In the Dark of the Night

Chapter 20

MERRILL BREWSTER PUT down her fork and eyed her son. He looked pale, with flushed spots high on his cheeks, and as far as she could see, he hadn’t consumed even a single bite of his supper. All he’d done was merely move his meat loaf and mashed potatoes around on his plate, but none of it had actually been eaten. “Do you feel all right, honey?”

Eric nodded, then put down his fork and sat back in the chair. “I guess I’m just really tired,” he said.

Merrill cocked her head. “What were you up to all day?”

“Nothing,” Eric said, shrugging dismissively. “You know — just hung out. Poked around in the carriage house, looking at some of the old stuff that’s stored in there.”

“Those aren’t our things,” Merrill said, frowning. “I think you’d better leave them alone. If something breaks, we’re responsible.”

“I know. We’re careful.”

Merrill rose from her chair and picked up her plate, but before she took it to the kitchen she paused and felt Eric’s forehead. “I hope you haven’t picked up some bug,” she fretted. “Ashley Sparks said Tad went back to bed this morning.”

“I’m fine,” Eric insisted, ducking his head away from his mother’s touch. “I’m just tired, okay?”

Merrill pulled back almost as if she’d been stung. “You don’t have to bite my head off! I’m just worried—”

“You worry about everything!” Eric broke in, rising from his chair. “I think I’ll just go to bed, okay?”

“Fine,” Merrill said, stepping back from Eric’s outburst, and looking him over once more, noticing for the first time a stain on his pants. “What’s that?” she asked.

Eric looked down to see dark rusty finger streaks, and the memory of the hacksaw he’d picked up from the floor of the hidden room flooded back. He thought quickly. “Rust,” he said. “I found an old saw, and it was all over the blade.”

“Have you ever heard of a rag?” Merrill asked, then shook her head and answered her own question. “Of course not. Why would I think you would have? Just put those in the wash before you go to bed, okay?”

Though he was barely listening, Eric nodded. Rust? Why had he said that? It hadn’t been rust — it had been sticky. Sticky, like—

He felt the blood drain from his face, and now his mother was staring at him.

“Honey? What’s—”

“I’m okay,” he insisted, managing to conceal his roiling emotions. “I’m just pooped — I’ll be fine in the morning.”

Merrill continued to eye him, and tried to tell herself she was just falling victim to needless worry again. “Okay,” she said. “Marci and I are going to work on her costume for the parade for a while. She’s going to be the Statue of Liberty.”

Feeling his mother’s appraising gaze still on him, Eric winked at his sister. “Tomorrow I’ll see if I can find something to make a torch out of. Wouldn’t that be neat?” Marci, still sitting at the table, bobbed her head happily, and he could see the worry start to drain out of his mother’s eyes.

A few minutes later, after he’d once more loaded the dishwasher, he paused at the table where his mother and sister were putting together something he was sure wasn’t going to look anything like the Statue of Liberty’s crown. “See you in the morning,” he said as he kissed his mother’s cheek.

To his relief, she barely looked up.

AN HOUR LATER, after she’d tucked Marci into bed — the freshly glued and glittered crown sitting safely on the nightstand next to her — Merrill looked in on Eric.

He was sound asleep.

She smoothed the hair from his forehead and kissed him gently, careful not to waken him. He still felt warm, and little beads of perspiration stood out on his upper lip, but she decided he didn’t look sick.

She tiptoed out and gently closed the door behind her.

As she moved through the quiet house, sweeping up wayward glitter, putting the lid back on the glue, folding up the newspapers, and disposing of the leftover cardboard and construction paper, she decided that her husband and family and friends had all been right.

Tonight, even without Dan here, she was actually enjoying being where she was.

She was enjoying the quiet of the lake and the house.

Before closing the drapes and locking the doors for the night, she took a long moment to gaze out at the moonlight on the lake.

Peaceful. Serene.

Perfect.

How could she have been so nervous about coming here?

She pulled the drapes, then turned back to the room, where Moxie was sprawled on the sofa, one ear cocked in her direction even in his sleep, ready to accompany her upstairs and sleep on a real bed as soon as she gave the word.

Even Moxie wasn’t worried.

And she herself felt calmer and more rested than she had in a long time.

She turned out the lights and headed upstairs, Moxie waking up to trot along at her heels.

Just as she slipped between cool sheets, the phone rang.

“Hi, honey,” Dan said.

Merrill smiled in the quiet and darkness of the house and snuggled down in her warm bed.

Tonight, for the first time in years, she didn’t have a single worry to tell her husband about.

GO HOME! TURN the boat around and go home!

But Logan knew he couldn’t go home — not yet. Not until he’d done what he came here to do.

The thing was, he didn’t know what to do.

Not anymore.

Not since the people had come to Pinecrest.

