by R. L. Weeks
“Did you break in here?” I ask in a desperate attempt at denial.
Her pupils dilate and her eyes gloss over. “I promise I didn’t.” Her voice carries an innocence to it that’s hard not to smile at.
“How did you get in here?”
“I-I don’t know.”
I drop my arms to my sides and sigh. I guess we are doing this. “Are you an orphan?”
Her bottom lip trembles. “I was in my room,” she says, giving me a milky-white stare, “and the bad man took me, and I woke up there.”
She points at the wall.
I guess she means behind it.
My heart pounds faster. “You say you woke up in the cemetery?”
She nods quickly. “I tried going back to the orphanage, but no one there could see or hear me.”
I feel the colour drain from my face. The poor thing is explaining everything to me as if I can solve her problem.
I can’t. I wish I could.
“Why did you come here?”
“I walked back through the cemetery when I saw you sitting on the wall and wanted to see if you could see me, and you can.” She sees me as an adult, someone who can help her straighten out this confusion for her. But I can’t help her in the way she thinks I can.
I part my lips. “What is your name?”
“Tabitha.”
“Tabitha, can you show me where you woke up?”
She reaches out to hold my hand. My breathing quickens as I shake my head. “You lead the way,” I say.
She walks through the wall. I climb over and hold my breath as I reach the top.
Tabitha waits patiently on the other side as I kneel down. There are no places for me to climb down on the other side.
I lower myself down until I am halfway down and let go. I land with no grace and almost topple over.
I straighten myself up and dust off the skirt of my dress. I look around for Tabitha.
“Tabitha?”
“Hi.”
I jump and turn around. “Stop doing that.”
She giggles and skips to my side. “I like your hair,” she says and reaches up to touch it, but her fingers pass through the blonde strands. “Am I dead?” she asks.
I panic. I had presumed she knew with being able to walk through hard objects.
“Maybe,” I say, trying to soften the blow, but I decide that the truth is necessary. Maybes just won’t do, as my father used to say. “Yes, you are, Tabitha. I’m sorry.”
She lowers her head, dislodging her brown waves, which flop forward. “I woke up there.” She points to the old part of the cemetery.
I point for her to lead the way. We walk, side by side, and she looks up at me. “I thought I would go to heaven when I died?”
I hold my breath for a second. “You will. We need to find where you died first.”
I look over at the old part of the cemetery and feel a shudder dance down my spine.
The branches of the trees twist over the weathered stones like contorted bones. I tread with care over the uneven ground.
“What happens after we find it? Do I go to heaven?” Tabitha asks.
I stop walking. “I, uh…” The truth is, I’m not entirely sure. I’m only a spectator to this part of the process. “I’m not sure.” Her expression drops. “But you will be okay. I promise.”
Her lips curve upwards. “I will get to see my Mama,” she says. “Mama died last year.”
I purse my lips. “Mine died too.”
Tabitha pauses. “Maybe I will see her and can tell her I saw you?”
I half smile. “Perhaps.”
She doesn’t even know my name.
Tabitha skips ahead and through the grey stones. She doesn’t disturb the leaves, and the farther away she gets, the more she looks like an out-of-focus photograph.
A howl of wind incites a creak from the iron gates. I look over to make sure we’re alone before continuing.
I don’t know what I am more scared of, being caught out here alone by the man who Tabitha said took her or by what I am about to see.
Tabitha stops next to an old crypt with a dozen withered roses upon it.
I round the crypt until I see a little hand poking out from the shrubbery. I move the leaves and see her lying still, like a doll, on the grass.
Her head sports a large bruise with trails of blood running around it.
I feel a chill slither around us.
“Who did this to you, Tabitha? Can you tell me what the bad man looks like or who he is?”
I look at her broken body tearfully before turning back to her fading form as I wait for a reply.
“He was helping someone else,” she says. “He didn’t say who, but I heard him talking to some others.”
I bite my lip. “So there’s a lot of them?”
She nods and looks down at her feet. “I think it is time for me to go now.”
“Wait,” I say as she fades, but it is too late.
Her face is the last to fade.
The eeriness of being alone sets in. I look over at the wall, which suddenly feels so far away, as I stand next to her corpse. I rub the back of my neck and close my eyes.
What do I do? How can I possibly explain knowing exactly where her body was or tell them what Tabitha told me? They’d brand me a witch. Well, I guess I must be, but I can’t have them knowing that.
The seconds pass slowly. Grandmother always says how the years pass her so quickly, but I envy her demons. For me, time seems to almost stand still.
The gate creaks again, pulling me out of my thoughts.
Will people come looking for her soon?
I lift her body from the grass. Her limbs are set at awkward angles, and her head flops as she leaves her final grassy blanket.
It reminds me of the time when the men came and took the chimney sweep boy who had died in our chimney.
That was when my gift had shown itself to my parents. Grandmother never knew, and I didn’t know either until I was older and looking back on the memory.
