A Graveyard for Lunatics

bang and the voices yelling. Maybe the accident got out of hand, if accident it was. Maybe they needed a proper midnight witness, someone to see but not tell. You let in the truth and have kept it since.?

I rose to stand and almost fainted. My rise, as if we were on weights and pulleys, sank the priest back, all but boneless, in his chair.

?You were witness, father, were you not? For it?s just a few yards off and, on Halloween night, 1934, didn?t they bring the victims here??

?God help me,? mourned the priest, ?yes.?

One moment full of fiery air, Father Kelly now gave up his inflammatory ghost and sank, fold on fold, flesh on flesh, into himself.

?Were they all dead when the crowd carried them in??

?Not all,? said the priest, in shocked recall.

?Thanks, father.?

?For what?? He had closed his eyes with the headache of remembrance and now sprang them wide in renewed pain. ?Do you know what you?ve got into?!?

?I?m afraid to ask.?

?Then go home, wash your face and, sinful advice, get drunk!?

?It?s too late for that. Father Kelly, did you give the last rites to any or all??

Father Kelly shook his head back and forth, wigwagging as if to sign away the ghosts.

?Suppose I did?!?

?The man named Sloane??

?Was dead. I blessed him, in spite.?

?The other man???

?The big one, the famous one, the all powerful???

?Arbuthnot,? I finished.

?Him, I signed and spoke and touched with water. And then he died.?

?Cold and dead, stretched out forever, really dead??

?Christ, the way you put it!? He sucked air and expelled it: ?All that?yes!?

?And the woman?? I asked.

?Was the worst!? he cried, new paleness firing the old paleness in his cheeks. ?Daft. Crazed and worse than crazed. Out of mind and body and not to be put back in. Trapped between the two. My God, it reminded me of plays I?d seen as a young man. Snow falling. Ophelia suddenly dressed in a terrible pale quiet as she steps into the water and does not so much drown as melt into a final madness, a silence so cold you could not cut it with a knife or sound it with a shout. Not even death could shake that woman?s newfound winter. You hear that? A psychiatrist said that once! The eternal winter. Snow country from which rare travelers return. The Sloane woman, caught between bodies, out there in the rectory, not knowing how to escape. So she just turned to drown herself. The bodies were taken out by the studio people who had brought them in for respite.?

He talked to the wall. Now he turned to gaze at me, stricken with alarms and growing hate. ?The whole thing lasted, what? an hour? Yet it has haunted me these years.?

?Emily Sloane, mad???

?A woman led her away. An actress. I?ve forgotten the name. Emily Sloane did not know she was taken. She died the next week or the week after, I heard.?

?No,? I said. ?There was a triple burial three days later. Arbuthnot alone. The Sloanes together, or so the story goes.?

The priest regrouped his tale. ?No matter. She died.?

?It matters a great deal.? I leaned forward. ?Where did she die??

?All I know is she did not go to the morgue across the street.?

?To a hospital, then??

?You?ve got all I know.?

?Not all, father, but some??

I walked to the rectory window to peer out at the cobbled courtyard and the drive leading in.

?If I ever came back, would you tell the same story??

?I should not have told you anything! I have breached my confessional vows!?

?No, none of what you?ve said was told in private. It simply happened. You saw it. And now it?s done you good to confess at last to me.?

?Go.? The priest sighed, poured another drink, slugged it back. It did nothing to color his cheeks. He only sagged more awry in his flesh. ?I am very tired.?

I opened the door of the rectory and looked along the hall toward the altar bright with jewels and silver and gold.