The Visitor

by Amanda Stevens

  My first instinct was to hightail it back to the main road and get someone to help me search. Despite all my ghost sightings and years of working in isolated cemeteries, I didn’t want to be alone in that forest. Not after the terrifying incident on the trail. The foulness of an unknown presence and the opposing rush of wind had left me frightened, not to mention the fact that two of the keys had somehow come alive as I approached Kroll Cemetery. This did not bode well. I wanted nothing so much as to hurry off to the nearest bit of hallowed ground where I could protect myself from what was coming.

  But I couldn’t shake a shivery premonition that the ghosts should be the least of my worries at the moment. Time might be of the essence for Dr. Shaw. If I left the woods only to find out later that something had happened to him, I’d never forgive myself.

  Taking one last survey of my surroundings, I grabbed my backpack from the car after safely stowing the two loose keys in the zippered pocket. Then I locked the door before setting out on the footpath.

  The closeness of the woods soon engulfed me. I could hear water dripping somewhere nearby, but I couldn’t pinpoint the source. If I stopped on the path and turned in a circle, the sound seemed to follow me. Working alone in remote locations as I had for so many years, I’d developed a good sense of direction. But Dr. Shaw was right. The lack of sunlight and the sameness of my surroundings proved disorienting.

  I kept going, stopping periodically to take out my phone. No matter how many times I called or how far along the path I traveled, the ringing seemed to come from somewhere ahead of me.

  But if the scenery could be disorienting, it stood to reason that sound might also be distorted. I wanted to call out to Dr. Shaw, shout his name at the top of my lungs, but my every instinct warned that it might not be wise to broadcast my whereabouts. If he was moving away from me, back toward the cemetery, then he must have a good reason.

  The trees along the path grew ever denser, the hardwoods and evergreens gradually giving way to overgrown hedges of boxwood, honeysuckle and gardenia. The shrubbery formed a tunnel with narrow channels breaking off on either side. I stopped and glanced around with quickening breath. I had come to the entrance of the maze.

  The opening was shrouded, but I could see where the vines and bushes had recently been chopped back to reveal bits of rusted metal beneath the greenery.

  The maze was so much larger than I had expected. I could hardly imagine Rose in her state of confusion planning something so intricate. The planting alone would have taken a very long time, and I couldn’t help wondering about her original intent. Had she meant to thwart trespassers or to keep the ghosts trapped inside Kroll Cemetery?

  As I stepped through the entrance, the untamed shrubbery rose twenty feet or more. The tapestry of leaves and limbs was so tightly interwoven that I could see nothing of the other channels. It had been cool and dim in the woods, but the dense vegetation constricted airflow. I started to perspire and soon found myself a little short-winded as I trudged along. I remembered Owen’s instructions and followed the path wherever it veered or broke left, keeping my eyes peeled for footprints in the dirt or broken twigs in the hedges that would let me know someone had passed this way before me.

  Eventually, I came to a spot where the main path seemed to angle to the right, but there was no branching trail to the left. I had the strongest urge to keep going. It was almost like a magnet pulling me forward, but even as I felt that strange tug, I realized I was experiencing a very clever illusion. There was, indeed, a path to the left, another choice, but the hedge wall curved in such a way as to obscure the entrance. I would never have noticed without Owen’s warning.

  After making the turn, I soon arrived at the cemetery gate, a wrought iron affair so cloaked in ivy that I couldn’t see through into the graveyard. The brick wall in which it had been set was at least ten feet high. I could have climbed a tree and jumped over, but not without some difficulty.

  Slipping off my backpack, I searched for the loose brick that would release the catch. As I moved in closer, I noticed that the gate stood ajar and rocked slightly as if someone had passed through it just before me.

  I paused, listening to the silence. There was no sound at all now, no matter how focused my attention. No scurrying feet. No rustling leaves. Just the soft rush of my own breathing. I tried to steady my nerves as I called Dr. Shaw’s number yet again. The ringtone was definitely louder. Without a doubt, the phone was inside the cemetery.

