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At first, she thought it was her imagination, but when she looked at Doctor Whitmore, she could see the fear in his eyes.
“You heard that?” she whispered.
The doctor nodded.
“Keep going,” she said almost silently. “Let’s see if the sound follows.”
The two continued walking through the clearing in the middle of the graveyard with the sound of dull thuds following them. Valerie started to get more and more nervous. As the thuds began to grow more frequent, Valerie could swear she could hear whispers on the wind.
Not now, she thought.Leave me alone. It was one thing to hallucinate when she was on her own, another when she was with someone else, and their lives were at stake.
They were almost to the edge of the clearing when she heard a voice whispering, “Stop.”
Valerie froze in place and even Doctor Whitmore stopped dead in his tracks. They listened closely, but the voice was gone. Valerie shone her flashlight around the graveyard, but still found nothing.
“What was that?” Doctor Whitmore asked nervously. “I heard a voice.”
“Me too,” she said. Valerie was conflicted: happy that this was no hallucination, but anxious that they were in real danger.
“Let’s go,” she said finally. “We’re almost out of here.”
They quickened their pace, not stopping until they reached the other side of the clearing. As they stepped out of the clearing, Valerie shone her flashlight on a new grave. The headstone read Martha Saldana.
“We found her,” she said.
“But no sign of Saldana?” the doctor observed.
“Not yet,” said Valerie as the wind whipped up, howling between the countless gravestones all around.
She studied the grave intently, looking for any sign of tracks or footprints that Saldana might have left behind. Reaching down, she felt the ground with her fingertips.
“Someone stood here recently,” she said, standing up and looking around at the empty cemetery.
“You think he’s been here?”
A shiver ran down Valerie’s spine as she looked at the tracks in the wet ground, all leading away from the grave. She felt a sudden sense of fear and dread wash over her, nearly overwhelming her.
“These footprints are fresh,” she said, turning to Doctor Whitmore with a worried look on her face. “He must have run off and hid somewhere nearby.”
Valerie then smelled something on the wind. It was faint, but definite. She recognized it immediately. It was the same smell as the janitor’s room in the basement at Elmwood.
There was a faint smell of the same bleach and cleaning products coming from nearby.
She stepped close to Doctor Whitmore.
“Stay still, don’t react,” she said.
The doctor stared wide-eyed at Valerie and listened with the roar of the wind at his back.
“He’s very close,” she said. “I’m going to pretend I’m leaving you. Stay here by the grave.”
He nodded almost imperceptibly. Valerie admired his bravery. She could tell he was scared, but real bravery was facing your fear, not being unmoved by it.
The doctor’s face was pale, and he looked just as scared as Valerie felt.
“We should split up,” Valerie said. “You stay here, and I’ll have a look around. Shout if you see him.”
She said this extra loud so that Saldana, who she expected was extremely close by, could hear and react accordingly.