The Guardians

By Lansford Guy

"Sexy and sly, The Guardians grabs you on its first punchy page and wrings you dry by its startling conclusion. — Ron Franscell, USA Today bestselling author of The Darkest Night and Shadow Man

The only thing buried deeper than her sister's body is the truth.

To protect Maureen Buckley from her family's plot to have her placed under a guardianship, attorney Allen Mann will have to first understand what could have driven her to conceal the mummified body of her twin sister under her family's sprawling Texas ranch. While none question Maureen's brilliance, her fear of leaving home and deference to the mysterious entities she refers to as the "Guardians" raise serious doubts about her sanity. Allen will have to dig deep into the gnarled roots of a wealthy family's twisted history, including the disappearance of two boys decades earlier, to unravel Maureen's motives and determine if she really is the delusional killer that will be portrayed in court.

About the Author:
Lansford Guy is a former newspaper reporter who followed the court room beat into the courthouse and now practices law. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in Pulp!, the Austin Daze and My Favorite Bullet. His podcast, Fiction Tartare, features his original fiction and is available through Apple Podcasts. His non-literary interests include archery, virtual reality development, and perpetually refining his chili recipe. He lives with his wife, son and two cats in Texas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DX Varos Publishing
• Release date: Jan 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781955065344

Book preview

Chapter One

They’ll say it was the bourbon that killed him. He’s confident that’s right. Just as he’s almost certain there will be no autopsy, so no one will know that for sure. Allen Mann’s passing will be recorded by a justice of the peace who will mark it as natural. His treating physician will likely add to the certificate the suspected cause of death, possibly immediate cause: complications of pancreatitis followed by due to: substance abuse. The death certificate will list other facets of his life and the end of it: place of birth: Oasis, Texas; mother: Darlene Mann; father: Unknown; occupation: Attorney; place of death: … The death certificate will tell the story of a lifetime in a single standardized page, the same form used to log the more spectacular 3,000-plus deaths by firearm reported to the state each year. If the bourbon was the bullet that ended him, Maureen Buckley was the gun and it’d take a lot more than a single page to explain what pulled the trigger.

Violent deaths spawn inquests which may turn into trials to determine if an individual’s liberty should be taken away. Trials provide the illusion of an answer that helps allow those who bear witness, whether in the courtroom or through the media or word of mouth, to etch a line in the sand.

The killer, a robber, was greedy,

but I’m not.

The killer, a jilted lover, was obsessed,

but I’m not.

The killer, a schizophrenic, was crazy,

but I’m not.

What’s unspoken is the thought that almost always follows: the victim was ostentatious in their display of wealth, but I’m not; the victim was promiscuous, but I’m not; the victim was… unfortunate, but I’m not.

With suicides, Allen found throughout his early years, the analysis was not dissimilar, but more perfunctory. Sometimes, there was a note that provided a hint as to a motive, allowing for the same existential drawing of lines those aware of the loss used to convince themselves they could not fall prey to the same fate. More often, there was nothing but speculation, satisfied when the decedent had a chronic illness or history of depression, as was frequent. But for a natural death such as organ failure, no one even knew that there were questions worth asking.

It was Friday evening, late, when Allen received the call that would connect him to Maureen Buckley and all that followed. He answered as he always did, Best Law Firm. The name had started as a joke of sorts. In law school, he had become acquainted with the man who would become his law partner, James Best. Allen had sought him out after one of their first classes expressly to propose that they practice together after graduation so that Allen could reap the free benefit of potential clients searching for the best lawyer in Houston. Best, a septuagenarian whose stage 2 diagnosis made it unlikely he’d ever even walk the stage, agreed in good humor. They formed a two-man study group, a friendship, and later a law practice that defied the odds legally and medically.

This is the best law firm in Houston, that right? The caller asked. Allen started to explain the circumstances of his firm’s name—technically, Best Mann and Associates—but was interrupted before he could complete his script. No worries, I don’t care about none of that. I just need someone to help me with something. Just so I got it right, first, what we talk about, you can’t tell nobody, that right?

