Into the Dark

by Peter Abrahams

  I would have minded my own damn business. But Ingrid kept that answer to herself. “Nothing,” she said.

  “You would have done nothing?” he said. “When your job is to protect the people of the town?”

  “You told my par—my mom.”

  “Should have,” said the chief. “But I didn’t. You—There’s enough trouble right now.”

  Whose fault was that? Ingrid found herself glaring at the chief. His eyes shifted away. Hard to explain, but at that moment she was pretty sure that Dad had used his alibi, or enough of it that the chief had guessed the rest.

  “What I did do,” he said, “was ask the station clerk where you went.”

  “And he told you?”

  “Grand Central Terminal, return ticket.”

  Anger came boiling up out of her. She’d never felt like this. “I’ll sue him.”

  The chief’s head turned toward her. Then he laughed. Had she ever heard him laugh before? A low, musical kind of laugh. It made her even madder.

  “Sorry, Ingrid. I’m not laughing at you.”

  “No?”

  “No. There’s just something about how you—” He stopped himself. “Sure you don’t want one of those candy canes?”

  “I already told you.”

  Any amusement drained from his voice, fast. “Bet you can guess my next question.”

  Ingrid knew the next question, all right, but she said, “I have no idea.” That sounded a lot like Chloe Ferrand, her friend-slash-enemy, Echo Falls rich girl; some of that anger got diverted toward herself.

  “The next question,” said the chief. “What were you doing in New York?”

  That was the question she couldn’t answer, not without betraying Grampy. But at that moment Ingrid found herself in the grip of a powerful desire to tell Chief Strade everything: New York City Mercy Hospital, Grampy’s cancer, Libby, and yes, Dad and Mrs. McGreevy too. Maybe even Dad and Mrs. McGreevy first, and how selfish did that make her? Ingrid bit the inside of her cheeks—so hard she tasted blood—and remained silent.

  “I could look into it, you know,” the chief said.

  Ingrid nodded. Good luck to him: The tracks were doubly covered, hers and Grampy’s.

  “The way you nod like that,” said the chief, “kind of tells me I wouldn’t have a prayer.”

  Ingrid didn’t answer.

  They turned off High Street, into Riverbend. “Hope you know what you’re doing, Ingrid,” the chief said.

  He didn’t speak the rest of the way. Or almost. On the way down Avondale, where the town woods first came into view, all dark now under a clear evening sky, they passed a car parked by an empty lot. The chief slowed down. Ingrid saw that the parked car had a mudded-out plate.

  “What the hell?” said the chief. He pulled over beside the parked car, shone his flashlight inside, then drove on. “One thing I don’t like seeing around here,” he said. “Private operators.”

  “What’s that?” said Ingrid.

  “Private detectives,” the chief said. “Private eyes. They muddy everything up.”

  “Just like the license plate.”

  “Exactly,” he said. He gave her a long look. “Exactly. I know this car—belongs to a dirt-ball PI from Bridgeport, name of Meinh of. Dieter Meinhof.”

  Dieter Meinhof. Dirt-ball PI from Bridgeport who’d snapped her picture, and also the anonymous tipster: any reason not to tell the chief about that? Ingrid hadn’t made up her mind when he turned onto Maple Lane, stopped in front of 99: lights on in the house, no cars in the driveway. The chief checked his rearview mirror. He wanted to get going—she could feel it.

  “Take care of yourself,” the chief said.

  “Thanks for the ride,” said Ingrid.

  She went in through the garage; no car there either. And no one in the kitchen. “Hey! Anyone home?”

  No response.

  She opened the door to the basement, didn’t hear the TV or any weights clanking around, called out anyway: “Ty?”

  No response.

  Ingrid checked the hall, dining room, went into the living room. A fire burned low in the fireplace. Fresh logs filled the wood box. And Grampy lay sleeping on the couch, still wearing his boots and the red-and-black-checked lumber jacket. She watched him, his chest rising and falling, slow and regular. Did he look sick? Not to her. Just tired, maybe. Her mind flashed a picture of Mr. Thatcher lying in the snow, also wearing a red-and-black-checked lumber jacket, but chest still and skin blue. Grampy was a long way from that. His chest went up and down, up and down. Was there any law against hope?

