The Awakening

by Amanda Stevens

I turned on Queen Street, walking all the way over to Rutledge Avenue. It was still early and the streets buzzed with traffic. I passed any number of pedestrians on my way home, mostly tourists and a few students from nearby UMSC. Despite my uneasiness over the evening’s events, I wasn’t frightened. I had my phone and pepper spray handy. Even so, I kept a watchful eye on my surroundings as my mind continued to spin.

  Not surprisingly, my thoughts eventually turned back to Devlin, as they almost always did. Why couldn’t I move on? Why couldn’t I accept once and for all that he was gone from my life and was never coming back? I didn’t want to think of myself as a woman who pined. I’d been alone for most of my life. I knew how to endure, even to flourish, on my own so why couldn’t I forget him?

  Maybe Temple was right. I’d created a dangerous fairy tale around him, one that kept me clinging to the past. He was my one and only serious love affair, so instead of facing the reality of our breakup, I’d allowed myself a bittersweet hope that his departure had somehow been a noble gesture. I’d convinced myself that because of his reluctant involvement with the Congé, he’d distanced himself in order to protect me. Why else would he have found a way to warn me of the danger I’d faced in Seven Gates Cemetery? I told myself that no matter his association with that deadly faction, no matter his engagement to Claire Bellefontaine, he still cared for me.

  My thoughts continued to churn as I turned right on Rutledge Avenue. The palm trees lining Colonial Lake cast long shadows across the moonlit surface. The water looked eerie and mysterious, and as I hurried along the street, the long row of Charleston-style houses seemed to crowd in on me. At the intersection of Rutledge and Beaufain, I paused to glance in the direction of the lovely old Queen Anne where Devlin had once lived with his dead wife and daughter. I couldn’t see the house clearly from my vantage, but I had no trouble conjuring the turrets and arches and the shimmer of ghosts at the front window.

  Up until that point, I hadn’t felt a sense of urgency to get home, but as the memories faded, a vague worry descended. A nagging premonition that something wasn’t right.

  The steady drip-drip-drip of the rain-soaked trees niggled at my nerves. A streetlight hummed and sputtered and I turned anxiously to survey the shadows as a dog barked in the distance. Traffic had dwindled. Suddenly, I felt very alone in the dark and I continued on down the street, glancing over my shoulder now and then until my house came into view.

  I couldn’t deny a sense of relief as I pushed open the gate and entered the garden. I sailed up the porch steps and unlocked the front door, but I didn’t go in. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe some instinct warned that I should remain vigilant or my heightened senses had picked up an uncanny vibe. Or maybe it was as simple as wanting to enjoy the fresh air from the safety of my front porch. Whatever the reason, I moved to the corner where the shadows were the deepest and I could watch the street without being seen.

  I drew calming breaths and focused. The night came alive for me. The waxing moon hung just above the treetops, and here and there stars peeked through a translucent veil of clouds. I could smell the tea olives at the side of the house and the last of the fall gardenias in the front garden. The perfumes mingled and drifted through my senses like a dream. Awash in that heady aroma, I stood there thinking of Devlin.

  Where was he now? I wondered. Still at the restaurant with Claire and the others? Or had the two of them slipped away to spend the rest of the evening alone?

  A night bird called from a treetop, coaxing me out of my reverie. The air had grown cooler and I pulled my sweater around me as I turned to go inside. Then I halted at the sound of an approaching car. Normally, this wouldn’t have alarmed me. Rutledge was a busy street. But I was certain the vehicle had slowed as it neared my house.

  I was still hidden at the end of the porch, but I found myself sinking even deeper into the shadows as I peered across the garden to get a look at the long, sleek sedan with tinted windows. The vehicle pulled to the curb and stopped in front of my house. I caught my breath as the driver cut the engine. Was I being followed? Watched?

  I wanted to believe paranoia was getting to me. After everything I’d been through, it would hardly be surprising. But was it really paranoia? I had enemies among the living, the dead and the possessed. All those malevolent faces flashed through my mind as I huddled in the dark and waited.

