Dead Voices (51 page)

It was ridiculous for her to be lost like this! She had played in these woods all her life. Why was she even out here in the first place? Was it simply because she wanted to avoid Frank or anyone else who might see her out walking at night? Why was she being so damned furtive? Was she embarrassed that she even entertained the notion that Graydon could — somehow, magically — let her communicate with Caroline?

The whole damned thing was absurd!

Any rational person knew that it was patently impossible to see or talk to the dead. Dead was dead, and that was the end of it! No matter what Graydon did tonight, just like the things Claire DeBlaise and Eldon Cody had done, there had to be some trickery involved or else some rational explanation. She was a damned fool for even starting out on something like this, much less for getting herself lost in the bargain!

As Elizabeth looked around at the moonlit woods, the gray, glowing tree trunks, the sprays of glittering leaves, and the hard, black shadows they cast, it was easy to convince herself that she had been lost for hours. She should at least have been able to hear the sounds of passing cars out on Old County Road — if indeed she was heading in the right direction — but the night song of the frogs still filled the woods. Anyway, at this hour, there probably weren’t all that many cars going by ... unless it was the police cruiser, looking for her.

Allowing for the movement of the moon as it reached its peak and began its westward decline, she figured she was still pretty much on track. Before long, with a rush of relief, she saw a clearing up ahead in the woods. She moved toward it, slashing with her arms through the undergrowth, and saw to her immense relief the southern edge of Oak Grove Cemetery.

The fence on this side of the cemetery rose high, towering in straight black lines against the glowing night sky. Elizabeth didn’t. even consider scaling the fence to get inside ... not unless she found the front gates were locked. After everything that had happened out here, she wouldn’t be surprised to see a police cruiser parked right out front. Crouching low and keeping to the shadows of the trees, she walked down to the road.

Just as she reached the comer of the cemetery fence, Elizabeth saw something and immediately dropped low to the ground. A car’s headlights glowed far down the road, heading toward her. It might be Graydon, arriving for their meeting, she thought, but she knew it would be foolish of him to make so obvious an approach. She lay flat in the grass, watching. Her breath caught in her throat when the harsh beam of the spotlight shot out from the car. It was the police again — Frank and his partner — coming back up the road, obviously still interested in checking out the cemetery.

The fresh aroma of damp soil filled Elizabeth’s nostrils as she hugged the ground while the yellow beam of light swept over and past her. She watched it ripple along the iron fence, pausing for only an instant at each gate before moving on. Elizabeth could see that both gates were closed. As soon as the police car disappeared down the road, she got up and walked as boldly as she dared to the front gate.

She pushed the iron gate open and cautiously entered the cemetery. As she eased the gate shut behind her, she toyed with the scary thought that, now that she was inside, the gate would slam shut and lock with a deafening clang!

The location of Caroline’s grave was vividly etched into Elizabeth’s memory. If she had felt fear while lost in the woods, it was nothing compared to the dizzying wave of panic that swept through her now as she turned slowly and looked up the gently sloping hill.

“Oh, Jesus,” she whispered, shivering wildly as she took no more than three small steps up the road. She glanced up at the silent globe of the moon, now starting its decline in the sky. The reverse side of the letters spelling OAK GROVE CEMETERY stood out like spidery scars against the night sky.

Terror like hard, black ice filled her mind when she considered that just up there, over that moon-soaked ridge, was Caroline. Not her grave; not her tombstone; not her memory —
her
! Dressed in her beautiful white dress, her hands clasped over her cold, motionless chest, she was lying six feet below the sod, shut forever in impenetrable darkness beneath the polished pink marble marker.

I can’t go through with this
! she told herself as she stared above the silent rows of tombstones.
I just can’t!

Her eyes were stinging, and for a moment, she forgot all about Graydon, the police cruising by the cemetery, and everything and everyone else in the world.
Her
world, her entire reason for living was up at the top of that hill, as cold and as lifeless as the heavy earth that covered her.

A flicker of motion off to her left caught her attention. Elizabeth let out a shrill scream when she turned and saw a hazy gray figure materialize from behind one of the tombstones. Horrified, she watched, unable to move as the shape silently coalesced and, raising one arm into the air, started toward her.

