The Light (Morpheus Road) (37 page)

306

"We gotta keep moving," I said. We helped each other to our feet and struggled to move forward. The earthquake, or whatever it was, intensified. We held on to each other for support and managed to stumble closer to the car. All around us, tombstones and statues were falling over and smashing. I heard a sharp crack and looked up.

"Move!" I shouted, and pushed Sydney forward just as a marble cherub fell from the top of a tomb and smashed to the ground, barely missing us.

Sydney was crying, but that didn't stop her from moving. We were both focused on getting to the car. It was our only way out of danger. We were maybe fifty feet away from it when the ground shook so violently that we both fell down. I hit the ground first. Sydney landed on top of me. We rolled and got back to our feet to continue our dash for the car . . . when the car moved. It shook, rocked on its wheels, and rolled forward slowly.

"Nobody's driving," Sydney cried.

For a second we both feared some demonic force had gotten behind the wheel and was about to drive away. What
did
happen was far worse.

"It's not the car," I declared. "It's the ground."

The roadway beneath the car was cracking apart. A huge gash appeared that ran directly under the silver Beetle, front to back.

"Hurry!" Sydney shouted, and ran for it.

I grabbed her.

"No, it's too late," I said.

She was desperate to get to the car and fought to pull away, but I held her tight. We both watched the ground beneath the car being torn apart by some horrific force. The gash in the road grew very wide, very quickly. The Beetle tilted to its side, then tumbled into the chasm with a metallic screech of metal against cement.

307

"No!" Sydney screamed, and pulled away from me.

I didn't know what she expected to do. The car was a goner. I followed and we made it to the edge of the deep, wide gash that had been ripped into the ground. Wedged near the bottom was Sydney's car. Useless. We would have to get out of the cemetery on foot.

The wrecked car wasn't the worst of what we saw down in that rift. When the ground pulled apart, it revealed the remains of dozens of coffins. Some looked ancient, others could have been buried last week. All were rudely disrupted from their resting places and thrown into the rift. Not all of them stayed closed. Bodies tumbled out as the coffins rolled down the side. One silver coffin flipped and sprung open to reveal an occupant that hadn't seen the light of day in a century. There was nothing left but a brown skeleton dressed in the shreds of what was once a suit.

Sydney clutched at me but didn't take her eyes off the chilling scene. A few dozen coffins had been flung into the pit and half of them had sprung open, leaving a trail of bodies in various stages of decay and mummification.

The ground stopped moving. The rumbling stopped. The only sound was the shrill whistle of the wind and Sydney's sobs.

"I'm going out of my mind," she whispered.

"It... it must be an illusion," I said shakily. "It has to be. Like the speedboats. And the blood. This isn't happening."

I didn't think it could get any worse.

I was wrong.

One of the bodies moved.

Sydney yelped in surprise.

I saw the movement but thought maybe the body was still settling after having been so rudely pulled from its not-so-final resting place. No such luck. A man's body that had been flung from its coffin turned its head and looked

308

up at us through empty eyes. I couldn't tell if the shreds that hung from its bones were rotted clothes or flesh. Or both. It was dead, yet it was alive. And it wasn't alone. All around it the other disturbed corpses began to stir as if they had been awakened from a nap. A long, dead nap. So much for resting in peace. One after another the corpses pushed to their feet and began to claw their way up the side of the ravine . . . toward us. They all opened their skeletal mouths to let out a sorrowful moan, joining together in a macabre chorus that pushed me closer to the edge of sanity.

"These aren't evil people," I reasoned aloud, my voice shaking. "They're just . . . people."

"Dead people," Sydney mumbled. "Woken up by Grave-digger."

That's all I needed to hear.

"C'mon," I said, and pulled her away from the edge.

