The Awakening

by Amanda Stevens

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “It’s the only way. I’ll send everyone out. The housekeeper...my grandson. We’ll talk in private and I promise you I won’t hold back. In return, you’ll deal with the ghost.”

  “That sounds like blackmail,” I managed, still astounded to be sitting in the same car with Jonathan Devlin, let alone discussing ghosts and extortion.

  “I prefer to think of it as an exchange. A simple barter, if you will. Information is the only thing I have of value to someone like you. You aren’t like the others. You’re not motivated by greed or lust for power. But you don’t like secrets, do you, Miss Gray?”

  “What others?”

  He lifted a brow as if surprised by my takeaway from his pitch. “My grandson is an extraordinary man in many ways, an intelligent and sophisticated man. But his choice of companions has invariably caused a lot of problems. Mariama Goodwine. Claire Bellefontaine. You.”

  I drew myself up. “I have faults, a lot of them, but I hardly think I deserve to be put in the same league as Mariama Goodwine. I would never drive my car over a bridge, deliberately trapping my four-year-old daughter inside so that I could appease one man and torment another.”

  “Mariama was trapped, too,” he pointed out.

  “Only because her seat belt malfunctioned. Perhaps it was divine intervention,” I added a bit cruelly.

  Both brows lifted. “Do you really believe that? The authorities ruled their deaths accidental, but I take it you don’t agree with the official conclusion.”

  “I have my reasons.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Mariama Goodwine was a very beautiful woman who had a talent for arousing strong emotions and impulses. Think how easily she manipulated Ethan Shaw.”

  “What does he have to do with any of this?”

  “I mention him only as an example of how expert Mariama was in pushing buttons. He was no match for her.” His smile sent another shiver down my spine. I had the distinct impression he’d taken no small amount of satisfaction in the demise of Dr. Shaw’s only son. Perhaps he’d even had a hand in it, though I couldn’t think how.

  Jonathan Devlin watched me carefully. “I, too, have thought about that malfunctioning seat belt. It’s logical to conclude that Mariama would have swum her way to safety if she hadn’t become trapped. But is it really so far-fetched to imagine that someone tampered with the mechanism before forcing her car over that bridge? Perhaps it was the child, and not Mariama, who was meant to be saved.”

  Why was he telling me all this? Why now? It almost sounded as if...

  No. Don’t even think that.

  Jonathan Devlin wasn’t responsible for what happened to Mariama and little Shani. It was too horrible, too terrifying to even contemplate. Losing his daughter had very nearly snapped Devlin. I could only imagine how he would react if he suspected even for a moment that his grandfather had been complicit.

  Just stop.

  Mariama alone had been responsible for their daughter’s death. If anything, this was a ploy to catch me off guard or a subtle threat to warn me of what might happen if I didn’t cooperate.

  As dangerous and manipulative as I’d always imagined Jonathan Devlin to be, I’d never once considered the possibility that he had been behind Mariama’s death, let alone Shani’s. I wouldn’t entertain that possibility now. I would not.

  Perhaps it was the child, and not Mariama, who was meant to be saved.

  If a crime was committed, mine was of silence.

  He watched me shrewdly as I tried to mentally scrub my face free of emotion.

  “We’ll never know what really happened,” he said. “But the one thing I can tell you with certainty is that had she lived, Mariama Goodwine would have destroyed my grandson, utterly and completely. So perhaps you’re right. The accident was divine intervention.”

  “And the child?”

  “Children have a way of becoming collateral damage, I’m afraid.”

  That silenced us both and I wanted desperately to open the door and bolt, run as far and as fast I could from Jonathan Devlin. I was no longer certain that he was even haunted by a ghost. Perhaps a guilty conscience had driven him over the edge.

  “Don’t you want to know about Claire Bellefontaine?” he asked, still in that deceptively soft voice.

  “What about her?”

  “On the surface, she seems a perfect match for my grandson, wouldn’t you agree? Smart, cultured, incomparably beautiful. But where Mariama was driven by passion and emotion, Claire Bellefontaine is cool and calculating. She plots and plans with infinite patience. She leaves nothing to chance. She is a woman without conscience, incapable of remorse. A true black widow.”

  I looked at him aghast. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “You must be curious about the woman my grandson has promised to marry.”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “If only that were true,” he said. “But their arrangement is very much your concern. You see, each has something the other wants or can provide. Claire is an ambitious woman. What she craves above all else is power. Her family has an illustrious history in Charleston, but in recent generations, the Bellefontaines have been tainted by scandal, as have the Duvalls. In the circles that Claire wishes to rule, tradition and reputation are still everything. The Devlin name would give her the ultimate redemption.”

  “What does John get in return?” I couldn’t help asking.

  The elder Devlin smiled. “Come to my house this evening. Come at twilight. Help me get rid of the ghost and you’ll know everything by nightfall.”

  Twenty-Three

  My conversation with Jonathan Devlin tormented me for the rest of the day. His nebulous confessions and vague revelations were disturbing on so many levels and I couldn’t help but think they’d been maliciously planted. He knew those questions would endlessly niggle, poking and prodding at my curiosity until my defenses were completely worn down.

