Summer of Night

  The colors of the flag were bright: blood red and crisp white above the green grass. The low, horizontal light made everything brighter and richer. Somewhere on Dale's Uncle Henry's farm one hill and a quarter of a mile away, a cow lowed and the sound was quite clear in the still air.

  Mike bowed his head and said a prayer. Perhaps he wouldn't have to confess the little lies after all. Then he crossed himself and walked down the lane toward the rear of the cemetery and Van Syke's shed.

  It wasn't really Van Syke's shed, merely the old toolshed that had been in the cemetery for years and years. It was set back near the rear fence, across a mowed strip of stubble far from the last row of graves-although, Mike thought, someday the cemetery would grow around it-and the thick sunlight lay across its west wall like butter spread on stone.

  Mike noticed that the padlock was on the door and he strolled past as if he was headed for the woods and strip-mined hills far behind the cemetery-the kids' usual destination when they cut through here-and then turned back, stepping into the deep shadow on the west side of the little building. Grasshoppers leaped blindly from the stubble under his sneakers and brittle weeds cracked underfoot.

  There was a window on this side-the only window the shed had-and it was tiny and neck-high on Mike. He went closer, shielded his eyes, and peered in.

  Nothing. The window was too grimed and the interior too dark.

  Whistling, hands in his pockets, Mike strolled around the building. He glanced over his shoulder several times to make sure that no one was coming down the lane. The road had been empty since Father C. had driven off. The cemetery was quiet. Beyond the road, the sun had gone down with the crimson, slow-motion elegance reserved for Illinois sunsets. But the empty sky was still burnished with June evening light, fading now toward true twilight and summer dark.

  Mike inspected the lock. It was a solid Yale padlock, but the metal plate where the hook was attached to the doorframe was set into splinters and rot. Still whistling softly, Mike wiggled the plate back and forth until one-then two-of the three rusty screws were free of the frame. The last screw took some urging from Mike's pocketknife, but finally it came free. Mike glanced around, made sure there was a stone nearby to pound the screws back in when it was time to leave, and then he stepped into the shed.

  It was dark. The air smelled of fresh soil and something more sour than that. Mike closed the door behind him-leaving a crack for light and so that he could hear if a car drove up to the front gate-and he stood there blinking a moment, letting his eyes adapt.

  Van Syke wasn't there-that was the important thing Mike had checked on even before stepping in. Not much was there: a bunch of shovels and spades-standard equipment for a graveyard, he figured-some shelves with fertilizer and jars of dark liquid on them, some rusted and barbed iron bars, obviously part of the fence that had been removed for replacement, stacked in one corner, some attachments for the tractor that mowed the grounds, a couple of small crates-one which had a lantern on it and looked as if it had been used as a table, some thick canvas straps which Mike puzzled over for a moment before he realized that they were the straps that went under a coffin so it could be lowered into the grave, and, directly under the grimed window, a low cot.

  Mike checked out the cot. It smelled strongly of mildew and there was a blanket thrown on it that didn't smell much better. But someone had obviously used this as a bed recently-a Wednesday edition of the Peoria Journal Star lay crumpled against the wall on it-and the blanket lay half on the floor as if someone had thrown it off in a hurry.

  Mike knelt next to the cot and moved the newspaper. Under it was a magazine with slick, glossy pages mixed in with cheaper paper. Mike lifted it, began to thumb through it, and then dropped it in a hurry.

  The slick pages held glossy black and white photos of naked ladies. Mike had seen naked ladies before-he had four sisters-and he had even seen magazines with naked ladies in them: Gerry Daysinger had shown him a nudist magazine once. But he had never seen photos like this.

  The women lay with their legs open and their private parts showing. The nudist pictures Mike had seen had been air-brushed-no pubic hair, only a modest smoothness between the legs-but these photos showed everything. Hair, the ladies' slits, the open lips down there… often held open by the ladies themselves, lacquered nails tugging apart the opening to their most secret parts. Other women were on their knees, rump to the camera, so you could see their bum hole as well as the hairy parts. Others were playing with their titties.

