In the Dark of the Night

  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.

  MERRILL WENT OVER the shopping list in her head one more time as she pulled into the parking lot to pick Marci up from the Summer Fun program that the Phantom Lake Elementary School was running, and that Marci had reluctantly agreed to try for the day.

  “But if I hate it, I don’t have to go back, okay?” the little girl had insisted for what seemed like the hundredth time when Merrill had dropped her off two hours ago. Merrill had gotten the message loud and clear that Marci fully intended to hate Summer Fun no matter what might be going on, but at least she’d given it a chance.

  In the two hours she’d had to herself since then, Merrill had gotten better acquainted with the town. She had been to the grocery store—which was far better stocked than she’d anticipated—picked up the hot dogs and steaks at Vern’s Butcher Shop, browsed through the bookstore, found two art galleries that actually had decent things in them, and picked up all the odds and ends that were either missing from the house or she’d forgotten to pack. The rear of the Lexus was almost as jammed as it had been nearly a week ago, when they’d driven up from Evanston, and there was far more food than she’d need tonight when the Sparkses and the Newells arrived.

  All that was left after picking up Marci was a stop at the hardware store to get some citronella candles.

  As she braked the car to a stop at exactly the place she’d dropped Marci off two hours ago, she braced herself for her daughter’s recitation of her objections to Summer Fun. But when Marci jumped into the car, her first words were the opposite of what Merrill had prepared for.

  “Guess what, Mom? I get to be in the Fourth of July parade!” Merrill gaped at her daughter in utter shock, but Marci barely noticed. “We’re going to do a red, white, and blue float, with flags and everything, and we have to start working on it Monday. It’s going to be made out of tissue paper and, listen to this: I get to be the Statue of Liberty! Can you take Krissy and me shopping?”

  “Who’s Krissy?” Merrill asked, as Marci paused for a breath.

  “She’s my friend!” Marci replied, giving her mother the kind of scornful look only a ten-year-old can muster. “So can you? Take us shopping? We need to get stuff to make my costume.”

  “That’s wonderful news, honey. Of course we can go shopping. We’ll go next week.”

  “And can I go over to Krissy’s house tomorrow?”

  A wave of relief broke over Merrill as she put the car in gear and made the right turn down Main Street. “Shouldn’t be a problem,” she said once they were safely on the road. “So what do you think?” she asked as she scanned the block for the hardware store. “Did Dad and Eric get the boat running yet?”

  Marci rolled her eyes. “Dad said that they don’t know what they’re doing.”

  Merrill pulled into a diagonal parking spot directly in front of the kind of old-fashioned hardware store that hadn’t existed at home for as long as she could remember, feeling like she’d somehow slipped back at least half a century in time. “Want to come in?”

  As Marci slid out of the car, Merrill scanned the window of the antiques shop next to the hardware store and stopped short, her eyes fixing on a floor lamp with a stained-glass shade—exactly the kind she’d been looking for to finish Dan’s study at home. She backed up two steps and looked at the sign on the store.

  CAROL’S ANTIQUES

  “Let’s stop in here for a minute, okay?” She pulled the door open and Marci followed her into the small shop’s air-conditioned interior. While Marci headed for a case filled with ancient dolls in faded dresses, Merrill went directly to the lamp.

  Up close it was even better; Dan would love it.

  “Hi,” a cheerful voice said from behind her. “Can I help you?”

  Merrill turned to see a smartly dressed woman about her own age whose smile actually seemed genuine rather than pasted on to impress a possible customer. “I just love this lamp,” she said, realizing too late that she’d just undercut her bargaining position.

  “Isn’t it something?” the woman asked. “It just came in yesterday.” She moved closer, holding out her hand. “I’m Carol Langstrom.”

  “Merrill Brewster. That’s my daughter Marci drooling over the dolls.”

  “Up for the summer?” Carol asked, putting on her reading glasses and peering at the tag on the lamp.

  “Yes. We’re staying at Pinecrest.”

  “Pinecrest? Really?” Carol took her glasses off and looked again at Merrill.

  Merrill cocked her head. “You sound surprised.”

  “I am surprised. I didn’t think it would be for rent.”

  Merrill’s brow creased slightly. “Why not?”

  Suddenly, Carol Langstrom looked uncomfortable. “Well, it’s just that Dr. Darby was an odd sort of man.” As Merrill’s frown deepened, Carol Langstrom spoke more quickly. “It’s not that I disliked him. I didn’t. No one did. In fact, he was very well respected in town. And certainly one of my best customers—practically everything in Pinecrest came through my shop.”

  Merrill’s puzzlement
deepened. “Then what’s the problem?” she pressed as Marci wandered back from the doll display.

  “Oh, mostly it was probably small-town rumor,” Carol Langstrom replied. “And perhaps I misspoke—it wasn’t so much that Dr. Darby was odd as much as it was his interests that were—” She hesitated, then spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “Well, they were odd. He worked with the criminally insane down at Central. You know, Central State Hospital? From what I’ve heard, he was doing some kind of experiments on some of his patients. New kinds of treatment or something, I suppose. But then to have him disappear like that! At the time, the stories were just incredible! I heard that one of his patients murdered him, and I heard that his experiments made him go crazy himself. I don’t know—it was all just so strange. Kind of creepy, you know?”

  Now Merrill was barely listening as some of Carol Langstrom’s words echoed in her mind.

  …creepy…

  …experiments…

  …criminally insane…

  What had really happened at Pinecrest?

  Merrill’s mouth went dry, and she suddenly found she couldn’t think of a thing to say to Carol Langstrom. For a moment she felt light-headed, dizzy, almost afraid she’d faint. She put a hand out to steady herself against an oak armoire.

  “Do you know Ashley Sparks?” she heard Carol Langstrom asking, and her head began to clear. “Ashley is a longtime customer of mine. She could tell you about Dr. Darby.”

  Suddenly, Merrill found herself acutely aware that not only she, but a very wide-eyed Marci, was taking in every word that Carol was saying. “Well,” she finally said, clearing her throat and deliberately trying to break the mood and change the subject, but not so obviously that Marci would see the ploy, “Pinecrest is a beautiful house, and we’re enjoying ourselves very much.” She put her hand on Marci’s shoulder, trusting that Carol Langstrom would get the message. “And tonight we’re having a barbecue.” She squeezed Marci’s shoulder. “Aren’t we, sweetheart?” She herded her daughter toward the door. “And I’m serious about that lamp!”