His eyes glinted. “I was teasing.”
“Oh.” I tried to take it as such, but something niggled at the back of my mind. That same feeling of destiny that had plagued me in the clearing. That unsettling notion that I had been brought here for a reason.
They do call you the restorer.
“Anyway,” Thane was saying. “I suppose Grandfather still has hope of an heir, but I’m not so sure the marriage will last that long.”
A divorce would probably make Luna happy.
I thought of that overheard rendezvous, the intimate murmuring and animalistic moans of pleasure… .
I drew a sharp breath. That day at the library, I couldn’t leave those sounds behind fast enough, but now I found the voyeuristic memory titillating. And that in itself was disturbing.
As we neared the summit, I felt something in the air, an odd vibration that thrummed through my veins and teased like a feather along my nerve endings. The breeze lifted my hair and stroked my face like a lover’s caress. I closed my eyes on a shudder. Then slowly I turned my gaze upon the man beside me. For a moment, his face seemed to morph into…
Thane scowled down at me. “Are you okay?”
“Do you feel something in the air?” I asked, pulling my jacket tightly around me.
The frown deepened. “Rain, maybe. I noticed storm clouds moving in earlier.”
That could explain the vibration, couldn’t it? The electrical shock that had pulsed through my body when I looked up and saw Devlin’s face?
Thane’s gaze lingered. “Are you sure you’re all right? Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Why don’t you wait here for me? I’m sure I’ll be able to find the grave on my own.”
“No, I’m fine. Something strange just happened.”
“What?”
How could I explain what I’d experienced when I didn’t understand it myself? Maybe it was all the talk of bloodlines and fertility, but the vibration seemed to stir something deep inside me, almost akin to a sexual excitement. “It was…” I paused and started again. “For a moment, when I looked at you…I saw someone else…”
He studied me curiously. “Who?”
I glanced away, unable to hold his gaze. “No one. It doesn’t matter.”
“Lack of sleep,” he pronounced. “Fatigue can play strange tricks on the mind.”
I willed my heartbeat to slow. “I guess you’re right. Kind of like a waking dream. Anyway, I’m okay now.”
He cocked his head. “Listen.”
“What is it?”
“You can hear the falls from here.”
We were silent, heads turned toward the summit. Over the distant rush of water, another sound came to me. A whisper that undulated like a gentle wave through the trees.
Amelia…Amelia…
Nineteen
We crested the hill and started down the rugged incline toward the laurel bald, the sun at our backs. We were not that far from Thorngate and the highway, but it felt as if we’d been transported a million miles into nowhere. I saw a lizard sunning on a rock, and high overhead, a lone hawk floated serenely on an air current. But no other living creature stirred as we made our way down the slope.
I was favoring my ankle now, though it didn’t really hurt. But an uncomfortable stiffness in the joint made me wary of a misstep, and I didn’t mind when Thane offered a hand over some of the more treacherous terrain. The vibration had stopped, and I’d regained my equilibrium. I could view him now as a pleasant, attractive man whose company I had come to enjoy. Nothing more.
As we reached the bald, I realized it was a very good thing we’d brought Angus along. In my mind’s eye, I’d pinpointed the exact spot where I had entered the thicket, but now that we were here, the breaks in the wall of scrubby growth looked exactly the same. Without Angus to once again guide me through that maze, I would have been hopelessly lost. Papa was right. The sameness of the landscape played tricks on the eyes and on the senses. I wasn’t able to pick out a familiar landmark until we scrambled down the overhang that sheltered the grave.
Angus had bounded ahead, and now he sat facing the mound, tail thumping excitedly as he waited for us to catch up.
“This is the place?” Thane asked.
“Yes. The grave is up there, underneath the overhang. See the foxglove? They didn’t grow there wild. Someone planted them. But if you were just passing by, you’d never notice.”
Thane glanced around. “Hell of a place to bring a body. Must have been torture getting it through all that mountain laurel. Unless…” He trailed off, but I knew where his mind was headed.
“Unless the body was still mobile? I know. I’ve thought of that. But the mounding of the dirt is deliberate and there’s a headstone. Anyone trying to cover up a crime would never be so brazen. And, anyway, I don’t think the grave is hidden. I think it’s protected.”
As we stood there talking, Angus got up and ambled over to the grave to paw at some leaves. Then with an odd whimper, he came over to nuzzle my hand. A moment later, he returned to the grave and repeated the ritual.
“What’s he doing?” Thane asked.
“I have no idea. There’s something about this place that excites him. He’s the one that led me here. He kept barking and barking until I followed him through the woods, and when I found him, he was just sitting there with his gaze fixed on the grave.”
“He must smell something,” Thane said.
“I don’t think so. The grave is too old for that.”
“Dogs have a more developed sense of smell than we do. He’s probably picking up on a scent that’s undetectable to us. Maybe one that’s lingered here for years.”
I thought suddenly of that overheard conversation between my mother and aunt. Was it possible this was the grave they’d been referring to? Had Angus somehow picked up the scent of my mother here and on me?
