And Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked...
And Esau came out to greet him, and embraced him,
and fell upon his neck...
-- Genesis 33: 1,4

"We don't take guests after dark."

Alan Milner let out his breath in an exasperated sigh. "I have a reservation. I told you, my car broke down outside of Maitland -- "

"And I told you: We don't take guests after dark."

The girl behind the screen door might have been beautiful under other circumstances. She was slight without being skinny, her face was pale and delicate, her bright green eyes stood in striking contrast with a curly cloud of reddish-brown hair. These were not, however, other circumstances, and Alan was not charmed.

She was holding a large wooden knife above her head. It was fashioned rather crudely, but Alan had no doubt that it could do murderous damage, and the girl didn't look like she would hesitate to use it.

"I'm tired," he said reasonably (he hoped). "I've been driving all day, and I've walked the last seven miles. I just want a place to rest."

"Where did you drive from?

"New York. The City. I work for a news show. In Touch?" He searched her face for some kind of recognition, but it held none. "I came to do some footwork on a story on Banes Farm -- " He noticed her raise the knife a bit higher " -- and I need to get some sleep before I go there."

"Why don't you have a film crew with you?"

Alan closed his eyes and leaned against the doorframe. "I told you. I'm doing the preliminary footwork. If the story is worth it, my boss will send a crew."

The girl's eyes narrowed, but he could see that he was starting to break through the haze into some kind of reality.

"Can you pass through the door?" she asked.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Can you open the door and come through it without my inviting you?"

"Do you plan to stab me if I do?"

"I plan to try if you can't."

Alan shook his head wearily and opened the screen door. He stepped into the kitchen. The girl stepped back. She lowered the knife, but kept it in a tight grip. "Welcome to Aunt Millie's Bed and Breakfast," she said stiffly. "In the future, you will kindly remember to be in before nightfall. No guests may visit you after dark. My name is Eloise Chernowski. I'll show you to your room."

Alan followed her up a rickety staircase and into a narrow hallway, where she took a key from her pocket. She opened a door near the end of the hall. The room was small, but well-kept, with a braided rug on the floor and a rocking chair near the window. A large crucifix hung over the bed.

"Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?" Eloise asked.

"Could you possibly remove the crucifix?" he asked with a tentative smile.

Eloise's eyes narrowed into slits. "Why?"

"I'm Jewish," he explained. "It makes me uncomfortable. Kind of a bad history, you know?"

Eloise frowned, a bit nonplussed. "Please take it down and hand it to me," she said after a moment's thought.

"Alright." Alan took a deep breath to control his frustration, and took the crucifix off the wall. He noticed that Eloise visibly relaxed when he actually touched it.

"I'll see if I can find some Jewish things tomorrow," she said. "We've never had a Jewish guest before. This isn't exactly Main Street Manhattan."

"It's quite alright," Alan said. "I'm not really religious."

"It wasn't an offer, Mr. -- ?"

"Milner."

"Mr. Milner. It wasn't an offer; it was a statement." She looked around the room. "For tonight, I'll put a Bible on the bedstand. A Bible is okay, isn't it? Even if it's got our scriptures at the end?"

Alan, who hadn't entered a synagogue in the ten years since his Bar Mitzvah and considered any religion so much superstitious hogwash, gave her a faint smile and said, "Sure. That's fine."

He awoke in the darkness, sitting up in bed and clasping the Bible with both hands. His arms were stretched out in front of him, placing the Book directly in his line of sight, blocking out the window. His heart was beating quickly, and he was gripped by terror. He tried to lower his arms, and found that he could not. He had been dreaming of something, outside his window, wanting to come in.

Ridiculous, he thought. A nightmare. I'm allowing myself to be manipulated by my own subconscious. Grow up. He tried to lower his arms again, but something inside him wouldn't allow it. He felt his fingers digging into the cover of the Bible, and heard himself frantically whispering a prayer in Hebrew. He didn't know what the words meant.

