Grave Intent

by Deborah LeBlanc

  A lump the size of a peach pit flew from Ellie’s mouth and hit the inside corner of the door panel, sticking there for a moment. Michael caught it as it slid down the panel. Although covered in phlegm, he saw what looked like chewed up leaves and grass woven through it.

  “Is she okay?” Janet asked anxiously.

  Ellie took a deep breath, yawned, then leaned against her father. Michael held out his hand so Janet could see what was in it.

  “God, what is that?”

  “I don’t know.” He aimed his hand away from the van and shook the sticky lump from it.

  “Michael, don’t!” Janet cried. “We should bring it with us to the hospital—have somebody look at it.”

  “Wait,” Michael said, turning Ellie around. He held her at arms length so he could study her face. Her lips were no longer blue, and her cheeks were gaining color. Ellie’s breathing, however, remained shallow. Her lips moved softly, whispering, and Michael pulled her close so he could hear.

  “M-mia lona,” Ellie murmured. “Mia r-rhine.”

  Hearing those words nearly stopped Michael’s heart. The Stevenson clan had chanted those words during Thalia’s viewing. Only now—somehow—he understood their meaning.

  “Michael?”

  He glanced up at Janet, but didn’t see her. His mind was too preoccupied. He knew now that the nightmare wouldn’t end just because he’d found his family. It hadn’t even been about him saving his wife or daughter from a fanatical Stevenson tracking a gold coin. Something much bigger and even more determined hunted the gold—and Ellie. And Michael could feel its kiss of death even now on his daughter’s breath.

  “—to the hospital.”

  Michael blinked and saw Janet pointing toward the ground.

  “—might want to examine it,” she said.

  Assuming Janet was still referring to the clump of phlegm, Michael shook his head. “It won’t do any good.” He cradled his daughter against him and quickly carried her to the back passenger door. He slid the wide door open and was about to lay Ellie across the seat when he spotted Heather. The child was crouched in a tight little ball on the opposite side of the van, sucking frantically on her thumb. Instead of acknowledging Michael, she stared straight ahead, an empty expression on her face.

  I know how you feel, he thought. He laid Ellie down, and only then did he notice the horse-shaped figurine clutched in his daughter’s right hand. Slightly puzzled as to how he hadn’t noticed it earlier, Michael gave it a scant second look before securing the van doors and running back to the driver’s side.

  “What do you mean it won’t do any good?” Janet asked when Michael motioned for her to scoot over to the passenger’s seat. She climbed over the console. “They might need it, Michael, if—”

  “Baby, listen,” Michael held his wife’s arm and looked at her intently. “Have you seen Ellie playing with anything new, anything unusual lately—something shiny—gold—about the size of a quarter?”

  Janet frowned. “What are you talking about? For heaven’s sake, what’s that got to do with—”

  “It’s important,” he said. “No, critical. Have you seen anything like that?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Where’s Ellie’s suitcase? Her toy bag?”

  Janet glanced fearfully out the window, then back at him. “Still in the cabin, but how in the hell can you be worried about something like that when—”

  “Stay here while I go and get her things,” Michael said, already turning away, ready to jump out of the van.

  “No!” Janet grabbed his arm. “Michael, no, don’t go in there! We—there’s—“

  “Janet, I have to. If I don’t find that gold piece and get it back—just please, you have to trust me!”

  A small hand suddenly plopped onto Michael’s right shoulder, and he looked back, startled.

  Heather stood against the seat, her hair disheveled, her thumb still in her mouth. She pointed to Ellie, who lay behind her.

  “I know, honey,” Michael said. “Ellie’ll be all right. Don’t worry.”

  Heather shook her head and fervently jabbed a finger at Ellie again.

  “What?” he asked.

  Dropping down on the seat beside Ellie, Heather pointed again, this time her finger touching her cousin’s fanny pack.

  “Shit,” Michael breathed. He scrambled to his knees and leaned over the seat to unzip the pack.

  Amid two Barbie dresses, an old bottle cap, a wadded up piece of tissue, two cat-eye marbles, and a moldy Fig Newton, lay the coin. Ellie groaned and stirred as he pulled it out of the pack.

