In the Dark of the Night

Chapter 8

ASHLEY SPARKS GAZED dolefully at the enormous pile of cooked, peeled, and cubed potatoes that threatened to overflow onto the floor at any moment. “Merrill, do you have a bowl for the potato salad? Or can I just chuck it all in the trash and take everyone out for dinner?”

“In the lower cabinet to your left.” Merrill pointed with the knife she was using to chop celery. “And no, you can’t throw it out. The worst is over — all you have to do now is add the good stuff.”

“Oh, come on, Merrill,” Ellen Newell put in as she unwrapped the butcher paper from a dozen thick steaks and arranged them on a platter. “Ashley doesn’t cook — she shops.” Then, as Ashley tried to muster up a dirty look — and failed — Ellen gazed enviously around Pinecrest’s huge kitchen. “Too bad we aren’t all living in this place,” she said. “I can’t believe how huge it is.”

Merrill glanced out to the terrace, where her friends’ husbands were drinking beer while her own poked at smoldering coals in the barbecue. “Marci, would you take the meat out to your father?”

Marci finished drinking her lemonade, set the empty glass in the sink, then took the platter from Ellen.

As soon as she was out of the room, Merrill turned to Ellen. “So I hear this Dr. Darby used to do experiments on the criminally insane,” she said, her voice as accusing as her expression.

Ellen and Ashley exchanged a quick look, then faced Merrill, expressions of mock guilt on their faces, and promptly dissolved into laughter. “That’s the rumor, all right,” Ellen said. “Hand me the mayo. Is it fat-free?”

Merrill pushed the jar of mayonnaise across the kitchen island. “Don’t you think you could have told me?” Then, as both her friends looked as if they were about to start laughing again, she glowered at them. “Don’t laugh at me!”

“Oh, honey, we can’t help but laugh,” Ashley said, sliding chopped pickles and onions from the cutting board into the bowl with the potatoes. “Look at this fabulous house — there’s no way on earth you would have rented it if you’d known about all those silly rumors.”

“And that’s all they are,” Ellen said. “Rumors. Who did you hear that one from?”

“Carol something-or-other. In the antiques store.”

“Carol Langstrom,” Ashley said, testing the water for the corn on the cob, then setting the lid back on the steaming pot before turning to face Merrill. “Here’s the story on Carol, and a lot of other people in Phantom Lake. Imagine being up here all winter long with ten feet of snow at forty below zero and really short days with nothing to do except gossip, spread rumors, and turn molehills into mountains. It’s not just Carol Langstrom, but much as I love her, she is the biggest gossip in town.”

“So, I have a plan,” Ellen said, as she began mixing the salad with a big wooden spoon. “To keep all of us from the evil of dwelling on rumors, we shall keep ourselves active. Minds and bodies. There’s a lovely little par-three golf course on the north shore of the lake, and there are public tennis courts over by the pavilion in town, and Jeff has the ski boat all tuned up. If we keep you busy enough, you won’t have time to think about everything you’re going to hear about this house. In fact, if I keep you really, really busy, you won’t even have time to hear the stories, let alone worry about them.”

“Not all of us are Barbie dolls, Ellen,” Ashley Sparks observed dryly, patting her own ample rump. “Nor do all of us look good enough in swimsuits to actually put one on. So for me there will be nothing involving public displays of flesh, okay? I’ll golf with you, but that’s as far as it goes. And you’ll go antiquing with me. Deal?” She lifted the lid on the pot again, where the water was now boiling. “I’m going to start the corn.”

“Deal,” Ellen said. “But from what I’ve seen so far, you could do a year’s worth of antiquing right in this house.”

“Don’t I know it,” Ashley replied, turning back to Merrill. “And I need a full tour right after we eat. I’ve wanted to get inside this house for years!”

“Maybe we should trade houses, and you can ignore all the stories about this one,” Merrill suggested, then wished she could retract her words as she saw both her friends roll their eyes.

“For God’s sake, Merrill,” Ellen said. “Don’t you think it’s about time to give up the Queen Nervosa title? You’re already over forty, and someday you’re going to look back on your life and see how much you’ve missed just by being afraid that something might happen.”

Merrill sighed and nodded, and as her two friends began planning tomorrow, she looked out through the window at their three sons, who were throwing a football around on the big lawn while Moxie chased after them. Dan and the other two men were laughing around the smoking barbecue, and Marci had sprawled in the hammock with her cat.

All of it going on against the beautiful backdrop of the sparkling lake at the foot of the lawn.

Ellen and Ashley were right; it was, indeed, time to give up her title and stop worrying.

If every day turned out like this one, there would be nothing to worry about.

