True believer - Nicholas Sparks [31]
“Good,” she said. She absently tugged at the sleeve of her sweater. “And I found a book of ghost stories that you might be interested in. There’s a chapter in there that discusses Cedar Creek.”
“That’s great.”
“Well, I’ll let you get started, then. I’ll be back in a while to see if there’s anything else you need.”
“You’re not going to stay?”
“No. Like I said earlier, I’ve got quite a bit of work to do. Now, you can stay in here, or you can sit at one of the tables in the main area. But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t remove the books from the floor. None of these particular books can be checked out.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” he said.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Marsh, I really should go. And keep in mind that even though the library is open until seven, the rare-book room closes at five.”
“Even for friends?”
“No. I let them stay as long as they want.”
“So I’ll see you at seven?”
“No, Mr. Marsh. I’ll see you at five.”
He laughed. “Maybe tomorrow you’ll let me stay late.”
She raised her eyebrows without answering, then took a couple of steps toward the door.
“Lexie?”
She turned. “Yes?”
“You’ve been a great help so far. Thank you.”
She gave a lovely, unguarded smile. “You’re welcome.”
Jeremy spent the next couple of hours perusing information on the town. He thumbed through the books one by one, lingering over the photographs and reading sections he thought appropriate.
Most of the information covered the early history of the town, and he jotted what he thought were relevant notes on the pad beside him. Of course, he wasn’t sure what was relevant at this point; it was too early to tell, and thus his notes soon covered a couple of pages.
He’d learned through experience that the best way to approach a story like this was to begin with what he knew, so . . . what did he know for certain? That the cemetery had been used for over a hundred years without any sightings of mysterious lights. That lights first appeared about a hundred years ago and occurred regularly, but only when it was foggy. That many people had seen them, which meant that the lights were unlikely to be simply a figment of the imagination. And, of course, that the cemetery was now sinking.
So even after a couple of hours, he didn’t know much more than when he started. Like most mysteries, it was a puzzle with many disparate pieces. The legend, whether or not Hettie cursed the town, was essentially an attempt to link some pieces into an understandable form. But since the legend had as its basis something false, it meant that some pieces—whatever they were—were being either overlooked or ignored. And that meant, of course, that Lexie had been right. He had to read everything so he wouldn’t miss anything.
No problem. This was the enjoyable part, actually. The search for the truth was often more fun than writing up the actual conclusion, and he found himself immersed in the subject. He learned that Boone Creek had been founded in 1729, making it one of the oldest towns in the state, and that for a long time, it was nothing more than a tiny trading village on the banks of the Pamlico River and Boone Creek. Later in the century, it became a minor port in the inland waterway system, and the use of steamboats in the mid-1800s accelerated the town’s growth. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the railroad boom hit North Carolina, and forests were leveled while numerous quarries were dug. Again, the town was affected, due to its location as a gateway of sorts to the Outer Banks. After that, the town tended to boom and bust along with the economy of the rest of the state, though the population held steady after around 1930. In the most recent census, the population of the county had actually dropped, which didn’t surprise him in the slightest.
He also read the account of the cemetery in the book of ghost stories. In this version, Hettie cursed the town, not because the bodies in the cemetery had been removed, but because she’d refused to step aside and into the road when the wife of one of the commissioners was