The sky had turned marble gray with storm clouds rolling in from the west, but the setting sun ignited them from underneath like an orange blowtorch, illuminating the polished marble gravestones of the Haddonfield Town Cemetery in a rare display of joyous glitter.
Angus Taylor, the caretaker of the non-denominational cemetery, puffed up the sharp incline, reading from a note pad as he led his trench coat-clad guest along a flagstone path. "Can't take this hill like I once used to," he said between anguished breathes. "Too much beer, not enough sex. Of course, I hold that a man can't have too much of either, but I suppose if I had my druthers it'd be..."
A glance at the visitor, who stared at him with a mixture if indifference or repugnance, subdued Taylor's chatter. He stopped a moment, panting, to look at the map on his note pad. "Let's see. Myers. Judith Myers. Row eighteen, plot twenty. Over this way."
They veered onto a secondary path whose stones had all but sunk beneath the encroaching grass. Willow branches whipped their faces as they peered through the impending gloom at names and dates that bespoke lives rich and inglorious, lives joyous and sad, lives short and long, but all terminated inexorably by the same grim hand.
The garrulous Taylor waxed silent. Though he'd been in the undertaking business all his life, it wasn't until lately that he'd begun to realize that his interest had become more than professional. At the age of sixty-two, the dozens of graves whose excavation be supervised had begun to beckon to him, and he'd started to ponder what it meant to spend an eternity in one. He'd arranged to be baptized so that he could be buried in a churchyard, where at least there might be the illusion of grace and salvation, and where he'd be surrounded by people bound to him by their mutual faith. "You believe in God, mister?"
Sam Loomis studied the man from beneath craggy brows and decided it wasn't worth getting into a philosophical debate. "Doesn't everyone?" he said. "Which way?"
"Left."
They walked slowly, scanning the stones.
"Every town has something like this happen," the puffing man said. "I remember a guy over in Russellville, Charley Bowles? Nicest guy you could ever imagine. You could boot him in the tail, he'd never complain. Then, maybe some twenty years ago I recollect, he finished dinner, excused himself from the table, and went into the garage. Come back with a hacksaw, he did. Kissed his wife and two kids good-bye, then proceeded to..."
"Mr. Taylor, where are we?" Loomis snapped.
Taylor held his note pad up to catch the fading sunlight. "Just right over there a ways. And I remember Judith Myers. Talk about sweet girls. She'd bat her eyes at you, you wanted to melt through the floor. Of course, they did find traces of semen, and this fella did admit he'd been humpin' her a few hours before, but that doesn't make a girl a tramp. Not these days. I know a fourteen-year-old who's been...hmm. I thought it was right about here." He consulted his pad and looked at a marble marker sunk into the ground at the convergence of two paths.
"Lost?" said Loomis with a sharp edge of exasperation.
"Should be right behind Ed Sanders and next to Cornelia Stirley. Aw shit!"
They stepped up to Judith Myers plot.
The stone was gone.
The earth had been exposed so recently, Loomis could smell the fresh loam and see long livid earthworms trailing into the ground after their violent disturbance.
"Goddamn kids. This happens to me every Halloween.."
You're sure it's Judith Myers?" Loomis's eyes glowed red in the direct glint of sunset.
"here, see for yourself." Taylor held the note pad up for Loomis to read. Pointing a pudgy linger at the diagram, he said, "See? Seventeen, eighteen is Myers, nineteen is Cornelia Stirley. It's Judith Myers, no doubt about it. Stone should be lying around nearby, if you want to help me look for it. They usually get tired of trying to haul these things and give up."
"Who does?"
"The kids. Teenagers, college kids."
"What do they do with them?"
"Play pranks. Put them on people's lawns. One bunch two years ago put one in the principal's office at school. Ho, what a stink he made, whoo-boy!" Taylor took a few paces downhill, scanning the surrounding ground for the stone.
"You won't find it," Loomis announced calmly.
"What makes you so sure?"
"I'm sure. He's come home," Sam Loomis said, leaning heavily on a tombstone.