It was. Whether Allen was hired by the caller or not, he explained, the subject of their discussion would remain confidential.

Good, said the man. And if I show you something, that’s just as good as words, right? You can’t tell nobody what I show you, just the same as if I said it?

Allen hesitated, biting back the stock response: It depends. The man was a crank. Or a criminal. There was something strange in his tone, just short of taunting. Like the street performer Allen had once encountered in New Orleans, little more than a beggar with a tangle of chains and padlocks, who had shamed him into paying to observe a gruesome ritual in which he’d bound himself and almost asphyxiated as he struggled to escape. The caller pressed on.

Look, I got money, you don’t got to worry about that none at all, I’ll pay you for your time, so long as you can come and see me and what I got to show you.

Under the weight of the caller’s demand for attention, Allen relented and resisted his instinct to hang up the phone and let it ring until it stopped. He set a price, one that seemed fair for the time it would take to trek out to the distant rural address he was provided. The caller agreed.

I’ll arrange for someone to drop off payment tomorrow, the man said. Friend of mine, actually. He can give you a ride, or you can follow him out here if you’re so inclined. One more thing though, I don’t got a check book or much cash on me. I can pay you in gold. Bullion. You got any problem with that?

He did. But the caller pressed on, promising that with a little time he could arrange some liquidity and exchange to have the retainer converted into cash. It seemed more than strange. Possibly dangerous. But if it was a scam, or something worse, Allen could not see the angle and, after the third slug of bourbon over the course of the call, had gained confidence that he could satisfy his curiosity without sacrificing much more than lost time that he had no better use for.

Twelve hours later, 150 miles away, underneath a sprawling, desiccated ranch estate, Nate Turner, ranch foreman, guided Allen down a corridor to the subject of his call.

This here’s what I got to show you… this is the goddamn mummy.

Chapter Two

A wiry man with the face of a ferret had met Allen at 7 a.m. Saturday morning as promised outside of his office located in a converted cottage in Montrose. After handing Allen a self-seal gold bubble mailer with some decent heft to it, the man tilted his head toward the passenger seat of the 1988 blue and white Ford Bronco he had arrived in.

That’s okay, I’ll follow. Where are we headed, in case I get separated?

The man grunted, then turned away to rummage through a pile of fast food wrappers and receipts on the passenger floorboard. He handed Allen a computer printout with the directions to the ranch and began pulling away before Allen could say another word, almost losing him after the second turn.

After about two hours, Allen pulled up to the glistening black arch that marked the entrance to Star Fall Ranch. The man, who had been waiting in his idling truck, gestured again to the passenger seat. After a glimpse of the rough-hewn ranch road winding through a thick growth of woods just beyond the entrance, Allen recognized that his four-cylinder Mazda compact would have a tough time reaching wherever they were headed.

You spend much time out here? He asked as they drove.

No response.

My grandfather had a ranch, nowhere near this big, but I spent a summer out there once… Allen trailed off, not sure where he was going with this story, but certain that the driver was not listening.

He turned his focus outward, drawing a map in his mind of the property. After breaking through the dense woodland that fanned out from the road abutting the entrance, a much more orderly collection of trees had been planted at some point to what Allen believed was east of the entrance. An orchard.

They turned off of the rutted dirt road they had been following and began bouncing down a steep incline, following a path that existed only in the driver’s mind’s eye. Vegetation scraped and crackled underneath the truck but gave way to a gravel road at the bottom of the hill they had been on, which wound a large figure 8 they followed around a second hill also topped by a large, antiquated residence.

They drove past a stable of horses. More barns. Swollen cows. More houses, some large, some small, some so decrepit they must have been abandoned generations ago. A pen housing llamas. Another with emus. A clay oval for stock car racing. Next to it, another dirt track with ramps for motocross racing. More houses. More cows. More barns. Three maybe four or even five stocked fishing ponds… it was becoming difficult to tell as they progressed through the property how much of it Allen had already seen. A ropes course featuring a rappelling tower that looked rotted out. An amphitheater with thick tendrils of weeds that obscured much of the worn stone benches, so that it appeared as the final reminder of some lost civilization. Reinforcing this impression, a replica of Stonehenge had been erected in a clearing carved out of another 20 acres or so of old growth pine trees. The neo-Neolithic monument was in the center of a series of concentric circles of cultivated blue bonnets, Indian paintbrushes, and other brilliant flowers that popped out against the stark grey slabs.

