The Visitor Page 4

  “Please.

  “If you’d like to leave the viewer, I’ll be only too happy to show it to my great-aunt. She’s owned the shop for nearly forty years and I believe she used to do all the engraving herself. The names in the inscription are rather unusual, so there’s a chance she might remember them.”

  “Would it be possible for me to come back later when she’s in?”

  Owen Dowling shook his head regretfully. “Her visits are few and far between, I’m afraid. She rarely even comes to Charleston these days.”

  “I see.” I pulled a business card from my bag and placed it on the counter between us. “If you or your aunt should think of anything, would you please give me a call?”

  He glanced down at the card and another scowl skidded across his forehead, but when he looked up, his expression showed nothing but a mild curiosity. “You’re a cemetery restorer.”

  “I am.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever met one before. Sounds like a fascinating profession.”

  “It can be. Anyway, thank you for your time.”

  “It was my pleasure. I only wish I could have been of more assistance.”

  I shrugged in resignation and thanked him again as I returned the stereoscope to my bag.

  A phone rang in the back and he pocketed my card with an apologetic smile as he glanced over his shoulder. “Sorry. I’m the only one here so I have to get that. But please...” He waved a hand to encompass the showroom. “Stay and have a look around. Take your time and enjoy our curiosities.”

  “I have an appointment, but some other time perhaps.” My voice trailed away as he disappeared through the curtain and I could hear the rumble of his voice as he answered the phone. I would have liked nothing more than to spend the rest of the morning browsing through all the oddities and treasures, but I had to get to my meeting with the Greater Charleston Historical Society.

  The pleasing tinkle of the bells followed me out into the sunshine. As I started down the cobblestone alley toward the street, something compelled me to glance over my shoulder.

  Owen Dowling stood just beyond the doorway peering after me. He had a phone to his ear, and as our gazes connected, he stepped back into the shadows as if he didn’t wish to be seen.

  I experienced the oddest sensation in that moment. Part premonition, part déjà vu. I’d never met the man before, had never been to that shop. Yet I couldn’t shake the notion that I had been guided to Dowling Curiosities for a reason, and that my visit with Owen Dowling had somehow set something dark and dangerous in motion.

  Seven

  Later that afternoon, I headed out again, this time to see Dr. Rupert Shaw at the Charleston Institute for Parapsychology Studies. As I came around the side of the Institute after parking, I shot a glance across the street at Madam Know-It-All’s, the palmist I’d become acquainted with last fall. I didn’t linger to try to catch a glimpse of her. I was in too much of a hurry to speak with Dr. Shaw.

  “He’s expecting you,” the new assistant said with a smile after I introduced myself. “I’ll take you back.”

  She escorted me down the hallway and motioned me through a set of thick pocket doors. “Go on in. If either of you need anything, I’ll be at my desk.”

  “Thank you.”

  As her heels clattered down the hallway, I stepped across the threshold and glanced around the room, relieved to see the same cozy muddle that I remembered so fondly. If anything, the stacks of books on the wooden floor had grown to a new, precarious level and an assortment of files and magazines threatened to swallow Dr. Shaw’s massive desk.

  The French doors stood open to the garden and I spotted his lanky silhouette at the edge of the terrace. He stood with one hand propped against a column, his head turned slightly away from me, but I could still see his careworn profile. His profound sadness caught me off guard, and I paused before knocking or calling out his name. A second later, he stepped in from the garden, his eyes lighting when he saw me.

  “There you are. Right on time as always. I was just outside getting a little fresh air.” The melancholy I’d glimpsed a moment earlier was now carefully masked, but there was no disguising the ravages of grief. The past few months had not been kind to Dr. Shaw. The sorrow of losing his only son had etched deep furrows in his brow, and his eyes held the shadows of a man haunted by memories and regret—a look I’d seen often in Devlin’s eyes.

  Not wishing to be caught staring, I bent to remove the antique stereoscope from my bag and placed it on his desk.

  He picked up the device and turned it in his hand. “What an interesting piece.”

  “I thought you might find it so. And this is the stereogram.”

  He took his time scrutinizing the images before slipping the card in the holder as he swung his chair around to capture the light. “The faces are startlingly clear, aren’t they? Almost as if they could speak to us.” His voice held a note of wonder. “Are there others?”

  “Other stereograms, you mean? It’s possible. The basement is crammed full of old boxes.”

  “Worth a look, I should think.” He lowered the viewer and swiveled back to his desk. “The resemblance is uncanny. I’m referring to the woman in the window, of course. Is she an ancestor?”

  “I have no idea.” I released a breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. The fact that he could see her was confirmation that she’d been alive at the time the photograph was taken.

  “Surely someone must have mentioned how much you favor a grandmother or great-aunt or distant cousin,” he suggested.

  “No, never. Until last fall, I’d been told I was adopted.”

  “But you’re not?”

  “The circumstances of my birth are unusual, to say the least.”

  “I see.” He removed a magnifying glass from his desk and studied the images for another long moment. “Intriguing the way the camera caught her in that window. Almost as if she were a guardian watching over them,” he mused.

