Another sheet of paper, more words emerged beneath the frantic strokes of wax:
Trapped here, we are… Forever dying. My children are burning! Help me, please!
“No, I’m going crazy. This can’t be real!” Rachel stammered aloud.
She found herself on her feet, running for her car.
Pine Grove Cemetery was sterile looking compared to the old Colonial burial yards. Modern graves were squat glossy marble things, their surrounding ornamental shrubs pruned, the grass short. Paved paths meandered through the rows.
A shrill cry came from abruptly stopped tires. Rachel sprang from the vehicle and ran to where a marker overlooked the dull sod of a fresh burial. The name Maura Gould was carved into glassy polished marble.
“This is insane,” Rachel muttered to herself, even as she ripped free a sheet from her paper tube and fished the rubbing wax from her denim shoulderbag. She moved the wax vigorously back and forth. Her mind was whirling. Had some latent psychic ability to communicate with the dead suddenly awakened in her? Had her preoccupation with the places of the dead tuned her into some world beyond?
She scrubbed so hard, the paper began to tear, yet all that showed was her aunt’s name and the dates of her birth and death.
A metallic whirring sound and peripheral motion made her turn to the nearby road. A young couple passed on ten speed bikes, both in black Spandex pants, and T-shirts of noxiously bright orange and green and small strapped-on plastic helmets. They looked at her as though she were an alien. Rachel pulled the paper free and crushed it into a ball. She leaned her head against the grave and sobbed.
The phone rang.
Rachel’s voice answered softly, “Hello?”
“Hi. I tried your house. Open late tonight, or what?”
It was Paul, a computer programmer from Southborough whom she’d been dating for several months.
“No, I’m just hanging around. Cleaning and stuff.”
“Ohhh. Well, hey, how ’bout goin’ out for a bite? You haven’t already eaten, I hope?”
“No. Ummm, I’m sorry, Paul, but I’m pretty tired tonight. Would tomorrow be okay?”
Disappointed sigh. Silence, then: “Yeah, okay. Talk to you later, then.”
“Bye.”
Rachel dropped the receiver into the cradle and sat back. An audience of flat wax faces watched her from the wall. She went through the drawers of her cashier’s counter in search of a flashlight and finally decided to take one of the lanterns that were for sale.
Animated leaves swam through the headlights. Broken pools of them sat here and there while others crawled about carried on the October wind. Rachel was so agitated that several times she nearly stomped on the brakes, mistaking the frolicking things for darting animals.
The road to the burial ground was long and, at this hour of the night, rarely traveled. She passed the farm, the pumpkin stacks now covered with dark tarps, the cornfield rushing along on her left, the scarecrow of crucified rags and straw.
A few of the headstones came into view as Rachel parked by the side of the road. She lit the lantern and gathered her art supplies. Outside it was cold enough to warrant a winter jacket. She would have liked to wear gloves, though they’d impede her.
Noisy leaves on the slope that led up from the road told of her coming, the heavy tree limbs above leaned down to listen. The lantern was not as direct as a flashlight would have been, its glow was soft and squirmed liquidlike over the stones that emerged from the darkness to greet her.
Mary Warren’s stone waited at the edge of the graveyard. Rachel forced herself near, holding the lantern out ahead of her, as if it might ward away the spectral forces. The flame shone weakly on the cherub’s inscrutable features.
Rachel set the lamp down and held the paper to the cool, hard slate.
“I… I’m back. Are you there?” The young woman’s voice strained.
She moved the wax across the paper.
Yes…
“What do you want?”
Rachel, help!
“Your children are burning, you said. But they aren’t dead?”
She was nearing the bottom of the paper. More letters appeared, as if scrawled into the stone and picked up by the wax. They read: Yes. A terrible fire. Dead, but forever here… forever dying!
Rachel shuddered. She replaced the paper.
“I don’t understand.”
Try other stones, the paper said.
Rachel turned to the nearest monument and rustled over to it. A plasma of bronze jelly squirmed on it, cast by the lantern. She held up a piece of paper to the surface.
“Is anyone there?”
Yes—Jonathan Cushing, here. I’m bleeding. Bleeding to death forever.
“Why? I don’t understand.”
The wax felt warm in the woman’s palm; she wiped hard against the slate.
This place—something here, in these stones, holds us here… forever dying!
“Dear God,” Rachel gasped. “What can I do?”
Break the stones…
Rachel thought of something. Quickly she turned back to the grave with the solemn winged face—the stone her aunt had been working on when she died, or was frightened to death.
“Auntie… are you there?”
Her heart drummed, the wax streaked, words showing through the dark.
Rachel, I’m here. My head hurts. Break the stones!
Rachel dropped the wax. She ran to the stone wall and tried to lift one of its components. Too heavy. Smaller stones rested at the base, semi-interred. She worked one loose, the smell of autumn soil thick, a centipede pouring like a bony ring across a finger. Back to the slates; she heaved the thing.
There was a loud crack. The top of the slate fell, the cherub split. Rachel grunted, again tossed the stone. The other grave fell backward and broke. She continued, feverish now, smashing with passion. Headlights swept past, blinding her for a moment. They must have seen! She didn’t care.
She was panting, sweating in her heavy winter coat. Most of the slabs had been downed or broken to some extent. Rachel fell to her knees, dizzy from exertion. She would rest a moment, then finish.
A stone to the right of her bore a grim-faced male with wings for ears. In the dim light, through her lightheadedness, Rachel watched as a smoky face seeped out through the solid one.
“Oh, my God!”
She turned; the woods stretched off behind her with three silhouetted graves in between. A dark figure moved. It was tall, stepping slowly without sound up the embankment.
Rachel got to her feet and stared. Mist, motion—something at the base of one of the shattered tombstones. Watery, details coming into focus. A face of squirming dust motes, burial clothes, and air smearing hands.
“Oh… oh, Christ!”
More and more of them, rising up, moving toward her. A shadowy man, an old woman hobbling, bearing a great toothless grin, a moon-pale little boy with arms offering a hug. There! Aunt Maura, her eyes grinning with gratitude—visible from the waist up, moving through the grass as if wading through a swamp.
It was too much. Rachel turned to run. Her feet on night moistened leaves—she slipped, her weight hitting hard against the base of one of the tall stones.
The remaining graves were illuminated by momentary flashes of blue light. The police car was parked behind Rachel’s and two officers stood amidst the destruction. They’d arrived too late to witness the misty evacuation of freed souls. They did, however find the vandal a passing motorist had reported. In her rampage, she had foolishly tripped over one of the leaning slates, which now lay across her chest.