*

Taryn is an author of epic YA fantasy, and is also an anthrozoologist. Here’s a little more about her from her Amazon author page: “As a graduate student in anthrozoology with an undergraduate degree in psychology and biology, she is dedicating her life to understanding and protecting animals, both human and nonhuman. This zeal for the outdoors combined with a lifelong love affair with fantasy and horror stories led her to create the YA dark fantasy series, The Fenearen Chronicles. The second installment, Twice Blessed, is due out in 2018.

“Taryn lives in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley with her Prima donna cat, Stella, and personal piano player/boyfriend, Lorenzo.”

You can find more by Taryn at her website and on Amazon, and follow her: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Goodreads.

Taryn was also the winner of the Daphne Contest here at Mythic Beast! You can check out her story, Daphne Rising, here.

*

The Ghost of Rattlesnake Cave

By Taryn Noelle Kloeden

*

“She’s a devil.” Ernie Timber’s whiskey glass trembled as he set it back on the bar. A splash of amber liquid sloshed over the rim. “I’m telling you, Marshal, there ain’t nothing of the Lord about this thing.”

Percy Argent, U.S. Marshal, wiped up the spilled drink with his sleeve. Timber was clearly a delicate man. Whoever had robbed him had left him shaken, but Argent needed information. Timber was Argent’s sixth interview of the day and he had little patience left for yellow-bellies. Still, the moon-faced drunk demanded a gentle touch. Argent motioned for the girl behind the bar to refill their glasses.

“This was two nights ago, correct?” Argent prompted as Timber watched the redheaded bartender pour.

Timber took a hearty swig. He cleared his throat. “That’s right.” He turned to Argent, watery gray eyes suddenly bright. “You a godly man, Marshal?”

Argent sipped his drink. “I reckon I do my best.”

Timber laughed—a wet, rheumy guffaw. “Don’t we all? ‘Cept for some of us, our best ain’t very good, is it?”

The interview was getting off track. Argent had only been in Hester, Arizona for the last day and a half, but he was already aching to show the dusty mining town his back. The other men he had spoken to that day—the local sheriff, his deputy, and the other three robbery victims—had already painted quite the picture. Argent was fairly certain he had the shape of things all right, but he needed Timber to corroborate his theory before he could make his move.

“Mr. Timber, just to confirm. It was a woman what robbed you?”

“Not a woman, no.” Timber crossed himself. “It looked like a woman, I grant ya, Marshal, but it weren’t one.” He shook his head. “Ain’t nothing been right for months. Sometimes I envy ol’ Don Waters. It was right after that rattler got him that all this bad luck started.” Timber swirled the whiskey in front of him, staring into as is if scrying for answers. “Course he was a mean old coot. Maybe he sent the spook after us.”

Argent frowned. What was it about going west that made men so superstitious? “All right. Back to the robber. If it looked like a woman, and talked like a woman?”

Timber nodded.

“Then, for the purposes of my report, you understand, why don’t I just write down that’s what it was?”

“For the report, sure. Don’t want no one thinking old Ernie Timber lost his marbles.” He drained his glass. “But between you and me, Marshal—”

“It was a devil?” Argent did not totally stifle his smile.

“You laugh, lawman. But if you go wandering around near Rattlesnake Cave, you’ll see.” He caught the bartender’s attention and pointed to his empty tumbler.

The redhead sauntered over. “You paying, Marshal?”

When Argent did not immediately respond, Timber bunched his shoulders, bristling like a tom cat. “You know I’m good for it, Maura.”

“Ernie, we both know your tab’s up higher than you’re like to make in a month.”

Argent tossed a crumpled bill on the counter. That exchange told him everything he needed to know. “Leave my friend here the bottle.”

Timber poured himself another without a thank you. “You leaving, Marshal?”

“Not quite yet. There’s one more person I’d like to speak with. Darling,” he tipped his hat to the barmaid, Maura. “Would you mind introducing me to the owner of this fine establishment?”

“Sure, Marshal.” She blushed redder than her hair. “Mama’s in her office. I’ll just go get her.”

“You’re the owner’s daughter?”

She gave a girlish giggle. “Mama Ath, I mean. She’s the madame here, Ms. Minnie Atheridge. Back in two shakes, suge.” She let herself out from behind the bar and sidled across the crowded saloon.

Argent followed her. “If it’s all the same, I’d rather speak to her privately.”

Maura pouted. “You sure you wouldn’t rather talk to me, Marshal?”

“Not that kind of talk, darling. Her office right through here?” He pointed to a purple door just past the stairs.