I had told them that the chimney sweep boy was playing in my room with my toys. They were furious that he was in my room when he should be working, but when they came up to my room, they could not see him. Only I could see him. He flickered, like a candle in the breeze. He told me that sometimes he was in my room and then the next minute he was back in the chimney and his chest hurt when he breathed.
I told Mother and Father what he had told me, but they did not believe me.
Still, they called for him up the chimney to prove to me that he was not hiding in my room, and when did he not answer, Father climbed up to find the boy’s body stuck there. That was when the boy faded completely. I guess he decided not to stick around.
I look around nervously before carrying Tabitha’s body across the cemetery. I hurry to the gates and rest her body against a gravestone close to the path. Someone will find her body soon, and no one would know I was here.
I wish I could help her more and find the man that did this to her, but I cannot jeopardise my life by doing so. After all, orphans go missing all the time, and there’s nothing I can really do to help.
I walk back through the cemetery, trying to rid myself of the guilt that now burdens me. New gravestones line the left side of the graveyard and the old, crumbling ones stand flowerless in the centre and to my right.
A cold breeze creeps through the stones and reaches me. The hairs on the back of my neck stand erect. I rub my hands together and quicken my pace.
“Raven.”
The whisper carries around me as if the wind is talking to me. I turn and am met with a face that looks a little like my own, except it is faded and grey.
My heart pounds in my chest, and I scream, falling backwards onto a crypt. My head hits the stone, warmth seeps down my head and neck, and everything fades to black.
Three
I pinch my hand, wondering if I have fallen into a dream, but I remain in the cemetery, except it looks different.
It’s summer; I can tell by the sunshine and buzzing bees surrounding a nearby tree.
I knit my eyebrows as I spot a six-foot-deep, freshly dug hole in the centre of the cemetery.
What is happening?
I hear voices behind me and jump as they walk over to me.
“Careful!” I scold as the well-dressed people almost walk into me. Grieving is no excuse for inconsideration.
A woman turns, and I have to dodge her again. “Seriously. Can you not see me?”
The woman stops, and I step out of her way. I reach my hand out to touch her arm, but it passes right through her.
I jerk my hand back and hold it with my other hand. What just happened?
My eyes widen as I look around at the rest of the cemetery. It looks like an out-of-focus photograph, like Tabitha when she led me to her body.
The voices of the people in suits and black dresses sound different to my ears—as if there’s something separating me and them.
They all stand around the six-foot-deep hole, and I notice the black casket for the first time. It must have cost a lot. It’s matte black with metal roses wrapping around the sides on black metal vines.
A woman who looks like a younger version of my grandmother cries into an ivory-coloured handkerchief. The men and women chatter amongst themselves. I walk closer to them to hear what they’re saying.
“It is an awful shame,” a man in a topcoat says. “But then, the Prides were always an odd family.”
“Hush, Harold,” the woman, who I presume is his wife, says.
I walk closer to the gravestone, and my heart skips a beat.
Alice Pride
1833 – 1853
Beloved Daughter and Sister
This must be a dream—or a memory. It’s 1870, not 1853. Also, who on earth is Alice? Grandmother has told me about every Pride that had lived in the last century and a half, and I’ve never heard of any Alice.
I turn and run as the casket is lowered.
“Raven.”
The same eerie whisper returns.
I stop by a gravestone and look to my left. The woman I saw earlier, the one with a face like my own, walks through the people and over to me.
I feel shadows closing in as the sunny sky turns dark. I turn from the woman and hurry back to the wall, darting around gravestones and white crypts.
My foot catches on a rock, and I lunge forward and hit the ground.
The breath is knocked out of my lungs.
I open my eyes and hear movement next to where I am lying. I see a pair of black lace-up boots stop next to me.
“Do not let them get you too, Raven,” she whispers. “Do not let them get you like they got me.”
Four
I awaken to a man’s voice. My eyes flutter open and then close again.
“You had a nasty fall,” the man says.
My head is throbbing. The pain is almost intolerable. I keep my eyes closed and do not reply out of fear that if I open my mouth, I may scream from the pain.
Thankfully, he doesn’t wait for a reply. “It’s all right. You must be in a lot of pain.”
I notice that I am lying on something soft. Perhaps a bed?
He presses something cold and wet, which I guess is a cloth, to my head. The pain is too much, and bile rises in my throat.
“Stop!” I scream and open my eyes. I try to sit up, but the dizziness forces me back down.
“Please, don’t panic,” he says.
I can’t see who this man is, as he is standing behind me. I close my eyes again and feel warm tears trickle their way down my cheeks.
“I know it hurts,” he says, “but I need to clean the last of the blood.”
His voice is assertive, but his tone is calm. For some reason, I listen, and I bite my bottom lip as he dabs my head with the wet cloth.
I bite until I can taste blood.
Just when I think the pain will be too much, he stops. “That wasn’t that bad, was it?”
