John Saul - In the Dark of the Night

Without thinking, he wiped his hands on his pants.

And suddenly the dream came back to him full force.

The dream in which he’d been standing over a young girl.

A young girl whose belly he’d ripped open.

His bloody hands were deep inside her, the scalpel cool and smooth to his touch.

But what did that have to do with these bloody rags?

Nothing.

It was just a dream.

Right?

No.

Somehow, in some way he didn’t understand, these rags had something to do with his dream.

With him.

And with the scalpels in the carriage house.

Eric looked at his hands again. They were clean. No blood.

And there was no way he could have been anywhere but in his bed all night long.

So somebody else had put these bloody rags in here.

Somebody else had wrapped them around the piece of liver, or whatever it was.

His first impulse was to tell his father.

Maybe this was somebody’s idea of a joke.

It wasn’t very funny.

“Tippy!” Marci’s voice came to him from the woods on the far side of the carriage house. “Tippy, come here.”

And then the bloody rags and their disgusting contents assumed a brand new meaning.

And he knew this wasn’t something he’d tell his father. This wasn’t something he’d tell anybody.

He walked quickly back into the house to wash his hands.

KENT STAPLED A copy of Marci’s flyer to a pole by the pavilion, a pole that looked like it was covered with confetti, it had seen so many flyers before. “How many more?” he sighed, silently thanking his parents for never having inflicted a little sister on him, at least not one who would get so upset over a cat running away that she’d make him spend the whole day putting up posters when he could have been doing something else.

Anything else.

Tad riffled through the dwindling stack of missing-cat flyers. “Six.”

“What a waste of time,” Kent muttered under his breath. “That cat didn’t come all the way into town.”

“You think I don’t know?” Eric sighed, taking another flyer from Tad and stapling it to the other side of the pole. “But the sooner we’re finished with this, the sooner we can do something else.”

“Maybe we could get Mrs. Langstrom to put one in the window of her shop,” Tad said.

“Good idea,” Kent said. “And the ice cream shop, too. That way at least Marci’ll see the poster every time she has an ice cream cone.” He looked at Eric and grinned slyly. “Now, I wonder which one of us should go in there and ask?”

“I’ll do it,” Eric said at once, not even bothering to pretend he wasn’t hoping Cherie might be at the counter again.

Taking a couple of the posters, he headed across the street, but when he looked through the window, he saw a different girl in a pink apron serving the ice cream. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to ask if he could put up a flyer anyway.

Or maybe they should call the job done and just throw the rest of the posters in the trash. But even as he looked around for a barrel, he remembered his father’s lecture on that exact temptation and the consequences he’d face if he succumbed to it.

A full week without access to the boat.

With another sigh, Eric headed for the door to the ice cream parlor, and came face-to-face with Adam Mosler, flanked by Ellis Langstrom and Chris McIvens.

“What’s this?” Mosler grabbed the posters out of Eric’s hand. “Oooohhh,” he said in mock sadness. “Somebody’s missing a little kitty cat.” His two friends snickered.

“Give me those,” Eric said, and snatched them back again as Tad and Kent started across the street.

“You losers are wasting your time,” Adam said. “If your cat’s gone, it’s dead.”

“You don’t know that, jerk,” Kent said, falling in on one side of Eric as Tad flanked his other side.

“Yeah, I do know that, asshole,” Adam said. “Know how many things out in the woods eat cats?”

“A pine marten got ours,” Ellis Langstrom said.

“Plus there’s weasels, raccoons, bears, wolverines, and a dozen other things,” Chris McIvens added, grinning as Tad Sparks’s face paled.

“Yeah,” Adam chimed in. “This is the Northwoods, coneheads. You really think some dumb cat who’s never seen anything worse than a squirrel is going to survive more than an hour?” Eric started to turn away, but Mosler added, “’Course, even a cat would last longer than any of you pussies.”

Kent took a step toward Mosler, his eyes narrowing, his fist clenched, but Eric reached out and took his arm. “Let’s just go, okay?” he said, his voice low.

Kent hesitated, and Eric could almost feel him making his decision as some of the tension left the other boy’s arm.

As the three of them crossed the street, leaving the local boys behind, Kent said, “I hate that punk.”

“I know,” Eric replied. “But let’s just finish this and get out of here.” He took two more flyers from Tad and handed them to Kent. “We each get rid of two and we’re done.”

Kent took his two, but his gaze followed Adam Mosler and his friends as they moved through the parking lot toward the dock. “You think maybe those guys took your cat?”

Eric shivered, the memory of his dream and of what he’d found in the garbage can that morning still fresh.

His stomach churned.

“No,” he said. “They wouldn’t do that. Anyway, I don’t think they would. Besides, it doesn’t matter, because even if they did, we’d never find out. Let’s just get these flyers up and be done with it.”

“They’d do it, all right,” Kent said, his eyes glinting. “They’d take her, kill her, and love every second of it.”

“C’mon,” Tad said, and pulled Kent toward the antiques shop. “The cat probably just took off. It could be back by the time we get home.” He led Kent into the shop, but Eric didn’t follow.

Instead, he stood on the sidewalk, feeling a dark knot of guilt forming in his belly.

But he had nothing to feel guilty about. Nothing!

And yet the memory of the dream didn’t go away.

In his dream, he’d used that scalpel on a girl.

He’d taken her, and killed her.

And he’d loved every second of it.

THE FLOAT PLANE was waiting at the dock when the Brewsters pulled into the parking lot by the pavilion. The Newells and the Sparkses were already there, talking with the pilot, and as Merrill walked down the dock to join them, she wished there were some way she could convince Dan to stay a few days longer, at least until they knew what had happened to Tippy. If the cat wasn’t back by this evening, Marci would be crying herself to sleep, and Dan had always been better at comforting their daughter than she was. But all her arguments had fallen on deaf ears. “Everything’s going to be fine,” Dan had told her only an hour ago. “Tippy’ll come back, you’ll have a great week, and I’ll be back on Friday night or Saturday morning.”

Now he was looking at his watch and smiling at her. “This guy doesn’t mess around,” he said, waving at the pilot. “Right on time.”

Merrill managed a wan smile, and a moment later they came to the plane.

“Looks like we got everyone,” the pilot said, taking Dan’s computer case and putting it in the back of the tiny plane. “Two of you in the back, one up front riding shotgun with me.”

Dan squatted down for a hug from an unhappy Marci. “Look at that lip,” he said to her. “You better watch out or you’ll trip on it.”

“Don’t go!” the little girl begged.

“I don’t want to, honey, but I have to.” He drew Marci close. “Tomorrow you’ll be back at Summer Fun, getting ready for the Fourth of July parade.” He pulled back and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Before you know it, it’ll be Friday and I’ll be back. And next weekend we’ll do something special. I promise.” Jeff Newell and Kevin Sparks were already boarding the little orange plane, which rocked gently at its mooring, and Dan straightened up to give his wife one more kiss.