The Visitor

by Amanda Stevens

  “No need. The viewer belongs here with you. But I do wonder how it came to be in the cellar of a house on Rutledge Avenue.”

  A frown flitted across Nelda’s wizened brow. “I’ve no idea. It just disappeared one day. I never knew what happened to it.”

  “And this, as well?” I laid the stereogram on the table facing her.

  She picked up the card and studied the dual photographs for the longest time before pressing the images to her heart. “I remember the day these were taken. Ezra had just come from the Colony where he’d been working in one of the gardens and Mott and I begged him to have his picture made with us. We adored him so. But he was always camera shy, especially after he returned from the war.”

  “Who took the photographs?”

  “Louvenia. Mott showed her how to position the frames at slightly different angles to create a 3-D image just the way Rose had taught her. Mott was always a quick study. She became as obsessed with photography as Rose. Both were in love with stereoscopy. They claimed you could see things in the three-dimensional imagery that couldn’t be glimpsed with the naked eye.”

  “That’s Rose in the upstairs window, isn’t it?”

  Nelda slipped the card in the holder and lifted the stereoscope to the light. “Why, yes it is. Watching over us as always. Funny, I never noticed her there before.” She returned the viewer to the table and handed me a cup of tea. “You can see why I was so startled by the resemblance.”

  “Yes, it’s uncanny, as you said. How did you come to know Rose? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “I don’t mind. I like talking about her. She just turned up in town one day. It seemed peculiar at the time. She had no friends or family in Isola, not even a job at first. Later, I came to suspect that she and Ezra had crossed paths in the past. She moved into a cottage he owned not far from the Colony.”

  “Why didn’t she live in the Colony?”

  “It takes a very special mind-set to adapt to communal living. Rose was much too private. Instead of paying rent, she made arrangements to tutor Mott and me. We had to miss a lot of school because of our health, you see. And there were other reasons...emotional reasons why we lagged behind. But Rose was a wonderful teacher. In no time at all, she had us doing work that was well above our grade level. Ezra was very proud of us all, especially Mott. The two of them were always so close. Sugar?” She offered the small bowl of glistening cubes, but I declined.

  “I’m fine, thank you. The tea is wonderful just as it is.”

  She smiled, pleased by the compliment. “The secret is just a hint of cloves.”

  I quickly swallowed. “Oh?”

  “It’s a tricky spice. Overpowering if one isn’t careful with the blend. I suppose I’ll need to pass down the recipe to Owen along with the shop.” She took a sip, savoring the taste with closed eyes before setting aside her cup. “Where were we?”

  “You said Rose used to tutor you and your sister.”

  “I don’t think she ever even saw anyone else, except on those rare occasions when she went into town for supplies. She certainly didn’t socialize. I know she must have been lonely, the cottage being so isolated. There wasn’t a road and barely a footpath. The terrain was difficult for Mott and me so Rose came to us most of the time. But every now and then, we’d venture to her place. She always made such a fuss when we visited. Treated us like little princesses. After everything we’d endured, Rose’s affection and unconditional acceptance meant the world to us.”

  “She was a special person, sounds like.”

  “Beautiful inside and out,” Nelda said, still with that misty smile. “And, as I mentioned, an avid photographer. For a time, she even had a darkroom in her house. Mott and I spent many a happy hour in that tiny space watching her work. She used to say that looking through the lens of a camera was like peering through a keyhole. All it took was an open mind to see many strange and fantastical things.”

  I glanced at the stereogram, wondering if there were things in the images that I had yet to notice. Fantastical things. Ghostly things. “That’s a very intriguing observation,” I said.

  “Oh, Rose had a lot of such notions even before she became so ill.”

  “What was wrong with her?”

  Nelda’s dreaminess turned to melancholy. “What happened at Kroll Colony hit her very hard. And then only a short time later, we lost dear Mott. So many tragedies that year. It was all too much for her, I think. That and the loneliness. Something inside her snapped and she began to lose touch with reality.”

