Page 4

The beam of my flashlight barely cut through the oppressive shadows, and it took all of my focus to navigate the steep, narrow stone steps under my feet.

Morrow moved ahead without hesitation, gracefully avoiding the crumbling stairs that almost sent me plunging to my death.

"Mind your step," he said lightly.

As if to punctuate his warning, my foot hit a cracked section.

I stumbled down several stairs before catching myself a hairsbreadth from his back.

I panted, gripping the wall as I listened to the broken stones falling for far too long. I swallowed hard.

"How deep does this go?" I whispered, mostly to myself.

"Deep enough to escape the notice of the living," Morrow replied.

He glanced over his shoulder.

Nearly there.

The stairway finally ended, opening into a low, narrow tunnel made of pale stone.

Morrow crouched, continuing forward on hands and feet without breaking stride.

I hunched forward, my shoulders occasionally brushing the rough walls despite my smaller frame.

Morrow turned left at a tunnel intersection and left again a few minutes later.

I followed, my breathing getting rougher the further we strayed from the outside.

I imagined I could feel the weight of the earth above me. Something small and many-legged scuttled away from my light.

The tunnel widened into a room suddenly, the ceiling far above my head.

The walls were covered in rows of small hollows, each one holding scraps of fabric.

"What is this place?" I asked.

"The original cemetery," Morrow replied.

"Before the current grounds were established."

Catacombs, he meant.

I glanced around, noticing a wider staircase on the other side of the room.

"Early settlers?" I asked, moving closer to peer into one of the holes.

The stone beneath was carved with an illegible name and a date. 1763.

"Yes." Morrow gestured toward another wall.

"That section holds victims of the yellow fever epidemic that nearly wiped out the settlement in 1795.

They were buried quickly, without ceremony."

I swept my light across the area he indicated.

There were no dates or names, just a wall of graves.

"How do you know?" I asked.

Morrow's lips stretched in that unsettling approximation of a smile.

"I was here."

I slowly turned to face him.

"How old are you?"

"Age is a human preoccupation," he said.

He moved deeper into the chamber, scanning the graves.

"My kind are drawn to concentrations of death," Morrow continued.

"Battlefields, plague pits, cemeteries.

We are... necessary."

"Necessary? I asked.

For what?"

He paused.

"For balance.

All life feeds on death in some form. We are simply more direct in our consumption."

I thought of Lawrence Emmett's ravaged corpse, of the terrible sounds of Morrow's feeding.

"That's how you justify it? Ecological balance?"

Morrow turned and his eyes shone in the light of my flashlight.

"I require no justification."

He continued walking, leading me toward an alcove set into the far wall.

Stone shelves lined the walls, stuffed full with random objects.

"My collection," Morrow explained, gesturing to the shelves.

"Memories of the dead."

I approached cautiously, my light revealing the wide variety of items.

A leather-bound journal.

A porcelain doll with a cracked face. A stack of letters tied with a faded ribbon. So many things from so many people.

"You take these from graves?" I asked.

"Some.

Others were given to me." Morrow carefully lifted a small wooden box from the nearest shelf.

He opened it to reveal a curl of blonde hair tied with ribbon.

"Elizabeth Palmer, 1842," Morrow said.

"Died in childbirth at nineteen.

Her husband buried her along with their son." He closed the box with a snap. "He visited her grave every Sunday for thirty years.

I eyed him.

"How could you possibly know all that?"

His unsettling gaze fixed on me.

"I consume more than flesh, Carmen Ruiz.

When I feed, I take in fragments of memory, echoes of the lives once lived.

I stared at him, trying to process.

"You're saying you...

absorb their memories?"

"Impressions.

Emotions.

Fragments of identity." Morrow replaced the box on the shelf with surprising gentleness. "The recently deceased yield the clearest impressions. The longer they lie in the earth, the more such fragments fade."

He moved to the table, long fingers hovering over a modern spiral notebook.

