Grave Intent (36 page)

“W-where’d that come from?” Janet asked.

“I’ll explain on the way to Brusley,” Michael
said, shoving the coin into his pants pocket. He flipped back
around in his seat and glanced at the time illuminated on the dash.
12:50 a.m.. Sunrise was a little more than five hours away, and it
would take at least four of those to get back to Brusley.

“Brusley? Michael, are you crazy? We have to
get Ellie to a doctor. Someone close by. Jesus, look at her! For
all we know she could be dying!”

Michael reached for the steering wheel. “Not
could, Janet,—she is.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Janet thought about Dango Reese, the bible
carrying, Harley rider Michael had told her he’d hitched a ride
with. Dango must have kept his promise to Michael about praying for
him. It was the only explanation for how they’d managed to make a
four-hour road trip in just over three and a quarter without seeing
one policeman or any road construction. Someone was surely watching
over them.

The girls had slept most of the way, with
Ellie breathing more and more like an asthmatic. Through the entire
trip, Ellie’s lips never stopped moving. She appeared trapped in a
silent, endless, one-way conversation.

Janet glanced over at Michael, who sat at
attention behind the steering wheel, his eyes locked on the road.
They’d spent the last few hours exchanging details about their
ordeals, her escape from the cabin and all that had led up to it,
his desperate attempts to reach them and why. Both of them had
always been realists, prone to finding objective, logical
explanations for anything out of the ordinary. But no matter how
many ways they had dissected the information each other shared,
there was no logic to be found. Janet still couldn’t believe her
daughter’s life depended on the return of a gold coin.

She saw another minute flip over on the dash
clock as Michael swerved right and headed for the south side of
Brusley.

4:22 a.m.. A little over an hour before
daybreak and only three blocks from Saint Paul’s Cemetery.

“I just hope I can find it,” Michael said
with a shake of his head. The worry lines on his forehead
deepened.

“You will,” Janet said, wishing she had more
to offer him than a platitude.

She knew from having worked at the funeral
home in the past that Saint Paul’s Cemetery was a twelve-acre
property with a hodgepodge of tombs and crypts, some dating back to
the mid-eighteen hundreds. She’d been told the plots had been
assigned an alphanumeric system only ten years ago, after Father
Melancon had inadvertently buried an old woman in someone else’s
pre-purchased plot. The new aisle markers, which were metal strips
tapped into concrete blocks, were supposed to clearly outline whose
plot belonged to whom. And they did—if you could find them. Even
during the day you had to weave between rows A and E, hoping to
find L. The standing joke in town was that whoever had set the
markers in place had either been severely farsighted or
dyslexic.

Trying to find the Stevenson girl’s plot in
the dark was going to be no joke, however. Michael told her that
Chad had been the one to handle the Stevenson burial, not him,
which meant he’d have no idea of the direction of the grave. He
claimed to remember the plot number from the arrangements, but she
knew it would still be difficult, if not impossible, to find.

Don’t stop praying, Dango,
Janet
thought.
Whatever you do, don’t stop now.

Michael turned sharply onto Ruston Avenue and
raced the two blocks to the next stop sign, which sat across the
street from Saint Paul’s. He rolled to a stop and threw the shift
into park.

“You sure you’ll be all right?” Janet asked
him.

Michael nodded. “Don’t worry about me. Just
go on and get the girls to Riverwest Medical. I’ll find someway to
meet you there when—”

The van’s interior lights suddenly flashed
on, and Janet and Michael spun around in their seats at the same
time. The back door was open, and Heather was crying. Ellie was
nowhere to be seen. Janet’s heart plummeted.

“Over there!” Michael shouted.

Janet whirled back around and saw him
pointing to the windshield. Beyond it, she saw Ellie sprinting
across the road with a dot of crimson light dancing wildly about
her. It took Janet a second or two to figure out the light emanated
from the crystal horse in Ellie’s hand.

Michael threw open his door. “Ellie,
stop!”

Ellie didn’t look back. She dodged a row of
hedges, veered left, then headed straight for the cemetery
gates.

