D

by George Right

  "Shit!" he muttered, having fallen to his left knee and trying to pull out his right leg. This, however, was not so easy. Apparently, underground water approaching close to the surface had affected the street from below, and his leg plunged into a dense viscous dirt, dirt which, without asphalt above, would be a real bog... Logan, still feeling more rage and vexation than fear (now his trousers were ruined for sure!), pulled his leg harder, then, without having succeeded, rested both hands against the asphalt–and felt it continue to break and crumble under his palms, like thin ice on a swamp surface...

  "Hooey!" Tony thought. "I can't sink in the middle of a New York street!"

  But he felt the real horror only in the following instant when he realized that his leg had not simply got stuck in a cold dense bog–but was being pulled downwards. He felt something blunt and strong (fingers? tentacles? jaws?) close on his ankle and drag it deeper...

  His leg was already sunk to the groin. "Help," Tony desperately shouted, though several seconds ago the notion of calling for aid in this area would have seemed a bad idea to him. Even now, having heard the hoarse sound of his own voice, he looked around with more fear than hope.

  And saw in the fog two burning eyes–headlights. Approaching.

  "Bus M13," Logan thought. "It's followed me. Or I've just called it and now it'll come for my soul..." Tony realized, though too late, that, while running away, he had again jumped out from the sidewalk to the middle of the street. And now this damned bus does not need to do anything supernatural, it will simply squash the helpless victim in a trap...

  Tony lay down on the street, seizing the unbroken portion of asphalt, and furiously heaved his body in an attempt to free his right leg. It looked as is he might even win back some inches, but the headlights behind him were inexorably closing. There was no engine noise so far, but the crunch and rustle under its wheels became clearer and clearer. One more jerk–horror on the verge of madness gave extra force to Logan–and he succeeded in freeing his leg almost to the knee. At that moment, right behind him, something crunched with an especially vile sound–probably, the bus had crushed a dead bird–and Tony understood that he wouldn't be in time. He screwed up his eyes, expecting the blow...

  But no blow followed. Wheels rustled to the right of him and stopped. Logan opened his eyes without believing that he was still alive.

  The vehicle stood opposite him and it was not the M13 bus. It was much smaller white truck. With improbable relief, Logan recognized a USPS truck, with a blue eagle head and the motto on the side.

  Tony did not ask why a postal truck was driving at night. Express delivery–what could be easier and more commonplace? Everything has a reasonable explanation and that thing holding his ankle is simply heavy dirt. The driver of the truck will now help him to get out and will explain how to reach normal transportation. Maybe the driver will even agree to give him a lift, though this is against the rules... And all this idiotic phantasmagoria, at last, will end!

  The driver's door lock clicked and a foot in a laced boot stepped onto the roadway. And at the same moment Tony noticed that the motto on the side of the truck differed a little from what he had gotten used to.

  Instead of "We deliver for you," was written "We deliver you." To be more exact, "We de·liver you," with either a dot or a tiny hyphen separating "de" from "liver."

  We rip out your liver.

  And the eagle's head looked too predatory and spiteful. Logan at once remembered the myth about the eagle tormenting the liver of Prometheus.

  The door opened more widely with an unpleasant scratch. The driver, a bulky bald Negro, got out of the truck. And turned his face to Logan.

  Or what he had instead of a face.

  Seeing it, Tony screamed... or rather, squealed, without controlling himself at all. A high cheekboned white skull looked at him. At the same time, there was black flesh on each side of the head and Tony distinguished the silhouette of chubby cheeks and a fat neck. But between them there was only the deathly whiteness of bone, long ago and completely cleared of flesh either by knife or by decomposition. However this skull had a nose–bone white too, but a nose, instead of a triangular hole appropriate to a decayed corpse.

  "What's wrong with you?" the dreadful driver inquired in a sepulchral, but almost friendly voice. And Tony, as frightened as he was, noticed that on this terrible whitish mask there was not only a nose, but also lips moving to shape words. Nevertheless he could not squeeze out of his throat anything articulate and only spasmodically twitched, trying to free his leg.

