In the Dark of the Night

Chapter 10

“RIGHT HERE,” Kent Newell said. “This is where I caught six trout in less than an hour last summer.”

“Yeah, right,” Tad groaned. “It was three, and we were out for two hours at least.” He looked around, finally spotted the dead tree he’d been looking for, and smirked at Kent. “And it wasn’t right here, either.” He pointed east, where the sun was still rising in its morning arc. “It was over that way. The dead tree was lined up with that real tall pine at the top of the hill, remember?”

Kent spread his hands in mock helplessness. “So sue me! This is close enough, isn’t it?”

They’d taken the boat out nearly two hours ago, tried three other spots where Kent had insisted the fish had been biting like crazy last summer — or the summer before — and failed at every one of them. As Tad shook his head at Kent’s refusal to rise to the teasing, Eric killed the motor and let the little boat glide slowly to a stop almost precisely at the point where the dead tree on shore lined up with the tall pine at the crest of the hill that rose a few hundred yards beyond the lake’s shore.

Kent, his line already rigged, dropped his baited hook over the side, made sure the red and white bobber was doing its job, then turned to help Tad get his line ready.

Eric snapped a jig onto his own line, threw it over, and started moving the tip of his pole up and down in the theoretically enticing motion that Kent still insisted was the only way to lure a fish, despite the fact that so far none of them had gotten even a nibble.

“Hey,” Tad Sparks said in a tone that caught both Eric’s and Kent’s attention. “I saw something really weird last night.” He hesitated, certain that Kent, at least, would tell him he’d only been imagining what he’d seen, but even when the sun had come up three hours ago, the strange image was still fresh in his mind. Besides, it was too late to change his mind now — both Eric and Kent were looking at him expectantly. “There was this old guy in front of our house,” he finally went on. “He was rowing a wooden boat with a huge cross on the bow. And he looked crazy.”

“Old Man Logan,” Kent said, snapping a small spinner onto the swivel on Tad’s line, then passing the rod to Tad. “Here. Cast and retrieve.”

“Old Man Logan?” Tad said as he took the rod. “Really? You think it was him?”

“Who’s Old Man Logan?” Eric asked, his own rod no longer jigging as he gazed at his friends.

“Crazy old guy who lives in the woods,” Kent said, shrugging indifferently.

“Crazy?” Eric asked, frowning. “You mean really crazy, or just weird?”

“Really crazy,” Kent replied. “I heard he killed a girl a long time ago.”

Eric’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, certain that Kent was up to something. “Come on. If he did that, how come he’s not in prison?” he asked, his eyes locking onto Kent’s as if daring him to push the story any further. But it wasn’t Kent who replied.

“Because he was crazy,” Tad said. “At least that’s what we’ve heard. He was locked up for a long time, but they finally let him out.”

“When?” Eric demanded, certain that neither of his friends would have an answer.

“Maybe ten years ago,” Kent replied.

“So if they let him out, he must not be crazy anymore, right?” Eric pressed.

Kent shrugged. “From what I’ve heard, he’s still nuts even if he’s not dangerous. I mean, who else but a crazy guy would mount a cross on the bow of his boat?”

Eric turned to Tad. “So what was he doing at your place last night?”

“Probably looking for someone else to kill,” Kent said before Tad had a chance to answer.

Once again Tad pictured the wild-eyed man with the scraggly beard, and suddenly his appetite for fishing evaporated. “All I know is that I saw him last night,” he finally said. “I don’t know what he was doing, but it was really creepy. Creepy enough that I made my dad come outside, but by the time he got there, the guy was gone. I mean like he just disappeared. It was like he hadn’t been there at all, but I know he was.”

“Jeez,” Eric whispered, scanning the lake as if in search of the apparition Tad had just described.

Abruptly, the wind picked up, and a dark cloud covered the sun. Goose bumps rose on Eric’s arms, and then even blacker clouds were closing in. What had been a perfect morning only moments ago was quickly turning into a storm, and already whitecaps were kicking up on the choppy water.

“Maybe we better go in,” Tad said, zipping up his windbreaker.

Eric nodded, reeling in his jig and laying his rod on the floor of the boat, then moving back toward the outboard. The engine started on the first pull, and Eric turned the boat toward the dock in front of Pinecrest, the little skiff rolling violently as the wind hit it broadside.

“Jeez,” Kent howled, grabbing the cleat near the bow to keep from pitching overboard. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to get us back to the dock,” Eric called a moment before a bolt of lightning ripped across the sky, followed immediately by a crash of thunder.

