The Sinner

I could feel his gaze on me across the table. I shook my head as my hand crept to the key around my neck. “I’ve never seen her before.”

“You’re sure? Take a closer look.”

“I am looking. I don’t remember ever having seen her before.” But even as the words slipped out, something tugged at the corner of my memory. Had I seen her before?

And just like that, an image came back to me. The flash of those ruby earrings as a dark head tossed. The glimpse of a tattoo as a hand lifted to open a glass door.

Whether the memory was real or imagined, I had no idea. It was there one moment and gone the next.

“Can I see her left arm?” I asked.

Kendrick gave me a quizzical look, but he said nothing as he nodded to the attendant and she lowered the sheet.

“Can you turn it so that I can see her wrist?”

The woman complied and I leaned in to get a better look at the tattooed words on the pale flesh as I muttered the phrase aloud, “Memento mori.”

I jerked back in shock as the import of the message sank in.

“What is it?” Kendrick asked.

“Her tattoo...”

“It’s Latin, right? What does it mean?”

I lifted my gaze to his. “Remember to die.”

Seven

I had only a few moments to speak with Detective Kendrick before he was called away on another case. I didn’t mention the memory of those flashing rubies. Until I knew if the image was real and what it might mean, I saw no need to draw more attention to myself. A stranger in town was an easy target for suspicion so I needed to be careful in my dealings with the police. My discovery of the body had already elicited a certain amount of curiosity, if not outright distrust, and I certainly didn’t want the killer to cast an eye in my direction. For now, it was in my best interest to remain on the periphery of Kendrick’s investigation.

I had intended on returning to the cemetery to finish the section of headstones I’d started that morning, but as I drove through town, the enticing aromas drifting out from the restaurants along Main Street reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Normally, I would have stopped by the house for a quick bite or taken something back to the cemetery with me, but today I felt compelled to dine among the living. I parked the car, got out and walked over to the café where I’d eaten a few times since my arrival in Ascension.

As I paused to study the lunch menu taped to the plate-glass window, the reflection of the building across the street caught my eye. A large skeleton key had been painted on the window in gold leaf. I’d noticed it before and had always meant to stop in because the gilded key reminded me of the one I wore around my neck. I had no idea of the nature of the business. There was no other adornment on the window, no name or street number on the door.

As I returned my attention to the menu, a memory fluttered at the back of my mind. I saw again the flash of those ruby earrings as the sunlight caught them. I glimpsed the curlicue of that tattooed message as a slender hand lifted to open the glass door. And now something else came to me—behind that gilded key, a lurking silhouette inside the shop.

The memory...the image...whatever it was wavered for a moment and then vanished. I turned slowly toward the building, heart tripping at the implication. If those vague flickers could be trusted, then sometime before her death, the victim had visited that shop. She might even have gone there to meet the person who had waited inside. I tried to remember when I might have seen her. My last trip into town had been at least a week ago.

I stared long and hard at that gold key, hoping something else would stir, but the memory remained elusive. On impulse, I crossed the street and tried the door of the shop. It was locked and I could see very little of the interior when I peered through the window.

A narrow alley ran alongside the building and I followed it back to a wooden gate that stood wide open—an invitation. If the gate had been closed, I would never have entered. At least that’s what I told myself as I peered through the opening into a tiny courtyard.

A fountain splashed against colorful mosaics and a dozen or more pinwheels clicked in the hot breeze. There were any number of sculptures and yard decorations cluttering the small space, but what caught my attention, what brought a gasp to my lips, were the dozens of padlocks hanging from pegs hammered into the wooden fence. They instantly brought to mind my great-grandmother’s key collection, which had hung from the ceiling of her sanctuary for decades, waiting for me to come along and find them.

This couldn’t be a coincidence, I felt certain. Once again, I had been brought to a particular spot for a reason. I was meant to find this courtyard. I was meant to see all those locks. The sight so intrigued and puzzled me that I failed to register the sound of voices until it was almost too late. Someone was coming.

