by Kelly Creagh
Gwen grabbed the hand that held the flashlight and, aiming the low glow in her own face, eyed Isobel with a baleful glare. “They’re not lock-picking tools,” she said. “They’re orthodontic instruments. My dad keeps a set in both cars in case he ever has to make hospital calls for face trauma patients. ”
“And you use them to pick locks?”
“I always sterilize them when I’m done. ”
Isobel twisted her hand in Gwen’s, aiming the flashlight at her own face. “Okay, Gwen, what I mean is—how the hell do you know how to pick a lock in the first place?”
Dropping Isobel’s hand, Gwen reached down to the black leather case and extracted the instrument she needed before returning to her work. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a magician when I grew up,” she murmured. “Harry, the all-time master, was my idol. I still have a poster of him hanging in my room. ”
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Isobel’s face scrunched with incredulity. “Potter?” she asked.
Gwen’s head snapped toward Isobel. “Houdini, Isobel,” she all but shouted. “Harry Houdini. The friggin’ Handcuff King!”
“Okay!” Isobel threw up both hands, nearly dropping the keys. “Sorry!”
Gwen snatched for Isobel’s wrist, aiming the light toward the lock again.
“I’ve since learned that picking a lock is a lot like talking to a guy,” she said. “Sometimes all you need is just the right amount of . . . force. ”
Click.
Isobel’s mouth fell open in the same moment the shackle popped free. Quickly Gwen stood.
“Here,” she said. “Take these. ”
Isobel rose, still gaping as Gwen shoved the instruments into her hand.
Checking over her shoulder once, Gwen yanked the lock from the gate and gave the metal doors a light shove. They eased open with a low and rusty groan.
Gwen hurried in.
“C’mon,” she said, turning back. “I think I hear a car coming. ”
Isobel stooped to grab the case full of tools, then darted through the gates. She had heard it too, the hushed monotone hum of a vehicle’s slow approach. Together, she and Gwen turned to push the gates shut, and while Isobel held the iron doors steady, Gwen threaded one thin arm through to snap the padlock back in place, effectively locking them inside the cemetery.
“Quick,” Gwen whispered. “Get down. Doesn’t have its lights on, so it’s gotta be a cop. ”
Isobel backpedaled away from the gate, searching for somewhere to hide. She froze, though, when she realized that she was standing right in front of Poe’s grave.
Shaped like an enormous white chess piece, the monument stood taller and wider than a person, raised off the brick walkway by a square-cut stone base. Embedded in the center of the memorial was a portrait of Poe embossed on a giant bronze medallion. His eyes, two chiseled holes, seemed to watch her with an expression that in the mix of shadow and light looked nothing short of stricken.
It took her back to the vision Pinfeathers had shown her. Poe’s final moments played out again in her mind’s eye, like a horror movie she couldn’t turn away from.
“What are you doing?” Gwen rasped, rushing to her side. “I said get down!”
Grabbing hold of Isobel’s wrist, Gwen pulled her behind the side of the monument that faced away from the front gates. Together, they pressed their backs against frozen stone, the contents of Isobel’s backpack digging into her spine.
Isobel squeezed Gwen’s arm. She pointed at the elongated Siamese-twin shape their shadows cast against the side of the tomb directly across from them. They sank down in unison, their shadows melding into one, blending in with humpbacked silhouettes of the surrounding stone markers. Staying low, they balanced on their haunches, listening to the sound of squeaky brakes as the car eased to a halt.
A flashlight beam shot past them, slicing through the darkness. Like a searchlight, it trailed down the walkway and over the slabs of stone. Isobel huddled closer to Gwen, pulling her own shoulder in from where it had been poking out on one side of the grave. Isobel held her breath, and she could tell that Gwen was doing the same.
A sudden scratchy burst of static erupted from what sounded like a two-way radio. A man’s voice broke through the fuzz. “Unit ten, we’ve got a call for backup at the harbor. ”
Isobel strained to hear, unable to help but wonder if the call had anything to do with her disappearance. She had no doubt that her father would have contacted the police by now. Had he already called Mom, too?
