A Hold on Me

by Pat Esden

  The wind picked up and, as it pushed through the graveyard, the hydrangea trees swayed.

  In the distance, thunder grumbled.

  I checked the clouds. They’d crowded the sky, their underbellies now as dark as the flock of sheep.

  My eyes went back to my name on the stone, then past it to the windblown hydrangeas and lines of monuments and graves. Though I wasn’t sure if I’d ever really be ready to see the spot, I had to find the marble lamb and make sure that was where Dad had gone.

  I walked deeper into the lines of crowded graves, moving toward the mausoleum at the top of the hill, scanning on both sides for the small stone. Despite the cooling wind, sweat gathered on my upper lip. I wiped it off, but the taste of salt lingered. Maybe the graveyard wasn’t public now, but early on it must have served the entire settlement of Port St. Claire. It was much too large for just one family.

  A line of newer gravestones caught my eye. And even as I stepped toward them, I knew what I’d find. This wasn’t what I’d come for, but my heart could not resist going near.

  Susan Woodford Freemont

  My mother’s name, birthday, and the day of her death were chiseled into a glistening white stone. Above her name was an etching of seagulls circling between swirling clouds. Below, it was the likeness of a family of seals resting on a cliff top surrounded by wild roses.

  But her name was not alone on the stone.

  I swallowed hard.

  James William Freemont

  Dad’s name was carved next to hers. It only lacked his death date.

  And then mine: Stephanie Persistence Freemont

  I stiffened and stood motionless, the wind chilling my hot face, the smell of the impending storm all around me—and the numbing reality of how short life was and how many lives had gone before mine settled in my bones. No matter what happened or where I went, in the end, I’d come back to the beginning.

  To Moonhill.

  To the family Dad had tried to leave behind.

  It could not be denied: I was a Freemont. I was one of them. And more than that, I wanted to be a part of them, of their heritage, their story, my story. My family.

  Shoving my hands into my jeans pockets, I looked away from the stone. As easy as it would be to stand here and get lost in thoughts about my past and a future that might never happen, I needed to keep in mind why I’d come, and how little time I had.

  I turned my back on the stone and continued up the hill toward the mausoleum.

  When I reached it, I flopped down on its hard steps and stared back the way I’d come. The graveyard wasn’t small, but it wasn’t that huge, either. The lamb should have been easy to find.

  I bit my lip.

  Unless there wasn’t one.

  Maybe that was what Dad had come to double-check.

  Thunder rattled again, closer this time.

  The sheep stopped grazing and scuttled off toward the back side of the hill, past a bowed hydrangea tree.

  As the tree’s branches scraped the ground and rose again, my eyes caught a hint of something white and low to the ground.

  My pulse jumped.

  I blinked to make sure I’d seen right.

  Under the overhanging branches was a small, solitary monument.

  A lamb!

  My fingers gripped the edge of a rough step. For a long moment, all I could do was stare at the monument. My mother had slipped on the wet grass and died there. Her blood had stained that stone and soaked into the ground around it. I couldn’t help but wonder who had found her body, and if I had been with her when she died.

  I gazed beyond the lamb to the spiderweb of trembling dark trees and the roiling black clouds. Probably I would never know why, but she must have had a good reason for coming here that day.

  Struggling to my feet, I made my way across the distance.

  I ducked under the hydrangea’s branches and knelt.

  The dirt’s dampness soaked through my jeans and chilled my legs. I touched the lamb, its body rough from age and cool beneath my trembling fingers as I traced what remained of an inscription. Sacrifice and innocence were the only two words I could make out.

  All around me the hydrangea’s leaves clattered. I licked my lips, my pulse drumming in my temples, and waited for something to happen—for a leaf to rustle, for a soft voice to reach my ears, for the sensation of a hand on my shoulder. Something of Mother.

  But the wind died and nothing happened.

  I squeezed my eyes shut.

  Nothing. Not even tears.

  It seemed like I’d feel a trace of something.

