stepped into him. Her breath whooshed out as the cold invaded, instantly icing her, edging her wound with rime.

  Then she ignored her own body and concentrated on Texas Jack. John Baker Omohundro. Love for his wife pervaded him, more than any other emotion. He truly couldn’t move on because Giuseppina wasn’t—hadn’t been—with him. Now that his bone mingled with hers, he believed their spirits drew closer. And he was right. Clare sensed another spirit advancing, a small bright yellow sparkle.

  The only color she could see. All her surroundings had turned sepia, shades of browns and blacks. No more gray dimension.

  And no more steady breathing, but harsh sucking in and out. Her chest pumped raggedly. Her hands and feet, arms and legs had gone numb.

  The spark became a firework blossom, then coalesced into a beautiful woman—lovelier and livelier than her photographs—dressed as the Indian maiden she acted in the play Scouts of the Plains. Before Clare could blink, her clothes became exquisite and expensive, the height of fashion in 1880, the year Texas Jack had died.

  At the sight of Giuseppina, a huge burst of feeling had blown through Jack, now leaving only love and awe and tenderness. He bowed, the southern gentleman. May I have this dance, my dearest wife?

  Giuseppina sank with a dancer’s grace into a curtsey, offered her hand. Yes, my beloved husband.

  Clare didn’t know if they’d ever danced together at a formal ball. She’d read of the generalities of their lives, but had found few details. She could peek into Jack’s memories, perhaps even into Giuseppina’s, but he’d been a friend to her, and both spirits deserved their privacy.

  And the cold had stopped much of her gift and flowed fast toward her heart.

  The moment their hands touched, Jack left Clare. She saw the ghosts come together in a waltz, phantom gazes locked on each other.

  Go and be blessed, she said mentally, since her numb lips couldn’t move. A true wish from her to them, but they didn’t hear. They whirled away, vital, graceful, complementing each other and in perfect step, and didn’t look back.

  Applause and shouts sounded in her ears.

  The pillar-like icicle holding her still and upright shattered around her as her knees gave way and darkness fell on her hard and cold as a frozen anvil.

  “Clare!” Zach yelled. He caught her, held her close, and a couple of those shouts became whistles, a catcall.

  Chapter 36

  She blinked but saw nothing except Zach’s shirt. Then she drew herself up, vertebra by vertebra. Meeting his eyes, she smiled a true smile that filled her eyes with joy. “Texas Jack—John Baker Omohundro—and his wife, Giuseppina Morlacchi Omohundro, danced away.”

  “Tell us more!” someone called.

  “Yes, more!” someone else said.

  “Sooo, romantic,” Mrs. Flinton’s voice fluted.

  “What?” Her lips still cold, the word sounded tiny. “What’s going on?”

  Pushing away from Zach she saw they were surrounded by a crowd two to three deep. In front were Mrs. Flinton and her walker, smiling, accompanied by Mr. Welliam, tall and proud and beaming.

  And with his wrist angled to record everything.

  Most of the people held up smart phones or cameras, a couple had video recorders and some other equipment. She shuddered and looked wildly around but she didn’t see any television crew. Of course she didn’t see the cameramen who worked for the channel who’d offered her a job.

  This was Massachusetts, not Colorado.

  But what were all these people doing here?

  “Mr. Welliam?” She sounded far too weak, but that didn’t matter much.

  Still grinning, he flung out his arms in an all-embracing gesture. “I contacted the local paranormal society so we could watch you send Texas Jack—John Baker Omohundro—on. Help him cross over. Record the paranormal activity for their—and our—annals.

  “I am pleased to say that some of us got very good readings of energy surges, perhaps even caught Texas Jack on special film.”

  “What a show!” the first person she’d heard enthused.

  She looked at Zach’s grim expression. No doubt he castigated himself for not seeing all of these people, but he’d been focused on Texas Jack and her, she knew that. Plenty of tall plinths and trees to hide behind until the real action—entertainment—started.