He tightened his hands on the oars, squeezing them so hard his knuckles ached. In the bow, the old dog whimpered softly, and Logan clucked in sympathy. “Too old,” he muttered. “Too old for any of this.”

Go back! Go away!

The voice seemed to come from outside his head now, but Logan knew that wasn’t true. The voices weren’t real — they were only part of his own craziness! That was what Dr. Darby had said — that was what all the doctors had said. They weren’t real, and he had to pretend they weren’t there.

He pulled hard on the right oar, and the shriek of its lock ripped through the night. From somewhere off to the left a bird burst from its roost, flapping in indignation. Logan ignored it, concentrating instead on pulling the boat around and forcing its prow into the muddy bank.

The howling in his head grew worse, but he dragged himself out of the boat, pulling it farther onto the shore and making its worn painter fast to a low-hanging branch.

Once on shore, the voices began to shriek at him. Gone were the soft, soothing tones that used to whisper to him, murmuring their approval as his fantasies became reality. As the voices howled, the long-buried memories crawled up from his unconscious, and once again he could feel it.

His enormous, coarse hands around her small, soft throat.

The sweet taste of her blood on his tongue.

All he’d had to do then was listen.

Listen, and obey.

But now—

The voices didn’t want him here.

But why?

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what the voices wanted him to do.

He had to do what Dr. Darby wanted him to do.

He paced the shore, searching for the courage to do what he knew must be done.

His hands went to his head, trying to shut the voices out, but even as he pressed so hard he thought his skull might crack, the voices tortured him.

In the bow of the boat, the old dog struggled to sit up, and Logan stopped his pacing. As the dog’s eyes fixed on him, a strange foreboding fell over him, and then his skin began to crawl as if he’d just been touched by death itself.

But it wasn’t death.

It was Dr. Darby.

Dr. Darby was inside the dog, and if he just concentrated — just focused his mind and kept his eyes on the dog — he would know.

Dr. Darby was stronger than the voices, and now, in the dark of the night, Dr. Darby would give him the strength to ignore the voices, too.

It would be all right.

He would find the strength.

Dr. Darby depended on him.

He had to keep everything in order, keep everybody safe.

Finally turning away from the boat — and the dog — he began slogging toward the carriage house, resisting the voices that pushed against him like the winds of a hurricane.

“I can do it,” he whispered as he came at last to the door. “I will do it.”

His hand touched the doorknob, and the cacophony of voices screaming at him to go away pounded so hard in his head that he almost fell to his knees.

Why weren’t they luring him the way they used to? Why weren’t they promising him the fruit of his darkest desires?

Why didn’t they want him anymore?

The answer bubbled up from the depths of his subconscious, groping its way through the fog in his mind.

They didn’t want him here because they had someone new.

They had someone else to carry out their evil.

Now a harsh ray of jealousy ripped at the clouds in his head, and Logan’s fingers tightened on the brass of the doorknob until he felt as if it must crumble under the pressure.

“Help me,” he whispered, leaning against the door. “Help me, Jesus.”

He turned the knob and entered the carriage house.

LOGAN STEPPED INTO his boat just as dawn was lightening the eastern sky. The old dog barely looked up when he shoved off from the weedy shoreline and began rowing toward home.

His back ached. His arms ached. His head ached.

And his soul ached even more.

He rowed with his eyes half closed, the little boat seeming to know the much traveled route even without his guidance.

He needed to rest.

He ached to put an end to his weariness.

Head hanging, he kept rowing, each long, torturous pull of the oars endurable only because it took him closer to home.

To sleep.

To blessed unconsciousness.

To freedom from the voices, even if only for a little while.

The dog moved restlessly on his nest of rags, and Logan opened his eyes.

Dawn was on the lake and they were almost home.

He put the last of his energy into the final strokes of the oars, and then the boat nosed into the hidden mud slip and came to a stop.

He secured the boat to a stump, lifted the dog onto the shore, and limped up the hill as sunshine blazed on the tips of the trees.

When he opened the cabin door, the one-winged crow greeted him with a hungry caw, and Logan realized he had failed to bring any food home.

The dog looked up at him with big, brown, expectant eyes, and Logan’s spirits dropped even further.

They had trusted him.

Trusted him as Dr. Darby had trusted him.

And he had failed.

“Sorry,” he muttered, his head hanging as he took off his jacket. Even the energy to talk had been drained from him, and all he could do was repeat the single word. “Sorry.”

He hung the jacket on a nail and lay down on his bed.

The old dog went to his bed and collapsed with a groan.

But the crow jumped from his perch, hopped up a series of boxes to the jacket, and pecked at the pocket.

“Go, crow,” Logan said, and waved an exhausted hand at it.