Allen laughed. It was a queer, startling sound, much like the sudden crash of unexpected rain from the cloudless sky that had started coming down. A sun-shower, he recalled some camp counselor had called that phenomenon. Only, he had thought the old man had said sunflower as he explained that whenever there’s a sun-shower, the devil’s been beating his wife. Another memory emerged, bubbling to the surface like an artesian spring.

We had a legend back when I was in summer camp, a lot of them, actually, campfire stories or whatever you’d call them, but the one I remember is about this cave they claimed was located somewhere near the campgrounds where a goat man lived. I guess that was supposed to be like a man with goat legs, hooves, horns, all that. It never made much sense, even as a kid, but it still scared me even though I knew it couldn’t be true. But I went looking anyway. I spent most of my free time wandering around trying to find that cave. I don’t know why, but I had to find it. You have anything like that out here, any stories people tell like that?

The man lowered his window, lit a cigarette, and pulled over to the narrow strip of shoulder that separated the path from another patch of wilderness. He didn’t speak until after he had finished smoking and had tossed the butt out into the tinderbox that surrounded them.

We’ve got lots of stories out here, the man said. Just not the sort you want to go chasing after if you want to come back.

Can you give me any examples of the stories folks tell around here? Allen asked after a little while.

What’d I just tell you? Anyway, we’re here. Nate should be waiting for you inside there by now. The man gestured to the massive white dome, one of several, they had pulled up to. They had stopped in a small, paved parking lot where one other truck, nearly identical to the driver’s but with red trim, was parked. Beyond the domes was a large body of water. It seemed to stretch across the horizon, although its expanse may have been exaggerated by the effect of the blinding sun-rays dancing across it.

The interior of the geodesic dome was simple. The blue throw rug in the center was topped by a round black coffee table directly underneath the open sunroof. From above, it would look like an eye gazing up. A pale violet, art deco sectional sofa rimmed one half of the rug. On either end of the couch, there were two cream colored chairs shaped like the bottom of a bisected egg. Other than a pair of tall stools upholstered in black velvet pressed up against the bar that separated a kitchenette, there was no other furniture on the ground floor. A spiral staircase led up to a loft area, where Allen assumed the bedroom and bathroom must be located. For decoration, there were a few potted plants and an abstract steel statue that looked like a man stretched improbably thin. The flooring was composed of rubber tiles arranged in a black and red checkered pattern.

The space was clinical. Sterile. Something Allen imagined he might see in a Scandinavian waiting room that was somehow over-stylized despite its minimalism. Or perhaps, it was more like the living quarters of some high-ranking officer on a voyage around Saturn’s rings. Little ambience would be needed for a trip in which passengers could have their recycled breaths taken away each day by the vistas on display in the viewing lounges.

Allen was brought down to Earth by a tap on his shoulder. He stifled a scream and jerked his head around, pinching a nerve in his shoulder that had already been raw from the drive. A man, approaching 60 as easily as 80, with the face of an animated baseball glove was smirking behind him. The door was almost directly in front of Allen, still closed, and the stairs also within his line of sight.

Where...

Where did I come from?

Yeah, what the… I didn’t hear...

Where do you think I came from?

I… I don’t know. Allen peered around, confirming that there had not been any rooms he could have missed in the hut-like structure.

Maybe I come from up there, the man said, pointing up at the patch of sky visible through the sun-roof.

N-Nate? Are you the guy who called me? Allen said, slowly backing away from the man who, despite his advanced age, looked capable of field-dressing a grown man in ten minutes flat. What… what do you want?

