Wild West Hauntings, page 3
“Dream telepathy? Is that possible?” Marianne hugged a pillow to her stomach, raised a brow, and pursed her lips.
“It’s supposed to be. And I get your skepticism. Even though I’m in the midst of the phenomenon first hand, I’m still not sure myself.” She shrugged her shoulder, acting like it wasn’t a big deal when it was. She was totally sure DT was possible, but realized Marianne would think her nuts if she knew how much research she’d done on the subject. “I have a hard time accepting I’m a part of anything of a supernatural nature. That I can communicate with a person on such a level, even though I don’t know him.” Rachel picked at a loose thread in the comforter. “According to the mainstream resources I’ve read—for research for some of my papers—interaction in dreams occurs mainly on a symbolic level. It’s the subconscious working out ways on how to deal with people or situations, dry rehearsals of exchanges if you will. But, there’s alternate research going on regarding the theory of dream telepathy, or rather, paranormal dreams.”
“Paranormal dreams? Like psychic stuff?” Marianne’s brown eyes widened in interest.
“As far as I know, yeah.” Rachel ran her fingers through her hair, continuing to drum up the information she’d learned during some of her graduate courses. If she continued to talk about what she’d been going through and what she’d learned, she could resolve her issues and feel better about herself and life. Hopefully Marianne wouldn’t think she’d lost a screw or two. “People have dreamt of loved ones coming to visit them to say goodbye when they’re dying. Twins have been known to dream the same exact thing. Pregnant women communicate with the children in their wombs. Couples who’re really close share dream experiences. Stuff like that.”
“Huh.” Marianne tossed the pillow to the side. “So you think that’s what you’re dealing with? Some kind of psychic thing with a guy?” She paused, tapped her fingers on her thigh. “Wait. You never told me you were involved with someone.”
“I’m not,” she replied with a sigh.
“Huh? You just said that couples who are close can do that hocus pocus stuff, but yet you’re not dating anyone? I could have sworn you were.”
Rachel shook her head. How could she explain the DT with a man she’d never met when she barely had a handle on the situation herself? “I’ve had dates, but nothing serious. You know I’ve been too involved in school for much of anything. The only ‘relationship’ I’ve had is in my dreams with a man named Dalton. It’s like I knew the guy in a different time, different life. He calls me Rae. He tends to think we’re married.”
“Married? And you didn’t invite me to the wedding?” Marianne winked and playfully swatted her.
“Ha, ha. Very funny.” Rachel returned the lighthearted swipe. “Do you want to know what’s going on or not?”
“Sorry. Please continue.”
Rachel raised a brow. At Marianne’s nod, she spoke again, “The dreams started shortly after a guy I’d been dating for a few months disappeared from my life.”
“Andrew, right? I seem to remember a phone conversation of ours. About two or three years ago, right? Whatever happened to him?”
“He stopped calling. I couldn’t track him down. His friends claimed that he seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth. I really liked him, too. He called me Christmas Star, sometimes just Christmas.”
Snickering, Marianne held up her well-manicured hand. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh, but don’t you just love how we’re still paying for our parents giving us Italian names in relation to when we were born? Miguel loves to call me Morning. But then, he’ll shorten Mattina and call me Matti at times, especially when he says I’m being a brat.”
“Bratty Matti. Fitting.” Rachel smiled to take the sting out of her words.
Marianne lightly slapped her again. “So you and Andrew must’ve been close. I mean we both use our middle names for our first names, Star for a last name, and you shared your birth name with him.”
“Not really. I only told him about my full name after he caught sight of it on my driver’s license when we got carded at a bar. He wouldn’t even tell me his middle name after I explained how mom and dad named me Natale Rachel Stella since I was born on Christmas day.” She continued to toy with the bed covering, plucking at an unraveling string and finding it interesting how Dalton also used star references in regard to her. “Come to think of it, Andrew didn’t share many details about himself. He told me his mom and dad divorced when he was very young, but not how young. His mom lives in Europe, but he wouldn’t say where. He has no idea where his father is. He never knew his dad, and his mother wouldn’t talk about him. I tried to get him to talk more about himself, but he wanted to take things slow. God, painfully slow. Unfortunately, we never got to the point of being all that serious or close. I think to him we were just in a casual relationship in the last semester of our undergrad studies.”
