Enter, Night

“No, you won’t.”

“Yes, I will,” she said urgently. “Just tell me.”

While Christina made breakfast in the kitchen, Finn, trusting her, told Morgan everything.

He told her about Sadie’s gruesome end in the sunlight two mornings ago above Bradley Lake. He told her of his father’s disappearance, and his return.

He told her about his mother’s murder, how he drove his father out of the living room with the Lord’s Prayer and the two pieces of smashed table leg in the shape of the cross. He told her how he crouched in his bedroom for an hour afterwards, watching his bedroom door, his pyjamas stained with gouts of his mother’s blood, clutching the two shards of broken wood, thinking he heard footsteps pacing the floorboards through the living room and the kitchen above him but not being sure, not daring to move from his spot to find out.

Finn told her about fleeing the house on his Schwinn, watching the skies as best he could, all the while knowing that if something came to carry him off, he would be powerless to stop it. He told her of spending the night crouched near a statue of the Virgin Mary near the baptismal font at St. Barthelemy and the Martyrs, only leaving when he was sure dawn was right around the corner, and that there would be adults awake in the houses around him, adults that might be able to protect him from whatever was surely hunting him even as he cycled like the wind all the way up the hill to Parr House, and the safety of Morgan.

Morgan was silent for a long moment. The she said, “Finn, this is like something out of one of your comic books. You realize that, don’t you?”

He raised himself on his elbow and said furiously, “I told you, you wouldn’t believe me! I said!”

“Finn-”

“Never mind! I mean it! Never… mind!” He stood up abruptly, almost knocking over his jar of water-holy water, Morgan supposed, since she believed him about having spent the night in the church.

“Finn, are you feeling better?” Christina stood in the doorway with a glass of orange juice. “I’ve made some breakfast. Are you hungry? Morgan’s uncle isn’t back yet, but he will be soon.” She extended the glass of juice, but he didn’t move to take it.

Finn looked from Morgan to Christina, then back again. His expression was hard for Christina to read-thwarted anger, longing, terror. Grief, definitely. But mostly, it seemed, terrible frustration.

Christina said, “Finn?”

He picked up his jar of holy water and ran out of the sitting room. They heard the sound of his bare feet on the marble foyer floor, then the sound of the front door being flung open, then slamming shut.

“Morgan, what happened? What did you say to him?”

“Nothing! He started telling me this story…”

“What story? What did he tell you?”

“Something about…” Morgan looked at her mother’s bewildered face, and faltered.

It was one thing for Morgan herself not to believe Finn. She was a kid, too-well, a teenager, but still. It would be something else to for her to tell her mother the crazy story and have Christina think Finn was crazy. It seemed disloyal, somehow.

Finn had been the only friend she’d had since they arrived, and all he’d ever been was kind to her. And how had she repaid him? By doing the one thing she knew would hurt him-treating his vampire comic book obsession like a joke. She hadn’t intended to, of course, but he clearly believed what he had told her. The least she could have done was listen to Finn and trust that he believed what he was saying, and keep her big fat trap shut. She was such an idiot.

“Morgan Louise Parr, what did that boy say before he ran out of here? You tell me right now!”

“He said… he said something about his mom and dad.”

“What did he say?”

“I don’t know. He wasn’t making sense. And then you… and then he just ran out of here. You saw him. I don’t know why, he just did.”

They heard the door click open again, then shut. Christina called out, “Finn?”

“No, it’s me.” Jeremy’s voice came from the foyer. He walked into the sitting room. From his face, Christina and Morgan knew the news wasn’t going to be good.

“Where’s Finn?” Jeremy said, looking blankly around the sitting room.

“He left,” Morgan said. “He just ran out of here.”

“What do you mean ‘he ran out of here’? Where did he go? His bicycle is gone, too. Weren’t you watching him?”

“Yes, we were watching him, Jeremy,” Christina snapped. “But he just jumped up and bolted out of here a few minutes ago. We couldn’t stop him. We tried.”

“Well, I went to his house. It’s not good, Chris. There’s glass everywhere, all over the floor. And I think… Morgan, would you excuse your mother and I for a minute?”

“I’m fifteen,” she said. “I’m not a baby.”

“You think what?” Christina snapped, ignoring them both.

“I think there’s blood on the carpet. It looks like something pretty awful did happen-maybe a fight between the mother and the father that went wrong. Got violent.”

Christina said, “Did you call the police?”

“The phone was ripped out of the wall. No way to call. I thought of finding a phone booth, but I decided to stop by the police station in person on the way back here and report it instead.”

“And? What did the police say? Are they going to check it out?”

“Well,” Jeremy said, “it was the damnedest thing. The station was empty.”

“What do you mean the police station was empty? How could it be empty? It’s a police station!”

“I don’t know how it could be empty, Christina. But it was. The lights were on and the front door was unlocked. It’s like they went out for coffee last night without even bothering to close up, then just didn’t come in for work today.”

Christina sat down heavily on the divan. “None of this makes any sense. And now that poor boy is running around outside in his pyjamas. He obviously saw something happen to his parents that upset him. Morgan, does he have any relatives in town, do you know? Or friends? Why did he come here?”

“I think he came here because I’m his… well, I think I’m his only friend,” she said. “He’s never mentioned anyone else. All Finn does is read Dracula comics and play with his dog. Her name’s Sadie. She ran away a couple of nights ago. Remember, I went over to see him? He was really upset about it. I wanted to go see him yesterday, too, on the way to school, but you were too busy to take me.” She added reproachfully, “Remember?”

Christina sighed. “Morgan, would you just stick to Finn? Did you see him again? Was he OK?”

“I went over his house at lunchtime. I knocked, but no one answered. That was the last time, until this morning.”

Christina took a deep breath and tried to marshal her thoughts. “All right. OK. One step at a time. Morgan, shouldn’t you be getting ready for school?”

“It’s Saturday, Mom.” Morgan rolled her eyes. “There’s no school today, even in Parr’s Landing.”

Jeremy frowned. “Morgan, did you check on your grandmother like I asked you to?

“No, Uncle Jeremy. I was talking to Finn. I’m sorry.”

“It’s almost nine and I haven’t seen her at all this morning. Have you, Chris?”

“No,” Christina said. “She hasn’t been down. And Beatrice didn’t come in this morning, either. I made breakfast, and no one came into the kitchen to tell me what a disaster I was, or how I was doing it wrong, or what a mess I was making.”

Jeremy smiled wanly, then sighed. “All right, I’ll go up and check on her.”

Jeremy rapped lightly on the door of Adeline’s bedroom and called out, “Mother? It’s me, Jeremy. Are you all right? It’s almost nine o’clock.”

He expected to hear a stinging rebuke of some sort issuing through the mahogany door, but there was only silence in the gloom of the upstairs hallway. He gently turned the cut glass doorknob and pushed. The door swung