Dark Season: The Complete Box Set (3 page)

Patrick

Why does my father suddenly talk about ghosts? Have they been here? Has he seen them? Does he know who they are, or why they are watching? Does he know what they want with me? If they are becoming more active, more curious, it worries me, especially coinciding with the first stage of the prophecy. I had not figured that the ghosts might be involved with the prophecy at all, yet here they are, seemingly reaching their grasp into the heart of whatever is happening. I am no longer entirely confident that I have all the information I need. I need to be more careful. The last thing I can deal with right now is another mistake.

Sophie

Patrick leads me down a long, dark tunnel. There are trailing roots hanging from the ceiling, the very lowest ends of trees that - above the surface - tower high into the sky. Down here, though, we have to brush past them as we make our way quietly through the darkness. Slowly, though, it starts to get lighter up ahead, but I don't want us to get to the end just yet. I want to talk to Patrick, but I don't know how to start. If this
is
a dream, it's not too shabby so far.

Walking steadily just ahead of me, Patrick is a complete mystery. There's so much to say, so much to ask, so much to tell him... so why do we both stay silent? He saved my life, but he doesn't seem to think that's worth talking about at all. As we come to the end of the long tunnel, I realize I can see the first light of morning breaking up ahead. Have I been down here all night?

"So," I say, just as Patrick turns and starts walking back into the tunnel. I watch as he walks away. "Hey!" I call after him. "You're a dream, aren't you?"

He stops and looks back at me.

"I don't mean you're a dream-
boat
," I add, correcting myself hastily. "I just mean... you're not real, are you? I'm dreaming you."

He stares at me.

"You know what I mean," I add.

He frowns.

"This isn't real," I say eventually. "No offense, but vampires aren't real. They're just not, which means I'm dreaming. Maybe I'm in a coma. Maybe I've got concussion. Whatever. It's all a dream." I pause for a moment. "Sorry. I guess that must suck for you. You'll stop existing when I wake up."

He narrows his eyes.

"Okay," I say, taking a deep breath and deciding to cut my losses. "It's been very nice dreaming about you, and I hope maybe you'll pop into my subconscious mind again some time, but for now..." I pause, trying to work out where I'm going with this train of thought. I really, really hope this
is
all a dream; if it's not, I'm making a huge fool of myself right now. "Thanks for everything," I say eventually.

He nods - just slightly; almost imperceptibly.

I nod too. It feels like a 'moment' where we're on the same wavelength. To be honest, it's the first time I really feel I've caught his attention. But then I say something stupid. Something so stupid, I still cringe when I think about it: "Can I see your teeth?"

He frowns.

"Sorry," I say. "It's just... if you're a vampire, I'd really like to see your teeth, before you go."

A hint of a smile crosses his lips for a moment, then he turns and walks away.

"Sorry," I call after him. "I didn't mean that!"

He doesn't respond. He just keeps walking and soon he's vanished into the shadows. So that's it, then. Goodbye forever?

I trudge out of the tunnel and find myself in a woodland clearing. I'm not entirely sure where I am, but I'm pretty sure that I can follow the sounds of a distant road and get back to civilization. As I start to walk, though, I can't help thinking about what I said.
Can I see your teeth?
Well, that was dumb. Seriously:
Can I see your teeth?
For fuck's sake, he must think I'm a complete idiot; he must think I'm a stupid little kid with a fetish for obviousness. Even though he and I look the same age, I feel so much smaller and younger right now. I guess I've just blown all my credibility.

Hearing a creaking sound nearby, I stop and turn around, half expecting to find that Patrick has followed me. Instead, a deer walks past. A real, actual deer. In the early morning sun, its coat glistens with dew as it sniffs the ground, and then it looks over at me and - I swear - it almost smiles as it locks its eyes on mine with a majestic stare that hints at some greater understanding. For a moment, I can't help feeling that this deer understands more about the world than I'll ever know.

"What are
you
looking at?" I ask, and trudge off toward home.

Patrick

I hang back. I don't want her to see me, but I have to make sure she gets home safely: partly because I'm concerned she might still be a target, and partly because it's as close as I can get to spending time with her right now. No matter how much I would like to see her, I have to keep away, at least for a while.

When she reaches her home, I wait for her to go inside and then I quietly make my way into the garden. Immediately, I know he's been here. I can detect his scent; he's been here more than once. That's okay. I expected as much. Benjamin and his men are probably all over this town, but I'm certain they'll hold back for now. They're probably just watching and waiting to see what I'll do.

One thing's for certain, though. Sophie
is
the girl from the prophecy. I can feel it in my bones.