You got nothing to be afraid of, son, if I was here to hurt you we’d be done with that by now. Besides, what’s that you got in your pocket there?

Allen gripped the package in his pocket, comforted by the hard twin lumps. Gold ingots. Two ounces for his trouble, whatever it might prove to be.

You think I look the sort who’d risk parting with something like that just to play some games? Hell, I could have a lot more fun than anything you’re worried about at half the price if I had a mind to. Nate, Nate Turner, pleased to meet you and sorry for the scare.

Allen squeezed the hand that was extended as hard as he could. Nate smiled charitably, laughed, and shook his head as he turned away and walked toward the kitchen.

So, you’re my lawyer then, is that right?

Nate… where did you come from?

Arkansas, originally. But I’ve been around. Here. Nate had managed to twist his body around in the cramped kitchen so that he was able to reach into the fridge and pull out two beers, one of which he handed to Allen.

Go, have a seat. I got some stronger stuff, but that’d probably best wait until we’ve had a chance to chat some. I got something to show you, but there’s no hurry, it’s not going anywhere as far as I can figure.

Allen settled into one of the chairs, which was affixed onto a steel cylinder with a circular metal base. The chair swiveled with almost no resistance, making it perfect for a starship helmsman who needed to shift between computer consoles while performing evasive maneuvers. He studied the bottle he had been handed… plain brown, no label. Its contents were cloudy at the bottom.

Home brewed, Allen’s host said. One of the boys, he’s got a little microbrewery he’s been playing with. Tastes like piss, but it’ll knock you good you’re not careful. You had anything to eat yet?

I—I’m fine.

Not what I asked you.

Uh, no, no I don’t guess I have.

I told Tim he ought to take you by Maude’s for lunch on the way here, he didn’t say nothing about that?

We didn’t ride down together. I mean, I followed him down here and he gave me a ride from the gate.

Alright, well, you need a bite and we might could just run over to the lodge for a burger or steak or whatever you might like. Not going to lie, I don’t expect you’ll have much appetite left after we get through here, but I’m getting ahead of myself… you want me to tell you a little about myself and this place, or should we just get to it?

Why don’t we start out with some of that stronger stuff you mentioned, if you think I’m going to need it.

Nate rummaged around in the kitchen cabinet and then settled on to the couch, placing a bottle of Jim Beam and two glasses on the coffee table. You want, I can get you some ice and something to mix it.

Neat’s fine.

Alright then. Nate poured two fat fingers into each glass and kicked his back, implicitly inviting Allen to do the same, then poured another round. Where’d you like me to start?

Where’d you come from?

We’ll get there.

Alright, wherever you’d like then. I’m yours all day, you’ve certainly paid enough for my time.

There was a knot in Allen’s stomach, but it started to slip as Nate’s words and his liquor circled round him.

This is a special place, this ranch. We’ve got a special situation here. Sensitive. I think I can trust that you can help, but let me ask you before we get into all that... are you my fiduciary?

The word struck Allen like a cattle prod, knocking him back in the seat he hadn’t even realized he was rising out of. It wasn’t that unusual to hear clients and other laymen toss around certain legal terms, sometimes correctly. But there was a certain heft to fiduciary, a special relationship requiring not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, as Justice Benjamin Cardozo had observed in a landmark decision. Best had been a great admirer of Cardozo.

Attorneys were fiduciaries of their clients, guardians of their wards. As a fiduciary, the interests of the person you owed a duty to must always be placed above your own.

I am your fiduciary.

They sipped on the bottle of bourbon and a few more beers through sundown. Weaving between the history of the Star Fall Ranch and his own life, which for about 20 years had been intertwined, Nate at times teased toward the purpose that had prompted him to pick up the phone but managed to steer the conversation away with the deft hand of a cattleman guiding his herd down the trail. The ranch had been operated for generations going back to the mid-19th century. The land had been acquired by Hieronymus Roni Buchholz, who had earned and lost much of a fortune built in the Amazon rubber trade. The rumored mistreatment of the indigenous workers had contributed to unrest that was put down, as the family still referred to the incident. Whatever precisely had happened was at least in part responsible for Roni’s emigration to Texas, where he built a new fortune in cattle, commodities, and other more questionable investment opportunities.