  “She stayed on in Isola after your brother died?”

  “Yes, in that same little house. Sister and I always assumed that Ezra had made provisions for her before he passed since she had no visible means of support. He was a generous soul, and like the rest of us, he had a soft spot for Rose. I’m sure she could have lived quite comfortably in town or anywhere she wanted, but she seemed to prefer the solitude. And, of course, she had her work at Kroll Cemetery.”

  I leaned in. “What kind of work?”

  “The locals were very vocal about not wanting to taint the public burial ground with all those suicides. Some believed it to be a mortal sin, you see. Rose made arrangements for the bodies, even the former soldiers, to be buried near her home so that she could mind the graves herself. She even went so far as to have walls erected around the cemetery and a maze planted at the entrance to keep out the gawkers and mischief makers.”

  Or to keep something else in, I thought with a shiver. “Your family didn’t mind about the cemetery? It was built on Kroll land, I assume.”

  “No one objected. It seemed the right thing to do and I think Louvenia was glad to have someone else take care of all the details.”

  “Was Rose also responsible for the headstones?”

  “Yes. She had each carved and engraved to her precise specifications.”

  “I’ve seen photographs of the cemetery,” I said. “All those numbers and keys etched into the headstones—I’ve never come across anything like them. Do you know what they mean?”

  “Rose had a fascination, a fixation, if you will, with keys. She must have collected dozens, if not hundreds, of lost keys over the years.”

  “Did she ever explain her fascination?”

  Nelda shrugged. “I don’t recall that we ever asked her.”

  I stared down into the teacup for a moment. “Dr. Shaw said there are those who believe the cemetery is a puzzle or riddle that no one has ever been able to solve.”

  Nelda smiled. “Perhaps because it’s unsolvable. You have to take into account Rose’s mental state when she designed Kroll Cemetery. What made sense to her would undoubtedly seem nonsensical to the rest of us. By the time the cemetery was finished, she was already living in her own world. Withdrawn and paranoid even with me. At some point, she suffered a complete breakdown. That’s the only way to explain why she did what she did.”

  “Build the cemetery, you mean?”

  “No, dear. Rose killed herself.”

  My hand jerked slightly, clattering the porcelain cup against the saucer. “How tragic, especially after all those other suicides.”

  “You’ve no idea. I was the one who found her hanging in the tiny dark room, a key still clutched in her lifeless fingers. I’ll never forget the way the blood dripped down her face like crimson teardrops.”

  “There was blood?”

  Nelda lifted her gaze to mine. “You see, before Rose died, she used that key to put out her eyes.”

  Twenty-Eight

  I left the shop with more questions swirling in my head than when I had arrived. Nelda was so preoccupied with the viewer that she barely noticed my exit. I’d meant to ask about her insistence that I come see her before I agreed to the restoration, but after her grisly revelation about Rose, I hadn’t felt like li
ngering.

  My look-alike and namesake had lost touch with reality, put out her own eyes with a key and then hanged herself. Of course, Nelda had been little more than a child at the time and she may not have known all the facts. If someone had murdered Ezra Kroll and the colonists in cold blood, who was to say Rose hadn’t met the same end?

  But what if the ghosts had driven her insane? What if she’d killed herself to escape them?

  What if the same fate awaited me someday?

  I always assumed my destiny was a dark one. I had only to look at Papa. He’d withdrawn inside himself to escape from the ghosts, and he kept things from me about my past and my gift because he wanted to shelter me. His motives were selfless, but his secrets made me vulnerable. I could see that now. The rules had hobbled me as much as they had protected me. Instead of growing stronger and learning how to fight for my future, I’d spent most of my life sequestered behind cemetery walls, hiding and pretending.

  That time was long gone. My eyes were open now and I could no longer deny the changes that were happening inside me any more than I could hide from the ghosts.