  “I hadn’t thought of her that way,” I said. “I wish I knew who they all were.”

  “You don’t recognize the man?”

  I glanced up at the note of excitement in his tone. “No. Should I?”

  “You’re much too young, I expect. Ezra Kroll’s legacy is all but forgotten these days, but there was a time when the very whisper of his name could send a chill down one’s spine.”

  “Ezra Kroll?” My pulse quickened, though I was certain I’d never heard of the man before. “Who was he?”

  “The founder of a rather mysterious commune back in the fifties. He and his followers lived in a self-sustained colony a few miles south of Isola in Aiken County. Some of his relatives still reside in that town.”

  Something niggled. Not a memory but a bristling awareness that this tidbit was important. A clue, perhaps?

  “What about the children?” I asked. “His daughters, I presume?”

  “Kroll had no offspring. But I seem to recall reading something about twin sisters. Conjoined twins,” he added.

  “What age were they when they were separated?”

  “They were never separated.”

  “Never?” All of a sudden, the inscription from the stereogram flashed through my brain: To Mott, From Neddy. Together Forever. “What happened to them?” I asked with a shiver.

  “It was very tragic if the stories are to be believed. One of the twins died. The other was so distraught that she tried to hide her sister’s passing by using cloves to cover the smell. It was days before anyone caught on.”

  I stared at him in horror. “Is that true?”

  “Cloves were used in the Middle Ages to disguise the stench and flavor of rotting meat.”

  “No, I mean...is it true that they were still joined even after the sister passed?”

&nbs
p; “Who’s to say? Stories become embellished over time.” He dropped his gaze to the stereogram, scrutinizing it for another long moment. “Notice the way they’re standing back-to-back, heads turned to the camera, expressions identical. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was an optical illusion.”

  I put a hand to my nape, where the flesh still tingled. “What else can you tell me about Kroll?”

  “He was a distinguished scholar and scientist who seemed to have a brilliant future ahead of him, but he came back from the war a changed man. He gave up his family, career, money—everything—to pursue his vision of utopia. He gathered like-minded people around him, many of them former soldiers desperate for a quiet life. And for a time, Kroll Colony flourished. But every paradise has its serpent. No one knew anything was wrong until the smell drifted into town.”

  My fingers tightened around the chair arms. “What happened?”

  “Mass suicide. Men, women, children...all gone. Kroll’s body was found sometime later in the woods with a gunshot wound to the head.”

  “Self-inflicted?”

  “More than likely, although there have been contradicting theories down through the years. The bodies from the Colony were buried far away from the public cemetery and sealed off by a stone fence. The place is isolated and nearly hidden by an overgrown maze that can be quite daunting to navigate, especially when the light starts to fade.”

  “I take it you’ve been there.”

  “Yes. A few years ago I was contacted by one of his sisters, a woman named Louvenia Durant. She owns a Thoroughbred farm in Aiken County. The cemetery is located on the property she inherited from Kroll’s estate. Over the years, there have been reports of strange lights. She requested that the Institute send someone down to do some readings.”

  “What did you find?”

  “A few pings on the EMF meter, a bit of static on the recorder, but nothing of consequence. However, the visit was well worth our time. Kroll Cemetery is the most strangely beautiful place I’ve ever investigated. There are thirty-seven graves inside, all of them marked with unusual headstones and tombs.”

  “What’s so unusual about them?” I asked.

  “For one thing, the symbols are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Each marker is inscribed with a seemingly random number and a key—”

  “A key?”

  He gave me a quizzical look as he nodded. “No two are alike. The effect is quite eerie.”

  “I can imagine,” I said on a breath. “Normally a key represents knowledge or, if wielded by an angel or saint, the means to enter heaven. Crossed keys symbolize Saint Peter. But the keys you’ve described...” I trailed off, tamping down the advent of something fearful in my stomach. I had a bad feeling that I was being led down a dangerous path with nothing but these esoteric bread crumbs to guide me. “I don’t know what to make of them.”

  “Some claim the cemetery is a puzzle or riddle that no one has ever been able to solve. Just think of it.” Dr. Shaw leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “All those clues and symbols hidden behind high walls for decades, waiting for someone clever enough to come along and put all the pieces together. And who better to solve a graveyard mystery than you, my dear?”

  Eight

  The breeze that blew across the Institute’s parking area was warm and fragrant, but I couldn’t stop trembling as I climbed into my car and started the engine. As anxious as I was to get home to my computer, I sat for several long moments, idly watching crepe myrtle blossoms pepper the hood as I tried to dissect all that I’d learned.

  A twin desperate to cling to her dead sister. A commune that had ended in tragedy. A cemetery of keys and suicides. All seemingly linked by a strange stereogram that had turned up in my cellar.

  I had no idea how the pieces fit together, but by the time I nosed my car onto the street, I could feel the tightening fetters of an obsession. Who in my position could resist the puzzle of that tiny walled graveyard and the mystery of all those keys? That I might somehow be personally connected to Kroll Cemetery only added to my fixation.