  Mike felt his blush fade, but at the same second, as if the blood had to flow somewhere, he felt his penis getting hard. He touched the magazine-although not picking it up again-and flipped pages.

  More women. More spread legs. Mike had never imagined that ladies would do such a thing in front of someone with a camera. What if their families ever saw these pictures?

  He felt his erection throbbing against his jeans. Mike had touched himself before-even rubbed himself all the way to the climax that had surprised him so much the first time it happened a year earlier-but Father Harrison had gone to great lengths to explain the consequences of self-abuse, both spiritual and physical, and Mike had no intention of going insane or of getting the special type of acne that self-abusers always suffered-thus letting the world know they were self-abusers. Besides, Mike had confessed his particular sin the few times he'd done it, and while it was one thing confessing something like that to Father Harrison in the dark and getting bawled out for it, it would be quite another telling Father Cavanaugh. Mike had realized that he would rather become an atheist and go to hell than confess this sin to Father C. And if he did it and didn't confess… well, Father Harrison had described the punishment in hell that awaited sinners who were depraved.

  Mike sighed, stuck the magazine back where he had found it, arranged the newspaper over it, and got to his feet. He'd jog down the hill and walk briskly up the next one; that should get rid of the bad thoughts and the hardness against the inside of his fly. The blanket slipped off the cot as Mike rose and a raw smell filled the room. Mike backed away and then came closer, lifting the blanket away.

  A stench of raw earth… and something worse… rose from beneath the cot. Mike held his breath a second, and then he lifted the cot and set it against the packing crate.

  There was a hole there. It was more than two feet across and perfectly round, as if it were an open manhole in a city street. But the edges were packed dirt. Mike got down on all fours and peered in.

  The smell was very bad. Mike had gone to a slaughterhouse near Oak Hill once, and this stench was sort of like the room where they'd tossed the entrails and other bits and pieces they couldn't sell. The blood smell was the same. It mixed with the rich, raw earth scent to make a stench so strong that it made Mike dizzy. He teetered for a moment, eyes closed.

  When he opened them, he caught a flicker of movement far down the hole as if something had just scurried from the light. Mike blinked. The edges of the hole were weird-raw red, although the soil around here wasn't clay, and striated, evenly ridged. It reminded Mike of something, although he couldn't think of what for a minute. Then he remembered.

  Dale Stewart had a set of Compton's Pictured Encyclopedias. The boys liked to look at the section about the human body; there were transparent overlays there. One of the pictures was of just the digestive system, with cross sections and colored cutaways.

  The sides of the hole looked like a section of human gut. Red and raw.

  As Mike watched, the red ridges seemed to move slightly-contracting, then relaxing. The smell from the hole grew worse.

  Mike crawled backward on all fours, breathing shallowly. There was a scraping, scrabbling sound from somewhere. Rats outside… or something down there?

  Mike had a sudden image of this tunnel running into the cemetery, connecting to the graves there. He imagined Van Syke crawling headfirst into this hole, disappearing down this raw gut into the deeper bowels of the earth… Van Syke slithering like a snake, sli
ding out of sight as he heard Mike's whistling a minute before.

  Van Syke… or something worse?

  Mike shivered. The filthy window suggested that it was already dark outside, although the crack in the door showed pale light.

  Mike shoved the cot back in place, making sure the newspaper and magazine were as he had found them, and readjusted the blanket so it concealed the hole. It wouldn't take the blanket to hide it, he realized. It's so dark in here, somebody night not notice the hole even if the cot weren't here if the smell didn't tip you off.

  Mike was still on his knees when he imagined a grub-white hand and arm sliding out from the blackness beneath the cot… sliding out and grabbing his wrist, gripping his ankle.

  Mike's sexual excitement was completely gone. For a second he felt like he was going to throw up. He closed his eyes, opened his mouth to lessen the smell, and concentrated on saying a Hail Mary and an Our Father.

  It didn't help.

