In the Dark of the Night

Chapter 15

MARCI’S CHIN QUIVERED as she set a worn catnip mouse on top of the shoe-box casket and sprinkled a handful of soil on top of it, then slipped her hand into her mother’s as Eric shoveled more dirt into Tippy’s grave.

“We couldn’t find anything to make a headstone with,” Merrill said as the little grave quickly filled, “so we’re scattering rose petals.”

“I’m going to make a cross later,” Marci said.

Eric nodded, and Marci picked up the basket of fresh rose petals she had spent the last hour gathering and carefully dropped them on top of the freshly turned earth, upending the basket to shake the last ones out. “Good-bye, Tippy,” she whispered, and once more clung to her mother’s hand.

“Good-bye, Tippy,” Eric and Merrill echoed as Merrill stroked her daughter’s hair.

“See?” Merrill went on, as Eric started toward the carriage house, the shovel held against his shoulder like a rifle. “Now Tippy will always smell the roses.” She gave Marci one more squeeze, then raised her voice enough for Eric to hear. “Fresh chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen.” As he waved an acknowledgment, she gently turned Marci away from the grave and started back toward the house.

A SHIVER RAN THROUGH Eric as he came to the door to the storeroom.

He paused.

Maybe he should let Kent and Tad go to the library by themselves, while he spent the afternoon in the secret room, quietly exploring the contents of the boxes and trying to decipher the cryptic entries in the journal.

He reached for the doorknob, his fingers already tingling in anticipation of touching the hard brass.

On the edges of his consciousness he could hear a whispering sound, almost like voices. Though the words — if they really were words — were unintelligible, they seemed to be pleading with him.

Pulling him closer.

His fingers closed on the doorknob.

The room — and the room beyond — wanted him….

The shovel slipped from Eric’s grasp, and when it crashed to the concrete hallway, startled him back to reality.

He checked his watch. It was only three-thirty.

At least he hadn’t lost track of time, and Tad had said the library stayed open until nine in the summer. Turning away from the door to the storeroom, he hurried to the tool room and replaced the shovel.

Back at the house, he found his mother and sister having cookies and milk at the kitchen table. He washed his hands, then went over and picked up a cookie from the plate in the center of the table. “I’m going over to Kent’s,” he said, snagging two more cookies, hesitating, then taking a fourth. “For Kent,” he added, though no one had challenged his taking all but three of the cookies left on the plate.

“Oh, honey,” Merrill said, putting a hand on his arm. “Couldn’t you just stay here with us?”

Eric turned back. “Why?”

Merrill’s brow creased with worry. “Because of all that’s happened. I just thought it would be nice if you were here with Marci and me.” And besides, she added silently, I don’t want to be alone when it gets dark.

“But Kent and Tad and I were going to the library.”

Merrill stared at her son. “The library?” she repeated. “I don’t believe it — Tad Sparks, maybe. But Kent? The library? During summer vacation?” She eyed Eric. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he replied quickly casting around in his mind for something his mother might buy. “Kent said a lot of girls hang out there,” he finally said, though Kent had never said anything of the sort.

His mother seemed to accept it, but said, “I still think you should stay home today.”

Suddenly he understood, and met his mother’s gaze squarely. “You’re just afraid something else is going to happen. And because you’re afraid, I get punished.”

Her gaze dropped away from his. “I’m asking you nicely to please stay home.”

Eric slid into one of the kitchen chairs. “And I’m asking you to please let me go hang out with my friends. If Dad were here, I’d get to go.” He could see his mother wavering. “Let’s call and ask him.”

Merrill hesitated, then reached for the cordless phone and dialed. She’d hoped Eric would have agreed to stay home, and then maybe her fears over being in the big house at night wouldn’t escalate into another series of horrible, interminable sleepless hours. She felt tears building up, but didn’t want to cry in front of the kids.

And she sure didn’t want to cry on the telephone to Dan, who answered on the first ring.

“Dan Brewster.”

“Hi, honey.” Not bad! Barely a quaver.

Eric bit into a cookie while Marci sat with her hands in her lap, a sad look on her face.

Merrill recounted Tippy’s funeral and Eric’s request to go out. “I just don’t think I can do it, Dan. I can’t be alone up here all summer while you’re in the city.” In spite of her efforts, her voice started trembling. “I’m thinking I want to pack up and come home.”

“Slow down, sweetie,” Dan said. “There’s nothing wrong with Eric spending the afternoon with his friends. It’s summer.”

