Atlas Obscura: A New Christmas Ghost Story
Gabriela Wagner’s Tomb
Balmorhea, Texas, United States of America
This seemingly out-of-place Baroque mausoleum sits peacefully in a field in the middle of Cartwright Horse Ranch, near Fort Stockton in West Texas. According to the ranch’s owner, the strange tomb houses Gabriela Wagner, a German-American artist who was once the lady of the house. She moved to West Texas in the 1960s after seeing the classic James Dean movie “Giant,” captivated by the stunning vistas on offer in the desert landscape. The mausoleum is a living example of her work; Gabriela designed the structure herself and sculpted the reliefs by her own hand. Maybe she had a premonition of things to come. On Christmas Day, just one year after finishing the family tomb, she became its first and only occupant.
People out here say the internet has robbed them of their private places. Little unknown pools, expansive viewpoints, and small wooded valleys that used to be treasured local secrets are blasted across the world in minutes on these “Instant Grams” for some housewife in China to consume, and before you know it there are hundreds of people coming out each year to get their own picture to tell the rest of the world they were here. Connie McLaughlin over in Marathon says some of them can even make money from that. I don’t know how that works, but then again it’s never something I’m gonna care about.
For me, though, the internet has been a godsend. Seeing Gabby every Christmas was always a ton of work in the pre-internet days. The supplies for the ritual aren’t exactly the kind that you find on the shelf at Fuentes General Store. You could find chalk, sea salt, and raw cow’s milk easily enough, but goat tallow candles? Sulphur from a mine in another country? Hell, it even took some doing to find olive oil for the Kukri knife that didn’t have a hundred million additives in it. The ritual knows when you’re not using the real stuff. Took me four years of R&D to get the thing right.
I used to stay up at night afraid of what would happen when I finally got too old to find supplies for the ritual. The old injury has made it so I can barely walk anymore. The Doc says I can get a total knee replacement and I’ll feel like I’m 40 again, but I can’t see how that’s true. You see all the time on TV about those knee replacements poisoning the folks who get ‘em. I really wouldn’t be able to get the supplies if they had to take my leg, even with online ordering and internet tourism.
Nowadays it all comes to me. Three clicks of a button and three and a half weeks later, I’ve got huge bricks of goat tallow that I can make the candles from. The sulphur comes from some volcano in Indonesia I read about in National Geographic. As for the tourists, they been coming out here by the droves to visit with Gabby ever since that website got wind of her mausoleum. Some of them are kind and leave her little mementos. I set up one of those love lock things and Maria started selling Master Locks out of the general store. She says it does a respectable bit of business. Who’d’ve thunk it.
“NNff! Grnnnf!! HHNNNN!!!”
I remember how anxious I was in those days before I perfected the ritual. Alone day-in and day-out puttering around the ranch, going through the chores. Somedays I was just numb, like a robot going through pre-programmed motions. Muck the stables, breed the studs, break the colts, saddle-train the fillies, lay out fresh hay, check for signs of colic, put down lame mares. There wasn’t any joy to be had in the work.
Other days I was terrified. Afraid of my own shadow. Afraid that the whole world would swallow me whole and I’d be lying there in a dank pit, dark and lonely with no one and nothing to talk to but the thinning air and the mud rising up to consume my flesh and my body, burying me in the unholy earth beneath centuries of sediment and dinosaur bones. Eventually I’d be liquified into black crude, drilled out of the ground, refined, and turned into fuel for an 18-wheeler to burn off as it carried a load from Odessa to Arkansas.
Gabby loved the ranch. I remember how her eyes lit up the first night I took her out here. I didn’t own the place back then. I was just a seasonal cowboy working for my drinking money. I never minded being a tomcat in those days. Seemed I could always find something fun to fill my time. But that’s how it is when you’re young. Always living in the moment, never making plans ahead of the next honky tonk, or BBQ, or glass of whisky. It was a good life for a 25 year old with Gene Autry looks and a good pickup line. But all that changed when I met Gabby.