  The back window slid down. I could see the shadowy profile of the passenger as he leaned forward to speak to the driver. I had the impression of a rigid posture and a sleek cap of silver hair. When he turned his head to stare up at my house, I caught my breath in astonishment. I knew him. As with Claire Bellefontaine, I’d never met him, had never even heard his voice. But I would have recognized Devlin’s grandfather anywhere.

  This was turning out to be a night of unnerving firsts.

  I pressed back against the wall as I tried to make myself invisible. I heard the click of a car door and a moment later, the driver came around to the open passenger window. He was a big man with wide shoulders and a menacing presence. I heard the soft murmur of their voices in the dark, but I couldn’t make out the conversation.

  The driver left the car and came up the walkway, pausing with his hand on the gate as he tilted his head to stare up at the second-story windows. His behavior troubled me. I had the notion he was trying to determine whether or not the upstairs tenant was home. Another moment passed and then he opened the gate and stepped into the garden.

  The night had gone deathly still. Even the songbird fell silent. Oddly, the scent of the gardenias deepened, as if Jonathan Devlin’s arrival had somehow stirred the heavenly scent. The driver’s footsteps were muffled as he strode up the walkway and climbed the porch steps.

  I didn’t move a muscle as I tracked him. If he peered into the shadowy corner, he would spot me huddled and quivering, but he didn’t even look my way. Instead he paused on the top step as Angus barked a warning from inside. Then he turned to glance over his shoulder at the car.

  “You hear that?” he called softly.

  “You mean the dog? Yes, come away from the porch before the whole neighborhood is awakened,” Jonathan Devlin said gruffly. “We’ll wait until morning.”

  The driver immediately turned and exited the premises as quickly and as quietly as he had come.

  I cowered in my hiding place as my heartbeat thundered in my ears. Only when the sound of the car faded did I rise and clamor down the porch steps, rushing along the walkway, through the gate and out to the street. I even took a few steps toward those receding taillights before I came to my senses and halted. What was I doing?

  If Dr. Shaw’s research and conjecture proved correct, then the elderly Devlin was not only a member of the Congé, but perhaps the leader. He could be every bit as dangerous as Claire Bellefontaine, perhaps even more so.

  Why else would he have come to my house? Why now, if not on a mission for that dastardly faction?

  Nine

  Once inside the house, I calmed Angus as I locked the door, reset the alarm and then stood at the window for several minutes watching the street, my breath catching at the sound of every car engine. I didn’t see the black car again but I could imagine the sleek lines gliding through darkened alleyways back to the exclusive enclave south of Broad, back to that towering mansion on Battery Row.

  Letting the curtain fall back into place, I knelt to stroke Angus’s back and scratch behind his battered ear nubs. Now that the outside threat had passed, he relaxed and pushed up against me. Since our time in Seven Gates Cemetery, we’d returned to our old friendship and I welcomed the ease and affection with which he now greeted me.

  “I’m glad to see you, too,” I murmured, dropping all the way to the floor so that he could nuzzle my face. “You’ve no idea.”

  After a few minutes in his calming company, I began to think a little more rationally. I even managed to con
sider the possibility that I had overreacted. The unexpected visit from Jonathan Devlin had thrown me for a loop, but if he were up to no good, would he have had his driver park in front of my house? Would he have sent the man up to my door? He was far too smart and seasoned to leave that kind of trail. No, whatever his motive, he hadn’t come here on business for the Congé. So why had he come?

  My nerves still thrummed as I headed down the hallway to the kitchen, Angus at my heels. I put on the kettle and fixed a cup of chamomile before letting him out in the rear garden for his evening activities. I sat on the back steps and sipped the soothing brew as he made his rounds through the bushes and flower beds, sniffing here, pawing there before disappearing into the shadows to do his business.

  The night was still clear, but the wind had risen since I got home, and I snuggled my sweater around me as I listened to the tinkle of the wind chime. The discordant notes were a comfort because they didn’t settle into a melody. I hoped that meant the ghost child hadn’t followed me home from the restaurant.

