Dancing with a Ghost

by Angela Pepper

  Still uninvited, Katie entered the house.

  The interior of the main Spirit Ranch residence was exactly as it appeared in Architectural Digest. The building predated the Civil War, and resonated with history. Since construction, the adobe dwelling had been continuously expanding, like a living creature. Some of the new rooms were technically original, as they had once been livestock barns. No longer a working farm, the ranch was both home to its famous artist owner and a retreat for a select number of art students.

  “You've finished restoring the rammed earth floor,” Lee said with admiration.

  Tilda elevated at the compliment, standing up on the balls of her bare feet. “What a living nightmare,” she said. “The mess, and the drama with the workers, and you wouldn't believe the fuss.”

  Lee sniffed the air. “Linseed oil?”

  She patted him on the head like a dog. “Good boy.”

  He beamed and shot Katie a smug look.

  Tilda came over to Katie, where she used her hands to form a frame around the girl's face. Katie froze. Tilda squinted and nodded as though approving her, then grabbed the handle of Katie's rolling suitcase.

  “Come along,” Tilda said. “If you're going to be here all week, we can't have you standing by the door the whole time.” She led the way around the enormous central fireplace that was the primary form of heat for the house.

  Katie noted that Tilda Onassis walked a bit like a duck, her bare feet slapping the polished adobe floor.

  Tilda paused to poke her head through a wood-timbered doorway. “Holly! We have two guests! Two of them! I need fresh linens, and an explanation from you!” She looked over her shoulder at Katie and Lee. “We weren't expecting you,” she said sweetly.

  “No?” Lee sounded wounded.

  “Sorry,” Katie said.

  “It must have been a miscommunication, but don't worry,” the redheaded artist said. “We'll have you two set up in no time. And it will be refreshing for me to have some sane company for a change.” She paused to look back at them as she rolled her eyes theatrically. “Sanity, like common sense, is always in short supply.”

  “We're at your service,” Lee said eagerly.

  Tilda showed Lee to his room first. He cooed with excitement. The bedroom had a narrow adobe ledge that had once been used as a bed. The room had been upgraded with a regular wood-framed bed, and the ledge now held only decorative objects: smooth pebbles, local pottery, and the bleached skull of something large and bovine. Lee stayed in his room and began unpacking, muttering to himself about the lack of electrical plugs for charging his devices.

  Tilda gave Katie an amused look and led the way down the hall. “He's fun,” she said of Lee.

  Katie said nothing.

  Katie's room was similar in style to Lee's, but with a larger window. The turquoise wooden shutters were closed now, but come morning, Katie was certain the view would be inspiring. It might even breathe life back into her and her painting.

  While Katie admired the spare walls and the Native American cross over the bed, Tilda swung the room's wooden door back and forth, squeaking the old brass hinges. “This needs oiling,” she muttered. “Holly! Get over here right now! Where are the linens?”

  A pleasantly plump woman appeared in the doorway, her dark-blond hair wildly disheveled. She was breathing heavily, her arms laden with towels and colorful woven blankets.

  “I'm not deaf,” the woman wheezed at both of them.

  Tilda raised her thin red eyebrows into pyramids. “Are you sure about that?” To Katie, she said, “Meet Holly Bagley. She's a dear old friend of mine whom we employ as a housekeeper, though I haven't the foggiest idea why.”

  “It's because I'm partly brain dead,” Holly said with a guileless, straight face. “From the accident. My brain doesn't work quite right, but my hearing is just fine.” Her face looked to Katie like a jumble—soft and lumpy, uneven. She had a thick scar running up her forehead and into her hairline. Where the scar split the dirty-blond hair, it created a mismatch, like two puzzle pieces smashed together the wrong way.

  Tilda gave the round-shouldered woman a pat on the back. “We love you all the same,” she said gently. “But why wasn't I informed that we had two guests with us this week?”

  “Two?” The housekeeper stared at Katie blankly. “But he said there was only one. And that's why we canceled. That's why we sent a refund.”

  Tilda asked, “Who said there was only one?”

