Death rides the desert, p.1
Death Rides the Desert, page 1
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 1
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said and slammed my palm against the steering wheel. “Ouch, sorry,” I apologized to the car.
Yes, I’d apologized to the car. But I wasn’t sure why. The car was the one who died at the end of the loooong driveway for Whispering Saguaro Ranch.
What is Whispering Saguaro Ranch? Good question. I either hadn’t known myself or had completely forgotten about it. Right up until my Great-Aunt Esperanza Caldwell’s attorney contacted me to tell me that I had inherited the place from her upon her passing.
“My condolences,” he’d said.
But again, I’d had no idea who she was, or why she’d left her ranch to me. It seemed strange that she had no one closer to her to inherit, but the lawyer had insisted that she’d left it specifically to me.
So, for a while, I’d thought the whole thing was a scam.
I ignored the lawyer’s calls and letters. Right up until I got fired, dumped, and some guy from Perdido Springs, Arizona, called me to tell me he was Esperanza’s ranch hand, and he was quitting if he didn’t get his paycheck… all on the same day.
So, what choice did I have?
My name is Claire Caldwell, and I’m bad at life. Apparently. I was a marketing executive for a huge company, that you have heard of, in Chicago. I guess saying I was fired is imprecise. I was downsized. Let go. Laid off.
Whatever. I didn’t have a job.
The best part? My boss, Kenneth, couldn’t even look me in the eye when he did it. “It’s not personal, Claire,” he’d said to his desk blotter. “The company is restructuring to optimize operational efficiency.”
“So I’m inefficient?” I’d asked.
“No, no. You’re just... redundant.”
Redundant. Like an extra kidney. Except that kidneys are actually useful.
Oh, and my fiancé, Todd, left me for a yoga instructor. His yoga instructor. I should have known when he took up yoga to “get ready for the wedding” instead of doing something like bodybuilding or running. Not that there’s anything wrong with men doing yoga, but Todd was definitely more of a weightlifter or a runner type.
Turns out, he was Harmony Moon Atwood’s type.
Or whatever her name was. It was something like that. You get the point.
The dumping conversation went like this: “Claire, I’ve found my authentic self.”
“Your authentic self is sleeping with your yoga instructor?”
“Harmony says monogamy is a social construct.”
“So is paying for half the wedding deposits, Todd, but here we are.”
So there I was, sitting in a dead rental car in the middle of nowhere, Arizona. The GPS had given up about ten miles back, right after cheerfully announcing, “Continue on unpaved road for eight miles,” and then dying like it had delivered me to my doom on purpose. My phone had no signal. And the ranch house, my ranch house apparently, was shimmering in the heat about two hundred yards away like some kind of desert mirage.
I grabbed my diet Coke from the cupholder and took the last warm slurp. The ice had melted somewhere around Tucson, which was about three hours and one lifetime ago. The Circle K clerk who sold it to me had given me this look when I said I was heading to Perdido Springs. Like I’d told him I was going to Mars.
“That’s way out there,” he’d said.
No kidding, buddy.
The car’s air conditioning gave one last wheeze and died completely. The temperature inside immediately started climbing toward hellish. I could actually feel my makeup melting. My phone showed it was 104 degrees outside. In October. What fresh hell was this?
Speaking of my phone, I should probably call someone. Let them know I wasn’t dead. Yet.
I held it up, searching for bars like I was on a cellular treasure hunt. Nothing. I waved it around. Still nothing. I held it over my head like I was summoning the phone gods. I contemplated climbing on top of the car, but if I fell and broke my leg…
“Come on,” I muttered. “Just one bar. I’ll take half a bar. A quarter of a bar. The suggestion of a bar.”
The phone mocked me with its “No Service” message.
Great. If I died out there, they’d find my skeleton clutching a phone that said “No Service” and it would be a cautionary tale about city people trying to ranch. They’d probably make a podcast about it.
“Okay, Claire,” I told myself. “You can do this. It’s just walking. You walk all the time. You had a Fitbit once.”
I grabbed my purse, the expensive one Todd bought me for our anniversary that I was definitely not returning out of spite, and left my suitcase. I’d deal with that later. Or never. We’d see.
The moment I opened the car door, the heat hit me like someone opened an oven set to broil. It was October. Wasn’t Arizona supposed to be nice in October? That’s what the internet said. The internet lied.
My completely inappropriate city flats, the ones I wore to get fired in, actually, immediately filled with gravel. Great. I started walking, trying to look dignified while basically walking on rocks. The driveway was longer than it looked from the car. Everything was longer in the desert, apparently. Including my list of bad life choices.
I stopped about halfway. This was stupid. This was incredibly stupid. I could just turn around, walk back to the road, and hitchhike to the airport. Fly back to Chicago. Sleep on my friend Sarah’s couch. Beg for my job back. Tell Todd that Harmony was right about monogamy being a social construct and maybe we could all just...
No. Absolutely not. I had some pride left. Somewhere. I thought I packed it with my good underwear.
