Chapter 7
Mallory’s mother used to call this time of year “autumn’s bite,” when the air turns to frost and the last gasps of warm weather are used up all at once. Her mother would wake her in the morning, the bitter orange of deep fall pouring through the blinds, and whisper, Let’s dress warmly today.
The memory echoes as Mallory hurries down the tree-lined path through central campus. She attempts to conjure the exact curve of her mother’s voice around those words, and a familiar sadness fills her when she realizes she can’t quite remember.
Burying the thought, Mallory darts past Exeter Hall, turning at the lamppost to climb the wide stone steps toward the dome-roofed library. She has an hour between art history and rehearsal, and she’s determined to use it wisely.
When she returned to her dorm last night, Arden’s bed was empty.
She’d left a note on a hot-pink Post-it—Staying at Raf’s!
—the entire paper covered in hearts and smiley faces.
But even in the thick silence, Mallory barely got any sleep.
She twisted and turned for what felt like hours, thoughts skittering like mice.
Those men in the cloaks and masks—they took a woman named Lily from her grave. They cut out her heart. They burned it.
And she’s been wanting Mallory to know for years.
The realization is sobering. A broken woman, roaming the earth in the dark, desperate for someone to find out what happened to her. To be heard. For the first time, Lily’s rotting reflection feels less like a nightmare and more like looking at herself.
But with that sliver of understanding now comes a million new questions. What made Lily tell her? Why did Mallory’s mother die with a blade aimed at her own heart, a mirror image of what happened to Lily’s body after she died?
How can Mallory be sure she isn’t next?
Last night, she tried to quiet her mind by thinking about Ezra, but that only made her restlessness worse.
In the dark, she gave herself permission to picture his mouth on hers, finding it all too easy to imagine him biting her lower lip, threading her hair in his fist. She thought about his ring-covered hands stroking her bare skin, sending a searing warmth between her thighs, until she had no choice but to slip her fingers beneath her shorts and—
No. She can’t think about that in the library.
Mallory drops her bag onto a desk on the fourth floor, waking the computer.
The small research nook is filled with a dusty glow from a banker’s lamp, and the only sound is soft clacking from other students’ typing nearby.
Mahogany shelves loom, reaching toward the curved ceiling, and rows of leather-bound books seem to stare down at her.
Sitting, Mallory locates the search engine and types in Lily A. Hubbard.
She scrolls. Nothing.
Trying again, she writes, Lily A. Hubbard obituary.
Nothing.
Chewing her lower lip, she tries, Lily A. Hubbard obituary Rhode Island.
This time, her breath catches.
Because the first link leads to the archives of The Shoreview Post-Gazette, the local newspaper.
Heart pounding, she clicks, and her eyes widen at the faded clipping.
Mrs. Lily Ann Hubbard (née Clark), beloved wife of Tobias, died of consumption at Shoreview Sanitarium on June 12, 1890. She is survived by her sister, Rebecca Clark; and her daughter, Rose.
Mallory reads it a few times before it registers.
Shoreview Sanitarium.
The gasp that follows draws stares from the students around her, but she barely notices. Because Lily didn’t just live in this state, or in this town. She died right here on this campus. When Shore College was a sanitarium.
Mallory thinks of her tour guide’s words about lingering ghosts, Professor Golden’s voice the night of auditions: Today, Shore is a place to think, but decades ago, it was a place to survive.
But Lily didn’t survive at all.
Mallory navigates back to the search engine, typing: Shoreview, Rhode Island cemetery tuberculosis 1890. She’s not sure what to expect, but it’s certainly not the headlines that follow.
VAMPIRE HYSTERIA GRIPS NEW ENGLAND TOWN
TUBERCULOSIS OR VAMPIRE INFECTIONS?
BODIES REMOVED FROM THEIR GRAVES OVERNIGHT
“What?” Mallory breathes. She clicks a headline dated 1896, titled GRISLY SUPERSTITION PERSISTS THROUGHOUT NEW ENGLAND.
Townsfolk have been digging up bodies of deceased relatives at Shoreview Sanitarium and burning their hearts. They believe those dead from consumption are leaving their graves and drinking the blood of living family members—unless their hearts are removed and set aflame.
The words blur as her pulse thrums in her ears. How has she never heard about this?
This phenomenon is not limited to Rhode Island.
At least twenty incidents have been documented throughout New England between 1793 and 1892.
Those partaking in this practice believe that consumption is not a physical disease but a spiritual one, and if the deceased still has blood in their heart after death, it means evil lurks there and must be destroyed.
