Cemetery of Angels (41 page)

Well, he must have gone around the vent pipe, the killer thought. He must have, because otherwise he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. What was in front of him was not making sense.

The killer moved to within a few feet of the ledge. And he could see a little better now. This strange man whom he faced was lean, with tousled hair and a white shirt. Just one good push, the killer thought, and over the ledge he would go.

The killer followed him. The vision moved erratically. The killer paid no mind. He trailed his fist victim to the edge of the rooftop. Two feet. One foot. He squinted. It was almost as if he could see right through the man.

“Going to push me over the side?” Billy Carlton asked.

“Yes, I am.”

“I’ll help.”

Billy Carlton took a step backward. Sheer suicide. One foot, then the other. The killer looked at him without comprehension. Carlton didn’t fall. He stood before him, big as life, substantial as any man he had ever seen, suspended in the air. Failing to take the plunge.

“What the…?”

The killer’s eyes went wide with terror. He looked at Billy Carlton’s feet, planted firmly upon nothing, supported by some abject defiance of all natural laws.

A bolt of fear shot through the killer unlike anything he had ever previously experienced. Then Billy Carlton faded into nothing. He was there one second and gone the next. But there was no impact below. No sound of death. No scream, no yell, no plunge into oblivion.

Just nothing.

Disoriented, the killer turned. Then his eyes went wide with an even greater terror, an even greater shock. The ghost was now behind him just a foot away, trapping him between the ledge and safety. And somehow, as the assassin now looked at him, the killer finally understood his fate, for he was looking through his unnatural adversary.

The killer swiped at the specter and an extra level of fear raced through him. His arm passed through a frigid field and continued. Then the man confronting him smiled.

Cold contented eyes. Eyes not of a killer, but eyes of a man who was already at peace with his own death.

Then the ghost put up his own hands and thrust them forward. Something with the force of an express train hit the killer in the center of the chest. He fought madly for his balance.

But the fight was futile. The ghost’s force propelled him straight backward and over the side of the ledge. The plunge to the asphalt below lasted less than two seconds.

It was followed by impact and pain.

His body broken and draining of life, he endured a final image in the two agonizing minutes that it took him to die. He saw an old-time movie actor standing over him, looking down with empty, mocking, vengeful eyes, eyes that pitied him but condemned him at the same time.

And in the final few moments of his life, the man hired to kill Rebecca heard something strange. It wasn’t a chorus of angels, and it wasn’t his own heartbeat. It was instead a strange tune played on an old piano.

On the rooftop, Billy Carlton knelt by Rebecca’s side. He unbound her with a gentle touch of his hands. She looked at him imploringly.

“Why?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”

“You want to know?” the ghost asked. “You’re ready to know? Ready to accept?”

She looked up. His face was in shadows, but as she latched upon his eyes, she again felt their pull. It was again as if she had known those eyes for more than a lifetime.

“I’m ready,” she said.

“Then come with me,” Billy Carlton said.

He placed his hands on her shoulders then raised them slowly until her face was in his hands. He cradled her head. He knelt forward and brought his brow to hers.

She closed her eyes. She felt a little tremor of fear, and then felt reassured by what was happening. Her spirit intersected with Carlton’s. She traveled with him.

First, there was an incredible darkness, as if she were tumbling through the blackest of nights. This seemed to last forever. But then a brightness beckoned.

More images spun before her. It resembled her hour under hypnosis, but this was more intense. Visions flashed in her mind, all of them horrifying, exactly what her lover Billy wanted her to see.

A time in North Carolina, when her husband completed a transaction for a pound of hashish. The receiver was the man in the wraparound sunglasses, the man who would attempt to kill her…

A time in Connecticut this past February, when the man who had tried to kill her met with Bill Moore, and her husband paid him even though he had failed to complete her execution…

A time in California when her husband met with her would-be executioner again, bragged of the huge insurance policy he held on his wife, and again handed over money in prepayment of a long overdue, long desired murder…

And a time that same evening, practically time present, when her husband sat at home and typed out a suicide note in his wife’s name, to be presented to the police when she was found dead the next morning…

She held her tearful eyes as tightly closed as possible. But when the ghost kissed her on her forehead, she felt her eyes come open again into the darkness of the rainy night, and in the bleakness of the death scene on the roof of a warehouse.

