The Awakening

by Amanda Stevens

  “I can’t help you with that.”

  He straightened as if he meant to end our conversation, but I said quickly, “No, wait. I understand about respecting privacy, but I need to ask you about someone who came to the cemetery yesterday. A woman. She came early, before sunrise. I didn’t see a car around, but I noticed her footprints in the soft ground. The tracks must have been made after the rain stopped. I think she visited the crib grave and then she left by way of the side gate when she heard me approach. You were in the cemetery early. Did you see her?”

  He rubbed his hand across the scruff on his lower face. “You were the only person I saw in the cemetery yesterday.”

  He hadn’t seen Claire Bellefontaine and her stepbrother? He hadn’t seen Devlin? “I noticed the footprints again when I exited the side gate. I followed them here. Did she come to see you?”

  “I just said I didn’t see anyone but you in the cemetery.”

  “You said in the cemetery. I’m asking if she came to your house.”

  His eyes darkened and I wondered if I had pushed him too far. “How do you know they were even the same prints?”

  “One of the heels had a distinct mark like a cut or indentation. It was most definitely made by the same shoe.”

  He said nothing to that, merely glared at me until alarm skittered along my backbone.

  I took a breath and said in an appeasing tone, “I don’t mean to badger you and I’m not trying to pry into your private affairs. But there are things going on in Woodbine Cemetery that concern me. It’s more than just the dead birds. Or the signs, as you call them. I’m just trying to find out what I’ve gotten myself into.”

  He was silent for a long moment, those cold eyes taking my measure before he shrugged. “I don’t know her name. She’s never said and I don’t ask. She comes to the cemetery a few times a month. We have the same arrangement she had with the previous caretaker.”

  “Which is?”

  “She slips me a few bucks every now and then to clean up around the stone crib. Sometimes she asks me to plant a certain flower, depending on the season. She leaves toys and coins and whatnot on holidays and sometimes she just sits beside the grave reading a book. She always comes early and she goes to a lot of trouble not to be seen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve never seen a car anywhere near the cemetery when she visits. I figure she takes a taxi. Or maybe someone drops her off and comes back to pick her up.” He gave me a shrewd look. “She’s not the only one, you know. Plenty of people sneak in and out of Woodbine to pay their respects or quiet their conscience. What makes this woman so special?”

  “I’m wondering if she could be the anonymous donor.”

  “She respects the dead, but I doubt she has the kind of money to hire someone like you.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “Do you know who Jonathan Devlin is?”

  I watched him closely, but his facade of surly indifference never wavered. “I know the name. Be kind of hard to miss in this city with all the Devlin this and Devlin that.”

  “He came to the cemetery this morning,” I said. “We spoke briefly. I wondered if you’d ever seen him here before.”

  “How should I know? He could walk up the porch steps and knock on my front door and I doubt I’d recognize him. If he visits Woodbine, chances are I never noticed him. Like I said, the gates are left unlocked. Easy enough to slip in and out without calling attention.” He paused. “You sure have a lot of questions.”

  “Yes, and I’m sorry about that. I don’t mean to sound as if I’m grilling you. I’ve wanted to talk to you for a while about all this. As I said, I came by here yesterday after I finished in the cemetery. When I first walked up, there was a song playing in your workshop. It sounded familiar. Haunting. I wonder if you remember the name of it.”

  For the first time, I seemed to have cracked his wall of indifference. Something flared in his eyes. “You may have heard music, but it wasn’t coming from my workshop. Must have been a car radio. I wasn’t around yesterday and I always keep the place locked up when I’m gone. Too many nosy people around.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was a dig at me or not. “The door was wide open. I could hear the music all the way to the road. There wasn’t any traffic, so it couldn’t have been a car radio. I didn’t just go snooping around your property,” I assured him. “I knocked on your door just as I did today. When you didn’t answer, I assumed you were in the workshop. I called out to you, but I thought you might be unable to hear me over the music. As I said, the door was open, so I had a look inside. There was a record playing on an old phonograph.”

  “Phonograph?”

  “You know, a record player.”

  “I know what a phonograph is and there’s one back there all right, but it’s a piece of junk. I found it when I moved in and never got around to throwing it away.”

  “It was sitting right there on your worktable. I even heard the click of the arm as it reset itself and started the record over.” I glanced up at the house. “Do you live here alone? Could someone else have been in the workshop playing records?”

  “Not unless they broke in and even then...” He trailed off, his gaze sliding back across the yard toward the cemetery. “What time did you say you were here?”

  “Dusk or a little after. It was pretty dark around back where your shop is. I didn’t see anyone inside, but I had the impression that someone had bolted when they heard my voice. Maybe I interrupted a break-in. Have you been back there today? Is anything missing?”

  “Maybe we’d better go have a look.” His hand slipped under his jacket as if he were making sure he could get to his weapon. I did the same with my pepper spray.

  Investigating the workshop with Prosper Lamb probably wasn’t the best idea. I’d had some very dangerous encounters in the outbuildings of old properties. But I’d come here for answers, hadn’t I?

