The Sinner (21 page)

Twenty-Seven

D
awn hadn't broken, but the light was already thinning as a fine mist settled over the countryside. I stood shivering at the edge of the orchard as I watched uniformed officers come and go from the shed. Angus huddled at my side and I was grateful for his company. I knelt and buried my fingers in his coat. He looked at me with those liquid eyes as if to reassure me that everything would be fine now. Nothing could get to me so long as he remained near. Not even Mary Willoughby's ghost.

I hadn't told Kendrick about her manifestation. I'd had no chance to even if I'd wanted to share such a harrowing experience. Everything had happened so quickly once he found out about the remains. He'd hauled me up and then busied himself placing calls to the necessary authorities. Within half an hour, a number of uniformed cops had descended on the property, followed by the county coroner and then James Rushing, who had insisted on examining the remains in situ.

One of the officers had offered to take my rescued kitten to a local veterinary clinic owned by a relative and I'd reluctantly turned over my charge.

Another officer had been dispatched to Annalee Nash's house to alert her of the discovery. She had arrived on the scene a few minutes earlier dressed in shorts and a baggy T-shirt that reminded me again of the enigmatic ten-year-old I'd witnessed in her memory.

She'd nodded briefly when she first walked up, but I had the impression she wanted to be alone so I hadn't tried to approach her. But I studied her from a distance as images flashed in my head. Not her buried recollections this time, but my own creations based on what I knew of her past and what I'd seen in that pit. I had a very clear picture of her leaning over the edge of the cylinder and whispering down to her trapped mother:
Memento mori, Mama.

She had only been a child at the time. It was a little far-fetched to believe that she had violently attacked her mother while she slept, somehow dragged her body all the way through the orchard to the shed and then pushed her down into that pit. A far more likely explanation was the one that had become local canon. George Willoughby was responsible for his wife's demise.

I turned back to the shed as those images continued to strobe in my head. What had been the original purpose of that cylinder? How had George Willoughby known about it? And who now knew of its existence?

I was still kneeling beside Angus when I looked up to find Annalee Nash standing over me. I'd been so lost in thought and so focused on the comings and goings at the shed that I hadn't seen her approach. Her sudden appearance startled me. I rose quickly and Angus pressed up against me as he watched her with wary eyes.

“I didn't see you come up,” I said.

“I didn't mean to startle you. You seemed a million miles away.”

“I'm just a little distracted.”

“With good reason. First you stumble across a body in the clearing and now my mother's remains.”

“We don't know for sure that the remains are your mother's,” I pointed out.
I
knew, of course. I'd seen her ghost. But I could hardly offer that as confirmation. “Dr. Rushing is a forensic anthropologist. He should be able to make that determination fairly quickly, especially if your mother had any broken bones or other identifying markers. Otherwise, he can use dental records and DNA testing if necessary.”

“It's her. I know it's her.” Annalee glanced back at the shed. “All these years and she was right there. So close. It's hard to wrap my head around that.”

“You couldn't have known,” I murmured. Unless she had seen her mother go into that pit.

Her smile seemed appropriately wan. “I suppose not. But I feel like I should have known. Like I should have somehow sensed her nearness.” She paused. “I know in my head that feeling isn't rational. After all, I wasn't even here. They took me away the morning they discovered my father's body.”

“You're probably still in shock,” I said, for lack of a better platitude.

“Maybe. Or maybe I just don't know how I'm supposed to feel about all this. She's been gone for such a long time. Most of my life. I can barely even remember what she looked like.”

I thought of the barefoot woman in the ruins, the way her eyes had gleamed as she held her daughter to the ground. Maybe it was best if those memories of her mother never surfaced.

Annalee slipped her hands into the pockets of her shorts as she rocked back and forth on her heels. “Sometimes I do have vague images of her. Mostly flashes of her doing some mundane chore—in the kitchen washing dishes or out in the backyard hanging laundry. Sometimes I'll catch a whiff of a certain perfume, and if I close my eyes, I can see her at her dressing table, brushing her hair as she smiles at me in the mirror. I do remember that she was very beautiful.”

I thought of those grayish clumps of hair still clinging to the skull. Those empty eye sockets and that hideous grin...

“Maybe that's the way you should remember her,” I said.

Annalee gave me a sharp glance. “Yes. Maybe it is for the best.”

She still rocked back and forth, her eyes so distant that I thought she might have drifted off into one of her states. But then I caught her watching me out of the corner of her eye. Her scrutiny unnerved me.

“I'm glad you're here,” she said unexpectedly. “It's good to have someone to talk to while this is going on.”

