The Ghost and The Graveyard (The Monk's Hill Witch) (6 page)

I
finished unpacking my moving box and rummaged through my closet for something to wear. I decided to go with jeans, but I changed out of my comfy ones and into some that fell lower on the hip and were more form-fitting. Then I tossed on a black lace camisole. It showcased just enough cleavage to prove I put some effort into my appearance but had enough support and coverage to be appropriate for a first date.

I was finishing my makeup when the phone rang, Michelle calling me back.

“I called as soon as I got your message. What’s going on? You sounded frantic.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Grateful, I’m between classes. Spill the beans!”

“My house is haunted.”

Silence. I could hear Michelle breathing but nothing more. Then she broke into laughter. “Very funny. But really, if you want to joke with me, do it when I don’t have school. Okay?”

“I’m serious. But, it’s all right. Turns out he’s a friendly ghost.”

“Yeah, okay, hon. Joke’s over. Gotta go.” The call ended and Michelle was gone.

Well, what did I expect? It wasn’t exactly a believable story. I tossed the phone down on the dresser, noticing it left a trail as it slid across the dusty wood. Jeez, I desperately needed to clean in here.

With my finger, I wrote myself a note in the filth.
Clean me.
Good enough. I’d get to it later. Probably.

It was almost noon, so I locked up and met Rick at his cottage. After I returned his mug, he slipped his arm through a picnic basket waiting on the small table near the kitchen and opened the door for me.

“You made lunch?”

“Of course.”

“Can you cook?”

“When you live alone as long as I have, you need skills.” He smiled and held out his hand. I didn’t hesitate this time. I slid my fingers into his and savored the resulting ache his touch elicited.

Rick led me across the street, the basket swinging from his elbow.

“You look like red riding hood with that basket,” I quipped.

He paused, his intense stare making my heartbeat quicken. “Funny, with you I feel more like the big, bad wolf.”

Damn!
I swallowed hard.

He continued to an iron gate that looked exactly like the one in my backyard. This was an entrance to the same cemetery. From the street, you couldn’t see the headstones because of tall hedges and a series of maple trees lining the path within.

It dawned on me that this was where I’d first laid eyes on him, driving into town. A heap of fresh earth told me why he’d been digging; a new signpost to the left of the gate read
Monk’s Hill Cemetery: trespassers will be prosecuted.

“Do you get a lot of trespassers?”

“You would be surprised.”

“What about the people who come to visit loved ones? How do they get in?”

“There are none. The youngest grave is over one hundred years old. No surviving relatives.”

“So you maintain this place for no one?”

“It has historical significance, but to be honest, you’re correct. It’s been years since anyone else was here.”

Weird. As we crossed the threshold of the gate, I felt both privileged and a little freaked out by the remoteness of it.

“Did you know there’s a gate behind my house?” I asked.

“Yes. The only other one besides this one.”

“Why?”

Releasing my hand, he retrieved a heavy key from his pocket and locked the gate behind us. “I wouldn’t want you to get away,
mi cielo
,” he said playfully, ignoring my question.

Mi cielo.
There it was again. My sky. A warm feeling blossomed behind my breastbone at the pet name. It was so romantic. The smell of the outdoors rolled off him again, this time with a hint of fresh rain. My mind went blank.

“Are you wearing cologne?” I asked.

He lifted the corner of his mouth. “You like how I smell? This is a good start.”

Captivated by his smile and the way his lips moved when he spoke, my head swam, maybe because all of my blood had rushed south, called by the heat he elicited. I stepped off the trail and almost walked into a headstone. When I realized what I’d done, I pulled up short of the faded stone marker.

“Watch your step,” he said, steadying me with a hand that seemed to fill the space between my elbow and shoulder. “You’re treading on Martha Whitacker.”

“Oh!” I scurried back onto the path.

He laughed. “Just teasing. She’s a long way from caring. This is one of the oldest graves in the cemetery. She was an early financier of Reverend Monk’s.”

“Reverend Monk?”

“The man Monk’s Hill Cemetery is named for.” He pointed up the hill toward a quaint chapel. “I want to take you there, to Monk’s church. I’ll show you where he and his wife are buried.”