I backed into the alley and slipped behind the wooden gate. I had a perfect view of the courtyard between the fence pickets and it disturbed me more than a little that I no longer even tried to justify my eavesdropping. I could have easily scurried down the alleyway and out to the street, but I didn’t.

Instead, I waited breathlessly as a man and woman came out of the building and paused near the fountain to speak. I recognized the man at once. He was Martin Stark, the locksmith that Detective Kendrick had summoned to open the mortsafe. Now the locks on the fence and the painted key on the plate-glass window made sense. This was undoubtedly his place of business.

I could only see the woman’s profile, but I knew her, too. I’d met with Annalee Nash enough times now to be familiar with her features. She was tall and fit, but where an air of grit had lingered over the petite dead woman, Annalee’s wide eyes and heart-shaped face gave her a delicate, almost frail appearance. She wore jeans and a striped T-shirt that made her seem very young even though I knew her to be a few years older than me. As she stood there in dappled sunlight with the breeze tousling her short locks, I could easily imagine her as that ten-year-old catatonic girl covered in blood. As if she’d been rolling around in a puddle of gore.

I couldn’t make out anything of their conversation, but as Stark turned to go inside, Annalee caught his arm. When he whirled back around, I could have sworn I glimpsed fear in his eyes. He tugged his arm free and hurried away from her.

Something unpleasant prickled at the base of my spine as Annalee headed toward the gate. She seemed very different at that moment. The illusion of frailty and innocence vanished as a satisfied smile tugged at her lips.

As she neared the entrance, I tried to shrink more deeply into my hiding place. If she closed the gate, I would be exposed and I had no good reason for being there.

But she didn’t close the gate. She breezed through the opening and strode down the alley. I thought I was home free, but before she got to the street, she whirled back around. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to peer between the gate pickets or if she was looking for something inside the courtyard. For a split second, her gaze was so focused and intense I worried that she had spotted me.

I felt the crawl of something unpleasant at the back of my neck and the scutter of insect feet across my scalp. I imagined an infestation of Darius Goodwine’s corpse beetles in my hair and it was all I could do to remain still. I wanted nothing more than to run screaming into the sunlight, but I stood frozen, my gaze fixed on Annalee Nash.

She lifted a hand, fingering the curls at her nape, and the spidery sensation crept down my collar. I could feel those scurrying feet all up and down my spine now and inside the legs of my jeans. I told myself it wasn’t real. The bugs were merely a manifestation conjured by my own fear. But real or imagined, I couldn’t stay still for much longer. I had to get out of there. I had to...

Annalee’s fingers slid up into her hair and I could have sworn I saw her shudder before she turned and headed back to the street. I waited until she disappeared around the corner before leaving my hiding place. I shook out my hair and batted my clothing, but already the sensation had faded. There were no beetles, no scurrying feet, nothing but deepening dread that perhaps I had stumbled into something far beyond even my capabilities.

By the time I came out on the street, Annalee was gone. Which was just as well. I’d already taken too many risks. It was time to regain my perspective.

For all I knew, the meeting between Annalee and Stark had been perfectly innocent, but I couldn’t forget the fear in his eyes when she’d caught his arm. Or the way her lips had curled as she strode through the gate. I hoped I was reading too much into her demeanor. What I now knew about Annalee’s past had undoubtedly colored my perception, just as it had with the Willoughby house.

But the image of that sly smile lingered all afternoon as I cleaned headstones in Seven Gates Cemetery.

Eight

I didn’t return to the Willoughby place until well after sunset. I justified the late hour by telling myself I needed to play catch-up for all the time I’d lost since discovering those mortsafes, but in truth, I’d been avoiding the house for as long as I could. Which was silly. It was still the same house.

Pulling into the driveway, I rolled down my window, letting the cooling air chase away the lingering cloud of the day’s events. Tantalizing scents drifted in—four-o’clocks, ginger lily and the darker, dreamier perfume of the angel trumpets.

