A Wild Fright in Deadwood (Deadwood Humorous Mystery Book 7) (56 page)

Footfalls creaked across the floor up on the landing. I cringed with each step, squinting into the shadows. They stopped at the top of the stairs.

“You’ve done it,” Wilda whispered.

“Done what?”

“Woken Mother.”

I heard another
creak
from the top of the steps.

“You’re the one who kept screaming,” I told the brat.

Wilda let out a whimper and hid behind me.

Wait a second. Why was she hiding? It was her mother.

Silence stretched, wrapping around me, trussing me up like a mummy. My focus tunneled, centering on the thick shadows at the top of the stairs. My pulse was pounding so loud the partiers down at the Purple Door Saloon must have heard it.

I saw the shadows shift, sort of ripple even, but I couldn’t make out anything definite in the darkness.

A warm fetid breath of air puffed against the right side of my face, heating my skin. Then I heard what sounded like a low-pitched, inward scream in my right ear, growing louder and steadier with each beat of my heart, which was busy trying to break land speed records. The whole right side of my body tingled, goosebumps spreading from head to toe.

Wilda’s mother was beside me. I could feel her energy making my hair stand on end like static electricity.

Gulping, I slowly turned my head to the right … and stared straight into Mrs. Hessler’s face.

Her cheeks were paler than in the picture I’d seen of her months ago up in her bedroom. Her chin was unnaturally long, as if she were being stretched. Her nose looked more pointed, her eyes black, bottomless pits. Her hair seemed to float in water around her, alive even though she was long dead.

The inward scream stopped. Her thin lips pulled back from her teeth, reminding me of a partially decayed body I once saw in Layne’s archaeology books. “Child killer,” she snarled, her teeth chattering like wind-up teeth.

Her hand lifted, long bony fingers reaching toward my face. I wanted to pull back. I needed to pull back. But I stood frozen, my eyes widening as her fingertips came closer, blurring.

The front door banged open behind us.

Mrs. Hessler’s head whipped around, her mouth gaping extra wide. Then she was gone and she took Wilda with her, flying out the door with a banshee scream that scraped over me like fingernails on a chalkboard and rattled the windows.

I ran after them out into the cold, fresh air, tripping on a charred and broken board and falling to my knees. When I looked up, I was back in the here and now. At least I figured it was present day since Cooper was sprawled out on his back on the grass below.

“Cooper?” I pushed to my feet and scrambled down to where he was slowly sitting up, shaking his head as if to clear it. “Are you okay?”

“What in the fuck was that?”

“Did you see her?”

“See who?”

“Mrs. Hessler. She just flew out of …” I looked back at the house that wasn’t there anymore, only the burned remains.

“What are you talking about, Parker? There was nobody here but you. Then this wind came out of nowhere and slammed into me, knocking me down.” He rubbed the back of his head as he got to his feet. “I think I blacked out for a second there.”

“I don’t think that was wind.” I reached out to steady him and he batted my hands away. “It was a ghost.”

The creases on his face deepened. “Christ. You really don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”

After the crazy shit he’d already witnessed, yes, but I bit my tongue rather than try to convince Cooper otherwise. Now was not the time, and I had a feeling we had bigger problems to juggle than his continued skepticism.

“Hell.” He winced while rolling his left shoulder. “Watching your back is hazardous to my health.”

He should try dodging an ax-swinging juggernaut. “Where’re the others?”

He jammed his thumb over his shoulder. “Still underground. You took off again, so I followed.”

“What did I do?”

He looked toward the burned pile of rubble that had once been a house. “You walked around the foundation like you were in some trance, then climbed the porch steps and turned into a statue.”

“Until that wind blew,” I said, replaying that last bit in my head. I shuddered at the memory of Mama Hessler. “Did Cornelius follow me?”

“No, you acted alone.”

