This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2022 by Veronica Henry

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

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ISBN-13: 9781662509445 (digital)

Cover design by Will Staehle

Cover image: © ACTIVE MUSEUM / ACTIVE ART / Alamy Stock Photo

October 1958

Maggie had a good husband who in recent months had become bedeviled by a series of bad decisions. A loan given in faith, yet to be repaid. The ground-floor investment turned sham. A used Packard ragtop that a week after purchase had coughed out a blast of smelly fumes before shuddering to a stop three blocks from home.

Between the two of them, she was the more levelheaded. And unlike other couples, when they were alone, her Francis pressed her to speak her mind. She had cautioned against each of these calls. But in a manner born of the streak of successes that had bought them their home and the ability to dine out every now and again, he had chosen to ignore her sensible counsel.

So when, before he left for work that morning, her husband beseeched her to meet him for a night out, dinner at the new country-cooking place, Maggie felt the unwanted, increasingly frequent stirrings of another bad decision close at hand. In his way, tacit, never loud or boastful, her Francis had underscored the importance of her hearing what he had to propose next.

The restaurant was a mellow affair sandwiched between a bank and a jeweler’s on Montgomery Street. Brick paved and high noon busy, the stretch of road ran alongside Franklin Square in what was becoming the seat of Savannah’s burgeoning Negro renaissance.

Restaurant was a generous term if Maggie was a truthful woman, and she was. If she and Francis stood and stretched their arms out on either side, their fingers could touch the exposed brick walls. The room would have been better served by a longish picnic table than the handful of tables crammed atop one another.

The small chandelier and white tapers added to what Maggie’s mother would have called ambience. Maggie gazed at her husband’s face and, even after all these years, felt that flush of warmth. From the first time he had shown up at her parents’ home, hat in hand pressed to his chest, flowers in the other, her mother had foreseen them being together. Their short courtship and backyard wedding. Their little girl, Annie Mae. Their love.

But Maggie hadn’t been gifted with the sight.

The candle cut off thoughts of her mother. The flame writhed, doing a fine impression of that new dance, the jitterbug offshoot—the bop. She blinked, and just like that, it was a regular old candle again. Her imagination had probably gotten the best of her.

They were huddled at a table in the corner, nearest the kitchen. She glanced over her husband’s shoulder through the cutout in the back wall, watching the cook slide overflowing plates onto the countertop to the outstretched hands of the lone waitress.

They prattled on about pedestrian things: a roof repair, their daughter’s recent growth spurt, a story in the Savannah Tribune about Congressman Powell’s tax troubles. Maggie knew it for what it was, a sort of tilling of the dirt before planting the seed.

By and by, Francis set his fork down, wiped his mouth, and then reached across the table to grasp her hand. He ran a thumb across her knuckles, then interlaced their fingers. “There’s no place in the South for us anymore.”

And there it was.

Maggie knew what he meant by us. He’d broached the subject a time or two before. He was of a mind that there was a yellow brick road paved with riches for Negroes who hightailed it north. Her gaze immediately skimmed the tables nearest them. No doubt the other patrons had heard him. Sure enough, a few were bold enough to stare, reproach written all over their faces. The town was divided into those who thought leaving was inevitable and those like her, who were flat-out insulted by the notion. If Francis noticed, he didn’t say anything. She lowered her eyes and gently pulled her hand away.

“Brooklyn is a boomtown.” He charged ahead, animated as a stalk of wheat caught up in a good headwind. “Ten, Margaret. Over the last few months, the firm has lost ten paying customers to Brooklyn alone. Don’t even get me started on everybody else leaving.”

“Francis, you don’t have a job yet,” Maggie said, with subtle insistence. She paused, then, “For that matter, I don’t either. We can’t just up and go.” Aside from cleaning and nursemaiding, work for women was scarce as a blizzard in Savannah, but Maggie was as dogged as she was organized. A shy drill sergeant in heels, her father had joked. Earning that high school diploma had been no small matter; it had helped her land a good position at the church—even if it was part time.

Her husband had made a name for himself keeping the books of all the Negro businesses up and down Main Street. Enough to buy what was, to her eyes, a picture-perfect little home in Cuyler-Brownsville. And he wanted to leave it all behind.

Francis had that pinched look on his face. The one that had precipitated many an argument. She steeled herself. “My brother’s been gone, what, six months? He’s got a job at the shipyard, an apartment, and a brand-new car.” Francis picked up his napkin and threw it down on his empty plate. “You just don’t believe in me.”

Maggie knew Gerard, all right. Had come to love him as if he were her own kin. And Annie Mae adored him. He was a decent enough soul, albeit a little dim. He was also prone to embellishment. But Francis had always been as blind to his brother’s shortcomings as he was to his own. If Gerard had half of what he claimed, she would be shocked.

“Maybe if we saved up a little more?” Maggie offered, trying to meet him halfway. “In a year’s time, we’ll have enough to hold us over if it takes longer to find work.”

Francis leaned back and snapped his shirt down. “Think about Annie Mae. The better education she’ll get. No, I’m done waiting.”

Maggie didn’t like Francis’s tone one bit, the finality of it. And her expression must have told him so because he softened.

“Forget those people,” he said, flicking his head over at the woman who was still giving them the evil eye, and taking Maggie’s hand again. “They’re part of the reason we’re leaving. I’m just asking you to trust me. Let’s give it some time. If it don’t work out, Savannah will still be sitting right here on this river if we want to come back.”

This was their decision, not his alone. Maggie swelled with an overwhelming urge to tell him just that. But she didn’t. Francis held her gaze, imploring her. How this man scavenged all this optimism in the face of his recent losses was a riddle with no solution. And in that instant, the image that was their lives began to rearrange itself. She and Annie Mae would follow Francis wherever he took them. As long as they were together, they would manage. If things went south, she’d find a way to fix them. And the negative phrasing about the South wasn’t lost on her. Even if they chose to leave, she wouldn’t allow herself to disparage her home that way again.

