“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 café?”
“Shut up, Jeremy. I didn’t pick him up in the café. We talked. Stop
the car.”
“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
fiancée, 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 fiancé 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.