Mercy (20 page)

With an effort, Haley opened her eyes. She needed to figure things out. There was something dark green and fuzzy inches from her nose. Bits of gravel and dirt were stuck in it, and tiny sparkling pieces of broken glass. Haley blinked hard and things came into focus. Carpet. She was lying on carpet, packed into a small, dark, curved space.

Then Haley got it. She was in Jake's car, lying scrunched up in the space under the dashboard. She must have fallen down there after she hit her head—

Jake's car. Jake!

Twisting, crawling, scrambling, Haley fought her way back up onto the passenger seat. Through the cracked windshield she could see nothing but old, yellowed grass. The horizon through the side window was slanted crazily, making her stomach swoop dizzily. She thought for a second that something was wrong with her eyes, but then she realized that the car itself had tipped, nose down, into the ditch alongside the road. The keys were still in the ignition. No sign of Jake.

The window on the driver's side had been shattered. Fragments of glass, icy white, were scattered across the seat.

Haley could get her door open, but no more than a few inches. The window wouldn't go down. She ended up crawling out of the broken window on the driver's side, pulling the sleeves of her jacket down over her hands to protect them, shielding her face with her arms.

On hands and knees, slipping in cold mud, she tried to climb out of the ditch. She slid back once, and one foot ended up ankle-deep in icy cold, slimy water. Shivering, grabbing handfuls of long grass, she heaved herself up beside the road and stood for a moment to catch her breath.

Her whole body ached, a vague throbbing that sharpened most keenly in the arm that had been twisted under her, the lip she'd cut against her teeth, and a spot over her right eyebrow.
Putting up cautious fingers, she encountered a lump too tender to touch. But everything worked. Right now that was enough.

To her right, behind the wrought-iron fence, was the cemetery. To her left, past the ditch, was the road. Not a car in sight.

Haley had no idea how long she'd been unconscious. A few minutes? An hour? More? Not long enough for someone to see the wrecked car and stop.

With stiff, cold fingers she clawed her cell phone out of her pocket. Just three little numbers, just 9-1-1, and she'd have help. Police, ambulance.
People
, lots of them, so she wouldn't be facing this nightmare by herself.

Her phone slipped out of her clumsy fingers, cartwheeled in the air, and vanished with a sickening
plop
into the icy puddle at the bottom of the ditch.

Without a second thought, Haley threw herself down after it.

She ended up on her knees, icy water soaking through her jeans. The puddle was murky brown; she couldn't see a thing. Groping frantically, she clawed through slimy grass and slick mud, trying hard not to think about what she might be touching. Her hands were so cold they hurt; she could have cried from the pain. And the smell of wet clay was choking her. It was worse than being inside Aunt Brown's house. It was as bad as being at the bottom of a grave.

There. She felt it. The hard, smooth rectangle of her phone. She hauled it out, flipped it open, brushed the slimy mud away. She tried to turn it on. Nothing. She shook it. She rubbed it dry on her jacket.

Nothing. Of course, nothing. It would never work after falling into that filthy water.

Haley stuffed the dead phone in her pocket and climbed out of the ditch for the second time.

Now she really was all alone.

She could run along the road, wave down a car, find a house. But what about Jake? What about Alan? By the time she found some help, it could be too late for both of them.

Still, what could Haley do, all on her own?

There weren't even any helpful strangers coming along the road. There was no one to do this with her. And she didn't have time to let that scare her. She had to make a choice.

Blowing on her cold hands, Haley looked at the cemetery. It was empty. She looked across the road, up the graveled driveway, to the shabby old farmhouse.

Alan was probably still there. And would Patience have taken Jake back there as well? She was strong, stronger than Haley had imagined. Haley felt a shudder crawl over her, remembering how easily the frail old woman had struck Jake and knocked him aside.

The thought of stepping back into that quiet, dim house made Haley's throat close up with terror. But Patience had lived there for—what? More than a hundred years now? It seemed likely she'd retreat there if threatened or attacked.

Haley took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and prepared to scramble down into the ditch again for a third time and up the other side when something brushed her arm. Light as a feather, as a breath of wind.

She turned her head and saw nothing.

She had to go.

That touch a second time. And something flickering at the corner of her vision.

Haley looked again.

It was hard to see Mercy. One moment she was there, the next she wasn't. Haley remembered how surprised she'd been the first time she'd seen a fire in the daylight. At night the orange flames looked nearly solid. In the sunlight they were close to transparent. Hardly there.

Mercy was like that. Haley had to squint and move her head to see her. That urgent face, that gesture with her hand.
Follow me
.

Mercy turned. She walked easily through the fence, as if it wasn't there. Maybe for her it wasn't.

Alan had said that Haley, following Mercy, had walked right through a door. But that didn't happen this time. When she put a hand on the fence, it was solid.

“Wait,” she called to Mercy. “I can't just walk through stuff, you know.”

Mercy, a vague gray figure, wavering a little with the wind, seemed to pause. Haley clutched the cold iron rails, hauled herself up the fence—

—and jumped down on the other side into the past.

T
he cemetery had shrunk around her. Less than half as big, it huddled close to the road. The fence was gone, replaced by a low stone wall. The grass was neatly mown, the headstones straight. The sunlight had vanished. Thick, low gray clouds covered the sky.

