The Kingdom

Thirty-Two

I slipped from bed that night, and I went to stare out at the darkness. The moon was still up, shimmering on the lake and silvering the edges of the pines. As I gazed up at those distant peaks, I had the strangest feeling of déjà vu, but the source of that familiarity came to me almost at once. I could see my reflection in the glass, and it reminded me of all those stone angels—all those upturned faces—gazing toward the mountains. Watching and waiting just as it had watched and waited for aeons.

It had always been there, Thane said. Scratching at his mind like a spider. An evil as old as the mountains. A darkness that stirred the dead and unleashed unspeakable desires.

Asher Falls is a ghost town.

I’d had only an inkling of what Sidra had meant that first day in the library. A mere suspicion until the tolling of the bells had awakened me. And then I’d seen the diaphanous forms in the swirling mist. I’d witnessed those phantom hands reaching out for me, felt a presence in the wind, heard that terrible howling, and still I remained in Asher Falls because I had a sense of destiny here. Like it or not, I was connected to this terrible place.

I moved away from the window, then glanced back, my heart jumping. Was Freya’s killer out there at the edge of the woods?

I watched for the longest time, but nothing stirred. It was just a tree or a shadow, I told myself. Angus was already sleeping peacefully at the end of my bed. If anyone or anything had been about, he would have roused to sound the alarm.

Or so I wanted to believe.

I climbed into bed and curled up under the covers, but I didn’t want to fall asleep. I intended to lie there and wait out the darkness. But my eyes soon grew heavy, and I kept drifting off only to startle awake every few minutes. During those short naps, my sleep was filled with the strangest images. I dreamed about Devlin and Mariama. About floating with ghosts and destroying hex signs.

And I dreamed about being back at the falls stretched out on the ground as faces hovered over me, and those in-between creatures crawled out of their holes to stare down at me. I felt something wet on my neck, and my fingers came away bloody. Someone said softly, “It’s done,” and then I heard a baby cry in the dark.

I woke up with tears on my face. I had no idea why that dream disturbed me so much, but I refused to close my eyes for the rest of the night.

Rising at dawn, I packed up the car and Angus, and I caught the first ferry. It was raining when we left, the kind of downpour that seemed portentous, as if it could wash the whole doomed town right into the lake. I stood under the cover, protected from the slash of rain as I watched the mountains slowly recede. But I didn’t feel a sense of relief until sometime later when we drove out of the deluge and headed east, straight into the sun.

The light streaming through the windshield was warm and healing. A weight lifted. I plugged in my iPod and hummed along to some music as we left the foothills and entered the gentle rolling countryside of the Piedmont.

Angus watched the passing scenery with avid interest, and I cracked the window so that he could feel the wind in his fur. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to just keep driving until we reached the coast. I didn’t want this feeling of lightness to ever end for him or for me.

I stopped for gas and a quick breakfast in Columbia, and my euphoria held until I approached the Trinity exit. And then the questions resurfaced. My need to know where I came from so that I could understand my place in this world and the next. I didn’t want to be a living ghost. I didn’t want to be hunted by Evil. I wanted to be normal.

The original plan was to drive straight through to Charleston, but instead I made the turn to Trinity and headed for Rosehill Cemetery, the place where I had seen my first specter.

The white bungalow where I grew up hadn’t changed much over the years. It was shaded by hundred-year-old oak trees that kept the house cool and dim even in the summer months, making it a pleasant refuge for Papa after hours of working under a baking sun. The front porch had always been my mother’s domain. She and my aunt had spent many an hour out there sipping sweet tea and gossiping as the scent of roses drifted up from the cemetery.

My bedroom window looked out on Rosehill. The view of the graveyard never bothered me even as a child, even after my first ghost sighting, because Rosehill had always been my refuge, and the hallowed ground had always protected me. Even after all these years, I still felt safe and at peace there as I never had anywhere else, even my own sanctuary in Charleston.

A layer of dust had settled on the concrete porch. Before my mother got sick, she would sweep that floor at least once a day. It was almost an obsession with her. Dirt—especially the grime Papa and I tracked in from the cemetery—drove her crazy. My aunt called her a persnickety housekeeper, to which my mother had once replied that it was a shame Lynrose had never learned to run a vacuum as well as she ran her mouth. My aunt had gotten a kick out of that retort. She loved to get a rise out of Mama, and I so envied their relationship, that constant banter. No one had ever been able to make my solemn mother smile the way her sister could. Not Papa. Certainly not me.

The house was all closed up, which was unusual. Papa would never have locked the front door unless he planned to be away for some time, so I didn’t think he was working in the cemetery or out back in his workshop. The whole place had a forlorn air, as though no one had been home in days.

I suppressed a momentary panic as I fished the key from a flower pot and let myself in. Papa had probably driven to Charleston to spend some time with Mama. He must have missed her terribly during all the months she’d been gone. They’d been together for a long time, and though neither was openly demonstrative—I couldn’t remember having ever seen them hug, much less kiss—I had to believe something more than habit kept them together. Something more than secrets, too.

I left Angus on the porch and went inside. The quiet of the house unnerved me. I took a quick walk through the downstairs just to reassure myself that nothing was amiss, and then I climbed the stairs, peeked into my old bedroom and continued on to the far end of the hallway where I opened the door to the attic stairs. I flipped the light switch and went up without hesitation. I’d never been afraid of the attic. It had been a favorite haunt of mine on rainy days when I grew bored of the family photo albums. Mama had kept a lot of her dresses from high school formals up there, and I had loved going through all those old trunks. She and Aunt Lynrose had been quite the belles, despite the family’s middle-class status.

Papa stored his keepsakes in a metal bin. It was always kept locked. Always. I’d been curious about that container since childhood, but it never occurred to me then to try and pick the lock. Now I shoved any qualms aside and used a hairpin to slide open the tumblers. If there was a secret in this house about my birth, it would be in that locker.

Inside was the usual paraphernalia that a man of Papa’s age and stature would have accumulated over the years. Service medals and framed citations from his time in the army. A pair of boots. An old pocket knife. A cigar box of photographs.

The most efficient way to conduct the search was to take everything out. I did so quickly and carefully, arranging the items in order so that I could put everything back exactly as I found them. I hated going through Papa’s things. He was a private man, and rifling through his treasures and memories was a violation that I likened to the desecration of a gravesite. But I didn’t let a guilty conscience stop me. I kept right on looking because I knew I wouldn’t rest until I found something.

I had almost given up when I happened upon a little blue box tied with a white ribbon. I assumed it was another medal or perhaps his wedding cuff links.

But, no.

Nestled against a bed of cotton was a shard of brown porcelain. I would never have known what it was, let alone the significance, had I not seen that little brown sparrow in Freya Pattershaw’s little blue bedroom.

However he had come by it, Papa had stored that broken wing amongst his most prized possessions.