The Restorer Read Online Free PDF Page A

had once told me that a place need not be haunted to be evil. I believed him because Papa knew things. Over the course of my childhood, he’d imparted much of that wisdom to me, but he’d also kept things from me. For my own good, I was certain, but those secrets drove a wedge between us where once there had been none. My first ghost sighting had changed us both. If Papa had withdrawn deeper into his own private world, he’d also become even more protective of me. He was my touchstone, my anchor, the one person who understood my isolation.
    After that first sighting, I never again saw the old white-haired man, but there had been others. Over the years, legions of beautiful, floating phantoms. Young, old, black, white, they drifted through the veil at dusk, a delicate parade of Southern history that both thrilled and terrified me.
    After a while, those unearthly transients simply became a part of my world and I learned to steel myself against the frosty breaths at the back of my neck, the icy fingers that trailed through my hair and down my arms. Papa had been right to train and discipline me, but acceptance of the situation hadn’t alleviated my questions. I still didn’t understand why he and I could see the ghosts and Mama couldn’t.
    “It’s our cross to bear,” he explained one day, keeping his gaze averted as he weeded a grave.
    That didn’t satisfy me. “Can my real mother see them?”
    Papa still didn’t look up. “The woman who raised you is your real mother.”
    “You know what I mean.” We never talked about my adoption even though I’d known about it for a long time. I had a lot of questions about that, too, but I’d learned to keep them to myself.
    Papa had already started to shut down so I went back to the ghosts. “Why do they want to touch us?”
    “I’ve already told you. They crave our warmth.”
    “But why?” Absently, I plucked a lone dandelion and blew the seeds into the wind. “Why, Papa?”
    “Think of them as vampires,” he said with a weary sigh. “Instead of blood, they suck out our warmth, our vitality, sometimes our will to live. And they leave nothing behind but a living, breathing husk.”
    I seized on the one word that made any sense to me, even though on some level I knew he was speaking metaphorically. “But, Papa, vampires aren’t real.”
    “Maybe not.” He rocked back on his heels, his eyes taking on a haunted, faraway glaze that chilled me to the bone. “But I’ve seen things in my time…unspeakable desecrations…”
    My terrified gasp brought him momentarily out of his gloomy reverie and he placed his hand on mine, squeezing my fingers in reassurance. “It’s nothing for you to worry about, child. You have nothing to fear, so long as you follow the rules.”
    But his words had filled me with a formless dread. “Promise?”
    He nodded, but turned away quickly, his careworn face shadowed with secrets…
     
    Over the years, I’d followed Papa’s rules faithfully. My emotions were well-schooled, always under control, and I suppose that was why I found my response to John Devlin so troubling.
    He’d come up behind me in the cemetery and must have said my name, but I was so lost in thought, I didn’t hear him. When he placed his hand on my shoulder to get my attention, the hair rose up on my scalp like the aftermath of an electrical jolt. I jerked away from him without thinking.
    He looked taken aback by my reaction. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
    “No, it’s okay. It’s just…”
    “This place? Yeah, it’s pretty creepy. I would think you’re used to that, though.”
    “Not all cemeteries are creepy,” I said. “Most of them are beautiful.”
    “If you say so.” Something in his tone—a cold, brittle undercurrent—made me think of his ghosts. I wondered again who they were and what they’d been to him in life.
    He was still peering down at me curiously. For some reason, his height hadn’t been so obvious to me earlier, but