As Soon As You Can Walk In The Sun Again

I must, before we go any further, make it clear that I do not trust, or indeed like, night crawlers.

This is not a rule. There is no antecedent, though there is precedent. I have never had reason to like night crawlers, and they have given me much reason to believe them to be deceptive, deceitful, cruel, easily given to malice and mischief, and not much of a contribution to our world.

Seeing a night crawler within my workplace is not unnatural, and on this particular day, when I looked up at the ringing bell on the front door and was hit unkindly with a night crawler’s pleased smile, I did not feel any more kindly or generous than usual. He wore full sleeves and a jacket beside, though it was late spring and more than warm outdoors. That was one of the simplest ways to spot a night crawler. There was rarely someone so dressed up on a summer’s day as someone who was uncomfortable in the sun. I had been in a good mood until then, believing that perhaps the sun would have driven night crawlers away from the shop today.

Had he not been a night crawler, I cannot think of a single thing that might have endeared me to him anyway. He did not enter my shop curiously so much as he did deign to step into it. His eyes as they scrutinized the shelves implied I should feel lucky they were doing so. He might have been admiring himself in the polished wood, or appreciating the number of books present. Night crawlers like their audiences large. He touched his fingers to one of the tables, as though to check for dust or to stake a claim to it and all furnishings and space around it. The closer he came to the counter, the clearer it was that he was a night crawler. There was a flower in one of the buttonholes of his shirt; his kind always wore flowers for luck or protection, as though they needed it. Sometimes they used their flowers to barter with the rest of us, like a flower might be adequate compensation for whatever they were about to put one through. My heart and head immediately distrusted him.

“Lea,” the night crawler said. He had the accent of a night crawler, the one that made my name, though pronounced correctly, sound incredulous to say. “How are you on this day? It is nearly summer. You must be happy about that.”

I did prefer summer to any other time. I preferred the solitude of those hot months; no one wanted to stay inside and peruse books when there was sun to be had, and those that were forced inside for whatever reason rarely interrupted my reading. The bookstore might have suffered, but I did not. I did not know how the night crawler had come to know this, but he had.      

“Is it a good day?” the night crawler said again.

I glanced down at his feet. They were bare. “It was,” I said to him. “How may I help you, sir?”

“You can help me in many ways, if you would like to,” the night crawler said, with a truly sinful amount of lasciviousness. “Standing there and listening to me talk is one way.”

“I have only so much time, sir,” I said. The minutes were ticking away as slowly as they ever had done. I sent a quick request to the man upstairs that he might hurry along their process. “To be completely honest with you,” I went on, “Within the day I can manage about an hour of conversation with any given person, possibly less for speaking with a night crawler. If you could gallop ahead to the point and your reason for being here, please?”

The night crawler let his hands relax in his pockets. He might have just fallen out of a yacht, and maybe expected to be falling into one. His complete lack of vexation made me more upset than his slow moving progress. If he had only looked as unhappy, I might have been buoyant on a cloud of agreeability. The night crawler crossed his feet at the ankles and leaned against my counter. I had never seen one so graceful. “I would like you to consider doing me a favour. The answer is entirely up to you, of course, but I would just like to emphasize that you stand to lose nearly nothing. I understand I must earn your trust, but at the end of today, I hope you will change your mind. I hope you will think me a good investment.”

I thanked our dear lord that he had provided no other trying customers for me on this day that I might have spent my patience on. “I am sure you care about my opinion only as much as I care about yours, if that.”

“I am sure that there is someone who cares equally for both our opinions, and whose opinion I care for and you might care for as well.” His smile was a strange thing to behold. I had seen many self-satisfied night crawlers, but never had their self-satisfaction been so directed at me. He looked as pleased as any rattlesnake or clever rodent.

“Oh? I can think of no one with whom we might both be acquainted,” I said, with as much icy civility as I could.

“Then good for you for having worked it out already. You are as smart as I’ve been told,” the night crawler said. He stood up a little more and squared his shoulders. “I still have a proposition to make. I understand you might know how to grant a new night crawler the ability to show themselves in the day sooner than nature allows. Is this true?”

