Night Runner (20 page)

“So how do you know Charlie?” she asked me.

“My dad and his dad were old friends.”

“When do you see him, if you don't go to school?”

“He visits me at night. Usually over the weekends, because it's pretty late.”

“That's it?”

“Pretty much.”

By this time I was lying on a flutter board. It fit under my stomach and kept me from sinking.

“Don't kick so hard,” she said. She walked beside me in the shallow water. “You only move your legs so that they don't sink. It's your arms that pull you forward. Just like you're crawling.”

“But my legs are so much stronger,” I said.

“I think your arms will manage just fine.”

I was starting to get the hang of it.

“You must spend an awful lot of time alone,” she said.

I mentioned Nurse Ophelia. And Jacob and Sad Stephen, too. They checked into the Nicholls Ward a few times a year, so they counted.

“Still, that's not a lot of visitors,” she said. “Not a lot of company.”

“There aren't a lot of people who stay up all night.”

“No. I guess not,” she said. “Sounds like you need to meet a nice insomniac. Or a vampire.”

I fell off the flutter board.

Luna laughed. She had a hand over her mouth, but it didn't do much to hide her smile. “I'm sorry,” she said. “That was my fault.”

She tossed the flutter board back on shore and went over the fundamentals of the backstroke. I liked this better. She had her hands underneath me again.

We talked about swimming, then sailing, and that led us to other stuff like hobbies and things we liked to do. The whole time she kept mentioning all the people she knew. I could hardly believe it, how she kept track of them all. It was mind-boggling. She must have known everyone in the phone book.

She brought back the flutter board and stuck it under my chest. Then she taught me how to do a frog kick. I liked it the best. Once I had that down, she took my hands and showed me how to pull myself through the water.

“This is the breast stroke,” she said. “It's my favourite. Cup your hands, and sweep them around so that they make a heart, then push the water down to your feet.”

I let her guide my hands for a few heart-shaped sweeps. Then she let go and I took a powerful stroke.

“I think you're a natural,” she said.

I didn't think so. It seemed to me the flutter board was doing most of the work.

“Do you want to try swimming off the dock?” she asked.

I stood up and we walked out of the water together. She handed me her towel so I could pat myself dry.

“I'd rather warm up for a while,” I said.

“Okay. Just hide that bag of marshmallows. They're going to be the death of me.”

By this time the fire had died down a bit. It was hypnotic, the way the flames danced and changed colours. The embers, too. They shifted in the breeze from red to black to orange. I imagined cavemen must have spent a lot of time just staring at these things. It
made me wonder why we didn't have a fireplace back at the ward. Infomercials about Miracle Glow had nothing on this.

“The coals are perfect,” she said. She reached for the marshmallow bag, stuck her hand in and pulled one loose. “I'll just have one.”

As soon as it was set on her stick, she turned it carefully over the coals.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked me.

I shook my head. Males and females were separated at the ward, so I'd never had the chance to talk to any girls my age.

“Are you going to come for a sail tomorrow?”

“I'll be sleeping.”

“Right.” She nodded.

I noticed her first marshmallow was followed by a second.

“Well,” she said, “if you find a cure by tomorrow, I'd be happy to rig us a boat and take you for a tour of the lake.”

I smiled. If only . . .

 

 

On the way home, Charlie grilled me with questions.

“So . . . ?” was the first one.

“So . . . ? So what?”

“So what happened?” he asked me.

I told him about the fire and the swimming lesson and our conversation.

“That's it? You just talked?” He shook his head and looked at me like I'd just slept through my last day on earth. Then he started talking about baseball and getting to all the bases, and that I hadn't even gotten into the batter's box. I had no idea what this had to do with anything, but I wasn't really listening. I was thinking of Luna.

I'd never actually
met
a person before. A stranger. Not the way
they do in movies where two people bump into each other on a bus or in a café and say things like, “Excuse me, is this seat taken?” and you just know they're going to get on famously. Meeting Luna was like that. I wondered if other kids ever felt this way, if it was normal. A week ago I'd never heard of her. Now she was stuck in my head so firmly . . .

Charlie interrupted me with a poke on the shoulder. “And no biting, either,” he said. “You know what I mean?”

I hadn't been listening, which wasn't like me.

“I hear ya,” I said. Then I went back to thinking about Luna.

J
ust as I had the night before, I snuck back down to the dock with my father's journal once Charlie was asleep. I was hoping I might find another entry with a little more detail about—anything, really. As long as it related to vampires. Why we have such a tough time of it. Where this whole thing came from. Why we can't be cured. Or maybe something about Vrolok and what his real name might be. I just needed more.

I skimmed a few pages, then came to a passage about Malta and Gozo. It didn't say where they were, but I could see that my father was hunting again.

 

Bad news confirmed by Mutada. B is now connected to three disappearances in Valletta. He appears to be spreading the contagion indiscriminately. Max and I are flying out tonight.

 

B must have been another vampire. One who was apparently doing a lot of biting. A few entries later, my father continued with this.

 

B found impaled and decapitated in Ta'Braxia cemetery.

 

There was more, but I stopped reading.

Impaled.
The word stuck in my head like a shard of glass.
Impaled.
Like those people in my nightmare. There had been thousands of them writhing on those long stakes. Screaming. Bleeding. Dying. The memory was vivid, as though I'd really been there. And that strange man who had appeared beside me, laughing. His face was perfectly clear, too. Large green eyes. Wide face. Hard cheekbones. Dark hair and moustache. And the teeth. I wondered if he was real. Well, not real, exactly, but maybe a person I'd seen on television, or in a picture I couldn't quite place, someone ordinary that my mind had twisted a little so that he fit in with the rest of the nightmare.

