Seize the Night

listened to it ring, I told myself that Randolph was dead, buried alive in the hole where that copper-lined room had been.

He answered on the third ring. I recognized his voice at once, from the single word hello.

“Dr. Randolph Josephson?” I asked.

“Yes?”

My mouth was so dry that my tongue stuck to my palate almost as securely as Velcro to Velcro.

“Hello? Are you there?” he asked.

“Is this the Randolph Josephson formerly known as John Joseph Randolph?”

He did not answer. I could hear him breathing.

I said, “Did you think your juvenile record was expunged? Did you really think you could kill your parents and have the facts erased forever?”

I hung up, dropping the handset so fast that it rattled in the cradle.

“Now what?” Sasha asked.

Getting up from the workstation chair, Bobby said, “Maybe in this version of his life, the kook didn’t get funding for his project as quickly as he found it at Wyvern, or maybe not enough funding. He might not yet have started up another model of the Mystery Train.”

“But if that’s true,” Sasha said, “how do we stop him? Drive over to Reno and put a bullet in his brain?”

“Not if we can avoid it,” I said. “I tore some clippings off the wall of his murder gallery, in that tunnel under the egg room. They were still in my pockets when I got home. They hadn’t just vanished like…Bobby’s corpse. Which must mean those are killings Randolph’s still committed. His annual thrill. Maybe tomorrow I should make anonymous calls to the police, accusing him of the murders. If they look into it, they might find his scrapbook or other mementos.”

“Even if they nail him,” Sasha said, “his research could go on without him. The new version of the Mystery Train might be built, and the door between realities might be opened.”

I looked at Mungojerrie. Mungojerrie looked at Orson. Orson looked at Sasha. Sasha looked at Bobby. Bobby looked at me and said, “Then we’re doomed.”

“I’ll tip the cops tomorrow,” I said. “It’s the best we can do. And if the cops can’t convict him…”

Sasha said, “Then Doogie and I will drive over to Reno one day and waste the creep.”

“You have a way about you, woman,” Bobby said.

Time to party.

Sasha drove the Explorer across the dunes, through shore grass silvered with moonlight, and down a long embankment, parking on the beach of the southern horn, just above the tideline. Driving this far onto the strand isn’t legal, but we had been to Hell and back, so we figured we could survive virtually any punishment meted out for this violation.

We spread blankets on the sand, near the Explorer, and fired up a single Coleman lantern.

A large ship was stationed just beyond the mouth of the bay, north and west of us. Although the night shrouded it, and though the porthole lights were not sufficient to entirely define the vessel, I was sure that I had never seen anything quite like it in these parts. It made me uneasy, though not uneasy enough to go home and hide under my bed.

The waves were tasty, six to eight feet from trough to crest. The offshore flow was just strong enough to carve them into modest barrels, and in the moonlight, the foam glimmered like mermaids’ pearl necklaces.

Sasha and Bobby paddled out to the break line, and I took the first watch on shore, with Orson and Mungojerrie and two shotguns. Though the Mystery Train might not exist any longer, my mom’s clever retrovirus was still at work. Perhaps the promised vaccine and cure were on the way, but people in Moonlight Bay were still becoming. The coyotes couldn’t have crunched up the entire troop; a few Wyvern monkeys, at least, were out there somewhere, and not feeling kindly about us.

Using the first-aid kit that Sasha had brought, I gently cleaned Orson’s abraded pasterns with antiseptic and then coated the shallow cuts with Neosporin. The laceration on his left cushion, near his nose, was not as bad as it had first looked, but his ear was a mess. In the morning, I would have to try to get a vet to come to the house and give us an opinion about the possibility of repairing the broken cartilage.

Although the antiseptic must have stung, Orson never complained. He is a good dog and an even better person.

“I love you, bro,” I told him.

He licked my face.

I realized that, from time to time, I was looking left and right along the beach, half expecting monkeys but even more prepared for the sight of Johnny Randolph strolling toward me. Or Hodgson in his spacesuit, face churning with parasites. After reality had been so thoroughly cut to pieces, perhaps it could never again be stitched back together in the old, comfortable pattern. I couldn’t shake the feeling that, from now on, anything could happen.

I opened a beer for me and one for Orson. I poured his into a bowl and suggested he share some of it with Mungojerrie, but the cat took one taste and spat with disgust.

The night was mild, the sky was deep with stars, and the rumble of the point-break surf was like the beating of a mighty heart.

A shadow passed across the fat moon. It was only a hawk, not a gargoyle.

That creature with black leather wings and a whiplike tail had also been graced with two horns, cloven hooves, and a face that was hideous largely because it was human, too human to have been plugged into that otherwise grotesque form. I’m pretty sure drawings of such creatures can be found in books that date back as far as books have been printed, and under most if not all of those drawings, you will find the same caption: demon.

I decided not to think about that anymore.

After a while, Sasha came out of the surf, panting happily, and Orson panted back at her as though he thought she was trying to converse.

She dropped on the blanket beside me, and I opened a beer for her.

Bobby was still thrashing the night waves.

“See that ship out there?” she asked.

“Big.”

“We paddled a little farther out than we needed to. Got just a little closer look. It’s U.S. Navy.”

“Never saw a battleship anchored around here before.”

“Something’s up.”

“Something always is.”

A chill of premonition passed through me. Maybe a cure and a vaccine were forthcoming. Or maybe the big brains had decided the only way to cover up the fiasco at Wyvern and obscure the source of the retrovirus was to scrub the former base and all of Moonlight Bay off the map. Scrub it away with a thermonuclear brush that even viruses couldn’t survive. Might the wider public believe, if properly prepared, that any nuclear event obliterating Moonlight Bay was the work of terrorists?

I decided not to think about that anymore.

“Bobby and I are going to set a date,” I said. “Gotta get married now, you know.”

“Mandatory, once he said he loved you.”

“That’s the way we feel.”

“Who’s the bridesmaid?” she asked.

“Orson,” I said.

“We’re deep into gender confusion.”

“Want to be best man?” I asked.

“Sure, unless, when the time comes, I’m up to my ass in angry monkeys or something. Take some waves, Snowman.”

I got to my feet, picked up my board, said, “I’d leave Bobby standing at the altar in a minute, if I thought you’d marry me instead,” and headed for the surf.

She let me get about six steps before she shouted, “Was that a proposal?”