Author's Note: A young canon Miss has finally knocked on the door of my inspiration, and I was there to answer her one second afterward. Henceforth, I've put 'Romance' right where 'Suspense' used to be, because I feel that's the safest way to introduce her and Pete can thank me later. I've also taken a page or two from 'Jesus Christ Superstar' and used some of Judas' doubts from the beginning to shape this original male character's personality a little further. Hope it works. Anywho…here's chapter three, my lovelies.

Matthew

For the longest time, I thought my life was safe from all evil.

Indeed, by all outward appearances, it should have been. I never drank too much or smoked too many, and I avoided all those illegal drug places like the plague. I never let myself get hopelessly tied to junk food, either. That was how I kept my good health in order.

I never lied to my parents about my marks or cheated during class. Any time the teacher had to use the paddle, it was always for someone else but me. That was how I kept my permanent record in order. I always looked both ways before crossing the street, and encouraged others to do the same. That was how I kept my safety in order.

I never charged any of my customers a cent more than what was due, and I always went out of my way to help them get what they needed. That was how I kept my workplace's reputation in order.

I never prayed too loudly in church, or for that matter, make a scene if there was something in the homily I disagreed with. That was how I kept my spirit in order. I never drove a mile over the speed limit, or let myself get lost in a fit of road rage. That was how I kept my respect of the law in order.

Above all, I never thought twice about leaving a little something in the donation box; keeping a cool head; and doing whatever my superiors asked of me, wherever I found them, whenever they asked me to get this or that task completed.

Again, by all outward appearances, I could not ever feel the temptation to let evil seep into my life. I was a productive member of society. I was safe, and I saw no reason why I would ever want to throw my order away.

That all changed the night a pack of speed demons almost ran me into an early grave.

One second, I was on the road; the next, I had just barely made it into the ditch before their hellish chariot killed me. I was left alone with my reeling thoughts and pounding heart while they continued into the night, their heartless laughter trailing behind them as they went. I had almost died from vehicular homicide. I had almost been run over in a violent rampage. If I hadn't been blessed with good reflexes, I could have easily been turned into a bleeding pulp wrapped in glass and sheet metal, left like a piece of garbage by the roadside for someone else to pick up.

It was a miracle, then, that I survived.

With my heart still pounding, I slowly stretched one limb at a time, just in case I'd missed getting injured by those Berserkers. Once I could be sure that my arms and legs weren't broken, I carefully turned my head from side to side, only to discover that I hadn't even suffered a sprain in the attack. I had survived, all right, but there was no telling if anyone else would be as lucky as me. Something told me those speed demons were far from finished where their rampage was concerned, although I had no clue about what they'd do next. Neither did I have any idea on why, somehow, they were allowed to run free into the night and follow no rules while I'd been held to several codes of behavior for my entire life. What I did know is that I wanted to go straight to Greg's house, and stay there until I felt sane and well enough to venture back outside again. Once I had a glass or two of Riesling and won a few Scrabble matches, I was sure my sense of order would win out in the end, letting me drive home peacefully and rest easy that same night.

Unfortunately, the chaos caused by those interlopers was far from over. Just as I was about to ask Greg just how long he thought that footballer's strike would drag on, we both heard a muffled screech from just outside the back door.

"Oh, God, not again," I'd blurted out as Greg had rose to go outside. He'd gotten one hand on the door before turning to look back at me curiously.

"Not again? Not again what, exactly?"

"Interruptions," I'd improvised, only half-lying through my teeth. "My ride here was interrupted, and now our game's suffered the same fate."

"Yes, well…that didn't sound like just any old interruption to me."

He had the door wide open by now, letting in an icy draft as he searched the backyard for the source of the noise. Leave it to him to show no fear, even when some hellish army could have fallen down on us at any second.

"What if someone just got hurt out there?"

"We don't know that," I said quickly, wanting nothing but to finish our game and our drinks. "It could have just been some cat who got its tail stepped on by accident. How about we go back inside and forget the whole thing?"

"We don't know it isn't a cat," he mumbled, still lost in his perfect little Good Samaritan world. "Suppose it's someone we know out there? We should probably—"

Greg received an interruption of his own when the screech came again, only twice as loud and straight by the woodpile at the same time.

"—The medical kit!"

He'd gone halfway down the walking path before I caught up to him, my heart pounding once again.

