In the Dark of the Night

Chapter 6

CHERIE STEVENS RINSED out the sticky bar towel after wiping down the tables in the ice cream shop for the last time and was about to hang it on the faucet to dry when she heard the ding of the door chime.

She’d forgotten to lock the door, and now another customer was coming in. But when she saw who it was, the frown she’d been preparing morphed into something that wasn’t quite a smile but wasn’t quite not one, either.

“Hey, Cherie,” Adam Mosler said as he swung onto a stool at the counter. “Can I get a root beer float?”

“We close at eight on Sundays,” Cherie said, tipping her head toward the clock on the wall that clearly read eight-seventeen, and wondering why she didn’t like Adam as much as he liked her. But she knew why, really. Though he was cute, he could also be a complete jerk. Tonight, though, he didn’t seem to be in one of his completely jerky moods. In fact, he seemed to be in a good mood.

“Okay,” he said. “So you’re off work?”

“Soon as I sweep up.” Cherie dried her hands, lifted one of the little wrought-iron chairs, and put it upside down on top of one of the round tables.

“I can do that,” Adam said, sliding off the stool and beginning to take care of the rest of the chairs while she started sweeping. “What are you doing after you’re done?”

Cherie shrugged. “I don’t know — going home, I guess.”

“I was going to take my dad’s boat over to the south shore.”

Cherie glanced at him, then shrugged again. “It’s kind of late.”

“Not too late,” Adam countered, putting the last chair on a table. “And it’s really nice out. Come with me.”

“What’s on the south shore?” Cherie asked, her mistrust of his motives clear in her voice.

Adam spread his hands dismissively. “Nothing. It’s just a ride.” Sensing her indecision, Adam put on his best smile — the one he’d practiced in the mirror to the point where it looked utterly uncalculated. “Come on. It’s really warm tonight.”

“Let me call my mom,” Cherie said, not quite agreeing, but handing him the broom as she went to the phone behind the counter.

Adam finished the sweeping while he listened to Cherie’s side of the conversation and heard her promising not to be home late.

“Good night, Mr. Evans,” Cherie called into the back room as she hung up the phone. “See you tomorrow.”

Adam opened the door and held it for her.

“You smell good,” he said as she passed.

Cherie rolled her eyes. “I stink like sour ice cream, and we both know it. Don’t push it, or I’ll walk home right now. In fact, maybe I’ll just do that anyway.”

“Come on!” Adam pleaded. “Jeez, can’t a guy say anything nice to you at all?”

Relenting, Cherie let him lead her down to the marina near the pavilion. Rows of boats floated quietly in the dusk. A few low-flying birds were still out scooping insects from the surface of the water, a few fish were still competing with the birds for the insects, and somewhere across the lake a loon was calling.

Everything else was quiet, their footfalls sounding unnaturally loud on the wooden planks of the dock. In a slip near the end, Adam’s father’s bass boat was gassed up in preparation for an early morning fishing expedition. Adam helped Cherie in, then cast off the lines, jumped into the driver’s seat, turned the key, and fired up the powerful outboard. Switching on the running lights, he backed the boat out of the slip. “Ready, babe?” he asked.

Cherie decided to ignore the patronizing endearment rather than just shove Adam overboard, and pulled her long hair up into a ponytail, fastening it with a rubber band as Adam idled out of the marina. When they were past the buoy holding the NO WAKE sign, he pushed up on the throttle. The bow rose in the water as the stern dropped, and a moment later they had leveled on the plane and were flying across the glassy surface of the lake.

I called her “babe” and she didn’t even tell me to shut up! Adam thought. This was going to be the summer he nailed Cherie Stevens.

CHERIE LEANED BACK in the seat and concentrated on the feel of the evening air on her face as they ran across the lake. The town was behind them now, and the first of the summer houses were coming into view, spread along the south shore of the lake like jewels on a necklace. Lights were on in some of the houses already, and if Adam were just idling along instead of racing like a nutcase, she knew she’d be able to hear people laughing on patios and around the small fires burning in the outdoor hearths.

Someday she wanted to live in one of these big lakefront houses; the only question was which one, since every one of them always looked even more beautiful to her than the last.

