The Awakening

“Thank you, Mr. Lamb, but I don’t anticipate any trouble.”

“No one ever sees it coming. And you can call me Prosper. Or Prop. We’ll likely be seeing a lot of each other if you don’t get scared off.”

“Scared off by what?”

He grinned, displaying a toothy overbite. “Cemeteries can be frightening places, ma’am.”

“Not to a cemetery restorer.”

He shrugged, letting his jacket fall back into place as his gaze moved to the stone crib behind me. “That one there...she’s a strange one.”

For one crazy moment, I thought he meant the ghost and I glanced over my shoulder in dread. Then I realized he referred to the stone crib and the portrait of the dead child. “There’s no name on the monument. Do you know who she was?”

“Never heard tell,” he said. “But that’s not the only grave in here without a name. Woodbine is where the well-to-do used to bury their secrets.”

“What do you mean?”

His gaze turned sage. “Their bastards and mistresses, if you’ll pardon my language. People they kept on the fringes of their lives. They erected all these fine monuments to honor the dead, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t give them their names. So they laid them to rest here in Woodbine, close enough to visit but separate from the respectable family plots in Magnolia Cemetery.”

“I never knew that,” I said, intrigued in spite of myself.

“Now you do. Who do you think pays me to watch over them?”

“I assume the same trust that hired me.”

He leaned in. “Who do you think sits on the board? Who do you think made the donation to restore this place? Years and years go by and all of a sudden someone is mighty interested in getting this place cleaned up. That doesn’t strike you as curious?”

“Not at all. The neighboring cemeteries have been undergoing revitalization for years.”

“Maybe that’s all it is,” he said. “Then again, maybe someone has developed a guilty conscience.”

I knew better than to encourage his gossip, but I couldn’t help myself. “Who?”

“Well, that is the question, isn’t it?” He lifted his head to sniff the air. “Smell that?”

I took a quick breath, drawing in the lingering scent that had been stirred by the ghost. “You mean the woodbine?”

“Nah, that stuff won’t bloom again until next spring. I smell something dead.”

My gaze darted inadvertently to the spot where the ghost had vanished.

Prosper Lamb walked all around the tomb, testing the air like a bloodhound. “It’s fresh. Barely any rot. But I’m never wrong about that smell. I’ve had a nose for dead things since I was a kid.”

My senses had evolved along with my gift, but evidently he was even more sensitive than I was. I didn’t smell anything.

“Are you the superstitious type?” he asked suddenly.

“Not really. Why?”

“You’re not bothered by corpse birds?”

“Corpse birds?”

“That’s what my mama used to call dead birds found on or near graves. She claimed they were signs.” As he talked, he reached inside the crib bed and carefully parted the purple blossoms. A second later, he extracted a dead crow, holding it up by the claws so that he could assess the glistening carcass. Even in the shade, I could see the sheen of black feathers and the dull glint in its beady eyes. There was something odd about the way the head dangled...

“Still warm,” he said. “Must have just happened.”

Foreboding tingled through me. “How do you suppose it died?”

“Sometimes they fall out of the sky without rhyme or reason. This one, though.” He glanced up. “Something wrung its neck.”

I suppressed another shiver as I quickly scanned the gloomy landscape. “I don’t see how it could have just died. I’ve been here for several minutes and I didn’t see anything.”

He held the bird out to me. “Feel it for yourself.”

“No, that’s okay. I believe you. I’m just wondering what could have happened to the poor thing.” I found my gaze flashing back to the place where the dead girl had vanished. I fancied I could still hear the echo of her taunting laughter.

My hand went to my throat again before I remembered that Rose’s key had gone missing. “I’ve lost my necklace. If you find a ribbon with a key attached—”

“This one?” He shifted the dead bird to his left hand and reached out with his right to unsnag the ribbon from underneath the hood of the crib. How it had gotten there, I had no idea, unless the ribbon had been caught when I bent over the monument to study the photograph.

“Looks old,” he said, dangling the key in the air in much the same way he’d displayed the dead crow. “A good-luck charm?”

“Something like that.” I held out my hand.

He eyed the key for a moment longer before dropping it in my palm. “Better hang on to it then. A corpse bird isn’t just any old sign. It’s a death omen. Finding that dead crow likely means someone else is about to pass.”

Three (#ub0e52320-9b52-50ae-8f54-f926e647d306)

That night I had the most disturbing dream, undoubtedly triggered by the ghost child’s manifestation and by Prosper Lamb’s death prophesy. I found myself walking through Woodbine Cemetery, a thick mist swirling around my legs as I searched for all those nameless headstones. I felt an urgency to find them. It seemed imperative that I visit each grave to let the dead know they hadn’t been forgotten.

As I entered one of the ornate fences surrounding a plot, I saw my mother and my aunt Lynrose in wicker rockers drinking sweet tea at the edge of an open grave. They were dressed in summer finery, florals and pastels, rather than in heavy mourning attire. I could hear the murmur of their soft drawls as they peered down into the abyss. As I came upon them, Aunt Lynrose looked up with a stern admonishment. “Mind your manners, chile. Don’t you go poking your nose in places it doesn’t belong.”

“Leave her be, Lyn,” my mother scolded. “We should have tended to this business years ago. Now it’s up to Amelia to find out the truth.”

My aunt worried the gold locket at her throat as she returned her attention to the open grave. “You should know by now, dear sister, that some secrets are best left buried.”

I left them muttering to each other as I traveled on through a sea of headstones. Just when I thought I must be hopelessly lost, the mist thinned and I could see the willow trees that lined the riverbank. As I neared the water, the scent of woodbine deepened and I heard the distant tinkle of a wind chime. The haunting melody drew me deeper into the copse, where Prosper Lamb reclined against the stone cradle. He eyed me curiously as I came through the trees.

“That one there...she’s a strange one,” he warned. “A bad seed, you might say.”

I turned to find the ghost child glowering at me from the shadows. She didn’t taunt or try to play as she’d done before. Her anger was palpable. I could see blood on her hands and on the white drop-waist dress she wore. She stood upright, but her head dangled at an odd angle like that of the corpse bird she clutched to her chest.

As I started toward her, a powerful wind knocked me back. Struggling to remain upright, I called out to her. “Please stop. You’ll hurt me.”

Her surly expression never changed, but suddenly she lifted a finger to point at something in the mist over my shoulder. I thought Prosper Lamb must have come up behind me. Still battling that terrible wind, I turned in alarm but my feet tangled in a vine and I hit the ground hard, tumbling over and over as if rolling down a long hill.

I awakened before I hit the bottom, my heart pounding. For a moment I could have sworn I saw the dead child’s face hovering over me in the dark, but nothing was there, ghost or otherwise. The night was calm and my dog, Angus, slept peacefully in his bed beneath the window. If he’d sensed an intruder, living or dead, he would have alerted me.