  Suddenly, a thought pricked at the back of my mind. I pressed my hand against the hard-packed earth, bare dirt, flat as it could be, and so thickly canopied by the hydrangea that not a single blade of grass grew, and hadn’t for years and years. For a lot more years than the fifteen my mother had been dead.

  I shimmied out from under the branches and scrambled to my feet.

  Wheeling around, I scanned the graveyard, searching for a different lamb.

  There were no others.

  No one could possibly have slipped on the wet grass and hit their head on this lamb, like Mother supposedly had done. It was impossible. There was no grass. The tree’s overhanging branches would have broken the person’s fall.

  Someone had lied about Mother’s accident.

  And Dad knew it.

  A gust of wind whipped my hair across my face. The hydrangea’s leaves murmured, whispering like cousins sharing secrets in the dark.

  I cocked my head as a fainter sound reached my ear. People talking, just beyond the hilltop.

  Taking the same route the sheep had, I crept toward the voices.

  As I crested the hilltop, I saw two familiar figures standing just below me. Zachary and Chase. It had probably been Zachary’s smaller footprints I’d seen on the way to the graveyard.

  Quickly, I ducked behind a tall gravestone and peeked out at them, my mind still reeling with thoughts of my mother and dad.

  “You’ve got to be kidding. You expect me to hit a pea?” Zachary whined.

  “Not hit. Slice. Now, watch carefully this time.” Chase shook his arms out, like a gymnast loosening his muscles. “Now, when the wind calms, throw the peas as fast and high as you can.”

  A second later, the wind let up and Zachary started heaving things into the air. As fast as he threw, Chase flicked his wrist and, one after another, knives sliced the air.

  Zachary gathered up the knives and brought them back to Chase. “That was awesome. You hit them all. I’ll never be that good.”

  “With practice, you might.” Chase reached into the pocket of his hoodie and pulled out an apple. “We’ll try something larger. Wait until you can’t feel the wind on your face. Watch your stance and focus. Don’t think about the apple. Think: your eye, your wrist, the—”

  Chase raised his hand, like he’d done to shush me at the party.

  “What’s wrong?” Zachary asked.

  As if he had sensed my presence, Chase swiveled toward me.

  I stepped into clear view and waved at them. “Hey, I thought I heard you guys.”

  Dad had always said: The best way to not get accused of eavesdropping—like at auctions—is to pretend you just arrived.

  Chase took the knives from Zachary and began tucking them into his beltline. In a few quick strides he closed the space between us, with Zachary following on his heels.

  Before he could put the question to me, I asked, “What are you guys doing up here?”

  “Chase is teaching me how to throw knives—and hatchets.” Zachary beamed.

  “Nice,” I said. I let my eyes find Chase’s. I wanted him to know everything was cool between us.

  He smiled, like he’d gotten my message. But his gaze quickly left mine and went to Zachary. “You two better get back to the house. It’s going to rain any minute.”

  As if on command, a drop of rain hit my arm, then another. A deafening clap of thunder came from d
irectly overhead. Rain pelted down. Lightning crackled.

  “The mausoleum!” Chase yelled, and we all ran toward it.

  But the mausoleum’s portico offered little protection from the torrential downpour and streaks of lightning.

  “C’mon!” Zachary yanked the mausoleum’s door open and dashed inside.

  I followed him, grateful to be out of the rain and within the thick walls that muffled the thunder’s noise.

  Chase bent over and picked up a chain and padlock from the floor. “It’s convenient for us. But this place is supposed to be locked.”

  “Someone cut it?” Zachary asked.

  “No. The lock’s open, like it was picked. More likely grave robbers than just kids messing around.”

  I stepped back farther into the mausoleum, uneasiness twisting in my stomach. Dad. He’d picked it. This is where I’d seen him coming from. I was sure of it.

  Goose bumps raced up my arms as I glanced around, trying to figure out what he possibly could have been looking for.

  In the dim light, interment vaults, some empty, a strip of them sealed, rose from floor to ceiling like honeycomb in a hive. In the middle of the floor two caskets, one steel with gold filigree and the other pure white, rested on marble slabs. In every corner and out-of-the-way place, spiderwebs and darkness huddled.