The boat steadied as Eric headed it directly into the wind, and he twisted the throttle, sending the skiff’s bow steeply upward, crashing into the trough beyond the wave they’d just crested. Water cascaded over Kent, who swore loudly, and Eric throttled back, afraid of swamping the boat.

Then, with no warning whatever, the motor died.

Eric pulled on the rope.

Nothing.

Another pull.

Still nothing, but this time he felt an ugly metal-on-metal grinding.

The motor would not be running any time soon.

“Get the oars,” he said.

As Tad dropped the oars into their locks and began to pull, the first raindrops began to fall, and by the time they tied up at the Pinecrest dock nearly half an hour later, all three boys were soaked to the skin. Then, as Eric was tying the last line to the cleat on the dock, the rain stopped as abruptly as it had started, the sun came out, and raindrops sparkled everywhere.

“So now what?” Tad asked, stepping out of the boat and peering up at the sky.

“Fix the motor,” Eric said. “The boat’s our only transportation, remember?”

“Then let’s fix it,” Kent said, rubbing his left biceps, which was still sore from his fifteen minutes on the oars. “I don’t want to row all the way to town and back Friday night.”

They crossed the lawn toward the carriage house, but stopped short at the door leading to the workshop.

Lying on the ground and glittering in the sunlight almost as if it were begging to be seen, was the can of charcoal lighter fluid they’d used at the barbecue the night before.

A couple of feet away from it lay the box of matches they’d used to light the fire, now sodden from the recent rain.

“How’d these get over here?” Eric breathed. “Didn’t we leave them by the fire pit?”

Tad shrugged, but Kent nodded. “So now we know what Old Man Logan was doing last night,” he said. “He was going to burn your house down.”

As Tad’s eyes widened at Kent’s words, Eric again felt goose bumps surging up his arms.

Then Kent grinned. “Kidding, guys,” he said. “Just kidding.”

But neither Eric nor Tad made a move toward the carriage house door.

“C’mon, you wusses,” Kent said. When neither Eric nor Tad made a move, he pushed between them, pulled the door open, and stepped through it into the gloom inside.

Nearly half a minute passed before first Eric and then Tad reluctantly followed him.

THE DOOR TO the workshop where the tools were kept stood open in front of them.

A few yards farther down the passageway was the door to the storeroom they’d spent a few minutes exploring last night.

Or had it been an hour?

None of them, not Eric, not Tad, not even Kent, made any move to step through the open workshop door. Instead, all three of them stood perfectly still, staring down the hall at the closed door to the storeroom.

Kent finally broke the silence. “That was weird last night.” When neither of his friends spoke, he looked first at Tad, then at Eric. “I told my dad we were just looking at old pictures, but it seems like…” His voice trailed off, then: “I don’t know. It was like I was feeling something. Or hearing something.”

The face he’d seen caught in the headlights last night flooded back into Tad Sparks’s mind. “Let’s just get the tools and go fix the outboard, okay?” he said. Though he’d tried to control it, there was a hint of a stammer in his words, and now Kent was staring at him, his eyes glinting.

“You chicken?” the bigger boy asked. When Tad hesitated, Kent turned to Eric Brewster. “What about you?” he asked. “You scared, too?”

Though Eric’s heart was suddenly beating faster, he shook his head.

“Then let’s go see,” Kent said softly.

The workshop suddenly forgotten, Kent led the way to the storeroom door, opened it, and turned on the light.

As they stepped through the door, a strange feeling of familiarity — almost of welcome — came over Eric. It was as if the room itself was glad to have him back.

Or something in the room.

He looked around.

Nothing had changed since last night.

The photo album sat open on the small slant-topped desk exactly as they had left it.

With Kent and Tad following him, Eric wound his way through the maze of stacked furniture and cartons until he was once more gazing at the still open album. He could feel Kent at his right side and Tad at his left.

The old white-bordered photographs in the leather-covered album were held to its black pages by little triangular paper corners.

Without thinking, without even looking at the image before him, without even realizing what he was doing, Eric turned the page and found himself gazing at a photograph of a small office, a ledger open on its desk. An octagonal window over the desk let in a ray of light.

“That’s this room,” Tad breathed.

Eric and Kent looked up to see the same octagonal window half obscured by a dresser that sat atop a table.

But in the photograph there was a small door in the wall opposite the little window.

A wooden door with what appeared to be a hand-forged iron handle and latch.

Kent pointed at it, then looked at the wall where that door ought to be, but saw instead a sheet of plywood propped against the brick wall.