  I told myself I wasn’t about to give in to his manipulations. I didn’t know what had happened to him on that stairway. Maybe a malevolent entity had attacked him or maybe he’d let his imagination get the better of him, but in either case, he wasn’t my problem. I had to worry about my own safety. Any further interaction, much less going to his home, would be asking for trouble.

  Yet I couldn’t stop brooding about Devlin’s relationship with Claire Bellefontaine as I finished laying out the grid that morning. If the engagement was nothing more than a business alliance, what would Devlin get in return for marrying that woman?

  His first marriage had ended in tragedy, but I still couldn’t bring myself to accept that Jonathan Devlin had had anything to do with Mariama’s and Shani’s deaths. Was I turning a blind eye to the obvious? Maybe I didn’t want to believe that Devlin’s grandfather could be capable of such cold-blooded malice. Maybe I didn’t want to see the monster that lurked beneath that withering persona.

  Regardless of my feelings for Devlin and my doubts about his grandfather, one thing seemed certain to me now. The Devlins had secrets, dark and well buried.

  My family had nothing on them.

  * * *

  With so much turmoil swirling around me, I found it impossible to lose myself in work. Nevertheless, I labored on until the sun started to slide beneath the treetops, and then I gathered my belongings and left the cemetery without a backward glance.

  I told myself to go home to Angus and hide in my sanctuary until morning. I would disregard any further overtures from Jonathan Devlin just as I would ignore any knocks on my door. I would hunker down in my private domain until the crisis had passed, and if that made me a coward, so be it. Better safe than sorry.

  But, of course, nothing was ever that simple in my world. The questions, as compulsive and tena
cious as the ghost voices in my head, continued to beleaguer even as I walked through the cemetery gates.

  After storing my gear in the back of my vehicle, I climbed behind the wheel and drove slowly down the gravel road that Devlin and I had traveled the previous night. Despite my better judgment, I still wanted to talk to Prosper Lamb. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew more about Woodbine—about a lot of things—than he’d let on, and right now I felt more comfortable getting answers from him than I did from Jonathan Devlin.

  I hadn’t seen the caretaker in the cemetery all day and I found his absence curious. I wondered if he knew about my visit to his workshop last evening, and if so, why had he bolted when he heard my voice? Was he still avoiding me?

  The evening was warm and I drove with my window down so that I could detect any unusual sounds or scents drifting over the fence from the cemetery or from the tumbledown house. I went all the way to the dead end and turned around. Then, after pulling to the shoulder, I got out and took a moment to reconnoiter my surroundings. The side gate was closed and the footprints that I’d followed were all but invisible. No one had come or gone this way since the evening before, and I didn’t know if I should feel reassured or alarmed by the absence of humans.

  I stood listening for a moment, hearing nothing more than a faint tinkle of the wind chimes from the cemetery. I hadn’t seen anything of the ghost child all day, but it was still early. I knew from previous encounters that she could manifest before twilight, but only in the sheltering shadows of the willow copse.

  With the task that lay ahead of me, I didn’t want to think about the evil that had loomed over her diaphanous form, creeping steadily toward her as if it meant to consume her or to somehow use her to lure me back into the cemetery. I didn’t want to think about the knock on my front door or the subtle footfalls across my roof. I didn’t want to think about the creature hanging from a tree in my garden or the scratches across my front porch. But the images were all there, floating through my mind as I squinted into the light of the dying sun.

  If a door had truly been opened, things were crawling through at an alarming rate. Beings and entities that I’d never seen before. I didn’t know how to make them go away or even if I should. Not all of them were evil. Some might even have come through to help me.

  It was tempting to believe that everything was connected to the ghost child and once I solved her murder, the door would close and all would be normal again. Normal for me, at least.

  But no mere haunting afflicted me. Her manifestation was a symptom, not the catalyst, of gathering forces.

  * * *

  Satisfied that no imminent threat lurked, I locked the car doors and then patted the side pocket of my cargoes to make sure my phone and pepper spray were at the ready. Senses on high alert, I walked back to the house and hovered in the shadows at the edge of the road, surveying the dilapidated facade as I’d done the evening before.

  I watched for several moments, concentrating my focus along the roofline, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, other than the structure itself. As I swept my gaze over the sagging balcony, I had the uncanny sensation that the house watched me back. Not someone or some thing but the place itself. It was as if the house were a living, breathing entity, a personification of whatever dark presence had taunted me through the cemetery gate and again later through my front door.

  The sun hovered just above the horizon and the daylight shimmering down through the trees bolstered me. Even so, time was slipping away. The shadows had already lengthened, and they crept across the yard toward the house.

  The wind had picked up, and behind me I could hear the discordant clang of the wind chimes in the cemetery. In front of me, the treetops undulated. The sky was clear but a storm was coming. In every direction, the dead world seemed to crowd in on me, warning me away even as it lured me closer.

  I remained in the shadows for several more minutes, watching for any sign of life as I gathered my courage. It didn’t take much. As wary as I was of Prosper Lamb and his ramshackle house, I was more frightened of the unknown and all those unanswered questions.

