Page 3 of What Happens at Nightfall

“Susan Smith McKinney Steward. She was—”

“I know. You told me. The first African-American female doctor in New York. If I make you miss her grave, you’ll never let me forget it. Shoo.” Jess shoved her arms into her sweater and squatted next to her fallen bag.

Longchamp. Bought when she had a corporate look to keep up and a corporate salary to sustain it. Now significantly worn about the edges and carrying too much random crap. Like Jess. The rough gravel of the road had gouged a gray line in the dark leather.

No point crying over spilled milk. Or spilled Lancôme. Jess shoved a lipstick back in her bag. Sunscreen, sunglasses, hand sanitizer, a collection of fuzzy cough drops. It was that strange time of day when the dying light made everything blurry, an Impressionist’s rendering of the world sketched in smudged chalk. Jess shoveled fallen items into her bag. In the creeping dusk she could smell moist dirt and decaying leaves. The darkness closed around her with a smothering hush. There were no traffic sounds, no voices, no anything. Just the sound of the tree leaves hissing above her, as though they were whispering danger.

Quick . . .

Who had said that? No one. Just the wind. Jess lurched to her feet, hauling her bag up onto her shoulder, ready to sprint in the direction of the tour group somewhere down the twisty road, when she saw something glinting on the grass, halfway up the slope.

Metal. A key.

Not one of her keys. By the time she’d reached it, Jess could see that it was a key on steroids, something out of the House of Usher, fully six inches long, with exaggerated teeth.

She could just leave it there. That would be the New York way. Don’t touch anything that doesn’t belong to you; look the other way; not my business. But she’d been raised in a small town where if you sneezed in your bedroom at midnight the next morning the crossing guard offered you a tissue.

The metal stung her palm, unnaturally cold. It was just a key, Jess told herself. She’d turn it in at the gate. Or give it to the guide.

If she could find the guide. Atavistic panic rose in her breast as she realized she couldn’t hear the guide anymore. But she could hear something else. There, in the darkness. A snuffling sound, a gasping and rasping that wasn’t the wind or the leaves.

Jess’s hand tightened on the shank of the giant key.

She could hear Kimmy’s voice doing its best Dracula imitation. Alone. In a graveyard.

In the middle of Brooklyn, for heaven’s sake.

The sound was coming from just ahead of her, from the center of what might have been either a particularly droopy tree or a shrub on steroids. It sounded, Jess realized, like crying. Or like someone trying hard not to cry. She knew what that was like, stuffing your fist in your mouth to try to shove the feelings in.

Slowly, Jess made her way up the slope. In the opening between the leaves, the white marble of a monument gleamed faintly.

In front of it was a boy.

He was curled up as small as he could make himself, rocking back and forth, knees pulled to his chest, head tucked down against his knees.

In the eerie half-light, he looked like something out of In a Dark, Dark Room. A ghost boy, curled against his own tomb . . .

Except would a ghost boy really be wearing Nikes?

If this was a ghost, it was a recent and very corporeal one. There was a whiff of gym socks about him and that indefinable eau de adolescent boy that Jess remembered from Kimmy’s three brothers.

Jess realized she was holding the key like a weapon. She shoved it into her sweater pocket, where it bulged strangely. “Are you okay?”

The boy started so violently he banged his head on the stone behind him, letting out a very human yelp. He tried to scramble backward, but the monument was in the way.

“It’s okay,” said Jess, even though it clearly wasn’t okay. “Are you the one who bumped into me?”

“Sorry,” muttered the boy. Hunched inside a bulky sweatshirt at least two sizes too big for him, he seemed very small and very young, his face pale beneath a mop of dark curls.

“Did you get lost?” Jess asked. “Did your friends leave you here?”

The boy made a convulsive movement with his head. “I’m f-fine.”

“You don’t seem fine.” She couldn’t leave him here. Didn’t the guide say they locked the gates at seven? “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here after dark.”

The boy made a huffing sound that was almost a laugh. “I live here.”

“In this tree?”