Cemetery of Angels (42 page)

He broke a cold sweat when he saw what had transpired. Billy Carlton’s grave was sealed again, the earth back in place. The big oblong shape that had been near the grave was gone. So was Bill Moore.

And the huge, hulking, granite angel, Billy’s tombstone, was back in place. Its seraph wings wide, its head proud and its one arm raised in greeting.

Or warning. Or judgment.

Van Allen blew out a breath. He led Rebecca and her children from the yard. And he knew that as long as he lived, he would never be able to describe the events that he had just witnessed, much less speak about them.

On a warm afternoon, Ed Van Allen sat on a bench in Santa Monica, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, trying to put the proper spin on his life and, to a lesser degree, the events surrounding the various incidents at the Cemetery of Angels.

Three weeks had passed since the reappearance of the Moore children. The same amount of time had passed since the disappearance of Bill Moore. And once again, Van Allen was looking at contradictions, contradictions as vast as the ocean in front of him.

There were no answers. Only speculation and haunting suspicions, theories of the occult and supernatural that he could mention to no one. Then there were the frequent re-awakenings each night from an uneasy sleep, and a scanning of his room to reassure himself that he was alone.

That he had seen a ghost and had interacted with one, he had no question. Exactly what explanation lay beneath that encounter, he had no way of knowing. His previous life experience had no way of interpreting it, nor did his religion.

Christianity and spiritualism were sometimes at loggerheads, though perhaps they shouldn’t have been. In the time left to him on this earth, he would spend much of it trying to re-order what he believed.

He watched the ocean water before him. Christmas was coming. More contradiction. The weather in the Southland was warm. Low seventies. He thought of the Christmas card images of the Anglo-German-American concept of Christmas snow on fir trees, Santa with a sleigh, holiday shoppers in heavy coats in northern cities.

A smile came to his lips. He was watching girls in shorts rollerblade. Christmas in California. Oh, well, he thought to himself. If he didn’t appreciate the lifestyle just a little, he would have moved away two decades ago. He knew that he lived here, belonged here, and would die here.

Of course, then what? After death, what?

Seeing Billy Carlton, meeting a ghost, being yanked out of bed by one, was both the best thing that could have happened to him as well as the worst.

On the one hand, the existence of the ghost suggested the euphoric notion of a spiritual life transcending death. And yet on the other hand, it called into question everything he had ever believed.

He sighed. More contradiction.

That’s all life was: contradiction. His ex-wife had even phoned him that morning. She wanted to have lunch with him, and wondered if he would accompany her to a social event. But she wanted to remain divorced, also.

Did anything, anywhere, he wondered, make any sense?

A few small parts of the puzzle began to take shape for him. The Cemetery of Angels was some sort of enchanted place, he reasoned, one of those quirky places in the universe where the accepted norm does not apply. That Billy Carlton could have risen from a grave and performed the role of a latter-day guardian angel did not necessarily contradict Van Allen’s own spin on his Christian beliefs.

On a darker note, that Bill Moore could have plotted to murder his wife and stepchildren did not necessarily run against the grain of the worst cases of human behavior that Van Allen had witnessed in twenty years as a cop.

That Billy Carlton had interceded and protected Rebecca’s children tested even Van Allen’s new orthodoxy. However, if he believed that Carlton’s spirit was real and tactile, then he had to make the logical leap to believe that an angel could have become the protector of Patrick and Karen.

Other issues nagged him: What about the explosion of the grave several weeks earlier? The disappearance of the coffin from the medical examiner’s warehouse? The restoration of Carlton’s tomb, with the granite angel returned to its proper position? The steadfast insistence of both Karen and Patrick that they could not recall where they had been for five weeks, and Van Allen’s every inquiry being met by a headshake or a “no”?

It was as if, they said, they had been in a pleasant dream, which once they were awakened, they could not remember.

And what of Rebecca Moore’s willingness to take a final polygraph? During it, she had described the events following the silent movie, and had described this bizarre encounter with angels in the cemetery. She passed her second polygraph so perfectly that Van Allen had wondered if an invisible hand had been guiding the needle.

In his mind, events spiraled. The effect of all the past weeks’ events settled upon him as a melancholy haze. Through it, he tried to find some light, some illumination to guide the rest of his life. He figured it might take years, if ever, before he would make that discovery.

A gentle breeze from the Pacific caressed Van Allen’s forehead as he sat in perfect physical comfort on the bench. A final contradiction: on the desk in his office, the Moore case and the San Angelo desecration had remained open. In his mind, however, both inquiries were closed.

A woman’s voice intruded, jostling him slightly from his reverie.

“I thought I might find you here,” she said.

Van Allen shielded his eyes from the sun. Rebecca stood before him.

