(This is for those of you who've read the "Realm of Essences" novels and have written me to say how much you loved him...or to castigate me for killing him. This is how his career started.)
Louis gave himself no chance to back out. The moment he came to the cemetery’s back gate, he flung his goblin mask and his bag of treats at the base of the low stone wall and plunged through, paying no heed to the giggling from Artie and his pals.
It wasn’t a large cemetery. There were headstones and monuments within a few yards of the walls. Many of them bore names he had never heard before, names that hardly looked American. Deukmeijian. Guillory. Wladiewski. Tyszczenko. Even the small stones were as tall as he was. The great ones loomed over him like spectres of judgment. He imagined a radiant malice emanating from them. Had they possessed the power of movement, surely they would have surrounded and crushed him for his intrusion.
Nestled amid a stand of pines to his left was a small concrete building flanked by alabaster figures. Its door was a glass and iron gate surmounted by a slab of gray marble in which the name FORSLUND was carved. The statues were ceremonial angels, winged cherubs of innocent aspect, yet the sense of their stone eyes weighing him, challenging his right to intrude on the repose of the dead, broke his nerve and set him to flight.
Less than a minute after he’d entered, he closed his eyes and broke into a headlong dash for the dimly spied front gate that opened onto the church grounds.
No one, certainly no six-year-old, runs sightless through a country graveyard without penalty. Halfway across the lot, Louis’s foot caught on a basket of flowers. He pitched forward and slammed shoulder-first into a headstone. It must have been loosely set in the earth, for the impact knocked it over, and Louis found himself lying prone on its polished granite surface, breathing in gasps and clutching himself against the urge to scream.
He scrambled to his feet and whipped his head about in a frantic search for danger. He found none, but his panic would not abate. With a grunt and a convulsive heave, he set the headstone upright, then resumed his sprint for the churchyard gate. The night pressed upon his shoulders, urging his short legs to longer and faster strides.
As he burst through the front gate, his strength deserted him, and he fell for the second time. The impact knocked him momentarily senseless.
He arose shaking. There was no sound, and little light from the almost-new moon. Two hundred feet away was the old church and the little house attached to it. The street beyond was still. Artie had promised to bring his things and meet him there.
He took stock of his surroundings. The graveyard had been filled with stones, mostly low blocks of granite with a few lines of writing on them, now and again dressed with flowers. The churchyard was spotted with enormous marble figures, giants in robes whose frozen faces he could not read.
What sort of ghosts dwelled here? If the lesser stones in the graveyard marked the homes of malevolent spirits that might snatch a little boy away from the world, never to return, what of these mighty ones, these unbending titans of judgment and reproof?
He was about to dash for the street and safety when a tall shadow arose from behind one of the huge white statues and loomed over him. Fear overcame him. He pitched himself to the ground and hid beneath his arms as best he could. When a long thin hand descended to rest upon his neck, he squealed and blacked out.
The man carried Louis into the kitchen of the house, set him in a chair at a long wooden table, and hunkered down in front of him. He looked to be about the same age as Louis’s father, but his father was short and thick through the waist, and this man was tall and thin. He wore the sort of old clothes Louis’s father would wear to work in the yard on weekends. His face was lined with kindly amusement, and his voice was deep and gentle. Though Louis’s parents had told him many times to beware of strangers, he could not bring himself to fear this man.
“What’s your name, child?”
“Louis.”
“Just Louis?”
“Louis Redmond.”
The man’s eyebrows rose. “Jeannette’s younger brother?”
Louis nodded.
“It’s not that long ago that... you would be about six, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, Louis, would you mind explaining what you were doing, running through the churchyard in the dark? I don’t mind the company, but I’d bet your parents wouldn’t approve of your choice of playground.”
Louis bit his lip. The man leaned toward him and examined his face.
“Were you out trick-or-treating and got separated from your parents?”
“No, sir.”
“Then what happened, Louis?”
“I was going to meet some friends.”
The man opened his mouth, closed it again without speaking. He looked off into the corner and made a face.
“You ran through the graveyard, didn’t you?”
Louis nodded. The man’s eyes traveled swiftly over his clothes and found the damp spots from his falls.
“Did you bump into something, Louis?”
Louis nodded. “A stone. I put it back up, though.”
That made the man’s eyes go wide. “You knocked a headstone over and you put it back up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you think you could show me which one, Louis?”
The thought of going back out into the graveyard in the dark was more than Louis could stand. He shivered and hugged himself against the cold beyond the door. “I don’t think so.”
There was a long silence. The man rose from his crouch and sat next to Louis at the long table.