  As I pushed open the gate, I became aware of the weight of the skeleton key around my neck. Perhaps it was nothing more than my imagination, but I could have sworn I felt the heat of it against my skin.

  As I slipped through the entrance something occurred to me. Here in Kroll Cemetery, I was the visitor. A welcome one I hoped, but who could say for certain?

  Thirty-Five

  As a child at Papa’s side, I’d learned to appreciate the grace and beauty of old graveyards. They were withering gardens, unique unto themselves and dedicated to the ancestral worship of our Southern culture.

  During my time as a restorer, I’d traipsed through countless burial sites, raked endless graves, cleaned hundreds of headstones. I’d restored graveyards large and small, old and ancient, the forgotten and the revered. But nothing had prepared me for Kroll Cemetery. It was, as Dr. Shaw had promised, the most strangely beautiful place I’d ever encountered.

  The graveyard was small in comparison to the maze, completely contained within the crumbling brick walls and shaded by an immense live oak. A rambling rose had snaked all the way to the top of the tree, spreading its feelers along the branches and snowing petals down upon the graves beneath. Where light shone through the leaves, the trunk and limbs took on a fragile glow from the thousands of cicada husks that clung to the bark. The effect was breathtakingly ethereal, as if the whole cemetery had been trapped in amber.

  Somehow I knew the cicada shell placed on my nightstand had come from this place. I had been right to worry about the unwitting trade of my bookmark.

  My fingers crept to the skeleton key around my neck—yet another accidental barter and one that I feared would have far-reaching consequences. The key had kept the ghosts at bay earlier, but not for a second did I think that I’d discovered its true purpose.

  Reluctantly, I tucked the key back into my shirt as I gazed around. The lush fragrance and riotous color from the wildflowers was nothing new in my line of work. I had seen many beautiful graveyards. But Dr. Shaw’s photographs hadn’t done justice to this one. He’d focused on the keys and numbers etched into the headstones while ignoring the whimsical whorls, spires and arched embellishments that added a storybook charm to the cemetery.

  The layout was also mazelike, with stone pathways curling around and through the graves in no discernible pattern. Against the far wall, a tabletop tomb rose on curved legs, the intricate domed top reminiscent of an old-fashioned jewelry box. One of the legs had succumbed to time, weather and the spreading roots of the ancient oak tree so that the structure rested at a precarious angle. It was the only exposed vault in the cemetery and I was curious to learn if Ezra Kroll’s remains were interred there. However, my first priority was finding Dr. Shaw.

  I scanned every shadowy corner of the graveyard. Either he was long gone or concealed within the scented enclave created by the climbing rosebush. Or—and this thought really frightened me—he lay prone in the tall weeds near the tomb. But where was his investigator? Surely both men couldn’t have disappeared or fallen prey to an ambush.

  Placing one final call, I followed the sound of the ringtone along those spiraling pathways, resisting the urge to stop and study the inscriptions, numbers and all those key engravings. Nor did I take the time to hunt for Rose’s grave. As much as I wanted to see my great-grandmother’s final resting place and as intrigued as I was by Dr. Shaw’s braille discovery, the solving of that riddle would
have to come later.

  I located his phone lying in the grass near a headstone. The case felt warm, as though someone had just dropped it, but I told myself the sun or even the battery could have heated the metal.

  Glancing around anxiously, I called out his name. The responding echo sent icy fingers skidding down my spine. Then I heard nothing but silence.

  The utter absence of sound and movement unnerved me. Bees should have been busy in the honeysuckle, birds picking at the early blackberries. It was as if that abandoned graveyard really had been suspended in amber, frozen in time and space for all eternity. I was reminded of Louvenia Durant’s observation that no dog or horse would come near the place.