  Michael studied the gold piece propped innocently in his hand. He thought of the pomp and circumstance involved when it had first been introduced during Thalia’s viewing. The solemnity—the fervor. Here, he now knew, lay the icon of a faith so powerful, it called up an ancestral community willing to kill for it. Somehow seeing it, holding it, helped him finally understand what needed to be done. This whole ordeal hadn’t been about getting the coin back to just any Stevenson. It was about getting it back to Thalia. Back to its owner.

  “W-where’d that come from?” Janet asked.

  “I’ll explain on the way to Brusley,” Michael said, shoving the coin into his pants pocket. He flipped back around in his seat and glanced at the time illuminated on the dash. 12:50 a.m.. Sunrise was a little more than five hours away, and it would take at least four of those to get back to Brusley.

  “Brusley? Michael, are you crazy? We have to get Ellie to a doctor. Someone close by. Jesus, look at her! For all we know she could be dying!”

  Michael reached for the steering wheel. “Not could, Janet,—she is.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Janet thought about Dango Reese, the bible carrying, Harley rider Michael had told her he’d hitched a ride with. Dango must have kept his promise to Michael about praying for him. It was the only explanation for how they’d managed to make a four-hour road trip in just over three and a quarter without seeing one policeman or any road construction. Someone was surely watching over them.

  The girls had slept most of the way, with Ellie breathing more and more like an asthmatic. Through the entire trip, Ellie’s lips never stopped moving. She appeared trapped in a silent, endless, one-way conversation.

  Janet glanced over at Michael, who sat at attention behind the steering wheel, his eyes locked on the road. They’d spent the last few hours exchanging details about their ordeals, her escape from the cabin and all that had led up to it, his desperate attempts to reach them and why. Both of them had always been realists, prone to finding objective, logical explanations for anything out of the ordinary. But no matter how many ways they had dissected the information each other shared, there was no logic to be found. Janet still couldn’t believe her daughter’s life depended on the return of a gold coin.

  She saw another minute flip over on the dash clock as Michael swerved right and headed for the south side of Brusley.

  4:22 a.m.. A little over an hour before daybreak and only three blocks from Saint Paul’s Cemetery.

  “I just hope I can find it,” Michael said with a shake of his head. The worry lines on his forehead deepened.

  “You will,” Janet said, wishing she had more to offer him than a platitude.

  She knew from having worked at the funeral home in the past that Saint Paul’s Cemetery was a twelve-acre property with a hodgepodge of tombs and crypts, some dating back to the mid-eighteen hundreds. She’d been told the plots had been assigned an alphanumeric system only ten years ago, after Father Melancon had inadvertently buried an old woman in someone else’s pre-purchased plot. The new aisle markers, which were metal strips tapped into concrete blocks, were supposed to clearly outline whose plot belonged to whom. And they did—if you could find them. Even during the day you had to weave between rows A and E, hoping to find L. The standing joke in town was that whoever had set the markers in place had either been severely farsighted or dyslexic.

 
Trying to find the Stevenson girl’s plot in the dark was going to be no joke, however. Michael told her that Chad had been the one to handle the Stevenson burial, not him, which meant he’d have no idea of the direction of the grave. He claimed to remember the plot number from the arrangements, but she knew it would still be difficult, if not impossible, to find.

  Don’t stop praying, Dango, Janet thought. Whatever you do, don’t stop now.

  Michael turned sharply onto Ruston Avenue and raced the two blocks to the next stop sign, which sat across the street from Saint Paul’s. He rolled to a stop and threw the shift into park.

  “You sure you’ll be all right?” Janet asked him.

  Michael nodded. “Don’t worry about me. Just go on and get the girls to Riverwest Medical. I’ll find someway to meet you there when—”

  The van’s interior lights suddenly flashed on, and Janet and Michael spun around in their seats at the same time. The back door was open, and Heather was crying. Ellie was nowhere to be seen. Janet’s heart plummeted.

  “Over there!” Michael shouted.

  Janet whirled back around and saw him pointing to the windshield. Beyond it, she saw Ellie sprinting across the road with a dot of crimson light dancing wildly about her. It took Janet a second or two to figure out the light emanated from the crystal horse in Ellie’s hand.