“It’s all right now,” Billy Carlton said. “It’s almost over. Bring your husband to me.”

“Where?” she asked.

“There’s only one place,” he said. “The Cemetery of Angels.”

Then, before her eyes, he again disappeared.

“Becca?”

“Uh huh,” she said.

Bill Moore stepped out of his car in front of the gates to San Angelo Cemetery. His wife was seated on the bench near the front gate. Her clothes were wet. She looked as if she had been waiting for a while. She had telephoned him twenty minutes earlier.

“What in God’s name is going on, Rebecca?” he asked. He looked at her quizzically. “I thought you were going to a movie.”

“I was. I did.”

“So why are you here?” He looked her up and down. And, yes, she decided, he was looking for evidence that she had been attacked. As she searched his eyes, she saw the same expression as she had seen that night in Connecticut nine months earlier. He was shocked that she was alive. He was shocked because he had paid good money to have her killed.

“I have a new insight,” she said. “I called Detective Van Allen also. He should be here shortly, too.”

“So what? He’s a pain in the ass. He treats us like suspects.”

“I know where Patrick and Karen are,” she said.

“What? Would you mind sharing it with me instead of making melodramatic gestures?” he snapped.

She didn’t answer. He looked at the cemetery gates. “This place gives me the creeps,” he said.

“It should. It’s haunted, you know.” He looked back at his wife.

“Where are the children?” he asked.

“Protective custody. Someone took them and hid them so that they and their mother wouldn’t be harmed.”

“Rebecca, you’re acting like you’re crazy,” he said. “Can we go home?”

“I can. You can’t,” she said.

“Becca!” he snapped, losing all patience. “Would you make some sense?”

“I’ll make a lot of sense,” she said. “I’m finally surrounded by friends.”

“What the…?”

He never finished his question, though in his mind the question was never answered. The chains slid free of the cemetery gates and clanked onto the brick driveway. Rebecca walked to the gates and pulled free the bar that kept the gates shut. She pushed the gate opened enough to admit them.

She walked in. Her husband hesitated.

“Rebecca?” he asked.

“Come on along, Bill,” she said. “You owe it to me.”

“You’re acting like a mad woman!” he yelled. She waited within the portal.

“Are you coming or not?” she demanded. She held out her hand to beckon her husband. Finally, he joined her. There was still a drizzle in the air, but a half moon was visible over them. The clouds broke, as if on cue. The slight clearing in the sky allowed enough light to illuminate their path.

Rebecca was more than at home with what followed.

She followed the path that led toward the central burial ground of San Angelo.

Her steps led directly toward the overturned marker of Billy Carlton. She passed it.

She led Bill Moore on the same path. He walked quickly behind her. Her vision was lowered, fixed upon the ground, just as Billy Carlton had asked. And as she walked, she began to sense what Carlton had promised.

At each of the markers, at the fringe of her perception, she began to see things. Or perhaps, she knew they were there, more than she actually physically saw them.

First there was one winged figure. Then another. And not from every tomb, only from some. Carlton’s friends. In death as in life. Angels. Or something very much resembling them. Rebecca didn’t care which. She kept walking. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness there were more of them. They were in every direction. Risen — or descended? — from God knew where. Returned on a mission. A mission of vengeance or mercy, or mercy combined with vengeance.

She was deep in the cemetery. She passed the fallen marker from Billy’s tomb, and she quickened her pace. Her husband ran after her until he reached for her arm. But she pulled her arm away and wouldn’t stop.

“Rebecca!” he called. “Rebecca!” He chased her.

“Look around you, Bill,” she said. “Look around and tell me that you didn’t try to have me killed. And God knows what you were planning with Karen and Patrick!”

