Night Runner (13 page)

I ran out of the hall, through the living room and into the kitchen. I had to find a back door. It was on the far side of the stove. I could see another pair of brackets and a steel pipe lying on the counter. Since this door wasn't barred, I figured Mr. Entwistle must have left this way.

I could hear voices shouting behind me, then a loud clank, which I guessed was the steel bar on the front door falling to the floor. The men were coming inside, only seconds away.

I yanked on the handle of the back door, but it didn't open.

“Come on,” I shouted. I kept pulling, then noticed it was locked. None of the rooms in the Nicholls Ward had locks, so I'd sort of forgotten about them. I twisted the deadbolt and pulled the door open. Then I grabbed the steel bar, just in case, and darted outside.

Men were entering the kitchen as I cleared the landing. In four steps I was around the side of the house. I coiled my body for a mid-stride leap, then launched myself up onto the lower branch of a tree. I used this as a springboard and cleared the neighbour's fence. I couldn't tell if anyone had seen me, but I wasn't taking any chances. I just kept running through the fog. Full blast.

I jumped another fence, and another. It made me think of men running hurdles at the Olympics, only these were six feet high. When I reached the last property on the block I ditched the pipe. It was slowing me down. Then I tore across the road and into the next yard. I wanted to stay off the streets. There was too much light. I ran through people's yards instead. Dogs barked. Lights came on. People shouted. I didn't stop, not for anything. My feet were moving so quickly that, if the earth had opened up below me, I would have run through the air. And the whole time, I had only one thing on my mind.

Vrolok had found me. My father's killer.

Wasn't that place supposed to be a safe house? And where was Mr. Entwistle?

I laboured on. All I could hear was my own frantic breathing. I thought it best to hold a straight line and put as much distance between me and the bad guys as I could manage. Soon, it was like I was running in a tunnel. My eyes took in nothing that wasn't right in front of me. So I didn't react when I heard a loud roar and a scream. It took me too long to sort out what it was. The roar turned out to be a car horn, and the scream was skidding tires. It was a police van. I'd reached the end of someone's property and had run onto the street without looking. The police must have been searching for me. They were moving quickly. And so there was little I could do. I just lifted my feet and curled up into a ball so that my legs hit the grille and my shoulder hit the windshield. And then I was airborne.

I
remember an explosion of light. Pain followed. Then a sharp snap from inside my body somewhere. And more pain. Then darkness.

When my eyes started working again I was lying on my back with my arm twisted underneath me. It was broken. My stomach was bucking. Even though it was empty, it still wanted me to throw up. The whole world was spinning around me. Even when I closed my eyes.

I managed to sit up. The pain in my broken arm made my vision go black and for a few seconds I think I was unconscious again. Then I put my one good hand against the side of my head and rocked back and forth, moaning.

I was vaguely aware of people approaching. I didn't know who. I didn't care. I just wanted them to go away. I wanted to be back at the ward. To have my dinner with Nurse Ophelia. And ping-pong fights
with Charlie. And I wanted the pain to stop. What I got instead were two voices just above me.

“. . . not your fault. Came out of nowhere.”

“. . . kid move so fast!”

“. . . never seen anything . . .”

“Are you okay?”

“. . . look like anything's broken?”

“Can you hear me?”

“. . . neck seems fine . . .”

“. . . at his arm . . .”

“. . . kid from the ward . . .”

Then one of them touched me. That was a big mistake.

I'd always suspected that I was much stronger than other kids my age. This wasn't just a vampire thing, it was also because I lifted weights every night. Turned out my strength was off the charts. I didn't really understand that until I felt the policeman's hand on my shoulder. He was wearing a bulletproof vest. I think they all wear them now, which is good. It probably saved his life. I balled my fist and smashed it into his chest. I didn't even see where he landed.

Then I screamed. It wasn't a shrill scream, the kind of sound a person makes when they're afraid. It was more like something you'd expect to come from the mouth of an angry predator. I was furious. Then I was back on my feet, running. I can guess that the police tried to catch me. They never got close.