  Michael threw open his door. “Ellie, stop!”

  Ellie didn’t look back. She dodged a row of hedges, veered left, then headed straight for the cemetery gates.

  Michael jumped out of the van. “Stay here,” he said to Janet. “I’ll get her.”

  “No, I’m going with you!”

  “Somebody has to stay with Heather,” he shouted, already heading for the cemetery.

  “Don’t leave me, Aunt Janet!” Heather begged from the backseat. “D-Don’t leave me!”

  Janet swiveled in her seat, intending to tell Heather she wouldn’t leave her, and bumped her injured knee against the center console. “Crap!” she cried, and cupped a hand gingerly over the joint. It had swollen to twice its normal size, and she felt heat radiating through her pant leg.

  “W-We’ll both go with Uncle Michael,” she told Heather after catching her breath. She couldn’t just sit here. Bum knee or not, Michael needed help. If the whole ordeal about getting the coin back to the grave before sunrise was true, he didn’t have time to chase after Ellie and find the Stevenson girl’s tomb.

  “No!” Heather said, curling up against the backseat. “I don’t wanna go in—”

  The driver’s door slammed shut so hard it rocked the van, and every door lock clicked into place simultaneously.

  “What—” Janet pulled up on the metal nub to unlock her door, but it wouldn’t move.

  “Look!” Heather screamed, pointing to the front of the van.

  Standing between the headlight beams was Anna Stevenson.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  At this hour, the street fronting Saint Paul’s was deserted, as was the pasture beyond it. To the left of the cemetery loomed Saint Paul’s church, a dark, kingless castle, with its nearest neighbor over a quarter of a mile away. Ten people could scream for help in this spot and no one would ever hear, Michael worried.

  Ellie had long disappeared beyond the cemetery gates by the time Michael reached them. The iron sloped-top wings were slightly ajar, and Michael pulled on one to widen the entrance. It opened reluctantly, filling the air with a hollow, resonating creak. When it was wide enough to slip his body through, Michael squeezed inside.

  He scanned the property, hoping to at least spot the light from Ellie’s horse.

  The cemetery appeared to stretch on forever. White painted tombs and crosses stood side by side, like bleached soldiers with drawn swords. Some of the crypts were gray and lopsided, sunken at one end after decades of settling. There were too many graves here, too many trees, too many places for a little girl to hide.

  Weaving around a wide, moss-laden oak, Michael chose the left side of the cemetery to start his search. “Ellie!”

  Frogs croaked and locusts whined, taunting him with sounds that sent his head whipping about in every direction. Numerous statues of saints and cherubs made for shadowy silhouettes that resembled small children. Michael soon found himself running back and forth, side to side, retracing his steps, checking and double-checking. Scarlet incandescent dots appeared every hundred feet or so, raising his hopes only to dash them again when they revealed nothing more than perpetual vigil lights.

  Michael twisted in half-circles, trying to look everywhere at once. An owl hooted nearby, and he jumped, startled. He turned, tracking the sound, then froze.

  There, arched and pulsing over the treetops in the far east section of the cemetery was a brilliant crimson light.

  Michael charged towards it. Ellie. It had to be!

  Winding around and over, through and under, Michael tore through the cemetery. Please, God, let it be her—let it be her—let it be her.

  When he finally reached the light’s origin, he skidded to a halt.

  A few feet ahead throbbed a fiery red ball of light with Ellie enveloped in its center. She lay on her back at the foot of a black marble tomb, her eyes closed, her hands folded over her chest. On her stomach stood the horse, the source of the light, its radiance so dazzling it hurt Michael’s eyes.

  A pained groan broke from Michael’s lips, and he ran to his daughter. The moment he connected with the vacuum of light surrounding her, he bounced off it and wound up ass down on the ground. Stunned, he quickly got to his feet and touched the sphere of light with his fingers. It had the texture of rock. He slammed a fist into it, and his knuckles came back bloodied.