“Copy that,” a voice answered. “Just checking on old Westminster. It’s still quiet over here, so we’re on our way. ”
The flashlight beam made one more arc over the cemetery before bouncing away. Beside her, Isobel could feel Gwen releasing her breath in a slow exhale.
Isobel began to relax too—until one last burst of static zipped through the air, carrying with it a snatch of melody, a woman humming. Three notes, haunting and beautiful, drifted through the cemetery before a motorized drone, like the sound of a power window rolling up, cut it short.
Isobel knew that melody. The lullaby.
Quickly she craned her head around the side of the grave. She glanced toward the front entrance of the cemetery just in time to catch the red glow of the patrol car’s taillights as it slid out of sight.
Isobel gripped Gwen’s leather case of tools to her chest. “Did you hear that?”
“Yeah,” Gwen answered in a whisper. “But whatever it is, I doubt it’ll keep them busy for long. Let’s go before someone else circles by. ”
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With that, Gwen pushed away from the monument and stepped down onto the pathway. Isobel turned to follow, but something on the side of Poe’s grave marker caught her eye.
“Gwen, wait,” Isobel called, forgetting for a moment to keep her voice low.
“Shh!” Gwen hissed. Isobel could hear her hurrying back up the walkway. “Come on, Isobel. You can pay your respects during normal business hours. Right now we need to hide!”
“No, look,” Isobel said. She placed a hand on the stone, her fingertips tracing the carved letters that arced in a rainbow shape.
VIRGINIA CLEMM POE
BORN
AUGUST 15, 1822
DIED
JANUARY 30, 1847
“Poe’s wife,” Isobel whispered. “I didn’t know she was buried here too. ”
“Well, say hello if you have to,” Gwen said, “but make it quick. One, it’s freezing out here, two, we’re officially breaking the law, and three, I think you’re standing on her anyway. ”
“She died so young,” Isobel said. “No wonder he was always so sad. ”
“Yes, it’s breaking my brittle little freeze-dried heart. Isobel, please. Can we at least get out of the spotlights?”
Isobel felt Gwen latch hold of her arm again and pull her forward. Yet her eyes lingered on the stone, unable to break away from Virginia’s name, highlighted by the warm yellow light.
How had Varen said she’d died? Tuberculosis? She thought that sounded right.
She could recall Varen telling her to write it down on one of the index cards the night before the project. Back in Poe’s era, though, the disease had been called “consumption” because of the way the sickness seemed to slowly devour its victim from the inside out, causing its sufferer to cough up blood.
Varen had told her that Virginia had been playing the piano for Poe and her mother the day the illness had revealed itself. She’d been singing when, out of nowhere, a single drop of blood landed on her bottom lip.
Red Death, Isobel thought.
“Psst!” Gwen hissed. “This way!”
Isobel stepped back from the grave. Adjusting the straps of her backpack, she turned to follow after Gwen as she moved farther down the redbrick path that skirted one side of the huge church.
Ahead, Isobel saw that th
e path tapered as it made its way between two rows of stone sepulchers. The low-lying tombs sat facing one another, like neighboring houses on a narrow street.
Isobel strode toward them, and the shadows around her grew thicker. Glancing down, she noticed a long white slab set into the center of the brick walkway, someone’s name chiseled into the alabaster stone. Stepping around the slab, she hurried to catch up with Gwen, who waited for her between the two rows of aboveground crypts.
Tiny flecks of snow began to light on the pointed rooftops of the squat stone chambers. Isobel glanced at the hinged doors that adorned the face of each, the iron panels large enough to allow for a single coffin to slide through. They reminded her of the kind of doors found on old-fashioned furnaces. Or morgue refrigerators. She had to wonder, though, why these doors needed hinges at all if they were never meant to be reopened.
“Watch out for the drain,” Gwen said, pointing toward Isobel’s feet.
“Drain?”
