Page 68

The puppy circles in my lap once, twice, three times. Settles. Sighs.

“Cages,” I say, “cages over graves.”

“And?” Widow asks.

“People with weird-ass names.”

In my back pocket, my phone buzzes. I pull it out, set it on the desk, ignoring another text from Micah. Widow is waiting for a better answer, arms crossed, eyes penetrating. I push my hair out of my face, plant my feet on the floor, rock the chair back and forth, calming myself.

There were cages, yes. Some with gates and locks, oddities that I allowed to be explained away. I believe what Widow said about them; it’s bizarre and alarming, but I don’t think she would lie to me. There’s something else, though.

“Aus dem Nichts,” I say, repeating the German phrase I’d seen on one of the stones. On Typhus’s grave, the one born in 1875, who the people of Bethington dug up, dismembered, and dispersed.

“Out of nothing,” Widow says, translating for me. “It’s the first part of the Zedeker family motto, my particular branch, anyway.”

“What’s the rest?” I ask.

The German rolls off Widow’s tongue effortlessly, guttural and fluid. “Aus dem Nichts, erheben wir uns.”

“Out of nothing . . .” I repeat.

“We rise,” finishes Widow, her eyes dark and tight on mine. “What else did you see out there?”

“I . . .” My mind wanders, searching. “Typhus, more than one—but not your brother.”

“No.” Widow shakes her head. “He’s not there.”

“Then where is he?” I ask. “You said you woke up one morning and he was gone—” I break off, suddenly aware of language, and the fluidity of words.

“He was gone,” Widow says. “We didn’t know it was rabies until the symptoms were already there, and once you’ve got it . . .” She raises one shoulder, drops it. “He got bit by a raccoon, jumped at his face and got him right in the neck. We put the animal down, of course, cleaned up my brother’s wound. He was fine, at first. Took a couple weeks to become symptomatic, and by then, it was too late.”

“Jesus Christ, why didn’t you take him to the fucking doctor?” I ask. “Surely—”

“There’s little to be done, as far gone as he was once we realized,” she says. “With people seeing Satan everywhere they looked, and the Zedeker name on their lips . . . if anyone knew Restoration Acres had an active rabies case out here, they would’ve shut us down, taken what was ours. And we cannot lose this place.”

Her mouth thins after that, face tightening, eyes unfocused.

“Widow,” I say, shivering. “Where is Typhus?”

She turns to me, face blank. “Where do you think?”

“He’s . . .” I think the answer before I say it, looking for confirmation in her eyes, finding it before I speak.

How deep did you dig?

“He’s in the compost, isn’t he?”

“Buried deep.” She nods. “We couldn’t put him in the graveyard. We were worried that people would put two and two together, get curious about his disappearance, go out to the family plot. Maybe dig him up.”

“Aus dem Nichts, erheben wir uns,” I say experimentally, the German rough on my tongue. The caged graves, the name Typhus recurring, over and over.

Coming back.

Resurfacing.

“Out of nothing, we rise,” I whisper, remembering the stone those words were on. Typhus, died in 1918, desecrated soon after. Born in 1875 . . . eleven years after his father, Lister, dead in 1864, and one year after his mother died, gone in 1874.

“Not from a mother,” I say. “And with no father.”