A lizard darted across the path, and I let out a shriek that probably scared vultures in three counties. The lizard stopped, did some kind of aggressive push-up routine at me, then ran off.
“Even the wildlife is judging me,” I muttered.
That’s when I noticed the silence.
It wasn’t peaceful quiet. It was wrong quiet. Like when a movie goes silent right before the jump scare. No birds. No insects. No wind. Just my shoes crunching on gravel and my own breathing, which was getting embarrassingly heavy for someone who claimed to do Pilates.
Something moved to my left. A jackrabbit. No, wait. That wasn’t a rabbit. Rabbits were cute. This thing looked like someone stretched a regular rabbit on a medieval torture device and gave it ears that could pick up satellite radio. It stared at me with eyes that seemed way too deep, then bounded off in leaps that would make an Olympic athlete jealous.
“What is wrong with this place?” I asked the desert.
The desert didn’t answer, which was probably for the best.
There was a cactus to my right that looked like it was flipping me off. I wasn’t even kidding. It was a saguaro with one arm with a smaller arm pointed up in a very specific gesture. Nature was giving me the finger. That seemed about right for how this year was going.
Something moved in the corner of my eye.
I spun around so fast I almost fell over. There was nothing there. Just a scraggly bush that had probably been dead since the Bush administration. The first one.
But the bush was moving. The branches were still trembling like something had just run through them. Something low to the ground. Something reddish-brown that my brain was trying very hard not to think about.
Because what my brain wanted to think about was this story my grandmother used to tell me. About witches in the desert who turn into animals. We didn’t say their name. They trick travelers, lead them off the path, and then...
“Stop it,” I said out loud. “You’re a grown woman with a master’s degree. You don’t believe in such things.”
The bush rustled again.
I walked faster.
Three vultures were circling overhead now. Actually circling. Like in cartoons.
“I’m not dead yet!” I yelled at them.
They kept circling. Rude.
The ranch house got closer, and it wasn’t what I expected. I guess I pictured something from a Western movie. This was adobe walls and a flat roof, with vigas, those wooden beam things, sticking out. The door was painted turquoise, or it was once. Now it was more like turquoise’s sad, peeling cousin. There was a welcome mat that said “Blessed Be” in fancy script.
Cute. Great-Aunt Esperanza was apparently one of those people.
There was an envelope sticking out from under the mat. Expensive paper, the kind that made you feel poor just touching it. It was addressed to Esperanza Caldwell from Harlan Ashford Properties, LLC. Postmarked two weeks ago. So, either the mailman had a very casual relationship with the concept of mailboxes, or someone shoved this under there intentionally.
I pulled it free and stuffed it in my purse with all the other papers I was ignoring.
The door was unlocked, just like the lawyer said it would be. Because apparently, people didn’t lock doors out here in the middle of nowhere. What’s the worst that could happen? Someone
I pushed the door open, and it swung wide. Too wide. Too easy. Like someone pulled it from the inside.
Cold air rushed out.
Wait. Cold air?
Everything should be off. Who was paying for air conditioning in a dead woman’s house?
I could see inside now. Mexican tile floors, exposed wooden beams, dust motes dancing in a shaft of sunlight like tiny ghosts. And there was a smell. Not bad, just... unexpected. Like dried sage and something else. Something floral.
Roses. I smelled roses.
But I saw the yard. Nothing was growing out there except desolation and spite.
From somewhere deeper in the house came a sound. Humming. A woman’s voice, low and pleasant, humming something I almost recognized.
“Hello?” I called out.
The humming stopped.
The silence rushed back, even more wrong than before.
“Luis?” I tried, remembering the ranch hand’s name from our very brief, very panicked phone call. “Anyone?”
Nothing.
I was standing on the threshold of a dead woman’s house, holding an expensive purse and a bad attitude, wondering what exactly I was doing with my life. Which, to be fair, was pretty much how I’d spent the last month.
I stepped inside.
Behind me, at the end of the driveway where my dead rental car sat like a monument to my sucky life choices, something watched. A fox, maybe. With one white paw that seemed to catch the light. It tilted its head like it was listening to something only it could hear.
When I turned back to close the door, it was already gone.
Or maybe it was never there at all.
Welcome to Arizona, Claire. Welcome to your new life.
God help you.
Chapter 2
I stood in the doorway for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the dim interior and trying to convince myself I hadn’t just heard humming from an empty house. The temperature difference between outside and in had to be at least thirty degrees.
“Hello?” I called out again. “Anyone? I’m not armed! Well, I have pepper spray, but it’s probably expired! Like, really expired. Like, I bought it in 2019 expired.”
Nothing.
Great. I was talking to an empty house about my self-defense inadequacies.
The entryway had one of those tables that existed solely to collect mail and keys and random things you didn’t know what to do with. It was covered in a mountain of correspondence. I dropped Harlan Ashford’s fancy envelope onto the pile where it joined bills from the electric company (past due), the water company (past due), and what looked like about thirty sympathy cards. There was also a grocery store circular from three weeks ago advertising a sale on ground beef.
Even the junk mail outlived Great-Aunt Esperanza.