There was something large, oblong, and dark sitting upon the earth where Billy Carlton’s grave had been. It was near the big gaping hole that had remained in the earth since the coffin had been brought up. Rebecca reached the spot and turned. Bill Moore had stopped several feet behind her. She stared at him.

“This is insane,” he said breathlessly. “This isn’t really happening.”

“Yes, it is,” she said.

He shook his head. Then he looked around. The same vision that brought her such tranquility and reassurance brought him a terror that no man could ever measure. There were more whitened figures than anyone could count. An army of them. An armada. Shimmering. Opaque. Gliding forward. Small images reflecting the grand angel on Billy Carlton’s marker.

Billy’s friends. Rebecca’s allies. A spiritual army guarding her.

They surrounded Bill Moore. The expression on his face was twisted with horror. “I want to get out of here,” he said. He looked beyond her and his horror doubled. The large object near the grave was the unearthed coffin, returned from the medical examiner’s office. The lid was open. The interior was waiting.

“You’re staying here,” Rebecca said. “It’s the only way. And it’s what you brought upon yourself.” Bill Moore shook his head.

“I’m dreaming. I’m hallucinating…” He muttered.

But when he tried to move, there was some strange field of force around him. His feet wouldn’t obey. He was fixed in place.

A moment later, Rebecca felt something in her hand. It was warm and reassuring. Bill Moore’s eyes widened a final time when Billy Carlton came into focus next to her.

Billy Carlton. Dead seventy-odd years. More substantial than the other angels, but a ghost nonetheless.

Rebecca’s eyes shifted. Beyond the gates shone the headlights of a motor vehicle. She recognized the car as Van Allen’s. She turned and looked at Billy Carlton.

He nodded. Rebecca let go of Carlton’s hand. The ghost released her and receded. She walked past Bill Moore as Moore screamed obscenely at her.

She lowered her head and walked through the angels. They formed a protective corridor and allowed her to pass.

Ahead of her she saw Ed Van Allen slipping through the open gates, proceeding into the cemetery. She wondered how much he could see.

Van Allen stopped several feet onto the path. Obviously, he could see her approaching. And he could hear Bill Moore screaming. But Van Allen, she knew, was wise enough not to interfere.

She felt a pulsation behind her, a growing sense of shock that built with incredible suddenness. She kept her head down and walked toward the policeman.

She dared not look.

Behind her, it happened. Hell on earth combined with Heaven on earth. It was like an explosion that took place in her head and in another dimension. As she neared Van Allen, she saw him avert his eyes, too, the way a man looks away from the flashpoint of an explosion to prevent being blinded.

Van Allen’s face was white, reflecting some strange light from somewhere, and there was also a tremendous sound of earth being moved and disrupted.

She met the policeman. He opened his arms and held her. Neither looked. The disturbance in the atmosphere was so strong that both their bodies shuddered and pulsated. But they remained standing, and they waited.

There was no way to measure the time. But it must have been over within a few seconds. Suddenly everything was still. Rebecca wanted to look backward but, Van Allen stopped her. “No,” he said. “Not yet. Just wait.”

Then, after another half minute, they were both visited by a thought. It was all right to look. In fact, they
should
look.

The graveyard beyond them was dark. And they dared not venture into it. But they waited upon the path. Van Allen held Rebecca’s hand for support.

She looked into the darkness and two small figures began to take shape.

“Oh, my God,” she said softly. “Oh, my God…”

“Go get them,” Van Allen said. “Go get them before anything else happens.”

But she was gone long before he finished his second sentence.

Two small voices. Two small human forms.

“Mommy?”

“Mom?”

Rebecca rushed forward and embraced Patrick and Karen. They were warm as life, spattered here and there with dirt and wearing the same clothes in which she had last seen them. But they were alive.

“Where are we?”

“What happened?”

She couldn’t explain even if she had wanted to. She cried uncontrollably, this time with joy. And she embraced them as she had never embraced them before.

Van Allen’s eyes meanwhile began to settle into the darkness and his gaze traveled far into the Cemetery of Angels.