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"Oh, I guess, my face," said the Black man (or whatever he actually was). Tony had a flashing thought that this...this being was looking for an occasion to be aggressive, and he pitifully waggled his head.

"Everything is all right, sir," the driver continued just as amiably. "Many people are frightened when they see me for the first time. It's a skin defect called 'vitiligo'. Don't worry, it's not in
fectious."

"My God, what an idiot I am," Tony thought, again relax
ing with immense relief (which allowed his leg to be pulled several inches deeper at once). Certainly, vitiligo, a pigmentation disorder. He had seen people with this skin condition before, but they were white. On a black face it looks particularly terrible... Especially when the spot is shaped exactly like a skeleton’s face. Moreover, taking into account the existing circumstances...

"Sorry," Tony murmured confoundedly.

"You need help," the driver said more affirmatively than interrogatively.

"Yes, my leg is stuck, and, in general, I'm in a stupid situ
ation..."

"Now we'll
relieve you of it."

But the motto? What about the motto? Could it be a one more trick of imagination which caused him to not see the preposi
tion "for"?

No. There was no "for." And "de" was quite distinctly sep
arated from "liver."

The driver stepped towards Tony and Logan saw his right hand that had been hidden by the truck door before. No–the hand itself was okay. No pigment spots and the fingers were not de
cayed. But these fingers clenched the handle of a huge butcher's hatchet, devilishly sharp even by sight and with a brown-stained blade.

"What... are you going to...?" Tony, who had instantly lost all his newly found calmness, plaintively exclaimed.

"To relieve you of it," repeated the Negro, taking one more step towards him, and Logan understood that "it" meant not his trouble, but his leg.

There was not the slightest chance of releasing himself in the remaining seconds. But when the driver had already raised his weapon, Tony seized the largest piece of asphalt and with all his might threw it right in the terrible white-black face.

The sound of the blow turned into a wet crunch. The jerked back and fell, hitting his head against the edge of the opened truck door (it slammed with a scratch)–and then finally tumbled down on the asphalt, still clutching his hatchet. Logan heard a new crunch and at first thought that it was one more sound of a breaking skull. But then he saw a new crack that ripped the asphalt from the edge of the hole into which Tony had slumped to the front wheels of the truck, having passed under the driver's motionlessly stiffened body.

And in the following instant something moved under the asphalt, heavily rolling towards the vehicle–or, maybe, towards the bald head from which, probably, blood exuded? Tony felt the grasp on his ankle weakened. Having gathered all his strength, he jerked once again–and his right leg broke loose with a viscous damp sucking sound. Without a shoe and all bedaubed with mud, but those were insignificant details. Logan jumped up and rushed farther along the street. He did not even try to pick up the post
man's hatchet (let alone getting behind the wheel of his truck), as he was not sure at all that the asphalt under him wouldn't break again.

Or that this guy won't come to senses at the most inoppor
tune moment as always happens in movies.

"Well, it's unlikely," Tony told himself (while still main
taining his pace). "His skull was broken in two places at least, and however sturdy he seemed..."

A familiar scratch came from behind. And then–a door slam.

Tony looked back over his in shoulder in panic and saw headlights again. Actually, they were not switched off even when the truck was standing. But now... they, seemingly, were approaching again.

Logan ran to the nearest house and hastily tugged at the door handle. Screws pulled from the mouldering wood, leaving the handle in his hands. The door had been locked. Having rejec
ted his "trophy," as useless as a weapon, Tony rushed off farther along the street. How many seconds are left to him?

From the fog a traffic sign appeared. A rhombus with an inscription "DEAD END." Holy crap!

However, he guessed there was a certain extense of free space beyond the sign. While it still could be nothing. There could be a fence blocking his path...

Without stopping, he threw one more glance back. The headlights were definitely closer. Tony again looked forward and saw a metal fence. But, no, it was not too high. And the main thing–there was a semicircular gate in it and it was open. And beyond the gate something like a town in miniature appeared in the fog: rows of low stone structures stretching into the gloom and silent pale figures erect between them...