Adam took a sweeping turn along the shore, then abruptly decelerated the engine. The boat instantly dropped back, its own wake quickly overtaking it and threatening to swamp it.

“Adam!” Cherie cried as the wake splashed on her back. “What are you doing?” He turned off the running lights. Cherie braced herself, ready to push his hand away the moment he tried to touch her. A boat ride was one thing, but if he thought she was going to—

“Look!” Adam whispered, his voice breaking her thought as he pointed toward the shore.

“At what?” Cherie asked, her voice dropping to match his.

“Pinecrest,” Adam whispered. “Look. Someone’s living there.”

Sure enough, lights were on all over the big house, which had been dark for so many years Cherie could barely remember when it was anything but a dark silhouette against the night sky. Tonight, though, it glowed beautifully in the twilight.

As Adam idled the boat up to the Pinecrest dock, Cherie reached out and grabbed one of the cleats. Adam turned off the motor. “I heard that someone rented it for the summer,” she whispered. “But I didn’t know they were already here.”

“Want to go see if we can look in the windows?”

Cherie glared at him in the fast-fading light. “You mean like be a Peeping Tom? You’re weird, Adam!”

Ignoring her words, he stood up on the seat of the boat and peered up the front lawn toward the big house, and suddenly Cherie understood. “Is that why we came out here? So you could spy on these people?”

“You don’t have to spy,” said a voice from the shadows by the boathouse. “Just come to the door and knock.”

Nearly losing his balance at the unexpected sound, Adam sat heavily back down, rocking the boat violently.

“Hi,” Cherie said. “We didn’t mean anything.” She glanced at Adam. “At least I didn’t.”

A boy about her own age emerged from the shadows and walked down the dock, a spark plug in one hand, a greasy rag in the other.

“I’m Eric Brewster,” the boy said.

“Hi. I’m Cherie Stevens. This is Adam Mosler.”

“I already know him,” Adam said. “His dog shits all over town.”

Cherie turned and stared at Adam. “Excuse me?”

“It was only once,” Eric explained. “And I picked it up. With my handkerchief. Your friend didn’t think I’d come back if I went for one of those plastic bags.”

Cherie gasped. “So you used your handkerchief?”

Eric shrugged, doing his best to act if it had been no big deal. “Well, it was either that or have your friend and his buddies take a swing at me. And handkerchiefs don’t cost much.”

Abruptly, Adam twisted the key in the ignition, and the outboard roared back to life.

“Hey,” Cherie said, raising her voice over the rumble of the engine. “Doesn’t Kent Newell stay out here somewhere?”

“Yeah,” Eric said. “Next door.”

“Fuckin’ coneheads,” Adam muttered.

“Coneheads?” Eric repeated, finally shifting his gaze from Cherie to Adam.

“It’s stupid,” Cherie said. “Because you’re in The Pines, you know? Pinecones? Coneheads? And it’s from some old movie they did a hundred years ago.” She turned her head to stare directly at Adam. “It’s stupid.”

Adam, his jaw tightening, said nothing. He put the motor in gear, but Cherie tightened her grip on the cleat that was bolted to the dock. “Do you know about the dances at the pavilion on Friday nights?” she asked.

Eric nodded. “Kent and Tad told me.”

“They start next week,” she said. “Maybe I’ll see you there.”

Adam pushed harder on the throttle, and Cherie was finally forced to let go of the cleat. She waved back at Eric, who stood silently on the dock, watching them go.

“You were pretty rude,” she said to Adam when they were far enough from the dock so Eric wouldn’t hear her.

“Why did you tell him about the dances?” Adam shot back, ignoring her question.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Cherie countered. “They’re for everybody, aren’t they? And besides, he already knew. So what’s the big deal?”

“They’re summer people,” Adam said, his voice taking on a hard edge. “They’re coneheads. I hate them.”

“Well, I think you’re an idiot,” Cherie said, sitting up straight in the stern and crossing her arms over her chest. “And I thought he was cute.”

Adam threw the throttle forward so quickly that the boat’s surge almost tossed Cherie into the lake. When they got back to the dock, she ignored his hand, easily stepping out of the boat unassisted.

“And I think I can walk myself home, too,” she said, turning and marching up the dock before Adam had even the first of the boat’s four lines secured to the dock.