Marianne stroked her arm, patted her knee. “You sound as if you were really into him, though.”
“Yeah, he was someone I felt comfortable being around. Someone I would have liked to have spent more time with. Developed something deeper with. You would have liked him. But what little relationship we had ended right after graduation.” She paused for a moment, counting back the years. “Ended a few months after you started working here at the ranch.”
“And you haven’t hooked up with anyone since he left? That’s a shame, Rachel. You’d make someone a good catch.”
She lifted a shoulder again. “Not having a love life was for the best. The reprieve from relationships gave me the chance to throw myself into my studies so I could finish out my Masters degree. Plus, Mr. Dreamy started visiting me after Andrew took off and has been coming around on almost a nightly basis. Well, at least he filled my dreams until I got stressed the last couple of months, and then he disappeared, too.”
“Now he’s returned?” Marianne drawled with a knowing smile.
“That he has.” Heat flooded her cheeks as images of her dream lover’s naked body filled her mind. “I’ve had some intense, sexual dreams where he’s concerned, which, in a way, were a blessing over the past few years. I didn’t feel I needed a man with Mr. Dreamy around.”
Marianne cocked an eyebrow. “But what about physical gratification. Wet dreams are good and all, but nothing beats the real thing.”
“Well, yeah, you’re right.” Rachel chuckled. “I … um … supplement the dreams with toys.”
“That’s my girl.” Marianne patted her sister’s leg again. “Maybe if you’re lucky while you’re here, Miguel will have a friend to set you up with, and you can give your buddy Bob a rest.”
“Bob?”
“Yeah.” Marianne grinned with a devilish glint in her eyes. “B for battery, O for operated, B for boyfriend. Bob.” She winked.
Rachel shook her head. “What am I going to do with you? As for men, I don’t know about being with someone while I’m here, Marianne. I’d rather just go stag my whole trip and not have to worry about pleasing some man.”
“Suit yourself.” Marianne jumped off the bed and strolled to the door. “We should get to the bonfire. We’ve already missed the carriage ride and open fire dinner. Now, there’s a chance we might have missed the hot chocolate and marshmallows, too.”
Giggling, Rachel clasped a hand over her heart and fell back onto the bed. “Oh, the horror.”
“Laugh all you want. Just you wait until you taste Kent’s famous hot chocolate.” Marianne wagged a finger at her. “Then you’ll realize how it should be a crime if it’s missed. It’s that good.”
“Fine. Let’s go have some of this treat you think so highly of.”
Minutes later, Rachel, dressed in jeans and sweatshirt, squeezed into the cab of the truck with her sister and Miguel, their winter jackets rubbing and rustling against each other. Headlights illuminated the darkened dirt roadway. Marianne explained they were heading down to an area where during nicer weather guests were treated to an open fire cowboys’ breakfast. Roxy, Bristol’s wedding planner and occasionally the ranch’s event planner, thought it’d be a good mid-point stopping place for the winter events like the carriage rides and where the Dougan family and friends could have dinner and dessert around a bonfire.
The truck hit a succession of potholes, bumping Rachel against her sister and the door. Miguel, driving a bit too fast on the dirt road for her taste, reminded her of cab drivers in New York City and Europe. She held fast to the handle above the window, thinking how country driving should have varied from city driving. She squeezed her eyes shut and gulped. What she wouldn’t give for a traffic jam or a ride on slow, smelly bus right about now.
“You okay, Rachel?”
She glanced at her sister. “Yeah, think so. I’m probably just suffering some jet lag or something.”
“Or something,” Marianne offered with a snicker.