“Mmhm.” Maura led the way and gave the door a quick rap before turning to go. She trailed her gloved hand across Argent’s shoulder. “If you change your mind, you know where I’ll be.”

“Thank you, Miss.”

“It’s open.” An older woman’s voice drifted from beneath the purple door.

Argent let himself in and closed the door. “Ms. Atheridge?” He removed his wide-brimmed hat and held it to his heart.

“Well aren’t you sweeter than a dewdrop.” The madame surveyed him behind round spectacles. She was younger than he would’ve suspected given her husky voice, perhaps thirty-five. “Marshal Argent, I presume?” She motioned for him to sit in the leather wing-back chair in front of her overburdened desk.

“Indeed, ma’am. Marshal Percy Argent.” He flashed the star badge affixed to his gun belt and took the offered seat. “I suppose word travels fast in such a small town as this.”

“Ma’am, Miss Atheridge…” She shrugged her shoulders. “Call me Mama, Marshal. All my friends do.” She removed the spectacles and tucked a stray auburn lock behind her ear. “I wondered when you’d come and see me.”

“Oh? Why’s that?” Of all the folk he had interviewed, Argent could already tell this woman was the smartest among them. It was something about her eyes. Not the color; they were some anonymous, muddy brown. No, it was something beneath that, something darker that reminded him of staring down a deep canyon. He would need to tread lightly and choose each word with care if he hoped to solve this case.

She chuckled. “Marshal, we’re both aware a madame knows everything worth knowing about her town and the people in it. So go ahead, suge, ask your questions.”

“You’re aware of the case I’m investigating?”

“Mm.” She steepled her long fingers. “If you can call it that.”

Argent bunched his eyebrows. Just a few words in and she had already caught him off guard by questioning the very validity of his investigation. “Well, Ms. Atheridge,” he paused, searching her impassive face, “what would you call a series of robberies?”

“I’d call it business as usual in these parts.”

“Perhaps.” He leaned forward, staring into those canyon-deep eyes. “But all the men report seeing the same thief. Your sheriff has no leads. Whether that’s because of incompetence or collusion, I couldn’t say.”

“Knowing Sheriff Cisneros, I’d suggest the former.” Her painted lips quirked at the corners.

“Be that as it may, over the last few interviews I’ve conducted, I noticed something. A connection between the victims.” There. The bait was on the hook. But he couldn’t reel her in too quickly lest she wriggle free.

“I suppose that penetrating mind is why you’re a Marshal.” She reached into the folds of her tight blue dress.

Argent stiffened as his hand flew to his colt.

“Relax, suge.” She revealed a cigarette in a long ivory holder. She placed it between her lips and leaned forward. “Would you mind?”

Argent kept his eyes on her face and off what he was certain to be an ample and purposefully distracting bosom as he pulled a box of matches from his pocket. He struck one and lit the cigarette.

Mama Atheridge took a long drag. “Now, it isn’t nice to leave a lady hanging. What did you notice?”

He paused. Their little dance had disrupted his flow of thoughts.

“About the men who were robbed?” She prompted. Silvery wisps of smoke curled around her widening grin.

“They were all in debt.”

Atheridge laughed in a thoroughly un-ladylike manner. “Marshal, if you want to impress me, show me three men who aren’t!”

“They were all in debt,” Argent repeated, “to you, Ms. Atheridge.”

“Is that right?” She tapped ash into a crystal tray. “Forgive me, we can’t all have your sharp intellect. But what’s the significance of that?”

“In my line of work, we call that motive.”

“Well dear me.” She set down her cigarette. “I suppose the foreplay’s over? I admit, you lasted longer than most men. But very well. What is it you’re accusing me of, Marshal Argent?”

“I don’t think you did anything, Ms. Atheridge. A respectable woman such as yourself would never dirty her own hands. But I think you know who did.”

“Well, you’re right about that.”

Argent failed to quiet a small start of surprise. Had she really confessed so easily?

“Do I astonish you, Marshall?” She raised one thin brow. “I know what those men described seeing and it wasn’t me or anyone else human.”

“The only thing I find astonishing,” Argent lied, “is that you’re as superstitious as your patrons.”

“Oh, I’m not.” She stroked her chin. “Normally I’d discount such nonsense, but in this case, I’m open to the possibility.”

Argent would not let this smokescreen throw him off the scent. “All three men described the same woman. Tall, dressed in men’s clothes, with a bandana covering all but her eyes.”

“Curious eyes too, one might even say monstrous.”

Argent exhaled his irritation through his teeth.

Atheridge didn’t pause. “One green as a gin bottle, the other milky white, like a corpse dragged from the river.”

