The Restorer

by Amanda Stevens

  “You’ve spent a lot of time in graveyards, haven’t you?”

  “It’s my job.”

  “Even when you were a kid?”

  “More or less. My father was a cemetery caretaker. He had several that he looked after, but my favorite was the one by our house. Rosehill. Have you ever heard of it? It’s surrounded by dozens and dozens of rosebushes. Some of them are over a hundred years old. They climb up in the trees and hang down from the limbs. In the summer, the scent is like heaven. I loved playing there when I was a little girl.”

  “You played in a graveyard?”

  “Why not? It was quiet and beautiful. A perfect little kingdom.”

  “You are a very strange woman.”

  “I thought I was practical.”

  “Strange, stunning and practical.”

  My heart quickened. I loved his description even though it seemed so out of character for him. It made me think of Rhapsody for some reason. Strange, stunning and practical. A girl who could play kick ball and cast spells.

  The steady beam of the flashlight revealed nothing ahead but more brick walls and more darkness.

  We’d only been walking for a few minutes, but already we seemed a long way from the opening through which we’d crawled. I wondered if help had arrived yet. Devlin must have told them I was trapped in the chamber, but how would they know to look for us in here? We were far enough away by now that I doubted they would even hear us if we called out.

  Devlin stopped so abruptly I almost plowed into his back.

  “What is it?”

  “Another opening.” He slanted the beam toward the bottom of the wall to our right. Some of the bricks had been removed to make a hole large enough to crawl through.

  He knelt in front of it and shined the light through.

  “Is it another tunnel?” My query bounced off the walls and came back to me.

  “Looks like it.” He paused, still probing the darkness. “I smell mildew and rot. This place is old.”

  “What do you suppose it was originally used for?” I stood in the dark, hugging my arms around my middle. The air was damp and dank. Like the touch of a ghost. “These tunnels must have taken years to dig.”

  “Maybe there was an old plantation house here before the cemetery was built. This could be part of a cellar system. They sometimes put the slave quarters underground.”

  Slave quarters. Perhaps that explained the pall that lay over Oak Grove.

  My gaze lifted. It must be twilight up there now.

  “Wouldn’t this place flood when the water’s up?” I asked.

  “Probably why there’s mildew and slime all over the place.”

  I glanced around nervously. “How do you suppose he found it?”

  “Old records, deeds. Or maybe he stumbled upon it by accident like we did.”

  “We keep saying he.”

  “Most predatory killers are male.” Devlin straightened.

  I nodded toward the opening. “Are we going in there?”

  “No. I think we should stay in the original tunnel. We can always double back. Let’s just keep going.”

  We started walking again.

  “This place reminds me of a recurring dream I had as a child,” I said, falling into step behind him. I tried not to project beyond the strength of the flashlight beam. “It was terrifying. So traumatic you would think I’d been lost in a tunnel or a cave in real life, but there was nothing like that where I grew up.”

  “Maybe the tunnel represented a different kind of trauma.”

  “Maybe. At one end, I could see a faint glimmer of light and on the other end, nothing but darkness. I would always start out walking toward the light, but then something would compel me to turn and I would go toward the darkness, only to be tugged back around to the light. This would happen over and over again. A few steps in one direction, turn, a few steps in the other direction. It was the most awful tug-of-war you can imagine.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “Yes. Except…once in a while I could hear a woman’s voice. She spoke in whispers. I could never quite make out what she said, but I always listened and listened, hoping that she would tell me where I was supposed to go, but she never did. And if I stopped for too long, the hands would come out of the walls.”

  “Hands?”

  I shuddered. “Dozens of them. Pale and grasping. I knew that if they managed to grab me, they would pull me down into some dark place far more terrifying than what awaited me at either end of the tunnel. So I would start walking again. A few steps toward the light. Turn. A few steps toward the darkness.”

  “You never made it to the end?”

  “Never. I’d wake up with the most dreadful feeling of being lost and not having a clue where I was or where I was meant to be.”

  “Sounds like a near-death experience,” Devlin said. “Not that I believe in any of that stuff, but the way you described your dream is a lot like the way I’ve heard people talk about an NDE. Except for the hands,” he added. “That’s new.”

  “The hands were the scariest part.”

  He waved the flashlight over the walls. “See? No hands.”

  “Thanks.” I tripped over the corner of a loose brick and righted myself with a palm to his back. Quickly, I pulled away. “Have you ever had a recurring nightmare?”

  “Yes.” He paused. “And then I wake up and remember that it’s real.”

  The silence stretched on and on.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  We were well into the tunnel by this time. Too late to turn back. I could feel a chill at my back and imagined a ghost behind me, creeping through the shadows, coveting my energy, leeching my warmth.

  I whirled, my heart in my throat. “Did you hear something?”

  “No.” Devlin turned and swung the light down the tunnel.

  I caught the gleam of beady eyes and then the scurry of tiny feet. Just a rat.