It seemed too far-fetched. That conversation had taken place years ago. Even if this was the same grave, Mama’s scent would have long since been washed away. And if I couldn’t imagine her in Asher Falls, I certainly couldn’t picture her climbing down a rugged hillside and trudging through a laurel bald.
But Angus’s behavior was intriguing. Obviously, he knew something about this place that I didn’t.
A nosegay of wildflowers had been placed near the headstone, and I knelt quickly to inspect them. “These weren’t here yesterday.”
“They look fresh,” Thane said. “Someone must have been here early this morning.”
“I told you at dinner, this grave has been taken care of for years. See the way the grass and weeds have been scraped away? In the Southern folk cemetery, that’s a sign of respect, leaving the bare earth exposed that way. It’s mostly an archaic tradition and rarely see in this area, but at one time, people spent hours and hours hoeing every scrap of grass from gravesites. It takes a lot of work and patience to keep it so clean.”
“Why the seashells?” he asked. “The ocean is miles from here.”
“It’s another custom, sometimes symbolic of a watery passage. You’ll see whole graves covered in cockle shells, especially here in the South.”
“And the roses on the headstone…you said a full bloom and a bud symbolize a dual burial.”
“That’s one interpretation and used to be indicative of a mother who died in childbirth and was buried with her stillborn baby. But gravestone art can be subjective. The same symbol can mean different things in different areas and different time periods.” I studied the grave for a moment, trying to sort out the messages. “There are a lot of clues here, but I think they speak as much to the caretaker as to the deceased. Whoever visits this grave puts a lot of value in tradition. This site has been cared for with love and respect.”
I placed my hand flat on the headstone and felt again that strange jolt, that overwhelming feeling of suffocation. My head swam as my ears started to buzz, and I jerked back with a gasp. If my mother had somehow stumbled upon this site, I understood why it had troubled he
r. The place seemed charged with some dark emotion.
Thane glanced up. “You okay?”
“I just need to get a little air.”
I stood and moved away from the grave, uneasily scanning our surroundings. It was so quiet here, and the sun streaming down through the skeletal limbs of the laurel and rhododendron seemed unusually bright. I was only a few feet away from the grave, but the glare in my eyes was so brilliant and the shade beneath the overhang so deep that Thane had all but disappeared. I might have been alone. Forsaken in that desolate landscape.
A terrible heaviness pressed down like a stone upon my chest. The suffocation I felt now was loneliness, so intense I could scarcely draw a breath.
An image came to me suddenly. A ghost in a dark dress, wavering reedlike on the pier as she gazed up the stepping-stones…willing me to see her… .
A shadow fell across my face, and I glanced up into the sun. For a moment, I could have sworn I saw a silhouette poised at the edge of the overhang staring down at me. But when I lifted a hand to shade my eyes, it was gone. Dissolved like Freya’s ghost back into the mist.
Freya’s ghost.
An incessant dread had been tap, tap, tapping at my subconscious for a while now. The fear that I was being haunted by Freya Pattershaw. Was it only a matter of time before my energy began to wane? Before I grew pale and gaunt and hollow-eyed? Before I became like Devlin?
My knees went weak. Not a good sign. I found a place near the overhang where I could lean back against a warm rock while I tried to recover my strength.
By the time Thane emerged from the shade, I was feeling almost normal. “Do you think this could be Freya’s grave?”
He glanced at me in surprise. “Freya Pattershaw? Why would you think that?”
I shoved my hands into my pockets. “You said no one likes to talk about her death. Maybe she was buried out here so that people could forget about her.”
“Freya was buried in Thorngate,” Thane said.
My gaze shot to his. “Which one?”
“The new one. She died after the old one was flooded.”
I leaned back against the rock and closed my eyes for a moment. “You know this for a fact?”
“For a fact, no. But when I was a kid, I used to see Tilly in the cemetery. I always assumed she was visiting her daughter’s grave.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Am I missing something here? What does it matter where Freya Pattershaw was buried?”
“You want to know who’s buried here, don’t you? Unless someone comes forward with concrete information, it’ll be a process of elimination.”
He frowned. “You weren’t kidding, then, when you said identification could take a long time.”
“No. But it would go a lot faster if we could just find out who left those flowers.”
“I’ll ask around,” he said. “In the meantime, we’re close to the waterfall. If you still want to see it, I’ll take you up there.”
The sun was warm and pleasant on my face, but I found myself shivering at the prospect. What if the falls really was a gateway to the realm of the dead?
Twenty
I had to shed my jacket again by the time we reached the waterfall. The trek had taken us up and around the laurel bald, through a mountain meadow carpeted with goldenrod and along a rocky stream. As the hillside gave way to a more treacherous climb, we skirted the base of a sandstone cliff, eventually arriving at a natural archway that led us into a fern grotto shaded with sugar maples.
The waterfall was directly in front of us, the upper portion a series of cascades that merged into a single thirty-foot drop before plunging into a deep pool at the base of the cliff. All around us, craggy walls honeycombed with clefts rose at least fifty feet.