I clamped my mouth shut quite quickly. There were always rumours of such things flying about. Someone was always hinting here or there that they knew a way to change the nature of night crawlers. Often times, these were people looking to scam night crawlers, or those people associated with them. Other times, they sympathized with night crawlers and were looking for a way to ingratiate themselves in the night crawler world. I thought it must have been hard for night crawlers to avoid the temptation to follow fraudulent or truthful leads. They were always looking for ways to be in our world, outside of the nighttime, faster than their physical make up allowed. I am sure that if God intended them to walk among us before their base impulses were ready to allow them, then he would have made them impenetrable to the conditions of our world more quickly. I said, “How many others have you heard have this ability, and how many have you already tried to coax into assisting you?”

“It is not for me, of course, but for a friend,” the night crawler said, as though I might be endeared by the power of friendship. He tapped his fingernail on the counter top. I was immediately sickened. It was a distinctly nighttime sound, like the tapping of claws on a window. I had not been able to hear it for a while without the feeling of fear descending upon me.

“I was not aware night crawlers fidgeted,” I said.

He smoothly ceased tapping the counter top- I did not let him see my relief, and tried surreptitiously to dab the sweat at my temple with my shirt sleeve -  and leaned once more against the wood.

“If it is for your friend that you require my services, perhaps your friend should come here instead,” I proposed, and I watched his face to see if that impossible proposition would perturb him.

He smiled as though we had created a private joke between the two of us just now. “For the moment, my friend might only travel at night, or with particular protection,” he said lowly, leaning forward, conspiratorially. “Though I did notice my umbrella was missing this afternoon, so my friend might be travelling the streets now. I might mention that it would be in your best interests to help and- oh, do not think that is a threat. I truly mean your best interests. We might have the same interests. What a beautiful piano, by the way.” This last bit was said with a nod to the keyboard wedged between two bookcases. There was a sign on it warning patrons that they need not act upon any impulse to play it. It had not been played for several months, and there was almost no one I would want to play on it ever again.

“I can’t imagine how any of our interests might overlap,” I replied. “So far, I am seeing no reason to trust you any more that I should trust any other night crawler that comes looking for a way to serve his own self interests. I have seen night crawlers serve their self-interests before, and I have been a victim of it. If only you were all petty thieves, I might still be inclined to help you. But you should take your business elsewhere.”

The night crawler took a step toward the piano. My feet itched to take me between him and the instrument. They were both cold and pale as the evening light began to drain from the shop. Night crawlers were most comfortable at night; I did not want him to make himself too comfortable in the bookshop. “I think you would not want that. I think you would want to be the one to help me,” he said. “I know you care for rare and beautiful books. I have done something similar, though not with a book, and she certainly came to me of her own volition.”

I put my hands down on the counter so firmly that the glass under it rattled. “Do not tell me whatever crimes you might have committed, or any deeds I would not approve of. Do not come into my workplace and involve me in your schemes. You are welcome to leave, now.”

The night crawler held a hand over the piano keys. “But I haven’t been helped yet, and you have not even seen her. She missed you while she was gone, and she misses you still, every day.”

I felt the cold descend on me and continue to descend, as though it were a current of water, pushing and pulling at me. “I can think of only one person who-“

The bell at the door rang, as it rarely did so late in the day. My daughter came in first, then the umbrella, which she closed immediately. She wore the same green coat I had last seen her in, and the same boots, though both looked darker now against her pale skin. She came and put her hand on the night crawler’s arm. A ring glittered on her finger and she smiled while my heart jerked erratically back to life.

“Oh, papa,” she said, “I hope he hasn’t been too much of a nuisance. David talks and talks, but his ideas are a good investment, I think.”

“Like myself,” David said. Never had I seen a snake smile wider. “I was getting around to telling your father that you had already decided so, and we plan to make it official as soon as you can walk in the sun again.”

“Oh, papa.” My daughter held her umbrella against her chest. “Please. It’s summer, after all. You don’t want me to miss all of it, do you?”

Art by Rovina Cai

Text by Lucie MacAulay