Enter, Night

In desperation, Finn sat down at the desk in his bedroom and wrote a letter to Marvel Comics in New York City, using the address he’d found on the bottom of the first page, and taped a twenty-five cent coin to it.

Dear Marvel Comics, he wrote. I am a recent reader of your Comic Book Series, Tomb of Dracula. I live in Parr’s Landing, Ontario, Canada where it is sometimes very hard to buy your products. Can you send me Issue #2? I have enclosed 25 cents (in Canadian money) for the comic plus postage to my country. My address is c/o Gen. Delivery, Parr’s Landing, Ont. Thank you very much. Sincerely, Finnegan Miller.

As it happened, the fates elected to smile on young Finn Miller- some kind soul at Marvel returned his twenty- five cent coin along with a manila envelope containing a copy of issue number two.

Dear Finnegan Miller, came the reply. Here is a copy of the second issue of T.O.D. We hope you enjoy it. We are returning your twenty-five-cent coin. May we suggest you put it towards a subscription? We don’t send out mags from our office as a rule, but are happy to help you out this one time. Sincerely, your friends at Mighty Marvel.

Finn’s joy knew no bounds. Issue number two was even more lurid than its predecessor. This cover featured Dracula turning into a bat in front of a huddled clutch of terrified Londoners cowering in an archway as a woman in a miniskirt lay crumpled at the Count’s feet, obviously dead. The lining of Dracula’s cape this time was a glorious blood-red. The issue’s tagline shrieked, A SHRILL SCREAM SPLITS THE AIR IN LONDON AT MIDNIGHT-WHO STOLE MY COFFIN?

Well, obviously Frank Drake did, Finn gloated. Now all hell was going to break loose. He flung himself across his bed, rummaging in the paper bag of candy from Harper’s Drugs till he found what he was looking for. He bit the tip off one of the grape-flavoured Pixy Stix straws, and then poured the sweet-and-sour powder onto his tongue, letting it luxuriate there for a moment before he swallowed it. Then he started reading, picking up the story as though it were a letter from an old friend, or rather what he imagined reading a letter from an old friend would be like.

Afterwards, he thought briefly of asking his parents if they’d buy him a subscription for his birthday, but he knew they didn’t trust American companies with their money, even the relative pittance it would cost for a subscription to The Tomb of Dracula. Besides, the day after he received issue number two from the kind soul at Marvel, the shipment of new comics-including The Tomb of Dracula-arrived at Harper’s Drugs like rain after a long drought. Issue number three had arrived on the spiral rack in a relatively timely fashion, considering how far away Parr’s Landing was from New York City.

Finn was coming up to the highest point of land around Bradley Lake. He looked around for Sadie, but she was nowhere to be seen. The sky was lightening, streaked with broad shards of dark pumpkin and deep purple, and the water reflected the advancing dawn, colours running slick as oil paint.

Finn called out to the Labrador. “Here, Sadie! Here, girl!” His voice ricocheted off the rock face. He called out again. “Sadie, come! Come! Here, girl!”

He frowned. This was unlike her. While she liked to bound ahead at her own pace, exploring, she always remained within earshot and usually scampered back several times as if to check that her master was following her. Finn listened for the sound of barking or rustling in the underbrush, but heard nothing. He looked backwards, squinting into the dimness of the path but saw nothing.

The tops of the trees shook in a sudden burst of cold wind, releasing a cloud of dead autumn leaves that cascaded down before being hijacked by the sudden shift in the air currents and tattering off across the lake. The sky was reddening in advance of the sunrise, the light shadow dappled and obscure.

For the first time ever, Finn was aware of his isolation. He was a mile and a half from home and his dog was nowhere to be seen. He looked around uneasily. The familiar landscape of rough-hewn cliffs rising out of black water looked suddenly barbaric and vaguely lunar.

