Page 9 of Wednesday
Morrow's lips stretched in that unsettling approximation of a smile. "I was here."
I slowly turned to face him. "How old are you?"
"Age is a human preoccupation," he said.
He moved deeper into the chamber, scanning the graves.
"My kind are drawn to concentrations of death," Morrow continued. "Battlefields, plague pits, cemeteries. We are... necessary."
"Necessary?” I asked. “For what?"
He paused. "For balance. All life feeds on death in some form. We are simply more direct in our consumption."
I thought of Lawrence Emmett's ravaged corpse, of the terrible sounds of Morrow's feeding. "That's how you justify it? Ecological balance?"
Morrow turned and his eyes shone in the light of my flashlight. "I require no justification."
He continued walking, leading me toward an alcove set into the far wall. Stone shelves lined the walls, stuffed full with random objects.
"My collection," Morrow explained, gesturing to the shelves. "Memories of the dead."
I approached cautiously, my light revealing the wide variety of items. A leather-bound journal. A porcelain doll with a cracked face. A stack of letters tied with a faded ribbon. So many things from so many people.
"You take these from graves?" I asked.
"Some. Others were given to me." Morrow carefully lifted a small wooden box from the nearest shelf. He opened it to reveal a curl of blonde hair tied with ribbon.
"Elizabeth Palmer, 1842," Morrow said. "Died in childbirth at nineteen. Her husband buried her along with their son." He closed the box with a snap. "He visited her grave every Sunday for thirty years.”
I eyed him. "How could you possibly know all that?"
His unsettling gaze fixed on me. "I consume more than flesh, Carmen Ruiz. When I feed, I take in fragments of memory, echoes of the lives once lived.”
I stared at him, trying to process. "You're saying you... absorb their memories?"
"Impressions. Emotions. Fragments of identity." Morrow replaced the box on the shelf with surprising gentleness. "The recently deceased yield the clearest impressions. The longer they lie in the earth, the more such fragments fade."
He moved to the table, long fingers hovering over a modern spiral notebook. "Your predecessor, Frank Tillman, was troubled by dreams of falling. A childhood accident left him with this fear, yet he chose to confront me on the roof of the mausoleum." A sound like grinding stones came from his throat.
My stomach lurched as I realized it was a laugh. I took an involuntary step back, suddenly acutely aware that I was alone with a creature who killed and consumed people without remorse. Who remembered doing it with what sounded like satisfaction.
Morrow noticed my reaction. "You fear me again. Good. You should not forget what I am."
"What are you?” I asked softly, almost afraid to hear the answer.
"A predator." He straightened to his full height, towering over me. "But a necessary one. And one capable of... selectivity."
He moved toward me, and I forced myself not to run screaming. When he stood directly in front of me, close enough that I could smell the wet earth and copper scent of him, he spoke again.
"We should go."
My mind stuttered before I absorbed his words. I nodded eagerly, more than ready to leave the oppressive darkness. Morrow led me through a different tunnel, this one sloping gradually upward.
"This passage will bring us near Helena Ross's grave," he said. "I must feed before the day fully claims the night."
I stumbled. "You're going to... right now?"
Morrow's head turned nearly 180 degrees to look down at me. "Yes. You may wait in the tunnel if you prefer."
