A Graveyard for Lunatics

The Beast?s voice! Urgently spelling calamities, terrible commitments, dreadful errors, sins darker than the marble sky above and below.

The priest?s voice gave brief and just as urgent answers of forgiveness, predictions of some better life, where Beast, if not reborn as Beauty, might find some small sweet joys through penance.

Whisper, whisper, in the deeps of the night.

I shut my eyes and ached to hear.

Whisper, whisper. Then?I stiffened in disbelief.

Weeping. A wailing that went on and on and might never stop.

The lonely man inside the church, the man with the dreadful face and the lost soul behind it, let his terrible sadness free to shake the confessional, the church, and me. Weeping, sighing, but to weep again.

My eyelids burst with the sound. Then, silence, and?a stir. Footsteps.

We broke and ran.

We reached the car, jumped in.

?For Christ?s sake!? hissed Roy.

Shoving my head down, he crouched. The Beast was out, running alone across the empty street.

When he reached the graveyard gate, he turned. A passing car fixed him as with a theatre?s spotlight. He froze, waited, then vanished inside the graveyard.

A long way off, inside the church doors, a shadow moved, the candles went out, the doors shut.

Roy and I looked at each other.

?My God,? I said. ?What sins could be so huge that someone confesses them this late at night? And the weepingl Did you hear? Do you think?he comes to forgive God, for handing him that face.?

?That face. Yeah, oh, yeah,? said Roy. ?I got to know what he?s up to, I can?t lose him!?

And Roy was out of the car again.

?Roy!?

?Don?t you see, dummy?? cried Roy. ?He?s our film, our monster! If he gets away?! God!?

And Roy ran across the street.

Fool! I thought. What?s he doing?

But I was afraid to yell so long after midnight. Roy vaulted over the graveyard gate and sank down in shadow like someone drowning. I shot up in my seat so hard I hit my head on the car roof and collapsed, cursing: Roy, dammit. Dammit, Roy.

What if a police car comes now, I thought, and asks me, What you up to? My answer? Waiting for Roy. He?s in the graveyard, be out any second. He will, will he? Sure, just you wait!

I waited. Five minutes. Ten.

And then, incredibly, there came Roy back out, but moving as if he had been electroshocked.

He walked slowly, a sleepwalker, across the street. He didn?t even see his own hand on the car door handle, turning it to let him in. He sat in the front seat of the car, staring over at the graveyard.

?Roy??

He didn?t hear.

?What?d you see over there, just now??

He didn?t answer.

?Is he, him, it, coming out??

Silence.

?Roy!? I hit his elbow. ?Speak! What!?

?He,? said Roy.

?Yes??

?Unbelievable,? said Roy.

?I?d believe.?

?No. Quiet. He?s mine now. And, oh God, what a monster we?ll have, junior.? He turned to look at me at last, his eyes flashlights, the soul burning out of his cheeks and coloring his lips. ?Won?t we have a film, pal??

?Will we??

?Oh,? he cried, face blazing with revelation. ?Yeah!?

?Is that all you got to say? Not what went on in the graveyard, not what you saw?