In the Dark of the Night

by John Saul

Once again Logan let the boat drift to a stop, hidden deep within the shadows cast over the lake by the tall pines for which the house had been named, trying to find the courage to go ashore.

  Then he heard a shout and saw a man coming down the lawn. His heart skipping a beat, Logan backed into the reeds near the shore, where the shadows of the pines were so deep he could barely even see the dog, who had caught his master’s anxiety and was now trying to rise on his rickety legs. To quiet the animal, Logan fished a knucklebone from the leavings he’d scavenged that night, and in an instant the dog had dropped back onto the floor of the scow and begun to gnaw.

  Logan waited.

  The man called again, went into the carriage house, then came out followed not by one boy, but by three.

  Not long after that, the lights in the house went dark.

  Logan waited in the darkness, knowing it was finally time for him to do what he should have done years ago.

  Careful to make no sound at all, he beached the boat, tied the painter to a branch, and stepped out.

  And the moment he set foot on Pinecrest’s soil, he felt it.

  Felt the pull.

  It was as if the things in the storeroom—the things Dr. Darby had told him to keep safe—had awakened and were somehow whispering to him.

  Beckoning to him.

  Luring him, as at dusk he sometimes lured the fish from the depths of the lake.

  Now, as he crouched in the boat that was itself hidden in the shadows of the pines on the shore, he tried not to listen to the whispers.

  Tried to resist the calling.

  His heart pounded in his chest as he tried to decide what to do.

  Almost against his own will, he stepped out of the boat and edged up toward the old carriage house, keeping to the fringe of the woods.

  And as he moved, the voices in his head began to rise.

  The whisperings became a cacophony of noise inside his head, each voice vying for his attention, each of them whispering what he must do.

  But on one thing, all of them agreed: he must go through the door into the back room, through the door that had been hidden for so many years.

  The door that should never be opened again.

  As if to turn away from the voices themselves, Logan turned away from the old carriage house, and his eyes fixed on the red glow of the dying coals in the fire pit. And as he stared at it, an idea began to form in his mind.

  He started toward the fire pit, the voices protesting with every step, but he ignored them until he was near the glowing coals.

  A few feet from the pit itself he found a can of charcoal starting fluid and a box of matches.

  The voices in his head rose as he picked them up.

  He forced himself to ignore the voices, steeled himself against the hard knot of fear gnawing at his belly.

  The voices grew louder, clearer.

  “Come to us.”

  A strangled whimper of protest bubbled in his throat.

  “We know what you want.”

  “You know what we want.”

  Logan tried to close his mind to them, tried to concentrate only on the structure that lay a few paces ahead now, and the objects in his hands.

  The objects that could be his salvation if only he could find the strength to disobey the voices.

  “Remember how good it felt to have your fingers around her throat?”

  Logan tried to focus his mind on nothing more than emptying the can in his left hand onto the evil structure, then setting it ablaze with the matches that were all but crushed by the pressure in the fingers of his right hand.

  “You can feel it, can’t you? You’re feeling it even now.”

  He was at the door of the carriage house.

  “Come in. See if all is as it should be. Make sure our treasures are safe.”

  The voices were nearly overpowering now, and Logan felt what little courage he’d summoned begin to fail.

  What could it hurt? And it had been so long since he’d been inside the room.

  Dropping the matches, he reached for the doorknob.

  His fingers were no more than a fraction of an inch from the cold metal when a tiny spark of reason flared in his mind for the briefest of moments.

  Dropping the can of lighter fluid, Logan turned and fled, shambling away into the darkness of the night.

  Only when he was back in his boat and it was slicing once more through the smooth waters of Phantom Lake, did he dare to take a deep breath and finally look back at Pinecrest.

  For now, at least, he and everyone else was safe.

  But for how long?