“I believe you may have missed your calling as a novelist, Ms. Atheridge. You do have a way with words.”

She leaned back in her chair. “I thank you, Marshal.”

“But what you and those men described sounds to me like a woman with a cataract—hardly evidence that ghouls walk among us.”

“True enough.” Atheridge lifted a crystal perfume atomizer from her desk. She sprayed each side of her neck. The scent was sweet, but with an edge he could not place.

“Oh, do you like it?” She lifted the tiny bottle for his inspection. “I make it myself. It’s my grandmother’s recipe. See, she was part Apache and knew all types of interesting things. It’s cactus flowers mostly, the kind that bloom at night. But the secret ingredient? Rattlesnake venom.”

Argent stood, pulling his bandana over his nose and mouth.

“Relax!” She put a hand to her chest to calm her laughter. “It’s harmless when mixed correctly. Although, Grandma always said it was the thing to wear to attract a man. It’s something about the danger, I think. Men get a whiff of that death smell and can’t help but want a closer look.”

Argent stayed standing. “I’ve had about enough of your deflections, Ms. Atheridge. Tell me what I want to know or I will be forced to place you under arrest.”

“On what charge?” If he had rattled her, she did not show it.

“Obstruction of justice, to start with.”

“Oh believe me, I have no intention of standing in the way of justice.”

“Then talk.”

Atheridge’s smile thinned. Something sparked in those canyon eyes. “You can’t understand why those men were so frightened of the woman that robbed them? How they could be so sure she wasn’t human? Isn’t it obvious?”

Argent lit his own cigarette from his pocket. “What did I just say about deflections?”

“They recognized her, Marshal. They saw a woman they know to be dead.”

Argent’s laughter filled the office. “You’re reaching now. I asked them if they recognized their assailant. None admitted to that.” Despite his words, something rang true in Atheridge’s statement. When he had asked the men if they had recognized the robber, there had always been a pause and a look in their frantic eyes. They were scared—that was clear, but there was something else, too.

“Of course they didn’t admit to it.” Atheridge had taken on the tone of an irritated school marm. “What man would cotton to something so impossible? Besides, admitting they saw her, looking like that?” She shook her head. “That’d mean facing what men like them did to that poor girl.”

Argent snuffed out his cigarette in the ash tray. “You know who they saw?”

“I told you—”

“A madame knows everything?”

She nodded. “Everything worth knowing. Though, in this case, I’d rather I knew less than I did.”

“Why’s that?”

Atheridge leaned back in her chair. “I’ll you, Marshal. I’ll tell you the whole sad tale. And do you want to know why?”

Argent crossed his arms. “Because I’ll arrest you if you don’t?”

“Because I believe you might be something rare. Something far more precious than gold or silver.” She winked with the last word, evidently aware of the wordplay with the french meaning of his surname.

“What’s that?”

“An honorable man.”

He could not help but snort.

“You see, I believe that if an honorable man were to hear the sad tale I’m about to recount, he would agree that it’s nothing more than a ghost story. He would agree, this case wasn’t worth his time, and would move on the next day.”

“Please keep the theatrics to a minimum.” Argent gestured for her to continue.

Atheridge cleared her throat. “Like any good story, ours begins with a beautiful woman. This one’s name was Melody Sweet.”

“She one of yours, I’m guessing?”

“Indeed. Now you’ve seen my flock. A few of them can pass for pretty on a good day. But Melody? She had looks most of my girls would kill for. Long dark hair, silky as a French chemise and eyes green as a cat’s. I don’t mean no alley cat, either. I mean a panther, the kind that spots you long before you see it. As you might imagine, she was popular around here. A night with her would set a fella back. Hell, an hour would.”

“So what happened?” Argent saw Melody in his mind’s eye. She smiled, and gooseflesh crawled along his skin.

Atheridge swallowed hard. “About a year back, we had a real busy night. We had all the regulars, plus folk passing through Hester on their way west, south, you name it. I was entertaining a patron myself when I heard the shot.” The madame’s eyes focused on the desk between them. Though she didn’t continue for some time, Argent did not interrupt her.

“I went running. Most of us did. But by the time anyone got there, it was just Melody on the bed. Window was open. Some of the men jumped out, hoping to run down whoever did it, but…”

“They never did?”

Atheridge shook her head. “I stayed with Mellie. She’d been shot in the face, just here.” She touched her skin between her left temple and jaw. “There was blood everywhere. I ruined my favorite dress holding her.” An incongruous giggle escaped her.

“I am sorry for your loss, ma’am.”

