The brick suddenly slid out. Kent handed it to Eric, who set it carefully on the floor, cradling it as gingerly as if it were a piece of crystal that might shatter in his hands, dust from the rotting mortar sticking to his moist palms.
Tad Sparks took the next brick, and within minutes Kent had removed enough of them to make a hole they could look through.
“Hand me the flashlight,” Kent whispered, lowering his voice as if something that lay beyond the bricks might hear him.
Eric passed him the broad-beam flashlight they’d brought from the house, then crowded close to Kent for a first glimpse of what was behind the bricked-up doorway as Tad Sparks tried to see over Kent’s other shoulder.
The musty odor of mold and dust wafted through the opening, and for a second Eric felt oddly dizzy.
“More boxes,” Tad said as Kent played the beam of light around the small room.
“And a bunch more old furniture,” Kent added, clearly disappointed that the contents of the hidden room seemed to be more of the same stuff that filled the room in which they were standing.
“There has to be something different about that stuff, though,” Eric said. “I mean, why is it in there instead of out here? There’s got to be a reason why someone bricked up the doorway.” Reaching over Kent’s shoulder, he grabbed a brick and tugged hard.
It came away in his hand, loosening a dozen others, which tumbled to the floor in a cascade of clatter and dust.
The boys moved back, and Kent passed the flashlight to Eric. “Jeez, Eric—be careful!” he said.
Elbowing Eric aside, Kent moved forward again, and working as swiftly and as silently as he could, dismantled the rest of the doorway. When the hole was big enough to step through, Kent straightened up and handed the last brick to Tad. But then, realizing there was no longer any barrier between himself and the hidden room, he stepped back.
“You want to go in first?” he asked Eric.
As Eric gazed at the gaping hole where a brick wall had stood, his heart began pounding so hard that his breath caught in his chest. Even so, he gripped the flashlight tight and stepped over the few remaining rows of bricks into the dark room.
A feeling of utter isolation instantly fell over him. It was as if he were totally alone in a dark and cavernous place—a dangerous place—where unseen evil lurked in every shadowy corner. Turning away from the blackness, he ran into a veil of cobwebs that covered his face and nearly dropped the flashlight in panic as he clawed them away.
“This is so weird,” Tad whispered, stepping through the doorway and moving close to Eric. Eric reached out, closed his fingers on Tad’s arm, and immediately regained his equilibrium.
Despite the cool of the chamber, perspiration burst from his forehead.
“It’s bigger than I thought,” Kent said as he, too, stepped through to join them.
Eric slowly moved the flashlight beam around the room, his heart still hammering, his hand trembling as he wiped bits of cobweb from his eyelashes and hair. The room was, indeed, much larger than they’d expected—it seemed almost the size of his bedroom up in the main house. Yet from the dimensions of the carriage house, he’d expected it to be only a few feet wide and deep, no more than a large closet.
And now that they were inside the room, they began to see that in fact it was different from the storeroom behind which it was hidden. This chamber was well organized, with a desk, a long table, and bookshelves, as well as stacks of boxes, some of which were beginning to slump with age.
And it was filled with a heavy odor that made Eric think of death and decay.
Tad’s voice broke the silence that had fallen over them as Eric played the light around the walls. “This box is open,” he said. “Give me some light.”
Eric turned the light toward Tad, who lifted an old black leather valise out of a box and set it on the table.
“What is it?” Kent asked.
Tad gazed at the object for a second, then recognized it from something he’d seen in one of the antiques stores his mother had taken him to a couple of years ago. “It’s an old medical bag. Maybe it was Dr. Darby’s.”
“What’s in it?” Eric asked.
Tad unlatched the tarnished catch and stretched the bag’s hinged mouth wide.
Eric shone the light inside.
Empty.
Turning away from the bag, Tad opened more of the boxes while Kent began exploring the drawers of the desk.
Eric went to the bookshelves and played the light over the titles, but many of the books were so old and worn that the printing on the spines was all but illegible. Still, he had a feeling that whatever the reason this room had been sealed up, the books were part of it.
“Look at this old lamp,” Tad said, breaking Eric’s reverie as he pulled a heavy, ornate lamp base from a box that was all but invisible in the dim light from the single bulb in the storeroom. He set the lamp on the table, which wobbled under its weight.
“Table’s missing a leg,” Kent said, pointing to the two small boxes that were all that supported one corner of the table.
Eric ran his finger along the dusty spines of the books, brushing them just clean enough to make out their titles. Most of them appeared to be old medical texts.
A row of jars with black screw tops and murky contents lined the top shelf, but in the darkness that was broken only by the flashlight and the spillover from the storeroom next door, he couldn’t tell what was inside them.
Then his finger passed over a different kind of book, and he felt a strange sensation—almost like electricity. He pulled the volume from the shelf and laid it on the table. A single word was stamped on the front in ornate gold script: Ledger.
Eric looked up from the book to see that Tad had become fixated on the lamp base, turning it around and around as he studied the intricate scrollwork, and that Kent was lost in tracing the pattern of the cracked Formica on the tabletop with his forefinger.