  But there was some noise, I realized. A slight buzzing in my ears that propelled me into a slow circle as I searched in vain for a physical source. Daylight had always been my refuge, but now it seemed the entities could reach out to me even when the veil was at its thickest. If the unbound power of death had bestowed upon me uncanny perception and ghostly telepathy, it had also left me with a dangerous vulnerability.

  The droning in my head grew louder and the ground tilted as a wave of dizziness rolled over me. I collapsed in a cold sweat as the cemetery walls started to spin and the voices in my head rose to a desperate crescendo. I felt enormous pressure in my chest, a kind of suction in my lungs and that same rush of wind.

  Fumbling with the ribbon around my neck, I pulled the skeleton key free from my shirt and clutched it in my fist, willing whatever power it contained to help thwart those insidious voices inside my head.

  Nothing happened at first and I thought the earlier incident must have truly been a fluke. But after a moment, the voices faded to a whisper. The pressure eased. Once more the key had temporarily locked the door to the dead world.

  Released from the spell, I sat up and squinted into the sunlight. The entire event had lasted only a matter of moments, but I had the unsettling notion that a chunk of time had passed me by. Fear pricked at the base of my spine as I rose on rickety legs. The sky was cloudless, but the air had the same electric calm that came before a storm.

  I’d dropped Dr. Shaw’s phone in the grass and now I grabbed it and tucked it away in a pocket. As I turned to retrace my steps to the gate, a feeling came over me that I was no longer alone. Someone had entered the cemetery without my notice.

  My gaze swept over the walls, the oak tree and finally the tabletop tomb. I saw someone lurking behind the domed lid and my breath quickened as I recognized Micah Durant’s shimmering hair.

  Nervously, I called out to him. “Hello?”

  He didn’t answer, just stood staring out at me through the gloom.

  “My name is Amelia Gray,” I said as I began inching toward the gate. “I saw you at the house a little while ago. Your grandmother invited me to take a look at the cemetery.”

  I could hear the drone of a hive somewhere in the woods behind him where earlier I’d heard no sound at all. I’d no sooner recognized the buzzing than Micah tilted his head skyward and slowly lifted his outstretched arms.

  He meant to summon the bees, maybe even the workers from the same colony as the one that had stung me in Louvenia’s driveway. If they zeroed in on the lingering pheromones, there would be no running away from them, no place to hide from them.

  All of this passed through my mind in the space of a heartbeat. I tried to concentrate my every thought on survival as I mentally sifted through the contents of my pockets. The phone would do me no good. We were miles from anyone. The pepper spray would only help if I could spray it directly in Micah’s eyes, and I had no intention of allowing him to get that close to me. If I could make it through the gate and into the maze, I might be able to elude him, but I wouldn’t be able to outrun the bees. I had to find shelter and quickly.

  I felt the crawl of tiny feet at the back of my neck, on my arm and in my hair. And then something very strange happened. Extraordinary even by my standards. A terrible noise arose within the walls of the cemetery as a winged horde descended from the branches of the live oak.

  I thought at first Micah had summoned the bees and my arms instinctively flew up to cover my face and head. Then I realized that honeybees did not make the kind of high-pitched whine that sprang forth from the swirling brood, a sound that could only be described as a chain saw slicing through concrete.

  Cicadas.

  Thousands and thousands of cicadas.

  The insect cloud grew so dense, I could no longer see Micah, and it came to me in a flash that this was the cover and distraction I needed.

  Engulfed in that clattering cyclone, I fled from the cemetery.

  Thirty-Six

  The din of the cicadas followed me through the gate, but once I entered the maze, the sound died away as if the graveyard walls were somehow able to contain it. I couldn’t help but think those cicadas had been summoned. I wondered if Mott had been there all along lurking in the shadows, perhaps crawling through the walls as she observed my every move. A wizened guardian whose intent I had yet to determine.

  But I wouldn’t contemplate her motives at the moment. I needed to keep my wits about me so that I could find my way back to the road. Before I’d gone too deeply into the maze, I paused to gather my bearings, mentally reversing Owen’s instructions. I heard no sounds of pursuit, human or otherwise, and after a while, I began to wonder if Micah had only meant to frighten me away.