“Y’all want anything else?” The waitress, clad head to toe in black, had been watching from the corner like a chaperone. She had somehow peeled herself away and approached without Maggie noticing. At that moment, the candle flared. The flame shot up well over their heads. The remaining stub burned down to a nub, only the blackened wick sticking out of the holder. Maggie gasped, eyes widening. Both the waitress and Francis looked at her like she was crazy. Hadn’t they seen it?

“What is it?” Francis asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Maggie waved him off. She moved the extinguished candle aside with an unsteady hand.

Francis watched her a moment more before turning back to the waitress and speaking for them. He gestured at Maggie’s plate. “See that good food left there on that plate?” He took his fork, jabbed at a slice of ham, and shoved it into his mouth. He didn’t finish chewing before he spoke. “That means my lovely wife has saved some room for a slice of your apple—”

Francis fell into a fit of coughing. Maggie chuckled. She had always chastised him for talking with his mouth full. The waitress reached over and gave him a solid slap on the back.

The coughing ended, replaced by an ugly silence. It was like his throat was stoppered. Maggie’s laughter broke off, and she shot out of her chair. Francis was gagging, hands clutched at his throat.

“Help me!” Maggie screamed, pounding on his back.

Others rushed forward. Francis tumbled out of his chair, upending the table and everything on it. Strong arms pulled Maggie away as two other patrons moved in.

Brown skin, tinged a ghastly blue. An increasingly vacant look in his eyes set Maggie to wailing. She tore away from whoever was holding her and raced to her husband’s side. “For heaven’s sake, don’t just stand there. Call the rescue wagon!”

Francis’s eyes bulged. His mouth moved, but no words escaped. Maggie rolled him over on his side. She shoved her fingers in his mouth, cleared out the bits and pieces of ham, and then groped deeper, trying to force him to throw up.

“Let it out!” she cried. But his body had gone limp. That sparkle in his eye snuffed out. Tears streamed down Maggie’s face. Where was the doctor? Why couldn’t anyone help him? She let fly a string of curses and prayers.

The door burst open, but instead of the rescue attendants, Jackson Stone barreled in.

The funeral director sank to a knee and laid a hand on Francis’s chest. Fingers to neck and ear to his mouth. His lips thinned when he looked up. He shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Maggie.”

The world splintered and fell away. All of existence swallowed whole by Maggie’s relentless screams. She was hunched over her husband, rocking his lifeless body, when something inside her snapped. It was as if starting at the top of her head, an unseen hand began to pull back her skin, peeling her like an orange. When she lay open and exposed, a great tug drew her up and away like a wall had sprung up to shield her soul from the boundless grief.

She thrashed and kicked, airy limbs fighting to go back. Below, customers milled around wide eyed, and the woman who’d glared at them stood there, hands clasped, lips forming a prayer. Maggie’s beloved husband sprawled on the floor. A rescue attendant who’d finally arrived feverishly pumped at his chest.

If her husband was dead, why was she the one floating above it all?

And then Maggie felt him. A version of her Francis, delicate and stocking sheer, hovering right beside her. He touched two fingers to his lips and laid them on hers. Wearing a placid expression, he floated up, up, pieces of him dissolving. When Maggie tried to follow, he stopped and shook his head.

Go back. His voice was a somber blues note in her head. I’ll be waiting.

Maggie fought to ascend, but as if tethered by a rubber band, she snapped back into herself, and all of the anguish crashed in.

Too soon, the room was cleared, Francis taken away. The candle, the one she was sure had burned down, stood at full height, lit once again. When it blazed and bowed, and a finger of flame crept toward her, she didn’t even flinch.

Pride. As Jackson descended the steps to the mortuary, his mortuary, pride straightened his back and lifted his dimpled chin. His was born of not arrogance but a staunch sense of accomplishment. He had overcome every hurdle the city had thrown at him.

He flicked on the light and whispered a prayer for the body resting on his stainless steel table. Then added another for the family. He slipped on his rubber gloves and began loading the embalming equipment onto a cart.

“You know what they say about all work . . .”

Jackson yelped. Goose bumps marched up and down his arms. The aspirator slipped from his hands and landed on the cart with a clang. He hated that voice. It was toneless. Hollow as a corpse. “What do you want?”

“Why do you hold such scorn for me when I alone have elevated you from the gutter?”

Jackson refused to give his tormentor the satisfaction of any further reaction. He piled everything onto his cart and rolled it over to the body. “That’s the difference between us, among other things. I’ve got no problem acknowledging your help. But you”—he stopped and pointed—“you don’t give me any credit. I’m the one down here doing the work.”

“You think me selfish?”

“I think you don’t know any better. How could you?”

“We are much alike, are we not? Driven. Dedicated to our work. We ease people’s suffering.”

Jackson considered this while he washed the body and then positioned the hands, crossing them over the abdomen. Next, he closed the eyes and mouth.

The truth was, people usually wanted to spend as little time as possible with him. Few viewed him as a suitable social invite. The only somebody aside from the bookkeeper’s wife who spared him more than a spattering of words was brooding on the other side of the table.

“When I hear words that make sense, I don’t argue them,” he said.

There was a ruffling of robes and a whistle—sounds Jackson had come to associate with contentment in his guest.

“The candles are burning,” his associate began. “Ever burning. Some are just starting; others are nearing their end. I have come to gift you with news of another ending.”

Despite himself, warmth radiated throughout Jackson’s body. This would be the third in a month. His coffers, overflowing. He would approach the family under the guise of presales. Only they wouldn’t have a clue how soon they’d be calling on him.