As if by unspoken agreement — or drawn by some unseen force of which they weren’t quite aware — the three boys moved toward the sheet of plywood, moving the stacks of cartons and jumble of furniture just enough so that when they finally reached their goal they could slide the plywood a few feet to the left.

And there was the doorway they’d seen in the picture.

Except that the wooden door with its iron hardware was gone.

In its place were bricks.

But not the kind of bricks with which the carriage house had been constructed. These were newer, and not nearly as well laid and neatly mortared. Rather, whoever had bricked up the doorway had done it poorly.

Or perhaps too quickly.

The bricks had been shoved into the opening haphazardly, and were only lightly and unevenly mortared.

“Why would anybody brick up the doorway?” Tad whispered.

“Want to open it?” Kent countered, not answering Tad’s question, and already prodding at the bricks.

Something inside Eric wanted nothing more than to find some tools and go to work on the outboard motor. But there was something else inside him as well.

Something that wanted to take those bricks down and free whatever was hidden behind them.

As the two conflicting forces struggled within him, Kent Newell was already working a brick loose.

Mortar dust sifted to the floor.

The brick moved more easily.

“Wait,” Eric said. “Let’s do it later, when our parents are gone.”

Kent stopped, his hands dropping away from the brick.

The three of them stood quietly, gazing at the makeshift wall, saying nothing.

None of them made any move to leave.

“We should go fix the boat,” Tad whispered.

Kent and Eric nodded, but still none of them moved.

Instead they stood staring at the doorway.

Something behind the bricks — something unseen — was holding them.

It was almost as if Eric could hear voices now, voices whispering to him, pleading with him.

Pleading for what?

“Now,” he said, his voice preternaturally loud. “Let’s go now.”

Slowly, as if struggling against the unseen force, they backed away from the wall, through the maze of cartons and furniture, and out the storeroom door.

Eric turned off the light and closed the door firmly. Yet even as he turned away he could still feel the strange force from behind the bricks pulling at him, and he knew Kent and Tad could feel it, too.

He knew they could hear the same indistinct voices that were calling to him.

And he knew that soon all of them would answer that call.

HANDING THE HEAVY tool kit to Kent, Eric led the way out of the carriage house and back down to the dock. As soon as Kent took the cowling off the motor, Eric saw the problem: the frayed starter rope had slipped from the pulley and wedged itself underneath, making it not only impossible to pull, but impossible for the motor to run as well.

“Needs a new rope,” Tad said.

“Which we don’t have,” Kent responded.

“I saw an extra one in the boathouse,” Eric said. “It’s hanging on a nail in the closet with all the old life jackets.”

As Tad went to get the new rope, Eric grabbed a couple of tools from the box and went to work. Fifteen minutes later the old rope was gone, the new one — which was almost as rotten as the old one — was on the pulley, and the final screw was tightened. “All I need is one pull,” Eric said as he put the tools back in the kit. “If it starts, let’s go to the marina and get a new rope. This one won’t last until tomorrow.”

He crossed his fingers, gave the rope a pull, and the motor instantly surged to life. As Kent replaced the cowling, Tad cast off the lines.

“Let’s go,” Tad said as he threw the last line off its cleat.

Eric pulled the boat away from the dock and turned toward town.

The sun was now shining brightly in a cloudless sky, and the only reminder of this morning’s squall was the leftover chop on the lake. Even that died out as they rounded the point that separated The Pines from the town itself. As the boat settled down to skim across the now glassy water, Kent finally began talking about the subject all three of them had been thinking about.

Whatever it was that lay behind the bricked-up doorway.

“If we just stack the bricks inside that back room, nobody would ever know the door had been bricked up.”

Eric’s brows knit uncertainly.

“The photo shows the door,” Tad said. “And if we slide that plywood back over it after we see what’s there, nobody would even know we went inside.”

“So what do you guys think is in there?” Eric asked, realizing even as he spoke that whatever they finally decided to do with the bricks and the plywood, the decision to find out what was behind them had already been made.

“Stuff that somebody doesn’t want us to see,” Tad said.

Kent nodded.

And despite the sun shining overhead, a shiver crept up Eric’s back. Tightening his grip on the control, he held the boat on a steady course.

As he eased the boat up to the dinghy tie-up on the fuel dock at the marina, Tad tossed a line around a cleat, used it to pull the skiff snug to the dock, then waited for Kent to make the stern fast before dropping the fenders over the side and hitching the bow line. It took them no more than ten minutes to find what they were looking for, but ten more to pay for it, and in the twenty minutes they were gone, something had changed at the marina.

A familiar figure was standing on the fuel dock, filling the tank of his family’s boat. And the dinghy tie-up was at the far end of the fuel dock.

