Darkscope

by J. Carson Black

  The girl said nothing, but stared fixedly in front of her.

  Lucas’s hand closed on the window casement. “Some people,” he said, “are saying the child is my son’s.” He turned to regard her, his face drawn into harsh lines. “I don’t believe it for a minute. My son John would never be so foolish. He has a career to think of. Still, there are rumors. There always are.”

  She didn’t reply. Lucas couldn’t gauge the depth of her reaction. “You have lost your job at the Copper Queen.” It was a statement.

  Kathy nodded.

  “How will you live?” Lucas asked.

  Kathy was confused. Why should Lucas McCord care how she lived? He had already denied that Johnny was the father of her child. “I can sew,” she said.

  “You can sew.” Lucas’s voice was rich with sarcasm. He paced the carpet like a ship’s captain, hands clasped behind him. He repeated, “She can sew.” To Kathy he asked, “Do you have any idea how much it will cost to support a child? We are in the middle of a Depression!”

  Kathleen’s chin raised a fraction higher. “I can do it.” The Irish was evident in her voice.

  “I’ve no doubt you can,” Lucas said, “with my help. I am prepared to take care of you from now until the child’s birth. Afterward—”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Kathy said. “But since you don’t think the child is Johnny’s, why should you want to help me?”

  Lucas was astounded. Never, not since his first days in the mines, had anyone spoken to him in tones other than respectful. Yet this girl, here in his office on sufferance—this Wobbly’s daughter—had spoken up to him. His anger vied with another emotion—inward applause at the girl’s spirit. At least his son had the sense to choose a girl with some gumption. Still, she needed to learn respect. “You’ll be quiet!” he told her, “and listen, or you can take your insolent questions out of here and see what you can get on the bread line!”

  Kathy opened her mouth to reply, then obviously thought better of it. She was not only spirited, but intelligent.

  Lucas removed his glasses and wiped them carefully. There is a condition,” he said. “I will help you get your start as a . . . seamstress.” His voice betrayed his contempt. “I will pay for you to have this baby in a healthy environment. I will do all that, but you must do something for me.” He sat at his desk again and leaned forward, watching her intently. “You must never, under any circumstances, contact my boy again. He knows about your . . . problem, and he denies that he is the father. I believe him. He’s shocked that you have been running around telling a bald-faced lie—”

  “I haven’t told anyone!” Kathleen blurted out.

  Lucas’s voice was like ice. “Young lady, I will tell you for the last time. Be quiet. I don’t have to help you. I am extending you a kindness. Don’t be so quick to turn it down.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll be frank. My boy doesn’t need this kind of scandal at the beginning of his career, especially when it’s completely unwarranted. John wants to get this thing behind him. Because of his once-high regard for you as a school friend, he has asked me to help you. And so I am. It could go the other way just as easily. You could be sued for slander.” He leaned back, noting the stubborn set of the girl’s chin. “But I am not entirely without understanding. You are in a bad position. You are young and frightened. It is only natural, I suppose, that you would choose my son—”

  Kathleen’s eyes flashed a warning.

  Lucas held up his hand. “I am only demonstrating that I understand how difficult it is for you. At any rate, Johnny denies it, and you must be realistic, for your child’s sake, if not your own.”

  Kathy felt suddenly defeated. There was truth in Lucas McCord’s words. She had written to Johnny twice. She hadn’t mentioned the child, but even so, she’d expected some sort of response. There had been nothing. She had come to the conclusion that he was a spoiled, pampered boy with school and a career ahead of him, and probably a socially acceptable wife as well. The fact was, John McCord couldn’t be bothered with a Wobbly’s daughter. His world was not her world, although they had shared childhood on the Gulch. Now she must make sure that her child was cared for, that it didn’t suffer from her mistake.

  And I have been mistaken, she thought. Mistaken about Johnny’s character.

