The Juliet (2 page)

Rhys asked, “What, like in the song?”

“You think it’s a joke, but it isn’t. Mystery House is real.”

One of the drunk girls started to sing: “Ride your mystery horse to The Mystery House, and…
something, something.” It was a sugar
-sweet song with a dark history relating to the singer’s connections to Satanism, so it appealed to almost everyone.

Rhys flashed a grin at her. “Your hippie mum sing you that one in the cradle?” She laughed, and he knew he needed to get over there. She was a redhead, plenty of those back home, but he couldn’t be picky.

Rhys handed the whiskey to Tony who took the offering as an invitation to lecture. “The Mystery House was built the same time as all this other shit, but it’s literally on the outskirts. Like, almost a quarter mile around this rock, tucked up a canyon road that goes nowhere. Not anymore.”

Larissa was annoyed. “You’re ruining it. You’re spoiling the magic.”

“I’m tired of magic. I grew up with it.” He gestured with the bottle. “What about you, Welshman? You grew up with magic too, right? Spooks and goblins in the bog and all that.”

“A fair amount, yes.”

“You religious now?”

“Not at all.”

“See?” Tony was speaking to Larissa. “Your folks screwed you over, raising you atheist. Now you’re always looking for stuff that isn’t there.”

Larissa rolled her eyes. “Installment number 97 of the Never-Ending Argument.”

“Not this shit again.” One Gel Boy nudged the other, who seemed to agree that they could find something more interesting to do than listen to their friends bicker. They rose together and wandered away from the party, disappearing in the starlit ruins.

Rhys took the opportunity of their departure to slide closer to the redhead and her dark-haired friend. He retrieved the whiskey and made sure the redhead got another taste while Tony and Larissa distracted each other. He guessed they were married or something, and not for long, either in the past or the future.

Rhys asked, “And it’s called The Mystery House because of its location?”

Larissa had given in by now. She was no longer having fun with her mystic dream. She took the bottle back and raised it in a sarcastic toast. “To Centenary. Civilization at its swiftest and aspirational best.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Rhys said.

“Look,” said Larissa. “Top to bottom, highest to lowest. It’s not even symbolic or ironic. It’s just raw.”

Tony concentrated on rolling another joint, but he couldn’t resist shooting a professorial look at Rhys. “She means the layout of Centenary. The banks and the opera house up on the edge of the basin, and everything getting shittier and shittier till you get down here behind the jailhouse and the red-light district.”

“With Lily Joy behind the garbage,” Larissa said. “And that only looks like the bitter end.”

Rhys said, “Until you find The Mystery House.”

“Right,” Tony said. “So who would be more of an outcast than The Whore of Centenary? The place is well built, dug in if you will. Like it was a choice but not a choice, you know?”

“Not even a century ago,” Larissa said. Her speech was slurring a little, but she was focused on an ancient and persistent wrong. “There are deeds and records for every stick, brick, and pit in Centenary,
except
that house. It’s on the maps but never identified.”

Rhys giggled. Larissa glared at him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Back home that’s where the witch lives.”

Tony liked that. Larissa thought Rhys was poking fun at her.

Tony said, “Could be the case here as well, except we have more diversity to consider. I’m thinking it was where Timbisha Shoshone workers, my people, might have been quartered. Or maybe Blacks. For cheap labor. But Witches, Indians, Niggers, it’s all the same, right?”

“And you went back there tonight?”

“There’s an old dude living in the house now. I saw him standing at the window.”

“Who would live out here?”

“I would,” said the redhead’s girlfriend. She was young, maybe young-young, and she hadn’t spoken a word all night. Black hair and a blue skirt with a loose, white blouse showing off country girl flesh. The redhead giggled, told her to shut up. Maybe a little sis, but not so little. Tony and Larissa seemed to make a point of ignoring her.

Tony said, “Might be a squatter. You get a lot of ‘em in these ghost towns. The house is actually on private land. The real owner is some environmental activist who lost his steam or got bored. He abandoned the house after a rockfall closed the canyon road on the park side. Used to be a lot more accessible.”

The girl in the blue skirt sort of faded away. Rhys had been marginally aware of her, and then he noticed she was gone. Wandered after the Gel Boys, perhaps. He hoped she wasn’t upset at how she’d been shot down, but he wasn’t going to let her distract him from the more pressing goal of getting somewhere with her redheaded companion. Rhys learned that the redhead’s name was Ginger, after all. The night had started with great promise, but now it seemed so unimaginative. Still, Ginger was from Louisiana, and that was pretty exotic.

“You eat alligators?” he asked.

She winked at him. Rhys didn’t think he’d ever been winked at by a woman before. He had an old uncle in Swansea with alarming eyebrows who winked all the time, but the poor fellow couldn’t help it.

Rhys winked back, and Ginger laughed so hard she almost stumbled, giving Rhys an excuse to snake his arm around her back.

Larissa said she wished they had her Ouija board.

“My granny called it a
planchette
,” Rhys said.

“Your grandmother spoke to spirits?”

“So she said. I’d never go against her.”

The girl in the blue skirt had returned. She brushed Rhys’ arm.

He said, “Oi, where’d you come from!” And everyone laughed. He’d finally said something properly British-
ish
, which was what they’d all been waiting for, apparently.

The other girl’s name was Miranda, of all things. She definitely gave off a wildcard vibe. “I just wanted to see if there was anything in the cells,” she said. Most of the buildings of Centenary had been reduced to piles of rubble, but the jail cells and the bank vault were intact and standing, sturdy as ever.

“Don’t go wandering off like that, Mandy,” Tony said. “You could fall into a hole. No kidding, this place is rough.”

In a half-protective, half-predatory gesture, Rhys looped his free arm around Miranda’s, taking a quick peek at Ginger. She didn’t seem to mind.
“Aye, stick close, love.”