  She heard the side door open, went into the kitchen. Ty was taking off his jacket, his varsity football jacket with Red Raiders on the back, his number 19 on one sleeve and Ty on the other.

  “Where’ve you been?” he said. “Mom’s pissed.”

  “Oh, God—is she out looking for me?”

  “Had to go in to the office,” Ty said. “I told her you were at the Rubinos’.”

  “Thanks. Did she say anything about Dad?”

  Ty opened the fridge, drank OJ from the carton, put it back without replacing the cap. Chaos was on the way.

  “She’s going to talk to us tomorrow after school,” he said. “They both are.”

  “Dad and her together?”

  “Guess so.”

  “That means they must have been talking.”

  “Guess so,” said Ty again.

  “What are they going to say?”

  “That everything’s back to normal.”

  “You think so?”

  “Get real,” Ty said. He picked his backpack off the butcher block, started toward the door.

  Ingrid glanced over at the water bowl. “Where’s Nigel?”

  “Stupid dog,” said Ty, waving his hand in the direction of the woods.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I took him for a walk to the tree house and he ran away,” Ty said.

  “Ran away? We’ve got to find him.”

  “Where do you think I’ve been for the last half hour?”

  “You just gave up?”

  “He’ll come back as soon as he realizes there’s no food out there.” Ty left the room, clomped upstairs.

  “But he’s never run away before,” Ingrid said to nobody. She ran down to the basement, threw open one of the sliding doors. “Nigel!” she called at the top of her lungs. “Nigel!”

  She listened.

  No response.

  Chaos, closing in fast. Ingrid hunted around for a flashlight, her movements jerky, panic awakening inside.

  eighteen

  INGRID STEPPED INTO the night, closing the slider and switching on a flashlight, the long rubberized one from the furnace room. She shone the light around the backyard, saw a whole muddle of footprints.

  Overhead the sky was clear and full of stars. An odd thought hit her at that moment, maybe an obvious one: The stars were up there in the daytime too; it was just that you could only see them at night. She felt a funny pressure in her head, a feeling she’d had before, always followed by a little spark of inspiration going off. Bzzz. But no bzzz this time: The feeling just faded away, leaving that promising thought—stars in the daytime—just hanging there.

  Ingrid crossed the yard, started up the path through the woods. She angled the beam downward: Now there were only three sets of tracks, two outgoing, one incoming. One set of outgoing prints matched the incoming—flat prints with horizontal grooves at the front and back. Those would be Ty’s sneakers; like all Echo Falls boys, he didn’t bother with boots in the winter. Like all Echo Falls boys except Joey, she realized. She could picture Joey’s boots, all scuffed up, strapped into his snowshoes when they’d walked the old Indian trail. Indian trail—the name made a connection in her mind with that stubborn cowlick of his, the blunt Indian feather thing. There was something different about Joey. She missed him.

  The other set of prints, of course, was Nigel’s. At first he’d kept to the straight and narrow, hi
s paws—the front left one bigger than the other three for some reason—running parallel to the sneaker tracks, meaning he’d been on the leash. Not long after the turnoff to the huge oak with the double trunk—Ingrid could see it, a thick shadow between thinner ones—where Dad had built the tree house years before, Nigel’s prints veered suddenly toward the right. Off the leash. But Ty’s kept going straight ahead, spaced the same, meaning he wasn’t running, didn’t feel he’d lost control of Nigel. Sure enough, ten or twenty feet farther on, Nigel’s prints came angling out of the woods, back beside Ty’s.

  A little way beyond that, Nigel veered off again. Ty’s tracks continued normally for ten or twelve steps, then began to lengthen, meaning he’d walked faster or even run. After a while these faster tracks came to an end, doubled back, went forward, doubled back again. Ingrid could picture Ty pacing back and forth, yelling, “Nigel! Nigel!”

  She tried it too, cupping her hands to her mouth. “Nigel! Nigel!”

  No response. The woods were silent. Ingrid looked up through the bare branches: all those stars. The universe was infinite, meaning it went on forever, Dad said. Therefore we were tinier than tiny, just about not there at all. In Casablanca—the reason Ingrid was Ingrid—the café owner, Humphrey Bogart, says something about the problems of a few little people not amounting to a hill of beans in this world. Maybe not; but then what was the point of the movie? Ingrid turned back, shining the light with care, and picked up Nigel’s tracks where he’d left the path.

