'Mommy . . .'
'I'll come by your room at eleven-thirty and knock softly. Be ready,' she said.
I stared at her a moment. What was I going to do? Then I looked down at the book in her hands.
She was holding it upside down, just using it to stare at her own maddening thoughts.
'Mommy, it's too dangerous to go to the cemeteries at night. Daddy would be very, very angry at both of us, but especially at me. Please,' I begged.
She gazed at me. 'Okay, Pearl,' she said. 'If you don't want to do it, it's all right.'
'But you're not going either, Mommy, right? Right?' I insisted.
'I won't go,' she finally said, but I didn't believe her.
I pledged to stay awake and listen for her footsteps just in case.
7
Beyond the Grave
Despite my urgent and great desire to do so, I had trouble keeping myself awake. I tried reading, but my eyes were drifting off the page and my head was nodding more and more. I told myself it would be easier to just-lie quietly in the dark, but almost immediately after I put out the lights and lowered my head to the pillow, my eyelids closed. The next thing I knew, I woke with a start and when I glanced at the clock, I saw it was nearly a quarter to midnight. If Mommy had come to my door to knock or if she had walked by, I hadn't heard her. I couldn't imagine her going out at night to a cemetery by herself. Confident I would find her still in her bed, I rose, put on my slippers and robe and tiptoed across the hallway to my parents' room.
The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it gently and peered in. The amber light of a half moon outlined the silhouettes of the dresser, lamps, chairs, and vanity table. I could see Daddy's head on the pillow, but when I looked closer, I did not see Mommy's. For a long moment panic nailed my feet to the floor. She must be in the bathroom, I told myself. I waited and listened, but there was no sign or any sound of her. I knocked gently on the door and waited for Daddy to lift his head. He didn't move.
I entered their bedroom and whispered loudly, 'Daddy.'
A heavy, resonant snore was his only response. I went to his side and touched his shoulder. I didn't want to wake him abruptly and frighten him. He might think the hospital had called about Pierre. But he wasn't responding.
'Daddy.' I shook him. He moaned and turned over, still not opening his eyes.
The strong odor of bourbon reached me, and I saw the nearly empty tumbler on the nightstand. When I shook him again, more roughly, my father groaned and his eyelids fluttered but barely opened.
'Whaa,' he said.
'Daddy, wake up. Where's Mommy?'
'Whaa.' He closed his eyes and turned on his side. Frustrated but frantic about Mommy, I retreated from the bedroom and hurried down the stairway. I searched the rooms, all of which were dark, and then I peeked in the kitchen, hoping she had gone there to make herself some warm milk. But I found only the night-lights on and no one anywhere.
I thought for a moment and then hurried down to her studio. Even though it was dark, I could imagine her sitting there, so I flipped on the lights. My heart throbbed in triple time as I held my breath. She wasn't there, but her recent picture caught my attention. I drew closer to it and saw that she had added more detail.
It was a sketch of Jean's face on a ghostlike body floating out of the swamp, but vaguely suggested in the water below was the figure of a man, his eyes wide.
I studied the picture and then stepped back and gasped. This was the face I saw so often in my own nightmare; it was the face of Paul Tate, who was thought to have drowned himself out of grief when ,Mommy went to live with Daddy. It was a face that obviously haunted her as well.
I turned off the lights and hurried through the house to look in the garage, where my worst fear was confirmed. Mommy's car was gone; she had driven off to meet the voodoo mama in the cemetery in which Nina Jackson had been buried. Upstairs, Daddy was in a drunken stupor. What was I to do?
I dressed quickly and drove Daddy's car to the cemetery. In the glow of the moonlight the burial vaults took on a pale flaxen glow, and the shadows around them deepened, creating long corridors of darkness that wrapped themselves tightly around most of the ovens and permitted only the very tops of monuments to be seen. The darkness resembled a sea of ink.
I hesitated and then drove slowly around the cemetery. At first I saw nothing and hoped Mommy had gone someplace less ominous; but when I made a final turn, I saw her car near an entrance, and she wasn't in it.
My heart began to thump. I pulled up behind her car and reached into the glove compartment for the flashlight. Then I turned off the engine and the lights, allowing that sea of ink to rush in around me, too. A wave of anxiety washed over me and sent my throbbing heartbeat into my bones. My fingers trembled when I reached for the door handle and stepped out. For a moment it felt as if the ground beneath my feet had softened into quicksand. Every step toward the cemetery took great effort.
I turned on the flashlight and directed the beam down the corridor ahead of me, not daring to look back or to my left or right. With my attention glued to the ray of light, I walked on, listening, hoping to find Mommy quickly and get her out of here and home.
Suddenly the screech of a cat sent sharp shivers through my chest and made my stomach do flip-flops. Blood drained down into my feet. I stopped and waved my flashlight over the ovens, cutting across the stone figures, the engraved words, and the embossed faces of the dead. A second screech was followed by a snarl, and then all went silent.