  My gaze darted back to the cemetery. I could still hear the wind chimes over the fence. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I could detect a melody now. The haunting strands that heralded the ghost child’s manifestation seemed like a warning, a sign that I should seek sanctuary before it was too late.

  Prosper Lamb had already rounded the corner of the house. I hesitated for only a moment before I hurried to catch up with him. Daylight was still upon us and so long as I kept a sharp eye, I’d be fine. As wary as I was of the caretaker, I couldn’t imagine that he meant me any harm. I’d been alone with him in the cemetery and nothing had happened.

  “How long have you lived here?” I asked as I came up behind him.

  “Nearly a decade.”

  “That long? Did you know the previous owner?”

  “There was no previous owner, just a previous caretaker. The property belongs to the trust. The house comes with the job. It’s not much to look at but it suits my needs.”

  “Have you...” I trailed away as the hair at my nape quilled.

  “Have I what?”

  “Have you had any strange experiences since you’ve been here?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “What kind of experiences?”

  “Unusual sounds, bad smells.”

  “Bad smells are why I bury the animal carcasses.”

  “I’m not talking about decomposition. Have you smelled sulfur?”

  That stopped him cold. He turned, cocking his head to one side as he stared at me. “Sulfur? Is that a joke?”

  “It’s not a joke. I smelled it last evening when I came through the side gate of the cemetery. I wondered if it might be sewer gas in the area or some kind of bacteria in the water. You’ve never noticed it?”

  His face was shadowed by the house, but I could feel his gaze on me, dark and intent. “If I smelled sulfur, I doubt I would have forgotten.” He turned an
d started toward the workshop.

  I didn’t know why I felt the need to press him. Maybe his comments in the cemetery about signs and omens made me wonder if he was a kindred spirit. Maybe I wanted to believe he could help me figure all this out so that I wouldn’t have to go see Jonathan Devlin. “Have you seen anything strange around here?”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything you couldn’t explain.”

  “I live across the street from an old cemetery. I see strange things all the time. It’s like I told you before, places like Woodbine attract a certain element.”

  “But you were talking about a human element.”

  He seemed to falter but he kept walking. “What else would I mean?”

  The workshop was just ahead. Even with the sun still hovering on the horizon, the building lay in deep shadows. My gaze lifted to the roof and now I faltered, too. If something was up there, I couldn’t see it, and yet the breeze sweeping through the treetops drew a shiver.

  Prosper Lamb had stopped once again. His gaze followed mine along the roof and then he turned to face me once more. My heart was suddenly pounding, not because of the suspicion in the caretaker’s eyes, but because I knew that something watched us. I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t hear it, but something was near.

  “Have you ever heard anything on your roof?” I asked softly. “Have you ever seen anything up in the trees?”

  Even in the fading light, I saw the color leach from his face. “What are you talking about?”

  “I just—”

  His voice sharpened. “What did you see here last night? What did you hear?”

  “I already told you about the music.”

  “No, you heard something else.” His gaze darted to the roof as he took a step toward me and I took a step back. His eyes were gleaming now, feverish and demented, and I was all too aware of the gun he wore at his hip. “What did you hear? What did you see? Tell me!”

  I slid my hand into my pocket and closed my fingers around the pepper spray. “It may have been nothing. Just my imagination or pinecones dropping from the trees—”

  “Tell me!”

  His harshness startled me. I put a hand to my throat. “The tin roof popped. First on the house and then on the workshop. It sounded like footsteps. Like someone had jumped from the house to the workshop and then back to the house.”

  His eyes still blazed but his voice had softened in disbelief. “That’s impossible.”

  “I know.”

  He scanned the lines of the house and then turned to scour the workshop. “What did you see?”

  “When I came out of the workshop, something was perched on the edge of the roof. A vulture maybe or an owl. That’s the logical explanation. Only...” I still wasn’t sure why I was telling him all this. For so many years I’d guarded my secrets and now here I was confessing my connection to the dead world to a virtual stranger.

  But Prosper Lamb wasn’t just any stranger. Despite my distrust of the man, I’d sensed something in him from the first. He knew things. He saw things. Just like me.

  “Only what?” he asked in a near whisper.

  I reached for Rose’s key, tangling my fingers in the ribbon. “It looked human. And I could have sworn it watched me just like the sparrow in the cemetery watched me.”

  He said nothing for the longest moment. I wondered if he was trying to process everything or trying to discern my mental state. Maybe he was quiet for so long because he didn’t want to risk setting off an unbalanced woman.

  “Mr. Lamb, are you right?”

  “What did you bring to my house?”

  His outburst frightened me so thoroughly that I could only gape at him. He had been looking up at the roof, but now he whirled back to me, pressing so close that I could see that strange glint in his eyes and the glisten of spittle at the corners of his mouth.

  I put up a hand to stop him. “Don’t.”

  He seemed to catch himself then. He didn’t creep closer, but neither did he back away. Tension radiated between us. Then he drew a sharp breath, lifting his gaze skyward as he asked in a calmer tone, “What did you bring here?”