For the longest time, I sat staring at the house. My stay there had been as peaceful and harmonious as I could have ever hoped, but a sinister pall had been cast. I’d noticed it earlier when I stopped by to change, but I hadn’t wanted to dwell on it then. Now as evening approached and the dark hours stretched before me, I couldn’t help but recall Kendrick’s disturbing story.

He’d wanted me to know about the gruesome history of the house and the shed, but why? Did he think George’s and Mary’s deaths were somehow connected to those caged graves? Did he suspect that Annalee was somehow involved in the young woman’s murder?

A childhood trauma leading to a permanent psychosis might well be within the realm of possibility, but I wasn’t prepared to jump to that conclusion, even after witnessing her encounter with Martin Stark. Yet as I sat there gazing at the quaint facade, the image came back to me of a ten-year-old girl huddled on the porch covered in blood. When I peered into the darkened front windows, I pictured her cowering under the covers as her father dragged her mother’s body down the hallway.

What did that old tragedy have to do with the present-day murder of the woman I’d found in the mortsafe? And how was any of this the business of Darius Goodwine?

I remained motionless, pondering question after question as the engine ticked down and the shadows across the lawn grew longer. The day was coming to an end and the house seemed to be waiting.

Which was ridiculous. Nothing had changed about that place except for my perception.

Shivering in the late-afternoon heat, I climbed out of the vehicle and locked the door. But instead of going inside, I headed for the backyard where I could hear Angus pawing at the wooden gate in excitement. The fenced property gave him ample room to safely roam while I worked, which was a nice change from our tiny backyard in the city.

The moment I opened the gate, he bounded through, but then drew up short, as if he’d momentarily forgotten his wariness. His continued reticence tore at my heart and I wished, as I always did when he seemed so guarded around me, that I knew some easy way to earn back his affection.

There was a time when Angus had trusted me completely, but his canine senses were even more attuned to the supernatural than mine and the progression of my gift unnerved him. He was all too aware of the changes inside me and sometimes still I would catch him watching me with those dark, soulful eyes as if to say, I know who you are but I don’t know what you are and that worries me.

We’d made some headway during the past year, but he wasn’t yet ready to accept me wholeheartedly. Until such time, I could do nothing but give him his space. The same as I had done for Devlin.

Kneeling, I put out a hand so that he could catch my scent. He eyed me from a safe distance. When he finally ambled over, he didn’t relax as he once would have done, but instead held himself in rigid acquiescence as I stroked his scarred head and scratched behind his ear nubs.

“I know,” I murmured, smoothing the fur on his back. “I know you don’t like the changes inside me. I don’t like them, either. But there’s nothing I can do about them.”

Unless I located Rose’s long-lost key. Unless everything I’d heard about it was true. That still seemed a remote possibility, an improbable fairy tale, but if the key I wore around my neck could hold the ghosts at bay temporarily, who was to say another key couldn’t lock them out forever?

Angus put up with my attention for as long as he could stand before trotting off to explore the front yard. He wouldn’t go beyond the ditch. No matter his reservations, he still felt protective of me and for that I was both humbled and grateful.

I let him nose around for a bit and then called to him to follow me into the backyard. As I closed the gate and turned, my gaze lifted to the flat roof of the shed jutting up through the treetops. The outbuilding was located at the back of the property, separated from the marsh by a salt-tolerant forest of loblolly pines and from the backyard and house by a small grove of orange trees.

As best I could tell from the windows and roofline, the shed was divided into three distinct rooms, one leading back into the other in the shotgun fashion of an old farmhouse. The structure looked to be in decent condition so I assumed someone had taken care of it over the years. It was painted white like the house with a high window on either side of the front room to allow in light. On a few occasions, I’d stood on tiptoes and taken a peek through the glass, but other than a jumble of old furniture, boxes and garden tools, I hadn’t been able to tell much about the interior.

