Horace thought of life beneath the ground. He did not wish to die, but the things he had witnessed and remembered this night caused him only more confusion and an ache that led him to wonder: Where will it end? Will it end? He thought of his family, of what they wanted of him; of his friends and what they offered him; and of himself . . . what did he, Horace, truly want? Suddenly life beneath the ground had a certain appeal it had never had before. It was becoming attractive in a macabre way. No more, no more ghosts, no more sin, no more, no more.

The graveyard stretched for scores of yards in all directions, but up and beyond sat a high fenced-off mound, the original graveyard holding the graves of the first Scots-Irish Crosses, the Englishmen who died here in the early 1700s, the babies who succumbed to croup and cholera and influenza and mere colds, the women who died in childbirth, the men who died much too young.

Convincing himself he knew the outcome of this story, he fully expected to see his own grave. Though he did not understand the point of this transparent charade, he was convinced that would be the best end. But as he looked around he saw nothing amiss. Only the chipped and eroded stones, greyer in thin moonlight, the shapes askew from the plane of the uneven earth.

Then, near the end of the graveyard-within-a-graveyard, beneath a diseased long-leaf pine, he saw what he had led himself to see, the reason, the logic, the point. It was round and square. It was hard and soft, black and white, cold and hot, smooth and rough, young and old. It had depth and was shallow, was bright and dull, took light and gave light, was generous and greedy. Holy and profane. Ignorant and wise. Horace saw it and it saw Horace, like the moon, like the sea, like the mountain—so large he could not miss it, so small he could barely see it. The most simple, the most complex, the most wrong, the most right. Horace saw. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, said the prophet Joel, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.

But what will they see?