Night Runner (5 page)

“He's too skinny to play you,” said Charlie. “You need that guy . . . what's his name? He played Robin Hood in the old movie.”

“Errol Flynn?”

“Yeah, he'd be perfect.”

“He was totally skinny,” I said. “Plus, he's dead.”

Charlie laughed. “Yeah, but you need someone like that.”

Then he told me how his classes had ended, and which couples in his grade were doomed to break up over the summer. I didn't know any of the people he was talking about, but I didn't mind. Then he said he had to go, but he'd call the next night and see if I could go with him.

“Try to find out what it takes to get a day pass,” he added.

“A day pass? What's that?”

He shook his head. “A day pass out of this place, you numbskull. A ‘get out of jail free' card. So you can come to the lake. Don't you want to show off your tan?”

He was backing out the door when he stopped.

“Man, I can't believe I almost forgot.” He stepped back in and closed the door. “I met a girl last Saturday. Suki.”

“That's her real name, Suki? It sounds like a motorcycle.”

“Her real name is Suzanne. God, you are such a dork. Anyway, she has a younger sister, Luna. I told her about you and she wants to meet you. I said you were cool, so you'd better spend the next few days ungeekifying yourself. And you have to find some way out of here.”

“How?” I asked.

“I don't know. Can't you chew through the wall or something?”
He opened the door again, then turned back and smiled. “It will be worth it.”

Then he left. And although he'd visited me many times before, this time was different because it was the first time he had ever told a girl about me, and it was the first time I'd ever heard of Luna.

I
t didn't take me long to fall asleep after Charlie was gone. I was good at that, falling asleep. It once happened while I was standing up in the shower. That's how it was with me. When my body needed rest, it was very insistent.

So, I fell asleep and had a dream about my father. This didn't surprise me. I once read that dreams occur because your mind has to reorganize itself when you're sleeping. So much happens during the day that you need to sort what is important from what is not. Some memories you keep close to the surface and others get buried. I think my mind was just trying to keep the memories of my father close to the top, where they belonged.

The dream started back at our old house on O'Carroll Avenue. It's right here in town. An old couple lives there now. They have a big RV in the driveway and the TV is always on. I could tell by the way the light changed in the room when I was running past. I thought
about stopping to visit them one night so I could tell them I used to live there, and see what it was like to be inside again, but in the end, I just couldn't do it.

In my dream my dad was cutting the grass. He saw me and stopped.

“Hey, Zack,” he said. His voice always had lots of energy in it. Like talking to me was the highlight of his day. And even though I was fifteen, and big for my age, my father was always a lot taller than me in my dreams. Like I was still a little kid. He reached down and mussed my hair.

“You getting better?” he asked.

“I feel better,” I said. “I feel strong.”

“You look strong,” he said. Then he scooped me up in his arms and asked to see my scars.

I pulled up the right pant leg of my scrubs and revealed the two circles of scar tissue.

My father ran his fingers over them. “They look almost better!” he said.

“They get fainter every year.”

He seemed pleased by this.

And then, just like that, we were inside the house. I was looking out the window at the snow on the tree branches. It must have been Christmas, because my grandparents were there, and so were Charlie and his dad. I called him Uncle Jake, even though he wasn't my real uncle.

I had lots of gifts to open, but I never got to because my father was suddenly missing. I looked around and caught a glimpse of his pant legs disappearing up the stairs. I ran after him and opened the door to his room, only when I got there it wasn't his room any more, it was an old Roman city. Right in the middle of it was his desk. He was writing in the journal he always kept. He looked at me for a few seconds. Then he closed his journal and stood.

“I have to go now,” he said.

I didn't want him to leave. I started to shake my head.

“You don't have to be afraid,” he said. “You're not alone.”

He waved me over to give me a hug, but the instant I moved towards him he froze. Then he started shouting at me.

“Get away! Run! Run!”

He was gone a second later. Buried in dust and wood and old square stones. I moved closer and looked down into the shadows. Two red eyes were staring back at me. Even though I knew the danger, I couldn't help myself. I had to move closer. And I knew what was going to happen. The shadow darted out on four legs, swift as thought, and bit me hard above the ankle. The pain was very real. When I woke up it was still hurting. And my father's words were loud in my ears.

“Run!”

Maybe I should have. Because there was a man in my room staring at me.

I
t took me a moment to figure out what was going on. I usually woke up if someone tried to come in my room, just as I had when Charlie came to visit.

The man was looking at me intently. He was wearing a suit that probably cost more money than an average person would want to spend on their car. It had pinstripes and a perfectly folded hanky in the pocket. His dark hair was perfect too, like a statue's, with just a little grey above each ear, and his face, which wasn't bad as faces go, looked strong enough to crush rock. He shifted so that his elbow was resting on the arm of the chair and his index finger and thumb supported the side of his face. He looked like the next president of planet Earth.

“Are you awake?” he asked.

I sat up and blinked and looked at the door.

“Would you like me to open that a crack? I didn't want anyone to disturb us.”

I shook my head. The room smelled a bit funny. Like cigars. It would have been nice to open the door and window to let some fresh air in, but the sun was still up. I didn't want any light spilling in from the hallway.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am your uncle, Maximilian.”

I looked at him carefully, and then I glanced over my shoulder at the reflection of him in the mirror on the door. He didn't look familiar. It made me wonder if he was lying. Maybe he was the person the old man on the motorcycle had warned me about.

“I don't have any uncles,” I said.

“Hmmm,” he said, rubbing the backs of his fingers over his chin. “I expected you might say as much.”

