Lure of the Night Read online

  Maybe it was the lateness of the hour, but we didn’t seem to be speaking the same language. “Who will come for me?”

  She shook her head again. “When the family gets back, they will know what to do.”

  I had finished going around in circles, I hadn’t got a clue what she was talking about. I thanked her for the tea and she showed me out. The long walk through the woods seemed different. Although the old woman was not all there, maybe a bit dotty, she’d given me some confidence. She obviously knew something but didn’t have the command of the English language to get it out. But there was hope, grounds for thinking that Ethan might be ok. I slipped into my house and checked the time, it was gone three. I undressed quickly and put on my baby dolls, I needed everything to look normal in the morning. Then I got to bed and fell straight to sleep, I was so exhausted.

  Ethan came to me in the night. One moment I was enjoying a dream, the next minute he was there, appearing in my dream, standing in front of me.

  “Ethan!”

  “Claire, you needn’t worry about me, I’m fine.”

  “But how could you survive, they said everyone was dead?”

  “No, we are safe.”

  “That old lady at your house, she said you couldn’t die.”

  “Eupraxia, yes, she’s a distant relation, she keeps house for the family.”

  “But what did she mean, you couldn’t die and something about someone coming after me?”

  “She was right, you could be in danger. Have you spoken to your father?”

  “My father, what’s he got to do with it?”

  “You don’t know?”

  I shook my head.

  “Claire, you are very, very special, when we get back from Andros, I will come to you.”

  “But what’s going on, Ethan, what do you mean? You are back, aren’t you? Or is this a dream? For God’s sake, I’m so worried, tell me what’s going on!”

  “Listen to your father, Claire. He will tell you everything.”

  It was obviously the night of the obscure conversation. Well, real or imaginary, it was fantastic that Ethan was here, even if it was only a dream. And even if he was talking nonsense. I wondered who had taught him his English.

  “I missed you, Claire,” he said, coming to sit on the side of my bed. “I want to get into bed with you, don’t worry, you’re right, this is only a dream, you are quite safe.”

  “Ok,” I said doubtfully.

  I felt his body slide under the covers next to me, he was fully dressed, yet his clothes felt silky and soft, different. Or was that his skin I could feel touching me? He held me to him and I put my arms around him.

  “Tell me, Ethan, what did she mean, you can’t die?”

  “It’s an old thing, nothing you need concern yourself with, your father will tell you.”

  “But, Ethan…”

  He put a finger to my lips. “Hush, don’t worry about it. I will be returning soon, then we can be together.”

  I hugged him to me, his body felt so warm and wonderful. We lay there quietly for what seemed like hours. I must have dropped off to sleep, Mom was calling me.

  “Claire, you’ll be late for school, didn’t you hear the alarm clock?”

  It was a wonderful dream, I was thinking about it all morning. Even the regular ambush at the school gate didn’t interest me. I heard Stella say something nasty, her eyes flared with that vivid brightness that was a bit scary. One of the boys, it might have been James or Roger, murmured curses and threats but I hardly heard them, least of all took any notice of them. Joanne ran to catch up with me. “Hey, I called to you outside the gate, you’re in a dream world.”

  “Sorry, Joanne, I’ve got things on my mind.”

  Then I saw she was carrying her sports bag. “Damn, is it sports today?”

  “Yeah, we’re doing netball. Why, did you forget your kit?”

  I nodded. “I didn’t sleep very well, it just slipped my mind.”

  “I’ve got a spare skirt, I think Jessica’s got some sneakers, I’m sure we can rustle you up a shirt.”

  I thanked her and we went on into class, it was supposed to be some civics thing but this morning we had a priest in to tell us about modern morals. Father Ben Ryan was a new priest at the local Catholic Church. He had been to the school before and the general opinion was that he was a stuck up, obnoxious little squirt. He was short, a whisker over five feet tall, weedy and pasty with a little moustache that one of the boys said made him look like Adolf Hitler. Maybe he was related. But even worse, he was Stella Ryan’s older brother. His eyes were the giveaway, they had that strange light in them, they seemed to glow with a hard light, both hot and cold, whenever he stared at me, just like his sister’s but much more intense.