Rachel shot her a stern look, silently demanding her sister take her thoughts and comments no further. The last thing she wanted was to be embarrassed in front of Miguel, a man she’d only just met, because she’d shared her dreams and theories with her bigmouthed sister.
Miguel slowed and drove around a curve. The vehicle’s lights flashed on several gravestones on a knoll surrounded by a few tall, bushy trees whose thin trunks and branches rose from the ground like boney arms being held in the air. A whisper of disquiet pricked the base of her spine and cast a passing shadow of foreboding across her mind. “The cemetery?” The question rasped out of her suddenly dry throat. It’s been here since the beginning.
“Yep, that’s the family plot,” Miguel stated, following the bend around the hill. “Been here since the founding of the ranch when Keith and Darlene Dougan first laid stake to the land.”
My instinct was right. Finding herself morbidly drawn to that particular area, Rachel wanted to check it out, look at the markers, learn what her strange attraction to the place was. Keeping her focus on the site, she noticed in the distance the lights shining through the windows of the lodge. The graveyard didn’t seem too far from the main building. She could sneak away and hike down at some point. She had a feeling that after a few minutes alone amongst the stones she’d be able to figure out a few things.
As they traveled by, an odd form glimmered in a thin ray of moonlight. Rachel shifted, glanced over her shoulder and out the cab’s rear window. The shape appeared to be the size of a man with an arm in the air. Waving at us? She gripped and shook her sister’s arm. “Look. Look in the graveyard. Do you see it?”
“See what?” Marianne asked, turning and looking out. “I don’t see anything.”
“You don’t see that greenish-yellow glowing guy waving at us?” She hated the edge of hysteria in her voice, how it seemed the thin threads of her sanity frayed bit by bit with each passing moment she spent on the ranch.
Miguel directed the truck down an incline and around another bend. “That could be Mr. P. Or maybe Mr. C One or Mr. C Two. Like Marianne mentioned earlier, we have ghosts along with guests on this ranch. Most of them are harmless. They just hang out, keep watch over us, show themselves to those more open to paranormal activities. Mr. P, though, he’s a bit of a problem. I believe he’s what people would call a prankster?”
Marianne shivered, closed her eyes for a brief moment and shook her head. “Poltergeist.”
“That’s it. That’s why we call him Mr. P. The others are like that friendly cartoon ghost character. So they got the letter C.” Miguel patted Marianne’s leg. “Mr. P, for a while there, had a habit of messing with Marianne’s things in the office and the guys’ equipment in the stables. When the hot-head started to get a little too personal with the females, we called in help.”
Too personal? Rachel’s mind raced with the implication of those words. “Help?” She leaned forward to gage Miguel’s features and reactions, see if she could obtain a reading on him and figure out if he was lying or not. It was one thing to have some weird dreams, another to start seeing and believing in ghosts. She didn’t want to enable him and thus agitate herself more in the process, too.
He nodded. “Dak’s gal, Cassie, called some people she knew and tracked down a psychic medium. The woman came in, did some hocus pocus stuff with Kane’s assistance, and banished Mr. P to the graveyard. He’s kept in there by a healthy dose of salt surrounding the area. At least once a day one of us is down here making sure the line of protection is secure. Most times it’s Kane doing the work since he’s almost a shaman and has a strong spiritual nature that can fight off the ‘evil’ as he calls it. I’d hate to see what would happen if Mr. P got free now.”
“I’m with you on that.” Marianne leaned against Miguel, rested her head on his shoulder. “It’s only been a few months since we stuck him there. I’m sure he’s sore and all good and riled up that he can’t roam about and cause havoc anymore or try to get in our pants.”
Rachel shivered, not from the cold she realized but from the talk of spirits and such. She focused out the window as Miguel parked the vehicle alongside a few horse-drawn carriages. The lineup reminded her of the tourist ride queues around Central Park. Too bad she’d taken the nap. It would have been nice to see the ranch from a wagon.
Then when I saw the cemetery I could have hopped out and gone to take a look.