You won’t learn any of that talking to any of them, Nate said. Had to read up on all that myself, not that any of it matters much now. Except maybe, I think, that all maybe had something to do with why the family changed its name. They’ll tell you otherwise, some of them, you get to meet them and you’ll hear an earful about all that if you press on it. Not that anyone ever asks me, but I think there was a meanness in there, in Roni I mean. There had to be of course, there is in every family. In everybody, I’m sure if you look hard enough and know how to find it. But I think… I think there’s a sort of a balance in families. In people. Like a clock… thing. A… well, shit. You got me plastered son, what’s the word I’m looking for?

Pendulum?

Yeah, like a pendulum, that swings back and forth. You got a mean old man, right?

Allen didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t know the answer.

No, son, I don’t mean you, Nate said, unfurrowing Allen’s brow. I’m just talking in general. Now say you got a mean old man, like my grandad. Beat the shit out of my dad and his brothers ever since they were no taller than a mule turd, or so I’ve been told. But my dad, sweetest son of a bitch you ever met, though you wouldn’t have known by looking at him. Too nice a guy, some would say, though not to me ‘cause I’d knock their teeth out. You get what I’m saying?

Sure. He didn’t.

There’s a history that’s passed down when families talk about it, and each generation, it reacts in some way. It’s molded by all that came before it. For better or worse, but I like to think usually for better among those who want to learn. But the Buckleys, not all of them mind you, but speaking in general… they got their eyes closed, ears shut, all that. Like those monkeys, you know?

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil?

Yeah, that’s right, you got it. Just like that.

The family had a history of burying its past, more so even than most families, Nate explained. Even the origin of the ranch’s name had become unclear with each successive retelling of the story. Many of Roni’s descendants and those who had been dragged into the family by marriage maintained that the large depression behind the dome had been formed by a meteor-strike eons ago: the fallen star. In the early part of the 20th century, it was claimed the family sought to establish the area as a tourist attraction. The crater, which had once been dry, was pockmarked with caverns and riddled with passageways that wound through the limestone substrata. Newspaper ads and brochures made spectacular claims that these subterranean spaces were inhabited by the offspring of the fallen angel that was identified as the true cause of the astronomical phenomena. The name Star Fall Ranch had reportedly been first used to draw the attention of moneyed tourists eager for something stimulating to break up the monotonous trek from Houston to San Antonio.

Factions of the family doubted whether there was any truth that there had ever actually been a Barnumesque period in the property’s history. They denounced the fanciful depression-era posters and faded photographs as fake accounts of Star Fall Ranch’s fraudulent era. This they insisted, even though there were older family-members who claimed to recall having once wandered through the cramped tunnels as guides for the gullible visitors. These oldsters told tales, to those who would listen, of manufactured mysteries such as the claw marks etched into vaulted rock ceilings well beyond a man’s reach and glowing clusters of otherworldly egg-sacs that their parents had paid migrant workers to paint with radium. Doubters rejected these stories as fueled by delirium, charitably, or as part of a conspiracy to wrest control of the ranch’s past from its self-proclaimed historians. Members of this latter camp preferred a more sterile account: a protestant paradise built through hard work and gumption.

Women such as Beatrice Buckley, Roni’s granddaughter and long-lasting matriarch through her death in the ‘60s, would abide little color to be brought to the ranch. The only stories she would permit in her presence, always shared at her unspoken insistence, were of examples of shrewd business acumen. The time her father had traded a beautiful, but poke-easy pony for a barren heifer that turned out abundantly fertile. The time her father allowed access to a water well, saving a neighbor’s parched sorghum in exchange for an option to purchase his crops well-below market rate for many years beyond the drought’s end. The time her father crusaded against nearby dancehalls so workers would rise earlier and work longer with fewer distractions.

