The dead won’t bother you
if you don’t give them permission.
Boston, 1844.
Tabby has a peculiar gift: she can communicate with the recently departed. It makes her special, but it also makes her dangerous.
As an orphaned child, she fled with her sister, Alice, from their charlatan aunt Bellefonte, who wanted only to exploit Tabby’s gift so she could profit from the recent craze for seances.
Now a young woman and tragically separated from Alice, Tabby works with her adopted father, Eli, the kind caretaker of a large Boston cemetery. When a series of macabre grave robberies begins to plague the city, Tabby is ensnared in a deadly plot by the perpetrators, known only as the “Resurrection Men.”
In the end, Tabby’s gift will either save both her and the cemetery—or bring about her own destruction.
Boston, 1844.
Tabby has a peculiar gift: she can communicate with the recently departed. It makes her special, but it also makes her dangerous.
As an orphaned child, she fled with her sister, Alice, from their charlatan aunt Bellefonte, who wanted only to exploit Tabby’s gift so she could profit from the recent craze for seances.
Now a young woman and tragically separated from Alice, Tabby works with her adopted father, Eli, the kind caretaker of a large Boston cemetery. When a series of macabre grave robberies begins to plague the city, Tabby is ensnared in a deadly plot by the perpetrators, known only as the “Resurrection Men.”
In the end, Tabby’s gift will either save both her and the cemetery—or bring about her own destruction.
BUY LINKS:
1
IN WHICH WE MEET OUR YOUNG HEROINE.
Boston, 1844
Tabby’s legs ached and the wind had long since snatched
her flimsy bonnet away, but she kept running through the night, her thin
leather shoes pounding the cobbled Boston streets. She didn’t know where she
was going, only that she had to get somewhere safe, somewhere away from the
bustling theaters and crowds of the city. Every time someone shouted at her to
watch where she was going, or ask if she was lost, she was sure that they were
one of her aunt and uncle’s friends. Would they drag her kicking and screaming
back to Amherst? Tabby shuddered. She wouldn’t go back. She couldn’t.
Her weary feet carried her up a hill lined with narrow
houses, and gradually she left behind the streets choked with theatergoers and
artificially brightened with gas lamps. After cresting the hill, she paused
just long enough to catch her breath and survey her unfamiliar surroundings.
It was quieter here, the only sounds the groaning of
ships in the harbor and the distant call of a fruit hawker trying to sell off
the last of the day’s soft apples. Going back down into the heart of the city
wasn’t an option, yet a wrought-iron gate blocked her way any farther,
forbidding pikes piercing the night sky. Pale headstones glowed faintly in the
moonlight beyond the gate. A cemetery.
Tabby stood teetering, her heart still pounding. Dry
weeds rustled in the thin night breeze, whispering what might have been a
welcome, or a warning. Behind her was the land of the living with house windows
glowing smugly yellow, the promise of families tucked safe inside. In front of
her lay the land of the dead. One of those worlds was as familiar to her as the
back of her hand, the other was only a distant fairy tale. Taking a deep
breath, she shimmied through the gap in the gate.
She waded through the overgrown grass and weeds, thorny
branches snagging at her thin dimity dress and scratching her. Panic gripped
her as she heard the hem tear clean away; what would Aunt Bellefonte say if she
found that Tabby had ruined her only frock? Would she smack her across her
cheek? Would Uncle lock her in the little cupboard in the eaves? Aunt
Bellefonte isn’t here. You’re safe, she reminded herself. As she pulled
away to free herself, her foot caught in a tangle of roots in a sunken grave
bed and she went sprawling into the dirt. Her lip wobbled and tears threatened
to overflow. She was almost twelve years old, yet she felt as small and adrift
as the day she’d learned that her parents had perished in a carriage accident
and would never step through the front door again.
This wasn’t how
her first day of freedom was supposed to be. Her sister, Alice, had planned
their escape from Amherst last week, promising Tabby that they would get a
little room in a boarding house in the city. Alice would get a job at a laundry
and Tabby would take in mending to contribute to their room and board. They
would be their own little family, and they would put behind them the trauma
that their aunt and uncle had wrought, making a new life for themselves. That
had been the plan, anyway.
When she and Alice had arrived in the city earlier that
day, her older sister had sat her down on the steps of a church and told her to
wait while she went and inquired about lodgings. Tabby had dutifully waited for
what had felt like hours, but Alice never returned. The September evening had
turned dark and cold, and Tabby had resolved to simply wrap her shawl tighter and
wait. But then a man with red-rimmed eyes and a foul-smelling old coat had
stumbled up the steps, heading right toward her. Tabby had taken one look at
him and bolted, sure that he had dark designs on her. She had soon become lost
and, in a city jumbled with old churches, hadn’t been able to find the right
one again.
Another thorn snagged her, pricking her finger and
drawing blood. She should have taken shelter in the church; at least then she
would have a roof over her head. At least then Alice would know where to find
her when she came back. If she came back.
Tabby stopped short. Toward the back of the cemetery,
amongst the crooked graves of Revolutionary heroes, stood a row of crypts built
into the earth. Most of them were sealed up with iron doors and bolts, but one
had a gate that stood just enough ajar for a small, malnourished girl to
wriggle through.
Holding her breath against the damp musk, Tabby plunged
inside. Without any sort of light, she had to painstakingly feel her way down
the crude stone steps. Lower into the earth she descended until she reached the
burial chamber.
Don’t invite
them in. As she groped around in the dark for a resting place, Tabby tried
to remember what her mother had always told her. Memories of her mother were
few and far between, but her words concerning Tabby’s ability remained as sharp
in her mind as words etched with a diamond upon glass. The dead won’t bother
you if you don’t give them permission, if you don’t make yourself a willing
receptacle for their messages. At least, that was how it was supposed to
work.
The only other thing she had learned regarding her gift
was that she should never, ever tell anyone of it, and the lesson had been a
hard one. She couldn’t have been more than six, because her parents had still
been alive and had sent her out to the orchard to collect the fallen apples for
cider. Their neighbor, little Beth Bunn, had been there, picking wild asters,
but she hadn’t been alone; there was a little boy Tabby had never seen before,
watching the girls with serious eyes from a branch in an apple tree. Tabby had
asked Beth who he was, but Beth insisted she didn’t know what Tabby was talking
about. Certain that Beth was playing some sort of trick on her, Tabby grew
upset and nearly started crying as she described the little boy with blond hair
and big green eyes. “Oh,” Beth said, looking at her askance. “Do you mean to
say you see Ollie Pickett? He used to live here, but he’s been dead for three
years.” That was how Tabby learned that not everyone saw the people she saw
around her. A week later she had been playing in the churchyard and noticed
that all the other children were clustered at the far end, whispering and
pointing at her. “Curious Tabby,” they had called her. And that was how
Tabby learned that she could never tell a soul about her strange and
frightening ability.
But even in a place so filled with death, the dead did
not bother Tabby that night. With a dirt floor for her bed and the skittering
of insects for her lullaby, Tabby pulled her knees up to her chest and allowed
the tears she’d held in all day to finally pour out. She was lost, scared, and
without her sister, utterly alone in the world.
Excerpted
from The Orphan of Cemetery Hill by Hester Fox Copyright © Tess Fedore.
Published by Graydon House Books.
About the Author
Hester Fox is a full-time writer and
mother, with a background in museum work and historical archaeology. Most
weekends you can find Hester exploring one of the many historic cemeteries in
the area, browsing bookshops, or enjoying a seasonal latte while writing at a
café. She lives outside of Boston with her husband and their son.
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