ERIC PASSED THE bag of marshmallows to Kent Newell, who expertly skewered three of them onto a single stick and held them just far enough over the glowing barbecue coals so they’d brown without bursting into flames the way his own marshmallows always did. The low murmur of their parents’ voices floated out from the house, and the soft background chorus of chirping crickets was the only other sound that broke the silence of the calm evening, except for the occasional croaking of a frog or the lonely call of a loon searching for its mate somewhere across the lake. As the daylight began to fade, he leaned back in one of the worn canvas camp chairs they’d found in the basement and decided that things couldn’t get much better. Kent and Tad were both here, and the summer stretched before them, an unexplored territory with a new adventure waiting every day.

“I’m going to look up Kayla Banks tomorrow,” Kent said, slowly rotating his marshmallows. He grinned at Eric and Tad over the barely flickering fire. “She’s had all winter to think about me.”

“Which could be good or bad,” Tad pointed out, “depending on how hard you tried to get in her panties last summer.”

“She loved it,” Kent bragged.

“And assuming she hasn’t already got a boyfriend,” Tad went on. “You don’t really think she’s been doing nothing but dream about you all year, do you?”

“If all the guys up here are like the ones I ran into, they’re all jerks,” Eric said before Kent had a chance to defend his desirability.

Kent’s gaze shifted from Tad to Eric. “Who?”

“Adam somebody.”

“Mosler.” Kent spat the name as if it tasted bad in his mouth. “Adam’s an asshole. He and two other creeps hassled us last year.” He grinned again, but this time there was a hint of maliciousness about it. “But this year it’s three of us against three of them. No problem.”

“Or maybe we ought to just steer clear of them,” Tad said. “In fact, maybe we should just stay away from all the townies.”

“No way,” Kent flared. “I have an investment in Kayla from last year, and this year it’s gonna pay off!”

“Jeez,” Tad groaned. “You sound like you think she owes you something.”

Kent’s grin broadened. “She does. She owes me a piece of—” He cut his own words short as first one, then the second, and finally the third of his marshmallows dropped off the skewer into the coals and burst into flames. “Crap!”

As Kent reloaded his skewer, the boys lapsed into silence, watching the embers. The brighter stars were just becoming visible in the evening sky, and the pine trees on the hills across the lake were silhouetted points against a rosy background.

Fireflies winked around the yard.

Suddenly, Eric remembered the other night, when a boat bearing not only Adam Mosler, but someone else as well, had shown up at the dock at just about this same time. “Do you guys know Cherie Stevens?” he asked.

“Sure,” Kent said. “She’s Kayla’s best friend.”

“I’m thinking maybe we should go to the pavilion dance next Friday,” Eric said. “She practically invited me.”

“I’m in,” Kent said. “We’ll all go, and maybe we’ll all get lucky.”

“We didn’t get lucky last year,” Tad reminded him.

“But that was last year,” Kent countered. “I’ve got a good feeling about this year.”

The kitchen lights went out and the dining room lights went on in the house, and Eric watched as all their parents settled in for a card game, which meant none of them would move for at least an hour. “You guys want to see what I found today?” he asked in a tone that caught both Kent’s and Tad’s attention. Setting down his marshmallow skewer, Eric rose from his chair, and a moment later the three boys moved soundlessly away from the terrace, across the lawn, and into the shadows of the old carriage house.

Eric opened the door and led the way down the darkened hallway.

“What is this place?” Tad asked, unconsciously dropping his voice to a whisper.

“It’s the garage now,” Eric said. “But there’s an apartment upstairs, and lots of other rooms from when it was a stable and carriage house.”

He opened a door and turned on a solitary lightbulb.

Kent and Tad edged past him and they all crowded inside the cramped room Eric had discovered only a few hours earlier.

“Wow,” Tad said, peering at the jumble of furniture. “Look at this stuff! My mom would go nuts if she saw all this.”

As Tad ran his hands over the polished wood of one of the old dressers, Kent opened one of the boxes, peered inside, then carefully lifted a leather photo album out of the box, setting it on a desk.

He opened the cover.

“Look,” he said. “It’s old pictures of Pinecrest.”

Eric and Tad moved closer and peered down at the page covered with deckle-edged photographs of the house. In one of them a young man in an old-fashioned suit was standing in front of the front door. “Suppose that’s Dr. Darby?” Tad asked.

Kent turned a few more pages. There were more photographs of people at Pinecrest — people posing on the front porch, relaxing on the back terrace, standing on the dock with a stringer of fish.

Some of the pictures showed people standing next to old cars; others depicted the interior of the house but with different furniture than it now contained.

Nowhere were there captions for the pictures.

Nowhere were there identifications of the people in them.

“Look at that,” Tad said, pointing at a photograph of a man wearing wire-rim glasses, his hair slicked back, sitting in front of a small oak secretary. “That’s a picture of this desk.” It was clearly the same slanted-front secretary they had the photograph album resting on.

Eric and Tad leaned in closer as Kent turned the pages one by one….

