The Visitor

by Amanda Stevens

  But the longer I remained below ground, the greater my unease. As I turned to toe a plastic carton out of my path, the light dimmed. I thought at first the overhead bulb had gone out, but then I realized that something had blocked the natural light streaming down the steps into the open doorway. I wanted to believe a cloud had passed over the sun, but I could still see ribbons of illumination trimming the edges of the door frame. Someone—or something—stood at the top of the stairs.

  Slowly, I lifted my gaze to the opening, sniffing the air for a death scent. Nothing came to me and I thought—hoped—it might be Macon. I told myself to call out. What harm could it do? I wasn’t exactly hidden nor could I slip away unnoticed. I was trapped. I knew it; whoever was at the top of the steps knew it. But neither of us made a move and the only sound I heard was the drumming of my own heartbeat.

  As I stood there immobile, my tongue suddenly tingled with the warm taste of cloves. I saw a flash in the doorway, an arc of reflected light, and then came a metallic ping as something hit the brick floor and bounced toward me. I glanced down warily, an icy breath whispering down my collar.

  Seventeen

  A brass key lay at my feet, the kind that would fit an ordinary door lock. Surely this couldn’t be the key the blind ghost had demanded I find. How could something so nondescript be my salvation?

  I supposed it was human nature that I should reach for it even as Papa’s warning sounded in my head: Leave it be, child. Remember the rules. Never acknowledge the dead. Never stray far from hallowed ground. Never associate with the haunted. And never, ever tempt fate.

  Too late. My fingers had already closed around the metal.

  As I straightened, a shaft of sunlight from the doorway caught the brass. For a moment, the thing seemed to dance in my hand. The radiance mesmerized and I stood transfixed, helpless to combat whatever dark force had entered my life.

  Put it back, Amelia. The door that can be unlocked by that key could very well lead to your destruction. Return it and leave the cellar without looking back.

  The spell broken by Papa’s imagined warning, I uncurled my fingers, but the tingle in my mouth grew stronger, as if my every distressed thought had been read and another calming message sent. A presence was trying to communicate with me, but I had no idea if the entity was ghost, human or in-between. I was too afraid at that moment to allow it into my head.

  Papa’s phantom caution flitted away as my fist closed once more around the key. I somehow knew it was important, another clue. What did it matter if I took it? The rules had long since been broken. A door to the dead world had already been opened.

  Call it instinct, call it desperation or even defiance, but I knew I couldn’t fight destiny with only half-truths. I felt strongly that my greatest weapon still lay hidden in the secrets that had been kept from me since the terrifying night of my birth.

  There was only one person who could help me uncover the past. Despite my fears and reservations, I had to go see Papa, and soon.

  And with that resolve, the taste in my mouth faded. Sunlight once again spangled down through the open doorway. Everything returned to normal, and if I hadn’t seen what I’d seen in my life, if I didn’t know what I knew, I might have convinced myself the past few moments had been nothing more than a hallucination or a waking dream.

  But I did know.

  Eighteen

  I put the key and the stereoscope in a desk drawer and for the rest of the afternoon tried very hard to concentrate on work. Twilight slid in on a mild breeze, but as darkness descended, the wind picked up and the chime outside my office played an unnerving serenade. I sat with my back to the windows and didn’t turn even when a tree limb scratched against the glass. I didn’t want to know what waited in the deep shadows of my garden.

  Around nine, I took a couple of pills for my headache and stretched out on the chaise, not yet ready for bed. I still had hopes that Devlin would call and kept the phone handy just in case.

  I only meant to doze for a few minutes, but when I roused sometime later, the garden breeze had died away to an unnatural stillness. I tried to concentrate on the hum of the ceiling fan in my office and the pop of settling floorboards overhead as Macon moved about his apartment. The normal household sounds were reassuring and made me feel less alone. Pulling a soft throw over my legs, I closed my eyes and sank more deeply into slumber.