The only choice we had was to run for the gates of the cemetery. I didn't know if that would get us away from Gravedigger, but it was a good start. The sky was still dark and the wind hadn't let up. I tried to remember how deep we were into the huge graveyard and feared that we had at least a half mile to go. That was a long way on foot. I glanced back over my shoulder to see skeletal hands reaching up from below the lip of the crevice, grabbing the edge to pull themselves up. Would they keep coming after us? Could corpses run? What would they do if they caught us? Would they blame us for disturbing their final resting place? I didn't want the answers to any of those questions.

"We're okay," I said between breaths. "We just gotta get out of the cemetery. It's a busy road outside. We'll get a ride. We'll. . ."

The rumbling returned. It was like trying to run on top of a volcano that was gathering the energy to erupt. Sydney

309

and I held on to each other to keep from falling over, but we kept moving.

"There!" I shouted.

The iron gates that marked the entrance to the cemetery were only a couple hundred yards away. Unfortunately, the road made several sweeping S turns between us and escape. The fastest way to get there would be to forget the road and run . . . straight through a labyrinth of tombstones and mausoleums.

"Straight through," I announced.

Sydney stopped. "I can't. Not over those graves."

I looked back to see the dozen corpses that had climbed out of the rift in the road and were shuffling forward on brittle legs, their moans calling to us. I flashed on
Night of the Living Dead.
It was a bad flash. Sydney looked back and saw them. It was all the convincing she needed.

"Straight through," she echoed.

She grabbed my hand and ran forward, plunging into the sea of tombs.

The ground continued to move. I feared that it might open up and swallow us the way it had the car. Why not? If Gravedigger was calling the shots, he could make us see whatever he wanted. That is, if this were actually an illusion. We couldn't take the chance. We had to get out of there.

We stayed together, dodging around the marble monuments, moving closer to what I hoped was safety. We skirted one large tomb and came upon a stunning monument. It was a white marble statue of a pure white angel that was kneeling with its arms on a tomb. Its head was resting on its crossed arms as if it were weeping. The thing was bigger than life-size, with huge wings that were held tight against its body. It was stunning.

And it was alive.

310

The marble angel lifted its head and turned to us with a lifeless gaze as if upset we had dared disturb its mourning. Sydney and I stopped short. The rumbling intensified. With a roar the doors blew open to a mausoleum, spewing out brilliant light and a musty wind. A second mausoleum across from it blew open, hitting us with light and dust from another side. Between the dust in my eyes and the wind and bright light, I was nearly blinded. Sydney and I stumbled to get away, but we had lost all sense of direction. The marble tomb that the angel had been weeping over exploded. The cement cover shattered as light and wind blew up from below. Through the dust and light I caught a glimpse of the angel. Its wings were spread wide. It was coming for us.

"No!" Sydney screamed, and pulled away from me.

"Sydney!" I shouted, too late.

The angel pounced on her, wrapping its wings around her body.

"Marsh!" I heard her call as her scream faded to oblivion.

I ran to her, too late. She was gone. The stone angel was gone. I heard a cracking sound and looked up to see a tall obelisk toppling over . . . toward me. I jumped away quickly as the marble pillar crashed across the top of the tomb, sealing it off. I stumbled over a gravestone and hit the ground. The moment I landed, the demon wind and light stopped. Both mausoleum doors were closed and the marble tomb was sealed off by the fallen obelisk.

Sydney was nowhere to be seen.

"Sydney!" I yelled. "Sydney!"

No answer. The angel, or whatever it was, had taken her. But to where? How could an illusion make a living person disappear? I ran to each of the mausoleums and yanked on the doors, but they were sealed tight. I tried to lift the marble obelisk off the broken tomb, but it was far too heavy. Wherever Sydney was, I couldn't get to her. I

311

heard the moaning of the corpses. I'd almost forgotten about them. They were getting closer. The only thing I could do was escape from the cemetery and get help. That's what I decided. I'd find somebody, anybody, and bring them back. We'd pry open the mausoleums. We'd find Sydney. No more secrets. I didn't care if they thought I was crazy. There was another life at stake. I didn't want Gravedigger claiming another victim. Especially not Sydney.