So, I must somehow have brought Cornelius along mentally? Or had I made that up with him and his pocket full of tricks? I scratched my forehead. This ghost business fit me like a pair of wooden shoes, all clunky, slippery in the muddy spots; whereas playing executioner felt as natural as running barefoot through the sand.

“Is Doc okay?” I asked.

“Besides his infatuation with a crazy-haired troublemaker?” When I glared at him, he shrugged. “He was more cognizant during this run than when we were at Uncle Willis’s ranch.”

“Violet?” Natalie called in the darkness.

“We’re over here, Nat.”

She jogged over, giving me a glance over and then focusing on Cooper. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing, why?” His tone was surprisingly terse. He usually saved that level of snappiness for me.

“Wow.” She turned to me. “Is my head still attached or did he bite it clear off?”

Cooper sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Sorry, Natalie. It’s been a long week.”

I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

“Apology accepted.” She crossed her arms over her chest, her back still stiff when she faced him. “Anyway, Doc told me to find you and make sure you were okay. He said something about you’d been caught in the blast zone.”

“Doc’s coherent already?” I asked.

“He and Cornelius both are. You kicked them out early.”

“I did?”

“According to Doc you did. Cornelius opened his eyes first, then Doc shortly afterward. He didn’t wake up happy either, saying something to Cornelius about you opening the channel too wide and something else coming through.”

Mrs. Hessler.

“Crud! That was my doing?” I sank both hands into my hair, tugging it away from my face. Aunt Zoe had warned me about doing that very thing. “Double crud! Now what?”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, Cornelius said you were successful in removing Wilda’s hold on him.”

So the little terror hadn’t lied when she’d claimed to have let him go. “I have a feeling her haunting him was a ruse.”

Cooper scowled. “What are you saying, Parker? That Cornelius was screwing with us all along about that ghost? For shit’s sake, do you realize the risk I’m taking by letting you down in that root cellar?”

“Relax, Cooper. Don’t go busting any blood vessels until you hear me out.” I growled at the ornery detective for good measure. “I’m talking about Wilda being the trickster. She was playing me all along, baiting me with Cornelius.”

“Why would she do that?” Natalie asked.

“So that I’d bring back her mother.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Friday, November 23rd

I woke up in an empty bed. The sky outside my window was gray, sleet pelting the glass. With a groan, I pulled the covers up over my head.

I’d screwed up big time last night …

Natalie had run Cornelius home after he’d finished packing up his gear. He’d been jovial in spite of the new mess I’d caused freeing him from Wilda. He told Doc he’d call him today after he woke up from what he hoped would be a long, quiet night with no trouble from ghosts for the first time in over a month.

Cooper had locked up the root cellar after us and threatened to throw me in jail if I called him within the next twenty-four hours. He strode back to his car and headed toward the police station without even blowing me a kiss goodbye.

“What a grumpy bear,” I told Doc.

He chuckled and put his arm around me, leading me toward the Picklemobile. “Cut him some slack. He leads a tortured life.”

“Fine, but he doesn’t have to use his thumbscrews on me.”

A short drive later, during which I texted Aunt Zoe that we were all fine and dandy at the moment, we were back in her warm, bright kitchen. I recounted what had happened in the Hessler house to Doc while we waited for Natalie to return from dropping off Cornelius. While I planned to share my ghostly adventures with Natalie, there were details that I wanted to work through with only Doc, such as the candle flame game I’d played while we were under. I needed to find out where he thought I’d screwed up and opened the channel too wide, and I didn’t really want an audience during that discussion.

Unfortunately, Doc didn’t have any concrete answers. According to him, in the paranormal activity business, there were different strokes for different folks, depending on the medium’s abilities. Since his specialty differed from mine, he was able to sense when the channel had opened wider but could only surmise that it happened sometime after Cornelius got involved with his humming routine. It was shortly after that when I’d somehow managed to boot both Cornelius and Doc from the whole show, which was an experience that had not happened to Doc before tonight.