The conspirators spoke of the necessary details. When the matter was closed, his associate lingered. Like a struck match, conversation flickered. Mindless, run-of-the-mill things. It didn’t particularly bother Jackson. For both of them, solitude was like a moat, keeping everyone else at bay. Hours later, Jackson was glad to be finally left to finish his work.

When the body was preserved, Jackson laid a hand on the sewn-up chest cavity, and the transformation began. Rich brown coloring returned. Balding receded. Lines and wrinkles gentled like a pebble’s rough edges smoothed by a river current. He always makes them look so alive, his customers would proclaim. Jackson Stone didn’t know why he had been granted the gift of glamour, but with his associate’s help, he had grown a business, and he relished it like the accomplished man he always knew he would be.

Savannah was a city built on top of its dead. Diners, gas stations, even schools squatted on blacktop and concrete that buried days gone by. But Margaret had a feeling that if the city’s residents had anything to do with it, the cemetery and church where her Francis was interred would hopefully be protected from the big-time developers intent on competing with the other port city, Charleston.

An eternity of yesterdays, amounting to three months and six days ago, Francis had died. Had Maggie been given a choice, she would have opted for the older restaurant that day, the one with the dusty fan propped up in the corner that neither cooled nor stopped you from leaving with layers of kitchen scents clinging to your clothes. But her husband had been excited to try the new spot. It was the last in what had been a string of bad calls.

This one, she couldn’t clean up.

Back for the funeral, Francis’s brother had arrived at the bus station with one bag and what looked like the weight of the world teetering on his sagging shoulders. And he hadn’t left. Maggie had heard through the grapevine that much of what she’d suspected was true. Gerard had filled Francis’s head with a pipe dream. That brand-new car? A secondhand bicycle. The fancy apartment was an outhouse-size room with shared facilities at the YMCA, and a merry-go-round of low-paying odd jobs barely covered it.

“It’s your fault,” Maggie had barked, slapping Gerard’s face when he showed up at her door. “He took me to that restaurant because you filled his head with foolishness.”

She regretted hitting him and apologized directly. To his credit, Gerard had not struck her. Hadn’t even raised his voice. He’d merely lowered his tear-filled eyes, shuffled past her, and said, “That screen door is about to fall off the hinges—you got a screwdriver in here somewhere?”

But if truthfulness wasn’t his thing, children were. He doted on his niece, Annie Mae. And in him, she retained a piece of her father. For that, Maggie was grateful. The only people who were truly dead were those who had been forgotten.

Within a month of his arrival, though, their lives had been upended. The home she loved and everything in it, wrenched away by the bank. Gerard was renting a room in a boardinghouse. Both sets of parents were long gone and the remnants of their families scattered north and west like shed leaves. Maggie took her daughter and piled their meager belongings into the Packard, which Gerard had fixed. Afraid to go anywhere else and too proud to ask, she parked at the church and spent one terrifying night keeping watch as her baby girl slept wrapped up in a blanket with her one-eyed Smokey Bear teddy bear in the back seat.

Maggie had nodded off, forehead against the steering wheel, when the sound of Pastor Dunbar’s ring tapping against the window woke her.

She stepped out of the car and closed the door softly. She smoothed her hair and the pencil skirt that felt like a tomb. She had been thinking about this all night: “Is that shack still empty?”

The pastor’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He knew Maggie well enough not to offer her money and appeared to be in the struggle of his life to find the right words to say. He looked down the hillside toward the weather-beaten hovel that sat halfway between the church and the cemetery, then back to Maggie. “Well, yes. But that’s no place—”

“I’ll clean it out myself. You can keep every bit of my salary as payment.” She thought about that, then corrected herself. “Minus twenty dollars for groceries. I’ve got a child to feed.”

“Mrs. Royal,” the pastor began. Despite having known her since he was a child, since she’d gotten married, he rarely used her first name. “I’m sure one of the members has room. Let me—”

Maggie ground her teeth to keep her lip from trembling. She had been baptized in this church and had worked as secretary for three years, but she hadn’t attended services in twice as long. Those people had shunned her mother, called her rootwork backward and evil. She wouldn’t ask them for help. “We’ll be fine.”

The place was a soulless ruin.

Maggie was a southern girl through and through, but she hated bugs like someone born and raised in a northern city block. She covered her hair with a scarf, slipped on gloves and overalls, and went at that shack like a woman on a seek-and-destroy mission. Beating back spiders, struggling through webs. Scouring the ancient tub and toilet until even the rust spots gleamed.

Opening the door to let a small snake slither out. Boll weevils, a nest of cockroaches that she still shivered at just thinking about. She aired the place. Swept, mopped, and scrubbed. All the while talking to Francis, assuring him that she was fine. She sewed new curtains, hung a drape to separate the doorless back and front rooms, and hung sprigs of lavender. The ruined shack became her little cottage.

Maggie sold the car; she wouldn’t be needing it. She saved most of the money and used the rest to purchase a few furnishings. At first, her daughter protested about living so close to the dead, but she adjusted. It wasn’t Maggie’s first choice, either, but a roof was a roof, and she was glad for it.

For reasons she didn’t understand, in the weeks following her husband’s death, Maggie felt something bordering on a compulsion to take up candle making. Hadn’t her grandmother made them a time or two? She bought molds, wicks, and wax. She used the candles at home, but soon Pastor Dunbar was buying them for the church and with him, half the congregation. She made a fair bit of money too. Francis would have been surprised but proud.

With Annie Mae off to school, Maggie headed to work. She walked the grassy path between her home and the church atop the hill and watched the late-morning sunlight bathe the flat expanse of New Light Cemetery. The place was green and somber and perpetually silent.

In the distance, she could just make out workers digging a grave, the red-tilled earth opening the door to another loss. The air was autumn crisp but thick with the rotten-egg smell of sulfur drifting up from the paper mill downtown.

