Danse Macabre
Take the Long Way Home
Ed needed to leave the party. He was drunk, it was late, he had no ride home. His apartment was several miles away—it was dark, windy and cold.
More than enough to drink, slurring speech, bumping into people, unsteady on his feet. One a.m. on a Friday night, edging into Saturday morning. Great party, but he’d blown past too much to drink an hour ago. With queasiness creeping in, tomorrow’s hangover would be brutal.
A party for a group office workers who built accounting systems. They met regularly—a mix of college-educated, mostly young and single, men and women.
“Eddie man, you’re leaving us. You’re wasted you animal—you sure you can make it home?”
“Yeah, I’m only down the road and I need the fresh air anyway—I think I can find my way home. I think.” Ed laughed to his friend.
He had walked to the party, a townhouse about two miles from his apartment complex. This was a rural and woodsy area past the outer suburbs of Washington, DC. This walk took him down a main road, not heavily travelled at this hour, but partially lighted with a twenty-four-hour gas station and supermarket and other closed businesses along the way.
Most nights, a simple and safe walk. But now, in his condition, the distance felt different: longer, heavier—far from home. There was a short cut though, a quicker route that would cut his trip by more than half. Not a road though, it was little more than a dirt path crossing forest and farmland. Still, the moon was full, and it was a clear night. He’d make the trip much sooner than taking the long way home.
One minor issue—the path, winding its way through the countryside, passed by an old, abandoned church—beside it, a forgotten cemetery.
Being the modern age, Ed wasn’t worried about the supernatural but more concerned with tripping over a rock or getting lost. Still, no matter how modern and pragmatic, the scenery gave him pause. He hesitated, felt embarrassed, then started off on the shorter journey—time to act like a man, not a mouse! thought Ed, laughing to himself.
****
He was off to a brisk start. Taking deep breaths and concentrating on maintaining his footing, the fresh cool air felt good. The route zigzagged through open fields, but even though well after midnight, a full moon made it easy to follow.
For the first quarter mile he’d glance back at the row of townhouses where the party was still winding down. Lit by the moon, fields of grass on each side rustled in the wind like ocean waves. Soon though, the path entered into a tunnel of large trees. Darker, but enough moonlight filtered through gaps in the canopy, so the trail was still easy to follow. Ed was alone but felt safe.
Nearby, the sound of traffic from the interstate drifted through the trees. In another direction, the lonely call of a freight train echoed through the night. Sounds carried on the cool autumn air, and with civilization so close, Ed wasn’t worried about stumbling into a grizzly bear or a wolf pack. He laughed—though not as easily as before.
Born and raised in Georgetown in Washington, D.C., Ed was more of a city boy at heart, less a rugged outdoors type.
He figured he was almost halfway home. The forest cleared into open fields again and Ed felt a flicker of relief as there’d be a bright full moon the last part of the walk—it would be the only light though.
The route followed along an old stone fence at one time part of a working sheep or cattle farm he’d read somewhere. The stones were smooth and pale, and the moon caught their edges, drawing them into the distance like a line on a map. Ed had always admired the craft it took to build a wall like that, each stone fitted just so, without mortar. It felt like civilization. Like people. He felt less alone. Almost home.
****
In the distance, he began to make out the silhouette of the old church. It wasn’t an obstacle exactly, but he wanted to get through this part quickly.
The path was hard packed dirt, smooth and well worn. The stone wall continued but had crumbled in places never being repaired—this was no longer a working farm.
Ed approached the church. Once painted white, the sides had faded to a dull gray shadow. On top, a steeple where a large black cross had broken off and lay on its side. Dark red graffiti, a giant star, was sprayed across the front door. What was once a parking lot had been taken over by tall weeds. Sermons were no longer held here.
The windows all broken out gave it a sinister look—Ed thought of it watching him pass by. He kept his head down focused on the path not wanting to look at it, much less at the looming graveyard.
The path dipped into lowland near the church and cemetery grounds. The temperature had dropped sharply, and Ed wearing only a thin, light jacket, shivered in the cold. A light, soft fog now hugged the ground glowing faintly in the moonlight.
