RAPE IN A CEMETERY
By Willailla
Chapter 1
A Rainy Day
What a day to be going to the cemetery, thought pretty Marie Bogle, as the
windshield wipers moved slowly back and forth.
It was a bleak day. A gray sheet obscured the sky.
Rain drizzled. She could have waited until a better day, but she wanted
to have pictures of John Blackthorne's grave site to show her students on
Monday. That was when she was going to introduce them to the poetry of that
obscure, eighteenth century American poet. She felt her introduction would be
more interesting to them once they knew Blackthorne had been a local and was
buried in nearby Iron Gate Cemetery.
She glanced at the engagement ring on her finger and smiled. Her
boyfriend, Brad, had proposed to her last night. He had asked her to set the
day. She thought early spring would be nice. Just when everything was coming
into bloom. When all was fresh and new.
She was twenty-five and into her third year of teaching. The most
attractive and popular female teacher, by far, at Crockett High. What her
students would call a knockout. She usually wore her straw-colored hair pulled
back into a bun to give herself a more mature, sophisticated look. Without
makeup, she could have easily passed as one of her students. The face was
sensitive and intelligent with blue, sparkling eyes.
As she drove through the iron-gated entrance of the cemetery, she hummed
along to a bouncy, little tune playing on the radio and waved cheerily to the
guard standing in the doorway of the keep.
He must think it strange for someone to visit on a day like today, she
thought, for it certainly was gloomy. The gray tombs and monuments, streaked
with centuries of lichen, were depressing to look at.
She knew that in the springtime the cemetery became a favorite trysting
place for lovers. But in the middle of November there weren't likely to be
many about.
The cemetery was huge, almost four thousand acres. She remembered reading
about it, once, in the Sunday supplement. There were trees of all kinds, but
mostly oaks and maples. The newer section of the cemetery was on the other
side, where there were only bronze plaques sunk into the ground to commemorate
the dearly departed. Here, in the old section, towering obelisks, gothic and
neoclassical monuments, tombstones and huge Ionian and Corinthian columns
competed with sphinxes, cupids, and simpering angels to form a virtual maze
around her as she drove deeper down one winding lane after another.
She had called the cemetery office the day before to get the location of
the gravesite, and they had faxed her a map. But many of the lane signs were so
badly faded with age that she couldn't read them. Some were missing entirely.
She was beginning to think she might never find it, when, suddenly, she
recognized the name of a sign that was within a stones throw of the site, at
least, according to the map.
She pulled her car over to the side of the lane and got out, after picking
up her camera case. Nearby, between two gothic tombs, with snarling gargoyles
on their corners, was an old, red brick path that descended down a terraced
slope. Towering oaks shrouded it, their bare branches dripping clear, crystal
drops from the rain.
Marie popped open her black umbrella and started down the path cautiously,
for the bricks were slippery from being worn smooth over the ages. She
regretted having worn her high-heeled sandals instead of her joggers, but then
it hadn't been raining when she'd left the house. At least she'd had enough
sense to put on her gray raincoat, she told herself.
Marie wasn't a superstitious person, but as she passed close by a
life-sized stone angel, she could not help feeling that its stone eyes were
watching her and that its stone arms were reaching out to her.
The dead were everywhere, and she felt their presence. An unpleasant
thought crossed her mind, for a moment, that someday she, too, would be lying
under her own press of earth. It was a horrible thought. She tried to think of
something more pleasant, like her wedding in the spring. But the gloom ïf the
surroundings settled upon her like an ill omen, and she determined to get her
pictures as soon as possible and leave this sullen place.
