Night People

by J L Aarne

  Wyatt took his hand away from Silas’s shoulder and stared down at the water lapping close to his feet. His pulse was racing because they were skirting around the very thing Wyatt had been wondering about for days. The very thing he had been thinking but dared not ask Silas the truth about because he was afraid of the answer. It was impossible, but of all the impossible things he had been thinking lately, it also made the most sense.

  He swallowed, took a breath and in a rush asked, “Are you John Bledsoe?”

  “No,” Silas said. He glanced over at Wyatt, saw the fear on his face and said again, “No. Is that what you thought? How could I be John when John is the lock? John’s the lock that is breaking now. I couldn’t be John.”

  “He’s breaking,” Wyatt repeated. He didn’t know precisely what that meant when it came to locks of John Bledsoe’s type, but just the phrase applied to a person in such a way made his stomach turn over in disgust. “He can’t break.”

  “Oh, believe me, he can. He will if another isn’t found soon. He’s strong—or he was—but it’s been four hundred years.”

  “How do we do that? Find another one?”

  “I don’t think we have to look very far, do you?”

  Wyatt stared at the toes of his shoes like he meant to burn holes in them with his eyes. Silas meant him, Wyatt was sure of it, and he didn’t know what he was supposed to feel about that or what he was supposed to say.

  He heard himself ask, “Who are you?” The question seemed to come from someone else, but it was his voice asking it. “Who are you really?”

  “That’s not as easy to answer as you might think,” Silas said.

  Wyatt’s fear began bubbling into anger. He tried to reel it in, but he heard himself say roughly, “Just answer the goddamn question, Silas.”

  “It’s complicated,” Silas said.

  “No, it isn’t,” Wyatt said. “It’s simple. Who are you?”

  Silas sighed and raked his hands through his hair. He had left it down and the spray from the water had dampened it, turned it a little darker. It hid his face until he pushed it back to look Wyatt directly in the eyes as he answered. “I used to be Richard Warwick.”

  Chapter 20

  Wyatt ran. He ran up the beach, past Silas’s big black truck and the red and white speedboat, past a native man and a boy carrying fishing equipment, past a blue minivan full of children pulling into the parking lot. He ran up the hill and along the side of the highway without even thinking about the cars speeding toward him or passing him by. His mind was a blank of static and white noise and fear.

  Silas is Richard Warwick.

  The thought blazed in his brain like a gasoline fire along with John Bledsoe’s words.

  Mr. Warwick is possessed by a skin-walker.

  If Silas was Richard Warwick, then he wasn’t human. If Silas was Richard Warwick, then he was a fleshgait, not a man. Silas, his friend, was not even a person, he was a monster.

  Wyatt felt betrayed and tricked. He wished that one thing, just one thing in his life would be exactly what it seemed to be. He couldn’t trust anyone, and he had trusted Silas because Silas was a warrior, a vanguard, he stood between the monsters and the men and he was Wyatt’s friend and his teacher. Except that was a lie and all along he had been one of them and Wyatt couldn’t understand how he had been so stupid that he hadn’t noticed it. He had honestly entertained the possibility that Silas was John Bledsoe because John, though he had lived hundreds of years before and it was impossible, had been one of the good guys. He had been like Wyatt and he had lost everything, but he had saved the world. He could have accepted it if Silas had been John.

  Richard Warwick though… Richard Warwick had not even been Richard Warwick at the end, so who was Silas really?

  Wyatt had gone a mile from the beach when his head began to clear, and he looked around and realized where he was. He wasn’t that far from home, less than ten miles, but if Silas came after him, he would overtake him in that big truck of his in no time at all.

  Wyatt took his phone out and called his sister. He half expected her not to answer and to refuse to come get him even if she did, but she picked up on the second ring.

  “Where are you?” Kat asked.

  He told her and added, “Hurry up, okay?”

  “What’s the hurry? It’s the middle of the day. There can’t be anything after you in the middle of the day.”

  “You think so?” Wyatt asked. “Just hurry, please?”

