Darkscope

by J. Carson Black

  Overhead, a sickle moon drifted over a low bank of clouds. The Thunderbird’s headlights carved out chunks of rolling hills, flashes of golden grass alongside the road, and the iridescent green sign: SIERRA VISTA—24.

  The October air sparkled, clear and cold. Chelsea appreciated the car heater. The desert lost its warmth at night.

  Less than a month away from the gubernatorial election and Uncle Bob was leading in the polls. Chelsea thought the debate tonight might have helped him over the top. Self-assured yet thoughtful; jovial, yet able to show his serious side, Uncle Bob had clearly been in charge the whole time. His answers were succinct and well thought out. He quoted a few statistics when necessary and sprinkled his rebuttal with homey anecdotes. Bob McCord, mining pioneer, statesman. Dignified, good looking, charming—a candidate for the times.

  Chelsea had tried to immerse herself in the victorious atmosphere, had tried not to think about Bob’s lie (alleged lie, she corrected herself), or the reasons for it. But she couldn’t help noticing his gaunt face and tired eyes.

  She’d asked him if he’d lost weight.

  “New physical fitness regimen,” Bob had replied. “I jog.”

  Chelsea knew he hated anything physical. What could possibly be responsible for such a turnaround? Still, in the health-conscious America of the 1980s, why shouldn’t her great-uncle stay fit?

  Except he didn’t look fit. He looked thin.

  A couple of times, when Uncle Bob brushed past her or she found herself very close to him, she smelled the bad smell. The smell she associated with death.

  His eyes had sunken in. His skin seemed to stretch tighter across his cheekbones.

  Two major routes connected Tucson to Bisbee, both meeting the interstate at different junctures. One went through Tombstone, and the other, which Chelsea drove, passed through Sierra Vista. By taking the highway loop, Chelsea could bypass Fry Boulevard in Sierra Vista’s business district and pick up the lonely ribbon of road headed toward Bisbee.

  As the road dipped to a break in the trees lining the San Pedro River, the car slowed. Chelsea pressed down on the accelerator, but the little Thunderbird didn’t respond.

  Her headlights picked out the cottonwood trees rising up on either side of the bridge. Near the river, to the right, and in from the road stood an abandoned farmhouse. On previous trips Chelsea had wondered who might have lived out here. Weren’t they lonely? It seemed like such a small place, dwarfed by a great, twisted cottonwood tree. On this trip, however, Chelsea paid no attention to the house; it was all she could do to keep the car moving, even though she had the accelerator floored. The Thunderbird bucked sluggishly, surged ahead, then lost power again. The car was slowing down!

  Panic gripped her. She was alone on a seldom-traveled stretch of road at one o’clock in the morning.

  “Calm down,” Chelsea told herself, steering the Thunderbird onto the shoulder of the road. The trees glittered pale green-gold in the sweeping arc of her headlights, a filigree of bare branches poking into the sky.

  Chelsea turned off the ignition, pulled the emergency brake, and turned on her blinkers. Air whistled at the edges of the windows.

  What could make her car lose power suddenly? Chelsea stared through the windshield at the light dusting of stars and the moon, its lower tip pointed like a dagger at the Mule Mountains. She ticked off causes in her mind. Couldn’t be the battery, otherwise the car wouldn’t have started so easily at the Circle K in Sierra Vista. Fuel pump? Alternator? Starter? She really couldn’t hazard a guess.

  Chelsea turned the key again. Nothing. No slow turning of the motor, not even a click. She pulled the Lights knob. The lights worked. The radio worked. She turned the radio up. Huey Lewis and the News, Comforting to know, with everything that’s been happening to me, the heart of rock and roll is still beating.

  Chelsea grabbed the flashlight from the glove compartment and stepped out of the car. The night breeze tugged at her coat. She opened the hood and ran the flashlight beam over the engine. Nothing obviously wrong: water in the battery, no corrosion on the posts. And, she thought ruefully, no jumper cables in the trunk. Not that people were exactly lining up out here to help her. Not one car had come by. Shrugging, she left the hood up as an SOS signal and returned to the car. Someone had to drive this road, sooner or later.