  “What, should we take bows?” Zach snapped.

  And, yes, all she could think of was the kind of show she must have been putting on—talking to an invisible dog, an invisible man, Zach standing by like a bodyguard. A huge flush of humiliation simmered away the last of the ice, then steamed straight into anger.

  Fury flushed through her. Never in her whole life—well, since she’d left childhood behind—had she wanted to just break loose. Give way to her emotions, yell at people to leave me alone! Accuse Mrs. Flinton and Mr. Welliam of spying on her, demand they go away, immediately.

  And she wanted to do that loudly and with a great deal of foul-mouthed cursing. Red pulsed before her eyes as if she saw through a veil of anger.

  Clare! Clare! called Enzo. She ignored him.

  I knew she was weak. That she would break, came a snottier voice. The Other.

  She opened her mouth to spew, felt Zach’s hand curl around her upper arm, and that steadied her enough to peer beyond that block of red, see a pale Mrs. Flinton, the miserable expression on Mr. Welliam’s face.

  They’d infringed on her privacy, sure. But she’d practiced her new craft—would probably conduct most of her ghost seer business—in a public place.

  She had a vocation, a career, a business where she’d always be judged by the public. Acknowledge and accept. She’d come out of the closet, planned on taking clients, not hiding her psychic gift—but offering it.

  Zach’s hand slid down to her fingers. Dimly she heard the elderly couple apologizing.

  Enzo said, These people who aren’t our friends have seen and heard what went on. I will make them go away. You will be private with our friends.

  She recalled Zach’s earlier words, a man who gave her good advice, helped her, as she helped him.

  Act. She could build another persona, one that had a core-thread of her, but was easier with people. She only had to be interested in people to like them, and she truly believed every individual was interesting. So act—be—a little more outgoing, relatable. Maybe she’d be building a shell, but she thought she would need such a shell to shield her inner self from the harsh judgments in her future.

  A public persona who wasn’t all of her, but part of her, still genuine. She held tight to Zach’s fingers, yanked her too-close-to-the-surface emotions back inside her, breathed until her vision cleared. All the local people had gone, or spread out through the cemetery.

  “Hi, Mrs.— Barbara. Hi, Kurtus. I guess you chartered a private plane.”

  Kurtus nodded. “Yes, we did.” Another apologetic glance, a bracing of shoulders. “We invaded your privacy.”

  Clare thought her left eyelid twitched. She ignored it. Pulling her hand from Zach’s, since he liked his hand available for his weapon, she gestured to the green lawn dotted with a few early fallen leaves, the gravestones, the trees. “It’s a public place.” She paused and gave them a truth. “I think cemeteries welcome people, and this is certainly a beautiful and peaceful place.”

  She took a good breath in, didn’t hide the sound of expelling it, kept her expression mild. “Did you understand what occurred?”

  “We, uh, could follow along,” Kurtus said. “And Barbara kept up a wonderful running commentary, since she can see many spirits, too.”

  “I observed—” Barbara said.

  “We watched,” Kurtus spoke at the same time. He cleared his throat, waved a hand. “As did those from the local paranormal societ
y who joined us.”

  Clare smashed down new anger spurting through her at being a spectacle . . . and helpless during that.

  Barbara moved close with her walker, kissed Clare on her cheek. “I didn’t realize how hard the whole procedure is on you, my dear.”

  Clare smiled wryly. “I get through it. It’s my job.” She inhaled deeply. “It is my job.” Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out one of the cards Barbara had made for her. “I’m accepting clients.”

  Enzo raced back. Good!

  “Good!” Kurtus enthused. His eyes gleamed. “Are you going to take a professional name? Madam Clare—”

  A laugh bubbled from Clare and she thought every one of them relaxed and released tension. “That makes me think of Evie Harve, the madam of the brothel in the Denver Parapsychological and Psychic Association’s building. I think the cards Barbara had made for me are perfect: ‘Clare Cermak, Ghost Seer, Specializing in Ghosts of the Old West.’”