  Crossing the road, I jumped the ditch and then paused yet again at the edge of the yard to survey the property. Satisfied that nothing lurked in the shadows or upon the roof, I walked up the porch steps and knocked on the door. As I stood waiting for someone to answer, I recalled Devlin’s warning about the criminal element that hung out in derelict properties.

  “Can I help you?”

  I whirled at the sound of the raspy voice behind me. I thought I’d been on guard, but Prosper Lamb had managed to come across the yard or around the house without making a sound. He stood at the corner of the porch staring up at me through a ragged camellia bush. He was dressed in much the same attire as I’d seen him in before—dark jacket, tattered jeans, worn work boots—but this time he also wore cotton gloves, the fingers stained with something that looked very much like dried blood. All those preserved animals in his workshop flashed before my eyes and a shudder went through me even as I tried to give him a polite smile.

  “Mr. Lamb, you startled me. I didn’t hear you come up. I’m sorry for dropping by like this.” I gave an absent wave toward the door. “I wasn’t even sure you lived here. I’m relieved to know that I’m at the right place.”

  He didn’t seem amused by my babbling nor did he try to put me at ease. Something flickered across his face as he watched me. Surprise? Suspicion? Bewilderment? As usual, he was hard to read and I felt certain he wanted it to stay that way.

  “I told you I lived nearby and this is the only house around so...” He shrugged.

  “True. It was a fair bet. You also said that I should holler if I ran into trouble.”

  “Let me guess. More dead birds?” I might have mistaken his question for a taunt except for the alarm that flashed in his eyes. I left my place at the door and went quickly down the rickety steps to meet him. Somehow, I felt safer standing on solid ground as I faced him.

  His sudden appearance had thoroughly unnerved me. Maybe it was those bloodstained gloves and the weapon I knew he wore at his hip. Or the creature I’d seen perched on top of his house and the dead animals he kept in his workshop.

  I dropped my hand to my side so that my fingers could easily close around the pepper spray. “No more dead birds, thankfully. At least none that I’ve found. I still haven’t gotten over all those starlings falling from the sky like that.”

  “It wasn’t a pretty sight,” he agreed.

  “Thank you for taking them away,” I said. “What did you do with them, anyway?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I know this may sound odd, but...” I paused. “I came by here yesterday looking for you. I saw your workshop in the back. I...couldn’t help wondering if you had a use for them.”

  “Not those birds, no way. Those birds needed to be buried.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you, they were signs. They’d already served their purpose.”

  “Where did you bury them?”

  “There’s a spot I use at the edge of the cemetery for the dead animals I come across.”

  I flashed again to all of those stuffed carcasses in his workshop and all those gleaming glass eyes. “Do you find a lot of dead animals around here?”

  “Enough.” He turned to glance across the road at the cemetery. “Not all of them are signs, but some are, if you know how to read them.”

  “And you do?”

  “My mother did. I reckon she passed on some of her ways.”

  I knew all about legacies.

  My gaze dropped to those darkly stained gloves and it was all I could do to suppress my own shudder. “It’s nice of you to take the time to bury them. The animals, I mean.”

  “The smell gets bad if I don’t. Not to mention the flies. But that’s
not why you’re here, is it?” He removed the gloves and stuffed them in his back pocket. I couldn’t help noticing the scar on his hand and I wondered again if he came from a violent past. And what or who had brought him to Woodbine Cemetery.

  “I’m here on cemetery business,” I said. “If you have a moment, I’d like to ask you some questions.”

  “About what?”

  “You said something the first day we met that struck me. You said you thought a guilty conscience might be responsible for Woodbine’s restoration.”

  “So?”

  “I’ve recently learned that a donation was made anonymously to the Woodbine Cemetery Trust with the stipulation that I be the one to do the work. I know it’s a long shot, but I’m wondering if you have any idea who may have made that donation. If that’s why you said what you did about a guilty conscience.”

  He put a foot on the bottom step and folded his arms on the railing, but his casual stance was hardly reassuring. There was an odd glint in his eyes, not unlike the one I’d noted when he examined the dead birds. I’d had a feeling then as I did now that there was a lot more to Prosper Lamb than he let on.

  “I’m just the caretaker,” he said. “The Woodbine Cemetery Trust pays my salary, but I don’t know anything about the donations.”

  “But you had a strong opinion about the motivation behind the restoration and you seem to know an awful lot about Woodbine in general. I get the impression you keep a sharp eye on things, so I’m sure you would take note of repeat visitors or any unusual activity. This is a roundabout way of saying that the donor may be someone with a personal connection to Woodbine. Someone who may have been coming to the cemetery on a regular basis for years or someone who just started to visit. Either way, someone with a guilty conscience.”

  “People come, people go. The gates are left open, so visitors wander in at all hours. So long as they’re respectful and not up to mischief, I try to stay out of their way. And anyway, the dead don’t care where the money came from. Why do you?”

  “Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I can’t help thinking there’s something suspicious about how things were handled. I wasn’t given all the facts before I signed the contract. Certain things were kept from me and I don’t like being misled or manipulated.”