  We pressed forward. I was breathing a little easier now, knowing the sounds I’d heard from behind me were nothing more than the scratch of rodent claws on brick. And oddly, telling Devlin about my dream had lightened my mood, unchained me from a childhood terror that had dogged me for years. It had also made him my confidant. I’d never told anyone about that nightmare. What this said about my feelings for him, I was a little too scared to consider.

  We had been keeping a steady pace, but now I slowed, my head turning to the side as a new sound invaded the silence. I paused, took a step forward, then glanced over my shoulder.

  “Something’s back there.”

  Devlin barely broke stride. “Another rat.”

  “No, not a rat. Listen.”

  Nothing but silence.

  Then it came again, a sort of furtive shuffle. The hair sprang up at my nape.

  “There! Did you hear it?”

  Devlin whirled, the light beam piercing the darkness. “Stay calm.”

  “I am calm,” I said over the thunder of my heartbeat. “What do you think it is?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  It wasn’t a ghost. This was something very real, something solid and alive.

  Devlin transferred the flashlight to his left hand, and with his right, drew his gun from the holster. Again and again, he swept the beam across the darkness.

  “Get in front of me,” he said and handed me the flashlight.

  “He’s back there, isn’t he?” I whispered.

  “Just keep moving.”

  We walked in complete silence now. Once the sound faded, my nerves settled and I noticed we were ascending. And just when I hoped that meant the end would soon be in sight, we came to a dead end.

  There was nothing in front of us but a solid brick wall.

  The thought of turning around and going back toward that sound, back to that chamber of horrors was too much. I was emotionally drained. Spent. I felt like dropping to the floor and bursting into tears.

  “Over there,” Devlin said, and pressed my hand holding the flashlight down
and to the left.

  Another opening. Another way out.

  He took the flashlight and shined it into the hole.

  “Is it a way out?” I asked nervously.

  “I think so. Come on.” He went first and waited for me on the other side.

  We were in some sort of circular chamber maybe five feet wide in diameter. Metal steps had been bolted into the wall and I felt a surge of elation until I realized those stairs led up to nothing. There was no opening at the top. Just total darkness.

  “I think we’re in an old well or cistern,” Devlin said. His voice had a metallic sound as it ricocheted off the round walls.

  “How do we get out?”

  “There must be a lid or something over the top.” He slanted the beam upward for a moment, then handed me the flashlight and his gun.

  “Do you know how to use a weapon?”

  “No, not really.”

  “The safety’s off. If anything comes through that hole, point at it and squeeze the trigger. Don’t think, just do it.” I nodded.

  “Keep the light,” he said. “Don’t watch me, watch that hole.”

  “Okay.”

  He tested his weight on the ladder, his footsteps clanging as he went up. Within seconds, he was twenty feet above me. I heard the click of the lighter and a grunt or two from Devlin as he tried to dislodge the cover, but I resisted the temptation to glance up.

  “Is it bolted down?”

  “It’s a door. I see hinges and a handle, but something solid has been placed on top of it outside. I can move it, but I can’t open it more than a crack.”

  My eyes were still glued to the opening as I clutched the weapon in one hand and the flashlight in the other. For a moment I could have sworn—

  There it was! That stealthy shuffle, as though someone was inching his way along the tunnel, skulking through the darkness so as not to give away his position.

  “He’s coming,” I whispered.

  My voice carried all the way to the top. The stairs clanged as Devlin quickly descended. He took the gun and the flashlight and swept the beam up the ladder.

  “Get to the top. I’ve managed to pry the door open a few inches. See if you can squeeze through.”

  “What about you?”

  “Just go. I’ll be right behind you.”

  But as I started up the ladder, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the light disappear through the hole.

  “Devlin?”

  No answer.

  I was torn between going up and coming back down. The torturous indecision was like my nightmare all over again. I was still hanging there a moment later when Devlin crawled back though the opening.

  He didn’t say a word, just waited at the bottom until I’d climbed to the top and then he followed me up.

  I shimmied through the opening, scraping elbows and knees against the rough brick, and then once through, I used all my strength to heave a boulder aside and open the door.

  Devlin crawled up out of the well and we both turned to survey our surroundings. We were somewhere in the woods outside the cemetery gates.

  It was not yet dark. The horizon still glowed in the west. To the east, the moon rose over the treetops. A breeze whispered through the leaves and I could smell jasmine in the twilight.

  Devlin took my hand and we walked through the cooling air as his ghosts slipped through the veil behind us.

  TWENTY-NINE

  By the time I left the cemetery, the place was swarming with cops. Crime scene techs had descended upon the chamber and a small army of policemen was combing through the tunnels. I assumed Devlin would be occupied for hours so I was completely shocked when he showed up at my door later that night.

  I’d been home long enough to shower and fix myself a light dinner, though I couldn’t bring myself to do much more than pick at the salad. What had been seen in that chamber could not be unseen, and I had a bad feeling it would be days, if not weeks, before I managed a full night’s sleep.

