Free D by George Right Page B

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..."
    And by the way–he had already seen the postal employee. Who says that the priest would be any better? Perhaps an upside down crucifix is