I approached the pole the guard had examined. It was about twenty feet tall with spikes on the sides that formed a sort of ladder. On top was a box that looked like a small speaker.
I turned back to Eve.
She was on her knees, her hands clamped to the sides of her head. I hadn’t heard her go down.
I glanced from her to the box and then quickly ran to her side.
“Sorry,” I muttered, crouching next to her.
“I’m okay,” she groaned as she pushed me away. “I’m all right.” But she retched until it sounded like she was on the verge of bringing up internal organs.
Wiping her mouth with the edge of her sleeve, she climbed unsteadily to her feet.
“There’s an HFD on top of the pole,” I said, standing. “They must be motion activated.”
Eve frowned. “Then why didn’t it go off when the guard was near it?” She glanced down at her wrist and ran a hand over the metal cuff. She held out her arm and slowly walked forward. When she was about five feet from the pole, she flinched and yanked her arm back. After a moment, she held out her other hand. This time, she seemed perfectly fine.
“It’s the cuffs.” She twisted the metal around her wrist. “They must have some kind of sensor in them that sets off the HFD when you get too close.”
I glanced from Eve to the pole and then back. Careful to stay out range, I walked to the fence and peered through the links.
There was a path. It ended about thirty feet away with a waist-high gate. It was the kind of barrier that would be easy to slip over. With the HFD covering the path, they probably didn’t worry about wolves just hopping the gate.
But I wasn’t a wolf.
“What was it Dex said at breakfast? That there were two places in the camp they didn’t want wolves to go?”
“You think this is number two?”
“I think a fence and an HFD is going to a lot of trouble if it’s not.” I turned back to Eve. “I can get over the gate. If I waited five minutes, do you think that would be enough time for you to get out of range?”
Eve shook her head. “I’m staying.”
She couldn’t be serious. “The second I get within five feet of the pole, it’ll go off.”
“Not for long. Unless you’re planning on strolling at a leisurely pace, it should only hit me for a minute.”
I opened my mouth but then shrugged. Who was I to argue if Eve wanted to sign up for another dose of pain?
Still, just because I wasn’t going to argue with her didn’t mean I wanted to hurt her any more than necessary. I made a run for the opening of the path, not slowing or glancing back as I raced past the HFD. She’d be all right once I was out of range; I just had to get there as quickly as possible.
I rounded the edge of the fence and almost did a face plant as I clambered over the gate. I caught a glimpse of Eve’s red hair out of the corner of my eye as I hurtled down the path, but I didn’t stop until I had gone another fifteen feet.
Eve was already standing by the time I looked back. She nodded at me, once, and I did the same before continuing on.
The chain-link fence rose at least ten feet into the air on either side of the path and left just enough space in the middle for a jeep to squeeze through. It was creepy and claustrophobic and I couldn’t shake the feeling that the whole thing was going to snap down on me. The breeze—which had been gentle and welcome when we left the laundry building—picked up strength and pushed at my back.
After a few minutes, the path curved to the right and then ended in a small, overgrown clearing. The fence branched out on either side, looping around an area that was too perfectly square to be anything other than man-made. When I glanced around the edges of the clearing, I noticed HFDs along each side of the fence.
The space was completely empty. I bit my lip. Why go to all this trouble to keep people out of an empty field?
I waded into the straggly grass and tripped as my sneaker caught on the edge of something hard.
I pitched forward and barely caught my balance. Letting out a low curse, I glanced down. A small rectangle had been set into the ground. I crouched and brushed thick weeds away from a granite slab. It was a grave marker, the name and dates worn smooth by time and weather.
I stood and walked down two rows of identical stones. There were fourteen in total, and only one had retained a legible date: 1933.
If the main building had been a hospital for tuberculosis patients, it made sense that there would be a graveyard, but why hide it? Who would care?
The markers in the next row looked different. Curious, I walked forward. The grass was slightly less overgrown, here, and the markers were metal, not stone. They weren’t decades old—the oldest was dated just five months ago—and each had a four-digit number where a name should be.
My blood turned to ice as I glanced at my wrist: four digits.
What if Dex was right?
Pulse thudding, I walked forward, counting as I went. There were six rows of seven markers and each row was progressively less overgrown. When I reached the last row, the graves were covered with plain dirt that looked like it could have been turned yesterday.
All of the dates were within the last four weeks.
I reached the last marker.
I couldn’t look down.
I had to look down.
My knees threatened to give out in relief as I stared at the slab of metal and read the date. Six days. The date was six days past. Whoever was buried here, it wasn’t . . . it wasn’t Serena.
A gust of wind whipped my hair around my face as a low rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. A flutter of yellow a few feet away caught my attention and all the relief died in my chest.
A wooden stake—the kind they used on construction sites to show where things should be placed—had been driven into the ground right where the next marker would be.
A roaring sound filled my head, louder than the distant thunder.
There were only two reasons why a stake would be there: either a body had been buried and the marker hadn’t been placed yet or . . .
I stumbled back, struggling to keep my balance as the first drops of rain hit my face.
. . . or they were marking where the next body would go.
“POP QUIZ, MACKENZIE DOBSON . . .”
“I’m not playing.”
“Spoilsport.” Amy laced her fingers through the links of the fence and stared at the cemetery. Her pale-blue sundress seemed to glow slightly in the dark and her bare feet and legs were splattered with bits of mud and grass.
She stared at the markers—small, dark shapes barely visibly in the mist. “Why do you think they took their names? They took their names and left them with numbers no one would remember them by. It’s sort of sad.”
Blood dripped off her hands and landed on the grass. For a moment, I thought she had cut herself, but then the moon slipped out from behind the clouds. The entire fence was coated in blood. Thick red beads ran down the links and fell to the dirt below. The earth soaked it up like a sponge, and when Amy shifted her weight, the ground beneath her gave a soft, wet sigh.
“If I could see them,” continued Amy as though nothing were wrong, “if I could talk to the Thornhill ghosts, do you think they’d talk back?”
