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!
Steps. Definitely not an echo. Shuffling, but at the same time resolute. Approaching. And again he could not tell—from where.
Tony rushed, having turned into a narrow lateral path. Probably—straight to who (or what) was wandering here at night. But better that, than to stand still, struck by fear. A sharp stone splinter stuck into his right foot, but Tony did not slow down at all. From gloom and fog silent figures of statues emerged—if, of course, they were simply statues. Logan tried not to look at them.
At last he felt himself absolutely chilled and exhausted—and the rows of abandoned tombs and collapsing gravestones still showed no end. Tony dropped into a walk, then limply leaned against a cold wall. Listened. No, apparently, there is no pursuit behind. Well, so it is possible to rest, and then…
Scraping, scratching sounds.
And now Logan had no doubts about their source—they came through a wall. Tony hastily recoiled, looking at what he had leaned against. It was the sealed door of an old crypt.
The sound came from within.
Till now Logan’s body had adequately reacted to danger, be it true or imaginary—namely, answered with mobilization of all forces. But now his knees became weak and he had to lean again on the crypt door in order not to fall down. His ear was flat against a rough cold surface, eliminating any chance to write off the scratching to a flight of imagination or acoustic strangenesses of a fog.
“Some animal has gotten inside,” his common sense supposed in despair. “A dog… or a cat… had dug through a hole into the crypt, and now cannot get out…”
“But isn’t it impossible to dig into a crypt from outside? Isn’t there a stone floor?”
“I don’t know,” Tony answered himself. “I never was in a crypt. Besides, if everything here is so decayed, a wall could fracture… And then it would fill up with earth, and…”
The thing inside moved more actively, as if it has scented the person from whom it was separated by only few inches. Well, why shouldn’t a dog scent… Only it was scraping obviously not at the height of a dog or, especially, a cat…
“Who is here? Sir?”
That reached through the door. The voice sounded obtuse (and how it could sound through such obstacle?), but definitely belonged to a woman. More likely even—to a young girl. Tony did not have enough strength even to recoil from the door—the horror paralyzed him so that he could not move, and the comprehension of his state only increased the fright.
“Sir, I beg you, help me. There was a terrible error. I was buried alive…”
“After all everything here has a reasonable explanation,” Tony exhaled with great relief. True, he believed that such gothic stories belonged in the time of Poe. Modern diagnostic aids exclude… On the other hand, he did not know, what kind of cemetery it was. Judging by the crosses—Christian, but there are different sects of Christians, too. If this girl is from any sect which does not approve of modern medicine, like Jehovah Witnesses…
“Sir, please! Let me out! I am so cold…”
I’m cold too, mechanically noted Tony, while after all this activity he should be warmed…
“I’ll call for help,” he promised aloud. His knees did not shiver any more. “As soon as I reach a pay phone., my cellphone…”
“Sir, do not leave!” in the voice from the crypt a genuine horror appeared. “Do not leave me! It is so dark and terrible here…”
“But I don’t know how to let you out,” Tony answered. “I can’t open this door,” he even pulled it several times for persuasiveness. “Is there another one?”
“Another? Whence could another door in a crypt appear?” Surprise in her voice was replaced again by begging tone: “I pray, sir, I need your help…” While talking, she did not stop scraping and scratching from within.
“She called me ‘Sir,’” flashed in Logan’s mind, “before I had started talking. How did she know that I am a man?”
He silently looked at the barrier dividing them. At spots in the layer of dust and dirt where he had leaned. At the moss-covered bottom of the door which had tightly grown into the ground. It seems that it has not been opened for a very long time…
“When?” he asked in a flat voice. “When were you… eh… locked here?”
“On the eighteenth of November,” reached from within.
The year was not required. Even if it was last year—it was quite obvious that in the crypt sealed ten months ago there could be nothing alive anymore. Though, most likely, this funeral had taken place much, much earlier…
“I’m sorry,” muttered Tony, moving back away from the crypt.
“No!” arose following him. “Do not leave me here… with them!”
And then Tony saw—not only heard, but also saw—the very heavy door grown into the earth violently shaking from blows from within. As if a hundred pound linebacker thudded against it, instead of a fragile girl.
Logan stumbled against a tomb behind him, but managed to keep his balance. And then he ran like mad again.
He did not try to keep to avenues and paths any more, feeling confident that they would never bring him to the exit. At the best case—they would bring him to the dismal church in the center… if only it was possible to say such a case was the best. He jumped over graves or ran directly on them, expecting every moment that the earth under him would open and bone fingers would seize his feet and drag him downwards. But this horror only made him run even faster. Then he stumbled and fell, his trouser leg seized by a hand sticking out of the earth. But before Tony had time to yell, he realized that it was the hand of a statue. At first he thought that it was one of the broken off fragments, but the hand sat in the earth so firmly that he understood that, seemingly, someone had buried an entire statue here. Tony did not ask any more questions about by whom and for what purpose a sculpture was buried here; having freed the torn trouser leg (this time the left one suffered), he ran farther.
And suddenly from the fog ahead, the black rods of a fence, and a bit more to the left—a semicircular arched gate, appeared. “It’s locked,” Logan thought hopelessly.
But the gate was open. Nothing prevented him from leaving the cemetery. And even no dead birds could be seen nearby.
To the right of the exit some poster hung on the fence. Tony thought that it was, most likely, a schedule of cemetery open hours. This question did not interest him much—and its words probably could not be read in the dark—but, nevertheless, he mechanically ran his eyes across the piece of paper.
It was not a schedule. There were only two sentences—large and distinct enough.