Grave birds haunt the cemeteries of Hawthorne, South Carolina, where Spanish moss drips from the trees and Southern charm hides ugly lies. Hollis Sutherland never knew these unique birds existed, not until she died and was brought back to life. The ghostly birds are manifestations of the dead’s unfinished business, and they know Hollis and her uncanny gift can set them free.
When a mysterious bachelor wanders into the small town, bizarre events begin to plague its wealthiest citizens—blood drips from dogwood blossoms, flocks of birds crash into houses, fire tornadoes descend from the sky. Hollis knows these are the omens her grandfather warned about, announcing the devil’s return. But despite Cain Landry’s eerie presence and the plague that has followed him, his handsome face and wicked charm win over the townsfolk. Even Hollis falls under his spell as they grow closer.
That is, until lies about the town’s past start to surface. The grave birds begin to show Hollis the dead’s ugly deeds from some twenty-five years ago and the horrible things people did to gain their wealth. Hollis can’t decide if Cain is some immortal hand of God, there to expose their sins, or if he’s a devil there to ruin them all. Either way, she’s determined to save her town and the people in it, whatever it takes.
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PROLOGUE
Sometimes the dead have unfinished business. “You see it, don’t you, Hollis?” Mr. Royce Gentry’s deep, rumbling voice stamped the air with white puffs. He squatted
low next to my chair and nodded toward my grandaddy’s grave where his coffin was being lowered into the ground. The men, Grandaddy’s dearest friends, slowly filled in the dirt, one mournful shovelful at a time.
Cold frosted the morning dew into a thin white crust that covered the grass. There, off to the side, was a little bluebird, tethered to the earth by an invisible thread. It twittered a helpless, frantic sound as it desperately flapped, struggling to get loose. Delicate and transparent, it looked as if it was made of colored air. Muted, so the hues didn’t quite punch through. It was a pitiful sight, the poor thing trying so hard to get back up in the sky.
A ghost bird, I had first thought when I saw it. Until I looked around and found there were many, many more in the cemetery.
It was a grave bird.
I swallowed hard and pretended I didn’t know what Mr. Gentry was talking about. “No, sir. I don’t see nothing,” I said as I continued to stare at the phantom.
He gave me a scrutinizing look. He saw the lie in my eyes. But he let it go, for the now anyways.
I was only eleven; I didn’t want to admit I was different. But I knew I was whether I liked it or not and would always be.
I had never so much as uttered a hello to Mr. Gentry until five days before. He’s the one who pulled me from the freezing river and brought me back to life. Not by means of magic or a miracle, but with science: medical resuscitation for thirty-two minutes.
But a miracle happened all the same.
The adults stood around my grandaddy’s grave, murmuring their condolences to my granny and my momma. It was that awkward moment after a funeral is finished where everyone seemed lost about what to do next, but we all knew we were going back to Granny’s house to a slew of casseroles and desserts that would barely get eaten. Two of my distant cousins, bored from the bother of my grandfather dying, kicked around a fallen pine cone over an even more distant relative’s nearby grave. Mrs. Yancey, our neighbor up the road, had just taken my twin brothers home since they were squalling something terrible, confused as to why we would trap Granddaddy in the ground. I watched as Mr. Gentry talked closely to Mrs. Belmont’s son, who was visiting from New York City, but his flirting, normally an immersed habit, was on autopilot as he watched me watching the grave bird. Could Mr. Gentry see it, too?
Mr. Gentry was a Southern gentleman, who put a great deal of care into perfecting the standard. His suits were custom-made from a tailor in Charleston, who drove up just to measure him,
then hand-delivered the pieces when they were finished. It didn’t matter your standing in society, Mr. Gentry treated the most common among us as his equal.
He lived a lush lifestyle, filled with grand parties attended by foreign dignitaries, congressmen and anyone powerful he could gain favor with. Several times a year he traveled across Europe,
something his job as a foreign consultant required of him. His friends, just as colorful as him, lived life to the fullest. A dedicated husband once, until his wife found interest in someone half her age. His two grown daughters, who didn’t respect his choice in who to love, eventually wanted nothing to do with him. I think it left a big hole in his heart and what drew him to help our family out.
In the weeks after the funeral, Mr. Gentry began to fill the empty space in our lives where Grandaddy once stood. It started with an offer to cover the funeral costs, a gesture my granny refused at first, but it was money we didn’t have and desperately needed. Then it was the crooked porch he insisted on fixing. Rolled up his starched white sleeves and did it himself, like hard labor was something he was used to doing. The henhouse fence got mended next. A tire on the tractor that hadn’t run in a year was replaced. Then our bellies grew accustomed to feeling full on fine meals he swore were simply leftovers from his latest dinner party. They were going to be tossed, and we were doing him a favor by taking them off his hands. Beef Wellington, with its buttery crust and tender meat center, so savory I’d melt in my chair from the sheer bliss of a single bite. It felt sacrilegious to eat lobster bisque from Granny’s cracked crockery, but that didn’t stop me from slurping up every last creamy bite. And nothing yanked me out of the bed faster than the sweet buttermilk and vanilla scent of beignets. If a stomach could smile, I’m sure mine did. And often, whenever Mr. Gentry needed his fridge clear.