  Halfway through his talk he started spouting a load of nonsense about sex, which started a few giggles.

  “Sex before marriage is a sin,” he thundered at us. There was a stirring in the hall, more than a few gasps and laughs. “It leads to all kinds of problems,” he continued. “Unwanted pregnancies, AIDS, venereal disease, it is a sin.”

  He rambled on with more in that vein, stuff we had all heard before in different guises, boring drivel. Then I pricked up my ears.

  “Satan has appeared in our midst, in the streets of our town, in the dark woods,” he paused then.

  Was he looking at me? Then I remembered Ranger Ryan, I’d guessed right, they really were the same family. Damn, news travelled fast in this town, I couldn’t do anything without being watched.

  “Deep in the dark, dripping forests, the forces of evil are at work. You must beware to avoid their temptations, their stink of corruption, for the perversion of innocent young lives is their primary mission on this earth.”

  I had to say he had his audience spellbound. This was no ordinary talk. He was obviously passionate about what he was saying. Joanne was next to me.

  “He’s off his trolley,” she grinned. I nodded. There was little doubt about that, but all the Ryans were unstable. Then again, the Ranger shouldn’t have been broadcasting my business around the town.

  Father Ryan was still ranting, I could see he was sweating now, rivulets of perspiration running down his pudgy face.

  “You may think that these creatures of Satan are just something that you only see in movies. Well it is not true. Werewolves, zombies, Satan can manufacture anything, even vampires!”

  Then he did stare directly at me. Jesus Christ, he needed psychiatric treatment. He shouldn’t be here frightening the kids. Bring on the men in the white coats. He was a candidate for a straitjacket.

  “So when you come across a creature of the night, these abominations, these undead, these creatures that cannot die, beware, for they will lead you into the dark places of certain damnation.”

  He had really worked himself into a lather, I could see some of the teachers starting to look worried, I mean, this was total crap. Mrs. Granger came onto the stage and interrupted him, he looked startled when she appeared but she plowed on.

  “We would all like to thank Father Ryan for his helpful and illuminating talk.”

  Of course we would, sure. She started to clap, the teachers joined in, none of us did, we were all watching, mesmerized and amused. Then some of the boys started to catcall, I heard names like ‘nutter’ and ‘loony’ tossed at the stage. He looked back at us angrily, then pointedly looked at me. “You’ll be damned, I tell you, damned!”

  Mrs. Granger led him off the stage and we filed out of the hall. I had a lot to think about, one thing the mad priest had said did strike a chord. ‘Creatures that cannot die’. I had heard that before, from Eupraxia. But how did I know that her name was Eupraxia? Ethan had told me the name but it was only in my dream. The old woman never actually told me her name. I needed to know more, something was going on here that wasn’t clear to me and I didn’t like it, something dark and unpleasant. Most of all I hated the thought that it was putting the finger of evil on Ethan, which just was not true. I g
uess I wanted to clear his name, at least in my own mind. I had only met him twice. Once in the woods and, when he came to see me in my bedroom when I was home sick. No, there was the night before when he’d come to me, but that was a dream, surely. He was far away in Greece. I realized that I didn’t even know if he was still alive. There was only one thing for it, I decided I’d go back and look up the old lady again at the Andros house, there were questions that I wanted the answers to. But most of all I wanted Ethan, he was the strong, guiding hand that had led me through the dark wood.

  In my soul I knew that meeting him that night has changed my life forever, as it if was pre-ordained. There was so much I needed to know. What was this ‘Satanic’ nonsense? I mean, Mom was a Presbyterian and she’d taken me to church when I was younger, but I saw it now the way most kids I knew did, as an antiquated, outdated institution that suited old ladies in hats. I guess a lot of them were still waiting for rapture. So Satanism to me was just some kind of total bullshit.

  Of course, the Catholics believed more in that stuff, they seemed to be heavily into exorcism and those weird rituals, but the Salem witch trials were a long time ago, no one really believed in that crap anymore. This was the age of the internet, Satan was definitely well past his sell-by date. But I did have so many questions weighing on my mind and the only way to deal with them was to go looking for answers myself. Asking Father Ryan anything would be a waste of time, besides, when he got heated he kind of spat phlegm all over your blouse. No, I’d have to try elsewhere, the internet of course, that would be a good starting point.