“But I’m afraid—”

“I know,” Dan cut in. “You’re afraid. You’re nervous. But that’s no reason to spoil everybody’s summer. Call Ellen or Ashley and get together. Don’t stay in the house. Take Marci and go somewhere.”

“But I hate it up here alone,” Merrill whispered fiercely.

“You’ve only been alone for twenty-four hours.”

Merrill chewed her lip.

“And you’re not alone. You’ve got the kids. Marci’s having a great time, and so is Eric. It’s sad about Tippy, but those things happen. You know that.”

“I know, but—”

“We’re not giving up the house,” Dan said quietly. “I’ll be up at the end of the week for the Fourth of July weekend. And Marci’s going to be in the parade, remember? I know you, sweetheart — you don’t want to spoil that for her.”

Merrill sighed, not only accepting defeat, but knowing that her husband was right. “I don’t,” she finally said. “And I won’t. I guess I just miss you.”

“I know, honey. I miss you, too. Tell Eric to go have fun and be home by dark. And you find yourself something fun to do, too, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Gotta run. Love you.”

Dan clicked off.

“Love you, too,” she said to the hollow silence of the broken connection. Composing herself, she pressed the Off button and turned to Eric. “Okay,” she said, forcing a bright smile. “Just please be home by dark, all right?”

Eric paused on his way out to kiss her cheek. “Thanks, Mom. And thanks for the cookies. They’re good.”

“You might as well take the rest for Tad.” This time her smile was genuine.

Eric took the last three cookies from the plate and headed out the back door.

• • •

ERIC AND KENT followed Tad as he wound his way through the maze of heavy oak reading tables toward the archway that led to the large room that was filled to overflowing with row after row of tall bookcases. Beyond the last row, they came to the room that held the periodicals, including bound copies of the town’s weekly newspaper, the Phantom Lake Times, going back ten years. They were just where the librarian had said they would be.

Tad ran his finger along the shelf of bound newspapers until he came to the large, heavy volume that was dated seven years earlier. He pulled it off the shelf and carried it to the scarred wooden table in the center of the room.

“Where do we start?” Kent asked.

Tad rolled his eyes. “At the beginning, of course. Except that if he went out in his boat, it had to be at least March or April, right? Otherwise the lake would still have been frozen.” He opened the cover and began carefully turning the pages until he came to the issue from mid-March. “And it’ll be on the front page. Right? I mean, Darby was one of the most important people in town, wasn’t he?” As Eric nodded, Tad continued turning the pages.

Nothing through March, or April, or May.

June and July showed nothing, either.

Then, in August, Kent reached out and stopped Tad from turning the next page. “There it is,” he said. “August eighth. Front page, just like you said.”

The three boys huddled close and began reading. PHANTOM LAKE MAN MISSING

Dr. Hector Darby appears to be missing after a boat belonging to him was found abandoned near Hunter’s Reserve last Wednesday. Mr. Charles Spencer reported first seeing it on Monday, then again on Tuesday morning. Spencer himself thought he recognized it as belonging to Dr. Darby, and reported the boat’s presence to Sheriff Floyd Ruston only after getting no response when he tried to contact Dr. Darby at Pinecrest, Darby’s residence of the last twenty years.

Sheriff Ruston went to Pinecrest to investigate and found newspapers piled in the doorway and an overflowing mailbox. Ruston entered the property, found no sign of Darby, but says he found no evidence of foul play. Though with no evidence of where Dr. Darby might be, Ruston is unwilling to launch a full-scale investigation, at least as of this date.

“Though Dr. Darby often stopped the newspaper and had his mail held when he left home, it wasn’t a consistent habit,” Ruston said. “Therefore, for the moment at least, I’m assuming that this time he simply didn’t make the arrangement, and in his absence, the wind blew the boat loose. If he hasn’t been heard from within a day or so, then of course I’ll look further into the matter.”

The boat was towed back to Pinecrest and secured in its boathouse.

When asked if there could be any connection between Dr. Darby’s disappearance and the discovery of Tiffany Hanover’s body found July 15, floating near Hunter’s Reserve, Ruston brushed the question aside, saying only that “I don’t even think that one’s worth a ‘no comment.’”

When he finished reading, Eric studied the photo accompanying the story. Dr. Darby appeared to be an ordinary, nondescript man wearing glasses and a business suit.