The pastor didn’t come in every day, leaving the office affairs to her, but the funeral home director, Jackson Stone, was waiting for her at the side door. He had done an admirable job with her husband’s services. He had also been one of Francis’s bookkeeping customers.

“Good morning, Miss Royal,” he said, removing his hat.

Jackson wore his loose gray suit like a king’s robe. Her ears drank in the tone of his voice, rich as apple butter. Nat King Cole smooth. Maggie’s stomach fluttered. Wait, she thought to herself. What am I doing? She realized she had been staring and averted her gaze. “Missus,” she reminded him and herself. “Pastor Dunbar probably won’t be in today.”

The funeral director strode into the office behind her. “No ma’am,” he said. “I’m looking for the real brains at this here house of worship. And that’s you.”

Maggie suppressed a smile, sat down, and pulled off her gloves. “You here about your candles or a service?”

“The latter,” Jackson said. “But if you have candles, I can always use them.”

Maggie offered to start a pot of coffee and was thankful when he declined; she preferred to get business out of the way. The two went on to discuss preparations for three pending wakes and funerals. She bristled a bit at his excitement. It was as if the money mattered to him more than people’s suffering. Still, he seemed to be a kind man. A widower who, after he’d buried his wife, had turned down every woman who had shown up to his big house with a cake or offer of help. That had been over a year ago.

After their business was done, a hush fell over the room. When Jackson wasn’t watching her, his eyes darted all over the place. He rubbed at the back of his neck and blew out a tired breath.

“Everything all right?” Maggie asked.

“Never better,” he said, but Maggie thought his expression said otherwise. “Mind if I ask you something?”

Maggie eyed him warily. “Ask whatever you want, and I’ll decide if I want to answer.”

Jackson raised a shapely dark eyebrow. “I always told your husband if he didn’t hurry up and marry you, I would.”

“Was that your question?” He had attempted to court her around the time she’d met Francis, but her husband had already claimed her heart. Maggie knew what Jackson was doing, but it was too soon. She wasn’t ready.

“Why was Francis in such a rush to move north? Something going on at work? I can’t get a peep out of the new bookkeeper.”

Maggie had wondered the same thing. Her husband had put it all on Gerard’s good fortune, but she knew there was something more. It was in the ledgers and notebooks he’d suddenly brought home instead of leaving at the office. How he’d snapped them closed when she’d come into the room. There was money involved. Wasn’t it always about money in some shape or fashion?

“Opportunity,” Maggie explained. “Like everybody else. He wanted better for us.”

The funeral director considered her words for a long time as if he, too, understood there was more to the story but was deciding whether to push her on it. In the end, he let it go. “I heard you were looking for a plumber,” he said. “I told you I would help whenever you need it.”

“I don’t want to be a bother,” Maggie said. Over the last couple of weeks, he had been angling to get over to her place. She was wary, but plumbers were costly, and even with the candle sales, there was little left for emergencies. She would just have to accept the help.

“No bother at all,” he said. “Come by later in the week? Bring you and Annie Mae some dinner?”

Maggie wanted to decline, but he looked so earnest and so troubled. “We have plenty,” she lied and felt the sting of doing so inside the church. “If you could take a look at the sink, that will be more than enough.”

It was dusk by the time Maggie left work. Through the burnished light, an afternoon shower had left the grass covered in what looked like copper pennies.

Maggie gazed out over the cemetery where Francis lay at rest. She hadn’t visited and wasn’t certain what drew her now, but she followed the church road down toward his plot. She was swatting at a cluster of gnats when a curious sound halted her steps. Her muscles went taut with the realization that the music was in her head. It was a dirge, the song of a funeral march overlaid with a thousand wailing voices.

She lurched forward, palms cupping her ears in a futile effort to block out the screeching. Then Maggie saw something that turned her insides to pulp. Like an invisible needle stitching together a tapestry out of thin air, a dirt road trailing off toward the graves knit itself into being ten paces in front of her. As suddenly as it started, the music stopped. Maggie picked up a rock and hurled it at the scene. It sailed right through and landed with a thud against the tree she knew was there but couldn’t see.

Pinpricks of yellow light blinked into view. They had the appearance of frenzied candle flames, flickering in and out like fireflies. Like tiny ghosts out for an evening stroll, they curved and twisted and gyrated down the road and amassed around a freshly dug grave. There the flames grew, sprouting torsos and arms and legs, ghoulish skeletal heads.

Maggie’s skin went clammy with sweat. She whimpered, unable to scream or to move. The sound of shuffling feet and a low murmur drew her gaze back near where the road began. A funeral procession advanced.

Two solemn figures at the front—one a woman, the hem of her dress fluttering as if by an unseen wind, and a man with a hat clasped to his chest. Four pallbearers with a narrow, ornate coffin on their shoulders. A trail of others following behind. Their faces, featureless brown slabs.

Maggie regained her movement and jumped in front of the procession. They passed right through her. Though her mind sought to make sense of what she was seeing by calling it a dream, she knew better. The procession moved to the grave, where they set the coffin down. The top was open. A sense of dread crept up Maggie’s throat. She ran forward and peered inside. It was empty, save for a child’s toy. Smokey Bear, with a missing eye—just like Annie Mae’s.

The firefly candles floated over the coffin while the mourners returned to pinpricks. The scene had unfolded obnoxious as a foghorn but faded away softly like a page turning in a book. Maggie was left standing in the middle of the cemetery cloaked in a crushing darkness.

It was only the deep thudding in her chest that reminded her to breathe. And she did, sucking in quick, ragged gulps. “Pastor,” she shouted, turning in all directions, even though she knew he wasn’t there. Nobody was. Not even the people who had just passed before her eyes. The air had taken on a decided chill.

Many nights had she left the church late with only the slimmest bit of moonlight to guide the well-worn path home. Never before had the darkness frightened her. But now, as every rustle of leaves or insect chirp butchered her dwindling resolve, it was all she could do to not turn tail and run in the other direction.