But the crow was insistent, and as Logan watched, it burrowed its head deep inside the jacket’s pocket and emerged a moment later, a bloody chunk of meat clutched in its beak.

The meat fell to the floor, and the crow jumped to the ground and began pecking at it.

The old dog hauled himself to his wobbly legs and made his way over to the meal.

“Good,” Logan whispered as he watched the two broken creatures rip and tear at the scrap. But then, as the meat slowly disappeared into the animals’ mouths, questions began to drift through the mists in his mind.

He had no memory of scavenging that night.

He hadn’t even been to town.

Then where had he gotten meat?

Didn’t matter. The dog and the crow were fed.

And the fullness in his gut told him he, too, had eaten not long ago, even though he didn’t remember that, either.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, this time uttering the thought out loud.

He closed his eyes and let sleep overtake him.

• • •

RUSTY RUSTON FIXED Adam Mosler with his meanest, most authoritative stare, the one that never failed to work on recalcitrant teenagers. Though Adam was a troublemaker, Rusty didn’t think he was a bad kid, and he was pretty sure the stare would get the truth out of him. The thing was, Adam seemed utterly unfazed by being called to his office, and he certainly hadn’t crumpled under any of his intimidation techniques. So either he was telling the truth about the last time he saw Ellis or he was so jaded by his father, who took the meaning of the word “mean” to a level Rusty could barely even imagine, that the stare truly didn’t bother him at all.

Still, he had to take a final shot at it. “So tell me one more time what Ellis said when he walked away,” he growled, doing his best to make his voice sound as threatening as possible.

Adam’s sigh told Ruston he’d succeeded only in boring the boy, and Mosler’s shrug was actually dismissive. “I’ve already told you a million times.”

“Tell me once more,” Ruston said, “and then you can go.”

Adam rolled his eyes impatiently, but began the recitation one more time. “Ellis was drunk. Said he hated this town, and everybody in it. Said he was leaving and we’d never see him again. Then he left.”

“Left for where?”

“Seemed like he was walking toward town.” Adam hesitated, then: “But I don’t really know — I was busy with Cherie.”

Ruston leaned tiredly back in his chair. This was exactly the same story Cherie Stevens had already told him, except that of course Adam wasn’t mentioning the part where she’d brushed him off. “Okay,” he said. “You can go.”

Adam stood up. “You want to know what I think?” he asked. Ruston shook his head, but Adam went on anyway. “You should talk to those summer kids out at Pinecrest.”

“And why should I do that?” Ruston asked, once again fixing Adam Mosler with the stare. Almost to his own surprise, this time it worked; Mosler actually flushed slightly.

“Well, some of us were having a little fun with them the other night,” he said, some of the bravado fading from his voice. “And they didn’t like it.”

“What do you mean, ‘fun’?”

Mosler spread his hands dismissively. “They were walking through the woods and we made bear sounds and scared them.”

“That’s all?” Ruston asked, his eyes boring into Adam now. “You just made noises? Nothing else? Nothing at all?”

Mosler’s blush deepened. “All right, maybe we tossed a rock or two. But it’s not like we hurt them.”

“But you figure maybe it made them mad enough to jump Ellis Langstrom?”

“Hey, I didn’t say they did anything,” Adam replied. “All’s I said was you should talk to them.”

“I will,” Ruston assured him. “And I’ll also ask them exactly what happened the other night, and you’d better hope their story matches yours.” As Adam started toward the door, Ruston said, “I don’t want to hear any more about you hassling the summer people, Mosler, and you need to hear me good about this. I’m not going to put up with it. Not even once more. I’ll bust you for criminal mischief, and you can spend some time in juvie hall down in Irma. That sound like fun?”

Adam shook his head, but didn’t look too worried.

“Go,” Ruston sighed, waving Mosler out of his office, and wishing he hadn’t heard about Eric Brewster and his friends. The last thing he wanted to do was go out to Pinecrest and scare the summer visitors with a story about a missing kid. But now he had no choice — Ellis was definitely missing, and he had to follow up on Adam’s story. And he had to do it gently, without getting the visitors, the town, or especially the mayor, riled up. He was going to have to muster a whole boatload of tact for this one.

HALF AN HOUR later — at precisely ten o’clock, which would mean he would be interrupting neither breakfast nor lunch — Ruston turned his cruiser up the long Pinecrest driveway, silently rehearsing the questions he wanted to ask Eric Brewster and consciously bringing a pleasant expression to his face.

He walked up to the front door and rang the bell, and no more than fifteen seconds later Merrill answered.

Remembering their last encounter, where the sight of him in a uniform made her think that something had happened to her husband, Rusty offered her a smile and asked to see Eric. “He’s not in trouble — I just heard a story about some of the town kids hassling him and his friends the other night and wanted to check it out.”

