Read Online Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore - Free Book Online Page A

fences and trespass and traipse around in the dark with her, and it had nothing to do with the deputy—or Ben McCranky—telling me not to. But when I opened my mouth, nothing came out. My mind went blank, and I couldn’t even form the word “no.”
    And who would blame me for going brain-dead? I’d had a very rough night. I didn’t want to start another argument at that hour, so I finally just said, “I still think it’s a terrible idea. But I doubt that will stop you.”
    “So you don’t want to go to the dig tomorrow, either?”
    “Oh, I’m going.” I
hadn’t
meant to say
that
, but once the words were out, I realized how much I did want to know what the crew from the university were uncovering by the river. It was a mystery, and I’d have to be dead not to be curious. And at least that was something normal.
    The fact that an uncovered skull was the most mundanething in my life right now didn’t bear thinking about. I warned Phin, “I want to head out first thing in the morning.” Before my resolve deserted me.
    “
First
thing in the morning?” she echoed. Phin was not a morning person.
    I sighed and started up the stairs. “Right after I take care of those blasted goats like I promised Aunt Hyacinth.”
    The phone call, in its way, was as surreal as the appearance of the ghost. Why was Aunt Hyacinth so worried about her livestock? Surely she didn’t think I’d go through with my threat to barbecue them. I really should try and call her back.
    But later. After I slept.
    Which brought me to my most immediate problem. One look at my room and I knew I’d never get to sleep in there. Forget the ghostly afterimage on my eyelids; the place was a disaster area.
    Instead, I grabbed my pillow and the quilt and went back down to the couch. The dogs came with me, Pumpkin worming under the covers and Sadie a welcome weight on my feet. Yet I still couldn’t seem to get warm.
    Phin was all about the gadgets, but some things just couldn’t be measured. There was no way to quantify the difference between the comforting cool around Uncle Burt’s rocker, like a fresh breeze on a hot day, and the hard, unforgiving cold that had come with the
other
thing.
    I shivered and tried not to think about it. Maybe I should worry about Deputy Kelly’s suspicions instead. Or I could dwell on whether everyone here viewed Aunt Hyacinth like the McCullochs did, and what had sparkedthe bad blood in the first place. Goodnights were quirky but usually likable. Or maybe I could just worry about the dead body by the river, and how long it had been that way.
    No wonder I lay sleepless, even as Uncle Burt’s chair rocked in a reassuring rhythm and the dogs melted into boneless piles of comfort. Fatigue made my eyelids too heavy to hold up. But inside … an icy thread wove through the knot still coiled around my insides, like a snare ready to close tight.
    “Why does any ghost haunt?” Phin had said. “Because it wants something.”
    What could any ghost want from me?

7
    r ight after breakfast—mine and the livestock’s—I set out with the dogs into the kind of sweet, dew-spangled Texas morning that nearly made up for the blistering heat that would come later. The first of July, you could still hope for a few temperate hours if you got up early enough to enjoy them.
    Phin was not there to see it. My knock on her door was met with an indecipherable complaint. I called that I was going without her and took the barely audible grunt as acknowledgment. I had no doubt she’d catch up, probably by car. The dogs weren’t part of my plan, but once I’d laced upmy hiking sneakers and slathered myself with sunscreen, they had worked themselves into such a frenzy of anticipation, I didn’t have the heart to leave them behind.
    Since I had neither instructions for how to reach the site nor Phin’s uncanny sense of direction, my idea was to head along the river until I found the dig. And there my plan ended. I didn’t like freewheeling