I sat down on the back porch steps, my gaze still fixed on the roof. As the horizon deepened, the moths came out, flitting among the bee balm and catmint that grew at the side of the porch. The breeze blowing in from the sea was cool and fragrant, and I could hear music somewhere in the distance. Closer in, cicadas and bullfrogs serenaded from the marsh as the bats flew out of their houses. It was a lovely time, a lonely time, with the last rays of the sunset valiantly staving off twilight.

Angus and I sat there until the shadows thickened at the edge of the yard and dusk crept over the orchard. I felt nothing unnatural in the breeze, but there was a sense of wrongness about the house and yard that I had not experienced before.

Perhaps it really was nothing more than my imagination fueled by Kendrick’s story. Or perhaps my finding those caged graves had somehow stirred a dormant evil. Whatever the reason, I found myself lingering on the steps and then on the screened porch because I didn’t want to enter the house.

“Oh, just get it over with,” I muttered as I pushed open the back door and stepped across the threshold. Fumbling for the light switch, I paused just inside the doorway as my gaze darted about the kitchen.

Most of the fixtures and cabinets were original to the house and created a vivid sense of time and place. I had a sudden vision of a woman in a black dress standing at the old farmhouse sink washing dishes. She wasn’t a ghost or a mirage or even one of Darius Goodwine’s illusions, but rather another product of my imagination. My gaze drifted to the table where a man with wire-rimmed glasses sat reading the Bible. What had driven a gentle, God-fearing man to murder his wife in her sleep and hide her body so well she’d yet to be found?

I watched the Willoughbys for a moment longer before allowing them to fade back into the past.

For the next few minutes, I busied myself attending to Angus’s dinner needs and then left him to his food as I walked slowly from room to room, searching for cold spots, listening for inexplicable sounds and sniffing the slightly musty air for peculiar scents.

Nothing seemed amiss even in the large front bedroom, which I assumed had belonged to George and Mary. I’d chosen the space for myself because of the southern exposure, but I’d spent very little time in the room. On most nights, the summer heat chased me out to the back porch where I would lie in the hammock watching the stars until I grew drowsy.

I wondered now if I had avoided the room because I’d subconsciously picked up on a disturbing feel—that sense of wrongness I’d experienced on the back steps. My gaze traveled over the room, searching every corner and crevice. If I peeled back the area rug at the end of the bed, would I find bloodstains on the floorboards? If I emptied my mind, would I feel the reverberation from Mary Willoughby’s screams?

There was nothing here, I told myself. No ghosts. No evil presence. Just that slight fusty odor that came from aging places. The house remained at peace.

Even so, I quickly packed up all my belongings and hauled my suitcase down the hallway to one of the smaller bedrooms at the rear of house. After I stored my things, I took a long, cool shower and put on a fresh nightgown before wandering back out to the kitchen.

Angus had finished his dinner by this time. He seemed content to curl up in a corner and watch drowsily as I ate a bowl of cereal standing at the sink. Then fetching my laptop, I settled down at the table for an evening of research.

So much had happened I hardly knew where to start. As on edge as I already was about the house, I decided to leave the topic of the Willoughbys for another day, concentrating instead on memento mori symbolism and the concept of triplism. I found a wealth of information on the transmigration of souls, but nothing at all on the Eternal Brotherhood of Resurrectionists or their enemy, the Congé. Finally putting all that aside, I searched through dozens of mortsafe images trying to find a duplicate or similar design to the cages in the clearing.

I had hoped once I began my research, a pattern would emerge that would help define my investigation, but by the time I finally closed my laptop for the night, enlightenment still eluded me.

Angus followed me out to the porch and I stood at the screen door, gazing into the darkness while he took care of business. I saw no ghosts hovering at the edge of the yard, no in-betweens skulking through the shadows, but the dead world seemed closer than it had in months.

Little wonder I felt so unnerved. It wasn’t every day Darius Goodwine came to me with a dangerous proposition. I half expected to catch a glimpse of him lurking in the shadows, but nothing stirred. The night was calm and yet my heart continued to race.

As if sensing my unease, Angus came trotting over to the door, whimpering to be let in. I placed a hand on his back and felt the bristle of his fur.

