Chapter 24 #3
“And you think it’s something in the cemetery,” she says, not bothering to hide her skepticism. “It’s been there forever. Like, even before the school. My architecture elective took a walk through there junior year.” She shudders.
“That’s why Jo sent me to the union to gather more information.
Of which there was plenty, because, as rumor has it, your campus development committee has been privately pitching the idea of relocating the cemetery off campus to build some new …
something.” He shrugs. “I don’t know, I wasn’t listening as closely to that part. ”
“How do you…” Listening. Oh, shit. “Who did you talk to?”
“I ran into a lovely woman named Beverly Grabor.”
“The dean,” Carter says in a strangled voice. “That’s the dean of the Arts and Sciences college.”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Right,” Devon says. “That was her. In any case, she was very accommodating.”
Fuck. I open my eyes. “Devon, please tell me you did not seduce or humiliate the very kind, very dignified, and very elderly Dean Grabor. The one who, in fact, helped me get and maintain scholarships here.”
He stiffens, offended. “No. I did not.” He bites off the words. “She was overseeing the students who were sheltering in place, and I simply asked for some help. I imagine she assumed I was one of them.”
Crap. I am just messing things up left and right. “Okay, sorry, that was shitty of me,” I say awkwardly.
Devon ignores my apology, turning to address Chessa and Carter.
“If there were such a thing as curses, I would suggest that this cemetery might be the center of one,” Devon says.
“The church associated with that graveyard burned down in the early 1800s after a lightning strike, which I would imagine was a great shock to the true believers who were inside at the time.” He holds up his phone with a photo of a black and white sketch depicting the event.
I wince.
“Also, apparently, the college, back when it was still exclusively an institution for women, hosted a popular spiritualist group in the early 1900s and they held seances in the cemetery.”
I mean, it wouldn’t work, but that makes me think one of us was probably on the periphery to take advantage of the supernatural “signs” that such things inevitably produce.
Most of the psychics and mediums I’ve met are human and just very good at reading people.
But I’d bet there are a few spawn out there who wouldn’t hesitate to masquerade as such.
Which is, at the very least, hilarious, if not downright ironic—actual magic wielders pretending to be gifted, for the chance to feed or mock.
“The mausoleum on the east side of the cemetery is, as Jo suggested, empty. So, technically, a cenotaph. It was donated by an anonymous family member as a memorial for five girls who went missing in the seventies, one of whom was never found,” Devon continues.
“Yes!” Chessa says, startling everyone. “I found an article on that in my research on deaths in and around Beecher.”
Deaths that she thought might be my fault. Though even she can’t blame me for ones happening that far back.
“The police thought at first it might be a copycat of the Boston Strangler,” Chessa says.
“That’s where the serial killer rumors come from.
Five girls vanished, one by one, over the course of a week.
They were presumed runaways at first because, you know.
” She rolls her eyes. “Girls, emotionally unstable, blah blah. Police eventually found four of them dead in Danvers in a pasture somewhere.”
“But it’s still unsolved.” Her brow furrows in dismay at the thought of more injustice running rampant in Beecher.
“And the mausoleum, cenotaph, whatever, it’s rumored to be haunted.
Apparently, the families all donated a personal possession to be kept in the mausoleum, and people used to think they could hear the girls whispering and giggling inside. ” She shudders.
Sounds more like urban legend, something to scare girls into “behaving.” Not the deaths themselves—very possible, unfortunately, serial killers have frequented college campuses more than once—but the stories in the aftermath. Society always wants young women to be fearful; it’s how they control us.
“I saved the best for last,” Devon announces. “One of the oldest graves in the cemetery is rumored to be occupied by a Mary Grace Scott, the sister of a woman executed during the Salem witch trials. She lived in Salem with her sister at the time.”
“Wait.” Chessa holds up her hand. “You’re saying the magic was real?”
“The magic was real, but not the witches. They don’t exist. It’s just us.” I fold my arms across my chest. “I’ve always thought the Old Ones or a bunch of spawn were there stirring the cauldron, so to speak.”
“You don’t know for sure?” she asks me, as if I am the one personally responsible for putting down the quill pen, derelict in my duty.
“It’s not … we’re not a cohesive group like that,” I say, exasperated. “And even if we were, I’ve done my best to stay out of that world. Remember?”
“We don’t exactly keep tight records, love,” Devon says gently. “Some groups are more fastidious than others.” He glances at me, and I know he’s referring to Aphrodite’s Family. “But even they have gaps.”
