Into the Dark

by Peter Abrahams

  “But—”

  “You heard me.”

  “Hey,” called Ty from his room across the hall. “Trying to get some sleep here, if that’s okay with you guys.”

  They rode in silence. Dark clouds sagged low in the sky, and something between rain and snow was falling in thick streaks. Sleet? Freezing rain? Was there a difference? Ingrid glanced at Dad, decided not to ask. He was far away. The windshield wipers went back and forth, back and forth, reminding her of this old movie she’d seen, featuring a metronome and someone locked in a closet. It got darker. All the cars had their headlights on. Staying in bed till noon sounded just about right.

  Dad pulled into Grampy’s long driveway, parked in front of the house. “Be quick,” he said.

  No smoke rose from the chimney. “What if he’s not up?” Ingrid said.

  “He’s up,” said Dad. At that moment his cell phone rang. “Hello,” he said. And then, “You’ve got the wrong number.” He clicked off.

  Ingrid got out of the car, knocked on Grampy’s door. After a moment or two it opened, and there was Grampy, dressed in canvas pants and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His feet were bare; Ingrid noticed how finely shaped they were, and how they didn’t seem old at all.

  “Hey, kid,” he said. “This is a surprise.” He looked past her, saw the car, rolled down his left sleeve, but not before Ingrid saw a Band-Aid on the inside of his elbow, partly covering a yellow bruise.

  “I forgot those minutes, Grampy,” she said.

  He looked vague. “Minutes?”

  “That you were supposed to sign.”

  “Paperwork,” Grampy said. “Had it up to here.” He went back into the house, soon returned with the envelope. Ingrid was sliding it into her pocket when she felt something else in there. What was this? Oh, yeah: Mr. Samuels’s letter.

  She handed it to Grampy. “This is from Mr. Samuels,” she said.

  Grampy gazed at it with narrowed eyes. “What does that nosey parker want?”

  “To interview you,” Ingrid said.

  “Never could mind his own business,” said Grampy.

  “But he runs a newspaper, Grampy. So isn’t it his business to—”

  “Newspaper? You call that rag a newspaper?”

  Ingrid kind of liked The Echo, strangely boring and interesting at the same time, but she didn’t argue. “I promised him that you’d at least read the letter,” she said. “He’s doing a special edition about World War Two veterans from Echo Falls. Five of you are left, and all the others said yes.”

  Grampy went still.

  “Mr. Samuels says you were a hero,” Ingrid said.

  Grampy’s gaze, very distant, slowly returned to the here and now. He looked down at her. “Isn’t this a school day?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then scat.” Grampy closed the door, taking Mr. Samuels’s letter with him.

  Ingrid went back to the TT. Dad, on his cell phone, snapped it shut as she opened the door.

  “Got ’em?” he said.

  She nodded. He started the car, and soon they were back on 392, that same streaky stuff falling from the sky, Dad driving Dad style, two fingers on the wheel and fast.

  “What did Grampy do in the war?” she said.

  “The war?” said Dad. “He doesn’t talk about it.”

  “What’s the Medal of Honor?”

  “For courage in battle,” Dad said.

  They crossed the bridge. Down below, the streaky stuff hit the water and disappeared, not even making any splashes.

  “Mr. Samuels says Grampy won it,” Ingrid said.

  “I’ve heard that too,” Dad said.

  “And?”

  Dad glanced at her. “I told you—he doesn’t talk about it.”

  Silence after that, almost all the way to Ferrand Middle. Sometimes, when Dad was annoyed or tense or maybe for other reasons Ingrid didn’t know, a lump of muscle appeared in the side of his face, right above the hinge part of the jaw. Ingrid saw it now.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah?” He slowed down behind the line of buses; one of the Dratch twins had his face pressed to the back window, his features—distorted to begin with—distorted even more.

  “I saw a nice picture of your mom at Grampy’s.”

  Dad stared straight ahead, didn’t say anything.

  “You look a bit like her.”

  Dad nodded, very slightly.

  “How old were you when she…?”

  Dad turned to her, the lump of muscle even more prominent. “You know all this, Ingrid.”

