The Awakening

Shush...lest she awaken...

My name is Amelia Gray, and I’m a cemetery restorer who lives with the dead. An anonymous donor has hired me to restore Woodbine Cemetery, a place where the rich and powerful bury their secrets. Forty years ago, a child disappeared without a trace and now her ghost has awakened, demanding that I find out the truth about her death. Only I know that she was murdered. Only I can bring her killer to justice. But the clues that I follow—a haunting melody and an unnamed baby’s grave—lead me to a series of disturbing suspects.

For generations, The Devlins have been members of Charleston’s elite. John Devlin once turned his back on the traditions and expectations that came with his birthright, but now he has seemingly accepted his rightful place. His family’s secrets make him a questionable ally. When my investigation brings me to the gates of his family’s palatial home, I have to wonder if he is about to become my mortal enemy.

Praise for THE GRAVEYARD QUEEN series by Amanda Stevens

“The beginning of Stevens’ GRAVEYARD QUEEN series left this reviewer breathless. The author smoothly establishes characters and forms the foundation of future storylines with an edgy and beautiful writing style. Her story is full of twists and turns, with delicious and surprising conclusions. Readers will want to force themselves to slow down and enjoy the book instead of speeding through to the end, and they’ll anxiously await the next installment of this deceptively gritty series.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Restorer

“The Restorer is by turns creepy and disturbing, mixed with mystery and a bit of romance. Amelia is a strong character who has led a hard and—of necessity—secret life. She is not close to many people, and her feelings for Devlin disturb her greatly. Although at times unnerving, The Restorer is well written and intriguing, and an excellent beginning to a new series.”

—Fort Worth Examiner

“I could rhapsodize for hours about how much I enjoyed The Restorer. Amanda Stevens has woven a web of intricate plot lines that elicit many emotions from her readers. This is a scary, provocative, chilling and totally mesmerizing book. I never wanted it to end and I’m going to be on pins and needles until the next book in THE GRAVEYARD QUEEN series comes out.”

—Fresh Fiction

The Awakening

Amanda Stevens

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Extract

Copyright

One

I came across the hidden grave my first day in Woodbine Cemetery. It was late October, warm and sunny with a mild breeze stirring my nostalgia and the colorful leaves that had fallen from the dogwood trees. Despite the temperature, I could feel autumn in the air—or at least in my imagination—as the sun settled toward the horizon.

Those fading days always brought twinges of melancholy and I was glad to have a new project to buoy my spirits. I was still in the early phases of the restoration—mapping, photographing and spending untold hours immersed in historical records. The hard labor of clearing brush and cleaning headstones would soon follow, but for now I luxuriated in the courtship stage, that heady, golden time of acquainting myself with the dead and their history.

Woodbine was one of the forgotten cemeteries in a whole community of burial grounds that fanned out from the Cooper River in Charleston, South Carolina. Tucked away at the end of a narrow lane and hidden from street view by a shrouded fence, this withering gem had languished in the shadow of the historic Magnolia Cemetery for decades until revitalization efforts in the area had uncovered it.

The grave was just as well hidden, secreted in the farthest corner of the cemetery and sheltered from the elements and the curious by the graceful arms of weeping willow trees. The graves of children always moved me, but this one affected me in a way I couldn’t explain. Perhaps it was the stone monument cast in the shape of an old-fashioned baby crib that so intrigued me, or the likeness of the child that peeped from underneath the hood. Or the unsettling epitaph, which read Shush... Lest She Awaken.

There was no name on the memorial, but I could make out the birth and death dates. The little girl had passed nearly fifty years ago at the heartbreaking age of two. Setting aside my camera, I smoothed my hand along the edge of the polished stone as I studied her portrait. What a beautiful child she’d been, with a heart-shaped face and perfect bow mouth. The black-and-white image had been hand-painted to tint her lips and cheeks pink, her curls golden and her eyes a lovely violet blue.

She hadn’t smiled for the camera and the solemnness of her countenance sent an inexplicable chill down my spine. It was strange to see such a serious expression on the face of an infant. Had she been ill? I wondered. Had her short life been filled with so much pain and suffering that death had come as a blessing?

I couldn’t look away from that sweet, doleful face. The child captivated me. There was something so mesmerizing about her eyes...something almost familiar about the shape of her mouth and nose and the lines of her jaw and chin. I couldn’t have known her. She’d passed long before I was born. I had only Mama and Papa and my aunt Lynrose in the area, none of whom had ever spoken of a dead baby. Despite the discovery of so many long-buried secrets, I doubted a familial bond, and yet I was drawn to that nameless child in a way that defied a real-world explanation.

Was she reaching out to me? Had my mere presence somehow awakened her?