“Louis, let me try to guess what happened. Your parents sent you out trick-or-treating with some older boys. When the bunch of you got near the cemetery, they told you some scary stories about it, and dared you to go across it alone. They told you that if you did that, they’d meet you in front of the church with your treats and make you a member of their little club. Am I right?”
Louis nodded. “Am I in trouble?”
The man chuckled. “No, not with me. But we should at least let your parents know you’re all right, shouldn’t we?”
“I guess so.”
“Would you sit here a moment, please? I’ll go call them and tell them you’ll be home in just a little while.” The man moved off. A few seconds later Louis heard a telephone being dialed, followed by a few muffled words in the man’s low, comforting voice. Presently the man returned to the kitchen and sat beside Louis again.
“Were you scared back there?”
“A little.”
“What scared you?”
“I was afraid of the ghosts.”
The man smiled. “But why be afraid of ghosts?”
Louis sat up. “Because they’re... well, aren’t you supposed to be?”
“But why, Louis?”
“I don’t know. They’re dead, aren’t they?”
“Does that make them scary?”
“Well, yeah!”
“But why? Dead people are gone from the world. They can’t do anything to you at all.”
“But...” Louis tried to remember why the thought of ghosts had always frightened him, but he couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried. “Well, what about the big ones?”
“What big ones, Louis?”
“In your back yard!”
“Oh, those. They shouldn’t scare you either. In fact, they’re friendly ghosts. They wouldn’t hurt you even if they could.”
“Why are they friendly?”
The man shrugged. “That’s just the sort of people they were. They were friendly people, and now they’re friendly ghosts.”
“Is that the way it works?”
The man chuckled. “Mostly. But you don’t have to take my word for it.” He stood and offered Louis his hand. “Let’s go say hello to them.”
Louis took the hand and stood up.
As they crossed to the belt of statues that girdled the churchyard, guided by a strong beam from the man’s flashlight, Louis looked up at him and said, “You’re special.”
“Hm? Why do you say that?”
“Because you didn’t try to tell me there’s no such thing as ghosts.”
The man squeezed his hand and smiled. “I know better.”
They came to a halt before a statue of a portly man seated at a large stone table. The figure had a quill pen in his hand, and leaned over an open book as if he were writing into it. Other stone books were piled irregularly around him.
“This,” the man said, “is one of the smartest people who ever lived. He took a huge mass of important things that no one understood, and he made sense out of them. When he was finished, millions of people were better off, because the things they believed no longer had any contradictions in them.” He paused. “Jeannette tells me you’re very smart. Do you know what a contradiction is, Louis?”
Louis nodded. “That’s when you say two things that can’t both be true.”
The man inclined his head in congratulation. “Very good. Do you know what a million is?”
Louis nodded again. “A hundred times a hundred times a hundred.” The man opened his mouth to speak, but Louis asked, “What was his name?”
“His name? It was Thomas Aquinas.”
The man led him to another figure. This one stood, with a staff in one hand and a bird perched on the back of the other. The figure appeared to be gazing off toward an unseen horizon.
“This,” the man said, “was the greatest traveler of his day. There were no cars or trains or airplanes when he lived, and the boats had only sails and wind to push them around, but he traveled more than ten thousand miles just to bring good news to people he’d never seen, and they loved him for it. The other great travelers of the world, the birds, were his special friends. Wherever he went there were birds to sing in joy as he arrived, and birds to sing in sorrow as he left. There’s a legend that says that when he died, all the birds in the world went silent with grief.”
“What was his name?”
“Francis Xavier.”
A little way apart was a kneeling figure of a beautiful young woman. Even in the dark of night, her face was as luminous as if bathed in the morning sun. She held the stem of a flower in her two small hands. Many other flowers were carved into her pedestal’s base.
“This,” the man said, “was a girl so beautiful that it was said that no one who saw her could bear to look away. But from an early age she wanted nothing for herself. She gave everything she had, everything she was, to the service of God. When she passed away, still just a young girl, all of Europe mourned. Her name was Therese Martin, the Little Flower of the Convent of Lisieux.
“Now, Louis,” the man said, squatting to bring his eyes level with Louis’s own, “can you imagine that any of these ghosts would ever want to hurt you?”
“No, but... aren’t there a lot of other ghosts?”
The man nodded. “Of course. But there’s one to keep all the unfriendly ones away. Over here.”
The man led him to a little shrine, a hollow quarter-sphere nestled in a girdle of pine boughs. Within was a statue of a standing woman in robes of blue and white. Her arms were spread in a gesture of boundless welcome.