  TAD SPARKS FILLED the top drawer of the bureau with his underwear and socks, closed the drawer, and dropped his finally empty duffel bag on the floor of the closet. Flopping onto the bed, he looked out the open window at the lake. The water seemed almost to be glowing from deep beneath its surface rather than merely reflecting the light of the moon.

  He’d forgotten how silent it was here at night, and how loud the frogs sounded when they broke the stillness with their calls.

  Then another sound broke the silence: his father’s voice calling from downstairs. “Tad!”

  Tad slid off the bed and went to the top of the narrow stairs. “What?”

  “Did you roll up the windows in the car and lock it?”

  He couldn’t remember. “Coming.” He took the stairs two at a time, and headed through the living room where his father was watching a baseball game while his mother knitted a sweater Tad secretly hoped wasn’t intended for him.

  “Might rain,” his dad said, barely glancing away from the TV screen.

  “Okay.” Tad grabbed the keys from the little table by the front door and went out into the night.

  The sky was clear and the canopy of stars hung so low that it seemed he could reach up and touch them.

  No way was it going to rain.

  Not that it mattered. Better to just do as his father asked than try to argue, since arguing had never worked. Besides, even if it didn’t rain, a raccoon could get into the car, and then his dad would really be mad.

  The car was next to the house, and for a moment Tad considered putting it in the garage, but then thought better of it—the garage door was narrow, and he didn’t want to think about what his father would say if the car got even a single scratch. Better just to roll up the windows and lock it. His father could move it into the garage tomorrow.

  Tad slid into the driver’s seat, inserted the key in the ignition, turned it to activate the electrical system, and was about to close the windows when he heard something.

  A faint but rhythmic squeaking noise.

  Frowning, he got out of the car and listened closely.

  The sound seemed to be coming from the lake.

  Oars?

  Was someone out on the lake at night, rowing?

  The moon was now paving a silvery pathway on the lake, which shimmered with ripples. A moment later the silhouette of a man rowing a boat slid into the bright moonlight.

  The boat turned slightly, and Tad saw what looked like a giant crucifix rising from its prow.

  But it couldn’t be—it had to be something else. A trick of the light.

  Something that just looked like a crucifix.

  He reached in through the window and flicked on the headlights.

  The boat was closer to shore than it appeared in the moonlight, and as the headlights flashed out of the darkness, the man rowing the boat turned, staring into the light like a deer caught on the highway at night.

  He was dressed in what seemed to be rags, with long hair and an even longer beard, and though he froze for an instant, he immediately came back to life, sinking his oars deep into the water and pulling hard so the boat turned away and Tad was staring at his back.

  But even though the man’s face had vanished, the memory of it was etched clearly in Tad’s mind. The man looked like one of the crazy homeless people he’d seen in Chicago plenty of times.

  The kind
of man who was never seen at all in Evanston.

  So what was somebody like that doing in Phantom Lake, let alone this part of the lake?

  And why would he have a wooden crucifix on the bow of his boat?

  Leaving the headlights on, Tad ran a few steps toward the house. “Dad!”

  Though the window he could see his father, who was still watching TV. He went to the front door. “Dad, there’s a really weird guy out on the lake.”

  Finally, his father turned away from the screen. “What do you mean, out on the lake? It’s almost nine—”

  “Come look,” Tad broke in. “Hurry.”

  Kevin Sparks heaved himself out of his chair and followed his son back to the car.

  The headlights still shone brightly on the lake, but only the still water was visible.

  They walked down to the lake, but even from its edge there was nothing to be seen.

  No boat.

  No man.

  No sound of anyone rowing.

  Not even the tiniest ripple of a wake at the water’s edge.

  It was as if it hadn’t happened at all.

  “Jeez, that is so creepy,” Tad said. “He was just here.”

  Kevin slung an arm around his son’s shoulders as they both stared out over the silent, empty expanse of water. “Well, if there was anything there at all, it’s gone now,” he said. “Come on, let’s get back to the house.”

  As his father went back to the baseball game, Tad closed the car windows, shut off the headlights, and locked it.