“ Sadie!” Finn called again. This time there was an edge of panic in his voice. Hearing nothing, he screamed, “Here, girl! Sadie, COME!” He whipped his head wildly from side to side. “SADIE! COME!”

And then from high above him he heard the sound of screaming-a high-pitched, rending lament that tore through the early morning air and shattered into echoes against the shield rock of the cliffs. It came again, then again. And this time, Finn recognized the voice as belonging to his dog.

“Sadie! Sadie! Where are you?” He tried to orient himself to what he now realized was a high-pitched howling that had never been part of Sadie’s vocal repertoire. If pure animal terror or pain could be distilled, this is what it would sound like.

Oh my God, what if she’s hurt? What if she has her foot caught in some sort of leg trap left by one of these assholes who hunts up here in the fall? What if she’s broken her leg or something? Please God, let her be all right.

He crashed through the bush in the general direction of Sadie’s screams, first left, then right, then doubling back and stopping to check if he was in the right place, or at least headed in the right direction. The acoustics of Bradley Lake played tricks with the sound of Sadie’s howls, seemingly sending it in every direction but its true source.

And then, dead silence. Oh my God, he thought again. Please, no. Finn came around the bend of a copse of trees and an outcropping of lichen-covered granite and saw Sadie cowering against a boulder thirty feet away-teeth bared, lips drawn back from her gums. She was growling low in her throat, her eyes wild and fixed on a point three feet from where she crouched. Her ears lay flat against her skull. The line of hackle fur along her backbone stood up in an arch and her entire body was contorted away from the spot. The Labrador’s fluffy tail was straight as an eel, and tucked up far between her hind legs.

At his approach, Sadie’s eyes rolled towards Finn. She growled again but didn’t move. When he took a step closer, her body seemed to draw itself in tighter, and for one crazy minute Finn was afraid she might attack him.

“Sadie?” he called softly. “Come here, girl. What’s the matter? Come here, Sadie.” He held out his hand. The Labrador looked at him, and then back to whatever she had been staring at. Whining softly, she lowered her head and looked imploringly at Finn.

“Good girl,” he crooned in his most soothing voice. “Come, Sadie. Good girl. Come here.”

Slowly, she stepped backwards, then turned and skirted the area, giving it a wide berth, trotting over to where he was standing and burrowing between his legs as though pleading for sanctuary. He reached down and stroked her head. The dog shivered violently, panting harshly. As he continued to caress her, the shaking subsided slightly.

What the hell is going on here? Finn wondered. He looked at the spot again. There was nothing unusual about it, certainly nothing he hadn’t seen before on any number of hikes out here by the lake, or indeed anywhere in the vicinity of Parr’s Landing. Curiosity overtook him and he took a step away from Sadie, towards the rocks.

Immediately, behind him, Sadie began to whine. He looked back over his shoulder and said, “Shhhh, Sadie.”

The dog was unconvinced and continued to whimper piteously as though begging him to stay with her, to not walk any farther in that direction, to take her home and away from here.

For Finn’s part, curiosity had overtaken caution. He glanced around him-it was flat land; there nowhere for anything dangerous to be slumbering or hiding. Immediately, he discounted a very short mental checklist of wild animals he might risk provoking into violence by surprising them.

So what the hell was she so scared by?

He stopped abruptly, struck by a sound. Actually, it was not a sound at all, but rather a complete absence of sound. He heard Sadie whining; he heard his own feet crunching in the dead leaves and twigs at his feet. But all around him, there were no dawn sounds of birds twittering, no fluttering of wings above him. Even the wind seemed to have stopped abruptly. It was as though a cone had descended on this area, trapping Finn and his dog but shutting everything else out.

He took three more steps. He realized he was standing directly below the ledged rock wall upon which the Indian paintings thought to be of the Wendigo of St. Barthelemy were etched.

He looked down at the overgrowth between the rock formations. There was a crack of some sort, a hollow- looking fissure in the earth that looked like it might have been the opening to a cave mouth at some point, perhaps