The smell of wet soil coiled up from the ground like steam, like heat, but ever did the casket lower. There was a warbling call from some mourning dove further in the woods, past the wrought-iron fence of the cemetery. Delilah stared blankly through the hot mist into the green overgrowth; the wood grain of the casket looked too much like Nonna's old door, and Delilah couldn't stomach another glance at it. Elm. Elm, ashy and pale. 

Khalil’s tiny fingers tugged Delilah’s sleeve. Would he even remember Nonna? Delilah’s psychology professor said that children lose their early memories at approximately seven. Khalil was six (and a half, as he would triumph). Would he remember Nonna’s elmwood door, or her homemade pralines, or her big box of costume jewelry? Around Delilah’s neck hung Nonna’s ruby necklace from that big box she had always marveled over as a girl. As the sexton began shoveling—thlunk, thlunk, thlunk on the casket—it seemed to weigh heavier now.

A car hissed past on the wet road. The mourning dove was silent. It was all too silent. Where was the brass band? The trumpets and trombones and drums, filling the street with rich, delicious music? There should be aunties here, dressed in their black veiled hats. There should be cousins with baskets of flowers. There should be swing spirituals and rejoicing. The deacon, this crusty yawn of a deacon, could not possibly rejoice. It was quiet, it was nothing, just silence and the smell of rain. The whole graveyard was all too…insipid.

Delilah patted Khalil’s spongy hair.

“Time to say goodbye,” she said.

“Bye,” Khalil said to the deacon.

“No—goodbye to Nonna.”

Khalil waved at the tombstone.

“Ready to go?”

He nodded, but Delilah continued to stare into the tangled shrubbery. Past the graveyard she could spot the shingled roof of a worn-looking building, a lopsided old thing. The windows were hazed over with dust and time and a wooden sign hung from one side. A store, perhaps. She hadn’t seen it from the road, and there was no driveway, but if she left the graveyard from the back, she might find some pathway up to it.

At Khalil’s final tug, she started the soundless weaving walk through the headstones, bereft of music or wreathes or distant family. Just as they reached the gravel parking lot, where her blue Volkswagen Beetle was parked, Delilah stopped, shifting her weight from foot to foot. 

“Hey. Let’s go see what’s in the woods.”

* * *

“They sell old things,” Delilah explained.

Though the paint was chipping away, she could tell the lettering was once green and swooping. Strauss’s Antiques. It hung from an angle, its iron bolts rusted. In fact, the whole building rested at an angle; the windows were not parallel to the wall and the roof hung lower on one side. 

With his nose pressed up to one of the windows, Khalil asked, “Can I please have a toy?”

Delilah searched the red Dutch door for business hours. Nothing. “I don’t know if they’re open, I’m sorry.”

There was something vaguely wrong about selling old things next to a graveyard, anyway. How many buried people had their furniture for sale right next door?

Khalil grabbed ahold of the brass handle and yanked with all his tiny might. The door banged against the frame. With a disappointed whine, he slumped against it, only to stutter open into a mudroom.

“Careful!” Delilah hoisted Khalil off the ground. The mudroom was cramped with a rack for umbrellas and a shoe brush. It led to the rest of the shop. “Remember to look with our eyes, okay? Not our hands.”

“Okay.” Head bobbing, Khalil marched onto the sales floor. Delilah trailed behind.

There were writing desks and armoires shoved to the walls, teetering with porcelain figures and bookends. Delilah nearly hit her shins against the seats of mismatched kitchen chairs, hidden under gold-lined encyclopedias and boxes of silverware and paintings stacked in bronze frames. She spotted a grandfather clock and a suit of armor, Moroccan-style tuffets and China teapots. A cello without strings, a birdcage filled with yarn, a leather sheath for some kind of knife. A basket of pocket watches. Wedding rings in vases. 

“What did he say?”

Delilah jumped. In all the clutter, she hadn’t noticed the woman by the window, who appeared to be either twenty-five or sixty; her smile lines and crow’s feet disappeared when she tilted her head, and her bobbed auburn hair either shone in the light or had faded gray. Not a spot on her skin, but she had hands like a pottery teacher and her clothes looked ‘50s vintage. 

