Page 5 of Hell Gate

Moonlight pierces the clouds, illuminating the fog blanketing the graveyard. From here I see the gate at the entrance down a small hill. Violet is nowhere in sight.

“It circles behind Talbot House,” Marie says. “It’s huge.”

“This is all there is to do for fun around here?” The unimpressed mumble isn’t meant to be heard, but Jessica grins at me.

“Everyone comes here.” She points to the remnants of a stone building at the top of the hill. “Think you’ve got the guts to enter the chapel? It’s haunted. I saw a ghost last time we snuck out here.”

I shrug. “Only one way to find out.”

Without waiting for them, I trudge across the damp ground, not bothering to avoid headstones half-sunken into the earth. I pass a weeping angel statue with part of her face missing.

If the matron finds out about this little transgression on my first night after she explicitly told me not to come here, will she kick me out? She’s state-appointed to act as my guardian for the next month. I don’t care if she tries to get rid of me. It’s the same old song and dance I’ve been stuck repeating for years.

My fingertips skim over thick ivy vines creeping up one of the few headstones that remains upright. A strange sensation swirls in my stomach. It’s almost like recognition. For this spot. This person, maybe? Tilting my head, I attempt to read the engraving, but the elements have deteriorated the name beyond legibility. The best I can guess is the year this person was laid to rest, over two hundred years ago.

The longer I stand there, the stronger the nagging tug at the back of my memory grows. There’s something about this place that feels oddly nostalgic. I can’t put my finger on it and push the feeling aside with a frustrated noise, done with myself.

I’ve spent too long aching for a place to fit in that abandoned graveyards have started to feel downright homey.

A bitter snort escapes me as I skirt around a mausoleum.Someone get this girl into therapy, stat.

Why would I know this graveyard? That makes no sense at all. According to my file, I was abandoned as an infant in the Pine Barrens, left on a doorstep not far from the Leeds house—notorious home of the Jersey Devil, if you’re a cryptid enthusiast. I’m not.

What’s left of a small stone chapel stands on top of the hill, the bell tower caved in with the bell missing. A set of crumbling stairs to an upper floor hug the side of the ruins, ending abruptly in a short drop to the ground with no destination. A small archway sits beneath the steps, just tall enough for a person to fit through.

For a second I think the air inside the arch shimmers. I blink, trying to see it again. I shake my head. It’s the fog playing tricks on my eyesight.

Violet emerges from within the chapel holding a lit candle when I reach it. “Did you feel it?”

“Feel what?” My tone is guarded and I watch her warily.

“I don’t know, like something wants out?” She laughs, shrugging. “The others swear they can’t, but every time we’ve come out here I get goosebumps.”

“Maybe it’s just adrenaline,” I offer logically. “You’re psyching yourself out and looking for something that isn’t there.”

Jessica and Marie come up the hill. They whisper to each other.

I turn to them. “What’s the deal with this place? Why is it off-limits?”

Mrs. Talbot’s warning about the cemetery being poisoned ground doesn’t track. I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary tonight. This place is just old, and other than being rude to stomp all over the resting places of the dead, I don’t see why she’s superstitious about it to forbid her wards from coming here.

“It’s where we commune with the beyond,” Jessica drawls in a suspenseful tone. “Did you get everything set up?”

“Yeah. The board is ready to go,” Violet says.

“Good.” Jessica holds up a box and smirks. “Who’s ready to get our seance on?”

“She’s totally legit,” Marie murmurs to me as we head inside the ruins lit by the candles Violet set up around the room. “She once did a tarot reading and that week another girl got adopted by the family in town that runs the hardware store she was working at.”

Sounds more like the girl met her new family on her own to me. I nod, faking interest while glancing around the cramped room. The amber glow of candlelight paints sinister shadows on the damp stone walls. A chill lingers in the room that makes me shiver. It’s warmer outside in the open air.

In the middle of the room there’s a blanket and a ouija board. It’s aesthetic—even my dead inside ass can admit that. It has a black background and white writing with an illustration of a badass reaper on it. The piece that goes in the middle depicts a sun and moon. The girls sit in a circle around it, then look at me expectantly.

I shift my weight on my feet before joining them. I’m not really into this kind of stuff. I might enjoy manga about reincarnation from a mundane life into fantasy worlds, but I don’t believe in magic. Ever since the Clarks fostered me at a young age, I’ve been disillusioned of anything that classifies as occult or supernatural.

My foster mother’s rotten voice echoes in my head.You’re unnatural. The Devil sent you to test me. I’ll sink you before you pull me down.

A bolt of searing heat shoots through my stomach at the memory. She’s gone. She can’t hurt me.

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