  She straightened her shoulders and returned Lucas’s gaze without flinching. Lucas McCord’s condition would not be a hard one. Not when the father was a boy like Johnny. Not when he had used her and then gone back to his playground in the East without another thought. Why not use the McCords’ money? As the McCords had used her.

  I accept,” she said, her voice soft.

  Lucas was warm with triumph. “You are very perceptive, my dear. You will see that I am not an ogre, if people deal with me fairly.” He leafed through an account book. I will direct Mr. Shattuck to open an account for you at the Miners and Merchants Bank.” He wrote rapidly. ‘You will say that you have come into an inheritance—most fortuitous—from your father. You can say he became successful, and on his deathbed, he saw the error of his ways and decided to make it up to his children. No one but you, me, and the bank will know where your money is coming from. You will say nothing about this arrangement. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes,” Kathleen replied.

  Was it hatred he saw in those big, green eyes?

  After Kathleen was gone, Lucas sat back at his desk. He had averted a tragedy. It had taken quick thinking, but he had done it. That common little trollop would not have his son. She would not become an embarrassment to Johnny the way Mary had been to him.

  Lucas opened the drawer of the desk and pulled out the packet of letters from his son. Two were addressed to Kathleen Barrie, but Lucas had possessed the foresight to have Reed Jenkins at the post office hold them for him.

  If you are wealthy enough, Lucas thought, you can handle anything. It is only a matter of price.

  As Beau Taylor threw another board on the growing pile of lumber, he saw the girl across the street—a real looker—watching him. If Beau knew one thing, it was that women liked to watch a man sweat. Especially when that man was as good-looking as Beau. He knew exactly what he looked like in his blue work shirt, the sleeves torn off to expose gleaming muscles under their thin film of dust and sweat. He knew from his year and a half as a male stripper at Cheeks in Phoenix that the girl’s eyes were probably straying down to the crotch of his faded jeans . . . and that was just fine with him. Beau Taylor took a simple, animalistic pleasure in the effect his body had on women.

  The girl stood at the edge of the park, her face shaded by a tennis player’s visor. She was no slouch in the nice-bod department herself; he liked the way her breasts swelled against the white material of her T-shirt, and he admired her tanned, muscled legs.

  Might as well give her a thrill. Beau shrugged off his work shirt, and then, in an exaggerated stretch, raised his arms and gloved hands over his head. It was all he could do to avoid a bump-and-grind.

  He sincerely hoped she enjoyed the show. If she stayed around until he was done, he’d ask her out for a beer.

  Unaware that Beau Taylor was preening for her benefit, Chelsea McCord stood on the grassy verge, her gaze frozen on the ruined McCord house.

  Today’s the day. Nonsensically, the words ran through her mind.

  Today’s the day they knock that sucker down.

  The workers stacked salvaged timber, kitchen and bathroom fixtures, and furniture untouched by the fire. By this time, Chelsea couldn’t help but notice the Adonis going through his routine. She laughed mirthlessly. A great show, she thought, but not anything like the one I’ve come to see.

  She watched as the bulldozer growled to life, her only movement an occasional sip from a can of Diet Coke. If you stayed for the movie, you might as well enjoy the refreshments.

  The dozer crossed the yellow lawn, lowering its head like a bull getting ready to charge. A grind of shifting gears, the sound of doughnut tires chewing into the grass. And then
the first goring—and she knew she hadn’t come here for nothing.

  The agonized howl might be the bulldozer’s engine or the scrape of metal. But Chelsea knew it was neither.

  Morbidly fascinated, Chelsea watched throughout the morning, unable to shut her ears as she heard, along with the crunch of timber and the grinding engine of the bulldozer, the tortured screams coming from the jumble of boards, plaster, and brick. Screams that might have come from the lost souls of hell.

  Chelsea knew no one else could hear them. They were meant for her alone.