The room seems to tilt. “ ‘The burnings are reportedly performed like a ritual,’ ” Mallory whispers, determined to make it through the rest. “ ‘Living family members are said to gather while corpses are dismembered, their hearts burned. Some families allegedly breathe in the ashes afterward, as added protection from evil.’ ”
Corpses dismembered. Hearts burned.
She thinks again of her nightmare—the cloaked men, the masks. The raging bonfire. The rock with the dripping red heart.
The stab wound through her mother’s chest. The emergency official’s words. It’s like she was trying to cut out her own heart.
It can’t be a coincidence.
Mallory types in another search: vampires, New England. The screen fills with article after article describing the same thing—exhumed graves, burning hearts, all throughout the Northeast. Manchester, Vermont, 1793. Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1807. Saco, Maine, 1862.
And Shoreview, Rhode Island, 1799, 1827, 1874, 1890.
As though her hometown has been the capital city of this secret all along.
She shuts down the computer and scrambles to her feet, snatching her bag. She has to find Ezra. Maybe she can catch him before rehearsal—
She halts.
There, among the shelves, is the girl from the courtyard.
She’s peering at Mallory through the book spines, a wisp of wintery hair falling over her forehead.
Unlike the other night, she’s dressed in normal clothes.
Jeans and a flannel, hair pulled back in clips.
For a moment, Mallory is derailed by how pretty she looks in the muted light, the lamp illuminating her peach-toned cheekbones and full, pink mouth.
But it’s only a second before she clocks the girl’s curious stare, the way she’s crouched behind the shelf, like she’s been watching this whole time.
“Hey,” Mallory whispers as she approaches. “I can see you!”
The girl spins and hurries down the aisle, but this time, Mallory is right at her heels.
She trails her through the shelves, between desks, and into the back stairwell, where the white-haired girl flies down the stone steps.
Mallory matches her pace, chasing her through the double doors at the library’s rear entrance.
“I just want to talk!” Mallory calls.
But the girl doesn’t slow, sprinting instead toward the gardens.
Mallory grits her teeth as she tears after her, nervously eyeing the thick hedge maze featured in every glossy photo of Shore’s brochure.
She suddenly feels claustrophobic at the thought of going inside.
She has to catch up before the girl gets too far.
Branches bite Mallory’s arms as she runs down the narrow path, autumn air clawing at her cheeks. Ahead, the girl weaves in and out of view, threatening to be swallowed by the fog.
“Wait!” Mallory yells.
“Stop following me!” the girl shouts back, and Mallory falters at the urgency in her voice. The blistering fear in it.
Mallory runs faster, careening around thorn-pricked corners, kicking up leaves with her boots. Her anxiety heightens as she realizes how deep they’ve run inside the maze, but the girl keeps sprinting, so Mallory follows, faintly registering a little stone raven nestled against one of the bushes.
“Wait!” Mallory calls again. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to know who—”
“Please, go away,” she begs, looking back. “Lily, leave me alone!”
Bewilderment crashes inside Mallory. Did she just call her Lily?
“What—?”
Mallory pitches forward, toe snagged on a root. Stars explode behind her eyes as she hits the ground. Her palms skid against a rock, and she hisses in pain, the taste of metal pooling behind her gums.
When she raises her head to peer farther into the maze, the white-haired girl is gone.
Mallory rolls onto her back in defeat, hair fanning in the dirt. Chasing her breath, she stares up at the last hint of sunlight reaching through the prickly greenery. That girl just called her Lily. But why? Why?
Sitting up, Mallory wipes a dusting of mud from her knit-covered knees. She’s about to stand when a flash of gray catches her eye—
A sharp corner of stone, peeking out from underneath the dirt.
She crawls to it and stares for a moment, her skin inexplicably erupting in goosebumps.
Without giving herself a second to change her mind, she starts to dig.
Dirt gathers under her fingernails as she scrapes at the earth. She flings palmfuls of gritty mud to the side, moving faster and faster until she can finally sit back on her heels to take in what, exactly, has been buried beneath the maze.
The graying stone is about a foot wide, square shaped, yet uneven. It’s not glossy or smooth, and whatever was engraved on it has eroded. But she has no doubt there was once a name and a date. Perhaps something like, Loving Mother and Sister and Friend.
Because at the top of the stone is a cross. And around that cross is a cluster of ivy.
Just like the one in her vision last night.
And as she traces the divots and ridges, taking in the blurred marks and chiseled edges, Mallory knows in the densest part of her bones that she is kneeling over Lily A. Hubbard’s grave. And with that understanding comes a new truth.
Lily didn’t just die on this campus.
She was buried here, too.