“Weird,” Kent said, rereading the last paragraph. “Go back to July fifteenth.”

Tad flipped the pages back three weeks.

“What do you know,” Kent whispered, staring at the headline for that week’s paper. “I never even heard about this one.” BODY FOUND FLOATING IN LAKE

Fishermen reported finding the body of a young woman floating near Hunter’s Reserve early this morning, according to Sheriff Floyd Ruston. She was not immediately identified, nor was the cause of death known.

“We’ve had no missing persons reports,” Sheriff Ruston said, “but she hadn’t been in the water very long. I’m sure we’ll learn something very soon.”

The girl’s body was removed to the county coroner’s office.

The boys scanned through the rest of the article, but there was no further information about the body; just a lot of warnings about water safety, not only from the sheriff, but from half a dozen other people as well.

“So somewhere between here and August eighth, they identified her,” Eric said when they’d all finished the story.

“Maybe she just drowned,” Tad suggested.

“Or maybe something else happened to her,” Kent said, and began slowly turning the pages once more.

They found the story in the issue from the following week. BODY IDENTIFIED AS SUMMER VISITOR

The young woman found floating in Phantom Lake near Hunter’s Reserve last week has been identified as Tiffany Hanover, granddaughter of Luther and Iris Hanover of Milwaukee and Phantom Lake. She had been spending the summer with her grandparents at their summer home on the west bank.

Tiffany, 18, graduated as valedictorian of her high school class last month and was slated to begin college this fall at Northwestern University in Chicago, where she had intended to enroll in a premed course of study.

Though sources close to the investigation say the cause of death appears to be drowning, the investigation of the case has not yet been closed.

The Hanovers have returned to Milwaukee to be with their son, Robert G. Hanover, and his wife, the former Lynette Giles, also of Milwaukee.

Tad turned page after page as all three boys scanned each issue for a resolution to either Darby’s disappearance or the girl’s death, but they found nothing. Finally closing the heavy volume, Tad looked up at Eric and Kent. “We don’t know much more about Darby now than we did when we got here,” he said.

“No,” Kent said, “but now we have Tiffany Hanover, too. And doesn’t it seem weird that the paper would say her drowning and Darby’s disappearance weren’t connected? I mean, doesn’t that make it sound like people must have thought they were? Otherwise, why even mention it?”

Eric suddenly remembered the woman behind the desk who had told them where to find the old newspapers. Certainly she looked like she’d been working in the library for a whole lot longer than seven years — in fact, she could have been the original librarian when the place had been built almost a century earlier. “How about asking the librarian?” he suggested.

They replaced the book and approached the big mahogany counter just inside the front door, where Miss Edna Bloomfield — identified by a neat brass nameplate set discreetly by the book-return box — was sorting catalog cards in a long narrow drawer.

“Are you boys finding what you’re looking for?” she asked in a whisper, peering at them over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses. Though her hair was twisted up at the nape of her neck in a tight bun and she wore a long-sleeve dress that was buttoned all the way up to her chin, there was a glimmer of a smile in her eyes that belied the severity of her dress and hairdo.

“I’m living at the house called Pinecrest this summer,” Eric said, “and we were interested in finding out something about Dr. Darby.” He glanced at Tad and Kent, then spoke again. “I mean, like, what happened to him? Did he really just disappear?”

“And we’re wondering about Tiffany Hanover, too,” Kent added. “Did she really just drown?”

Edna Bloomfield gazed up at them, her eyes moving from Eric to Kent to Tad, then back to Eric, and Eric could almost see the gears turning in her head as she appraised them and decided how much — if anything — to tell them. Finally, she leaned back in her chair, took off her glasses, and let them hang on a chain around her neck. “Well,” she said, her voice rising slightly, “you boys seem to have happened onto the only two mysteries of Phantom Lake.” She clucked her tongue sympathetically. “That poor girl.” Now her voice dropped again, and she leaned forward, glancing in both directions as if to be certain nobody but the three boys was listening. “She was murdered, you know.”

“Murdered?” Tad echoed. “But there was nothing about that in the paper. At least nothing we could find.”

“This is a small town,” Edna Bloomfield said. “We rely on tourism.” She glanced around once more, and her voice dropped still further. “So sometimes everything doesn’t get into the paper. But everyone knows she was strangled, even if Gerry Hofstetter at the paper didn’t publish anything. And who can blame him? He didn’t want to scare people. And why hurt the town? After all, it isn’t like one of our people did it.”