  Zachary wiped his hand along the white casket. “When I die, I want to be put in here. But I want to be stuffed like the polar bear.” He raised his arms and growled.

  I pulled my flashlight out and flicked it on.

  Chase eyed me. “Prepared, aren’t you?”

  “S—sometimes.” I stuck to one word, but my voice still gave away my fear.

  He tilted his head to one side, first studying me, then my light.

  Unnerved by his stare, I forced a laugh. “Tell me you don’t think this place is creepy.”

  “It’s not creepy.” Zachary’s voice came from the rear of the mausoleum.

  Chase stepped closer to me, his voice low. “You’re afraid.”

  I backed up. My heart pounded like crazy. “No. I don’t like dark places. That’s all.”

  “Fears all have a root. Why the dark?”

  Outside, the thunder rumbled even louder and rain pummeled the mausoleum’s roof.

  I glanced out the open door. Every muscle in my body wanted to push past him and escape. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve always felt this way.”

  “Always?”

  “Yes,” I said, but my quivering voice made it sound like a lie, even to my own ears.

  Chase’s eyes locked on mine, ocean-deep and unflinching. “Are you sure?”

  I looked away from him, to the flashlight’s beam. Then, I forced myself to step toward the middle of the mausoleum. “See, doesn’t bother me at all,” I said.

  Resting my free hand on the white casket, I stared into the darkness to further prove my point. If this didn’t work, I’d switch things up and ask him about his childhood fears.

  In the shadowy light, I could just make out the faint outline of candelabras and sword-wielding angels standing guard on either side of a stone altar.

  My breath stalled in my throat. There was a time I could remember—a time so faint I could only recall it in the moment between sleep and waking: my mother’s warm arms wrapped around me, her singing, beautiful, soft, the smell of sandalwood. There had been a time when I didn’t fear the dark.

  There was no sound to warn me, but the hairs on the back of my neck prickled and my chest tightened as Chase moved in closer behind me. His hands clasped my upper arms, a determined grip. “What happened?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t remember.” Then, as I squeezed my eyes shut to hold back a surge of unwanted tears, I felt a trickle of warmth run from my nose and I tasted blood. I wiped my hand across my upper lip to check if my nose had suddenly started bleeding, but my fingers came away dry and a surreal feeling closed in around me.

  “Tell me.” His voice buzzed in my ear, distant and dreamlike.

  An image flashed in the back of my mind, a split-second memory fighting to get free, like a bird trapped in a black box, struggling for daylight. I did know something. Something about my mother’s death.

  I opened my mouth to tell Chase. He’d lost his mother, he’d understand. But I didn’t dare say a word; one sound from me or anyone else might stop the flickering image from taking form.

  I glanced at the altar with its candelabras and angels standing guard, angels with their arms thrust skyward like the one in the gallery.

  Zachary’s voice echoed out. “Look at this!”

  Chase’s hands fell from my arms. “Don’t touch that vault,” he said, nearly bringing me back to the here and now.

  “The Professor would want me to. There’s writing on it. It’s in ancient Greek: In service of Hecate, the Three-faced Goddess, Protector of the Gateways.”

  The darkness in my head wavered for an instant and I gasped as the image clarified instead of vanishing. The feeling of recognition in the gallery. The human-shaped shadow. It wasn’t a trick of light. Or a hallucination brought on by the willow. It was a living, breathing, horrifying being!

  The shadow’s darkness, it was the root of my fear.

  My mother died in the gallery.

  The shadow had been there.

  “Mother.” The word tumbled from my lips and every trace of the memory slipped back into the darkness, but there was no question I’d witnessed my mother’s death.

  Chase wrapped his arm around my shoulder. His voice softened even more. “Are you all right?”

  Trembling, I leaned against him. I had to tell him. I couldn’t keep this to myself. “I need to talk to you, alone,” I whispered.

  He took his arm off my shoulder and looked me in the eyes. “I have to get the sheep into the lower pasture. After that, I’ll find you.”