Under normal circumstances, the grave of someone who was around during the witch trials sounds like the most likely bet for a spawn, but the timeline would be extremely odd for someone who is active now.
That’s a long time to be hiding or regenerating.
Also, I didn’t think anyone besides Old Ones could live that long. Still, it’s worth checking out.
But … there’s also something about the empty mausoleum that makes my brain itch. “What year did you say that those girls went missing?” I ask.
“Uh, one second.” Chessa pulls her phone up and clicks through. “1977. Why?”
I close my eyes and mentally shuffle through the spreadsheet summaries I’ve been creating for Dr. Kelleher.
She’s had me scanning old admission files and student information.
Something nudges the back of my mind. Everything’s digital from about 2005 onward, but prior years are a mess of faded printer paper, onion skin carbon copies, and actual typewritten pages.
It’s an absolute pain in the ass, when entering the information into a searchable database would be much faster. Especially when Kelleher wants a summary of each year.
But it does make it easier to pick up on patterns. I’m stuck somewhere in the fifties now—the 1950s. I’ve been through the nineties, eighties, seventies, and the sixties.
I open my eyes, excited now. “At work, Kelleher marks certain students and their families with red asterisks on the printouts she makes me give her. They’re the ones she wants to make sure aren’t on the contact list.”
“Because they’re dead,” Chessa guesses.
“Some of them, yeah, but it’s also anyone who had a ‘less than stellar Beecher experience.’” I use finger quotes around Kelleher’s words.
“She doesn’t want to stir up bad publicity or a lawsuit.
Some of them are what you’d expect for the time.
Gropey professors, sexual assaults on campus, blatant discrimination, but a lot of them are suicides or suicide attempts. Weird deaths.”
Considering it now, I wonder how many of those “weird deaths” over the years would be centered in proximity to the cemetery.
“Just like Beecher is known for, like you said.” Chessa shrugs, clearly still angry with me. “A statistical anomaly.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t always like that.” I picture the sea of red in the later documents. “In the fifties, one or two incidents. Maybe the odd year of five. Until—”
“Let me guess, the 1970s?” Carter asks. His hair is shoved back off his forehead, but I can still see the lines my fingers made running through it.
I tear my gaze away from him, trying to keep my focus. “You got it. From the late seventies and through the eighties and nineties, the number is double or triple that of the early days, and stays that way as far as I can tell.”
“But that could just be a cultural shift,” Chessa argues. “No one was keeping that shit hidden anymore. You know that more was happening here than was ever reported. That’s true everywhere.”
That is a fair observation. Which does not stop the flush of annoyance from rising in my chest. Because this feels … personal somehow. Like she needs me to be wrong.
“Besides, what’s more likely to be a source of all this? An empty mausoleum with a bunch of old junk in it or an actual grave with one of you in it?” she scoffs.
Irritation has me grinding my teeth. “You’ve known of our existence for hours and suddenly you’re an expert?”
“It’s only logical,” she snaps. “I’m trying to help.”
“No, you’re trying to slap back at me for not…” I take a deep breath, stopping myself. I’ve rarely had friends close enough to, in moments of disagreement, know exactly how to get under my skin. But Chessa is and she does.
She arches her eyebrows at me. Clearly she’s taking my retreat as a win. To call her competitive is a vast understatement. The woman can make anything into a challenge, but normally we’ve been on the same side.
I’m not sure that I would count pissing off the daughter of Death as any sort of victory, but hey, you do you.
Is what I want to say. But I don’t.
Because no matter how angry she makes me, I refuse to resort to that level. I am who I am in spite of my heritage, not because of it. I don’t want to be that person. Plus, I suspect she’s testing me, making sure I’m the person she thought I was before.
But sometimes, oh, sometimes, the thought of giving in is tempting, like sinking your teeth into a brownie fresh out of the oven, even when you know it’s going to burn your tongue.
I wrestle my emotions back under control, working not to react to her self-satisfied expression. She is my friend. Or was. Either way, she’s struggling now and if this is how she needs to handle it, fine.
“If we’re going to the cemetery, I don’t see the harm in investigating both,” Carter says, offering a compromise of sorts in the taut silence.
“Excellent.” Devon claps his hands together with faux cheer. “A plan.”
“Great,” Chessa says. She slides off the barstool and digs keys out of her pocket, holding them up. “I have my mom’s van.”