As I pushed open the gate, I became aware of the weight of the skeleton key around my neck. Perhaps it was nothing more than my imagination, but I could have sworn I felt the heat of it against my skin.
As I slipped through the entrance something occurred to me. Here in Kroll Cemetery, I was the visitor. A welcome one I hoped, but who could say for certain?
Thirty-Five
As a child at Papa’s side, I’d learned to appreciate the grace and beauty of old graveyards. They were withering gardens, unique unto themselves and dedicated to the ancestral worship of our Southern culture.
During my time as a restorer, I’d traipsed through countless burial sites, raked endless graves, cleaned hundreds of headstones. I’d restored graveyards large and small, old and ancient, the forgotten and the revered. But nothing had prepared me for Kroll Cemetery. It was, as Dr. Shaw had promised, the most strangely beautiful place I’d ever encountered.
The graveyard was small in comparison to the maze, completely contained within the crumbling brick walls and shaded by an immense live oak. A rambling rose had snaked all the way to the top of the tree, spreading its feelers along the branches and snowing petals down upon the graves beneath. Where light shone through the leaves, the trunk and limbs took on a fragile glow from the thousands of cicada husks that clung to the bark. The effect was breathtakingly ethereal, as if the whole cemetery had been trapped in amber.
Somehow I knew the cicada shell placed on my nightstand had come from this place. I had been right to worry about the unwitting trade of my bookmark.
My fingers crept to the skeleton key around my neck—yet another accidental barter and one that I feared would have far-reaching consequences. The key had kept the ghosts at bay earlier, but not for a second did I think that I’d discovered its true purpose.
Reluctantly, I tucked the key back into my shirt as I gazed around. The lush fragrance and riotous color from the wildflowers was nothing new in my line of work. I had seen many beautiful graveyards. But Dr. Shaw’s photographs hadn’t done justice to this one. He’d focused on the keys and numbers etched into the headstones while ignoring the whimsical whorls, spires and arched embellishments that added a storybook charm to the cemetery.
The layout was also mazelike, with stone pathways curling around and through the graves in no discernible pattern. Against the far wall, a tabletop tomb rose on curved legs, the intricate domed top reminiscent of an old-fashioned jewelry box. One of the legs had succumbed to time, weather and the spreading roots of the ancient oak tree so that the structure rested at a precarious angle. It was the only exposed vault in the cemetery and I was curious to learn if Ezra Kroll’s remains were interred there. However, my first priority was finding Dr. Shaw.
I scanned every shadowy corner of the graveyard. Either he was long gone or concealed within the scented enclave created by the climbing rosebush. Or—and this thought really frightened me—he lay prone in the tall weeds near the tomb. But where was his investigator? Surely both men couldn’t have disappeared or fallen prey to an ambush.
Placing one final call, I followed the sound of the ringtone along those spiraling pathways, resisting the urge to stop and study the inscriptions, numbers and all those key engravings. Nor did I take the time to hunt for Rose’s grave. As much as I wanted to see my great-grandmother’s final resting place and as intrigued as I was by Dr. Shaw’s braille discovery, the solving of that riddle would have to come later.
I located his phone lying in the grass near a headstone. The case felt warm, as though someone had just dropped it, but I told myself the sun or even the battery could have heated the metal.
Glancing around anxiously, I called out his name. The responding echo sent icy fingers skidding down my spine. Then I heard nothing but silence.
The utter absence of sound and movement unnerved me. Bees should have been busy in the honeysuckle, birds picking at the early blackberries. It was as if that abandoned graveyard really had been suspended in amber, frozen in time and space for all eternity. I was reminded of Louvenia Durant’s observation that no dog or horse would come near the place.
But there was some noise, I realized. A slight buzzing in my ears that propelled me into a slow circle as I searched in vain for a physical source. Daylight had always been my refuge, but now it seemed the entities could reach out to me even when the veil was at its thickest. If the unbound power of death had bestowed upon me uncanny perception and ghostly telepathy, it had also left me with a dangerous vulnerability.