  Ahead, the dark humps of the Mule Mountains leaned massive shoulders to the sky. They weren’t very far. She must be only ten miles or so from Bisbee. So close . . .

  Might as well get comfortable. Looks like I’m in for a long wait. She rubbed her hands and blew on them.

  Time passed. No one came. One hour, two. Then suddenly, two pinpoints of light appeared in the rearview mirror. Headlights. Chelsea didn’t know whether to be relieved or even more frightened. It might be someone who could help her, but at the same time, it might be an ax murderer or a rapist.

  The pinpoints grew, burning dimly and fairly close together.

  She should have some sort of plan just in case. Chelsea pushed down the lock pins. She reached back and found the cardboard sun visor (blue sunglasses on a field of white) and set the reverse side in the windshield: EMERGENCY: PLEASE CALL THE POLICE.

  And waited.

  The two orbs approached. They wavered in the darkness, pale amber. As they got bigger, Chelsea could see the shape behind them. The sight of it froze her blood.

  The bulky frame, rounded at the corners. The high roof. The long, low hood. Narrow, divided windshield. High fenders sloping down to running boards.

  Chelsea had seen cars like that before: in old movies, at shopping mall car shows, in her hallucinations. An old car. From the thirties.

  Her heart pounded. The back of her head started to ache, sending throbbing shoots of misery down her neck. “Kathy,” she muttered aloud. “I’m getting pretty damn tired of you and your tricks.”

  No answer, but the wind chuckling at the edges of her window.

  And then she heard it—the whining sound of a car in low gear. Madonna babbled senselessly from the box near her knees. She shut it off, alone now with the sound of the laboring engine.

  The car loomed in the rearview mirror. Chelsea could see it clearly now. Gray, pitted, and dented from glancing rocks, floured with dust. It might have been sitting in a junkyard for forty years.

  Huddled against the chill, she waited for the car to draw even. What would she see? A ghost? A rotting corpse leaning out of the passenger side, leering out of empty eye sockets? Or could it be a human danger—an escaped mental patient, a murderer?

  The car slowed just before it reached her.

  Fear tugged Chelsea’s heart loose from its moorings. It thumped wildly somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach.

  The car turned onto the dirt road leading to the abandoned house. Relieved, Chelsea watched in the rearview mirror as the ungainly shape receded into the darkness and stopped at the house. The taillights died. She heard a distant slamming of doors.

  Chelsea couldn’t make out the shapes very well, but they seemed to be those of a man and a woman. They disappeared around the house.

  The shrill wind worried against the windows. Alone again. Only the clear sky and impassive moon to keep her company.

  Sounds floated across the field, obscured by distance. She heard the clink of a bottle and raised voices. Ragged sounds carried in the slight wind, unintelligible words. One voice belonged to a man. Slurred. The other was high and musical, punctuated by laughter. A girl’s. Finally the voices died down.

  Chelsea pulled her coat around her shoulders. No other cars passed. After several minutes, she started to feel warm, though the heater wasn’t on. She leaned back against the seat, lulled by the sensual music of the big band era on the radio. The headache disappeared. Chelsea dozed.

  The motorcar’s sewing-machine engine awakened her. It came up the road from the abandoned house, headlights out. Somehow, this was even spookier—the dark car crawling along the chalk-white road, starlight bouncing off the grill
. The car turned onto the highway in Chelsea’s direction.

  Chelsea’s heart picked up its breakneck pace again, every blood vessel in her neck and head clanging an alarm. She thought of Lucas rising from the slag heap.

  As the car drew even with Chelsea’s Thunderbird, the occupants peered out at her. Relief ran like warm liquid through her veins. It was just an old couple in an old car.

  “Need any help?” The blue-haired woman in the passenger seat asked. Her pleasant face was mottled with liver spots and creased with soft wrinkles.

  Chelsea rolled down her window. “My car broke down. Would you call the Highway Patrol when you get to Bisbee?”

  “Of course, dear. But maybe you should ride with us.”