  Undaunted, Kurtus looked around them, at the large trees blocking the sky, no mountains. “Have ghost? Will travel.”

  Clare choked on a laugh, Zach snorted, Barbara made a noise close to a squeal. Enzo yipped.

  “At the meeting I saw you help Evie Harve cross over, too,” Kurtus said eagerly. “Can you describe that in more detail? Something about a sheep?”

  Barbara patted his arm. “She can tell you on our flight back home to Denver. We canceled your plane so we could all go together.” Barbara glanced at her watch. “We leave in an hour and a half. We can have a late lunch on the plane. And, Kurtus, you can ask all about Texas Jack and Giuseppina Morlacchi, too.”

  “I suppose I should submit a report to Mr. Rickman—Tony,” Clare said.

  Kurtus looked at her from under lowered brows. “I’m interested, of course, but I hired you to move Darin Clavell on and you did that—”

  “I did nothing and won’t take your money,” Clare insisted.

  “Don’t be a PIA, Clare,” Barbara said.

  “The poltergeist is gone and I thank you for it. Buffalo Bill’s grave site is once more pristine for the event tomorrow. We all thank you for that.” Kurtus actually gave a half bow.

  “Indeed.” Barbara tucked Clare’s card in the designer bag hanging from her walker.

  Clearing his throat, Kurtus looked expectantly at Clare. “I need twelve of those cards.”

  At his enthusiasm, Clare faded back a step, but took out her cards and counted them. When she offered them to Kurtus, she saw he held a list in his hand. His lips moved as he counted. “Twelve. Yes, twelve.” He nailed her with a gleaming, interested gaze. “I have twelve people who would like you to either communicate with ghosts in their homes or businesses, or help them transition.”

  “Oh.”

  Twelve, Clare! Twelve clients for us. Our business is booming, Clare! Enzo ran around, through a few gravestones and trees and back.

  With a nod to Clare, Kurtus cupped Barbara’s elbow. She swung her walker around and headed off to a car parked on a nearby road.

  “Twelve. Clients,” Clare said faintly.

  Zach put his free arm around her waist, pulled her close for a squeeze and a kiss. “Stick with me, Madam Clare.”

  “Zach!”

  “Babe. We’ll do this together.”

  Yes! Enzo said.

  “Yes,” Clare agreed. She let the satisfaction of following her vocation, of Texas Jack’s joy in being with Giuseppina, sink into her. Let the peace of the autumn morning wrap around her. She accepted the ease of not being on a case, the freedom of once again being the mistress of her fate. “Zach, I love you.”

  “Good!”

  “Because you love me to?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’ve been waiting for me to say it first.”

  “This time around, yeah.”

  “You know saying ‘I love you’ doesn’t make you less than a manly man.”

  He kissed her again. “I understand that, and you saying it doesn’t make you less rational.” He shook his head. “I’m so proud of you, of what you overcame today. Under layers of accountant Clare, you have a huge and loving heart. I love peeling those layers away.”

  Sometimes she felt all too exposed when he uncovered a section or two, or probed all the way deep into her to see what she might have hidden even from herself.

  “I love you, Zach. And I can say that to you every day.”

  “You can do pretty near anything.”

  “Thank you.” As always, his support boosted her confidence, sank down to the bedrock of herself, her self-image, that she was rebuilding. Someday she’d be a kick-ass ghost seer, sometime soon when she’d peeled away more of those layers she’d pulled over herself as protection from careless parents. Someday soon.

  “Clare?”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you, too.”

  Author’s Note

  As far as I know, there has never been a poltergeist at William F. Cody’s grave, nor has his or his wife’s spirit lingered—that is, no tales of ghosts. So that part of this story is made up, as is Texas Jack being a ghost, and his reasons for not moving on.

  The app I use for sunrise/sunset/moonrise/moonset times is Sun Calendar. I have a separate app for phases of the moon since I’ve used them more often in my work. I prefer the program MoonPhase for that.