God, Alan, why not just by an amulet like Grandma's have it over with?

The fact that some part of his mind seemed to think this a perfectly reasonable idea frightened him more than whatever was outside the window.

There is nothing outside that window. This is a dream.

Of course. That was all. Alan made himself believe that.

He made himself believe it so strongly, actually, that he decided it was unnecessary to check.

The little boy stared at him frankly across the breakfast table.

"Hello," Alan said.

The boy blinked.

"Hello, I'm Alan Milner. And you are?"

Eloise entered. "Breakfast is served at seven-thirty. You're early." She swatted the back of the boy's head. "Evan, you're being rude. Stop staring. Mr. Milner, this is my brother, Evan."

"We've met." He leaned back. "Where is Aunt Millie?"

"Aunt Millie died three years ago," Eloise answered simply. Now I run the place."

"How old are you?"

"Almost twenty-one."

Twenty-one, he thought. Two years younger than he was, and running her own business. He wondered if she sometimes felt like an imposter (as he often did), as if, at any moment, someone might stand up and cry Fraud! or demand to know why a child had been placed in a responsible position. "What about your parents?" he asked.

"My father is dead. My mother is at Banes Farm." She turned away and started breakfast, rattling the pans much more than she needed to.

"Are you really going to Banes Farm?" Evan asked, wide-eyed.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I work for a television show. A news show, in New York City. They want me to take a look at Banes Farm, because it's been around for a long time, and they want to know why."

"That's stupid. Anyone could tell you why."

"So tell me."

"Because people at Banes Farm never die." Even traced his finger along the edge of the table for awhile, then looked up. "Eloise says you're Jewish. Are you really?"

"Yes."

"I never met anyone Jewish before. Did I, Eloise?"

"No. Now stop being rude. Mr. Milner is a guest." She put down the breakfast plates.

Osininka County, New York, was balanced precariously on the northernmost rim of Appalachia; it had little of the proud (if somewhat eccentric) culture, but most of the economic problems. The Naho River slashed across its easter border, effectively cutting it off from the rest of New York state. A few miles to the north and west, the land dropped off sharply to the Great Lakes plain, and the lake culture of Buffalo and Rochester set in, but it didn't reach the little enclave. In short, it was a landlocked island. Near the eastern edge of this island, sitting on a high plateau near the town line between Ravensthorpe and Carlisle, was the Banes Farm collective.

Alan got out of his car and looked across the field. A small farmhouse stood at the far end of a dirt road. After last night's disaster, the mechanic who had towed his car back to Aunt Millie's early that morning had warned him not to give it too many bumps. He decided to walk. He locked his car, feeling foolish out here in the middle of nowhere but unable to break the habits of a lifetime -- and anyway, the very emptiness of the place made him jumpy. He had a sense of... other. It wasn't a threatening feeling, exactly, but it made Alan somehow uneasy, not quite in complete control. At home, in the City, he had sometimes had this sense, but it was normally drowned out in the noise. Here, it was...

Stop it. Just stop it. Last night's nightmare had been far enough out of line; Alan would not let a case of nerves revert him into some kind of childhood paranoia. He was simply not used to the quiet, that was all.

He walked west toward the house, and his shadow was cast long ahead of him. It made him feel tall. He had reached his full height at a none-too-impressive five-eight. His mother still held out hope; she was always telling him that some men keep growing until their mid-twenties. Alan himself didn't care that much, but he did take inordinate pleasure in his rare moments of feeling tall.

It took him fifteen minutes to reach the farmhouse, although it had seemed only a little set back from the road. He went up the weather worn porch steps and knocked on the door. There was no answer. There was, however, a note on the door.

"Mr. Milner," it read, "I'm sorry you came all the way out here, just to find us gone, but there was work to do. If you come back around nine-thirty tonight, we'd love to talk to you. Yours, Daniel Salamone, Banes Farm Collective."

A chill went down Alan's spine, and for no reason at all, he felt like running.

When he got back to Aunt Millie's, he found Evan and Eloise in his room.