  True. There were all these facts of family history she’d grown up with, but maybe she didn’t understand their—what was the word? It came to her, a word recently heard from the lips of Mr. Porterhouse: “Boston Tea Party, significance of.” Significance, that was it. For the first time, Ingrid realized significance contained sign and understood what the word really meant.

  “Eight?” she said.

  “Six,” Dad said, his voice going high-pitched all of a sudden. They crept forward behind the buses. Dad said, “Six” again, this time in his normal voice.

  “It was cancer?” Ingrid said.

  “You know all this,” said Dad again. The line moved another foot or two. “Jump out here. I haven’t got all day.”

  Ingrid slung on her backpack and walked into the school. Someone said something to her, but she didn’t take it in: She was thinking about what it would be like for a six-year-old boy growing up alone with Grampy out on the farm. Somewhere behind her, tires squealed on icy pavement.

  “What the heck,” said Mr. Santos, straying from the script right from the top, “are we gonna do? How’re we sposta feed the kids when there’s no grub for ourselves?” He held up his hands, palms up, sustaining the gesture for what seemed to Ingrid—seated on a stool next to Brucie in the corner of the stage where Hansel and Gretel’s bed would be—a very long moment.

  “In the morning, Husband,” said Meredith O’Malley in her breathiest little whisper, “let’s take them into the woods and leave them while we go off to our work. They will not find their way home, and our problem will be solved.” She smiled a big bright smile; months of cosmetic dental work were finished at last, and her teeth were huge and sparkling.

  Jill Monteiro, watching from a plush red seat in the fifth row of the Prescott Hall theater, said, “If we could hold it right there for a sec?”

  The woodcutter’s little family gazed out at her—all except Brucie, who was peering into his shirt pocket.

  “Meredith?” said Jill.

  “I’m sorry,” said Meredith. “Was it too…too outside in?”

  “No,” said Jill. “Not that.”

  “Oh, good,” said Meredith. “I’ve been trying to work more outside in lately, without overdoing it, of course.” She paused. No one spoke. Brucie had discovered something long and sticky in his pocket, was pulling it out. “Like Sir Laurence Olivier?” Meredith said. “I read his bio.”

  “Wasn’t it great?” said Jill. “I love how much thought he put into his characters.”

  “Isss it safe?” said Brucie, shoving the sticky mass back in his pocket.

  Jill glanced at him in surprise. “And on the subject of character, Meredith, what can you tell me about the woodcutter’s wife?”

  Meredith put her index finger—the nail long and bright red—to her chin. “She’s very hungry,” she said.

  Jill clapped her hands, eyes shining. “Excellent,” she said. “You’re very hungry, all of you—keep that in mind. It’s no accident that the witch’s cottage is edible.”

  Wow, Ingrid thought. Jill was amazing. An idea hit her. “Maybe we should all lose some weight before opening night,” she said.

  “Huh?” said Mr. Santos.

  “Nice idea, Ingrid,” Jill said, “but in this case I think costume and makeup will do the trick.”

  “Whew,” said Meredith under her breath.

  Jill rose, came forward, enthusiasm radiating of
f her. “We’ve got hunger, Meredith,” she said. “What else?”

  Meredith did that index-finger-to-chin thing again, but this time it didn’t work. After a while, Ingrid said, “Is she the mother or the stepmother?”

  “Great question,” Jill said. “In early versions of the story she’s the mother. Only later did she turn into the stepmother. Any idea why?”

  “Typo?” said Brucie.

  “How was rehearsal?” Mom said.

  “Good,” said Ingrid.

  Mom drove her MPV van Mom style, hands in proper ten-minutes-to-two position, speed limit never exceeded. Only a few minutes after five, but the sky was already black, except for some purple edging in the west; Ingrid confirmed the direction on her compass ring.

  “I never liked that story,” Mom said.

  “‘Hansel and Gretel’?”

  Mom nodded. “I could never believe any parents would abandon their children like that.”

  “That came up,” Ingrid said. “Jill was trying to get Meredith to sound meaner. She said not to forget how hungry they all were.”

  “Still,” said Mom.

  They drove in silence for a few minutes, a light snow starting to fall, the flakes strangely black in the headlights. The expression on Mom’s face changed in a way Ingrid had seen before. She knew what was coming next: As a kid Mom had been great at memorizing poems, had all this poetry inside her.