  Suddenly aware of the gelid air seeping into her bones, Chelsea wavered. Should she go with them? It was lonely and dangerous here. This old couple seemed harmless.

  “Thanks. That’s very nice of you.” She withdrew her keys from the ignition.

  “No trouble,” the woman said, laughing. Her voice set up alarm bells in Chelsea’s brain. Something wrong here . . . the laugh . . . something wrong with the laugh . . .

  “We don’t mind at all.” Another gale of laughter.

  Something wrong . . .

  The old woman’s laugh sounded like that of a young girl.

  Chelsea hadn’t paid much attention to the couple at the abandoned house, but the voices had sounded like those of young people. Could she have been mistaken?

  “What’s the matter, dear?” the woman asked, her voice sympathetic.

  “Nothing,” Chelsea replied. “I’m so glad you came along. I could have been stuck out here all night.”

  The big car idled roughly, as if the muffler had been dragged across a swamp. White exhaust burbled into the darkness. Chelsea noticed that the liver spots on the woman’s face looked more like bits of mud, and her hair, which had been so neat and bluish-white, now looked decidedly mossy. Moisture gathered on the woman’s cheeks. Her features were somehow familiar. Her eyes glittered like green glass. Like Kathy’s.

  Something was wrong.

  The driver leaned forward, and Chelsea saw him for the first time. “What’s the matter, young lady? Don’t you trust us?”

  A frigid ice pick of surprise wedged into Chelsea’s heart.

  It was Uncle Bob.

  The woman leered at her. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” She turned to Uncle Bob. “Some people don’t trust anyone,” she huffed.

  Uncle Bob put the car in gear. “To hell with you, young lady,” he said.

  The car vanished.

  She was alone.

  The empty highway stretched to the mountains. Only the road remained, and the wind.

  Shaking, she huddled in the car. That was a close call.

  Chelsea shuddered. What would have happened if she’d gotten into that rattletrap car from hell? Would Kathy have harmed her?

  She didn’t know.

  Her mind worried all the implications for what seemed like hours, until at last she dropped into a troubled sleep.

  When she awoke, the sky showed shell-pink above the cottonwood trees.

  A truck raced by. No one had stopped, despite the message on the sun visor. Chelsea stepped out and stretched her legs, her mind still on the strange couple.

  Ten minutes passed. No traffic from either direction. Chelsea returned to the car. At last, just for the heck of it, she turned the ignition key.

  The car roared to life and settled into a confident rumble.

  Normally a neat man, Bob McCord would never leave his clothes around for Felicitas to put away. But tonight, shrugging off his suit jacket, he draped it over his bedroom chair.

  He sat down on the bed, feeling every one of his sixty-six years. Campaigning had taken its toll tonight. He’d given them hell—no question about it—but here in the privacy of his home, he could admit that it hadn’t been as easy as he’d thought it would be.

  He hadn’t liked the way Chelsea had stared at him. Just a couple of times, when she’d thought he wasn’t looking. Her expression had contained loving concern, but something deeper, too. Fear?

  But there was nothing to fear, was there? Sure, he’d been overworked. His aides had put together a grueling schedule. He must have crisscrossed the state a dozen times in the past two months. He’d been checked out by Dr. Stern just last month, and the good doctor had marveled at Bob’s robust constitution, giving him a clean bill of health.

  Then why did he feel so tired all the time? Why did he anticipate crawling into bed every night, when he’d always been so energetic? Just so he could dream about Kathy?

  Kathy. She was with him all the time now. Like a poem savored over and over, a poem that never lost its sweetness. In his dreams, he was young again. Virile, strong.

  Bob rubbed his tired feet. His eyelids lowered, feeling as if they were tied to weights. He lay back on the bed, feeling dry, brittle. But soon the dreams would come, and he would be young again.

  He fell asleep thinking about John’s twenty-fifth birthday party.

  Bob, John, and Kathy had been inseparable for months—mostly due to Bob’s persistence. Kathy didn’t like spending so much time with John’s younger brother, but John was flattered. Bob had never actively sought his company before.

  Naturally, when it came time to plan John’s birthday party, Bob helped. He was in charge of the cake.

