Michaela hadn't been in bed for two seconds when there was a fierce pounding on the door downstairs.
"Must be an emergency," she said to Sully.
Katie broke into a cry, not happy about being woken up in the middle of the night.
"I'll stay with her. You go."
She threw on her clothes as fast as she could and found Jake at the door. "Mrs. Mallory's husband is bad off. They're waiting at the clinic. You should've heard her caterwauling. Woke up the whole town."
"I'm coming." With Andrew out of town, she was the Mallorys' only hope. She rode into town with Jake, going as fast as the horses could go.
Mrs. Mallory was standing outside the clinic obviously waiting on her. Her cheeks were shining from all the tears she'd shed. "You got to help him, Dr. Mike!" she cried when she saw her. "There was a noise in the barn and the animals were making all kinds of sounds. Silas told me to wait while he checked it out. When he didn't come back, I went in and found him just laying there. Blood running down from his neck. Some kind of creature got him."
"I'll do everything I can," she promised.
Silas was laid out on the examining table, eyes closed. There was no rise and fall of his chest. Unbuttoning his shirt slightly and putting the bell of her stethoscope to his chest, she listened for a heartbeat, but there was no pulse.
To her sorrow, there was nothing she could do. He was dead. She would have to tell his wife, which was the hardest thing about being a doctor.
She drew back up to examine him further for a cause of death, knowing Mrs. Mallory would likely want answers. She couldn't help but notice how pale he was, so pale he was almost white. To be expected when one was dead, of course, but he looked as if he had suffered from albinism. She'd only seen Silas in town a few times, but as far as she could recall, he had been quite tan as most farmers were.
Her eyes then went to his neck. Two round little holes as if something had bit him there, but it couldn't have been a snake bite, or at least not a poisonous one, because there was no swelling. Had the shock of whatever had bitten him been enough to kill him?
She turned, preparing to tell Mrs. Mallory the awful news, when she heard the soft rustling of clothing. She whirled back around and her eyes went wide to see Silas sitting up. His eyes were glowing red. Maybe he was an albino and she had just never noticed before, but his hair wasn't white. It was dark, in fact. Very strange. He was moving to stand.
"Mr. Mallory, don't get up. You've been through quite the ordeal, and I'm going to have to look you over to make sure you're really alright."
He didn't appear to hear her as he got to his feet. He began walking towards her in a most unsettling way, but even more unsettling was the way he was looking at her like he hungered for her.
She took more than one step back, wondering if she should call for help, but then his wife came into the clinic.
Mrs. Mallory ran into his arms. "Oh, Silas. You're okay! What happened? What was in the barn?"
"Nothing. Only a bat who'd lost its way."
Michaela frowned. If he was speaking of a vampire bat, it had indeed lost its way because from what she'd read, they were only found in Mexico and South America. But Silas seemed to be okay now whatever it had been. "I guess you're free to go if you're feeling better."
"I feel fine," he said.
"We'll pay you the next time we're in town," Mrs. Mallory said. "Thank you so much."
She watched as they got into their wagon. Silas was hanging close to his wife, looking down at her with the same hungry expression she'd seen trained on her only moments ago. She shivered. If it meant interacting with Mr. Mallory again, she'd just as soon not get paid. She hadn't really done much anyway.
She took her stethoscope off and put it back in her bag, thinking about what had just happened. Halloween was drawing near. She was reminded of another Halloween when everyone had been convinced there was a man dropping dead all over town, but this was different. She had carefully examined this man. She had been ready to write him a certificate of death. She would have staked her reputation as a doctor on the fact that he was dead.
Only he wasn't. She had doubted stories of people being buried alive, but now it seemed a lot more possible. Was she overtired and had just missed hearing a heartbeat? That seemed the most likely explanation. Perhaps Mr. Mallory hadn't been eyeing her strangely at all. Maybe she just needed to go back to bed.
She was just preparing to leave for home when Preston came running up. "Come quick! Something's wrong with the reverend!"
It wasn't like Preston to be this excited over anyone's welfare but his own and that made her run all the harder. She only stopped once when a black cloud moved out of the way to reveal a blood red moon.
She forced herself to calm down and take deep breaths. It was the unusualness of her last patient making her feel like there was something supernatural about a red moon. It was only a lunar eclipse, beautiful and rare but just an eclipse.
She resumed running towards the church, having no idea that in only a few minutes she would wonder why she had ever doubted the supernatural.