Just possibly setting myself up for suffocation or to be the focus of his legendary anger.
I've always found train rides relaxing. The rhythmic thunk of each carriage over the tracks would lull me into an almost-sleep as a young boy; trains always meant adventure, but the sort where I assumed, with child-like certainty, that no harm would come to me, hence the sleepiness. As a grown man, trains promised work, meetings, business. Off to war. And now? I haven't come up with the word to describe it properly, but stupid, foolhardy, or idiotic come pretty close to fitting the bill.
I attempt to settle back into my seat. I'm facing the direction of travel, leaning on the narrow window ledge with one elbow, cradling my jaw in one hand. Mine is the only seat in this set of four occupied, but that's no surprise.
Someone as pale-faced as me travelling on a night train has got to be a goth, a nightshift worker, or a vampire. No eyeliner or black clothing for me, so neither goth nor emo. I give the appearance of someone in his late twenties, early thirties, so that rules out such a childish pursuit anyway. As for working nights? In a way, one could say I do. But I'm too smartly dressed for most work scheduled at night. Immaculately-pressed shirt, smart trousers, matching jacket. If these were work clothes, I'd be an accountant or something equally respectable and well-paid; therefore, I'd be able to afford my own transport. And I'd be travelling through the day.
All of which leaves one option more likely than any other: that I'm undead.
Years ago, I met someone. Not Alyssa, not the librarian who was so into Russian novels. A man who deserves to rest in peace, without his name being brought into the equation. A rarity, a male, living human who was the one to approach me and say flat out, "You are, aren't you?"
I said nothing, merely quirking an eyebrow and waiting for him to show off his deductive powers.
"A vampire."
I said nothing in return but made sure to look him up and down. Discreetly, or so I'd thought at the time.
"Thought so." He nodded and stood back. We were in a bus station at the time, and it was well after midnight.
I can't even remember what I was doing there. Waiting for someone's arrival or my own departure, it doesn't really matter now.
"And?" I finally said. "What makes you say that?"
"I was expecting you to say 'how did you know?'"
"I'm not going to give you the victory so easily."
"You're very pale."
"So are a lot of people."
"You're out at night."
"So are you."
"There's something about you."
I raised my eyebrows expectantly, wondering if he meant it as a compliment. I took it to be so; after all, if he thought I was physically repulsive, he wouldn't have approached me in the first place.
But a bus station was an unusual place to be picked up, if indeed, he was trying to pick me up.
A pub would be more understandable. This? It had certainly never happened to me before.
"You're dressed too smartly."
"You think I'm a vampire because I'm dressed too smartly?"
"I think you're one of those who tries to stand out."
"Listen, friend."
I looked him in the eyes, and the tragic thing is, now, I can't even remember what colour they were.
"I just want to get by. I'm not trying to stand out at all."
"Okay, maybe that was the wrong phrase. Not stand out. But you're certainly apart."
This was in the days when vampires were out and legal, if not fully accepted. Late seventies, early eighties. Men had long hair, wore indecently tight jeans, had shirts in every colour of the rainbow, sometimes every colour together in one shirt. The nineteen seventies; the decade that taste forgot.
I frowned then and carried on looking at him, but my "are you sure you want to be speaking to me" stare softened into an intrigued gaze.
"My last boyfriend was a vampire, you see," he said. "That's how I know what you're like."
Then he told me his name.
Sometimes, I can't resist falling into the past, and when it happens, I avoid the forties---or try to, that is. There's a gravitational pull centred on that particular decade, growing stronger now I'm on this train ride.
Will gave me the name of a club where he --- Adam---goes to hang out. It passed between them in conversation a while back, during a phone conversation. Will doesn't know Adam's exact address, just the name of the town where he "lives," the approximate area wherein he's now domiciled. Of course, I now have Adam's mobile phone number, passed on by Will, but I couldn't just call him out of the blue. I'm not that cruel.
Maybe showing up on his territory like this is crueller still, I think.
Oh, I don't know which is the right way to do things, if I should even be doing this at all, but I've started on the journey now and keep telling myself over and over again that I can't run forever. I can't avoid him for all eternity. It's been decades so far, making me incredibly lucky.
Someday in the not-too-distant future, I'll run into him in the street. He'll spot me in a nightclub.
Someone I know will speak to someone he knows.
Fate has been an absolute bitch to me, so I'm making this attempt to cheat her, out of malice. She won't get to spring a chance encounter with Adam on me because I'm taking matters into my own hands for the first time in years. I'm going to him.
But first, I'll rest. No, I don't need to sleep, so perhaps rest is the incorrect word. I need time to brace myself, to prepare. Breathing space, as those among the still living might call it.
Will's booked me into a vampire-friendly hotel in Adam's adopted hometown, laughingly called Shrouds. Sunlight won't
