Alexandra Sokoloff - The Harrowing

Martin was so openly contemptuous of the idea of a ghost that there was no point in involving him unless she got something definite. And Cain—

She didn’t know what to think about Cain. But of course he didn’t believe in anything. So what was the point?

Still, anyone would have been better than facing a whole cemetery alone.

Robin shivered in the wind, then grimly straightened and pushed the tall gate open, flinching at the iron squeal of rust against metal.

The more modern part of the cemetery was well tended, the grass, already turned winter brown, clipped and smooth. Most of the graves were modest; many of the headstones were simple marble rectangles set flat into the ground.

What’s the point of a flat headstone? she thought as she walked along the smooth packed-dirt paths, past curved marble benches under clusters of oaks. So discreet, it doesn’t even seem like death.

The older part of the cemetery made up for it, though, with statues and monuments crooked and streaked with age, cracked by moss that spread in patches like some pestilent disease. Wind gusted around her, whispering dryly through overgrown grass and bare trees. There was a feeling here…the heaviness of arrested time. Her steps were slower and slower; she found herself wishing for the polite modernity of the polished flat stones.

Too late to turn back, though. She made herself move forward through the haphazard maze of stones, paused under a row of bent cypress to puzzle over the directions the grounds manager had given her over the phone.

There was supposed to be a gate separating one section of the graveyard from the one she was in—the north section, the grounds manager had said, although he’d hesitated before he said it, in a way that made Robin think he’d meant to say something else.

She turned and squinted through the line of cypress, and then she saw it—rusted bars and crumbling foundation posts. She moved toward it through the trees.

Inside the gate, these grounds felt even older than the rest, tombstones crowded together and falling over. As Robin stepped through the iron arch, she had an instant impression of a different cemetery altogether. She moved slowly in through the stones. Here and there, she saw little piles of small rocks placed on the gravestones…some ritual she seemed to recall from a movie, but she didn’t remember which or what it meant.

There were no crosses, either, she realized. And something was different about the writing.

She turned in a circle, looking around her at the tombstones. Many were in English, but every third or fourth one bore a strange alphabet, square and archaic.

And then she saw it: a weathered granite oval, three feet high. She registered the name first, so familiar to her now.

But what made her gasp was the Star of David carved into the top of the stone.

Jewish. He was Jewish .

Looking around her now, she could see the same stars on other graves around her, the little rocks—a ritual she’d seen in a Holocaust movie. The alien lettering was Hebrew. It was the Jewish section of the cemetery, that’s what the grounds manager had been reluctant to say. Segregated—in 1920, it would have been.

She stepped close to the worn stone and read the inscription beneath the name. Her eyes widened at the epitaph:

It all hit at the same time: the finality of the grave of a nineteen-year-old boy, barely older than she was. The bewildering inscription—as far from the angry personality they had encountered as she could imagine. And the paradox of raging anti-Semitism coming from a Jewish ghost.

Robin looked around her under the darkening sky, shivering. She spoke low. “Zachary? I’m here.”

She stood very still, listening to the dry whisper of the grass. She knelt on the grave and reached out, put her hand against the rough stone.

“What do you want?”

She was barely breathing. The light around her slipped lower, darker; the movement of wind was almost imperceptible. But nothing and no one answered her.

She sat back on her heels, withdrawing her hand from the stone and resting both hands on the ground beside her. And then something stung her palm, a dull but discernible prick. She pulled her hand back instinctively and stared down into her palm. There was no mark.

She frowned and scanned the ground in front of her. Scattered beside the base of Zachary’s headstone were some small rocks like the ones she’d seen piled on other tombstones. Perhaps they’d fallen from the headstone over the years. But the sting hadn’t felt like a rock. Then she saw it, lying half-buried in the dirt.

Gently, she picked it up—a small flat piece of silver, blackened with age. She broke the encrusted dirt from the delicate bars and looked down at the medallion: a Star of David.

Zachary’s? Had someone left it for him, all those years ago? Had he meant for her to find it?

She sat very still, holding it—until she realized she was waiting for the touch of the wind. And then she jumped up from the grave and ran as if chased through the acres of stone.

Back at the Hall, Robin stood in the dim corner of the third floor boys’ wing, knocking hard on

Martin’s door, wishing that she’d thought to bring a camera to the cemetery to document the gravestone. But she had the Star of David (she felt for it in her jeans pocket, reminding herself it was there). And surely Martin would believe her, and think it as strange as she had, the proof Zachary was Jewish.

She stood back, waiting, and focused on the little metal scroll nailed to the door frame, with its Hebrew lettering…remembered Zachary’s raging, the fury not just at Martin but also at the Jewish God.

Zachary was Jewish. Martin was Jewish. Despite his outward denial of his own faith, Martin had spoken in Hebrew to the board. There was a connection here, something she didn’t understand, but somewhere at the heart of it was the answer.

She was absolutely sure that Martin knew more than he was telling.

She reached to knock again.

A hand touched her shoulder from behind and she whirled, gasping.

Cain stood behind her in the dark corner of the hall. He looked down at her pale face, frowned. “What’s wrong?”

Cain’s room was illuminated by two circles of low light cast by a desk lamp and another on the

bed stand. Robin paced the floor through the pools of light while Cain sat on his bed, watching her.

“I found Zachary’s grave.”

She blurted it out, and was gratified at his startled look. “He’s buried in the cemetery just outside of town.” She met his eyes. “In the Jewish section. There’s a Star of David on the headstone. I found this on the grave.”

She fished out the Star of David and handed it to him. Cain examined the tarnished metal piece, then looked up at her in disbelief; she recognized the same jolt of confusion that she had felt in the cemetery, looking down at the grave.

“He was Jewish?” Cain said slowly.

“So he would never have said those things to Martin.” She hesitated, then raced on. “But actually I don’t think he was saying them to Martin. I think it’s really somehow about God—”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Cain held up a hand, frowning. “You said Zachary lived in Mendenhall. But Mendenhall used to be a fraternity. The frats didn’t let Jews in on this campus in 1920. There was a quota system for Jewish admissions, even—the school cut the Jewish students down by half over two years.”

Robin was shocked, though she knew she shouldn’t be. “How horrible.”