The Whispering Dead: Gravekeeper Book 1

by Coates, Darcy

  He stopped at the door, one hand on the handle, and gave her a final, gentle smile. “I’m glad you’re staying, Keira. Ghosts aside, I’ve grown quite fond of you.”

  She grinned. “Same to you.”

  The door closed with a solid click as the pastor left. Keira rose, put her own cup in the sink, and went to the window. Adage’s pace was brisk as he returned to the parsonage. The harsh morning chill was abating, and a scattering of visitors had entered the graveyard to pay their respects to friends and family. Keira felt for the muscle, opened her second sight, and inhaled as she saw the congregation of souls. The aloof Victorian woman strode among the guests without looking at them. Two middle-aged spirits sat next to each other, not speaking but seeming to enjoy the company. A young girl darted between gravestones, playing a game of hide-and-seek that only she could participate in. More shapes, still indistinct but no less worthy of care, lingered deeper in the graveyard.

  To her left, the older stones gradually merged into the forest. She would need to venture inside the woods eventually, to meet the presence that had filled her with dread on her first day in Blighty.

  Then, too, were the men who had hunted her on her first night in town. She didn’t know if they were still searching for her or what they wanted from her, but despite the increased risk that came with staying in Blighty, she found she didn’t care. Let them find me if they want. She was no longer friendless, no longer vulnerable.

  Daisy stretched, leaped down from the bed, and sauntered over to Keira. The little cat rubbed against her leg affectionately, then crouched and leaped onto the windowsill. Keira stroked the fur between Daisy’s ears as the cat watched the graveyard with her.

  Keira’s heart felt so full, it ached. She owned nothing, not even her own identity, but what she did have was worth far more. She had a home. She had friends.

  Most of all, she had a purpose, and she intended to give it everything she had.

  * * *

  Keira’s story continues in Gravekeeper Book 2: The Ravenous Dead. Keep reading for a bonus sample from the first chapter.

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  The Ravenous Dead

  “You’ve been dead for a long time.”

  Keira’s hair stuck to her face, drenched by the thick fog that rolled through the barely-lit landscape. Each word came out as a cloud of condensation as she breathed in the near-freezing air. It was before dawn and Keira struggled to see the ground ahead of her feet.

  Gravestones surrounded her. Some were less than a decade old, but others had been there for centuries, giving them time to crack and tilt and sink into the earth. They were all neglected. Weeds and long grass choked the ground between them. Lichen grew across the slabs, blotting out names and dates.

  An immense figure lingered to Keira’s left, half-hidden by the heavy mist: a stone-carved angel, its wings sagging and its hands clasped under its chin in supplication. Age had stained it. Lines ran over its draped gown, showing where decades of water had flowed. They created tracks running from its eyes to its chin, as though it wept.

  Keira shivered, drawing further into her jacket, her numb fingers clenched in her pockets. She faced a small, square grave marker. The inscription read: Marianne Cobb, 1801-1835.

  “It’s a long time to linger after death,” Keira said. Each breath of condensation merged into the mist, swallowed into the mass within seconds.

  A shape swayed at the edge of her vision. Keira strained to see it more clearly, but she only caught glimpses. Curling, frayed hair, pinned into a messy arrangement underneath some kind of shawl. Bony hands wringing together. The woman hunched, keeping the gravestone between herself and Keira, her eyes averted.

  She was a ghost. A faint one. Gone for a hundred and eighty years, but still present. Still waiting. For what, Keira didn’t know. That was her job, now: to find out.

  “I hope it’s not rude to point that out.” Keira tried for a smile and an easy shrug, even as drop of condensation ran down to her chin and dripped onto her jacket. “I’m still new to this. Sorry.”

  She thought the spirit tilted towards her a fraction, but it was hard to be sure through the mist. The ghosts seemed to be made up of the same fog that permanently lingered in the graveyard. They were a see-through, vapid white, their eyes turned a heavy, inky black. Every movement was slowed, as though they were trapped underwater. As the spirit’s head moved, so did stray strands of hair—floating behind it, tugged by an invisible current.

  “You must have something keeping you here,” Keira pressed. “Maybe I can help.”

  The spirit’s head lowered as she turned away. In a heartbeat she was gone, evaporated into the fog as though she’d never existed at all.

  Keira let out a ragged breath. She pulled on the muscle behind her eyes to open her second sight again. It was sore from over-use, and a low, throbbing headache set up as Keira pushed it harder. It made no difference. Marianne was gone.

  Keira let her sight relax slightly as she turned away. Chills ran along her skin, the hairs rising, as she sensed something else watching her.

  Or, rather, many eyes watching her.

  The graveyard held dozens of spirits. Some were so faint that Keira could barely make out flickers of movement between the gravestones. Others were so strong that they seemed to glow.

  The sun must have risen, but it barely touched Blighty’s cemetery. The area was shrouded in a conflicting twilight, dampened further by the mist that never seemed to fully evaporate, and the tall, leafless trees that stretched dark branches into the sky.

  A man stood barely ten paces behind Keira. Grizzled and with sunken cheeks, his dead eyes met hers for a heartbeat before a cloud of fog rolled between them, obscuring him. When it passed, he was gone.

  Keira cleared her throat. She’d ventured into the graveyard to meet its spirits, learn their names, and hopefully understand their situations a little better, but had strayed deeper than she’d meant to. The groundskeeper’s cottage—her temporary home—felt miles away. She couldn’t even remember which direction it was in. She took a step forward, her boots crunching over layers of frost, and stopped again.

  Something small and dark whisked through the tall grass. Keira squinted to follow the liquid shadow, then smiled. Daisy, her black cat, hunted insects. Her tail lashed as she spotted some new prey, then she vanished again, swallowed by the gloom.