Elizabeth backpedaled frantically until the iron fence halted her. She wanted to cry out, but after her first surprised screech, her throat had closed off and wouldn’t make any further sound.

“Elizabeth,” a deep voice said. In her overactive imagination, it sounded like a low, animal growl.

Speechless, Elizabeth didn’t dare take her eyes away from the shape as it came slowly toward her.

“I was afraid you had changed your mind,” the voice said. Now — for the first time — she recognized Graydon’s voice.

“No — I, uh, I was delayed,” she managed to say. To her fear-heightened senses, even her own voice sounded thick with resonance. The moon was behind Graydon, but she was finally able to discern the moon-shadowed outline of his face. She heaved a deep sigh of relief, but the coiling tension in her gut was only minimally lessened.

“I had to park out on Route 22,” Graydon said, once he was beside her. “There’s a place just off the road where I hid my car so ... well, so no one would find it right off, anyway.”

“I saw a police car go by twice while I was on my way out here,” Elizabeth said. “It looked to me as though they were patrolling the cemetery here —” She cut herself off and cringed when, from off in the distance, she heard the whoosh of tires on the road.

Graydon heard and noted the sound of the passing car as well, but he dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “That’s out on 22,” he said. “As for the police ... “ He snickered with laughter. “Well, I don’t think we have to worry about them tonight.”

“We’re not going to do ... anything illegal, are we?” Elizabeth said. “I mean — I don’t think I could take it if we have to ... if I —” She cut herself off, unable to finish voicing her fear that Graydon and she were here to exhume her daughter. It was unnerving, with the full moon behind him, not to be able to see his face directly. Was this another one of his control tactics? she wondered. He could see her face in the moonlight, but she couldn’t see his.

“No, no,” he said, although she found little reassurance in his voice. “What we’ll be doing has nothing to do with grave robbing or anything of the sort. Even if the police did arrive and find us up here, we wouldn’t be doing anything illegal. The teenagers who come out here to drink and get high break more laws than we will tonight.”

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said, still struggling with a bad case of second thoughts. “I mean, this whole thing is ... is —”

“A miracle,” Graydon finished for her. “What you’re about to see is the absolute apex of necromantic art.” He waved his hands wildly over his head, his hooked fingers clawing upward as though summoning demons from the deep. “And I have complete and total faith in you, Elizabeth, that you’ll be strong enough and brave enough to face what has to be done.” Clenching his fists, he shook them at the sky.

“I — I’m not sure,” Elizabeth stammered, completely taken aback by the near maniacal intensity with which he was speaking. It was so obvious that this man was out of his mind and possibly dangerous; she was a total fool for believing
anything
he said.

“Oh, but I know you
are
sure,” Graydon went on. “Because the rewards for you — and me — will be absolutely... incredible.” He lowered his hands and, gazing up at the moon, its silver light lining his profile and making his eyes glimmer brightly, took a deep breath. “The hour draws near,” he said, more softly. “I have all the materials we’ll need over here.” He turned and walked back to where he had first materialized, fully expecting Elizabeth to follow along.

The part of her brain telling her to get the hell out of here was getting louder, more insistent. She hesitated at the cemetery fence, still unsure if she even
could
walk any further into the cemetery. The thought that the chain would magically rise and wind itself through the bars of the gate, trapping her inside with this madman, still terrified her.

“Aren’t you coming?” Graydon asked, turning to look back once he realized she wasn’t behind him.

“I —” But that was all she managed to say as she looked down at her feet and saw them begin to shift forward across the moonlit grass. Her feet looked distant, foreign to her, and she couldn’t ignore the overpowering sensation that someone else was controlling them, moving them for her.

“If we don’t hurry, we’ll miss the most opportune time,” Graydon said. He picked up a rather large bundle from behind one of the gravestones and walked over to the grass strip in the center of the dirt road.

Wave after wave of chills darted like icy spears through Elizabeth’s body as she shuffled forward into the cemetery. Her shoulders were hunched, and she tensed, waiting to hear the heavy
clang
as the gate locked itself behind her. When it didn’t come, she felt a measure of relief, but that was quickly shattered when she heard Graydon’s next words.