“This,” the man whispered, “was the only perfect child of humanity. She was special from the first moment of her existence. She had to be, for she was born to bear a child even more special, a child that would lift the entire world onto his shoulders and carry it from darkness to light. She gave her life to her child, so that her child could give his life to the world. Her ghost is the special protector of children everywhere. No harm can come to a child that sleeps in her arms.” The man’s voice shook.
Louis fancied that he could feel a special benevolence wrapped about the statue, a gentle aura of reassurance for all who came to visit. “What’s her name?”
“Mary.”
“Just Mary?”
The man nodded. They stood looking at the statue for a minute more.
“Are there other good ghosts?” Louis said.
The man nodded. “Yes, many. Too many to meet in one Hallowe’en.” He peered at his watch. “I’d better get you home. It’s nearly nine o’clock.”
As they walked the narrow, gently sloping streets toward Louis’s house, he asked the man, “With ghosts like that around, why are people so scared of the other kind?”
The man chuckled. “Are you sure they’re scared, Louis? Maybe they just tell all those scary stories for fun.”
“Well...okay.”
“You’re rather quick to believe, aren’t you?”
“Were you fooling?”
“Ha! No, Louis, not at all.”
“Then I guess I’ll wait and see.”
The man looked down on him with approval. “Yes, I think you will.”
“What’s your name?”
“Father Schliemann.”
“Could I come back and meet the other ghosts? When it’s light out?”
“Of course, Louis. Jeannette will be coming over tomorrow. Ask her to bring you. Tomorrow’s a special day for ghosts. Much more special than Hallowe’en.”
“Does she already know all this stuff about the ghosts?”
“A lot of it, yes.”
Louis scowled. “Dirty hold-out!”
Father Schliemann exploded in laughter. “Well now you’re even with her.”
They ascended the short flight of steps to Louis’s front door, and it opened before them. Louis’s mother stood there in her apron, his goblin mask in one hand and his canvas bag of treats in the other.
“Where have you been, young man?” Marie Redmond struggled to hide her amusement. From the living room beyond came Jeannette’s high, sweet giggle.
Louis shrugged. “Learning about ghosts.”
“Oh? And what did you learn?”
Louis glanced up at Father Schliemann. The tall man’s eyes darted from Louis to his mother and back. He gave a tiny shrug. Louis imitated it and said, “They’re not so bad.”
The adults laughed in unison as Louis and Father Schliemann stepped into the light and warmth of the Redmond family home, where no evil thing could follow.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Louis gave himself no chance to back out. The moment he came to the cemetery’s back gate, he flung his goblin mask and his bag of treats at the base of the low stone wall and plunged through, paying no heed to the giggling from Artie and his pals.
It wasn’t a large cemetery. There were headstones and monuments within a few yards of the walls. Many of them bore names he had never heard before, names that hardly looked American. Deukmeijian. Guillory. Wladiewski. Tyszczenko. Even the small stones were as tall as he was. The great ones loomed over him like spectres of judgment. He imagined a radiant malice emanating from them. Had they possessed the power of movement, surely they would have surrounded and crushed him for his intrusion.
Nestled amid a stand of pines to his left was a small concrete building flanked by alabaster figures. Its door was a glass and iron gate surmounted by a slab of gray marble in which the name FORSLUND was carved. The statues were ceremonial angels, winged cherubs of innocent aspect, yet the sense of their stone eyes weighing him, challenging his right to intrude on the repose of the dead, broke his nerve and set him to flight.
Less than a minute after he’d entered, he closed his eyes and broke into a headlong dash for the dimly spied front gate that opened onto the church grounds.
No one, certainly no six-year-old, runs sightless through a country graveyard without penalty. Halfway across the lot, Louis’s foot caught on a basket of flowers. He pitched forward and slammed shoulder-first into a headstone. It must have been loosely set in the earth, for the impact knocked it over, and Louis found himself lying prone on its polished granite surface, breathing in gasps and clutching himself against the urge to scream.
He scrambled to his feet and whipped his head about in a frantic search for danger. He found none, but his panic would not abate. With a grunt and a convulsive heave, he set the headstone upright, then resumed his sprint for the churchyard gate. The night pressed upon his shoulders, urging his short legs to longer and faster strides.
As he burst through the front gate, his strength deserted him, and he fell for the second time. The impact knocked him momentarily senseless.
He arose shaking. There was no sound, and little light from the almost-new moon. Two hundred feet away was the old church and the little house attached to it. The street beyond was still. Artie had promised to bring his things and meet him there.
He took stock of his surroundings. The graveyard had been filled with stones, mostly low blocks of granite with a few lines of writing on them, now and again dressed with flowers. The churchyard was spotted with enormous marble figures, giants in robes whose frozen faces he could not read.