Tony laughed out loud and called him a pirate, but all the women shivered. Rhys gave Tony a look that said,
Watch out, I might go for yours after all.

There was another shout in the night, one that jogged Miranda’s memory. “Oh yeah, there’s kids doing it in the school.”

“Not in the jail cells?”

Miranda shook her head. “You can’t get in there. Sealed up tight.”

The joint was passed around, and the mood turned cozy. Rhys pulled a sweater out of his backpack and urged Ginger and Miranda to sit on it with him. It was impossible, but once they had arranged themselves on the ground to stare at the gravesite trinkets and candlelight, it seemed like the most comfortable seat in the world. Miranda even stretched out with her head on Rhys’s crossed legs while he and Ginger kissed.

Eventually Tony and Larissa began to make out, too. There was another short scream. Tony said it was an owl.

“You know that.” Rhys’s comment was almost involuntary.

“Yes, White Man. I do.”

Rhys loved that, but he knew better than to show it. “You and I are a lot alike.”

“How so?”

“We’re both full of shit.”

“No male bonding, please,” said Larissa. “We’re here for Lily.”

That was enough for Tony. “You ever come back to the states, dude. You and me. Friends for life.”

“Oh my god,” Larissa said.

There were two lengths of chicken wire that separated Miranda, Ginger, and Rhys from Tony and Larissa on the other side of Lily’s grave. The links flickered in and out with the candlelight, making it look like Tony and Larissa were in a movie.

“So there has to be more to the story,” Rhys said. He meant Lily Joy. “Where I come from, a legend’s not a legend ‘til there’s revenge from the grave.”

“Sure, sure. We got that, too.” Tony nodded. “There are always sightings.”

“And Lily’s moans,” said Larissa. “Her cries in the night, etcetera. You can’t tell if she’s miserable or in ecstasy, because, of course,
she’s still out there doing business somehow with her ghost clientele.”

* * *

Ginger took Rhys to the jail cells. They carried candles to light the way. The facade and roof of the sheriff’s office were completely gone as if blown away from the inside out, but the back wall of brick cells and two crumbling side walls remained. Rhys and Ginger found a good corner inside, kicked away the debris, and made a pallet out of the clothes Rhys pulled from his jammed backpack.

Ginger turned out to be everything he had been hoping for that night: enthusiastic, brave, and American as hell. He put his back into it, and she did the same. They heard the owl again, but Ginger said it was Larissa. That meant every living person in the ghost town of Centenary was having sex, except maybe Miranda and the boys. “It’s like we’re possessed,” Rhys laughed.

“Don’t say that, baby. Be careful.”

“Oh right. You’re from Louisiana.”

She told him she’d also done the dirty at the tomb of Marie Laveau. He’d been there too, at St.
Louis Cemetery #1 in New Orleans to drink a toast on his American tour. “Missed you and I didn’t even know.”

Afterward they lay exposed to a black, sparkling sky. Night in the desert sounded like an old record when the song was over, a rhythm of scratches in a silence that was otherwise deep as drowning. In fewer than eight hours Rhys would be back in the tin jangle of Vegas, boarding a flight for home.

Ginger asked Rhys what he liked best about America.

“I like the desert,” he said. “I like how you can see everything. Do you know what I mean?”

“You only think you can.”

“No, really. You can find any place to stand in front of Beatty or Ridgecrest and see the whole town grid, all the way to the back street where there might be a cat or a tricycle just as clear as anything.”

Ginger laughed. “Like a toy train set up.”

Rhys smiled at the night sky. That was it exactly.

* * *

Rhys woke to Miranda’s form standing over him, blotting out the stars. The hem of her skirt tickled his chest and shoulder as she tiptoed around him.

Ginger was gone.

Miranda whispered, “The candles are out. Everywhere.”

Rhys rose up on his elbows and made no effort to cover himself. “What do you mean?”

“Sshh. They just went out. All at once. I saw it happen.” Miranda lowered herself to sit next to Rhys on the pallet. She pulled her knees up and hugged them.

“Where is everyone?”

“Gone.”

“Oh, fuck no. How are we supposed to get out of here?” Rhys had hitchhiked to Centenary, and he was counting on charming a ride back to Beatty where he’d probably bum a ride from a Vegas-bound trucker.

“We’ll have to wait,” Miranda said. She seemed insufficiently worried that they were stranded.

“They just left us here? They left
you
here?”

“Keep your voice down. They’re gone is all I know.”

Rhys became aware of all the sharp bits pressed into his skin. “Aren’t they your friends?”

“Not really.”

“I thought you came here with them. I thought Ginger was your sister.”

Miranda shook her head. “Listen, hear that?” There was a rustle and a creak. “All that noise from a teeny-tiny lizard.” She crooked her thumb and index finger into a c-shape. “There’s mice and coyotes and rattlers all over this place, but side-blotched lizards are the only ones that make a racket.”

Rhys wasn’t impressed. He pulled on a t-shirt and rummaged around for his pants. He got to his feet and stepped carefully around the site; with the candles out, starlight revealed broken glass shards everywhere, mixed in with the bits of masonry and other debris. He picked his way to the back wall and found his jeans wadded under a barred window. With his privates protected, he felt better able to take matters in hand.

“Miranda, how did you get out here?”

“Lily blew the candles out.”

Perfect.
They left him alone, naked, in a ghost town with a new age nutter. “Miranda.”

Her head tilted up at him, but he couldn’t quite see her face. She reminded him of a cat. “I live here,” she said.

He tried to kid her out of her transcendental mood. “You don’t smell like you live here.” According to Tony, only wizened hermits, like the guy in The Mystery House, still lived in ghost towns. Miranda might be crazy, but not that kind of crazy.