It was not a comforting thought. I was a ghost seer, a death walker and sometimes a detective for the unquiet, but I did not embrace my calling. I took no pride in my abilities. I considered my gift a curse because all I’d ever wanted was a normal life. A quiet, peaceful existence, perhaps with a child of my own someday.

But ordinary was not meant to be, and I was coming to accept the painful reality that children were out of the question. I couldn’t take a chance that I would pass on my gift just as it had been passed down to me. The ghosts were frightening all on their own, but the malevolent entities that had invaded my world—the Others and the in-betweens, the malcontents and the shadow beings—made for a harrowing existence. I wouldn’t wish my life on anyone, especially a child. And as I had only just discovered, there was yet another danger lurking in the dark underbelly of the city. The Congé was a secret, fanatical group intent on ridding the living world of any force they perceived as unnatural. If they learned of my gift and the light inside me that attracted the earthbound entities, they would come for me and mine.

So, no, a family wasn’t in the cards. I would never willingly subject a child to the horrors and dangers that came with my bloodline.

But...back to this child. Who was she? Why had she been buried in a nameless grave in this sheltered, forsaken corner?

Forsaken perhaps, but not forgotten. The grave had recently been tended. Someone had cleared away dead leaves and planted purple pansies in the bed of the crib. Someone remembered this child. Someone who still grieved for her, perhaps.

The breeze drifted through the willows, tinkling a hidden wind chime. I was so caught up in the mystery of the grave that at first I didn’t take note of the melody. And it was a melody, distinct and haunting, as if an invisible hand tapped out the notes. Tearing my focus from the portrait, I lifted my gaze to comb the tree branches. The smell of woodbine deepened even though the blooms had long since faded. I felt something in the breeze—no longer a trace of autumn, but an ethereal chill that raised goose bumps along my arms.

Go. Go now, I told myself. Go back to your work before you get drawn into yet another ghostly puzzle, yet another dangerous mystery.

But I feared I had already lingered too long.

The sun hovered just above the treetops, but inside the grove of willow trees, a preternatural twilight had fallen. Here, the veil had already thinned and I could see a vague, timorous shadow in the deepest part of the shade. I shuddered, my hand still on the edge of the crib as a whispery missive floated over the grave and into my head. Mercy...

“Is someone there?” I called, and then chided myself for my stubborn naïveté. After all these years, after everything I’d seen and heard, I still wanted to believe the presence could be human and benign.

The shadow darted through the wispy strands of the willows and I heard a high-pitched giggle, followed by a muffled thump. Then an old, weathered ball rolled out of the shadows at my feet. I wanted to ignore the overture. I told myself to get on with the exploration of the cemetery, but before I could stop myself, I gave the ball a gentle kick back into the shadows. It was instantly returned, but this time I let it roll into the bushes.

The childish chortle died away and suddenly I sensed a darker emotion. The laughter that followed held no humor and only a remnant of humanness. Fear trickled down my spine as I searched the shade. “Who are you? What do you want from me?”

Mercy.

From who? For what?

It was time to end this game, time to heed the instinct that warned to distance myself from this grave and the specter hiding in the shadows. But when I would have turned to scurry back into the light, my feet tangled in a vine that snaked around the base of the tomb. I hadn’t noticed the creeper earlier. It almost seemed as if the woodsy tentacle had slithered in while the ghost had caught my attention. As I bent to free my snared shoelaces, I heard the wind chime again, the sweet, haunting melody inharmonious with the darkness I felt from the entity and that high, mocking titter.

Instinctively, I reached for the key I wore around my neck, a talisman blessed by a divine hand and left to me by my great-grandmother Rose as protection against the ghosts. This provoked an even stronger reaction. A gust blew out of the shadows, so strong the blast felt like a physical assault. I was still bent and off balance, and as I staggered backward, the vine tightened around my ankles, jerking me off my feet. I fell in an ungainly sprawl, stressing my right wrist when I tried to catch myself.

I went down hard, gasping as pain darted up my arm. Cradling my tender wrist, I focused my attention on the shadows. I could see her there, watching me from the gloom. Her face reminded me of the embedded portrait, but she couldn’t be the infant’s ghost. This girl looked to have been at least ten when she passed. Sisters, perhaps. Dead but still clinging to their mortal bond.

I wanted to know her name, her history, her connection to the infant in the tomb.

I wanted to scramble to my feet, hurry from the cemetery and never look back.

The ghost’s childish trickery disturbed me in a way I didn’t yet understand. I found myself once again reaching for my talisman, but the key was gone. Frantically, I clutched my neck while tracking the mischievous entity. She giggled again before fading back into the shadows.

