A Graveyard for Lunatics

?Yeah, but I wasn?t nuts!?

?Who says??

I shut my mouth, Crumley opened his.

?Well,? he said, ?what if we took Emily Sloane to church??

?Hell!?

?Don?t ?hell? me. We all heard about her charities every year for Our Lady?s on Sunset. How she gave away two hundred silver crucifixes two Easters running. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.?

?Even if she?s mad??

?But she?d be aware. Inside, behind her wall, she?d sense she was at mass and?talk.?

?Rant, rave, maybe??

?Maybe. But she knows everything. That?s why she went mad, so she couldn?t think or talk about it. She?s the only one left, the others are dead, or hidden right in front of us, with their mouths shut for pay.?

?And you think she?d feel enough, sense enough, know and remember? What if we drive her even more mad??

?God, I don?t know. It?s the last lead we have. No one else will own up. You get half a story from Constance, another fourth from Fritz, and then there?s the priest. A jigsaw, and Emily Sloane?s the frame. Light the candles and incense. Sound the altar bell. Maybe she?ll wake after seven thousand days and talk.?

Crumley sat for a full minute, drinking slowly and heavily. Then he leaned forward and said:

?Now, do we get her out??

67

We did not take Emily Sloane to church.

We brought the church to Emily Sloane.

Constance arranged it all.

Crumley and I brought candles, incense, and a brass bell made in India. We placed and lighted the candles in a shadowed room of the Hollyhock House Elysian Fields Sanitarium. I pinned some cotton cloths about my knees.

?What the hell?s that for?? griped Crumley.

?Sound effects. It rustles. Like the priest?s skirt.?

?Jesus!? said Crumley.

?Well, yeah.?

Then, with the candles lit, and Crumley and me standing well out of the way in an alcove, we fanned the incense and tested the bell. It made a fine, clear sound.

Crumley called quietly. ?Constance? Now.?

And Emily Sloane arrived.

She did not move of her own volition, she did not walk, nor did her head turn or her eyes flex or motion in the carved marble face. The profile came first out of darkness above a rigid body and hands folded in gravestone serenity upon a lap made virgin by time. She was pushed, from behind, in her wheelchair, by an almost invisible stage manager, Constance Rattigan, dressed in black as for the rehearsal of an old funeral. As Emily Sloane?s white face and terribly quiet body emerged from the hall, there was a motion as of birds taking off; we fanned the incense smokes and tapped the bell.

I cleared my throat.

?Shh, she?s listening!? whispered Crumley.

And it was true.

As Emily Sloane came into the soft light, there was the faintest motion, the tiniest twitch of her eyes under the lids, as the imperceptible beat of the candle flames beckoned silence and leaned shadows.

I fanned the air.

I chimed the bell.

At this, Emily Sloane?s body itself?wafted. Like a weightless kite, borne in an unseen wind, she shifted as if her flesh had melted away.

The bell rang again, and the smoke of the incense made her nostrils quiver.

Constance backed away into shadows.

Emily Sloane?s head turned into the light.

?Ohmigod,? I whispered.

It?s her, I thought.

The blind woman who had come into the Brown Derby and left with the Beast on that night, it seemed a thousand nights ago.

And she was not blind.