“If there’s ever anything I can do...” Macy’s voice trailed off.
Malachi thanked her again and turned to leave; Abby followed. They walked the few blocks to Colonial Park Cemetery.
That day, Abby let herself really look around the cemetery and see. She saw the old couple, vigilant as ever on their bench. A young woman in a long white gown seemed to float behind a live oak that dripped with moss. A grinning soldier stood behind a group of tourists; he blew on a girl’s neck and his grin broadened when she spun around, looking for the prankster. Across the way, hovering by one of the monuments, two young women in early-nineteenth century clothing seemed to be taking a casual walk through the stones.
Malachi, she thought, noticed them all. He was, however, fixated on the older couple.
“Good morning,” he said, pausing by the bench.
“Good morning, young sir,” the man said, standing politely.
“We wanted to let you know that Abby has written the necessary people about your son’s gravestone. We are in the process of getting the situation rectified,” Malachi told him.
“We thank you sincerely.” The man bowed. “My love,” he said to his wife, “a great dishonor will be set right.”
The woman rose, as well. She looked at them, and Abby could almost believe there were real tears in her eyes.
But she wasn’t there. Except as...
Heart, soul, spirit?
“I wish I could set every situation right.” Abby decided not to add that, through the years, gravestones hadn’t just been defaced, some had disappeared altogether. She wanted to tell them that cemeteries were really for the living. The dead remained alive in their loved one’s memories.
“We found a tunnel in an old building,” Malachi said. “Right down the street, in the area you kindly pointed out to me. But it brought us to a dead end. Have you noticed anything else?”
“You looked inside, not in the alley?” the man asked.
“We’ll go back,” Malachi said. “We’ll keep looking. Inside and out.”
“There was a time, not long after the war—the war that took our son—when the dead were often taken beneath the ground. The dead and dying. The yellow fever...they did everything they could to fight it. And when it was over, I believe they tried to hide the epidemic and how many it claimed.” He spoke thoughtfully. “We were the South. Our economy was cotton—and the river. The cotton plantations, of course, depended on slaves. But there were those who hated slavery. Early on before the other war, I heard they began to use some of those tunnels to hide people who were escaping. We, my wife and I, we closed our eyes. I was a merchant here, and I knew how the plantations worked, but...in my heart, I also knew it was wrong. If I remember...” He looked at his wife. “If I remember, we saw people in the night back then. Hurrying down the streets. Disappearing into the alley, into the darkness.”
“Thank you,” Malachi went to shake the man’s hand; Abby watched a ghostly hand touch Malachi’s in return.
She lowered her head, smiling. He thought he was awkward with people. He wasn’t. He was very good.
With the living and the dead.
“Thank you,” Abby echoed. She and Malachi hurried across the cemetery to leave by the main entrance. They passed tour groups and couples, parents and children.
They walked back toward the Wulf and Whistle. The buildings on the street were flush with one another; space here was at a premium. But a narrow alley stretched between streets, an alley that was no longer passable by any kind of conveyance. A tree that had taken root blocked it at the sidewalk. Malachi and Abby crawled over the roots that sprouted through the concrete, and they stood in the narrow alley behind the Wulf and Whistle.
“Who knows exactly what was going on when,” Malachi murmured, studying the building. “But there was a tunnel in the Wulf and Whistle. Presumably, during the yellow fever epidemic, they were bringing the sick and the dead down to various tunnels and underground rooms. Then, when the Underground Railroad became active, they reopened the tunnels. After the war—the Civil War, this time—the local owners, aware of what went on at the cemetery, which was now under military rule, might have hurried and covered up their secrets.”
“But we went down into the Wulf and Whistle. You tapped all the walls in the tunnel there yourself.”
“Yes, but an entry from the tavern might have been sealed off. That doesn’t mean there aren’t more tunnels beneath us.”
“And how are we going to find one? And if it’s all blocked off, how’s a killer using it?”
“The killer, obviously, knows where it is,” Malachi said. “And, somehow or other, he’s opened it.”
Abby turned around in the little space. Behind the Wulf and Whistle was a wooden portico and a gate that sectioned off an area. She realized that was where the tavern kept their garbage.