Cold moon over Babylon

by McDowell, Michael

  He hung about in the shade of the pecan trees until Margaret appeared at the front door of the school. While she made her way down to the bicycle rack, Nathan hurried toward the hearse. At a distance, he followed Margaret through town, and overtook her only when she paused to speak to Nina at her mailbox He turned his head aside so that they would not recognize him, and drove quickly out the Styx River road. He parked the vehicle just out of sight on the disused logging track, pulled on the leather motoring gloves, drew the black leather mask over his head, and then lay in wait for Margaret by the side of the road.

  At first Nathan had regretted the murder of Margaret Larkin. It had been certainly the most radical—though probably also the safest—solution to the problem of her pregnancy and absurd demands of marriage. He had feared that her death would adversely affect his chances of getting the Larkin property; but before that really came of issue, he had been put to the necessity of murdering the girl's brother and grandmother as well. This exigency he had not foreseen, but now that it was accomplished, Nathan saw that it was perhaps all for the best, and the blueberry farm would more easily be his. The idea of bringing Charles Darrish into the plot was so clever that he wondered he had not thought of it before. Darrish would see to it that their legal trail was covered, a partnership with the lawyer would serve to keep Ginny at bay, and Charles might even be able to mishandle Warren Perry's defense so that the man would be convicted. Nathan complacently considered that though he had acted mostly by impulse in these three murders, no long- considered plan would have produced such salutary effects. One way or another, Nathan laughed aloud, he had got rid of the entire Larkin clan.

  The laugh seemed to bring him to his senses. He wondered how long his attention had been centered on Margaret Larkin, for staring at the highway, Nathan realized that he did not know where he was.

  The road was familiar, he knew he had traveled it before, but he was certain that it was not the way that led from Pensacola to Babylon. The forest was thick but the grassy shoulders were too narrow. The bed was the same width, but the gravel in the pavement was coarser. Only the moon was where he had left it. The road curved slightly; Nathan took the turn carefully, staring all the while at the moon. It seemed to move with the Lincoln, and shone through the same spot on the windshield.

  Behind and ahead were no lights from other cars, and the encroaching forest was uniformly black. The other half of the four-lane highway was masked by large stands of pine on the median, and he could not see it. That meant—if he were on the right road at all—that he was only a few miles from town. He stared ahead hoping for the marker that read Babylon 5 miles but knew, in spite of his hope, that the familiar sign would not appear.

  Nathan's heart broke and skipped. Directly in front of him were headlights. Nathan, who was in the left lane, swerved into the right, and narrowly missed a collision with the other vehicle. Its horn, blown continuously, rose in pitch as it approached, swelled, and died quickly behind him.

  Nathan was sweating. He slowed to no more than fifteen miles an hour, and swore in a low voice at the driver of the other car, who had through drunkenness or stupidity driven the wrong way on a four-lane highway. Nathan hoped the man would be killed.

  It was then he first noticed the yellow stripe in the middle of the road, to warn against passing. The other car had blown its horn adamantly because he, Nathan, had been in the wrong lane. He was not on the Babylon road at all. He was somewhere else, perhaps not even in Escambia County; he hadn't even the confidence that if he reversed direction, he would end up in Pensacola.

  Where had he turned off the highway? The road still was familiar, and he had the uneasy feeling that he could identify it, if only it were day. He proceeded cautiously, scanning the black landscape for a sign or a familiar building that would identify the route. At the beginning of every turn he would hope that the moon would disappear behind the high trees of the surrounding forest, but it maintained its position, always directly ahead on the highway, leading him forward.

  He pushed the buttons that raised the windows of the car and locked the doors, and turned on the radio softly to the Pensacola country-and-western station. He marked time by the progression of the songs, of which he heard only the beginning notes. The rest was lost beneath his attention to the road.