  A few minutes later, back upstairs in his room, he found himself not only shutting his bedroom door, but locking it as well, and before he went to bed, he closed and locked the window, too.

  Despite his father’s words, he was certain that not only had he seen the strange man in the boat—and the madness in his face—but that the man hadn’t gone anywhere at all.

  He was still out there somewhere, hiding, waiting, in the dark of the night.

  “RIGHT HERE,” Kent Newell said. “This is where I caught six trout in less than an hour last summer.”

  “Yeah, right,” Tad groaned. “It was three, and we were out for two hours at least.” He looked around, finally spotted the dead tree he’d been looking for, and smirked at Kent. “And it wasn’t right here, either.” He pointed east, where the sun was still rising in its morning arc. “It was over that way. The dead tree was lined up with that real tall pine at the top of the hill, remember?”

  Kent spread his hands in mock helplessness. “So sue me! This is close enough, isn’t it?”

  They’d taken the boat out nearly two hours ago, tried three other spots where Kent had insisted the fish had been biting like crazy last summer—or the summer before—and failed at every one of them. As Tad shook his head at Kent’s refusal to rise to the teasing, Eric killed the motor and let the little boat glide slowly to a stop almost precisely at the point where the dead tree on shore lined up with the tall pine at the crest of the hill that rose a few hundred yards beyond the lake’s shore.

  Kent, his line already rigged, dropped his baited hook over the side, made sure the red and white bobber was doing its job, then turned to help Tad get his line ready.

  Eric snapped a jig onto his own line, threw it over, and started moving the tip of his pole up and down in the theoretically enticing motion that Kent still insisted was the only way to lure a fish, despite the fact that so far none of them had gotten even a nibble.

  “Hey,” Tad Sparks said in a tone that caught both Eric’s and Kent’s attention. “I saw something really weird last night.” He hesitated, certain that Kent, at least, would tell him he’d only been imagining what he’d seen, but even when the sun had come up three hours ago, the strange image was still fresh in his mind. Besides, it was too late to change his mind now—both Eric and Kent were looking at him expectantly. “There was this old guy in front of our house,” he finally went on. “He was rowing a wooden boat with a huge cross on the bow. And he looked crazy.”

  “Old Man Logan,” Kent said, snapping a small spinner onto the swivel on Tad’s line, then passing the rod to Tad. “Here. Cast and retrieve.”

  “Old Man Logan?” Tad said as he took the rod. “Really? You think it was him?”

  “Who’s Old Man Logan?” Eric asked, his own rod no longer jigging as he gazed at his friends.

  “Crazy old guy who lives in the woods,” Kent said, shrugging indifferently.

  “Crazy?” Eric asked, frowning. “You mean really crazy, or just weird?”

  “Really crazy,” Kent replied. “I heard he killed a girl a long time ago.”

  Eric’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, certain that Kent was up to something. “Come on. If he did that, how come he’s not in prison?” he asked, his eyes locking onto Kent’s as if daring him to push the story any further. But it wasn’t Kent who replied.

  “Because he was crazy,” Tad said. “At least that’s what we’ve heard. He was locked up for a long time, but they finally let him out.”

  “When?” Eric demanded, certain that neither of his friends would have an answer.

  “Maybe ten years ago,” Kent replied.

  “So if they let him out, he must not be crazy anymore, right?” Eric pressed.

  Kent shrugged. “From what I’ve heard, he’s still nuts even if he’s not dangerous. I mean, who else but a crazy guy would mount a cross on the bow of his boat?”

  Eric turned to Tad. “So what was he doing at your place last night?”

  “Probably looking for someone else to kill,” Kent said before Tad had a chance to answer.

  Once again Tad pictured the wild-eyed man with the scraggly beard, and suddenly his appetite for fishing evaporated. “All I know is that I saw him last night,” he finally said. “I don’t know what he was doing, but it was really creepy. Creepy enough that I made my dad come outside, but by the time he got there, the guy was gone. I mean like he just disappeared. It was like he hadn’t been there at all, but I know he was.”

