D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,24

along a passageway between tombs, fearfully looking around. This whole place made the heart sick, and the darkness and fog, which were getting even denser, did not add enthusiasm at all. The cemetery was old, very old. It did not resemble an active one–at least, one where somebody looks after tombs. Gravestones and monuments were decayed, fissured, fouled with dirt and some wet muck–more probably a mold than a moss. Many slabs and stone crosses were dangerously tilted and looked ready to fall. It was almost impossible to discern inscriptions, especially in the dark, but those which Logan nevertheless managed to read confirmed the antiquity of the burial places: the beginning of 19th century, the middle of the 18th, even one thousand six hundred-and-some years, combined with the obviously Dutch surnames...

But the worst of all were the statues. At first, Tony paid attention only to their condition, as pitiful as all the rest here–fouled, lop-sided, collapsing. Here a stump of a broken off hand stuck out, there a hole of a broken- off nose blackened, and here a long-ago fallen head had grown into the ground. (Tony shuddered, almost having stepped with his unshod foot on a face poking out of the earth; at first it seemed to him that it belonged not to a sculpture at all.) But then he began to look closely at faces.

No, these were not the muzzles of demons. Silent sculptures represented figures quite traditional for old cemeteries: angels, grieving maidens in long gowns, and sculptural doubles of the dead towered in the fog. But the expressions! These stone faces were not grieving at all. Angels grimaced in mischievous triumph and twisted their mouths into mocking grins of sadistic pleasure; faces of maidens wore expressions of all kinds of perversity and corruption and, moreover, they were mostly not maidens, but dissolute old women, and the older and uglier their faces were, the more lusty and obscene. Faces of sculptures and portraits on headstones, representing those buried under these stones, were disfigured by eternal horror and pain.

And even worse–Tony could not shake the growing sensation that all of them were continuously looking at him. Looking from all directions. No, stone heads did not turn when he passed by, he did not see and did not hear any movement. But when he turned his head he met blind eyes full of rage, scorn, or unbearable torment, for which even death was not the resolution, but only the beginning.

"What are you staring at?!" Logan lost his temper, looking in the face of an angel who was stretching stone stumps towards him–the left hand of a sculpture had fallen off at the elbow, the right one–at mid-forearm. "I'm not afraid of you! You're just a piece of marble!"

The statue remained silent and motionless, as a statue should. Tony turned away and walked on.

Behind him a rustle sounded.

Tony sharply turned back.

The angel was moving. His head was turning and sloping, and stumps were drawing toward the man. Then Logan, frozen with horror, saw a crack separating a head from a neck, and two others, running through the stomach and knees of the statue. He hardly had time to jump aside, when the stone figure, falling to pieces already in air, crumbled with a roar across the passageway. The head rolled to Tony's feet and stopped dead, face upwards.

Logan took a breath. Of course, simply everything has decayed and is collapsing here. No mysticism. But all the same, he had to get out of here as quickly as possible before the next ton of marble falls right down on his head...

But only–Tony once again looked downwards–he was ready to swear that when the angel was whole, the expression on the marble face had been different. A spiteful triumph, instead of powerless fury. And the mouth had not been open then.

Put a finger in. Reach right in here, doubting Thomas.

"To hell with you," Tony thought, hastily walking away. "Night and fog play tricks on the mind. There is nothing to stare at all in these figures... It is best to get out of here as fast as possible... But where is that damned exit?" He had walked a long distance already. How long can a cemeterial avenue be? It was not a straight line as could be expected, but probably was nevertheless not so curved as to misguide him... or it just seemed to him in the absence of distinguishable reference points? What, if he wanders here in circles? Or even not