The Abandoned - By Amanda Stevens Page 0,8
maybe by now it was just habit, Hayden thought. At any rate, he’d always found the lone cemetery vigils far more therapeutic than the group therapy sessions his parents had dragged him to after his brother’s suicide. Hayden hadn’t needed a psychiatrist—then or now—because he already knew he wasn’t to blame for Jacob’s death. His brother had been sick for a really long time. Early childhood schizophrenia was a rare thing, but Jacob had been diagnosed at eight. Even with medication, the voices and visions had steadily gotten worse until one day one of those voices had told him to hang himself from his closet door.
For years, solace had eluded Hayden. All through high school and college, he’d been tormented, not so much from guilt, but with questions that no one could answer—not his parents, not his psychologist, not even his priest. Finally, the cold spots and electrical fluctuations in Jacob’s bedroom had led him to seek answers from unconventional sources. And nearly ten years later, he was still searching. But to what end, Hayden had no idea.
Out on the road, he heard a car approach. Kids probably. Or maybe another ghost hunter. His heart gave an odd thump as he listened and waited. He could feel something in the mist. It was like…an echo. A memory. Some sort of strange vibration. A shiver raced up his spine and his pulse quickened. The night grew unbearably still, as if waiting for the dead to rise. Then after a moment, the car drove on and Hayden went back to his lonely vigil.
ILSA
As soon as Ree got back to her tiny apartment that night, she put on a pot of coffee and sat down at her desk to work on her thesis—a focus on personality development in old age. But her mind kept returning to the strange events of the evening. Finally she gave in to that incessant tug and scoured the internet for information about the Tisdales—a prominent Charleston family whose roots could be traced to the city’s founding—the Order of the Coffin and the Claw, a secret society that dated back to the mid-1800s—Oak Grove Cemetery, abandoned in the early half of the last century—and finally Amelia Gray.
Following a link to Amelia’s business website, Ree clicked through the portfolio of before and after cemetery images and then scanned Amelia’s bio. Her credentials were certainly impressive. Undergraduate degree in Anthropology from the University of South Carolina. Master’s in Archeology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Two years with the State Archeologist’s Office in Columbia before starting her own restoration business. And she was only twenty-seven. Comparatively speaking, Ree felt like a slacker.
Carrying her laptop to the sofa, she curled up to peruse Amelia’s blog. The wordplay title, Digging Graves, amused her, as did the posted news articles that referred to Amelia as The Graveyard Queen. The whimsical moniker took Ree straight back to that Sunday afternoon in Rosehill Cemetery.
On impulse, Ree dashed off an email:
My name is Ree Hutchins. You may not remember me. We went to school together in Trinity. I’d like to ask you some questions regarding Oak Grove Cemetery in Charleston. Would it be possible for us to meet?
To her surprise, Amelia responded in a matter of minutes:
Can you come by my place tomorrow at ten?
Ree jotted down the address and phone number, and tucked the note in her bag so she wouldn’t forget. Then she went back to reading the Digging Graves archives. She had no idea how long she’d been engrossed in the entries when she became aware of a chill. The air-conditioning must have cycled on. The outside windows were frosted and a fusty odor hung in the air, which Ree attributed to the moldy vents.
As she got up to adjust the thermostat, she heard the faint strains of a song. She thought at first the plaintive melody was coming through the paper-thin walls of her apartment. Then she realized it was the same tune she’d heard earlier.
Intrigued, she followed the sound into her bedroom. The numbers on the clock radio were flashing, an indication that the power had gone off. Ree had been working on her laptop so she might not have noticed a flicker. When the electricity came back on, the surge probably triggered the radio. Nothing spooky about that.
But the song…it was like being lost in a memory, Ree thought dreamily. She closed her eyes and let the music pour over her, into her, and then the haunting quality