“What’s he talking about?” Spencer asks.
Jeremy answers before I can say anything myself. “She’s a runner. Track and cross country.”
“That’s just what we need,” Spencer says, the pitch in his voice noticeably higher. “This cemetery is a full square mile in area. Whoever follows them is going to need the speed and stamina to keep up. If you’re a runner, then it’s you who needs to follow them.”
“I don’t like this plan,” I say again. “What if they see me?”
“You have to make sure they don’t,” Jeremy says. “Remember what happened to Mr. Donaldson when he followed them down the sidewalk?”
I shake my head at the thought of being eaten alive by spiders. “There has to be another way. And you,” I say to Spencer with a sudden realization, “where are you going to be? Home? Or is your uncle OK with you wandering around cemeteries after midnight?”
“I can be creative,” Spencer says.
I roll my eyes because I know what he means. “Sneaking out and stealing your uncle’s car is far from creative. In fact, I’m certain it’s a crime. Not to mention you’d have to do it twice. Once to stay with Jeremy while I follow them back to the tomb, and once again the next night to come back and help seal it, whatever that even means.”
Suddenly, tires slowly grinding on pavement crackle to the west of us. All three of us stretch our necks for a look down the winding cemetery road.
“Police!” Spencer says, standing.
“Really? Where?”
“I see them!” Jeremy says, bobbing his head to look through the trees.
I look again and spot the black and white paint job of a Mount Herod police car flashing between the trees lining the private road. The car is traveling very slowly, as if patrolling, and I think I see the familiar profile of Officer Mary Coolidge behind the wheel.
Jeremy tugs my sleeve and Spencer taps my shoulder. “Come on, Abby,” Spencer says. “We have to go.”
We scamper back in the direction of the bathroom pavilion, but I fear we’re just drawing more attention to ourselves by running through the cemetery rather than slipping away quietly. I grab Jeremy’s arm to slow us down, and I call up ahead to Spencer, “Spencer, wait! We shouldn’t run. They’ll see us for sure.”
I pull Jeremy into a maze of headstones and thick-trunked oak trees. Spencer follows us. We crouch behind a massive headstone wider than the three of us put together.
I glance around the stone, back in the direction we saw the cruiser. The car has passed Cattail Pond and is moving away from us.
“The bus driver,” I say.
“What?” Spencer asks.
“It’s all I can think of. The bus driver must have remembered dropping us here and called the police. You said George is in Chicago and probably hasn’t seen the news about the McGoverns yet. Why else would the police be here?”
“We were in the mausoleum yesterday, too,” Jeremy reminds me. “One of the ladies at the desk gave me a map.”
“Do you think she’d remember you?”
“My money’s on the bus driver,” Spencer says. “You stick out as a pair, but I don’t think anyone would remember you if they saw you apart.”
“Either way,” I say, “the police now know we’ve been here.”
“They can’t possibly assume you came back and hid here,” Spencer says.
“They might be looking for us. They might be looking for you,” Jeremy says to Spencer.
“Me? Why?”
“I asked for you by name in the office,” Jeremy says. “That’s when the lady gave me the map and told me I could find you with the groundskeeper near Cattail Pond.”
Spencer’s shoulders slump. “It was either Mary or Patty. What did she look like?”
“Red hair. Glasses.”
“Patty.”
“They’ll go to your house, too,” Jeremy says. “They’ll talk to your uncle.”
With a crushed expression, Spencer slides down the headstone into a sitting position in the grass. The wind picks up. I clutch the edges of my hood to keep it from blowing off my head. It’s an eerie reminder that nighttime is only a few hours away.
I squat down next to Spencer. “By the way, happy birthday,” I say sarcastically, and I deliver two pats on his knee before standing back up to make sure the police car is gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE CEMETERY IS closed, empty, and lonely.
The sunset ignites the underside of the approaching rain clouds with a blazing orange haze. I stand within the cover of a grove of pine trees, preparing for the night, terrified of where my dreams may take me, wondering how Jeremy, Spencer, and I will cope with the dropping temperatures and imminent rain, and appraising the circumstances of whether or not the black-eyed kids will make another appearance.