  Part Three: Dreams

  Thirty-one

  Bob McCord didn’t know when he first became afraid of the carpet. He had bought it at least twenty years ago, somewhere in the Middle East—exactly where, he couldn’t remember. He had been excited about it at the time, had wanted to own it with a desperation that often accompanied buying trips abroad, but once its possession was a fait accompli, he had consigned the carpet to his living room and promptly forgot about it.

  The news of the McCord mansion fire must have shaken him more than he thought, because it was that day (or the next) that he’d felt his first twinge of uneasiness.

  He remembered crossing the carpet on the way to the kitchen, aware of something crunching underfoot. Like beach sand underneath the nap, shifting under his feet. He looked down. The carpet stretched endlessly around him like strange lands surrounded by Prussian blue seas. The red areas were clusters of flowers bordered by gold, but Bob could almost imagine that they were countries. He imagined warlike hordes of little people (Lilliputians?) yelling and fighting around his feet, so small they were beyond his vision.

  Suddenly he knew, without any doubt at all, that the little people were there. He couldn’t see them; they were too tiny. But he felt them. Oh yes. He could almost hear their cries, almost taste the dust, almost (but not quite) see the flash of their sabers. He could even smell the blood.

  It was on that day he had first crossed to the edge of the carpet and walked along its border, pretending to himself that the view from the picture window was too enticing to ignore.

  Soon—a matter of days, in fact—to merely skirt the carpet wasn’t enough. The damn thing was so big it covered half the room, and the area between the wall and the carpet border was narrow. He was too close, much too close. Walking briskly, traversing the area between the kitchen and the bedroom with an efficient, ground-eating walk, his head turned permanently toward the window as if fixed on a natural disaster, Bob would remark to himself how pretty the birds were, and were there new blossoms on the bougainvillea? All the while he was counting the distance: ten yards, five yards, almost there.

  He played games. If I can just get to the Tiffany lamp, it’ll be all right. If I step over the corner, and nothing happens, maybe the next time I can put one foot down on the carpet. Just on the corner. Just one foot. But I don’t have to. His pulse would quicken, and he would invariably cheat about stepping on the corner.

  He knew the little people were there. He knew that they were fighting, and he thought they just might (if there were enough of them) crawl up his leg and slash and hack him until he was overcome, just like Gulliver.

  One time, he saw a thin skein of dust rise and dissipate over a gold country, as if there had been a skirmish there.

  Another time, he was sure the dragon in the center of the carpet shifted slightly, the tapestry pulling out, little threads popping up. One thread, two, three . . . then a whole bunch ripping up at once with a terrible rending sound that started in his brain and ended in his ears. The dragon’s tongue, a fierce tendril edged with fire, licked up at him and that day he almost didn’t cross the room at all, but stood there at the edge, unable to move.

  At last, he had retreated back into the kitchen, emptying his coffee cup into the sink, watching the trail of muddy coffee trickle over the porcelain and thinking it looked like old blood.

  A rushing noise, like wings, came from behind him.

  The blood vessels under the skin of his legs constricted; he felt the tightness stem up from his legs and buttocks to flower out into his spine and along his shoulder blades, and he was aware of the fullness in his bladder.

  Something had moved.

  A harsh, dry whispering, like corn husks on a summer day. He was certain that the sound was from wings, the dragon’s wings. If I turn around now, it will be sitting on the carpet.

  He could feel its eyes on him.

  Of course that was ridiculous; the whole thing was ridiculous, but as Bob stood there with his cup tipped over the sink, his certainty grew.

  It was there.

  He would have to turn around and face his fears. The thought pulsed through his brain, strobe lights going on and off behind his eyeballs. The fear had taken on a temperature; his body felt as if it had lost twenty degrees as he stood there. He poised on the balls of his feet, ready to give the signal to his knees to bend, the muscles, the ligaments, to swivel and push away and turn him to face the thing behind him. He would turn around now. Of course he would.

  The clock above the sink ticked loudly. It seemed to Bob that there were longer pauses between the ticks than he could remember. Pauses brimming with emptiness. The minute hand moved—

  A click like the sound of dragons’ teeth coming together.