“Then who did?” Tad asked.

Edna Bloomfield waved her hand at the question as if it were a pesky fly. “Well, I’m sure I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows. Some reporter from Milwaukee came and poked around, trying to make everyone think it was one of those killers you hear so much about these days.”

An image of Old Man Logan and his strange boat with the cross mounted in the bow suddenly rose in Tad Sparks’s mind.

Miss Bloomfield put the index cards aside and leaned closer to the boys. “I heard he even suggested our nice Dr. Darby might have done it, just because he used to work with those killers at the hospital down in Madison. But none of us ever believed that, of course. Dr. Darby was such a fine man. He was a patron of this library, you know. Always in here, working on his research.”

“What kind of research?” Eric asked.

“Well, his specialty, of course,” Edna Bloomfield replied, as if Eric should have known. “Those terrible killers — what do they call them?” She glanced around distractedly, as if expecting to find the words she was looking for tucked away in some far corner of the library, then brightened as she found them. “Serial killers! Yes, that was it. My goodness — he used to come in every week, it seems like, always looking for new books about the psychology of murderers and all that sort of thing. Of course, I tried to buy all of them since he was so generous to our library, but it seemed I could never keep up. He always knew of one I didn’t have, and oh how I’d scramble to get it for him. Now, of course, he’d get them all on the Internet, but back then…”

Her voice trailed off and she seemed to disappear into another world. Then she straightened up in her chair, and when she spoke again, her voice was much brighter. “I always liked Dr. Darby. I considered him to be Phantom Lake’s only genuine eligible bachelor. He was very nice and very well-respected. He had a fine mind.” She took a deep breath, replaced her glasses on her nose, and smiled up at the boys. “But he’s gone, and we’ll probably never find out what happened to him, will we?”

As she picked up her cards and began shuffling through them once again, Eric saw a sadness replace the smile in her eyes.

THE LAST OF the twilight faded quickly as Kent walked off the road onto a path that seemed to plunge directly into the densest part of the woods. In moments the forest had closed around him like a shroud, and a veil of fog seemed to have come out of nowhere. Even though he was only a few steps ahead of Eric, Eric still found himself barely able to see the other boy’s back as they made their way along what both Kent and Tad had insisted was a shortcut home. Squinting hard, Eric kept his eyes on the ground to avoid the roots, rocks, and thick mulch of rotted leaves that it seemed were conspiring to trip him. The path appeared to be little more than a game trail, one so seldom used and so overgrown that even the animals seemed to have abandoned it.

Soon the darkness obscured even the path, and now Eric had to rely on the sound of Kent’s footsteps in front of him — and Tad’s behind him — to keep him on the trail.

His mother was going to be furious that he wasn’t home yet.

Worse, she’d be worried, and once she started worrying, there’d be no stopping her. “Maybe we should have taken the boat to town,” he said.

Before either Kent or Tad could say anything, a twig snapped.

Eric froze, and a second later Tad’s hand closed on his shoulder, startling him so badly he whirled around, ready to defend himself.

“Did you hear that?” Tad whispered. “Someone’s behind us!”

Unbidden — and unwanted — images rose in Eric’s mind, and for a moment he was caught once more in the dream he’d had only a few nights earlier, when he was prowling through the same kind of darkness and mist that surrounded him now. He tried to force the memory down, but even as he reminded himself that he was only a few hundred yards from home, something in his memory kept trying to drag him back to the streets of London.

London, and Jack the Ripper.

“There’s nobody there,” Kent said, his low, confident voice staving off the panic that had nearly overwhelmed Eric. “Just keep going.” Then Kent increased his pace, leaving Eric to try to keep up, stumbling along in the dark, Tad close behind him.

But a few seconds later another sound came out of the darkness, this time from the other side of the path, and all the images Eric had banished came flooding back. Now Tippy’s torn body floated in the night, and he could almost see bloodstained blades glinting in the darkness.

And what about the girl they’d read about only a few hours ago, who’d drowned in the lake?

If she’d really drowned at all.

What if the rumors were true?

What if someone had killed her?

And what if he was still out there?

What if he’d seen them in the library, and knew what they were doing?

Another twig snapped, closer this time.

From a few yards behind, Eric heard Tad utter a tiny yelp, and a second later Tad’s hand clamped onto Eric’s biceps so hard it sent a spasm of pain right down to his fingertips.