  At least someone was having a good time.

  Keira hunched her shoulders and kept moving, her eyes scanning her surroundings, picking out the monuments and cracked tombstones in her path.

  A low, creaking noise came from her right. Just the trees groaning. They strained under their own weight, as though each new morning brought further discomfort.

  That meant she was closer to the forest’s edge than she’d thought. The tombstones continued into the trees. Keira had tried to find the graveyard’s end, once, before encountering a presence that forced her to turn back.

  Her head throbbed. Figures blinked in and out of view as she strode between the stones. She moved carefully as she tried to avoid stepping on the burial mounds, but the cemetery was chaotic, and some of the graves were so old that their only remaining evidence was a glimpse of fractured slate between thick grass.

  She didn’t think it was her imagination that the spirits of Blighty Cemetery were avoiding her. They watched from a distance, sometimes, but almost all vanished when she turned towards them.

  Condensed mist trickled down Keira’s back like an otherworldly finger tracing her spine. She shuddered, hunching her shoulders further. She thought she must be nearing the groundskeeper’s cottage. Some of the markers looked familiar.

  Keira circled a tree, running her hand across the damp, cracked bark as she passed it. Her view ahead momentarily cleared and she glimpsed an elderly woman in elaborate Victorian dress. Keira dipped her head politely as she approached. “Hello!”

 
Unlike Marianne, this spirit was crisp and bright. She seemed to glow like a light through the fog. Her wrinkled, angular face didn’t even turn towards Keira, but her eyes narrowed as she lifted her cane and strode through a magnificent headstone. She didn’t come out the other side.

  “All right, cool, we’ll catch up another time.” Keira rubbed wet palms on her jeans. Am I imagining it, or are these ghosts being kind of… picky? I mean, I know I’m new at this, but it’s not like spirit mediums come through here every week.

  Then, ahead, she caught a flash of motion. A spirit’s hand waved at her. Keira’s heart lifted and a smile grew as she lengthened her gait. “Good morning—”

  A beaming man emerged from between two headstones. He was plump, middle-aged, mostly bald, and completely naked.

  “Oh. Okay.” Keira cleared her throat and held up a hand to block her view of his lower half. “Well, hi, it’s nice to meet you?”

  Dimples puckered his cheeks as he waved both hands. Unlike Keira, he had no compunctions about his state of dress. He was friendly, at least, so Keira kept her eyes fixed on his face as she moved nearer. “Which grave’s yours?”

  He patted the top of a waist-height slab. Flakes of frost spread over the stone where he touched it. Keira leaned forward to read the epigraph. “Tony Lobell, huh? Nice to meet you.”

  The stone said he’d passed away in 1998, age fifty-two, making him the most recent ghost she’d met. Even though he was recent, his grave was untended, with weeds growing over the mound. A small metal holder had been attached to the headstone, but if it had ever held flowers, they’d long decayed. That struck Keira as deeply melancholy, but the grave’s state wasn’t unusual. Only a handful showed any sign of human care.

  Keira tried to keep the sadness out of her voice. “Do you have unfinished business keeping you here?”

  Tony shrugged. The motion jiggled his belly, revealing more than Keira would have liked. She quickly repositioned her hand. “You’re not sure?”

  He tapped the side of his head and gave her a what-can-you-do kind of smile.

  “Oh, you can’t remember?”

  A shake.

  “Right. I’ll see if there’s anything I can do to help, anyway. I’d better keep moving, but thanks for talking with me, Tony.”

  He beamed and waved, and Keira couldn’t help but match his infectious smile as she shuffled past him.

  The strain of keeping the ghosts in sight created a throbbing headache that radiated through her skull. The skill seemed to get easier with practice, but she didn’t think she could hold onto the second sight for much longer.

  One more introduction, then I’ll call it a day.

  A pale spirit stood near the forest’s edge, not far from her cottage. His old, well-mended travelling coat moved in a breeze Keira couldn’t feel. He faced away from Keira, staring into the trees.

  “Hi,” she said as she neared him. “I don’t know if you heard me earlier, but my name’s Keira.”

  The spectre didn’t respond. His arms hung limp at his sides. He seemed to sway lightly, but it was hard to be sure when his form was so heavily disguised by the flowing fog. He stood on a grave—his grave, Keira guessed—with a small, discreet headstone at his side.

  Keira kept her distance as she circled him. “How long have you been—?”

  Her words died as she stopped ahead of the man. He wore old, tattered clothes that looked at least a hundred years old. Weeds grew high around his legs, their tips white with frost. And his face…

  He didn’t have a face. The space between his temples and his chin had been carved away, hollowed out, as though it had been hacked at with an axe. No eyes, no mouth, just a gaping hole that extended deep into his head. Keira swallowed and abruptly looked away. She felt as though if she stared into that pit of flesh for too long, she would be in danger of falling into the chasm.

  “Okay. Sorry, I didn’t expect…” She swallowed again and hazarded another look. “Um, can you hear me? Can you raise your hand if you understand me?”

  The faceless spirit didn’t move except to sway, his patched coat twisting around his ankles, his hair floating as though weightless. His ears were still intact, Keira saw, half-buried in hair that was overdue for a cut. He should be able to hear her. He just wasn’t responding.

  She looked at the stone at his side. There was no name, only a date: November 15th, 1891. Keira frowned. “That’s strange. I’ve never seen a stone without a name before.”

  The spirit seemed to shiver, then his form melted away like an illusion, leaving Keira standing alone beside the gravesite.

  Continue reading in Gravekeeper Book 2: The Ravenous Dead