Читать книгу The Visitor - Amanda Stevens - Страница 12

Seven

Later that afternoon, I headed out again, this time to see Dr. Rupert Shaw at the Charleston Institute for Parapsychology Studies. As I came around the side of the Institute after parking, I shot a glance across the street at Madam Know-It-All’s, the palmist I’d become acquainted with last fall. I didn’t linger to try to catch a glimpse of her. I was in too much of a hurry to speak with Dr. Shaw.

“He’s expecting you,” the new assistant said with a smile after I introduced myself. “I’ll take you back.”

She escorted me down the hallway and motioned me through a set of thick pocket doors. “Go on in. If either of you need anything, I’ll be at my desk.”

“Thank you.”

As her heels clattered down the hallway, I stepped across the threshold and glanced around the room, relieved to see the same cozy muddle that I remembered so fondly. If anything, the stacks of books on the wooden floor had grown to a new, precarious level and an assortment of files and magazines threatened to swallow Dr. Shaw’s massive desk.

The French doors stood open to the garden and I spotted his lanky silhouette at the edge of the terrace. He stood with one hand propped against a column, his head turned slightly away from me, but I could still see his careworn profile. His profound sadness caught me off guard, and I paused before knocking or calling out his name. A second later, he stepped in from the garden, his eyes lighting when he saw me.

“There you are. Right on time as always. I was just outside getting a little fresh air.” The melancholy I’d glimpsed a moment earlier was now carefully masked, but there was no disguising the ravages of grief. The past few months had not been kind to Dr. Shaw. The sorrow of losing his only son had etched deep furrows in his brow, and his eyes held the shadows of a man haunted by memories and regret—a look I’d seen often in Devlin’s eyes.

Not wishing to be caught staring, I bent to remove the antique stereoscope from my bag and placed it on his desk.

He picked up the device and turned it in his hand. “What an interesting piece.”

“I thought you might find it so. And this is the stereogram.”

He took his time scrutinizing the images before slipping the card in the holder as he swung his chair around to capture the light. “The faces are startlingly clear, aren’t they? Almost as if they could speak to us.” His voice held a note of wonder. “Are there others?”

“Other stereograms, you mean? It’s possible. The basement is crammed full of old boxes.”

“Worth a look, I should think.” He lowered the viewer and swiveled back to his desk. “The resemblance is uncanny. I’m referring to the woman in the window, of course. Is she an ancestor?”

“I have no idea.” I released a breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. The fact that he could see her was confirmation that she’d been alive at the time the photograph was taken.

“Surely someone must have mentioned how much you favor a grandmother or great-aunt or distant cousin,” he suggested.

“No, never. Until last fall, I’d been told I was adopted.”

“But you’re not?”

“The circumstances of my birth are unusual, to say the least.”

“I see.” He removed a magnifying glass from his desk and studied the images for another long moment. “Intriguing the way the camera caught her in that window. Almost as if she were a guardian watching over them,” he mused.

“I hadn’t thought of her that way,” I said. “I wish I knew who they all were.”

“You don’t recognize the man?”

I glanced up at the note of excitement in his tone. “No. Should I?”

“You’re much too young, I expect. Ezra Kroll’s legacy is all but forgotten these days, but there was a time when the very whisper of his name could send a chill down one’s spine.”

“Ezra Kroll?” My pulse quickened, though I was certain I’d never heard of the man before. “Who was he?”

“The founder of a rather mysterious commune back in the fifties. He and his followers lived in a self-sustained colony a few miles south of Isola in Aiken County. Some of his relatives still reside in that town.”

Something niggled. Not a memory but a bristling awareness that this tidbit was important. A clue, perhaps?

“What about the children?” I asked. “His daughters, I presume?”

“Kroll 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?”