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He came through the front gate and we met at the bottom of the porch steps.
“Miss Gray? Amelia Gray?”
“Yes?”
He nodded politely and touched his brim. “Evening, ma’am.” He spoke with a thick, country drawl that left me wondering briefly about his background. He was tall, thirtyish and attractive, from what I could see in the dark, but I barely noted his appearance. I was far more interested in whatever new discovery or revelation had brought him to my doorstep.
“Is anything wrong?” I asked, bracing myself.
“No, ma’am. John Devlin asked me to keep an eye on your place tonight.”
The use of Devlin’s whole name gave it a subtle formality, and I was reminded of the way the other cops had seemed so uneasy around him at the cemetery. What were they afraid of? Or perhaps more aptly…why did Devlin make me so edgy?
The officer’s gaze swept over me with more than a passing interest. Whether his curiosity had been triggered by Devlin’s request or my own bedraggled appearance, I could only guess. He hauled out his wallet and flashed his ID. After the evening’s events, I was annoyed with myself that I hadn’t thought to ask for it straightaway.
“I understand you had some trouble earlier,” he said.
“Someone broke into my car and stole my briefcase.” I nodded toward my parked vehicle, even though the shattered back window wasn’t visible from where we stood.
“Rash of that lately. Punks looking for something to hock and nobody ever sees squat.” He gave me another long look. “Reckon it could be connected to that cemetery business, though.”
He seemed to expect an answer so I shrugged. “I hope not.”
“Best keep your eyes peeled, just in case. I’ll do drive-bys for the rest of my watch.” He fished a card from his pocket and handed it to me. “My number’s right there on the back. You see or hear anything out of the ordinary, don’t be afraid to holler.”
I took the card and thanked him before climbing the steps to my porch. Once inside, I flipped the dead bolt, turned on a light and glanced out the window. The officer had climbed back into his car, but he didn’t pull away from the curb. The interior light was on and I could see a cell phone pressed to his ear. I wondered if he was reporting back to Devlin, wondered why the notion of that both relieved and bothered me.
Turning from the window, I faced my empty house.
Light from the wall sconces welcomed me through the arched doorway into a long, narrow hallway. A large parlor furnished with thrift store antiques opened to the right. To the left, a curved staircase led up to a bolted door that separated the first-and second-story apartments.
My office was a converted sunporch all the way at the back of the house, just off the kitchen. In the mornings, a buttery light shone through the long windows and I liked to start my day out there with a cup of tea and my laptop.
Tonight, nothing but darkness lay beyond the windows.
I turned my back on all those shadows as I sat down at the desk, opened my laptop and compressed the Oak Grove folder so that I could send all the images in one email to the address on the card Devlin had given to me earlier.
There.
I sat back and let out a breath. My part in this whole disturbing mess was over. I’d done everything I possibly could to help the police.
But even after I pressed the send button, I still couldn’t shake a lingering unease. Unless the killer knew that Devlin was now in possession of those images, he might still consider me a threat. And he couldn’t know that I’d sent the images unless he was watching me at that very moment.
I shot a tentative glance over my shoulder.
No one was there, of course. No eyes peering in from the darkness. No face pressed to the glass. Just the faintest hint of condensation creeping over the panes from the air-conditioning.
As I watched, tiny lines appeared in the rime like ghostly etchings, but there was nothing supernatural about the cracks. Nothing more sinister than a cold surface meeting the warmer outside air.
An unpleasant smell clung to my raincoat, and I decided the odor I’d brought home from the cemetery might be facilitating my apprehension.
Rising, I hurried into the bathroom, stripped off all my clothing and stuffed everything into a garbage bag. Then I got into the shower and scrubbed my skin and hair for a good twenty minutes, until every last bit of graveyard grime had been washed down the drain.
Wrapped in a towel, I padded down the hallway to my bedroom and pulled on cotton pajamas and a pair of thick socks, because the wood floor felt cold beneath my feet.