  The night of the birthday party was clear and cold. John’s friends had rented the Pythian Castle. They’d strung up lights—it was just after Christmas—and planned everything from entertainment to dancing. Lucas, of course, didn’t come.

  Bob was secretive about the cake, which he said had been specially ordered. At the right moment, Bob and a couple of friends wheeled out the enormous cake from behind a side curtain.

  For a moment, the murmured conversation continued, voices dropping off a little at a time until the room resounded with shocked silence. Bob would always remember John’s face, frozen in horror. And Kathy, her eyes glittering like green ice.

  The three-tiered wedding cake towered under the lights, white and shiny-slick and elaborately sculpted. Two plaster models, looking remarkably like John and Kathy, stood on top of the cake. Dressed as bride and groom.

  Forty-one

  Tired and cramped from her night in the car, Chelsea drove toward Bisbee.

  A dozen thoughts crowded into her mind.

  Every time she turned around, something new and frightening happened. She was finding it harder and harder to concentrate on her teaching. Her work was slipping. And she didn’t even have Ben to talk to.

  Obviously, Kathy was getting stronger.

  Chelsea thought about Uncle Bob’s haggard face, the odor that seemed to cling to him like a death shroud, his puzzling appearance as the driver of the old car. Bad things were happening to Uncle Bob, and there was no point in pretending Kathy didn’t enter into it somewhere.

  The horror of her next thought blotted out everything else. Did I lead her to him? Could Chelsea have helped Kathy shake loose from the spirit world, little by little, until at last the creature could go after Uncle Bob?

  She pounded the steering wheel. “Why?”

  But she knew why. Deep inside, buried in her subconscious, she carried the knowledge like a time bomb.

  Tomorrow the photographs would be ready. Chelsea dreaded what they would show. She could not yet name this dread, although her subconscious could, if she would only give it voice.

  The truth. She was afraid to learn the truth.

  Turning up Oak Avenue, Chelsea drove along narrow O’Hara Street to park in front of her house. A white Chevrolet Malibu with a rental sticker was parked in her usual place.

  She walked up the steps to the porch and stopped dead. Her heart took a nosedive into her stomach.

  “Hello, Chelsea.” Jason sat in one of the metal chairs by the door. He stood up and stretched indolently. To Chelsea, he looked as handsome as ever. Narrow
face, sensual tawny eyes, a halo of blond hair. He wore the shirt she had given him on their last Christmas together.

  For one moment, Chelsea experienced the familiar lurch in her stomach, a hopeless yearning for what might have been, and then . . . nothing.

  “Nice place you have here,” Jason said.

  “Thank you,” Chelsea replied stiffly. She continued up the steps and onto the porch, unlocked the door.

  “Small, though. Considering your last residence. Whatever possessed you to come to this little, one-horse town?”

  Chelsea ignored his words. “What are you doing here, Jason?” she asked, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice.

  “That’s a strange question to ask your own husband.”

  “I’m not in the mood to play games.” Chelsea opened the door. “You know damn well I don’t want to see you.”

  Jason reached her in one stride. “Do I?” He stooped over her, one hand propped against the doorjamb, the other pulling her around to face him.

  Chelsea saw with a start that up close, Jason had changed. He was thinner, much thinner. His eyes, once sparkling, now looked stark and suggestive in his sallow face. Coke. He’d been doing a lot of it, if Chelsea was any judge.

  “I had to come and tell you in person how much I don’t want this divorce,” Jason said, flashing his most sincere smile. Not long ago a look like that would have melted her defenses. Not so long ago he could have charmed her into believing anything.

  A lot of things had happened since then, and now his ardent suitor act wasn’t anywhere near as engaging. “You’d better go.”

  “Chelsea,” he said, his hand still on her arm. “I made a mistake. Okay, I made several. But I love you.”

  “You’re wasting your time.”

  “I stopped drinking, and I’m going into a detox center. Isn’t that proof enough that I want us to go back to the way we were?”

  Chelsea laughed shortly. “I don’t want to go back to the way we were. I just want a divorce. If you really love me, then do that for me.”