Keira opened the cupboard and stacked her rice on one shelf and the potatoes on the other, then put the toothbrush and soap in the bathroom. Eating the muffin Zoe had forced into her pocket, she returned to the living room and looked around the space. The room still held a lot of the warmth from that morning’s fire, even though the grate contained nothing but dull embers. She turned in a circle on the rug, searching for something that might distract her for an hour or two while she waited for Adage. The cottage didn’t have any television or books that she could see, and most of the cupboards held nothing but dust.
This place needs cleaning. Keira rubbed at the back of her neck and made a face. Not the sort of distraction I was hoping for, but it beats sitting by the window at least.
She found gloves and old cloths under the sink, opened the windows, and set about chasing out some of the dust. On one hand, it felt silly to clean a house that would return to being abandoned within a day or two. But it was one of the few things she could do to repay Adage, and even though it in no way matched his kindness, she wanted to show him that at least she was trying.
She’d flipped the bed’s mattress over and was in the process of putting on fresh sheets when a brisk knock at the door startled her. “Keira? It’s Adage. I hope you got my note.”
“Ah!” Keira jogged to let the pastor in. “I did, thanks. Not that it’s my business to tell you what to do or anything, but is it wise to invite strangers into your home while you’re out?”
Adage’s face was still flushed from his walk, likely because of the bundle of cloths he carried in his arms, but he beamed at her as he stomped his boots on the mat. “Don’t worry so much. I told you last night that I know everyone in town, and I’m proud to say I trust most of them a little farther than I could throw them.” He extended his burden and exhaled when Keira took it from him. “Thank you, child. They’re heavier than I thought they’d be.”
Keira shifted the bundle a little. She could see cotton, denim, and even some lace. “What are they?”
“Clothes from our donation bin. You won’t be a fashion icon, but they’re clean and respectable. I guessed your size. I hope they fit.”
“Seriously?” Keira lowered the clothes onto the round table. “I mean, thank you…but I don’t feel right taking these.”
“You’re welcome to wear trash bags, if you prefer.” Adage slid into the comfy lounge by the fire and exhaled a satisfied sigh as he relaxed against the pillows. “But those clothes were intended for people who couldn’t easily afford their own. I don’t think anyone would begrudge them going to you.”
Keira swallowed as she flipped through the first few items. She hated feeling as if she was taking and taking without giving back, but it would be nice to wear something clean and soft, and the offering included a T-shirt featuring a bug-eyed cat face that she found absolutely hilarious. “Thank you.”
The pastor was watching her through one eye. “You’ve got a little more color today. Did you have enough stew?”
“Oh, I’m good actually! I walked to town and bought some food, so I won’t have to keep taking yours.” Saying it gave her a little buzz of pride. “Would you like something to drink?”
“That would be lovely.” The pastor’s eyes had closed, and he looked as though he could happily fall asleep where he was. “Black tea with plenty of sugar, thank you. I’ve had the most exhausting day. Both Miss Millbury and Mrs. House wanted to see me, and I swear neither of them have any comprehension of the concept of peace, let alone know what it sounds like.”
Keira had left the cups from that morning to dry on the sink, so she put a tea bag in each while the kettle boiled. “It seems like a really…interesting town. Do you know Zoe Turner? I met her when I was shopping, and she somehow got me to confess everything.”
“Charming soul, that one. Accused me of being a part of a conspiracy involving highly intelligent sea mammals and Scientology.” He chuckled. “She had dossiers and everything. I was quite impressed.”
“Is she…uh…” The kettle finished boiling, and Keira used the interruption as an excuse to chew over how to phrase herself. “Is she an okay sort of person?”
“Oh yes, definitely. Like I said, she’s a charming soul.”
Keira realized, with surprise, the pastor’s comment hadn’t been facetious. “Really?”
“Certainly.” He took the cup she passed him. “She’s a little abrasive, but there are plenty of worse sins a person could indulge in. Cruelty, duplicity, small-mindedness. I’ve known her for her entire life, and she’s never exhibited any of those. You could have a much worse friend.”
That was a relief. She’d wanted to share her puzzle with Zoe, but it had still felt like a risk, and Adage’s reassurance helped to erase some of her uneasiness. Keira took the wooden chair beside the pastor and blew on her cup of tea.
“There’s not exactly an easy way to transition to this,” Adage said, “but I made some inquiries, as promised. I’m friends with the constable, and he was able to search a database of missing persons. No one matching your description has been reported as missing within the last two weeks, but he’s promised to watch it in case a new report comes through.”
“Right.” The news didn’t come as a surprise to Keira. Everything she’d learned about herself pointed toward a nontraditional lifestyle. If anyone was missing her, they wouldn’t be the sort of person to contact the police.
“I hope you’ll do me the honor of staying here until we can find you a more permanent home.”
Keira smiled into her tea. It was an incredibly elegant way of phrasing the offer. “You don’t know how grateful I am. I’ll find a way to repay you.”
“Nonsense. My good deeds won’t be worth half as much in the next life if I take payment for them.” He winked to let her know he was joking. “Would you like me to ask around for a job and a rental place? It would probably need to be in one of the larger towns, I’m afraid. Blighty’s career options aren’t exactly abundant, but I’m sure I could find something suitable in Glendale or McKenzie.”