I adjusted the thermostat, then went back to the kitchen to make some tea. Carrying the cup out to the office, I sat down at my desk and once again opened the laptop.
The combination of soothing chamomile and a long shower took the edge off my anxiety and I started to relax and work on a new blog article—“Graveyard Lilacs: The Divine Smell of Death.”
The cemetery certainly hadn’t smelled so divine tonight, I thought with a grimace.
Unable to gather my thoughts, I gave up and went back to the Oak Grove images.
Using a full-length mirror to reflect light, I’d shot almost every grave in the front section before the rain had set in. Creating a visual prerestoration record of the cemetery was always the first step. Then came the research. The foundation of a successful renewal always lay in the archives. If no directory or map could be found, county death records, church registries and family Bibles had to be meticulously scoured, sometimes for weeks or even months at a time. I kept at it for however long it took, because there was nothing so lonely as an unmarked grave.
Scrolling through the JPEGs, I located the victim’s burial site by searching for the monuments and landmarks I’d memorized earlier at the cemetery. I enlarged the image to full screen and zoomed in. Using a magnifier, I went over the grave carefully, scrutinizing every pixel.
Finding no evidence the soil had been disturbed at the time I’d taken the photograph, I concluded the killer had buried the body sometime after I left the cemetery late Friday afternoon and before the storm hit at midnight.
I did notice one interesting detail, however.
Leaning forward, I absently rubbed my thumb against the polished stone I wore on a chain around my neck as I studied the image.
The headstone faced away from the grave. This in and of itself wasn’t so unusual. Families sometimes requested this arrangement so that the inscription could be read without treading upon the grave. But whether the headstone placement had anything to do with why the killer had chosen that particular grave to dispose of the body, I had no idea.
Curling one leg underneath me, I moved on to the next shot, which was the face of the headstone. On a yellow legal pad, I jotted down the name, the epitaph, year of birth and death, and made note of the imagery—a weeping willow bough entwined with morning glory vines and a feather floating downward toward the grave.
Then I opened the corresponding document file and scanned through the information I’d collected on the deceased, one Mary Frances Pinckney. She’d died of scarlet fever in 1887 at the age of fourteen.
Nothing unusual there. I went back to my notes and reread the epitaph:
The midnight stars weep upon her silent grave,
Dead but dreaming, this child we could not save.
The verse triggered a moment of melancholia, but there was nothing particularly strange about it. More than likely, the grave had been selected randomly by the killer. Or because it was located away from the walls and gates so that it couldn’t be easily spotted by a casual onlooker.
I sat there for the longest time, studying those photographs and worrying about my stolen briefcase. Worrying about my reaction to John Devlin and wondering if somehow my father’s rules were being tested in ways I didn’t yet understand. But mostly I thought about the dead woman who had been dumped in an old grave at Oak Grove, left there in anonymity, without benefit of ceremony or marker. The callous burial bothered me almost as much as the murder. It spoke to a lack of conscience, a lack of humanity that conjured deep dread.
He was out there, that monster. Stalking the streets, perhaps with the scent of his next victim already burning inside him.
The scent of his next victim…
Absorbed in the images, I’d barely registered the fragrance that had invaded my office.
Now I closed my eyes and drew it in.
Not graveyard lilacs, but jasmine…
So sweet and pervasive, I wondered for a moment if I’d left a window open. The vines were everywhere in the backyard. Sometimes the cloying smell became unbearable at night.
But this scent was different. Deeper, headier, with an undertone of something I didn’t want to contemplate.
As I got up to check the windows, I heard the soft tinkle of the wind chimes on the patio.
Strange, because there wasn’t a breeze.
Alarmed, I reached back and closed my laptop.
I stood shivering in the dark, gazing past my reflection in the glass to the patio and garden beyond.