  Devlin had brought a laptop with him so that we could go through the Oak Grove images together. I assumed he’d come to the same conclusion I had earlier—Hannah Fischer had been in that chamber either dead or alive while I’d been aboveground photographing headstones. The theft of my briefcase solidified my suspicion that the killer believed I’d captured something incriminating in one or more of those shots.

  But how had he known those pictures were in my briefcase…unless he’d seen them?

  On the day the body had been discovered, I’d spent the afternoon at Emerson, both upstairs in the main library and in the basement archives area. The briefcase had been left unattended for long periods of time while I combed through boxes of records and scrolled through the database. If the case had been open, anyone passing by could have glimpsed the pictures. Which would mean that at some point during the day, I had been in proximity to the killer. We might have brushed shoulders or exchanged pleasantries. The thought of that now in the aftermath of our discovery—with the purpose of those chains and pulleys so gruesomely apparent—made me ill.

  Before Devlin arrived, I’d put together a chart of everything we knew about the burial site of each victim, starting with Hannah Fischer.

  Along with a floral design, the headstone had been engraved with a floating feather and this poetic epitaph:

  The midnight stars weep upon her silent grave,

  Dead but dreaming, this child we could not save.

  The headstone on the grave where the unidentified remains had been excavated contained a single full-blown rose, a winged soul effigy and the inscription:

  How soon fades this gentle rose,

  Freed from earthly woes,

  She lies in eternal repose.

  Since Afton Delacourt’s body had been left on the floor of the mausoleum rather than buried, I had no headstone art or epitaph with which to compare, but I thought the art and inscription on the vault that had led us to the hidden chamber might be significant clues. The broken chain deviated from the soul-in-flight motif on the two headstones, but the verse intrigued me:

  The day breaks…

  The shadows flee…

  The shackles open…

  And now blessed sleep.

  As I looked down through my chart, underlining “feather,” “soul effigy,” “broken chain” and “shackles,” I felt a stirring of excitement. Maybe Tom Gerrity was right. The answer was there, staring me right in the face, if only I could interpret the killer’s message.

  How much time did we have, I wondered, before he claimed his next victim?

  “What is it?” Devlin asked.

  His voice startled me in the quiet. I’d almost forgotten he was there, which also surprised me. “I was just sitting here going over all the epitaphs and symbols and thinking that Tom Gerrity was right. There is a message in all of this, but I don’t know how to read it.” I paused. “Have you found anything?”

  “No, unfortunately.” He sounded as frustrated as I felt.

  “You know what’s still bothering me? How the killer knew about those tunnels.”

  “Like I said earlier, old records, deeds. By accident.” He glanced up. “I’ll tell you what’s bothering me. The way the skeleton was shackled.”

  “Because it breaks the pattern?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “When will you hear from Ethan?”

  “Soon. He’ll make it a priority. At least now he can compare any anomalies or details he finds in this skeleton with the remains we exhumed from the grave.”

  We both fell silent for a moment as we concentrated on the Oak Grove images.

  Then I thought of something else I wanted to tell him. “Remember I mentioned earlier about seeing Daniel Meakin in the archives room at Emerson? I asked him that day about the possibility of a missing register from an old church that was once connected to Oak Grove. He said a lot of records were destroyed during and after the Civil War, but he also mentioned that some of them might have merely been misplaced becau
se everything is such a mess down there. And he’s right about that. Someone could have easily removed any record or book that cited those tunnels and no one would have missed them.”

  “Did he mention anything other than a church in connection to that property?”

  “No. And we talked about it, too. He did tell me that he has some old books in his office that reference Oak Grove. He was going to look up some information for me, but I haven’t seen him since that day.”

  Devlin nodded. “I’ll go talk to him.”

  “I think that’s a good idea. If anyone would know whether something had been there before the church, it would be him.” I hesitated as something else occurred to me. “This probably has nothing to do with anything, but Temple told me that Meakin once tried to commit suicide.”

  Devlin glanced up.

  “I know it’s just gossip, but apparently she saw a nasty-looking scar on his wrist. And he does tend to favor his left hand. You’ll see what I mean when you talk to him. He holds it at an odd angle as if he’s constantly bothered by that scar or overly aware of what he tried to do to himself.”

  “He’s always been a little strange,” Devlin said.

  I cocked my head in surprise. “You know him? When you said you knew of him, I assumed you were familiar with his work.”

  “He was a few years ahead of me in school.”

  “What school? Emerson? You went to Emerson?”

  He frowned at the accusatory note in my tone. “Is that a problem?”

  “No…it’s not a problem, but why didn’t you mention it before?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t talk about my personal life unless it’s relevant.”

  I stared down at my chart, wondering if he would consider my next question relevant or just plain nosy. “Did you meet your wife at Emerson?” I almost said “Mariama,” but caught myself because Devlin had never once called her by name. Another odd thing.