He rejoined our fingers and led me to a winding pebble trail. With my hand in his, our shoulders bumped as we walked. Whether from the sunlight or the heat coming off him, I broke a faint sweat.

Rick knew all about the people buried around Monk’s Hill. Most of them were associated in one way or another with Reverend Monk’s ministry. I tried to pay attention, but it was difficult to hear what he was saying when my eyes kept fixating on how the muscles of his shoulders and chest formed a deep groove behind his collarbone. I wondered how it would feel to kiss that spot at the base of his neck. Could I wrap my fingers around his bicep? Was his stomach as hard as it looked?

“—and this is Monk’s Hill Church,” he said.

The top of the hill afforded a spectacular view of the cemetery. From this height, I could see that the topography wasn’t a traditional rectangle shape but a large five-pointed star in a circle of wrought iron fencing. My house was past the point to the west.

“This is unexpectedly picturesque,” I said. For a place where people were buried, Monk’s Hill was surprisingly homey. The full-sized maple and oak trees gave the cemetery warmth, like a park or forest preserve. I turned my face toward the cloudless blue sky and then the wooden church behind me.

“Would you like to see inside?”

“Absolutely.”

Rick led the way. Behind a painted black door, two rows of wooden pews stretched toward on altar. Rick explained that the iron bins at the foot of the pews were where churchgoers would place their coals in the winter. The sconces on the walls and at the ends of the pews were for candles. Women used to sit on the left and men on the right.

“So, no one uses the church anymore?”

“No. Not regularly. There was a wedding here a few years back but not many people want to drive all the way out here for a ceremony.”

“It’s a shame, really. It’s beautiful.” For a moment, I pictured the aisle lined with sprays of white flowers, candles lit and flickering in the sconces, a handsome groom waiting with a priest at the altar. This church was grossly underutilized.

I was pulled from my reverie when I noticed the oil paintings lining the walls. “Do you mind if I look at the art?”

“Go ahead. They’re paintings of the parishioners.”

I wandered up a row toward the most recent-looking one, while Rick hung back by the altar. The portrait was labeled 1692. Stoic-faced men and women with gaunt cheeks and dark clothes were lined up in the churchyard.

“These people look like pilgrims.”

“Technically, Puritans, but the terms are used interchangeably these days.”

I squinted at the details in the portrait. They each had a large book in their hands, probably a Bible. I scanned the hollow faces, looking for some hint of emotion. “Why didn’t people smile in old pictures?” I turned toward Rick, who was watching me, motionless, and with an unreadable expression.

“Life was harder then,” he said. “People here were desperate. Starving.”

“Starving?”

“In sixteen eighty-nine there was a war north of here, King William’s War. Refugees from Canada and upstate New York settled here in Red Grove. The people who were here first, Monk’s parishioners, welcomed the refugees in because that’s what Puritans did. Hospitality was part of their religion. But they were farmers, and that year there was a drought. There wasn’t enough food to feed themselves and the refugees.”

“How awful. What did they do?”

“Some of them died. The old ones. The weak ones. Some others were able to feed themselves by hunting in the woods. All of them asked Reverend Monk for help.”

“You mean, like, to pray? To ask for rain?”

“Yes. But more. Word from Salem was there had been a confession of witchcraft. Salem was starving too, but they were doing something about it. They were finding the witches who caused the problem and burning them.”

“Wait, are you talking about the Salem witch trials?”

“Yes.”

“But obviously, there are no such things as witches. I think I read somewhere that the whole thing in Salem was caused by mass hysteria. Did Monk really believe the drought was caused by a witch?”

“Oh, yes. The hysteria had made it all the way to Red Grove, and his parishioners insisted he weed out the witch. They got more than they bargained for from Monk though, as legend has it.” Rick smiled and shook his head. “I’m boring you with my stories. Let’s enjoy our lunch and this beautiful afternoon.”

“I’m not bored,” I said. “The Salem witch trials are super creepy. I had no idea they extended all the way to New Hampshire. But I’m hungry and more than curious about what’s in the picnic basket. Save the story for later?”

“Of course.”

