The Visitor. Amanda Stevens
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had no offspring. But I seem to recall reading something about twin sisters. Conjoined twins,” he added.
“What age were they when they were separated?”
“They were never separated.”
“Never?” All of a sudden, the inscription from the stereogram flashed through my brain: To Mott, From Neddy. Together Forever. “What happened to them?” I asked with a shiver.
“It was very tragic if the stories are to be believed. One of the twins died. The other was so distraught that she tried to hide her sister’s passing by using cloves to cover the smell. It was days before anyone caught on.”
I stared at him in horror. “Is that true?”
“Cloves were used in the Middle Ages to disguise the stench and flavor of rotting meat.”
“No, I mean...is it true that they were still joined even after the sister passed?”
“Who’s to say? Stories become embellished over time.” He dropped his gaze to the stereogram, scrutinizing it for another long moment. “Notice the way they’re standing back-to-back, heads turned to the camera, expressions identical. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was an optical illusion.”
I put a hand to my nape, where the flesh still tingled. “What else can you tell me about Kroll?”
“He was a distinguished scholar and scientist who seemed to have a brilliant future ahead of him, but he came back from the war a changed man. He gave up his family, career, money—everything—to pursue his vision of utopia. He gathered like-minded people around him, many of them former soldiers desperate for a quiet life. And for a time, Kroll Colony flourished. But every paradise has its serpent. No one knew anything was wrong until the smell drifted into town.”
My fingers tightened around the chair arms. “What happened?”
“Mass suicide. Men, women, children...all gone. Kroll’s body was found sometime later in the woods with a gunshot wound to the head.”
“Self-inflicted?”
“More than likely, although there have been contradicting theories down through the years. The bodies from the Colony were buried far away from the public cemetery and sealed off by a stone fence. The place is isolated and nearly hidden by an overgrown maze that can be quite daunting to navigate, especially when the light starts to fade.”
“I take it you’ve been there.”
“Yes. A few years ago I was contacted by one of his sisters, a woman named Louvenia Durant. She owns a Thoroughbred farm in Aiken County. The cemetery is located on the property she inherited from Kroll’s estate. Over the years, there have been reports of strange lights. She requested that the Institute send someone down to do some readings.”
“What did you find?”
“A few pings on the EMF meter, a bit of static on the recorder, but nothing of consequence. However, the visit was well worth our time. Kroll Cemetery is the most strangely beautiful place I’ve ever investigated. There are thirty-seven graves inside, all of them marked with unusual headstones and tombs.”
“What’s so unusual about them?” I asked.
“For one thing, the symbols are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Each marker is inscribed with a seemingly random number and a key—”
“A key?”
He gave me a quizzical look as he nodded. “No two are alike. The effect is quite eerie.”
“I can imagine,” I said on a breath. “Normally a key represents knowledge or, if wielded by an angel or saint, the means to enter heaven. Crossed keys symbolize Saint Peter. But the keys you’ve described...” I trailed off, tamping down the advent of something fearful in my stomach. I had a bad feeling that I was being led down a dangerous path with nothing but these esoteric bread crumbs to guide me. “I don’t know what to make of them.”
“Some claim the cemetery is a puzzle or riddle that no one has ever been able to solve. Just think of it.” Dr. Shaw leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “All those clues and symbols hidden behind high walls for decades, waiting for someone clever enough to come along and put all the pieces together. And who better to solve a graveyard mystery than you, my dear?”
The breeze that blew across the Institute’s parking area was warm and fragrant, but I couldn’t stop trembling as I climbed into my car and started the engine. As anxious as I was to get home to my computer, I sat for several long moments, idly watching crepe myrtle blossoms pepper the hood as I tried to dissect all that I’d learned.
A twin desperate to cling to her dead sister. A commune that had ended in tragedy. A cemetery of keys and suicides. All seemingly linked by a strange stereogram that had turned up in my cellar.
I had no idea how the pieces fit together, but by the time I nosed my car onto the street, I could feel the tightening fetters of an obsession. Who in my position could resist the puzzle of that tiny walled graveyard and the mystery of all those keys? That I might somehow be personally connected to Kroll Cemetery only added to my fixation.
As soon as I got home, I went straight to the office and opened my laptop. An anticipatory thrill quickened my heart as I typed in the name Ezra Kroll and watched the links pop up. Curling a leg underneath me, I relaxed more comfortably into my chair and soon became lost in research.
Nothing I learned about Kroll would suggest the evil charisma of a cult leader or demagogue. To the contrary, he had been a gentle, unassuming scholar who’d eschewed the violent culture that had sent him and so many other young men off to war. He’d chosen, instead, to live simply and in harmony with nature, which made the tragedy at Kroll Colony all the more unfathomable.
Hours passed as I sat spellbound. Twilight came and went. The questions raised by my visit to Dr. Shaw and now by my own research spun on and on until I finally gave up and went to bed.
I’d tossed the cicada husk in the trash that morning, but as I flipped on the light to turn down the bed, I cast a wary glance at the nightstand. Nothing was there. No insect shell or bookmark. I heard nothing in the walls, smelled nothing untoward in the air. All was calm in the house, but it was a very long time before I slept.
* * *
Sometime later I was again awakened by a noise. I lay there straining to hear scratches in the wall or raspy breathing behind my headboard, but the disturbance was different this time. Distant and less distinct. It came to me that I may not have been roused by a sound at all, but by a sixth-sense certainty that I was no longer alone.
I eased open the nightstand drawer and removed a fresh can of pepper spray, which would be of no use against ghosts, but might offer a modicum of protection against the more substantive entities I called in-betweens. If a thing could breathe and scramble through walls, it could also feel pain, I reasoned. It might even be as frightened as I was. A squirt to the eyes might be enough to startle such a creature away.
That my mind would even go to such a place revealed how far I’d come from a time when ghosts had been the only supernatural encounters in my life. Now I lived in a world populated by all manner of shadowy beings.
Clutching the canister, I padded across the room and peered through the door before merging into the thicker gloom of the hallway. As I approached the kitchen, I paused once more to listen. I started to move through the doorway only to stop dead, one foot suspended over the threshold as a breeze stirred my hair. In the same moment, I realized I could hear the faint swish of passing cars out on the street as if a door or window had been left open.
I saw something move in my office then. A flickering shadow. A flash of light. Instinctively, I melted back into the darkness in the hallway and counted to ten before chancing another glance into my office.
A figure stood behind