Still clutching Gwen’s keys, the case of orthodontic instruments now tucked under one arm, Isobel pressed the on button for the flashlight. As the bulb sprang to life, she aimed the slim beam downward, illuminating a cement drain entrenched in the walkway. It ran between a pair of parallel tombs that, unlike the other face-to-face crypts, flanked the walkway lengthwise. No doubt the drain was meant to keep the tunnel-like section from flooding with rainwater.
Moving to one side of the drain, Isobel placed her hand against the tomb to her right, allowing the rough stone to guide her.
Gwen pressed onward, navigating a path Isobel could tell she had taken before. She turned left and disappeared behind one of the tombs. Isobel spurred herself forward, entering an open courtyard. To her right, next to an ancient and gnarled tree, stood the set of gates that looked out on Greene Street.
“Over here,” Gwen whispered.
A squeaking sound drew Isobel’s attention away from the street to where Gwen tugged at another gate recessed beneath a brick archway, one that seemed to lead into the lower portion of the church. Smoky glass backed the iron bars, hiding from view whatever lay within. Isobel knew right away that it must lead to the catacombs Gwen had mentioned before.
Isobel took a step in the direction of the door but paused, glancing toward the rear portion of the cemetery, where the ground arched into hilly terrain dotted with slabs and still more large and closely quartered aboveground tombs.
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As she looked out over the crowded landscape, it struck Isobel as odd that there didn’t appear to be any angels or other decorative figures guarding any of the stone burial chambers. There were no seraphs or weeping women bearing laurels. There were no lyres or even crosses. Only stone and mortar, marble and granite. Even though they were in a graveyard, the scene struck her as very lonely.
“Isobel,” Gwen hissed.
She turned to see Gwen hanging out the catacomb door. “Would you get in here? You can take the tour later!”
Isobel glanced behind her to the gates that faced Greene Street. A car whooshed by, and somewhere in the distance, she thought she could hear a faint chattering growing nearer. She turned and jogged to meet Gwen, who stood back from the door, allowing Isobel to slide into the musty chamber.
Underneath the church, it smelled like chalk and earth.
Taking the miniature flashlight from Isobel, Gwen shone it through the darkened space. More vaults lay scattered around a cavernous room. Gravestones, too, poked up through a floor of dust and dirt.
“That door,” Gwen said, pointing across the room to yet another iron gate backed by the same opaque glass as the one they’d entered through. It seemed to glow, lit from behind by nearby city lamps and building lights. “It lets out to the rear of the cemetery. Right behind another row of mausoleums. From there, you’ve got a straight-shot view of Poe’s old grave. But I thought we’d hang out in here till midnight,” she said, and aimed the beam of her flashlight upward, illuminating the underbelly of the church. Stone archways filled with pockets of spiderwebs stretched across the ceiling. “If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to hear the Poe Patrol whenever they get back from dinner. ”
Isobel stared at the door that led to the back of the graveyard as she strode forward through the gloom, moving toward its dim glow. She stopped at the place where the light from the small flashlight reached its limit.
While she could discern the tops of tombstones and the general perimeters of the room, she could barely make out the dirt floor itself. The darkness created a thick blanket that hid the outline of steps and short brick barriers and squat grave markers.
“What time is it now?” Isobel asked, her voice echoing.
“Almost nine, I’m guessing,” Gwen said. “I’m not sure. I turned off my phone so it wouldn’t give a signal. You did too, right?”
“Left it with Dad,” Isobel murmured.
“Even better,” Gwen said.
Isobel turned to face Gwen again, watching as she swept her skirts up from the dusty ground to tie them in a knot over the pair of thermal stretch pants she wore. Gwen lowered herself with a grunt to sit on the ground, her back pressed to the front of one of the long tombs. After that, she twisted to aim her flashlight up at the name engraved above the rusted iron door.
“Well, hello . . . J . . . Meredith,” she said. “Hope you don’t mind the intrusion. No, no. No need to get up. We’re not the fancy type. I’m Gwen and this is Isobel. Isobel, J. Meredith; J. Meredith, Isobel. ”
Isobel took the black case out from beneath her arm and offered the tomb a pinched smile and a slight wave with her free hand. She drew up to the mausoleum and let her backpack slip to the ground, then lowered herself to sit next to Gwen on the other side of the metal door.