What sort of ghosts dwelled here? If the lesser stones in the graveyard marked the homes of malevolent spirits that might snatch a little boy away from the world, never to return, what of these mighty ones, these unbending titans of judgment and reproof?
He was about to dash for the street and safety when a tall shadow arose from behind one of the huge white statues and loomed over him. Fear overcame him. He pitched himself to the ground and hid beneath his arms as best he could. When a long thin hand descended to rest upon his neck, he squealed and blacked out.
* * *
The man carried Louis into the kitchen of the house, set him in a chair at a long wooden table, and hunkered down in front of him. He looked to be about the same age as Louis’s father, but his father was short and thick through the waist, and this man was tall and thin. He wore the sort of old clothes Louis’s father would wear to work in the yard on weekends. His face was lined with kindly amusement, and his voice was deep and gentle. Though Louis’s parents had told him many times to beware of strangers, he could not bring himself to fear this man.
“What’s your name, child?”
“Louis.”
“Just Louis?”
“Louis Redmond.”
The man’s eyebrows rose. “Jeannette’s younger brother?”
Louis nodded.
“It’s not that long ago that... you would be about six, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, Louis, would you mind explaining what you were doing, running through the churchyard in the dark? I don’t mind the company, but I’d bet your parents wouldn’t approve of your choice of playground.”
Louis bit his lip. The man leaned toward him and examined his face.
“Were you out trick-or-treating and got separated from your parents?”
“No, sir.”
“Then what happened, Louis?”
“I was going to meet some friends.”
The man opened his mouth, closed it again without speaking. He looked off into the corner and made a face.
“You ran through the graveyard, didn’t you?”
Louis nodded. The man’s eyes traveled swiftly over his clothes and found the damp spots from his falls.
“Did you bump into something, Louis?”
Louis nodded. “A stone. I put it back up, though.”
That made the man’s eyes go wide. “You knocked a headstone over and you put it back up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you think you could show me which one, Louis?”
The thought of going back out into the graveyard in the dark was more than Louis could stand. He shivered and hugged himself against the cold beyond the door. “I don’t think so.”
There was a long silence. The man rose from his crouch and sat next to Louis at the long table.
“Louis, let me try to guess what happened. Your parents sent you out trick-or-treating with some older boys. When the bunch of you got near the cemetery, they told you some scary stories about it, and dared you to go across it alone. They told you that if you did that, they’d meet you in front of the church with your treats and make you a member of their little club. Am I right?”
Louis nodded. “Am I in trouble?”
The man chuckled. “No, not with me. But we should at least let your parents know you’re all right, shouldn’t we?”
“I guess so.”
“Would you sit here a moment, please? I’ll go call them and tell them you’ll be home in just a little while.” The man moved off. A few seconds later Louis heard a telephone being dialed, followed by a few muffled words in the man’s low, comforting voice. Presently the man returned to the kitchen and sat beside Louis again.
“Were you scared back there?”
“A little.”
“What scared you?”
“I was afraid of the ghosts.”
The man smiled. “But why be afraid of ghosts?”
Louis sat up. “Because they’re... well, aren’t you supposed to be?”
“But why, Louis?”
“I don’t know. They’re dead, aren’t they?”
“Does that make them scary?”
“Well, yeah!”
“But why? Dead people are gone from the world. They can’t do anything to you at all.”
“But...” Louis tried to remember why the thought of ghosts had always frightened him, but he couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried. “Well, what about the big ones?”
“What big ones, Louis?”
“In your back yard!”
“Oh, those. They shouldn’t scare you either. In fact, they’re friendly ghosts. They wouldn’t hurt you even if they could.”
“Why are they friendly?”
The man shrugged. “That’s just the sort of people they were. They were friendly people, and now they’re friendly ghosts.”
“Is that the way it works?”
The man chuckled. “Mostly. But you don’t have to take my word for it.” He stood and offered Louis his hand. “Let’s go say hello to them.”
Louis took the hand and stood up.
* * *
As they crossed to the belt of statues that girdled the churchyard, guided by a strong beam from the man’s flashlight, Louis looked up at him and said, “You’re special.”
“Hm? Why do you say that?”
“Because you didn’t try to tell me there’s no such thing as ghosts.”
The man squeezed his hand and smiled. “I know better.”
They came to a halt before a statue of a portly man seated at a large stone table. The figure had a quill pen in his hand, and leaned over an open book as if he were writing into it. Other stone books were piled irregularly around him.