  At lunchtime I didn’t bother with any food, I didn’t really feel hungry. Joanna picked up on it, of course. “Claire, you’ll be starving, you ought to get something to eat.”

  I told her I wasn’t interested. “If you start missing meals it’ll make you ill,” she fired her parting shot. Yeah, there were several billion people in the world in front of me waiting to jump the queue for wasting away by starvation.

  “I was thinking about becoming a model,” I shouted as I walked quickly away. Great, that would get the tongues wagging, ‘Claire’s starving herself to become a size zero model. She’s becoming anorexic, they’ll have to put her in a hospital.’

  As I walked up the stairs to the library I luxuriated in the myth that I’d started and I knew would start to circulate around the school. Claire Winter, striding confidently along the catwalk, wearing the latest designer dress, sewn from enough material to make two pocket handkerchiefs and costing about five thousand dollars. Thin as a broomstick, six-inch heels, make up like a European royal princess. Perhaps not.

  I found a spare terminal and loaded a browser and Googled Satanism. Lots of nonsense about people who wouldn’t have been out of place in an asylum, they were probably already there by now. Totally cuckoo. Then I came across Andros. I’d spotted the Greek island straight away in the middle of lots of other hits, it seemed to be a harmless tourist resort until the earthquake destroyed it, that got thousands and thousands of hits. Then another result caught my eye, something to do with vampires. It was only a snippet, so I Googled vampires and hit the motherlode.

  “What are you up to, Claire?” a voice said behind me. Until I’d bumped into Ethan, it was a voice I would have welcomed anytime. David Brougham, roughly the same age as me, a real nice guy. Except that he didn’t ever seem to notice me, not once, not until now.

  “Nothing much, David. Just killing time.”

  “Vampires? I didn’t know you were interested in that subject.”

  “I’m not, it was just something that crazy priest said this morning, I thought I’d look it up. What are you doing in here?”

  In truth, David wasn’t much of a book person. As there were no games that could be played on the library computers, I couldn’t think what would interest him in here. He was a jock, sometimes played quarterback in the junior high team. All muscle, a tasty body but not a great deal up top. He was an ok guy, though, for all that.

  “I saw you through the doorway and thought I’d look in and say hi.”

  “Right. Hi to you, too.”

  He stood fidgeting so I asked him what he wanted.

  “Uh, well, I heard you were going to be a model.”

  Oh my God, that was what, ten minutes ago?

  “Maybe, what’s it to you?”

  “Uh, you wouldn’t say anything to anyone, would you?”

  “About what?”

  “I wanted to ask you something, but it’s a secret.”

  “Oh sure,” I replied. “You can tell me.”

  “It’s just that, I’m, well…”

  I immediately thought of my cousin-in-law John. “Are you trying to tell me you’re gay, David?”

  “What?” he shrieked. “No, absolutely not, where did you get that idea from?”

  I was smiling inside, I’d rocked him badly, really put him off his stride. After John telling me about his being gay, I guess I thought that every boy who stuttered about telling me something was going to be the same. David had gone red in the face.

  “Look, David, I didn’t get that idea from anywhere, I just wondered what it was that was so secret.”

  “You did? Oh, right. I thought you meant that every guy that wanted to be a model was gay.”

  “Well I don’t think that.”

  “Good,” he said with some relief.

  “But I guess a lot of them are.”

  “What, do you think that’s true?”

  “Probably not, David. So that’s it, you want to become a model, a male model? I thought your folks wanted you to become a lawyer or something. Or was it a doctor?”

  “A dentist, like my dad.”

  “Ok, so they won’t like this model thing, will they?”

  “Uh, maybe not, but you can earn huge amounts of money and meet lots of famous people, celebrities, film stars and so on.”