Gwen let out a long sigh as she tilted her head back to rest against the tomb, while Isobel reached for her backpack.
“I’m going to put your dad’s tools in my bag,” she said.
Gwen rolled her head in Isobel’s direction. “Not tools,” she muttered. “Hammer and wrench are tools. Orthodontists use instruments. ”
“You hungry?” Isobel asked. Digging deeper into the bag, she pulled out two of the granola bars she’d packed.
“Always,” Gwen replied, and snatched one up. She tore open the package. “Dunno if it’s really kosher to dine in catacombs, though,” she said, taking half the bar in one bite.
Isobel fumbled to open her own bar. Even though she didn’t feel hungry, she knew she needed to eat. She chewed her first bite without tasting.
The sound of their munching seemed to fill the otherwise silent space. After a moment, Gwen released her hold on the tiny flashlight button, allowing the darkness to turn both of them into shadows too.
“Where do you suppose your dad is right now?” Gwen asked.
“No telling,” Isobel said, and even though she had half the granola bar left, she nudged Gwen, offering her the rest. “Police station, maybe. ”
“Thanks,” Gwen said. She took the bar, and Isobel could hear her chew and swallow loudly.
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“I have water, too,” Isobel said.
“I’m good. ”
They were quiet for a long time after that. Then, when the soundlessness began to grow loud in Isobel’s ears, she spoke again.
“I bet Dad’s called Mom by now,” she said softly. “She’s probably scrambling right this second to get a plane ticket. And someone to watch Danny. ”
“Mmm,” Gwen said.
“I can’t help thinking about it,” Isobel whispered. “About what I’m doing to them right now. About how crazy they must be feeling. The things they’re saying to each other. The things they’re thinking. ”
Isobel pulled her knees close, hugging them to her chest.
“Sometimes,” she went on, “I wonder if any of this would have ever happened the way it did if I could have just talk
ed to them about what was going on. I mean, what was really going on. Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference if I’d told Dad about the things I was seeing, about Varen’s journal and the Poe book and the dreamworld. I don’t think he would have ever believed me. But not just because of the weird stuff. ” She paused. “Until I met Varen, it was never like that, where I couldn’t just go to my dad and tell him . . . whatever. Because no matter what it was, I never had to doubt whether he’d be on my side. I mean with something that really mattered. ”
Isobel stopped again, dropping her forehead to her knees.
Gwen said nothing, but Isobel kept talking anyway, the words spilling out from some inner wound she hadn’t realized had begun to bleed.
“Why?” she asked. “What about Varen changed all that?”
Taking in a shuddering breath, she tasted dust. “I guess,” she continued, deciding to take a stab at answering her own question, since Gwen had yet to offer one, “I guess that by wanting to keep us apart, Dad thought he was protecting me. I’m trying to understand that, to get that, but it’s hard when he never even gave Varen a chance, you know? When he decided in a split second, after just one look, that he couldn’t accept Varen even being in my proximity. No one could. His friends, my friends, my parents, the entire school—everyone wanted to pretend like, together, Varen and I formed some kind of . . . I don’t know . . . combustive chemical mixture that could blow everything up. I think you were the only one, the only one in the whole world, who it didn’t make any difference to, Gwen. Did you know that?”
Isobel waited. When Gwen still made no response, she glanced over to hear that her friend’s breathing had turned slow and measured.
Asleep . . .
Taking into account the drive Gwen had made that day, coupled with her earlier survey of the cemetery and the stress of picking her up from the harbor, Isobel didn’t doubt that she’d probably dozed off after Isobel’s third sentence.
But that was okay, she told herself. Because it hadn’t been Gwen who she’d been speaking to anyway. Not really.
Leaning back again, Isobel shut her eyes and, releasing a sigh, rested the back of her head against the tomb.