John Saul - In the Dark of the Night

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.”

The face he’d seen caught in the headlights last night flooded back into Tad Sparks’s mind. “Let’s just get the tools and go fix the outboard, okay?” he said. Though he’d tried to control it, there was a hint of a stammer in his words, and now Kent was staring at him, his eyes glinting.

“You chicken?” the bigger boy asked. When Tad hesitated, Kent turned to Eric Brewster. “What about you?” he asked. “You scared, too?”

Though Eric’s heart was suddenly beating faster, he shook his head.

“Then let’s go see,” Kent said softly.

The workshop suddenly forgotten, Kent led the way to the storeroom door, opened it, and turned on the light.

As they stepped through the door, a strange feeling of familiarity — almost of welcome — came over Eric. It was as if the room itself was glad to have him back.

Or something in the room.

He looked around.

Nothing had changed since last night.

The photo album sat open on the small slant-topped desk exactly as they had left it.

With Kent and Tad following him, Eric wound his way through the maze of stacked furniture and cartons until he was once more gazing at the still open album. He could feel Kent at his right side and Tad at his left.

The old white-bordered photographs in the leather-covered album were held to its black pages by little triangular paper corners.

Without thinking, without even looking at the image before him, without even realizing what he was doing, Eric turned the page and found himself gazing at a photograph of a small office, a ledger open on its desk. An octagonal window over the desk let in a ray of light.

“That’s this room,” Tad breathed.

Eric and Kent looked up to see the same octagonal window half obscured by a dresser that sat atop a table.

But in the photograph there was a small door in the wall opposite the little window.

A wooden door with what appeared to be a hand-forged iron handle and latch.

Kent pointed at it, then looked at the wall where that door ought to be, but saw instead a sheet of plywood propped against the brick wall.

As if by unspoken agreement — or drawn by some unseen force of which they weren’t quite aware — the three boys moved toward the sheet of plywood, moving the stacks of cartons and jumble of furniture just enough so that when they finally reached their goal they could slide the plywood a few feet to the left.

And there was the doorway they’d seen in the picture.

Except that the wooden door with its iron hardware was gone.

In its place were bricks.

But not the kind of bricks with which the carriage house had been constructed. These were newer, and not nearly as well laid and neatly mortared. Rather, whoever had bricked up the doorway had done it poorly.

Or perhaps too quickly.

The bricks had been shoved into the opening haphazardly, and were only lightly and unevenly mortared.

“Why would anybody brick up the doorway?” Tad whispered.

“Want to open it?” Kent countered, not answering Tad’s question, and already prodding at the bricks.

Something inside Eric wanted nothing more than to find some tools and go to work on the outboard motor. But there was something else inside him as well.

Something that wanted to take those bricks down and free whatever was hidden behind them.

As the two conflicting forces struggled within him, Kent Newell was already working a brick loose.

Mortar dust sifted to the floor.

The brick moved more easily.

“Wait,” Eric said. “Let’s do it later, when our parents are gone.”

Kent stopped, his hands dropping away from the brick.

The three of them stood quietly, gazing at the makeshift wall, saying nothing.

None of them made any move to leave.

“We should go fix the boat,” Tad whispered.

Kent and Eric nodded, but still none of them moved.

Instead they stood staring at the doorway.

Something behind the bricks — something unseen — was holding them.

It was almost as if Eric could hear voices now, voices whispering to him, pleading with him.

Pleading for what?

“Now,” he said, his voice preternaturally loud. “Let’s go now.”

Slowly, as if struggling against the unseen force, they backed away from the wall, through the maze of cartons and furniture, and out the storeroom door.

Eric turned off the light and closed the door firmly. Yet even as he turned away he could still feel the strange force from behind the bricks pulling at him, and he knew Kent and Tad could feel it, too.

He knew they could hear the same indistinct voices that were calling to him.

And he knew that soon all of them would answer that call.

HANDING THE HEAVY tool kit to Kent, Eric led the way out of the carriage house and back down to the dock. As soon as Kent took the cowling off the motor, Eric saw the problem: the frayed starter rope had slipped from the pulley and wedged itself underneath, making it not only impossible to pull, but impossible for the motor to run as well.

“Needs a new rope,” Tad said.

“Which we don’t have,” Kent responded.

“I saw an extra one in the boathouse,” Eric said. “It’s hanging on a nail in the closet with all the old life jackets.”

As Tad went to get the new rope, Eric grabbed a couple of tools from the box and went to work. Fifteen minutes later the old rope was gone, the new one — which was almost as rotten as the old one — was on the pulley, and the final screw was tightened. “All I need is one pull,” Eric said as he put the tools back in the kit. “If it starts, let’s go to the marina and get a new rope. This one won’t last until tomorrow.”

He crossed his fingers, gave the rope a pull, and the motor instantly surged to life. As Kent replaced the cowling, Tad cast off the lines.

“Let’s go,” Tad said as he threw the last line off its cleat.

Eric pulled the boat away from the dock and turned toward town.

The sun was now shining brightly in a cloudless sky, and the only reminder of this morning’s squall was the leftover chop on the lake. Even that died out as they rounded the point that separated The Pines from the town itself. As the boat settled down to skim across the now glassy water, Kent finally began talking about the subject all three of them had been thinking about.