  The housekeeper didn't answer. She stared at Katie as though in a trance, the bundle of blankets trembling in her arms.

  “Holly, wake up.” Tilda gave the woman an audible slap on the buttocks. “I asked you a question!”

  The housekeeper jolted to life with a shriek. She tossed the blankets at Katie, who hadn't been expecting such an outburst, and succeeded only in swatting them away from herself rather than catching them.

  The housekeeper turned on Tilda and let out a rushing torrent of swear words that would have been comical if not for the vehemence behind them.

  Tilda started yelling back, both of them spitting and outraged.

  Katie backed into a corner of the room. The fighting women were blocking the only exit.

  Finally, Tilda slapped Holly across the cheek.

  “Snap out of it,” Tilda commanded. “Holly, I know you're still in there. Wake up!”

  Cowed, Holly bowed her head and left the room whimpering.

  Tilda turned back toward Katie and released a tired groan. “Don't worry about Holly. She's completely harmless. She whirls around like a dust devil, but she wouldn't hurt a flea.”

  “I'm sorry you only had two people sign up for this week. It's a real shame. I can't understand why you're not fully booked.”

  Tilda picked at a dab of paint on her oversized shirt. “Nothing is quite as it was a few years ago. Sometimes I wonder if this place is as cursed as people say.” She looked straight at Katie, her expression softening and becoming childlike. “Sometimes I wonder if I'm the one who's cursed.”

  Katie swallowed hard. She wondered the same thing herself.

  Tilda backed out into the hallway, pulling the wooden door with her, its old hinges squeaking. “Freshen up and find your way to the kitchen in about thirty minutes. We've already had a late lunch, and I thought we were done with food for the day, but Holly will rustle up something for your belly so you can sleep well tonight.” She paused, her face framed by the narrow sliver of space between the door and its rustic lumber frame. “Some guests say the closet in here is haunted. You might wish to use the dresser for your personal effects and let the dead sleep undisturbed.”

  And with that, she left Katie to the spartan room and its ancient spirits.

  Chapter 3

  Katie had just stripped down to her underwear, removing her road-dusted clothes, when the door to her room creaked open behind her.

  A male voice said, “My bad, my bad!” The door creaked shut again. “Sorry, miss.” Embarrassed chuckling. “Don't worry, I didn't see much. It's these stupid doors my mother has on all the bedrooms. No locks. She says it creates a feeling of openness. I tell her, 'Mom, people need to choose when they want to open up,' but she's got her own ideas.”

  Katie finished fastening the snaps on the denim dress she'd been changing into for the late meal. She didn't have a mirror in the room to check herself, but she knew the dress was flattering. Not as flattering as it had been on its former owner, Darlene Silva, but Katie could only do so much with the sparse gifts nature had given her. She lacked Darlene's ample bosom and sultry bedroom eyes. But Katie was still alive, still able to wear clothes, breathe, enjoy life. And she would keep trying to shake the shadow that haunted her and made her do strange things. Why had she taken Darlene's clothes? Why was she walking in the other girl's footsteps, taking her place at the lodge? The only explanation she had was that something compelled her to. Like how an addict is compelled to keep seeking the thing that's killing them. Katie was addicted to being haunt
ed.

  There was a soft tap at the door. “You still alive in there?” The man let out a low, self-conscious chuckle. He had the sound of someone who laughed at the absurdities of life with little provocation; he sounded like the opposite of Lee Elliot.

  He knocked on the door again. “Hey, miss? I didn't frighten you to death, did I? Because this place doesn't need any more ghosts.” More chuckling. “We're already packed full with those.”

  Katie swung open the door. “Still alive,” she said.

  He took a step back, his jaw dropping. “Darlene!”

  Katie looked over her shoulder. Could he see Darlene?

  No. He was looking right at her, and why wouldn't he be? The reservation was under Darlene's name. And, even though Katie was keenly aware of her shortcomings when measured against the other girl, she couldn't deny that a casual observer might mistake them for each other. They were the same age and height, with similar features. At Halloween, they'd worn matching wigs and posed as conjoined twin cheerleaders. People believed they were twins in real life. The girls had laughed and played along, enjoying twinhood for one night.

