Into the Dark

by Peter Abrahams

  Thump. Snow fell from a branch high above and landed a few feet away. Ingrid took that as a sign and left the path.

  She went between two trees, two more, then past a bush, not very spiky, and a rock, not as big as the one near the Punch Bowl with RED RAIDERS RULE spray-painted on the side, but pretty big. Could she have missed a rock like that in the night? Ingrid didn’t know. She glanced around, saw nothing that might help her.

  “Nigel! Nigel!”

  No response. But her voice hardly carried, muffled by the snow. She tried again, louder. Nothing.

  Ingrid moved on. The ground began sloping up. For some reason her legs didn’t have their normal strength. She leaned forward and pushed, head down. She almost missed the fallen tree, about twenty feet to her right, now half buried in snow. A minute or two later she stepped into the clearing.

  Those clues from last night—Nigel’s tracks and the messed-up patch where it looked like some commotion had happened: all gone, the surface smooth and unfeatured. Ingrid walked to the middle of the clearing, trying to picture what had happened. Nigel had left the path and set off through the woods on a straight line to this place, picking up speed. Then his tracks ended in the messed-up patch. And therefore? No idea. She paced around, tired and frustrated. The metal-toothed piece under her right snowshoe—crampon?—suddenly dug into something hard; maybe not hard, but denser than the snow.

  Ingrid crouched down, swept snow aside and uncovered…a steak? Yes, a T-bone steak, a cooked one with grill marks and spices sprinkled on top; and one ragged bite taken out of the side, not the polite kind of bite cut with knife and fork. Ingrid picked up the T-bone steak, sniffed at it, and then noticed something strange: a tangled thread—no, not a thread, more like fishing line, one end knotted around the joining part of that T in the T-bone. She untangled it: surprisingly long, ten or twelve feet.

  And the meaning? A picture began taking shape in her mind. She turned in the direction Nigel had come from, in that beeline, and as she did, the frame of her left snowshoe clinked on something metallic. Ingrid looked down, saw a disk. She picked it up: one of those tags from the vet that attaches to a dog collar, proving the dog has had its shots. Riverbend Veterinary Medicine, she read. Then came the vet’s phone number, and at the bottom the name of the dog: Nigel.

  She pocketed Nigel’s tag. Then she laid the T-bone in the snow, moved across the clearing with the end of the line in her hand till it was straight. She tugged on the line. The steak slid across the snow.

  The picture grew sharper in her mind, a picture with two characters. One was a T-bone–loving dog with a great sense of smell. The other character was a creepy-looking fat-faced guy with a T-bone steak on a fishing line…and what else? A cage? Maybe. This second character lured the T-bone lover into the clearing, the T-bone lover probably out of control by now, with the proof that his sense of smell was world-class practically in his grasp. All character two had to do was drag that steak right up to the open cage door. But the next step, the actual capture, hadn’t gone smoothly. The messed-up patch and the tag coming loose off the collar proved that. There’d been a struggle, a struggle that Nigel had lost. Otherwise his prints would have continued somewhere beyond the patch, and last night she’d seen none.

  And then? The creepy guy had carried the cage out of the woods, taking the path that Ingrid had found by accident—the path that ended at Avondale Road. He had a car parked there, a car with mudded-out plates—Dieter Meinhof, dirt-ball PI from Bridgeport. Ingrid knew what had happened, knew who had done it, when, and how. But why? Was there some connection between Nigel and Bridgeport? Nigel and the anonymous caller? She had no clue.

  Snow fell harder and the wind rose, driving the flakes, smaller and icier now, across the clearing, but Ingrid was barely aware. PI meant private investigator. There were public investigators too—Chief Strade for example, maybe a good one in general but he’d botched the Thatcher case, arresting an innocent man. But that wasn’t the point, not right now. The point was that Chief Strade worked for the public, meaning the people of Echo Falls. And a private eye? He worked for somebody private, a client. And now it came, one of those buzzes of inspiration. Bzzz. Dieter Meinhof didn’t kidnap Nigel for himself but for a client, someone who paid him to do it. Someone had also paid him to make the anonymous call. Could it have been the same person?

  And if so, who?

  “Nigel!” she called. “Nigel?” But there was no way she could outshout this storm, and Ingrid didn’t really try.