Natalie’s return spurred a rerun of the night’s events. We each took turns speculating about the cookie jar lid and how it played into the whole shebang. Each of our theories included Mama Hessler’s appearance, making me wonder if Wilda had somehow played Natalie by offering up that lid from the burned ruins.

After Natalie called it a night and went upstairs to crash in Aunt Zoe’s bed, Doc and I moved to the couch. We both downed a bottle of beer while lost in our own thoughts as Humphrey Bogart smoked and rattled off one-liners on the TV screen. Halfway through the movie, Doc stood and held out his hand for me, pulling me after him up the stairs.

I took a quick rinse shower, wanting to wash away the rank mustiness of that root cellar along with Mrs. Hessler’s foul smell from my skin before crawling under the sheets. Doc was already asleep when I closed the bedroom door and eased in beside him. He woke enough to pull me close and nuzzle my neck and then went out again. Much to my surprise, I followed his course within minutes, snuggling into his body and forgetting about garish clowns and terrifying ghost mothers.

Unfortunately, with the morning light came another reckoning of my royal fuckup. I hid deeper under my covers.

I was in the midst of beating myself up again when I heard the bedroom door open. Familiar footfalls crossed the floor. The mattress shifted next to me.

Doc peeled the covers back, grinning down at me. “Hiding from the world again?”

I blinked up at his unshaven face, noticing the damp ends of his hair, catching a whiff of my shampoo. Showered but not shaved. Hot damn. “How do you do it?”

“Lie next to you all night long without ravishing your body?”

“You didn’t quite make it all night on that score.”

“Oh, but I did score, Boots.”

Yes, he had early this morning. Or rather I had. Actually it’d been more of a tie on the scoreboard. “How do you battle ghosts at night yet look fresh as a daisy come morning?”

“You fought the battle last night, not me. I just facilitated transitions for you.” He combed some curls back from my face. “Besides, I wasn’t the one who looked Wilda’s mom in the face up close and personal.”

“Thanks to you all I did was look.”

When I’d met up with Cornelius and Doc as they were coming out of the root cellar last night, Cornelius had told me that after I’d booted the two of them back to the present, Doc had gone back under in order to shield me from whatever harm Mrs. Hessler had intended. He’d been the reason the front door had banged open, saving me from her touch. Unfortunately, that move had given Wilda and her mom an escape route, something for which Doc took full blame. Never mind that I was the one responsible for Mrs. Hessler showing up in the first place.

“Come on.” He pulled the covers down further. “Harvey is here. He made bacon and waffles. That’ll make you feel better.”

I sat up and pulled my shoulders back in a big stretch.

Doc watched me, his eyes locked south of my chin. “On second thought,” he reached for me, “forget breakfast.”

I dodged his hand and rolled off the other side of the bed before he could catch me. “Bacon trumps sex, buster,” I told him, stepping into a pair of pajama bottoms and slippers. “Especially when Harvey’s working the spatula.” I put on an old sweater and chased him out the bedroom door.

He detoured toward the bathroom while I headed for the kitchen. Cooper was sitting at the table when I stepped into the room. He welcomed me with a scowl.

I stopped short. “Who let you off your leash already?”

His steely eyes narrowed, moving up to my hair. “It’s even worse first thing in the morning.”

“How about some coffee with a splash of hemlock to start your day, Cooper?” I walked over to the fridge to get some creamer, poking Harvey in the ribs on the way.

“Thanks, Parker, but your venom is deadly enough.”

“Jeez.” Natalie stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. “Do you two wake up thinking of ways to insult each other?”

Harvey snickered. “They’re both mean as bulldogs on gunpowder diets this mornin’.”

She joined me at the coffee pot, not noticing that Cooper was checking her out, from her tousled hair to her faded Lead-Deadwood Golddiggers T-shirt and black yoga pants to Aunt Zoe’s smiley sunshine slippers.