“Sorry,” Delilah stammered. She instinctively searched the room for Khalil. He was happily occupied, elbow-deep in a box of wood blocks. Reassured, she met the woman’s large bright eyes. “What do you mean?”

“The deacon, sweetheart. During the committal, what did he say? That was your grandmother, wasn’t it? I’m Effie. I’m sorry for your loss. Though, you’ve made your way up here! We don’t get customers often, thank God. Was his eulogy alright?”

Her voice spilled outwards like a flock of sparrows, rolling and ceaseless and without rhyme. Or like light hail, pelting and random. Delilah ran her hand through her box braids and attempted to respond.

“Um, right, she was my grandmother. She wasn’t Catholic. None of us are, actually.”

Effie’s eyelashes fluttered as she looked Delilah up and down, pausing at her ruby necklace. Her expression softened. “You have a beautiful accent. Are you from the South? I’d love to have visited. Always heard it was beautiful.”

“New Orleans. My family is from there.”

“You’re all alone up here, with…is that your brother?”

“Khalil, yes. We’re pretty much alone until our aunt arrives. I’m in college here. Our Nonna moved here with Khalil to be closer to me. She… had a heart attack the day after they moved.”

“And the deacon?” Effie spoke with such anticipation and urgency that Delilah felt she had missed out on some secret code. “Did he read the Rite of Committal?”

“I really don’t know. He could’ve.”

Effie nodded and turned back towards the window. The glass was uneven, but the graveyard peeked through. She sighed and looked back at Delilah.

“I mean, dear,” she said gently, “did he say, ‘Rest in Peace?’ Or anything like that?”

“Yeah, he…” Delilah faltered, replaying the service in her head. She spent much of it distracted, but surely the deacon had said those words. Didn’t he? “No, actually. I don’t think he did.”

It was only a moment, but something flickered in Effie’s eyes and her face darkened. She looked older. She looked…angry. But she was all smiles again and Delilah questioned if Effie had really glowered at all.

Uneasy, Delilah changed the subject. “Do you own this place?”

“Of course, darling. Been here for… well, seems like centuries, now.”

Khalil ran up to Delilah. “I found something,” he whispered. “Behind glass.”

“Let me unlock the display case for you, little one,” Effie said. She led them to the sales counter tucked in the back of the store. Khalil pointed to a figurine of a cat, whittled from softwood and painted black. Effie plucked it from behind the glass. “Twenty-five cents,” she said as she searched for a sheet of tissue paper with which to wrap it.

As Delilah poked through her coin purse, Khalil abruptly yelped. She followed his wide stare to the wall behind Effie; there was a doorway covered by a thick red curtain, and from a crease in the fabric, a pair of silver-dollar eyes peered back.

Effie also turned, a hand flying to her pearl necklace, but she laughed in relief. “Oh, heavens, that’s just Elmer. He’s nothing to worry about. And he knows how to work the register. Get out from there, you.”

Elmer slowly emerged from the dark. He was a tall old man, bony and taut, with wiry white hair frayed down to his shoulders. He wore a vest and a bowtie, though he would not have looked out of place wearing a cravat.

“What’s back there?” Khalil asked.

“Possessions,” Elmer said, just as quietly. He spoke with all the geniality of one speaking to a fellow adult. 

Delilah gave up on counting change and handed him a dollar. Elmer rested his rootlike fingers onto the knobs of the old-fashioned register and clacked away as if it were a typewriter.

“Did you meet these sweet little ones, Elmer?” Effie asked, quite like how many people speak to their basset hounds. “They said goodbye to their grandmother today. Isn’t that sad? The deacon didn’t say the Rite of Committal, either. You know, we used to have perfectly good funerals up here. Got the job done. Not anymore, not since he’s in charge. And he trains the new ministers, too. Incompetent.”

Elmer slid three quarters across the counter to Khalil. “Hickory’s back.”

As he said this, the front door creaked open. Effie chirped, “Oh, so they are. We’re back here, Wrenny!”

Delilah gripped her coin purse. Between Effie’s prattling, Elmer’s dull presence, and the newcomer in the store, all cramped in the clutter, she felt whiplashed. This place was far from abandoned.