“Crap,” Eric said quietly. “There’s Adam Mosler.”

“And Ellis Langstrom,” Kent said.

“Ignore them,” Tad said. “We’ll just walk by.”

But Adam wouldn’t be ignored, and as the three of them approached, he centered himself squarely in the middle of the dock, feet spread, arms crossed over his chest.

“What are you dickheads — oops, I mean coneheads — doing on our dock?”

“Just leaving,” Tad said.

“And it’s not your dock,” Kent added.

“In your little girlie boat?” Adam asked, ignoring Kent. “Better hurry or you won’t make it all the way home before dark.” His lips twisted into a sneering grin. “Bad things can happen to coneheads after dark.”

Doing his best to ignore Adam, Eric moved quickly around the other boy, walked to the end of the dock, and tossed the new rope into the Pinecrest boat. As he was climbing in, Kent and Tad caught up with him, untied the boat, and shoved it away from the dock before Adam had a chance to try to pick a fight.

Eric offered a silent prayer to the god of little outboard motors and pulled the rope.

Miraculously, it started.

He gave the engine a little gas and the boat moved away from the dock, leaving Adam glowering after them.

“Why does he want to be such a jerk?” Tad asked, neither expecting nor getting an answer to his question.

Eric guided the boat out of the marina and away from town, and as they pulled out into the open lake, he finally began to relax. Only a moment later, though, he heard the roar of a powerful outboard, and his guts told him what it was even before he glanced back over his shoulder. Sure enough, Adam Mosler was steering his father’s runabout straight toward them, racing at full speed. Ellis Langstrom was standing behind Adam, hanging onto Adam’s seat with one hand, clutching the boat’s rail with the other. Only at the last possible moment did Mosler throttle back and let the runabout’s bow drop into the water, bringing the boat to a stop alongside their little dingy.

“Going fishing, girls?” Adam mocked, then eyed the bait bucket on the floor of the dinghy. “Eeewww, worms!” he said in an exaggeratedly girlish voice. “Who’s going to bait your hooks?”

Eric held his course steady, silently praying that Kent wouldn’t try to pick a fight out here in the middle of the lake.

Once again his prayers were answered.

“Okay,” Adam said, finally deciding that neither Eric nor his friends were going to rise to his taunts. “We’ll leave you to your summer fun.” He shoved the throttle forward; the motor roared, the boat surged, and Adam flipped the wheel and cut sharply away from Eric’s boat, executing the maneuver so quickly that Ellis Langstrom nearly lost his balance.

The spewing rooster tail built so quickly that Eric had no time to escape it, and as Adam’s boat shot away, a cascade of water poured into the dinghy. Tad Sparks instinctively tried to dodge away from the deluge, but succeeded only in slipping off the seat and banging his shoulder against the side of the boat as he fell. Soaked to the skin once more, the three of them could hear Adam laughing as he sped back toward town.

“Bastard,” Kent said. “I’d like to kill that guy.”

“Forget him,” Eric said.

“I don’t want to forget him,” Kent said. “You okay?” he asked Tad.

Tad scrambled back onto the seat, rubbing his shoulder. “Yeah,” he said. “I shouldn’t have tried to duck.”

“It’s not your fault,” Kent said. “What a jerk. Maybe we should go back to town, find him, and teach him a lesson.”

“Or maybe,” Eric countered as he turned the boat back on course toward Pinecrest, “we should just go home and forget about Adam Mosler.” As Kent opened his mouth to argue, Eric grinned. “My folks are off playing golf, and Marci’s going to that Summer Fun thing at the school. Which means we’ll have plenty of time to unbrick that door and see what’s behind it.”

Kent looked once more at Adam Mosler’s boat. “Okay,” he said. “Besides, who knows? Maybe there’ll be something in there I can use to get that loser.”

Eric twisted the throttle and the boat picked up speed. A moment later they rounded the point, and Adam Mosler’s boat disappeared.

But, though Adam Mosler and Ellis Langstrom were no longer visible, they were not forgotten.

RITA HENDERSON SAW the sheriff’s car pull up and silently rehearsed what she was going to say to the two boys who were sitting in the backseat. She didn’t care much for Adam Mosler, and was fairly sure that sooner or later he’d take a wrong turn on the road of his life and wind up in prison, if not worse. But Ellis Langstrom was another matter, and when she’d recognized him in the boat with Adam, she called Floyd Ruston, who had been the sheriff as long as Rita could remember and was every bit as eager as she herself that nothing happen to dent the tourist trade that was all that kept the town alive. It had taken her no more than a minute to convince Ruston to throw a scare into the two boys, and no more than ten to bring them to her. Now Rita swiveled in her chair and made a few notes on her pad as she heard three car doors slam and footsteps come up the wooden porch steps to her office door.