I look at him as he sits next to me.
I am on a bed.
He has a square face and dark, neatly combed hair. His almond-shaped eyes are darker than the smoke from a furnace. He wears a relaxed smile as he takes a puff from his pipe.
My gaze travels from him to the window.
“It is nightfall?”
“Yes.” He sits forward. “What’s your name?”
I part my lips, but I can’t find the words to explain anything to him.
The main worry that fills me is Grandmother. I shouldn’t be outside the house. It’s not like I’m a well-hidden secret; a rumour at most.
“I need to go.”
I raise my hand to touch my head and fall back. “Ouch.”
“Careful,” he says and places his hand under my head. He slowly sits me up and takes me into his arms. “You’re quite headstrong.” He cracks a smile. “But you must rest.”
“I can’t rest here,” I say, frenzied. “I must go home.”
A crease forms on his forehead. “Where is home?”
“I, uh…”
“Amnesia,” he says aloud, his expression filled with worry. “Perhaps I should call the doctor.”
“No. Please don’t call anyone. I can walk home. It’s not far from here.”
He takes another puff on his pipe, stands up, and walks over to the armchair across from me this time. I look around the room. Candlesticks line the side tables, covering the room with an orange hue. Wax drips onto the wooden tables and white lace cloths.
The walls and ceiling are cracked in places. A fireplace sits empty at the head of the room, and soot covers the floor in front of it.
Above it hangs a black-framed mirror that is covered by a sheet of dust and is home to a little black spider hanging from a web.
“Where am I?” I ask.
“You’re in Littlemore Orphanage.”
My heart races at the back of my throat as I think of little Tabitha and her broken body. I hold my breath for four seconds and repeat it until I calm down.
Someone knocks on the door. Panicked, I push back against the wall behind the bed to try and hide from view.
He opens the door, and I hear the voice of a little boy. “She was caught stealing Tabitha’s things.”
“Get out of here. I have a guest!” the man shouts and then slams the door.
He turns to me. “Sorry about that.”
“Who’s Tabitha?” I ask, pretending to be oblivious.
“One of our girls.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “Is she okay?”
He looks down at me suspiciously. “No, actually, she’s not. She’s gone missing.”
My stomach twists. “Has she not been found yet?”
He eyes me again. “No.”
“Has anyone searched the cemetery?”
His gaze narrows. “Yes. I searched it myself.”
“Every gravestone?” I say, pressing.
“Yes. That is how I found you.”
I suck in a deep breath. “Sorry, of course.”
He searches my expression. “Do you know something, Miss…?”
“My name is Raven,” I admit in defeat.
“What an unusual name.”
“It’s Raven Pride.”
He parts his lips and leans forward. “So it’s true. Gertrude Pride does indeed have a granddaughter. I am Emmett White. I run the orphanage.”
“You look too young to be running an orphanage,” I say. He looks like he’s only in his early twenties.
He stands up and paces around the room. “You ask a lot of questions, Miss Pride.”
“Sorry.”
There’s a pause.
“I just want to go home,” I say and look desperately at the door. “If you could just help me back to the road, I can make my way home from there.”
“Why were you in the cemetery earlier?” he asks, ignoring my
request.
“I was looking for something.” I mentally kick myself for being such a terrible liar.
“You saw nothing regarding our missing girl?” he asks.
“No.”
A dangerous glint crosses his gaze. “Well then, I guess we must get you home, Raven.”
Five
Emmett walks me down the dark stairs of the orphanage. Each step creaks as I put my weight on him. My head throbs and my hands are frozen. A child scampers down the stairs, almost knocking me down.
“Careful, child, or it’ll be the cane!” Emmett shouts.
The little boy hurries around a corner at the bottom of the stairs.
Emmett pushes open the double doors, and we walk out onto the street. The dry air hits my lungs, making me cough.
Unpainted houses connect together. They are ugly, but according to Grandmother, Crogsworth’s flats are much nicer than those in the slums of London.
He sees me looking at them. “I’m guessing you don’t venture into this part of town often.” He looks down at me. “Or at all.”
I shake my head, which I regret seconds later when the thudding in my brain gets worse. “I live… It’s a big house across from the butcher’s shop on First Avenue.”
“I know where the Pride house is,” he states and half-carries me past the flats. “I like the butcher’s shop. I go their often.”
“Why?”
“I was told that my father was a butcher. I guess it makes me feel close to him.”
“Was a butcher?” I ask, noticing that he used the past tense.
“He’s dead now.”
“I’m sorry.” I empathize. “I know how it feels to lose a parent.”
He shrugs. “Well, I do not.”
I furrow my brows again. This man is confusing. I decide not to press further. I just want to get home.
We continue our walk through the dark streets in silence. I glance in the direction of the cemetery and wonder how he hasn’t found Tabitha’s body yet. I had placed her by the entrance. Did the man who killed her come back and move her?
