But what made her gasp was the Star of David carved into the top of the stone.
Jewish. He was Jewish.
Looking around her now, she could see the same stars on other graves around her, the little rocks—a ritual she’d seen in a Holocaust movie. The alien lettering was Hebrew. It was the Jewish section of the cemetery, that’s what the grounds manager had been reluctant to say. Segregated—in 1920, it would have been.
She stepped close to the worn stone and read the inscription beneath the name. Her eyes widened at the epitaph:
It all hit at the same time: the finality of the grave of a nineteen-year-old boy, barely older than she was. The bewildering inscription—as far from the angry personality they had encountered as she could imagine. And the paradox of raging anti-Semitism coming from a Jewish ghost.
Robin looked around her under the darkening sky, shivering. She spoke low. “Zachary? I’m here.”
She stood very still, listening to the dry whisper of the grass. She knelt on the grave and reached out, put her hand against the rough stone.
“What do you want?”
She was barely breathing. The light around her slipped lower, darker; the movement of wind was almost imperceptible. But nothing and no one answered her.
She sat back on her heels, withdrawing her hand from the stone and resting both hands on the ground beside her. And then something stung her palm, a dull but discernible prick. She pulled her hand back instinctively and stared down into her palm. There was no mark.
She frowned and scanned the ground in front of her. Scattered beside the base of Zachary’s headstone were some small rocks like the ones she’d seen piled on other tombstones. Perhaps they’d fallen from the headstone over the years. But the sting hadn’t felt like a rock. Then she saw it, lying half-buried in the dirt.
Gently, she picked it up—a small flat piece of silver, blackened with age. She broke the encrusted dirt from the delicate bars and looked down at the medallion: a Star of David.
Zachary’s? Had someone left it for him, all those years ago? Had he meant for her to find it?
She sat very still, holding it—until she realized she was waiting for the touch of the wind. And then she jumped up from the grave and ran as if chased through the acres of stone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Back at the Hall, Robin stood in the dim corner of the third floor boys’ wing, knocking hard on
Martin’s door, wishing that she’d thought to bring a camera to the cemetery to document the gravestone. But she had the Star of David (she felt for it in her jeans pocket, reminding herself it was there). And surely Martin would believe her, and think it as strange as she had, the proof Zachary was Jewish.
She stood back, waiting, and focused on the little metal scroll nailed to the door frame, with its Hebrew lettering…remembered Zachary’s raging, the fury not just at Martin but also at the Jewish God.
Zachary was Jewish. Martin was Jewish. Despite his outward denial of his own faith, Martin had spoken in Hebrew to the board. There was a connection here, something she didn’t understand, but somewhere at the heart of it was the answer.
She was absolutely sure that Martin knew more than he was telling.
She reached to knock again.
A hand touched her shoulder from behind and she whirled, gasping.
Cain stood behind her in the dark corner of the hall. He looked down at her pale face, frowned. “What’s wrong?”
Cain’s room was illuminated by two circles of low light cast by a desk lamp and another on the
bed stand. Robin paced the floor through the pools of light while Cain sat on his bed, watching her.
“I found Zachary’s grave.”
She blurted it out, and was gratified at his startled look. “He’s buried in the cemetery just outside of town.” She met his eyes. “In the Jewish section. There’s a Star of David on the headstone. I found this on the grave.”
She fished out the Star of David and handed it to him. Cain examined the tarnished metal piece, then looked up at her in disbelief; she recognized the same jolt of confusion that she had felt in the cemetery, looking down at the grave.
“He was Jewish?” Cain said slowly.
“So he would never have said those things to Martin.” She hesitated, then raced on. “But actually I don’t think he was saying them to Martin. I think it’s really somehow about God—”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Cain held up a hand, frowning. “You said Zachary lived in Mendenhall. But Mendenhall used to be a fraternity. The frats didn’t let Jews in on this campus in 1920. There was a quota system for Jewish admissions, even—the school cut the Jewish students down by half over two years.”
Robin was shocked, though she knew she shouldn’t be. “How horrible.”
Cain gave her a cynical look. “Yeah, well, this school wasn’t the only one.”
Robin’s eyes clouded as she thought it through. “Maybe he was hiding being Jewish, then, so he could get into the college. And putting on the anti-Semitism, to pass as”—she had to search for the word—”Gentile.”
She sat abruptly in the window seat. “What a terrible way to have to live. No wonder he’s so angry.”
Cain leaned forward to speak. Robin was sure he was about to say something scathing about the nonexistent ghost. But he stopped himself and sat for a moment, silent. Finally, he looked across the room at her.
“I know something else about your friend Zachary.” He stood, extending the Star of David. She took it and watched as he moved over to his desk. The volume of bound newspapers she’d given him was on top. Cain opened the old book to a page he’d marked with a concert flyer, glanced back at her.
Robin rose and moved to his side, looked down at a Law Review article. She read the title aloud: “‘IRS vs. the Baltimore Talking Board Company.’” She looked at Cain, confused…but there was a prickling of significance along her neck. “Baltimore Talking Board.”
“Yeah. Same as the one we were using.” He spoke rapidly, running his hand through his hair. “This is a real legal case from 1920.1 looked it up. This Talking Board Company had the patent on alphabet boards and was really churning them out, because of that Spiritualist craze that Martin was talking about. The IRS got a look at the profits and started taxing the boards as games, so the manufacturer took the case to court, trying to get out of the tax by claiming religious exemption. They argued that the Ouija board isn’t a game, but a form of spiritualism, and therefore exempt from federal income tax.” He smiled thinly. “The game company lost, of course.”
Robin looked at him, still not understanding. He nodded to the book.
“Look who wrote the article.”
Robin turned to the author’s name, and caught her breath. “Zachary.”
Cain’s smile twisted. “I figure he decided to do his own research.”
Robin’s eyes were dark as she realized what he meant. “So he tested the board to see if it really worked.” She drew in her breath. “That was his board we were using. Do you think that’s why his ghost is attached to it?”
But she frowned at her own theory, realizing intuitively that there was a logical flaw. In fact, the whole idea of Zachary with the board made her extremely nervous. The burn marks on the board. He was using the board. Did they die using the board?
She lifted uneasy eyes to Cain’s, allowing her secret fear to come to the surface. “Do you think that what we’re talking to might not be Zachary?”