“Look what I found,” Eric said, and both their heads snapped up as if his words had startled them out of a deep sleep. As they moved closer, Eric opened the ledger to the first page.
Written in a fine, old-fashioned copperplate script were a variety of notes:
10/8 acq ladder fm M. Heuser. $17.
10/10 Saw R. Squireson .75 hr
10/11 Chimney swept. Hired F. MacIntosh gardener.
Eric turned the page.
11/3 acq painting for dng rm fm H.H.$9.
11/5 acq chaise fm J. Sanders $6
11/7 weigh 177. Must stop dairy
He flipped to the middle of the book.
7/6 sld washbasin $4, acq 3/6 $47. No energy. Suspect fraud
8/1 Saw R. Logan 1.5 hr.
8/5 Brkn window in boathouse fx’d.
Tad reached out and touched the second entry with his forefinger. “Logan,” he breathed.
“And what’s that mean?” Kent asked, pointing to the entry above the one that mentioned Logan. “Fraud on a forty-seven dollar washbasin?”
But Eric was eager to continue and kept turning pages, his eyes scanning each of them in turn, the whole process taking on the same almost automatic, oddly hypnotic rhythm they’d experienced with the photo album in the other room.
Page after page contained strangely cryptic notes—words that didn’t quite mean anything, or seemed oddly out of place—all written in the same fine hand.
At the end of the thick tome were half a dozen blank pages, but only when he was gazing at the inside of the back cover did Eric turn to the final entry.
I’ve acquired the final piece, but if I fit it to its mate I know my strength will fail. The power overwhelms me now—it is far stronger than I.
I shall therefore close this room, leaving all but one of the pieces inside.
Perhaps I should never have begun this venture, but I have the strength neither to continue the research, nor destroy what I have taken such pains to amass.
I pray that some day someone stronger will finish what I have begun.
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May God have mercy on my wretched soul.
—H.D.
Kent whistled softly as he finished reading the entry, and Tad looked up to gaze straight at Eric. “H.D.,” he said. “Hector Darby. And that sounds like a suicide note, doesn’t it?”
Instead of answering Tad’s question, Eric played the beam of the flashlight around the room. “What is all this stuff?” he asked. His heart was beating faster again, and as the now fading beam of the flashlight hit each object, he felt a strange sense of excitement. Suddenly, he wanted to touch everything—to feel the objects—to experience them. It was almost as if the contents of the room had found voices and were whispering to him, calling to him.
But it was more than that, more than merely a need to look at the strange amalgam of seeming junk that filled the room.
No, it was much, much more. Eric—indeed, all three of the boys—were feeling an almost electric eagerness to absorb and understand everything in the room.
As the flashlight beam faded to a dull yellow, Eric hit it onto the palm of his hand. It flickered strong for a moment, then faded again. “What’s the matter with this?” he muttered.
“What time is it?” Tad asked.
Eric glanced at his watch, then looked again. Disbelieving what his eyes were telling him, he tapped its face, then held it up to his ear.
Its ticking was faint, but definitely there. “Five minutes to five?” he breathed, making it more a question than a statement. He looked first at Tad, then at Kent. “How could that be? We’ve only been in here—what—a half hour?”
“We got here at one,” Kent said. “I know—I looked at my watch.”
“Crap,” Eric said. “My folks’ll be back any minute.” Turning away from the room and its contents, he led the way back through the broken brick wall, leaving everything as it was, and together the three of them pulled the sheet of plywood back across the opening.
Eric put the flashlight back in the tack room, and they walked out of the carriage house into the bright afternoon sunshine. He felt strangely disoriented, as if the daylight was wrong, as if the outdoors was too big. He quickened his step as he headed up the lawn toward the house.
The message light was blinking on the phone when they came through the back door into the kitchen, and he pressed the button to play back the message.
“Hi, honey,” his mother said through the tinny speaker. “The six of us had a great round of golf and your dad picked up Marci from Summer Fun. We all decided to have dinner here at the club, and if you and the boys want to join us, Tad’s mother says there’s a taxi you can call. Or you can all go into town for a pizza if you want to. Just behave yourselves, and be careful, and be home by ten-thirty, okay? Eleven at the latest. Love you.”
Eric looked at his friends, and could read the decision in their faces as clearly as it was in his own mind. If they went into town for pizza, they could be back in less than an hour.
And that would give them at least two more hours in Hector Darby’s secret room.
“Let’s go now so we can get back sooner,” Tad said, voicing Eric’s thought almost exactly.
ERIC TOOK A bite of pizza, even though he wasn’t hungry. All he could think about was the secret room, and the stuff in it, and the ledger.
And the way he’d felt when he was in that room, every nerve in his body seeming to tingle.
Time vanishing away, leaving him feeling…how?
He wasn’t sure. It was a strange feeling, but not bad. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t remember everything that had happened, but somehow hours slipped away in what felt like minutes.
And then, at the end, just before they’d all left, there had been that strange sensation of hearing voices, but not really hearing them at all.
Now that he was sitting in the bright lights of the pizza parlor, it all seemed even stranger. Strange, but not really frightening. But shouldn’t he be frightened? Shouldn’t all of them be? Hours had passed, and none of them had been aware of it.
