Conversion

“He is his own grandpa,” succinctly explains Mary/Chuckles.

“How did that come about?” asks a nonplussed Pitch Darkly. He’d seen and heard about everything in his extended life.

“A concert. A bat thrown onstage. He thought the bat was rubber. He bit its head off, finding out it was a real bat: his own (vampire) grandpa. Their blood comingled. He became his own grandpa.”

Pitch Darkly stared over at the figure in the corner. “Is he alive? I mean, you’re alive and…”

“… mere mesh figure?”

“Well…”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”

So Pitch talked to the figure. “Hellooo? Mr. Well? Hell–OOO??” He looked back at Mary/Chuckles. “No good.”

“No. He is mere representation. He can’t do what I’m about to do now.”

Pitch watched as Mary/Chuckles got up and stood beside the window, outfits instantly swapped out.

He turned back to the Osborne Well figure. “Is that his grandpa there he’s holding?”

Mary/Chuckles sat back down at the table with Pitch Darkly, green outfit returned. “No, it’s just a microphone shaped like a bat. He holds a bat just like you use to do. But we should move more into who he is beyond what he is.”

“Okay.”

“Can you guess?” asked Mary/Chuckles.

“Umm. Vampire from the etheric plane. Er, vampire from the Planet of Vampires. Or just a vampire from (an airplane).”

“All three, yes. Another great 3-n-1. Their plane or planet crashed or clashed over there.” Mary/Chuckles pointed behind her toward what Pitch understood as the Catsocks sinkhole he and Buster had visited just yesterday. “A deal was struck with Chelsea: Stay across the tracks from our hotel and attached developing city and we’ll let you do as you wish. Thus the killing shacks. Thus the creation of the multiple fishing holes. Like me, vampires, or at least this particular strain of vampires, love to fish.”

“*You’re* not a vampire?” Pitch Darkly logically asked. “But, no,” he then added more to himself. “I would obviously be able to tell my own kind.”

“Owen Grandpa,” Mary/Chuckles chipped in. “That was his vampire grandpa’s (ironic) name. But Osborne Well didn’t know his grandpa was a vampire until he bit his head off in bat form.”

“Interesting (developing) story. What happened to Osborne, Mary? I mean, since this figure really isn’t him.”

“As a living breathing dichotomy, Well soon became ill and died. So another ironic name, both grandson and grandpa. Other vampires moved in to fill the power void. I wasn’t around but I heard it from my grandma. I speak with her still sometimes.”

“Channeling?” guessed Pitch Darkly.

“No. Phone. She lives over in Farmington.”

A face began to form on top of the Osborne Well figure’s own, glasses intact for now. The facing Mary/Chuckles saw it and then asked Pitch to turn around. From his surprised expression she understood he saw the same. “The Protector,” she explained, face locked in. “Monsters all around.”

Well’s glasses faded as well, making Pitch Darkly revert back to Baker Bloch. “I know that face.”