“I'm happy to help in any way I can.”

“Would you mind if I ask you a question?”

“No, of course not.”

Her gaze was very direct now. “I was told you're the one who found her remains.”

“Yes, along with Detective Kendrick.”

“The details are still a bit fuzzy, but the officer who came to my house said something about an intruder.”

“I thought someone had broken into the storage shed so I called the police. Then Detective Kendrick and I heard what sounded like an animal in distress and we crawled through a window to investigate. That's when we found the hole beneath the floorboards.” I hesitated, uncertain how much I should reveal since the case would undoubtedly be reopened. “If you have any more questions, it's probably best to talk to Detective Kendrick.”

She gave a slight nod as her gaze moved back to the shed. “I wonder how much longer they'll be.”

“A while, I imagine. Would you like some tea while you wait? I could go up to the house and fix you a cup. Or you could wait there if you'd prefer. I'm sure Detective Kendrick wouldn't mind stopping by when he's finished.”

“That's kind of you, but I don't want to leave. I feel like I should be here.”

“I understand.”

“After all these years.” She shook her head in wonder. “What were the chances that you would stumble across a hole beneath the floorboards while trying to rescue a stray cat?”

“Did you have any idea that hole was there?” I asked carefully.

“No. How could I? I'm sure it was boarded up before we ever moved here.”

“But someone knew about it.”

She shot me another glance. “My father, you mean.”

I didn't ask any more questions even though there were so many things I still wanted to know. Had she noticed anything unusual in her mother's demeanor in the days leading up to the tragedy? Had Annalee shared her father's conviction that something evil had taken over her mother's body?

If she remembered nothing of that night, why hadn't she moved into the house upon her return to Ascension? What was she afraid of here?

But, of course, I asked none of those things because, as badly as I wanted the answers, interrogating Annalee Nash wasn't my place.

Kendrick came out of the shed just then and I saw him glance over at us. I started to lift a hand in acknowledgment, but then I saw a look pass between him and Annalee.

I was still shaken by the night's events and my suspicions lurked a little too close to the surface. Even if they had exchanged glances, it didn't have to mean anything. But the rationale did little to ease my mind because suddenly I was remembering the confrontation between Annalee and Martin Stark. The secretive nuances in her conversation with Officer Malloy. I'd had a feeling for days now that she and Stark and Malloy were all somehow involved in this. Was Kendrick a part of that cabal, as well?

I toyed with the idea of clearing my mind to see if I could slip into her head, but I had the disturbing notion that she might have the power to block me. The last thing I wanted was to pit myself against Annalee Nash and I certainly had no intention of revealing my abilities to her.

She moved away after that and I hung around for only a few minutes longer. Then, calling to Angus, I walked back to the house. The light was still gray and the mist that clung to the trees had thickened. There was a hushed quality to the orchard that had me glancing over my shoulder even though the voices from the shed should have been a comfort.

Hooking the screen door behind us, I plopped down on the hammock and Angus curled up nearby, snout on crossed paws as he watched the yard through the screen door. The air had cooled and I pulled a light throw over me, hunkering down under the soft cotton as if I could hide from the day's revelations.

My thoughts churned as I lay there in the dark, listening to the sounds from the other side of the orchard. Even from this distance and without much focus at all, I could distinguish Kendrick's voice from all the others. His accent seemed more pronounced and I wondered if the grimness of our discovery had caused him to revert back to his natural inclinations. Or had I exaggerated the lilting edges of his vowels and the slightly elongated
e
's now that I'd had that glimpse into his past?

The hammock swung gently beneath me. I grew drowsy and it became a struggle to keep my eyes open. I'd had a long day, but I wasn't yet ready to succumb to sleep. There was a chance Kendrick would stop by before he left and I had a thousand questions I wanted to ask him.

Who else could have known about that hole besides George Willoughby? Who had imprisoned a helpless cat and for what purpose except to lure me down there?

I couldn't help but think of Kendrick's description of Annalee Nash when the police had found her on the porch. I couldn't help but conjure the image of the girl I'd glimpsed in her memory. Catatonic and covered in blood. So traumatized she hadn't spoken a word for months and only then after her mind had been able to thoroughly suppress the memories of that night.

What had she seen? I wondered. What did she know?

Despite all those disturbing questions, I fell into a deep sleep. Strangely, it wasn't Annalee or Malloy or Kendrick I saw in my dreams. It wasn't even the ghost of Mary Willoughby. I stood on a darkened street in Charleston peering through a wrought-iron gate that opened into a long, narrow alley. I could hear the ocean behind me and laughter from across the street, but my gaze was riveted on a tall figure lurking in the shadows behind the gate. I couldn't see his face, but I knew him. It was Devlin. I felt an urgent need to go to him but I couldn't find a way inside.

