While I was sitting on the porch in the pre-dawn, listening to the hot Miami winds blow through the fronds, Evil Tom joined me for a snack.

"Good morning, Tom. Happy Hallowe'en. What brings you out in the small hours?"

He lifted his shaggy ginger face from the bowl of food and considered me through rheumy eyes. This is my time, Feeder. It is not yours. Why are you out? He returned to his crunching.

"I've been sick again, Evil Tom, and I've had too much on my mind to rest properly. With the storm coming I decided to get out of the house and enjoy the wind."

Without looking up: Are you enjoying it?

"It's okay, I guess, but it isn't enough. I almost wish we would get a little hurricane, or even a severe storm. I need something with natural force to shake me out of this funk. I mean, it's Hallowe'en, why can't I get something a little more primal?"

Tom lumbered to his feet and began grooming his matted and dirty fur. I drank more coffee. In the darkness down the street something was blown over, and dogs began to bark, one, then another, then another.

"Stupid, noisy dogs."

Stupid, yes, but still dangerous. That's when swaggering young toms and kittens die, when they believe that dogs are always stupid.

"Well, yes..."

Wanting the winds and rain to come because you hurt is stupid, Feeder. The Trapped Ones and others say you are like a cat. I say you are nothing like a cat.

"The Trapped Ones? You mean, the cats in my house?"

He turned three times then settled onto the terracotta tiles, regarding me balefully. As you wish. They no longer know the joy of the hunt, or the pleasure of moonlight runs in the company of their kind.

"Yeah, but they don't know the terror of speeding cars, either, or disease, or... wait, why am I bothering to argue with you?"

We sat in silence for a while as the sky shifted from black to indigo. The sounds of trucks on the highway became more frequent, and occasional night people nodded at me as they passed on the sidewalk.

It is your holiday, Feeder, and you haven't hunted. You spend your nights in the windowless room that stinks of lightning, and not under the sky. If you were my kit I would tell you to hunt one of the rats nesting in the dead palms behind your home, drinking its terror to fire your heart. I know you will not. He yawned broadly. You are no cat.

There are things that walk on this night, Feeder. You know this better than most, but your people make stories about them without understanding. You wear strange cloth, you shout and make noise. You don't understand.

I started to interject, but he cut me off.

Be silent. I was sick, Feeder, and near my time, and you gave me food and showed me kindness and kept the Dark Cat from me. For that alone I will tell you this. You no longer see the Walkers, but they are still there. We try to keep them from you, but they are of your kind, not ours.

He rose stiffly to his feet, arched his back, and padded slowly to the end of the porch, then leaped lithely into the black-green grass.

As he faded into the shadows, his words drifted across the lawn. Not all masks are cloth — the Walkers are your own. If you want to live, feed yourself.