In time, maybe an hour, my rage started to subside. I slowed and listened. Cars. Distant voices. The hum of electricity. Feet shuffling on the sidewalk around the corner. Rustling leaves and creaking branches. Nothing out of the ordinary. I was alone. And I had no idea what to do. I should have asked Mr. Entwistle before he left where the blood donor clinic was. If I had, maybe I could have figured out why he hadn't come back.

I decided to keep running.

More time passed. I looked at my arm. It was black just below the elbow, and it had a crook in it. I'd been cradling it in my other hand. It didn't feel as painful now. More itchy than anything. And it throbbed as I ran.

What I needed was blood. According to Mr. Entwistle, that would speed up my healing. But I also needed a safe place to hide. So I kept running, oblivious to the houses and blocks as they passed, until I found myself in familiar territory—my old neighbourhood. I turned a corner and just like that, I was standing in front of our old house on O'Carroll Avenue.

I don't know why I chose to go there. Maybe a part of my memory decided for me. I think it must have remembered that I'd once been safe there. And loved.

I stood at the end of the front walk, uncertain. Now that I wasn't moving, I felt very exposed, so I dashed over to the neighbour's place and hid behind a tree. Then I just stared at the house, thinking. The lights inside were off, but it was late. Maybe eleven o'clock. The older couple who lived there now must have been sleeping. I crept out from behind the tree, then I noticed that the big RV that was usually parked in the driveway was gone. It probably meant that they were away. I'd just have to chance it.

I sprinted into the backyard. I hadn't seen it in eight years and it was totally unfamiliar. Everything looked smaller than it should have been. Our old apple tree was gone, and instead of the hedge there was a fence. I crept up to the back door and tried to open it. It was locked. Even with one arm broken I probably could have torn it off the hinges, but I didn't want to damage anything if I didn't have to, so I tried the basement windows. The first one was locked too, but the second one wasn't. It was one of those sliding windows. The wide and short kind. It made a hissing noise as I opened it, and it seemed so loud to me that I was afraid the whole neighbourhood might wake up.

I had to slide in feet first. There was a huge laundry sink underneath,
the kind that's made of cement and looks like a big feeding trough, so I didn't have far to go. Fortunately the sink was empty. As soon as I was inside I turned around, slid the window shut and locked it behind me. Instantly, I felt safer. I could actually breathe without worrying about all the noise I was making. After a few deep breaths, my heart began to settle. As it did, the throb in my arm returned.

There was a washing machine beside me. The floor was covered in stuff, mostly boxes and clothes. The room didn't seem familiar, especially the smell. It wasn't foul, but it wasn't a clean smell, either.

I stepped out of the sink and listened. Nothing. To my left was a set of wooden stairs that led to the back hallway. It didn't look as familiar as it should have. Too small. Too worn. I climbed them slowly, cringing each time the old wood creaked. At the top of the steps was a door. I tried to push it open quietly, but it was stuck at the bottom, so when I put some weight behind it, it opened with a pop. And that's when I discovered what the strange smell was. It was a dog. A big husky. It was waiting for me in the back hall. And it didn't look happy.

Animals are a bit like people. You meet some nice ones and some that are a little prickly. This dog was a walking cactus. Its eyes didn't even get along—one was blue and the other was green. But I could see right away that all of his teeth were alike. Long and sharp and white. The way he showed them off, you could tell he was very proud of this.

He snarled, took a few quick steps and lunged at me. I was just fast enough to back up and close the basement door. My heart started pounding again.

The dog was now barking loudly and scratching at the door. With the luck I was having, the neighbours were probably going to show up any minute with torches and pitchforks. There was no way I could stick around with Barky making so much noise, so I ran down the steps and climbed into the sink again. I was aiming to crawl out, but my broken arm was still useless, and the window was too high
for me to manage without something taller to stand on. The lights were still off, so I had to fumble around looking for a chair or a stool to put in the sink. In the end, I found something else, and I decided to go upstairs instead and try my luck with Barky.