  Michael dropped down to his knees and pressed his face against the sphere, trying to get as close to Ellie as possible. Even through the haze of colored light, he saw the paleness of her skin, the shallowness of her breath, the blue line trailing once again around her mouth. His baby was dying.

  He pounded on the translucent wall. “Ellie, honey, open your eyes! Look at me! It’s Daddy, Ellie, it’s Daddy!”

  But Ellie didn’t look at him. She didn’t move. And all Michael could do was watch his daughter’s chest rise and fall slowly—much too slowly.

  He jumped to his feet and twisted about, looking for something to strike the barrier with. His eyes settled over the marble tomb in front of which Ellie lay, and his jaw fell slack. The marker on top of the tomb read:

  THALIA STEVENSON

  Our Beloved Daughter

  Sweet Jesus! Not bothering to question how his daughter wound up here, Michael scrambled to the side of the tomb. He sensed more than ever that getting to Thalia would be Ellie’s only chance for survival.

  The outside of the tomb was shaped similar to the lid of a shoebox and sat a foot or more above the ground. It served as a cap for the vault that lay beneath it. The casket was placed in the vault to protect it from water, which was a given since most of Louisiana sat at or below sea level. He’d have to remove the lid to reach the vault and get to the casket.

  Michael quickly squatted with his back to the crypt, then jammed his fingers under the vault cap. Using his legs as a lever, he pulled up with a grunt, but his fingers soon slipped away.

  “Please,” Michael moaned, and shoved his fingers back into place. He held his breath and pulled up again.

  Not even the air around him moved.

  Hot needles of pain seared the tips of his fingers, and Michael reluctantly let go of the cap. His hands shook when he drew them close to his face. The unpolished, grainy bottom of the lid had peeled off most of the skin from his fingertips. His shoulders slumped. Even if he had a crowbar, he wouldn’t be able to lift the weight of the marble lid.

  With a wail, Michael jumped to his feet and kicked the side of the tomb. He faced his daughter, the captor light, the horse that seemed to glow brighter with each passing moment, and pulled the coin from his pocket. Michael held it out like a crucifix warding off evil.

&nbs
p; “I have your fucking coin now, goddammit, so leave my daughter alone!” He beat his chest with a fist. “You want somebody? Then here, take me, goddammit, take me! She didn’t do anything!”

  The only response he received was a gust of wind, blowing across his back. With it came the clang of tin against tin in the distance. Michael inhaled sharply, suddenly remembering the old front-end loader kept under a lean-to behind the cemetery. He’d seen Jasper Castille, the caretaker, shovel dirt with the clunky antique plenty of times. It would easily get the vault lid off! All he had to do was figure out how to use it.

  Michael shoved the coin back into his pocket and took off for the toolshed.

  The lean-to was no more than a few sheets of tin attached to the top of four, ten-foot high posts. It jutted out along the north end of a shed and barely covered the tractor. A backhoe attachment lay under the backside of the awning like a giant, one-armed praying mantis with rust spots.

  Michael circled the loader; looking for what he wasn’t sure, but at least the tires weren’t flat. He opened a narrow toolbox that straddled one of the tire humps and fished a hand inside on the chance Jasper might have stashed a flashlight in there.

  All he found was a thick coil of chain. After closing the lid, Michael hauled himself onto the tractor seat and studied the dozen or so switches, knobs and levers that surrounded him.

  “Which one?” he muttered. He ran a hand over the shift knob sticking up between his knees. At least he knew what this one was for. His first vehicle at fifteen had been an old four-speed pickup with a standard shift on the floor. Michael checked near the steering column for an ignition switch. All he saw were toggles, worn rubber knobs, and gauges behind cracked glass or no glass at all. Nothing with a keyhole. He figured that to be a good sign, considering he didn’t have a key.

  Blowing out a hot puff of air, he began to push and twist, pull and flip everything in sight. Sweat dripped into his eyes, and just as he readied to swivel about to try the controls at his back, the tractor’s engine roared to life. Michael stared at the control panel, bewildered. The engine sputtered, then coughed, and he stomped a foot against the floorboard, hunting for a gas pedal. Not finding one, he threw his hands back onto the controls and lucked out with the first lever he pulled. The engine revved up to a grumbling whine.