  Mom spoke. She had this special poetry voice, quiet but musical, almost sounding like a different person.

  “And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s

  Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother

  Through the parables

  Of sun light

  And the legends of the green chapels….”

  The legends of the green chapels: Was that meant to be something about the woods? Ingrid didn’t think she’d ever heard anything so beautiful in her life; so different from those woods in “Hansel and Gretel.”

  “Hunger or not,” Mom said, turning in to the driveway at 99 Maple Lane, “I just don’t buy it.”

  six

  “NIGEL COULD USE a walk,” Mom said on Saturday morning.

  Ingrid, eating waffles—a brilliant invention, in her opinion, with those square depressions, kind of like rice paddies, so perfect for containing mini lakes of buttery maple syrup—glanced over at Nigel. He lay in his usual spot by the water bowl in the sunny corner of the kitchen nearest the stove, one eye fully closed, the other open maybe the tiniest crack, front paws stretched out comfortably. Was walking on his mind?

  “What about Ty?” Ingrid said.

  “He’s got Five Tools,” Mom said, stuffing real estate listing sheets into her bag. “I’m dropping him on the way to work.” Five Tools was a baseball skills class run in the winter at the rec center by Mr. Porterhouse, who was also the varsity coach at Echo Falls High. The five tools were hit, field, throw, and two others Ingrid couldn’t remember at the moment, all of which Ty, or Ty and Dad, or maybe just Dad, were determined to improve before spring tryouts.

  “He doesn’t want a walk,” Ingrid said.

  “Ingrid.” Mom glared at her; that hardly ever happened, or never. Then her eyes got liquid. “I don’t have time to argue.” She grabbed her bag and left the room. What the hell?

  “Okay, okay,” Ingrid said. “On your feet, Nigel.”

  That one eye, maybe open a crack? Now it was squeezed shut, beyond any possible doubt, closed so tight it must have hurt.

  “Where to?” said Ingrid.

  Nigel, on his leash, stood at the end of the driveway at 99 Maple Lane, damp nose in the air, one forepaw raised alertly in that misleading way he had, as though he were a pointer or some other clever dog. In fact, he came from no particular breed, in some way didn’t remind Ingrid of dogs at all, was more like Nigel Bruce, the tweedy, bumbling actor in old black-and-white movies who had played Dr. Watson to Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes; Ingrid had the complete collection. Nigel had strayed into their lives in the fall, almost immediately chewing up Mister Happy, the teddy bear Ingrid had slept with almost all her life.

  “Come on,” she said. “Which way?”

  But Nigel just stood there, frozen in position like some street performer. Left meant a long uphill walk that would take them to a park where Nigel liked to dig deep holes; right led past Mia’s house at the corner of Maple Lane and Avondale. Maybe Mia was home, could be persuaded to come along. Ingrid gave Nigel a little tug to the left. He immediately veered right. Reverse psychology: She knew Nigel.

  He ambled in his unhurried way, not bothering to sniff the air or chew snow chips or do any other doggy things. Oops—not so fast. Outside 113 he suddenly lifted his leg, like it had been jerked up by a puppeteer, and peed on the FOR SALE sign—RIVERBEND PROPERTIES, CALL CAROL LEVIN-HILL. Mom hadn’t shown 113 in weeks despite two price cuts, and Ingrid had overheard her telling Dad she was worried about losing the listing. “Not here,” Ingrid said, dragging Nigel away. He left a spotted yellow trail in the snow.

  They came to Mia’s. It was a nice house, a lot like Ingrid’s—same builder, Mom said—but smaller and darker, under some overhanging trees. A big black car stood out front. Like Sherlock Holmes—if there’d been cars in his day, which she was pretty sure there weren’t, since everyone was always coming and going in hansom cabs or dogcarts—Ingrid noticed the license plate: New York. A man sat behind the wheel staring straight ahead. At that moment Nigel suddenly picked up speed, almost reaching his top gear, a kind of waddling sprint, and turned up the path to Mia’s front door, pulling Ingrid along. She remembered he’d been here a few weeks ago. Had Mia given him a treat? Oh, yeah, half a hot dog—Hebrew National, his favorite brand. So who was doing the reverse psychology?

