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“Mine,” came the breath in the shadow.
“I’ll help you get away,” I said.
“From what?” the shadow said. And then, in terrible fear: “Gone. They are gone!”
“They?”
“Gone? They’ve got to be! Are they?”
Lightning struck the dark acres at last, thunder knocked the tomb. I spun to stare out at the meadows of stone, the hills of shining slabs with names being sluiced away. And the slabs and stones were lit by the fires in the sky and became names on mirror glass, photos on walls, inked names on papers, and again mirror names and dates being washed away down a storm drain while the pictures fell from the walls and the film slithered through the projector to dance faces on a silver screen ten thousand miles below. Pictures, mirrors, films. Films, mirrors, pictures. Names, dates, names.
“Are they still there?” said the shadow on the top shelf of the tomb.
“Out there in the rain?”
I looked out at the long hill of the mortuary place. The rain was falling on a dozen and a hundred and a thousand stones.
“They mustn’t be there,” she said. “I thought they were gone forever. But then they began to knock at the door, wake me. I swam out to my friends, the seals. But no matter how far I swam, they were waiting for me on the shore. The whisperers who want to remember what I want to forget.”
She hesitated. “So if I couldn’t outrun them, I’d have to kill them one by one, one by one. Who were they? Me? So I chased them instead of them me, and one by one I found where they were buried and buried them again. 1925, then 1928, 1930, ’35. Where they would stay forever. Now it’s time to lie down and sleep forever, or they might call me again at three in the morning. So, where am I?”
The rain fell outside the crypt. There was a long moment of silence and I said, “You’re here, Constance, and I’m here, listening.”
After a while she said, “Are they all gone, is the shore clear now, can I swim back in and not be afraid?”
I said, “Yes, Constance, they’re really buried. You did the job. Someone had to forgive you, that someone had to be Constance. Come out.”
“Why?” said the voice from the top shelf of the tomb.
“Because,” I said, “this is all crazy, but you’re needed. So, please, rest for a moment, and then put your hand out and let me help you down. Do you hear me, Constance?”
The sky went dark. The fires died. The rain fell, erasing the stones and slabs and the names, the names, the terrible names cut to last but dissolving in grass.
“Are they?” came the frantic whisper.
And I said, my eyes filled with cold rain, “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes,” I said. “The yard’s empty. The picture’s dropped. The mirrors are clean. Now there’s only you and me.”
The rain washed the unseen stones sinking deep in the flooded grass.
“Come out,” I said quietly.
Rain fell. Water slid on the road. The monuments, stones, slabs, and names were lost.
“Constance, one final thing.”
“What?” she whispered.
After a long pause I said, “Fritz Wong is waiting. The screenplay is finished. The sets are built and ready.”
I shut my eyes and agonized to remember.
Then, at last, I remembered: “ ‘Only for my voices, I would lose all heart.’ ”
I hesitated, then continued: “ ‘It is in the bells I hear my voices. The bells come down from heaven and the echoes linger. In the quiet of the countryside, my voices are there. Without them I would lose heart.’ ”