  Back home, Ingrid went upstairs. Mom was talking on the phone behind her closed bedroom door. Ingrid raised her hand to knock, all set to tell Mom about Nigel. Then she heard Mom say, “Let’s just get it over with.” Ingrid could tell Mom was trying not to cry. She backed away, went into her own room, got ready for school.

  Mom was in the kitchen when Ingrid came down, just staring out the window, a cup of coffee in her hand.

  “Ingrid?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What are you doing up? It’s a snow day. That’s why I didn’t wake you.”

  “Oh,” said Ingrid; first snow day in her life when she hadn’t jumped up and down at the news.

  “You can go back to bed if you want,” Mom said. “But when the snow stops, we’re going out to the farm.”

  “What for?”

  “We have to talk, all of us.”

  “Dad too?”

  “Yes,” Mom said. “Him too. You and Ty have to understand that your lives will still be”—Mom searched for a word—“stable.”

  “I do,” Ingrid said, although she felt far from stable.

  “You have to hear it from both of us,” Mom said.

  Ingrid went over, gave Mom a hug. No tears this time, just a quiet hug, snow coming down like crazy outside. Ingrid had a momentary feeling of being all grown up. It vanished the moment she let go.

  “Hi,” Dad said, opening the door to the farmhouse.

  They went in, Ingrid, Mom, Ty, all of them keeping their distance from Dad. He wore a leather jacket Ingrid had never seen before, looked good except for a shaving cut under his lower lip.

  “Fresh coffee,” he said. “And there’s hot chocolate for the kids.” They sat at the kitchen table and Dad set mugs in front of everyone. Hot chocolate just the way Ingrid liked it, with a marshmallow floating at the top: a bit surprising that Dad knew that. She didn’t even touch the mug. Mom sat back, arms folded. Ty’s eyes were on Dad, the lids partly closed in a way that reminded Ingrid of those shooting slits in the wall of a fort.

  “Ty,” Dad said. “Ingrid. I know you’re angry at me. You have every right. There are just two things I want you to know. The first is your lives are going to change as little as possible. You’ll still be living in the same house with Mom, going to the same schools, doing everything the same.”

  “We get it,” Ty said. “The same.”

  Dad flinched slightly, as though dodging a blow.

  “Ty,” said Mom.

  “And what’s the second thing?” said Ingrid.

  Dad looked right at her. “The second thing is I love you both very much.”

  “You got them in the wrong order,” Ty said.

  The very best thing Ty had said in his whole life. Ingrid felt herself flushing, filled with pride, as though for some great champion knight of the Middle Ages.

  Dad went pale. That lump of muscle in his jaw bulged. “Come on, Ty,” he said. “We—”

  “We?” said Ty. He rose and walked to the door without another word. Mom sat with her arms folded. Dad’s mouth opened but no words came out. Ingrid rose too, without a thought, and followed Ty outside.

  The wind lifted his unzipped jacket, like wings. Ty looked so big. At first he didn’t notice her.

  “Hey,” Ingrid said.

  He turned to her. Big, maybe, but his face was miserable. “Hey,” he said, very quiet.

  “You da man,” said Ingrid.

  A pause. Then Ty laughed, and didn’t look so miserable any
more.

  “Let’s go see the pig,” Ingrid said.

  They went into the barn. Piggy was in his pen, as expected. The surprise was the man standing beside it, stripping the wrapper off a Slim Jim. The man heard them coming in and turned.

  “Mr. Sidney?”

  “Hi, petunia,” Mr. Sidney said, and to Ty, “Hi, kid.” He wore his Battle of the Coral Sea cap, also had a cigar in his mouth. Mr. Sidney smoked? Ingrid realized she’d never seen him except on the school bus.

  “What are you—” she began, and then it hit her. “You’re the one taking care of the pig for Grampy?”

  “Course,” said Mr. Sidney.

  Piggy, tiny eyes on that Slim Jim, made a strange sound between grunt and squeal, an impatient sound.

  “You and Grampy are friends?” Ingrid said.

  “Wouldn’t go that far,” said Mr. Sidney. “Not so easy being friends with Aylmer Hill, no offense. But there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him.”

  “Huh?” said Ty.

