The Sinner by Amanda Stevens

in, cicadas and bullfrogs serenaded from the marsh as the bats flew out of their houses. It was a lovely time, a lonely time, with the last rays of the sunset valiantly staving off twilight.
    Angus and I sat there until the shadows thickened at the edge of the yard and dusk crept over the orchard. I felt nothing unnatural in the breeze, but there was a sense of wrongness about the house and yard that I had not experienced before.
    Perhaps it really was nothing more than my imagination fueled by Kendrick’s story. Or perhaps my finding those caged graves had somehow stirred a dormant evil. Whatever the reason, I found myself lingering on the steps and then on the screened porch because I didn’t want to enter the house.
    â€œOh, just get it over with,” I muttered as I pushed open the back door and stepped across the threshold. Fumbling for the light switch, I paused just inside the doorway as my gaze darted about the kitchen.
    Most of the fixtures and cabinets were original to the house and created a vivid sense of time and place. I had a sudden vision of a woman in a black dress standing at the old farmhouse sink washing dishes. She wasn’t a ghost or a mirage or even one of Darius Goodwine’s illusions, but rather another product of my imagination. My gaze drifted to the table where a man with wire-rimmed glasses sat reading the Bible. What had driven a gentle, God-fearing man to murder his wife in her sleep and hide her body so well she’d yet to be found?
    I watched the Willoughbys for a moment longer before allowing them to fade back into the past.
    For the next few minutes, I busied myself attending to Angus’s dinner needs and then left him to his food as I walked slowly from room to room, searching for cold spots, listening for inexplicable sounds and sniffing the slightly musty air for peculiar scents.
    Nothing seemed amiss even in the large front bedroom, which I assumed had belonged to George and Mary. I’d chosen the space for myself because of the southern exposure, but I’d spent very little time in the room. On most nights, the summer heat chased me out to the back porch where I would lie in the hammock watching the stars until I grew drowsy.
    I wondered now if I had avoided the room because I’d subconsciously picked up on a disturbing feel—that sense of wrongness I’d experienced on the back steps. My gaze traveled over the room, searching every corner and crevice. If I peeled back the area rug at the end of the bed, would I find bloodstains on the floorboards? If I emptied my mind, would I feel the reverberation from Mary Willoughby’s screams?
    There was nothing here, I told myself. No ghosts. No evil presence. Just that slight fusty odor that came from aging places. The house remained at peace.
    Even so, I quickly packed up all my belongings and hauled my suitcase down the hallway to one of the smaller bedrooms at the rear of house. After I stored my things, I took a long, cool shower and put on a fresh nightgown before wandering back out to the kitchen.
    Angus had finished his dinner by this time. He seemed content to curl up in a corner and watch drowsily as I ate a bowl of cereal standing at the sink. Then fetching my laptop, I settled down at the table for an evening of research.
    So much had happened I hardly knew where to start. As on edge as I already was about the house, I decided to leave the topic of the Willoughbys for another day, concentrating instead on memento mori symbolism and the concept of triplism. I found a wealth of information on the transmigration of souls, but nothing at all on the Eternal Brotherhood of Resurrectionists or their enemy, the Congé . Finally putting all that aside, I searched through dozens of mortsafe images trying to find a duplicate or similar design to the cages in the clearing.
    I had hoped once I began my research, a pattern would emerge that would help define my investigation, but by the time I finally