  "Oh, I guess, my face," said the Black man (or whatever he actually was). Tony had a flashing thought that this...this being was looking for an occasion to be aggressive, and he pitifully waggled his head.

  "Everything is all right, sir," the driver continued just as amiably. "Many people are frightened when they see me for the first time. It's a skin defect called 'vitiligo'. Don't worry, it's not infectious."

  "My God, what an idiot I am," Tony thought, again relaxing with immense relief (which allowed his leg to be pulled several inches deeper at once). Certainly, vitiligo, a pigmentation disorder. He had seen people with this skin condition before, but they were white. On a black face it looks particularly terrible... Especially when the spot is shaped exactly like a skeleton’s face. Moreover, taking into account the existing circumstances...

  "Sorry," Tony murmured confoundedly.

  "You need help," the driver said more affirmatively than interrogatively.

  "Yes, my leg is stuck, and, in general, I'm in a stupid situation..."

  "Now we'll relieve you of it."

  But the motto? What about the motto? Could it be a one more trick of imagination which caused him to not see the preposition "for"?

  No. There was no "for." And "de" was quite distinctly separated from "liver."

  The driver stepped towards Tony and Logan saw his right hand that had been hidden by the truck door before. No–the hand itself was okay. No pigment spots and the fingers were not decayed. But these fingers clenched the handle of a huge butcher's hatchet, devilishly sharp even by sight and with a brown-stained blade.

  "What... are you going to...?" Tony, who had instantly lost all his newly found calmness, plaintively exclaimed.

  "To relieve you of it," repeated the Negro, taking one more step towards him, and Logan understood that "it" meant not his trouble, but his leg.

  There was not the slightest chance of releasing himself in the remaining seconds. But when the driver had already raised his weapon, Tony seized the largest piece of asphalt and with all his might threw it right in the terrible white-black face.

  The sound of the blow turned into a wet crunch. The jerked back and fell, hitting his head against the edge of the opened truck door (it slammed with a scratch)–and then finally tumbled down on the asphalt, still clutching his hatchet. Logan heard a new crunch and at first thought that it was one more sound of a breaking skull. But then he saw a new crack that ripped the asphalt from the edge of the hole into which Tony had slumped to the front wheels of the truck, having passed under the driver's motionlessly stiffened body.

  And in the following instant something moved under the asphalt, heavily rolling towards the vehicle–or, maybe, towards the bald head from which, probably, blood exuded? Tony felt the grasp on his ankle weakened. Having gathered all his strength, he jerked once again–and his right leg broke loose with a viscous damp sucking sound. Without a shoe and all bedaubed with mud, but those were insignificant details. Logan jumped up and rushed farther along the street. He did not even try to pick up the postman's hatchet (let alone getting behind the wheel of his truck), as he was not sure at all that the asphalt under him wouldn't break again.

  Or that this guy won't come to senses at the most inopportune moment as always happens in movies.

  "Well, it's unlikely," Tony told himself (while still maintaining his pace). "His skull was broken in two places at least, and however sturdy he seemed..."

  A f
amiliar scratch came from behind. And then–a door slam.

  Tony looked back over his in shoulder in panic and saw headlights again. Actually, they were not switched off even when the truck was standing. But now... they, seemingly, were approaching again.

  Logan ran to the nearest house and hastily tugged at the door handle. Screws pulled from the mouldering wood, leaving the handle in his hands. The door had been locked. Having rejected his "trophy," as useless as a weapon, Tony rushed off farther along the street. How many seconds are left to him?

  From the fog a traffic sign appeared. A rhombus with an inscription "DEAD END." Holy crap!

  However, he guessed there was a certain extense of free space beyond the sign. While it still could be nothing. There could be a fence blocking his path...