“I called your office,” Rebecca said. “Alice said you’d be spending time down here. So I took a chance.” He smiled.

“A good chance,” Van Allen said.

“I wanted to speak with you. Off the record. Know what I mean?” she asked.

“I know what you mean.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Not at all,” the detective answered. Rebecca sat down on the far edge of a bench.

“We never really had that much time to talk, you and I. First the case was closed. Then the children were back.” She shrugged.

“The press keeps badgering me. I get offers to sell my story. I don’t even know what my story is.”

“Well, let’s see,” he said. “There’s the official version. Your husband was into assorted criminal deeds. He had your children hidden somewhere. They were released. He’s a fugitive.” Van Allen shrugged. “A nice, neat, unclear, wide open ending to an otherwise thoroughly unlikely story.”

She smiled.

“The tabloids should be pumping it for a week or two, till something better comes along,” he said.

“Are you going to have the coffin raised?” she asked. She chose her words carefully. “The ‘Billy Carlton’ coffin?”

He shook his head. “Whatever’s down there stays down there,” he said. “At least as long as I have anything to do with it.”

“Let the dead stay dead?” she asked with irony. “Is that it?” He appreciated her phraseology.

“I’m not sure that’s what I mean,” he said. “I’m not sure that’s what always happens.”

For a moment she had a faraway look in her eyes. Her gaze traveled the surface of the water then returned to the detective.

“What do you think we’d discover if we opened the coffin now?” she asked.

“I think we’d discover more questions than we would ever be able to answer,” he said. “That’s why that box stays down there. Those questions are not for us to answer.”

She nodded.

“Delicately put,” she said.

“It’s the best I can do.”

“Your best,” she said, “is pretty good. Thanks for everything.”

“Some weeks I earn my check,” he said. “These past few were among them.”

“Stop over sometime,” she suggested. He nodded.

“I’ll do that.” He knew he wouldn’t. She leaned to him and kissed him on the right cheek. In response, he wrapped an arm around her and gave her a hug of friendship.

Rebecca got to her feet.

She glanced to an area down the promenade about fifty feet away. She indicated the figure of a man. From the distance, all Van Allen could see was that the man had sandy brown hair. He wore a white shirt and dark slacks. The man waved to Van Allen. Van Allen looked back to Rebecca, without acknowledging the wave.

“Do you see that man down there?” she asked.

“Yes, I do,” he said.

“No one else does,” she said. “Just you and me.”

“Curious,” Van Allen said. “I guess we’re both crazy.”

“Or not,” she said.

She bade him goodbye. She turned on the walkway and started back toward the pier. She raised one hand and signaled to her two children, who had been playing on the beach. They ran to her and joined her, one on each side.

Van Allen watched her go, walking slowly a hundred, two-hundred feet down the promenade. Thereupon, she was joined by the man who had been waiting for her. He walked to her side, back a few steps from her.

Van Allen squinted. Even with glasses, his eyesight wasn’t as sharp as it used to be. He would have liked a closer look at Rebecca’s companion. Van Allen glanced away for a moment and then looked back. He couldn’t pick them out of the crowd anymore.

They were gone.

Never again would Van Allen pass by 2136 Topango Gardens and never again would he run into Rebecca Moore. He would never hear that piano music, either. Nor was there ever another poltergeist manifestation in his home.

Except for one.

Van Allen had kept the broken pieces of the Mont Blanc pen, the family heirloom. He had packed them in a small oblong box and stashed them in a drawer in his desk. Several months after the Moore case had faded from public view, Van Allen came to his desk one morning and found the top drawer wide open.

He did not remember leaving it that way. On further inspection, he found that the wooden box containing the pen had been disturbed.

Opening the box, he was shocked to discover the Mont Blanc restored completely. It was intact and in perfect working order, as if an expert craftsman had put the writing utensil back together with the greatest care.

Or as if a friend had come by during the night to say he was sorry and to set matters right. The mystery surrounding the pen was only the last of several events which Van Allen would never understand.

What he did know, however, was that with the repair of the pen, he could finally emotionally accept that the Moore case was closed, as much as it would ever be. And if somewhere out there an angel might be watching over his own interest in ways large or small, so it would have to be.

Not that this was anything he could ever share with anyone. With the exception of Rebecca, and possibly old Martinez, there were few souls in the world who would have believed any bit of it.

But he made a mental note to always carry the pen. It would serve as a reminder of what in the world was real, what wasn’t, and of the vast magical uncharted universe of spirits that lay in between.

Noel Hynd is the author of 24 published books and three produced screenplays. His work has been translated into ten languages in all parts of the world. He can be reached by readers at: [email protected] and, surprisingly enough, will write back to you. In the meantime, his three cats say hello.