  “Jeez,” Eric whispered, scanning the lake as if in search of the apparition Tad had just described.

  Abruptly, the wind picked up, and a dark cloud covered the sun. Goose bumps rose on Eric’s arms, and then even blacker clouds were closing in. What had been a perfect morning only moments ago was quickly turning into a storm, and already whitecaps were kicking up on the choppy water.

  “Maybe we better go in,” Tad said, zipping up his windbreaker.

  Eric nodded, reeling in his jig and laying his rod on the floor of the boat, then moving back toward the outboard. The engine started on the first pull, and Eric turned the boat toward the dock in front of Pinecrest, the little skiff rolling violently as the wind hit it broadside.

  “Jeez,” Kent howled, grabbing the cleat near the bow to keep from pitching overboard. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to get us back to the dock,” Eric called a moment before a bolt of lightning ripped across the sky, followed immediately by a crash of thunder.

  The boat steadied as Eric headed it directly into the wind, and he twisted the throttle, sending the skiff’s bow steeply upward, crashing into the trough beyond the wave they’d just crested. Water cascaded over Kent, who swore loudly, and Eric throttled back, afraid of swamping the boat.

  Then, with no warning whatever, the motor died.

  Eric pulled on the rope.

  Nothing.

  Another pull.

  Still nothing, but this time he felt an ugly metal-on-metal grinding.

  The motor would not be running any time soon.

  “Get the oars,” he said.

  As Tad dropped the oars into their locks and began to pull, the first raindrops began to fall, and by the time they tied up at the Pinecrest dock nearly half an hour later, all three boys were soaked to the skin. Then, as Eric was tying the last line to the cleat on the dock, the rain stopped as abruptly as it had started, the sun came out, and raindrops sparkled everywhere.

  “So now what?”
Tad asked, stepping out of the boat and peering up at the sky.

  “Fix the motor,” Eric said. “The boat’s our only transportation, remember?”

  “Then let’s fix it,” Kent said, rubbing his left biceps, which was still sore from his fifteen minutes on the oars. “I don’t want to row all the way to town and back Friday night.”

  They crossed the lawn toward the carriage house, but stopped short at the door leading to the workshop.

  Lying on the ground and glittering in the sunlight almost as if it were begging to be seen, was the can of charcoal lighter fluid they’d used at the barbecue the night before.

  A couple of feet away from it lay the box of matches they’d used to light the fire, now sodden from the recent rain.

  “How’d these get over here?” Eric breathed. “Didn’t we leave them by the fire pit?”

  Tad shrugged, but Kent nodded. “So now we know what Old Man Logan was doing last night,” he said. “He was going to burn your house down.”

  As Tad’s eyes widened at Kent’s words, Eric again felt goose bumps surging up his arms.

  Then Kent grinned. “Kidding, guys,” he said. “Just kidding.”

  But neither Eric nor Tad made a move toward the carriage house door.

  “C’mon, you wusses,” Kent said. When neither Eric nor Tad made a move, he pushed between them, pulled the door open, and stepped through it into the gloom inside.

  Nearly half a minute passed before first Eric and then Tad reluctantly followed him.

  THE DOOR TO the workshop where the tools were kept stood open in front of them.

  A few yards farther down the passageway was the door to the storeroom they’d spent a few minutes exploring last night.

  Or had it been an hour?

  None of them, not Eric, not Tad, not even Kent, made any move to step through the open workshop door. Instead, all three of them stood perfectly still, staring down the hall at the closed door to the storeroom.

  Kent finally broke the silence. “That was weird last night.” When neither of his friends spoke, he looked first at Tad, then at Eric. “I told my dad we were just looking at old pictures, but it seems like…” His voice trailed off, then: “I don’t know. It was like I was feeling something. Or hearing something.”