  When the dreams came, they transported me back to a time in my childhood when I had not yet been aware of the ghosts. I was in Rosehill Cemetery with Papa. It was just getting on dusk and moths flitted through the air like dark-winged fairies. I sat in the grass and watched Mama’s yellow tabby pounce once, twice and then disappear into the shelter of a rose thicket with something dangling from his sharp teeth.

  The approach of twilight had always spooked me. Even with Papa nearby I felt the stir of an unknown fear. The day had been clear and warm, but now a chilly breeze swept through my hair, lifting the blond strands as though invisible hands were at play there. Papa didn’t seem to notice the sudden nip. His head was bowed to his work and he didn’t glance up even when the leaves overhead began to whisper.

  Trying to ignore the tingles across my scalp, I removed a ribbon from around my neck so that I could admire the old key I’d found earlier on a headstone in the deepest recesses of Rosehill Cemetery. Shrouded in ivy and Spanish moss, that forgotten corner had become my hideaway. No visitors ever came along that way and even Papa rarely went back there. But I’d spent many an hour in the company of the forsaken, reading aloud from my Gothic romances and weaving daisy chains to adorn the crumbling headstones.

  I was never to take anything from the graves. Papa had instilled that rule in me long ago, but I felt certain that key had been placed on the headstone for me to find. My aunt Lynrose was visiting from Charleston and she always brought little gifts—a book, a charm, a shiny silver dollar—which she slipped beneath my pillow or hid away in my favorite climbing tree.

  Suspended from a pink satin ribbon, the key was ornate and beautiful, the kind that might open an ancient treasure box stuffed with toys and trinkets and deep, dark secrets. Draping a clover necklace over the headstone, I slipped the ribbon around my neck as a frisson of excitement coursed through me.

  The key felt heavy and warm to the touch. Tucking it inside my sweater, I skipped off to find Papa.

  Now as I waited for him to finish his work, I grew more and more fascinated as I spun the ribbon around one finger, watching the brass catch the fading light. Faster and faster I twirled the ribbon until the knot worked loose and the key went flying.

  “Oh!” I fell to my knees to search through the thick grass.

  “What’s wrong?” Papa called out to me.

  “I lost my necklace. The one Aunt Lynrose left for me. I’ve looked and looked, but I can’t find it anywhere.”

  Papa abandoned his work and came over to kneel beside me on the ground. “Whereabouts did you drop it?”

  I showed him the spot and he began to methodically comb through the grass with his gnarled fingers. We kept at it for a long time until I finally grew weary of the search.

  “I’m tired, Papa. Can we come back tomorrow and look for it?”

  “No!”

  His sharp tone startled me. I glanced up at him in confusion. “Why not?”

  His tired gaze met mine in the falling twilight. “You mustn’t leave here until you find what you lost.”

  “But why, Papa?”

  “Remember what I told you, child. Take nothing, leave nothing behind.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Keep looking, Amelia. Hurry. We’re losing the light.”

  There was something strange in his voice and demeanor. Something almost frenzied about the way he applied himself to the search. In that moment, he didn’t seem at all like my papa but a dr
iven, secretive stranger.

  Finally, he straightened and held out his hand so that I could see the key in his palm. “Is this yours?”

  “Yes! Oh, thank you, Papa!”

  “It looks very old, child. Are you sure your aunt gave this to you?”

  As he studied my face, a guilty conscience niggled. I’d been certain earlier that Aunt Lynrose had left the key on the headstone, but Papa’s strange behavior filled me with doubt. What if I’d taken something that didn’t belong to me, something sacred from a grave? Papa would be very unhappy with me and I couldn’t abide his disapproval. He and Mama meant everything to me. What if they decided to send me away? Ever since I’d learned of my adoption, I’d nursed a secret worry that I might someday be returned to the family that didn’t want me. What if that someday was now?

  All of this flashed through my mind in the blink of an eye as I answered Papa with a vague nod.