A voice inside me said no. He wasn't a person I'd invented or recreated. And he was connected to that bloodstained field of dying bodies. The two belonged together.

Impaled.

Who ever heard of a vampire dying that way? A stake through the heart I understood. If you really wanted to go overboard you cut off the head too, and put garlic in the mouth, like Van Helsing did to Lucy in
Dracula
. But impaled? It seemed like a disgustingly cruel end, even for a rogue vampire.

I read on.

 

Of B's servants, we can find no trace. The lack of evidence suggests the Coven of the Dragon has been at work here.

 

The Coven of the Dragon
? That sounded ominous. Like a secret
society. I kept skimming, hoping to find more. Then my uncle's name caught my eye. And the letters
EP
, which I assumed at first were the initials of another vampire.

 

Max returned from Turgovishte last night in great dismay. Of the Coven of the Dragon, nothing can be confirmed. Like early stories about carriers, there is much rumour and few hard facts. In addition, our friends have concluded their research. If their findings are correct, the inevitable fate of all carriers is insanity, a condition they refer to as “Endpoint Psychosis” (EP). This confirms our worst fears—a carrier's madness cannot be prevented, only postponed.

 

I read it a second time, then a third. I kept reading until I'd practically memorized every word, but only two stuck out.
Endpoint Psychosis.

I couldn't believe what I was reading. Did my father really believe that
all
vampires went crazy? Like I wasn't in
enough
trouble?

I started flipping frantically through the journal to see if he'd written any more about this.
Endpoint Psychosis.
When did it happen? Was I close? Was there any way to tell? My hands were shaking so much I had to set the journal on the dock just to keep the pages still.

I got to the end and had found nothing. I started flipping again from the back. Then again from the front. Nothing. Maybe this was how I was going to go crazy. I was going to get so worried about Endpoint Psychosis that I'd keep turning pages until my brain snapped in two.

I slammed the journal closed and slid it away from me. Then I flopped back on the dock so I was looking up at the stars. The sky was full of grey-blue clouds, but Cassiopeia was in full view, floating upside down in her orbit around Polaris, the North Star. I thought for a minute how cruel it was that she had been in my life longer than my father. It made me furious. Why hadn't he explained things
properly? Why was his journal so vague? Why did he have to go off in the first place and get himself killed?

I balled my fists and tried to squeeze the frustration out of my body. My heart was pounding against my ribs like it wanted to escape, and who could blame it? If my father was right, I was going to go crazy. After spending eight years in a mental ward, I knew exactly what that meant—confusion and anger and pain. Or hopelessness and despair. I'd seen both. And because I was a vampire, it would be far worse. I would become a creature so terrible even my own father would have killed me.

I tried to slow my breathing so my body would stop shaking. It took a few minutes. Then I folded my hands under my head like a pillow and closed my eyes. The water was shifting gently underneath the dock. Normally, the subtle rising and falling would have calmed my nerves, but now it just made me nauseous.

For a time I just lay there, wrestling with my nervous stomach and listening to the sound of the bats hunting overhead. The needles of the trees made soft swishing noises that blended with the chirping of insects. My thoughts drifted and I found myself wondering about Nurse Ophelia. She'd vanished just after Mr. Entwistle crashed into my life. When all the trouble started. There was no way this was a coincidence. Her disappearance and my dilemma had to be connected. And Mr. Entwistle? He'd died by arson the day after saving me. That couldn't be another coincidence. Someone had to be responsible.

Maybe my Uncle Max would know. But he hadn't called back yet, so maybe he was gone, just like the others.

Thank God for Charlie. I wondered how much I should tell him. If I was in danger of going bonkers and biting everything in sight, I should warn him, at least. Or just go away by myself. That would keep him safe.

But I didn't want to go away. I'd spent enough of my life alone.
Mr. Entwistle had survived for over six hundred and fifty years. If that was true, then it
was
possible to stay alive and stay sane . . . if you could call him that. But Mr. Entwistle was gone, and his secrets were gone with him.

I thought back to the night of our escape, when he'd told me about his purpose: that he helped other vampires. Even the rogues. That must have been one of his secrets. And he didn't attach himself to things. And he drank. A lot.

Well, one of those things was possible for me. I could find a purpose.

I stood up and retrieved my father's journal. That would be my first purpose. I would finish reading it, all of it, not just the vampire parts, and learn all that it could teach me. Then I was going to find my uncle. That was goal number two. I had to find somewhere safe to hide, and then I could figure out how to deal with Vrolok. Find out who he was and if he had a weakness. That was goal number three. And I had to see Luna again. In fact,
that
was goal number two. My uncle and Vrolok could wait. As soon as I was done with the journal, I had to find a way to tell her the truth.

I looked up at the sky. Cassiopeia was still sparkling overhead. I felt a sudden swell of confidence, as if my Miracle Glow, fairy-tale ending was only minutes away. I smiled and started leafing through the journal to find my page.

No sooner had I started reading than a sudden coolness crept over the dock. A chill went through me, raising goosebumps on my arms. I looked out over the water. A fog was moving down the lake. It curled and tumbled like a living thing, clawing its way toward me. The wind picked up, lifting the back of my hair and causing the pages of the journal to flutter.