The living room was... well, it looked like a New Age shop exploded. And then another New Age shop came to the funeral and exploded too.
There were Navajo rugs layered over saltillo tiles, and I could see the traffic patterns worn into them. Someone paced here. A lot. Like, wearing a groove in the floor a lot. There were crystals on every single windowsill, catching the afternoon light and throwing rainbow patterns on the walls. I picked one up. It was purple and heavier than it looked. It was also warm. And I swear to God, it was vibrating.
“Great,” I muttered, putting it down quickly. “Radioactive crystals. That’s all I need. I’ll grow a third arm and become a circus act.”
Books were everywhere. Not just on shelves, but stacked on the coffee table, teetering in corners, making architectural structures that defied gravity. I read the spines of the coffee table stack: “Desert Plants and Their Uses,” “The Veil Between Worlds,” “Water Rights in the American Southwest,” and “Commune with Your Spirit Guides.”
Of course. Of course, she was that aunt.
I knocked one stack with my hip and a book fell out from behind the couch. “How to Know if Your House Is Haunted.”
I left it there. I didn’t want to know.
The mantle above the fireplace (which actually made sense because apparently deserts turned into frozen tundras at night, who knew) was covered in family photos. Most were people I didn’t recognize, all staring at the camera with that peculiar intensity that old photos often have. But there was one of me at seven years old, at some family reunion I barely remembered. I had chocolate ice cream all over my face and was grinning like an idiot.
“God, I was a messy kid,” I told the photo. “Still am, apparently. Just now it’s my life that’s messy instead of my face.”
The air conditioning hummed steadily, which should have been impossible. Who was paying the bills? Dead people didn’t usually keep up with the electric company. Though based on that past due notice, maybe they didn’t.
There was a notepad by the ancient landline phone, yes, an actual landline, with a cord and everything, and written in shaky handwriting was: “URGENT! HARLAN!” followed by a phone number.
Urgent. Right. Well, it wasn’t urgent anymore, Esperanza. You’re dead, and I’m here, and Harlan could urgent himself right off a cliff for all I cared.
The rose smell was more powerful further into the house. I followed it like I was in some weird fairy tale, through a hallway lined with more photos and into the kitchen.
The kitchen was where things got bizarre.
There was a vase of perfect red roses on the table. Not “they’re holding up okay” roses. Not “if you squint they still look nice” roses. Perfect roses. With actual dewdrops on the petals, like they just came from some magical flower shop that didn’t exist in the middle of the desert.
Next to them was a note in flowery cursive: “Para Esperanza, con amor - Rosa.”
I touched one petal. It was real. It was fresh. It was impossible.
“Okay,” I said to the roses. “You’re creepy. You’re very, very creepy.”
The fridge was covered in novelty magnets from every tourist trap in the Southwest. The Thing? Mystery Spot. London Bridge (which was apparently in Arizona now, who knew). Tombstone. The OK Corral. Either Esperanza really liked tourist traps, or she had friends with terrible taste in souvenirs.
I opened the fridge, and that’s when my brain started to short-circuit.
Fresh milk.
Eggs in a ceramic bowl shaped like a chicken, because of course.
Tupperware labeled “Luis - eat this!” containing what looked like lasagna.
A six-pack of Diet Coke. The same brand I drank. With a note on top that said, “for Claire.”
“Okay, that’s creepy,” I announced to the kitchen. “That’s very, very creepy. That’s advanced creepy. That’s creepy with a master’s degree.” Because how did anyone from Perdido Springs, AZ know that I drank Diet Coke? And not casually either, if not for that six pack in the fridge, I would have been kicking myself, and fiending like an addict, in a couple of hours when I had no way to drive into town to buy more.
But the stove was what really got me. There was a pot of pinto beans on the back burner, lid on. I lifted the lid and steam rose up, bringing the smell of perfectly seasoned beans.
The burner was off. The burner was completely cold. But the pot was hot.
My hands started shaking. Someone was here. Someone had to be here.
The back door creaked open.
I grabbed a knife from the block on the counter and ducked behind the kitchen island, which was a terrible hiding spot, but it was all I had.
Someone walked in backwards, singing off-key to whatever was playing through their earbuds. It was a young guy, maybe nineteen, carrying a basket of eggs and utterly oblivious to the fact that he was about to get stabbed by a panicked city girl with a knife that, I was now noticing, was embarrassingly dull.
He turned around and saw me crouched behind the island, wielding the world’s most useless knife.
We both screamed simultaneously.
“Oh my god!”
“¡Ay, Dios mío!”
He dropped the eggs. They exploded everywhere, like tiny breakfast grenades.
“Get out!” I yelled, waving the knife. “I have a knife! And pepper spray! And... and rabies!”
“Rabies?” He looked genuinely confused. “What? Lady, I work here!”
“Nobody works here! The owner is dead!”
“I know she’s dead! I went to her funeral! I was a pallbearer!”
We stared at each other across the egg massacre. He was wearing a Perdido Springs High School Rodeo Team shirt that had been washed so many times the bucking bronco on it looked more like a sleepy pony.