  He took my arm and drew me to my feet. “Listen to me, Amelia. Whatever you bring into a cemetery, you must never, ever leave behind. Do you understand?” His grasp tightened. “I don’t mean to frighten you, but this is important. That key has special meaning to you, does it not? It was given to you as a gift. Leaving it behind might be misconstrued as an offering or barter. Or worse, an invitation.”

  “An invitation to what, Papa?”

  His face grew even more somber. “It doesn’t bear thinking about, child.”

  An image of the clover chain I’d left on the headstone in exchange for the key necklace flashed through my head. I wanted desperately to tell Papa what I’d done, have him reassure me that all was well, but I was too afraid. Not of him. Never of him. But of something I didn’t yet understand.

  He looked beyond me to the cemetery entrance. His gaze lingered for only a split second before he lifted his face to the sky. As he watched the bats swoop overhead, he said softly, “Look over toward the gate, Amelia, and tell me what you see.”

  His request puzzled me, but I did as he asked. “I don’t see anything, Papa. Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, child. I thought for a moment we had a visitor, but it’s just these old eyes playing tricks, I reckon. Now put that trinket safely in your pocket and let’s go home. Your mother worries if we’re not back by dark.”

  As he gathered up his tools, I couldn’t resist glancing over my shoulder. For a moment, I thought...

  No. It was just a shadow. Nothing was there.

  There’s no such thing as ghosts.

  But as Papa and I set off for home, that brass key was an unwelcome weight in my pocket.

  * * *

  I awakened with an unsettling certainty that the dream had not been a dream at all but a memory nudged loose by the incident in the cellar. I hadn’t thought about that key necklace in years. Like so many things in my life that had once seemed important, the memory faded when the ghosts came.

  Now I recalled how agitated I’d been after Papa’s warning. I’d spent an uneasy night with the key underneath my pillow and the next morning I’d risen early to return that found treasure to the headstone. I’d gone back a few times to see if the key was still there, and it always was, waiting for me to slip the pink ribbon around my neck.

  I never asked Aunt Lynrose if she was the one who had left it because I didn’t want to know. After a while, I started avoiding that hidden corner of the graveyard. I found a new hideaway in the hallowed section of Rosehill Cemetery where I could read my books and play among the statuary. And other than a few pilfered stones, I had taken Papa’s cardinal rule to heart: Take nothing, leave nothing behind.

  As I thought back to his strange behavior that day, I became certain that he’d seen a ghost at the gate. Maybe I had, too. The shadow I’d glimpsed may well have been my first sighting.

  I’d always wondered why the ghosts had come into my life. For the first nine years of my existence, I’d remained oblivious to their presence. I’d been born with the gift but blinded to the dead until a veil had been lifted from my eyes, allowing me to see that which had been unseen.

  Had the key been the catalyst?

  And if taking that key from the headstone had somehow opened a door allowing the ghosts into my world, what might I have unleashed by removing the key from the cellar?

  Get rid of it, child. Return it to where you found it!

  Panic chased up my spine at Papa’s imagined warning. Grabbing the key from my desk, I went out into the garden, where the air smelled of dead leaves and spent roses. Moon bursts of datura hung heavy with dew and from shadowy beds, white agapanthus rose on spindly stems. The night was very still, so eerily static I could hear the pounding of blood through my veins.

  I didn’t need a flashlight. Clouds of artemisia floated on either side of the walkway, guiding me unerringly to the cellar stairs where I knelt. The rose that I’d dropped there earlier was gone.

  For a moment, I tried to convince myself that Macon had removed it or the wind had blown it away, but deep down I knew better. Someone—something had taken the flower and tossed the key in the cellar in exchange.

  “It wasn’t a trade,” I whispered into the night, but I had no idea to what or to whom I spoke. “It wasn’t an offering or an invitation or anything else. See? I’m returning the key.” As I placed it on the top step, the brass gleamed obscenely in the moribund moonlight.

