Death Trance

I rattled furiously at the cemetery gates but there was nothing I could do to get in there. I could only watch in horror and disbelief as Charlie tried to claw his way up the polished side of the marble catafalque, desperate to escape two huge upright gravestones which ground their way in towards him on either side. They must have weighed nearly a ton each, those stones, decorated with stone lilies and sobbing cherubs; and they moved like giant funeral carriages, des chars funebres, gray and grotesque, faceless and unstoppable.

'Oh, God!’ shrieked Charlie. 'Oh my God! Neil! Help me! Oh God, somebody help me!'

By some unimaginable effort, Charlie managed to heave his bulky body halfway out of the relentlessly-closing space. His face was crimson with fear, his eyes starting out of his head. He raised one arm towards me, but then the massive tombstones closed in on him, trapping him between two upright faces of solid granite.

Without hesitation, the tombstones crushed him. I heard the bones in his legs snapping like a fusillade of pistol-fire; and then he soundlessly stretched open his mouth, gagging for a moment in utter agony, before a gouting fountain of blood and raw flesh surged from between his lips and darkly splattered the gravestones all around him. He was pinned upright for a moment, jerking and writhing, and then he mercifully collapsed.

I closed my eyes, still clutching the bars of the wrought-iron gates. I was shivering all over, and I could hear the blood pumping through my veins like the rushing traffic to hell itself. Then, without looking towards Charlie any more, I turned around, and began to walk back up the hillside.

Behind me, there was a shuddering, screeching, scraping sound, as the tombstones moved back into their proper positions. It was a sound that crawled into my bones, as Yiddish people sometimes say. I knew that I would wake up at night for years to come and think that I could hear that noise; the grating noise of an impossible and unavoidable death.

I could have reported Charlie's death to the police, I suppose. I could have knelt beside him until somebody came. But I was already involved in enough mysterious fatalities; already tangled up in enough fear and enough complications. How could I possibly explain Charlie's crushing to anybody who hadn't seen it for themselves? I couldn't even believe it myself, the way those massive tombs had moved of their own terrifying volition. I kept on walking up the hill, past the end of Quaker Lane, and back at last to the Granitehead Market.

It seemed to take me three times as long to get back to the store as it had to run down to the cemetery, and I was bushed when I walked back in there to collect my liquor.

'Did you find him?' asked Cy.

'Not a sign,' I lied.

'You're worried about him?' Cy wanted to know.

There was something I wanted to tell him, that's all. But I guess it can wait.'

The way you ran out of here, like a bat out of hell, I thought that…'

'Forget it, okay?' I said, more sharply than I meant to. I picked up my wine and my whisky. 'I'm sorry. Thanks for taking care of the booze.'

'Any time,' said Cy, looking puzzled.

I drove into Granitehead. Somebody had taken my favourite parking spot and so I had to go all the way down to the municipal lot by the harbour. By the time I had trudged back uphill to the square, I wasn't in the best of tempers: shocked, tired, and edgy. I walked into the Crumblin' Cookie with a scowl on my face like Quasimodo with a hunch-ache.

'Well,' said Laura, 'you've actually dared to show yourself.'

By the simple fact that she was speaking to me I knew that I was halfway forgiven. I set the flowers and the bottle of wine on the counter, and said, ‘The flowers are to say sorry. The wine we should have shared last night. If you want to throw the flowers away and drink the wine on your own, I'll understand.'

'You could have called me,' she said, resentfully.

'Laura, I don't know what else to say. I feel like a total Pig-'

She took the bottle of wine and examined the label.

'All right,' she said, 'since you have such excellent taste, I forgive you. But only just. And if it happens again, I may unforgive you very fast.'

'Whatever you say, Laura.'

'Well, you could look as if you're sorry.'

'I'm just upset, that's all.'

'You don't think I'm upset?'

'I didn't say you weren't.'

'At least when you're saying "forgive me" you might look as if you want to be forgiven.'

'What do you want me to do?' I demanded. 'Sing I'm Sorry and pour ashes all over my head?'

'Oh, get out of here. You're about as sorry as I don't know what.'

'You don't even know what it is I'm as sorry as, and you're telling me to get out?'

'John, for God's sake.'

'All right,' I told her, 'I'm going.'

Take your wine and your flowers with you,' she said.

'Keep them. Just because you don't know what it is I'm as sorry as, that doesn't mean to say that I'm not sorry.'

'You're about as sorry as Gary Gilmore,' she snapped at me.

'Well, you know what his famous last words were, don't you? "Let's do it." '

I walked out of the Crumblin' Cookie and left Laura to her justified anger. I liked her, I didn't want to upset her. Maybe I'd call her later this evening and see whether she'd cooled down. I knew that, sure as hell, I wouldn't have been very happy if I'd spent all evening preparing an Italian meal for somebody who couldn't be bothered to turn up.

I was crossing the cobblestones of Granitehead Square when I thought I glimpsed the girl in the hooded brown cape on the other side of the street just turning into Village Place. I changed direction, and followed after her, determined this time to catch up with her and find out who she was. Maybe she was nobody special at alclass="underline" maybe her frequent appearances had been coincidence. But after Charlie's death and Constance's death, I was determined that I was going to lay the ghost of the David Dark, and that meant I was going to track down anything and everything that could help me.

I turned the corner into Village Place: a little narrow cul-de-sac lined with fashionably chintzy shops. The girl was standing in front of the Granitehead Bookmart, staring into the window, either at the books that were displayed inside, or at her own reflection.

Twenty-Five

I approached the girl cautiously, circling around behind her so that I could see her pale face mirrored in the bookstore window. She must have known I was there, but she stayed where she was, quite still, one hand clasping her hood around her head, the other hanging with almost unnatural stillness by her side.

We both stood there in silence for quite a long time. A man in a woolly ski-hat came out of the store with a package under his arm, saw us, stopped for a moment in surprise, and then went hurrying off.

The girl said, 'Why did you follow me?'

'I think I should be asking you that question. Everywhere I've been in the past few days, I've seen you.'

She turned around and looked at me. There was something strangely familiar about her, although I couldn't think what it was. She was very pale, but quite pretty, with the darkest of eyes; yet her eyes were liquid and animated, not like the dead and lightless eyes of Jane, or Edgar Simons, or Neil Manzi.

'You're not one of them,' I said.

Them?'

'The manifestations; the ghosts.'

'No,' she smiled. 'I'm not one of them.'

'But you do know who I mean?'

'Yes.'

I took out my handkerchief and dabbed at my forehead. I felt hot and uncomfortable and I wasn't quite sure what to say. The girl watched me placidly, still smiling; although it was a quiet and friendly smile, not supercilious, or sly, or marked with that coaxing twist of the lip that had characterized Jane's smiles, whenever she had appeared.