  “Wasn’t for your grandfather, there’d be no Myron Emmitt Sidney standing before your eyes this very moment,” said Mr. Sidney. “Would’ve been long gone, dead and buried in a far-off grave, ancient history.”

  He let go of the Slim Jim. Piggy scarfed it down in midair.

  “Are you talking about the war, Mr. Sidney?” Ingrid said.

  Mr. Sidney tipped his cap.

  twenty

  “KNOW MUCH ABOUT the war in the Pacific?” said Mr. Sidney. They sat by the pigpen on rickety old stools left over from back when Grampy had kept some cows. “World War Two, I’m talking about.”

  “Pearl Harbor,” Ty said.

  “Yup,” said Mr. Sidney. He puffed on his cigar. The mouth end was all raggedy and the smoke smelled horrible. “Anything else?”

  “You and Grampy fought on Corregidor,” Ingrid said. “And Major Ferrand.”

  “Yup,” said Mr. Sidney. “They teach you where Corregidor is?”

  “Who?” said Ingrid.

  “Your teachers. Who else?”

  “An island?” Ingrid said.

  “An island in Manila Bay, south of the Bataan Peninsula,” Mr. Sidney said. “Philippines, I’m talking about.” He licked his finger—knuckles swollen and deformed—leaned down, and drew a map in the dust on the worn wide-plank floor. “Corregidor,” he said. “Manila. Bataan. Got it so far?”

  Ingrid and Ty nodded.

  “Don’t need to tell you where the Philippines are, do I?” said Mr. Sidney.

  Ingrid and Ty shook their heads.

  Maybe not convincingly, because Mr. Sidney added, “Western Pacific—leave it at that.” He tapped a big white ash off his cigar, ground it under his heel. “Thing to remember is”—he took another puff—“we got cut off.”

  “Cut off?” said Ty.

  “On account of it being an island chain, the Philippines, and their fleet still ruling the waves, the whole point of Pearl Harbor. Midway came later.”

  They looked at him blankly.

  “Midway being the beginning of our comeback, fleet-wise,” said Mr. Sidney. “But forget all that. Just remember…” His voice trailed off and his eyes went a little vague.

  “That we got cut off?” Ingrid said.

  “Right,” said Mr. Sidney. “April, nineteen hundred and forty-two.”

  “That’s when Corregidor fell?” said Ingrid.

  “Nope—that’s when Bataan fell. Fall of Corregidor wasn’t till May. Lot of people don’t realize that, but it makes a big difference.”

  “Why?” said Ty.

  “Because the boys caught up in Bataan went on the march, and the boys down in Corregidor did not,” Mr. Sidney said.

  “The Death March?” said Ingrid.

  “The Death March,” said Mr. Sidney.

  “So you and Grampy and Major Ferrand weren’t on the Death March?” Ingrid said, trying to remember the details of the Echo article, at the same time beginning to suspect that Mr. Samuels hadn’t got all of them right.

  “Didn’t say that, now did I?” said Mr. Sidney. Piggy came to the side of the pen, his twisted little tail vibrating. “Wanna fetch one of those Slim Jims, kid?”

  Ty went to the shelf by the big doors, brought back a Slim Jim.

  “Just toss it in,” Mr. Sidney said. “Don’t need to take off the wrapper—he’s not fussy.”

  “Really?” said Ty, eyes lighting up.

  “I’ll take if off,” Ingrid said. “It’s no prob—”

  Ty tossed in the Slim Jim. It disappeared in Piggy’s mouth, wrapper and all.

  “Hey,” said Ty.

  Mr. Sidney watched Piggy eat, his eyes growing vague again. “Would have killed for a Slim Jim,” he said softly. After a silence he gave himself a little shake. “Where were we?”

  “The Death March,” Ingrid said.

  Mr. Sidney nodded. “Death March,” he said, and went silent again.

  “Were the three of you on it, after all?” Ingrid said.

  “Didn’t say that, neither,” Mr. Sidney said, coming to life. “We were on Corregidor, all right, but our unit got transferred to Bataan first day of April, reinforcing the line west of Limay.” He licked his finger again, drew a line across the peninsula. “Next week, night of April six, that’s when the enemy came through.” His voice got quieter. “We couldn’t stop ’em. Long time ago. Suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”

  Did Grampy look at it that way? Ingrid didn’t think so: He wouldn’t even get in Mom’s MPV, a Japanese car.