“Use the key,” he whispered.

His familiar drawl sent a shiver through me as I removed Rose's key from around my neck and fitted it into the lock. The gate swung open, but when I tried to enter, he lifted a finger to his lips and glanced uneasily over his shoulder.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Danger,” he said, and then faded away.

I woke up with a start, thinking the dream had awakened me. But then I heard voices nearby. Devlin's presence had seemed so real that, for a moment, I thought he had come to find me. I was still so gripped by the sensation that I almost called out to him. Then as the haze cleared, I realized that someone was talking out on the road.

A moment later, I heard the sound of vehicles heading off into the night. I assumed all the authorities had cleared out, but then I heard Kendrick. He sounded very near, as if he were standing right outside the porch, yet his voice was muted so that I couldn't make out his words. A woman answered him and I thought his companion must be Annalee.

I hadn't even realized that I'd gotten up from the hammock, but the next thing I knew I was unlatching the screen door and slipping silently down the porch steps, padding through the damp grass and around the corner of the house to the front drive where I had a view of the road. Only one vehicle remained—Kendrick's black SUV.

Mist swirled in the postdawn light, but I could make out two silhouettes at the side of the vehicle. Annalee was gazing up at Kendrick and he was gazing down at her, one hand propped on the open door. They were standing very close as he spoke softly to her in French.

Twenty-Eight

D
espite so little sleep, I rose at my normal time, expecting to find a line of police cars parked in front of my house, but the road was deserted and the countryside quiet. I carried a cup of tea out to the back porch as I waited for Angus to finish his morning routine. He nosed all around the yard, sniffing and pawing, but he didn't go beyond the orchard. He didn't seem to want to let me out of his sight and I was grateful for that. Today I needed him close.

As he came back up on the porch, my gaze fell again on the slashed screen. Strange how that event now seemed almost dreamlike in light of all the other discoveries. I thought about Mary Willoughby's ghost trapped in that hole, restless and ravenous but unwilling to move on because of her sins. I thought of those twelve disciples buried beneath cages, calling out for relief but reluctant to transcend their earthly bonds because of what awaited them on the other side.

What part was I to play in all this? I wondered.

As much as I had learned about myself and about my gift, I still sometimes puzzled over my destiny. I could endure, if not embrace, my role in helping trapped spirits move on. In time, I might even learn to accept my great-grandmother's legacy of tracking those supernatural beings she and Papa had called malcontents—entities with no other earthbound purpose than to create chaos among the living.

But unmasking Atticus Pope, an evil witch doctor with the power to enter my mind and manipulate my thoughts, required a whole different level of abilities. I wanted to believe I was strong enough to withstand his diabolical machinations. I was a Gray, a Wysong and a Pattershaw. My gift was a coalescence of all those powerful bloodlines, of all those ethereal senses. But I was also an Asher. The weaknesses that came from my birth father's family had also been encoded in my DNA. What if I succumbed to Pope in the same way that Mary Willoughby had? What if I did things under his influence that couldn't be undone? That unwittingly put not only my life but also my soul in jeopardy? Would I, too, remain trapped in an earthly prison because of my fear for what awaited me on the other side?

I often pondered my purpose and place in this world and the next, but I didn't like to dwell on my mortality. I didn't want to think of myself as a ghost. I strived to lead a good and productive life, but sometimes I worried about where my gift would lead me. I'd already come so far—from ghost-seer to death walker to detective of lost souls. What would ultimately be required of me—here and on other the other side?

Shrugging off that weighty question, I went back inside to tidy up the kitchen and then ready myself for work. The sun was just popping over the horizon when Angus and I arrived at Seven Gates Cemetery. I stood inside the fence watching the red-gold light fan across the sky as it burnished the pine boughs.

Angus made every step with me as I carried my tools through the gate, pausing when I stopped to click the lock behind us. It seemed we'd turned a corner and were slowly but surely settling back into our old relationship.

Safely inside the fence, he explored the perimeter and nosed around all the gates as if to satisfy us both that all was well. Then he found his usual place beneath the cottonwood grove to watch the squirrels as I set to work. A light breeze rattled through the palmettos and swept away the last of the ground fog. With the sun warm on my back and Angus on guard nearby, it was easy to lose myself in the routine task of cleaning headstones. It was easy to believe that nothing more sinister than all those layers of lichen and moss awaited me.

