“Ciara, I want to go. I want to go right now.”
She furrowed her brow, like she was seeing him for the first time. “Patrick?”
“I’m serious, Ciara. Please. I can’t explain, and I’m sure you’ll understand more once we get some distance between us and this place. I want to go. We have to go.”
“Patrick, I’m tired. Too tired.”
“Ciara!”
“But okay. Just not right now. It’s the middle of the night.”
“It’s dawn.”
“You know what I mean. And what about Torsten and Simone?”
“I… I don’t know.”
She patted the bed beside herself. “Rest, yeah? For now. In the morning, the four of us, we’ll talk about it.”
“I just want to go!”
“All right. But in the morning. We’ll tell Torsten and Simone.”
“If they won’t come, we leave anyway, yeah? Ciara? Please?”
She gave him a crooked half-smile, but her eyes were sad. “Okay, Pat. Okay.”
He drew in a ragged breath and came back to the bed. As Ciara lay down again, he unclipped the two bumbags and tucked both safely just under his side of the bed. He didn’t think he’d sleep any more, but he was so very tired. He drifted in and out of fitful, restless dozing.
The winter sun was bright through the room when he woke. He jerked up, turned to see Ciara, but her side of the bed was empty. Looking at his watch, it was past noon. How had he slept so long? He got up, headed for the door, then paused. He fetched the two bumbags, put them both on as he had the night before, then zipped up his baggy black hoodie. It covered both well enough.
Downstairs a few stragglers from the previous night’s party loitered around on the couches and armchairs. No sign of the band or his friends. He went back upstairs and checked the siblings’ room, but it was empty, the bed neatly made. Or not even slept in.
Back downstairs he searched the kitchen and other parts of the house. Nothing. Back in the lounge room he approached the nearest reveller, a small blonde woman with goth makeup wearing a tight, short-skirted dress and Doc Martens.
“Have you seen my friends?”
“I dunno. Who are your friends?”
“What about Edgar? The rest of the band.”
“They went out. With that German pair and the hot Irish chick.”
“Went out where?”
“I don’t fucken know, mate. I’m not a cop.”
“What?”
The woman hauled herself up out of the chair and staggered off towards the front door. She let herself out. Patrick turned back to the others in the room and they were all getting up, some casting suspicious glances his way.
“Do any of you know where the band went?” Patrick asked. “Or my friends? Ciara, Torsten and Simone?”
“What are you, their fucken dad?” one tall, long-haired young dude asked. He laughed and left the house.
The others followed and in moments Patrick stood alone in the lounge room, surrounded by the litter of the night before. Bottles and glasses, ashtrays with spliff butts, someone’s shoes. Who had left without their shoes?
Patrick turned a slow circle. Alone in the house. His gaze drifted upwards. Well, not entirely alone…
The man who made me, shall we say.
Patrick began to tremble as thoughts that had been orbiting his mind at a distance began to coalesce. He remembered one of his favourite films, The Lost Boys. Grandpa, right at the end, casually taking a drink from the refrigerator. One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach: all the damn vampires.
Blind Eye Moon weren’t vampires, not exactly, but they were something similar, weren’t they? A week ago, Patrick would have scoffed at the idea, but the things he’d seen the last few days, the realisations he’d made. And they protected that old man upstairs.
The man who made me, shall we say.
Patrick could end all this, if that old man did hold the key to the power the band wielded. Ciara had said she’d talk in the morning with Torsten and Simone and they would leave. So where was she? She’d gone out with the band instead. Didn’t even wake him to invite him along. She’d said they would talk. She didn’t mean it, or didn’t remember. Either way, Edgar and his friends had a hold over her.
Patrick realised he was already heading towards the stairs. He stopped and went to the kitchen instead. He took the biggest carving knife from the wooden block by the stove and returned to the stairs, went up and headed along the hallway. His hand shook as it fell on the door handle but he clenched his teeth and pushed on. It was insane, but he had made a decision. Everything about this was insane. Even the fact that a band as good as Blind Eye Moon would play shitbox gigs like Monkton. From the moment they had struck those first chords, they had been putting spells on Patrick and his friends. But he saw through them. And he had a way out.
He mounted the narrow staircase leading up to the attic, breathing hard through his nose. Though his hands shook, his grip on the knife was unbreakable. The attic was lit from the large window at the end, the old man a collection of sticks under the covers of his bed. Bram, Patrick remembered. Edgar had called him Bram. Patrick braced himself, crept forward. He didn’t know what kind of strength to expect, but thought if he moved fast enough, it wouldn’t be an issue.
He was halfway across the large space when the old man stirred, turned to sit up. “Edgar? That you, boy?”
Bram was skeletally thin, long white hair in greasy tails around his skull-like head. His eyes were dark pools, those same black filament capillaries lost in the wrinkles of his cadaver-pale skin. His eyes were bloodshot, the pupils clouded over, but red like the band. In his shock before, Patrick hadn’t taken much in, beyond that flash of recognition. Now he saw it was indeed the man from the portrait, but so much older. He’d seemed elderly in the painting, now he was ancient.
Bram squinted as the covers fell from his bony shoulders. He wore stripy pyjamas. As Patrick got within a few metres, Bram said, “You again?”
The old man’s eyes widened and he hissed, opening his mouth wide to reveal half a dozen blackened teeth in red and bleeding gums. He lifted clawed hands up like he was about to cast a spell even as he surged from the bed with unnatural speed and agility. Patrick felt a harsh dragging on his chest. He remembered the dream when the creature had seemed to draw something out of him. He imagined the band drawing from his friends like that every night.
Let’s feed.
His breath left him and his vision blurred at the edges, like he was about to pass out. Bram continued to hiss, striding towards him, eyes flickering with red light like a fire burned in them.
Patrick hauled the knife up and it thunked into the old man’s toast rack chest as the distance between them closed. Bram coughed and wailed a high, thin sound. The sensation of drag eased so suddenly that Patrick nearly fell. He drove forward, pushed the old man back onto the bed. He pulled the knife out and slammed it down again. And again. Something warm spattered his face and the bed clothes blossomed with red stains. Bram’s pyjama top was soaked, the blood dark crimson, and he collapsed back.
The thin, keening wail faded and the old man lay still, head tipped back, red eyes staring sightlessly at the headboard. His mouth remained open in a silent scream.
Patrick staggered back, leaving the knife sticking up from Bram’s chest. He looked at his hands, saw them soaked in blood. “I did it!” he laughed, a thrill rushing through him. “I fucking did it!”
He staggered through the curtain into the old man’s bathroom and turned the taps on, washed his hands in the sink. A small mirror hung from the sloping roof above and he saw a scarlet spray of freckles across his face, even over his lips. He gagged and washed his face, again and again. Eventually he felt clean and thought for a moment he might vomit but swallowed it down.