Darkscope

by J. Carson Black

  “Honey! I got help!”

  A figure huddled in the yellow beam of the car’s dome light, a figure with light brown hair in a down jacket. As Bob watched, the woman leaned over and unlocked the door.

  “It’s okay, honey. Look who just happened to be driving by? Bob McCord, our next governor.” The man turned to Bob. “I’m sure gonna vote for you. You can bet on that!”

  The woman slid out of the car.

  A trick, the sneaky little voice in the back of his brain told him.

  Bob prepared himself for a ghastly shock. The woman would come into the twin beams of the headlights. And she would be Kathy—a dark, bloody hole in her head.

  Shoes clicked on gravel. The shape appeared dark, thick.

  With relief. Bob saw that this woman couldn’t be more unlike Kathy. Lank straight hair. A face the color, consistency, and shape of an unripe pear. Small brown eyes, deeply sunken. A petulant mouth. Bulky, even if you didn’t count the plum-colored down jacket. Bob noticed that under the jacket she wore powder-blue ski pants, stretched to the limit, and white open-toed sandals. Her feet must be freezing.

  “Wait a minute,” the woman said. “I musta left my purse.” Returning with a large carpetbag, she regarded Bob with an expression of stupid cunning. The man got into the back; the woman squashed her way into the front, filling the seat like an inflated airbag. “Cold, ain’t it?” she asked, grinning. One of her front teeth was gold.

  Bob turned the Mercedes around, and they drove out to the highway.

  “Thanks again,” the man said, leaning over the seat. “Etta’s not well. The cold was getting to her.”

  “No problem,” Bob said, expansive now that he knew his fears had been unfounded.

  “Just drop us off at the first open gas station,” the man continued.

  “I told you we shouldn’t have went that way,” Etta said, folding her arms.

  “How was I to know that wasn’t the road?”

  “You just take off half-cocked and the road didn’t even have no sign. We was almost to town, why couldn’t you have asked somebody? But no, you had to—”

  “Shut up, Etta. ‘Scuse me, Mr. McCord.”

  “Ron, maybe this nice man knows.”

  The man sighed. “Do you know where the Charleston Road is? It goes from Tombstone to Sierra Vista.”

  “Yes, I know it,” Bob said, uneasy again. The road ran right by the Tombstone Rose Mine.

  “We’re the new caretakers up at the Silver Concho,” the woman said proudly.

  Alarm bells went off in Bob’s head. The Silver Concho claim was adjacent to the Tombstone Rose.

  “Maybe you could just drop us off there. It’s real close to town, I heard, and we could pick up the car in the morning.”

  “I guess I could,” Bob said. Why didn’t he say no?

  Ron and Etta kept up a bad-tempered banter all the way into Tombstone. They stopped at the only open gas station. The attendant told them they couldn’t get a tow truck until morning. Bob was stuck with them.

  They started out of town on a winding, hardtop road, passing several small hills. As he drove, Bob’s uneasiness grew. The couple was arguing in earnest now, ignoring him completely. They argued about money, about Ron’s ex-wife, about Etta’s cooking. Bob was sick of the two of them. He tried to tune them out.

  “Here we are,” Ron said at last. He pointed to a small hill. No buildings, only a road that looked as if it had been traveled by heavy equipment recently. A pickup truck and a Caterpillar tractor nosed into the hill.

  “You’re going to live here?” Bob asked.

  “Did I say that?” Etta said. She slapped her enormous thigh. “I guess I did at that. But I want to talk about you, Mr. McCord.” Her eyes glittered. Two dimples yawned around her smiling mouth.

  “What are you playing at?” But he knew.

  “I know everything about you, don’t I, Ron?”

  Ron leaned forward. His breath smelled like chicken noodle soup and rotten earth.

  “I lived over there,” the woman said, pointing to the Tombstone Rose, “until a week ago, didn’t I, Ron?” She laughed. Bob had heard hyenas with more pleasant voices.

  Ron cackled. “You did, sweetie. That you did. And if you don’t mind my saying so, you’re a little worse for wear.”