  But I was tired of dwelling on the direness of it all. It was a beautiful May morning, cloudless and breezy. I didn’t want to think about my gift or Rose’s prophecy or the unbound power left behind by the dead. I wanted to shove every bad thought to the furthest corner of my mind and retreat into my work as I always had.

  There would be time enough later to reflect on Rose Gray and Ezra Kroll and the cemetery she had built for him. Time enough to obsess over those keys on my nightstand and the motes in my eyes and the gruesome way in which Rose had met her end. But for now, for a little while longer, I would lose myself in the withering beauty of one of my forgotten graveyards.

  And for most of the day, I was able to do exactly that in a little cemetery just outside Charleston. But on my journey to Trinity late that afternoon, the forbidden images crept back in. The possibility that a key I’d found on a headstone in Rosehill Cemetery nearly twenty years ago had turned up on my nightstand made me contemplate again the notion of predestination and how all the strange occurrences in my life were somehow connected.

  The sun still hovered over the treetops when I pulled into the empty driveway. I knew from an earlier phone call that my mother was away for the day with my aunt. I’d started to go straight to the cemetery to look for Papa, but I’d wanted to spend a few minutes with Angus. He bounded across the yard to greet me as I climbed out of the car, but the moment I held out my hand to him, he stopped short, his lips curling back in a low growl.

  His threatening behavior stunned me. He wouldn’t have forgotten me in so short a time. I could only surmise that he had intuited the supernatural turmoil around me. Maybe he’d even sensed the unbound energy of death that I had unwittingly attracted.

  Still in shock, I knelt and spoke to him in my softest voice. “It’s me, Amelia. Don’t you recognize me? You know I won’t hurt you.”

  His head came up and he stared at me for the longest time with those dark, soulful eyes. Then he took a cautious step closer as if he wanted to believe I was still the old Amelia. Almost immediately he halted with a snarl, his tail dropping and his hackles rising.

  He looked to be on the verge of more serious aggression so I stood slowly and began to ease back to my car. “It’s okay, Angus. It’s okay, boy,” I soothed over and over.

  He was getting ready to lunge. I could tell by his stance. If I made one wrong move, I had no doubt he’d be on me.

  As I felt for the door handle, he rushed forward and then retreated, repeating the action until I was back inside my vehicle. Then he began to pace, teeth bared, body hunched low as I started the engine and drove away.

  His rejection devastated me. Of all the beings that had come and gone in my life, Angus was my constant, my touchstone, as close to a soul mate as I would likely ever know. We understood each other because we both had the sight.

  He had turned on me once before, but only because he’d been afflicted by the evil that resided in the woods and hollows around Asher Falls. Even then, he’d somehow managed to banish the influence and come to my rescue.

  Now it was something inside me that threatened him. That repelled him.

  Even after I’d glimpsed the darkness inside Micah Durant, even after I’d slipped into Devlin’s memory, I hadn’t wanted to accept the evolution of my gift, but it was hard to discount Angus’s response to me. Suddenly, Darius Goodwine’s words came back to haunt me.

  You’re not the same person as when we first met, nor will you be the same when our paths cross again.

  * * *

  Still shaken, I parked on the shoulder of the road and took a shortcut through the woods, emerging only a short distance from the entrance to the old section of Rosehill. The gate was unlocked, but I didn’t go inside. Instead, I turned to stare down into that secluded glen where I’d found the skeleton key necklace all those years ago.

  I’d once asked Papa why the people buried there hadn’t been laid to rest on the other side of the wall, in consecrated ground. He had explained to me that in the old days, it had been customary to keep the bodies of criminals, suicides and other undesirables separated from the traditional burials. Not only were the remains exiled from hallowed ground, but they were also relegated to the northernmost part of the cemetery, where it was cold, dark and damp.