“Elmer, you old egg, I’ve fetched you your—hullo!” The newcomer grinned as they glimpsed Delilah and Khalil, then approached the counter. Androgynous, their features seemed both soft and defined, handsome in one angle and pretty in another, dancing somewhere in their early thirties. Freckles stippled their face, and their eyes shone like bronze. “Hickory Wren, pleasure to meet you.”

Was that a Transatlantic accent? “You too,” Delilah said softly. Khalil said nothing, as he had already removed his new trinket from the tissue paper and was inspecting it closely, lost in his own world.

Hickory Wren tipped their newsie cap and rooted around in their messenger bag. “Well, Elmer, I fetched you what you need for the Stanton project,” they said, drawing out a small felt pouch. They tossed it to Elmer, who remained still as a tree. It hit his chest and flopped to the counter.

Effie clapped her hands. “It’s about time! I was worried it’d never get resolved. Good on you, Wrenny. Best field agent we could’ve asked for.”

Claustrophobic, Delilah pulled Khalil closer. It was hot in here and something was off, something like static crackling in the air between them all. Some sort of energy she had felt in thrift stores before, but louder. “We should go,” she said. 

“Right, right, of course.” Effie eyed Delilah’s necklace again. “Take our business card. If you need help getting rid of anything unwanted, call. We’ll take anything. Truly. Wrenny, you have one?”

From their tweed pants pocket, Hickory Wren pulled a shiny black card and offered it to Delilah between their first two fingers. “Call should you need us. The line’s always open.”

“Thanks.” She slid it into her wallet without looking. “Let’s go.”

As she rushed for fresh air with Khalil in tow, she heard Elmer’s voice lingering behind them: “Stay safe.”

* * *

Delilah re-clamped her hair claw and leaned back over the cardboard box. Between taking sympathy calls from people back home and keeping Khalil within eyesight, it was only the fourth one she opened today; Nonna had packed densely and left no possession in New Orleans. It was all here, everything, but folded and hidden. Buried.

Delilah sliced through the packing tape and opened the flaps. She pulled from the box sashes and scarves. “This one’s just clothes.”

Aunt Sylvia’s tinkling voice sounded through the speakerphone. “Leave it, then. I’ll donate it when I get there Monday. How…how was it yesterday?”

Shifting the box aside with her foot, Delilah slid down the living room wall and collapsed. She absently twirled her necklace between her fingers. A cool nighttime draft whuffed from the open window. “The burial was okay. Quiet. It’s a pretty spot, though.”

“I’m sorry I missed it.”

“You live in France.”

“Still. I’m sorry you’re alone, Dee.”

The overhead light swayed gently as a car passed. Delilah took the phone off speaker and raised it to her ear. “It’s my fault anyway,” she muttered.

“What do you mean, baby?”

Delilah bit her lip. “I can handle it. You don’t have to come.”

“You’re strong, I know that, but Khalil needs an adult.”

Delilah looked from the tumbled clothes to the shelves she had arranged with Nonna’s photo albums. Her chest grew hot and she blinked back tears. Khalil had had an adult: Nonna, and the church ladies, and even Delilah, all before she decided to come to Pennsylvania. He still would have had everybody if she had stayed. Nonna would have had a bright, laughing funeral if she had stayed. Now what? A year away from graduating and all Delilah could think to do was drop out and go home. Clean up her own mess instead of letting Aunt Sylvia do it.

“Hold on,” Delilah said. Khalil was slumping his way down the hallway in his footie pajamas, carefully cradling his kitty, Gumbobo. He hadn’t let it out of his grasp since yesterday. Delilah heaved herself off the floor. “I’ll call you back. Love you.”

“Love you too, Dee.”

She ended the call. “What is it, Khalil?”

“I want to talk to Nonna!”

Something like ice shuddered over Delilah’s skin. “That was Aunt Sylvia. You heard her on the phone.”

“No, it was Nonna!” Khalil jutted his chin out. The wrinkles of his pillowcase imprinted against his cheek and the hair on that side of his head was matted, turning his afro into a half-moon. 

“You had a hypnopompic hallucination,” Delilah decided, plucking Gumbobo from his palm. “You were dreaming. Let’s go back to sleep.”

He wriggled out from her and scrambled into the living room. When he saw only boxes, he whirled around. “I was awake. I heard her. She was talking about college. I heard her.”