Furious, he watched her go. This wasn’t how the evening was supposed to end, and he knew whose fault it was.

Eric Brewster’s.

And if he had anything to do with it, Eric Brewster would get exactly what was coming to him.

That, and maybe a whole lot more.

THE OLD DOG moved restlessly in the bottom of the boat, and the even older man put a quieting hand on his flank. “Shhh,” he said gently to the animal, who settled down with a tired sigh.

Logan parted the branches of the overhanging willow he had slipped into when the loud fishing boat came charging around the point from town. It was a good thing, too. Yes, it was a good thing, because a boy had been in the boathouse, and he hadn’t known that.

Hadn’t known that at all.

But now, peering between the willow branches, he could see the faint light of the bare bulb in the boathouse, and as he watched, it went out. A moment later the boy closed the boathouse door behind him and walked up the lawn toward the house.

Logan waited a few more minutes, then quietly rowed around the overhanging tree just far enough so he could see up the lawn to the house.

The old mansion was ablaze with light; a warm, yellow light.

The house looked happy.

And if the house was happy, then the evil was angry.

“Mercy,” Logan breathed softly, his eyes shifting from the house in the distance to the cross he’d mounted in the bow of his boat. “May the Lord have mercy on us all.”

He bowed his head and prayed silently for a moment, then looked up again. But what was he supposed to do now?

Keep watching — that was it! Keep watching, and see what happens!

Then maybe he’d know what to do — maybe the answer would come into his head like answers sometimes did.

But the answer, when it came, would be bad.

He was pretty sure of that.

In fact, he knew it.

Sighing almost as tiredly as the dog had a moment ago, Logan quietly dipped the oars into the water and brought the boat right up to the shore at the edge of the property. He secured the bow line to a branch and touched the dog on the head to reassure him, then stepped out into the shallow water and moved slowly up the bank.

He edged up the property, staying out of the light, keeping to the shadows of the trees.

Making sure he was invisible.

Soon he was close enough to the house to see people inside, and the sight of them drew him on.

His heart began to pound, and his head throbbed. He tried to turn back, tried to go no closer than he already was, but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted — he had—to see what they were doing inside.

And who they were.

There was a boy inside, he knew that.

But who else?

As he edged yet closer to the house, he glanced over toward the carriage house that seemed almost like it was trying to hide behind the larger building. But it looked all right — dark and safe, although even from here he could feel the pull.

But it was all right.

He could resist, at least for now.

For now, he was safe.

But he couldn’t resist the family inside the big house.

He crossed the lawn to the steps, slipped silently up onto the terrace, and peered in through the big living room windows.

A fire burned in the fireplace.

He remembered another fire burning in that fireplace.

There was a woman reading in Dr. Darby’s leather chair in front of that fireplace.

He remembered Dr. Darby reading in that chair.

As Logan watched, a little girl appeared, carrying a bowl of popcorn.

No! No little girls! No boys, no little girls!

Danger…so much danger.

It was happening again. It was all going to start again! Soon!

Logan put his hands to his head, pressing hard. There was something he was supposed to do — something in case this very thing happened.

But what?

He couldn’t remember!

A little white dog started to bark and jump at the window a few feet from where he was standing.

Panicked, Logan backed away from the window, then turned and ran back into the woods, making his way as quickly as he could down to the water.

Down to the water, and his boat.

His heart still pounding and his head still throbbing, Logan untied the line from the tree, got into the boat, and shoved off.

Careful to keep the big wooden cross on his prow between himself and the house, he backed slowly and silently away, until he was completely out of sight of the evil.

But out of its sight, he knew, didn’t mean he was away from its influence.

Away from its force.

“Mercy,” he whispered once more.

Praying silently, he began to row home.

“WHAT’S THE MATTER with Moxie?” Merrill asked, looking up from her book.

“Something’s out there,” Marci said, her eyes narrowing as she gazed at the blackness beyond the window.

“Nothing’s out there,” Eric said, coming in from the dining room with a piece of pie, which he was piling on top of the s’more he’d already eaten. The dog was still scratching at the window and whining to get out, and though he’d just said there was nothing out there, Eric wondered if maybe Adam Mosler had decided to come back and do what he’d heard him suggesting to Cherie earlier. Except Adam Mosler hadn’t had time to get all the way to town and back, and Eric was pretty sure that whatever Adam had in mind, Cherie wouldn’t be willing to go along with it.

