The Unholy Night

Chapter XV

"Everybody's staring at me, oh, since you're looking I'll put on a fucking show, this is what I chose, why can't no one understand? I got scissors for my hand, hold you closer but I can't, I-I-I don't wanna kill a man"

- Scissorhands by Maggie Lindemann

Somehow, it was midnight, and I was in a cemetery in the worst possible company I could imagine. 

Okay, except for Bess. I love Bess. She is and was and always will be amazing. 

We had jumped over the churchyard wall to land in the graveyard. The night was dark, with heavy clouds blotting out most of the moonlight, and we were hiding behind a line of bushes next to Lucy's tomb. 

'We' in this case means Van Helsing, Arthur, Bess, Quincy, Seward, and I. Some of the worst company imaginable due to the factor of the doctors and Arthur. 

Earlier, we had entered the tomb, and Van Helsing had opened the casket, and found it emptied of Lucy once again. The visit to the cemetery had been rather spur-of-the-moment and therefore we hadn't had time to warn them. 

Van Helsing pointed at Seward. "You were here with me yesterday. Was the body of Miss Lucy in that casket?" 

Seward nodded. "It was."

"Is this your doing?" Quincy asked. 

Van Helsing put his hand over his heart. "I swear to you that I have not removed or touched her. How dare you make such accusations. Two nights ago, we found this coffin empty, and then the next day, she lay there. Now it is empty again. Was it not so?"

"It was so," Seward muttered. 

And now we were hiding behind the bushes, and I was watching the sky. The clouds raced past and I breathed in the night air.

I have always associated darkness with a sort of freedom. When candles were lit then, you are caged, and when lights are flicked on now, you are firmly rooted to reality. In the night it isn't so. You can go anywhere, you can do anything, you can be anything. 

That made me feel a bit better about being surrounded by people who wanted to kill me. 

Van Helsing was sprinkling the tomb with holy wafers. "I am sealing the tomb, so that the undead may not enter, using the host. Worry not, I have permission from the Vatican."

The whiteness of the tombs against the night was ghastly, the trees had a funeral gloom hanging around them, the grass rustled ominously, and the trees made creaking noises in the wind. Dogs howled all around us from very far away. 

I was home.

Jesus, I sound like a member of the Addams family. 

But perhaps I felt so comfortable there because I was and am, in a sense, dead. I don't mind it so much, but it felt nice to be surrounded by my... peers. 

Van Helsing made a hissing sound and ducked behind the row of bushes. In the distance, there stood a figure bathed in moonlight. 

No no no. Oh god, Lucy was coming. She was coming and she was going to die. Then I saw the hair, the color of oak, and breathed a sigh of relief. There must have been a mistake.

Then I caught a peek of the face. "Ffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck," I breathed. 

It wasn't Lucy, it was Addy.

And so I did the only thing I could think of to do and stood up. 

"What are you doing, woman?!" Van Helsing snapped. "That isn't her!"