Unnerved, Delilah just stood in the doorway. “Khalil—”

That’s when she heard it, the low kind of murmuring you hear as a kid when your parents are talking in the kitchen: the oscillating volume, the indistinct words, the gentle pattern of vowels and consonants. It was like whispering, or singing, or laughing, or yelling, louder and louder and Delilah slammed her palms over her ears at the shrieking, whistling, guttural whoop that rang the room. She clamped her eyes shut but could still see the overhead light twirling out almost vertically and the stacks of boxes toppling and Khalil covering his face. Then she or Khalil or the voice cried out in pain, or joy, and everything galloped faster and louder and deeper and higher and it was gone.

At the silence, Delilah lowered her hands. Poor Khalil was shaking and his eyes were glassy.

“Come here,” she said, voice quaking. She held her arms wide.

Khalil eyed Gumbobo, which had clattered to the floor. He vigorously shook his head. 

“Come,” she begged. 

“I’m scared.”

Before she could talk herself out of it, Delilah snatched the figurine from the ground and chucked it out the window into the backyard. Khalil sprinted into her arms, grabbing ahold of her beltloops. She covered his head in kisses. 

“Get your blankets. Get your pillows. We’re not sleeping here tonight.”

* * *

Through the rear-view mirror, Delilah checked on Khalil, bundled in fleece and asleep in the backseat of her blue Volkswagen Beetle. He let out a snore but was otherwise still. Delilah pulled into the empty lot; the park lights speckled off into the simmering fog and not even lovelorn teens would wander here at this hour.

What happened in the living room was different than the kitchen last night—Khalil had heard it, he had definitely heard it. Whatever it was, she had led it right in when she bought that stupid cat. It must’ve been festering, stuck inside Gumbobo in that display case for who knows how long, biding its time until the next grief-stricken sucker picked it up.

Delilah’s leg stopped bouncing. She had been given instructions, she realized, in the case of a haunting. Squirming in her seat, she fished her wallet out from her back pocket and flipped through the dividers until she found it, the shiny black business card:

There was no number. Why wasn’t there a number? Useless. Delilah flung the card onto her dashboard and chewed on the inside of her cheek, watching the fog pour over itself. She switched on the car radio and dialed through the stations in search of some low static or white noise, something soft to lull her thoughts to sleep. As she tuned, she glanced up and caught the outline of a figure standing underneath the hazy park light.

A searing heat broiled over her chest. Delilah gasped, clawing at her shirt until her skin touched metal, the steaming metal of her necklace. The chain snapped from her neck as she yanked the glowing ruby pendant; it made a quick little pipe like a kettle, too hot to hold, and tumbled into the crack between the driver’s seat and the center console.

With the pain gone, Delilah peered across the lot. The figure was closer. It moved without the bobbing motion of walk: adrift like the fog, so slow it hardly appeared to move at all. The necklace fifed again from somewhere beneath Delilah’s seat and the car radio shattered the static, shooting through stations in feverish spurts of song, static, and speech. Delilah slammed the knob but the speakers still hissed, and she flashed her high beams but the figure still approached. And just as she reversed from the parking space, she glimpsed the reflection of the business card in the windshield.

Glittering, a phone number penned itself in gold. Delilah snatched up the card and entered the number. It took only a moment for the line to pick up, and what met her was the sizzling sudsy fizzle of old-timey telephones.

“Ye-es?” a voice answered, jaunty with that Transatlantic accent.

“Hickory Wren? Is that you? I need your help,” Delilah blurted. “There’s a ghost or a spirit—well, I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but it’s here, and I think it’s in my necklace—”

“Hold on, deary. I’ll be there right away. Okay? I’m on my way.”

“Don’t leave—” the call dropped. Delilah scoffed. She tossed a look back at Khalil, who was still quite asleep, and another at the figure, who had stopped a few yards short of the Volkswagen. 

The radio spazzed before resting on a dead channel. Then, piercing through the prickly buzz, a low murmur: “Delilah.”

Ahead, the figure blurred into focus. Nonna stood dignified in her dusty green church dress, arms spread and eyes kind.

Breath snagged in her throat, Delilah covered her mouth with her hands. Nonna widened her arms.

“Delilah, baby,” Nonna’s voice sang through the speakers, but her mouth remained smiling. “I’m here.”

“That’s not you,” Delilah whimpered behind her hands. 