“Go take a look, okay?” his father asked, emerging from the den at the far end of the living room, which could be closed off with a set of sliding doors. “Set your mom and sister’s minds at rest.”

“Probably a raccoon or something,” Eric said. “I better put his leash on him, or he’ll get himself in trouble.”

“Moxie could beat up a raccoon,” Marci insisted.

“Yeah, right,” Eric said, snapping the leash onto the dog’s collar. “And Tippy could bring down a deer.”

“I didn’t say that,” Marci shot back, injecting as much scorn into her voice as she could summon. “But I bet she could,” she whispered as her brother opened the door and stepped out onto the terrace.

“Bet she couldn’t,” Eric tossed back. Glancing around and seeing no glowing eyes, he bent down and released the dog from the leash. “Sic ’em, Mox.”

The dog ran barking down the lawn toward the lake.

Eric stood on the patio, gazing out into the night. The moon was just rising, and the light on the horizon threw the pine trees into silhouette and reflected in a faint silver tinge on the water’s surface. The whole world seemed to be turning black and silver.

Then, from off in the distance, Eric heard the creak of an oarlock, and he saw a glittering splash of water. As his eyes adjusted from the brightness of the house, he thought he could see the faint form of a boat disappearing into the darkness. But almost as soon as it was there, it was gone.

Moxie continued to bark for another moment or two, then fell silent, and Eric could barely make him out, squatting at the edge of the lake. Finished with his business, the dog gave one more bark, then ran back up to Eric.

“Got that out of your system?” Eric asked, and picking the little dog up, carried him back inside the house. “Whatever it was, Mighty Moxie chased it off,” he announced.

But later, as he was going to bed, Eric found himself gazing out the window at the lake, searching once more for the boat he thought he’d seen.

Where had it come from? It hadn’t been there earlier, when he was talking to Cherie just before he came in for a piece of pie.

Or maybe he hadn’t seen it at all.

Except he had.

He knew he had.

THE MEMORY OF Eric Brewster was as vivid in Cherie Stevens’s mind as she turned the corner onto Spruce Street and started up the last block toward her house as it had been when she’d walked away from the Moslers’ boat, leaving Adam to tie it up himself.

Adam Mosler! How could she ever have thought that he might actually qualify as a boyfriend? Although to be absolutely fair, until tonight she hadn’t realized just how much of a jerk he could be.

But Eric Brewster — now, he was something else. Even in the fading light of dusk she’d seen how cute he was, and though she hadn’t been quite able to tell for sure, she was still certain his eyes were blue. And not just any old blue, either, but the exact shade of turquoise that was her favorite color. All during the walk home from the marina — all eight blocks of it — she’d replayed the short conversation she’d had with Eric. He was so different from the boys at Phantom Lake, and the way he’d refused to rise to Adam’s bait — or sink to his level — was so perfect. And she could just imagine how Adam and whoever had been with him must have treated Eric. But who had it been? Probably Chris McIvens, who could be just as much of a creep as Adam.

Cherie glanced at her watch as she came to her house, and quickened her step as she realized how late it had gotten. Seeing her father sprawled out on the couch with a beer in his hand, she braced herself for whatever mood he might be in.

Or whatever mood the beer had put him in.

“’Bout time you got yourself home,” Al Stevens growled as she opened the screen door and stepped into the living room. “Where you been?”

“Out with Adam Mosler. I called. Didn’t Mom tell you?”

“Your mother’s gone to work — it’s late.” He glared balefully at her. “Too late for you to be out with a boy.”

“It’s not that late, Dad,” Cherie began. “It’s summer—”

“Don’t matter,” he cut in, his eyes shifting back to the TV. “Get yourself to bed.”

Cherie opened her mouth to argue, then thought better of it. “Okay. I’m sorry.” Going to her room, she took off her blue and white striped uniform, checked the closet to make sure she had a fresh one for tomorrow, then tossed the one she’d just taken off into the hamper. She dropped a thin nightie over her head, went down the hall to the bathroom to wash and cream her face and brush her teeth, then flopped onto her bed and called Kayla Banks, intending to tell her every detail of her encounter with Eric Brewster.