If Atheridge heard him, she made no mention of it. “The worst part was, she was still alive. I called the surgeon and he cleaned her up best he could. She lingered for two weeks, if you can believe it. My girl was strong. She woke up a few times, never all the way, but, still.”

“Was she able to say who shot her?”

“I don’t think she knew she’d been shot. She didn’t remember much, but she knew my face. I’d like to think I brought her comfort until she passed.”

“And this was a year ago, you said?”

“Round about. We buried her in the little cemetery behind the church. The sheriff pretended to care for a time, but the truth was, she was another dead working girl. No leads, no arrests, no fancy marshals riding down to solve the case. That was that, until the trouble started.”

“Trouble meaning robberies?”

“At first it was just a string of bad luck. Donald Waters, local drunk, got himself bit by a rattlesnake in his bed. But then things started going up missing—clothes, a horse, a dozen other random bits. Then people started whispering about seeing something—someone—out there in the desert. She’d appear and disappear just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “People talked about hearing laughter and singing on the wind when storms came. Then your robberies started. The victims, always men of somewhat ill repute.”

“And this ghost, you’re telling me it’s Melody Sweet?”

She shrugged. “I’m just relating what I’ve been told. I’m not superstitious, Marshal. I believe dead is dead, but I will say this: if anyone could claw her way back onto the mortal plane to take revenge on the town where she was killed and never brought any justice, it would be my Mellie.”

“So that’s your supposed ghost story, Ms. Atheridge?” Argent wasn’t made of stone. The sad tale had affected him, but it had also given him the information he needed to fill in his theory’s gaps.

“What would you call it, Marshal Argent?”

“I’d call it a conspiracy.”

“That’s a mighty big word. I wonder if you know what it means.” Her response was cool, but Argent knew he had surprised her just the same.

“Let me explain. I think the story you told was the Lord’s truth, right up until the ending.”

“Oh?”

“You said Melody Sweet was a survivor, and I think that’s just what she did.”

Atheridge clucked her tongue as if he were some misbehaving child. “You think she survived a gunshot to the head?”

“I’ve seen it myself twice. Read about it even more. I think Melody recovered, you buried an empty box, and the two of you came up with this little scheme to take money you feel you were owed.”

“Now that’s quite a story. It would make me what, an accessory to robbery? I don’t see how you could prove it, though.” She stood. “I suppose I was wrong about you, Argent. You aren’t an honorable man.”

“Oh, I am. It’s just that I’m a lawman first, and any other kind second.”

“Unless you plan on arresting me, you can see yourself out.” She pointed to the door.

He replaced his hat. “I’ll find your ghost, Ms. Atheridge. Good day, ma’am.”

“Good luck, suge. You’ll need it.” She slammed the door behind him.

*

“But if you go wandering around near Rattlesnake Cave, you’ll see.”

Ernie Timber’s slurred threat led Argent miles out of town into the desert. He rode Peg, his Appaloosa mare, at an unhurried pace. He told himself this was due to the uneven terrain, but something else weighed on his mind and slowed his journey. It wasn’t guilt, exactly. But maybe guilt’s cousin—a nameless, sinking sensation he could not shake. Maybe a truly honorable man would have agreed with Atheridge and left this case for campfire tales.

When the sun set and the desert cooled, Argent tied Peg to a scrubby hackberry tree. In the dark, it would be best to continue on his own. If the map he had seen in town was right, Rattlesnake Cave would be just over the next ridge anyway. Argent checked his colt was fully loaded and that each of his hidden knives were in place. He felt a fool; he was on his way to arrest a half-blind woman after all. Yet, his ears hummed with Atheridge’s words: “Good luck, suge. You’ll need it.”

Argent stole over the ridge, staying low to the ground. In the scant dusk light, a wide, dark mouth in the mountain ahead appeared. Rattlesnake Cave. He had neglected to ask why the cavern had earned that particular moniker. He half-hoped it had been bequeathed ironically, though his instincts told him that was wishful thinking. Again he touched his gun, rubbing it like a rabbit’s foot.

Suddenly, in the near-darkness, movement. Argent flattened himself in a saguaro’s shadow as a figure appeared from the mountain’s other side.

She was quick, her footfalls silent. She paused in front of the cavern entrance and glanced around. If it had been day, she surely would have spotted him. Argent squinted as she held something to her face—was it a gun? A glint of rising moonlight reflected off a crystal bottle. Melody Sweet spritzed herself with perfume as if she were entering her boudoir and not a snake-infested cave. With that, she melted into the black opening.