It was a prophecy. Maggie’s mother and her grandmothers had had the sight, but not like this. They hadn’t seen death. Someone was going to die.

Annie Mae!

Maggie lifted her skirt and ran to the cottage. When she burst through the door, Annie Mae was seated, as she often was, not at the table but on the floor, with her back against their lone wingback chair, a book open in her lap. Relief, even if it was temporary, stilled Maggie’s thumping heart. Her daughter smiled when she looked up. Then she pushed up the glasses on her nose and said, “What’s wrong, Mama?”

Annie Mae had been a carefree child, dreamy to the point that made Maggie and Francis wonder how she would do in school. But since losing her father, the girl had become hypersensitive. Dedicated to her schoolwork with a sense of perception as keen and sharp as a rosebush thorn. But she was still a child, and with effort, Maggie could fool her. “What’s wrong is I told you to sit near the light if you’re going to read after dark.”

Maggie came inside and hung her sweater on the hook on the back of the door. When she turned, Annie Mae was right behind her. It wouldn’t do to avert her eyes; the girl would latch on to that like a dog on a bone and hound her until she had answers. It broke Maggie’s heart to see her daughter so always on edge, looking out over the precipice, awaiting disaster to visit upon them again.

“Go on and wash up so you can help me with dinner,” Maggie said. Annie Mae trotted off to the bathroom to clean up. Maggie looked outside once more before she snatched the curtains closed and inhaled a few deep breaths. She went to the sink to wash her hands. They were shaking so badly that she dropped the bar of soap three times. When she reached for the dishcloth to dry her hands, Annie Mae was standing there and handed it to her.

“You told me you would come right home today,” she said, unblinking. Another effect of her father’s death. The girl measured minutes like a human stopwatch.

“I wanted to give you more time to finish your schoolwork,” Maggie said. “Hand me the eggs.”

Annie Mae darted off to the icebox and came back with eggs in a bowl. “I was thinking,” she said, placing the bowl on the counter near the sink, “I could help you with your candle making after school. Then we can make double as much, and that way you can be here when I get home. After we read, then we can do some more too.”

Maggie frowned. Where had this come from? “I’m the mother, and you’re the daughter. What that means is we both have roles to play. And yours doesn’t include an after-school job. Not yet.” Maggie had spoken the appropriate words, but the point was a good one. With help, she could expand her business and maybe make a real go at it. They were lucky to have the little home they did. If something happened to Pastor Dunbar and someone new came in, there was no guarantee they would be able to stay.

That feeling of impending death again. Pastor Dunbar? Annie Mae? Maggie couldn’t even fathom it, and she quieted those thoughts. But she would keep an extra-close eye on her baby.

“Uncle Gerard thinks we can go up to the big city. Like Daddy wanted us to. He says Negroes can do anything they want up north.”

She should have known. Maggie could strangle Gerard for filling Annie Mae’s head with his nonsense. “Did your uncle mention what happened when he tried the first time?”

Annie Mae set the eggs down on the high table that served as their kitchen workspace. Maggie cracked them in the skillet. “I thought real hard about that, Mama. You can learn me at home, and all of us can work on your candle business together.”

This child.

“I’ll think on it,” Maggie said. She didn’t want to dash her hopes outright. Having a dream was no small matter for a girl child.

Annie Mae grinned her front-toothless smile.

“Go ahead and set the table.”

Maggie hurried her inquisitive daughter off to bed soon after supper, and despite her protests, quick as a jitterbug, she was snoring softly. Maggie drew a hot bath and settled in to think. The candles were key—no doubt. From the restaurant to her vision, they persisted . . . but why? After sitting in the tub until the water turned cold, she hadn’t made heads or tails of any of it. She toweled off and slipped on her nightdress. She checked the doors and even shut and locked the window she normally left open for the nighttime breeze.

She eased into their shared narrow bed. Her eyes were like a cabinet door that refused to stay closed. Maggie got up and shuffled off to the bathroom, silently closing the door behind her. She leaned over the sink, massaging the back of her neck. That vision was about death, no doubt. But whose? Or maybe she hadn’t seen anything at all—

“Mama!”

There is no greater terror than hearing the scream of someone you love. Maggie yanked at the bathroom door, but it was stuck again. “Annie Mae!” She kicked at the bottom edge where it met the floor at an odd angle, then yanked again.

When it finally opened, she stumbled out to find her daughter in bed sobbing. “Where were you. It was dark and—”

“Shush.” Maggie slipped into bed, cradling Annie Mae. This had happened before. A part of Maggie, a part that wasn’t proud of it, almost resented the attachment. The clinginess, like the umbilical cord had somehow regrown between them. She hadn’t had a single moment to herself since she’d put her husband in the ground. And she immediately felt awful for thinking it. “Mama’s here.”

After her sobs abated, Annie Mae fell asleep again. When morning came, the child was back in good spirits and left for school with instruction for her mother to think about her business proposal. Maggie assured her she would.

As Maggie waved goodbye, panic seized her. The vision, the teddy bear. What if it meant . . . She grabbed her purse and sweater, deciding to walk her all the way there. “Now you wait for your uncle to pick you up—don’t walk home by yourself,” she said, a little too sternly.

She doubled back to the church and was sitting at her desk, struggling to concentrate, when Pastor Dunbar arrived.

“Morning, Mrs. Royal,” he said.

“Can I talk to you about something?” she asked, following him into his office. She had been wondering all night if what had happened when Francis died was connected. If it had unlocked her foremothers’ gift.

“What’s on your mind?” he said, lowering himself into his chair.

“When Francis died . . .” She paused, groping for the right words. “It was like I died with him—for a moment anyway. I floated. We floated above that whole scene. Then he was gone.”