  Off the path lay unpacked snow, harder going, but Nigel’s tracks were very clear. He’d cut between two big trees, then circled a prickly bush, its branches sagging with snow, the distance between his paw prints short and unvarying, in no particular hurry. Up a long, gradual rise, the trees growing thicker, Nigel kept to that deliberate pace, straight ahead, like he had a plan, was actually going somewhere.

  “Nigel! Nigel!”

  Silence.

  Just past a fallen tree—a fallen tree that Nigel had walked around but that Ingrid stepped over—she came to a small clearing. She swept the beam ahead, following Nigel’s tracks. They led to the middle of the clearing, spreading out, like he had started running, and then—what was this? They seemed to vanish, as though Nigel had suddenly taken flight. Ingrid went closer, saw that where Nigel’s prints ended, the snow was all messed up, full of holes and ridges, as though there’d been lots of activity. No way that he’d simply vanished; therefore maybe his prints continued beyond the messed-up patch, on the other side. Ingrid raised the light, but at that moment it flickered twice and went out.

  Night closed in right away. Ingrid couldn’t see a thing. She tapped at the lens, turned the switch off and on, shook the flashlight, thumped it against her leg. Nothing.

  Her eyes began to adjust to the darkness, but only to a point. The whiteness of the snow in the clearing was now a faint glow; Nigel’s footprints and the messed-up patch remained invisible. All around rose the trees, their tops dark and spiky against the starry sky. She banged the flashlight against her leg again, harder this time. The top fell off with a spronging sound and the batteries shot out, landing with soft thuds. Ingrid got on her knees, felt with her mittened hands in the snow. She was still doing that, without success, when a dog barked, far far away, almost inaudible.

  “Nigel? Nigel?”

  She listened.

  “Nigel? Nigel?”

  The dog did not bark again.

  Ingrid rose. No light. What else could she do but go home? She went back across the clearing, left its dull glow for the complete darkness of the woods. Or almost complete darkness: There were still those stars above. Sailors long ago, like Columbus and Magellan, knew how to read them, could navigate by the stars. Ingrid didn’t know how to read the stars, but she was close to home, so—no problem. All she had to do was follow the slope downhill until she reached the path, very simple navigation. Even if she couldn’t see the path, she’d feel the space around her opening up, and then all she’d have to do was turn left and soon her own backyard would—

  Ow. Ingrid bumped into something hard, right across her shins. The fallen tree? She reached down, felt tough bark, all nubbly. Yes, the fallen tree—meaning her sense of direction wasn’t letting her down. Columbus, Magellan, and Griddie: Three Navigatin’ Dudes, as Brucie would probably say. Oh, God: Was Brucie starting to rub off on her? Ingrid climbed over the fallen tree and kept going.

  Thinking of Brucie reminded her of the play. Like Gretel, she was now in the dark forest. Unlike Gretel—hey, Gretel, not so different from Griddie—she wasn’t afraid; she’d played in these woods for years. And very soon she did feel space opening up around her, saw the faint glow of the path. Left turn. Ninety-nine Maple Lane was seven or eight minutes away, tops. Might help to know exactly how long the walk took. Data, right? Ingrid checked her red Rollexx, pressing the light button. Seven fifty-two. Should be home by eight.

  She walked on, sensed the turnoff to the tree house on her right. Twinkling lights from 99 Maple Lane and maybe some of the neighboring houses would be coming into view any second. But they didn’t; probably blocked by the trees. Ingrid picked up the pace, not so easy, the snow on the path somehow less packed down than before. She was sinking to her ankles with practically every step, also huffing and puffing a little. She checked the time again: 8:09? That didn’t seem right.

  Ingrid paused, glanced around, saw nothing but dark shapes. Was this going to end in embarrassment, with her screaming “Help! Help!” in the night? In her haste she’d forgotten her hat and mittens; now she felt how cold it was. Embarrassment or worse. Fear awoke inside her. The first thing it did was try to make her breathless.