"Excuse me?" he said.

"Hello, Mr. Milner," Eloise answered. She was busy nailing a small board to the foot of the bed. Evan, with an old wood burning kit, was writing something on another. Alan was surprised at first to see that the letters were Hebrew, but since they had expressed such an interest in "Jewish things," the surprise wore off quickly. He was no longer in any mood for it.

"What are you doing?"

Eloise finished her task. "I went to the library this morning, to see what I should dow about you. The book said that evil things could be kept away by saying 'At my right, Michael; at my left Gabriel; before me, Uriel; behind me, Raphael' -- "

"'And above me, God in heaven,'" Alan finished irritably. He had a vague memory of this; it was lumped together in his mind with using the various names of God to do magic, like bringing a golem to life. "This, you go to the library to study. Great."

Eloise continued as if he hadn't spoken. "So I found out how to write them in Hebrew. I thought it might be, you know, stronger in Hebrew."

Alan glanced at his bed, and noticed that one side of the bed and the head featured similar placards to the one Eloise had just affixed tot he foot, and the one Evan was working on had the letters mem, yod, kaf, alef, and lamed -- the letters of the name "Michael" -- on it.

"Wouldn't it have been easier to just put up a mezuzah?" he asked dryly.

"What's that?"

"All that reading, and you didn't find out?" Alan shook his head, and decided to stop needling. He had a headache. "A mezuzah is a little box you put beside your door. Or actually, it's the scroll inside it, but no one thinks of that. It's got some Bible verses on it, I think. Like I said, I'm not too religious."

"Where could I get one?" Eloise asked, almost hungrily.

"In this godforsaken wilderness? Nowhere. Not if you want to be back before dark."

Eloise looked down, hurt.

"I'm sorry," Alan said. "I didn't mean to insult -- "

Eloise shook her head briskly. "It's okay, really. I know what Ravensthorpe must look like to city people." She laughed nervously. "It doesn't really look like all that much to the people who live here."

"Ravensthorpe sucks," Evan said thoughtfully, starting to work on the mem. Alan realized dimly that the boy had been working backwards, left to right.

Eloise smiled. "I also got you a Jewish Bible while I was out. The kind without the New Testament in it. It was never taken out of the library before." She reached over to the bedstand and picked it up.

He took it from her. "What is all of this about?"

"I can't let you stay here without some kind of protection. This isn't a good place, Mr. Milner, and you came here specifically to look at the source of what's wrong with it."

Evan finished up his artwork. Alan noticed in passing that it was really quite good for a nine-year-old. "Did you go to Banes Farm?" he asked.

Alan sat down. "Yes. Mr. Salamone broke our appointment. He left a note saying he had business elsewhere and told me to come back at 9:30." The looked at him expectantly. "Look, I'm not in a very good mood. WOuld you mind letting me rest for awhile?"

Eloise frowned. "I don't know how to be more frank with you than I've been, Mr. Milner -- "

"Please call me Alan!" he shouted, for no reason.

She stood back. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean any offense. But Banes Farm is dangerous. Daniel Salamone is dangerous. He wouldn't meet you in daylight hours because he can't meet you in daylight hours. I don't know how else to put it."

"Are you trying to say that he's a vampire?" Alan said wearily, deciding that it was about time somebody spoke the word that had been scrupulously avoided. Once the ridiculous had been postulated, he figured, it would be easier to set aside.

"Yes."

He had figured wrong.

Alan left at nine. The sun had just gone down. Eloise had tried everything from threats to seduction to get him to stay, but he had refused to allow her superstition -- or his own uneasy feelings -- to interfere with his job. He was an adult, for God's sake, and he had a commitment to meet. She had, in the end, merely informed him that he was not to return until daylight. Alan hoped he'd get along with the people at the collective.

He was halfway to Banes Farm when he noticed something move in the back seat of his car. He slammed on the brakes and skidded to the side of the road before he recognized the face in his rearview mirror.