Spencer insisted we not return to the shed because the cemetery staff would almost certainly point the police to the maintenance shed as the most likely place to find Spencer. We speculated Spencer’s uncle had by now been informed Spencer was possibly connected to us and, consequently, the McGovern murders.
We believe the police could be exploring two opposing scenarios. First, they may speculate Spencer is entirely innocent and may be in grave danger. They may think Jeremy and I are psychotic zealots drawn to Spencer by some sort of twisted veneration. Perhaps we have kidnapped him or harmed him in some way.
Second—and worse—the police may now consider Spencer a renewed suspect in the murder of his own father and brother. They may even go so far as to assume the three of us have known each other for years, a relationship they may have missed during their investigation of the Hawkins murders three years earlier. From the perspective of a biased investigator itching to solve a case as quickly as possible, we may look like a three-member juvenile cult of serial killers right about now.
The situation has spiraled into a catastrophe. We may be kids, but we know the police scurry desperately to solve murders, especially in Mount Herod. Calming the public becomes the number one priority at any cost, even if it means jumping to conclusions based solely on circumstances and coincidences. Jeremy, Spencer, and I could be heading to prison for four murders we didn’t commit.
Not returning to the shed means we lost our food and sleeping bags. It was entirely possible the police would search the entire cemetery, from churches to bathroom pavilions. They may be prepared to tear the cemetery apart looking for Spencer, which meant we had to wait someplace they’d never look, or didn’t even know about.
Spencer took us to a funerary monument on the southeast side of the cemetery near the old Tyburn Gate we entered through last night. I can’t say I recall seeing this specific monument last night, but there are probably hundreds of these monuments dotting the cemetery, both big and small, and last night they all blended together in the dark.
The monument stands two stories tall and descends one level underground. According to Spencer, it holds the bodies of two generations of the Watson family, a wealthy and locally-famous family from the 1800s with tight ties to the Jesuits and the founders of Saint Thomas University. Little did they know 200 years later three runaways would hide in their tomb.
The horizon and the approaching storm clouds consume the sun, and the first few stars begin to twinkle in the east. I leave the shelter of the pines, walk back to the monument, circle around its low arches, and pass through a concrete doorway flanked by life-size statues of Joseph and his wife, Mary, who cradles the baby Jesus in her arms.
A narrow stairway climbs up to my left to the open sky. To my right, circling into darkness, descends an even narrower stairway. I turn right and duck through the opening.
The descending passage is so constricted my shoulders brush the walls, and it coils downward in a spiral so tight it feels as if I’m spinning in place. There is no handrail. I steady myself on the steep, tapered stairs by running my palms along the cold stonework. The air is stale, and the perpetual darkness is silent and still.
&nbs
p; One last step and my foot strikes the stone floor of the tomb. “Spencer? Jeremy?”
“Still here,” Spencer says, and a penlight attached to a keychain flares up like a flame in the darkness. Spencer holds the flashlight outward and upward like a tiny torch. It illuminates the claustrophobic chamber with a dim white bloom.
Spencer and Jeremy sit on a riser between two sarcophagi, the contents of which presumably hold the eldest Mr. and Mrs. Watson. On the walls surrounding them are morbid carvings of winged skulls and dancing marionette skeletons. They are bleak, unexpected images in a Christian tomb, but Spencer explained to me earlier the carvings are called memento mori—which is Latin for “remember death.” Their purpose is to remind those still alive to remain humble and righteous because life is fleeting and death is its inescapable end.
At this time, I need no such reminder.
“The sun has set,” I say. “The cemetery is empty. There’s no one around.”
“Are we going to stay down here all night?” Jeremy asks nervously.
“It’s very cold,” I add. I don’t mention how disturbing the setting is because I know it doesn’t bother Spencer.
“We’re out of the wind,” Spencer says.