“Something’s out there,” Tad whispered. “It’s—” Before he could finish, a low growl came from their right, instantly followed by a violent thrashing in the brush.

“Bear!” Tad yelled, shouldering past Eric and charging up the path at a dead run.

Eric’s heart was pounding so hard he could barely breathe, let alone speak, but his horror at being left alone in the dark with whatever was hidden in the brush overcame the terror that was all but paralyzing him. “Kent?” he finally managed to squeal, no longer even able to see his friend. “You still there? Don’t leave me!”

“Let’s just get out of here,” Kent called back over his shoulder, his voice trembling almost as badly as Eric’s. “Come on!” He broke into a run, cursed loudly as his foot caught on something and he nearly lost his balance, then caught himself and once more bolted into the blackness. Eric followed, stumbling after Kent and Tad, low-hanging branches slashing at his face, and brush catching at his clothes like claws trying to snatch him away into the night.

He could hear the predator clearly now, crashing through the brush off to the left. He could almost smell it, almost feel its fetid breath on the back of his neck as it charged toward him.

The bushes thrashed right beside him.

In another second it would be too late — the creature would be upon him, cutting him off even from the help of Kent and Tad.

Panicked, Eric leaped forward, racing through the darkness. He could feel the beast behind him, feel it rising up, poised on its hind legs, lashing out to smash him to the ground with a massive clawed paw. He could feel its fangs sinking into his flesh, feel it tearing at him, gnawing on his very bones. A howl of terror rose out of his throat, and then he’d caught up with Kent and Tad, and all three of them were flying through the woods, the lumbering, crashing beast following close behind.

Then, with no warning at all, they burst from the woods onto the road, and dead ahead of them was the floodlit entrance to The Pines.

And as suddenly as they were out of the woods, the crashing of the beast stopped.

Silence — a silence so heavy that Eric could actually feel it — dropped over the night.

“Wh-Where is it?” Tad Sparks stammered, gasping for breath. “Where’d it—”

His words ended abruptly as a rock hit him hard on the side.

“What the—” he began again, but his words were cut off once more, this time by the sound of laughter as Adam Mosler, Ellis Langstrom, and Chris McIvens emerged from the edge of the woods.

Mosler threw another rock, forcing Eric to dodge away. “Oooh, it’s a bear,” he said, his voice a mocking singsong.

“Don’t leave me,” Chris squealed, pitching his own voice into a girlish register and pitching a third rock that hit the pavement at Kent’s feet.

“What a bunch of fags,” Ellis sneered.

Eric felt his face burning, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Kent’s hands clenching into fists. “Let’s just get out of here,” he said softly enough that only Kent and Tad could hear him. “Ignore them.” He grabbed Tad and they walked quickly down the road toward home.

A moment later Kent reluctantly followed, but his fury was still palpable as he caught up with Eric and Tad. “I’m going to freakin’ kill that bastard,” he grated, his breath still rasping from his charge through the woods.

“Maybe we should tell somebody about them,” Tad said. “One of us could have really been hurt back there!”

“And if we report them,” Eric instantly responded, “all that will happen is that my mom will make me go back to Evanston. Let’s just leave it alone, okay?”

“Not okay,” Kent shot back, kicking a rock out of the road. “I hate those guys.”

Tad snickered. “You gotta admit,” he said when Kent glared at him, “they really had us going.”

“Yeah?” Kent growled. “Well, maybe you think it’s funny, but I don’t!”

Eric eyed Kent, whose eyes were almost glowing with anger, even in the darkness. “Come on, Kent — lighten up. What good’s it gonna do to stay mad? Tad’s right — they made us look like idiots.”

“He’s right that someone really could have gotten hurt, too,” Kent said, balling his fists again. “And I’m not going to get mad — I’m going to get even!”

Five minutes later Eric was back at Pinecrest. He stood by the front door for a moment, checking his breathing and trying to shrug away the last tendrils of the fear that had gripped him only a few minutes ago. When he was sure neither his breathing nor his expression would give away what had just happened, he finally went inside and found his mother and sister watching a movie.

A Disney movie.

The house still smelled like chocolate chip cookies.

A small fire was glowing on the hearth, even though the evening was warm.

The draperies were drawn against the darkness outside, and as he settled into the big easy chair, the last of his terror faded away.

Outside, hidden in the darkness, the old skiff with the crude wooden cross on its prow moved silently away from the shore and headed out across the dark water.