Less than a hundred yards away, four men were carrying a coffin. They were dressed in dark suits, hats on their heads. A line of people came behind them. The women all wore long, old-fashioned dresses, like Mercy's. Some had shawls around their shoulders and heads.

No
, Haley thought.
No, Mercy, I can't be here. I have to find Jake—

But Mercy wasn't there.

Haley looked around in panic. There was no figure at her side, flickering at the edge of her vision. And Mercy wasn't among the women walking behind the coffin, either.

Had Mercy brought her here and abandoned her? Left her a hundred years in the past, away from Patience—and Alan, and Jake?

“Mercy!” she shouted. Or meant to. Her voice made no sound. She grabbed at a nearby headstone and felt nothing. Her fingertips moved through the solid stone as easily as through mist.

A ghost. She was a ghost.

With nothing else to do, Haley ran toward the funeral. She had seen Mercy, when Mercy was a ghost in Haley's time. Maybe somebody now—then—would see her, help her.

The men were carrying the coffin toward a place Haley remembered. They hadn't reached it yet, but Haley could see where they were headed. A willow tree—not as tall as the last time Haley had seen it—leaned near a cluster of gravestones. A man stood near it with a shovel in his hand, waiting patiently for the mourners to reach him. At his feet was a trim, straight-sided hole in the ground. A small hole, to fit a small coffin. Edwin's coffin.

Haley had reached the pallbearers by now as they continued their slow march across the cemetery. One of the men carrying the coffin was staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched. He looked furious. Tears were running almost invisibly down his face and creeping into a thick black beard.

“Hey!” Haley shouted uselessly. “I'm here!” She waved her arms. “Can you hear me? Can you see me?”

The weeping man didn't turn his head. But one of the women walking behind the coffin glanced up. Smooth, dark hair was pulled into a braided knot on the back of her head. Her dress and shawl were black, her face pale, her cheeks brushed with red from a chilly wind. There were no tears in her eyes.

Haley had last seen her barefoot, in a long white shift, bending over her sleeping sister.

Patience.

Haley flinched as Patience seemed to look straight at her. Suddenly she no longer wanted to draw attention to herself. She
backed away quickly, stumbling, walking through headstones because she didn't dare turn, didn't dare take her eyes off Patience, who was still looking around, frowning a little, as if she'd heard something she couldn't quite catch.

Then a flicker at the corner of her eye caught Haley's attention. Something had moved. Had it been the man, leaning on his shovel near the newly dug grave? But as her head turned toward him, he disappeared.

The funeral, the coffin, the mourners vanished as well.

But Patience was still there.

Jake was sprawled on his back near Mercy's grave. His head was turned toward Haley, his eyes closed. There was blood on his throat, running down his neck, soaking into the collar of his white shirt.

He didn't move or stir as Patience, crouched over him, lifted her head. There was a smear of blood on her lower lip. Slowly she licked it away.

Haley shuddered, but she didn't back up. Her mind shouted,
Run!
It shouted,
Help him! Save him! He saved you!
The commands clashed and tangled along her nerves; her feet stayed rooted.

Gracefully, Patience rose to her feet, smoothing out her skirt. She still looked like the Aunt Brown Haley had known all her life, but something was different. She seemed younger. Her cheeks were flushed red. Even her hair, slipping loose from its knot, looked a little darker. She didn't look thin and frail anymore. She looked . . . strong.

Run. Get away
.

But Jake didn't move, didn't open his eyes. Was he breathing? She couldn't tell.

Patience smiled, just a little. Was it a smile? Her upper lip lifted, showing her teeth. No fangs. They were just ordinary teeth, sharp and white and—

This was a predator with hunger in her eyes. Haley wasn't family to her now. Wasn't even a person. She was simply prey.

Like any hunted animal, Haley turned and ran.

She felt something snag the collar of her jacket, something sharp graze the back of her neck. But Patience had tried too soon; she wasn't quite close enough to get the grip she needed. Haley dodged, dove aside between a row of headstones, heard a snarl of frustrated rage behind her.

Haley's mind shut off. She wasn't thinking, just running. The urge filled up her head, not even a word, just a command—
faster faster faster
.

Fear flicked at her like the lash of a whip.
She's behind you—she'll catch you—you'll die. You'll be dead. Like Jake
.

She didn't dare to look over her shoulder, couldn't hear anything but the rasp of her own breath. But Patience must surely be right behind her. She'd outrun a car. Haley's mind flinched from that thought. But it was true. Patience had caught up with the car, had dragged Jake from it. How was Haley going to escape from something like that?

Haley saw a crypt up ahead, a small square building of white marble blotched with lichen, and she ducked around its corner. She hesitated a moment, her back against the wall. Patience would be after her any second. But then Haley would know where the vampire was. Haley would get the crypt in between them, she thought. Then she'd run for the road and pray for a car to stop. It wasn't much of a plan, but between terror and exhaustion, it was all she had.

Except that Patience didn't appear.

Silence. The sunlight shone on quiet rows of gravestones. No wind stirred the grass or the twigs of the leafless trees. No birds, no squirrels. Haley's breath had settled down to deep, slow gasps. But even without that dreadful rasping in her ears, she couldn't hear a thing.