  Without stopping, he threw one more glance back. The headlights were definitely closer. Tony again looked forward and saw a metal fence. But, no, it was not too high. And the main thing–there was a semicircular gate in it and it was open. And beyond the gate something like a town in miniature appeared in the fog: rows of low stone structures stretching into the gloom and silent pale figures erect between them...

  Crypts. Tombstones. Monuments.

  If this nightmare were in Manhattan, Tony remembered, south of City Hall would be the Trinity Episcopal Church cemetery–the only one active on the island. But it is is apparently much closer and very small, not comparable to this huge necropolis lost in the fog. Here, perhaps, it is not hard to lose one's way, especially at night... And why is the cemetery open at night? Though it is, of course, good that it is open, considering the vehicle which has almost overtaken him already... But still, though Tony did not consider himself superstitious, he, as well as the majority of people, somehow did not find the idea of night visits to cemeteries appealing. Especially–after everything that has already happened this night.

  Here truly–dead end. Tony thought again about the literal meaning of this ordinary expression.

  And, having run closer to the gate, he got an additional reinforcement to his fears.

  It was one more dead bird. A swan, like those populating city ponds and Sheepshead Bay. It was impaled on several rods of the cemetery's fence, piercing it through. Feathers, once white, were stuck together with blood and cadaveric putrilage, shabby wings and the semi-decayed neck hung powerlessly downwards. The rotted head had fallen off and lay near the foot of the fence with a wide open blackened beak.

  No "No entrance" sign would have dissuaded Tony from entering more convincingly. But still, choosing between a dead swan and a live maniac with a hatchet... Tony hastily ran in the gate and turned into the first lateral walk, and then–into a narrow passageway between a crypt and a marble angel. Hunkering down, he hid.

  All was silent. Indeed–silent, as a cemetery... Probably the maniac had lost his trail or not followed him here at all. Logan remembered some scraps of a horror film in which, contrary to the most widespread genre cliches, the cemetery was the safest place, since the evil spirits could not pursue characters there because of its consecrated soil. Certainly, Tony had never before believed either in evil spirits, or in consecrated soil... But he hadn't believed either in USPS trucks driven by fans of cutting out livers and other body parts.

  Fans who could not be stopped even by a broken skull.

  Tony waited a little longer, then, trying not to make a sound, slowly stood up, noticing for the first time the discomfort of his right foot being wet and clad only in a sock. He did not dare to go back; such a big cemetery for certain had more than one exit.

  He carefully moved along a passageway between tombs, fearfully looking around. This whole place made the heart sick, and the darkness and fog, which were getting even denser, did not add enthusiasm at all. The cemetery was old, very old. It did not resemble an active one–at least, one where somebody looks after tombs. Gravestones and monuments were decayed, fissured, fouled with dirt and some wet muck–more probably a mold than a moss. Many slabs and stone crosses were dangerously tilted and looked ready to fall. It was almost impossible to discern inscriptions, especially in the dark, but those which Logan nevertheless managed to read confirmed the antiquity of the burial places: the beginning of 19th century, the middle of the 18th, even one thousand six hundred-and-some years, combined with the obviously Dutch surnames...

  But the worst of all were the statues. At first, Tony paid attention only to their condition, as pitiful as all the rest here–fouled, lop-sided, collapsing. Here a stump of a broken off hand stuck out, there a hole of a broken- off nose blackened, and here a long-ago fallen head had grown into the ground. (Tony shuddered, almost having stepped with his unshod foot on a face poking out of the earth; at first it seemed to him that it belonged not to a sculpture at all.) But then he began to look closely at faces.

  No, these were not the muzzles of demons. Silent sculptures represented figures quite traditional for old cemeteries: angels, grieving maidens in long gowns, and sculptural doubles of the dead towered in the fog. But the expressions! These stone faces were not grieving at all. Angels grimaced in mischievous triumph and twisted their mouths into mocking grins of sadistic pleasure; faces of maidens wore expressions of all kinds of perversity and corruption and, moreover, they were mostly not maidens, but dissolute old women, and the older and uglier their faces were, the more lusty and obscene. Faces of sculptures and portraits on headstones, representing those buried under these stones, were disfigured by eternal horror and pain.