  He put his phone back in his pocket and walked a little faster, expecting Silas to pull along beside him, but he didn’t. He had let Wyatt go after telling him his great big secret and Wyatt didn’t understand it. Why tell him at all? Then, once he’d told him, why let him live? It didn’t make any sense.

  Except he had read the journal. John Bledsoe had figured it out and when he’d confronted the thing that had once been Richard Warwick, it hadn’t denied it. It had told him the truth, at risk to its own life, and then it had helped John.

  But why would a fleshgait help a night man like John Bledsoe stop the Midgard Serpent from rising? They were creatures of chaos, Silas had told Wyatt so himself. Didn’t that mean they served the serpent, who embodied chaos itself? Didn’t that mean that Silas served the serpent?

  It should have, but it didn’t feel that way.

  John Bledsoe’s journal had ended without saying how he intended to stop the serpent; how he meant to become the lock. What it had said was that the thing that was Richard Warwick meant to help him, and the serpent had been stopped for four hundred and eight years, so it could be assumed that he had kept his word.

  A horn honking on Wyatt’s left got his attention and he looked up to see Kat’s silver Subaru pulled off on the shoulder of the road just ahead. He picked up his pace and looked in the open window to see Kat, her mirror-lens sunglasses lowered on her nose so she could look at him over the top of them.

  She grinned at him and said, “Get in.”

  Wyatt got in and buckled his seatbelt.

  “What are you doing way out here anyway?” Kat asked. “You don’t swim.”

  “I can swim,” Wyatt said.

  “Yeah, but you don’t, so what are you doing out here?” she asked. “And how did you get out here without a car? Did you completely lose your shit and take the bus?”

  “I came with Silas,” Wyatt said.

  “Oh,” Kat said. “So, you had a fight? Sorry.”

  From the tone of her voice, he understood that she thought the fight between Silas and Wyatt had been a lover’s spat. He rolled his eyes and looked out the window. “I’m not sleeping with him,” he said.

  “Really?” Kat asked. “Why not?”

  “Because I’m me.”

  It explained his reasoning perfectly as far as he was concerned, but Kat did not agree.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” she demanded like she was gearing up to defend his honor. “You’re cute. You’ve got those big googly blue eyes. Why wouldn’t some hot older guy want to bang you?”

  “It’s never really come up,” Wyatt said dryly.

  She frowned and took her eyes off the road for a few seconds to glance his way. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “We’re friends. That’s all,” Wyatt said. He realized even as the words left his mouth that they were still true. He was angry, and he was scared, but whatever else Silas was, he was still his friend. He hadn’t done anything to change that yet. “We’re friends,” he repeated.

  “Okay,” Kat said. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” Wyatt said. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

  “No problem. I mean… I guess I kinda owed you,” she said. “Hey, Wyatt?”

  “Yeah?”

  “About the other day at your place…”

  “Don’t apologize. You were upset. It’s fine.”

  “I know, but I was a bitch.”

  “You were, but it’s okay.”

  “Okay.” She shifted in her seat and s
ent him a quick, nervous look again. “Can I tell you something?”

  “Sure,” Wyatt said.

  “Promise not to freak out?”

  “No, but, you know, I’ve been freaking out a lot lately, so it’s fine. I promise not to yell though, if that helps.”

  “Okay.” She took a breath and said, “I’m pregnant.”

  Wyatt turned away from gazing out the window at the passing scenery and cars and stared at her. “You are?”

  “Yes. I’m pregnant. Six weeks, my doctor says.”

  “I’m sorry?” Wyatt said uncertainly.

  She reached over and gave him a gentle shove. “No, you idiot, you’re supposed to say congratulations.”

  Genuinely baffled, he asked, “Why would I say that?”

  Wyatt didn’t like babies in a vague way that meant he didn’t think about them much. He had always thought, from everything she had ever said or done, that Kat disliked them too, probably even more than he did. She had always seemed disgusted by the idea of making one herself and had never expressed any maternal desire to have one of her own. Now she was having one and she was practically bouncing in place in her excitement about it and he did not understand why.

