It was another Friday in that long ago and misremembered 1987, October 30th. Mischief Night, or Devil’s Night as some of the more alarmist voices were already starting to call it. All Hallow’s Eve Eve… The threshold of the threshold.
“We should go out to the cemetery and watch for Satanists,” Dave suggested. “They’re bound to be out, right? Getting ready for the great ritual, the high holy Samhain.”
We were all together again – in the attic space above Dave’s family apartment that we’d claimed as our own. The television was on, some eurotrash horror film called The Sweet Terrors of the Succubus, but we’d grown bored of it and lost track of the plot, such as it was, and we were casting about for something to do. Dave’s mom had suggested that we could help her make rice crispy treats for Halloween trick-or-treaters, but we’d declined.
She also brought up a small box of Halloween decorations – mostly paper cutouts of skeletons and ghosts and witches. “Mom,” Dave whined. “That’s kids’ stuff. It’s corny.” She smiled and left the box anyway and Micah was sorting through it. He hung a few of the spiders and skeletons from the ceiling.
“If we wanna go to the cemetery,” I said, “we’re going to need to call Allison.”
“No, dude,” Dave said. I’m not exactly sure why Dave didn’t care for Allison. He called her “Yoko.” I told him that was uncool, and he shrugged. Anyway, Micah was already dialing the phone. Dave saw it. “Dude, no.” Micah handed the phone to me.
“Hey,” Allison said. “Whatever it is, I’m down.”
“Trip to the cemetery,” I told her.
“On Mischief Night? Groovy.” I could hear her grin through the phone. Twenty minutes later she was in the alley behind Dave’s apartment, and we were sneaking down the back stairs.
“How’d you get the car?” I asked as Allison drove us across town towards the Resurrection Cemetery. “You don’t have your license yet, do you?” Dave and I were in the back seat. Micah was up front with her.
“No. Beth and the parentals are out of town. They’re taking her to visit one of the colleges she’s interested in. They don’t know I’ve got the car.”
I nudged Dave with an elbow to the ribs. “Well, thanks for driving us to the graveyard. It’s cool you’re coming.”
“Actually,” Allison said without taking her eyes from the road, “It’s a cemetery. Though we use the words somewhat interchangeably. Cemeteries are larger and not connected to a church. Graveyards are smaller and associated with a church.”
“Cool,” Micah said.
“Same’s true of coffin and casket,” Allison continued. “We use them to mean the same, but they’re different. Caskets are rectangular with four sides. Coffins are tapered with six sides.”
“Cool,” Micah said again. I don’t think I’d ever heard him so verbose.
Allison turned off the headlights and parked the car a ways up the road. “Quiet now,” she warned. “We don’t want to attract attention.”
But she needn’t have bothered. The place was dead. Bad pun, I know. I know. People had been there but now it was only us and the remains of someone else’s party. We shone our flashlights around the scene and saw the remains of their revelries. There was trash everywhere. Empty beer cans and vodka bottles, empty cigarette packs and cigarette butts. Dave found a used condom and Micah found a stray shoe and a very large black bra. There were a few broken candles scattered around one tombstone and lots of pieces of paper blowing around in the grass.
Dave stepped on one to stop it from blowing away. He picked it up and read from it. “It’s from the Bible,” he said. “This page is Isaiah. ‘My heart falters, fear makes me tremble; the twilight I longed for has become a horror to me...”
That caught my ear. “That’s… I recognize that one. Why do I know that one?” I looked at Allison for help. “It’s so familiar. Why do I know that passage?”
“Beats me,” she said. “But maybe we should clean this up. I mean, we just can’t leave it like this. It’s so…”
“Disrespectful,” I suggested.
“Ugly,” Dave said at the same time.
“Yeah,” she said to both. “I think Beth’s got a trash bag in the back of the car.”
So we spent the next half hour walking between the graves, using our flashlights to find the trash and detritus left behind by the unknown revelers and mischief makers. We worked methodically in silence to gather up all the Bible pages and beer cans and other assorted debris. Dave used a small branch to pick up the used condom and to drop it in with the rest of the trash. We nearly filled the bag.
When we finished, we gathered around Micah who was pointing his flashlight at a headstone with a pile of small stones on top. We watched in wonder as Micah added one more stone to the pile.
He pointed his flashlight at the grave marker again and said, “My uncle.”
LEVI ABELMAN –
1932 – 1984
BELOVED HUSBAND –
DEVOTED FATHER
Allison turned and hugged him. And we all sat there in silence on the ground.
“It’s like that song by This Corpse Alive – Dark Gethsemane,” I said as we sat together there at Micah’s uncle’s headstone.
Early
hasten to the tomb
where they lay
this lifeless
clay
all is solitude
and gloom.
We huddled together in silence for several minutes. Not speaking. Not moving. Just listening and thinking. After what seemed like a long while I asked a question. “Do you ever wonder if this is all there is? I mean, these bodies. This flesh… This life. There’s more, right?”
Dave nodded. “But what is it?” I asked again. Now he looked slightly panicked. Micah shook his head and shrugged.
We went out that night looking for performative blasphemy, all the satanic rituals of death in the Resurrection Cemetery, but we found something like the meaning of life. Or at least the right questions. And that’s still the question. All these years later. Is this all there is? All our assumptions about life and death and life after death and life after life. Spirit disembodied, removed from the material and the physical. A presence without weight and a weight without presence. Is there more? Are we more?
“I don’t know what comes after life,” Allison said. “But whatever it is, it’s not worth much without love.” She placed another small stone on Micah’s uncle’s headstone.
That’s when the police rolled up and turned on the flashing blue and red lights.
“Shit! We’re busted,” Allison hissed.
“Should we run?” Dave asked.
“No,” I said as I stood. “He’s probably already got the license plate from the car. Even if we ran, he’d still track us down.”
“Okay, you punks. Just hold it there. Don’t move,” called out the police officer as he turned his powerful flashlight on us. “Every year it’s this same damn thing. You kids come out here on Devil’s Night to topple some gravestones or spray paint pentagrams all over everything.”
“Sir,” I said raising my hands over my head. “We’re not satanists. We came out to see satanists, but we didn’t find any...”
“But they were here,” Dave interrupted. “They left their trash all over everything.”
“We just cleaned it all up,” Allison finished the explanation. And Micah pointed to the trash bag at our feet.
“Open that up and let me see,” the officer instructed. Micah knelt down and opened the bag wide enough to see inside. The condom was still right there on top of all the beer cans.
The officer spoke into his radio, “This is Richardson out at the Resurrection Cemetery. You got anything on that license plate?”
“Negative. No tickets or outstanding warrants.”
“All right kids. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to haul ass out of here before I have to arrest you for trespassing. You’re going to go home. Straight home. And I’m going to file a report saying that I didn’t find any evidence of satanic mischief out here tonight. Which not only saves me a lot of other paperwork but has the added blessing of being true. Now haul ass.”
We took off running for Allison’s car. But he shouted again, “Hold on, hold on! Take this trash with you.” Micah ran back and grabbed the bag, and we all beat feet for the car.
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