"Evan!" he cried with mixed relief and anger. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm coming with you."

"You could have asked -- "

"If I'd asked, Eloise would have heard." He smiled. Alan returned it. The conspiracy thus established, they drove on. A mile out from the farm, Evan told him to stop the car.

"Now what?"

"Now we stop to be careful." Evan pulled a small pouch suspended from a thin leather strap from his pocket. "This is bread and salt. And I spit on it. The book said it worked better if there was spit in it, so I did it, but it's kind of gross."

Alan took it and put it around his neck, feeling ridiculous, but finding it somehow comforting anyway. "Why did you come, Evan?" he asked.

"I want to see my mother."

Alan didn't know how to answer that. He turned the key again, and drove the last mile.

Daniel Salamone himself met them at the door. He was a middle-aged man, with long blond hair and a beard and mustache to match it. A large peace medallion hung around his neck and rested in the center of the complex tie-dye pattern of his shirt. He dressed like most of the other ex-hippies of Alan's acquaintance, but he looked less burnt-out.

"Mr. Milner," he said cordially. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm sorry I wasn't here this morning, but you know how it goes. The world calls, we answer."

Alan made it a practice to not state acceptance of any apology that he did not in fact accept. He also made it a practice to not offend the person he was trying to interview before the interview even began, so he just nodded.

"Please come in," Salamone said, with a sweep of his arm. "Would you like something to eat?"

"No, thank you." Alan stepped in and looked around. Men and woman were sprawled everywhere in the living room. Some were smoking, others were wrapped around each other, still others seemed to be tripping off in a far corner. The food Salamone had alluded to sat untouched on a coffee table, and no wonder. Alan couldn't imagine trying to eat here -- there was a stink about the place, as if something had died and rotted in the walls.

"I'm going to find my mother," Evan whispered, and was gone before Alan could stop him.

"Where's the kid going?" Salamone asked.

"To find his mother, I guess."

"That's good."

Alan smiled nervously.

"What's that around your neck?" Salamone gestured toward the leather pouch with a jerk of his chin.

"I don't know," Alan lied. "Evan -- the kid -- gave it to me. I didn't want to hurt his feelings."

Salamone laughed richly. "The people around here are superstitious. They see someone who lives differently than they do, and they call him a monster. I know what they say about me, Mr. Milner. I used to be insulted, but, hey, to each his own, right? Hey, do you mind if I call you Alan, Alan?"

Alan found that he did mind, quite a bit, but he said nothing.

"Now, Alan," Salamone went on, "you want to hear about Banes Farm?"

"That's why I'm here."

"Well, I bought the place in '67, as a place to get away from the world. I brought a few of my friends with me, and when we got here, we made lots more friends, didn't we?" The others in the room hooted and cheered. Salamone smiled graciously. There was something off about that smile. Something wrong. "We keep the place by farming a little. We have people who take care of our business, since we don't like to be distracted with it."

"Then what kind of business were you doing today?" Alan asked.

Salamone was momentarily surprised. He shrugged. "We took a little field trip is all. A kid you as you must remember field trips." Alan clenched his teeth, but kept his sentiments in. "We went to do a little exploring." The room burst into laughter.

Alan waited for the cacophony to fade; he was not going to let this slip out of his control. "Why do you think Banes Farm has outlasted so many of the other collective farms founded around the same time?"

Salamone smiled. "Love, baby."

The door swung open, letting in a summer breeze. Evan stood there with a woman who could only be his mother. The resemblance to Eloise was uncanny. "Hey, Daniel," she said. "You haven't met my son."

Salamone turned and went over to them. He put a hand on Evan's cheek, and caressed it tenderly. "What a nice little boy."

"Evan, this is Momma's friend, Uncle Daniel," the woman said.

Evan spat. For a moment, Salamone froze. Then he smiled. This time, Alan could not mistake what he saw in it. "Now, Evan," Salamone said. "That's not nice. We're nice to each other here." He leaned closer. "Now, come on. Be nice to me."