Through the fragile layers of mist, I could see the soft glow of moonflowers and gardenias and the starry spill of the jasmine over the pike fence. An old live oak guarded the darkest corner of the garden, and a swing hung like a childhood memory from one of the gnarled branches.
It swayed gently, as if someone had just gotten out of the wooden seat. Back and forth…back and forth…back and forth…
The creak of the rusted chains lifted the hairs on the back of my neck.
Someone was out there walking around in the garden. A shoulder had brushed against the wind chimes. An idle hand had rocked the swing.
I wanted to believe that Macon Dawes had come home from the hospital and was taking a midnight stroll in the garden to unwind. But wouldn’t I have heard his old clunker pull into the driveway?
Someone—or something—was out there. I could sense a presence in the darkness, sense eyes on me.
Reaching behind me, I felt along the desk for my cell phone and the card the officer had given to me earlier. Using the lighted display, I punched in the number, realizing a split second before I placed the call that the number I’d entered was Devlin’s.
My thumb hovered over the send button. I don’t know why I hesitated, some instinct or premonition of what was about to come perhaps. All I knew in that moment was fear. An icy terror of what lay in wait outside my window. But I still couldn’t bring myself to push the button that would summon Devlin back into my life.
And then I saw it. A nebulous, dreamlike form hovering just beyond the fall of pale moonlight.
Devlin’s ghost child.
I thought at first I must be seeing things. Prayed that my overwrought imagination had conjured her from my deepest fear.
But she was there.
I felt the cold fire of her eyes through the darkness.
The swing and wind chimes were still now. I heard no sound at all except for the terrified drumming of my heart.
How was it possible? This house was a haven, a hallowed refuge that protected me from ghostly invasions. I was safe here. Or had been—until I met Devlin.
I forced myself to remain at the window, as if casually staring out into the garden. But the moment my gaze strayed from the ghost child, I sensed her annoyance. Her displeasure.
Before I could process this development, she glided from the shadows into a pool of moonlight, and I caught my breath. She was the most beautiful, delicate entity I’d ever laid eyes upon.
Through her wispy aura, her skin looked translucent, her hair a tangle of raven curls. She wore a sweet blue dress with a sprig of jasmine tucked into the waist, and I saw the sparkle of some tiny ring on her finger as she lifted her hand and pointed toward the window where I stood trembling.
There was no mistaking her intent.
She knew I was there.
She knew I could see her.
And she was letting me know that she knew.
Never before had I interacted with a ghost. How could this be happening when I’d followed my father’s rules to the letter?
Somehow everything had changed. The rules had been broken and I didn’t even know how.
Emotions stormed through me, a mass of swirling confusion. The sensation lasted for only a moment and then the darkness passed.
The ghost lowered her hand, stepped back into the shadows and slowly vanished into the mist.
FIVE
The next morning, I awoke to the half-light of dawn. It was nearly six o’clock, an hour before the alarm would sound, but I switched it off, anyway, then draped an arm over my eyes as the events of last evening came drifting back.
Maybe because I wasn’t yet fully alert, everything seemed a bit hazy. The unearthed body in the cemetery. The visit from the ghost child. Even my strange reaction to John Devlin.
I rolled to my side and stared out the window as I contemplated calling my mother later. I knew she’d be worried if she heard about the Oak Grove story on the news, but I was afraid my voice might give too much away if Devlin’s name came up, and how could I explain something I didn’t even understand myself? He was haunted and, therefore, taboo, so a certain amount of appeal was inherent to the situation. But I wondered if it was more than that. Why else would he unnerve me even without his ghosts?
I’d dreamed about him last night. That rarely happened even with men that I dated. It was nothing graphic or erotic, just a series of strange vignettes that ignited an already unhealthy curiosity.