  He imagined that he heard stealthy footsteps in the grass stubble outside.

  Mike flung the door open and threw himself outside, not caring if he ran into whoever it was, wanting only to be away from the hole… out of there.

  The cemetery was empty. The sky was darker, one star hung in the east above the treeline there, the woods looked dark, but it was still summer twilight. A red-winged blackbird sat on a tall gravestone twenty yards away and seemed to stare at Mike.

  He started to leave, walking quickly away, but then remembered the lock. He hesitated, realized that he was being an idiot, and then went back and began pounding in the screws. The last one had to be screwed in, and Mike noticed that his hand was shaking slightly as he used his penknife to do it.

  If something comes out of that hole, how does it get out of the shed? Maybe it slithers through the window.

  Shut up, stupid. The knife blade slipped and sliced his little finger. Mike ignored it, driving the screw the last quarter inch, oblivious of the drops of blood dripping onto the wooden frame.

  There. It wasn't perfect. A close inspection would show where the latch frame had been pulled out and then readjusted. So what? Mike turned and walked down the lane.

  There was still no traffic on County Six. Mike jogged down the hill, wishing the shadows here at the bottom were not so deep. It looked like night in the thick woods on either side.

  The Black Tree Tavern was closed and dark-no alcohol could be served on Sunday-and it was strange to see the little building with no cars in front. Mike slowed to a walk when he got up the hill and past the Black Tree driveway. The woods continued to his left, Gypsy Lane was in there somewhere, but the country opened out to cornfields to his right and it was much lighter up here. Mike could see the junction with Jubilee College Road only a couple of hundred yards ahead, and once there, Elm Haven's water tower would be visible three quarters of a mile to the west.

  Mike had slowed even more, silently cursing himself as a coward, when he heard gravel crunch behind him. It wasn't a car, but the soft tread of footsteps.

  Still moving, he turned to walk backward, hands unconsciously raised to fists.

  Another kid, he thought when he first saw the shadow separate itself from the darkness under the trees on the road at the top of the hill. He didn't recognize the kid, but saw the old-fashioned Boy Scout hat and uniform. The boy was about fifteen yards behind him.

  Then Mike realized that it wasn't a kid. It was a guy in his twenties maybe, and the outfit wasn't a Boy Scout uniform but some sort of soldier suit like the uniforms Mike had seen in old photographs. The guy's face seemed waxy, smooth, and oddly featureless in the dim light!

  "Hi!" yelled Mike and waved. He didn't know the soldier, but he was still relieved. When Mike had heard the footsteps behind him, he'd had a sudden image of Van Syke on the road with him.

  The young soldier didn't wave back. Mike couldn't see his eyes, but it was almost as if the guy was blind. He wasn't running-just walking quickly in a sort of stiff, straight-legged march, but it was a fast enough march that the soldier had already closed some of the distance between them. He was ten yards away now and Mike could clearly see the brass buttons on the brown uniform, the weird khaki wrappings-like bandages-around his legs. The hobnailed boots made crunching noises on the gravel. Mike tried again to see the face, but the broad-brimmed hat cast deep shadows despite the dim light.

  The young man was marching so quickly that Mike got the definite feeling that he was trying to catch up… was hurrying to close the distance.

  The shit with this, thought Mike, vaguely aware that he would have to confess another bad word to Father C.

  Mike turned and began running down Jubilee College Road toward the distant smudge of trees that was Elm Haven.

  Dale's little brother Lawrence was afraid of the dark.

  As far as Dale could tell, the eight-year-old wasn't afraid of anything else. He'd climb places that no one else-except perhaps Jim Harlen-would even consider attempting. Lawrence was tough with that kind of quiet physical courage that sent him ripping into bullies half again as tall as him, his head down, fists pummeling even while he was taking a beating that would send an older kid fleeing in tears. Lawrence loved daredevil stunts-he would jump his bike from the highest ramp they could build, and when it came time in their backyard daredevil show for someone to lie down in front of the ramp while others jumped their bikes over him, Lawrence was the only one to volunteer. He played tackle football against mobs of kids bigger than him, and his idea of fun was to be taped up in a cardboard box and thrown off the strip-mined cliffs of Billy Goat Mountains. Sometimes Dale was sure that Lawrence's lack of fear would get him happily killed someday.