  From deep within the garden came a long, strident rattle followed by several short bursts. A warning? A rebuke?

  Anger fought its way up through the fear. I felt like a mouse caught in a trap, once more a helpless pawn in some dark, mystical game. I picked up the key and curled my fingers tightly around the brass as I stood. For a moment, there was no sound at all beyond the soft swish of my breath. Then an ear-piercing whistle jolted the silence and I whirled toward the garden.

  Before I had time to think, I flung the key into the night.

  Cold and quaking, I waited for another whistle or an insect-like rattle, but the sound I heard was eerily metallic, like the squeak of a phantom wagon wheel.

  For some reason, I flashed to the stereogram, to the strange, cart-like apparatus I’d noticed in the background. Maybe it was my imagination fired by the realness of that 3-D image, but I could have sworn I glimpsed a tiny humpback creature gliding backward through the shadows of my garden.

  Nineteen

  “Perhaps we’re reading too much into the timing,” Dr. Shaw said the next day when I met him at the Institute. “Louvenia Durant knew of my work with the committee. It’s not so unusual that she would ask me to recommend a restorer.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s true. Assuming she really is interested in my professional services.”

  “I believe she’s sincere about the restoration,” Dr. Shaw said as he sat back in his chair. “But for the sake of argument, let’s assume our qualms are warranted and there really is something fishy about her and her sister’s visit. What that something might be, I’ve no idea, but would it make a trip to Kroll Cemetery any less appealing? The other day you seemed quite intrigued by the notion of all those engraved keys.”

  “I still am.” More so now than ever considering the events that had transpired in my cellar and garden. Intrigued...and increasingly frightened at the prospect of following all the ethereal clues being strewn before me. But follow them I must because I was being led to that cemetery for a reason. Ignoring the signs wasn’t an option.

  Dr. Shaw got up and began to rummage through a file drawer. “I’m certain I have some photos of Kroll Cemetery around here somewhere. Mrs. Durant had strict rules about filming and photographing the graves, but she allowed us to snap a few shots so long as we agreed that nothing would be published.”

  “I’d love to see them.”

  After a few minutes of searching, he gave up with a sigh. “The file must have been moved to st
orage. We’ve switched to digital photography almost exclusively in our fieldwork, but I distinctly remember taking those shots with my old camera. I’ll ask Vivienne to have a look later for either the prints or the scans. When we find them, I’ll have her drop them by your house.” He closed the file drawer and returned to his desk.

  “Dr. Shaw, you said the other day that some people think the cemetery is a giant puzzle that has never been solved, but it seems to me that a far bigger mystery is how that stereogram ended up in my basement. Do you believe some things are preordained?”

  “I don’t believe the universe is random,” he said obliquely.

  “Neither do I. There are no true coincidences. Everything happens for a reason. My finding that stereogram. Louvenia Durant and Nelda Toombs coming to see you.”

  “Your resemblance to the mysterious Rose,” he added with a gentle smile.

  “Exactly. That may be the greatest puzzle of all.”

  “And you’re certain no one in your family has ever mentioned the likeness?”

  “No, never. But I’m driving up to Trinity tomorrow and I’m hoping my father will have some answers for me.”

  Dr. Shaw rubbed a finger across his chin in deep thought. “You said the other day that the circumstances regarding your adoption were unusual. What did you mean by that? If you don’t mind talking about it, that is.”

  “I don’t mind, but it’s a long story.” I glanced out the French doors. The scent of roses wafting in from the garden brought a pang of nostalgia. The heady fragrance always took me back to those lonely summer evenings in Trinity. “I found out last fall that the man I’d always thought of as my adoptive father is in actuality my biological grandfather. He had an affair with a midwife named Tilly Pattershaw, my maternal grandmother. They had a daughter named Freya, but Tilly never told Papa about Freya until years later when I came along.”