  I clutched Rose’s key tightly to my breast. “I didn’t bring it. It was already here.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true. I saw it on the roof from the cemetery gate.” As I spoke, I inched away, my fingers closing over the pepper spray. I tried to keep my tone even so as not to provoke him. Maybe it worked. He made no move to follow me. Then I stepped in a hole and went sprawling backward to the ground. He loomed over me and I tried to scramble away before I realized he’d reached his hand down to help me up.

  “You need to go,” he said. “Now.”

  “Why? What do you know? What aren’t you telling?”

  “I said go!”

  “All right, I’m going.” I studied his expression in the waning light as I slipped the pepper spray back into my pocket. “But you need to be careful. We both do. Whatever I saw on your roof could come back.”

  “Shush.” Once again he lifted his gaze to the sky.

  I heard a sound then, like a distant whispering. The breeze blew through the trees, stirring the woodsy scent of pine and cedar and an undercurrent of something I couldn’t name.

  The whispers grew progressively louder and more insistent. For a moment, I even imagined that I could hear my name on the breeze. Then I realized those strange, muted utterings came not from the wind or the leaves or even the ghosts in Woodbine Cemetery, but from the flap of a thousand wings.

  I scrambled to my feet as a shadow drifted over me. Not a cloud passing over the setting sun, I realized in awe, but a formation of starlings. I almost expected to see dead birds drop all around us and I braced myself for the coming death storm.

  Beside me, Prosper Lamb stood immobile, his gaze fixed on the sky. As we watched in frozen astonishment, the flock separated and then came back together, all those starlings swirling and dipping as one, creating extraordinary patterns against the deepening sky—ocean waves, a seashell and then a human face with beady eyes and a beak-like mouth.

  The face seemed to dip lower, as if that gaping mouth meant to devour us. I clutched Rose’s key, stunned by the eerie formations. We watched the sky until the starlings flew on and the whispering faded.

  Then I turned to the caretaker, my pulse still racing. “What just happened?”

  “It’s called a murmuration,” he said. “I’ve only witnessed it one other time in my life.”

  “What does it mean?”

  He tore his gaze from the sky and stared down at me in pity. “You still don’t get it, do you?”

  “Get what?”

  “All these birds... I told you before, they’re coming to you for a reason.”

  “Yes, I remember and I’ve done some research. The crow we found that first day...you called it a corpse bird. A death omen. You said it meant someone else is likely to pass. In certain beliefs, sparrows are considered soul catchers and starlings are messengers. I’m trying to figure out what it all means, but I have a feeling you already know.”

  “It’s not the birds you need worry about,” he said darkly. “The danger lies in what comes through the door after them.”

  Twenty-Four

  I was shaken by my encounter with Prosper Lamb and what we had witnessed in the sky, and even more unnerved by his reaction. He obviously had sensitivity to the dead world and I didn’t take lightly his warning about what might come through the door after the birds. I was frightened, yes, but I also felt an urgent need to solve the dead child’s murder so that her ghost could finally move on. It pained me to think of her eternally earthbound, but her killer’s trail had undoubtedly grown cold years ago. All I had to go on was the vision she’d shown me, but were there clues in tha
t disturbing vignette that I hadn’t picked up on? Hints in my dreams that I’d yet to cue into?

  I thought about what I did know. The haunting music. The smell of woodbine. A woman’s footprints in the cemetery.

  Jonathan Devlin’s desire to rid himself of a ghost.

  The ghost child’s rage. Her apparent attachment to the stone crib. Her scream as she’d fixated on Claire Bellefontaine.

  Perhaps I knew more than I realized. The puzzle pieces were all there and now it was time to start putting them together.

  Before time ran out.

  * * *

  Research had always been my strong suit and as eager as I was to get home to my computer, I tarried at the cemetery gate. The breeze picked up and the wind chimes beckoned. The notes of that haunting melody drifted down from the trees and floated out over the graves, whether summoning me or warning me, I could no longer be certain.

  I didn’t give in to my fears, however. Bracing myself against a possible assault, I opened the side gate and stepped through. The cemetery still basked in the golden light of the sunset. Burnished angel wings beckoned, and the light shimmering down through the Spanish moss cast an ethereal glow over the enchanted garden. I looked for the ghost child among the cockleshell headstones, and not finding her there, I moved quickly along the winding path to the willow trees.

  As I parted the fronds and stepped into that hidden enclave, I almost expected to find a sparrow staring at me from the stone crib. Or the ghost child glaring at me from the shadows. But all was quiet in that sad little glen. My only company was the forlorn teddy bear I’d returned to the crib that morning.

  After everything I’d witnessed, the silence seemed weighty and portentous. The premonition that had dogged me since I’d found the unnamed grave deepened.

  I sank to the ground beside the stone crib and drew up my knees. The day was coming to an end and I needed to keep an eye on the light. As much as I wanted answers and as eager as I was to solve an old murder, dangers lurked in Woodbine Cemetery after dark. Threats from this world and the next. I was cautious, but more resigned than frightened, and as I sat there beside that hidden grave, loneliness had never settled more heavily.