“It’s the me that matters.”

At Delilah’s stillness, Nonna lowered her arms. The static spurted for a moment before the humming. It was Sanctuary Nonna was humming Sanctuary just like she did when Delilah would skip home from elementary school.

Delilah swung open her door, but hesitated as she stepped out. She clung onto the handle, keeping her body protected. “Why are you here?”

Nonna planted her hands on her hips. “What kind of question—for you, child, I’m here for you! To keep an eye on you, thinking you’re such a big girl and all that. You need a loving touch or a stern hand, ‘specially over all that talk about dropping out. What were you thinking?”

It was Nonna. Undoubtedly, it was Nonna. Delilah threw herself into her arms, and though the touch was lukewarm and the scent of jasmine was faint, it was the kind of hug Delilah had craved since she left New Orleans.

“There,” Nonna’s voice thrummed as she stroked Delilah’s cheek. “You’ll be okay, baby, you’ll be fine. Khalil will be fine. I love you.”

“I love you,” Delilah whispered. 

A pair of circular headlights cut through the fog, evaporating the traces of Nonna. Alone, Delilah wiped her eyes and watched the white 1920’s Rolls Royce as it rumbled closer. It seemed to have materialized from nothing, but if the sputter of its engine wasn’t real enough, the brazen squawk of its Klaxon horn could convince anyone.

The car’s right front tire tore over the curb, but it parked anyway. Hickory Wren leapt up from the driver’s side and popped up the collar of their checkered overcoat as they scanned the lot and landed on Delilah.

“There y’are!” They strode across the pavement. “I’m here to help.”

“Oh.” Delilah rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. “It was my Nonna. She was just here. She’s been…visiting. But she’s not supposed to be, is she?”

“No, ma’am. But you’re handling yourself better than many. I’m going to take real good care of Nonna, awright? Where’s that necklace of yours?”

“It fell somewhere under my seat. My little brother’s asleep, if you don’t mind—”

“Not at all. I’ll be quiet as a mouse.” They rooted through the inside pockets of their coat and picked out a pair of what looked like forceps. “You lovelies must have had such a fright. So sorry for it all. But your grandmother loved you very much; she visited sooner than most dearly departed.”

As Hickory Wren kneeled over the driver’s seat and rummaged through the crevices in the car, Delilah gazed out at the fog. “You do this often, then? Collect…what, souls?”

“Your unfinished business is our business, as it were,” Hickory Wren said, emerging with the ruby firmly clasped within the forceps. “You’d be surprised by the number of botched burials around. It’s why Effie insists on a Rite of Committal: leaves no room for lost souls. It’s straight to peacetime. No possessions, no hauntings, no latching onto anything. Souls like being connected to things, you see. It could be any old thing. Often, it’s something special, like your necklace. Makes for an easy cleanup, at least.”

“It was never the cat, then, was it?”

“No, no, Elmer purged that one long ago. He handles the cleaving.” Hickory Wren slid the necklace into a small felt pouch. “Once Nonna is freed, Effie’ll guide her to where she needs to be. She’s gotten real good at identifying souls; she told me right away it was your necklace. But me, I get the fun part,” they said, twirling the forceps. “I get to collect your shinies.”

Delilah wrapped her arms around herself. “So that was goodbye, then. The real goodbye.”

Hickory Wren’s eyes softened. “Yes, deary, that was goodbye.”

She nodded, then inhaled sharply as if to move on. “This can’t be real. I mean, I know it is, but people would be talking about it. There would be research and experiments. I would have known about it, about souls.”

“It’s different for everyone. And it depends on your funeral. You’ll be fine. Well, you’ll be fine if you die at the right church.” Hickory Wren waved in grandiose fashion as they stooped back down into the Rolls Royce. “And if you don’t, we’re here.”

“This is psychologically relevant. What if I tell people?” Delilah called.

The only response was “Tell what to whom?” and the white car reversed off the curb and away into the fog.

Delilah leaned against the open door of her Beetle, watching Khalil’s chest rise and fall through the window. She parted her lips, hoping for a taste of sweet jasmine, but tasted only the hanging dew of late night. Sighing, she turned off the radio and drove home.

The next morning, Delilah awoke with the fading warm memory of a dreamlike embrace and her favorite necklace missing.