  The young man stared at her, rubbing the red stubble on his unshaven chin.

  “I'm Katie Mills,” she said. “Darlene was my roommate.”

  “Was?” He gave her a sidelong look.

  “I mean, she is my roommate. We're in the same arts program together. She couldn't make it up here for the retreat, so she insisted I take her place.”

  His jaw moved fruitlessly before he found his words. “Where is she?”

  “I don't know,” she said, which was the truth. Nobody knew where Darlene was. She was just missing, as far as Darlene's parents and the rest of the world knew. And the disappearance of a twenty-year-old college girl didn't make the national news. The folks here in New Mexico wouldn't have learned of it.

  Katie could be the only person who knew the girl was dead. Other than the person who killed her. Katie assumed Darlene must have been murdered. People who died of natural causes didn't show up in their college dorm rooms as ghosts, did they? The spirits of people who peacefully passed away didn't follow around their look-alike roommates, appearing at dusk and sticking around until dawn.

  The young man chuckled again, his posture softening. “Darlene's probably off gallivanting. That girl sure could find trouble.”

  “Did you know her well?”

  “Me?” He seemed confused by the question.

  “Yeah. She didn't talk much about her time here. It was just one thing she did for a week, before she was off to the next thing.”

  “You art students can be like that.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and gave her a sheepish look. He hadn't introduced himself yet, but Katie figured he was Tilda's son—not just by how he spoke of his mother, but his looks as well. He had the same bright-green eyes and red hair as Tilda, though his hair was curly, as wild as Tilda's was rigid. His nose had a bulb on the tip, and he had considerably more body fat than his angular mother, which gave his cheeks a pleasing roundness. His jaw wasn't weak, but it wasn't sharply delineated, either. Shape-wise, he was comprised of squashed circles. He was attractive, in a boyish way.

  “I met your friend Darlene, but I didn't know her well.” He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and rotated his arms to reveal dimples in his chubby elbows. “On the other hand, I've seen you in your underwear, plus we've had this whole entire awkward conversation which has taken forever and a day, so I'd say I already know you a lot better than I got to know Darlene.” He laughed at his joke.

  “I'll pass along your regards, anyway,” Katie said with a friendly smile.

  A tiny voice made a complaint in the back of her mind. What are you doing? Why are you lying?

  The voice was right. She hadn't meant to keep lying. She'd planned to tell the people at the lodge about Darlene, but now it seemed so much easier to pretend she was alive, the way Darlene's parents did. The Silva family hadn't touched the girl's old bedroom at home. They hoped she might walk back through the door any minute.

  When Katie asked the Silvas if she could come to Spirit Ranch on Darlene's booking, they'd agreed readily. They hoped Darlene would show up as well, surfacing for the first time in months, and wanted her to see a friendly face.

  Katie hadn't told the Silvas about the ghost, about how their daughter had surfaced already, but not in the form they wanted. She hadn't told anyone about the ghost except one doctor. She hadn't even told the detectives working on Darlene's disappearance.

  “So,” Katie said, using the short word that was her placeholder for actual conversation.

  “Marco,” he said with a lift of his chin. “Tell your friend Darlene that Marco sends his regards. It's actually Mark, Mark Patrick James Onassis, but people started calling me Mark O back in school, then it evolved into Marco, and... you're bored and I'm still talking. Jeez. My name doesn't really need this much explanation, does it? You look so bored, like bored to death.”

  “I'm not bored,” Katie said. “A little hungry.”

  He nodded for her to follow him down the hall. “Food's on the table. Your buddy Lee Elliot is already down there, trying to apply his lips to my mother's skinny derriere.”

  “He's not my buddy.”

  Marco chuckled.

  Katie stopped in the hallway and peered through a doorway. The air was different here, cooler. “Is this the Sky Room?”