"What? For who? I don't see—"

"—There."

One gesture from Greg, and suddenly we both saw a crouched, bleeding figure exactly ten steps away from where we stood. As we would find out later, he originally looked swarthy and dark-eyed; yet at this moment, his eyes were too swollen from bruising to see, and he could barely speak as well from losing some teeth. That didn't stop him from hearing us talk, however, for he turned and pointed in our direction on the spot.

"What's he doing? What's he pointing at?"

"You-u-u…"

"Hush, Matts, I think he's trying to speak."

His speaking was garbled, broken; a mix between moaning and lisping, or so it sounded to my ears. It was as though an alien in a black uniform and black boots had been dropped from the sky, conveniently without a mother ship or an understandable form of communication. I was careful to keep my distance from this strange fellow, just in case he started offering prayers to Ctulhu or began humming the five notes from 'Close Encounters'. I wish I could have said the same for Greg, of course, but he had gone to stand by the stranger before I had time to protest.

"Well, well, ran into some trouble, have we?"

He'd reached down to help the stranger up, only to almost get strangled instead. Thank goodness he'd had enough sense to push him away before his attacker's full strength kicked in. And thank goodness, also, that I'd found the garden rake just in time to give that attacker a good whack to the backside. Back then my actions taught John, as we would come to know him later, not to go choking the first person who tried to help him up off the ground. It was what made him go inside for some much-needed medical attention, as well as teach him a little respect for one's hosts whether or not he got invited to their parties in the future. It also put some order back into our gatherings, for once his health, appearance, and sanity got back to their proper places, so also did we become a trio where our games and conversations were concerned.

We continued safely with this routine for two years running or so, after which another interruption came, this time from the front door instead of the backyard. He'd tried asking for water only to fall down unconscious, almost hitting his head on the tile floor inside. As relieved as I was that he hadn't tried attacking Greg like John had tried to do, I still feared the worst. His uniform was white where John's had been black, he'd brought some strange, old walking stick along, and he wore a similar set of black boots. There was a vile pattern seeping into Greg's household through these two strangers, and if he hadn't asked me to help John carry him in, I would have been more than content to leave it outside with our latest newcomer. Both could have frozen in the snow that way, and there would have been no threat to me or my own to worry about.

As always, though, Greg had to go and play the Good Samaritan once again, which meant I had to help out by washing and bandaging the little upstart's injured feet. Thank goodness he'd had enough sense by then to hold still while I did it, otherwise I might have considered letting him catch an infection instead. It was enough, though, that he'd already been disarmed by that point. It was enough to make the three of us take off the dark glasses we'd been wearing, and then invite him to stay over for the night. Something about our behavior had drawn him in to do just that, give or take one glass of fresh water and a weeping fit before he finally dozed off. John and Greg would later sleep as easily as our latest guest, dropping off as soon as they found a comfortable place to lie down and bundle up. I wish I had their resolve to do the same, or at least their nerves of steel. As much as no harm had come to any one of us, this time, I could not put my thoughts back in order no matter how hard I tried.

There was something familiar about this one stranger, I was certain. His very appearance at the door had made me look twice at him, maybe even three times as we were carrying him inside. What was it about him that kept me awake? Could he have been some old classmate of mine that went down the wrong path, only to cross ours completely by surprise? A bully from my school days, maybe? Or, worst of all, could he have been one of those Berserkers that almost succeeded in killing me two years ago?

Until the morning came and allowed me to find out for myself, I had dozed off at around midnight or so, and then dreamed of black beasts and ghostly white creatures with roaring voices, shining eyes, and teeth as sharp as knives. Some eight hours later, I awoke in a cold sweat to hear the sounds of John making coffee and humming to himself. The difference between my nightmare and our somewhat domestic lifestyle was sharp, but there was also a fine line resting between the two. I had to know where one ended and the other began. Once I'd rubbed the sleep from my eyes and climbed up from my place on the couch, I walked over and pinched his arm as hard as I could.

"Ow! Christ, what the hell was that for?" he shouted, glaring at me as he yanked his arm away.

