the truck only had a driver’s seat.
“ You can sit on the crates in the back,” Harry said.
“ That’s okay,” Arty said, “we’ll stand.”
“ It’s better for all of us, if a certain old woman doesn’t see you riding around with me,” Harry said.
“ Gotcha,” Arty said, and they moved to the back of the truck to sit on the milk crates.
Ten minutes later they were in Harry’s den, with a fire roaring in the fireplace. Harry sat in an easy chair and the children sat on a small sofa. Arty had lounged there many times in the past, leaning back with his feet on the coffee table, but this time he was sitting up straight, like Carolina, and they were both glued on to Harry’s wise brown eyes as he talked.
“ Did you ever wonder where the stories of werewolves and vampires got started? I did. When I was young, like you, my grandfather told me stories about shape changers. When I got older, I grew interested in the shape changers that roamed around Europe. They were more interesting than the Indian variety, especially the ones that dressed in evening clothes during the night and slept in coffins during the day. The vampires.
“ Where did the stories come from? Were they true? Probably not, but they say that anything man can imagine, one day he can accomplish, and that every idea has its roots in the past. And our past takes many twists and turns and the shape changers are always there.
“ But what is real, and what is imagined? Did vampires ever stalk young women? Were young men ever turned into the wolf during the full moon? Along the course of my life I have met many who believe, but I always doubted. Then I went to Trinidad.
“ I was walking back to the dock to get on my ship one night during the rainy season. I had a little to drink, so the light rain felt good on my face. I was thinking about one more drink on board, before going to sleep, when the electricity went out and Port of Spain was covered in darkness. The rain clouds covered the sky, shutting out the moonlight.”
He paused for breath, then he got up and went into the kitchen. He came back with a quart of cold chocolate milk and three glasses.
“ What happened?” Carolina asked as he poured the milk.
“ Yeah, tell us,” Arty said.
Harry Lightfoot poured the milk and set the bottle down. He picked up his glass and raised it.
“ One for all,” he said.
“ And all for one,” Arty said, raising his glass and clinking it with Harry’s.
“ And all for one,” Carolina said, clinking her glass with theirs.
“ No matter what happens, we have to trust each other,” Harry said. “No matter how bad it gets, we can’t ask for help, because no one is going to believe us. I’m just a crazy old man and you’re both children with wild imaginations. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
They nodded their heads.
“ Okay, back to my story,” he said, but he took a drink of the milk and let the silence rule the room for a few seconds before continuing.
“ I was walking down a quiet street, when I heard a woman scream, and it was at that instant that the power went back on, and what I saw would be enough to chill any man’s soul.
“ A young woman was laid out on the sidewalk in front of me. Dead. And a wolf was chewing on her neck, sucking out her blood. So, quiet as I could, I moved behind a parked car and hid, and watched.”
“ You didn’t try to help the lady?” Carolina asked.
“ No.”
“ Why not?”
“ She was already dead and I knew it was no ordinary wolf.”
“ How?” Arty asked.
“ Because there are no wolves in Trinidad.”
“ How do you know it was a wolf and not a big dog?” Carolina asked.
“ I’m an Indian. I know.”
Again the room was silent, lit only by the fire coming from Harry’s fireplace. Arty felt a tingling sensation, like static electricity, running up and down the hairs on his arms, and, when he looked over at Carolina, she was biting her lower lip. She looked scared.
“ After the wolf drained all of the woman’s blood, it raised its head and howled into the night and then, right before my eyes, it turned into a ball of fire and shot up through the clouds.”
“ Wow, just like I saw,” Arty said.
“ Wow and double wow,” Carolina said.
“ Now let me tell you about the Nightwitch, the witch that can’t die.”
Chapter Seventeen
“ The Nightwitch, the witch that can’t die. She’s a soucouyant, or maybe I should say, The Soucouyant, because she’s the last of her kind. At least that’s what they say in the small towns and villages outside of Port of Spain,” John Coffee said, “but nobody believes anymore, except a few of the very old, and those that have seen. They believe.” He was sitting, crosslegged on the ground, opposite Sarah in the small two man tent, hands folded in his lap.
“ And that’s what you’ve been fighting all this time?” Sarah asked, sitting up in the sleeping bag. She yawned. It was a cool afternoon, but the chill felt good on her skin. She was surprised that she’d slept the day away, and a little miffed that he’d allowed her to do it.
“ Not fighting, running from, would be a better way to put it,” he said.
“ And this Nightwitch can change into anything she wants?” It was hard to believe he was still going on with this. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, yawned, and stretched, pushing her arms and elbows behind and thrusting her breasts forward. She appreciated the fact that his gaze never left her eyes. Miles had had his eyes everywhere when she was naked. At first she liked the way he took in her body, but now she realized that he only saw a naked woman, not a helpmate or a partner.
“ Most anything. It can’t be a sea creature. Salt water can destroy it, but other than that, yes. However she usually picks something nasty-you won’t find her as a horse or cow. She’s very carnivorous,” he said. He started wringing his hands, like he knew she was having a hard time believing what he was saying.
“ And she can’t die?” Sarah yawned again. She was amazed that she hadn’t sought something to cover herself with. She felt natural with him, because clothes or no clothes, he treated her like a human being, not a sexual object to be ogled and used. However, she was going to have to do something about clothes soon. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life in the buff.
“ Not if they’re careful. Silver is kind of like their Kryptonite. It won’t kill them, but it makes them weak enough so that a wooden stake in the heart might work.”
“ So now you’re telling me that vampires and werewolves exist,” she said, trying not to associate the man telling her this fiction with the man who made slow wonderful love last night.
“ Not exactly,” he said. Now he was twisting the front of his shirt with his thumbs.
“ Then what are you saying?” She looked into his sweet eyes and tried to see beyond his words. He was a troubled man, but his eyes said that he was telling the truth, or at least the truth as he believed it.
“ I’m saying that this thing, this soucouyant, is real. It did this.” He pulled his fingers away from the front of his shirt and ran them along his scabbed check and bruised neck. “I know that even after everything you’ve seen, everything that’s happened, you still don’t believe. But I’m telling you it’s real. I’m not making this stuff up.” His hands went back to his lap, clenching each other tight enough to turn his knuckles white.
“ Silver Kryptonite, wooden stakes, come on, John, you have to know how this sounds?” She reached out and took his tense hands in hers, pulled them apart and met his liquid stare with concern.
“ I’ve kept this bottled up for a long time, because I know how it sounds. Do I look crazy to you?”
“ No,” she said, but he did kind of look crazy, with his disheveled hair, wringing hands, pleading little boy stare, and the way he was sitting, almost in a lotus position, looking like a firecracker about to explode.