I cleared my mind, refusing to think about the exchange between Kendrick and Annalee the night before or the strange dream I'd had of Devlin. The morning passed peacefully. Angus and I had lunch in the shade and then I pulled on my gloves and got right back to work.

By late afternoon, my back and shoulders protested and I stood to stretch, going through a series of exercises to work out the kinks. My gaze fell on the north gate and I experienced a familiar tug. The summons wasn't as strong as before, but I felt compelled to return to those cages just the same. After everything that had happened, I wanted a fresh look at that circle.

Angus trotted at my heels as I strode along the rugged trail. The rich, loamy scent of the woods soon engulfed us. Patches of primrose and buttercups grew along the path and the air swirled with the cottony seeds from the cattails.

The dreaminess of the day persisted until I stopped to detangle a burr from Angus's fur. Then I sensed something moving toward us through the trees. I turned an ear to the woods, trying to home in on the snap of a twig or the scrape of a low-hanging branch. Closer and closer the presence came until goose bumps tingled along my arms. But Angus remained unruffled. His calm eased my fears and I chided myself for allowing my imagination to run away with me.

We continued down the trail without incident, and as we rounded the last curve, I was struck again by the unexpectedness of the mortsafes. I put up a hand to shade my eyes, thinking once more of those trapped spirits beneath the cages and wondering if Pope's disciples had been calling out to me, beseeching me to free them from their prisons. Or, like Mary Willoughby's specter, did they fear what awaited them on the other side?

I shuddered and paused to glance over my shoulder, peering deep into the woods. I couldn't shake the feeling that we were not alone, and this time Angus sensed it, too. His head came up and the fur along his backbone bristled. He stood for a moment, head slightly cocked, before dashing off toward the woods.

“Angus, stay!”

He halted but he didn't come back to me. His head was still tilted as if something he'd heard or sensed in the trees confused him. It came to me then that something was calling to him. Something was luring him into those woods as surely as I had been compelled to that circle.

“Angus, come!”

He glanced back at me, torn by my command and the summons from the woods. Then he whirled and darted off into the trees.

“Angus!”

I ran after him, following the crackle of dead leaves as he rushed toward some unknown destination. Sunlight shimmered down through the branches and the air thickened with seed tufts. The ethereal quality of the woods seemed discordant with the dark premonition that suddenly gripped me. Angus wasn't the only one who had been lured into the forest.

I could feel a presence all around me now. When I turned in a circle, those invisible eyes followed me. The sensation was so strong that I thought a figure with an animalistic face must surely hover nearby. How foolish I'd been to come into these woods alone. No one knew where I was. If I disappeared, no one would miss me for a very long time. My parents knew that I was away for the summer. Neither they nor Devlin had any reason to be alarmed by my absence.

Devlin. I could almost hear his deep drawl in my head:
Danger.

My breath came harsh and fast as I scanned the trees, the brush and the piles of windswept leaves where a flesh-and-blood presence might hide. Where something from the underworld might lurk.

I saw nothing suspicious, heard nothing untoward. Still, I stood there clutching Rose's key until the sensation faded. Then I hurried after Angus, emerging a few minutes later at the swamp. Cypress knees jutted gnomelike from the shallows and long curtains of Spanish moss draped the soft bank. The landscape was dark and primordial, unlike the wetlands of reeds and rushes that I was used to.

Angus huddled at the water's edge staring back into the woods. I thought for a moment he waited for me, but his gaze was fixed on something behind and above me.

My fingers tightened around Rose's key as I turned. From deep within the forest, sounds came to me. The rustle of brush. The whisper of leaves. Soft sounds. Innocent sounds.

Then my gaze lifted.

I felt the cold penetration of the watcher's gaze from the shadows, but I couldn't tear my focus from the sight above me.

Someone had carved a primitive-looking skull into a tree trunk and fashioned dead branches on either side of it to create a winged effigy. A death's-head. A symbol of mortality and the transcendence of the soul.

My first thought was not of Atticus Pope, but of Darius Goodwine's revelation about the
Congé
. They marked themselves with symbols and creeds, he'd said. What better representation for a faction intent on stamping out the supernatural than a death's-head? What better creed than a reminder of our own mortality?

Warily, I searched the trees. Were the
Congé
out there at this very moment tracking Atticus Pope? Had they returned to Ascension to seek revenge for their fallen comrade? Or had they refocused their attention onto me? Were they watching me now, waiting in the shadows for proof that I was their enemy, one of the unnatural?

