Enter, Night

policeman than he did a young boy listening to a ghoulish campfire story. Dave Thomson caught the subtle tonal shift and glanced at the younger officer. Elliot didn’t notice. Billy held his full attention.

“We found him,” Billy continued. “Emory had collapsed against a boulder about a hundred yards away from where the path veered sharply upward to the hill that led to the cliffs. At first, we thought he had fallen and maybe broken his arm, but his screaming was too obviously the sound of someone in terrible, terrible pain. His knees were pulled up and he was clutching his shoulder and writhing in agony in the dirt. My father ran to him. Emory kept screaming. Dad gently pulled his hand away from his shoulder to see what had happened. His shirt was soaked in blood that was gushing out of a severe, deep wound in his shoulder. Emory’s face was paper-white-he was obviously in the early stages of shock. My father asked him what had happened, and he was able to say just one word before he passed out. He said, Richard.

“Dad tore off his own shirt and tied it around Emory’s shoulder in a clumsy tourniquet. He said, ‘We need to get Emory to the hospital right away.’ We picked him up as gently as we could, then carried him, half running, all the way back to the camp. Once there, we lay him across the back seat of the van and drove down the hill as fast as possible to the doctor’s office. Thank God he was in. The doctor said it looked like Emory had been hit with an axe, or some sort of ice pick, in the shoulder.

“By that time, Emory had regained consciousness, though he was in terrible pain. The doctor gave him a shot of something strong- morphine, maybe? My father asked him what had happened, and Emory said that Elliot had been hiding behind one of the rock walls, and had jumped out and attacked him with the chisel end of an archaeological hammer. Emory said something else before the drug knocked him out cold. He said that Richard drank his blood.”

“Drank his blood?”

“Yes, that he’d attacked him with the hammer, and drank the blood from the wound. That he’d pressed his mouth against it and sucked it. He also said that Richard had told him that ‘the voice’ had told him to do it, and that the voice was coming from ‘the caves.’”

“The caves?” Thomson said. “What caves?”

“He claimed there were caves in the cliffs,” Billy replied. “Are there?”

“Well, yes. There are caves. Parr’s Landing is a mining town. The ground underneath it is full of tunnels. Some came about when the mine opened a hundred years ago, but one of the reasons the mine opened was that there were caves and gorges there in the first place. Combined with the gold they found, it made for ideal conditions. But that’s something that Richard could have discovered all on his own, without a ‘voice’ guiding him. So-he was plain crazy the whole time? Some kind of breakdown?”

“Emory was picked up by an ambulance plane and taken to hospital in Sault Ste. Marie. In addition to the blood loss, he’d suffered severe nerve damage from the wound. The RCMP caught Richard a couple of days later. He’d been living outdoors in the area around Bradley Lake. I saw him when the cops brought him in. He looked like a monster out of a horror movie. His clothes were torn and filthy. His face and hands were scratched, and his face was smeared with Emory’s dried blood. His eyes looked like an animal’s eyes, but even wilder. He didn’t seem to recognize either my father or me. He claimed he didn’t know who Emory was.”

Billy stood up and walked across the room to where his suitcase lay open at the end of his bed. He rummaged through his clothes, and then withdrew a thick manila file folder encircled with a plastic band. He brought it over to where the two policemen sat and put it down on the table between them.

“What’s this, then?” Thomson said. He looked down at the file and read the handwritten label. It said Richard Weal case: Clippings and Notes in faded blue ink.

“It’s the story,” Billy said simply. “It’s what happened. They arrested Richard and charged him with assault and attempted murder. He was still raving about voices in the rocks when they took him away under police guard. He was declared unfit to stand trial and was incarcerated in a mental institution outside of Montreal for fifteen years.” Billy tapped the folder. “It’s all here-everything. My father’s notes. Newspaper clippings. The arrest, the trial, everything. My father made a copy of this before he died, and mailed it to me. He said he was working on a book about what happened-and what had happened before.”

“What do you mean, what had happened before? Before what? You mean, with Richard?”

“Not just with Richard,” Billy said. “There’s a history of violent incidents associated with this place. That history stretches back almost two hundred and fifty years. What happened with Richard and Emory has happened before, and right around here.”

“Again, Dr. Lightning,” Thomson said in a pained voice, this time not even trying to cover up his impatience, “this is all very interesting. I’m sure your father’s book would have been fascinating. Forgive me for repeating myself again, but you still haven’t answered my question about why you’re in Parr’s Landing now.”

“Because I think Richard Weal murdered my father in Toronto six weeks ago, Sergeant Thomson.”

“Do you have any evidence of that, Dr. Lightning?”

“Nothing that would likely convince you, Sergeant.” Billy sighed. “It didn’t convince the police in Toronto.”

“Humour me,” Thomson said. “Why do you think he killed your father?”

“My father was killed with a hammer blow to the head. The police say he may have known his killer, because there was no sign of forced entry, but the house had been ransacked, from top to bottom. Nothing of any apparent value was taken-things like my mother’s Georgian tea service and some fairly expensive art was left where it was. Given that the vast majority of valuable objects were left behind, the police concluded that it was likely some sort of drug-related break-in.”

“You said ‘the vast majority of valuable objects’ were left behind. Were the police able to ascertain what was taken, if anything?”

“The originals of these notes,” Billy said, picking up the folder, “were missing from his study. What was also missing was a translation from the French he’d been working on. An obscure document from the Jesuit Relations-the letters written by the Jesuit missionaries to New France and sent to the Society of Jesus in Rome in the seventeenth century.”

Thomson looked dubious. “These papers were ‘missing,’ you said? I doubt they considered that a motive for murder. Was any money taken?”

“My father had always kept some emergency money locked in his desk,” Billy said. “The desk was unlocked when the police went over the place, but the money was still there. He might have kept some money elsewhere, but I couldn’t confirm or deny that to their satisfaction. The case is still open, technically, but they seem to have made up their minds. They said that there’s no evidence that it was anything other than what they said it was.”

“It sounds like a tragedy, Dr. Lightning,” Thomson said. “But the police were likely correct. Had Richard Weal been in touch with your father? Had he made any threats?”

“No,” Billy admitted. “Nothing he shared with me. But the missing documents-”

“Dr. Lightning,” Thomson said, rising, “we’re sorry to have bothered you at this difficult time. You’re, of course, welcome to travel anywhere and do anything. I don’t think I would have chosen Parr’s Landing as a place to recover from the death of my father, personally, but to each his own. Constable McKitrick and I will be on our way. Thank you for your time, sir.”

“I’m telling you, Richard Weal killed my father. And he’s coming here. I know it. He has my father’s papers. He believes something is speaking to him in the rocks.”

“Afternoon, Dr. Lightning,” Elliot said. He opened the motel door and held it open. Before stepping through, Thomson turned to Billy again.

“Dr. Lightning,” Thomson said. “You never told us what happened to Richard Weal. Did the police ever find him to question him?”

“No,” Billy replied. “They didn’t. He’d been released from the institution a few years back, according to the information I was able to acquire on my own. If he was getting outpatient treatment somewhere, there weren’t any records immediately available, and since he wasn’t seriously considered a suspect, no one looked very hard to find him.”

“I see. Well, that settles it, as far as we’re concerned, I think. Thank you again for your time, Dr. Lightning. We’ll be on our way now, I think.”

And they were on their way. Billy Lightning closed the motel room door behind them. The silence of the motel