Of course, if I were wise, I would put Devlin out of my mind entirely. I’d done what he asked and now there was no reason for further contact. And if we did meet again, I would need to engineer an effective defense somehow, because I couldn’t chance another visit from his ghost child. What if next time she managed to advance beyond the garden? The thought of such a breach scared me, but even so I couldn’t deny that last evening had been stimulating in more ways than one. The encounter with Devlin had shaken things up in my safe little world and given me a lot to mull over as I dressed and brought in the paper.
The Oak Grove story had made the front page of the Post and Courier. I skimmed the article as I stood at the kitchen counter sipping a glass of juice. Very few details were given, but as Devlin predicted, in the university’s official statement to the press, Camille Ashby had cited me as an “expert consultant” brought in to protect the historical integrity of the cemetery. Not my actual job, but close enough.
Refolding the paper, I set it aside and left the house for my daily walk, heading south on Rutledge Avenue. Two blocks later, I turned east, where the first scorching fingers of sunrise began to creep over the horizon. A mild breeze stirred the palmetto fronds and deepened the scent of the magnolia blossoms that peeked like roosting doves from nests of dark, glossy leaves.
On a morning like this, with the ghosts floating back through the veil, I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful place. The Holy City, some called it, because of all the church steeples that dotted the low-rise skyline. Charleston was old South, a state of mind, the luxuriant landscape of lost dreams. Everywhere I looked, everywhere I walked, the past enveloped me.
I’d only lived in the city for the past six months, but I had deep roots here. My mother had been born and raised in Charleston. She’d left her childhood home to marry my father four decades ago, but she remained to this day a Charlestonian through and through. She and her sister, Lynrose, had been raised in a comfortable household in the Historic District. Their parents were teachers, well-read and well-traveled, but it was their sense of tradition and refinement that allowed them to mingle at the fringes of society despite their middle-class upbringing.
By contrast, my father grew up in the mountains of North Carolina. Hill trash to the gentry that lived south of Broad Street. In 1960s segregated Charleston, Papa’s Blue Ridge heritage would have placed him only a rung or two above the black men with whom he’d tended garden at St. Michael’s, where he’d worked before they married.
Like my maternal grandparents, I was educated and traveled. I’d received an undergraduate degree in anthropology from the University of South Carolina at the age of twenty—what else had I to do but study?—and a graduate degree in archaeology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I was a member of the American Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, the Southeast Regional Conservation Association, the Association for Gravestone Studies and the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation. I owned my own business, was considered by some to be an expert in my field and, thanks to that viral YouTube video, had become a minor celebrity among Charleston taphophiles and ghost hunters. But for all my accomplishments and fleeting notoriety, there remained a segment of Charleston’s dying mansion class that would never accept me because of my father’s people.
This bothered me not in the slightest.
I was proud of Papa’s heritage, but I did still wonder how he and my mother had managed to meet and fall in love, considering the social chasm that had separated them. Over the years, my queries to both parents had been met with little more than vague details and outright dismissals.
The only clue I’d ever uncovered was in an overheard conversation between my mother and Aunt Lynrose when she’d come to visit us in Trinity, the small town north of Charleston where we lived when my father worked as caretaker for the county cemeteries. Every evening, the two sisters would sit out on the front porch sipping sweet tea from tall, frosted glasses while twilight settled around them as softly as the silk scarves that held back their hair.
Chin propped on the sill, I would sit and listen to them through the open parlor windows, mesmerized by the lyrical quality of their lovely drawls. As I grew older, I learned to pick out the French Huguenot and Gullah influences that made the Charleston accent so distinct. My mother had never completely lost those long midvowels, and to a sheltered child such as I, her exotic speech patterns made her seem glamorous and mysterious.
On one particular evening, as I sat listening through the window, I’d detected a note of sadness in Mama’s voice as she and my aunt reminisced.
Aunt Lynrose had reached over and patted Mama’s hand. “Things don’t always work out the way we planned, but we have to make the most of what we’re given. You have a good life, Etta. A lovely home and a hardworking husband who loves you. And don’t forget what a blessing Amelia is. After all those terrible miscarriages…”
