John Saul - In the Dark of the Night

And now that they were inside the room, they began to see that in fact it was different from the storeroom behind which it was hidden. This chamber was well organized, with a desk, a long table, and bookshelves, as well as stacks of boxes, some of which were beginning to slump with age.

And it was filled with a heavy odor that made Eric think of death and decay.

Tad’s voice broke the silence that had fallen over them as Eric played the light around the walls. “This box is open,” he said. “Give me some light.”

Eric turned the light toward Tad, who lifted an old black leather valise out of a box and set it on the table.

“What is it?” Kent asked.

Tad gazed at the object for a second, then recognized it from something he’d seen in one of the antiques stores his mother had taken him to a couple of years ago. “It’s an old medical bag. Maybe it was Dr. Darby’s.”

“What’s in it?” Eric asked.

Tad unlatched the tarnished catch and stretched the bag’s hinged mouth wide.

Eric shone the light inside.

Empty.

Turning away from the bag, Tad opened more of the boxes while Kent began exploring the drawers of the desk.

Eric went to the bookshelves and played the light over the titles, but many of the books were so old and worn that the printing on the spines was all but illegible. Still, he had a feeling that whatever the reason this room had been sealed up, the books were part of it.

“Look at this old lamp,” Tad said, breaking Eric’s reverie as he pulled a heavy, ornate lamp base from a box that was all but invisible in the dim light from the single bulb in the storeroom. He set the lamp on the table, which wobbled under its weight.

“Table’s missing a leg,” Kent said, pointing to the two small boxes that were all that supported one corner of the table.

Eric ran his finger along the dusty spines of the books, brushing them just clean enough to make out their titles. Most of them appeared to be old medical texts.

A row of jars with black screw tops and murky contents lined the top shelf, but in the darkness that was broken only by the flashlight and the spillover from the storeroom next door, he couldn’t tell what was inside them.

Then his finger passed over a different kind of book, and he felt a strange sensation — almost like electricity. He pulled the volume from the shelf and laid it on the table. A single word was stamped on the front in ornate gold script: Ledger.

Eric looked up from the book to see that Tad had become fixated on the lamp base, turning it around and around as he studied the intricate scrollwork, and that Kent was lost in tracing the pattern of the cracked Formica on the tabletop with his forefinger.

“Look what I found,” Eric said, and both their heads snapped up as if his words had startled them out of a deep sleep. As they moved closer, Eric opened the ledger to the first page.

Written in a fine, old-fashioned copperplate script were a variety of notes:

10/8 acq ladder fm M. Heuser. $17.

10/10 Saw R. Squireson.75 hr

10/11 Chimney swept. Hired F. MacIntosh gardener.

Eric turned the page.

11/3 acq painting for dng rm fm H.H.$9.

11/5 acq chaise fm J. Sanders $6

11/7 weigh 177. Must stop dairy

He flipped to the middle of the book.

7/6 sld washbasin $4, acq 3/6 $47. No energy. Suspect fraud

8/1 Saw R. Logan 1.5 hr.

8/5 Brkn window in boathouse fx’d.

Tad reached out and touched the second entry with his forefinger. “Logan,” he breathed.

“And what’s that mean?” Kent asked, pointing to the entry above the one that mentioned Logan. “Fraud on a forty-seven dollar washbasin?”

But Eric was eager to continue and kept turning pages, his eyes scanning each of them in turn, the whole process taking on the same almost automatic, oddly hypnotic rhythm they’d experienced with the photo album in the other room.

Page after page contained strangely cryptic notes — words that didn’t quite mean anything, or seemed oddly out of place — all written in the same fine hand.

At the end of the thick tome were half a dozen blank pages, but only when he was gazing at the inside of the back cover did Eric turn to the final entry.

I’ve acquired the final piece, but if I fit it to its mate I know my strength will fail. The power overwhelms me now — it is far stronger than I.

I shall therefore close this room, leaving all but one of the pieces inside.

Perhaps I should never have begun this venture, but I have the strength neither to continue the research, nor destroy what I have taken such pains to amass.

I pray that some day someone stronger will finish what I have begun.

May God have mercy on my wretched soul.

— H.D.

Kent whistled softly as he finished reading the entry, and Tad looked up to gaze straight at Eric. “H.D.,” he said. “Hector Darby. And that sounds like a suicide note, doesn’t it?”

Instead of answering Tad’s question, Eric played the beam of the flashlight around the room. “What is all this stuff?” he asked. His heart was beating faster again, and as the now fading beam of the flashlight hit each object, he felt a strange sense of excitement. Suddenly, he wanted to touch everything — to feel the objects — to experience them. It was almost as if the contents of the room had found voices and were whispering to him, calling to him.

But it was more than that, more than merely a need to look at the strange amalgam of seeming junk that filled the room.

No, it was much, much more. Eric — indeed, all three of the boys — were feeling an almost electric eagerness to absorb and understand everything in the room.

As the flashlight beam faded to a dull yellow, Eric hit it onto the palm of his hand. It flickered strong for a moment, then faded again. “What’s the matter with this?” he muttered.

“What time is it?” Tad asked.

Eric glanced at his watch, then looked again. Disbelieving what his eyes were telling him, he tapped its face, then held it up to his ear.

Its ticking was faint, but definitely there. “Five minutes to five?” he breathed, making it more a question than a statement. He looked first at Tad, then at Kent. “How could that be? We’ve only been in here — what — a half hour?”

“We got here at one,” Kent said. “I know — I looked at my watch.”

“Crap,” Eric said. “My folks’ll be back any minute.” Turning away from the room and its contents, he led the way back through the broken brick wall, leaving everything as it was, and together the three of them pulled the sheet of plywood back across the opening.

Eric put the flashlight back in the tack room, and they walked out of the carriage house into the bright afternoon sunshine. He felt strangely disoriented, as if the daylight was wrong, as if the outdoors was too big. He quickened his step as he headed up the lawn toward the house.

The message light was blinking on the phone when they came through the back door into the kitchen, and he pressed the button to play back the message.

“Hi, honey,” his mother said through the tinny speaker. “The six of us had a great round of golf and your dad picked up Marci from Summer Fun. We all decided to have dinner here at the club, and if you and the boys want to join us, Tad’s mother says there’s a taxi you can call. Or you can all go into town for a pizza if you want to. Just behave yourselves, and be careful, and be home by ten-thirty, okay? Eleven at the latest. Love you.”