  As though his mind had been running along the same lines, Mr. Sidney said, “Not the way your grandfather sees it, of course. Can’t say as I blame him, after everything that happened.”

  “What happened?” Ty said.

  Mr. Sidney gazed down at the rough map he’d drawn on the floor. “Hit us with these howitzers on Bataan—two-forties. Never want to hear them again. Plus they had planes and we didn’t. No excuses. Buddies burned to a crisp in their foxholes—I saw that. The forest was on fire. Our company got trapped on a ridge, enemy on all sides. Surrounded is what I’m saying. We had a lot of Connecticut boys in the company, not sure why. Cyrus Ferrand—captain at the time—was in command. I was sergeant with the second platoon. Your grandfather was a corporal with the third. Best shot in the company, but that’s not how he won his medal.”

  “How did he win his medal?” Ty said.

  “Coming to that,” said Mr. Sidney. “Don’t rush me, kid. Should never have been on that ridge in the first place—Lieutenant Porterhouse of the first platoon told Ferrand we could never defend that damn ridge.” Mr. Sidney shook his head.

  “Not Mr. Porterhouse the gym teacher?” said Ingrid.

  “His dad,” said Mr. Sidney. “Died that night, up on the ridge. Whole lot more would have, hadn’t been for Aylmer.”

  “What did he do?” said Ty.

  “Coming to that,” said Mr. Sidney. “But first: There was only one way off that ridge, this trail down the south side—the high side. The enemy got a heavy machine gun going up there, firing down from above. We were doing all right, considering, dug in pretty good, but it didn’t take much smarts to know that when the sun came up and they could see what they were doing, we’d be goners. We all knew it. Strangest feeling—waiting to die. That’s when Aylmer took things into his own hands.”

  “How?” said Ty.

  Mr. Sidney gave him a look. “I left out the noise,” he said. “They were calling in the aircraft—didn’t risk bombing us because of the chance of killing their own, so they strafed. Real noisy on the receiving end. Aylmer was right beside me, crouched down behind this tree trunk. He shouted something to me—didn’t hear a word—and the next thing I knew, he took off.”

  “Took off?” said Ty.

  This time Mr. Sidney didn’t give him a look; in fact there was a new glow in his eyes. “Did he ever. Aylmer always could run, of course—high school state champ in the hundred-yard dash.”

  “He was?” said Ingrid.<
br />
  Mr. Sidney nodded. “But he never ran faster than he did that night on the ridge. Ran right up to the machine-gun nest—all this in the dark, but a flare went off and I saw him like in a photograph, arm raised up, throwing a grenade. Boom. And then someone yelled, ‘Go!’ and we were all running, what was left of us, through that wiped-out machine-gun nest and down off the ridge, back behind our own lines. Point being, your grandfather saved a lot of lives that night.”

  “And that’s why you’d do anything for him?” Ingrid said.

  “Nope,” said Mr. Sidney, spitting out a stray bit of cigar leaf. “Reason for that came later. But not much later. Would you believe it? Three days after that battle, we got orders to surrender.”

  “Who?” said Ty.

  “All of us—all our fighting forces in Bataan, except for the ones on Corregidor. They held out a little longer. But the important thing is we didn’t surrender. We were ordered to surrender.” His eyes narrowed. “See the difference?”

  Ingrid wasn’t sure she did. Had they surrendered or not? But this felt like a good moment for keeping her mouth shut. And Mr. Sidney’s next words cleared everything up.

  “Very next morning they had us on the road to the prison camp. Not going to talk about the Death March—you can look it up. Not going to talk about the starvation, or the disease, the heat, or what happened to anybody who lagged behind, even to drink from a mud puddle.”

  “What happened to them?” said Ty.

  “What did I just say?” said Mr. Sidney. “And drinking from the mud puddles turned out to be a bad idea anyway, even if you were dying of thirst, ’cause then you got a disease that most times was even quicker. That’s what happened to me—so sick I couldn’t stand up, let alone keep moving. But you had to keep moving, see? Because if you stopped—” Mr. Sidney drew his finger across his throat.

  “How did you do it?” Ingrid said.

  “I didn’t,” said Mr. Sidney. “Came a point where I just toppled over and lay in the dust, said my prayers.”