I ran for the gates. After leaping over several toppled tombstones, I broke out onto the twisting cemetery roadway and stopped to plot my course. The cemetery was surrounded by a black metal fence that was too high to climb. It was in a residential area in a remote part of Stony Brook that had mostly big homes on giant, tree-covered properties. Directly across from the cemetery was a huge stone mansion from the nineteenth century. Farther up the road to the right was an ivy-covered all-girls school. To the left of the mansion was a giant tank that held the town's drinking water. It was a familiar part of town for me. I'd ridden my bike along that road many times. I knew the neighborhood.

But the neighborhood was gone.

Beyond the tall metal fence was nothing. I should have seen trees blowing in the wind and the big stone mansion and the water tank. Instead I saw a dark, swirling soup that had no beginning and no end. The cemetery had become an island that floated in a murky, supernatural sea. There was no road, no sky, no life. The world beyond the fence looked like an artist's canvas that was dripping with colorful paint but with no recognizable image.

"He's trying to keep me here," I muttered to myself.

I ran for the gates, convinced that it was one of Grave-digger's illusions. I was sure that as soon as I got out of the cemetery, the world would return to normal. We had made

312

that gamble with the speedboats and won. I was ready to go for it again.

That is, until the cemetery erupted. The sudden, earthquake like rumblings were so fierce that I could barely keep my balance, let alone run. I stumbled and fell on the roadway, then had trouble getting back to my feet. But I was almost there and kept going on my hands and knees. I had to get out of there and if it meant crawling, that was fine by me. Sydney's life depended on it. On the far side of the road, tombstones tumbled and statues fell. Grave-digger was throwing down obstacles in my way. I had to duck and roll and look everywhere for fear that something heavy would land on my head.

I made it to the last paved road before the final stretch of graves. The ground in front of me was littered with the remains of shattered marble and broken statues. I stopped to look ahead and plan a route through the rubble . . . and saw the ground move. Something was under the grass. Something alive. Not five feet in front of me, the grass was being pushed up from below. Whatever was down there was coming up. I couldn't move. My eyes were fixed on the spot. The grass tore apart as . . .

... a mummified head poked up from below. A head! Its hands pushed up through the dirt, tearing at the sod as if making a desperate escape from the world below. Behind it, another skeletal hand reached out of the ground, followed by another.

The rumbling continued. I backed away on the paved road and looked around to see the same thing happening everywhere. It was like this demonic earthquake had shaken awake the dead. Hundreds upon hundreds of corpses in various stages of decay were pulling themselves up and out of their graves.

The cemetery had come alive with the dead.

313

It was mind-numbing. There were thousands of them. Multiple thousands. Stony Brook was four centuries old. The cemetery was loaded. They pulled themselves up from below, shook off the dirt from the ages, and began to move . . . toward me.

The only undisturbed ground was the roadway. Though I was close to the gate, there was no way I was going to plunge into a mass of living corpses to get there. I had to stick to the road. I put my head down and ran. I didn't want to see. It was beyond a nightmare. Their moans grew. I heard the wails of men and women and probably even some children. There were no words, just the sad cry of thousands of people who shouldn't have been disturbed.

"It's not real," I kept saying to myself. "This can't be happening."

When somebody dies, their spirit dies with them. Or goes somewhere else. The idea that their personalities had returned to their dead bodies and somehow been reanimated was too horrific to imagine. I had to keep telling myself it was an illusion, like the speedboats and the lake serpent. . . or even my cat at the school. I kept moving with my eyes on the ground, though I sensed their presence all around me. None of them stepped onto the roadway. They were crowding the edges of the pavement, reaching out to me. I feared their cold touch, so I kept to the middle of the road. The wailing grew along with the crowd. I put my hands over my ears, but that only muffled it. Tears ran down my cheeks. I was growing closer to the gate and to the edge of sanity. There was no telling which I'd hit first. The only thing that kept me going was the belief that as soon as I stepped through the gate, the illusion would end and everything would be fine.

I rounded the final curve in the road and dared to look up. What I hoped to see was a clear path open through the