Two

I was still crouched on the ground with my gaze pinned to the spot where the ghost had vanished when I realized someone had come upon me. Not a ghost this time, but a human presence. I didn’t jump at the intrusion. I’d learned long ago to keep my nerves steady, so I took only a moment to recover my poise as I turned slowly toward the cemetery.

A man dressed in a faded black jacket and tattered jeans stood no more than five feet from me, head slightly cocked as he observed me with surly indifference. I had never met him before, but I recognized him from the description I’d been given by my contact in the group that had hired me. His name was Prosper Lamb and he was the cemetery caretaker, a term I used loosely in his case because not much care had been given to Woodbine over the past several decades. The grounds were overgrown and littered with trash, the graves in bad need of weeding. He hadn’t even bothered to pick up the empty beer bottles at the entrance, making me wonder how he managed to keep his job. I’d been told he lived across the road so perhaps proximity was the only requirement.

His gaze on me deepened and I suppressed another shudder as I took in his countenance. I guessed his age to be around forty, but a hard life had carved deep lines in his face. A scar at his neck and another across the back of his hand hinted at a violent past. He was tallish and lean with a hairline that had receded into a deep widow’s peak. He hadn’t said a word to alert me of his presence or to put me at ease. I had a feeling he enjoyed my discomfort.

I got quickly to my feet as I brushed off my jeans. “Mr. Lamb, isn’t it?”

“You must be the restorer,” he said in a countrified drawl. “They said you’d be stopping by today.”

“Amelia Gray.” I offered my hand, but then let it fall back to my side when I saw that his attention was already diverted.

He nodded to the ground at the base of the tomb where I had risen. “Looked like something knocked the wind out of you just now.”

“Nothing so dramatic. My shoelaces tangled in a vine and I tripped.”

“They’re everywhere,” he grumbled. “Briars, ivy, swamp morning glory. Pull one up, half a dozen more grow back in its place. No offense, ma’am, but this seems like a mighty big job for such a small woman.” His eyes narrowed as he gave me a cool appraisal.

“I appreciate your concern, but I assure you I’m up to the task.” I returned his frank assessment. “And what is it you do around here, Mr. Lamb?”

He merely shrugged at my pointed question. “They call me the caretaker, but I don’t touch the graves. Not anymore. These days I’m more of a watchman. I keep an eye on things. Chase away the riffraff that has a tendency to gravitate to places like this.” He put his hand on his waist, pushing back the wool jacket so that I could glimpse the gun he wore at his hip.

The knowledge that he was armed and quite possibly dangerous did nothing to put me at ease in his presence. I couldn’t help noting the isolation of our surroundings. Despite our nearness to the hustle and bustle of downtown Charleston, I doubted a car had strayed this way in a very long time.

His expression turned sardonic as he continued to watch me. His speech cadence and manner of dress put me in the mind of an old-time traveling preacher, also not reassuring.

“You’re off the beaten path and not in the safest part of town,” he warned. “If you run into trouble, just holler. I’ll be around.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lamb, but I don’t anticipate any trouble.”

“No one ever sees it coming. And you can call me Prosper. Or Prop. We’ll likely be seeing a lot of each other if you don’t get scared off.”

“Scared off by what?”

He grinned, displaying a toothy overbite. “Cemeteries can be frightening places, ma’am.”

“Not to a cemetery restorer.”

He shrugged, letting his jacket fall back into place as his gaze moved to the stone crib behind me. “That one there...she’s a strange one.”

For one crazy moment, I thought he meant the ghost and I glanced over my shoulder in dread. Then I realized he referred to the stone crib and the portrait of the dead child. “There’s no name on the monument. Do you know who she was?”

“Never heard tell,” he said. “But that’s not the only grave in here without a name. Woodbine is where the well-to-do used to bury their secrets.”

“What do you mean?”

His gaze turned sage. “Their bastards and mistresses, if you’ll pardon my language. People they kept on the fringes of their lives. They erected all these fine monuments to honor the dead, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t give them their names. So they laid them to rest here in Woodbine, close enough to visit but separate from the respectable family plots in Magnolia Cemetery.”

“I never knew that,” I said, intrigued in spite of myself.

“Now you do. Who do you think pays me to watch over them?”

“I assume the same trust that hired me.”

He leaned in. “Who do you think sits on the board? Who do you think made the donation to restore this place? Years and years go by and all of a sudden someone is mighty interested in getting this place cleaned up. That doesn’t strike you as curious?”

“Not at all. The neighboring cemeteries have been undergoing revitalization for years.”

“Maybe that’s all it is,” he said. “Then again, maybe someone has developed a guilty conscience.”

I knew better than to encourage his gossip, but I couldn’t help myself. “Who?”

“Well, that is the question, isn’t it?” He lifted his head to sniff the air. “Smell that?”