Kayla’s cell phone rang seven times before a sleepy voice spoke. “Hello?”

“Were you asleep?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Kayla sighed. “What time is it?”

“Not that late,” Cherie told her. “Listen — I met the guy whose family rented Pinecrest. His name’s Eric Brewster, and he’s cute! I mean, like, really cute.”

Abruptly, the sleep was gone from Kayla’s voice. “Where? How’d you meet him?”

“I went for a ride with Adam in his dad’s boat, and we pulled up to the Pinecrest dock.”

“Adam Mosler?” Kayla asked. “Why were you out with him? You always said he was a jerk.”

“Don’t ask,” Cherie groaned. “He is a jerk. But I told Eric about the dances in the pavilion, and he’s going to come and bring Kent and Tad. You know, the guys from last year?”

“I remember Kent,” Kayla said. “He called me once last fall after he got home.”

“He did? How come you never told me?”

“Because he only called once. Besides, who cares? I’m with Chris now, anyway.”

“But—” Cherie began, but before she could say another word, her bedroom door swung open and her father loomed in the hallway.

“To sleep, Cherie,” he said.

As his eyes fixed on her, Cherie pulled the bedspread over the thin nightie that was all that covered her body. “I gotta go,” she said to Kayla. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Okay. ’Night.”

“’Night.” As she folded the cell phone and set it on the nightstand she kept her eyes on her father. How much beer had he drunk? “It was just Kayla,” she said. “I’m going to sleep now, okay?”

Her father hesitated, and for a horrible moment Cherie was afraid he was going to come in and try to kiss her good night, getting his beery breath all over her pillow. But then he nodded, grunted a good-night that was reduced to a single almost unintelligible syllable, and closed the door.

Cherie clicked off her bedside lamp and slid under the bedspread and sheet. The crickets outside her bedroom window were the loudest she’d heard all summer, and every few seconds a frog croaked from the little pond down the road.

She wondered if Eric was listening to the crickets, too.

And she wondered if he was thinking about her the way she was thinking about him.

LOGAN THREADED HIS boat through the tangle of cattails and willow branches as easily in the near-total darkness as he would have in full daylight, bringing the prow so gently to rest in the narrow channel that served as its berth that he barely felt it at all. Securing the bow line to a dead tree, he carefully lifted his old dog out of the boat and set him on the shore.

The dog staggered for a moment, found its footing, and followed behind Logan as he moved through the thick brush to the cabin that was completely invisible from the lake, though it was barely two hundred yards from the shore.

Logan’s feet felt heavy as he slogged along the path, and by the time they came to the cabin door, he was out of breath. The sack he carried, though only half full of the things he’d scavenged from the Dumpsters in town, felt heavy enough to stretch his arm.

He shouldered open the door and set the bag on the battered folding table he’d rescued from the dump so long ago he couldn’t even remember when, fixing its broken leg with someone’s discarded cane.

Home.

Safe.

Except he wasn’t safe.

He would never be safe again.

Logan lit the stub of a candle that had half melted into a jar lid and set it on top of a stack of boxes so old they were starting to fall apart, held upright only by their contents. The light threw flickering shadows around the old trapper’s shack, and for a moment Logan could almost imagine that he’d drifted back a century or two and was coming home from a night on the traplines rather than another night of keeping watch on the lake.

The one-winged crow he’d found in the marsh a few years back squawked, hopped from his perch by the window to the box, and started tearing at the bag with its beak.

“Greedy critter, aren’t you,” Logan muttered, snatching the bag away as quickly as he could, but not quickly enough to avoid the bird’s angry jab. “Dog first,” he said, nursing his injured finger for a moment.

The ancient dog had collapsed on his jumble of rags in the corner. Logan squatted down and opened the bag. The old Labrador’s nose twitched at the scent of scraps of half-eaten hamburgers he’d found in the Dumpster behind the drive-in, and piece by piece Logan hand-fed the dog. As the animal ate, Logan’s eyes fixed blearily on the stack of boxes. “Keep the papers,” he muttered softly. “That’s what Dr. Darby said, isn’t it? Keep all the papers.”