  “All right,” I said, barely able to breathe.

  His eyes narrowed to bands of unflinching steel. “Promise, you’ll tell me everything.”

  “I will. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  He pressed a finger against my lips. A warm rush shot though me. Nerves, excitement, fear, desire, so many emotions balling into one.

  “Don’t say that,” Chase said.

  Zachary’s voice came again. “I bet we could pry the vault open.”

  “Get over here.” Chase’s tone was tough, almost too hard.

  Zachary stomped back to us. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

  “Your grandfather’s going to be unhappy enough about the break-in without you damaging something by mistake.”

  My eyes widened. Grandfather? Even though I wanted desperately to tell Chase what I’d discovered about Mother’s death, I didn’t want anyone to know I suspected Dad had broken in. First I needed to be sure why he’d done it, and how it connected to everything else.

  Quickly, I swept the flashlight’s beam across the dust-coated floor.

  “What are you looking for?” Zachary said.

  I flicked the flashlight off. “I was checking to see if the burglar left any footprints.” If Dad had left any, the three of us walking around had wiped them out. I couldn’t be sure, but I hadn’t seen any signs that Dad had touched or taken anything either.

  CHAPTER 14

  We who now must work in the shadows shall

  one day be the lights of the world.

  —Jeffrey White, President

  Sons of Ophiuchus

  As fast as the storm had arrived, it blew over, leaving everything soaked but the sky blue and the air cool.

  Chase called Kate and told her about the break-in. I wasn’t surprised he mentioned I was with him, and it didn’t matter since Zachary would have told everyone anyway.

  After that, I hurried back to the house and straight to the west wing. It was time for Dad and me to have a heart-to-heart about Mother’s death and what he’d been doing in the graveyard. While I was at it, I’d ask about my flashlight—th
ough I suspected Dad had stolen it while he was possessed and probably had no memory of doing it.

  When I reached Dad’s door, I raised my hand to knock, but froze when an unfamiliar hushed voice crept out from the other side. “Easy as skinning a cat,” it said.

  “Yes, indeed.” A deeper voice snickered.

  A memory careened into my head. A month ago, I’d gone shopping and come home unexpectedly early. When I’d stepped into the house, I was certain I’d heard voices. But no one was there besides Dad and it had felt like he’d turned the heat up, really high.

  Slowly, I lowered my hand to the doorknob. The sound of my pulse thudded in my ears and fear, cold and sharp, shuddered up my spine. Part of me wanted to run, but I gritted my teeth and stood firm. If Dad was in there, maybe there was a reason he wasn’t saying anything—or couldn’t.

  The deeper voice cleared his throat. “I believe we’re not alone.”

  I threw the door open and catapulted inside.

  A blast of sweltering air hit me. An eye-burning stench stole my breath.

  Faintness rushed over me. I staggered back against the doorframe, clutching it as my head whirled and the floor tilted up to meet the ceiling.

  I gulped a breath, and then another. Holding onto the doorframe, I clawed my way back onto my feet. Five more breaths and the room stopped spinning. The air temperature plummeted back to normal and the overwhelming bleachlike odor faded.

  Dad had me by the arm. He walked me over to a chair. “Sit,” he said.

  Shivering from the sudden drop in temperature, I pushed my sweat-slicked hair away from my face. The heat and the smell had been like a super-charged version of the last time I’d seen the shadows in Dad’s room, and not at all like the dizzy and surreal feeling I had experienced in the mausoleum.

  Wide-eyed, Dad stared at me. “Fascinating,” he said. “You are as white as a clam.”

  I glanced around the room. “I heard voices. It was so hot. Was someone in here?”

  A smug little smile lifted his lips. “I was.”

  My jaw clenched. The Dad I knew would have run to get a cool compress for my head, held my hand, threatened to phone 911. Instead, he looked amused.

  My eyes went to the bed. The cross hung over the headboard and the bag with the relic in it was still tucked partway under the mattress. The priest had said no demon could stand being around such things.