Enter, Night

Slowly the colour returned to Adeline’s face. When she spoke, her voice was weak. “Do they know who… do they know who it was?”

“No, the police don’t,” Billy said. “Mrs. Parr, again-are you all right?”

“I knew your father, Dr. Lightning. We… he was a fine man. I remember that awful business with that student of his, what was his name? The one in 1952?”

Billy suddenly felt the room was oppressively warm. “Richard Weal. His name was Richard Weal. Why do you ask?”

“Your adoptive father was… we stayed in touch, Dr. Lightning. Not often, mind you. More out of courtesy. He was a very courteous man. He was quite… he was quite disturbed by what happened that summer. He expressed it to me several times.”

“Mrs. Parr, why are you telling me all this? Do you know something about what happened to my father? Did my father… were you and he frequently in touch?”

“No,” she said sharply. “As I said… we were very sporadically in touch.”

“Mrs. Parr, you just said that my father expressed to you several times that he was ‘disturbed’ by Richard Weal. The dig ended when Richard was arrested. When did you and my father discuss Richard Weal? And for how long? Recently? Please tell me!”

Adeline closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Dr. Lightning. I feel rather faint. I’m going to go and lie down now.” She reached for the silver bell next to her plate and rang it. From behind the swinging door that connected the dining room to the kitchen, Beatrice approached to clear the table. “I’m so sorry about your adoptive father,” Adeline said.

The hostess voice was back, weaker of course, but evident. Billy pictured a curtain being drawn. In a few seconds, any chance of getting any information out of Mrs. Parr would vanish.

“Mrs. Parr, if you know something about Richard Weal and my father, please tell me,” Billy said urgently. “I believe Richard Weal killed my father. The police don’t believe me-they insist he’s dead. I don’t believe he is. I believe he’s come back here, looking for whatever he thought wanted him in 1952. At least one person is dead in a town not far from here, and a boy from Parr’s Landing found a bag full of bloody archaeological hammers up on Spirit Rock yesterday. Please. I’m begging you-tell me what you know, if you know anything.”

But the curtain had closed. Adeline’s eyes were again bright, her expression impermeable. “Ah, Beatrice,” she said brightly. “Yes, you can clear now. The eel was absolutely delicious. You’ve outdone yourself yet again.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Beatrice said dutifully.

Adeline smiled at Billy, inclining her head slightly like a queen preparing to accept a visiting ambassador’s gratitude and admiration for her kingdom’s hospitality. “Did you enjoy your lunch, Dr. Lightning? The eel? Oh, I do hope you did. Dr. Lightning is a famous professor from Michigan, Beatrice,” Adeline continued, turning to the cook. “He spent some time here in the Landing as a young man. It just didn’t seem right to let such an illustrious guest pass through our little town without visiting Parr House, don’t you agree?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Beatrice began to clear away the plates. She bent down to pick up the cutlery at Adeline’s feet, placing it without a word on the empty plate she carried.

“Beatrice, would you be so kind as to see Dr. Lightning out? I would do so myself, but I’m feeling rather sleepy and may toddle upstairs for a nap. Dr. Lightning,” she said, turning to Billy. “Again, thank you for having lunch with me. I very much enjoyed our discussion about your work, and the mission that was in Parr’s Landing. We’re very proud of the town’s history, as you know-both the development of a barren region as a source of industry, and of course the introduction of Christianity and salvation to a heathen race. You’re a perfect example of the success of that introduction, Dr. Lightning. Your adoptive father’s charity allowed you to rise in the world. You should be very proud.”

Billy stared at her blankly, his mouth open in disbelief. This woman isn’t real, he thought. There’s no way this is a real person. Surely not. What the hell is going on here? I’m in a madhouse.

Adeline extended her hand, as though expecting it to be kissed. Dumbly, Billy shook it.