“Any heat that made its way down here is billowing up that staircase like a chimney now that the sun is down,” I counter.
“I really don’t like it down here, Spencer,” Jeremy says. “I know we had to hide from the police, but I don’t want to stay down here all night. What if the black-eyed kids find us down here? There’s no place to run. We’re cornered.”
“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” I suggest. “The police left hours ago. It’s dark now, and the cemetery is too big for them to search the whole thing. It’s like a maze, and it would never occur to them we’d actually be hiding in it. They’re checking friends’ houses, parks, alleys, bus stops, but there’s no way they could think the three of us would possibly camp out in a cemetery all night.”
“OK,” Spencer says. “There’s a place not too far from here, an old historic church. The doors are chained and padlocked, but I have my keys. There’s no electricity and no running water, but it’s consecrated. It’s holy ground. If the black-eyed kids have to spend daylight hours in an unbeliever’s tomb, maybe they can’t enter consecrated dwellings like churches.”
I look at Jeremy. “What do you think?”
Jeremy scans the inside of the chamber. “Anything to get out of here.”
Mere seconds later, the three of us ascend the twisting narrow staircase out of the Watson tomb. When we get back outside, we are welcomed by the sinking gloom of gathering storm clouds. The previously fiery sky is now a monotonous wash of billowing ashen clouds, and scattered drops of rain have already begun to fall.
“This way,” Spencer says, and he leads us away from the monument, south toward Tyburn Gate.
We snake through the headstones. Dry dead leaves spiral to the ground around us, knocked from their perches by the rushing winds of the building rainstorm. Spencer illuminates our path with the dull, sweeping beam of his penlight while memento mori skulls stare back at us from the faces of crooked and crumbling gravestones. By the time we reach the tiny church, night has completely engulfed the cemetery and a cold rain falls steadily down upon us.
Willow Tree Church obviously gets its name from the two enormous weeping willows flanking it, the threadbare branches of which ebb toward the ground like claws. A chain secured by a padlock loops through the iron handles of the church’s oak doors. Assisted by his penlight, Spencer eventually finds the correct key on his keychain, snaps open the padlock, uncoils the rattling chain, and parts the timeworn double doors, which yawn open with a groan like a tired old man.
The inside of the church is as black as the tomb we just left.
“I can’t see a thing,” I say.
“There are two candle chandeliers up in the ceiling,” Spencer says. “We can lower one and light some candles if we can find matches.”
“Leave the doors open,” Jeremy says.
“Why?” Spencer asks. “It will be warmer with them shut.”
“Jeremy’s right,” I say. “Leaving the doors open means the black-eyed kids won’t have a door on which to knock. We did the same thing last night in the fenced-in area around the shed.”
“You’re grasping at straws,” Spencer says. “We don’t know that will work.”
“We don’t know your theory about being safe in a church will work either, yet here we are.”
I watch Spencer inwardly debate his own hypocrisy for a moment. Then, “Fine. Leave them open.”
The rain abruptly turns to a downpour, and the three of us scurry into the shelter of the church, leaving the double doors open behind us.
Spencer’s penlight reveals we’re standing in a small entryway separated from the main part of the church by a wooden railing. An aisle runs down the center of the church with two columns of six pews on either side of it. Stained-glass windows climb high into the vaulted ceiling, which is supported by two rows of pillars running the length of the church.
Spencer’s penlight finds one of the two-tiered candle chandeliers up in the ceiling’s arch.
“There,” Spencer says, and he traces his light along a chain which runs across the ceiling and descends to a winch mounted on the wall. “That can give us some light, and maybe even a little heat.”
After Spencer clips the padlock to the chain which once held the church doors closed, he sets it on the seat of the back pew, and the three of us make our way down the side aisle to the winch.
Aided by a series of loud, clattering, clanking pulleys, which echo through the empty church as if it were a canyon, Spencer effortlessly lowers the chandelier to the floor of the center aisle using the winch.
“That wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be,” I say.