I'd once read a book by Jack London,
The Call of the Wild
. Actually, my dad read it to me. And we watched the movie on TV. The story is about a dog, Buck. In one scene, he gets thrashed by a man with a stick. Apparently, that's how you establish who's boss. Well, I figured there were lots of ways of showing someone who was boss. And whoever heard of a vampire running away from a dog?

Barky was still scratching at the door when I hit the top of the stairs. He was making more noise than a police siren. I turned the door handle and pushed it open with all the strength I could muster. It wasn't easy. I was carrying an awkward load in my one good arm. But even with all my heavy breathing, and Barky's barking, I could still hear his claws scraping over the tile floor as I forced him backwards. The door opened just enough for me to lean my shoulder in. That was all the space I needed.

I leaned over and dumped my awkward load onto the floor. It was a big bag of dog food, one of those fifty-pounders that old people buy because it probably saves them ten cents. Kibble spilled everywhere. About ten years' worth. And just like that, Barky was my best friend. I didn't even need a stick.

I waited behind the door while he filled his belly. I was feeling jealous. Without a blender and a bag of blood, I wasn't going to be eating anytime soon. And that meant my arm was going to be useless for a while.

After a minute, I stuck my head out and said hello. Barky ignored me completely. He wasn't eating the kibble so much as he was vacuuming it up with his mouth. This gave me a chance to look around. And that was when they hit me. Old memories. I guess it happened because my nerves were a little more settled, but a flood of things I'd
forgotten all about came back from some part of my brain I hadn't talked to in a long while.

I could hear my father's voice calling me for dinner. I remembered how he hummed or sang whenever he cooked. Just bits of songs. Never a whole one.

Other things came back. The sound of the back door slamming, all the times I'd gone crashing out into the yard. Coming in from the cold and kicking off wet winter boots. How my dad used to straighten them all the time so that they were always waiting in a row. The vent we dried our mittens on.

My stomach began to tighten.

I left Barky in the back hall stuffing his face. There was a door separating the back hall from the rest of the house, so I closed it to keep him from following me, then I made my way to the stairs. I didn't bother going into the living room or exploring the rest of the house. You would think it might have made me happy to be home after so many years, but it wasn't like that. I felt like an intruder. Or a ghost. Like my body was in the present, in the house as it was now, but my mind was stuck in the past, in my home as it used to be. It made me feel very lonely. Like my life was gone somehow.

At the ward, when I felt this way and got all quiet, it wasn't really because I didn't want to talk to anyone, it was because I only wanted to talk to my parents. My father, as I remembered him. And my mother, as I imagined her.

So I was talking to them as I climbed the stairs and turned down the hall to my old room. I opened the door and stared inside. It looked like a guest bedroom now. Right in the middle was a tall brass bed. It smelled dusty. Unused. I sat on the edge of it and looked out the window at our neighbour's house. Its two front windows loomed on either side above the door. As a kid, I thought it made the house look like a face. And there it was, staring at me again. It was the only familiar thing there.

More memories came back. I couldn't turn them off, even though I was tired and my head felt thick, like it was full of jelly. Mostly I remembered stories my father had read to me. When I couldn't sleep, I'd creep into his room across the hall. Sometimes he'd have fallen asleep watching the news, so the TV would still be on. Other times, after we'd been watching a movie, the room would still smell like buttered popcorn. I thought it was funny that he always cooked it in a pot on the stove even though we had a microwave.

I didn't sit still for very long. I was exhausted. I couldn't feed, so I decided the next best thing was to get some sleep, even though the sun wouldn't be up for a long time. I considered lying under the bed, but then I remembered my dad's closet. It was big, the kind you could walk right into. But more importantly, it had no windows, so when the sun came up it would be pitch black in there.

My dad's closet had always been off limits. One time, I snuck in just before Christmas to see if there were any presents hidden there, but I didn't find anything. Just the same, when he found out, he exploded. It was the only time I remember being afraid of him. He was furious.