Crypts. Tombstones. Monuments.

If this nightmare were in Manhattan, Tony remembered, south of City Hall would be the Trinity Episcopal Church cemetery–the only one active on the island. But it is is apparently much closer and very small, not comparable to this huge necro
polis lost in the fog. Here, perhaps, it is not hard to lose one's way, especially at night... And why is the cemetery open at night? Though it is, of course, good that it is open, considering the vehicle which has almost overtaken him already... But still, though Tony did not consider himself superstitious, he, as well as the majority of people, somehow did not find the idea of night visits to cemeteries appealing. Especially–after everything that has already happened this night.

Here truly–dead end. Tony thought again about the literal meaning of this ordinary expression.

And, having run closer to the gate, he got an additional reinforcement to his fears.

It was one more dead bird. A swan, like those populating city ponds and Sheepshead Bay. It was impaled on several rods of the cemetery's fence, piercing it through. Feathers, once white, were stuck together with blood and cadaveric putrilage, shabby wings and the semi-decayed neck hung powerlessly downwards. The rotted head had fallen off and lay near the foot of the fence with a wide open blackened beak.

No "No entrance" sign would have dissuaded Tony from entering more convincingly. But still, choosing between a dead swan and a live maniac with a hatchet... Tony hastily ran in the gate and turned into the first lateral walk, and then–into a narrow passageway between a crypt and a marble angel. Hunkering down, he hid.

All was silent. Indeed–silent, as a cemetery... Probably the maniac had lost his trail or not followed him here at all. Logan re
membered some scraps of a horror film in which, contrary to the most widespread genre cliches, the cemetery was the safest place, since the evil spirits could not pursue characters there because of its consecrated soil. Certainly, Tony had never before believed either in evil spirits, or in consecrated soil... But he hadn't believed either in USPS trucks driven by fans of cutting out livers and other body parts.

Fans who could not be stopped even by a broken skull.

Tony waited a little longer, then, trying not to make a sound, slowly stood up, noticing for the first time the discomfort of his right foot being wet and clad only in a sock. He did not dare to go back; such a big cemetery for certain had more than one exit.

He carefully moved 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 inscrip
tions, 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 at
tention 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 sculp
tures 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 sensa
tion 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 de
cayed 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 pos
sible... 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 in circles–he definitely had not passed again by the same crypts and statues–but in some devilish labyrinth...

It seemed to Tony that he heard steps.

He stopped dead. No. All is silent. Perhaps, his own echo... He walked farther.

More sounds again. Surely, echo, what else? The sound is reflected from all these crypts and gravestones...

Only why did he hear only his left, shod footsteps, and the "echo" had sounds from both feet?

He stopped again, listening attentively in fear to darkness.

Bommmm!

Tony shuddered so violently that he almost bit his tongue. From the fog came the second sound of a large bell ringing, and then a third... The lingering, dreary, and at the same time aloof and indifferent sounds floated from the darkness, bringing even more dread than mysterious steps among tombs and spiteful faces of statues.

"Somewhere this cemetery there is a church," Tony thought. "Well, it is absolutely logical. But this bell is unlikely to be a call to a vigil. If any vigils were kept here during last two hundred years... (still, why is the obviously abandoned cemetery open, moreover at night?) And if it is the striking of a clock bell, isn't the number of strikes too much? Five, six... If it is six o'clock in the morning now, it should be dawn already... Seven... Eight..."

Bommmm.... The sound of the last, twelfth blow slowly faded away in the gloom.

Not morning at all. Midnight.

"What the crap?! It should be, at least, 4 a.m. already!"

"If only I could understand where this damned church is," Tony thought, but in a fog he could not identify the direction. The sound seemed to come from everywhere. "If there is a priest there or... at least anybody–though it could be a mechanical chiming clock..."