  He had counted off six songs when he saw, around a small sharp curve, the white fervid light of a mercury lamp. A hundred yards further on, he came upon it, in the paved yard behind a low long brick building. This he recognized, after just a moment, as the Babylon ribbon factory. He was on the uninhabited secondary road that ran not anywhere near Pensacola, but rather from Jay, directly east of Babylon. He had not been through Jay. He tried to visualize a map of Escambia County, but could not recall any sequence of turns that would have taken him off the main Babylon highway that went south- to-north, and onto this one, that traveled east-to-west.

  At any rate, he was back, and must ascribe his perplexing wandering to a fit of distraction, occasioned by a dozen oysters too many, the unaccustomed winnings at Cantonment, the discovery of the corpses of Jerry and Evelyn Larkin over the weekend. He imagined that he had been hypnotized by the moon, thrown into one of those trances that were common enough at night, on lonely stretches of road, to solitary drivers. “That's it,” he whispered to himself, “I was led astray by the moon. But now the moon’s brought me home safe again…”

  Chapter 37

  Nathan drove slowly along the dark deserted streets of Babylon. It was close to midnight by his watch. He had lost an hour somewhere, or the watch was wrong. The clock in the Lincoln confirmed the time. He had left Pensacola at ten o’clock, no later, and should have been home before eleven. Where had he been? He suspected that the moon had led him all over the night-black county.

  Streetlamps were sporadic in this part of Babylon, among the workers' houses. The ground was flat here, and the dwellings set far back from the road. Lights burned in only a few windows, A dog that was tied to a tree barked viciously.

  Coming up on the left, beyond the field where the traveling circus set up every July, was the old Babylon cemetery. Nathan remembered now that Evelyn and Jerry had been buried early in the afternoon. He had been annoyed that their corpses had been located so quickly.

  Lights along the side of the cemetery that Nathan had seen in his approach suddenly winked off, all three at once. This startled him, but no less than the fast that when he looked into the sky, he found that the moon had suddenly altered its position. It had seemed to follow him all the night, pinning him against the sat seat, stabbing through a point just between his eyes. Now it shone not on him at all, but over the cemetery. On the drive home, the interior of the car had been bleacher with the livid white light; but as Nathan glanced around, he found the interior of the car dark. The dash dials gleamed a pale lime green.

  But all along this uninhabited road, the cemetery was whitely lighted. He could count the gravestones inside. The worn lettering was deeply shadowed, and he could make out names of families in town: HIGHTOWER, READ, TOBIN, LAMB, BLUE, and LARKIN.

  Nathan tried to think whether these monuments looked the same now as when he had last driven by. HIGHTOWER was as he remembered it, and so was BLUE, because he could recall attending services at each graveside. He didn’t know the Read, Tobin, and Lamb families very well, though he assumed they had their plots on this near edge of the cemetery. But Nathan was almost certain that the Larkin plot was distant, on the far side, not here. As he drove past, he automatically slowed, and stared into the cemetery. With a clarity that ought not have been possible from such a distance, he made out the upturned earth of the new double grave, and marked out the less-recently spaded ground where Margaret Larkin lay buried. Nathan suffered an alteration of perception that sometimes accompanied heavy drinking: an expansion of time, in which hundreds of discrete sensory perceptions and trains of thought crowded every passing second. Nathan tried to remember how much bourbon he had consumed at the racetrack—no mo
re than half a pint; how many beers with supper—no more than three. It was possible, though it hadn’t occurred to him before, that he was drunk.

  He was frightened and determined to get home as quickly as possible. Last time the streetlamps had winked out he had smashed into something that looked like Margaret Larkin. He stepped hard on the accelerator, but to his surprise, his foot sank to the floor without resistance. The car suddenly lost power. He threw his foot on the brake, but that too was ineffectual. The car rolled forward slowly. He pulled on the emergency brake but there was no alteration in speed. He threw the Lincoln into park, but the car only rolled to an easy stop, directly in front of the gates of the cemetery.

  Turning the key in the ignition gave no response. He tried the turn signal, but this didn’t work. Only the headlights remained, and the interior dash lighting. Nathan punched the lights out, but was so frightened by the intensity of the moon’s pale glow that he pulled the knob out again immediately. The lights did not come back on.