  I still couldn’t come up with a rational explanation for Dr. Shaw’s absence unless he and his investigator had also been scared off. I found that prospect unlikely, but wherever they’d gone to, I needed to find them.

  I’d been traveling through the maze at a good clip, senses on alert for any threatening sound or movement when I ran into a dead end. I had been careful with my turns, but somehow I must have missed one in my rush to get away. I backtracked a few steps only to realize that I was hopelessly disoriented.

  Stopping to regroup, I reminded myself that I’d been lost in a laurel bald once and had managed to find my way out. That particular thicket had covered the whole side of a mountain, the vegetation so dense in places that I’d had to drop to my hands and knees and crawl through the narrow channels with a killer on my trail.

  This maze had been planted by my great-grandmother, and though it seemed large from the inside, I doubted it covered much more than a few acres. Since the cemetery lay directly south of where I’d left my car, all I had to do was use the position of the sun and the compass app on my phone to work my way out.

  With that plan in mind, I resumed my journey, taking the time to carefully chart a new course each time I came to a dead end, heading due north whenever possible. As I made my way through, I tried to listen for snapping twigs or hurrying footsteps—or the drone of bees—but all was silent inside the hedges.

  The farther I traveled, the more convinced I became that I was in no real danger. Micah hadn’t made a move toward me in the cemetery nor had he threatened me that day in the Unitarian Churchyard. Maybe I’d overreacted, giving him exactly what he wanted.

  I trudged on until the shrubbery thinned and I could see an archway just ahead. But I hadn’t found my way back to the road or my car, I soon realized. Somehow the wrong turn had taken me to another opening in the maze.

  The first thing I saw when I stepped out of the hedges was a dilapidated house. It had once been white, but most of the paint had peeled away and the rotting boards had weathered to gray. Pieces of latticework clung to either end of the sagging front porch and I could see the jagged teeth of broken windows both upstairs and down. Beyond the yard, the remains of an outbuilding peeked up out of the trees, and the rusty squeak of a weather vane sent a shiver down my spine.

  Despite years of neglect, I recognized the house from the stereogram. Rose had once lived in those shadowy rooms, sequestered from her family and tormented by a ho
rde of angry, restless ghosts. She may even have gouged out her eyes and hanged herself because of their relentless pursuit. If ever a place could be haunted, it would be my great-grandmother’s home.

  The tumbledown dwelling seemed to call out to me, but this was not the time for exploration. I needed to find my way back to the car and make sure Dr. Shaw was safe. Now that I was out of the maze, I had a better sense of direction and felt certain if I kept heading north, I would eventually come out at the road.

  Checking the compass and the position of the sun, I set out once again only to freeze at a sudden noise. Somewhere in the maze, a ringtone had gone off. The sound of civilization beckoned even as I held back in alarm. As much as I wanted to believe that I was in no real danger from any of the Kroll relatives, I would be foolish to let down my guard, especially in such a remote location.

  As I stood there with an ear turned toward the maze, the ringing stopped but I feared that Micah or one of the others was headed straight toward me. I could go back into the maze and try to elude him or I could hide out in the woods. But if he released the bees, my only hope was shelter.

  I whirled back to the house. The stare of all those darkened windows was like a silent invitation.

  Skirting the edge of the yard so as not to leave a path of flattened weeds, I made my way around to the back of the house where the woods had long since encroached.

  Piles of bones from small prey littered the clearing and the putrid odor of a fresher kill drifted out from beneath the porch. As I neared the back steps, a feeling of oppression descended and the smell of rotting flesh turned my stomach. Kneeling at the bottom of the stairs, I peered up under the porch. I could just make out a small gate in the enclosure. As my gaze traveled along the fence, I suddenly had the sense that something was holed up in the shadows watching me.