Keira chewed on her lip as she turned toward the window. Deep-gray clouds had started to gather above them. The town wasn’t visible from her chair, but she could still picture its lights glowing through the valley. The settlement was so picturesque that it had been easy to imagine living there. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and she would be grateful for any kind of stability. “That would be great.”
Adage leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “You know, the proper, official thing to do would be to declare yourself to the police and let them look into your past. They might have better luck than I did.”
Keira shook her head. “No. I’d rather not draw too much attention to myself if those men are still looking for me.” Not to mention police investigations would mean hospital investigations, questioning, searching for a match in the criminal database…
For a second, Keira imagined how it would feel to see her mug shot appear on a police search, to hear the officers muttering as they cuffed her and dragged her toward the cells. An unpleasant taste flooded her mouth. That’s the problem with having a mystery past life—you don’t know what you might be guilty of.
“Take a day or so to rest up and get your bearings,” the pastor said. “In the meantime, I’ll ask around to see if I can find someone who’ll take in a cheap boarder so we can get you somewhat-permanently settled.”
Keira shook herself free from the unpleasant mental images. “I’d love that.”
Adage drained his cup and rose. “I’d best be going then. I’m leading a study group tonight and should be preparing the material. If you want to go out again, don’t leave it too late. They say we have more rain coming.”
She believed it. The clouds had grown darker while they talked, and a prickling sensation over her scalp told her a storm was coming. It made her uneasy. Why? Will rain bring the spirit back? Her eyes flicked toward the window where she’d seen the specter. “Um, Adage?”
She swallowed. There was no simple, offhanded way to ask what she wanted to know, so she had to trust in the pastor’s unflappable congeniality to not take her question the wrong way. “Are there any ghost stories around Blighty? Around the cemetery?”
“Getting squeamish of the graves, are we?”
“No, not at all! I was just curious. I mean, a town as old as this, it’s got to have some urban legends, right?”
Adage considered that for a moment. “Well, you’ll always hear campfire stories, but I don’t think anyone takes them seriously. If you’re worried about sleeping so close to the graves, I can tell you that I’ve lived beside this cemetery for forty years and never seen anything of a ghostly nature.”
“Okay, good.” She hoped the tightness in her chest wasn’t leaking into her voice. “That…puts my mind at rest.”
“See you tomorrow, child.”
I hope, the morbid part of her mind responded.
Chapter Eight
Keira leaned against the window and watched Adage make his way toward his parsonage. The stones had grown long shadows over their uncut grass, and heavy clouds blanketed the sky with pending rain.
If I’m going to spend another night in this cottage, I want to know about its ghost. Who is she? What does she want?
Keira took a deep breath, crossed to the door, and let herself out. She’d forgotten how insulated the cottage was; the outside air tried to worm its way through the gaps in her clothes and chill her core. She zipped up her jacket, put her head down, and strode into the cemetery.
Although she’d been looking, she hadn’t seen any sign of the ghost since the night before. She didn’t know what that meant. Was the spirit dormant or sleeping? Had she moved to a different location? Or was it even possible she had relinquished her hold on the world and moved on to the next life?
Am I sure there even is a next life?
Keira stopped at the cottage’s garden wall and rubbed her sleeve across her nose, which was growing wet. Like phantom snakes, thin tendrils of mist writhed between the stones, leaving dew wherever they touched.
Adage has never encountered a ghost, despite living here most of his life. That means the ability to see them is unique to me, not to the location. She turned in a semicircle as she examined the nearby stones. A tall cross near her gate looked at least a hundred years old, but one a few meters to her right was so clean, it could have been installed within the past year. From what she could see, very little planning had gone into the cemetery, and new graves were placed wherever there was room for them.
She began reading names as she walked among them. Occasionally, she would find husbands and wives buried together, and even family plots. The farther away from the parsonage she walked, the older the graves seemed to be. As she neared the forest, she started to find stones whose faces were so old that the words were worn off. Some had tipped over or sunk into the earth. Others were overgrown with weeds and spindly vines.
Keira paused at the edge of the forest. She raised her eyes, and chills slipped through her in waves as she stared into the tangle of trees and grave markers. The stones were all old, and many had crumbled, but they seemed to go on forever. In some cases, trees had collapsed over the slabs, crushing them, or the markers had fallen over and depressed into the forest floor to become morbid stepping stones.
She pushed forward, moving carefully to avoid stepping on any overgrown graves, one arm raised to push spiky, dead branches away from her face. She wanted to see how deep into the woods the graves went and whether the cemetery truly had an end. Light faded as the trees closed in behind her, and yet the stone markers still surrounded her, listing, rotting, half-consumed by the earth, going on for as far as her eyes could make out.
A whispered noise echoed from ahead. It sent a spike of fear through Keira. A coppery taste flooded her mouth and made her stomach clench.
There’s something evil here. Something evil…something evil…something evil…
The thought echoed again and again, becoming a mantra she couldn’t silence. The ground ahead of her was tainted with more than just bones. A dark figure shifted between distant trees.