The pastor rubbed his smooth chin and nodded. “I’m not surprised. Husbands and wives, parents and kids, even good friends. Yours isn’t the first time I’ve heard of someone close to the deceased having a similar out-of-body experience.”

Maggie was relieved to hear it. “So I’m not crazy?”

“Not in the least. If anything, it speaks to how much you and Francis cared for one another. The Lord was just letting you know it wasn’t your time.”

Maggie thanked the pastor. As she turned to leave, he said, “I’m glad you saw fit to confide in me.”

Over the next couple of weeks, Maggie’s paranoia shrank from constant companion to occasional visitor. She loosened her grip on Annie Mae, allowing her to walk to school, to play outside after supper.

On a lonely Thursday night, Maggie realized that had been premature. She was wiping down the cooktop when she heard the music again. A somber, dreary note that jumped out of nowhere and landed at her feet like something gone bad. Her throat went dry as she was drawn to the window.

Along the road to the cemetery, another funeral procession. This one led by a lone tall figure, others following behind, carrying the casket. Thousands of those wickedly prophetic flames crept in and out of the procession.

She glanced over at Annie Mae, asleep in their bed. She couldn’t fathom it: if she were gone, Annie Mae would have lost both her parents. And if she lost her daughter, well then, they may as well take her too. The whole thing riled her enough to send the fear on a hasty retreat. She raced outside, screaming, “Leave us alone!” She swung at the ghosts ineffectually. Her hands only served to flutter the mirage, which snapped right back into place.

They had stopped, the coffin folded open. Inside, an unmistakably female shape. In short order, the whole scene was gone again, and Maggie was left sitting on the grass, chest heaving with exertion. After she ran back to check on her daughter, she knew it was time to ask for help.

“I’m seeing funerals,” she said as soon as she rushed into Jackson’s office and closed the door behind her. Who better to ask than a man who dealt with the dead for a living?

“Wait,” he said, coming to his feet and guiding her to a chair. “You’re seeing what now? Slow down.”

Maggie was trembling. “Twice.” She clasped her hands together to keep them from shaking. “Weeks apart. I see ghosts leading a funeral procession. But I can’t tell who is in the coffin. I think . . . I think it means I’m going to lose her.” Maggie paused, then: “Or she will lose me. It’s an omen, isn’t it?”

Jackson didn’t assuage Maggie’s panic. Oddly, he just kind of shuffled back onto the edge of his desk and sat there regarding her, his face all twisted with something she couldn’t understand. She had expected shock, some patronizing, but this? If she wasn’t mistaken, he was afraid. But then the moment passed, and he composed himself. “You’re not sleeping, are you?”

“Sometimes no,” Maggie admitted. “At first I was just missing Francis, but lately . . .” Maggie choked up. “What if something happens to my baby?”

Suddenly, Jackson’s jaw stiffened, his gaze drifted off behind her, and Maggie’s hair stood on end. She jerked around, but nobody was there.

“It’s stress,” Jackson stated. “You lost your husband. Your home. You live in a graveyard, for heaven’s sake.”

“You saying this is all in my head?” Maggie asked.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Jackson said. “Tell me everything.”

Maggie thought for a moment before answering. The truth was the strangeness started that night at the restaurant. The candles. The phantom funerals—it all had begun shortly after. She explained all of this to her friend while he watched her with obviously growing agitation.

“Listen, I have an appointment.” He made a show of checking his watch. “We’ll talk more later.”

He was up and at the door in a blink while Maggie stood up, gaping at him. It was a brush-off if she’d ever seen one. Coming to him had been a mistake. Probably thought she was losing her mind and had decided he didn’t want anything more to do with her.

On the way home, Maggie couldn’t help thinking that maybe Gerard had the right idea. It was time to get out of Savannah; she just needed to figure out how.

“She has the forbidden knowledge,” a voice hissed as soon as Jackson closed the door.

He dared not turn around. Not yet. His skin prickled with awareness. He had to find a way to save her. He arranged his features, funeral-director flat and unemotional, before he spoke. “Grief,” he said, moving behind his oversize desk. He needed solidity, the separation, now. “That and one too many sleepless nights. You heard her.”

His associate moved forward, dragging the shadows along with it. “You care for this one. Do you not?”

Too close. Jackson resisted the urge to shrink back. “She’s a fine woman. One with a little girl. I’m sympathetic, that’s all.”

A weighty silence while his words were considered. “You are transparent.”

“I’m sensible,” Jackson countered. “This is a troubled woman. She sits there in that tiny shack every day with nobody for company but a little seven-year-old ankle biter. She doesn’t see the faces. You heard her. She doesn’t know who is going to die.”

The air was as heavy as his suddenly palpable conscience. Jackson found himself struggling to breathe. Icy fingers cupped his cheek, then crushed his throat.

Rancid breath inches from his face. “We have a bargain, Mr. Funeral Director. One that has made you incomparably rich. You had her husband’s coffin prepared weeks before he died, did you not? There is something about this city, more abominations like her here than anywhere else. All I ask is that you use what I have given you to point me to them. If you cannot do that, you are of no use to me.”

In the dismissal, Maggie found fortitude. The first thing she had done was to pull Annie Mae out of school with a hasty excuse about a family emergency.

She was preparing some valerian root to ease her stomach when her thoughts turned to her grandmother. How she’d talked about including certain things, hair, skin, in her remedies, to produce certain effects. But usually, it was from other people. And Maggie got an idea. She would make a new candle. One infused with a bit of herself—a snip of her hair. It was little more than a risky guess, but maybe, just maybe, she could use the sight, the sight of her mothers, to her advantage.

In exactly three days, it happened again, and Maggie was prepared.

The previous glimpses had told her the body was female. This time when night fell, she was sitting in one of the kitchen chairs, nodding off at the window, when the discordant chords strummed again. She was up and out the door, locking it with her sleeping daughter inside. She knew now that she couldn’t interact directly with the ghosts but had brought the candle.

