Hide Me Among the Graves Read Online Free

substantial, your ghost?” She waved one hand. “Did it have weight, did the floorboards creak?”
    â€œWeight? Not at first,” said Christina bleakly. “Later, yes. Yes.” She sighed. “As I diminished.”
    Maria was deep in thought and absently said, “I don’t think anybody would say a ghost can ruin a girl.” She looked up. “I thought Papa—”
    â€œBut I know.” Christina’s face was damp and chilly as she made herself speak. “Oh God. It wasn’t—he, it, didn’t force itself on me.”
    After a pause, Maria nudged her horse into a walk with her left heel, and Christina’s moved forward to keep pace.
    Maria said, “I thought Papa kept that damned thing on a special shelf in his room.” She looked at Christina and shrugged. “Of course I know. What other ghost could it be?”
    â€œOh. Yes. Papa was keeping it in the pocket of his robe, lately. He thought it helped his vision. But then he gave it to me, three months ago.”
    â€œAnd where—” Maria’s head whipped around to face Christina. “Jesus save us! You didn’t bring it here, did you?”
    â€œI’m sorry! I thought you’d know how to … make it stop, free his soul from the statue, lay him to final rest! You’ve read so many—”
    Maria’s eyes darted over Christina’s long coat and bunched-up skirt. “Do you have it with you now ?”
    Christina nodded miserably. “I carry it around with me, very close. Not that it does me any good.”
    â€œI cannot believe you had it in the house with Lucy and Bessie!” Maria peered at the open gate of the cypress-shadowed churchyard, only a dozen yards ahead now along the rutted dirt path. “We could bury it in consecrated ground.”
    â€œI don’t think it would lie … inertly, in peace. And Papa entrusted it to me—I know he’ll want it back, sooner or later. Oh, Maria, I don’t want to hate him for this!”
    â€œHate which?”
    Christina blinked at her sister, then answered softly, “Well—either of them.”
    â€œYou say he led Papa to our mother.” Maria’s voice was flat. “And he resembled Gabriel and William and me. And Mama and you too, I imagine. I think I know who your ghost must be.” She shook her head. “Have been. And you—you’re fond of him.”
    â€œI—try not to be. I do want to send him away.”
    â€œExorcise him? To Hell? That’s where he belongs—he committed suicide, remember, in 1821.”
    â€œNo—I know, but Mama—”
    â€œHe’s what’s made you sick. Does he keep you from eating, sleeping, to make you so pale and thin?”
    â€œNo,” said Christina. She laughed briefly, a sound like dry sticks knocked together. “He’s more like a—a bedbug.”
    â€œHe, what, he bites you?”
    â€œIt doesn’t hurt. It did at first, but now it—doesn’t hurt.”
    The horses had rocked and plodded up to the arched wrought-iron gate of the churchyard, and Maria unhooked her right leg from the fixed saddle pommel and slid down to thump her boots on the dusty ground.
    â€œWe might be able do something here,” she said.
    Christina, up on her own conventional saddle, hadn’t shifted. “Maria, you’ve read, oh, Homer and Euripides and Ovid! I don’t want to exorcise him to Hell. Isn’t there some pagan ritual we could do?”
    â€œWe’re Christians, and this is a Christian church; I don’t—”
    â€œMama loves him still! He’s her brother! What if it were a brother of yours—Gabriel or William?”
    â€œAny such ‘ritual’ would … compromise our souls, Christina, yours and mine.” She squinted up at her sister. “Our Savior mercifully put an end—and an interdict!—to the old pagan