There’s a bond that comes with somebody saving your life. Our friendship became something built on the purest of love. Where he had stepped into my life and filled the important role my grandaddy had once represented, I helped him heal the ache from being denied the chance to be a loving father.
A few months after my grandfather was put in the ground, Uncle Royce—who he eventually became—took me back out to the church’s cemetery. He sat me down on the graveyard bench, a place you go when you want to sit a spell with the dead. The mound of dirt from my grandfather’s grave had rounded from the heavy rain, slowly melting back into the earth.
He told me what I already knew, that I would be different now after the accident. He knew because the same thing had happened to him.
“You and I share something special,” Uncle Royce started his story. We were two people who had been clinically dead then brought back to life. Lazarus syndrome he said they called
it. Only months ago for me. Near forty years for him.
He had died for twelve minutes. Knocked plum out of his shoes when a car hit him at twenty-two
years old. He says he stood over himself, barefoot, watching them work on his body. He thought he was going to ascend into the bright light but instead was sucked back into his body and woke up a few days later in the hospital.
A chill shivered up my spine: it was almost exactly what I had experienced.
I had felt myself float up and away from the river; I was no longer cold and wet. Sad or scared. An aura of peace enveloped me—or rather became me.
It had seemed like I hovered there forever in that state of infinite understanding. A warmth emanated from above, a light formed from all that came before me.
From the bright light my grandfather’s voice reached out. His gentle words, simply known and not heard, urged me to go back. It wasn’t my time yet. My place was still at home.
In a swooping rush, I was vacuumed back inside myself. I spat up a gush of water. My lungs burned. My body was freezing cold again. And Mr. Gentry was smiling down on me saying, “That a girl. Get it all out.” Far off down the road an ambulance cried that it was coming.
“You know what I think they are?” Uncle Royce said now, pointing to all the birds who were trapped, defeated, most of the color leached from their feathers. I didn’t say anything, still not
wanting to confirm that he was right, that I could see them. I just listened. “I think they’re a kind of representation—a manifestation— of the dead’s unresolved issues.” I didn’t know what
he meant by that, but it sounded heavy and important, and that felt about right.
I could see it, in a way. Granddaddy had been mad at me before we went off the bridge. I’d stolen a gold-colored haircomb, complete with rhinestones across its curved top, as pretty as a
peacock’s feathers, from Roy’s Drugstore. When Granddaddy found out, he had yanked me up by the arm, angry that the preacher’s granddaughter would shame her family in such a manner.
He was scolding on the truck ride home when I started crying about not having pretty things like the other girls at school. He paused his lecture for a minute, and I could tell this bothered him; I could see the way it saddened his eyes. He was the preacher at a poor country church where shoes were often scuffed, clothes mended instead of replaced, and a good meal was something scarce. Family and Jesus were what was important. I found I felt small next to all the wealthy girls who attended the big, fancy church with their new shoes, their starched dresses, the silk ribbons in their hair. It made my poverty stand out, and I didn’t like it.
Then Granddaddy said envy was one of the seven deadly sins, and I was setting myself up for a lifetime of grief by wanting others to love me for what I had instead of who I was. Shame welled over me, whether he intended it to or not.
I was crying something fierce, but I knew he was right.
But hard lessons aren’t easy to accept. Instead of apologizing or even letting him know I understood, I told him I hated him. Screamed it as loud as my young lungs could. Couldn’t say who it shocked more, him or me. I wished those words back into my mouth as soon as they were out.
But it was too late.
A construction truck crossed the road on our right, not waiting long enough for other cars or paying enough attention. It smashed into the side of our truck and pushed us over the railing
and off the bridge, down into the Greenie River.
“You should tell him you forgive him,” Uncle Royce said, pointing to the mound of earth under which my grandaddy now lay.
“Forgive him?” Clearly, he didn’t understand. I was the one who’d stolen something, who’d made my own grandaddy so ashamed, so disappointed. I was the one who’d spewed words of hate in our last moments together.
I had survived, and my grandaddy was dead.
If I hadn’t have stolen that comb, he never would have come to town to fetch me.
He never would have died.
“He doesn’t want you to think it’s your fault. He feels bad he scolded you so severely over stealing that haircomb.”
I turned my head slowly toward Uncle Royce. He couldn’t have known about the comb: no one did. “How do you know about that?” I said on whispered breath, almost too faint to hear.
He looked me straight in the eye. “Because his grave bird
showed me.”
Excerpted from GRAVE BIRDS by Dana Elmendorf. Copyright © 2025 by Dana Elmendorf. Published by MIRA, an imprint of HarperCollins.
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