50.

“What of HER?” Eben Nudd asked, pointing at the thing in the coffin. No man made answer. We had not time for demons any more.

We made for the next doorway down, the one which led up into the cupola. Storrow nearly dragged me.

We made what speed we could. Chess was on his way up, through the house. We could hear him shrieking, though none could understand the words he spoke.

Our shoes rang on the iron gallery, which was suspended from the dome by rods. We pushed through the broken section of the cupola & out into the night air, & the light of one million stars. Around us the dark trees sighed & cast their limbs about. Storrow & Eben Nudd lifted me through the opening & then set me down on the slope of the roof, to hold on as best I might.

“We’ll have to climb down. Try not to fall, is my best counsel,” Storrow said. But then he turned. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

“Ayup,” Eben Nudd said. We all had. It was the sound of feet falling on the iron gallery. It could be naught but Chess the vampire, hot on our heels. “I think—” the downeaster began, but we never learned what he thought.

Chess jumped up through the broken dome as if he’d been shot out of a parrot gun. He grabbed Nudd by the collar & twisted his head clean around, snapping his neckbones with audible sounds. He did not bother to suck the erstwhile lobsterman’s blood, but only threw him off the roof to crash to the ground below.

“I’m not sure we’ve been properly introduced,” Chess said. His eyes burned like coals.

—THE STATEMENT OF ALVA GRIEST