Michael jumped out of the van. “Stay here,”
he said to Janet. “I’ll get her.”

“No, I’m going with you!”

“Somebody has to stay with Heather,” he
shouted, already heading for the cemetery.

“Don’t leave me, Aunt Janet!” Heather begged
from the backseat. “D-Don’t leave me!”

Janet swiveled in her seat, intending to tell
Heather she wouldn’t leave her, and bumped her injured knee against
the center console. “Crap!” she cried, and cupped a hand gingerly
over the joint. It had swollen to twice its normal size, and she
felt heat radiating through her pant leg.

“W-We’ll both go with Uncle Michael,” she
told Heather after catching her breath. She couldn’t just sit here.
Bum knee or not, Michael needed help. If the whole ordeal about
getting the coin back to the grave before sunrise was true, he
didn’t have time to chase after Ellie
and
find the Stevenson
girl’s tomb.

“No!” Heather said, curling up against the
backseat. “I don’t wanna go in—”

The driver’s door slammed shut so hard it
rocked the van, and every door lock clicked into place
simultaneously.

“What—” Janet pulled up on the metal nub to
unlock her door, but it wouldn’t move.

“Look!” Heather screamed, pointing to the
front of the van.

Standing between the headlight beams was Anna
Stevenson.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

At this hour, the street fronting Saint
Paul’s was deserted, as was the pasture beyond it. To the left of
the cemetery loomed Saint Paul’s church, a dark, kingless castle,
with its nearest neighbor over a quarter of a mile away.
Ten
people could scream for help in this spot and no one would ever
hear,
Michael worried.

Ellie had long disappeared beyond the
cemetery gates by the time Michael reached them. The iron
sloped-top wings were slightly ajar, and Michael pulled on one to
widen the entrance. It opened reluctantly, filling the air with a
hollow, resonating creak. When it was wide enough to slip his body
through, Michael squeezed inside.

He scanned the property, hoping to at least
spot the light from Ellie’s horse.

The cemetery appeared to stretch on forever.
White painted tombs and crosses stood side by side, like bleached
soldiers with drawn swords. Some of the crypts were gray and
lopsided, sunken at one end after decades of settling. There were
too many graves here, too many trees, too many places for a little
girl to hide.

Weaving around a wide, moss-laden oak,
Michael chose the left side of the cemetery to start his search.
“Ellie!”

Frogs croaked and locusts whined, taunting
him with sounds that sent his head whipping about in every
direction. Numerous statues of saints and cherubs made for shadowy
silhouettes that resembled small children. Michael soon found
himself running back and forth, side to side, retracing his steps,
checking and double-checking. Scarlet incandescent dots appeared
every hundred feet or so, raising his hopes only to dash them again
when they revealed nothing more than perpetual vigil lights.

Michael twisted in half-circles, trying to
look everywhere at once. An owl hooted nearby, and he jumped,
startled. He turned, tracking the sound, then froze.

There, arched and pulsing over the treetops
in the far east section of the cemetery was a brilliant crimson
light.

Michael charged towards it. Ellie. It had to
be!

Winding around and over, through and under,
Michael tore through the cemetery.
Please, God, let it be
her—let it be her—let it be her.

When he finally reached the light’s origin,
he skidded to a halt.

A few feet ahead throbbed a fiery red ball of
light with Ellie enveloped in its center. She lay on her back at
the foot of a black marble tomb, her eyes closed, her hands folded
over her chest. On her stomach stood the horse, the source of the
light, its radiance so dazzling it hurt Michael’s eyes.

A pained groan broke from Michael’s lips, and
he ran to his daughter. The moment he connected with the vacuum of
light surrounding her, he bounced off it and wound up ass down on
the ground. Stunned, he quickly got to his feet and touched the
sphere of light with his fingers. It had the texture of rock. He
slammed a fist into it, and his knuckles came back bloodied.

Michael dropped down to his knees and pressed
his face against the sphere, trying to get as close to Ellie as
possible. Even through the haze of colored light, he saw the
paleness of her skin, the shallowness of her breath, the blue line
trailing once again around her mouth. His baby was dying.