"Just making sure I was truly awake," I answered, wishing I could have laughed out loud at the look on his face. He and Greg were so very trusting of this newcomer, unfortunately. They were so trusting, he could have stabbed them to death last night and they would never have seen it coming. He hadn't, of course, but the creaking above us for the next thirty minutes suggested that he had woken up with the rest of the household. I half expected to see our latest stray human join us for a cup of the old breakfast blend, or, if he wanted to be as scary as he had been last night, come running down the stairs with that knife in his hand, prepared to slice us all to ribbons. It was Greg who came downstairs instead, not wasting any time on asking after his new patient. Neither of us had found out anything yet, at least not from the table where we sat drinking our hot coffee and thought silently to ourselves. Our answers came as soon as we joined the new kid in Greg's practice hospital room, where a round of questions made him nervous enough to vomit onto the carpet.

If his sweating and shaking didn't tell us anything before, his getting sick like that did, at least to me. All the warning signs of his drug use were right in front of our good Doctor himself. Why, then, did he refuse to acknowledge it?

"I knew we should have checked his pockets," I snapped, one step away from giving Greg and John my biggest, wettest raspberry. "There you are, it's obvious he's going into drug withdrawal. What now, Greg? Should we get him off to the hospital?"

"I've got a better idea," John announced, still not taking the situation as seriously as he should have. "I christen thee…'Synthemesc'!"

Leave it to John to crack jokes! This 'patient', whoever he was, was clearly going into convulsions and all our friend could do was laugh about it! What on earth was this world coming to?

"Oh, so you think that's funny, do you?" he went on, oblivious to the truth. "Looks like you just blessed the floor there. Too bad you can't do the same to the rest of the room, though; we could have turned it into a chapel."

"What are you doing?" Greg hissed, finally seeing reason.

"Just play along," John answered, thus labeling our problem a mere game for children. Any more games, and our mystery man would suffocate to death. Didn't a doctor's oath include the words 'Do No Harm'?

"Oh, well, at least it'll keep the vampires away from us, right? We should all be so safe, shouldn't we?"

Vampires? I wanted to yell, and hopefully while knocking them all out with my fists. What do vampires have to do with anything?

I didn't have to wonder for long, though. Quite surprisingly, our latest patient burst out into laughter right then and there, his weak state taking a back seat to John's sense of humor.

"Ha ha ha ha ha…oh, noooooo, not the vampires…ha ha ha…oh oh my, oh dear…"

One second later, John had to go and join in, which made me all the angrier. It sounded like they were having a laugh at my expense, and that was something I just could not handle. I would owe them both an answer for this stupidity later, make no mistake.

"Everyone! Just when do we plan on getting some rug cleaner and taking care of this mess?"

"Lovely idea, Matthew," John answered, a sickening smirk crossing his face. "We'd have never thought of it by ourselves. When do you plan to help clean up?"

"Greg?"

"I have to look a few things up in my books," Greg said, refusing to move. "Hope that's not a problem."

It was a problem, actually, no matter what either of them would have liked me to think. It was the biggest problem we'd ever had since we discovered a nest of rats in the house's foundation. Unlike the rats, however, this nest of criminals had gotten too comfortable to ever be exterminated. It made all the difference now that they'd got on Greg's good side; because that meant he'd never push them out without a fight.

"Very well, I'll go downstairs for a moment. Come get me if there's any change."

"Right."

And so, because I was alone in my misgivings, I would instead have to play janitor to take care of our second troublemaker's mess. If either of my parents were there with me now, I suppose they would have talked me into helping, due to our guest being too weak to stand up, too miserable to speak, or some other such nonsense to gain my sympathy. He might have been truly ill for all we knew, but on the other hand, how much of that illness was real and how much of it was faked? Moreover, was it some run-of-the-mill virus, or a sickness that he'd brought on entirely by himself?

I thought this matter over further as I searched downstairs for the rug-cleaning vacuum, for without it, that stain would probably be there forever. That, and it would leave a terrible stink besides, if such a thing could ever imitate the person that made it. If I survived this encounter, I'd tell the little upstart to go wash up before he knocked us all unconscious with his foul odor.

I happened to pass one of the windows leading to the front walkway as I went along. Just outside the front door, I spotted a Christmas wreath hanging from the lamppost, a sure sign that a fifth person was making her yearly rounds. More importantly, I was relieved to notice her trademark box of English shortbread waiting for us on the coffee table. Our third visitor had left both of her calling cards behind, thank goodness…but at the moment, where was she hiding?

I only had to glance out of the corner of my eye before I finally saw her standing behind me.

"Well, well, what have we here? A night watchman caught with his back turned?"