A Graveyard for Lunatics

The mirror slid open again. Footsteps moved off quietly.

I stared through into the tunnel half lit by mere firefly ceiling lights.

The Beast?s massive shadow drifted on the incline going down, as he turned.

He gazed at me steadily out of his incredibly wild, incredibly sad eyes.

He nodded down the incline at darkness. ?Well, if you can?t walk, then run,? he murmured.

?From what??

The mouth munched wetly on itself and at last pronounced it: ?Me! I?ve run all my life! You think I can?t follow? God! Pretend! Pretend I?m still strong, that I still have power. That I can kill you. Act afraid!?

?I am!?

?Then run! God damn you!?

He raised one fist to knock shadows off the walls.

I ran.

He followed.

71

It was a dreadful pretend pursuit, through the vaults where all the film reels lay, toward the stone crypts where all the stars from those films hid, and under the wall and through the wall, and suddenly it was behind, and I was ricocheted through catacombs with the Beast flooding his flesh at my heels toward the tomb where J. C. Arbuthnot had never lain.

And I knew, running, it was no tour, sweet Jesus, but a destination. I was not being pursued but herded. To what?

The bottom of the vault where Crumley and blind Henry and I had stood a thousand years ago. I jolted to a halt.

The sarcophagus platform steps waited, empty, in place.

Behind me I felt the dark tunnel churn with footfalls and the fire bellows roar of pursuit.

I jumped on the steps, reaching somehow to climb. Slipping, crying insipid prayers, I groaned to the top, cried out with relief, and shouted myself out of the sarcophagus, onto the floor.

I hit the tomb door. It burst wide. I fell out into the graveyard and stared wildly along through the stones at the boulevard, miles off and empty.

?Crumley!? I yelled.

There was no traffic, no cars parked.

?Oh, God,? I mourned. ?Crumley! Where??

Behind me there was a riot of feet clubbing the tomb entry. I whirled.

The Beast stepped into the doorway.

He was framed in moonlight. He stood like a mortuary statue reared to celebrate himself, under his carved name. For one moment he seemed like the ghost of some English lord posed on the sill of his ancient country gatehouse, primed to be trapped on film and immersed in darkroom acid waters to rise phantom-like as the film developed in mists, one hand on the door hinge to his right, the other upraised as if to hurl Doom across the cold marble gameyard. Above the cold marble door I once again saw:

ARBUTHNOT.

I must have half cried aloud that name.

At that he fell forward as if someone had fired a starter?s gun. His cry spun me to flounder toward the gate. I caromed off a dozen gravestones, scattered floral displays, and ran, yelling, on a double track. Half of me saw this as manhunt, the other as Keystone farce. One image was broken floodgate tides lapping a lone runner. The other was elephants stampeding Charlie Chase. With no choosing between maniac laughters and despairs, I made it down brick paths between graves to find:

No Crumley. An empty boulevard.

Across the street, St. Sebastian?s was open, lights on, the doors wide.

J. C., I thought, if only you were there!

I leaped. Tasting blood, I ran.

I heard the great clumsy thud of shoes behind, and the gasping breath of a half-blind terrible man.

I reached the door.

Sanctuary!

But the church was empty.

Candles were lit on the golden altar. Candles burned in the grottos where Christ hid so as to give Mary center stage amidst the bright drippings of love.

The doors to the confessional stood wide.

There was a thunder of footfalls.

I leaped into the confessional, slammed the door, and sank, hideously shivering, in the dark well.