  Bob gulped hard on a breath that had been waiting to explode from his lips like a scream. The messages to his knees were blurry, uncertain. His skin tightened like shrunken clothing on his back, and the cold came from his own core. He steeled himself to turn around and his legs obeyed. His gaze swept the kitchen, toward the hallway and—

  Nothing.

  Bob laughed, his voice way too loud in the sunny kitchen. He was safe. Nothing in the doorway. Nothing on the carpet.

  As a matter of fact, he would cross the thing now, and finish this nonsense once and for all.

  He walked back and forth across the carpet. He marched. He ambled. He dug divots in the land and kicked disparagingly at the sea. And then he went out to the pool and swam thirty laps.

  I beat this thing, he thought, and I didn’t even need an expensive psychiatrist to do it.

  The next morning, when Bob awoke and put his bare foot flush against the bedroom carpet (dusky rose wall-to-wall plush), he didn’t notice the warm breath licking at his ankles, coming from under the bed.

  And the next evening, when he walked across the Oriental carpet, he didn’t notice the gentle tugging on the sole of his boot. He didn’t look down to see the dragon, its snout wagging from side to side as it worried at his foot. Trying to pull him in.

  Thirty-two

  They rode to the hill above the ranch again. Chelsea kept her own counsel until she and Ben paused again to let the horses graze.

  “Something else has happened, hasn’t it?” Ben asked.

  Chelsea thought of Lucas McCord, his burial suit flapping in the wind, the feverish, glowing eyes in the grinning skull. His face blotted out the mountains, and she felt his evil presence there with them at the moment.

  What could Ben do other than listen? She was really frightened now, but she poured the story out anyway with as much logic as she could summon. What did that stupid bumper sticker say? “Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.” Tell it all and let Ben sort it out.

  “Some pretty damn weird things have been happening to me, but this . . .” She shivered. “It’s almost as if everything is escalating.”

  “If you’re vulnerable psychically—and I think you are—you might be giving the . . . spirits an ‘in.’”

  “I’m not getting you.”

  Ben considered. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if you’re more susceptible to these manifestations, for want of a better word—than other people because of your family’s link to Kathy. You might even be helping to make them stronger, just by being receptive.”

  “You mean I might actually be helping these things to gain some sort of a toehold?” Chelsea felt the skin tighten on her back. The sound of th
e horses’ rhythmic munching filled the air, and she thought how strange it was, the two of them sitting on horseback under a warm sun in the fresh air, talking matter-of-factly about ghosts and Chelsea’s latent psychic abilities.

  Ben was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Have you ever wondered why the house didn’t trap you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were inside. Certainly any power that could start the house crumbling could have made sure you didn’t leave it alive. And what about Lucas? He didn’t get you either.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “If Lucas wanted you for his house, or if he wanted to kill you, why did he let you go?”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Just think for a minute, Why did you escape so easily?”

  Chelsea shook her head. “I just did, that’s all.”

  “Ever hear of a thing called a shape-changer?”

  “It’s some kind of an Indian legend, isn’t it? A spirit that wanders the earth, taking different forms?”

  “I’m not sure what the origin is. I think there have been many different legends, in all kinds of cultures. Some cultures believe that a living soul can be transferred to an animal, or a tree, or another person. Perhaps the dead can do the same thing.” Ben paused. “I think Kathy’s a sort of shape-changer. I think she can create illusions.”

  “You don’t believe Lucas is . . . a real manifestation?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I’ve come up with a theory of my own.”

  “But I saw him—”

  “Hear me out. If we agree that you’ve created a sort of wedge to let Kathy enter this world, then you’ve probably empowered her to communicate.”

  Chelsea nodded. That made sense.

  “I think you were meant to see the fight between John McCord and his father in the mine. Just as I was meant to see the little girl asking for her brother.”

  “Of course we were, but—”