  Marco stopped and did a soldier-like about-face. “Detour,” he announced. “The Sky Room is right through here. Let me give you the full tour. You didn't see this yet?”

  She shook her head. No. Her arrival had been unexpected and rushed.

  Marco gave her a pained look. “Let me guess. My mother and Holly were fighting again?”

  Katie shrugged. She didn't want to make things worse for anyone.

  He lowered his voice to a whisper. “If you think those two are dysfunctional, wait 'til you meet Mr. Fish, also known as Clive Kingfisher.”

  Katie whispered back, “Tilda's manager? Is he staying here at the ranch?”

  “Only when his wife kicks him out. Which is pretty much all the time.” He winced and nodded as though anticipating Katie's thoughts. “Yeah. Things are always interesting here at Spirit Ranch. Never a dull moment. Especially not on the days when you desperately want to sleep in, that's for sure.”

  Marco led the way down a hallway and then through another door, into the world-famous Sky Room. Overhead, the stars were framed by wood beams similar to the ones in the other rooms, but without an adobe roof. The space could be called an inner courtyard, but it was small and cozy enough to be called a room. The Sky Room at Spirit Ranch was famous not only for its architecture, but for the photographs of celebrities that had been taken within it. There had been a time when a guest such as Katie would never have found it unoccupied, as it was now.

  They both looked up at the stars and the gibbous moon. Katie shivered.

  Marco said nothing, but Katie could sense his laughter lurking just below the surface, ready to fill the spaces around them.

  She asked, “Are you an artist, like your mother?”

  He laughed, just as she knew he would. “I'm an artist, but not like my mother. There's no one like her.”

  “You're so lucky,” she gushed without thinking. “The path is clear for you, not like the rest of us. I mean, of course you'll be an artist. It's so obvious from the outside looking in.”

  His rolling chuckle stopped on a sharp intake of breath. “You'd be surprised, Katie Miller.”

  “Mills.”

  “Classic Marco mess-up,” he said, shaking his head. “Well, Ms. Mills, I've tried to be other things, trust me. I trained as a chef, but I couldn't take the hours. Up in the morning to hit the market, then sweating my nuts off—pardon my language—in a kitchen all night. It makes for a long day. I started taking naps, and when that didn't help, I started self-medicating, but that helped even less.” More chuckling, sucking inward now. “There's a path,
all right, and it takes you straight down.”

  Katie didn't ask what he meant. The words echoed in her head. There's a path, all right, and it takes you straight down.

  Outside, beyond the roofless room, a lone coyote bayed at the bright moon.

  Another distant sound grew louder. It was a vehicle, coming up the dirt road.

  Under his breath, Marco muttered, “Speaking of straight down, here comes the devil himself.”

  “The devil?”

  “El diablo,” Marco said. “Clive Kingfisher. The man who fancies himself as royalty. He'd love for everyone to call him Mr. King, which is why we call him Mr. Fish. You should steer clear of him, if you know what's good for you.”

  “Is he really that bad? Lee was going on and on about how wonderful of a manager he is.”

  “Oh, he's quite the manager. He's managed to spend a lot of my mother's money.”

  “But she's doing okay, right?” Katie trembled from the cold of the open room as much as from the revelation that even the most successful female painter might not be doing so well.

  “My mother's like a cat,” Marco said. “She always lands on her feet. And she's working on something new right now. Something brilliant.”

  Katie gasped. “Paintings? A new series?”

  “Mmm, not exactly,” he said cryptically. “Maybe if you play your cards right, though, she'll bring you into her studio and show you.”

  Katie clapped her hands. “That would be amazing.”

  “But you can't tell anyone what I just told you,” he said. “I shouldn't have said anything.”

  She whispered, “I can keep a secret.”

  He was quiet, perfectly still. His squashed oval shapes were pleasingly symmetrical in the moonlight.

  “You're shivering,” he said. “Let's get you inside and at the dinner table before my mother comes hunting for you.”

  Marco pulled open the door to the hallway, releasing a gust of warmth and golden light that made the sky overhead even more cold and beautiful.