  Even so, I remained jittery, my disquiet too easily summoning the images that had unfolded in that garden. I shuddered as I thought back on that horrifying tableau. Someone had killed that child. Murdered her in cold blood. I wondered about her assailant, why he had remained invisible to me. Was he—she—still alive? Had he gone unpunished all this time?

  As I sat there puzzling over the child’s death, bits and pieces of last night’s dream mingled with the ghost’s revelations. In the back of my mind, I could see Mama and Aunt Lynrose at the edge of that open grave, rocking and sipping sweet tea as my aunt warned me not to poke my nose in places it didn’t belong.

  Leave her be, Lyn. We should have tended to this business years ago. Now it’s up to Amelia to uncover the truth.

  What business? What truth? How could that child’s murder be connected in any way to my family?

  It couldn’t, I told myself firmly. Sometimes a dream could portend the future or unlock the past, but sometimes a dream was just a dream. It was pointless to try and infer anything from those disjointed images when I had concrete clues to decipher.

  The prospect of another investigation so soon after my harrowing experiences in Seven Gates Cemetery overwhelmed and exhausted me. What choice did I have, though? The ghost had already latched on to me and she wouldn’t fade away of her own accord. I had learned that the hard way. Her tricks would only become more pernicious if I tried to ignore her. The sooner I started putting the pieces together, the sooner she would go back to her grave and we could both rest easy. That was the hope, at least.

  Succumbing to my weariness, I yawned and called to Angus. He appeared at the edge of the shadows, head cocked as he regarded me across the garden. When I called to him again, he took a step toward me and then halted, his tail going up as he fixed his gaze on the steps beside me.

  “What is it?” I murmured even as a thrill skirted along my spine. I turned to stare at the empty space beside me. There was no ghostly chill, no shimmer from a manifestation, only a quivering certainty that I was no longer alone.

  “John,” I whispered. It wasn’t a question. I knew he was there just as I knew if I put out my hand, I would feel nothing but air.

  The night became unbearably still, so quiet I could hear the sigh of the wind in the trees. Or was that my own sigh? I swallowed and touched my face where I could have sworn I felt his lips.

  A moment later, the wind chime tinkled as if brushed by an invisible shoulder. I heard the gate creak as if a flesh-and-blood entity had gone through it.

  Then all was silent in my garden.

  * * *

  I had another strange dream that night. I was a child again, no more than nine or ten, wandering through the familiar terrain of an abandoned cemetery. The air smelled of old death and fresh earth, a scent that I did not find unpleasant. As I walked on, the breeze picked up, swirling the mist at my feet as the leaves overhead started to whisper my name. Amelia. Amelia.

  I wasn’t at all frightened of those whispers or of my withered surroundings. I was at home here. The eerie sights and sounds were a comfort.

  On either side of me, angels with broken wings rose up out of the mist and I wanted to stop and read the epitaphs as I had always done with Papa. But the plates on the monuments were blank, as if the inscriptions had somehow been scrubbed clean.

  A memorial without a name seemed very sad to me. I didn’t like the notion of the dead being hidden away and forgotten. Everyone had the right to be mourned and remembered, even those who had dwelled on the fringes of someone else’s life.

  I walked on, the paving stones cool beneath my bare feet. The shadows grew longer and a tingle up my spine warned of the coming twilight. But I didn’t turn back. Something awaited me in the cemetery, something important. Something I needed to see. A part of me knew that I was dreaming, but it was more than a dream. Deep in my subconscious, memories were stirring.

  Eventually, I came upon Mama and Aunt Lynrose still rocking beside that open grave as they sipped sweet tea from frosted glasses. They were dressed in cool linen, hair precisely coiffed, makeup and nails done to tasteful perfection. I caught the whiff of lemon sachet on the breeze and more faintly, the green notes from their perfume.

  The familiarity of those fragrances wrapped me in the warmest embrace and I hurried forward, eager to be drawn into their circle. They whispered to one another, their expressions anxious and didn’t even glance up as I approached. I went right up to the fence and called out to them through the wrought-iron gate, but they didn’t seem to hear me and for whatever reason, I couldn’t enter. The gate was locked tight.

