Enter, Night

“Well, obviously I’m going to stop the car. We’re here, aren’t we? Hmmm,” Jeremy said, peering through the windshield. “He doesn’t look very happy. He must have encountered dear mama. He must have asked her for money, or blood, or water or something.”

“Shut up, Jeremy,” Christina said again. “Seriously, though, what could he be doing here?”

She opened the car door and stepped out onto the gravel driveway. When Billy saw her, he brightened perceptibly.

“Hi there,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Hi yourself,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you again, especially not here of all places.”

“I didn’t expect to be here, of all places,” Billy replied. “Your mother-in-law phoned me and asked me to lunch. It was… strange.”

“She what? You’re kidding, right?”

“No, she invited me to lunch,” Billy said. “She called me this morning at the motel and said she knew my father-or rather, she’d known him- and that I should come to the house.”

Jeremy came from behind and extended his hand. “I’m Jeremy Parr,” he said. “You must be the famous Dr. Billy Lightning.”

Billy’s face was wry. “Famous here for all the wrong reasons, it seems. I seem to have antagonized the police, I seem to have upset your mother, and I sincerely hope that this young lady,” he added, indicating Christina, “will forgive me for showing up on her doorstep and surprising her.”

“I’m surprised, but it’s not my doorstep,” Christina said. “It’s fine.”

“Christina,” Jeremy said. “I’ll just go inside and check on things with Mother.” He smiled almost imperceptibly, then turned to Billy. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Lightning.”

“Nice fella, your brother-in-law,” Billy said as the front door closed behind Jeremy. “Are you sure that’s really his mother in there? I don’t see the resemblance.”

“Neither do we. My husband wasn’t much like her, either.”

“Listen, Christina.” He paused. “I know we agreed not to… to see each other again because of… well, you know. Our respective situations. But I really need to talk to you. Your mother-in-law said some very strange things this afternoon.”

“Everything my mother-in-law says is strange. Why should today be any different?” When she saw that Billy was serious, she stopped. “Strange in what way?”

“She talked about my father. She claims they knew each other, but wouldn’t elaborate. When I told her about his murder, she almost had a heart attack. Now look, I could be wrong, but something about Mrs. Parr leads me to believe that hearing about a murder isn’t going to rattle her cage too much. But she nearly pitched a fit.”

Christina tried, and failed, to picture Adeline as vulnerable in any way. Raging, yes, even murderous. But not vulnerable to the news of someone else’s death, unless she was celebrating it in some way.

“Would you have dinner with me tonight?” Billy said tentatively.

“Billy…”

“Not a date. Just to talk. Really, I mean it,” he said with conviction. “You’re the only sane person I’ve met in this town, and I need to thrash out some ideas. I’ll answer any question you want in exchange for you listening to what I have to say, and maybe helping me make some sense out of it.”

What am I afraid of? Christina asked herself. What Adeline thinks? What the town thinks? I already know what they think. Morgan will understand-she knows what it’s like to have her grandmother disapprove of her making friends. What do I think? I think I could use a friend-that’s what I think.

“Christina…? Would you? It could be an early dinner. There’s a diner next to the motel. We could go there. Or we could go to the Pear Tree in town. Or even O’Toole’s, if you’d prefer?”

She hesitated, then said, “Yes. That’d be fine. I’d like that. I could meet you at seven. I have to be home before nine.”

“Not a problem,” Billy said, stifling his pleasure and gratitude with difficulty. “Would you like me to pick you up?”

Christina laughed. “God, no. If you thought she pitched a fit over lunch, you wouldn’t want to picture what kind of a fit she’d pitch if she knew I was going to meet… if she knew I wasn’t going to be at the dinner table on time. I’ll get Jeremy to tell her something. I’ll meet you at the Nugget at seven.”

As she watched Billy drive away in the Ford, she checked herself for feelings of guilt over having dinner with a man less than a year after the death of Jack Parr.

Finding none, she probed deeper. The only remorse she felt, if it could properly be called remorse, was that Jack hadn’t met Billy, as well. They would-as she had thought earlier-have liked each other immensely.

Jack-better than anyone except, perhaps, his brother-would have understood what it was like to feel alone and friendless and vulnerable at Parr House, and he wouldn’t have wanted that for anyone, least of all the woman who had given him a reason to save himself by leaving.

When Finn’s subconscious mind registered that his sanity would not survive his obsessive replaying of Sadie’s last moments-the flash of red arcing air in the orange and pink dawn sunlight, Sadie rocketing into the air in pursuit of her favourite ball, her body igniting from within as though a fire had started under her skin, and her terrible, near-human screams as she was burned alive in the sunlight-it eventually overrode his conscious mind, shutting it down and causing him to fall asleep.

It was not a restful sleep, but one full of random, dreadful images selected by his half-sleeping brain.

He dreamed of Sadie, of course, and the images of her as a puppy, or licking his face, or watching him solemnly, waiting for a piece of cheese to fall off the kitchen counter, having her wounds daubed with hydrogen peroxide by his father the other night, a million years ago. His own voice, Don’t hurt her! These were agony and somehow infinitely worse than the flashes of Sadie’s actual death that flickered at the periphery.

He moaned in his sleep, rubbing his eyes. Sweat sealed his hair to his forehead, which was hot and shiny with nightmare-sweat.

Images of Morgan, of course. Images of his parents’ faces, the scent of fresh laundry and coffee as she held him against her warm body this morning. Bits of movies, the sky over Spirit Rock, the smell of bacon frying.

And images selected from his Tomb of Dracula comics-the streaks of lightning inked in bold yellow, indigo blue for black, black only for shadows and highlights. The faces of Frank Drake and his beautiful fiancee, drawn by the artist whose name he’d memorized: Gene Colan. Vampires in slumbering coffins, vampires rising nightly to suck the blood of the living…

The weakly handsome face of Clifton Graves, the weasel who betrayed Frank Drake, his best friend, trying to steal his girl from him and unwittingly pulled the wooden stake from Count Dracula’s rotting skeleton deep in the dungeons of the castle, thus releasing the risen vampire into the night.

These were his friends, and his mind whispered their names like a calming mantra: Frank, Clifton, Jeanie. Frank, Clifton, Jeanie. Dracula.

Poor Jeanie, a shard of splintered wood driven through her body by her brokenhearted fiance in the hotel room in London. That terrible comic book scream as she died a vampire’s death-AIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. No exclamation point was ever required, not with that glorious, lurid green lettering.

Jeanie crumbling to dust, burning in the sunlight. Pleading for forgiveness, absolving Frank Drake of not having been able to protect her as a man ought to have been able to from the ghastly things that crept through the shadows when the sun went down.

“Frank…? I’m dying, Frank. The sunlight.”

… vampires burning in the sunlight…

… Sadie burning in the sunlight…

Finn sat bolt upright in his bed, gasping for breath. The damp blanket his mother had draped over him fell from his shoulders as he pinwheeled his arms, pushing the dream away, flailing for wakefulness. He looked down into his left hand. In his sleep, he’d sought out the red rubber ball as though it were a talisman to ward off nightmares. It was still smeared with ash. Finn uttered a sharp cry and let it fall on his coverlet. It rolled across the bed and bounced on the floor.

Next to his bed, Finn kept his stack of magazines and comics. He leaned down on his stomach and tore through the stack until he located Issue Two of The Tomb of Dracula. Frantically, he flipped