ELLEN NEWELL PEERED dolefully at the pair of sevens that had first been dealt her, and made one last attempt to find the possibility of a winning hand in the five additional cards that had come her way. Finding nothing, she tossed the hand in. “Okay,” she sighed as Dan Brewster raked in the pot, adding the last of her chips to the enormous pile in front of him. “I’m broke, and I’m tired, and I want to go to bed.” She glanced out the window, but all she could see was blackness — the last of the fire’s embers had long since died away. “How about you go call your son?” she asked Jeff, who’d lost the last of his stake in a game to Dan two hands earlier.

“How come he’s suddenly just my son?” Jeff asked as he stood up and moved to the French doors.

“Because I’m too tired to call him myself,” Ellen replied, watching her husband step out onto the terrace to call Kent.

When there was no answer, Jeff called again, then crossed the terrace and moved down the steps onto the lawn. “Kent!” he called again. “We’re leaving!”

When there was still no answer, he moved down the lawn to the fire pit, where a half-empty bag of marshmallows lay by one of the canvas chairs and three skewers — still sticky — were propped against the metal ring that contained the fire, which was no longer even smoldering.

But no sign of the boys.

Jeff felt his blood pressure rise as he walked down to the boathouse. If they’d taken the boat out after dark and not even bothered to tell anyone what they were up to, all three of them would find themselves grounded for a week.

But the boathouse was dark; Pinecrest’s little aluminum skiff lay quietly tethered to the dock.

“Kent!”

But the lake and the woods were silent.

He stood on the dock and peered across the dark water. The moon was about to rise, and the eastern sky was taking on a faint silvery glow. But the lake was quiet, the shore deserted as far as he could see; there were no boys here.

Jeff looked back up the lawn toward the house, and for the first time saw a faint yellow light in a back window behind the garage.

The old carriage house? What were they doing in there? But of course he knew what they were doing.

Messing around.

Seeing what they could find.

And, of course, getting into mischief.

Jeff began rehearsing the speech he was going to deliver in about two minutes when he found the boys, letting them know exactly what would be expected of them this summer. He began mentally ticking off points.

Almost old enough to drive.

Going to be seniors in the fall.

Time to demonstrate responsibility.

And, last but far from least, they weren’t going to ignore him when he called!

A door to the rooms behind the garage was ajar, and down the hall another door stood open, yellow light spilling out, illuminating the hallway. Jeff strode down the hall and stepped into a storeroom.

The three boys were huddled together, poring over something on an old desk.

“Kent!” All three boys jumped at the sound of his voice and whirled to face him. “Are you deaf?” he went on. “I’ve been calling you for at least five minutes. It’s time to go home.”

The boys looked at one another uncertainly. “You just started playing cards,” Kent finally said.

Jeff scowled at his son. “We started an hour ago, and Dan’s cleaned us all out. I’m down at least three dollars, and it’s time to go. After you’ve cleaned up the mess by the barbecue pit,” he added pointedly.

But the boys were barely listening. An hour ago? How was it possible? They’d been in the storage room only ten minutes or so. They couldn’t have been looking at the album for more than that.

But as they stepped outside, they saw that night had fallen; there was no trace at all of the sunset that had still been bright when they’d left the fire pit.

It was completely dark, except for the brightness in the east where the moon was coming up.

But how could it have gotten this late?

“I’m sorry, Mr. Newell,” Tad said. “I guess we just lost track of time.”

Jeff Newell’s eyes narrowed. “What were you boys doing in there, anyway?”

“Looking at some old photographs is all,” Eric said.

“For an hour?” Jeff turned, addressing the question directly to his son.

Kent only shrugged, and so did Eric and Tad.

“Okay,” he began. “This is not how it’s going to be this summer.” He began ticking off all the points he’d laid out in his head a few minutes earlier, using his fingers to count them one by one. “And you’re going to show some respect and have some consideration for other people. When I — or anyone else calls you—”

“Sorry, Dad,” Kent cut in. “It won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t,” the elder Newell replied as they came to the remains of the fire. “Now clean up those skewers and get the marshmallows into the house before a raccoon gets them. And your mother is waiting. She’s tired. We’re all tired. It’s time to go. So step on it, okay?” Without waiting for a reply, Jeff Newell wheeled around and headed back to the house, leaving the three boys to clean up their mess.

“You guys go if you want,” Eric said. “I’ve got this.”

“How did it get so late so fast?” Tad whispered.

Eric shrugged. He had no idea how it had happened, but he also knew that what had happened this evening was exactly what had happened that afternoon.

Only tonight it had happened to all three of them.

There was something about that room.

Something strange.

Something that, even now, seemed to be tugging at him.

But what was it? It was just a storeroom, wasn’t it?

Or was it?

As he picked up the marshmallows and skewers and started toward the house, he suddenly turned and looked back at the dark mass of the carriage house, and even though he still had no idea exactly what had happened in there just now, there was one thing he did know.

He couldn’t wait to go back in there again.