Though Merrill’s expression tightened slightly, she invited him in and led him to the dining room, where Ruston realized there was one meal he’d forgotten about: brunch. Gathered around the dining table were not only Eric and his little sister, but two other boys his age, and two women who he assumed were their mothers. He also assumed that the boys had been with Eric the other night, when Adam said he and his own friends tried to scare them in the woods.

Merrill made a quick series of introductions, then waited expectantly. Picking up his cue, Ruston got directly to the point, but decided to direct his first words to all three of the boys and see what happened. “I heard some of the boys in town tried to give you guys a scare in the woods the other night.”

Three pairs of eyes darted toward one another, then Eric nodded. “Something like that, yes.”

“All three of you?” He indicated the two other boys with a nod of his head.

Eric nodded.

“Anything come of that?”

“Do you mean did we kick their butts?” Kent asked.

Ellen glared at her son. “Kent!”

The sheriff, though, smiled at the three boys. “Basically, yes, that’s what I’m asking. And I’m not saying you’re in trouble if you did, either. From what I’ve already heard, it sounds like they had it coming to them.”

“Well, we didn’t,” Kent said, “but we should have.”

“You didn’t come all the way out here just to ask my son if he was in a fight,” Merrill Brewster said. “Something else is going on, isn’t it?”

Ruston shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other, but saw no point in not telling them what they were bound to hear within a few hours anyway. “Ellis Langstrom has been missing since night before last.”

Tad Sparks paled and slumped in his chair.

“Ellis Langstrom?” Ashley Sparks breathed, her face as pale as her son’s. “Carol Langstrom’s son?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ruston said.

“Oh, dear, that’s terrible.” Ashley said, sinking into one of the empty chairs at the table. “Poor Carol. I’d better call her.” She looked back up at the sheriff. “Where is he? I mean, what happened to him?”

“That’s what I’m trying to determine.”

“Well, we sure didn’t have anything to do with it,” Kent said.

“All that happened was that they were trying to scare us the other night in the woods,” Eric explained. “You know — cracking twigs, and growls and moans and all that kind of stuff. And it worked — we got spooked and they got their laugh. But that was it — it was nothing, really.” He looked at his mother, who was frowning at him as if there must be something he wasn’t talking about. “Really. Nothing happened at all!”

Kent turned to the sheriff. “And if I was gonna make someone disappear, it’d be Adam Mosler, not Langstrom.”

“Kent!”

Ellen Newell looked like she might slap her son, and Ruston quickly smiled at her. “Some of our kids can get kind of frisky in the summer. School’s out and they don’t get much supervision from their folks.”

Tad was still slumped in his chair, staring into space. Nothing about either his posture or expression suggested guilt. In fact, he looked more scared than anything else, and none of the boys showed any obvious cuts or bruises on their faces or their hands. At least not the kind they would have had if they’d gotten into a fight with Adam Mosler and Chris McIvens, and he was sure that Kent Newell’s remark about going after Mosler rather than Ellis Langstrom was absolutely true. Ellis might have gone along with Mosler’s harassment, but if it came down to a fight, Ellis was far more likely to run than stand. Which, in Ruston’s book anyway, at least made him smarter than his two friends.

“Well, I guess that’s it for now, then,” he said. “If you hear or see anything, give the office a call, okay?”

“Of course,” Merrill said. She walked the sheriff out the door to the edge of the porch, then put a halting hand on his arm. When she spoke, he could hear the fear in her voice. “You don’t think an animal did something to him? I mean…” Her voice trailed off, her eyes shifted to a spot near the woods, and after a second or two she spoke again, though her words were barely audible. “I was just thinking about our cat.”

He followed her gaze to a makeshift cross over a little plot of cleared earth near the garage, and a shiver ran the length of his spine as he remembered the way the cat had been ripped open, gutted, and left on his doorstep.

Surely there couldn’t be any connection between that and—

He cut the thought short, unwilling to complete it. “I think some kind of animal got your cat,” he said quietly, “but between you and me, I still think Ellis took off for Madison or Chicago or someplace. I’m pretty sure his mother will hear from him within a few days.”

Merrill shook her head sadly. “Every mother’s nightmare. I’m not sure I could stand it at all.”

“Sorry to have bothered you,” Ruston said. “Try to enjoy your day, okay? I’m sure everything’s going to be just fine, and you can be proud that your boy and his friends were big enough to just ignore Mosler’s crowd. I wish we had more kids around here like yours.”

Merrill managed a smile and stepped back to the doorway, staying there until he had driven out of the driveway. He could still see her in his rearview mirror as he made the turn toward the highway.

There was a woman, he decided, who worried too much. Today, though, he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she wasn’t right to worry.

What if the same thing that had happened to the Brewsters’ cat had, indeed, happened to Ellis Langstrom?

Rusty Ruston didn’t even want to think about it.