  But he was afraid of the dark.

  Lawrence was especially afraid of the dark in the hallway at the top of their stairs, and even more afraid of the dark in their bedroom.

  The Stewarts' house-they had rented for the five years they had lived here since their move from Chicago-was old. The light switch at the bottom of the stairs controlled the bulbs on the small chandelier above the lower entrance hall, but left the landing above steeped in darkness. To get to the boys' room, one had to walk around the landing in that semidarkness. Worse, from Lawrence's point of view, was the fact that there was no wall switch in their room. To turn on the hanging light bulb in the center of the room, the boys had to walk into the darkness, feel around for the cord hanging in midair, and tug it on. Lawrence hated that part and begged Dale to go up to turn on the light for him.

  Once, as they were falling asleep with the night-light on, Dale had asked him why he hated to do that… what exactly was he afraid of? It was their room. At first, Lawrence wouldn't answer, but finally he'd said sleepily, "Somebody might be in here. Waiting."

  "Somebody?" Dale had whispered. "Who?"

  "I dunno," Lawrence had sleepily whispered back,"somebody. Sometimes I think I'll come into the room and be feeling around for the light cord… you know, it's sorta hard to find… and instead of the cord, I'll feel this face."

  Dale's neck had gone cold.

  "You know," continued Lawrence,"some tall guy's face… only not quite a human face… and I'll be in here in the dark with my hand on his face… and his teeth'll be all slick and cool, and I'll feel his eyes wide open like a dead person's… and…"

  "Shut up," Dale had whispered.

  Even with the night-light on, Lawrence was afraid of things in the room. The house was old enough not to have closets-Dale's dad had said that people used big wardrobes for their clothes back then-but the previous owners or renters had added a closet to the boys' room. It was a crude thing-hardly more than a floor-to-ceiling box of painted pine boards in one corner-and Lawrence said that it reminded him of a coffin propped up there. It reminded Dale of a coffin, too, but he wouldn't admit it. Lawrence would never be the first to open the closet door, even in the daytime. Dale could only imagine what his brother thought might be waiting in there.

  But mostly Lawrence was afraid of what might be u
nder his bed.

  The boys slept a few feet apart on small beds, identical down to the Roy Rogers blankets on them. But Lawrence was sure that something waited under his bed.

  Lawrence would kneel to say his prayers if his mom was in the room, but when the two boys were alone, he was quick to get into his pajamas and jump onto the bed-not even come within grabbing distance of the darkness under it-and then he would go through a ritual of tucking his blankets in, securing everything so that nothing could drag him down, pull him under. If he was reading a comic or something and it fell on the floor, he would ask Dale to pick it up. If Dale didn't, the comic remained on the floor until morning.

  Dale had reasoned with his brother for years. "Look, stupid," he'd said,"there's nothing under your bed but dust-balls."

  "There could be a hole," Lawrence had whispered once.

  "A hole?"

  "Yeah, like a tunnel or something. With something in it waiting to get me." Lawrence's voice had been very tiny.

  Dale had laughed. "Peabrain, we're on the second floor. There can't be a hole or tunnel on the second floor. Plus, it's solid wood." He'd leaned over and rapped the floor with his knuckles. "See, solid."

  Lawrence had closed his eyes as if expecting a hand to reach out and grab Dale's wrist.

  Dale had given up trying to convince Lawrence that there was nothing to be afraid of. Dale wasn't afraid of the dark upstairs-his fear was centered on the basement, specifically the coal bin where he had to go down to shovel coal every winter night-but he'd never told Lawrence or anyone about that anxiety. Dale loved summer because he didn't have to go down in the basement. But Lawrence was afraid of the dark all year round.