  My video app in these books, SeeAndTalk, is fictional.

  The settings are true, though I continue to feel a little frustrated about my description of the quartz rocks at the grave site. They look white in every photo I took, but like most quartz, they have different shades as well as a translucent quality that the camera can’t capture. At the request of readers, I removed the word “crystal” from the description of the rocks, since it added confusion. That said, you can see pictures of the grave site and many settings in this book on my Pinterest page: pinterest.com/robindowens/ghosttalker/

  Also true, and taking place at the time I gave it, is Buffalo Bill’s Western Roundup. I didn’t have in mind any deadline for this book, like I had for Ghost Killer, but when I plugged in the dates, there the event was, the very next weekend after the beginning of the story. That’s synchronicity for you. Time and luck was on my side in that I was able to attend 2015’s event though it was a week earlier than the base year I use in the series.

  I decided to keep the setting of Ghost Talker and its sequel close to Denver so that when I inevitably forgot something (like which way the graves face on Lookout Mountain), I could return and check it out. I actually visited Lookout Mountain no less than five times. I walked the Buffalo Bill Trail, I scouted the nearby Denver Mountain Parks, I drove the roads to and from . . .

  I also headed up to Leadville and Texas Jack’s grave a couple of days after the anniversary of his death in the summer and also in the fall when the book takes place. As usual, I was very glad I did because if I’d made up the setting, I would have been wrong. It is not on a hillside as I’ve come to expect of cemeteries in Colorado (Boot Hill), and the closeness of his gravestone to the road startled me.

  Something I didn’t include in the book was that at one point Texas Jack tried his hand at teaching in Florida after the Civil War, and to impress those he wished to hire him, he used all the biggest (ten syllable) words he knew. He did occasionally quote Shakespeare, so he was an educated man. He also left home at about fifteen.

  Yes, the creepy gift from the universe of Jesse James’s signed photo to his good friend (and killer) Bob Ford is completely false, and I admit to the morbidity of my mind. I do research what kind of gift might be valuable and therefore given to Clare, and I found that, so far, there is only one autographed photo of Jesse James in existence. The seller’s stated price that he wanted to receive was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the piece, but he didn’t quite get that, so I don’t know what the pic
ture went for, though a price had been put on the piece. Also, as far as I know, there are only copies of original photographs of Wild Bill Hickok, and no original photos survive.

  Another complete fiction is the ghost of Evie Harve.

  There is one “definitive” biography of Texas Jack: Buckskin and Satin: The Life of Texas Jack, J. B. Omohundro by Herschel C. Logan, The Stackpole Company, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1954. This volume includes the articles Texas Jack wrote himself.

  Also of interest is: Hunting In The Yellowstone; On The Trail of The Wapiti With Texas Jack In The Land of Geysers by the Earl of Dunraven and edited by Horace Kephart, published by Amazon Digital Services.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My deep thanks to the Lowell Historical Society of Lowell, Massachusetts, and their members: Eileen Loucraft, David, and Walter Hickey, who arranged for Mr. Hickey to take pictures of Giuseppina Morlacchi Omohundro’s grave and the environs so I wouldn’t make mistakes with that setting. You can donate to the Lowell Historical Society here: lowellhistoricalsociety.org/donations.htm

  Thanks to the Lake County Public Library for their wonderful website,

  lakecountypubliclibrary.org/Cemetery%20Records.htm, which had all I needed to locate Texas Jack’s grave, as well as my standard go-to: findagrave.com

  As usual, I also used a website dedicated to my main ghost: texasjack.org/wp/, and I thank that association for information.

  Also, thank you to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum for their great website: nationalcowboymuseum.org.

  Naturally, the Denver Public Library Western History and Genealogy section was invaluable.

  Robin Owens is the bestselling author of the Celta novels, including Heart Fire and Heart Fortune, and the Ghost Seer novels, including Ghost Killer and Ghost Layer.

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