"Get away!" Evan yelled, pulling a wooden stake from under his shirt. Alan got up to tackle it away from him, but his mother had already plucked it away from him. She hooked its pointed end under a chain around Evan's neck and pulled. Evan screamed. A crucifix fell to the floor from under his shirt. His mother used the stake to push it away.

Alan saw Salamone's mouth yawn open, the teeth very prominent. He leapt on Salamone's back, only to be thrown away like a rag doll, and caught by several of the others, who began rolling him about in some kind of filth in the corner.

And, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Salamone descend on Evan. Evan didn't scream. Instead, he had leaned his head back to allow it. He fell against Salamone.

Alan dove for the crucifix and pushed it back toward the boy. "Evan!"

The boy turned. He caught sight of the crucifix and reached down for it. When it brushed his hand, he screamed, and Alan saw a flash of fire. For a moment, Alan saw terror and despair in Evan's eyes. Then they went black as obsidian. He turned back to Salamone. Salamone kicked the crucifix away.

A strong arm gripped Alan from behind. He could feel the cold non-breath of his attacker bearing down on his neck. He couldn't seem to fight -- and, craziest of all, he didn't want t. He wanted nothing more than to just give in, let it happen, be one of them...

The vampire who had attacked him suddenly stopped with a cheated howl and shoved him away.

Alan looked down and saw that the creature's hand had happened across the leather amulet that Evan had given him. No one had thought to take it away. A feeling of revulsion swept through him. He brushed his hand across his neck; there was a rough spot where a tooth had broken the skin, but there was no blood.

The vampire's shove had sent Alan back toward the door. He had been there several minutes before he realized that the other vampires seemed to have lost interest in him. He grabbed for Evan's discarded crucifix and ran.

When he got back to Aunt Millie's, the front door was uncharacteristically open.

He went in. Eloise was in the kitchen, sitting in the corner weeping. He went over to her.

"I can't find Evan," she explained. "I can't find Evan, and I have to find him before -- " She broke into hysterical tears.

"He followed me," Alan said quietly. "I should have sent him back, but -- "

"You let him go to Banes Farm! You bastard!" She stood, still weeping. "My God, you didn't leave him there! You don't know what could happen to him -- "

"Yes, I do." He put the crucifix in her hand.

There was silence for almost a full minute, as Eloise began to comprehend. Then she began to wail. She said no words. She just started to stagger around the kitchen, tearing at her hair, keening at the top of her voice.

Alan went to her, caught her.

"I'm sorry," he whispered into her hair. "I didn't believe you."

"You bastard -- "

"I'm sorry."

"I'm frightened."

"You're safe." Then, without knowing he was going to do it, he kissed her.

Evan appeared just past three a.m., hovering outside Alan's window.

Eloise was sitting up against the headboard, her hair spread across the placard that read "Raphael," he eyes squeezed shut against the apparition. Alan put a hand on her arm, and she jumped. "We're safe," he whispered. "He can't get to us here."

"Eloise," the creature called softly. "Let me in."

Alan felt her start to rise, and held her back.

"Let her come," Evan demanded.

"No."

Evan retreated to a child's voice, but one that was distorted into a caricature of itself. "Please let me in. I'm cold. I've come home."

Alan felt the pull of the vampire's mind. Whether it was Evan's or Salamone's, or if there was a difference anymore, he didn't know. He felt Eloise try to get up again, but was somehow able to prevent it. "At my right, Michael," he said quietly. He saw Evan recoil. "At my left, Gabriel -- "

"Let me in."

"Before me, Uriel, behind me Raphael -- "

"Let me in."

"And the Lord in heaven above all." The sense of other that Alan had felt vaguely that morning came back to him -- only this time it was welcome. He reached outward with some part of himself which he had forgotten. "I command you to leave," he told Evan evenly. "I command it in the name of Shaddai."

Evan screeched and fell away from the window. Alan went over and looked after him. He was gone, as if he had never been there. "Baruch ha-Shem," he whispered.