  He pushed buttons, turned the key again and again, twisted knobs, but all to no effect. Nathan pulled the keys from the ignition and stepped quickly out of the car.

  He was momentarily blinded by the light of the moon.

  He stared up. It was twice as large as it had been only a few moments before, and so bright it wavered in his vision, wobbling like the sun. He cast his eyes to the ground, when it appeared that the moon was yet increasing in size. He didn’t dare look at it.

  There was a noise behind him, a wet slap against a solid surface. Something had knocked against the brick archway of the entrance to the cemetery. Without looking around, he pressed the catch of the car door, intending to retrieve the pistol that he kept in the glove compartment. The door would not open. He thrust the key into the lock; it turned and snapped softly off. He pulled on the front door, pulled on the back, and this proving fruitless, he beat on the window, wondering if he could break the glass with his fist.

  Another wet slap made him turn around.

  Margaret Larkin stood solemn and unmoving beside the brick archway. The moon, triangled in the comer of Nathan's eyes, was three times its normal size, and swelling by the moment. It shone directly on the figure beneath the cemetery entrance. Her eyes and mouth were closed, but slowly they opened on unreflecting blackness, the only black things beneath the black starless sky—all else around her was washed out in a cold white light. Blacks and browns, the red brick and the green foliage, were bleached to a slightly shadowed gleaming white. Nathan looked down at himself, at his hands and clothing, and found that he alone was in deep shadow. Behind him, the untenanted land across from the cemetery was unremittingly black, as if the moon shone there not at all. He couldn’t make out the colors in his shirt or his trousers, could barely trace the nails of his hands. He held his arms out to the side but no light fell upon them.

  He looked up again. Margaret Larkin had moved to the other brick post. Her gown—whatever garment it was that she wore—had somehow altered its form. He glanced at it now, trying to make out how it was constructed, but his gaze was brought irresistibly up to those empty eyes and that gaping black mouth.

  Suddenly full of anger, Nathan turned a little, and ripped the radio aerial from the car. He pressed it in so that it was three feet of sturdy sharp metal, and then hurried several steps toward the white motionless figure.

  Without turning, Margaret retreated into the cemetery. Nathan pursued her into the violent white landscape. Behind him he could feel the moon growing still larger and brighter. The gravestones were diffused with reflected light; even the oldest gave back the chill illumination as though they were polished mirrors. They glowed beyond their physical boundaries. The graveled paths, the rank vegetation, the trees, the planted and the artificial flowers, were a dusty gray and began to lose their definition as Nathan grimly followed Margaret Larkin’s retreat among the shimmering monuments. The apparition swept backward without stumbling, without flinching or moving aside for small obstacles, with only a slight fluttering motion of the arms and hands at her sides.

  Nathan held the aerial menacingly before him, and tried not to notice that his arm and its metallic extension remained in deep shadow. He passed his free hand before his face, and for a moment the white landscape was blacked out.

  All the tombstones glared suddenly brighter, so bright that for a moment he lost sight of the figure of the girl. He looked behind him. The moon, enormous, featureless, with a staggering incandescence, hovered directly over the cemetery. With anything so bright so close, he felt he should have been burned, but all he felt was a creeping chill across his shoulders, a prickly dampness peeling across his neck.

  Nathan tried to adjust to the glare. It wasn’t entirely like light, or great intensity of light; but rather the landscape appeared an overexposed photograph. Before him, the small monuments and the gravestones were of a dazzling and undifferentiated whiteness, while the dark trees, grass, shrubs, and earth, which ought to have been black in the night, were a shining gray with speckled shadow. Behind him was the moon, frigid and enormous, imparting a dense primeval phosphorescence to everything before him. Only his own body remained in shadow.

  Nathan tried to call out but could not. He had heard nothing at all since the wet slaps against the brick. They echoed in his mind now, when all else was silence. He waved the automobile aerial in front of him, and its slender black length disappeared in the whiteness. He ought to have heard its metallic swish through the air, but did not.