Argent cursed. Why hadn’t he revealed himself when she was still out in the open? It made far more tactical sense. Instead, he had been transfixed by her sudden appearance and strange behavior. He could wait until she left again, but he had no way of knowing if the cave had other exits. He had to end this now. Argent stood, raised his gun, and followed the ghost into her lair.

He blinked. His eyes struggled to adjust in the swallowing darkness. A strange rasping echoed around him. The rasp dissolved into a chittering buzz. Something clicked by his right ear. Argent froze.

“Don’t move, Marshal Argent.” A match struck against his stubble, illuminating the woman holding a pistol to his head. Melody Sweet covered her face with a black bandana. Only her eyes were visible beneath her wide-brimmed hat.

Argent had pictured those eyes, but nothing compared to the real thing. Her green eye stared him down, unblinking. The other wasn’t white, exactly. In the close firelight, scar tissue facets shone like an opal.

Without turning away, Melody lit a torch along the cave wall, throwing the rocky entrance into orange, flickering relief.

Argent gasped. Only the gun against his head kept him from fleeing. Snakes, at least two score, filled the cavern. They slid along the stones, slithered around stalagmites, hissing and rattling in a squirming, knotted horde. Just one more step and he surely would have stepped on one.

“How can you survive in here?” Argent kept his voice steady.

“A ghost can’t be killed.”

“You’re no ghost, Melody.” Argent dared move enough to face her directly. He swallowed the bile in his throat at the sight of the massive rattlesnake draped around her shoulders.

“No?” She shrugged, rearranging the serpent like a living feather boa. It turned its arrow-shaped head toward her neck, flicking her with its forked tongue.

“You’re a woman who was wronged, but you got your revenge didn’t you?” Argent had to keep her talking long enough to find a way out of this death trap. “You aren’t just a thief, you’re a killer. Though given what Don Waters did to you, I’d say he got what was coming.”

Melody laughed. “Solved that case too did you, Marshal?” She lowered the bandana, revealing what remained of her face. Her jaw was twisted and gnarled as a bristlecone pine. Her nose was gone, the skin beneath her pale eye cracked. A livid, purple scar curled around her temple, forking at her scalp like a tattoo of her snake’s tongue.

“Of course,” she continued. “it’s too late. Don already met his judge, jury, and executioner.”

“You think it’s right that you played all three?”

“Not me.” She stroked the snake. “He was judged by a higher power.”

“God?” Argent scoffed.

“God,” Melody agreed, “and older things.”

“You’re mad.” Argent stiffened. The snake had begun to slither down Melody’s arm toward him.

“Perhaps, but you’re the one that followed me here. You will be judged Marshal Argent, but not by me.”

“You want me to believe these animals can weigh a man’s soul?”

“It’s not about what you believe. It’s about what they see.”

“You want to know what I think? I think Mama Ath’s special perfume has more than one use. It protects you somehow.”

Melody smiled—at least what remained of her lip-less mouth twisted. “Could be. I guess we’ll find out. Don’t worry. My work here is done. It’s time I be moving on. Goodbye, Marshal Argent.”

Stamping down his natural panic, Argent pushed his head harder against Melody’s gun barrel. “Then do it. Just get it over with and shoot me.”

“You so eager to die?” Despite her quick response, Argent registered surprise in her one good eye.

“No, I wanna live, but this isn’t about me, Ms. Sweet. It’s about you, who you really are.”

“And who’s that?”

He shrugged. “You killed Waters because he all but killed you. I understand that. But look at yourself now. I never hurt you. I’m just a man doing a job.”

“And I was just a girl doing mine,” she bit back.

“I know, and I’m sorry for what happened to you. I truly am. If this is who you want to be, a ghost, a killer, a monster, then pull this trigger or let that beast bite me. I just hope you can stand to look at your reflection after you do.”

The gun quaked in her hands. Her finger hovered just over the trigger. “I know what I am,” she whispered.

A flash of movement and pain burst in Argent’s skull. Stars exploded in the dark and he knew no more.

*

Heat and light seared Argent’s eyelids, forcing them open. A bright blue sky greeted him. He grasped his aching head and rolled halfway up. A rattlesnake sunned itself by his boots. Argent scrambled away, but it did not move. As he rose, still eyeing the serpent, he saw the long tracks in the sand surrounding and crossing over where he had lain. He was just outside the cave. While he had slept, a dozen deadly snakes or more had slithered over him. None had bitten him.

Beneath the stink of sweat, Argent caught a whiff of something sweet.

“Cactus flowers,” he said to the basking viper, “the kind that bloom at night.”

*

© 2019 Taryn Noelle Kloeden. The content of this article, except for quoted or linked source materials, is protected by copyright. Please contact the author for usage.

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