Eloise was gone when he woke up in the morning. She had left a note asking him to please take care of breakfast for himself, as she had some errands to run. "We have a lot to do before sundown," she wrote. Somehow, in the sunlight, the night seemed unreal. The bad parts of it, anyway.

He had just finished eating when she returned. She carried a box in her arms. He tried to kiss her, but she pulled away.

"Tomorrow," she said. "If we start this now, we won't be able to finish what we have to do before dark."

Alan nodded. "What's in the box."

"Groceries. Life goes on." She began to unpack. "And a bean seedling. I should have grown it from the seed, but we don't have time."

"What?"

"I went to confession this morning. You have to perform kapparah."

"I have to perform what?"

"I read it in the book. I pass a seedling around your head seven times, then you throw it in the river. It's like the scapegoat from the Bible. You're supposed to do it on the New Year, but I'm sure God would understand. You can do it with a dead chicken, too, but... Well, that's gross. It's better with no blood involved."

"I agree."

"Anyway," she said, "I want us to go clean today. Pure. We have to start out with a clean slate, or we can't win." She started to unpack the groceries. "What does 'Shaddai' mean?"

"What?"

"You said it last night. When Evan came."

"Oh." The reality of last night's events hit him. "It's a Name of God. There are a lot of them -- El, Yah, Elohim. Adonai is the prayer name. Shaddai means something like 'God of the Mountain,' but they usually translate it 'Almighty.' The Hebrew is supposed to work better."

"I thought you weren't really religious."

"So did I."

They left Aunt Millie's at ten-thirty in the morning in Eloise's car. She drove out of town, down a couple of country roads, and finally through a gate at Bellary State Park. She stopped at a picnic area. A little sign identified it as "Bear Creek Lookout."

Alan got out of the car.

The light was filtered through tall trees, giving everything a greenish cast. Pine needles littered the area. There was a pleasant, earthy smell about the place. A creek (Bear Creek, he reasoned) threw itself down a narrow cascade into the Naho river far below. "It's beautiful," he said.

Eloise nodded. "I come here a lot. There aren't a lot of beautiful things around here. This is one of the few."

"Why do you stay?"

She looked away. "I've forgotten."

She took his hand and led him to the stone wall beside the creek. The stood atop it, facing each other. She lifted the small basket with the bean seedling in it, and began to trace it around his head. "This is in place of this man," she intoned. "This is his surrogate, this is a substitute for him." She finished the seventh circle, and handed the basket to Alan. "Throw it into the creek."

Alan took it, and concentrated all his mind on it, all his sins, all his private injustices. He hurled it into the water. He saw it bounce twice in the current, then balance on the edge of the cascade. Alan felt a moment of intense vertigo, then the basket plunged down into the river and was gone.

For a few minutes, he felt lost and disoriented, as if part of him really had been carried away.

Eloise kissed him. "How do you feel?" she asked.

"Tall."

Eloise had just laughed when Alan asked if they shouldn't get busy making stakes. She opened the trunk of her car. There were at least two hundred wooden stakes inside, stacked like firewood.

"People around here are prepared," she explained. "Whether they believe it or not, whether they think about it or not, they have these lying around. I went around this morning and picked them up out of people's woodpiles. They don't say it's for Salamone, of course, but a hell of a lot of people keep their winter woodpiles well sharpened -- and in easy reach. I saw a lot of people looking out their windows at me when I was collecting them. One woman even came out and gave me twenty more. She didn't say anything, just gave them to me."

"If everybody knows, why hasn't anybody done anything?"

Eloise thought about it. "There's a kind of... lethargy, I guess, in places like this, Alan. Salamone might be a bad neighbor, but they're used to him. We're used to him."

"But you're going anyway."

"Yes."

"For Evan?"

"No. I didn't go for my mother. I miss her, too, as much as I'm sure I'll miss Evan. But I didn't go."

"Then why?"