Sophie

I push the front door open as quietly as possible. It's barely 7am and I really don't feel like talking to anyone, but my efforts are in vain: my mother is sloping through the hallway in her dressing gown, with a morning milkshake in her hand. She turns to look at me, but she doesn't say anything and instead she just hauls her bulk back up the stairs and shuts the door to her bedroom. Somewhere else in the house, my little brother Todd is doing something that sounds destructive, but if my mother doesn't care - and she never does - I don't see why I should. So I go to my room.

My bedroom door is open again, letting the smell of chip fat waft in from the rest of the house. I shut the door and go straight to my desk, and I immediately pull open the top drawer: the $150 I'd stashed in there is gone. I slam the drawer shut, filled with anger at the knowledge that not only did my mother brazenly come and take my money, but also that there's nothing - nothing! - I can do about it, other than start again and this time find a better hiding place. A year's worth of saved money, gone.

I sit on the end of the bed and for the first time in nearly a day I find myself in complete silence, alone, and lost in my thoughts. I think of Vincent this morning, telling me that my parents would be worried about me being out all night. Cute idea, but he was dead wrong. At that moment, I hear something bumping about in the room above my bedroom: sounds like my mother is slamming things around again. I'd like to think she can't possibly be drunk before midday, but I wouldn't bet any of my non-existent money on it. I think about calling my father, but while it's 7am here, it's only 5am in his time-zone. It seems cruel to wake him up so early just to bitch and moan over the phone, even if I know he wouldn't complain. He never complains. I miss him.

I lost my phone last night, so I grab my laptop and type out a quick message to Shelley, just to double-check she got home okay. She replies almost instantly:

NO WORRIES. STILL AT CALLUM'S. WANT VODKA? SEE YOU TONIGHT?

Somehow, I raise a smile. Good old Shelley: up all night, drunk out of her mind, probably on all sorts of drugs, but still making sure her spelling and grammar are perfect. I once watched her when she was high as a kite on drugs, but no matter how wasted she got, she was still squinting and concentrating as she tried to find how to insert a semi-colon in a text message to her dealer. People like Shelley make mornings like this more bearable; even when they're far away on the other side of town. I type back:

MAYBE.

Notice the full stop? Shelley would slaughter me if I missed that off the end. I shut the laptop and curl up on the bed, with the aches and pains from last night really starting to kick in. It feels like someone rolled me up into a ball and then threw me into the middle of a giant pinball machine; it's like I almost died, even if I don't seem to have any obvious cuts or marks. I grab a small mirror from the bedside table: looking at my reflection, I'm shocked by how healthy I look. What's going on here?

Taking a deep breath, I start wondering when I'm going to wake up. I'm clearly still in the dream, unless somehow I woke up while I was walking home and my dream somehow segued into real life. It's tempting to think that Patrick and Vincent were real, but I'm certain they were a product of my feverish mind. Either that, or I happened to bump into two absolute lunatics in the forest. Still, I don't understand how my injuries from last night could have healed so fast. I must be dreaming. There's no other explanation.

Still, I can't stop thinking about Patrick. Questions race through my mind so fast, I don't have time to think about any of them. Tragically, he was by far the most interesting and attractive guy I've met for a long time. Did my subconscious mind create him, purely so it could torture me. I could never get a guy like that. The guys in Dedston are more my type: dull, brain-dead and mostly kinda ugly. Seriously, why would a hot, moody vampire hang around in a town like this? Sighing, I close my eyes and try to force myself to wake up from this dream. Whatever's happened to me, wherever I am, I just want to get back to reality.

At some point, with all these thoughts swirling above me, I fall fast asleep. Well, that's what it
feels
like, anyway. I guess you can't fall asleep in a dream, but eventually I wake up and find myself still dressed and still on my bed. Is it possible that I fell asleep while I was already dreaming, and now I've woken up and I'm
still
in the dream. Sitting up and rubbing my eyes, I realize that all these contortions are starting to make my head hurt. Taking a deep breath, I reach up and pinch my left arm. The pain's real enough, which I guess means I'm awake right now. Whatever happened before, I'm definitely awake
now
.

Heading through to the hallway, I find that it's gone lunchtime. Just as I'm about to go into the kitchen, I hear the doorbell ring. I'm tired and I don't want to talk to anyone, but I figure the person - whoever he or she is - can probably already see me through the front door's frosted glass. Sighing, I walk over and open the door.