The town was always something special to see at Christmastime. The streets were lit 24/7 with strings of lights making angelic, otherworldly little halos in the sky. I used to swear that the Square at Christmas floated just a half inch off the ground. The stars were just that little bit closer.
Surrounded on all sides by that angelic haze, among a flock of trees done up with ornaments and tinsel, flanked by a small platoon of carolers and caballeros, walked the most beautiful blonde I’d ever laid eyes on.
I remember all the lines I used to spit back then just turned to ashes in my mouth. The caroling voices singing O Tannenbaum faded into a dull humm that sounded vaguely like the background noise those NASA guys down in Marfa can pick up when they’re listening to outer space. Her eyes met mine and I could see a sort of recognition, like she’d already known I was gonna be there. I almost expected her to say, “What took you so long?” in that little German lilt of hers.
Ten years. Only ten years of love we had in this world. Ten years of year-round Christmas, floating half an inch off the ground. I bought the ranch from Old Man Cartwright and we settled into peaceful years of raising horses and starting a family. I converted one of the smaller barns into her studio space so she could paint and craft her sculptures. Soon enough we were pregnant and off to the races. She was due to give birth the same time as Brunhilde, her favorite Palomino.
But all that’s the past.
The really finicky thing about the ritual is where you place the tourists. At this point, the chalk circle almost draws itself. I’ve got so good at the candlemaking that they can burn for hours and hours, giving us all night together to talk. I bought one of those big industrial grinders for the sulphur when the arthritis started hitting my shoulders real bad, and I just mix in sea salt as it goes. It’s amazing how perfect the mixture gets. Sprinkling that over the chalk takes maybe five minutes tops.
I dope up the tourists a little bit so I can get a handle on ‘em, but they still need to be awake and aware of what’s happening for the ritual to work. I tried knocking ‘em out one year and nothing happened. Had to rush to get three more and just take a chance on the personalities. That year was awful.
I’ve gotten really good at tying knots over the years. You want to give them as little room to move as possible. One inch the wrong way and the whole thing is messed up. You want ‘em hog-tied tight, with their eyes facing the center of the circle and each head directly over the glyph in front of them. You also need to get to know them a bit before you knock ‘em out, so you can determine who the strongest-willed one is. That’s why I usually try to grab ‘em around October. It gives me about a month and a half to really understand them.
You place the strong-willed one facing West towards the entry to the mausoleum so their life force is directed right at Gabby. The other two face North and South on either side, their weaker wills pulled along by the stronger. The Kukri knife needs to be soaked in the olive oil for at least 24 hours and the slice along the jugular needs to be made with intention. I learned about mindfulness meditation back in the 70’s; I know it sounds all hippy-dippy, but it’s really helped me strengthen my willpower and concentration for the ritual. I draw up my thoughts and clear my mind, filling myself up with only the image of Gabby, the way she looked on that first Christmas night all those years ago.
The blood spurts out of Mia and Jason, this year’s two weakest wills. Mia called Jason her “tick-tock boyfriend.” Apparently he was just there to take pictures of her. Both of them cracked almost instantly under the pressure of being caught.
Kelsey’s will is one of the strongest I’ve had in a few years. I was beginning to think this whole internet thing was dulling people’s senses. Everybody staring into their computers every day. Even the extra hands I hire for breeding season are a little more unaware of their surroundings than we used to be when I was a young cowboy. It’s the way of the world, I guess.
As Kelsey’s blood mixes with Jason’s and Mia’s, I carefully pour the milk over the circle’s center, whispering the words from an ancient language from the forests of Gabby’s ancestors, calling the spirits of the Winter Solstice to pierce the veil of death that’s thinner than any other time of year. The milk-blood mixture seeps into the Texas dirt, intermingling our shared heritage and imbuing the ground with the richness of life.
Music draws the shade to the circle, where it feeds on the life force and reclaims its selfness. I pick up the music box she loved so much, give the old mechanical key a turn, and the ballerina on top begins to spin as the box plinks out the notes of O Tannenbaum.
As long as the tallow candles burn and the sky stays dark, we can talk as long as we want.
To read a behind-the-scenes appendix to this story, become a paid subscriber today.