  The dazzling white figure of Margaret Larkin anchored suddenly at the head of the freshly turned graves of her grandmother and her brother, and though Nathan moved closer, she did not retreat. The mouth and eyes opened and closed mechanically, like those of a dying fish,

  Nathan lunged.

  The aerial pierced the figure, and it exploded, like a burst balloon. The phosphorescent whiteness disappeared in that same instant.

  All Nathan's sense was transferred from his eyes to his ears. He could see nothing; the sudden darkness blinded him as effectively as the whiteness. His feet moved forward over the grave, and he kicked aside the flowers that the dead woman had left for her granddaughter.

  Beside him, on other graves, he heard crickets and cicadas. Frogs croaked in a drainage ditch nearby. He could make out the balking of the tethered dog he had passed.

  He turned to stare at the moon, but found it reduced to its normal size, partially masked by the thick foliage.

  Nathan stopped, stared carefully down to the earth, where Margaret Larkin, or whatever it was that impersonated her, had stood. His eyes slowly grew accustomed to the night. A slightly gleaming liquid, soaked the already damp earth, forming a small flat pool; and as he looked, the dark pool drained away into the turned earth.

  Nathan did not move for several seconds. He felt the tip of the aerial, which had pierced the figure; it was damp. He wiped his soiled fingers on his trousers. Around him, the tombstones shone only faintly; he could read none but the boldest inscription on the newest monuments.

  When he felt that his heart was beating less quickly, when he assured himself that he had suffered only a minor hallucination brought on from the anxiety of the last couple of weeks and the liquor he had consumed, Nathan stepped over the concrete curb of the Larkin family plot and onto the narrow gravel path He realized then that he was in a different part of the cemetery, the farthest corner, out of sight of the road; he could not have seen this tomb when he was driving by. He wondered how quickly he could find his way back to the gates.

  Once again, behind him, there was a slight noise. It was no wet slap this time, but still Nathan did not turn. A rumble, felt more than heard, broke against his ankles, swelled up through his legs, and registered sickeningly in his belly.

  The agitation in the earth intensified, and the sound grew with it; a grotesquely rumbling tremor in the earth behind him.

  Nathan turned slowly, and stared at the graves of Evelyn and Jerry Larkin. He cried aloud, but was not rea
ssured by the sound, as before he had been frightened by its absence. On the right-hand side of the spaded ground, the clods of earth trembled and scattered. Splits appeared in the surface, and were quickly filled with loose shaking soil. The trembling strengthened, and the earth above the grave heaved from top to bottom, as if a hellish seesaw operated beneath. When the lower end was raised, earth flew against the pink marble monument that read LARKIN; and when the upper end came up, Nathan himself was pelted with the small clods. He backed against a small monumental stone to stand out of the way of the flying earth.

  He wanted to run from that place, but was transfixed by the heaving earth of the fresh grave. In his fright he told himself that one of them, Evelyn or Jerry, had not been killed. It must be Evelyn: Jerry’s head was cut off. The sword through the old woman’s body had been insufficient; the overturning of the car into the Styx hadn’t been enough. The coroner had been fooled and Evelyn Larkin buried alive. But after her funeral, when the mourners had gone away, she had closed up her wounds. She had cleared her lungs of the black water of the Styx, and pushed open the top of her coffin. She was clawing to the surface of her premature grave.

  He waited for a hand to be thrust up through the earth, a grimy thin hand that had belonged to Evelyn Larkin, that was not yet dead. But it was no hand that appeared. The surface of the coffin, with the glint of a metallic handle on the lower end, broke the surface only a few feet from where Nathan stood. The coffin bad been rocking itself to the surface of the grave.

  He turned to run, but was arrested by a ripping, earth-muffled explosion behind him, He threw his hands over his face. The coffin itself had exploded; splinters and slats of wood, fragments of satin and gleaming hardware rained down all around him. He was knocked painfully in the forehead by a long splinter of painted board,