In the Dark of the Night

Chapter 9

LOGAN PULLED ON the oars, sending the boat silently through the water. Even the oarlocks seemed muffled this night as he skirted the edge of the lake where the moon had not penetrated the dark shelter of overhanging trees.

Near the bow, the old dog stirred restlessly on his bed, the scent of bones that Logan had dug up from the Dumpster behind the butcher shop strong enough to penetrate even his diminished nostrils.

“Soon,” Logan soothed. “Just a little longer, then we’re on our way home.” He eased the boat around the point, turned it, then froze as he gazed at Pinecrest, his hands clenching the oars so hard his arthritic knuckles sent agonizing protests straight up his arms. But he was barely conscious of the pain as he gazed at the windows of Pinecrest, almost all of them ablaze with light.

He had hoped that the people would go away. He had wished them away, focusing every fragment of his consciousness on his need to have Pinecrest — all of it — empty of people.

But they hadn’t gone, and he knew he was failing at what Dr. Darby had commanded him to do before he’d…Logan groped in the cluttered depths of his consciousness for the right word…. Before he’d left. And now, after all these years, all the years in which he’d been able to do what Dr. Darby had asked — had demanded — he was failing.

How could he protect Dr. Darby’s things when he couldn’t go near them? For several long minutes he sat perfectly still in the boat, telling himself that maybe it would be all right, that maybe the people in the house would stay in the house and that, after all, the hidden things — the secret things — would remain exactly as Dr. Darby had left them. Finally, he began rowing again, heading for home.

He would feed the dog and feed the bird, and maybe the doctor’s things would be safe, and the people in the house would soon be gone.

But as he eased the boat through the water and came abreast of the old carriage house, his heart began to pound.

The light in the storage area was on.

The light was on, and he knew why.

The boy.

The boy he’d seen earlier.

That’s who it had to be. The boy was inside the storage area, and Dr. Darby’s things were not safe.

The boy was not safe.

No one was safe.

Once again Logan let the boat drift to a stop, hidden deep within the shadows cast over the lake by the tall pines for which the house had been named, trying to find the courage to go ashore.

Then he heard a shout and saw a man coming down the lawn. His heart skipping a beat, Logan backed into the reeds near the shore, where the shadows of the pines were so deep he could barely even see the dog, who had caught his master’s anxiety and was now trying to rise on his rickety legs. To quiet the animal, Logan fished a knucklebone from the leavings he’d scavenged that night, and in an instant the dog had dropped back onto the floor of the scow and begun to gnaw.

Logan waited.

The man called again, went into the carriage house, then came out followed not by one boy, but by three.

Not long after that, the lights in the house went dark.

Logan waited in the darkness, knowing it was finally time for him to do what he should have done years ago.

Careful to make no sound at all, he beached the boat, tied the painter to a branch, and stepped out.

And the moment he set foot on Pinecrest’s soil, he felt it.

Felt the pull.

It was as if the things in the storeroom — the things Dr. Darby had told him to keep safe — had awakened and were somehow whispering to him.

Beckoning to him.

Luring him, as at dusk he sometimes lured the fish from the depths of the lake.

Now, as he crouched in the boat that was itself hidden in the shadows of the pines on the shore, he tried not to listen to the whispers.

Tried to resist the calling.

His heart pounded in his chest as he tried to decide what to do.

Almost against his own will, he stepped out of the boat and edged up toward the old carriage house, keeping to the fringe of the woods.

And as he moved, the voices in his head began to rise.

The whisperings became a cacophony of noise inside his head, each voice vying for his attention, each of them whispering what he must do.

But on one thing, all of them agreed: he must go through the door into the back room, through the door that had been hidden for so many years.

The door that should never be opened again.

As if to turn away from the voices themselves, Logan turned away from the old carriage house, and his eyes fixed on the red glow of the dying coals in the fire pit. And as he stared at it, an idea began to form in his mind.

He started toward the fire pit, the voices protesting with every step, but he ignored them until he was near the glowing coals.

A few feet from the pit itself he found a can of charcoal starting fluid and a box of matches.

The voices in his head rose as he picked them up.

He forced himself to ignore the voices, steeled himself against the hard knot of fear gnawing at his belly.

The voices grew louder, clearer.

“Come to us.”

A strangled whimper of protest bubbled in his throat.

“We know what you want.”

“You know what we want.”

Logan tried to close his mind to them, tried to concentrate only on the structure that lay a few paces ahead now, and the objects in his hands.

The objects that could be his salvation if only he could find the strength to disobey the voices.

“Remember how good it felt to have your fingers around her throat?”

Logan tried to focus his mind on nothing more than emptying the can in his left hand onto the evil structure, then setting it ablaze with the matches that were all but crushed by the pressure in the fingers of his right hand.

“You can feel it, can’t you? You’re feeling it even now.”

He was at the door of the carriage house.

“Come in. See if all is as it should be. Make sure our treasures are safe.”

