Enter, Night

truth in this Relation.

Reverend Father, I have lived as a Jesuit, and I die a faithful one. Our way is not the way of ignorance and superstition, but rather of wisdom and learning. And yet, I realize now how much I had yet to learn, and how dangerous was the arrogance I had brought with me from France to this New World. I do not doubt the glory of our work among the Savages, and yet in these final hours of my life, I am plagued by questions and doubts. I realize it is not my place to question.

But I ponder, Reverend Father, and I pray for wisdom. And I pray for your forgiveness, and for God’s, for the burden of these doubts.

I have watched these poor people shrivel and die from mysterious illnesses they have blamed on what they call our sorcery. They claim we brought the pox to them. They claim that it did not exist in their world before we arrived. We have wrapped them in our blankets to comfort them, and watched them die, praying for a conversion before death claimed them, a baptism before they breathed their last. We have given them Christian names, and we have buried them under those names. We teach them to reject their customs and beliefs. We teach them to believe they are ignorant and lost for believing in their world of spirits and oracle, while we hold the belief that the Devil has them in his thrall.

And yet, Reverend Father, may God forgive me, I believe I have seen the Devil walking in the forests of New France. But-O, blasphemy of blasphemies! He wore the same robe I wear, and his mission and legacy was a most wicked one. While I pray that I was somehow, through my sad efforts, able to halt the spread of that ungodly contagion, I am haunted by the words of the drunkard Dumont, words I have heard in my nightmares for eighteen years.

Dumont said: There are worse things now walking in the forests at night than the Savages.

In light of what I have witnessed, I have searched my poor ignorant soul to know, beyond a doubt, that we do God’s work here. Yea, and that we have brought these people Light and not more darkness. But my soul is silent. Around me, the Indians die, either at our hand, or at least beyond our ability to save them.

If I have committed blasphemy here, I beg for God’s mercy and forgiveness, and for Your Reverence’s prayers after I am gone. But the account contained in this Relation is true, and I die as I have lived, as Christ’s most humble servant, and Your Reverence’s.

Ad majorem Dei gloriam.

Fr. Alphonse Nyon of the Society of Jesus

Montreal, Quebec, 1650

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, my deepest thanks to Brett Savory and Sandra Kasturi of ChiZine Publications, and to the rest of the ChiZine crew, for one of the finest publishing experiences of my career. Thanks also to artist Erik Mohr for the beautiful cover and to Samantha Beiko for her gorgeous interpretation of the town of Parr’s Landing on the endpapers of the collector’s limited edition hardcover. To be a ChiZine author is to be part of the creme de la creme of a new vanguard of speculative fiction, as well as a member of a very special creative family.

Special thanks to my supremely patient and nurturing agent, Sam Hiyate of The Rights Factory, for his belief in my work, and his unflagging support of it.

I’m grateful to my great friend, former teacher, and former St. John’s headmaster, Fred Parr, who inculcated in me a fascination for Canadian history in the classroom when I was a teenager, and later shared with me what it was like to grow up in northern Ontario in the early ’70s, as well as some of the folklore of the region. He also read through part of this manuscript, pronounced it worth pursuing, and allowed me to name a town full of vampires after him-not a bad endorsement, all told.

Thanks to my friend, Elliot Shermet, who let me borrow his first name and physical appearance to create Elliot McKitrick (but not his character or personality, which is infinitely admirable, certainly more so than his fictive counterpart).

I was very fortunate to have had an extraordinary young writer named Stephen Michell as a research assistant on this project. I am even more fortunate that we became friends over the course of working together on Enter, Night. I look forward to reading Mr. Michell’s own novels in the future, and so will you. Remember his name-you heard it here first, which is my great honour and privilege.

My friend, author and screenwriter Robert Thomson, generously read through the manuscript of Enter, Night at every point in its evolution and offered his usual superb editorial insights, as well as talking me down from the ledge more than once. My gratitude to him for his kindness is beyond measure, as is my admiration.

I’d like to thank the powerhouse women of my writer’s group, the Bellefire Club-Sandra Kasturi, Helen Marshall, Sephera Giron, Nancy Baker, Halli Villegas, and Gemma Files, accomplished authors, all-who read part of the seventeenth-century section of the novel, offering insightful advice and encouragement.

On a purely personal note, Christopher Wirth and Barney EllisPerry are my two oldest friends, and they’ve been agitating for this book since I was using an electric typewriter, as has Werner Warga.

And Ron Oliver, my constant partner in crime-he’s the one who knows where all the bodies are buried.

Thanks to Steward Noack for always making New York feel like home to me; Thane MacPherson for his constancy; Chuck Gyles for getting the ball rolling that day in the car on the way home from Kitchener; Michael Thomas Ford and Sephera Giron always picked up the phone; and my dear friend Eliezenai Galvao kept the home fires burning during the writing of it; Mark Wheaton remains a personal hero as well as one of my most precious friends; Helen Marshall kept vigil and wielded a dexterous editorial scalpel; and Helen Oliver- my “second mum”- always seemed to know just when to call with encouragement and love. So did Tabatha Southey, who came bearing cocktails and divertissements.

Likewise, immeasurable thanks to my great friend, J. Marc Cote, for too many reasons to list here.

I’d like to acknowledge my father, Alan Rowe, and my stepmother, Sarah Doughty, a very great lady who came late into my life, but who has left an indelible impression on my heart.

I would also like to acknowledge my late mother, Helen Hardt Rowe, who bought me a paperback copy of Dracula at ten, and my first typewriter at eleven, but never told me what I could or couldn’t write on it. I think she would have been proud of Enter, Night, vampires or not.

Lastly, to Brian McDermid, my husband, who makes all things possible, and to Shaw Madson, the heart of our family-this book belongs to you, offered with my love and thanks.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Rowe was born in Ottawa in 1962 and has lived in Beirut, Havana, Geneva, and Paris. An award- winning journalist, essayist, and editor, he is the author of several books, including Writing Below the Belt, a critically acclaimed study of censorship, pornography, and popular culture, and the essay collections Looking For Brothers and Other Men’s Sons, which won the 2008 Randy Shilts Award for Non-fiction. He has also won the Lambda Literary Award, the Queer Horror Award, and the Spectrum Award, and has been a finalist for the International Horror Guild Award and the National Magazine Award. He was, for 17 years, the first-tier Canadian correspondent for Fangoria. In 2002, Clive Barker credited him with “forever changing the shape of horror fiction” with his original anthologies, Queer Fear and Queer Fear 2. He is married and lives in Toronto. This is his first novel. Visit him at www.michaelrowefiction.com.