“What’s out there?” I murmured.

If only he had been able to warn me.

* * *

That night I dreamed about Devlin. He appeared to me in the cemetery in much the same way as Darius Goodwine had. I looked up from cleaning headstones and there he was, standing so deeply in the shadows of the old church ruins that I thought at first he must be a mirage. When I tried to speak to him, he lifted a finger to his lips to silence me. And when I would have gone to him, he shook his head as if to warn me away. The dream seemed so real and I felt his presence so strongly that, when I awakened, I almost expected to find him standing over me. Instead, I saw Annalee Nash peering down at me in the dark.

I bolted upright in bed. The moonlight streaming in through the windows was so bright I didn’t bother with the lamp. Clutching the covers to my chest, I glanced around, certain I would find Annalee hiding in one of the corners, but no one was there. I must have still been dreaming when I saw her.

Angus was nowhere to be found so I climbed out of bed and padded down the hallway to look for him. He stood on the back porch peering through the screen into the yard. He didn’t seem alarmed or frightened, but when I opened the door to let him out, he wouldn’t go.

I rested my hand on his head, gently scratching behind his ear nubs as I searched the yard. The night was still and quiet, perfumed by the lemony scent of the catmint. Moonlight spilled across the yard, cool and silvery, but the shadows along the orchard were impenetrable. I scanned the tree line once, twice, at least three times before I noticed a slight movement. When the outline of a crouching form took shape, my heart leaped to my throat and I reached for the hook on the screen door to make certain that I’d latched it.

Even in the dark, I recognized her at once, and for a moment, I could have sworn she was the ten-year-old Annalee from Lucien Kendrick’s story.

I started to call out to her and then thought better of it. She stared up at the house, but I didn’t think she’d seen me. I wasn’t even sure she was cognizant of her whereabouts. Whatever caused her to hunker in the shadows was something from her past. Something that only she could see.

She watched the house for a moment longer and then rose tentatively as she glanced over her shoulder. Still half crouching, she backed deeper into the shadows and disappeared into the trees.

I wondered if I should follow her, make sure she was all right, but the memory of that sly smile stopped me. I went back inside the stifling house, calling softly for Angus to come. With the doors and windows closed, the musty odor seemed stronger tonight and I detected a cloying under note that turned my stomach.

Walking slowly through the darkened rooms, I opened closet doors and peered into murky corners. I didn’t know what I expected to find. I doubted that Annalee had actually been inside the house. Somehow, I must have picked up on her nearness in my sleep and manifested her face in a waking dream. Still, the very fact that she had come creeping around the property so late at night bothered me.

The moldy odor was stronger in the front bedroom. The windows were closed here, too, and the closet was empty. There was nothing under the bed or behind the headboard. Nothing lurked in the corners. No one had been in that room since I’d moved out all my things earlier, but I sensed a presence as strongly as I’d felt Devlin’s in my sleep.

“Show yourself,” I whispered.

I heard something then that reminded me of a mewling kitten. The sound was so soft and distant I couldn’t be sure I’d heard anything at all. I held myself perfectly still, listening to the silence of that bedroom. The house didn’t creak and moan as would be expected in such an old structure. To the contrary, the quiet seemed uncanny.

I’d had some experience with an entity that could scurry and scrabble through walls, but I didn’t think the sound had come from inside the house. Rather, the tinny, echoing quality made me think of a well or a tomb. Something deep underground. Something buried alive.

My heart pounded as I turned to the doorway where Angus hovered. He wouldn’t come inside the room and his reluctance, even more than the sound, sent a warning thrill down my spine. I might have succumbed to my earlier curiosity and thrown back the rug to search for bloodstains, but my cell phone rang just then and I left the room in relief to hurry down the hallway to answer.

A phone call in the middle of the night was never a good omen, but since I didn’t recognize the number, I expected it was just a misdial.

“Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello?” I said, a trifle impatiently.

Nothing. Not even so much as a hitched breath. But someone was there. Someone who knew that I was in the house alone.