Something evil…something evil…something evil…
She staggered backward, her heart a staccato pulse in her ears, her breathing ragged. She barely noticed as branches snagged at her clothes and kept moving even when she’d passed out of the forest’s border. The backs of her legs hit a solid object; she fell over it, tumbling to the spongy earth as she raised her hands to guard her face.
Her mind fell silent. The fear abated, moving out of her in a steady ebb, until all that remained were the shaking hands and racing pulse. Something sharp and cold pinged off her forehead, then another hit her hand. It had started raining.
Slowly, as though sudden movements could undo the calm, Keira lifted her torso off the ground. She’d tripped over a low, square tombstone. Horror impacted her as she realized she was on top of a grave, and she scrambled back, desperate to get onto clean ground.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. She came to rest in a space between two graves and wrapped her arms around her chest. The forest waited ahead of her, dark and dripping with malaise.
What was that? Something moved between the trees, and it didn’t seem human…
The rain was coming down in cold, hard spits, coating her hair and trickling down the back of her neck. Keira shuddered and blew out a breath. It plumed in front of her. The temperature was plummeting with unnatural speed.
An eerie sensation crawled over Keira’s skin. She twisted to look behind herself, but she was alone.
No, her instincts whispered. You’re not.
“Hello?” More condensation came out with the word. The fog was thickening, transforming from tendrils into an ocean, and the continued drop in temperature made her shiver uncontrollably. She squinted, trying to pick shapes out of the mist.
Then she blinked, and something inside of her head clicked. It was like a Magic Eye poster. The picture appeared as a jumble of nothing until she looked at it in exactly the right way, then the hidden image became clear.
The woman, so transparent that her floating hair and sundress were almost invisible, walked through the markers a row ahead of Keira. Her delicate, bloodied face twisted as she wrung her hands. Keira didn’t dare speak, didn’t dare move, but stayed huddled on the ground, half-obscured by the fog. The idea to search for the ghost had seemed logical while she was inside the cottage, but crouched among the gravestones as the light failed and a storm brewed overhead, the notion felt positively insane.
The woman didn’t seem to notice Keira. She strode along a row of graves, turned, and paced back the way she came from. Her lips moved, but the words were inaudible. The sticky bone fragments of her crushed skull glistened in the dim light.
Keira had to strain to keep the transient figure in her vision. It was as though she had a muscle just behind her eyes that made the ghost visible. As soon as she relaxed it, the woman disappeared into the mist.
She blinked, mentally collected herself, and tried again, focusing on using the muscle she hadn’t even known existed. It took a moment, but then the woman emerged back into her vision, standing directly ahead of Keira and gazing toward town.
They were close. Keira could feel a chill rolling off the spirit and reflexively leaned away from it. The movement drew the woman’s notice, and her head snapped toward Keira. The long, blood-streaked hair swirled like a cloud behind her.
They watched each other, both silent, both waiting. Keira felt as though she was supposed to say something, but words died on her tongue. Her body shook from the cold as stress and fear clouded her head, but she knew she couldn’t leave. Not yet.
Then the dead woman turned and began walking along the row of graves, unconcerned that she was treading over the burials. She stopped and looked over her shoulder, her expression beseeching. A request
to follow.
On unsteady legs, Keira rose. The drizzle had soaked into her clothes and made her feel heavy, but when she took a step toward the ghost, the woman turned and continued. As she walked through the fog, her body took on a luminescent sheen, and her form’s solidity waxed and waned according to the mist’s density.
Although the ghost walked across the graves, Keira took care not to step on them. She couldn’t even tell herself why, but it seemed disrespectful to walk over the coffins, like desecrating sacred ground. She had to weave around the graves and even climb over two hedges to keep up with the spirit.
They were moving toward the forest’s edge. Keira’s anxiety increased as they drew nearer to it. Please, not into the woods…
The woman stopped and turned. She waited for Keira to catch up, then gave a graceful nod toward the shape beside her.
She was standing on a grave. The stone was small and modest, a traditional curved-top slab without adornments. Keira had to move closer to the spirit than she was comfortable with in order to read the words carved on it.
Emma Carthage 1955–1981
“Is this yours?” Keira looked up, but the woman was gone. Keira took a step back as she looked around herself. “Emma?”
No answer came from the garden of gravestones.
“I’m going to try to help.” Keira’s voice came out faint, so she licked her dry lips and tried again. “I have your name now. I’ll find out who you were in life and how you died, and…I can’t promise… I don’t know how much I can do…but whatever you need, I’ll try to get it for you.”
Still no response. Keira felt for the muscle behind her eyes and strained it, pushing as hard as she could as she looked over the graveyard. There was a flicker of motion somewhere to her right. No—there was a shape to her left, fading as soon as she tried to look at it.
The rapidly advancing twilight made it difficult to see. She tried harder. A throbbing headache began at the back of her skull and flared over her scalp. She pushed through it, fighting to get both her internal and external eyes to work in tandem and show her the woman. It felt like straining against an invisible wall. The barrier cracked, then broke, and Keira was suddenly able to look through.
The Whispering Dead: Gravekeeper Book 1 Page 6