The beauty of the place was breathtaking, but already I could feel a spiny tickle at the base of my neck as I walked through the archway, Angus at my heels. I didn’t like the claustrophobic feeling of being hemmed in. I could imagine a little too vividly the scenario with Wayne Van Zandt. Once he’d entered the enclosure, he would have been trapped by whatever had followed him through the arch.
Near the base of the falls, the mouth of a cave opened into darkness. Above the entrance, three circular symbols had been carved into the face of the rock. A slight breeze swept in behind us, and a whisper ran through the trees as my gaze fastened on those marks. I inhaled sharply at the sight. “Ivy told me about those symbols, but I never imagined they’d be so large.”
“You want to take a closer look?”
My gaze traveled up the side of the cliff. “You’re joking, right?”
Thane grinned. “It’s not as dangerous as it looks. It’s actually an easy climb.”
“I’ll have to take your word for that.”
“You sure? You can’t see them from here, but there are some smaller drawings up near that ledge.” He pointed to a narrow shelf about ten feet from the top of the cliff.
“Like these?”
“I think so.”
I squinted up at the symbols. “Ivy said that no one knows what they are or who carved them.”
Thane shrugged. “All I can tell you is that they’ve been here for a long time. Up close, you can see where they’ve started to erode. You can also see chisel marks.”
“I know what they are,” I said a little breathlessly.
He turned in surprise. “You’ve seen them before?”
“Yes, on old gravestones. They’re hex signs. And despite what Ivy said, I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one around here who knows what they are.”
“Hex signs? What do they mean?”
“They’re not as ominous as they sound. Mostly, they’re used to ward off bad luck or evil spirits. Kind of like the evil eye. You see them a lot in cemeteries that are in or near old Germanic communities, especially in Pennsylvania. I’ve also seen them on gravestones in Texas and North Carolina. It’s a little unusual to find them in this area, though. And why here? Why over that cave?”
My fascination seemed lost on Thane. His attention had already been caught by a red-tailed hawk that had landed on another ledge at the top of the cliff.
“I wish I’d brought my camera.” I moved more deeply into the enclosure to get a better look at the signs. “I wonder how long they’ve been here. There must be some information about them in the library. Surely someone has written about them.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Thane said, his gaze tracking the hawk as it took flight. He walked over to the pool and knelt to skim his fingers through the water. “Ice-cold. It always is, no matter the time of year. Makes for an invigorating swim.”
That got my attention. “You’ve been swimming in this pool?”
“When I was a kid. I wasn’t supposed to come up here alone, so naturally I snuck away every chance I got.”
Light struck the cut on the side of his face, making him seem both tough and vulnerable. An appealing dichotomy, I was coming to discover.
“You’re braver than I am,” I told him.
“You’re the one who works alone in cemeteries.”
“Most cemeteries aren’t the least bit scary.”
“How would you rate Thorngate?”
“Verdict is still out,” I said lightly. My gaze lifted again to the symbols. Something tugged at the edge of my memory, and I struggled to recall what I’d read about them.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’m trying to remember what I know about hex signs. You almost always see them in multiples of at least three,” I said. “The one on the outer edge, nearest the falls is the most common. It’s called a sun wheel. The one in the center is a compass star. See how the points are rounded like flower petals?”
Thane rose and walked back to where I stood. “I’ve always thought the third one was a pentagram.”
“It’s called a Drudenfuss. A witch’s foot. According to German folklore, it has the power to stamp out demons.” And then suddenly I had it. I knew what had been worrying me about that s
ymbol. “Do you notice anything strange about it?”
“They’re all strange to me,” Thane said.
“No, this one has an anomaly. One of the lower points of the star has an open end. See how the tip is blunted?”
He tilted his head. “Are you sure that’s not just erosion or a characteristic of the rock?”
“No, I’m pretty sure the end was opened on purpose.”
“For what reason?”
“Some people believe that an open point on a pentacle is a way for evil to enter our world. And in order for it to exit, another point must be opened or the whole star destroyed.”
“So if only one point is open…”
“Evil is still here.” The breeze stirred again, arousing a murmur from the trees. Leaves peppered the surface of the pool, then floated serenely away.
“But it’s only a legend,” Thane said. “More mountain lore.”
“I know that. But in all the cemeteries I’ve visited, I’ve never once seen a pentacle with an open point. It’s a little unsettling to find one here.”
“Why? Because this place is supposed to be some sort of gateway or vortex?”
“That’s part of it.” I wrapped my arms around my middle as I gazed around. “And because it’s so closed in. It feels a little claustrophobic to me. I keep thinking about what happened to Wayne Van Zandt here. If something followed him in here that night, he never stood a chance. There’s only one way in and one way out.”
“Unless you go up,” Thane said, his gaze lifting.
I pictured the marks on Wayne’s face, those five raised scars where claws had slashed across his cheek, stealing his good looks and almost taking his life. Whether it was the vision of that attack or Ivy’s insinuation about a thin place, I didn’t know, but I began to experience the same light-headedness I’d felt in the laurel bald. I could feel that odd thrum, too, pulsating along my every nerve ending.
I turned to Thane. “Do you feel that?”
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