  And even worse–Tony could not shake the growing sensation that all of them were continuously looking at him. Looking from all directions. No, stone heads did not turn when he passed by, he did not see and did not hear any movement. But when he turned his head he met blind eyes full of rage, scorn, or unbearable torment, for which even death was not the resolution, but only the beginning.

  "What are you staring at?!" Logan lost his temper, looking in the face of an angel who was stretching stone stumps towards him–the left hand of a sculpture had fallen off at the elbow, the right one–at mid-forearm. "I'm not afraid of you! You're just a piece of marble!"

  The statue remained silent and motionless, as a statue should. Tony turned away and walked on.

  Behind him a rustle sounded.

  Tony sharply turned back.

  The angel was moving. His head was turning and sloping, and stumps were drawing toward the man. Then Logan, frozen with horror, saw a crack separating a head from a neck, and two others, running through the stomach and knees of the statue. He hardly had time to jump aside, when the stone figure, falling to pieces already in air, crumbled with a roar across the passageway. The head rolled to Tony's feet and stopped dead, face upwards.

  Logan took a breath. Of course, simply everything has decayed and is collapsing here. No mysticism. But all the same, he had to get out of here as quickly as possible before the next ton of marble falls right down on his head...

  But only–Tony once again looked downwards–he was ready to swear that when the angel was whole, the expression on the marble face had been different. A spiteful triumph, instead of powerless fury. And the mouth had not been open then.

  Put a finger in. Reach right in here, doubting Thomas.

  "To hell with you," Tony thought, hastily walking away. "Night and fog play tricks on the mind. There is nothing to stare at all in these figures... It is best to get out of here as fast as possible... But where is that damned exit?" He had walked a long distance already. How long can a cemeterial avenue be? It was not a straight line as could be expected, but probably was nevertheless not so curved as to misguide him... or it just seemed to him in the absence of distinguishable reference points? What, if he wanders here in circles? Or even not in circles–he definitely had not passed again by the same crypts and statues–but in some devilish labyrinth...

  It seemed to Tony that he heard steps.

  He stopped dead. No. All is silent. Perhaps, his own echo... He walked farther.

  More sounds again
. Surely, echo, what else? The sound is reflected from all these crypts and gravestones...

  Only why did he hear only his left, shod footsteps, and the "echo" had sounds from both feet?

  He stopped again, listening attentively in fear to darkness.

  Bommmm!

  Tony shuddered so violently that he almost bit his tongue. From the fog came the second sound of a large bell ringing, and then a third... The lingering, dreary, and at the same time aloof and indifferent sounds floated from the darkness, bringing even more dread than mysterious steps among tombs and spiteful faces of statues.

  "Somewhere this cemetery there is a church," Tony thought. "Well, it is absolutely logical. But this bell is unlikely to be a call to a vigil. If any vigils were kept here during last two hundred years... (still, why is the obviously abandoned cemetery open, moreover at night?) And if it is the striking of a clock bell, isn't the number of strikes too much? Five, six... If it is six o'clock in the morning now, it should be dawn already... Seven... Eight..."

  Bommmm.... The sound of the last, twelfth blow slowly faded away in the gloom.

  Not morning at all. Midnight.

  "What the crap?! It should be, at least, 4 a.m. already!"

  "If only I could understand where this damned church is," Tony thought, but in a fog he could not identify the direction. The sound seemed to come from everywhere. "If there is a priest there or... at least anybody–though it could be a mechanical chiming clock..."

  And by the way–he had already seen the postal employee. Who says that the priest would be any better? Perhaps an upside down crucifix is mounted over his altar and to it, tied head-down by his own torn out veins... or guts... hangs a stray night traveler. A traveler who counted on a help from a church and whose blood drips into the ritual vessel below... This picture so clearly appeared before Tony's eyes as if he was really looking at it. He desperately needed to get out of this cursed cemetery while he still can!