The Visitor(31)

“Remember what I told you, child. Take nothing, leave nothing behind.”

“I know, but—”

“Keep looking, Amelia. Hurry. We’re losing the light.”

There was something strange in his voice and demeanor. Something almost frenzied about the way he applied himself to the search. In that moment, he didn’t seem at all like my papa but a driven, secretive stranger.

Finally, he straightened and held out his hand so that I could see the key in his palm. “Is this yours?”

“Yes! Oh, thank you, Papa!”

“It looks very old, child. Are you sure your aunt gave this to you?”

As he studied my face, a guilty conscience niggled. I’d been certain earlier that Aunt Lynrose had left the key on the headstone, but Papa’s strange behavior filled me with doubt. What if I’d taken something that didn’t belong to me, something sacred from a grave? Papa would be very unhappy with me and I couldn’t abide his disapproval. He and Mama meant everything to me. What if they decided to send me away? Ever since I’d learned of my adoption, I’d nursed a secret worry that I might someday be returned to the family that didn’t want me. What if that someday was now?

All of this flashed through my mind in the blink of an eye as I answered Papa with a vague nod.

He took my arm and drew me to my feet. “Listen to me, Amelia. Whatever you bring into a cemetery, you must never, ever leave behind. Do you understand?” His grasp tightened. “I don’t mean to frighten you, but this is important. That key has special meaning to you, does it not? It was given to you as a gift. Leaving it behind might be misconstrued as an offering or barter. Or worse, an invitation.”

“An invitation to what, Papa?”

His face grew even more somber. “It doesn’t bear thinking about, child.”

An image of the clover chain I’d left on the headstone in exchange for the key necklace flashed through my head. I wanted desperately to tell Papa what I’d done, have him reassure me that all was well, but I was too afraid. Not of him. Never of him. But of something I didn’t yet understand.

He looked beyond me to the cemetery entrance. His gaze lingered for only a split second before he lifted his face to the sky. As he watched the bats swoop overhead, he said softly, “Look over toward the gate, Amelia, and tell me what you see.”

His request puzzled me, but I did as he asked. “I don’t see anything, Papa. Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, child. I thought for a moment we had a visitor, but it’s just these old eyes playing tricks, I reckon. Now put that trinket safely in your pocket and let’s go home. Your mother worries if we’re not back by dark.”

As he gathered up his tools, I couldn’t resist glancing over my shoulder. For a moment, I thought...

No. It was just a shadow. Nothing was there.

There’s no such thing as ghosts.

But as Papa and I set off for home, that brass key was an unwelcome weight in my pocket.

*

I awakened with an unsettling certainty that the dream had not been a dream at all but a memory nudged loose by the incident in the cellar. I hadn’t thought about that key necklace in years. Like so many things in my life that had once seemed important, the memory faded when the ghosts came.

Now I recalled how agitated I’d been after Papa’s warning. I’d spent an uneasy night with the key underneath my pillow and the next morning I’d risen early to return that found treasure to the headstone. I’d gone back a few times to see if the key was still there, and it always was, waiting for me to slip the pink ribbon around my neck.

I never asked Aunt Lynrose if she was the one who had left it because I didn’t want to know. After a while, I started avoiding that hidden corner of the graveyard. I found a new hideaway in the hallowed section of Rosehill Cemetery where I could read my books and play among the statuary. And other than a few pilfered stones, I had taken Papa’s cardinal rule to heart: Take nothing, leave nothing behind.

As I thought back to his strange behavior that day, I became certain that he’d seen a ghost at the gate. Maybe I had, too. The shadow I’d glimpsed may well have been my first sighting.

I’d always wondered why the ghosts had come into my life. For the first nine years of my existence, I’d remained oblivious to their presence. I’d been born with the gift but blinded to the dead until a veil had been lifted from my eyes, allowing me to see that which had been unseen.

Had the key been the catalyst?

And if taking that key from the headstone had somehow opened a door allowing the ghosts into my world, what might I have unleashed by removing the key from the cellar?

Get rid of it, child. Return it to where you found it!

Panic chased up my spine at Papa’s imagined warning. Grabbing the key from my desk, I went out into the garden, where the air smelled of dead leaves and spent roses. Moon bursts of datura hung heavy with dew and from shadowy beds, white agapanthus rose on spindly stems. The night was very still, so eerily static I could hear the pounding of blood through my veins.

I didn’t need a flashlight. Clouds of artemisia floated on either side of the walkway, guiding me unerringly to the cellar stairs where I knelt. The rose that I’d dropped there earlier was gone.

For a moment, I tried to convince myself that Macon had removed it or the wind had blown it away, but deep down I knew better. Someone—something had taken the flower and tossed the key in the cellar in exchange.