  “I haven’t told anyone else yet,” Kat said. “I thought you’d be happy for me.”

  He had to censor himself as he had never done before with his sister because his immediate response was, Why the hell would you ever think that? Didn’t she know him at all anymore? If Kat had come to him even a year ago and told him that she was pregnant, he would have offered to go with her to the clinic to have it aborted. She might have laughed, even if she meant to keep it, but things were different now and he knew instinctively that if he made such an offer, even in jest, she would be offended and angry and she would not laugh.

  He also understood that by telling him about her pregnancy first, it was her small way of trying to connect with him again and get back to how they used to be. It wasn’t her fault. She was the same; Wyatt was the one who had changed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “If you’re happy, then I’m happy for you.”

  She smiled at him. “Thank you,” she said.

  They were almost to Wyatt’s place when she asked, “Are you still seeing Dr. Graham?”

  “Why?” Wyatt asked.

  “Well, nothing, only… I talked to Mom a couple of days ago and she said that she called the house asking about you.”

  Wyatt sighed. “No, I’m not seeing her anymore,” he said. “She shouldn’t have done that. She shouldn’t be calling the house asking about me.”

  “She’s probably just worried about you,” Kat said. “Are you seeing someone else?”

  “No.”

  “But, Wyatt, you can’t just—”

  “Kat, don’t,” Wyatt said. “It’s none of her business. I’m sorry she bothered them.”

  “It’s not a bother to them. They’re worried about you, too,” Kat said.

  “Well, they don’t need to be. I’m fine,” he said.

  “Look, when you just stop going to therapy when you’ve been going to therapy since you were in kindergarten, your therapist is going to be worried about that,” Kat said.

  “I know,” Wyatt said. “But I’m fine. There’s no law that says I can’t stop going to therapy, is there?”

  “I’m not trying to fight with you, you know,” Kat said defensively. “I’m really not.”

  “Then let’s stop talking about it,” Wyatt said.

  “But, Wyatt—”

  “Please.”

  Kat chewed on her bottom lip and looked unhappy, but she said, “Okay, fine.”

  “Thank you,” Wyatt said.

  When they got to Wyatt’s building, Kat parked outside and got out of the car. He didn’t tell her not to come inside, so she went with him.

  The apartment was cleaner than it had been the last time she visited. The coffee table was clean, the sword put away, the dishes all washed and stacked in the cupboards, the bed was made, the carpet vacuumed, the television and all the furniture dusted. There weren’t even any clothes dropped on the floor or tossed over the back of a chair anywhere in sight.

  “Did you hire a maid?” Kat asked.

  “I started leaving bread and half-and-half out for the gnomes,” Wyatt said. “They like the white bread best. It’s like cake.”

  Kat laughed, thinking he was joking. He laughed with her because he wasn’t joking and it was ridiculous and it was his life now. Gnomes cleaning his home in return for room and board was one of the most normal things about it.

  Kat went into the kitchen and knelt too look under the long table in there. She frowned and walked back into the living room. “Where are Benson and Hedges?”

  “Oh, they…” He couldn’t tell her the truth about that either and the lies were starting to pile up. Wyatt could see the pile in the future growing exponentially higher and heavier to carry, but there was nothing else for it. “They’re at the vet. Benson was sick and then Hedges started getting sick, so I took them. They’ll be there overnight but the doctor said it was probably nothing. Just a cold or something like that. I didn’t even know cats could catch colds, but apparently they can.”

  As he watched the look of concern appear on her face, he realized he had been waiting for it. He knew her so well. He also understood as he watched the expression appear and fade that the lie, though a small one, would necessitate a call from him in the future where he would be distraught over the unexpected deaths of his pets.

  “You never asked me about the father,” Kat said.

  She perched herself on the arm of the sofa and looked at him, waiting.

  “The father…?”

  “Of my baby.”

  Oh. Right.

  “Do you want me to ask you about him?”