Memento mori
, the leaves seemed to whisper.

* * *

Kendrick hunkered in front of the symbol, observing the effigy from a different angle. “Someone went to a great deal of trouble to create this,” he finally said. “Do you have any idea what it means?”

“It appears to be a death's-head, a symbol that represents mortality and the flight of the soul. You'll see it on headstones in very old graveyards. The kind of
memento mori
art we talked about the other day.”

“It's impressive,” he said. “The wingspan must be at least twenty feet across.”

I folded my arms as I stared up at the symbol. “I can't imagine how someone managed to haul all that brush up there, let alone fashion it into wings. And then to carve that symbol at such a height. I wouldn't have noticed it at all if Angus hadn't been with me.” When he heard his name, he trotted over to stand beside me and I reached down to absently scratch his scarred head.

Kendrick seemed unaware of either of us at that moment. He stared up at the effigy, deep in thought. “Maybe it's not meant to be noticed from this vantage,” he murmured.

“What do you mean?”

He got up and walked to the water's edge, staring out across the tangle of water lilies and duckweed before turning to lift his gaze back to the symbol. “Maybe it's meant to be viewed from out there.” He nodded toward the shadowy water. “Remember I told you the other day that the killer would have had to bring the victim through or near the cemetery unless he came by way of the swamp.”

“Yes, I remember. So you think the symbol is part of his ritual?”

“His ritual?” He gave me a frowning glance. “You're still trying to put him in the box of a fictionalized serial killer. You're trying to ascribe to him the kinds of motives and compulsions you've seen on television. The symbol may well be ritualistic, but I think it also serves the practical purpose of being a marker.”

“What kind of marker?”

“The body of water you see here is not so much a lake as a series of sloughs and channels. It goes on for miles and it's easy to get lost in all that vegetation, especially at night when the landscape looks the same. You'd need a way to distinguish the place to put in if your destination is the circle or even the cemetery.”

“Yes, but even as big as that symbol is, you'd still need a powerful spotlight to find it in the dark. And in that case, why go to so much trouble? If it's not ritualistic, why not just tie a ribbon around a tree or paint an
X
on the trunk?”

“I never said it wasn't ritualistic or symbolic. Nor do I think it was put up there for the soul purpose of guiding the killer through the swamp. It looks to me like this thing has been up there for years.”

“As a marker?”

He was silent for a moment. “You seem to know an awful lot about Atticus Pope so I'm assuming you've heard the rumors of ceremonies and sacrifices that were supposedly conducted in the church ruins.”

I flashed back to Annalee's memory and nodded. I'd not only heard about the rituals, but also I'd witnessed one through the buried recollection of a ten-year-old girl. “Yes, but anytime I've brought up the possibility of a Pope connection, you've been quick to discount it.”

“Because I haven't wanted to muddy the investigation.”

“And now?”

He hesitated. “Let's just say, I'm willing to admit there are aspects of this case I can't reconcile.”

“Like this symbol?”

He shrugged.

“I have another theory about it,” I said.

“I'd love to hear it.”

We were both standing on the bank now, shoulder to shoulder, and I found myself reacting to his nearness. But there was another reason for the prickles across my scalp and the bristle of my every nerve ending. I could still feel the watcher in the woods. The sensation had diminished upon Kendrick's arrival, but the presence was still there. Still watching me. Still waiting.

I shivered again as I forced my attention back to the symbol. “I don't think it was erected to guide Pope's followers to the ruins. I think someone put it up there as a warning to those who would continue to do his bidding after his disciples were buried beneath the cages.”

“Correct me if I'm wrong, but we've yet to determine the identities of those interred beneath the cages,” Kendrick said.

“Maybe we don't have proof, but as we've previously discussed, it's not a far-fetched assumption. Mary Willoughby disappeared twenty years ago and we found her remains at the bottom of a pit. Twelve of Pope's closest disciples vanished at around the same time and there are a dozen mortsafes in that circle. I'll say it again, that can't be a coincidence.”

“And you think whoever murdered them put this symbol up as a warning to Pope's remaining followers.”

“It's one theory.”

His expression remained inscrutable. “Do you also have a theory about the murderer?”

That gave me pause as I remembered Dr. Shaw's warning to speak of the
Congé
to no one. They were a powerful faction, he'd said, their reach wide and merciless. And once upon a time, I'd entertained the notion that Kendrick might be one of them. Now I knew that he was a ghost-seer like me, anathema to the zealots
and all that they stood for. Surely someone with his gift and background would never have been allowed to infiltrate such an aristocratic covenant.