He stared at me for a few seconds as though he expected me to respond. When I didn't, he reached into the inside pocket of his suit and pulled out a card-sized envelope. He folded it open, then handed it to me.

There were several photos inside. The first was of a young girl and boy sitting on an old fence made of split logs, the kind you might see on a farm. I flipped to the next one, quickly. It was a picture of my father. He must have been on a dig, because he looked dusty and exhausted. His arm was draped over the shoulder of another man, who was more or less holding him up. The photo was a bit blurry, but it was clear enough for me to recognize the other man as the person now sitting in my room. He looked tired in the photo too, but he had a smile on his face like he'd just conquered Everest.

The last one was a group shot. It was from a wedding. I recognized my mother and father, the bride and groom, and Charlie's dad. My grandparents, too. Others I didn't know, mostly women. And this man, smiling again, standing beside my father.

I flipped back to the first photo and looked at it more closely. I'd never seen a picture of my mother as a girl, but this had to be her.
She was wearing a summer dress and her hair was in pigtails. I tried to focus on her face, but my eyes were watering, so it was hard to see.

“My sister's name was Dorothy May. She married your father on our parents' farm, where the two of us grew up together.”

I was still looking at the photo of my mother and the boy. It was him.

The man coughed gently several times, as though he was clearing his throat.

“You had no idea, did you?”

I shook my head.

“That means you don't have your father's journal.”

“No.”

“That's unfortunate. He would have wanted you to have it. And he would have wanted you to know about me. I haven't seen you since you were a baby, but I can see you are growing up to look much like him.”

I turned back to the picture of my father in his dusty clothes. I still didn't see the resemblance between the two of us, but it pleased me that others could. In the photo he was standing beside something that looked like a well. There was desert behind him. And large mountains. Or maybe it was rock. I wondered what he had been doing to get so tired.

I tucked the photos into the envelope and reached out to hand them back.

“No, they're for you,” he said. Then his eyes widened for a split second. He was looking at my necklace. It must have slipped from beneath my scrubs when I leaned forward.

“You're still wearing his necklace.” He smiled. Then his jaw clenched and I saw the muscles there tense for just a second. His eyes looked very sad. “My sister, your mother, had the matching piece. Did you know that?”

I nodded.

“It was a golden crescent that snapped to the side of the one you're wearing. It might be the most beautiful piece of jewellery I've ever seen.”

My father had said exactly the same thing.

“We have much to discuss, you and I.”

I didn't exactly know what to say. Under other circumstances, I probably would have jumped for joy to discover that I had an uncle—someone who could answer questions about my father and mother. But when a deranged motorcycle thief destroys your television and warns you that trouble is on the way, it sort of puts you on your guard. And I was still stuck in my dream. “You're not alone,” my father had said, but he'd also said, “Run.” And where had this guy been all these years? The moon?

“Are you really my uncle?” I asked.

He smiled. “Yes,” he said.

“Well . . . where have you been?”

He laughed, and I felt myself smile, too. The sound of laughter just does that sometimes.

“Where have I been? Why, I've been many places.”

“But I've been here for eight years.”

He looked at me and nodded. Then he covered his mouth and coughed quietly.

“I know. At least, I know that now. But I only discovered it recently. I was told eight years ago that you had died after lapsing into a coma. You can't imagine how shocked I was when I got the news you were still alive. Shocked, but very pleased.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. And yet it made sense. I
had
been in a coma eight years ago. It explained why he hadn't come looking for me.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“Good question, but the answer is complicated and probably not worth getting into right now because I can't stay long.”

He glanced down at his watch. The red numbers on my clock radio told me it was 7:53. The sun would be setting soon.

“Not tonight, anyway,” my uncle continued. “And we have more important things to talk about. Like your father, for instance.”

He paused. I didn't know what to say. Since I didn't want him to stop talking I kept my mouth shut. Nurse Ophelia had once told me that some people will talk forever if you let them. In this case, I didn't think that would be such a bad thing.

“You were with your father the day he died, I know. I hope it isn't painful if I speak frankly.”

It didn't bother me, and I told him so.

“Do you remember what happened?”

“Yes. He was crushed when a temple collapsed.”

My uncle nodded almost imperceptibly. He was looking at me intently again.

“That was the official version,” he said. “But that's not what really happened.”

“No?”

“No.”

He put his elbow back on the arm of the chair and propped the side of his face on his index finger and thumb again. This looked like his thinking pose.

“And you probably thought your father was an archaeologist.”

“He was,” I said. “I went with him on all his digs. After I was two, I did. After my mother died. And when he went to lecture at universities, I went with him then, too.”

“Of course,” my uncle said. “And the whole world would have agreed with you. Your father was an archaeologist. One of the very best. But he was much more than that. Much more.”

Here he leaned forward in his chair. I was sitting on the bed with my back against the wall and I found myself leaning towards him. He looked at the door and paused to cough again, then he turned back to me and spoke in a whisper.

“He was a great believer in truth, your father. He used to say that it longed to be discovered by people like him, people willing to dig it up. He loved archaeology and he admired archaeologists, just as he admired historians and police detectives and other people who search for the truth. But archaeology was a front, of sorts. It was a disguise. It allowed him to conduct his
real
work, the work he did with me.”

He looked at the door again and leaned in even closer. His eyes were intense now. Dark and focused.

“Your father was a vampire hunter,” he said.

W
ell, this guy had certainly come to the right place. He was nuts.

My uncle stared at me for a time. I guess he wanted me to take all of this in. My dad was a vampire hunter.