  Kat looked puzzled, then shook her head. “You know, sometimes I think you’re hiding things from me,” she said. “Important things. I can’t figure out what could be that important or why you would hide it, but it’s a feeling I get when I’m talking to you now.”

  “A new feeling,” Wyatt said. It was not a question. “You didn’t feel that way before.”

  “Wyatt, I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to do except to say I’m sorry,” Kat said.

  “I know,” Wyatt said. “I’m sorry, too.”

  “Why do I think we’re not sorry for the same thing?” Kat asked.

  She didn’t expect an answer from him though and stood up to leave. “His name’s Brian. I like him,” she said as she crossed to the door. “It wasn’t some one-night stand sort of thing, if that’s what you were thinking.”

  “Kat, I wasn’t,” Wyatt said. “I’m happy for you.”

  “Yeah,” she said. She opened the door, then stood there. “You know, I just want things to be normal again. I didn’t know you’d so mad about it. What I said. I didn’t think about it at all, it just… came out.”

  She was talking about the night his car broke down. She thought it was all about that night in November and that made sense, from her perspective, because he didn’t talk to her anymore like he used to. He couldn’t; he had too many secrets.

  “Hey,” he said. “I know, okay? I forgave you for that a long time ago. People say shit. Because they’re stressed or tired or not really thinking. It happens. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I just thought…” She shrugged. “I thought you hated me.”

  “Well, I don’t,” he said. “Things probably won’t ever be normal again. I mean… we’re different. You’re having a baby. But, you know, what the fuck is normal?”

  She smiled at him. “Yeah,” she said. “I love you. I’ll see you later.”

  “Okay,” Wyatt said.

  Then she was gone, and he felt both relieved and guilty at her leaving.

  The apartment was so empty without Benson and Hedges twining between his legs, chirping at him to feed them and purring in his lap. He sat down on the sofa and it was just him, alone, sitting on the sof
a with all the things that worried him demanding his attention.

  His biggest worry was Silas. Silas was a monster, but Silas was also his only real friend. He thought there had to be something he should do about it, but what? Kill him? He wasn’t a killer and Silas, whatever he was, had never harmed him or threatened him, he’d just lied to him. It should have been impossible because he couldn’t know the way a fleshgait saw the world, but he tried to put himself in Silas’s position and understand why. Once he did that, it was simple.

  He had lied to him because he lied to everyone. He was Silas Delano and he had probably been Silas Delano a hell of a lot longer than he had ever been Richard Warwick. No one knew what he was, and his life had undoubtedly depended on that fact for centuries. He hadn’t trusted Wyatt because he didn’t trust anyone, and Wyatt was a night person and night people sometimes killed fleshgaits. Even Silas sometimes killed fleshgaits.

  Which only raised more questions. Questions Wyatt couldn’t answer merely by putting himself in Silas’s shoes for a few minutes.

  He knew what he was going to have to do if he wanted to make sense out of it or accept it. There was one person other than Silas who might be able to shed some light on things and give him a little peace of mind, so he decided to pay him a visit.

  Wyatt drove out to his parents’ house with the radio cranked up so he wouldn’t have to think. He’d called his mother before he left just to make sure they would be home and she had sounded like herself. She had even sounded cheerful when she said they would be so happy to see him, come on over.

  Something was wrong. He couldn’t put his finger on any exact reason why he knew this, but he did. Maybe it was something in her voice, something under the uplifted cheer. Maybe it was how eager she sounded at the prospect of his visit. Maybe it was just a feeling, but he knew.

  He did not want to see Aaron Sinclair (whom he had privately started thinking of as “the Dad Thing”) but he would know more about fleshgaits than Wyatt did. There was no one better qualified to tell him what he needed to know. After his last visit with him in the garage, Wyatt had stayed away. He hadn’t seen his mother in more than a month. The Dad Thing made his skin crawl and when he was near it, he couldn’t decide if he was more terrified of it or angry with it. He couldn’t sit near it and call it Dad knowing the truth and he didn’t know what, if anything, to do about it. He had considered telling Silas about it at first, but something had always stopped him.