"Because a stranger can break the lethargy."

"I'm not a stranger to you," Alan said. "People who are strangers to everyone else can't afford to be strangers to each other."

Eloise smiled wearily. "But can they avoid it?" She shook her head. "Don't answer. I'm sure you could say something very pretty, and I might believe you for awhile. But I think a stranger is always going to be a stranger. It's something inside that doesn't change."

"Then why?"

"Why what?"

"Why last night? If you think we're irrevocably strangers anyway."

She cast her eyes down. "I don't know. I was scared. You were there."

"What, do you make this a general practice?"

"It was my first time."

Alan turned away. "I don't understand you!"

"That's what I mean." She ran into the house.

Alan waited quietly for her to return. Fifteen minutes later, she did, and they set out for Banes Farm.

They were halfway there before either of them spoke. "Eloise?" Alan said.

"What?"

"It was my first time, too."

She nodded, and neither said anything more.

"Where are they?"

Eloise shrugged. "They have to be where there's no sun."

"Are you sure?"

Eloise nodded. She sniffed the air for a minute and looked around. "The cellar," she decided suddenly, and set off at a rapid pace, in a direct line to the storm doors of the cellar. As she reached for the handle, Alan had a flash of knowledge about what would come next.

"Eloise, don't -- "

She screamed. So did something else. Alan ran to her. In the open cellarway, Evan was writhing in the sunlight, his skin bursting into erratic flames. Alan closed the doors and dragged Eloise away. "Not like that," he said.

"That was Evan," she said. "He put my brother in the way."

"Eloise, you're going to have to face what we're here to do."

She nodded and closed her eyes. "We'll go around to the front, and just go down through the house. Some of them might be hiding in the upstairs closets, too." She started off around the house. Alan followed.

She had started kicking at the front door before he caught up with her. "It's locked," she said. Alan went to the window beside it. He pushed up on the frame.

With a scream of wood on wood, it rose. He checked the floor beneath it, then simply stepped through. Eloise smiled sheepishly and did the same.

Last night, the smell of the house had been covered by other smells -- food, drink, smoke -- but today, it stood alone. Alan gagged.

Eloise struck him between the shoulders. "You okay?"

"It stinks."

She nodded. "Yes, it does." She showed him a satchel full of stakes. A hammer rested uneasily among them. Alan's stomach turned. "Come on."

She went through the house, opening closet doors, and knocking on floorboards, to see if any came up. There were no vampires in the upper floors.

Eloise double-checked the kitchen, looking in cupboards and above the suspended ceiling. It was clean.

She reached for the cellar doorknob, bracing herself for whatever horror awaited her. The door swung open soundlessly.

They were lying on the steps, one after another, blocking the way down.

"Oh my God."

"We have to walk on them," Alan said.

"No," Eloise said coolly. "We have to kill them."

She took the satchel off her shoulder and pulled out a stake. Alan looked down at the first step. Eloise's mother lay there, flat eyes staring at the ceiling. Eloise poised the stake above the creature's heart. Her face registered pity and hatred for a moment, then it went blank. "Wake up, Momma," she whispered.

The hammer fell.

The woman immediately became animate, clawing at the air and chomping her sharp teeth together. Blood flew from her mouth, from around the stake, from her nose... it seemed to be everywhere. Eloise didn't falter; the hammer swung in its regular arc, turning scarlet with blood, but never failing to fall.

At last, the vampire's body became rigid for a moment. Then dark blood erupted from the wound. The body relaxed.

Eloise embraced it and wept.

Alan knelt beside her and put his arms around her. "Are you alright?"

Eloise nodded. "You ahve to take her outside. Fill her mouth up with dirt. I have to... to keep going. Come back when you're done. There'll be more."

"Eloise, I can -- "

"Please, Alan. Take her out. After, then I'll need your help. But I can't do it with her... watching. We can bury her later, when we're done."

Alan picked up the limp body. As he leaned over, he glanced down the stairs. There were ten more before Eloise reached the bottom. He kissed her cheek, smeared with her mother's blood. "I'll be back soon."