  I sank down in the mist and closed my eyes, letting their voices drift over me. I heard my name now and then, but mostly they were reminiscing about their girlhood days. The murmur of their soft drawls and clinking glasses aroused a dreamy nostalgia. I hugged my knees to my chest as I thought back on all those overheard conversations, all those sisterly secrets that intrigued and mystified even as they deepened my loneliness.

  Mama said with a little sigh, “Lyn, do you know what I’ve been thinking about lately? That dress Mother made for your sixteenth birthday. The midnight blue one.”

  Aunt Lynrose clutched her hands to her heart. Her voice grew soft and unbearably wistful in the twilight. “Oh, how I loved that dress! I wore it to the spring dance, remember? The crystals on the skirt twinkled like starlight when I twirled.”

  “You wore your hair up that night and Mother let you borrow her diamond earbobs. You looked just like a princess.”

  “And I felt like one, too.”

  “I remember how happy you were when you left the house. How you couldn’t stop smiling.”

  “It was a night like no other.”

  “If only we’d known—”

  “Don’t, Etta.”

  “When you didn’t come home—”

  “Oh, don’t let’s talk about that part,” my aunt pleaded. “I just want to remember the music and the moonlight and the scent of honeysuckle drifting in through the open doors.”

  “But we have to talk about that part,” Mama insisted. “That’s why we’re here. When midnight struck and you didn’t come home or even call, Mother was beside herself with worry. It wasn’t like you to miss curfew. And Father—” Mama shuddered. “I’d never seen him so angry. He paced the floor all night and when you finally came home at sunrise, you had that terrible row.”

  “You don’t need to remind me.” My aunt’s voice sounded resigned as she lifted a hand to her cheek. “I’ll remember every word he said to me until my dying day.”

  “Nothing was ever the same,” Mama said sadly. “We were a happy family until that night. At least it was easy to pretend that we were. Then Father sent you away and I wanted desperately to come with you. The tension in the house had become so oppressive by that time. Bu
t I suppose I had it easy considering what you had to put up with Aunt Rue. She was such a spiteful person. So pious and judgmental. I don’t know how you stood it.”

  “I stood it because I had to. It was my penitence, Father said.”

  “It was cruel of him, what he made you do.”

  “And I’ve never forgiven him,” my aunt said. “But what good does it do to dredge all that up now? Haven’t we both learned that some secrets are best left buried?”

  “Have you been able to bury it, though?”

  “Yes, until I hear that song. You know the one I mean. And then everything comes back as though it were yesterday. All that pain and suffering. The guilt and the loneliness. Oh, Etta, the loneliness...”

  The faint tinkle of a wind chime came to me as I knelt there clinging to the fence. The melody drifted through my senses, tugging at more memories until I had the strongest sense of déjà vu. I knew that I had overheard this very conversation just as I knew the secret my mother and aunt spoke of wasn’t meant for my ears. I would be in trouble if they caught me eavesdropping and I couldn’t abide Mama’s disapproval. She and Papa were everything to me, so I tried very hard to never, ever displease them. I stood to alert her of my nearness, but when I called out to her, she dissolved into the mist without even acknowledging my presence.

  “Where did she go?” I cried. “I need her to see me.”

  My aunt stared pensively into the open grave. “Leave it alone, chile. You can’t change the past. What’s done is done. You of all people should know that no good ever comes from all that digging.”

  And then my aunt vanished, too, leaving me with a terrible foreboding. What’s done is done.

  I knew that I was still dreaming, but the realization gave me no comfort because I couldn’t rouse myself. Not yet. The dreams and the ghostly visits were somehow connected and everything had meaning. The mist, the open grave, my mother and aunt’s conversation. Even the beady eyes of the corpse bird that watched me from atop a headstone. If the crow wasn’t a clue, then it was surely a sign or an omen. It means someone else is likely to pass.