She looked up when the door opened, then stood and held her hand out to Sheriff Ruston. “Thank you, Rusty,” she said, deliberately using his nickname to make it clear to the boys just how close her relationship with the sheriff was.

“If you hadn’t called, I’d have impounded that boat and arrested these boys,” Ruston replied, sticking perfectly to the script they’d worked out on the phone.

Rita set her mouth in a grim line and inspected the two who stood before her.

Adam Mosler was on the verge of a smirk — no surprise — but Ellis Langstrom looked positively terrified.

Good.

“Reckless endangerment,” the sheriff went on, starting to tick off the boys’ various offenses on his fingers. “Exceeding the five mile per hour speed limit in the marina. Ignoring the no wake rule.”

Rita nodded.

“If it were up to me, they’d both spend the rest of the summer attending Power Squadron classes and doing a whole lot of community service. Not to mention the six hundred and twenty dollars Adam’s father would have to pay to get his boat out of impoundment.”

Rita noticed Adam’s smirk fading. “Sounds like they both owe you a debt of gratitude for not doing all that,” she said pointedly.

Ellis got the message in an instant and turned to face the sheriff. “Thank you,” he said, clearly on the verge of tears. “It won’t happen again. Really — I promise.”

Adam mumbled his apology, and Rita wanted to shake him, but she was prepared to settle for what little she could get, especially since Ruston hadn’t actually seen any of what the boys had done himself, and wouldn’t have wanted to risk Cleve Mosler’s wrath anyway. Not with an election coming up in the fall.

A moment later the sheriff was gone, and it was Rita’s turn.

“It isn’t just the recklessness,” she said, feeling her blood pressure rise as a smirk began to curl around the corners of Adam’s mouth again. “I saw what you did — you were hassling summer people from The Pines.”

Ellis looked at the floor, but Adam merely gave her an insolent glance.

“I’m so disgusted with both of you that I can barely stand to look at you,” she went on. “Especially you, Ellis. How much do you think the local residents spend in your mother’s store?” She barely gave Ellis a chance to speak before answering her own question. “Not much! Not much at all. It’s the summer people and the tourists who put money in our bank accounts and food on our tables. They give you summer jobs.” She moved directly in front of Adam to make her point. “Actually, I give you summer jobs on their behalf. Is that clear?”

She waited for a response.

An apology, maybe.

Or a thank-you for saving them from the possibility of criminal prosecution and juvenile court.

Anything.

But there was no response from either of them.

“Are you listening to me?” Rita finally demanded.

“Yes, ma’am,” Ellis said.

Adam nodded.

“I saved your butts this time because I think you deserve a break. Once. Once. Next time, I’ll let Sheriff Ruston haul you off and take your father’s boat.” Adam glowered at her, his face twisted with fury. “So you’d both better grow up and do something constructive with your time.” She stared at Adam, who met her gaze unflinchingly. “Get it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ellis said.

“Adam?” Rita demanded, her gaze unwavering.

After what seemed an eternity, Adam’s eyes shifted to the floor. “I hear you,” he said.

“Good,” Rita said. “Now get out of here, both of you.”

AS SOON AS they were outside, Adam pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his jeans pocket and took his time lighting one. He glanced back through the window at Rita Henderson, who was back at her desk but watching them. “Bastards,” he said softly. “Maybe we should just kill ’em. All of ’em.”

“Will you shut up?” Ellis said. “What if she hears you?” He walked down the steps to the sidewalk. “I’m going over to my mom’s shop.”

“You workin’ today?”

Ellis shrugged, glancing at Rita Henderson, who was still watching them. “I think I’ll just go help her out. It’s summer — she’ll be busy.”

“So go,” Adam said, his voice taking on a sarcastic edge as he sauntered down the steps, deliberately flicking the ash of his cigarette on the real estate office porch. “Go do what that Henderson bitch wants, and I’ll think of a way to get even with those pricks.”

“Why don’t you just give it up, Adam?” Ellis started down the sidewalk, walking faster to put some distance between them. “It’s not like they ever actually did anything to you.”

“Who cares?” Adam countered as Ellis moved away. When Ellis disappeared around the corner, he tossed his half-smoked cigarette into some bushes and spoke again, more to himself than to anyone who might be listening. “What they did isn’t the point — it’s what they are. And I say they’re a bunch of snotty pricks, and I’m going to teach them a lesson they’ll never forget.”