Amanda Stevens - The Sinner

I turned back to the path, trudging onward as I slapped at the mosquitoes and gnats rising up from the grass to flog me. The palmettos barely stirred now and no other sound came to me. The utter silence of the clearing engulfed me.

The fingers that tickled the base of my neck now slid with icy precision across my scalp. The hair on my arms lifted as the still air suddenly became rank with the sulfurous odor of the nearby salt marsh. The chanting came to me again, hushed and distant, no more than a whispered repetition that vanished the moment I glanced over my shoulder.

I hurried my steps, driven by a force I had yet to understand. Not once did I consider the alternative of fleeing back along the path to the cemetery. I had come too far and the prodding from the watcher in the woods was too strong.

As I drew closer, I could see the cage more clearly through the weeds. It was a heavy device with a series of rods and plates padlocked together to safeguard the buried remains. In the old days, the contraption would have protected the grave until decay rendered the corpse useless to the medical schools and anatomists that employed the body snatchers. Then the mortsafe would have been unlocked, removed and placed over another grave.

Not so this cage. The edges were anchored in cement, making the safe virtually immovable by human hand or Mother Nature. Thorny vines with heart-shaped leaves coiled around the rods and weeds jutted up through the grates. So thorough the camouflage, a casual passerby wouldn’t have glimpsed the cage at all. No telling how long it had remained hidden and forsaken until the watcher in the woods had summoned me here to find it.

I was near enough now that I could see the sunken dirt beneath the grid. At any other time, I would have searched for a marker or headstone, but now I gave the grave only a cursory examination because something else had caught my eye.

About ten feet to my right, I’d glimpsed another cage. From what I could see through the weeds and vines, the device appeared identical to the first except for one grisly addition.

Inside the mortsafe, a pair of hands rose up out of a freshly mounded grave to grasp the iron grate.

Two

The hands were tiny and delicate. Pale with a chalky bluish tint beneath the crust of dirt. Smooth and unblemished save for the dried blood around the broken nails. Not the hands of a child, I realized, but of a small woman. Young and Caucasian.

I tried to tear my gaze from the horrifying scene, but I couldn’t look away. I stood motionless, sweat soaking through my shirt as a suffocating dread settled over me. I was stunned by the discovery and nearly breathless with fright. I even had a moment of déjà vu that took me back to the Oak Grove murders and to the gruesome discoveries I’d made there with Devlin.

But even in such a distressed state, I had the presence of mind to take stock of the situation and make sure I was in no immediate danger. Except for that unknown presence in the woods, I seemed to be alone.

My evolved senses were so attuned to the environment, I could hear the ruffle of feathers high up in a treetop and the distant lap of water against its banks. I could smell the brine from the saltwater marsh and the woodsy aroma of the evergreens, but nothing human came to me. No lingering energy. No telltale malodor of sweat and excitement.

Almost against my will, I drew a deeper breath, testing the air for a hint of decay, which might have given me an indication of how long the body had been buried. The absence of putrefaction suggested a fresh death. The flesh on the backs of the hands and on what I could see of the arms jutting up through the dirt appeared somewhat supple, leaving me to wonder just how recently blood had flowed through the poor woman’s veins.

Perhaps only a matter of moments before I had come upon the grave. If only I had arrived sooner...

You might also be dead, a little voice whispered. Locked inside one of those metal cages for all eternity.

Shaking off a stifling claustrophobia, I refocused my attention on the properties of the mortsafe. Like the first cage, the edges had been anchored in cement so that it couldn’t be easily moved. The metal rods and lattice had rusted in places, but the padlock looked fairly new, having been placed on the gate so recently that the salt air hadn’t yet corroded the steel.

The more obvious observation and by far the more chilling had occurred to me immediately, but I’d managed to push the revelation to the farthest corner of my mind. Now as I stared at those dainty hands, I had to face the horror head-on. The woman inside the grave had been buried alive.

Buried. Alive.

I shuddered and moved in even closer until I was staring down through the grate directly over the hands. They were filthy, the nails caked and ragged from digging. Through the grime, I could see the curlicue of a tattooed word on the inside of her left wrist and the gleam of a silver ring on her right hand. The intricate design made me think that the jewelry was old, perhaps even an heirloom. The kind of piece that could easily be traced. I couldn’t help but wonder why the killer had left it. Had he or she been that certain the body would never be discovered?

Killer.

The silence deepened as the reality of my find gripped me. Only a few moments had passed since I’d first come upon the hands, but it seemed as if I had been standing there for ages, wasting precious time. A homicide had been committed and the sooner I called the police, the sooner they could identify the victim and start searching for her murderer. I knew the procedure, knew what I had to do. Yet I still hesitated because I sensed this was just the beginning of something dark and sinister. A riddle from the dead that would test me in ways I had never before experienced.

And so I remained rooted to the spot, breathing deeply and drawing out those last moments of calm before the storm hit.

As it turned out, I had very little time to vacillate. From somewhere in the woods, the warning tremolo of a loon sent a sharp thrill along my spine and I spun once more to rake the tree line. It occurred to me in the split second before the crack of a rifle sent me scrambling for cover that the killer might still be nearby.

I hit the ground as something hot seared my face. My hand flew to my cheek and I drew back bloody fingers. I’d been hit. Shot.

Propelled by fear and self-preservation, I flattened myself in the dirt and covered my head with my arms, certain that at any second another bullet would rip through my scalp. That would be the end of me because neither my gift nor my calling could save me from a mortal wound.

Eyes squeezed shut, I braced for the impact as the reverberation from the first shot died away in the stillness. As always in moments of extreme crisis, I thought about Devlin. If I died here in this desolate clearing, would he sense my passing? Would he come here to search for my body? Or was my absence from his life such a relief that he would ignore the twinges of premonition and gut instinct that had been honed during his years on the police force?

As the disturbing notion flashed through my head, I again became aware of the absolute stillness and I tried to corral my senses. What could I see, hear, smell, taste? Focus!

When nothing moved in the weeds, I lifted my head to reconnoiter. Touching a finger to the blood on my cheek, I realized the wound was superficial and had come from nothing more sinister than a smilax vine. And in hindsight, I decided the shot had sounded from the direction of the marsh instead of the woods, leading me to believe that a gator was most likely the target, not I. In my already heightened state of agitation, I’d overreacted.

Even so, I remained prone in the dirt for several minutes longer as I tried to quiet my flailing heart. Using the weeds for cover, I listened for the telltale sound of a sliding bolt or the snap of a twig beneath stealthy footfalls. When nothing came to me, I eased to a kneeling position and then to my feet as I dusted off my jeans and walked back over to the second mortsafe.