Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012

He’s pale as paper and it takes me a moment to realise that’s not makeup. It’s because he’s bled out from the two puncture marks on his neck.

“Vampires don’t exist, right?” Scott says gruffly. “That’s what I keep telling my girls. All that Twilight garbage.”

“This isn’t the first?”

“The third this year. We’ve kept the lid on it so far, but that’s not going to last forever.”

That’s when I notice the writing on the wall. It’s scrawled almost at ground level, but I can tell instantly it’s written in blood. It’ll take the technicians longer to confirm it, but I know I’m right. I crouch down for a closer look, earning a grumpy mutter from the photographer I displace. “Darkling,” it says.

I step back, shocked. “Is this a first?” I point to the tiny scribble. “Was there something like that at the other scenes?”

“Nobody spotted it,” Scott says. “I’ll get someone to go over the crime-scene pics.”

I don’t need them to do that. I know already it’ll be there. I know because it’s a message for me. Darkling is where I am, where I’ve been since I found myself trapped in this place, this time, this body. Darkling. In the dark. A creature of the dark. But now I’ve had a message from my own side.

And now I understand how to fight my enemy. I need to erase this darkling existence. If I can wipe the word from human consciousness, I’ll be free again. Free to move through time and space in my full grace and glory, not the pale shadow existence I’ve had since I was jailed in this form. The murders will stop too. The three that have already happened will be undone, their victims back in their proper place in the world. That’s an unintended consequence, but a good one nevertheless.

I say something, I don’t know what, to get myself off the hook with Scott and melt into the night. I’m home in an instant, computer on, fingers flying over the keys. First recorded instance... Shakespeare. I can’t help but smile in spite of the seriousness of my plight. Shakespeare. How bloody predictable is that? I take a deep breath, spread my fingers against the side of my head, and will the transference.

The room is small, lit by a trio of tapers. In the flutter of light, I see a man in his late thirties hunched over a small wooden table. There’s a stack of thick paper to one side of him. His sharpened quill is poised above the ink pot, his dark eyes on the middle distance, a frown line between the fine arches of his brows. His lips are moving.

“The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,

That it’s had it head bit off by it young.

So out went the candle, and we were left darkling,” he mutters.

If I were in my pomp, it would be no problem. Being physically present would offer all sorts of options for change and deletion. In extremis, I could kill. But I can only manifest as a voice. He’ll think it’s his own interior voice, or he’ll think he’s going mad. Either way should serve.

“Not darkling,” I say. “Sans light. It’s the Fool speaking. Sans light, that’s what he’d say.”

He pauses, uncertain. “We were left sans light?” he says.

“Sans light,” I say. “Sans light.”

He twists his mouth to one side. “Not darkling. I cannot make a poet of the Fool. Sans light.”

He dips the quill and scratches out the word and I dissolve back into my body. I’m amazed. Who knew it would be so easy to edit the great bard of Avon?

Next up, John Milton and Paradise Lost. My consciousness emerges in a sunlit garden where the great man is declaiming. There’s no other word for it. But the poet is not alone. Of course he’s not alone. He’s blind. Somebody else has to write it down for him. There’s a younger man scrawling as he speaks. I need to move fast. We’re coming up to the line. Yes, here we go.

“As the wakeful bird sings darkling.” Milton gives himself a congratulatory smile.

“Birds don’t sing in the dark,” I say. The scribe looks around wildly, wondering if he’s just spoken out loud.