The procession wound its way along the road, and she planted herself in front of it and held the candle aloft.

The ghosts, in various stages of decomposition, watched her. With her arm, she gestured for the pallbearers to set the coffin down.

Maggie’s knees buckled and nearly gave way when they obeyed. She looked inside the open casket. The teddy bear was there all right, but it was the wedding ring that gave it away. She clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle the scream that would wake Annie Mae. She stumbled backward and blew out the candle. The procession continued on without her.

Maggie stood there in a stupor. The face that lay lifeless in that casket was her own.

“I’ve got something you need to see.” Jackson had called her at the church; she didn’t have a phone at home. “I think I’ve found out what you’re seeing and why. I’ll come pick you up as soon as you’re done there.”

“I’m coming now,” Maggie said. She was still angry at him, but if he could help her, she’d go.

She left Annie Mae with the pastor and took off at a pace just shy of a run. A buttery sun sat low in the sky. Whether from the sun or her racing heart, she had sweat pooling down her back by the time she made it to the funeral home ten minutes later.

Maggie opened the door and stepped into the foyer. “Jackson,” she called out.

“In here,” he called from his office down the hall. There was an odd hitch to his voice, a little higher and tighter than his normal baritone.

Maggie’s hurried footsteps were cushioned by the thick rugs lining the hall. She pushed open the door. “Jackson?” She peered inside.

He was seated at his desk. The ever-present tie loosened around his neck. The first few buttons on his white shirt open. A nearly empty bottle and a tumbler full of a brown liquid sat on his desk. The smell of whiskey stung her nostrils. He didn’t stand, didn’t offer her a chair. She had never seen him in such a state.

Jackson reached for the tumbler and downed the contents in one loud, sloppy gulp. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I tried, I really did. But this is out of my hands. If only you had kept what you saw to yourself.”

“What?” Maggie couldn’t make sense of what this man was saying. “What are you talking about?”

“What he means to say is that death is not yours to see or foretell. I am the keeper of the candles.”

Maggie spun around at the unnatural voice. A shadow floated through the door, and of its own volition, the door closed behind it. All smoke and shadow and billowing robes: she couldn’t see what was hidden beneath. She gasped, her whole body set to trembling, and she backed away until she bumped into Jackson’s desk. She turned to him, and he had his face in his palms.

“I’ll look after Annie Mae,” he mumbled without looking up.

“You won’t come near my daughter. I’ll—”

“You’ll do nothing. Your friend Mr. Stone and I have a pact, you see,” the shadow said. It moved closer to the light. In its skeletal hand, it held a weapon, a pole as tall as she was, ending at a curved blade. “I tell him who Death will visit; he engages the family and secures the rights to the funeral beforehand. In this way, he has become a rich man. But when he comes across a soothsayer, a glimpser such as yourself, he is bound to alert me. Strangely enough, this arrangement has never bothered him before. I believe he likes you.”

“How could you!” Maggie rounded on Jackson. “Francis respected you.”

Jackson fixed her with a glare. “That bleeding-heart bastard was going to rat me out. Sure, I added an upcharge here and there. Who doesn’t?”

“That’s why you’ve been sniffing around? To see if Francis left something that could incriminate you?” Maggie fumed at Jackson’s audacity and betrayal.

Death’s bones rattled, and it closed in behind her. “This is all quite dramatic, but I grow weary of it, and your time here has come to an end.” With that, Death reached out and touched Maggie. And then she was gone.

Maggie’s scream was buried someplace deep inside her. Inaccessible and ineffectual. She hurtled through space and time. Her movements constrained as if groping through the blackest, thickest tar, blotting out breath and sight.

She came through on the other side in a cavernous underground chamber that went on as far as she could see. From the hard-packed earth beneath her feet to every outcropping scaling walls with no ceiling—candles. Poised in ornate candlesticks, candelabras, gilded jars. Every one different. A dizzying, infinite collective. All burning, all in various stages of melt. Maggie couldn’t make sense of it.

Or the cluster of emaciated souls that stood in a clearing off to the side. The scream that she had been holding erupted from her throat.

“They call me Death. I prefer the name Reaper, if you will. I am the keeper of the candles,” the creature said, gliding over to the candles like a farmer tending his flock. “One for each life in the world. The candles are burning, ever burning.”

Maggie’s pulse was racing, and this hole in the ground . . . the walls . . . they were closing in on her. She had to get out of here. “What is this place?” Maggie cried.

“Where you shall be until your candle”—Reaper glanced around and pointed—“that one right there. Until that burns out, this is where you shall remain.”

At that moment, Maggie heard a series of moans and cries. She looked back to the clearing. She counted five people. All wore resignation like shields. All unnaturally pale. Eyes flat.

“Like you,” Reaper said. “Glimpsers. Abominations. Trying to steal what is mine by decree of the Almighty. Their candles, too, are burning. I give you the same choice I gave them.”

“Don’t fall for it.” A warning from one of the men.

“Silence!” Reaper bellowed, and the man shrank. He collapsed to the ground, hugged his knees to his chest, and sobbed.

There had to be a door, a window, a latch hidden somewhere. Maggie tried to run. A wall, there and not there, sprang up to stop her. She tried again and again. But the only clear path was to the clearing, where the others were. Reaper watched her as if amused.

“I cannot allow you to go trampling the candles,” Reaper said. “That”—a forefinger extended—“is your refuge unless . . .”

Maggie squeezed her eyes together. This can’t be happening. Wake up, wake up, wake up—She stopped and breathed. “Unless what?”

“You can choose to end this.”