  As soon as I got home, I went straight to the office and opened my laptop. An anticipatory thrill quickened my heart as I typed in the name Ezra Kroll and watched the links pop up. Curling a leg underneath me, I relaxed more comfortably into my chair and soon became lost in research.

  Nothing I learned about Kroll would suggest the evil charisma of a cult leader or demagogue. To the contrary, he had been a gentle, unassuming scholar who’d eschewed the violent culture that had sent him and so many other young men off to war. He’d chosen, instead, to live simply and in harmony with nature, which made the tragedy at Kroll Colony all the more unfathomable.

  Hours passed as I sat spellbound. Twilight came and went. The questions raised by my visit to Dr. Shaw and now by my own research spun on and on until I finally gave up and went to bed.

  I’d tossed the cicada husk in the trash that morning, but as I flipped on the light to turn down the bed, I cast a wary glance at the nightstand. Nothing was there. No insect shell or bookmark. I heard nothing in the walls, smelled nothing untoward in the air. All was calm in the house, but it was a very long time before I slept.

  * * *

  Sometime later I was again awakened by a noise. I lay there straining to hear scratches in the wall or raspy breathing behind my headboard, but the disturbance was different this time. Distant and less distinct. It came to me that I may not have been roused by a sound at all, but by a sixth-sense certainty that I was no longer alone.

  I eased open the nightstand drawer and removed a fresh can of pepper spray, which would be of no use against ghosts, but might offer a modicum of protection against the more substantive entities I called in-betweens. If a thing could breathe and scramble through walls, it could also feel pain, I reasoned. It might even be as frightened as I was. A squirt to the eyes might be enough to startle such a creature away.

  That my mind would even go to such a place revealed how far I’d come from a time when ghosts had been the only supernatural encounters in my life. Now I lived in a world populated by all manner of shadowy beings.

  Clutching the canister, I padded across the room and peered through the door before merging into the thicker gloom of the hallway. As I approached the kitchen, I paused once more to listen. I started to move through the doorway only to stop dead, one foot suspended over the threshold as a breeze stirred my hair. In the same moment, I realized I could hear the faint swish of passing cars out on the street as if a door or window had been left open.

  I saw something move in my office then. A flickering shadow. A flash of light. Instinctively, I melted back into the darkness in the hallway and counted to ten before chancing another glance into my office.

  A figure stood behind my desk, rifling through the contents of a drawer. The form was dark but well defined against the windows. I couldn’t make out any features, but I took note of what I could see—black clothing, slim build, tallish. And human.

  Which would explain why I’d detected no abnormal chill in the air, no death scent in the draft that once again lifted my hair. How the intruder had managed to invade my house so stealthily, I had no idea.

  My first impulse was to backtrack down the hallway and get to my phone, but I was afraid that even the slightest movement would draw his attention. I couldn’t know if he was armed, but I had to assume he was dangerous, perhaps even desperate. I wanted to believe all I had to do was stay out of sight and once he discovered that I had nothing of value in my office, he’d leave.

  But he didn’t appear easily discouraged. He closed one drawer and opened another, strewing papers all over my desk. I had no idea what he might be after, but if he decided to search the rest of the house, I was a sitting duck. As soon as he crossed through the kitchen into the hallway, he’d spot me cowering in the shadows. I couldn’t remain hidden f
orever. I had to get to the front door or to my bedroom, where I could lock myself in and call the police.

  I moved slightly, testing the floorboards. The creak beneath my feet sounded as loud as a gunshot. Before I had time to blink or even draw a breath, the intruder leaped over the desk—in a single bound I would later swear—and lunged toward me.

  Stunned by his agility, I was slow to react. By the time I whirled and dashed down the corridor, he was almost upon me. His footsteps, silent earlier, pounded on the old wooden floorboards, the creaks and moans sending a sharp, cold panic up my spine.

  I’d walked that hallway hundreds of times. I knew every nook and cranny by heart and as I raced toward the foyer, I searched my memory for a weapon or the nearest escape route.

  He was right behind me, gaining on me with every step. I hit the wall, barely evading his grasping fingers, and sent a small table crashing to the floor. We both tripped and in those precious moments it took to right my balance, I stumbled past my bedroom door.

  I’d bought myself some time, but not enough to backtrack to the phone, much less unfasten the dead bolt and chain lock on the front door. Instead, I raced through the parlor archway and flattened myself against the wall, trying to control my breathing as I scanned the room.

  The windows were all closed and locked. By the time I could wrench one open, he’d be on me again. The house was a death trap. I couldn’t hope to hide or evade him for long so I had to take a stand.

  All this sailed through my mind as I readied my finger on the pepper spray. I knew where he was in the hall even though he was silent. He knew where I was, too. I sensed his intense concentration and the penetration of his stare through the wall.

  Reflex, surprise and that puny can of pepper spray were my only defenses. All I could do was let instinct take over. The moment he appeared in the doorway, I leaped out and pointed the nozzle at his face.