"I'm so sorry," says the man standing on the porch, speaking with a thick southern accent. He seems just as surprised as I am. "I didn't want to disturb you, but..." He looks rather sorry for himself, and totally out of place. Dressed in a big puffy green jacket, blue jeans, and a white sunhat, he looks more ready for an early morning fishing trip than door-stepping me in suburban Dedston. I can't see much of his face, because he's wearing huge orange-tinted sunglasses. When he smiles, however, his tobacco-stained teeth and browned, dirty lips tell me this is the kind of guy who does most of his work on a bar stool. He looks pretty ridiculous, like a cross between Steve Buscemi and Hunter S. Thompson, the kind of guy you'd avoid wherever you had the misfortune to encounter him.

He looks down at a notebook clutched in his left hand. "Are you... Sophie Hart?"

"Who wants to know?"

He smiles, and reaches out a hand. "Dexter Logan,
Dedston Gazette. You might have seen the front page a couple of months ago with a story about the world's largest ice cream. That was me." He seems faintly proud.

"You're the world's largest ice cream?"

"No," he says, seeming a little deflated. "I wrote about it. But don't worry." He smiles. "You know, I wrote another piece about a cat stuck in a tree about a month back, had to be rescued with a ladder."

"You rescued it?"

He pauses. "Well, no. But I wrote about it." He smiles. "Never mind. I'm just a guy from the paper." He holds out a press card that I don't really bother to look at.

"Is this about anything in particular?" I ask, feeling kind of sleepy.

"Yes," he says. "Hang on." He starts searching through his pockets for something, pulling out all sorts of crap - old tissues, matchboxes, ancient mobile phones, lint, pens - but apparently not finding what he's after. "Young people these days just aren't interested in local news," he says. "Thank you, internet! But look, or rather listen, I just wanted to see if you're okay?" He stops looking through his pockets, apparently unable to find what he was looking for, and he fixes me with a stare that's a little more focused than I expected. "After last night. Are you doing okay?"

It takes me a moment to work out what he could be referring to, and then I become a little concerned. "Okay after what?" I ask cautiously.

"The mugging," he says. "At the ATM up on West Street last night? How are the bruises? Looked like you took a real pounding there. Lucky you got away."

I definitely don't want to be having this conversation. "I think you have me confused with someone else," I say.

"No," he says. "I don't think so. The surveillance video footage from the ATM was very clear. That's how I... you're Sophie Hart, right? So, hey,
are
you?"

"Am I what?"

He smiles. "Are you full of heart?" He launches into a fit of sniffing, and it takes me a moment to realize this is his way of laughing. Just a torrent of little sniffs, with barely any other movement on his face. "Sorry," he says, "you must get that a lot. But seriously, I'd be interested in talking to you about the mugging. Local crime, that kind of story. I could guarantee you a spot on page 5 or 6 of the paper next week, maybe even page 2 - actually, no, forget I said anything about page 2. I wouldn't want to get your hopes up. But..." He winks. "Maybe, baby. You get me? You'd be doing me a favor, and I'd be doing you a favor."

"Sorry," I say.

"Look at this," he says, reaching into a shoulder bag and pulling out some photos. He hands one to me. "Recognize this face?"

I look at the photo. It's Patrick. Unmistakably, undoubtedly him, staring out of what looks like a very old photo. The image is kind of faded yellow, like an old Civil War picture, and Patrick has the same eyes that those soldiers have in old photos. It looks like something from another era.

"That's an old photo," says Dexter. "Very old."

"Thank you for your concern," I say. "But -"

"No problem," he says, interrupting. "I'm just trying to help. Wouldn't want another Jessica Harper or Rose Tisser case in town, would we?"

"Who?"

"Can I come in?" he asks. "I think we should talk about what happened to you last night."

"I was just going out," I lie, figuring I really need to get out of this conversation. It's as if my dreams are starting to bleed through into reality.

"You're not wearing shoes," he points out.

"Sorry," I say. "I really have to go." With that, I push the door shut and head through to the kitchen.

"If you change your mind," he calls after me, "you can contact me at the Dedston Gazette! The name's Dexter Logan! I think we can really help each other out, if you know what I'm saying!"

Ignoring him, I grab a carton of milk from the fridge and pour myself a glass. There's something about that Dexter Logan guy that really creeped me out. For one thing, I'm certain I'm awake now, yet Dexter was going on about Patrick and the mugging at the ATM last night. For another thing, I don't get how this Dexter guy could know what happened to me at all. Taking a swig of milk, I try to work out how all that stuff with Patrick could have been real. Eventually, I remind myself that it's impossible. Whatever happened last night, I guess it's beyond my comprehension right now, but there's no way I'm going to start believing in vampires. I'm just not that kind of person.