Alongside the church, the graveyard spread out behind a rusted, broken fence. Old gravestones were lined up in rows, many askew or toppled over. Like the church, somewhere no longer accepting new occupants. The headstones were lit by the moon, but with the fog draped around them they seemed more like crooked, broken teeth. The stones closest to the fence were worn smooth, inscriptions long unreadable—the dead here had been abandoned.
****
Edward Banks graduated from George Washington University tucked into DC’s Foggy Bottom. He earned a BA in History the sort of major favored by those with no ambition to practice medicine or law or science and the like. A generalist’s degree, but one that opened the door to corporate America, doing something or other, which is exactly what he did.
He sometimes wished he’d aimed higher but had no deep regrets. He was a good-looking guy, six feet tall, light brown wavy hair, he made it to the gym enough to maintain a good physique, he dressed well. He was only twenty-six and even though he currently had no serious girl, he dated enough and was hardly ready to settle down.
More immediately, he had to get past the cemetery. He chuckled at the thought, though this time the laughter was quieter—almost like he didn’t want to be overheard.
A general liberal arts education required classes on the Western Canon which a corporate working boy like Ed thought irrelevant: The Greek philosophers; the Age of Enlightenment; Astronomy; Mathematics; Literature—maybe an elective on bowling or tennis. Tossed in for good measure was a basic “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” à la Benjamin Britton, or a similar “Classical Music Through the Ages” type of class. All standard fare.
Now, at this inopportune moment, Ed found himself recalling his limited musical knowledge. Classical music never interested him, but he did recall something about absolute and program music. It was the program part giving him pause. His primary example for this kind of music was, of course, Camille Saint-Saëns’ tone poem, Danse Macabre. Oh, why couldn’t he be remembering Sonja the Duck instead from Peter and the Wolf, thought Ed—this time with no laughter at all.
He vaguely remembered Danse Macabre as a small orchestral piece—program music, based on a tale set on All Hallows’ Eve. A lone man walks down a country lane at midnight. As he passes a cemetery, a skeleton perched atop a gravestone strikes chords on a fiddle, summoning the dead to rise and dance in the moonlight ‘till dawn. Not an image Ed wants in his head just now.
He tried to force his memory—was Sonja an oboe? a French horn? He strained to focus on this but to no avail. His mind—his inner ear—kept circling back to a violin, scraping out those high, thin notes of the fiddle calling the dead from their graves.
****
Ed was no longer worried about tripping over a rock or tree root or taking a wrong side trial—now, he was completely focused on the unnatural! The thought had taken root, irrational but insistent. He knew he had to keep moving, but his legs felt sluggish, like they were wading through syrup. The fog itself seemed to thicken around him damp and heavy—something holding him back. The air stale, no longer fresh.
Off to his right, near one of the crooked gravestones, something moved—a flash, quick and bright but silent. Maybe a racoon or a cat. Then to his left came a cry from a small animal being caught by a night owl, it’s horrible screech reeking of fear and death. It echoed through the dark.
Almost paralyzed, Ed kept moving, one slow step at a time, a funeral procession of one. He staggered forward and by now all it would have taken was the actual scrape of fiddle strings to send him into full cardiac arrest. No longer feeling better, he was dizzy, nauseous and on the verge of collapsing or throwing up his evening’s liquor consumption.
Still, he kept up his slow funereal cadence, step by step.
The last thing he recalled was the old Scottish Proverb: “Of ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us.”
****
The next morning, Ed woke to a slamming, soul-crushing headache. Still in his clothes from the night before, half-curled on the couch. He reeked of stale vomit. His mouth tasted like sulfur.
He couldn’t remember the end of the walk home—not sure if he blacked out or just forgot. Either way, it was gone.
He stumbled into the kitchen, drank some OJ but it tasted like gall. He made coffee instead, but the thought of food made his stomach churn. Instead, he guzzled a gallon of water and threw back a handful of maximum-strength Tylenol. His hands shook. His head throbbed. He swore—again—never to drink.
What a night. A nightmare, a dream?
He flopped back on the couch and turned on the radio, mumbling a voice command to Alexa: “Play anything.”
The first song was an old favorite from the seventies—an English band he liked back in college. Supertramp. The song: “Take the Long Way Home.”