“I don’t care about any of this.” Maggie felt like an animal caught in a snare, ready to chew off a limb to escape if she had to. “If I see another one—I—I won’t look. I won’t—”

“Ah, but you do care,” Reaper cooed. “You wear it like silk ribbon tied around your neck. What you do not know is that the visions will only become more pronounced. You will see faces. And in time, you will feel bad. You will want to warn them. And they’ll change their routine. Move, run. The living fear nothing more than death. The way a soul dies matters. You change that, and you throw everything off balance. And you make my job unnecessarily difficult. When the candle burns down, time is up. I collect the soul and shuttle it to the other side. And no one. No one will disrupt my duty.”

“Your duty?” Maggie rounded. “Holding people here like prisoners? Torturing our loved ones. It’s bad enough what you do. This so-called job of yours. You’re a monster. And a cruel one at that.”

“You dare judge me.” Reaper seemed to swell, doubling in height. It reached up and pulled back the hood of the robe. The skull was a gleaming white, so bright it momentarily blinded her. It was all bone, except for the gray humanlike eyes and a near-perfect set of teeth. A bit of pinkish tongue visible in a blackened mouth. Maggie trembled.

“Enough.” A small thin woman stepped in front of Maggie. “If it was possible to curse you more than you already are, I would. You’re doomed to live in this hellhole forever. I can’t do it anymore.” The woman ran forward, then snatched the scythe that lay at Reaper’s feet. She slashed and slashed as Maggie watched, horrified.

“As you wish,” Reaper said with an odd hint of sadness in its voice. It held out a skeletal hand, and a candle appeared in its palm. It was a long one, burning bright.

Reaper released the candle. Time slowed. The woman, who must have had a change of heart, raced forward and dove. The others turned their faces and cowered. Maggie didn’t understand.

Until the candle landed and broke in half.

The woman collapsed mid-dive. She howled long and deep as a torrent of flame erupted and engulfed her, christening her in reddish, burned-flesh-smelling ash.

When Reaper leaned down and blew out a breath, her remains floated upward and scattered.

And the finality of it all hit Maggie like she had been cleaved in half.

“Anytime you are ready to leave here,” Reaper said, “like the recently departed, the choice is yours.”

Maggie retreated. Two of the remaining prisoners were openly sobbing; one stared morosely at the candles. The other eyed her with open contempt.

“What can you tell me?” she asked quietly. “Has anyone actually ever made it out of here? How long have you all been here?”

The angry woman answered. “The only way out of here is death. The fast way that you just saw or like the rest of us, the slow way. We can’t sleep or eat or move off this godforsaken patch. I just wish I had the guts to end it like Carla.”

The candles. Her grandmother had died when Maggie was still just a girl, so the memory was shadowy, but once, she’d walked in as she’d added bits of things to a candle mold. Vaguely, she’d understood that when the candle burned, it would bring about some intended change. Maggie thought back to her idea.

“Reaper,” she called. “You struck a bargain with Jackson because he has something to offer you. I can do you one better.”

Reaper turned and watched her. “I am listening.”

“Instead of waiting for Jackson to randomly run into people like us, we use my candles.

“My mother, grandmother, all the women in my line had the gift. All except me. Until my husband died. I’m sure of it—a piece of hair, a fingernail, any part of me that I infuse into the molds will do. That’s where you come in. Give me whatever you’ve given Jackson, and the candles will know if the holder is a glimpser. The sight is triggered by death. When the candle burns down, the holder’s sight will end with the wax. I’ll sell them all around the country.”

Reaper didn’t have eyelids, but Maggie imagined that if it did, they would be blinking right now. The skull lowered; the swishing robes stilled. “Is my company so repugnant then? Is not the life you cling to wrought with so much pain? So many disappointments and wretchedness. Here you feel no hunger, suffer no disease. You need not sleep and have no worry. Is that not what you covet?”

Glory be, Maggie thought. He didn’t want them to leave, and not because of some duty. Reaper, Death—it was lonely, just like her. Like the widower Jackson Stone. “No denying all of what you say. But you’re missing all the good parts: friends, family, love. The struggles make it all worth it. If you give this a chance, I can show you all that and more.”

The gruesome bargain she was making wasn’t lost on Maggie. Inviting Death into her life, a seat at her table whenever it saw fit. But there was no other way.

Reaper considered for several moments, then pulled the hood back over its head and said, “You have a deal.”

“Not just for me,” Maggie said, gesturing at Reaper’s other captives, who now stood alert and hopeful. “You have to let the others go too.”

“I cannot.”

Curses. Sobs. Wails.

“You can! You brought us here, so you can send us back.” Maggie knew she should stop now, but she couldn’t. That funeral director had known about her Francis and said nothing. Had stood by while she was taken. “And one more thing,” she said. “Jackson Stone shouldn’t make another dime off the people of Savannah. His business is finished. Bring him here if you want.”

“I see why Mr. Stone held you in such high regard. You are . . . extraordinary,” Reaper said. “It was a pleasant thing to have someone to talk to.” Reaper floated off toward the other end of the cavern and didn’t spare them a return glance. Maggie didn’t see but heard the soft click, bone on bone, of a finger snap.

When Maggie came to, she was in the cemetery, sprawled at the foot of her husband’s grave. She laid a hand on his marker and felt the grief that had replaced him as her companion recede just a little. She thought back to that night at the restaurant, Francis’s plans, and made a decision.

She got up, gave herself the once-over, and, finding herself unharmed, ran to the cottage. A single candle glowed through the tiny window.

She could only hope that Reaper had kept its word and released the others.

When she opened the door of their tiny cottage, a groggy Annie Mae climbed out of bed and rushed into her arms. She smoothed her daughter’s hair and whispered in her ear, “Pack up, baby. We’re going to New York.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Veronica G. Henry is the award-winning author of The Quarter Storm, The Foreign Exchange, and Bacchanal, which was an Amazon Editor’s Pick for Best African American Fantasy. Her stories have appeared in FIYAH Literary Magazine and various online publications.

Table of Contents

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT PAGE

October 1958

ABOUT THE AUTHOR