  “Do you think so?” Etta screeched. Her face elongated with a horrible crackling sound as her forehead popped open, a flower of blood bursting out onto her sickly, greenish skin.

  Bob stood on the brakes. The impulse to run was not as strong as his impulse to watch. Etta’s face folded up like a multiple-use suitcase, a hidden pocket zipping up here, a doubled-up garment bag snapping shut there. Then her flesh constricted, as if being sucked from within, leaving her skin molded to her skull, a parched, dry mummy. Eye sockets yawned, an emptiness that had no end. Black lips split open, exposing one large snaggle tooth.

  Her jaw creaked when she talked. “You got a problem, Mr. McCord. You killed me and you think you can get away with it. I’m here to tell you that you can’t. It’s been eatin’ at you for a long time. Like things been eatin’ at me.”

  “Who are you?” Bob asked, although he knew.

  “I’m you, Bob. But for the grace of God, I’m you,” the creature hissed.

  “Who are you? Say it!”

  Her eyes had returned, lying way back in her skull, crafty lights in muddy depths. Like a crocodile peering at its prey from a gloomy swamp. “Don’t you like my disguise. Bob? After all, it is Halloween! You know. You’ve always known.”

  “Kathy.” His voice came out in a whisper.

  “He ain’t so dumb,” Ron giggled.

  “I’m of her,” Etta conceded. “And I’m here to tell you it’s time. Time to face the music.”

  Faint music from over the hills, a swing band. The music reminded him of the times he and John and Kathy had gone out together . . .

  Only this music sounded off-key, clashing, without rhythm. A parody.

  “Time to pay up!” Etta screeched. “You think on that, Bob McCord. You just tarry and think on that a while.” She leaned back against the open window. Her body stretched like rubber and leaked out the window to slip away, still facing him, up and up over the dark mountains. Laughter followed her on the wind.

  Bob turned around. Ron had disappeared. Bob was alone outside the Tombstone Rose Mine, where Etta said she lived.

  Far away, the music played on.

  After dinner Ben and Chelsea sat in front of the fire. The jack-o’-lantern leered at them from its perch on the bookshelf. The wind eddied around the eaves.

  “Are you sure the brakes didn’t just fail?” Chelsea asked Ben.

  “I wish they had.”

  “But who—”

  Ben stood up and stirred the fire. “Don’t you think it’s obvious?”

  “I can’t believe Uncle Bob would do that to me.” Chelsea folded her arms, shivering. “I just can’t.”

  “He killed Kathy.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “He could have hired someone to break into Ernie’s garage.”

  “But what about Jason?”

  “You know him better than I do.” Ben leaned down and kissed her. “Why don’t you try calling him?”

  “What good would that do?”

  Ben shrugged. “See if he’s in LA.”

  Chelsea called Jason’s apartment and got his answering machine. She dropped the receiver back into the cradle. “He’s here,” she told Ben. “I just know it.”

  “I’m here, too,” Ben said. He stood and came up behind her, gently locking Chelsea in his arms.

  Chelsea turned to face him. He tugged her chin up and kissed her gently. “I love you,” he said softly.

  She raised her face to his and they kissed, long and lingeringly. Ben ran his fingers lightly over her body, then increased the pressure, exploring with greater and greater urgency. Chelsea pressed the length of her body against his, her desire growing. Ben’s tongue followed his
hands, until neither of them could stand it any longer.

  Ben said, “I know something that might take our minds off our troubles for a while.”

  The car wouldn’t start. Bob’s throat closed. He was helpless out here, alone, with that infernal band playing somewhere in the desert. He powered up the windows, flicked the button for the locking pins. I’ll show them I’m not afraid. I can tough it out. After all, I’m a McCord.

  He had to stay awake, though. Had to remain alert. Despite himself, his eyelids drooped. The radio. Yes, that’s it. I’ll play the radio. It would drown out that hideous band, and if he played it loud enough, it would keep him awake. He reached down and turned the knob.

  The rasping hiss turned to dead silence; a black hole punched into his hearing. Like what he’d seen in Etta’s eye sockets, the nothingness extending into infinity. The eerie silence blotted out his thoughts, but not before he realized that terrible void came from no place on this earth.