  “Look, David, I was only half joking about the model thing, I really don’t know anything about it.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  “Right. Well, I’m not really sure, when I heard about you becoming a model I got to thinking it would be a cool way to get rich. But I guess I maybe should go with the dentist thing, Pa said he’d get me a car when I started college, an import.”

  An import, the rich kid’s status symbol. “That’s nice.”

  “Yeah, well, I was up here originally to bone up on some science stuff, my essay is overdue.”

  “Ok, then.”

  “I hear you’re ok with physics, chemistry, stuff like that. Straight As.”

  “Sometimes, yes. Not always.”

  He should have started dragging books off shelves, researching at one of the computer screens. But he stood up and left, he didn’t get it. I guessed if he knuckled down and did some studying he’d become a dentist, marry a Stepford Wife and be on his third divorce by the time he was a thirty five year old alcoholic. I thought more about the model thing, but it wasn’t for me. I didn’t see myself as one of those haughty, strutting, confident young women, bones sticking through the seams of a tight skirt. Maybe they looked good, but I just wasn’t that confident about my looks. I mean, I was ok, I’d had no shortage of boys asking for a date, most of whom I told to get lost, but I wasn’t any Kate Moss. So what did I want? Mom wanted me to become a veterinarian, for some reason. Trouble was, I wanted a life that was a bit more interesting, exotic, perhaps mysterious even. A travel writer would be good, that would get me around, I could even visit Andros.

  Ethan. That’s why I was here. I needed to know more about the mysterious, beautiful boy who had captured my imagination. And my heart, if I was truthful. Oh my God, would any other person have given me the strength to deliberately walk through that dark wood in the middle of the night? I don’t think so. I leaned forward to look at the screen, praying that no other would-be models would interrupt me. So vampires and Andros were linked. That was a start. I searched some more, but there was little that was of a
ny real interest.

  It was dawning on me that someone was trying to smear the Andros family, almost certainly Father Ryan, who saw demons behind every tree. His vicious sister Stella wasn’t much different, a nasty bully, why were they so spiteful about the Andros family? People saw a family from Greece, some of whom had a funny accent, looked a bit different to the norm. It was similar to the way some people looked at Hispanics really, they look different therefore they must be bad. So they were suggesting that the Andros’s were vampires, was that the deal? That was a laugh, for a number of reasons. Of course, there weren’t any such thing as vampires. Or demons, or Satan, or any of the numerous bogeymen that religious nutcases had touted over the centuries. It always seemed to be the bad guys lurking around the corner, waiting to jump out and rob you of your soul. Never the good guys, if there were so many of these demonic dudes roaming the country, where were the saints? If bad old Satan could engineer a stroll around the US of A, why couldn’t the ones at the top, Jesus and the disciples or whoever were flavor of the month, pop in for the odd visit? But of course, they never did, they left the coast clear for the demonic dudes, Satan’s sisters or whatever. It was just all so boring. It was also true that Stella Ryan was a nasty bully anyway, she didn’t need any excuse to bully me, no doubt her priest brother was just as bad.

  The first thing was to discount this vampire crap. Ethan wasn’t a vampire, they didn’t exist. It was such a stupid idea I didn’t even stop to consider it. So it was back to Google. There was little I hadn’t already seen, nothing more to clear up the mystery. I found a reference to the Greek myths, stuff about ancient battles between warring Gods, but nothing helpful. I’d heard about Jason and the Argonauts, or was that a cartoon when I was younger? Scylla and Charybdis, that rang a bell too, of course, it was the name of Ethan’s two dogs. Was that enough to call in the FBI, ‘This guy’s a vampire. Here’s the proof, he named his two dogs after Greek myths’? Not really, no. I felt annoyed at Father Ryan’s thinly veiled accusations, I was used to being kicked around myself, people always lashed out at anything or anybody who was different to them, so I guess that’s why the Andros family got it in the neck from Father Spit. It was time to get back for the first class of the afternoon. I walked in and there was a definite buzz when they clapped eyes on me. The model thing, yeah, suddenly the prospect of me being a celebrity made me desirable, in their eyes. But I didn’t want to be desirable, not to these hypocrites, not at all, I just wanted to be left alone. Joanne indicated the seat next to hers so I went and sat down.