  My gaze followed the dipping path into the copse. When I was a child, I hadn’t minded the gloominess of that corner. I’d felt very sorry for the outcasts who were buried there and had taken it upon myself to visit each grave so that the dead would know that I’d been there. But Papa refused to linger. He’d always made quick work of his duties, seemingly anxious to be back out in the sunlight. He’d never forbidden me to play there, but I wondered if he’d known just how much time I’d spent inside that shadowy enclave, reading aloud to the dead and weaving daisy chains to adorn their headstones.

  I could feel a tug toward that murky place now, but I told myself the attraction was nothing more than my own curiosity. I really wanted to believe that. As I hovered there clutching the straps of my backpack, it came to me that I was standing on the exact spot where the two pathways diverged. A crossroads. Straight ahead lay the safety of hallowed ground. To the left, a slanting stone trail into perpetual twilight. I had a choice of destinations. I wanted to believe that, too. But even as the notion of free will flitted through my head, I was already picking my way along the broken flagstones, guided by the melancholy fragrances of damp earth and dead leaves.

  A breeze drifted through the crowding oaks, rippling the leaves and stirring long curtains of Spanish moss. Despite Papa’s care, the years hadn’t been kind to this part of the cemetery. I could see a handful of fallen stones while others had succumbed to the tenacious clutches of ivy roots and vandals. The crumbling markers were mostly rough fieldstones and simple slate tablets. No angels resided here. No saints marked my progress along the winding pathway.

  Deeper and deeper I traveled, my footsteps silenced by moss. I hadn’t been back that way in years and wondered if I would even recognize the headstone on which I’d found the key. But presently my gaze came to rest on a crumbling marker, and the flesh at my nape started to crawl. Time, weather and perhaps even a bolt of lightning had blackened the face of the stone so that the name was completely obscured. I had no idea who was buried in the sunken grave nor did it seem to matter.

  I paused on the trail, gathering my courage before making my way through the dead leaves and underbrush to the back of the marker so as not to tread upon the grave. Pushing aside tendrils of ivy and brambles, I scratched away some of the lichen and then ran my hand lightly across the rough surface. I could feel a slight indentation in the stone and leaned down for a closer inspection. Perhaps it was the hazy light or the power of suggestion, but I fancied I could trace the outline of a shank, teet
h and bow.

  I removed the skeleton key from my backpack and placed it in the hollow. It was a perfect fit.

  How many years had that key remained on the headstone, waiting for me to return? Why had it come back to me now? And how could it possibly be my salvation?

  The wind picked up and the leaves started to quiver as the light faded. In the outside world, dusk hadn’t yet fallen, but here in this forsaken corner, the veil had already thinned and the ghosts were getting restless.

  My gaze was still riveted on the headstone. As the chill of a manifestation settled over me, the key started to glow.

  Twenty-Nine

  “Amelia? What are you doing, child?”

  At the sound of Papa’s voice, I snatched the key from the headstone and stuffed it in my pocket, guilt niggling as I turned to face him. I’d brought the key into the cemetery, so I wasn’t breaking any rules by taking it with me, but I had a bad feeling that Papa might consider my rationalization a matter of semantics.

  “I was looking for you,” I told him. “I thought I heard you back here.”

  “Come along. It’s getting on dark and your mother will be back soon.”

  He took my hand as we walked back toward the gate. I could feel the unwelcome weight of the key in my pocket and I felt the same fear and confusion I’d experienced on that long-ago twilight because I somehow knew my life was about to take another terrifying turn.

  Papa must have sensed my distress. He clung to my hand until we got to the end of the path, and then he opened the gate and we both stepped through onto hallowed ground. We walked in silence through the monuments and markers until we reached the stone angels. I dropped to the ground and Papa lowered himself more tentatively. Drawing my knees to my chest, I watched the statues come alive in the fiery glow of a Carolina sunset.

  When the dance was over and the sun had dipped beneath the horizon, Papa finally turned to me, his grizzled features taut with worry. “What’s wrong? Why are you here?”