Enter, Night

Beside her, Christina moaned softly in her sleep and turned over. She’s dreaming, Morgan realized. She reached out and gently touched Christina’s blonde hair. Her mother’s eyes were ringed with blue-black circles, and the skin on either side of her nose was dull red and raw in the dim overhead lights of the church. Christina looked exhausted. Morgan wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before. Then she realized why- Christina hadn’t wanted her to see it. Her mother had been trying to protect her in every possible way since they’d arrived in Parr’s Landing. But in sleep, the lie failed and her face told the truth.

The scattershot of stones on glass came again.

Morgan reached over and shook her mother’s arm. “Mom? Mom, wake up. There’s someone outside. I’m scared.”

But Christina slept on, oblivious. Morgan held the St. Christopher’s medal tightly in her hands. The silver was warm, and comforting somehow.

The rocks came again, this time harder and more insistent. She ran to the window and tried to see outside, but it was impossible. This time the stones bounced off the glass directly in front of her.

“Go away!” she screamed. “Leave us alone!”

The voice that answered her was as clear as water. A soft voice. A boy’s voice.

“Morgan. It’s me, Finn. Come outside.”

“Finn?” she cried joyously. “Is that you? Are you OK?”

“It’s me, Morgan,” he said. “I’m OK. Come outside.”

“I can’t, Finn,” she said. “I’m not allowed.”

Finn’s voice was impatient. “Come to the front door of the church, anyway. I’ll be on the front steps.”

Morgan looked at Christina sleeping on the pew. “Mom,” she whispered. “Mom, wake up. Can you hear me?” There was no answer. Christina slept on. “Finn’s here. I’m going to go and see him. I’ll be right back. Is it OK?” She won’t even know I was gone, Morgan rationalized. I’ll be back before she wakes up. Finn’s alive! Finn’s alive!

She walked the length of the nave and opened the church doors wide to welcome Finn back.

Finn stood on a small rise of accumulated snow on the lawn of the church.

His feet looked frail and blue in the light, and there was no disturbance in the snow leading in any direction to or from where stood. The wind whipped his dark hair about his face and the fabric of the pyjamas billowed ludicrously around his thin body.

Morgan stared. “Finn? Is that you? What are you doing there? It’s freezing! Come in here where it’s warm.”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said ruefully. “I’m always coming to you, aren’t I? I wish I was older so I could have been your boyfriend, then I could have taken care of you.”

“Finn, what are you talking about? You did take care of me. You saved my from my grandmother back at the house. You saved my life.”

He went on as though he hadn’t heard her. “You’re really pretty, Morgan.” He looked like he could be blushing, but in the light it was hard to tell. “Can I tell you something?” He sounded gently embarrassed, but didn’t wait for her to answer. “I… I love you, Morgan. I guess I have, from the moment I saw you outside the school that day.”

“Oh, Finn.” Morgan’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t a better friend to you. I’m so sorry.”

He paused. “You know, right? You know what happened to me?”

Morgan shook her head, but even as she did so, she realized she did know. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The tears that had been brimming in her eyes spilled down her cheeks.

“He took me away,” Finn said darkly. “He took me to the caves up by Spirit Rock. He changed me. To punish me. You know. For, well, for what I did. You know, with the holy water.” Finn shivered. “He did awful things to me up there,” he said. “He’s terrible, Morgan. He’s so old. He’s been waiting up there for hundreds of years. Waiting for someone to wake him up. Someone did. Some crazy person. That day I found his bag with all the knives in it-that was his. For waking him up.”

Morgan glanced back towards the church doors, feeling a sudden stab of fear. She clapped her hands over her ears to block out the sound of Finn’s voice.

This isn’t Finn, dummy. It used to be, but it isn’t, now. He’s something… well, someone else. Like Grandmother Parr was.

But then, Grandmother was sort of like that even before, wasn’t she?

Finn sighed. “I’m the same person, Morgan. I’m not going to hurt you. I promise. And you were hearing me in the church even though I was outside, so don’t bother covering your ears.”

Morgan’s voice quivered. She pointed through the open doors, into the nave. “My mother is in there. She’s sleeping.”

“Your mom won’t wake up till I want her to. She’s just asleep, don’t worry.”

“You won’t hurt her, either? You promise?”

“Your mom is a nice lady,” Finn said, sounding wounded. “She was nice to me. I would never hurt her.” He smiled, showing the small pearlescent fangs of a twelve-year-old boy on the edge of manhood, a state he would never attain. “She was nice to me. Of course I won’t hurt her. I needed to see you before…”

“Before what?” she demanded.

He was silent, unmoving from his spot atop the mound of snow.

“It hurts,” Finn said. His voice was small and hollow, even where it echoed inside her head. “It hurts something awful. It’s not like I thought it would be. In my comics, the vampires forget about their lives and they stop feeling bad about it. Not me-I remember everything. And I still miss my dog. Sadie tried to protect me from this. She knew what was waiting up here.”

Morgan was trembling. She wrapped her arms around her torso and rubbed them, trying to warm herself.

“You’re cold,” Finn said. “You should go inside.”

“I don’t need to go inside. But is it OK if I run inside quickly and get my sweater? Do you want to come inside and get warm?”

“I can’t,” Finn said. “I can’t go in there.”

“Why not?” Then she thought about it. “Oh, right,” she said. “Sorry.”

Morgan realized she should feel safer knowing Finn couldn’t cross the threshold of the church, but instead it just made her feel sad. “I’ll be right back,” she promised. She knew he could probably stop her if he wanted to.

But he just said, “OK,” and shrugged.

Morgan hurried up the nave to the place where Christina was still fast asleep-if anything, in a deeper sleep than before. The dark circles under Christina’s eyes seemed to have faded by degrees, as though Finn were actually healing her mother from where he stood on top of the snow, outside the church.

I could stay in here and never come out. She picked up her sweater from where it lay on the back of the pew. I could leave him out there in the cold and the snow and the night and never have to see him again. These things can’t come into churches. But he’s not a ‘thing,’ is he? He’s Finn. He’s my friend. He saved my life.

Morgan saw the St. Christopher’s medal lying on the pew next to her mother. She picked it up and slipped it into her pocket.

“There’s a house over there,” Finn said, pointing across the snowy lawn after Morgan returned with her sweater. “Behind the manse. It’s empty. Do you want to go in there?”

“What for?” Morgan said, suddenly fearful again.

“Because it’s cold out here, dummy, obviously,” Finn teased. “And even if I’m not cold, you are. I can tell. You’re still shivering. I know you have that medal in your pocket. You could use it if you wanted. I wouldn’t be able to stop you. Besides, I told you not to worry.”

Morgan’s voice was incredulous. “How do you know all this stuff?”

Finn shrugged again, but this time it was a self-conscious shrug. “Some of it from The Tomb of Dracula, some of it from Dark Shadows. Some of it from… from him. He steals people’s memories, then he shares them with us. The rest of it I just know.” He tapped his chest and his head. “I know it in here. I don’t know how, I just do.”

She thought about it for a moment, then said, “OK, let’s go to the house. How do you know it’s empty? Or that