Graveyard Child

prologue

If he had shouted, it would have been better.

“You don’t look fat,” he said, the words almost uninflected. “You look pregnant.”

He stood in the bedroom doorway, leaning against the frame. The beautiful boy she’d met back in Florida was gone, and this ghost was in his place. The dark hair looked dry now. Dusty. The darkness under his eyes seemed permanent. Carla looked down at her belly, sick with shame not only on her own behalf but for what she had done to Jay. If she hadn’t given in, they would still be flirting together, going off to Disney for the day with the young singles group or driving to Daytona Beach with her cousins. He was a man. It had been her job to be modest. To make sure things didn’t go too far.

She’d failed.

“I just thought . . .” she began, and then the tears started and she choked a little.

“Sweetie, the reason the one with ruffles has all those ruffles? It’s in order to make you look like you’re just fat. The people who make wedding dresses aren’t stupid. They know how to hide what needs to get hidden,” he said. He sighed. “And so do I, right?”

She sat on the bed, the springs creaking under her weight. Hers and the baby’s.

“I always imagined the day I got married, you know? The dress I’d wear. How pretty I’d look. Kind of stupid, eh?”

It was four thirty, and the winter sun spilled through the window, ruddy and dim. She could feel the cold radiating from the window. It never got this cold in Florida. Jay stayed where he was long enough that she was afraid he’d walk away. When he stepped toward her, she felt relief and dread. Relief because he was going to sit beside her and take her hand. Dread because she saw in the way he held himself that he didn’t want to. The bed creaked more, the mattress pressing them closer to each other. He took her hand.

“This isn’t what you wanted,” he said. “It’s not what I wanted either. We’re solidly in plan B territory. But it won’t be like this forever. I can get back. And you can help me. It’s going to be okay.”

“I love you, Jaybird,” she said.

“You’re a beautiful girl, Carla mine,” he said. He stroked her cheek and she leaned into his touch. He kissed her just like she knew he would, and for a few seconds they were who they’d been before. Two young Christians deeply in love. He pressed his forehead against her temple. His smile was so close, she could barely see it, but she knew it was there. It made everything better. Not right, but better. His hand slipped onto her breast.

“When exactly do you have to meet your dad and Pastor Michael?” Carla asked.

“An hour.”

“You think maybe you ought to . . .”

He pressed back against her. The bed protested.

“Jay,” she said. “The baby.”

He sighed, nodded, stood.

“It’s just that, with your family coming in, I don’t think we’ll have much private time for a while.”

“You can wait until after the wedding,” she said, and the words were sharper than she’d meant them to be. Harder. And worse, she didn’t regret them.

She stayed in the bedroom watching the light die in the west while Jay washed his hands, found the car keys, and ate a container of strawberry yoghurt standing in front of the old, green refrigerator. The sound of traffic from the street was like an echo from another world. He didn’t say good-bye when he left. The front door only opened and then closed. She watched him get in the car, the dome light on him like a halo for a moment, and then darkness. The engine roared and squeaked. A belt was slipping. Jay didn’t know how to fix that kind of thing, so he just put up with it. The headlights came on, and the father of her child, her soon-to-be husband—the man she would wake up beside for the rest of her life—pulled out into the street. He either gunned the engine out of anger or just to keep the old car from stalling. She didn’t know which.

With him gone, she watched the neighbor’s Christmas lights glow. Christmas day was gone, and they’d probably stay up until after New Year’s. She tried to take some joy in them, then turned on the TV just for noise. She didn’t care what was on. She texted her best friend from Orlando, but she didn’t get an answer. She screwed around online, playing stupid games on Facebook and trying not to think. They wouldn’t come in until the day before the wedding. Her parents. Her sister. Her brothers, except Carlos, because he’d just started a new job and couldn’t get the time off to go to Wichita to watch his slut little sister’s shotgun wedding. She clicked on a link and a grinning cartoon goat popped up asking her to confirm her in-app purchase and she hit Cancel, pushed at her eyes with the back of her hand, and clicked over to the fashion news. It was just the baby making her emotional. Everything would get better when the wedding was over. And better than that when she gave birth and she could hold her son.

She wished they could have stayed in Orlando. It killed Jay to go back to his family and ask for help, but there weren’t a lot of jobs in Florida right now, and the money Carla made as a paralegal would just about cover the day care she’d need in order to work. If they were here, Jay’s parents could help out, and not just with babysitting. His dad went to church with the landlord of the new apartment. The place was ragged and worn and it smelled like old ant poison, but it was cheap. Cheaper than it would have been for someone else. Jay had other friends. Connections. He’d grown up here. It was his town. If they couldn’t make it here, they couldn’t make it anywhere. He had laughed a little when he said that, but she could hear the distance in it.

