Russ Viola

An excerpt from my first novel. Com­ments are always welcome:

Chap­ter 1

”…have to find it. That will make this go away…will bring back the soft quiet in my head. I have to remember!!”

The clock tower square in Old Town was bustling with peo­ple that mild Octo­ber evening. Accor­dion music was echo­ing off the church walls with a black­smith keep­ing time on his anvil. The tour groups were fol­low­ing bright umbrel­las or lit­tle flags on sticks while the rest of Prague’s tourists scut­tled between them.
Sean took it all in as he sat in the open-air cafe on the square, drink­ing his beer and wait­ing on his friends.
“Where are they? Prob­a­bly still hung over from last night’s pub crawl!” he thought to him­self.
He should never have agreed to this crazy plan of Scott’s. Break­ing into that old ceme­tery was going to be noth­ing but trou­ble. Scott and Paul were not going to be any help if things got bad with the locals, and they were prob­a­bly drunk already.

“Scott…I had just about given up on you. Where’s Paul?”

“Down for the count. Hung over too badly for tonight’s fes­tiv­i­ties, it seems.”

“So, it’s off!” Sean countered.

“Nay, my chicken-shitted friend! We shall see, con­quer and over­come the walls hold­ing those poor Jew­ish souls in, and we shall lib­er­ate them to fly across this square!” Scott’s solil­o­quy was punc­tu­ated by a flight of pigeons ris­ing from the clock tower to pass behind his head.

“He couldn’t have seen that. Weird.” Sean thought.
“I’m not going.”

“Oh, yes you are.”

“Oh no, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are Sean.”

“No, I’m not.“
This went on through din­ner, a con­sid­er­able amount of beer, and halfway to the Jew­ish quarter.

“Give me your hand Sean!” Scott hissed, lean­ing over the wall of the ceme­tery, head and arm pop­ping out of the gloomy dark­ness like some apparition.

“Ok…ok…keep your pants on,” mum­bled Sean scrab­bling on the smooth stone of the wall for purchase.

“Look what I man­aged to not spill!” Scott offered, as he uncorked and took a swig of the vino they had been shar­ing on the way over there.

“Alive”, he thought.
That both­ered him deeply. It felt like there was lost ran­dom noise here, a col­lec­tion of sounds, groans, moans, mus­cles stretch­ing, and joints pop­ping. This place seemed to col­lect all the sound and activ­ity of the city, not Prague as it is now, but maybe as it was. As Sean stopped at a tomb, sway­ing, he leaned against it and allowed him­self to be swept away by the thrush and throb of the noise. This wave of oscil­lat­ing sound trans­ported him. It cleared his head and vision. It sharp­ened his ears and made all the col­ors around him in the night seem much more vivid.
It was in this state of height­ened aware­ness that he first saw them, lit­tle tiny lights, almost like the fire­flies of his youth. Slowly and gen­tly, they flit­tered from stone to stone, danc­ing in the air above the tombs in a pat­terned and chore­o­graphed dis­play of grace and beauty. Blink­ing on, then off, on, then off again, as they swayed around each other.
“It has to be the wine,” he thought. “This can’t be real.“
But, a calm had swept through his whole body as he began to vis­cer­ally feel the sound and move­ment around him. He reached his hand out toward the danc­ing fire­fly lights, beck­on­ing. They mul­ti­plied and began to sur­round him, danc­ing in and then out, toward him, then away, stay­ing just out of his reach. Sean was sur­rounded by the sounds of life, old life, and he under­stood. Those other ceme­ter­ies where quiet, because they were empty. This one was not. This one was full of life, of spirit. Then, he saw them. Illu­mi­nated by the fairy light, they were stand­ing mere inches from his face, sur­round­ing him, all arms and eyes and open yam­mer­ing mouths.
He tried to call out to his friend Scott, to warn him that there really were things in the night. Hun­dreds sur­rounded them, maybe thou­sands, and these peo­ple might want them to leave. As he took a quick breath in, the lights rushed him. Impos­si­bly fast now, they surged between his lips, tick­ling down his throat, fill­ing his lungs with flut­tery liq­uid fire. Cough­ing and stum­bling back, Sean cast the bot­tle aside, smash­ing it on the stones. He heard Scott cackle from far across the ceme­tery. Sean spun toward the sound and cut between two stones, lurch­ing in the direc­tion of his friend and ran into the cold, brit­tle chest of a tall black clad man.

“Waaa…cough, cough.” He couldn’t get the tickle out of his chest. Fran­tic, he looked for a way around the man. To run or to hide, cast­ing left and right, mov­ing it seemed to him, in slow motion, he backpedalled away from the strange thin man in the dark coat and cap. The man approached as a night­mare, float­ing inex­orably, his spec­ta­cles flash­ing accu­sa­tions with bright, round flatness.

With this, the gaunt man spit up a piece of phlegm into his hand…he molded and kneaded it while hold­ing Sean with his flash­ing gaze.

Whis­per­ing names and prayers onto the lump, the Rabbi stepped for­ward and embraced Sean. Plac­ing the Eucharist in his mouth, he pushed it down Sean’s throat.

“My name was Sean. I…I met the Rabbi Low’s …ghost?”