  Hurriedly, Bob turned the knob, searching for another station. More silence. A silence that threatened his sanity.

  He switched the radio off.

  The swing band—even a ghost band—was better than that.

  Chelsea lay in the crook of Ben’s arm, feeling deliciously warm. She had never known lovemaking like this, had never felt so completely the merging of love and sex. Their love had grown in the midst of darkness and uncertainty and fear, had warmed them in the coldest night.

  Ben kissed her throat. “Jason doesn’t know what he’s missing,” he said, leaning up on one elbow and looking at her.

  “I was his golden goose,” Chelsea said. “That’s all I ever was. Not the kind of thing you like to think about, not being loved for yourself”

  “What do you want to think about?”

  “My second marriage.”

  “You’re not through with your first yet.”

  “Are you saying you won’t wait?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think,” Chelsea said slowly, tracing a finger down Ben’s chest, “that if you don’t marry me soon, your life will be in danger.”

  “Well, that settles it. I’ll do anything to save my skin.”

  They made love again. For the first time in a long while, Chelsea felt that the darkness could not reach her. Not here.

  Here she was safe.

  The band played on. Bob wondered if the musicians were ghosts. He pictured milky forms wavering behind insubstantial bandstands, ectoplasmic fingers racing along translucent clarinet stops, incorporeal lips honking away on holographic saxophones.

  They, like Etta, must be part of Kathy.

  What were they waiting for?

  Time to tarry and think awhile.

  Bob had plenty of time to think. He thought about the ploy he had used to lure Kathleen out that night—the story about her child not dying at birth. A story that even he’d thought was farfetched. He thought of Lucas, trying to run everything. If it hadn’t been for Lucas, Bob would have turned himself in. At the most he would have been charged with manslaughter. Lucas McCord employed the best lawyers in the state.

  But Lucas didn’t want the disgrace of a trial.

  Bob laughed. Oh yes, Lucas had pulled all the strings. Just like God. But everything had turned out wrong. He had been thwarted at every turn. First John’s infatuation with Kathy, then John’s death, and Kathy’s—and still Lucas didn’t learn. He had to meddle, had to run things. Well, he ran this one right into the ground.

  What would Lucas have done if he’d been alive when Sean Barrie’s call came two years ago? Deny it? Yes, Bob supposed he would. Sean Barrie wouldn’t have gotten a penny, even though Bob guessed he had a right.

  Lucas sure as hell hadn’t seen it that way.

  And now he—Bob—was paying for his father’s stubbornness. Now he was out here in the middle of nowhere, a ghostly band playing a clashing descant to his thoughts. And Kathy was out there, toying with him. Waiting to move in for the kill.

  Wind buffeted the car, swiping at it like an angry cat. Stars glittered impassively. Cold. It was so cold.

  The music faded as if the ghosts were moving farther away. The frigid air felt like the edge of a diamond, cutting into the exposed skin on Bob’s face, his hands.

  It was Lucas’s fault, damn it. All his fault!

  He could barely hear the band now. Now he couldn’t think about anything else but the bitter cold—

  A clicking sound. Bob turned to the passenger window.

  She was there. Peering in at him, her fingernails ticking on the glass.

  Keep her out. Have to keep her out.

  Her laughter pealed like silver bells across his mind. Her dark cloud of hair shimmered in the moonlight.

  She looked . . . alive.

  Alive. Warmth flooded his limbs, the warmth of recognition. This creature could not be dead, she was as alive as he was.

  I don’t have to be dead, the voice—her voice—sounded in his brain. He knew the voice came from inside his head, her lovely, glittering laughter issued from his own brain. It doesn’t have to be that way.

  The cold melted away in the face of the comforting warmth.

  “What do you mean?” he asked the slender shape, which was now backing away from him, beckoning for him to follow. “You’re dead. I killed you.”

  Do I look dead? Come out, Bob. I’ll show you I’m not dead. You wanted so badly for me to live, remember? And now you have me. I’m alive and you can have me, if you come out now.

