Prologue THIS IS A LARGE cemetery for such a small town And old You told us once that some of the gravestones date back hundreds of years But I didn’t make a habit of hanging out in cemeteries when you were doing the telling Believe me I’d rather have been anywhere else Did you know I arrived alone that first day Pascal Bender and Merrilee Takahashi were supposed to meet me at one o’clock by the iron gate There I stood It was three minutes past one And then it started to rain The first raindrops plopped against the grave markers which teetered this way and that over the lumpy ground I was sure that even a ghost could knock down some of them just by floating past at sunset Sorry I know how you felt about ghosts And vampires And zombies I could see that there were different types of stones brown white bluish gray but I didn’t know which was
And all those carved symbols on the stones Well the angels were easy to spot Their wings were a dead giveaway But I didn’t know what the other symbols meant like the ones with clasping hands or a baby lamb And all those skulls and crossbones I was sure that meant the cemetery was full of dead pirates When Pascal and Merrilee didn’t show up I thought I must be waiting in the wrong section I was standing in the oldest part of the cemetery where the stones were covered in lichen and eroded words Maybe we were supposed to start in the newer section and work our way backwards through time But I didn’t know where the newer part of the cemetery which might be I certainly didn’t know who would be buried there You
One _____ Reading Weathered Marble WIND HOWLED through the trees that surrounded me Boughs overhead moaned The roots beneath my feet wrapped tightly around the buried coffins to hold the trees to the ground And all the while I stood at the cemetery gate trying my best to ignore the posted warning signs Beware of Falling Gravestones Enter at Your Own Risk Closed at Sunset No Dogs Allowed Just who did the gate think it was fooling Sure it looked secure enough but when it was locked at night the
gate would be useless at keeping anything inside that wanted to get out And I wasn’t worried about the living Then I heard a shrill four-fingered whistle across the street from the cemetery Derek the whistler hollered from the front steps of the old stone library that had once been a church We’re in here I grabbed my knapsack and bolted from the cemetery gate cold heebie-jeebies charging down my spine But when I got to the crosswalk I stopped in my tracks I looked left right left and then left right left again before taking a careful step off the curb The extra checking was a safety habit that I couldn’t seem to shake not even when fleeing a spooky graveyard in the cold rain After crossing the street I scrambled up the granite steps to the library with relief I’d never been to this library before Even though it was no longer a church its stained-glass windows had been saved Each one was filled with scenes of people in robes and sandals the men with beards the women’s heads covered by hoods many of them weeping or looking up to the sky with their hands clasped some on their knees heads bowed beams of light shining down You must be Derek I’m Loyola Louden