The spot we chose for lunch was under the shade of an elm tree. Rick spread out a gigantic burgundy blanket made of plush velvet. We removed our shoes and sat cross-legged in the middle. From the picnic basket he pulled two wine glasses and a bottle of Shiraz.

“Your favorite, if I remember correctly.”

I nodded. “But I don’t think I should have any.”

“Why not?”

“It’s just…I want you to respect me. And, well, I think, last time, I moved too fast.”

I’m not sure how it happened but in the blink of an eye, Rick had placed the glasses down and was by my side, my hands wrapped within both of his. Logically, I knew the process was a series of movements, but he was so fast it all happened at once. I never even saw him get up. My brain tried to make sense of it, but his touch was more than distracting, and soon the thought floated away from me.

He raised my fingers to his lips and kissed them gently. “You could never be too forward. I do respect you. More than you know. What happened that night was because we are kindred souls. Kindred souls that found each other.”

“Kindred souls?” I laughed. “Come on, you’ve known me for three days.”

“But already I know you are an old soul, much older than your twenty-two years. You’re a wanderer—not of places but of people. Relationships have been hard for you because no one understands who you really are.”

“And you’re saying you do?”

“Yes.”

I tilted my head to the side. “Hey, how did you know how old I was?”

He laughed and looked away. “You told me. You don’t remember?”

I didn’t remember telling him my age, but then I’d had a lot of wine. He was right about the relationship thing. Besides Michelle, I didn’t have many close friends, and I had suffered a series of devastating romantic relationships. I wondered how Rick knew, if he could smell the failure on me like some sort of bad cologne. “Well, I never thought of myself as an old soul but the rest of what you say is true. I’m not sure that makes us kindred souls, though.”

“Oh, we are,
mi cielo
. Ask me anything. I bet I know more about you than you think.”

“Okay. I’ll play. What’s my favorite color?”

He grinned and rubbed his chin. Then he raked his eyes over me from head to toe, his gaze a palpable thing that made my skin tingle. “You tell people red because you think it’s what they want to hear, but your favorite color is actually silver. You love it as you love the winter—cold, calm, and magical.”

“What the hell? How did you guess that?”

“Kindred souls.” His fingers motioned back and forth between us.

“What’s my favorite food?”

“Lamb.”

I shivered. This was getting creepy. Lamb
was
my favorite. How could he possibly know that? “My favorite music?”

“Metal.”

“Finally you get one wrong.”

“You don’t like metal?”

“Its not that I don’t like it, but it’s just not my favorite. I mean, as older music goes, definitely, but lately I really like—”

“Rap,” he interrupted.

Oh. My. God. “How did you know?”

“You like your music to energize you. It has to be bold, loud, and hard. I can tell.”

Heat crawled up my cheeks as I thought about how I’d attacked him on the couch. I knew how he could tell.

Rick was closer now, leaning over me so that I could feel his breath on my cheek. “I know one more thing about you,
mi cielo
.”

“What?”

“You are compassionate to a fault. Someone who cares deeply about others.”

I turned toward him and touched my forehead to his. “I do care about people. It’s why I became a nurse. Even though I struggle with relationships, I care.”

My heart picked up its pace, and the scent of the outdoors washed over me again, even more complex, with a hint of honeysuckle. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply until my insides twisted, begging me to kiss him. My head felt light again. His face, his body was so close. He wanted to kiss me and maybe more, I could feel it. But it was like he was waiting for something—maybe a sign of consent on my part? I knew I shouldn’t rush into things, but all the blood had rushed from my brain again to someplace lower on my body.

I leaned forward and feathered my lips up his cheek to his ear. “What do you know about kindred souls, Rick?”

“They usually think alike. And right now, I’m thinking about kissing you.”

I nodded, a dimwitted gesture necessary because my mouth had grown useless with desire. Whatever promises I’d made to myself about going slow melted in the heat of the arm that wrapped around my shoulders and lowered me to the velvet. Balanced above me on his elbows and cradling my head in his hands, he brought his lips down on mine. I opened my mouth, accepting his probing tongue. I could sense his need for me in the kiss, and it was more than sexual. It was like he was drinking me in, trying to climb inside my skin.