Too much of an imagination. That was why I’d let that dumb phone call get to me. People were probably right when they said I’d read too many books about morbid stuff. Mr. Mindlow, the school psychologist, thinks I’m fascinated by “horror media” because I lost my parents, and thus scary stories and monster movies are safe and even reassuring for me because they are not real. That is why, he says, I am always reading Anne Rice or Providence’s own favorite haunted son, nutty old H. P. Lovecraft himself. That is why all my favorite rentals are in the science fiction/horror/suspense section of MovieLand. And I have the world’s biggest collection of Fangoria magazine. Because all the blood and fear and mortality is under my control.

Even though I’m not as tragically out of balance as Mr. Mindlow thinks, I suppose he is sort of right. You can always walk out of a movie or turn off a TV, even in the middle of the most awful events. You know that, after the filming is over, all the people who get “killed” are really still alive, and the monsters are all fake. I’ve seen loads of documentaries on makeup and special effects. It’s comforting to see the same character actors getting glommed up by evil beings in one movie after another. It is like they are immortal. Even death is imaginary.

But the phone on the wall was not imaginary. Nor was that voice. It was too real.

The phone rang again. And I finally did something. I grabbed it and yelled “What do you want?”

“I vant your blood,” said a voice with a thick accent.

4

SCRATCHING

IF THE PERSON saying those words with that phony accent had been close enough, I would have grabbed him and shoved one of his Anne Rice novels down his throat.

“Grow up,” I growled.

“Blagh! Vot is the matter, pathetic mortal?”

“Roger Tillinghast, you are an idiot! Just stop it!” Maybe it was because my own voice trembled as I said this that his immediately changed.

“Aw, Maddy, ah’m sorry. What’s wrong?”

No more phony Count Dracula, just his usual New Orleans drawl. Roger’s name and roots are just as Rogue Island as mine. His family goes back about as far as anyone who isn’t Narragansett. But Roger’s dad and mom were living in Louisiana when he was born. They only moved back to his grandmother’s house on Federal Hill when his mom got hired by the English department at Brown. Her family is from Cranston, which is part of greater Providence. Her specialty is the Gothic tradition in novels, so she is right at home here in more ways than one.

“Did you just call me?” I said.

“You mean right now?”

“No, before this, like a minute ago.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Are you sure?”

“Honest Injun.”