I took a quick breath, drawing in the lingering scent that had been stirred by the ghost. “You mean the woodbine?”

“Nah, that stuff won’t bloom again until next spring. I smell something dead.”

My gaze darted inadvertently to the spot where the ghost had vanished.

Prosper Lamb walked all around the tomb, testing the air like a bloodhound. “It’s fresh. Barely any rot. But I’m never wrong about that smell. I’ve had a nose for dead things since I was a kid.”

My senses had evolved along with my gift, but evidently he was even more sensitive than I was. I didn’t smell anything.

“Are you the superstitious type?” he asked suddenly.

“Not really. Why?”

“You’re not bothered by corpse birds?”

“Corpse birds?”

“That’s what my mama used to call dead birds found on or near graves. She claimed they were signs.” As he talked, he reached inside the crib bed and carefully parted the purple blossoms. A second later, he extracted a dead crow, holding it up by the claws so that he could assess the glistening carcass. Even in the shade, I could see the sheen of black feathers and the dull glint in its beady eyes. There was something odd about the way the head dangled...

“Still warm,” he said. “Must have just happened.”

Foreboding tingled through me. “How do you suppose it died?”

“Sometimes they fall out of the sky without rhyme or reason. This one, though.” He glanced up. “Something wrung its neck.”

I suppressed another shiver as I quickly scanned the gloomy landscape. “I don’t see how it could have just died. I’ve been here for several minutes and I didn’t see anything.”

He held the bird out to me. “Feel it for yourself.”

“No, that’s okay. I believe you. I’m just wondering what could have happened to the poor thing.” I found my gaze flashing back to the place where the dead girl had vanished. I fancied I could still hear the echo of her taunting laughter.

My hand went to my throat again before I remembered that Rose’s key had gone missing. “I’ve lost my necklace. If you find a ribbon with a key attached—”

“This one?” He shifted the dead bird to his left hand and reached out with his right to unsnag the ribbon from underneath the hood of the crib. How it had gotten there, I had no idea, unless the ribbon had been caught when I bent over the monument to study the photograph.

“Looks old,” he said, dangling the key in the air in much the same way he’d displayed the dead crow. “A good-luck charm?”

“Something like that.” I held out my hand.

He eyed the key for a moment longer before dropping it in my palm. “Better hang on to it then. A corpse bird isn’t just any old sign. It’s a death omen. Finding that dead crow likely means someone else is about to pass.”

Three

That night I had the most disturbing dream, undoubtedly triggered by the ghost child’s manifestation and by Prosper Lamb’s death prophesy. I found myself walking through Woodbine Cemetery, a thick mist swirling around my legs as I searched for all those nameless headstones. I felt an urgency to find them. It seemed imperative that I visit each grave to let the dead know they hadn’t been forgotten.

As I entered one of the ornate fences surrounding a plot, I saw my mother and my aunt Lynrose in wicker rockers drinking sweet tea at the edge of an open grave. They were dressed in summer finery, florals and pastels, rather than in heavy mourning attire. I could hear the murmur of their soft drawls as they peered down into the abyss. As I came upon them, Aunt Lynrose looked up with a stern admonishment. “Mind your manners, chile. Don’t you go poking your nose in places it doesn’t belong.”

“Leave her be, Lyn,” my mother scolded. “We should have tended to this business years ago. Now it’s up to Amelia to find out the truth.”

My aunt worried the gold locket at her throat as she returned her attention to the open grave. “You should know by now, dear sister, that some secrets are best left buried.”

I left them muttering to each other as I traveled on through a sea of headstones. Just when I thought I must be hopelessly lost, the mist thinned and I could see the willow trees that lined the riverbank. As I neared the water, the scent of woodbine deepened and I heard the distant tinkle of a wind chime. The haunting melody drew me deeper into the copse, where Prosper Lamb reclined against the stone cradle. He eyed me curiously as I came through the trees.

“That one there...she’s a strange one,” he warned. “A bad seed, you might say.”

I turned to find the ghost child glowering at me from the shadows. She didn’t taunt or try to play as she’d done before. Her anger was palpable. I could see blood on her hands and on the white drop-waist dress she wore. She stood upright, but her head dangled at an odd angle like that of the corpse bird she clutched to her chest.

As I started toward her, a powerful wind knocked me back. Struggling to remain upright, I called out to her. “Please stop. You’ll hurt me.”

Her surly expression never changed, but suddenly she lifted a finger to point at something in the mist over my shoulder. I thought Prosper Lamb must have come up behind me. Still battling that terrible wind, I turned in alarm but my feet tangled in a vine and I hit the ground hard, tumbling over and over as if rolling down a long hill.