Chapter 4

That was the last anyone saw of Uncle Gerald.

The next day he didn't come to the family dinner either. Said he'd suddenly taken ill, that he was laid up in bed groaning and couldn't so much as stand.

Three days later, Uncle Gerald vanished.

We'd already gone back to the city after tending the graves. Three days later Aunt Doreen Emerson called, and we rushed straight back, the whole extended family pitching in to search for him.

Aunt Doreen had cried herself hoarse, and even so she was out in the yard, propping Uncle Gerald's clothes on bamboo poles.

I knew what she was doing. A soul-calling ritual, trying to call him home.

"It's cursed, I tell you. The day you all came back from the graves, he wouldn't touch his lunch. Came home and lay right down, kept saying his legs ached, that he couldn't walk. No life in him at all, like he'd had a bad fright."

"I figured I'd take him to get looked at once I finished the farm work. Then I get up this morning and he's gone. Didn't take a thing with him. Didn't even put his shoes on. Just gone."

"I looked high and low, not a trace of him anywhere. No idea where he went, no way to file a report, no way to even know if he's really missing. All I could do was call you all back."

My skin crawled at that.

That day, Blake had spoken to Uncle Gerald alone, and Uncle Gerald had taken ill and not shown his face since.

And now, three days later, he'd disappeared?

I looked around for Blake without thinking, but he was nowhere in sight.

"Where's Blake? Something this big, how is he not here? Where is he?"

"I called him an hour ago. He said he was repairing the family grave. Said the storm on All Souls' Day washed a hole into it, and he's out there overseeing the work."

Something dropped in my chest, and I bolted for the grave.

It had been raining for days. The next village over was already flooded. Repairing the grave now was pointless.

But Blake was still guarding it, working nonstop to fix it, and that made me feel worse.

By the time I finally reached the grave, I was gasping for breath.

From way off I could see the workers about to pour another layer of concrete over it, and it sent me into a frantic shout.

"Stop! Don't touch it! Stop, I've called the police, don't move anything!"

Hearing me, Blake stepped in front of me first, blocking me from getting near the grave.

"What's this nonsense now?"

"Nonsense? Blake, what are you actually doing?"

Standing beside the grave, the stench of decay was thicker, laced now with the smell of blood.

And the grave had grown by a whole ring wider.

Like something else had been hidden inside it.

"What could I be doing? Is repairing the family grave a crime? Somehow it feels like you've come back this time with a lot of hatred for me."

"Stop lying to me, Blake. I can smell it."

"Smell what?"

"A body. The stench of rot. The smell of a body that hasn't been dead long, coming out of our family grave."

Blake stiffened, his face gone hard, his eyes carrying something murderous now.

He kept staring at me, as if already working out in his head how to kill me, how to bury me in that grave too.

But it had come to this. There was nothing else I could do.

"Blake, I've already called the police. The station's men are on their way. Don't add one wrong to another."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't play dumb. Blake, did you kill someone? And hide the body in our family grave?"

The words landed, and the workers froze in terror.

The others scattered back too.

Blake laughed coldly, his expression deeply unnatural, still forcing his way through it.

"Have you lost your mind? You see me come home rich, bringing honor to the family, and it eats at you? So you make up something like this to slander me?"

"Whether it's slander or not, we'll settle that when the police get here."

The sirens grew closer, and the rain came down harder.

The relatives came running at the noise, all of them crowding around the grave.

When the workers dug it open, the officers leaned in for a look and jerked back, startled.

"There's... there's something in the grave!"