So he’d kept them, and every now and then, as the years had passed by, he’d looked through them. There were all kinds of old papers in the boxes. Some of them came from Dr. Darby’s own files, but that wasn’t all there was. There were files from the hospital Logan himself had been in so long ago, after the trouble.

That was how he always thought about what had happened: the trouble.

The story of the trouble was in the boxes, too. The third box, the one with the yellow label that had finally fallen off a couple of years ago. Or maybe longer. But that was the box — it had all the newspapers in it, and the papers from the lawyers, and from the court, and then from the hospital where they’d put him.

Even now he wasn’t sure how Dr. Darby had collected all of it, and Dr. Darby hadn’t ever told him, either.

Before he was finished feeding the dog, the crow had dropped down to the floor and was pecking bits of meat and bun out of Logan’s hand, off the floor, anyplace he could get to, even right out of the old dog’s mouth.

“Why’d he want me to keep them?” Logan muttered. Maybe he should just burn the whole lot of them. But Dr. Darby had told him not to, told him that if he burned the papers, or threw them in the lake, or tried to get rid of them at all, they’d come and take him back to the hospital.

Logan didn’t want to go back to the hospital. The hospital had been even worse than living out here in the old trapper’s shack all by himself. So he’d done what Dr. Darby told him to do, except for one thing.

The stuff in the old carriage house.

He should have gotten rid of it a long time ago, right after Dr. Darby—

— after Dr. Darby left, he finished, unable even in his own mind to think too much about what might have actually happened to Dr. Darby.

Dr. Darby had told him to do it. The very last time he’d seen Dr. Darby — at least he was pretty sure it was the last time, but there were things he just couldn’t remember very well — things he didn’t want to remember, Dr. Darby had told him — so maybe the last time he remembered wasn’t really the last time he’d seen Dr. Darby.

But he remembered what Dr. Darby had told him. Keep the boxes. But don’t let anybody find the things in the back room.

And so far, no one had. But no one had come to Pinecrest, either.

But now there were people there, and he wasn’t sure what to do.

Logan stroked the old dog’s head until the dog sighed and put his gray muzzle down on his paws. “I’ll do my best,” Logan said softly. “It’s all anyone can do, isn’t it?” The dog whined softly, and Logan nodded as if the animal had just confirmed his words. “And maybe nothing will happen,” he went on.

The dog closed his eyes and relaxed into sleep, and Logan knew he should go to sleep, too. It was late, and he was tired, and before long another morning would be here. But he couldn’t sleep — not tonight.

Tonight he had to look in the box — the box he hated most of all.

The box that held the story he still, even after all these years, couldn’t quite remember.

The story of why they’d put him in Central State Hospital.

He knew the story, of course. He must have read it a hundred times — maybe a thousand.

And he knew the story was true.

Knew it when he relived it in his dreams, and woke up with his fingers flexing as if they were still around the girl’s neck like they had been in the dream.

But when he was awake, it was like the girl didn’t exist at all, and he couldn’t see her face, or feel her body, or feel his fingers sinking into the flesh of her neck.

He’d told people he remembered. He’d told the doctors, and the lawyers, and even Dr. Darby, that he remembered.

But all he actually remembered was what he’d read.

What he’d read, and how he felt when he was at Pinecrest.

When he was close to the carriage house, where all the things were stored.

All the things he was supposed to guard, and keep anyone from finding.

The things that drew him, pulled at him, whispered to him in the night.

As they were whispering now, barely audible, nothing more than faint voices at the edge of his consciousness.

“No!” The word burst out of Logan’s mouth like an explosion, startling the crow so badly that it leaped into the air, its single wing flapping madly, only to drop back to the floor a moment later, eyeing Logan balefully.

Even the dog, deaf for years, stirred slightly, and Logan scratched his ear to settle him down once more.

Only when the dog was once again sleeping peacefully did Logan move across the floor to his own bed, which was little more than a nest of tattered blankets on a worn mattress that lay in a corner of the tiny cabin. He held his head and rocked back and forth, trying to get the whispering to stop before the voices became clear and spoke to him distinctly.

Because once the voices started, once he began listening to them, bad things started to happen.