It had been so sweet when it started. Jay was a gentle man. Kind and strong and funny. And he’d looked pretty damn good in his swim trunks. They met through the church. He’d just moved away from his family for the first time, and the joy he took in being on his own shone in him like a lamp. He hadn’t been wild. He didn’t go out drinking or anything like that. But there was a sense of freedom about him. Of possibility. That had probably been better than the swim trunks. It had all seemed so easy at the time. One thing had just led to another, and then there they’d been, naked and sweating on top of the nubbly orange bedspread, and her praying right then that she’d get away with it. Other girls did. She could too.

Only she couldn’t.

The baby shifted uneasily, pressing against her from the inside. Hunger gnawed at her, but she knew how it would go. She’d stand at the refrigerator, wanting steak or liver and onions—she’d always hated liver and onions, but not now—and there would only be noodles and lunch meat. Leftover casserole that Jay’s mother had left for them. She’d stand there with the cold air pushing at her just like the December chill from the windows until she gave up and ate something. Anything. Then, about thirty minutes later on, she’d puke and go to sleep.

Might as well cut out the middle part.

She turned off the computer and the TV and went into the empty bedroom. Her body felt too heavy. Not like she was fat, but like someone had turned gravity up too high. She wondered what was taking Jay so long. It had to be nine, nine thirty by now. The city outside her window was black as midnight.

The little glowing alarm clock by the bed said it was six forty-five. The night had hardly even begun. Carla kicked off her shoes, pulled back the covers, and clambered into the bed. She’d have to get up later. She’d have to eat and shower and brush her teeth and put on a nightgown. For right now, pressing her head into the dust-smelling pillow with her clothes still on—her dress that didn’t make her look fat, just pregnant—felt like the best and only thing to do. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t fall asleep. Or if she did, not deeply. She dreamed she was in her old place in Orlando, looking out a bathroom window that wasn’t there in the real world. Someone was outside it, looking in. A man with a round, bald head and a bright smile. In the dream, she knew she should have been scared of him, but he looked so nice.

The baby squirmed and shuddered like he was having nightmares of his own. At first, Carla thought that was what had woken her. Then the voice came again.

“Carla? It’s okay, but you need to wake up now.”

It was a man’s voice. Not a man she knew. And it was inside the apartment. Her heart started pounding.

“Who’s there?” she said, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.

“It’s all right,” the man said. “I’m here to help you.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” she said. “I’ll scream. I’ve got a knife.”

“You don’t,” the voice said. “And if I’d wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t be telling you that I’m here. But please wake up. I have to talk to you, and we don’t have very much time.”

Carla kicked off the covers, and they slid down to the carpet with a hiss. She should have been cold. The room was cold. The dress clung to her, tacky with sleep sweat. She walked forward slowly. She could run for the front door. Or get her cell phone and call the cops. Call Jay.

The man was sitting at the kitchen table. His pants and sweater were black, his pale fingers laced together before him. His head was shaved to the scalp. For a moment, it seemed that his paper-pale skin was covered in black tattoos. The marks were on his fingers, the backs of his hands, his throat, his ears, his eyelids. Even his lips were striped with black. The marks and symbols made her think of letters in alphabets she didn’t know or mathematical notations. She had the sense that if she looked in the whites of his eyes, there would be symbols written by the blood vessels. Then as quickly as it had come, the impression was gone, and he was only a pleasantly smiling stranger in her house. The kitchen was dark except for the overhead light, and it made him seem like he was on a stage.

His smile was rueful.

“Hey,” he said. “I know you’ve only got my word to go on, but I actually don’t usually sneak into other people’s houses like this. Most of the time I’ve got pretty decent manners. If you want to get a knife or something, I’m perfectly comfortable with that. Or I could make you some tea.”

“What the fuck are you?”

“Short form? One of the good guys.”

“How did you get in here?”

“Magic,” the man said, his voice losing its apologetic tone. “I got in here using magic. Because I need to talk to you. I need to warn you. You’re in danger. And more to the point, your baby’s in danger.”

Carla put a hand to her belly. As if in response, her boy kicked. A little thump in the middle of her palm.

“Not from me,” the man said, raising his hands, palms out. “I want the cycle broken. That’s what I’m here for. To stop it before it starts again. Surprisingly thankless job, actually, but the benefits package is decent and . . .” He let out a long sigh. “Honestly, Carla, I’m usually a lot less verbose than this. It’s something I do when I’m nervous, and I’m really nervous right now.”

“Why?”

“Something really bad is coming,” he said, trim fingernails scratching absently at the back of his other hand. “Something big and powerful that’s killed some of my friends. It’s like a demon, and now I’m pretty sure it’s after your baby. And I’m scared that you might not believe me.”

Carla stood silent for a long moment. It was madness, and she knew it. If the man in her kitchen wasn’t crazy, then he was obviously some kind of satanist. But he didn’t sound like that when he talked, and everything he said seemed to fit with some growing but still unspoken suspicion of her own. She shouldn’t talk to him. She should tell him to leave or start screaming or something.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice hardly above a whisper.

“I don’t know what your fiancé has told you about his family. About his sister,” the man said. “How much do you know about Jayné Heller?”