suddenly crowded with unwanted images of Tommy and Margaret, not as
they had been in life but as they might be in their coffins: decaying,
worm-riddled, eye sockets empty, lips shriveled back from
yellow-toothed grins. Trembling uncontrollably, he was gripped by an
absolute conviction that the earth in front of the granite markers was
going to shift and cave inward, that the corrupted hands of their
corpses were going to appear in the crumbling soil, digging fiercely
and then their faces, their eyeless faces, as they pulled themselves
out of the ground.
He backed away from the graves a few steps but refused to flee. He was
too old to believe in the living dead or in ghosts.
The dead brown grass and spring-thawed earth did not move. After a
while he stopped expecting it to move.
When he was in full control of himself again, he walked between the low
stone columns and out of the graveyard. All the way to the house, he
wanted to spin around and look back. He didn't do it.
He entered the house through the back door and locked it behind him.
Ordinarily he never locked doors.
Though it was time for lunch, he had no appetite. Instead, he opened a
bottle of Corona.
He was a three-beers-a-day man. That was his usual limit, not a
minimum requirement. There were days when he didn't drink at all.
Though not lately.
Recently, in spite of his limit, he had been downing more than three a
day.
Some days, a lot more.
Later that afternoon, sitting in a living-room armchair, trying to read
Thomas Wolfe and sipping a third bottle of Corona, he became convinced,
against his will, that the experience in the graveyard had been a vivid
premonition. A warning. But a warning of what?
As April passed with no recurrence of the phenomenon in the lower
woods, Eduardo had become more-- not less--tense. Each of the previous
events had transpired when the moon was in the same phase, a quarter
full. That celestial condition seemed increasingly pertinent as the
April moon waxed and waned without another disturbance. The lunar
cycle might have nothing whatsoever to do with these peculiar
events-yet still be a calendar by which to anticipate them.
Beginning the night of May first, which boasted a sliver of the new
moon, he slept fully clothed. The .22 was in a soft leather holster on
the nightstand.
Beside it was the Discman with headphones, Wormheart album inserted. A
loaded Remington twelve-gauge shotgun lay under the bed, within easy
reach. The video camera was equipped with fresh batteries and a blank
cassette. He was prepared to move fast.
He slept only fitfully, but the night passed without incident.
He didn't actually expect trouble until the early-morning hours of May
fourth.
Of course, the strange spectacle might never be repeated. In fact, he
hoped he wouldn't have to witness it again. In his heart, however, he
knew what his mind could not entirely admit: that events of