  “Get a grip,” she said aloud, and then remembered that time in the kitchen with Mom, trying to find the right voice for Gretel, and the question that had risen in her mind: Did real bravery start like that, just making a bit of an effort to control fear? Ingrid kept going, making a bit of an effort to control fear. And not long after—at 8:16, to be exact—twinkling lights appeared between the trees. Strange how her estimates had been so far off. She’d walked this path so often, at least the first part from the backyard to the Punch Bowl, that you’d think by now she’d—

  Streetlights appeared, but not the streetlights of Maple Lane. Ingrid walked out of the woods and into a vacant lot. Vacant lot? Was this Avondale? Yes. Ingrid glanced back, saw she’d followed some completely different path. No problem in the end: Home was right around the corner. She crossed the vacant lot, stepped onto the street—at the same spot, it suddenly occurred to her, where Chief Strade had pulled over to examine the car with the mudded-out plates. The car with the mudded-out plates was no longer around.

  Ingrid walked toward the corner. She heard someone driving up behind her. No sidewalks in Riverbend: She moved to the edge of the road. Headlights shone on her; Ingrid’s shadow grew long. Then the car slowed down. Ingrid turned: not a sedan with mudded-out plates, but the MPV.

  It stopped beside her. Mom leaned across the front seat, called through the open passenger window, “Ingrid? What are you doing out at this hour?”

  “Nigel ran away.”

  “For God’s sake. How can you be so careless? Get in.”

  Ingrid got in.

  “Don’t sit on the listing sheets.”

  “Sorry.” Ingrid moved the listing sheets aside. Mom drove home. As they turned into the driveway—no sign of Nigel waiting on the front lawn—Ingrid said, “Do you think he’ll come back, Mom?”

  “I wouldn’t let him,” Mom said. Her voice broke and then she was sobbing.

  “Mom! Don’t cry. I meant Nigel.”

  Mom didn’t seem to hear. She slumped forward on the steering wheel, crying and crying. “Don’t be a fool like me, Ingrid,” she said. “Whatever you do.”

  “You’re not a fool, Mom.” Ingrid patted Mom’s back. It felt bony, even under her coat.

  Mom pulled herself together, got a tissue from her purse, dabbed at her face. “Sorr
y, Ingrid. That won’t happen again.” She smiled a little smile, not real, but at least her face took the shape of a smile, if only for a moment. Just making a bit of an effort to control fear. Mom was brave, no question. “I’m sure Nigel will be back soon,” she said. “He probably followed some scent.” After a pause, Mom added, “He’ll get tired of that soon enough.”

  “Yeah,” said Ingrid, crossing her fingers.

  nineteen

  INGRID AWOKE JUST before dawn, a milky half-light faint in the space between her curtains. She felt tired, as though she’d been up all night, although Ingrid actually didn’t know that feeling—she and Stacy had tried twice to stay up all night, both efforts ending in zonked-out failure somewhere between four and five A.M. But her first thought was: Nigel. She got right up—the floor so cold under her bare feet—threw on clothes, went downstairs. Had Nigel come home in the night, scratched at the door or barked, and been let in by Mom?

  No Nigel: not lying by the water bowl, the front door, on the old corduroy couch in the TV room—not in any of his usual places. She turned from the couch, looked out the sliders, where Nigel liked to appear when he knew TV watching was going on without him; he was partial to the cooking shows. No Nigel: but what was this? Snow. Snow and lots of it, falling fast, the flakes big and dense. Oh, no.

  Ingrid put on jacket, mittens, hat, strapped on her snowshoes, went outside. A snowflake landed on her eyelash, so fat and heavy she actually felt its weight. Not a print to be seen: the snow lay smooth and unmarked, across the backyard and onto the trail. All the tracks, all the evidence from the night before, Nigel’s, Ty’s, and her own—wiped out. She hurried down the trail, past the turnoff to the tree house, searching for the spot where Nigel had veered off the trail for good. If only she hadn’t got lost on the way back last night—that idea, timing the walk, would have worked.

  Ingrid kept going. The snow wasn’t coming down so hard in the woods; it was more like being inside a snow globe after someone has given it a good shake. How much farther? She remembered that right after Nigel had left the path, he’d gone between two trees and then around a spiky bush. She looked for a triangle like that and saw hundreds, every sharp detail and hard edge blurred by snowflakes and milky light.