Chance Buckley was a man who, like his daughter, had no allowance for amusement. And so it stood to reason that he would never have abided an amusement park on the property, even though the land was not his outright so as to control it in his sole discretion. The narrative Beatrice constructed did not permit the existence of something as frivolous and pedestrian as a sightseeing spectacle and so this flavorful account of the Star Fall Ranch’s past could be no more than myth. And so it stood to reason, in her oft-repeated phrase, that the first use of this name could not have originated as some of her kith and kin attested.

As you can imagine, or if you can’t you’ll find out firsthand soon enough, given that they can’t even agree on something as harmless as when or how the place was named, it’s not so easy to resolve the bigger issues when they get to brewing.

Is that where I come into the picture? Allen asked. You hoping I can somehow straighten up whatever mess is going on here?

Nate swayed his head back and forth and held his hands up in the universal sign of surrender. Nothing so simple as that and that ain’t simple. Wouldn’t be my place to get involved in nothing like that anyway.

Lawyers had come in waves over the years, towing Redweld folders packed with case law and exhibits that they claimed would help draw a clearer line of succession to their respective clients. The litigation had peaked in the 1950s after Beatrice announced that they were spending so much squabbling that only the attorneys had any chance of winning. There were occasional flare-ups that could be treated, but never fully cured, through some minor concession over property use or bookkeeping practices. The big city lawyers with their haughty airs and piles of papers had become less of a threat and more of a running joke the longer the détente imposed during Beatrice’s time lasted.

One fellow, he was called out here on short notice. Ripped right out of bed by the look of him. But he come down here in a huff, couple dozen boxes full of documents he hauls out one by one and lines up in the conference room where just about everybody’s gathered. I don’t remember what they were squabbling about, some damn fool thing, but this lawyer starts spouting off about how there’s going to be changes. Cyril Buckley, you’ll meet him I’m sure, he’d been getting up to some nonsense again, tearing up like he does, and someone brought this lawyer down to lay down the law so to speak and put him in his place. Had him looking like the rapture’d come and gone without him until he signed something and backed off whatever it was that got him riled up. Some of the folk got to joking around, way I hear it, about how they didn’t think there was a damn thing in all those heavy looking boxes. And guess who had to haul them all off after the dust settled and that lawyer took off without them?

Yeah?

Now maybe I shouldn’t’ve, but you’re my fiduciary and you can’t tell nobody if I say I had a little peek, right? Allen nodded. Well, sure enough, there were a couple pages of official looking stuff at the top of each of those boxes, but underneath there were just reams of blank paper that city boy had picked up to add some heft to what he was saying I guess.

So what exactly is it you hope to have me help you with?

Well, I’m not so sure you can. But Jimmy, he thought high of you—

Wait, Jimmy? Allen, who had become drowsy from the alcohol and Nate’s prolonged narrative, snapped to attention. My partner, James?

Nate laughed. Of course, son. You think I just pulled your name out of a hat?

How’d you know each other?

Hell, I known him for years. He used to come hunting out here with a group of guys who had a deer lease out here. Exotic game. African things with funny names. They’d give me a little something to show them around and we’d get to chatting about this and that. Last time I saw him, he’d mentioned y’all had started working together and we got to discussing what I got you out here about, only some stuff’s happened since then.

So, did you hear what happened to James…

Yeah, yeah I sure did. Damn sorry to hear that. He was a good guy.

Yeah, he was.

Allen reached for the bottle. He stopped himself, already more inebriated than he usually was at this time of day on a Saturday on account of having skipped lunch. He thought of the last time he had seen Best. The last time he’d practiced his craft. His old craft—really more of a calling that he’d hung up on—from before he’d sold his step-father’s mortuary and entered law school. He took another drink.

You said there was something you wanted to show me on the phone.

Yeah, yeah, I guess let’s get to it then.

Allen wobbled after Nate, who stopped and kneeled down by the eerie metallic statue of the stretched-out man. The aging foreman, whose hair glowed in the light cast by the figure, dug his fingernails into a crease in the rubber flooring and peeled back a layer. Nate opened the hatch door he’d revealed