“Come on, Elizabeth,” he said, sounding impatient and anxious. “We’ve got to begin soon. Your daughter is waiting to talk to you.”

EIGHTEEN

The Summoning

1.

As much as she wanted to deny it, Elizabeth couldn’t ignore the cold squeezing that constricted her chest as she walked beside Graydon up the hill toward Caroline’s grave. In spite of her earlier attempts, this was the first time she had actually come up here since returning home; and even now, she couldn’t believe she was doing it ... especially under such bizarre circumstances.

“How — uh, what exactly are you going to do?” she asked Graydon, once they reached the crest. She didn’t look at him; her eyes were fixed on the gravestone, illuminated by the blue wash of moonlight. The name and dates chiseled into the polished marble surface were etched in inky blackness.

CAROLINE JUNIA MYERS

OCT. 27, 1981-FEB. 15. 1988

The cold glint of moonlight reflecting off the polished stone sent a wracking shiver through her body.

“It’s not what
I
intend to do that’s important,” Graydon said, as he placed the bag he was carrying onto the ground and stood back, thoughtfully regarding Caroline’s grave. “It’s what
you
do that’ll be important.”

“You’ll have to —” Elizabeth’s voice choked off as tears filled her eyes and her vision blurred. “You’ll have to tell me what to do,” she finally said.

“Oh, don’t you worry about a thing,” Graydon said. He looked at her, his thin smile widening. “You’ll know exactly what to do when the time comes.” He rubbed his hands together eagerly and then knelt down and opened the bag, which made a rustling sound like a crackling fire, which reminded Elizabeth of her nightmare as the old woman opened her shopping bag to show her ...

Caroline’s head, surrounded by flames!

Graydon extracted several objects and placed them on the ground beside him.

Elizabeth shivered and hugged her arms close to herself as she watched him go silently about his preparations. In the moonlight, she couldn’t distinguish most of the items Graydon had brought, but her heart skipped a beat when she saw moonlight reflecting off the edge of a long, sharp-looking knife blade.

“Wh-what’s that for?” she asked.

Graydon chuckled softly and said, “All part of the ceremony ... all part of the ceremony.”

“I don’t see why —” she started to say, but then she let her voice drop off and just stood silently and watched.

The night closed in around her, encasing her and Graydon in a tight, dark shell. Overhead, the spanning sweep of the Milky Way was diffused by the light of the moon to no more than a hazy blue glow. From the woods behind the cemetery, the distant call of a whippoorwill echoed mournfully, and from deep in the swamp came a loud chorus of frogs. Overhead, she heard the high roaring of the wind in the trees, but where she and Graydon stood, the air was curiously quiet. Everything around her seemed strangely transformed, distant. Elizabeth couldn’t shake the feeling that the small patch of ground where they stood — including Caroline’s grave — had somehow been magically removed from the real world.

Graydon finished emptying his bag and then, after sitting back on his heels for a moment, looked up at Elizabeth and cleared his throat.

“What I’m going to do with this” — getting to his feet, he held up something to show Elizabeth, but she couldn’t make out what it was —”is inscribe a pentagram, a five pointed star, on the ground over your daughter’s coffin.”

There was a crinkling of paper as he opened the smaller bag he was holding and then, bending down, began tracing a pattern on the ground. Elizabeth wondered how he could work with just the glow of moonlight to illuminate what he was doing, but he seemed to have no problem as he sifted a fine white powder that looked like chalk dust onto the ground.

“Once we begin,” he said, his breath puffing from the effort of bending over and working, “both you and I have to make sure we don’t step outside this design.”

“Why’s that?” Elizabeth asked tightly.

“Suffice it to say that, once we’ve started, do not step over the lines,” Graydon said. His tone of voice was harsh, almost angry sounding. “Don’t even touch them. Even the tiniest break in the line could be disastrous. “

Elizabeth nodded slowly, unable to look away as she watched Graydon outline the large five-pointed star on the swell of ground over Caroline’s grave. The star-shape had a diameter of ten feet or more. Although she could see Graydon’s darkened silhouette as he worked, the pentagram seemed to appear from nowhere, like an illusion on the dark grass.