Having no idea where the strong draw to go there was coming from, she shook her head to clear it. Rachel followed Miguel and Marianne over to the group sitting around a large, roaring fire. She sat within a clearing of a copse on a wide log lying on the ground. Across from her and behind the rest of the group, a table was set up with finger foods, pastries, and large stainless steel coffee pots for hot beverages. Beyond the table, darkness lay like a thick, black blanket. An image of the glowing form played on her mind’s screen. The thought of ghosts, especially a poltergeist who wanted to be intimate with women, sent shivers careening through her body. A tall form moved into her line of vision. She jerked, but the cute, sandy-haired wrangler didn’t seem to notice her unease.
“You must be Marianne’s sister from the city. I’m Jake.” He handed her a steaming mug. “If you need anything else or have any questions, just give me a holler.” He winked, but didn’t smile.
“Now, now, Jake,” Marianne interjected, wrapping an arm around her sister’s shoulders. “You know Rachel will come to me if she needs anything. Plus, she’s taken.”
Jake tipped his white Stetson, disturbing the long locks that curled around his ears. “My apologies, miss.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Rachel replied with a confused, sidelong glance at her sister.
He gave a nod and headed back to the fire. A frame fit over the pit and from it hung a platform on which a black pot sat. The orange-red flames lapped at the shelf. Brown liquid splattered out of the container. An older wrangler rushed to remove it.
She pulled out of Marianne’s embrace. “Why’d you tell him I was attached?”
Marianne tilted her head. “For one, I didn’t think you’d want to be bothered with getting hit on by all the ranch hands, considering the state of your dreams. You told me you didn’t want to be with anyone while you were here. For another, he’s a bit young, don’t you think?”
She shrugged. Age differences, as long as they weren’t too wide, never were a big deal to her. And she wasn’t like her sister, who tended to go for older men. “Thanks. You’re right. Not that age makes a difference with me or that Jake is that much younger than me. Still, last thing I need is to be hassled and have to worry about a man’s feelings when I’m only here for a short while. I have enough problems as it is.”
Miguel strolled over and handed each of them a gray wool blanket. “Thanks, Miguel.” She placed the mug of hot cocoa next to her on the bench, wrapped the scratchy material around her and then took sip of the dark brown liquid. The rich drink was the perfect combination of creamy and sweet with a very faint hint of mint. “Oh my God, you’re right. This is great.”
“Told you.” Marianne smiled and snuggled against Miguel under the blanket they shared.
Rachel sipped more of the wonderful liquid, peering over the rim and assessing the gathering. Just for a few moments she wanted to try to forget her dreams, the déjà vu … the talk of ghosts.
Surveying the scene, she warmed her hands on the mug. All the couples seemed happy, content, firmly grounded in reality, unlike herself with her crazy dreams, weird visions, acting as if a dream man was actual flesh and blood.
She missed having someone in her life—someone real—to share special moments with, but, for the most part, being alone was her own doing. Like she’d told her sister, school had been her priority. Next would be finding a job if her latest interview back east didn’t pan out. Having a love life would need to wait some more.
A woman, her belly heavy with child, sat beside her. She held out her hand. “You must be Rachel. I’m Bristol, Damon’s fiancée.”
Rachel accepted her handshake. “Nice to meet you. Marianne tells me you’re due in about a month or so?”
“That I am, though the doctor says I could go early. I’m just hoping the little fellow stays put until after the holidays. Once January first comes and goes, then he’s more than welcome to come into the world, but for now I only want to deal with one stress at a time. First my wedding, then Christmas, then New Year’s. Then six weeks after he’s born, we’re hoping to take a trip to Grand Cayman for our honeymoon. Just trying to swing the cost for the flight, along with the wedding and the gear for the little one is tight.” Bristol rubbed her belly. “Speaking of stresses, are you all right? You’re looking on the pale side.”
“I’m okay. It’s just been a long day with the weather back east, the flight…” Rachel stared at Bristol’s rounded abdomen. Did Bristol have dreams of her baby? Conversations with the child that only Bristol could hear?