“Goodbye, Mrs. Parr,” Billy said. “If you can think of anything else, I’ll-”

Adeline cut him off swiftly. “Please enjoy the rest of your stay in Parr’s Landing, Dr. Lightning.”

When Billy turned around, Beatrice was waiting with his coat. “This way, Dr. Lightning,” she said, stepping ahead of him out of the dining room, into the foyer.

When Billy looked back, Adeline was staring at a fixed point in front of her, at something Billy couldn’t see.

Again, he was struck by how much she seemed to have aged in the short minutes between hearing about his father’s murder, and now. She stared ahead of her, not seeing him watching. Billy had the sudden uneasy notion that she was watching for ghosts. He wished he knew whose ghosts they were, and what secrets she was keeping for them.

The cold rain turned to wet snow, then back to rain, eventually slowing to the present drizzle, but the skies were still dark with low-hanging storm clouds, and the road was slick and wet. The air was full of the scent of pine and rain, and the near-distant overture of winter. It was a scent that Jeremy had always loved, one he secretly craved in late October, in the city.

If anything could have pleased him right now, could have soothed the rage and pain and desolation he’d felt after leaving Elliot’s house, it might have been that subtle but unmistakable turn of the seasonal wheel, but Jeremy was incapable of seeing beauty anywhere this afternoon, and if either truth or passion had greeted him by name on any one of the ugly streets of Parr’s Landing this afternoon, he wouldn’t have recognized them. That, or he would have suspected they were imposters.

There could be nothing good in this town-nothing decent thrived here, and never would. And if he and Christina and Morgan were to thrive, they’d have to leave. Every moment they remained was draining some essential part of their souls in a repetitive pattern that he suddenly understood was carnivorously cyclical, a pattern that had been woven into his history, the town’s history, and the history of their ancestors. Parr’s Landing fed on itself like the Ouroboros devouring its own tail. It had almost devoured Christina and Jack. It had devoured Elliot, draining him of all hope and tenderness, leaving him a shell, a hard, brittle revenant, a small-town cop in a dead-end job, in a town on the edge of the world where nothing ever changed. A place where the one thing he could never be was the person he actually was.

Parr’s Landing might even have swallowed Jeremy himself if he hadn’t fled that night fifteen years ago, hitchhiking to Toronto under the cover of darkness to ensure that his ogress of a mother wouldn’t ever find him again. And now here he was, right back where he started.

His eyes on the road, his mind sifted through this history and his own place in it.

Simple, really, Jeremy mused. I come from a family of ghouls. We’ve been feeding on the town for more than a century, in the same way the people who came from the old world to claim this corner of the new world fed on the people who lived here before us. My mother has fed on her own children. The “eternal return” in Parr’s Landing isn’t renewal, it’s damnation.

Jeremy picked up Christina at the library. She was waiting inside, by the door. She saw him, waved, and made a dash for the car to avoid the drizzle.

“How’d it go with Elliot?” Christina asked.

“Not well. I don’t want to talk about it right now. Later, though, I promise, okay?” Jeremy said, paused for a moment, then continued, “We’ve got to leave here, you know. This was a very bad idea. This town isn’t a good place for any of us.”

And the way she had of always seeming to understand him as few others had ever been able to, Christina grasped his hand and squeezed it. She said nothing, but that nothing was everything to Jeremy with her hand on his as they drove back to his mother’s house in silence, except for the steady patter of cold northern rain on the roof of the car.

“Who’s that?” Jeremy said as the Chevelle pulled up into the circular driveway of Parr House. A tall man in his late thirties or early forties, wearing a leather jacket, was stepping out of the front door, which he then closed decisively behind him. The man’s thick black hair was gathered in a ponytail.

Christina said, “It’s Billy Lightning. The professor I was telling you about the other night.”

“Handsome,” Jeremy said with more than a little envy. “This is the guy you picked up in the cafe?”

“Shut up, Jeremy. I didn’t pick him up in the cafe. We talked. Stop the car.”