Maybe they should just brick up the doorway again.
Maybe—
“Know what I think?” Kent Newell said, breaking Eric’s thoughts as he pushed his own uneaten slice of pizza away. “I think we should stop pretending to be hungry and go buy a couple of lanterns so we can get some decent light in there—you know, those Coleman ones that are almost as good as electric lights.”
Tad nodded. “At least we’d be able to see what we’re doing.” He hesitated, then spoke again, avoiding his friends’ gazes. “I mean, if we’re really gonna do it.”
“What do you mean, ‘if’?” Kent flared. “We already broke in—all we’re doing now is finding out what that stuff is. And if we leave now,” he added, “we can get another look inside that room before our folks get home.”
“I don’t want my dad to catch us in there,” Eric said. “So let’s pay a little better attention to the time, okay?” And even as he spoke the words, Eric knew he wasn’t going to brick the secret room back up. Instead, he’d just agreed to go back into it tonight, and his excitement was starting to grow.
“There’s something in there,” Kent said softly. “Something big. Something important.”
Tad flagged down the waitress to bring a box for the leftover pizza, and a few minutes later they were out of the pizza parlor and halfway down the block, heading for the sporting goods store. But before they came to it, Eric stopped in front of the ice cream shop. Inside, Cherie Stevens was behind the counter, loading a sugar cone with ice cream the same shade of pink as her apron.
“You guys go get the lanterns,” Eric said. “Come back for me.”
“Aw come on, Eric,” Kent protested. “Not now!”
“I’m just going to say hello,” Eric said. “Go get the lanterns.” And before either of them could protest any further, he pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The cool interior was filled with the sweet scent of ice cream and toasted cones. Cherie looked up and smiled at him as she finished with the couple at the counter. The only other people in the shop were a woman and a little boy who sat at one of the small round tables, eating dishes of ice cream. Eric walked up to the counter, suddenly feeling as if he were six years old. Instead of looking at Cherie, he found himself staring at the variously colored squares of fudge that were laid out in the case.
“Hi,” Cherie said.
“Hi.” Eric tried to look up, and failed. Now his heart was pounding even harder than when he’d been in the secret room that afternoon. Except that this afternoon it had been exciting. Now he just felt like an idiot. “I—I think I’d like some fudge,” he stammered. “Is it good?” Is it good? he echoed silently to himself. Bigger idiot!
“It really is. Want a taste?”
Eric managed to nod, and pointed at a dark chocolate slab that was studded with nuts.
Cherie sliced off a bite and handed Eric a square of wax paper with the taste of fudge on it. “I’ll take a hunk of that,” he said.
Cherie’s brow rose. “You haven’t even tasted it yet.”
Eric felt himself blushing. “Don’t need to. You said it’s good.”
Cherie rolled her eyes, but smiled. “How much do you want?”
Eric shrugged.
Cherie sliced off a chunk, wrapped it up, and put it into a little white bag. “On the house,” she whispered as she handed it to him. “What are you doing later?”
“I’m going to—I’ve got to do some—” He fell silent for a moment, then: “Hey, do you know anything about Hector Darby?”
“Dr. Darby?” Cherie replied, and Eric nodded. “Sure.” She wiped her hands on a white cloth and leaned in against the counter. “He used to own Pinecrest.”
Eric nodded again. “Yeah, I know.”
“So what do you want to know about him?”
The bell on the door dinged, and Eric saw Cherie’s eyes flick to the door, then back to him, disappointment clear in her expression. “Uhoh,” she whispered, then stood up straight. “H
i, Kayla. Hi, Chris.”
“Hey, Cherie,” Kayla Banks said.
Eric turned to see a pretty brunette about his own age, holding hands with a tall, skinny kid. Then he recalled that the skinny kid had been with Adam Mosler his first day in town, when he and Marci were walking Moxie.
Eric held up the white bag. “Thanks,” he said, turning around to leave. But just before he reached the door, it opened and Adam Mosler himself walked in.
“’Bye, Eric,” Cherie called. “See you at the dance Friday night.”
Eric’s heart skipped a beat, but his gut knotted as he saw the expression Cherie’s words brought to Adam Mosler’s eyes. Then he decided he’d had enough of Adam Mosler. “I’ll be there,” he called back over his shoulder.
And Mosler walked right into him, bumping him hard with his chest, knocking him against a table, which tipped over onto a couple of chairs, then crashed to the floor.
The woman with the little boy looked up in alarm.
Wishing that he’d just kept his mouth shut and ducked past Mosler, Eric apologized to the woman and quickly picked up the fallen furniture.
Meanwhile, Adam Mosler regarded him with an evil sneer. “Oh, gee, excuse me all to hell,” he said, his tone emphasizing the sarcasm of his words.
Eric saw Kent Newell and Tad Sparks walking up outside, carrying plastic bags from the sporting goods store, and he knew it would be better to get past Mosler before Kent decided to get involved. “Apology accepted,” he muttered to Adam, and pushed the door open.
Too late. “Was that guy hassling you again?” Kent demanded. “I can kick his ass, you know. And I can do it right now.”