“This,” the man said, “is one of the smartest people who ever lived. He took a huge mass of important things that no one understood, and he made sense out of them. When he was finished, millions of people were better off, because the things they believed no longer had any contradictions in them.” He paused. “Jeannette tells me you’re very smart. Do you know what a contradiction is, Louis?”
Louis nodded. “That’s when you say two things that can’t both be true.”
The man inclined his head in congratulation. “Very good. Do you know what a million is?”
Louis nodded again. “A hundred times a hundred times a hundred.” The man opened his mouth to speak, but Louis asked, “What was his name?”
“His name? It was Thomas Aquinas.”
The man led him to another figure. This one stood, with a staff in one hand and a bird perched on the back of the other. The figure appeared to be gazing off toward an unseen horizon.
“This,” the man said, “was the greatest traveler of his day. There were no cars or trains or airplanes when he lived, and the boats had only sails and wind to push them around, but he traveled more than ten thousand miles just to bring good news to people he’d never seen, and they loved him for it. The other great travelers of the world, the birds, were his special friends. Wherever he went there were birds to sing in joy as he arrived, and birds to sing in sorrow as he left. There’s a legend that says that when he died, all the birds in the world went silent with grief.”
“What was his name?”
“Francis Xavier.”
A little way apart was a kneeling figure of a beautiful young woman. Even in the dark of night, her face was as luminous as if bathed in the morning sun. She held the stem of a flower in her two small hands. Many other flowers were carved into her pedestal’s base.
“This,” the man said, “was a girl so beautiful that it was said that no one who saw her could bear to look away. But from an early age she wanted nothing for herself. She gave everything she had, everything she was, to the service of God. When she passed away, still just a young girl, all of Europe mourned. Her name was Therese Martin, the Little Flower of the Convent of Lisieux.
“Now, Louis,” the man said, squatting to bring his eyes level with Louis’s own, “can you imagine that any of these ghosts would ever want to hurt you?”
“No, but... aren’t there a lot of other ghosts?”
The man nodded. “Of course. But there’s one to keep all the unfriendly ones away. Over here.”
The man led him to a little shrine, a hollow quarter-sphere nestled in a girdle of pine boughs. Within was a statue of a standing woman in robes of blue and white. Her arms were spread in a gesture of boundless welcome.
“This,” the man whispered, “was the only perfect child of humanity. She was special from the first moment of her existence. She had to be, for she was born to bear a child even more special, a child that would lift the entire world onto his shoulders and carry it from darkness to light. She gave her life to her child, so that her child could give his life to the world. Her ghost is the special protector of children everywhere. No harm can come to a child that sleeps in her arms.” The man’s voice shook.
Louis fancied that he could feel a special benevolence wrapped about the statue, a gentle aura of reassurance for all who came to visit. “What’s her name?”
“Mary.”
“Just Mary?”
The man nodded. They stood looking at the statue for a minute more.
“Are there other good ghosts?” Louis said.
The man nodded. “Yes, many. Too many to meet in one Hallowe’en.” He peered at his watch. “I’d better get you home. It’s nearly nine o’clock.”
As they walked the narrow, gently sloping streets toward Louis’s house, he asked the man, “With ghosts like that around, why are people so scared of the other kind?”
The man chuckled. “Are you sure they’re scared, Louis? Maybe they just tell all those scary stories for fun.”
“Well...okay.”
“You’re rather quick to believe, aren’t you?”
“Were you fooling?”
“Ha! No, Louis, not at all.”
“Then I guess I’ll wait and see.”
The man looked down on him with approval. “Yes, I think you will.”
“What’s your name?”
“Father Schliemann.”
“Could I come back and meet the other ghosts? When it’s light out?”
“Of course, Louis. Jeannette will be coming over tomorrow. Ask her to bring you. Tomorrow’s a special day for ghosts. Much more special than Hallowe’en.”
“Does she already know all this stuff about the ghosts?”
“A lot of it, yes.”
Louis scowled. “Dirty hold-out!”
Father Schliemann exploded in laughter. “Well now you’re even with her.”
They ascended the short flight of steps to Louis’s front door, and it opened before them. Louis’s mother stood there in her apron, his goblin mask in one hand and his canvas bag of treats in the other.
“Where have you been, young man?” Marie Redmond struggled to hide her amusement. From the living room beyond came Jeannette’s high, sweet giggle.
Louis shrugged. “Learning about ghosts.”
“Oh? And what did you learn?”
Louis glanced up at Father Schliemann. The tall man’s eyes darted from Louis to his mother and back. He gave a tiny shrug. Louis imitated it and said, “They’re not so bad.”
The adults laughed in unison as Louis and Father Schliemann stepped into the light and warmth of the Redmond family home, where no evil thing could follow.
==<O>==