“It’s the pulleys,” Jeremy says. “Set up correctly, they’ll let you lift and lower just about anything, no matter its weight.”
“OK,” says Spencer, swinging the penlight around the interior of the church. “If there’s matches in here, they will be in the sacristy.”
Spencer leads us in the direction of the altar at the domed end of the church. On our way, we pass several unlit wrought-iron floor candlesticks with elaborate, arching bases which remind me of spider legs. Near the altar, a statue of Mary stands by a doorway to the sacristy. A statue of Joseph stands on the other side of the altar near another doorway to the sacristy. A crucifix hangs on the back wall above the altar, the lifeless body of the Lord Jesus nailed upon it.
In daylight, the inspired artwork might be appealing, but Spencer’s penlight casts awful shadows which fall across the carved faces and ornate stonework, shadows which creep and sweep and seep into corners and crevices, giving illusory life and motion to dead stone. There is nothing peaceful or settling about it. In fact, it is quite unsettling, especially set amongst the roll of rain upon the church’s towering roof.
“The church is still used sometimes, but not often,” Spencer says.
“What’s it used for?” Jeremy asks.
“Funerals. It’s the most expensive place to have a service since it’s a historic building.”
“I bet you can get in big trouble for being in here,” I say.
“Honestly, after today, I think my days of working at Chokecherry Bluff Cemetery are over anyway.”
I understand what he’s saying. One way or another, we’ll eventually be discovered. Either the police will find us or the black-eyed kids will, and the result of either of those will likely mean Spencer’s part-time job will come to an end. Whether it ends in a jail or a coffin remains to be seen—for all three of us, actually.
We slip past Mary and step through the left doorway into the sacristy.
Spencer’s light illuminates only small sections of the room at a time, but we can see the sacristy has been setup very humbly. In the center of the room sits a table and chair. A block of cabinets stands again
st one of the walls. Atop it rests a countertop on which is mounted a sink. Instead of a faucet, however, the sink’s water supply comes from an antique water pump bolted to its edge.
Jeremy and Spencer begin to open and close cabinet drawers and find a book of matches in short order. Less than a minute later, the three of us stand around the chandelier back out in the church’s center aisle.
The two-tiered chandelier has an impressive diameter of at least six feet and a height which rises to my shoulders. It is both Gothic and ornamental, adorned with iron spirals and brass chains from which dangle hundreds, maybe thousands, of glass crystals.
Spencer strikes a match and lights one of the candles on the bottom tier, and the moment we feel the slightest hint of heat from just a single candle, we know we must light them all. Once three candles are lit, Spencer pushes the matchbook down into his pocket, and the three of us use the lit candles to light the others. It takes a minute for us to light them all, but eventually both tiers blaze like a sleepy, silent bonfire.
We settle back into the nearby wooden pews, basking in the warmth and light of the chandelier’s candles.
After a long stretch of silence, Jeremy asks, “What do we do in the morning?”
I look down the aisle toward the open double doors, out into the inky black of the stormy night. The rush of wind follows a roll of thunder, causing the doors to sway slightly. The candles on the chandelier flicker violently. Two of the flames sputter and die; their wax souls ascend to heaven in a thread of white smoke. Spencer stands and resurrects them using another candle.
“One thing at a time, Jeremy,” I say sleepily. “Let’s just get through tonight. We have the start of a plan. We’ll figure out the rest tomorrow.”
Spencer looks at me and nods. “God speed the dawn.”
The three of us talk a bit more in breaths. We speak in soft reverence, for who’s sake, I don’t know—maybe the hundreds of thousands who lie dead beyond the church’s doors? In any case, the idle chatter doesn’t last long.
Despite my rain-dampened clothes, I am already warmer than last night, and even this old wooden pew is more comfortable than the ground. It feels as if I haven’t slept in forever, and despite my half-hearted attempt to fight him, the sandman overtakes me amongst Willow Tree Church’s dancing shadows and creaking frame.
Curse of the Black-Eyed Kids (Mount Herod Legends Book 2) Page 20