"Your predecessor, Frank Tillman, was troubled by dreams of falling.

A childhood accident left him with this fear, yet he chose to confront me on the roof of the mausoleum." A sound like grinding stones came from his throat.

My stomach lurched as I realized it was a laugh.

I took an involuntary step back, suddenly acutely aware that I was alone with a creature who killed and consumed people without remorse.

Who remembered doing it with what sounded like satisfaction.

Morrow noticed my reaction.

"You fear me again.

Good. You should not forget what I am."

"What are you? I asked softly, almost afraid to hear the answer.

"A predator." He straightened to his full height, towering over me.

"But a necessary one.

And one capable of... selectivity."

He moved toward me, and I forced myself not to run screaming.

When he stood directly in front of me, close enough that I could smell the wet earth and copper scent of him, he spoke again.

"We should go."

My mind stuttered before I absorbed his words.

I nodded eagerly, more than ready to leave the oppressive darkness.

Morrow led me through a different tunnel, this one sloping gradually upward.

"This passage will bring us near Helena Ross's grave," he said.

"I must feed before the day fully claims the night."

I stumbled.

"You're going to...

right now?"

Morrow's head turned nearly 180 degrees to look down at me.

"Yes.

You may wait in the tunnel if you prefer."

I did not breathe until he looked away.

We walked in silence for a few minutes, nothing but the sound of my boots scuffing the ground.

I should take his offer. The less I had to see the better.

Instead, I heard myself ask, "Can I watch?"

He stopped walking.

"You wish to witness my feeding? he asked.

When I did not immediately reply, he turned to face me. Why?"

I did not have a good answer.

Only a morbid curiosity that seemed to grow stronger the more time I spent in Morrow's presence.

He studied me for a long moment.

"Very well." He turned away, continuing up the passage.

"Few have voluntarily observed. Fewer still have survived the experience."

The tunnel eventually opened into a small chamber with a stone ceiling.

Morrow placed his palm against it, pushing it upward before shoving it aside.

Moonlight filled the space as Morrow easily leapt out of the ground. He reached down to offer me a hand.

I hesitated before accepting.

His skin felt cool and dry against mine, the bones beneath prominent.

With surprising strength, he pulled me up into the night air.

We emerged directly beside Helena Ross's fresh grave.

The temporary marker gleamed dully in the moonlight, her name and dates stark against the white plastic.

I turned to squint at the stone that had covered the tunnel entrance. It was a large, flat companion headstone carved to look like a flowerbed. Good camouflage in a cemetery.

Morrow moved to the foot of the grave and began to dig, creating a narrowing tunnel that angled downward to the coffin.

I watched, completely transfixed.

It was not what I had expected. There was nothing frenzied or savage, only the untiring determination to reach his goal.

Within minutes, he had created an opening large enough for his narrow form.

He paused at the edge, those unnatural eyes finding me in the darkness.

"Last chance to turn away," he said.

I shook my head, my throat too dry for words.

Morrow slipped into the hole, disappearing from view.

I crept closer, peering down into the darkness.

I could not see him, but I heard him. The crunch of the coffin lid giving way, the whisper of fabric being moved aside.

Then silence, broken only by my heartbeat pounding in my ears.

"Come closer," Morrow's voice called.

"If you truly wish to see."

I was torn.

I wanted to run, to forget everything I had seen and heard, and slink back to the cottage with my tail between my legs.

I wanted to pretend Morrow was the nightmare he appeared to be and I would wake up at any moment. Instead, I knelt at the edge of the hole and shone my light into the darkness.

In the darkness below, Morrow crouched over the hole he had punched in the coffin.

In his hands, he held a human thigh.

The skin was gray and wrinkled and still partly covered by blue, gauzy fabric. There was only a ragged stump where the lower leg should have been as if he had ripped the limb out of the coffin and snapped it in half like a person would a crab leg.

"The flesh is already cold," Morrow said.

"But her essence lingers.

