Isabella Moon (7 page)

Kate didn’t respond.

They walked a few moments longer and Kate interrupted the silence.

“You must think this is ridiculous,” she said. “I never should have brought you out here. You’re cold. And what if nothing happens?”

Lillian put her arm out to stop her. “What was that?”

“What? What did you hear?” Kate said.

Lillian pushed at her lightly and laughed. “It’s the sound of your imagination, Kate, working overtime. Now, if you want to do this, stop messing around. I know this cemetery like the back of my hand. I’ve buried more people here than you’ve known in your life. This child is telling you something, so you’ve got to listen, because it’s my guess that nobody listened to her before. And with you, she’s found a sympathetic ear.” She tilted her head, looking at Kate. “I wonder why.”

It was a question Kate had asked herself more than once in the past few days, and she still didn’t have an answer. She smiled. “I guess I’m just a soft touch,” she said. “Even for ghosts.”

The squat mausoleum that Kate had come in search of stood at the cemetery’s northwest corner. Its peeling white paint and elaborately carved columns topped with cherubs and stone clusters of grapes gave it the look of an aging ruin in the faint moonlight. Lillian shone her flashlight at the name carved over its lintel.

“Josephus Taylor,” she said. “Mean old bastard. Claimed kinship with Zachary Taylor on his father’s side, but I doubt that they claimed him. Nowdays they’d call somebody like that a loan shark, but back then he was just somebody you went to when you were in trouble. My grandparents never had any truck with him, but he died owning half the houses in the East End.”

Kate nodded, not really listening. “It’s around back,” she said.

“Ah,” Lillian said.

The side of the mausoleum was planted with bramble roses that at this time of year were just a tangle of thorn-covered branches lying close to the ground. The branches caught at their pant legs as they passed.

“That Josephus—greedy for anything he can get, even in death,” Lillian said, pulling away from the branches. She thwacked the side of the marble building with the flat of her hand. “Shame on you,” she said.

Kate giggled in spite of her nervousness.

Behind the mausoleum they found the small clearing ringed by cedar trees. A number of mounds of leaves about five or six feet in diameter spread out over the ground in front of them. The clearing smelled not of cedar, but of decaying leaves. It pricked Kate’s memory and she was overcome with sadness.

“Compost,” Lillian said. “The town sends a crew out here to the cemetery every fall to clean up the leaves. I thought they were supposed to haul them off, but here they are, dumped like garbage. Wish I could say I’m surprised.”

“Last time…” Kate said, but her voice trailed off.

“Is she here?” Lillian said. She sounded excited.

“I don’t think it works like that,” Kate said. “I don’t think she
hangs out
here or anything like that.”

“She told
you
to come here.”

Kate had tried to explain to the sheriff and then to Lillian how the girl communicated with her. But it wasn’t something she could verbalize well. It was as though she had been privy to the girl’s emotion, an emotion that had taken up residence in her mind, like a memory of her own, but it was not exactly her own. And when she thought of this place, it filled her with a paralyzing dread.

The night she had awakened in her own bed almost three years ago and put her hands to her belly and realized her baby had been taken from her, she had rolled over and vomited onto the floor. She vomited until she was vomiting thin strands of blood, yet her body still felt full and numbed and she retched for an hour. Later, she lay on the cold bathroom floor wanting to escape her own skin because her body had reached the limits of its existence: It felt like a living death. This was the feeling she got from Isabella Moon about the clearing.

Kate sat down in the path of flattened leaves. Lillian crouched beside her.

“What are we supposed to do?” Lillian said. “Does she want us to dig her up? We’ll have to go back and get a couple of shovels.”

The ground was cold and damp through Kate’s sweatpants. She thought about the girl and how, if she was indeed beneath the leaves there in front of them, she would be horribly cold and uncomfortable. But she was dead, Kate knew, and couldn’t really feel anything. So the feeling had been left to her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I want to, but I don’t know that we’re the ones to do it.”

“That
is
a lot of leaves,” Lillian said. “Maybe pitchforks. You know, it wasn’t too long ago this used to be kind of a lovers’ spot. One of those places kids go. It’s a little inhospitable for that now.”

Kate was about to suggest that they return to the house when a breeze shifted the branches of the cedars with a soft, rustling sound and circled the clearing, stirring up a few of the drier leaves. It died down, but picked up again quickly, this time catching up more leaves and carrying them, swirling, into the air.

Puzzled that she could not feel the breeze that was so obviously close, she held her arm out into the air in front of her. The air seemed denser, yes, but still.

“We need to go,” she said.

She helped the silent Lillian to her feet, but despite her words, neither of them moved.

By now the breeze had stiffened and begun to pulse with form and life. It seemed to suck the rotting leaves from the ground and drive them ahead like some fierce and angry tornado.

“Lord in heaven!” Lillian shouted.

As the leaves rose from the ground, twisting into a tight column that blocked out the moon and stars, a low roar like the sound of an approaching freight train bore down on them. They felt a change in the air pressure. Lillian’s grip tightened on Kate’s arm.

Lillian’s flashlight dropped to the ground.

“Look,” she shouted over the wind. “Under the leaves.”

Kate followed the narrow beam of the fallen flashlight. The ground beneath the column lay completely exposed, strangely flat and empty. Nothing grew there, there was nothing remarkable to see.

Now Kate felt something pressing against the palm of her hand. She looked at Lillian, but Lillian was still focused on the ground beneath the swirling leaves. Looking down at her hand, she saw that it was empty, but still there was the pressure. Then she felt an insistent tug.