  Bob knew what she was doing, but obediently he unlocked the door and fumbled for the door handle. Maybe she would forgive him. Maybe she had already forgiven him, because he wrote that letter to Chelsea, because he had admitted his guilt. Of course, no one would see the letter for a very long time, but that couldn’t make much difference, could it? After all, Kathy would understand about timing, wouldn’t she? She’d understand that he was good for the state, that Arizona needed him.

  Accident. It was an accident. Not murder. No.

  She’d know that, wouldn’t she?

  He thought about Etta and his blood froze. If Kathy was so happy to see him, why did she send Etta?

  There could only be one explanation. The Etta-thing had been a joke. A joke in exchange for the joke he’d played so long ago, that had ended so tragically—an accident—Just to scare him. Quid pro quo. Tit for tat.

  A joke.

  He opened the door.

  We can make it like it was, the voice in his head promised him. Kathy’s voice. Remember? It was so hot that night. Too hot for clear thinking. And I know you wanted to call that bullet back, the minute you shot me.

  The stars had come in closer, they were right on top of him. It was warm, just like on that night so long ago. Hot, really. Bob removed his jacket, dropped it on the hood of the car.

  Youth ran through him like an electric wire, wild, impulsive youth, straining at the bonds of his old man’s body. Why did she always stay just out of reach?

  Kathy led him through the desert toward the mine. Finally she turned and embraced him in her cool arms.

  He felt young again,virile. He was Bob McCord, the boy of 1942. He leaned closer to her, a ramrod. She reached up and kissed him passionately, her fingers sketching a delicate trail of sensation down his neck and shoulder. Runners of flame ran along his arms and legs.

  The voice of reason plodded through his brain. Why has she waited until now? Why didn’t she make love to you all those years ago? Look out, the annoying, pedantic voice told him. She’s dangerous.

  He dismissed the voice and concentrated on her caresses. He was amazed at her expertise. She ran her tongue behind his ear, an exquisite warmth that brought him to the brink.

  He couldn’t control himself. He felt like a kid again, not even twenty—more like fourteen and horny as hell and unable to stop . . .

  His hand clutched her arm. It was smooth, dewy with a gentle perspiration. So soft—

  Suddenly the skin peeled off in hi
s hands in moist flaps.

  Her laughter shrieked across his brain like a high-powered saw.

  He jerked back. His eyes widened.

  Her skin erupted in a hundred places, blood flying, spraying him with a fine mist. Like parchment, her skin stretched, shriveled, and pulled apart.

  A needle thrust into Bob’s heart. Twisted. He couldn’t catch his breath. He was rooted to the spot, watching in horror as, like a time-lapse film, Kathy’s skin unraveled from her body. A bursting dam of internal organs, blood, water, nerves, muscles, and fat sloughed from her frame like tenderly cooked beef off the bone, raining to the ground with soft slaps.

  He gagged.

  Her face was a gout of dark things.

  The fire in his left arm became a throbbing ache. He knew what it was. He knew it the moment he felt it.

  A heart attack.

  The numbing cold burrowed into his flesh again. He lowered himself to the ground, unable to look at the thing dancing before him like a puppet on a string. He could imagine the pain glowing—a maleficent pulsing green, shooting up and down his system.

  And then he lost consciousness.

  For a while.

  The heart attack didn’t kill him.

  He died of exposure, just before midnight. He didn’t die alone. Kathy held his head in her lap, the clicking bones of her fleshless fingers gently soothing his fevered brow. She stayed with him in death, as he had stayed with her all those years ago.

  Fifty-six

  Outside, the wind had died. Still cold, though, as Chelsea knew from her trip outside when they had checked the horses for the night. But inside, the fire roared and crackled. She glanced at the clock. Six minutes to midnight.

  “I want you to be careful when I’m gone,” Ben said. “I can probably wrap up everything by tomorrow evening so I can fly back the next day.”

  “I just got here, and you’re already leaving me,” Chelsea joked.

  Ben kissed the top of her head.

  For a moment, resentment rose in Chelsea’s throat. Here she was, in danger for God’s sake—a vengeful ghost and a human enemy both stalking her—and Ben was leaving her alone.