Chapter Two

December 21^st. The Winter Solstice. More than that, this Winter Solstice was special. For the first time in, well, centuries, there would be a total lunar eclipse on the same night. Craig shivered. Couldn’t she see?

 

He gripped the phone tightly in his hand and closed his eyes. He hadn’t wanted to pick up the phone but this time when she’d called he’d been staring out the window onto the garden thinking that he might like to go for a walk. He was pale, fish-belly white, and the sun was shining. He’d be like a grub emerging from a crumbling, rotten piece of wood, blinking in the unnatural light.

 

When the phone rang, only half breaking in on his thoughts, he’d picked it up almost without thinking. It had been Fiona.

 

“I can’t, Fiona,” he said.

 

“Why? Why can’t you? Craig, we haven’t seen you in months.”

 

He sighed. He genuinely liked her, that was the problem, he needed some excuse but he couldn’t think of one.

 

“I just can’t.”

 

There was silence on the other end. She didn’t believe him. She thought that he was hiding from something. From death, from life, she didn’t know. He knew that she was trying to figure him out.

 

“Craig,” she said. Her voice was calm and patient and he knew that it was the same voice she used with her patients when they needed to take their medicine. “It’s been three years. I know that you were very close to your father but it’s time. You need to be out with people now. Come to our house. It’s dinner. Just dinner. A few friends will be there, we’ll celebrate the Yule, and watch the eclipse. It’ll be a nice night. You can leave when you want to.”

 

An eclipse! A total lunar eclipse on the shortest night of the year. Craig wanted to scream at her but she wouldn’t understand. She’d think that he was becoming obsessed with death and she’d worry and then, what? Send men in white coats to his house to take him somewhere.

 

“How many people are coming?”

 

He could almost see her smiling on the other end of the line and it did make him feel slightly better.

 

“Oh! About fifteen people, I should think, including you,” she said.

 

“Fifteen,” he said.

 

“Yes. Please come, Craig, you’ll like these people, I’m sure you will,” she said.

 

He opened his eyes again and the sun was still shining in the unkempt yard. He was fascinated with how quickly the well-manicured yard had fallen into wilderness. The trees were scraggly and jutted from the brown lifeless earth randomly. He felt his beard and decided he should shave.

 

“I’ll see.”