When she tried to shake off whatever it was, it only gripped her tighter and tighter so that she thought it might break the bones in her hand. The breadth of it across her palm wasn’t particularly wide—it felt like a child’s hand in hers.
Of course it was a child’s hand! What else could it be? Hadn’t she been waiting, expecting the child?
Its stubborn persistence frightened her. She wanted to scream, to warn Lillian, or to run away herself. But she knew she couldn’t leave Lillian there alone. Her only choice was to give in, to let Isabella—surely it was Isabella—lead her.

As Kate was pulled toward the leaves, Lillian touched her shoulder, but Kate shook her off. There was
something
about the empty ground before her that attracted her. Unmindful of Lillian’s sudden cry, she let herself be led forward.

The wind clutched at her hair, her clothes, even her skin, pushing and pulling at once. She realized that she had no control here, that she was at the mercy of the wind around her, but the sense of panic she’d experienced a moment earlier had disappeared. Beneath her feet the ground was soft and yielding. The leaves stayed high above her.

When she was at the center of the clearing, she felt the child’s hand slip from hers. Around her the wind moaned. She stood there, feeling an odd kind of peace. Looking back, she saw that Lillian’s mouth was open, saying something or shouting, but Kate couldn’t hear her. She felt as though she might stand there forever.

Just as it had started slowly, the sound of the wind began to recede, and she was overcome with emotions that weren’t hers. She felt the spreading, violent pain of the place. It filled her body and tore at her muscles. She had felt pain, cruel pain, but never imagined that
this pain
could exist, could be held in one body. She began to weep because it was the child’s pain, and no child should feel
this pain
.

Kate eased herself to the ground and put her wet cheek against it to comfort the girl who was surely there, waiting for her. The dirt was warm, not cold as she’d imagined. Lying there, the wind quieting above her, she closed her eyes.

But here was Lillian trying to pull her to her feet.

“We have to go, baby,” Lillian shouted at her. “Come on!”

Lillian half dragged Kate across a few feet of blank dirt until Kate began to come to herself and allowed Lillian to lead her away from the clearing.

Behind them the sound of the wind receded and changed in tone to something less alive, less mournful. When they reached the cemetery’s gravel path, Kate looked back. There was nothing to see above the mausoleum but the motionless outlines of the cedars etched against the sky.

They were silent on the drive to Kate’s house. When they’d returned to Lillian’s from the cemetery, they discovered that it was nearly ten o’clock, a good three hours after they’d set out. In unspoken agreement, Lillian went inside to get her keys, and when she emerged, Kate followed her to the car.

“You want me to come inside?” Lillian asked five minutes later, when they reached Kate’s dark cottage.

Lillian had resumed her attitude of relaxed efficiency, but beneath it Kate sensed that Lillian was as unsettled as she. She hoped they could talk about it, but not yet.

“You need to get back home,” Kate said. The last thing she wanted was for Lillian to be involved in whatever insane thing was happening to her. “Maybe Francie should stay with
you
tonight,” she said. “You want me to call her? You know she would.”

Lillian waved her off. “I didn’t much like what happened tonight, honey, but I’m not worried that I’m going home to ghosts. Albert’s the only ghost I need, and he’s much less of a bother than he was in life.”

Kate tried to smile. She’d always been a little jealous of Francie’s relationship with Lillian. Francie complained a lot about her interfering ways, but Kate felt blessed in some way that Lillian had been with her. She still felt horribly guilty, but grateful just the same. Finally, someone—and it was someone she trusted—knew that she hadn’t made up her encounter with Isabella Moon.

“Go in and sleep,” Lillian said. “And I bet you’ll sleep like a baby.”

“If only,” Kate said.

When she got inside, she found her answering machine blinking twice. The possibilities of who it was were limited. Only Francie, Caleb, or Janet called her. She pressed the message button and Caleb’s deep, reassuring voice filled the cottage’s front room.

“It’s late,” he said. “Sure wish you were home. It’s awfully lonesome in this motel room and I miss the sound of your voice.” He sighed. “Another fine meal at the motel’s diner. I had the fish special tonight—big mistake. But I was thinking about taking you to the ocean this summer, Pumpkin. Get a little sand in your bathing suit.”

His voice paused a moment and Kate could hear the sound of the television in the background.

“Hey, I miss you. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

While it was true that she missed him as well, she couldn’t imagine what she would tell him about what had just happened to her. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell him anything about the little girl. There were so many secrets she felt she had to keep from him. But she didn’t know if she was protecting him or just herself.

The second message was a hang-up. Whoever called had waited to hear the whole announcement, which wasn’t her voice, but the electronic one that came with the machine, and then hung up. She found those kinds of calls unsettling. But tonight she wasn’t willing to let her imagination go anywhere with it. She had enough going on in that department already.

6

KATE OPENED HER EYES
to find the bedroom awash in spring sunlight. But it was a sound, not the sun, that had snapped her out of her sleep. Out in the living room she heard heavy but hesitant footsteps, as though someone were trying not to make any noise as they walked through the room. Kate rolled over to her right side and carefully slid open her nightstand drawer. Without being able to see inside, she felt around for the pistol, the Ruger .22 that had been hers since she was a teenager.

The gun was cold in her hand, but comfortable. Her hands shook some and her heart was racing. It was good, though. She felt ready. One of the thoughts that flew through her head was of the hang-up the night before. She hadn’t wanted to think of it as a clue, a precursor to a confrontation, but there she was.

As the intruder came down the hall, the procedures came to her automatically: Get a wall behind her back and distance herself from the kill funnel—the doorway—for a clear shot. Don’t shoot to wound. Aim for the head or the heart.

Kate closed her eyes briefly and tried to steady her breathing. The moment seemed to last forever, and indeed lasted too long. When she opened her eyes, she saw Caleb standing in the doorway. If it had been anyone else, anyone who wanted to do her harm, she would be dead.