Would you know something of Helena Ross before she fades completely?" His black eyes met mine.

Before I could answer, Morrow's jaw unhinged with a wet sound, exposing rows of needle-like teeth.

He raised the severed limb to his mouth and tore into it.

I flinched backward, nearly dropping my phone. I was shocked. Revolted. But I could not look away.

Instead, I watched with horrified fascination as he fed, ripping chunks of flesh from the bone before swallowing them whole.

The sounds were almost more gruesome than the sight.

Tearing flesh and chewing and Morrow s low rumbling, growls. When he lifted his head, dark fluid stained his lipless mouth. He extended one long-fingered hand toward me.

"Take it," he said.

"If you want to see."

I only hesitated for a moment before I reached down.

His fingers interlaced with mine, leaving behind smears of congealed blood that began to tingle against my skin.

Suddenly, images flooded my mind.

A young woman in 1950s clothing laughing as she ran across a beach.

The same woman, older, holding a newborn.

Helena at her husband's deathbed, clutching his hand. Helena alone in a garden, watching butterflies with arthritic hands folded in her lap. I jerked back, falling into the grass as the images faded.

"What was that?" I gasped.

"Helena," Morrow said simply.

"Or fragments of her, at least." He resumed his feeding.

I lay in the grass, trying to process what had just happened.

Somehow, Morrow had shared Helena's memories with me.

Proof of his claim that he consumed more than just flesh. It was amazing even if the way he did it was horrible. I stared up at the stars, trying to tune out his noises.

By the time he emerged from the grave, the eastern sky had begun to lighten.

He moved with the same fluid grace, though his frame seemed somehow fuller, the hollow cavities of his chest less pronounced.

Dark fluid stained his mouth and hands, but he made no move to wipe it away.

"You will help restore the grave?" he asked, gesturing to the disturbed dirt.

I nodded mutely, still feeling a little dazed.

Together, we refilled the tunnel he had created, careful to pack the soil firmly.

When we finished, the only evidence of disturbance was a slight depression that could easily be attributed to natural settling.

"The groundskeepers will add more soil tomorrow," Morrow said.

"They always do.

They blame it on air pockets around the casket."

We walked back toward my cottage in silence.

The sky had lightened to pale blue, the first birds beginning their morning songs.

Morrow seemed less monstrous in the growing light. Still inhuman and wrong, but somehow less threatening.

"The development plans," he said suddenly.

"They must be stopped."

I glanced at him.

"What can I do? I'm just the night guard."

"Attend the public forum with Winters.

Speak against the development." Morrow's elongated fingers flexed at his sides.

"I cannot appear at council meetings, for obvious reasons."

The absurd image of Morrow addressing the city council made me laugh despite myself.

A short, sharp sound quickly swallowed by the morning air.

"I'll do what I can," I promised.

"But not just for you.

I need this job. I gestured to the cottage visible in the distance. "If the cemetery goes, I m back in my car."

"Our interests align, then." Morrow stopped at the edge of a large oak's shadow.

His mouth curved into that unsettling smile.

"Sleep well, Carmen Ruiz. Dream of memories not your own."

He melted into the shadow of the oak tree, his form seeming to fold impossibly upon itself until nothing remained but darkness.

I stood watching the empty space where he had been, wondering at the strange turn my life had taken.

In my pocket, the silver locket he had given me pressed against my thigh, a tangible reminder of our tentative truce.

I took it out, turning it over in my palm.

The clasp was stiff with age, but it opened under gentle pressure.

Inside was a tiny portrait of a young woman, her black and white features faded.

I closed the locket and slipped it back into my pocket, suddenly exhausted.

As I continued toward the cottage, I realized I no longer saw Morrow as just a monster.

Though he was certainly that. He was something more complex. I wanted to know more about him and the things he could do. I wanted to know everything.

If my curiosity was stronger than my horror, what did that make me? As I closed the cottage door behind me, I did not have an answer.