  Nigel started up the front steps, wheezing with excitement. The door opened, and Ingrid heard Mrs. McGreevy, very loud: “…and not one minute later.”

  Mia came out; in the background stood Mrs. McGreevy, arms folded across her chest. They both looked startled to see Ingrid; both went pale at the same time.

  “Hi,” said Ingrid. What was going on? No clue. She plowed on. “Want to come for a walk with Nigel?”

  “I, uh,” said Mia. She pointed with her chin at the black car. “My dad’s taking me to lunch.”

  Ingrid turned. “That’s your dad?” He was still staring straight ahead. Mrs. McGreevy was in the doorway now, an angry blush rising up her neck.

  “Yeah,” Mia said. “He’s got a meeting in Hartford.”

  “Um,” said Ingrid. A few moments passed, all awkward. “Call me later.”

  “Yeah,” said Mia. She got in the front seat of the car. It drove away. Mia looked very small.

  Ingrid felt a tug on the leash: Nigel, still in search of that Hebrew National. Ingrid tugged back. “C’mon, boy.” The door closed in his face, very close to a slam.

  “Divorce,” Ingrid explained to Nigel, halfway through a very long walk, easily their longest ever, a walk that took them out of Riverbend, onto Main Street, and all the way to the village green. But divorce meant nothing to Nigel, or to any other dog, even the smartest that ever lived. Did it have meaning for any animals at all? Ingrid scrolled through a few in her mind—bears, deer, crocodiles, geese. She just didn’t know enough about their habits to know. And even with those creatures that mated for life, none of which came to mind at the moment, did the offspring bother to stick around for more than a few weeks or months? Life was pretty short for most animals; on the other hand, they had no inkling. Only human beings had inklings about the end part. What was that quote? Ingrid remembered Mom saying it, one day when she’d dragged the whole family to some strange art thing at the Wadsworth Museum in Hartford: Death casts a shadow backward. Oh, boy. “Death casts a shadow backward,” she said to Nigel. His stubby tail drooped, but that might have been because he was getting tired. Ingrid was feeling a little droopy herself. She started to wheel Nigel around and head for home, and then noticed two men standing in front of
the Civil War monument on the green.

  Two old men. One she recognized: Mr. Samuels. He had a camera in his hand and was motioning for the other man to move closer to the monument, a column with names carved into the stone and a bronze soldier above—turned green by time—his cap and shoulders topped with snow. The other old man, also completely bald but otherwise nothing like Mr. Samuels—much taller and wearing a black patch over one eye—backed up a step and said something in an annoyed way. Ingrid caught the words, “…got all day.”

  Something about the scene grabbed Nigel’s interest. His tail rose back to full height (not very high) and started wagging a bit. He tugged Ingrid toward the monument.

  “Nigel!” she said, in a loud whisper meant only for his floppy ears. But both men heard and turned to her.

  “Why, Ingrid,” said Mr. Samuels, lowering the camera. “Is that you?”

  “Hi, Mr. Samuels.”

  “What luck,” he said. “Here’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  Ingrid went over, Nigel trotting along, all at once obedient, even eager to please. For a moment it looked like he was about to greet Mr. Samuels or the other man, but instead Nigel went right by them and lifted his leg at the base of the monument.

  “Ingrid,” said Mr. Samuels, “this is Mr. Cyrus Ferrand.”

  Ferrand? The Ferrands were the richest family in town. Ingrid had been friends with Chloe Ferrand when they were little, and Dad worked for her father at the Ferrand Group, but Ingrid had never heard of Cyrus Ferrand. He glanced down at her for the briefest moment, glanced with that one eye, dark at the center, with lots of red veins crisscrossing the white part.

  “Major,” he said.

  “Yes, of course,” said Mr. Samuels. “Major Ferrand. That’s the whole point of the exercise.”

  Exercise? Ingrid wasn’t following.

  “In fact, what an opportunity,” said Mr. Samuels, putting a hand on Ingrid’s shoulder and gently nudging her closer to Major Ferrand. “A picture of the two of you together might be just the ticket.”

  “Ticket to what?” said Major Ferrand, edging away.