"Isn't this just a lovely evening, Marge? Joe?" gawked Raymond insincerely, but only as insincerely as everything he said. In truth this Italian "vacation" was a bust and this whole decaying nuclear family knew it--even though Joe was only four. Ray had worked nearly the whole time, and the fact that the work was as dark as it always would be was just the icing on the shit cake. The slimy meat of it was that the whole affair was only a feeble attempt to save an ailing marriage and fatherhood, coming also at a time of gloomy weather in Italy. No upstanding Christian and American could appreciate this ghastly, Satanic-seeming clime... or for Joe, this perfect, magical Halloween clime. Joe liked to be frightened as much as his father loathed all that was out of the norm.
The route from the city, such as it was, to the village of their stay was short enough that Ray had suggested taking it by foot a few times, and this was one. While it hardly befit a red-blooded American to miss the glory of a ride by car... there was the romance to think of, the romance dying between Marge and him.
Such a devilish gloom though. So much evil emanating from the graveyard of these half-Pagan Europeans. Such devilish laughter among the trees.
...Devilish laughter?
Was it those Catholic-school children? Almost surely not, they looked as terrified as he felt. And besides, the direction was wrong. The directions were wrong.
...Directions?
The laughter came from only one direction, one corner of the graveyard whose wall ran along their route, but from the other nearby corner came a series of Nazi-like screams. Yes, definitely German. No, now Russian... Italian... Polish... French... English?... German again. But all the same voice. They were moving now... he couldn't just scale the wall at the corner and catch the people... please God, let them be people... behind this atrocity. He would look like a fool caroming among the trees. Raymond Eawest will never look like a fool. Raymond, Eawest, will never look like a fool.
Then an egg hit him in the face. A putrid stench enveloped him and he gagged and doubled over.
Joe Eawest found all of this extraordinarily cool, funny, and frightening.
No comments:
Post a Comment