He carried the body outside and laid it down on the ground near the car. The mouth was open. The gums were stretched and the mouth was stained and torn, but it was a human mouth. The face was restful. Alan picked up a handful of black earth. He filled her mouth with it, and closed the ragged lips. When he went back in, Eloise had traversed two more "steps." She had simply dragged these into the kitchen.

"Come down," she said blankly. "It gets easier after awhile." She took the third beneath the armpits and dragged him up into the kitchen. "After this, I think we can just throw them over the edge of the stairs.

"Eloise -- "

"Time is short."

Alan looked out the window, and the sun was very definitely in the western part of the sky. But he could not bring himself to pitch dead bodies over the side of a rail like flour sacks. The images it brought into his mind were of a too-recent vintage, the piles of bodies to horrible to contemplate. They had no choice about what they were doing, but these bodies were human again, and they deserved respect. "I can't do that," he said. "I'll take them outside at least."

"Fill their mouths," she said. "You filled my mother's mouth, didn't you?"

"Yes."

She went back to her grisly work. Alan started to take the bodies outside.

The stairs took them an hour to get down, and when they were finished, the sky had taken on the hint of gold that signals imminent sunset. "Now for Evan," she said. "I need you with me."

He nodded, and followed her down. They found Evan on the stairs leading up to the storm doors. If their previous encounter with him had injured him, it didn't show. "I can't do it," Eloise whispered. "Not the way I did... " She gestured helplessly toward the stairs. "They say, if you take the head off... "

"How is that better?"

"If you get a piece of wire, just pull it... it would be bad, but not like that."

"Do you have a wire."

She reached into her satchel. "It's piano wire."

"You hold his head. I'll... I'll do it."

"Wrap your hands in something, or you'll cut them."

Alan took off his shirt and ripped it in two. He wrapped a half of it around each hand. Eloise had slipped the wire around Evan's neck, and crossed the ends. She held them out to Alan.

He took them. "Are you sure?" She nodded. He took the wire in his hands and pulled.

There was resistance for a minute, then he felt the metal noose sink into flesh. Blood seeped out in a steady flow, but it didn't gush as it had with the others. This was better. But it wasn't good. The wire worked its way through the neck, stuck for a moment at the bone, then found its way between the vertebrae. It was done.

Eloise kissed her brother's forehead. "Sleep well, Evan," she said.

Alan looked away, trying to look anywhere but at the body of a child who had only last night hidden in his car to escape his sister's watchful eye. Where he looked was the window. What he saw was the last ray of sunlight, shooting across the fields.

"Eloise... " he began.

A scream of rage echoed through the cellar.

Alan turned.

Salamone was rising from a niche behind the furnace, his face livid. He was across the cellar in two bounds. He grabbed Eloise by the hair and flung her into a corner. Evan's head rolled sickly down the stairs.

"Eloise!" Alan shouted. She didn't answer. Her head was at an impossible angle to her body, and bleeding where part of the scalp had been torn off. "Eloise... "

"And now you," Salamone whispered hoarsely. "How dare you? How could you?"

Alan looked at Eloise's body one more time. He pulled a stake from her satchel, and aimed himself at Salamone.

Salamone caught him easily and tossed the stake aside as if it were a toothpick. He pushed Alan across the cellar, into the corner where Eloise's body had been hurled. Salamone descended toward him.

"Shaddai," Alan called out by instinct. "Elohim, El Elyon..."

Salamone cringed away.

"Yah, Adonai... "

With a cheated shriek, Salamone fell into himself. Alan's eyes could not quite comprehend what he was seeing -- at one moment, Salamone stood threateningly above him, at the next, he was gone in a blast of furious wind.

Alan sat alone in the darkened cellar for a long time, with Eloise's body beside him. The moon streamed through the little window, casting everything in a ghostly glow. There was nothing left here.

He gathered Eloise against him, and carried her outside.