The voices were nearly overpowering now, and Logan felt what little courage he’d summoned begin to fail.

What could it hurt? And it had been so long since he’d been inside the room.

Dropping the matches, he reached for the doorknob.

His fingers were no more than a fraction of an inch from the cold metal when a tiny spark of reason flared in his mind for the briefest of moments.

Dropping the can of lighter fluid, Logan turned and fled, shambling away into the darkness of the night.

Only when he was back in his boat and it was slicing once more through the smooth waters of Phantom Lake, did he dare to take a deep breath and finally look back at Pinecrest.

For now, at least, he and everyone else was safe.

But for how long?

• • •

TAD SPARKS FILLED the top drawer of the bureau with his underwear and socks, closed the drawer, and dropped his finally empty duffel bag on the floor of the closet. Flopping onto the bed, he looked out the open window at the lake. The water seemed almost to be glowing from deep beneath its surface rather than merely reflecting the light of the moon.

He’d forgotten how silent it was here at night, and how loud the frogs sounded when they broke the stillness with their calls.

Then another sound broke the silence: his father’s voice calling from downstairs. “Tad!”

Tad slid off the bed and went to the top of the narrow stairs. “What?”

“Did you roll up the windows in the car and lock it?”

He couldn’t remember. “Coming.” He took the stairs two at a time, and headed through the living room where his father was watching a baseball game while his mother knitted a sweater Tad secretly hoped wasn’t intended for him.

“Might rain,” his dad said, barely glancing away from the TV screen.

“Okay.” Tad grabbed the keys from the little table by the front door and went out into the night.

The sky was clear and the canopy of stars hung so low that it seemed he could reach up and touch them.

No way was it going to rain.

Not that it mattered. Better to just do as his father asked than try to argue, since arguing had never worked. Besides, even if it didn’t rain, a raccoon could get into the car, and then his dad would really be mad.

The car was next to the house, and for a moment Tad considered putting it in the garage, but then thought better of it — the garage door was narrow, and he didn’t want to think about what his father would say if the car got even a single scratch. Better just to roll up the windows and lock it. His father could move it into the garage tomorrow.

Tad slid into the driver’s seat, inserted the key in the ignition, turned it to activate the electrical system, and was about to close the windows when he heard something.

A faint but rhythmic squeaking noise.

Frowning, he got out of the car and listened closely.

The sound seemed to be coming from the lake.

Oars?

Was someone out on the lake at night, rowing?

The moon was now paving a silvery pathway on the lake, which shimmered with ripples. A moment later the silhouette of a man rowing a boat slid into the bright moonlight.

The boat turned slightly, and Tad saw what looked like a giant crucifix rising from its prow.

But it couldn’t be — it had to be something else. A trick of the light.

Something that just looked like a crucifix.

He reached in through the window and flicked on the headlights.

The boat was closer to shore than it appeared in the moonlight, and as the headlights flashed out of the darkness, the man rowing the boat turned, staring into the light like a deer caught on the highway at night.

He was dressed in what seemed to be rags, with long hair and an even longer beard, and though he froze for an instant, he immediately came back to life, sinking his oars deep into the water and pulling hard so the boat turned away and Tad was staring at his back.

But even though the man’s face had vanished, the memory of it was etched clearly in Tad’s mind. The man looked like one of the crazy homeless people he’d seen in Chicago plenty of times.

The kind of man who was never seen at all in Evanston.

So what was somebody like that doing in Phantom Lake, let alone this part of the lake?

And why would he have a wooden crucifix on the bow of his boat?

Leaving the headlights on, Tad ran a few steps toward the house. “Dad!”

Though the window he could see his father, who was still watching TV. He went to the front door. “Dad, there’s a really weird guy out on the lake.”

Finally, his father turned away from the screen. “What do you mean, out on the lake? It’s almost nine—”

“Come look,” Tad broke in. “Hurry.”

Kevin Sparks heaved himself out of his chair and followed his son back to the car.

The headlights still shone brightly on the lake, but only the still water was visible.

They walked down to the lake, but even from its edge there was nothing to be seen.

No boat.

No man.

No sound of anyone rowing.

Not even the tiniest ripple of a wake at the water’s edge.

It was as if it hadn’t happened at all.

“Jeez, that is so creepy,” Tad said. “He was just here.”

Kevin slung an arm around his son’s shoulders as they both stared out over the silent, empty expanse of water. “Well, if there was anything there at all, it’s gone now,” he said. “Come on, let’s get back to the house.”

As his father went back to the baseball game, Tad closed the car windows, shut off the headlights, and locked it.

A few minutes later, back upstairs in his room, he found himself not only shutting his bedroom door, but locking it as well, and before he went to bed, he closed and locked the window, too.

Despite his father’s words, he was certain that not only had he seen the strange man in the boat — and the madness in his face — but that the man hadn’t gone anywhere at all.

He was still out there somewhere, hiding, waiting, in the dark of the night.