He pounded on the translucent wall. “Ellie,
honey, open your eyes! Look at me! It’s Daddy, Ellie, it’s
Daddy!”

But Ellie didn’t look at him. She didn’t
move. And all Michael could do was watch his daughter’s chest rise
and fall slowly—much too slowly.

He jumped to his feet and twisted about,
looking for something to strike the barrier with. His eyes settled
over the marble tomb in front of which Ellie lay, and his jaw fell
slack. The marker on top of the tomb read:

THALIA STEVENSON

Our Beloved Daughter

Sweet Jesus!
Not bothering to question
how his daughter wound up here, Michael scrambled to the side of
the tomb. He sensed more than ever that getting to Thalia would be
Ellie’s only chance for survival.

The outside of the tomb was shaped similar to
the lid of a shoebox and sat a foot or more above the ground. It
served as a cap for the vault that lay beneath it. The casket was
placed in the vault to protect it from water, which was a given
since most of Louisiana sat at or below sea level. He’d have to
remove the lid to reach the vault and get to the casket.

Michael quickly squatted with his back to the
crypt, then jammed his fingers under the vault cap. Using his legs
as a lever, he pulled up with a grunt, but his fingers soon slipped
away.

“Please,” Michael moaned, and shoved his
fingers back into place. He held his breath and pulled up
again.

Not even the air around him moved.

Hot needles of pain seared the tips of his
fingers, and Michael reluctantly let go of the cap. His hands shook
when he drew them close to his face. The unpolished, grainy bottom
of the lid had peeled off most of the skin from his fingertips. His
shoulders slumped. Even if he had a crowbar, he wouldn’t be able to
lift the weight of the marble lid.

With a wail, Michael jumped to his feet and
kicked the side of the tomb. He faced his daughter, the captor
light, the horse that seemed to glow brighter with each passing
moment, and pulled the coin from his pocket. Michael held it out
like a crucifix warding off evil.

“I have your fucking coin now, goddammit, so
leave my daughter alone!” He beat his chest with a fist. “You want
somebody? Then here, take me, goddammit, take me! She didn’t do
anything!”

The only response he received was a gust of
wind, blowing across his back. With it came the clang of tin
against tin in the distance. Michael inhaled sharply, suddenly
remembering the old front-end loader kept under a lean-to behind
the cemetery. He’d seen Jasper Castille, the caretaker, shovel dirt
with the clunky antique plenty of times. It would easily get the
vault lid off! All he had to do was figure out how to use it.

Michael shoved the coin back into his pocket
and took off for the toolshed.

The lean-to was no more than a few sheets of
tin attached to the top of four, ten-foot high posts. It jutted out
along the north end of a shed and barely covered the tractor. A
backhoe attachment lay under the backside of the awning like a
giant, one-armed praying mantis with rust spots.

Michael circled the loader; looking for what
he wasn’t sure, but at least the tires weren’t flat. He opened a
narrow toolbox that straddled one of the tire humps and fished a
hand inside on the chance Jasper might have stashed a flashlight in
there.

All he found was a thick coil of chain. After
closing the lid, Michael hauled himself onto the tractor seat and
studied the dozen or so switches, knobs and levers that surrounded
him.

“Which one?” he muttered. He ran a hand over
the shift knob sticking up between his knees. At least he knew what
this one was for. His first vehicle at fifteen had been an old
four-speed pickup with a standard shift on the floor. Michael
checked near the steering column for an ignition switch. All he saw
were toggles, worn rubber knobs, and gauges behind cracked glass or
no glass at all. Nothing with a keyhole. He figured that to be a
good sign, considering he didn’t have a key.

Blowing out a hot puff of air, he began to
push and twist, pull and flip everything in sight. Sweat dripped
into his eyes, and just as he readied to swivel about to try the
controls at his back, the tractor’s engine roared to life. Michael
stared at the control panel, bewildered. The engine sputtered, then
coughed, and he stomped a foot against the floorboard, hunting for
a gas pedal. Not finding one, he threw his hands back onto the
controls and lucked out with the first lever he pulled. The engine
revved up to a grumbling whine.